WASHINGTON (AP) - Donald Trump holds the most powerful office in the world. But he's dogged by insecurity over his loss of the popular vote in the election and a persistent frustration that the legitimacy of his presidency is being challenged by Democrats and the media, aides and associates say.
Trump's fixation has been a drag on the momentum of his opening days in office, with his exaggerations about inauguration crowds and false assertions about illegal balloting intruding on advisers' plans to launch his presidency with a flurry of actions on the economy. His spokesman Sean Spicer has twice stepped into the fray himself, including on Tuesday, when he doubled down on Trump's false claim that he lost the popular vote because 3 million to 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally cast ballots.
"He believes what he believes based on the information he was provided," said Spicer, who provided no evidence to back up the president's statements. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have finalized their election results with no reports of the kind of widespread fraud that Trump is alleging.
If the president's claim were true it would mark the most significant election fraud in U.S. history - and ironically, would raise the same questions about Trump's legitimacy that he's trying to avoid. Yet Spicer repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether the Trump administration would investigate the allegations pushed by the president.
Some Trump allies say Trump is justified in using his platform to defend his standing. They point to Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis' pre-inauguration statement that he did not see Trump as a legitimate president, as well as U.S. intelligence agencies' assessment that Russia meddled in the election in order to help Trump win.
"Segments of his own government keep driving this narrative," said Roger Stone, a longtime confidant. "I don't think it hurts to point it out."
Key advisers in Trump's inner circle concede the focus on crowd claims and alleged voter fraud have been a distraction. But who's going to stop him from airing his complaints?
After relishing in Friday's inaugural festivities, the new president grew increasingly upset the next day by what he felt was "biased" media coverage of women's marches across the globe protesting his election, according to a person familiar with his thinking. Trump was particularly enraged with CNN, which he thought was "gloating" by continually running photos of the women's march alongside the smaller crowds that attended his inauguration the day before, according to this person, one of several White House aides and associates who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.
Tuesday night on Twitter, Trump slammed CNN again, referring to the network as "FAKE NEWS @CNN" while praising rival Fox News Channel.
Trump has had a tumultuous relationship with the press, frequently calling the media dishonest and insulting individual reporters by name at his rallies and on Twitter. Still, two people close to Trump said he expected his coverage to turn more favorable once he took office. Instead, he's told people he believes it's gotten worse.
The bad press over the weekend has not allowed Trump to "enjoy" the White House as he feels he deserves, according to one person who has spoken with him.
The result has been a full display of Trump's propensity for exaggeration and more. During an appearance at the CIA Saturday, he wrongly said the inaugural crowds gathered on the National Mall stretched to the Washington Monument, despite clear photo evidence to the contrary. And during a reception with lawmakers from both parties Monday night, he repeated his false assertion that millions of illegal immigrants provided Hillary Clinton's margin in the popular vote.
It's not the first time that Trump, who is known to be both thin-skinned and dedicated to polishing his public image, has become fixated on details that challenge his success. When journalist Timothy O'Brien wrote in a 2005 book that Trump was a multimillionaire, not a billionaire, the real estate mogul sued him for $5 billion. The case was dismissed. Trump appealed, accusing the journalist of libel. He lost that, too.
Spicer hinted at Trump's feelings during his maiden press briefing on Monday.
"There is this constant theme to undercut the enormous support that he has," Spicer said. "And I think that it's just unbelievably frustrating when you're continually told it's not big enough, it's not good enough, you can't win."
Less than one week into the administration, Spicer has twice been sent to the White House briefing room to reiterate his boss' message. Trump is said to have approved of Spicer's angry tirade against the media on Saturday, which included false statements about the size of inaugural crowds. But the president, who is intensely focused on optics, was said to be critical of Spicer's on-camera image.
By Monday, Spicer was donning a darker suit and his lectern in the briefing room had been lowered somewhat.
Underscoring Trump's habit of stoking rivalries among his staff, he has told people he wants his counselor, Kellyanne Conway, to be on television more. He cheered her use of the phrase "alternative facts" in a recent interview as a way to counteract what he believes is the media's inherent bias.
Those around Trump are trying to get the cable news consumer-in-chief to be near a television less often, according to one person who has spoken with him.


The reinstatement of the “Global Gag Rule” means poor women in foreign countries will have narrower access to contraception and other health-care services.
Two days after millions of women and their allies throughout the world took to the streets to protest the bigotry and misogyny of Donald Trump, the president sat in the Oval Office, surrounded by other men, and signed an executive order that could have dire consequences for women living abroad.
The United States provides more funding for women’s health services than any other country. For health providers that receive that aid, the gag rule forces them to limit their services, or face a major budget gap. In other words, health organizations that provide a whole range of essential services besides abortion get punished. For women, it means narrower access not just to abortion but also to contraception, which in many poor countries is largely funded by foreign donors. Disruptions in aid put women at greater risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and make them more likely to resort to unsafe abortions. More than 1,327 communities in Ghana, for instance, were affected after George W. Bush reinstated the rule in 2001, forcing Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana to forgo $200,000 in USAID funding and cut its nursing staff by 44 percent, according to Population Action International. In Kenya, two leading reproductive health–care providers were forced to close a total of 17 clinics. Contraceptive shipments from the US to 16 countries—primarily in Africa—stopped completely.
Given the history of the gag rule, Trump’s rush to reinstate it is not a surprise. But that doesn’t diminish the significance of the order for millions of women and their families. The two largest recipients of family-planning funding from USAID, Marie Stopes International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, announced Monday that they won’t comply with the reinstated policy. IPPF, which will lose $100 million as a result, promised to “work with governments and donors to bridge the funding and service gaps the Global Gag Rule creates.” But even if the money materializes from another source, it will take time, leaving women—particularly poor and rural women—at risk to disruptions in access to care. MSI (which often works in unstable and emergency settings, such as in Nepal after the deadly 2015 earthquake) will lose $30 million, or about 20 percent of its annual budget. The organization estimates the shortfall could, during Trump’s first term, lead to 6.5 million unintended pregnancies, 2.2 million abortions, 2.1 million unsafe abortions, and the deaths of 21,700 pregnant women.


WESTFIELD, Ind. -- The Indianapolis Colts are kicking off their training camp on Wednesday at their new summer home, Grand Park.
The team will practice there for about a month, until Aug. 18. This is the first year of their 10-year agreement with the park.
Organizers say there’s a large area for watching practices, "Colts City" with drills and inflatables for the kids and several events where fans can meet players.
Admission is free, but you have to download a free ticket first to get in.
If you'd like to see the 2018 training schedule and theme days, click here.


MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- On Memorial Day, Monday, May 26th at Wood National Cemetery -- was a powerful tribute from veterans still with us -- in honor of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
Wood National Cemetery on West National Avenue played host to the annual Milwaukee Veterans Affairs Memorial Day ceremony.
Memorial Day is a day meant for remembering the servicemen and servicewomen who have died while serving the country.
It is a day meant for reverence, reflection, and a heartfelt "thank you" to our veterans.
It is a federal holiday that inspires those who haven't served -- and conjures vivid memories for those who have.
"The buddies that I lost in Vietnam, that were killed next to me -- I`ll always think about them every year, all the time," Vietnam veteran Fred Masarik said.
Masarik was in awe at the respect he was shown during the ceremony at Wood National Cemetery on Monday.
He knows first-hand -- it wasn't always like this.
"It was different times. The country was very divided, and when we came through San Francisco, they threw stuff at our jet in `67. We just sort of shook our heads," Marasik said.
In speaking with veterans on this Memorial Day who have sacrificed to serve our country -- one common call was for us to appreciate our freedom.
"You don`t know what we have here. When I went to the embassy and saw our flag every day, that just filled me with so much pride," Navy veteran Marcia Cunningham said.
Of course, those freedoms have come at a tremendous cost. A cost so great, some veterans say they need ceremonies like Monday's for a reminder.
"It's real important for me to just visualize this and go through it. Just keep it in my mind. Once you're a vet -- you're a vet," Vietnam veteran Earl Milan said.
"People should never, ever forget what they gave and sacrificed for this country. The ultimate sacrifice," Marasik said.
The least we can all do is reflect on that sacrifice.
Wood National Cemetery is actually CLOSED to new interments.
The only interments that are being accepted are subsequent interments for veterans or eligible family members in an existing gravesite.
Periodically however, burial space may become available due to a canceled reservation or when a disinterment has been completed.
When either of these two scenarios occurs, the gravesite is made available to another eligible veteran on a first-come, first-served basis.
The cemetery is co-located with the VA Medical Center and the VA Regional Office in Milwaukee.
It is the only cemetery in the National Cemetery Administration that is co-located with both a Veterans Affairs Medical Center and a Veterans Affairs Regional Office.
The cemetery is located on the grounds of a former Soldiers Home that today is called the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, Milwaukee, Wis.
From 1867 until 1871, the home buried its soldiers in private cemeteries in the Milwaukee area.
In 1871, a cemetery opened on the grounds.
Originally known only as Soldiers Home Cemetery, it wasn’t until 1937 the name was changed to honor Gen. George Wood, a longtime member of the Soldiers’ Home’s Board of Managers.
It became a national cemetery in 1973.
The cemetery is part of the Northwestern Branch-National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers National Historic Landmark district, designated on June 6, 2011.
The 60-foot-tall granite Civil War Soldiers and Sailors monument was erected in 1903 when the cemetery was part of the Northwest Branch Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers.
The monument was sponsored by the Soldiers and Sailors Association and was sculpted by Joseph Shaver Granite and Marble Co. of Milwaukee.
A memorial pathway is lined with a variety of memorials that honor America’s veterans.
As of 2003, there were seven memorials along there —most commemorating soldiers of 20th-century wars.
Ordinary Seaman James K. Duncan (Civil War), U. S. Navy, USS Fort Hindman. Harrisonburg, La., April 16, 1864 (Section 19, Grave 41).
Private Milton Matthews (Civil War), U.S. Army, Company C, 61st Pennsylvania Infantry. Petersburg, Va., April 2, 1865 (Section 11, Grave 61).
Corporal Winthrop D. Putnam (Civil War), U.S. Army, Company A, 77th, Illinois Infantry. Vicksburg, Miss., May 22, 1863 (Section 16, Grave 109).
Private Lewis A. Rounds (Civil War), U.S. Army, Company D, 8th Ohio Infantry. Spotsylvania, Va., May 12, 1864 (Section 20, Grave 256).
Boatswain’s Mate Michael McCormick (Civil War), U.S. Navy, USS Signal. Red River, May 19, 1865 (Section MA, Grave 10A).
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What happens when the world's best-performing emerging market meets the world's fastest-developing continent? This week, India and Africa are hoping to find out. Over 50 African leaders are currently in New Delhi looking for new partnerships in trade, education and investment. Some ties already exist in telecoms, IT, health and - as featured in this report - higher education.


Meet Newsday's All-Long Island boys tennis first team for the 2017 spring season.
Long Island Player of the Year: Yuval Solomon, Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK, Sr.
Solomon capped a historic varsity run with a second straight state championship. Only six other Nassau County boys tennis players have won multiple state titles. The Wake Forest commit rolled over every opponent in his path, never losing a set or more than four games during the state tournament.
"When he came here the first day, he was hitting the ball four times in a game," coach Nick Ventimiglia said. "It was ace, ace, ace ace." Solomon, who was the state runner-up as a sophomore and the consolation runner-up as a freshman, went 73-2 over his last three seasons. He also reached the state tournament as part of a doubles team in eighth grade.
"It's been a pleasure playing high school tennis," Solomon said. "Five years at the state tournament, six years on varsity tennis, and it's just great."
Suffolk Player of the Year: Jack Flores, Huntington, Fr.
With three more years of high school tennis, Flores has plenty more he can accomplish.His freshman season was special enough to indicate the future is extremely bright.
Flores impressively defeated Half Hollow Hills West's Jackson Weisbrot, who had beaten him twice already this season, in the Suffolk singles championship final. He dominated his first-round match in the state tournament before putting up a strong fight but falling short in the second round.
Alvaro Bezos, St. John the Baptist, Sr.
Bezos won the CHSAA singles championship in his only season on the varsity.
Peter Siozios, New Hyde Park, Sr.
He was runner-up at the county tournament and reached the state quarterfinals.
Jackson Weisbrot, Half Hollow Hills West, Sr.
Weisbrot led his team back to Suffolk team championship. He followed that by placing second in the county tournament and winning an epic three-and-a-half hour match in the first round of the state tournament.
Rajpal and Eli Grossman played doubles for the county tournament and won the whole thing. Then they went on a run to finish third in the state.
Grossman and Preet Rajpal played doubles for the county tournament and won the whole thing. Then they went on a run to finish third in the state.
Tyler Nierman, Half Hollow Hills West, Sr.
Nierman and Cameron Klepper, a junior, won the county doubles tournament. They also dominated on their way to the state quarterfinals before falling to eventual champions James Wei and Dylan Glickman.
Cameron Klepper, Half Holow Hills West, Jr.
Klepper and Tyler Nierman won the county doubles tournament. They also dominated on their way to the state quarterfinals before falling to eventual champions James Wei and Dylan Glickman.
Fisher's Braves went 18-0 and have won 52 consecutive matches.
Newsday All-Long Island boys tennis team 2017Kieran Lynch reveals the Newsday All-Long Island boys tennis team for 2017. Newsday's All-Long Island history databaseMore than 6,000 players and coaches have earned Newsday's top high school honors.


The Oscar-nominated makeup team takes us behind the scenes of the D.C. Comics movie.
From left, from Warner Bros./Everett Collection, Warner Bros/DC Comics/Rex/Shutterstock, courtesy of Warner Bros.
In 2015, Warner Bros. hired makeup artist Alessandro Bertolazzi for the most intimidating challenge of his three-decade career: making over the Joker, a pop culture icon, for Suicide Squad. Granted, the supervillain (played this time by Jared Leto) did not get as much screen time as the film’s titular team. But as the most-famous character featured in Suicide Squad, the 67-year-old, green-haired villain, who has appeared in thousands of comic books and been famously portrayed onscreen by Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, was the speculative fixation of many comic fans. (Bertolazzi was startled to discover that the Internet was already guessing how his Suicide Squad Joker would look before he started work on the film.) So, how did Bertolazzi prep for the much-anticipated makeover?
Bertolazzi gathered other inspirational materials, including everyday items—sawdust, wood, stone—photos, newspaper clippings, Internet images, and anything else that inspired him.
When it came time to put makeup brush to skin, Bertolazzi and the filmmakers made the decision to keep the Joker separate from the rest of the Suicide Squad cast by putting everyone in separate makeup trailers.
It was David Ayer’s idea to give the Joker a scar. Bertolazzi expanded on that idea by giving him seven.
Despite the intimidating challenge he faced, Bertolazzi was satisfied with how the studio trusted him to experiment and take the movie’s most prized character into his literal hands.


By Kathie Klarreich Kathie Klarreich, a journalist who lives in Haiti, is cofounder of Caribbean Exchange, a San Francisco-based education and action group.
HAITIAN President General Prosper Avril completed a year in office Sept. 17. He has managed to survive several coup attempts, a crippling economic decline, and an increase in the random violence that drains the country morally and materially. The same hope that sprang up in February 1986 when Jean Claude Duvalier fled the country reappeared when Mr. Avril took office. There was some general housecleaning, as low-ranking soldiers ousted superiors with Duvalierist ties. But Avril himself, with 30 years of service to the Duvalier regime, was suspect. People took a wait-and-see attitude.
Now even Avril's most vocal critics acknowledge certain improvements. Most recently, the president agreed to substantially cut official salaries, and halve his own, to help fight the country's huge deficit. But many promises have yet to be realized. The result is widespread discontent, increased repression, and political instability.
Already the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, Haiti's economic situation continues to deteriorate. Coffee, one of Haiti's main exports, can no longer compete on the world market. Currently, Haiti imports nearly twice as much as it exports in order to feed its people. The market is flooded with free or low-cost staple foods that have undercut an already unstable local market.
In the capital city, nightly murders, robberies, and rapes force people inside when the sun goes down. Both the elite bourgeois and the penniless beggar are victims of this rising insecurity. One facet of the situation is increased banditry, perhaps a desperate response to the decaying economy. Another is the insidious attempt to keep people from organizing for democratic reform. Most of the rural organizations that formed after Duvalier's departure have collapsed.
One significant difference in this current wave of violence is the difficulty of tracing its source. Though there are no fingerprints leading to the National Palace, official passivity and mock investigations suggest some sort of collusion, if not direct involvement.
Ironically, from the beginning Avril has expressed an interest in the transition to a civilian government. He is proud of the Provisional Electoral Council, which this month will announce the electoral calendar. While the government insists on the council's honest intentions and independence, Duvalierist sympathizers and death-squad members have been reported present at several council meetings. These thugs made it clear that, despite a constitutional provision prohibiting anyone linked to Duvalier from participating, they intend to run for office.
The US, meanwhile, continues to praise President Avril. The deputy assistant secretary of state for the Caribbean, Richard Melton, recently said the US fully supports the efforts of Avril to move forward on democratic, social, and economic reforms.
Free and fair elections are a precondition for resumption of US aid, which was cut off after an election-day massacre in November 1987. The US also demands reduced drug trafficking and improved human-rights conditions.
Encouraged by Haiti's cooperation in drug control, the US recently approved $300,000 to help in this effort. The money will be used to expand the government's ability to track down dealers. Critics, however, question how the money will be kept out of the pockets of government employees, who are themselves often part of the drug trafficking.
Human-rights violations are numerous as ever. Illegal arrests average one a day; arbitrary detentions and assassinations are common. In the countryside, the victims are usually members of peasant and church groups and labor unions, and those who participate in political demonstrations.
Whether as a result of politics or economics, more people than ever are fleeing the country by boat. In the first six months of this year, 20,530 Haitians on some 300 boats were stopped by the US Coast Guard.
There is little question that Haiti desperately needs economic assistance to get back on its feet. But if the US blindly doles out dollars it risks perpetuating a system that is doing nothing for its 6 million poor. Given the current situation, Haitians have little reason to feel optimistic that either their economic or political situation is likely to change in the near future.


Wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, has called on women and the youth from the North-East to wait behind at polling units and protect their votes during the general elections.
She made the call in Bauchi on Wednesday at the North-East Zonal Town Hall meeting for women and the youth organised by the Buhari Women and Youth Presidential Campaign Team.
The President’s wife was represented by the wife of the Vice-President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo.
Mrs Osinbajo said, “Her Excellency (Mrs Buhari) has asked me to tell you to take care of your PVCs so that on February 16, you can go to the polling units and vote for the APC.
“She has asked me to tell you that after voting, you must not go home. You must vote and wait for your votes to be counted.
“She has asked me to remind you of the children that go to school and get fed there and to remind you of the work done by the government of President Muhammadu Buhari.
She said the President’s wife was happy when she was told of the market women who were beneficiaries of the Trader Moni and the Market Moni as well as the thousands of Nigerian youths who had jobs with the N-Power.
Osinbajo also quoted the President’s wife as calling on the youth to shun violence before, during and after the general elections.
The Chairman, National Working Committee Women and Youth Presidential Campaign, Gen. Buba Marwa (retd.), called on the youth to be law-abiding and peaceful before, during and after the elections.


Outside of the ocean floor, there are no empty spots on a map of Earth. At one time, of course, that was not the case. As little as a 150 years ago, most of the western United States and Canada's far north were vast white spaces on maps. It took centuries for explorers to answer the most basic questions about North America: What's there and where is it?
Derek Hayes's "America Discovered" is a fascinating look at the evolution of North America as seen through the eyes of European explorers and mapmakers. He presents approximately 300 maps created over the past five centuries. It is a stunning collection that shows mapmaking not simply as the utilitarian necessity that it was, but also as an art form. In fact, given some of the flights of fancy that mapmakers indulged in when filling those empty spaces, some maps were more art than reality.
Hayes's commentary moves chronologically, beginning with the few maps we have from early Viking exploration of North America. He then moves on to Christopher Columbus, who technically didn't reach North America itself, but rather islands off the continent.
As Hayes illustrates, the next centuries saw a slow process to determine how big the continent was, how it might be traversed, and what resources could be exploited.
Although many have a romantic view of these early explorers, Hayes makes it clear that nearly all exploration was driven by the profit motive. Explorers wanted to know what was over the next hill in hopes of being able to sell it back in Europe or somehow make money from settlers. "Without that investment," he notes, "little exploration would have occurred."
Still, the maps often reflected desire more than reality. After explorers realized that North America wasn't Asia, they searched for a route to China. Rivers, bays, and straits not fully explored were reported back in Europe as paths across the continent. Those searching for riches placed nonexistent cities of gold and silver on their drawings.
Exploration dispelled some myths but propagated others, such as the belief that California was an island, a fantasy that persisted for nearly two centuries. Complicating matters was the fact that some nations hid their maps from the world, causing a few explorers to "discover" parts of North America repeatedly.
Although maps are the stars of this book, Hayes's illuminating commentary is equally good. His training as a geographer and the four previous historical atlases he has edited have prepared him well.
While he concentrates his chronicle on the better-known explorers and mapmakers, he doesn't ignore the unique stories of men unfamiliar to most of us, such as Arctic explorer John Franklin, mapmaker John Barnwell, and fur trader Peter Pond.
Beautifully produced with large color reproductions, "America Discovered" traces the exploration of North America and what its explorers desired as the geography was gradually revealed. It's a wonderful introduction for those interested in learning how humanity filled in those mysterious white spaces.


Pep Guardiola believes his brilliant Brazilian midfielder Fernandinho can extend his Manchester City career by moving back to central defense on a permanent basis as he ages.
His versatility has also seen him look increasingly effective on occasion at center-half, a role he performed so effectively in last weekend's comfortable 3-1 win over Arsenal.
Now Guardiola, who extended Javier Mascherano's career at Barcelona with a similar positional switch, reckons Fernandinho could benefit from the same move in England.
"I think he can play in that position, I am pretty sure," said City manager Guardiola ahead of Sunday's match at home to Chelsea, where a win for his side would likely see them leapfrog Liverpool into first place on goal difference, albeit having played one game more, after their title rivals 3-0 victory over Bournemouth on Saturday.
"He is fast, he is strong in the air, good going backwards and when he sees the football in front of him, his vision for the pass inside, switch of play is excellent," the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss explained.
"So he is intelligent to go forward or go backwards, so he understands everything. Of course he has to train more at it. I think he can do it, but his position is as a midfield player."
Guardiola appeared to have gambled last week when he left England center-half John Stones on the bench and played Fernandinho in the heart of City's defense instead.
"I know what is going to happen, we are going to lose when Fernandinho plays in that position," he said. "I am a genius, huh?
"But I discover a surprise for the opponents doing that and I know what is going to happen," the Spaniard added. "‘Why do you take a risk and leave £45 million ($58 million, 51 million euros) on the bench when he can play in that position?’ And I know that."
Fernandinho's contract runs out next year, by which time he will be 35, which has focused Guardiola's attention on finding his successor, although the City boss admits that is not an easy process.
"We have some options and are looking for some options but today it is not easy to find the player and to buy the player so we will see. You know, we spoke many times about that. We are trying to help Fernandinho in that position."
Since 2013, the reigning champions has finished an average 25 points behind the next season's winners and the last three defenses have been hugely unsuccessful.
"I know, in the last five or six years, the position where the champions were the year after," said Guardiola. "All of them were out and didn't have a chance to win the Premier League.
"However, we are there. That is what I like the most in this season," he added.
"I say we are in the League Cup final and you are in all the competitions then we are fighting. In the last two seasons, Leicester and Chelsea had no chance, but we are there at the top.
"That is what I like the most but if we want to be there until the end.
"If we win against Chelsea it will help us and if we win the game, I am sure we will be there again fighting to be champions again."


While watching the Stanley Cup match on Saturday, the first period ended and legendary sportscaster Bob Costas appeared on the screen with the Lexus Intermission Report.It made me chuckle seeing an overt corporate placement because the day before, a blogger at the political website Mother Jones named Tom Philpott had asked me on Twitter what I thought of a new EPA paper on the herbicide atrazine.
Well, of course he should ask them, that is why I said it. The weird thing is that he believes it would be legitimate to ask anyone else. The reason is obvious, by way of an analogy; if you want to know about the weaknesses of an Intel processor, you go ask AMD, not Intel, and certainly not me. If there are flaws in the EPA's paper or gaps in the studies they selected for their analysis, the obvious way to find them is to ask is the manufacturer. That is Journalism 101.
Obviously, he did not want to engage in journalism, he wanted to engage in political posturing. But to what avail? Does he really think a small, unrestricted grant (.009 of American Council on Science and Health revenue last year) from a company allows them to buy some special clout with us? It's batty conspiracy talk. I wondered, watching that hockey game and that corporate-sponsored intermission report, if Mother Jones similarly believes Bob Costas is rigging the score of the hockey game to be whatever outcome Lexus wants. Because, you know, the network that pays him proudly lists Lexus right on the screen.
At the Council, we also proudly list our corporate donors, as does the American Heart Association, United Way and numerous prominent non-profits. You know who doesn't? Mother Jones. But they have them. A lot of them. On their last available Form 990, the Foundation for National Progress, the parent of Mother Jones, had ~$13,000,000 in revenue. A subscription to Mother Jones magazine costs $12. They have just under 167,000 subscribers. That's around $2,000,000 in subscription revenue, meaning about $11,000,000, a whopping ~84 percent of their revenue, is dark money. Where does that 84 percent of their revenue come from, then? Obviously corporations and certainly partisan political activists like George Soros.
Anyway, in case it remains unclear; no, Mother Jones employees, Bob Costas is not a shill for Big Lexus, nor is he manipulating the score of hockey games, no matter what Vast Corporate Conspiracy you choose to believe about scientists. And even less believable is that any of us at the American Council on Science and Health manufacture articles that are false because anyone paid us to do so.
Does ‘Excess’ Dietary Salt Cause Cardiovascular Toxicity?
And more to come this year. If only Mother Jones used its millions of dollars so constructively, rather than paying employees to engage in social media smear campaigns.


Jordan makes official statement: a Grad rocket hit Aqaba. The rocket appears to have been fired from outside Jordan.
Jordanian Minister of Information Nabil al-Sharif confirmed Thursday evening that a Grad rocket hit the city of Aqaba earlier in the day. Previously, Al-Sharif said only that an explosion had occurred in a warehouse in the city.
Al-Sharif said the missile damaged a warehouse, and did not cause injury. The Grad was fired from outside Jordan, he said. Jordanian authorities plan to investigate the incident.
Israel is investigating the incident as well. Israeli investigators believe there may have been more than one rocket fired; additional rockets, if found, could give clues as to the identity of the attackers.
Two or three explosions were heard in Eilat on Thursday morning, leading to fears that rockets had hit the city. Security forces searched and found that the rockets had apparently struck Aqaba, adjacent to Eilat.
One theory was that the rockets had been fired by terrorists in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, who intended to hit Eilat but missed their mark. Egyptian officials denied that missiles had been fired from Egyptian territory.
Some residents of Eilat expressed anger at the media for reporting that rockets had been fired at Eilat despite the fact that it has not been proven that Eilat was the target. Reports of terrorism targeting Eilat are premature, and are likely to harm the thriving tourist industry in the city, they said.


Youths from Nkayi District Wards 22 and 29 attended a two-day camp at Entokozweni Safari Resort. The youth camp is a component of Habakkuk Trust's advocacy initiative aimed at strengthening youth involvement in the mainstream of society.
The youth received training on advocacy, human rights, Constitution, resource tracking and youth participation in decision making processes. The outdoor setting enhanced participation as youth were able to engage in a more relaxed atmosphere. The youth highlighted the relevance of the content stating that as rural youth they felt marginalised when it comes to governance and development issues.
"We have been covered with a two in one blanket as rural youth and now that blanket has been removed, by Habakkuk Trust," Butholezwe Ngwenya.
"We greatly appreciate the knowledge that we received at the camp. As we go back to our areas, we will share the information with other young people so that we collectively influence decisions in our Wards."
The youths exhibited high levels of enthusiasm and preparedness to be advocates for youth inclusion in development in their communities.
The youths lamented lack of access to land and their exclusion from decision making structures.
Precious Dube from Ward 22 proposed that youth should create sub-committees that will feed into Village Development Structures so as to amplify the voices of young people in decision making platforms. "We can identify active youth who will form a youth sub-committee to work with the village development committees and the ward committees so that the interests of the youths can be included in development planning," She said.


Gaza authorities shutter Al Arabiya and Maan offices in what critics call an illegal move.
Protesting what they called Hamas' "ongoing assault on journalists", Palestinian journalists held a sit-in near Ramallah last week to protest against the Hamas government's recent closure of two media offices in Gaza.
A week earlier, Hamas authorities in Gaza shut down two media offices used by Al Arabiya satellite channel and Maan News Agency, which they accused of "disseminating false news and publishing fabricated reports" about Hamas and its relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
On July 25, police officers arrived at the two media offices in Al-Rimal neighbourhood, west of Gaza City, and ordered their workers to leave immediately, saying they had an order issued by the attorney general to "temporarily" close the offices and seize their contents.
"Police detectives came to our office showing us an order issued by the attorney general to temporarily close our office, but they refused to give us a copy of the order," said Al Arabiya's Gaza office director, Islam Abd al-Kareem.
Hamas government spokesman Ehab el-Ghussein said the government had previously "warned against going too far in fabricating news, spreading rumours, and publishing entirely baseless reports about the government, which served to disseminate hatred and incitement against the Palestinian people in Gaza".
We're not biased, and in all cases this is Gaza's office, not Egypt's. If they tried to send a political message by closing our office in Gaza, it would be absolutely ludicrous.
But, he added, "the two media offices ignored the government's calls and kept on with their unethical and unprofessional behaviour and policies, as they deliberately tried to implicate the government as interfering in Egypt's ongoing internal conflict".
Hamas, which has been in control in Gaza since June 2007 and is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been repeatedly accused of interfering in internal Egyptian affairs.
Al Jazeera recently reported that deposed Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi has been arrested on a number of charges, the most significant of which is his alleged conspiracy with Hamas to carry out "anti-state acts" including attacks on police stations, soldiers and prisons.
Ghussein emphasised that the government's policy is to not interfere in other states' internal affairs. The media outlets, according to Ghussein, "falsely and deliberately" portrayed the Hamas government as interfering in Egypt, thereby provoking resentment against it.
Maan's editor-in-chief Nasser Al-Lahham criticised the decision to close the two offices, saying the move represents "a continuation of Hamas government's crackdown on journalists and press freedoms".
Since coming to power, Hamas has restricted press freedoms in the Gaza Strip. These include an ongoing ban on importing three local newspapers printed in the West Bank, and a ban on Palestinian journalists from working, giving interviews or cooperating with Israeli press and television. Hamas has repeatedly stated it will not lift the ban on the three allegedly pro-Fatah newspapers until the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah lifts a similar ban it has enforced on pro-Hamas newspapers in the West Bank.
Lahham said Hamas' media office has "consistently" interfered with Maan's work over the past years, especially since the July toppling of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. "Some Hamas officials in Gaza have apparently gone mad and started behaving irrationally after the recent events ended Morsi's and the Muslim Brotherhood's rule in Egypt," he commented.
Similarly, Al Arabiya's correspondent dismissed the government's claims of fabricating stories about the government and its relationship with Egypt as "unfounded".
On July 24, Maan News Agency published a news report citing an unnamed Israeli source and stating that "six Muslim Brotherhood officials had smuggled themselves into Gaza to plan an uprising against the military in Cairo, after their Egyptian president was deposed".
When this later proved to be spurious, Maan responded that the story was originally published by an Israeli news site - which it has not named - and that Maan merely translated the report from Hebrew to Arabic, as per its policy.
Although the government filed a complaint against Maan and Al Arabiya more than a month before this incident, Salama Marouf, the head of Hamas' media office, says the news report "was the straw that broke the camel's back".
Marouf explained that the closure order was issued based on "multiple pieces of damning evidence which the government supplied the attorney general with demonstrating unprofessional and unethical behaviour on their [the media outlets'] part.
"We found out their translation fabricated the original news report ... And they could have visited the Beach Hotel where they claim the Brotherhood officials were staying, and which is a few minutes away from their office, to factually confirm the news before they ran it on their site," he added.
Government officials Ghussein and Marouf failed to provide specific complaints about Al Arabiya's coverage, though they vaguely stated that the majority of Palestinians in Gaza were "offended" by the Saudi-owned channel's coverage.
Abd al-Kareem said he found it "ludicrous" to justify the closure of Al Arabiya's office by claiming it provides biased anti-Muslim Brotherhood coverage of the ongoing events in Egypt.
"We're not biased, and in all cases this is Gaza's office, not Egypt's. If they tried to send a political message by closing our office in Gaza, it would be absolutely ludicrous. And it would be telling that the order has come from a supposedly independent and unaffiliated party, i.e. the attorney general," he said.
Human rights groups in Gaza have condemned the office closures, saying the decision constituted a violation of press freedoms and freedom of expression, as well as of Palestinian basic law and international human rights standards.
Samir Zaqout of the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights asserted that "the closure procedures violate Palestinian Basic Amended Law of 2005, which denies any form of monitoring, ban or warning or the imposition of restrictions over the media unless by a judicial decision in conformity".


“The theme for all our Business Outlook forums this year has been basically the same—a focus on stimulating economic growth after what seemed to be an entrenched recession, which slowed or put growth on hold in a number of areas,” said Ms Joan Albury, President of TCL Group and chief organiser of the Business Outlook Series.
Joining Mr Christie on the podium will be Eleuthera Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Sands, Jr, who will update the audience on the developments in Eleuthera since the last Business Outlook.
“We are fortunate to have the support of the Eleuthera Chamber of Commerce again this year and its dynamic president, Thomas Sands, who has a finger on the pulse of business and society on the island, especially in the south. This is a partnership we hold in high regard because it is so necessary to create the kind of cooperate efforts that will continue to energise the Eleuthera economy. It was, in fact, Mr Sands who invited TCL to bring the forum to his home island. He saw the value of the Business Outlook programme in pulling together the right players from key sectors to share the necessary information to drive things forward,” said Mrs Albury.
Completing the slate of speakers for the 2014 Eleuthera Business Outlook are: Christel Sands Feaste, partner, Higgs and Johnson, attorneys-at-law; Scott Gorsline, VP operations, Cape Eleuthera Resort and Marina; James Malcolm, VP and managing director, Sand Piper Inn and Destination Schooner Bay Ltd; Juan Pulido, project manager at Cotton Bay Holding Ltd; Angela Cleare, founder, ABC Tours and Consulting Co; Christopher Maxey, founder and director, Cape Eleuthera Island School; Arinthia Komolafe, managing director, the Bahamas Development Bank, and Edrin Symonette, farmer and entrepreneur.
So instead of managing the country, he is just going around talking crap.
LMAO...this is goodbye tour....BUSH DID IT WHEN HE WAS LEAVING OFFICE.


From the outlook of a planet that resides next to a quiet, relatively predictable star, the circumstances that lead to dramatic stellar explosions elsewhere in the universe can sound somewhat improbable. Some such blasts, known as type Ia supernovae, occur when a small, dense star known as a white dwarf—roughly the diameter of Earth, but hundreds of thousands of times more massive—grows too large by siphoning material off a neighboring star, igniting a thermonuclear explosion. Other cataclysms, known as type II supernovae, occur when much heftier stars, some of them dozens of times as massive as the sun, implode under their own weight.
Luckily those circumstances arise infrequently enough to spare humankind the fallout of a nearby supernova. But the universe is a big place, and locally rare events such as type Ia and type II supernovae happen in relatively large numbers across the vast expanse of space. Now a sky survey has turned up a much rarer kind of supernova, one that defies the standard explanations for how such blasts work.
Four new PTF supernovae, along with two events identified in the past several years that defied classification, all share the same unexplained traits: They are extraordinarily bright, and a spectral breakdown of their emitted light shows no trace of common supernova components such as hydrogen, iron and calcium. "If you look at thousands of supernova spectra, as I do, these immediately jump out to you as being peculiar," Quimby says. "They don't have the normal kinds of wiggles that you'd expect to see."
The extreme brightness of the new class of supernovae, some 10 times that of a typical type Ia supernova from an exploding white dwarf, rank them among the most luminous supernovae known. That luminosity enabled Quimby and his colleagues to spot a handful of the new supernovae among the 1,000-plus supernovae of all kinds that have been found by PTF, even though core-collapse supernovae appear to be 10,000 times more common.
But just what produces the brightness of the new class remains unknown. The way the supernovae fade from their peak brightness over time is inconsistent with the decay of radioactive elements, which is what powers the glow of a type Ia supernova. And in core-collapse cataclysms such as type II supernovae, heavy elements such as iron appear in the spectra, usually accompanied by hydrogen from the expanding supernova blast encountering ambient gas in the circumstellar medium.
One possible origin for the superluminous blasts is a very massive star, roughly 100 times the mass of the sun, that ejects a dense shell of hydrogen-depleted material. If it then undergoes core collapse to initiate a supernova, the supernova-driven ejecta would collide with the existing shell to glow brightly. Astronomers have found a precedent of a hydrogen-poor supernova preceded by an eruptive event, says Roger Chevalier, a professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia who did not contribute to the new research. But the scale of that eruption was far too small to explain the luminosity of the PTF group's supernovae.
Alternately, a supernova could have left behind a magnetar, a highly magnetized form of the dense stellar remnants known as neutron stars. The rapid spin of a magnetar could provide an internal power source to light up the supernova ejecta. But that scenario is wanting for observational backup as well; all known magnetars spin far too slowly to account for the glow of the superluminous blasts. "You want it to be formed with a spin rate of one to three milliseconds, and we don't have any evidence to show that magnetars form with those kinds of spin rates," Chevalier says. "So in principle at least you can produce the high luminosity in that way, but again there's a lot we don't understand."
Quimby and his colleagues are continuing to look for new events and to track fading supernovae over time to see how they evolve. They have even marshaled the Hubble Space Telescope to gather their ultraviolet spectra. "By building that whole sequence and incorporating the UV data, we can get a better handle on the physical origins of these things," Quimby says. But for the moment neither mechanism for the newfound supernova class is entirely convincing, Chevalier notes. "They both have their pluses and minuses, and I wouldn't say the community has come to an agreement about what is going on here," he says.


(EMAILWIRE.COM, October 06, 2018 ) This report presents the worldwide GPS IC market size (value, production and consumption), splits the breakdown (data status 2013-2018 and forecast to 2025), by manufacturers, region, type and application.
The GPS IC market was valued at Million US$ in 2017 and is projected to reach Million US$ by 2025, at a CAGR of during the forecast period. In this study, 2017 has been considered as the base year and 2018 to 2025 as the forecast period to estimate the market size for GPS IC.


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RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A weightlifter who lost his family's house in a cyclone danced off stage at the Rio Olympics on Tuesday to raise awareness of the threat climate change poses to his remote Pacific nation.
David Katoatau got more cheers than any other lifter, including a Brazilian, throughout the men's 105kg B Group.
His dances became a trademark of his victory in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland two years ago. That was the first gold medal in any global sporting event for his island nation of Kiribati.
He was also a social media sensation for his dancing as Kiribati's flag bearer at the Rio Games' opening ceremony.
Kiribati, located in the Central Pacific, is suffering "extreme coastal erosion not just of the beaches but also of the land" according to its government.
Some scientists have predicted a catastrophic effect on Kiribati's 21 inhabited islands.
"Most people don't know where Kiribati is," Katoatau said. "I want people to know more about us so I use weightlifting, and my dancing, to show the world.
"I wrote an open letter to the world last year to tell people about all the homes lost to rising sea levels. I don't know how many years it will be before it sinks."
That letter was distributed at a Commonwealth Games Federation meeting by Katoatau's coach, Paul Coffa.
"We don't have the resources to save ourselves," Katoatau said.
Kiribati also lacks the resources for basic sports facilities.
"There was no gym when I started training as a boy, and there is no gym now," said Katoatau, 32. "I trained on the beach in the open sun. The bar would become too hot to touch so I had to train at six in the morning."
Katoatau moved to the Oceania Weightlifting Institute when he was 16 and has been coached by Coffa since then. He now lives and trains at the Institute in Noumea, New Caledonia in the South Pacific.
He has a coaching certificate and intends to team up with Coffa when his lifting days are over. His next target, though, is defending his Commonwealth title in Gold Coast, Australia, in 2018.
He won a state reward of A$11,000 (S$11,340) for his Commonwealth gold and used it to build a home for his parents on Tarawa atoll, the most populated of Kiribati's more than 30 atolls and islands.
The house was destroyed in a cyclone soon after its construction, he said.
"We have built another one, but it's close to the sea so there is always a worry."
Katoatau, who finished 15th in his 2008 Olympic debut, came in sixth in the B Group with 349kg, 1kg more than his Commonwealth Games effort.
He made his first five lifts but failed with the last one. He kissed the bar and danced off stage regardless, to the cheers of the crowd.
"I'll be dancing again tonight," he said.


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Salem Coin & Stamp Shop can be found at Center St Ne 3964. The following is offered: Coin Collecting. The entry is present with us since Sep 8, 2010 and was last updated on Nov 14, 2013. In Salem there are 3 other Coin Collecting. An overview can be found here.
Salem Coin Shop buys and sells coins and stamps in Salem, OR. We have been in business since 1962, our experience makes the difference. We buy gold, silver, collectible coins, silver dollar, and older collectible gold pieces, stamp and coin collecting supplies. Contact us today for more information!
Posted on May 25, 2015. Brought to you by yellowise.


Garden Walk: Landscaping for Birds, 6-7:30 p.m. Sept. 6. $5.
Herb Preservation. Sept. 7. $10/$15.
BREWtanical Series: Westallion Brewing. Sept. 7. $10/$15.
Native Wisconsin Plants. Sept. 9.
Deer Resistant Plants. Sept. 16.
Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory: Ultra Violet Summer Floral Show, open daily (through Sept. 10). Purple plants and flowers on display with a collection of modern and abstract sculpture pieces all created in shades of violet, lavender and purple. 524 S. Layton Blvd. (414) 257-5600.
Orchid Show & Sale. Sept. 16-17.
4th Annual Community Farmraiser, noon-7:30 p.m. Sept. 9. Victory Garden Urban Farm, 220 E. Concordia Ave.
Hawthorne Hill Farm: Vintage Treasures Market features home and garden décor, antique and vintage items, quilts, furniture and accessories, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sept. 8-9; 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sept. 10. 16370 W. Small Road, New Berlin. www.hawthornehillfarm.com.
Kenosha County Historical Society guided walking tour of Library Park Historic District. $12. Sept. 9 and Oct. 14.
Wade House Visitor Center: “Frank Lloyd Wright: A Wisconsin Original” lecture, 1 p.m. Sept. 16. W7965 Highway 23, Greenbush. (920) 526-3271.
Antique Clock Repair. Sept. 12-Dec. 5.
Window Treatments. Sept. 13-Oct. 18.


Performance Reviews Are Pointless And Insulting -- So Why Do They Still Exist?
I'm the HR Director for a growing manufacturing firm. I started the job in July. I report to the CEO.
I'm putting my 2018 plan together. One thing I told my boss "Jake" when he interviewed me is that I plan to talk him out of the company's annual performance-review process.
I agree with you that making every employee fill out an evaluation form and sit down to talk about it every year is a huge waste of time and energy, and most employees hate performance reviews.
If the relationship is healthy between the manager and the employee, they're having regular conversations anyway — including quarterly and annual planning sessions. If that isn't happening, I can help managers fix that -- but having more conversations doesn't require an evaluation process.
I eliminated performance reviews at my last company and everyone was happy about it.
Of course, employees need to be able to get feedback when they need it. If they can get that feedback without being graded like elementary school students then it's a win-win for everybody.
Jake says he might be open to the idea of abolishing performance reviews but he needs a very good reason to do so. In my last company I polled our managers (37 of them) and 35 were in favor of getting rid of performance reviews.
The other two managers were neutral. We knew the employees were negative about the performance review process because the subject came up regularly in our Town Hall Meetings and survey responses.
Jake wants me to write up a proposal for him. Thanks in advance for any insights you can share!
Performance reviews are artifacts left over from the Industrial Revolution.
They come from an earlier time, when work was designed on the mechanical model I call Godzilla.
If employees stand in front of a conveyor belt all day polishing widgets, you can easily count the widgets as they come down the line and see which employees are hitting their goals and which folks are missing them.
Knowledge Work is is more complex and nuanced than that. Knowledge Worker jobs don't boil down to a number of widgets polished per hour or per quarter.
Somebody on your team might have a breakthrough idea today precisely because they ignored the passing parade of widgets and stared off into space for 45 minutes.
That's the energy you want to inspire and capture in your company — not widget-polishing energy!
Performance reviews are not effective at improving performance. They have never shown their value as leadership tools -- but they make excellent power-and-control mechanisms, and that is one reason some companies have trouble giving up on them.
It doesn't help an employee move forward for a manager to tell them what they did well and did badly last year. If a manager needs to give someone feedback, they should do that in the moment — not months later.
When we are lifted up in the service of a larger goal than to hit our weekly and quarterly numbers, we don't need to waste time rating and grading employees. We only need to reinforce them and give them room to run!
We need every millisecond of our time and energy to be spent inspiring and encouraging our teammates — not to mention moving obstacles out of their way.
1. They take up expensive staff hours for no observable gain. It takes hours and hours of time for employees and managers to complete performance review forms, get them approved, set up performance review meetings and handle the paperwork. The next year, they do it all over again.
Who benefits from that massive time and energy investment? Do your customers benefit? They don't — because if there were customer-benefiting information to be shared it would have happened whenever it came to light, not now.
2. Their purpose is unclear — and always has been. Various people will tell you that performance reviews are essential for letting employees know how they're doing (why?), to justify pay increases (you don't need performance reviews for that), or to create a paper trail if someone should need to be terminated (doesn't work, because managers almost always give struggling employees average-to-good performance reviews. Later they say "I was trying to motivate the employee!").
Anything you might want to accomplish through performance reviews can be accomplished without them.
3. They are unfair. Companies come up with rigid systems (five-point review scales and ten-point scales!) but they never solve the biggest rating challenge — the fact that managers vary dramatically in their assessments of Excellent, Good, Average, Fair and Needs Improvement. Performance reviews are also unfair because they tend to weight more recent events and results more heavily than those from earlier in the year. They are unfair because managers have biases.
4. Performance reviews are insulting. If I hire someone to work for me doing graphic design, marketing strategy or software development I can talk to them about the project and our relationship. I can let them know if I'm unhappy with something they do or don't do, but it's not my place to tell them how to do their job or how to live their life.
Performance reviews cement the bad, old idea that when someone is your supervisor, they sit on a higher plane than you do. That's ridiculous. A supervisor in today's Knowledge Economy is an orchestral conductor. The conductor keeps the orchestra together but doesn't presume to tell the musicians how to play their instruments.
5. Every business process requires a clear objective and desired outcome, to pay its way in your busy operation. Performance reviews lack both a clear objective and a desired outcome. No one in your company can say "Here's the outcome we want when we conduct performance reviews next year."
There is no desired outcome except to remind the employees who's a boss and who isn't — and to keep up a time-honored tradition simply because you've always done it.
Talk to your fellow managers and employees and see what they think about performance reviews.
If you can't find anybody ready to defend performance reviews, tell Jake "I didn't hear from anyone who wanted to keep performance reviews going.
"This is our opportunity to streamline our company, save money, act on our team members' feedback and shift our culture out of old-fashioned command and control management into new-millennium leadership!"
Most managers, like most employees, fear change.
CEOs fear change, too. Tell Jake you'll use 2018 as a test year to see if your organization falls apart when you put the kibosh on performance reviews. I predict that like every other company that has done away with them, you'll be much happier when they're gone!


Oscar Preps: Will Rain Spoil the Show?
L.A.'s worst storm in two years is predicted to hit this weekend, but if you think that'll slow the Academy Awards down, you got another thing coming.
ET's Brooke Anderson was at the Dolby Theatre today, where tenting has been erected and plastic sheeting rolled out in anticipation of a possible downpour on Oscar Sunday.
"It's the biggest red carpet for film in the world," said Oscar associate producer Joe Lewis. "[There's] over 25,000 square feet [of red carpet] across the entire compound."
But once the stars walk the red carpet and enter the theater, all that matters is who goes home with the 24-karat gold plated statuette. In the race for Best Actor, Leonardo DiCaprio is in the lead, according to Bing users. The Wolf of Wall Street star is pulling in 60 percent of Bing searches for "best actor."
And be sure to tune in to TVGN Live with ET at the Oscars, on Sunday at 5:00 PM ET/ 2:00 PM PT on TVGN for our live coverage from the Oscars red carpet. To find your channel go to www.TVGN.tv.


Changed my mind. Let me say first that I appreciate the jobs and opportunities the Charmed reboot has created. But I will never understand what is fierce, funny or feminist in creating a show that basically says the original actresses are too old to do a job they did 12 years ago. I hope the new show is far better than the marketing so the true legacy does remain. Reboots fair better when they honor the original as opposed to taking shots at the original. Reboots also do better when they listen to a still passionate fan base which is what it's all about, isn't it? That's why we do reboots. The fans are why we all get to do what we do. So we wish them well and hope for success.
The Charmed star's comment on Twitter regarding what is "fierce, funny or feminist" is likely a reference to the reboot's description, which used those adjectives when describing itself. It is one of the things Holly Marie Combs has spoken out on social media about before. In late January, she addressed it in a tweet referencing the new series "feminist storyline." Many fans believe the original series also shared that characteristic.
Why The CW did not want to follows other networks and launch a revival of the original Charmed is anyone's guess. Fans of the original were clearly very open to the idea of continuing the story of "the charmed ones." Charmed has accrued a passionate fan base in the twenty years since it premiered. The original series premiered in 1998 and ran for eight seasons before concluding in 2006. As of 2018, the series has been off the air for twelve years.
Through reruns and the entire series streaming on Netflix, it has been able to reach an even wider audience through the years. While television has been in the habit of bringing shows from the past back to life with a new cast and a similar storyline, it has also found tremendous success with ones that bring the original cast back for a new story. NBC and ABC have both experienced success using the latter formula for sitcoms and a drama should theoretically experience similar results.
The CW could have brought Charmed back and then done the reboot as a spinoff, maintaining both shows and expanding the franchise. The network gave the go-ahead for the reboot in January and this May, The CW picked up the series. The Charmed reboot will air after Supergirl on Sundays, as part of The CW's newly launched lineup for the night. The first trailer for the series has already been released, which led to a passionate response from fans. An exact premiere date for the reboot has not been announced yet.
The Charmed reboot will air Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on The CW, this fall. For the new and returning shows set to arrive over the next couple of months, check out our guide to TV's summer premieres. To gain better insight into what to expect when summer draws to a close, check out CinemaBlend's 2018 network TV rundown to find out which shows have been cancelled and renewed.


(Illinois News Network) -- A new Illinois law will soon allow schools to use recruitment agencies to find substitute teachers.
The program opens the door for school districts to work with temp agencies to supplement the search for substitute teachers for elementary and secondary schools. It will be available Jan. 1.
Most school administrators will pull from the surrounding school districts to fill an open substitute teaching position, Ford said. But when that pool of teachers is tapped out, they are stuck. The new law will change that by allowing schools to pull from a larger group.
Rural schools especially are struggling to find teachers for “more technical areas” like sciences or foreign languages, said Ben Schwarm, the deputy executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards.
A 2018 survey from the Illinois Board of Education showed nearly 3,000 unfilled positions – including administrators, educators, and other school personnel – across the state.


You might want to start brushing up on your Iranian rap. Or Palestinian trance. Jordanian Punk will be important too. And don't forget Bahraini R&B. This is the music of the new revolution sweeping the Middle East. In Tahrir Square Egyptians rocked to a catchy number by rocker Mohammad Munir, who asked, "How can I love you [Egypt] if you don't give that love back?" If you want to know what the anthem of change in Yemen will be, check out mideastunes.com, where the region's revolutionary playlist is ready for download. This is no sugarcoated pop site. The music is about social change, human rights and freedom of expression, and it's manned (rather, womanned) by Esra'a Al Shafei, 24, a Bahraini activist whose social consciousness was raised not by western rock, but by the passioned rhymes of Kurdish Hip-Hop. "My inspiration comes from music," says Shafei, who cut her activist teeth campaigning for the rights of Kurds at the age of 18. "Sure, people like Gandhi give me hope, but what makes me want to go out and make change is people's stories, and that comes through their music."
But Mideasttunes is only a small part of Shafei's campaign for change. She also founded mideastyouth.com, a multi-media web platform that uses tweets, blogs, stories, links, videos and discussion forums to promote tolerance, human rights, freedom of speech and democracy not just in her native Bahrain, but around the Middle East. The site focuses on campaigns for the rights of migrant workers, persecuted religious groups, Kurds, and other minority issues. "These are issues that are not limited to one country, they affect all of us in the Middle East," she says, in rapid-fire English. "I wanted to use the pan-Arab movement to build relations between activists throughout the region."
It's working. The site has become the go-to place for young Arab activists. It's where people get ideas, and learn about new issues. And, most important, it's where they go for support. As a Bahraini, Shafei has to be cautious about pushing for change in her own country. At least two protesters were killed in an uprising that brought thousands to the capital's central square on Sunday and Tuesday. She has a family to protect, and, as she points out, "If something happens to me, what happens to my work?" Instead she helps activists in other countries, who in turn help her. It's like an online activism co-op. As an example, she is helping activists push for Kurdish rights in Syria, something she couldn't do if she were actually in Syria. "It's a way for us to help each other out," she says. "I tell people to practice caution if you live in those [repressive] countries, and focus on social rights activism elsewhere. It's a way to come together over the things we have in common  a desire for rights and freedoms."
Mideastyouth is about forging connections. It's also about producing content that raises awareness. The site produces cartoons and comics for distribution. A cartoon about the abuse of domestic workers, for example, or an engaging ad for Kurdish rights. The messages are clear, the production values high and the medium engaging. The result, she hopes, is getting people to think, and act. One promotional spot, a jazzy ad done in the style of a tourism commercial about the persecution of the Baha'i' minority in Egypt got thousands of hits within the first few days. "People were talking about it because Muslims were doing it. Even the Baha'is were surprised," says Shafei, explaining that it was the first time a Muslim organization had been formed to fight specifically for Baha'i rights. To her, generating buzz is almost as important as getting the message across. "This is what we do to get traditional media to talk about these issues," she says. "And that is how you get the attention we really want." Of course the Internet is huge in the Middle East, she says. But your average Saudi isn't going to Google human rights. "We can't wait for them to come to us. So we create new ways to find them." Once they connect, "we can find more people wanting to work with the cause."
Shafei focuses on minority rights, she says, "because we cannot have human rights for ourselves if the minorities in our countries don't either." Many rights-based organizations in the Middle East have traditionally been self-centered  for example, women supporting women. That kind of silo mentality is ultimately destructive, says Shafei. It keeps organizations isolated, and it also enables authoritarian regimes to play one group against another. "As a Bahraini woman, yes, I would like my rights," she says. "But in comparison to religious minorities or migrant workers, I have a lot more rights. I'm Muslim, Arab, a member of the mainstream that has more freedom of speech and a more comfortable life. We can't progress as a society if we leave the most vulnerable behind."
The hard work of overthrowing dictators, of course, is better left to locals. "There are plenty of groups working on regime change, so we focus on the people who don't have a voice." That doesn't mean that she turns her back on calls for change  she pumps up the volume. She just launched crowdvoice.org, a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world through crowdsourcing. "People can use it to collect or view collections of videos, photos, news stories, blogs, tweets and other media sources on current events," she says. "It's used to amplify voices of dissent."
Shafei makes it very clear that her push for democracy and human rights has nothing to do with an American agenda for the Middle East. If anything, she says, the U.S. has demonstrated that its principal value in the region, at least, is self-interest. "The United States continues to support repressive and anti-democratic regimes. The U.S. Government was aware of the injustices in Egypt, but continued supporting Mubarak because of self-interest. No one can argue that Saudi Arabia is the home of human rights or democracy, yet America continues to support the regime."
The credibility of the U.S. among the young in the Middle East, Shafei says, "is in negative numbers." She says that neither she, nor other members of the Arab youth movement, are against Americans. When you see Arabs burning the flag, "It's not Anti-American, it's anti-American foreign policy hypocrisy."


The CW’s The Messengers wrapped its one-and-done run on Friday night with 950,000 total viewers and a 0.2 demo rating, adding a few eyeballs while flat in the demo.
Of note, the supernatural drama only rose above a 0.2 rating twice during its 13 episodes, hitting a 0.3.
Opening The CW’s night, Masters of Illusion (1.5 mil/0.3) was flat in the demo.
NBC’s Dateline (4.8 mil/0.9) edged out CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 rerun (4.7 mil/0.5) to deliver Friday’s largest audience, while ABC’s What Would You Do? (4 mil/1.0) led the night in the demo, as the only show to hit 1.0.


Exit polls show voters overwhelmingly favored Republican candidate. 80,000 Americans from Israel have already submitted their ballots.
iVoteIsrael, the leading organization facilitating the ability of Americans in Israel to vote in the US elections, has successfully completed its campaign to make voting from Israel more accessible to as many Americans in Israel as possible.
Internationally, American expats typically have a 5% turnout rate. If those trends continue, the American vote from Israel will represent 20-25% of the total expat community from around the world, further solidifying proof of the unique nature of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, which is not limited to the diplomatic and strategic levels but also exists at the grassroots and electoral level.
“This connection demonstrates the breadth of the unique relationship between the two countries, and iVoteIsrael is proud to have played a role in illustrating this connection to the public,” commented Pieprz.
· 61% of voters from Israel cited Jerusalem and "peace process" negotiations as a primary motivating factor for voting.
IVoteIsrael calls itself "a diverse group of Americans who currently reside in Israel, from all over Israel, and all over the US. "
"We are deeply concerned about the safety, security and future of Israel," the group says. "Most importantly, we want to see a president in the White House who will support and stand by the American citizens living in Israel in absolute commitment to their safety, security and right to self-defense.


Pauley Perrette is leaving "NCIS" after 16 years and 15 seasons. The actress, who played forensic specialist Abby Sciuto, will sign off after the current season wraps.
On Wednesday, she cleared the air about her departure on Twitter and emphasized that there is no drama behind her decision.
She wrote: "There has been all kinds of false stories as to why (NO I DON'T HAVE A SKIN CARE LINE AND NO MY NETWORK AND SHOW ARE NOT MAD AT ME!) It was a decision made last year. I hope everyone will love and enjoy EVERYTHING ABBY not only for the rest of this season but for everything she has given all of us for 16 years. All the love, all the laughter, all the inspiration…I love her as much as you do."
Former "NCIS" cast member Lauren Holly tweeted, "You will be missed," while former cast member Sasha Alexander said, "I [love] you @PauleyP! What joy you brought to the world playing #AbbySciuto can't wait to see what's next! #ncis."
"Pauley has been a valued member of both 'NCIS' and the CBS family for over 15 years," said CBS in a statement. "While it's never easy saying goodbye to a beloved actress and character, we respect her decision to leave at the end of the season. We are grateful to Pauley for all her contributions to the series and making Abby one of the most unique characters on television."
"NCIS" executive producers George Schenck and Frank Cardea also released a statement, saying they were working on a special send-off. They added, "From day one, she has brought incredible passion and specificity to the role. Abby is a character that inspires millions of fans around the world, and all of us at 'NCIS' are appreciative of Pauley for portraying her."
Perrette has been a vocal advocate for victims of stalking. She has been working with other victims to change stalking law and to give police more ways to stop the harassment. She talked to "48 Hours" about her experience with a stalker.
"NCIS" airs Tuesdays, 8 p.m. on CBS.


Tenders to redevelop Union Terrace Gardens will close in the middle of this month, it has been revealed.
Aberdeen City Council has still to appoint a contractor for the multi-million-pound revamp of the Victorian gardens and is accepting bids to carry out the work until later in the month.
Douglas Lumsden, co-leader of the local authority, has not been able to give assurances the work – due to be completed in 2020 – will kick off this year, but has said it “hopes” to appoint a contractor by the end of the year.
SNP group leader Stephen Flynn has raised concerns over perceived delays to the work.
He said: “We’re all well aware that Union Terrace Gardens is behind schedule and the key thing at this stage is the administration ensure their revised timetable is kept to.
Construction has yet to start, but without a spade yet hitting the ground it is feared it may be impossible for the ambitious project to be completed within the estimated 18- to 24-month timeframe.
A number of high-profile council projects have been delayed in recent years, including revamps of Broad Street, the art gallery, Provost Skene’s House and the Central Library.
London Olympic Park architects LDA Design won planning permission for its Union Terrace Gardens plan in March.
The proposals include new walkways, an amphitheatre and a cafe.
They aim to conserve the Victorian park’s heritage and to “sustain Aberdeen’s performance in times of economic difficulty”, according to a design statement.
Other features of the scheme include a new accessible walkway route into the gardens from Union Street.
Lift access from Union Street into the upper level of the gardens will also be provided through a new entrance building on Union Terrace at the existing Burns Monument.
The central lawn space would be retained as a flexible space for large-scale gatherings and events and there would be a new entrance opposite His Majesty’s Theatre.
The plans mark the latest development in the future of the city park. Councillors rejected proposals for a £140 million transformation of the gardens in 2012.
Businessman Sir Ian Wood had offered £50m towards the cost and earlier this year claimed it was a “tragedy” Aberdeen City Council decided to reject his multi-million-pound plan for the renovation of the gardens.


A Turkish Airlines pilot managed to smoothly land an Istanbul-İzmir passenger plane as one of the engines caught fire after being hit by lightning during a flight on the night of Jan. 24.
Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that the plane took off from Istanbul around 11 pm and was airborne when lightning struck. One of the engines caught fire and passengers began panicking onboard.
The pilot, however, managed to land the plane at İzmir Adnan Menderes Airport with no further problems. Firefighters immediately rushed to the scene.
One of the passengers onboard, who captured the entire event on his camera, said nothing else abnormal occurred during the flight and the lights remained on.
See all talkbacks "Watch: Lightening hits Turkish plane, engine catches fire"


There’s a familiar face in the Beaufort West mayor’s office. Above the wood-grained desk, a Vincent van Goghesque painting has been returned to the wall and his “Vuna municipality of the year” awards are back on the shelf. But the mayor is not reclining in the luxury chair.
It’s his deputy, the controversial Truman Prince.
“Sometimes you have to lead from the back,” Prince tells the Mail & Guardian on Tuesday, explaining why he’s in the mayor’s office while the actual mayor — Noel Constable — occupies the deputy mayor’s quarters in the building next door.
“People like to use this word, that I am controversial. But you know, controversial means most hated but also most loved,” he says.
Prince returned to the driver’s seat of the municipality through Constable, the leader of the Karoo Democratic Force (KDF), who was elected mayor after breaking his coalition agreement with the Democratic Alliance and joining forces with the ANC.
In the 2016 local government elections, the KDF secured one seat in the local council and the DA and ANC won six each, making the new party the kingmaker.
Constable sits in the much smaller deputy mayor’s office next door, preparing for a mayoral council meeting. “The meeting is meant to happen now but we can move it to 11.30am; I just have to check if it’s okay with Truman,” he says.
Truman is in between taking meetings with disgruntled residents, some of whom have come to query municipal accounts.
“If your door isn’t being trampled down, there is dysfunctionality in your office,” Prince explains with gusto, flattered by the hope residents have in his return to office and the number of people who visit him daily.
Prince holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of the Western Cape and was “born and bred” in Beaufort West. He describes himself as a grass-roots activist, connected to the most underprivileged communities.
When there’s a funeral, he pitches up in his silver Mercedes-Benz to grieve with the family, says Oortman Okkers (55), a lifelong resident of Beaufort West.
“He is one person who will never turn you away from his door. He got my son a job, and sometimes when we don’t have electricity or food we say: ‘Meneer, come and look at our food cupboards; they are empty.’ Then he will come with food hampers,” Okkers says.
Although Prince styles himself as the people’s mayor — with his designer clothes, Italian leather shoes and a chicken-foot necklace around his neck — his chequered track record still haunts his tenure in government.
Before the 2016 local elections, he was reprimanded by the ANC for writing a letter to the council, asking that a construction tender be awarded to a company sympathetic to the governing party.
After the polls, Prince literally shed tears: the results showed that the ANC would lose power to a coalition formed by the DA and the KDF.
Entering the ranks of the opposition meant Prince would lose his mayor’s salary. A few months later, he also lost his position on the South African Football Association’s executive and its generous salary.
Since returning to power after ousting DA mayor Japie van der Linde during a council meeting in February, Prince has again raised suspicions because of his management of municipal finances and a dubious toilet construction deal.
A R1.9-million contract started in February to build 21 toilets connected to old council houses, most of which have an outside toilet in the corner of the yard, is the latest scandal hanging over his head.
Constable admits the municipality spent all the money but not a single toilet has been finished. Instead, workers built two walls and installed the toilet pot, then dug a trench to lay piping towards the sewage point at the outside toilet — and left.
The piping was never connected, the trenches were left open and the toilet doors were never installed, rendering the lavatories useless.
“I had to fill up this deep hole they just left in the back yard because it’s dangerous for the old people and kids,” beneficiary Alfred Louw explains outside his two-bedroom council house in Rusdene, opposite the Beaufort West football stadium.
“They would start building a little bit here, then go next door to build a little bit, then come back and continue. Then in January, they left it like this. But if there’s just a hole in the fence of the stadium, it gets fixed now-now,” Louw says.
Constable says the council budgeted R8-million for the project and intended to build 80 toilets costing about R30 000 each. The high cost is owed to a “labour-intensive approach”.
“We said we could give the project to a big contractor to bring in machines and do it quickly, but our intention was to create jobs. So when you create jobs, you have to go with the labour-intensive approach. That’s why we are still waiting for the rest of the R8-million and that project will be completed,” he said.
Then there’s the municipal accounts. When Van der Linde was ousted, he is said to have left the municipality with R2-million in its current account. In the five months since Prince and Constable have been in charge, the account has sunk into a R7-million overdraft, and Eskom and South African Revenue Service bills have not been settled.
“The reason we are sitting with this problem … You see, Japie is a bit confused … He continued with a tender without having a letter of assurance from national treasury that they can roll over the money, and that put us in a very awkward financial position,” Prince says.
Other residents, however, are not fooled by Prince’s charms. The town’s informal settlements have doubled in size over the past 10 years, residents say, and Prince has done very little to alleviate their suffering.
The N1 highway cuts through the town’s business district, bypassing B&Bs, colonial-era churches and the popular Chris Barnard Museum, and is usually packed with trucks and taxis making their final stopover before heading to Cape Town.
In Mandlenkosi, the worn-out streets are littered with rubbish and turn into dusty gravel roads passing by the asbestos council houses, where children compete with cattle and goat herders for space on the open fields to play football. Unemployed men and women sit in their front yards while others loiter in front of spaza shops owned by foreign nationals.
Beaufort West has an unemployment rate of more than 60%, according to the latest figures from Statistics South Africa (2017). Many believe Prince has failed to deliver on his promises to bring about change.
“We need to put food on the table and get jobs — we are not here to take pictures!” a young man in a KDF T-shirt exclaims angrily as Constable emerges from his office.
He is part of a large group of people who came to the office to inquire about when the toilet project, on which they earned R2 200 a month as temporary workers, would resume.
“At the end of the day, he is just a politician. If you’re not his supporter, he won’t help you. And most people here don’t like to kiss people’s asses. We are really struggling,” says resident Angie Stuurman, who hopes to get her first job in two years.
Prince supporters call him “Beaufort se baas” — someone who can tend to their immediate needs, usually by channelling government money into football projects.
“I’m a soccer lover and I started football in the area ... If our sports structures are functional, then it will get the youngsters away from crime and drugs,” Prince says.
Prince is not shy about Beaufort West’s heavy investment in football. The Fifa stadium cost R30‑million to build — R6.3-million was spent on astroturf alone — and this was money well spent, according to him. A former local football star, Prince now owns and partially manages the Beaufort West City football club.
But if Van der Linde and his DA colleagues have their way, Prince’s return to the deputy mayorship will be short-lived. Among the strategies being considered to remove him from office is a case opened against Prince for allegedly stealing water from the drought-stricken town.
After his interview with the M&G, there’s a large group of people still waiting outside to see him. Prince speeds past them on his way to the mayoral committee meeting, infuriating them even more.


Image caption Lemn Sissay says he wants to show young people who have left care they are wanted by society and are "worth something"
Young people who have spent part of their childhood in care have been invited to special Christmas dinners by Manchester poet Lemn Sissay.
The Christmas Day meals will take place in Manchester, Leeds and London after Mr Sissay, who is Chancellor of Manchester University, raised £38,000.
The poet, who was in a Wigan children's home from the age of 12 to 18, said he wanted to create happy memories.
A group of volunteers has sourced the venues, transport, food and presents.
The dinners are being provided for care leavers in the three cities who are aged between 18 and 30.
"At its most simple the Christmas dinner offers a memory so next year the person can look back and think I was worth something then," Mr Sissay said.
"Christmas Day actually exposes the inadequacies of a system which treats children as if they are a problem because that day the child stands alone thinking 'I must be a problem, I'm obviously not worth anything because there is nobody here'."
The 48-year-old said his own early Christmas memories were "without family in virtually empty children's homes with staff who didn't want to be there".
"You have this secret room inside yourself and as Christmas approaches you draw back to that room. Each time you hear or feel the nature of family you are reminded of what you just do not have."
Mr Sissay said he believes people continue to feel isolated at Christmas after leaving care.
The first Christmas dinner took place in Manchester in 2013 and was extended to a second city, London, in 2014.
The money has been raised through crowd funding.


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The concept Police -- New York (State) | New York represents the subject, aboutness, idea or notion of resources found in Boston University Libraries.
Administration. : Civil service;, by Theodore Roosevelt ..
Police trials : report of a special committee of the City Club of New York, April 7, 1905.
Report and proceedings of the Senate committee : appointed to investigate the Police department of the city of New York.


Research interests: architectures, protocols and algorithms for hybrid optical access networks, subscriber traffic modeling for video-based applications, and Software-Defined Networking (SDN).
Research interests: Optical access networks, Statistical modeling, and Data Center Networking.
Research interests: MLR networks, Wavebanding, Cloud Networks, Disaster-resilient network modeling and optimization, Data center and content placement schemes, and Virtual machine migration.
Research interests: Cloud Networks, Energy-Efficienct Networks, Network Function Virtualization, Virtual Machine Migration, and Green Computing.
Research interests: Interdependent Networks, Disaster-resilient Network Modeling and Optimization, Software Defined Networking, and Space Division Multiplexing (SDM).
Research interests: Network virtualization robustness and measurement, software defined networks design and optimization over optical networks, nature-inspired metaheuristics, multi-objective optimization, and next generation Internet design and optimization.
Research interests: Mathematical Modeling, Interdependent Networks, Disaster Resiliency in Networks.
Research interests: Adaptability and survivability of communication networks against disasters, QoS-aware service provisioning schemes, and Software-Defined Networking (SDN).
Research interests: Elastic optical networks, Software-Defined Networking(SDN), and Data center Networking.
Research interests: Network Virtualization and Automation, Machine Learning and Data-driven Solutions for Cost-Efficienct Networking. Details at Google Scholar profile and LinkedIn profile.


Jay Leno checked himself into a hospital in Burbank after canceling Thursday's show last minute. No word on what ails Leno, but an NBC rep says he's doing fine: "He was kidding around with the hospital staff and running his monologue jokes by the doctors and the nurses." Leno, who is famous for his work ethic and never calls in sick, also cancelled his Friday show. Ryan Reynolds—and an animal handler and small menagerie of reptiles—were expected to appear on Thursday's show. It was the first time Leno canceled a taping since he took over the show in 1992.


Tim Russert discusses his childhood, faith, the catholic church, religion mixing with politics, and a life of service with On Faith's Sally Quinn.
Tim Russert, the NBC commentator who revolutionized Sunday morning television and infused journalism with an unrelenting passion for politics, died of a heart attack yesterday.
Russert was recording a "Meet the Press" introduction in an NBC sound booth in Northwest Washington when he collapsed and was taken by ambulance, accompanied by his longtime producer Betsy Fischer, to Sibley Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead soon afterward. He was 58.
The news swept the capital like a shock wave, with colleagues, rivals, President Bush and those vying to succeed him remembering Russert as a superb practitioner of political analysis and an irrepressible son of blue-collar Buffalo who, quite simply, loved the game. His influence was such that an appearance on the top-rated "Meet the Press" could boost or sink a candidate, and when he declared after midnight on May 6 that Barack Obama had wrapped up the Democratic nomination, that was treated as a news event in itself.
Russert wore many hats -- onetime Democratic operative, Washington insider, NBC bureau chief, MSNBC commentator, sports fanatic, committed Roman Catholic, biographer of his father, dubbed "Big Russ" -- but his greatest legacy was his sustained style of interrogation. Grounded in prodigious research, Russert would press his guests on past statements and contradictions, often for a full hour, spawning legions of imitators.
Friends were stunned by the news. "I just loved him," said Bob Schieffer, host of CBS's "Face the Nation." "When I scooped old Tim, I felt like I'd hit a home run off the best pitcher in the league."
"He was made for Washington because he lived and breathed politics," said Judy Woodruff, a former NBC correspondent now with PBS. "When our son was sick about 10 years ago, he was right there, calling, coming over, bringing him back gifts from trips."
Russert's internist, Michael A. Newman, told MSNBC that an autopsy showed the journalist had an enlarged heart and that cholesterol plaque ruptured an artery, causing coronary thrombosis. He said Russert had been diagnosed earlier with coronary artery disease, but that it was controlled with medication and exercise and Russert had performed well on a stress test in late April.
The thread of Russert's career is laced through recent political history. His whiteboard from Election Night 2000 -- on which, early in the evening, he scribbled "Florida, Florida, Florida" -- became an iconic symbol of the disputed tally. Days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Vice President Cheney chose to appear on "Meet the Press." In late 2006, Sen. Obama used the Russert program to say he was considering a White House run.
Russert moved his father, a former sanitation worker, to a nursing facility last week and had escaped for a brief vacation in Italy with his wife, Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth, and their son, Luke, before returning to Washington Thursday. Luke Russert, a radio sports commentator, had just graduated from college.
Former anchor Tom Brokaw gave MSNBC viewers the news at 3:40 p.m. "He worked to the point of exhaustion so many weeks," Brokaw said, adding: "This news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice."
Within minutes, all the cable networks were airing nonstop remembrances of Russert, as if a head of state had died, and tributes poured in. Bush called him "an institution," "tough and hardworking," and "as gregarious off the set as he was prepared on it."
Obama told reporters he considered Russert "not only a journalist but a friend. There wasn't a better interviewer on television, a more thoughtful analyst about politics. . . . I am grief-stricken with loss." Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, called Russert "the preeminent political journalist of his generation."


Military Times Forums > Hot Topics > In the News > You guys think this guy will hire Mark O'Mara as his attorney?
View Full Version : You guys think this guy will hire Mark O'Mara as his attorney?
In Florida when things go bad during an altercation and you kill the other guy you gotta hire Mark O'Mara right?