One glance at the Hope Café in Midland, Dimapur can easily make anyone fall in love with its structure and interior designing. However, the enthralling factor of the café happens to be something else, unknown to those apart from its customers. A visit was made and the discovery injected in a realization that a 500 words article wouldn’t be able to contain its cosmic sublime nature.
Welcomed with a smile, our orders were taken by a woman who was particularly very silent, yet vigilant and little was it known that, we’ll be leaving the café knowing Khareimy was not just a quite woman, rather an extraordinary person who possessed covetous potentials. The next thing our eyes fell on was the frames hung on the wall, opposite to the painting of the café’s logo and a motivational bible verse neatly written. The basic sign language and motivational quotes were the ones framed and that was enough for the light bulbs to go off in our heads.
Although from the Tangkhul tribe, Khareimy was born and brought up in Dimapur and found education in, the Deaf Biblical Ministry School located in Naharbari, Dimapur. It was fate that she studied in that particular school because in few years time, it would be that school’s principal who will introduce Hope Café to her.
From a very young age, Khareimy was introduced to various activities such as weaving, knitting and accessory making, thereby giving no room to doubt and unnecessary self-pity. When asked if she ever worried about being unemployed, her reply was quick and confident “No.” Growing up she learnt that her hard work wouldn’t betray her and that fuel was more than enough for the journey to keep progressing.
Talking about her passion, Khareimy smiling from ear to ear, beautifully in sign language said it was “baking.” Before, joining Hope Café she worked as a beautician in Pune, however had to return home because of her parent’s concern of her safety, which she obliged without hesitation because she knew her passion was somewhere else among baking powder.
When asked about further ambitions, she replied about having none while adding on that, Hope Café had been the door to her dream job. As she talked about using her talents for God’s glory and how Hope Café has helped her make it possible, she took out a bracelet and used it as an example to share the salvation. Here, she found delight at how she wasn’t treated differently, which was the opposite back in Pune.
Though Khareimy doesn’t have the power of speech, her thoughts and opinion have counterbalanced it. One of her many emphasis, is the need for parents to never shy away but be a constant encouragement for their children who are physically challenged and mentioned that, till the end of time, she will be grateful to her parents for breaking the stigma.
Communicating with Khareimy was made easy by Akumla who works as a staff and interpreter in the café. Akumla also stated that Khareimy was very witty and knew how to handle crisis. At present, the Hope Café has six employees who have hearing challenges. However, their impairment has not made the cakes they baked or the coffees they brewed any less tasty and professional.
The Hope Café is an initiative by the Eden enterprises and Ministry with its founding purpose dedicated for the community often over looked, especially in terms of employment. The Ministry has established cafes in Midland and Duncan, Dimapur providing job opportunities for the community whose challenges are two of their common senses – speech and hearing. A plan for the third café to be constructed in Kohima is presently being considered, said Akumla.
The Hope Café and Bakery has also received an Honour Award for their exemplary contribution and support to motivate and uplift the hearing and speech impaired youth to produce remarkable results, by the TechKilla Technologies Pvt Ltd, Delhi.


How tough is this stuff?
Have you ever seen a paper skyscraper? Probably not, because paper is not strong enough to withstand the forces acting on a skyscraper. Hold a "tug-push-twist-o'war" to find out which materials can best withstand different forces.
Before you test the materials, predict which ones will be strongest in tension, which in compression, and which in torsion.
1. First make a table to record your results. You�ll rate each material for each type of stress.
2. Tug: To test the material in tension, pull on it from both ends. Record your rating and any observations in the table.
3. Push: To test the material in compression, push it together from both ends. Record your rating and any observations.
4. Twist: To test the material in torsion, twist the two ends in different directions. Record your rating and any observations.
5. Repeat Steps 24 for each material.
1 Very weak! It crumples or breaks with hardly any force.
2 Only fairit can't withstand much force.
3 Pretty goodit takes a lot of force to break it.
4 Super strong! We can't break it.
Which materials were strongest in resisting each type of force? Did any of these results surprise you? Why or why not?
Which materials were strongest across all three tests? How would you describe those materials?
Does shape affect how well a material performs in the Tug-Push-Twist-O'War? Choose a material and design a test to answer this question.


European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, left, alongside Atle Leikvoll, Norwegian Ambassador to the EU, after the Nobel Peace Prize was announced Friday.
Russian human rights activists expressed dismay at the news that the EU will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
"First they give [it] to Obama, then to the European Union. Who is next? Maybe the Shanghai Cooperation Organization," veteran campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva quipped to Interfax, referring to a regional security watchdog dominated by Russia and China that is widely seen as ineffective.
U.S. President Barack Obama won the prize in 2009, triggering widespread criticism because he had been in office for only nine months then.
Observers and oddsmakers had said ahead of Friday's announcement of the 2012 prize winner that the Nobel Committee could choose to highlight human rights issues in Russia with the award.
Instead, the committee announced that the prize would go to the European Union for promoting unity on the Continent, in what was seen as an attempt to boost morale amid an abiding debt crisis in member states.
Alexeyeva, who co-founded the Moscow Helsinki Group in 1976 and turned 85 this summer, has been tapped as a potential winner numerous times.
She said that she was not offended by the committee's choice but that it would have been "colossally helpful" if the prize had gone to a Russian activist. She recalled that receiving the 2009 Sakharov Prize from the EU had given her a great deal of encouragement.
"The Norwegian Nobel Committee could have played just such a role. Sadly, it would not do it," she said.
Alexeyeva's comments were echoed by fellow rights campaigner Svetlana Gannushkina, who said the decision was "simply laughable."
Gannushkina, who has also been nominated several times for the prize for her work with Chechen refugees, told Interfax that the prize had been "depersonalized" by going to a bureaucratic structure like the EU.
"The Nobel Committee could have asserted the principles of peace and democracy by giving the prize to those who have worked in this field for many years and now need support," she said.
She also said the decision failed to send a strong signal to the EU, which she said has become "rather indifferent" to human rights and related issues in past years. "They should wake up," she said.
Anna Sevortian, the head of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, said that by giving the peace prize to the EU instead of to a nongovernmental group or to political prisoners, the Nobel Committee continued to lower the Peace Prize's significance.
"I would not say it discredits the prize, but it is certainly getting less important for people," she told The Moscow Times.
In a rare show of harmony, a senior pro-government lawmaker joined the rights campaigners in criticizing the choice.
"In my opinion [it] should have been awarded to major public figures for their bravery and nonstandard actions," said Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the State Duma's Foreign Relations Committee and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction, Interfax reported.
"To award it to an organization for its overall achievements looks unconvincing to me," Pushkov said.
He added that while the decision was probably intended to lift the EU's spirits amid the financial crisis, it was questionable given that the union, in his opinion, no longer can be considered a model for bringing nations together.
Pushkov cited the fact that racist and xenophobic convictions had risen in the bloc in recent years, culminating in last year's massacre in Norway by right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, which claimed 77 lives. Norway is not an EU member, however.
By contrast, a senior EU official in Moscow praised the decision by saying that it would boost the bloc's efforts to strengthen democracy in Russia.
"We are trying to open up civil society, the rule of law and human rights, and one can only hope that this helps our work here," Michael Webb, the deputy head of the EU delegation to Russia, said by telephone.
Webb added that while the delegation's diplomats had not popped open any champagne, they were "of course all very pleased" by the award.


“You were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did,” wrote Michael Herr in his Vietnam memoir Dispatches. I’m not sure he was right, but in the early 1990s, I wanted to find out. I was working as a journalist in Boston and the Vietnam War still hung in the air. The POW-MIA flag flew over the local police station. Psychologists and journalists were writing at length about post-traumatic stress disorder and the veterans who had it. I never went to Vietnam — I was only four years old when President Johnson sent his first troops — but I had an inkling of what it had done to Americans’ image of themselves. I began to wonder if the country’s growing fascination with veterans and trauma reflected a loss of something cultural too, of the myths that up till then had organized our national identity. And if it did, I thought, then perhaps Americans were suffering from a species of collective trauma. Perhaps our civilian memories were as disordered in their way as those of our traumatized combat veterans. Perhaps those of us at home who glimpsed the war only here and there, in magazines and on TV, were as responsible as a culture for what we’d seen as our soldiers were for what we and our government had asked them to do.
The analogy strikes me as a little too easy now. But it led me into long conversations with combat veterans, into thinking about how the plots changed from the first Rambo movie to the last, about Ronald Reagan and his attempt to reclaim the mantle of John Wayne, even about the rituals of the men’s movement. I gathered these pieces into a long rumination, which was published as Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War In American Memory by Anchor Doubleday in 1996. Now, as soldiers come home from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see the same news stories about traumatized veterans that I used to see after Vietnam. It’s excruciating.


Session fixation attacks rely on poorly managed Web application cookies. Rob Shapland answers a reader’s question on session fixation protection.
Question: What is session fixation and how can I protect my users from it?
Session fixation is a vulnerability caused by incorrectly handling user sessions in a Web application. A user’s session is usually tracked by a cookie, which is assigned when the user visits the page with the Web application for the first time. The problem occurs when this cookie does not change for the duration of the browsing session; users authenticate and log out, but their session cookie remains the same. This is often the default behaviour of an application.
This introduces a flaw into the authentication process. If a malicious user visits the Web application (usually from a shared computer, for example in a library), he or she would be assigned a session cookie. The malicious user could then record the cookie’s value and leave the browser open. If another user then arrives and authenticates from the same machine, the malicious user would now have the session cookie of an authenticated user, and, using simple tools, could send a request to the Web application that contains the compromised cookie. This would grant the malicious user full access to the authenticated user’s account until that user logs out, usually ample time to change the user’s password or registered email address.
Session fixation attacks occur in both vendor-supplied applications and custom-written applications, but are much more prevalent in the latter.
In certain cases, session fixation can be achieved remotely, which bypasses the hurdle of using a shared computer to complete the attack. This takes advantage of further mistakes in session management, and can be achieved in two ways.
Session fixation is not quite the same as session hijacking, but both pose a significant risk. Learn more about session hijacking.
In the first scenario, sessions are not handled by cookies, but by a static parameter in the URL of the Web application. This is usually a long, random value that is assigned to a user in a similar fashion to a cookie. However, if this value does not change when the user authenticates, it will be possible to remotely fix the user’s session. An attacker could send a phishing email to users of the application that contains a valid session identifier in the URL. When a user clicks the link, he or she will be taken to the legitimate website, but will be assigned a session identifier that is known by the attacker. Then, using the same technique as above, when the user authenticates, the attacker will be able to gain access to the user's account.
In the second scenario, the attacker takes advantage of a behaviour of applications that include the session cookie as a value in the URL. Some insecurely developed or configured applications will set the cookie based on the value specified in the URL, which allows an attacker to use the same phishing techniques as above to gain access to a user’s account.
There are no tools available for session fixation protection; the defence is in coding Web applications correctly. To defend against session fixation, ensure your Web application developers code their applications so they assign a different session cookie immediately after a user authenticates to the application, and also verify they do not include the cookie value in the URL. By taking these precautions, you’ll ensure no one can gain access to the cookie before the user authenticates.


Standardized test opt-out: Senate says kids still have to show up for tests.
If only a random fraction of the students supposed to take the tests do so, many of the kids most at risk will be encouraged to stay home.
Should annual standardized testing be required—or as required as No Child Left Behind made it—or should parents be allowed to keep their kids at home on testing days? As both houses of Congress attempt to rewrite the controversial bill and update the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, that was one of the bigger questions being lobbed around the two chambers recently.
Current federal law mandates that at least 95 percent of students at every school participate in the controversial standardized assessments. Schools that receive federal Title I funds can (at least in theory) be dinged if they fail to meet this threshold; for other schools, there are no such hard-and-fast consequences. So what happens if, say, an eye-popping 1 in 6 eligible kids opts out of the testing, as they did in New York state this year? Pretty much nothing—for all the threats, there is no real mechanism in place to enforce the 95 percent participation rate. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a very legitimate reason for encouraging it, or for administering the tests in the first place.
would gut one of the most meaningful provisions in all of the ESEA—the current requirement that states assess at least 95 percent of all students using the same, objective measuring stick. Adoption of this amendment would send the signal that Congress is perfectly fine with actions to systemically discriminate, and coordinated efforts to counsel certain kids out of the state accountability system.
That’s the basic problem with the whole feel-good opt-out movement. If only a random fraction of the students supposed to take the tests do so, many of the kids most at risk—and those tend not to be the ones whose outraged parents are staging rallies and writing letters to the editor—will be encouraged to stay home. And, for all its considerable flaws, No Child Left Behind was remarkably effective at gathering data about the current student population in the U.S. and measuring where the achievement gap yawned the widest. Make the tests optional and you lose that transparency.
On Tuesday, the Senate’s version of the opt-out amendment, offered by ur–Tea Partier Mike Lee of Utah, came up for a vote. This one was defeated 32–64. Now onto the next firestorm.


LA Fleet Week kicked off Friday, Aug. 31, 2018, with visitors taking in military exhibits, touring active-duty ships and enjoying some music, food and cold brews at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro.
Because it is a work and school day, Friday made for a perfect opening, said Arley Baker, senior director of communications for the port. “It’s an ideal ramp-up day,” he said. “Today we provided some limited mobility tours that went well.” Crowds typically build through the weekend and more than 200,000 people are expected to attend the festivities that run through Monday, Labor Day. Hours are 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. On opening night Friday, a red carpet premier featuring cast members of the Amazon Prime series “Jack Ryan” was planned on board the Battleship Iowa. Among the most-anticipated highlights will be Saturday night’s sold-out Beach Boys concert followed by a laser show. “This is our third year at it and I think each year it’s a little bit smoother,” Baker said. Although the weather is “looking good” with cooler temperatures and overcast skies, Baker advised visitors to arrive early and wear sunscreen and comfortable shoes. Go to www.lafleetweek.com for details.


BALANCED FLAVORS: The gorgonzola adn basil-roasted hamachi was served with peppery radicchio.
Since it opened in 2003, Mike Selig's Vermillion has joined the shining stars on Little Rock's culinary map, and not just because the food is good. The modern space is comfortable and unpretentious but dressed up, lovely. Here is where the movers and shakers eat, but you don't have to be a bigwig to be welcomed.
Back to the food. Just past the gleaming black granite bar at the front of the restaurant is the raw bar, where there's a delectable assembly of fresh tuna flown in from Hawaii and served sashimi style, oysters on the half shell, shrimp, mussels and clams. Vermillion was formerly named Vermillion's Water Grille, and the raw bar and the murals on the walls (originals by John Deering) hearken back to Selig's first love — fish.
Take the insalada caprese. The fresh Arkansas tomato was served with a truffled mozzarella, seared frisee and a dollop of reduced balsamic. Simple, delicious.
We moved on to the gorgonzola and sweet basil-roasted hamachi (amberjack, $35) served with grilled truffled radicchio and raspberry vinaigrette. Again, no one ingredient over powered the next. The peppery taste of the radicchio balanced nicely with the intense gorgonzola and complimented the fish perfectly.
The peppercorn grilled aged Angus beef tenderloin ($35) didn't live up to the rest of the meal. The cut of beef, itself, was fine and it was cooked perfectly rare, just as it was ordered. But the peppercorns suggested in the title were curiously absent and the basil-stacked potatoes were a disappointment. The basil was missing and the potatoes themselves were dry and tasteless. Considering the quality of the rest of the meal, this might have been a one-time overlook by the kitchen.
Other entrees run the gamut. For vegetarians there is the vegan leek tostada ($19) served with caramelized green chilis in Arborio rice, shredded spinach and “Rooster's Beak Relish” (a variety of diced fruit and citrus). for the slightly less adventurous is pan-seared chicken picatta ($19), served with citrus braised fennel drizzled with hazelnut balsamic. A sesame-seared salmon ($24) is served with vegetable sushi crisp and dipping sauces Sriracha Dijon — hot Thai chili sauces and mustard — and pineapple plum.
The highlight of our meal came at the end with what an employee called “Vermillion's liberal take on beignets” ($9). The golf-ball-sized, cocoa-flavored pastries had a warm crispy outer layer with a slightly cooler cream cheese center.
They were served with a creme anglaise and a house-made jalapeno and cinnamon ice cream. If you try nothing else at Vermillion, this dessert alone is worth making time for.
When you have both the money and the time, Vermillion is a stop everyone who enjoys a good meal should make.
Vermillion's bar menu serves up more casual meals than the dinner menu. Choose from a smoked turkey club, angus cheeseburgers, corned beef Reuben, grilled ham and Swiss melt, Southern fried chicken sandwich, salmon cakes and fried bologna and cheddar. All of these selections are $8. For $2 more, you can add batter-dipped fries and a pickle spear.
11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday; 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
Full bar including a great wine list; all credit cards accepted.


Catholic Charities of Buffalo officials and volunteer leaders announced an $11 million goal for the 2016 Appeal Jan. 6. Monsignor David S. Slubecky, Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia for the Diocese of Buffalo, representing The Most Reverend Richard J. Malone, Bishop of Buffalo who was unable to attend, made the announcement at a kick-off event held at the new Catholic Charities Health Care Center for refugee clients and the community, located in the former Nativity Roman Catholic Church on Buffalo’s West Side. The theme for the 2016 Appeal is “Find Good Within” and the patron saint of the 92nd annual Appeal is St. Nicholas.
The Appeal helps fund Catholic Charities’ 70 programs across 61 sites in the eight counties of Western New York along with Bishop’s Fund for the Faith.
Two important dates during the 2016 Appeal include First Report Sunday on March 13 and the culmination of Appeal Week on Palm Sunday, March 20. Although Appeal Week marks the strongest push for parish donations, volunteers will work to achieve the final goal by the conclusion of the organization’s fiscal year on June 30.
The location for the Appeal kickoff offered a sneak preview of the just completed reconstruction of the church sanctuary, retaining much of the space’s architecture, into a primary care health clinic. The facility will be operated by Mobile Primary, with dental services provided by Baker Victory Dental Services, along with offices for Catholic Charities’ Immigration and Refugee Assistance case managers and a community meeting room. In addition, D'Youville College students will assist in the provision of clinic services.
Bishop Malone and Sister Mary appointed Nicholas and Nicole Tzetzo as chairs of the 2016 Appeal. Other members of this year’s volunteer leadership team are Gerard and Barbara Mazurkiewicz, vice chairs; Kellie Ulrich, community division chair; John and Suzanne Berger, corporate chairs; and Rick Cronin, parish chair.
Stressing the importance of donations to the Appeal, Monsignor Slubecky spoke about the example set by this year’s patron saint.
“St. Nicholas was a fourth century bishop born in an ancient Greek town off the coast of Turkey,” Monsignor Slubecky explained. “His wealthy parents died in an epidemic while Nicholas was young. Taking to heart the words of Jesus in Luke 18:22 to ‘sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor,’ Nicholas used his inheritance to assist the needy, the sick and the suffering. He became known throughout the land for his generosity and concern for others. His reputation for gift-giving became the model for Santa Claus.
Since its founding in 1923, Catholic Charities has helped individuals and families in need. That need is varied and widespread – from emergency assistance to counseling and from specialized services for the elderly to help with job training and education.
As the most comprehensive human service provider in Western New York, Catholic Charities makes a difference for people of every faith and ethnicity. Catholic Charities empowers children, families and seniors to achieve meaningful, healthy and productive lives. In all situations, Catholic Charities delivers support to meet immediate needs, and then assess its clients for other needs to ensure long-term success.
Catholic Charities is an excellent steward of the contributions it receives. Catholic Charities receives the highest-possible rating (four stars) from Charity Navigator for transparency and sound fiscal management. Catholic Charities also receives the highest ratings from the Council on Accreditation for quality service.
To make a donation or learn more about Appeal 2016, contact Catholic Charities at (716) 218-1400 or go to www.ccwny.org. You can also check out Catholic Charities on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ccbuffalo and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ccbuffalo.


At the heart of the “stay forever” arguments that Beltway elites tend to make is the belief that to withdraw any troops from the Middle East is to invite attack against the United States. That is not true.
National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have both recently made overt assertions that despite President Donald Trump’s declarations to the contrary, U.S. troops should remain until “every last Iranian boot” is out of Syria. In other words: forever.
Despite what establishment Washington voices say, the perpetual deployment of U.S. combat troops in Syria (and Iraq and Afghanistan) not only fails to keep us safe here, it damages our ability to effectively defend ourselves against potential threats elsewhere.
At the heart of these “stay forever” arguments is the belief that to withdraw any troops from the Middle East is to invite attack against the United States. Former Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, claimed that to withdraw from Syria or Afghanistan is to invite ISIS and other terror organizations to “spring back to life.” Sen. Lindsey Graham claimed that withdrawing would “pave the way” for a second 9/11. However, a quick review of America’s history in the Middle East quickly exposes those fears as irrational.
The first time the United States sent combat troops to the Middle East was in July of 1958. At that time, Iraq was governed by the pro-U.S. Hashemite royal family, and Iran was under the U.S.-installed Shah; Egypt and Syria were among America’s biggest foes.
But Iraq’s King Faisal, the crown prince, and the prime minister were murdered in a violent coup. Eisenhower sent fifteen thousand U.S. troops there in a show of force because he was afraid the coup would have a “domino effect” and cause other friendly regimes in the region to have coups, moving them into the Soviet’s orbit. By October 1958, however, the president concluded the danger had passed and ordered the withdrawal of the military from Lebanon.
In August of 1982, President Ronald Reagan ordered eight hundred Marines to Lebanon as part of a multinational military peacekeeping operation to assist in ending the Lebanese civil war. The military was never given an attainable military mission, however, and the objective of the deployment shifted over time. In October of 1983, tragedy struck when Hezbollah terrorists attacked the Marine barracks with a suicide truck bomb that killed 241 Americans.
On February 7, 1984, Reagan determined that while he considered the attack outrageous, expanding the mission to go after the perpetrators and likely getting embroiled in a civil war was not in America’s interests and he ordered their withdrawal. Many criticized Reagan for his refusal to go after Hezbollah, but events proved his actions right: no more American troops lost their lives and the United States did not get bogged down in the civil war.
– Before 1958 (when America deployed no troops to the Middle East) the region was very chaotic.
– During thirty of the thirty-two years between 1958 and 1990 when no American troops were in deployed in the region, the Middle East was very chaotic.
– Since we began our permanent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the region has been very chaotic.
The point should be painfully clear: the Middle East is a violent and chaotic place, and it hasn’t mattered whether American troops were engaged there or not—and the nature of the region won’t change after we leave. Amidst all of this chaos, however, the security of the American homeland was guaranteed by our overwhelming conventional and nuclear deterrent.
Continuing to keep tens of thousands of American military, contractor, and government officials deployed overseas in military occupations with no clear objective are not merely pointless, but they degrade our ability to protect the American homeland from potential existential threats that may arise.
I have fought in large-scale tank-on-tank battles, traditional counterinsurgency fights, and foreign military training missions. I also served in Korea in the 1990s against the backdrop of a perpetual threat of large-scale battle, in Germany during the Cold War patrolling the East-West border between the Soviet Union and Western Europe, and served as the second-in-command of an Armored Cavalry Squadron.
The long-term effects of detracting our operational and training focus away from preparing for peer-on-peer fights since 9/11 has unquestionably reduced America’s ability to fight and win major conventional wars.
It would truly be a tragedy if we had an unexpected need to fight a major regional conflict and suffered greater casualties because we were over stretched and over involved in small-scale combat operations around the globe that had no relation to our security.
America is not made secure by permanent combat deployments overseas. Its security is assured by robust global ISR regardless of where threats arise on the planet, and current U.S. deployments degrade our ability to fight potentially existential fights. Given these truths, we must not only withdraw our combat troops from Syria, but also Iraq and Afghanistan. The longer we delay taking these necessary steps, the longer our genuine security remains unnecessarily high.


BEACHWOOD, Ohio - How fitting that Corus Fitness makes me think of choirs and music. After my first workout at the just-opened facility last week, every muscle in my body was singing.
No reason I should be surprised. Even though I work out almost every day, I don't generally do anything like what I did there. Namely, push myself to the max on a high-end Pilates machine.
That's not all that sets Corus apart. Unlike those of its competitors (I'm looking at you, JetSet Miami), the workout at Corus was one I was actually able to keep pace with, and therefore to enjoy. I may have gone home a sweaty mess, but at least I went home happy.
I credit Hillary Zashin, owner of Corus Fitness. A former representative of Beachbody home exercise videos, she's been around the fitness block a few times and has a sense of what works and what doesn't. What people want and what they definitely don't.
Have a suggestion for an activity you think I should try? Send me an e-mail.
Her first wise choice was solid equipment. No gimmicky, faddish devices or regimens here. The entire workout at Corus (corusfitness.com) takes places on the "Megaformer," the luxury version of the tried-and-true Pilates Reformer machine. It's a tank, a giant surfboard of a thing with a stable flat base, handles and straps galore, and a sliding platform connected to adjustable resistance springs.
On this we performed just about every variety of exercise you can imagine, following a protocol developed by Sebastien Lagree. The class was only 45 minutes long, but in that time, under Zashin's supervision, we managed to completely roast my quadriceps, hamstrings, and shoulders.
To get that kind of burn elsewhere, I have to log some serious time doing squats, lifts, and pull-ups. Elsewhere, however, I don't get to wear fancy socks with grip pads (the kind you wear at SkyZone) or enter the studio via the coolest bead curtain you'll ever see.
Two of my favorite exercises: In a one-legged lunge on either side of the machine, we placed the other leg on the sliding platform and pushed back, scorching the inactive leg. Then, crouched on top of the machine with one foot in a stirrup-pulley system, we frog-kicked, using our hamstrings to drive the platform with our bodies forward and back. Just thinking about that is enough to make my legs tremble.
Zashin's other wise choice: music. At many gyms, the soundtrack is hit or miss. At Corus, on the other hand, you can make requests, and even if you simply go with the flow, you can rest (or rather, bust your hump) assured the lineup will be upbeat and energizing. On the day I visited, we were all about rock from the 80s and 90s.
Beachwood, it seems, is becoming something of a fitness hot-spot. In the same plaza with Corus, at least three other studios are thriving, and several more are located within a mile radius.
But I'd say Corus stands out from the crowd. In fact, I'd say that for the time being, Corus has the melody.


One of the silent killers attacking the developing world is the lack of quality basic education for large numbers of the poorest children in the world’s poorest countries — particularly girls. Yet unlike many of the world’s most grievous ailments, this is a disease with a known cure. We know what tools are needed and what models are proven to work. We also know that the cost of that cure – perhaps $7.5 billion to $10 billion per year — is minuscule compared with the enormous benefits such education would bring for health, economics, women’s empowerment, and basic human dignity.
An estimated 110 million children — 60 percent of them girls — between the ages of six and 11 will not see the inside of a classroom this year. Another 150 million are likely to drop out before completing primary school.
More than half of all girls in sub-Saharan Africa do not complete primary school, and only 17 percent are enrolled in secondary school. Rates in rural areas are even worse. For instance, a 1996 study in Niger found that only 12 percent of girls in rural areas were enrolled in primary school, compared with 83 percent of girls in the capital.
The situation can be even worse for vulnerable children. In developing nations, those with disabilities and those affected by AIDS face even greater obstacles to education, while orphaned children are less likely to be enrolled in school than their peers who live with at least one parent. Only six percent of children in refugee camps are enrolled in secondary education, and opportunities for internally displaced children are even more limited.
Access is only part of the story. The other crucial factor is quality. As highlighted by “Education for All: The Quality Imperative,” the 2005 Global Monitoring Report by UNESCO, too many children leave school without mastering a basic set of skills. Ensuring a decent quality of education is an essential component of reform.
Raluca Ifrimescu, of Romania, at school.
The good news is documented in “What Works in Girls’ Education,” a 2004 Council on Foreign Relations report that I co-authored with Barbara Herz, and is reinforced in a Mother’s Day 2005 report by Save the Children: we have extremely strong evidence both on the high returns on girls’ education and on what works to get girls in school. What is striking is the breadth of benefits derived from educating girls — not only economic benefits in terms of higher wages, greater agricultural productivity, and faster economic growth, but also health benefits, HIV prevention, and women’s empowerment.
Two 1999 World Bank studies found that closing the education gender gap in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa would have led to faster economic growth between 1960 and 1992, while increasing the share of women with a secondary education can yield growth in per-capita income. Another 63-country study attributed 43 percent of the decline in malnutrition achieved between 1970 and 1995 to more productive farming as a result of increased female education.
Even more impressive are the gains to health that come from educating girls. An extra year of female education can reduce infant mortality by 5 percent to 10 percent. In Africa, children of mothers who receive five years of primary education are 40 percent less likely to die before age five than are children of uneducated mothers. Across both Africa and Southeast Asia, mothers who have a basic education are 50 percent more likely than uneducated mothers to immunize their children.
Education has also proven to be one of the most powerful tools to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. A recent study in rural Uganda found that, in comparison with young people with no education, those with some secondary education were three times less likely to be HIV-positive, and those with some primary schooling were about half as likely to be HIV-positive. In Kenya, a study of 17-year-old girls found that those in secondary school were almost four times as likely to be sexually inactive as those who had dropped out after primary school. In Swaziland, a 2003 study found that more than 70 percent of in-school youths were not sexually active, while nearly 70 percent of out-of-school youths were sexually active. And school-based AIDS education programs have been shown to reduce early sexual activity and high-risk behavior. According to the Global Campaign for Education, seven million cases of AIDS might be prevented over the next ten years if all children completed basic education.
In making progress on girls’ education, there are three things to keep in mind.
First, while sending girls to school may be clearly beneficial both for the girls themselves and for their countries, in most poor nations it is the parents who make the ultimate choice on schooling, and for them this calculation may not seem so clear. Rightly or wrongly, such extremely impoverished parents often feel they need their girls’ labor for extra income or, more frequently, just to help with the grueling requirements of life, such as the long hours spent collecting water or firewood or caring for the younger children in the family.
The good news is, when you reduce the cost and increase the benefits of sending girls to school, most parents will choose a better future for their children. It is critical to develop and widely implement policies that work to align the temporary interests of parents with the longterm well-being of their girls and their societies. The simplest and most basic strategy to reduce costs for parents is to eliminate the per-child school fees that are still charged in many developing countries. We know this strategy works because countries that have reduced or eliminated school fees have seen enrollment skyrocket overnight. In Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, enrollment increased dramatically in the very first year after fees were abolished: from 3.4 million to 5.7 million students in Uganda in 1996; from 5.9 million to 7.2 million in Kenya in 2003; and from 1.5 million to 3 million in Tanzania in 2002.
Beyond eliminating fees, even modest additional incentives to parents have made a huge difference. Scholarships and conditional cash transfers have been shown to lift attendance of both girls and boys in countries such as Bangladesh, Mexico, and Brazil. School-based health and nutrition programs have also proven successful. In Kenya, for instance, school meals were found to raise attendance by 30 percent and to boost test scores.
Reducing the distance children must travel to school is also critical because it both cuts down on the time children must spend away from home and alleviates parental concerns for the safety of their children, especially their girls, as they walk to and from school. Policies that both build parental trust and make schools more girl-friendly — such as hiring more female teachers, forming parental committees, and providing latrine facilities for girls — have all been shown to increase girls’ enrollment.
Second, while it is crucial that countries make an extra effort and institute special initiatives to target girls’ education, these endeavors will work only in the context of a broader focus on universal basic education for all children. Though the educational gaps for girls are especially large, the problems for boys — particularly poor, rural boys — are also dramatic. Furthermore, efforts to get girls into schools will never be successful unless there is a decent quality of education — respectable class sizes, trained teachers, quality instructional materials — for both girls and boys.
Third, while the impetus for all major education reforms must come from the local and national levels of countries themselves, it is critical that there be a global compact that pairs a commitment from developing countries to institute necessary reforms with a clear contingent commitment from donors to provide resources to countries that fulfill their part of the compact. This is especially critical because the major cost for poor countries seeking universal basic education is the recurring cost of teachers’ salaries.
The key to such a compact is certainty. Donors must feel certain that there is a commitment to good governance, careful monitoring, and national ownership of any plan to expand basic education. Leaders of developing countries, on the other hand, must have the certainty that, if they are willing to take on the enormous task of mobilizing political will and resources to seek universal basic education, then donors will live up to their part of the compact by providing the substantial funds needed to fill their financing gap.
Instilling confidence that donors will live up to their pledge is particularly important in light of the multiple crises facing most poor countries and the reality that many of the economic benefits of achieving universal basic education will not be realized until after current leaders have left office. When the leaders of a poor nation consider taking on such a challenge even though the political payoff may flow to their successors, it is essential that the global community at least make it clear that those leaders will not be left without the resources to succeed.
In the five years since Dakar, there has been some progress on these promises. The world established the Fast Track Initiative (FTI), a new global financing mechanism designed to direct coordinated funding to low-income countries that have developed quality national education plans. As of July 2005, 16 countries had been endorsed by FTI, and an estimated 44 others could be ready over the next two years.
FTI represents an important step toward a certain and viable global compact on education. Unfortunately, donors’ contributions have to date been far short of what is required. As the World Economic Forum’s Global Governance Initiative reported, donors in 2004 delivered less than 10 percent of what is needed annually to achieve universal primary education.18 The global community will ultimately need to provide another $7.5 billion to $10 billion annually, above the pathetic $2 billion that is now provided in external assistance for basic education.
While reform must always emanate from the local communities and national governments of poor nations, it would be inexcusable if educational and political leaders in developing nations were discouraged from taking bold steps to provide all of their children a free and quality basic education simply because they lacked confidence that donor nations would hold up their end of the global bargain.
Gene B. Sperling is senior fellow for economic policy and director of the Center for Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. He served as President Clinton’s national economic advisor and head of the National Economic Council from 1997 to 2001.
1 Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2003/4: Education for All: The Leap to Equality (Paris: UNESCO, 2003).
2 Niger Poverty Assessment: A Resilient People in a Harsh Environment (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1996).
3 Global Survey on Education in Emergencies (New York: Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, 2004), p. iii.
4 Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2005: Education for All: The Quality Imperative (Paris: UNESCO, 2004).
5 Gene Sperling and Barbara Herz, What Works in Girls’ Education: Evidence and Policies from the Developing World (Washington, D.C.: Council on Foreign Relations, 2004); and State of the World’s Mothers 2005: The Power and Promise of Girls’ Education (Westport, Conn.: Save the Children, 2005).
6 Stephan Klasen, “Does Gender Inequality Reduce Growth and Development? Evidence from Cross-Country Regressions,” Policy Research Report on Gender and Development, Working Paper No. 7, World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1999; and David Dollar and Roberta Gatti, “Gender Inequality, Income, and Growth: Are Good Times Good for Women?,” Policy Research Report on Gender and Development, Working Paper No. 1, World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1999.
7 Lisa C. Smith and Lawrence Haddad, “Explaining Child Malnutrition in Developing Countries: A Cross-Country Analysis,” Discussion Paper 60, IFPRI Food Consumption and Nutrition Division, Washington, D.C., 1999.
8 Paul T. Schultz, “Returns to Women’s Schooling,” in Elizabeth King and M. Anne Hill, eds., Women’s Education in Developing Countries: Barriers, Benefits, and Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
9 Lawrence H. Summers, Investing in All the People: Educating Women in Developing Countries (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1994).
10 Anastasia Gage, Elisabeth Sommerfelt, and Andrea Piani, “Household Structure and Childhood Immunization in Niger and Nigeria,” Demography, vol. 34, 1997, pp. 295-309.
11 Damien De Walque, “How Does Educational Attainment Affect the Risk of Being Infected with HIV/AIDS? Evidence from a General Population Cohort in Rural Uganda,” World Bank Development Group Working Paper, Washington, D.C., 2004.
12 Education and HIV Prevention (New York: UNICEF, 2002), citing data from Kenya Demographic and Health Survey.
13 Alan Whiteside et al., What Is Driving the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Swaziland? (Durban, South Africa:Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division, University of Natal, 2003).
14 Douglas Kirby et al., “School-Based Programs to Reduce Risk Behaviors: A Review of Effectiveness,” Public Health Reports, vol. 109, 1994, pp. 339-61.
15 Christel Vermeersch, “School Means, Educational Achievement, and School Competition: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment,” unpublished paper, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 2002.
16 For further discussion of such a global compact on education, see Gene Sperling, “Toward Universal Education: Making a Promise, and Keeping It,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2001, pp. 7-13; idem, “Toward a Global Compact on Universal Education,” testimony before the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, 14 May 2003; and Gene Sperling and Rekha Balu, “Designing a Global Compact on Education,” Finance & Development, June 2005, pp. 38-41.
17 The Dakar Framework for Action (Paris: UNESCO, 2000), p. 9. 18. Global Governance Initiative Annual Report 2005 (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2005).
Article: Who’s Being Left Behind?


Jose Padilla, who the government alleges was part of an al Qaeda plot to set off a radiological bomb, has refiled his lawsuit against the federal government.
Padilla, who is being held at the Navy brig near here, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court here after the U.S. Supreme Court in a narrow ruling last week decided Padilla's original case should not have been brought in federal court in New York, his attorney Donna Newman said.
"We have to just move forward. It's just a matter of time now," said Newman, who filed the lawsuit Friday.
The justices, in a June 28 decision, ruled the New York court did not have legal authority over the brig's commander, Melanie Marr, who was named in the original suit.
The Brooklyn-born suspect initially was held as a material witness in the investigation following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks. Within days the government designated him an enemy combatant and he was moved to the brig near here and prevented from challenging his detention.
Attorneys for Padilla later sued and, last December, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City ordered him released from military custody within a month unless the government chose to charge him.
That ruling was suspended until the Supreme Court considered the case.
The U.S. administration considers some terror suspects enemy combatants and says they could be held indefinitely without charge.
The justices did not address the broader question of whether President Bush had congressional authority to designate Padilla an enemy combatant or whether indefinite detention without charges or trial violated his constitutional rights.
Padilla, described by authorities as a former Chicago gang member, is being held amid allegations he sought to detonate a "dirty bomb" and blow up apartment buildings in the United States.
The government said he proposed the idea to a top al Qaeda terrorism coordinator who has since been arrested in Pakistan.
In a dissent to the Supreme Court decision, Justice John Paul Stevens argued Padilla was an "exceptional case" that warranted the Supreme Court's jurisdiction and a ruling on whether detention was lawful.
The FBI arrested Padilla in May 2002 as he returned from a trip to Pakistan.
In a related case, the Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Bush had the right to imprison another enemy combatant, Yaser Hamdi, but that Hamdi had the right to counsel and to challenge his detention in court.
In a second ruling, the justices said that terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay must have court hearings as well.
Last month, The Justice Department detailed Padilla's alleged al Qaeda training in Afghanistan and contacts with the most senior members of the terrorist network, his travel back into the United States and preparations to rent apartments and set off explosives.
The government said Padilla sought to blow up hotels and apartment buildings in the United States in addition to planning an attack with a "dirty bomb" radiological device.
Deputy Attorney General James Comey called the chronicle of Padilla's plotting "remarkable for its scope, its clarity and its candor."
The department released documents, based in part on interviews with Padilla, saying he and an unidentified al Qaeda accomplice planned to find as many as three apartment buildings supplied with natural gas.
"Padilla and the accomplice were to locate as many as three high-rise apartment buildings which had natural gas supplied to the floors," the government summary of interrogations said. The alleged accomplice is in custody.
"They would rent two apartments in each building, seal all the openings, turn on the gas, and set timers to detonate the buildings simultaneously at a later time," the papers alleged.
Comey said Padilla suggested to his handlers that he detonate a nuclear bomb that he thought he could make from instructions on the Internet, or that he set off a dirty bomb that would release deadly radiation in a small area. His handlers did not think either was feasible, Comey said, and wanted him to focus instead on the apartment-building plot.
Top al Qaeda officials "wanted Padilla to hit targets in New York City, although Florida and Washington, D.C. were discussed as well," the summary said.
One of Padilla's lawyers, Andrew Patel, characterized Comey's information as "an opening statement without a trial."


This story has been updated to include comment from Lockwood, Andrews and Newnam.
FLINT, MI - The Flint mother who told federal lawmakers her house was "ground zero" for lead-contaminated water has filed a lawsuit against those she says are responsible for poisoning her children.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, March 3, in Genesee Circuit Court by LeeAnne Walters, names multiple corporate entities and three current and former government employees for their role in the city's water crisis.
Walters claims her four children have been exposed to extremely high levels of lead and have experienced brain development injuries, cognitive deficits and other problems.
"It's time for the kids to be heard," Walters' attorney, Corey Stern said. "With so much talk among officials, heads of corporations, and the media, the reality of what happened to these children - and how it will affect each of them for the rest of their lives - has been drowned out in the noise."
The lawsuit alleges the companies hired evaluate and review the city's water services, Rowe Professional Services Company, Veolia and Lockwood, Andrews and Newnam, committed professional negligence by failing to insist on corrosion control for the city's treated water.
Former Flint Public Utilities Director Howard Croft, former Michigan DEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel and Michigan's Chief Medical Executive Eden Wells are accused of gross negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress for their "outrageous conduct" that allowed lead to remain in the water despite residents' concerns, according to the lawsuit.
"The systems we provided services on are operating without issue, and it is clear that LAN provided these specific services in a responsible and appropriate manner in accordance with industry standards. Decisions concerning the optimization plan for corrosion control were made by the city and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and not by LAN."
New York-based law firm Levy Konigsberg LLP and the Flint-based Robinson Carter & Crawford PLLC, which are representing Walters, filed eight similar complaints Thursday on behalf of other Flint parents.
"We are prepared to file as many individual cases for children in Flint as there are children in this city who have been lead poisoned," Stern said. "The number of children harmed should not deprive each child of his or her individual day in court."
Walters testified in February in front of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in Washington, D.C. after elevated lead levels were discovered in her home by Virginia Tech researchers.
"The citizens in Flint were assured for 18 months that the water was safe," Walter testified. "We were dismissed."
Walters said her water registered much higher lead levels when tested by Virginia Tech University than in sampling that had been done by the city of Flint, with one test hitting 13,500 parts per billion.
She also contacted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for help with the elevated levels, she alleges the state DEQ dismissed a report by the EPA's Miguel Del Toral that warned of the lead problems.
Multiple other state and federal lawsuits have been field previously over the crisis.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the DEQ declined to comment on the lawsuit. The remaining defendants could not be reached for comment.


Few things are as important as neighborhood schools. They can help reinforce a sense of identity and belonging. Many people can relate to this important experience of youth through either being able to walk to school each day because of its proximity or coming away from the school with significant memories of teachers, staff, classmates and surroundings.
It is those kinds of important developmental moments the Amarillo Independent School District is embracing with proposed revisions to a voluntary desegregation plan that will emphasize the unique attributes and advantages of having a neighborhood school. Actions are specifically focused on the city’s North Heights Neighborhood, according to our story Sunday.
By way of background, the original plan dates to 1975, when the district received a letter from federal authorities saying the “concentration of African-American students in North Heights schools were disproportionately concentrated in the black community.” The notification prompted school trustees then to address the issue, which resulted in busing students out of the neighborhood to other schools in the city.
One consequence was children who lived near each other often did not attend school together. Neighborhood residents recently asked the board to re-visit this issue, and the board voted in December to approve changes, which now must be ratified by the Office for Civil Rights, the federal overseer of the district’s plan. AISD officials say this could take up to a year, and the plan can be accepted, rejected or modified, according to our story.
Proposals address elementary and middle schools and should provide families in the neighborhood with more flexibility concerning where their children attend. For example, our story pointed out the plan includes an option of attending Carver Early Childhood Academy or Carver Elementary School (depending on the student’s grade level) or attend school at the campus where they are assigned.
Students also can choose to stay where they are with transportation provided in a proposal that would be phased out over a seven-year period. Finally, students can transfer to a school other than Carver Early Childhood Academy or Carver Elementary or the assigned school by using the district’s intra-district policy. Transportation is not provided with this option.
As far as the critical middle-school years, the proposal outlines a process where students in the Carver attendance zone can choose the feeder pattern they wish to follow. The decision is to be made by May 1 of a student’s fourth-grade year. As our story pointed out, once students choose a feeder pattern, they are permanently assigned to that pattern as long as they live in the Carver attendance zone. Any changes afterward would fall under the district’s transfer policy.
The proposals have gained traction with parents and advocates alike who favor an end to the busing of North Heights elementary school students. It is impossible to overestimate the impact of neighborhood schools upon the young minds that enter their doors. Likewise, a school that is just around the corner (compared to across town) adds to the comfort level of parents, who often become much more involved in the life and activities of the school.
There is no doubt that neighborhood schools breathe life into the communities they serve. The district’s decision to re-visit and revamp its policies to serve the best interest of students and families is a great step that federal authorities should endorse as quickly as possible.


A lover tried to commit suicide and to kill his ex-beloved by stabbing her with a knife in a building where she used to work as a maid, the Dubai Criminal Court heard.
JKK, 32-year-old Indian guard is accused of attempting to kill NBA 40 because she broke up with him.
The victim NBA, 40, works for a family who stays in a building in the Al Nahda area and was allowed to stay in a flat on the eighth floor of the same building – with her employer’s relatives.
“After I finished cleaning my employer’s house, I went down to the other flat in the eighth floor where I was allowed to stay. When I left the house to go back, as I opened the door and saw JKK standing in front.
“He pulled a knife from a laptop bag and stabbed me on the neck saying: “I’ll kill you” and stabbed me again in my belly. I tried to stop him by holding the knife, but he stabbed my arm. I held the knife and started screaming for help. The neighbours came to my help and called the police.
“He tried to kill me because I broke my relationship with him and refused to marry him. During this period he used to threaten to kill me and himself whenever he saw me in the building,” she testified.
“There were blood in the lift and an empty juice container next to the accused who was lying with his hands tied to his back in the corridor of the building, shivering,” testified Major Juma Khalfan who rushed to the scene on July 6 at around 12.30am.
The accused confessed to having a love affair with NBA since three years and that he used to talk to his beloved in her house. He told the police officer that he converted to Islam to be able to marry her, but NBA left him.
On the day of the incident he took a knife from his house and put it in the laptop bag and put pesticide in the juice container. As he saw her, he asked her why she broke up but as she did not give him attention he drank the pesticide asking her to clarify. When he felt dizzy, he pulled the knife and stabbed her and fell unconscious.
The maid’s employer, Mudar Mohsen, 38, Indian, testified that one of the neighbours knocked at their door and told them that there is a problem on the eighth floor.
The accused confessed to his crime and the court adjourned the case for verdict until February 7.


Over the last several years the DA developed a narrative which saw the party targeting 30% of the vote in 2014, victory in both Gauteng and the Northern Cape and laying the basis for the DA to be part of the government by 2019. Naturally, this involved a great deal of talk about the "terminal decline" of the ANC. Sometimes DA speakers got quite carried away by these targets and even started talking of "winning" by 2019 or, in Lindiwe Mazibuko's case, of becoming President by 2024.
It all made for an extraordinary spectacle: political parties do not normally give such hostages to fortune. The rationale for all this was, apparently, that the DA was engaged in a race against time before the ANC could effectively reduce South Africa to failed state status. The strategy which this implied was a frantic competition for the black vote, with concession after concession made to ANC policy - on BEE, on affirmative action, on using race as a factor, on the lunatic new land reform bill and even on surrendering the party's even-handed position on Israel/Palestine.
To top it all off there came the twice-repeated and utterly bizarre offer of the party leadership to Mamphela Ramphele. In this virtual stampede away from the party's old liberal stance, offence after offence was dealt out to the party's old core electorate in quite heedless fashion. The notion was that while this might cost the party some support, it would gain far more elsewhere. Above all, the party tried to make Zuma the issue. The party's Gauteng leader, Mmusi Maimane, suggested that the big question in the electorate's mind was whether Zuma was as good as Mbeki, with the suggestion being that everyone who preferred Mbeki (like Maimane himself) could vote DA.
This involved the party in reversing all it had said in criticism of the Mandela and Mbeki administrations - the arms deal, Aids denialism, support for Mugabe, the lot - and embracing the whole period of ANC governance up to 2009. This amounted to nothing less than large-scale historical falsification and the denial of the party's own heritage - a quite extraordinary thing for any party to do. In effect the DA was turned virtually inside out in this Gadarene rush.
The publication of the latest Sunday Times/IPSOS poll has dealt a hammer blow to all that. It suggests that the DA will poll only around 22-23%, far, far below the 30% target. With that, the ambitions of the DA taking Gauteng and the Northern Cape also disappear. The prospect of the DA entering government in 2019 then seems remote. The much-touted Ramphele, it appears, is so lacking in popularity that her party will score 1% or less. Perhaps worst of all, it looks possible that Jacob Zuma might even lead the ANC to a net gain, perhaps even a two-thirds majority. If the actual result is indeed anything like this it will not only mean that the DA strategy will lie in ruins but also that the party has turned itself inside out and offended its traditional supporters - for nothing.
Thus apart from the extraordinary breakthrough of 1999's "Fight Back" election, the DA has been gaining steadily, adding 30% or so to its electoral core at each contest. This was no mean achievement - one is reminded of the German SPD's steady progress through the 1950s and 1960s when the party spoke of "Comrade Trend" being behind them. In the DA's case this performance meant starting from a white, English-speaking Old Prog core, adding first white and then Coloured Afrikaans-speakers and Indians, and then slowly building a small but growing base among African voters. This in itself was an extraordinary social achievement for no institution in South African history has ever previously built such a non-racial coalition through the steady accretion of different groups. The result was a party which was far more truly non-racial than the ANC and, indeed, the real fulfillment of the Rainbow promise of 1994.
Building such a coalition was not easy and ran right against the trend of racial polarization which the ANC has successfully ridden since 1990. As each incremental step was made, great care had to be taken to integrate and cement the new groups into the coalition, make them all feel at home, listened to, made to feel they counted. Moreover, most of these groups had no previous history of liberal belief and a huge job had to be done of inculcating liberal principles into their elites for onward transmission to grass roots. The strategy was, of course, at its most successful in the municipalities that the DA won, where all groups could feel they were benefiting from better, cleaner management. This, then, was the strategy the party followed from 1994 to 2009. In fact it was much the same strategy followed by the old Progs who had slogged their way up from having but one MP in 1961 to becoming the official Opposition by 1977.
Everything suggested that the same steady incrementalism was the right path for the future. For it to succeed it was of critical importance that the DA unwaveringly held to liberal principle: such a diverse electorate could only be held together if there was a complete refusal of racial favouritism. As the example of the ANC shows, once one engages in racial favouritism towards any group, the non-racist strategy fails - the ANC may proclaim its non-racism but its clear racial favouritism has seen its support among the minorities dwindle to nothing.
Of course, following such a strategy meant one could not set one's clock by the rate at which the ANC was destroying the economy. One could only progress at the DA's own speed. And that meant that the DA would probably only approach 30% in 2019. If then, because, against all expectations, South Africa's proportional electoral system was producing two-party polarisation. This meant that the DA's progress would become steadily harder because, with the withering of the smaller parties, virtually all DA gains in the future would have to come directly from the ANC. It would be a very hard slog. But, like the old Progs between 1959-90, the party would stand squarely for principles that it knew to be right and which gradually gathered more and more people in.
Thus the question is: why on earth did the DA decide to throw away this clearly successful incrementalist strategy and instead go for broke by a sudden wild bid for a major share of the African vote - which everything in its own past history said would be inevitably unsuccessful? The idea that the party could leap in one bound from 16.66% to 30% was pure wishful fantasy. Worse still, the party decided to throw away its liberal principles in order to make this ridiculous bid.
Even if it had succeeded it would have had nothing more than an unstable rag-bag of groups which it could not possibly hope to hold together. For Mmusi Maimane, after all, the big question was which ANC leader do you prefer, Mbeki or Zuma? Yet there is no doubt at all that if you tell the old Progs and the ex-Nats of Gauteng that their real choice is about which of two ANC leaders they would choose, you will end up with a party split. Progress simply cannot be made in that way if the incremental gains of the past are to be sustained, let alone added to.
How did we get here? Part of the reason would seem to lie in the hiring of Stanley Greenberg as the DA's pollster. The fact that Greenberg had been the ANC's pollster since 1994 was a warning, not a recommendation. It is a basic rule of politics that no major party ever hires its opponent's pollster: in effect pollsters get bracketed as being either Labour or Tory, Democrat or Republican. This is necessarily so: a pollster shares the party's inner secrets and helps devise its tactics and strategy - not matters to be assigned to someone from the opponents' camp. The fact that the DA did exactly this in itself suggests a wishful leap of imagination, as if that step alone could unlock the secrets of the African vote.
Mr Greenberg is an able pollster, but look at the history. He helped guide Clinton to victory in 1992 but then in the 1994 mid-terms Clinton met his Waterloo: the Democrats were completely smashed, the Republicans swept both the House and the Senate; and suddenly Clinton was looking at the ruins of his presidency after just two years. Re-election in 1996 looked all but impossible. At which stage Clinton dropped Greenberg and instead hired Penn and Schoen Associates. Schoen quickly explained to him that Greenberg's entire analysis had been built upon a fatally wishful analysis of the 1992 result. Clinton had won 43% of the vote then against George Bush Sr's 37.5% and Ross Perot's 18.9%. Greenberg had interviewed Perot voters and they had told him that they were so fed up with Bush that they would have been just as likely to support Clinton as Bush. Greenberg told Clinton that this meant he had won fair and square, because if you re-allocated the Perot equally, he would still be ahead. This is just what liberal Democrats wanted to hear because it meant they were free to pursue a liberal Democrat strategy - Hillarycare and so on.
Penn and Schoen said this was all nonsense. Perot's voters were natural conservatives and what they had meant was that they were so angry about Bush breaking his pledge on no tax increases that they might even have shown their pique by voting for Clinton. But in fact they hadn't done that and probably never would do so. So Clinton had won just 43% in 1992 and then again in 1994, this time with no Perot to split the vote, which meant the Republicans had won everywhere. The only way to recovery was to give up on the wishful interpretation of '92 and move to the centre. Which Clinton did - and won handsomely in 1996. The re-interpretation of the 1992 vote actually changed American history.
However influential Greenberg may have been, it is impossible to hold him responsible for the DA's ill-fated attempt at a great leap forward. It is the party leadership that chooses the pollster it wants and then chooses whether or not to listen to him. Ineluctably, responsibility for the present denouement comes back to Helen Zille and her team. They have done prodigious damage to the liberal tradition and if that is to be restored much of their work will need to be undone. Looking at that team one realises that it divides into two groups: those too young to have much sense of the party's heritage and people whose main historical formation lay with the UDF.
The UDF was in many ways a glorious chapter in South Africa's history but its heritage is an unhappy one. It was energized by a feeling that it represented all the people of South Africa and that it must have no enemies on the Left. It had no liberal principles at all and largely accepted the ANC's "struggle narrative", a weirdly limited view of South African history and one which dealt in such dubious currency as "struggle cred". And it was completely voluntaristic. By happy chance it existed in an era when a whole array of political, international and market forces were all pointing to the Nats' downfall, so UDF-ites got what they wanted and were left with the abiding belief that if you wanted something to happen badly enough, you got what you wanted. Sound the trumpets long enough and the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down. That is, voluntarism worked. It was the very opposite of the sturdy incrementalism which the Progs had used to become the official Opposition.
The most disturbing fact about the UDF was that although it strenuously denied that it was a pawn of the ANC, in fact it was exactly that - as was demonstrated by the way in which the movement simply folded itself into the ANC without a murmur after 1990. This in turn meant that it would always toe the ANC line - hence its bitter enmity towards Buthelezi and the other homeland leaders, some of whom were obvious potential allies for an anti-apartheid movement. Worst of all, this meant a one-sided condemnation of (say) IFP violence combined with a delicate aversion of the eyes when the ANC or UDF forces themselves used violence. Thus the UDF engendered what Jill Wentzel tellingly called the great liberal slideaway, as formerly principled liberals began to jettison liberal values in order to adhere to the UDF line. Little wonder, then, that that UDF heritage has now produced a further liberal slideaway.
In fact it looks as though the DA will gain in its old incremental fashion - for the fact is that for most of its electorate the die was cast some time ago and the party's antics over the last year will not have much immediate impact. Once the election is over, however, there will need to be a serious re-appraisal and the question will have to be posed: if the DA abandons its liberal heritage, what identity does it then have?


Think your morning cup of coffee is too small to make a difference? Most Americans (56 percent) drink coffee every day, according to the National Coffee Association of USA. This volume is what makes coffee beans the world’s most-traded commodity after petroleum. It’s not difficult to green your daily jolt of caffeine, whether you brew your own or hit up your neighborhood coffee shop.
Organic, fair-trade coffee beans are widely available at grocery stores, specialty shops and coffee houses. Since coffee is a major cash crop in many developing countries, the “fair trade” certification means the farmers growing the coffee beans get paid a living wage. These products must also meet certain environmental standards.
Some coffee harvesters rely on chemical pesticides and harvesting practices that involve removing overhanging tree canopies. Stripping away these leafy habitats for migratory birds wreaks havoc on the region’s biodiversity. Coffee labeled “shade-grown” or “bird-friendly” avoids these practices.
If coffee isn’t your thing, look for organic and fair-trade tea and cocoa as well.
While at-home coffee makers are becoming increasingly high-tech, many purists are rediscovering the allure of the French press. In addition to delivering a more flavorful drink, this simple hand-pulled brewing device doesn’t need to be plugged in. In fact, it requires no energy at all — besides a bit of arm muscle.
Commercial coffee shops now have more ways to green their operations. Like traditional cleaning supplies, cleaning agents for professional-grade espresso machines are now available in greener formats. The Full Circle brand offers washes and cleansing tablets made from naturally derived ingredients.
Much like a reusable shopping bag, a washable coffee cup is a small concession that can add up to major waste reduction — and savings — over time. A plethora of travel versions exist, many made from sustainable materials.
Unbleached or washable coffee filters can also cut down on waste for at-home brewers.
Can’t kick the coffee shop habit? Bring your own coffee cup cozy and avoid the single-use cardboard sleeves. You can knit your own, or hit up craft fairs or sites like www.etsy.com to find a stylish handmade version.
Can you recycle disposable coffee cups?
The short answer: It depends on the city. And the cup. A few advanced municipal recycling programs are able to handle the cups with their slick inside coating. Some coffee shops offer recyclable and even compostable take-away cups for patrons, although these are more expensive. Ask your local coffee shop about recycling options. Better yet, bring your own cup. Many places offer a modest discount (usually about 10 cents) for patrons who BYOC.


ICC chief executive David Richardson interacts with the media at the end of the ICC board meeting in Kolkata this week.
As things stand, if voting happens on the 2021 Champions Trophy switch to a World T20, India would very likely lose it 16-1. It’s not that the rest of the cricket world is out to humiliate the BCCI. Like any corporate structure, the International Cricket Council (ICC), too, is money-minded and the reality is, T20 cricket has become the game’s biggest money-churner.
The ICC’s official broadcaster wants the scrapping of the 2021 Champions Trophy, to be replaced with a World T20. The logic is simple. A World T20 will have 16 teams compared to eight in the Champions Trophy. It means more matches, wider global coverage and a lot more money. Fatter broadcast revenue will, in turn, add to the ICC’s bank balance and will subsequently come to its members. India is the host of the CT 2021 and a section of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) thinks that the proposed switch would result in a $30-million loss. It’s difficult to understand how. The BCCI’s issue is probably more sentimental; it’s about forfeiting one of its own products and losing further bragging rights in the global body.
When the late Jagmohan Dalmiya took over as the ICC president in 1997, the governing body of world cricket had funds of a little over $22,000. Three years hence when he left, the ICC coffers had swelled to $15 million. The Champions Trophy was the great administrator’s brainchild. The idea was to bring in a more lucrative product between the World Cups. Dalmiya termed it as a ‘mini World Cup’, with only the ICC Full Members eligible to participate. That made the event even more competitive compared to the World Cup. The spectators and the broadcasters lapped it up, making the first edition in 1998 in Bangladesh an instant hit.
It’s an irony that in Dalmiya’s city the ICC performed the Champions Trophy requiem. “The Champions Trophy in a way was too similar to the World Cup; always quite difficult to differentiate… Why are you having a World Cup and then a Champions Trophy? It was difficult. And don’t forget the 13-team ODI league is a huge step in making sure the ODI format has much more context going forward,” ICC chief executive David Richardson said at the culmination of an almost week-long conclave.
Short-form cricket has changed since the IPL’s advent in 2008. Test cricket’s die-hard support base has helped the format survive, keeping the ‘obituary mongers’ at arm’s length. As for white-ball cricket, the IPL’s rapid growth has made the 50-over format secondary with regard to crowd preference. In that context, the Champions Trophy might have become surplus to requirements. Then again, the 2017 Champions Trophy final between India and Pakistan had attracted over a billion eyeballs, attesting the fact that fans still covet marquee 50-over events. The inconsequential bilateral series has fallen out of favour.
Now think about how Dalmiya had handled the present situation, if he were representing the BCCI at the ICC. Negotiation and persuasion had been his strength, and the master negotiator would have talked his way to a majority in the boardroom. N Srinivasan, another former BCCI and ICC president, on the other hand, might have browbeaten the weaker links in the ICC to earn votes in the BCCI’s favour. Unfortunately, the Indian cricket board is leaderless and rudderless at the moment and its clout in the global body is gone.
In the grand scheme of things, though, it’s not a bad development. A democratic set-up should thrive on equality. India might be contributing the biggest chunk of revenue to the ICC coffers and it is empowered by its legendary support base, but the BCCI can’t work in isolation. The stunning Rs 16,347.5-crore broadcast rights deal for the IPL from 2018-2022 is not only about the Indian stardust in the tournament. The extremely talented cricketers from Australia, South Africa, England, West Indies and other countries handsomely contribute to the global popularity of the League. Similarly, Star India has paid Rs 6,138.1 crore for the Indian cricket’s global TV and digital rights for the period 2018-2023 because Virat Kohli and company would play a lot of marquee series in the next five-six years. Without the overseas presence the IPL would become a glorified Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, while international cricket for India would cease to exist.
It would be ludicrous to think that the ICC is trying to take India for a ride. Without India the organisation would run on flat tyres. Which is why, if the Champions Trophy has to be scrapped, the BCCI should be at the forefront of that decision, not at the receiving end.


Luis M. Avila-Zarate, 27, of 2081 Stonelake Rd., Apt. 116, was arrested about 2:45 p.m. Saturday and charged with aggravated assault after he allegedly threatened an acquaintance on the 2000 block of Stonelake, police said. The suspect was taken to McHenry County Jail and given a Tuesday court date, according to authorities.


TVLINE | It’s been three months since the events of Season 1. How’s Audrey holding up?
Externally, she’s handling it extremely well — possibly too well. She’s got a job, a new look and a new hobby, but that’s all on the surface. Internally, she’s still trying to pretend nothing happened, and that what’s happening now has no connection to what happened three months earlier. She’s keeping up a stoic appearance for her friends.
TVLINE | It seems like Audrey is the new target this season, more so than Emma. How do you feel about stepping into that role?
I have to say, being the target is tricky. It’s rough. And now I understand what Willa [Fitzgerald] went through last year. It’s absolutely nerve-racking, but it’s been so fun to play around with that, because Audrey reacts differently than most people would. Sure, she gets paranoid, but her instinct is to mask that.
TVLINE | Audrey’s connection to Piper, I imagine, will be revealed at some point. How much did you know going into filming?
TVLINE | Is romance in the cards for Audrey this season? I know things didn’t work out too well with Rachel.
We catch a little glimpse of Audrey trying to flirt with someone in the premiere, probably the first time since Rachel [was killed last season]. To be honest, she’s lost a bit of her suave-ness, so to speak. She’s still very much haunted by whatever happened to Rachel. She feels incredibly responsible — and there’s a reason for that.
TVLINE | The promos keep warning us that no one is safe, even more so than last season. How worried should we be?
I really hope the fans are going to be nervous for all of their favorite characters. I know we said last year that no one is safe, but there’s a huge sense of “I don’t know who’s going to go next” this season, and I really like it.
TVLINE | To that end, what was your reaction to the first big victim of the season?
Shock, absolutely shock. I had no idea it was happening, and most of us didn’t. It was strange and surreal, definitely a shock to the cast. I’m really, really hoping it comes as a shock to everyone else, too.
What’s your craziest Audrey/Piper theory? Any idea who the first victim might be? Whatever’s on your mind, drop it in a comment below.


This should be fairly obvious, but not everyone uses the network as much - or as well - as they could. As soon as you know the name of the person interviewing you (which most companies will tell you a few days in advance), the first thing you should do is look him or her up on LinkedIn.
Moving away from more formal methods, you can see which blogs your interviewer reads - and whether you share interests - by peeking at her LiveFyre and Disqus profiles. These two popular comment plug-ins allow readers to log in with a social network of their choice to comment on blog posts. Because all their comments are compiled together, you can see everything they've commented on. Brilliant, right?
For extra brownie points, comment on some (not all - that would be overkill) of the same posts your interviewer has commented on, both before and after the interview. If she sees your name out there in the wild, she might recognize it and be more likely to consider you for the job, especially if you comment on industry-relevant blogs.


Q: The soffits on the addition to our house rot out after only a few years. The soffits themselves are not vented, but there is a large gable vent. There are identical gable vents on the main part of the house. The soffits on that portion of the house are not vented, yet they are still in great shape after nearly 30 years. Since the roof of the addition meets the side wall of the house, could the problem be that the soffits trap condensation because the gable vent does not have a free outlet at both ends? When we install new soffits this summer, should we have vent holes in them?
A: Yes. The new soffits should be vented. Although I do feel that the attic is not properly ventilated, I suspect that moisture is also being introduced into the attic from interior sources. A typical source of interior moisture is a bathroom exhaust fan that discharges into the attic rather than outside.
On the exterior, check the roof to be sure that damaged shingles aren't allowing moisture to penetrate and that there are no open joints in chimney flashing, or around vent stacks or skylights.
Once these checks are complete, remove the soffit and push any insulation away from the eaves to ensure that the vents won't be blocked. Install polystyrene baffles in the attic above the soffits to ensure that airflow through the soffit vents won't be obstructed.
Next, make new soffits with vent cutouts. It's important to prime the interior and exterior soffit surfaces, the endgrain and all cut surfaces before installing the soffits. This is known as backpriming. Apply a coat of exterior paint to the soffits, install the vents, then install the soffits. At some point, you will need to reroof the addition. When you do, install a ridge vent to improve airflow.
Several do-it-yourselfers read our recent piece on fastener extraction and wrote to say, "Hey, what about Spin-It-Out bits?" Good point. These useful bits are made by Eazypower (eazypower.com). They have a 1/4-in. hex shank that fits nicely into a drill or a multibit screwdriver. At the tip, the bits have aggressive serrated edges that dig into stripped-out screw slots, mangled fastener heads or even a broken piece of screw shank. They also work on paint-covered screws.
Roy Bellon, Oak Park, CA: Roy Bellon has been reading POPULAR MECHANICS for 40 years and servicing air-conditioning equipment for 30. So he seems well qualified to write on this topic. After reading our advice on cleaning ducts, he wrote to tell us of a likely cause of dirty air-conditioning vents. Rather than dirty ducts, the real culprit is dirt in the room's airstream, he says. A vortex forms in the air as it discharges through the vent. This imparts a static charge to the grille. The charge causes dirt in the room's air to stick to the grille. His advice: Use high-efficiency air filters in the air-conditioning system and clean the vent cover with detergent and hot water.
Q: I found PM's recent tip on using foam sealants to fix a loose shower head very interesting. I use Dow Great Stuff a lot, and I really like the product. How do I find an MSDS for it?
A: An MSDS, or Material Safety Data Sheet, must be provided by a manufacturer for any product that contains chemicals deemed to be hazardous by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The things it may list are the product's chemical composition, the dangers posed by those chemicals if ignited or spilled, and first-aid and fire-suppression measures. The MSDS for Dow Great Stuff Big Gap Filler, for example, states that the product emits dense smoke when it burns, and notes that corn oil is more effective than soap and water for removing it from skin.
To get the MSDS for this product, go to the Construction/Professionals section of greatstuff.dow.com.
When a company does not post an MSDS on its Web site, contact its technical service department.
Q: A branch fell onto my shed and put a big dent in the roof. How can I repair the roof without ripping off all its shingles?
A: Whether you strip all the shingles off the roof depends on their general condition. If the dent is small, and if the shingles other than the damaged ones are in good condition, then replace only those shingles necessary to fix the roof deck.
Aside from replacing the shingles, you will need to make structural repairs to the shed's rafters or to its roof deck. If the falling tree branch cracked a rafter, attach a piece of framing lumber to it using 12d common nails in a staggered pattern. Space the nails about 12 in. apart. The lumber should be as wide as the rafter and long enough to span the damaged area plus 2 to 3 ft. on either side of it. To replace a damaged section of roof deck, cut out the damaged section to the center of the nearest rafter or install blocking on the rafter's side that will allow you to fasten the repair piece of plywood.
Q: My home has a family room with a vaulted ceiling that runs to the ridgeline of the house. The room looks great, but it's hard to keep it heated and cooled to the same temperature as the rest of the house. What can I do?
A: The most common way to deal with this problem is to install a ceiling fan. In winter, for example, heated air rises toward the ceiling, and cool air settles toward the floor. Depending on the room size and shape, it's not unusual to find as much as a 15-degree difference between the floor and ceiling. The ceiling fan can be used both winter and summer to mix air layers with different temperatures, making the room more comfortable.
It seems counterintuitive, but the fan should force air down during the summer because the downward airflow cools a person as it moves over the skin. During the winter, the fan should produce an upward airflow to force the layer of heated air at the upper level to wash down the walls. This will raise the temperature in the occupied area of the room.
An easy way to determine whether the fan airflow is up or down is to look at the fan blades as they rotate. The blades are installed on a slight angle. If the blade's leading edge (the edge facing the direction of rotation) is up, the airflow is down. When the leading edge is down, the airflow is up.
If you have a ceiling fan and find that it's not effective, you may be able to achieve better air distribution by having a heating-cooling contractor install an inline fan in the ducts leading to the room.
Q: Can I adjust my Allister garage door opener? The door gets close to the floor, then goes back up.
A: The problem may be due to a pinched door track, an improperly adjusted remote control or a malfunctioning photo-sensing device. A garage door operated by a pre-1993 opener reverses downward travel if it encounters resistance. Doors with post-'93 openers reverse from resistance and have a second -safety device, the most common being a photo-sensing beam.
First, check the track. Disengage the opener, then operate the door by hand. If the door binds, adjust or replace the track. If the door moves freely, try adjusting its remote control. If you don't have an owner's manual that explains this, download one from allstarcorp.com. (Allstar owns the Allister brand.) Likewise, if the opener's photo sensor is out of alignment, check the manual.
Just ask Norman about it. Send your questions to Homeowners Clinic, Popular Mechanics, 810 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10019 or pmhomeclinic@hearst.com. While letters cannot be answered individually, problems of general interest will be discussed in the column.
Pat Porzio III, a master plumber and electrical contractor, runs Porzio Heating & Cooling in Haskell, N.J.
Sometime in June we get our first desperate phone call from a homeowner: "Hi. I've turned on my central air conditioner for the first time this season, and it isn't working. How soon can you get here?" I can only reply: "Not as soon as I would like." By the second 90-degree day of the season, our phones will go nuts, and we will be inundated with a wave of service calls.
To avoid the crush and to reduce the burden on an a/c system that has sat idle for several months, I urge people to test their system as soon as the weather is in the 70s. Here are the basic steps that every homeowner should take at the onset of the cooling season.