Xu Caihou retired as vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission last year and from the party's decision-making Politburo in 2012.
China will court-marshal one of its most senior former military officers on charges of corruption, state media said on Monday, the highest-ranking official to date felled in President Xi Jinping's battle against deep-rooted and pervasive graft.
Xi heads the Central Military Commission, which controls the 2.3 million strong armed forces, the world's largest, and has repeatedly reminded them to be loyal to the ruling Communist Party.
Xi has made weeding out corruption in the military one of the top goals in his administration. It comes as Xi steps up efforts to modernise forces that are projecting power across the disputed waters of the East and South China Seas, even though it has not fought a war in decades.
"This is earth-shaking. To the entire party and the country, this is heartening news that sends a strong signal. It's a clap of thunder," said Ni Lexiong, a military expert at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.
Xu had been expelled from the party and would be handed over for a court martial after being accused of taking bribes, the official Xinhua news agency said. The military and judiciary both take orders from the party and will not likely challenge the charges against Xu.
"The party will never allow a hiding place for corrupt elements. The military will also never allow corrupt elements any place to hide," Xinhua said.
Both the party and the army, the agency said, had to understand "the long-term, complicated and arduous battle against corruption, and the need for the fight against corruption to be put in a more prominent position".
"Upon investigation, Xu Caihou took advantage of his office, helped others be promoted to positions and accepted bribes directly or through his family, used his position to influence others for profit and his family members accepted valuables from others."
In a series of separate and equally brief stories, Xinhua also announced the expulsion of Li Dongsheng, former vice minister of public security; Jiang Jiemin, the former head of the state asset regulator; and Wang Yongchun, former deputy head of state energy giant China National Petroleum Company, all for graft.
Xu has been under virtual house arrest for months while helping in the probe into Gu Junshan, who has been under investigation for corruption since he was sacked as deputy director of the logistics department of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in 2012, sources previously told Reuters.
Gu was charged with corruption earlier this year.
Xinhua said that Xu had been under investigation since March 15, though this was the first time the government has made a public announcement about his case.
"Military anti-corruption efforts have not reached this rank before. It's very serious," said Zhang Ming, an expert on domestic politics at Beijing's Renmin University, noting that the fall from grace of earlier prominent military leaders like Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai were not related to corruption issues.
The party leadership had faced a dilemma over whether to prosecute Xu, who is undergoing treatment for bladder cancer, sources have said.
Reuters has not been able to reach either Xu or Gu for comment. It is not clear whether they have lawyers.
The Xinhua dispatch made no mention of Gu.
President Xi has launched a sweeping campaign against graft since becoming party chief in late 2012 and president last year, vowing to take down powerful "tigers" as well as lowly "flies".
Xu is the most senior person to date to have been felled by Xi.
However, a potentially far juicer scandal is brewing - the case of the powerful former domestic security chief, Zhou Yongkang.
Sources have told Reuters that Zhou has been put under virtual house arrest, though the party has yet to make an announcement about his case.
Former Vice Minister of Public Security Li and former state assets chief Jiang are among the numerous Zhou allies who have been caught up in the case against Zhou, and their expulsions from the party also pave the way for their prosecution.
Zhou was a patron of former high-flying politician Bo Xilai, who was jailed for life last September for corruption and abuse of power in the worst political scandal since the 1976 downfall of the Gang of Four, led by the widow of former leader Mao Zedong, at the end of the Cultural Revolution.
The party has struggled to contain public anger at a seemingly endless stream of corruption scandals, particularly when officials are seen as abusing their posts to amass wealth.
China stepped up a crackdown on rampant corruption in the military in the late 1990s, banning the PLA from engaging in business. But the military has engaged in commercial dealings in recent years due to a lack of checks and balances, sources say.
The buying and selling of military positions has also been an open secret, but Chinese media have generally avoided the subject. It is difficult to assess how widespread the problem is.
For officers who paid bribes to be promoted, corruption is seen as a means of making a return on the investment.
Examples of graft include the leasing of military-owned land to private business, selling military licence plates, illegally occupying military apartments or taking kickbacks when buying food or equipment.


Former President George H.W. Bush has shaved his head to show support for the son of a member of his security detail, who is being treated for leukemia.
After seeing that many members of his Secret Service detail had shaved their heads in support of a young boy named Patrick, whose father Jon is a member of the Bush Protective Division, Bush took the drastic step in solidarity with the others, according to a press release from the Bush’s spokesman.
The two-year-old is diagnosed with leukemia and had started losing his hair, prompting the action. The family’s surname was withheld at the family’s request.
The Bush Protective Division has also launched a website, as well as other benefits, to assist with the boy’s medical bills. Bush and his wife Barbara made a donation to Patrick’s website, followed by Bush shaving his head, according to the release.
The Bushes lost their second child at the age of four to leukemia 60 years ago, the press release noted.
The haircut caught widespread attention including that of former President Bill Clinton who tweeted about Bush on Wednesday night.


A MEMBER of a political group in Mijas has accused a local councillor of committing hate crimes by using an anti-Semitic slur during a speech.
Ludovico Lopez, of the Association for a Democratic Europe, claimed Mijas councillor and leftist Podemos member Francisco Martinez used the term “Jewish dogs” during a speech. Lopez has since filed a complaint with a court in Fuengirola.
Martinez said he was on record for apologising to the Jewish community for the comment and accused Lopez of taking his words out of context for political gain.


After high school holiday tournaments last week many teams had some time off for the holidays but boys basketball, boys hockey and girls hockey get back at it tonight. In boys basketball Apollo hosts Rocori at 7:30, pregame on AM 1390-the Fan at 7:20. Rocori was 1-1 in the Granite City Classic while Apollo is 0-2.
Elsewhere in boys basketball; Sartell-St. Stephen is at Tech; Willmar at Sauk Rapids-Rice.


The women's golf team took the top spot in the Dartmouth Invitational for the first time in four years.
As the golf program seeks to establish a new standard of success, it has turned toward the youngest members of its squad. Four of the five players in the team’s top group this weekend were from the freshman class.
“We know that we can really bring something to the table,” Hana Bradshaw ’19 said.
On the first day, the Big Green’s top group of golfers finished first in a field of 10 teams — which included a second Dartmouth squad — by shooting a 294, only six shots over par. Playing in her second collegiate event, Bradshaw led the team with a one-under 71 in the first round, which placed her alone atop the leaderboard at the end of the first day. Bradshaw was the lone golfer in the field to shoot under par on Saturday.
“I felt as a freshman it was something really special, especially at home,” Bradshaw said.
Julia Calbi ’19 and Kane closely followed Bradshaw’s round-one performance with scores of 73 (+1) each, placing them tied in second heading into the second round. Three out of the five golfers in the Big Green’s feature squad sat in the top two positions on the leaderboard through 18 holes.
Rounding out Dartmouth’s top group, Angela Zhang ’19 shot a 77 (+5), giving her a place in the top 10, and Catherine Roddy ’19 finished eight-over par with an 80 for a tie at 21st with three other golfers. On the Big Green’s B-team, both Lily Morrison ’16 and Jamie Susanin ’17 tied along Zhang at 10th, and the second team was ranked at fourth overall at the end of the round.
Starting day two of the invitational with a nine-stroke lead over second-place Boston University, the Big Green held on for the win with a combined score of 598 (+22) through two rounds.Kane posted the team’s best individual performance of the tournament by shooting a 73 on Sunday to finish in third place at two-over par. Entering the final round tied for second, Kane put up a consistent performance on Sunday, matching her one-over score from Saturday. On the third-place finish, Kane said she “feels great,” but is still looking to improve.
The women had two more golfers finish in the top 10 at the Invitational. After beginning her collegiate career with a second-place overall finish at the Chesapeake Bay Invitational, Calbi tied for fourth at five-over for the weekend after carding a 76 on the final 18. In two career events, Calbi has posted consecutive top-five finishes.
Bradshaw entered the final round atop the leaderboard but could not repeat her under-par performance from Saturday. Bradshaw shot a 79 to finish the tournament in sixth place at six-over par, just one stroke behind Calbi. Dartmouth was the only team at the Invitational to have three players in the top 10. The team, Calbi said, learned a lot from the event.
Hartford finished second at the event, led by senior Brooke Nethercott, who shot one-under for the weekend, winning the tournament individually.
Dartmouth’s second squad finished in seventh, 39 strokes behind its top unit.
Golfers enjoyed fair conditions over the course of the weekend, which gave the Big Green an opportunity to go out and attack its home course.
Dartmouth will travel for its final two contests of its fall season before heading into the winter offseason.
Despite the challenge, the team feels ready to face what will be stiff competition in the ensuing weeks, Calbi said.
“I think we need to stick to our game plan and not over think it,” she said.
The Big Green will head to New Jersey this weekend for the Princeton Invitational where it will have the chance to benchmark itself against other Ivy League competition.
“We want to make a name for Dartmouth golf in the Ivy League,” Calbi said.


Researchers found noticeable differences in the brains of CFS patients, offering a small antidote to the skepticism often given to this medically unexplained condition.
Chronic-pain conditions are really hard to figure out. Pain is tough to measure, its sources are often plural, and our perception of how much pain is tolerable varies widely by culture. There is no shortage of lay people offering their take on what, exactly, pain is all about (just type “chronic-pain management” into an Amazon Books search box to see some examples), but genuine breakthroughs in the medical community on specific pain conditions are scarce.
One such aberration cropped up last week at the Stanford School of Medicine. Researchers reported discovering slight but significant differences in the brains of people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The condition, described in Stanford’s press release as “crushing, unremitting fatigue that persists for six months or longer,” has stumped medical researchers for years. The new study, though small, is being touted as a game-changer, and online support groups for the unexplained illness are teeming with optimism about the discovery. Yet, the findings get us almost no closer to a treatment for or even an understanding of what causes the condition—they just show that CFS may indeed be a thing.
The new research from Stanford merely indicates that there could be MRI-observable differences in the white and grey matter in the brains of people with CFS. While this discovery is not yet fungible in terms of symptom management, it’s a social-legitimacy jackpot for patients with the illness. This discovery gives the condition an objectively observable organic basis, which is the gold standard for social recognition of suffering in Western culture.
Up to now, a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome rested mostly on the patient’s subjective narrative of their symptoms. For a long time, it was pretty standard in the medical community to repudiate and dismiss chronic fatigue syndrome. The brief from Stanford Medicine notes that “it’s not uncommon for CFS patients to face several mischaracterizations of their condition, or even suspicions of hypochondria, before receiving a diagnosis of CFS.” Earlier this year, a team of medical researchers in the U.K. published a comprehensive study that concluded that many general practitioners remain reluctant to diagnose patients with CFS because they are either ignorant of or skeptical about the existence of the condition. In many ways, the hallmark of the CFS experience is less the intense symptoms and more the deep skepticism sufferers encounter from their family and from doctors.
The intimate relation between diagnosis and social legitimacy is well-documented. Medical sociologist Kristin Barker suggests that we should think about illnesses on a “continuum of verifiability”: a spectrum that contains conditions that are clearly identifiable (through plain sight or through biotechnological tools) on one end, and more contested conditions whose verification relies on descriptive and subjective evidence on the other. The further your condition is toward the subjective end of that spectrum, the more likely your condition’s legitimacy will be challenged.
And people believing that you actually have a condition is no small thing. In many ways, being denied social recognition of suffering can be as deleterious to well-being as the symptoms themselves. Sociologists have identified all sorts of benefits that people with conveniently diagnosable illnesses are more likely to enjoy relative to those with more contested conditions. They include interpersonal sympathy, charitable acts from one’s community, insurance-related assistance, and even attention from the pharmaceutical industry—which is always on the lookout for new conditions whose treatment can be monetized. Less diagnosable conditions, on the other hand, make one more likely to be labeled as lazy or crazy. In other words, conditions that defy diagnosis constitute a double affliction: physical and social.
CFS is one of a bunch of prominent “medically unexplained” illnesses, including fibromyalgia and multiple chemical sensitivity, that afflict many people but that lack full-on social acknowledgement. Anthropologist Joseph Dumit calls them “illnesses you have to fight to get.” In the absence of objective physical indicators, these illnesses require dramatic and persistent social efforts on the part of patients to install their condition in our cultural consciousness. This is a difficult task because when conditions lack codified medical and social recognition, it’s harder for patients to find people who share their symptoms, exchange knowledge, and raise awareness.
The new Stanford discovery provides some verifiable evidence that CFS sufferers can begin to start cashing in on for increased social legitimacy. So while this research gets medicine no closer to relieving sufferers’ physical symptoms, it takes a step toward alleviating the social maladies of people with CFS.
Drew Foster is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Michigan.


Monetary-policy makers from around the world are being pressed into action to shore up a global economy that is suffering its steepest slowdown since the recession ended in 2009.
On the heels of a June 5 interest-rate cut by Australia, China unveiled its first reduction in borrowing costs in more than three years to counter what Premier Wen Jiabao has called increasing downward economic pressure.
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi left the door open at a June 6 press conference to a rate cut, while highlighting the limitations of the ECB’s tools in countering the region’s financial turmoil.
“Across the board, we’re seeing the central banks being galvanized into action by weak growth around the world,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist in Lexington, Massachusetts, at IHS Inc.
The global economy will grow 1.7 percent this quarter and 2 percent next, after expanding at an annual pace of 2.5 percent in the final quarter of 2011, economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York said in a June 1 report. The result is “an extended soft patch as weak as anything experienced in the past two decades outside the Great Recession,” they wrote.
Stock markets have climbed this week on mounting anticipation that policy makers will act to pump up growth, although those gains were trimmed Thursday after Bernanke refrained from explicitly pledging further steps in testimony before the Joint Economic Committee in Washington.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index erased a rally of as much as 1.1 percent to close little changed Thursday. The gauge is up 2.9 percent on the week. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index is poised to snap a five-week losing streak.
David Hensley, director of global economics at JPMorgan in New York, looks for a “loosely coordinated round of global policy easing,” with the Fed moving at its June 19-20 meeting, followed by an ECB rate cut in July and further steps by the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England to boost growth.
He predicts the Fed will extend its pledge to keep its benchmark rate at “exceptionally low levels” into 2015 and will continue its Operation Twist program to bring down long- term rates beyond the scheduled completion this month.
The Fed has held the target for the federal funds rate at a record low between zero and 0.25 percent since December 2008. The ECB returned its benchmark rate to a record low in December.
Emerging markets probably will join in, with both Brazil and India reducing rates further in the coming months, according to Behravesh. Brazil has cut borrowing costs by four percentage points to a record low 8.5 percent since August. India’s monetary authority reduced its repurchase rate by 50 basis points to 8 percent in April and has trimmed its reserve ratio by 125 basis points this year to 4.75 percent.
China coupled its rate cut — it lowered the benchmark one- year lending rate to 6.31 percent from 6.56 percent — with moves to give banks extra freedom to set the amounts they pay on deposits and charge for loans.
“This is a very positive pro-market move that is quite bullish,” Donald Straszheim, senior managing director of New York-based ISI Group, said in a note to clients.
Shen Jianguang, a Hong Kong-based economist with Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. who has worked for the ECB, said China’s move is “the beginning of a rate-cut cycle” and predicted “at least one more reduction this year.
Wen called for steps to stabilize growth and offset downward pressure on the economy in a speech last month in the southern Chinese province of Hunan, according to the Hunan Daily newspaper.
Industrial output in China, the world’s biggest producer of steel and cement, probably rose 9.8 percent last month from a year earlier, close to the slowest pace in three years, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 27 economists ahead of a report due June 9.
Fixed-asset investment may have grown at a slower pace in the first five months, with Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment, among companies reporting a slowdown in sales.
In spite of decelerating growth, China had held off from cutting rates because it was worried that such steps would push inflation back up and reflate a housing bubble, Hensley said.
South Korea today kept its benchmark unchanged, citing elevated inflation expectations even while flagging that risks to growth are increasing. Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong Soo told reporters in Seoul that China’s move will have an “indirect” impact on his nation’s economy, Asia’s fourth largest.
The ECB also has been reticent about taking further action to tackle a spreading recession and financial-market instability in the 17-nation euro area. Having already cut its benchmark rate to 1 percent and injected more than 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) of three-year loans into the banking system, the ECB is reluctant to do more heavy lifting as governments procrastinate over the reforms it deems necessary to put the monetary union on a sustainable footing.
Draghi said the ECB stands “ready to act” should the sovereign-debt crisis damp the euro-area economy further, and “a few” Governing Council members pushed for a rate reduction at the June 6 policy meeting.
Draghi also cast doubt on the impact of further longer-term refinancing operations, or LTROs, saying the full effects of previous loans have yet to be felt.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said the ECB and the region’s governments must do more to restore confidence amid the euro-area debt crisis.
While the euro area narrowly avoided falling into a recession in the first quarter, unemployment was a record 11 percent in March and April and economic confidence is at the lowest since 2009. Behravesh said the mounting gloom will push the ECB into cutting interest rates next month.
In the U.S., Fed officials are divided over whether the central bank should take additional steps to support an economy that is being buffeted by the financial strains coming out of Europe. The next meeting of the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee will come just days after Greece holds elections on June 17. The results could hand power to parties that oppose the terms of the nation’s rescue package, precipitating its exit from the monetary union.
More easing isn’t necessary, regional Fed Presidents Richard Fisher in Dallas and James Bullard in St. Louis said in separate speeches June 5. Additional stimulus would be “pushing on a string,” Fisher said, while Bullard said there’s time to assess the economy and no need to change policy now. Neither is currently a voting member of the FOMC.
Three of their colleagues, led by Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen, suggested on June 6 that conditions may warrant some action.
Bernanke, for his part, didn’t tip his hand during his testimony yesterday. Instead, he outlined the course of discussion he foresees at the next meeting of the FOMC.
U.S. employers added 69,000 workers last month, the fewest in a year, while the jobless rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in April.
AT&T Inc. Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson said June 1 that smaller companies have reduced hiring as business conditions get “tighter and tighter,” cutting demand for the largest U.S. phone company’s services.


LEEDS, U.K. -- Nov. 14, 2016 -- NUGEN Audio today announced the launch of MasterCheck Pro, a new loudness, dynamics, and codec toolset for music professionals. MasterCheck Pro enables producers to hear and visualize the playout encoding and loudness matching techniques now in use by music streaming service providers such as Spotify, Apple Music(R), YouTube, and Digital Radio. Ideal for both mix and mastering engineers, MasterCheck Pro enables producers to audition different codecs in real time to help avoid codec distortion or over-compression, resulting in masters that are perfectly tuned for each digital music streaming service.
"Consumer demand has never been higher for music on streaming apps, download stores, websites, and podcasts. All of these services use data compression and/or loudness matching, which can affect mixes in various unforeseen ways," said Jon Schorah, founder and creative director, NUGEN Audio. "With MasterCheck Pro, producers can take back control of the listening experience and mix to the streaming services' criteria. They can identify problems ahead of time and optimize their mixes, resulting in music that reaches the listener sounding exactly as originally intended."
With MasterCheck Pro, producers can instantly hear how their tracks are affected by loudness matching algorithms on different devices and services. Real-time codec auditioning helps users understand how masters respond to different codecs and bandwidths by giving them the ability to preview the mix through different encoding schemes and quality settings. Industry-standard meters show loudness and peak-to-loudness ratio (PLR or dynamic range) and how these factors are affected when the music is played on the target platform. Producers can also A/B the master FX chain with other reference tracks or with the uncompressed mix.
In addition, MasterCheck Pro's loudness auditioning reveals any level changes that may be applied by the streaming service. MasterCheck Pro's true-peak metering ensures the mix is within the delivery spec and guarantees the music won't be clipped at later encoding stages.
Schorah added, "With regard to loudness and codecs, most playout services have a 'letter box' through which they deliver audio. If the music doesn't meet those criteria, then it will be forced to fit. A heavily maximized master might win the loudness war on a CD, but would simply be turned down on a music service or player leaving valuable headroom that could have been used for transient detail and punch. With MasterCheck Pro's loudness and PLR features, producers can find the sweet spot between perceived loudness and dynamics, resulting in a master that's optimized to the format."
For a limited time, MasterCheck Pro is available at an introductory price of $149 (regular price $199). The plug-in supports AAX, VST, AU, and RTAS for both Windows(R) and OS X(R) operating systems. Information about MasterCheck Pro and other NUGEN Audio solutions for the music industry is available at www.nugenaudio.com or by email: info@nugenaudio.com.


DIFFERENT types of meditation have distinct effects on the brain. Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues looked at how three meditation techniques affected the brains and bodies of more than 300 volunteers over nine months.
One technique was based on mindfulness meditation, a second concentrated on compassion and emotional connection with a partner. A final method encouraged people to think about issues from different points of view. MRI scans taken after each three-month course showed that parts of the cortex involved in the specific skill that was trained grew thicker in comparison with scans of a control group. For example, mindfulness increased the thickness of the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobes, which are linked to attention control. All the brain changes were matched by improvements in tests of the relevant skills (Science Advances, doi.org/cdw7).
The study suggests meditation courses could be designed like exercise regimes, focusing on particular weaknesses.


It is now general knowledge that another round of talks in the never-ending negotiations between the government of the Republic of Namibia and the government of the Federal Republic of Germany is scheduled for next week.
One may by now have lost count of the number of times these negotiation talks have taken place, yet without any agreeable and constructive solutions in sight.
In fact, even the fundamentals of the negotiations have not been reached - but it is not hard to see why. It has been evident that these negotiations, from the word go, were ill-advised and thus ill-conceived. This is because there were no prior consultations in their conceptualization.
Hence the reservation of this section of the affected community about these negotiations, which to this day has never been allayed. Time and gain a section of the affected communities has been harping and protesting against their exclusion from these negotiations.
Today they are awaiting the verdict of the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York. This is from an application brought before that court by the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama.
Among the pleas by a section of the affected communities is for them to be included in the ongoing negotiations between the two governments as communities with the first, if not only locus standi in this matter.
So far the Namibian government has been purporting to act on their behalf. In turn the Namibian government has always been maintaining that the door remained open for other members or sections of the affected communities to join the negotiations.
On its part, the German government has been maintaining that the exclusion of a section of the affected Namibian communities was and is an internal Namibian matter, specifically within the jurisdiction and powers of the Namibian government.
The last high-ranking Namibian government's official to openly once again declare the government's willingness and amenability to welcome those who may have been excluded from the ongoing genocide and reparations between the two governments, was none than Vice-President Nangolo Mbumba. This was on August 31, 2018, on the occasion of the return of a consignment of 27 human remains of Namibian victims of the 1904-1908 genocide by Imperial Germany.
There and then it was the hope of everyone, including the excluded affected communities, that sooner than later this matter shall see closure. Given the expressed desire for the excluded communities to be included, this being one of their pleas to the court in New York, one cannot understand why a solution seems as distant as ever - years after engagement and agitation by the affected communities.
In fact it is not preposterous to conclude that the matter has long ago reached the Rubicon. To cause a change of direction from all current self-delusional efforts, going back to drawing board for that matter, the matter surely needs a genuine solution to be engineered.
On the contrary all role players have illusively and self-assuredly been soldiering on their different respective paths, as much as it has been obvious that they have been leading to a cul de sac.
On the eve of another round of negotiations next weekend in Swakopmund, the German government, fronted by the German ambassador to Windhoek Christian Schlaga and its special envoy on genocide and reparations Ruprecht Polenz, is understandably meeting Ovaherero leaders in Omaruru next Thursday.
Interestingly, among those who have been invited to this meeting are traditional leaders from the Ovaherero Traditional Authority (OTA), one of the traditional authorities that have been vociferous in their protest against their exclusion.
What worries yours truly is why only the Otjiherero-speaking traditional leaders have seemingly been invited to this meeting. Your guess is as good as mine. But one cannot but think this may be the last kick of this dying horse in trying to get a buy-in among those communities that have been excluded, led by traditional leaders of the OTA. The grapevine has it that matters may not seem what they appear to be within the Namibian negotiating team, with part of it not comfortable with the direction the negotiations seem to have been taking.
And this may ultimately let the pigeons out regarding the bluff that each and every player, whether in and/or out of the negotiations, have been calling.
Whatever bluff by whomever of the various role players, it cannot be late for all to call of the bluffs and come to the full realisation that until all players tackle this matter at a roundtable, excluding no one, there cannot be a lasting solution to the issue of genocide and reparations.


Two semi-trucks collided head-on and struck a pickup truck Sunday along Interstate 10 in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, killing four and injuring one.
HIDALGO COUNTY — A fiery crash along Interstate 10 in western New Mexico claimed four lives, including an El Paso man.
New Mexico State Police responded to the fatal head-on collision at mile marker 19, near Lordsburg, about 3:30 p.m. Sunday, March 24.
Police said a 2015 Freightliner semi-truck was traveling east on Interstate 10, when, for unknown reasons, it crossed the center median and hit a west-bound 2013 Kenworth semi-truck head on. The Freightliner’s trailer hit a 1999 Dodge pickup that was also traveling west. Both semi-trucks caught on fire.
Four people died in the crash: Sean White, 50, of West Covina, California, was the driver of the Freightliner; Jose Apodaca, 47, of El Paso, was the driver of the Kenworth; 51-year-old Arnold Rojo of Sierra Vista, Arizona, was the driver of the dodge and Susan Rojo, 47, of Sierra Vista, Arizona, was a passenger in the Dodge.
A 13-year-old female passenger in the pickup, both believed to be from Arizona, were transported to an area hospital with critical injuries.
Alcohol is not believed to have been a factor and seat belt use has not been determined. Police are continuing to investigate.


The American Medical Association (AMA) is opposing the presence of federal immigration agents in hospitals and clinics. A new resolution declaring this stance was passed Wednesday by the AMA's House of Delegates, the policy-making body for the association.
The announcement comes just weeks after a 10-year-old girl in Texas was taken into custody by border patrol officials following an emergency surgery. Advocates and health care providers are increasingly concerned about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents encroaching on hospitals.
A recent opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested health care facilities should take an active role in establishing so-called "sanctuary hospital" policies. The Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association has said it's unaware of any hospitals seeking any sort of sanctuary policy.
The AMA is an important voice in suggesting nationwide industry standards in health care, though new AMA resolutions don't always result in new policies.
Dr. Elisabeth Poorman is a physician with Cambridge Health Alliance in Everett and works primarily with immigrant patients. She says the resolution is a good step, but she'd like to see the association take more aggressive measures.
"I think we need more proactive guidance from the AMA about what to do when ICE comes into the clinic," Poorman says, "but also how are we going to bring immigrant patients back into the clinic — people who are currently afraid to seek necessary medical care which endangers them, their families and their entire community."
In the statement, Dr. Andrew Gurman, the immediate past president of the AMA, said patients should not be in fear that entering a hospital will result in arrests or deportation.
"In medical facilities, patients and families should be focused on recovery and their health, not the ramifications of their immigration status,” he said.
Schools, churches and hospitals are considered "sensitive locations" by ICE, which means officials will often avoid arrests in these places, but, there are exceptions to this rule.


Rollover crash kills 56-year-old woman on I-96 in Lyon Twp.
State police: Rollover crash kills 56-year-old woman on I-96 in Lyon Twp.
Michigan State Police's inital investigation says the woman was driving recklessly and her vehicle rolled after she lost control on the roadway.
A 56-year-old woman died after a rollover crash on eastbound I-96 in Lyon Township, Michigan State Police said.
At 2:50 p.m. on Saturday, MSP troopers were dispatched to Old Plank Road. They saw several people and Lyon Township EMS personnel at the scene attempting to resuscitate the driver, MSP said in a series of tweets.
The driver, however, died on the scene.
An inital MSP investigation says the woman reportedly was driving recklessly in traffic and her vehicle rolled after she lost control on the roadway. She struck the right embankment under the Old Plank overpass, MSP said, and was ejected from her vehicle.
"She was driving too fast, lost control and the vehicle rolled. She had been driving in and out of traffic, then lost control," MSP Lt. Michael Shaw told Hometown Life. "We are trying now to see if she was wearing a seat belt. She was ejected, but there was a lot of damage to the vehicle — the seat belt could have snapped."
Her family has reportedly been notified.
One lane of eastbound I-96 was shutdown while authorities investigated the accident.


ISLAMABAD - Thirty Pakistani government officials and agricultural industry representatives have completed a six-year US Department of Agriculture (USDA) sponsored training programme.
According to a press release, the ceremony was held to mark the completion of training programme. The ceremony was presided over by David Williams, Agriculture Counselor, US Embassy Islamabad, Muhammad Tariq Khan, Deputy Director Department of Plant Protection, Karachi, and Dr Babar Bajwa, CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International) Director Pakistan and West Asia.
The USDA, with support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has invested more than $4 million in this six-year distance learning project initiative to support the government of Pakistan’s efforts to increase agricultural trade. The programme’s goal is to strengthen Pakistan’s ability to comply with international trade rules to increase Pakistan’s commodity exports, and help Pakistan to prevent the importation of harmful plant diseases and pests.
Since 2011, the USDA and partners, CABI and Texas A&M University, have joined hands to create a distance learning project to bolster Pakistan’s sanitary and phytosanitary (also known as SPS) skills and knowledge. With interactive workshops supplemented by online training modules, the USDA SPS Distance Learning project is advancing Pakistan’s adoption of international plant and animal health standards by training 30 Department of Plant Protection officials and other Pakistani agricultural professionals. The workshops and training modules focus on a range of topics, including pest-risk management, market access and inspections.
“Proper regulation of exports and imports is key to meeting the demands of foreign buyers as well as protecting Pakistan’s domestic agriculture and consumers. We are hopeful that these courses will serve as a resource for Pakistan’s phytosanitary regulators,” said Agriculture Counselor David Williams. The success of these training modules in Pakistan has made SPS Distance Learning Modules a key component of a new USAID initiative called the Food Safety Network, which will expand the curriculum to include animal health and food safety and deploy them globally in several languages.
The US government supports Pakistani scientists and farmers to improve agricultural productivity in Pakistan, and to meet economic objectives and food security needs, with USAID allocating more than $350 million in funding to support Pakistan’s agricultural sector from 2002 to 2015.


With their families by their side, Edward. R. Williams, Jeffrey J. Marchetti and Joseph M. Solomon were all promoted from captain to deputy fire chief.
BROCKTON — It's been a week of promotions and reason to celebrate at the Brockton Fire Department.
On Monday night, the City Council approved the promotions of 11 firefighters – from lieutenants to captains to deputy chiefs.
And those new deputy fire chiefs were officially sworn in on Wednesday morning during a short ceremony at Brockton City Hall.
City Clerk Anthony Zeoli performed the ceremony with Fire Chief Michael Williams, Mayor Bill Carpenter and their fellow deputy fire chiefs in attendance.
The other promotions this week at the fire department were Lts. Christopher J. Martin, Timothy J. Lacouture and Christopher J. Beyers to fire captain and firefighters Heather Doten (the first woman ever promoted within the department), David P. Owen, James E. Croker, Robert J. Reiser and Richard S. Gagne to fire lieutenant.


Is inflation in the U.S. ready to blow its top? Uh, no. Prices are rising, but just gradually.
It’s all over but the shouting. Interest rates are going up. And up. And up.
That’s what a roaring economy will do. Households and companies are the most confident in years. Consumer spending and business investment are strong. And years of steady hiring have knocked the unemployment rate down to the lowest level since 1969 — an astounding 3.7%.
The reward? Higher costs of borrowing for consumers and businesses.
The economy is doing so well the Federal Reserve has embarked on a path to lift a key short-term U.S. interest rate to at least 3%, pushing them to the highest rate in more than a decade. That will raise the cost of all sorts of other loans.
Oh sure, interest rates are still low, but if you don’t act soon, that home mortgage, auto loan or small-business line of credit is going to cost more. The Fed is on track to raise interest rates again by December.
It’s not just the strong economy that’s pushing the Fed to act, though. What’s accompanied fast economic growth is higher inflation, the archenemy of central banks every where.
The latest readings on inflation this week aren’t going to set off any alarms, but they’ll likely affirm that the trend is still up.
Most notably the consumer price index, or cost of living, is forecast to rise 0.2% in September. This index tracks all the things Americans spend money on each month: Rent, food, gas, medical care, clothing, transportation and the like. The report will be issued Thursday.
An increase of that size should keep the yearly rate of inflation at around the current level of 2.7%. That’s above the Fed’s preferred 2% range, but well below what’s considered threatening to the economy.
Consumer inflation is somewhat lower if the volatile categories of food and energy are stripped out — 2.2% over the past 12 months.
What’s less clear is where inflation goes from here.
Some economists insist it will keep rising and breach the 3% mark soon for the first time since 2011, forcing the Fed to raise interest rates even more swiftly and threatening the expansion.
Others suggest prices could level off between 2% and 3% barring another major oil shock or another unusual trigger. Hence economic nirvana: steady growth and stable inflation — the dream of central banks everywhere.
For now the Fed can bide it’s time. Inflation has leveled off over the past few months to give it some more breathing room.
“There is nothing in the inflation data that would make the [Fed] feel compelled to pick up the pace” of rate hikes,” said chief economist Richard Moody of Regions Financial.


The Hayward family added a third daughter, Nora Mae, on Thursday.
He's more than halfway to his own WNBA team.
Boston Celtics forward and former Butler and Brownsburg star Gordon Hayward and his wife, Robyn, welcomed their third daughter on Thursday.
Robyn Hayward announced the addition on Instagram on Friday, writing: "Our sweet Nora Mae was a little stubborn on wanting to join us, but she was worth the wait. Yesterday was a special day. 💕"
The couple also have two daughters: Bernie, 3, and Charlie, 2.
They previously revealed Nora Mae's gender in a video posted to Robyn's Instagram account in July, in which Bernie and Charlie open a box filled with pink balloons.
"In January we will be adding another baby to the family and we couldn’t be more grateful!" she wrote. "Three babies in three and half years has me thinking we’re crazy, but our lives are already crazy so what’s adding another baby!😬😂💗"
Gordon Hayward's first reaction to learning he'd be getting a third girl?


Sport The 28-year-old's knee buckled in a marking contest on Sunday.
News The 204cm Gympie Giant's season looked over before it began.
News It was Keeffe's third game.
Rugby League Cowboys fullback will miss 'several months'.
Swimming Swimmer smashes personal record on way to claiming prize.
Tennis Highlights from this weekend's slam of tennis fun.


PRIMAL SCREAM – DISSED IN DISS!
Primal Scream stopped off for a head-to-head with one of their fiercest critics during the first leg of their British tour – in a record shop in Diss, East Anglia.
Mani popped in to ‘have a chat’ with Wes Kent of Revolution Records in the town following the band’s show at the University Of East Anglia in nearby Norwich.
The showdown had happened because in reply to an industry questionnaire – sometimes sent out when labels are searching for initial feedback to review copies of material – Wes had awarded ‘Exterminator’ 0 out of 10, adding ‘this record must have taken all of 10 minutes to record’. Somehow Primal Scream heard about the slating and in response had been sending Wes postcards from several of their stop-off points during the recent Australian and Far Eastern tour.
The Eastern Daily Press, one of the region’s newspapers, reports that the band had taken it all in good humour and were actually pleased to have have come across someone who expressed their own opinion.
But even after the meeting and being taken out for a pint, Wes remained unbowed, explaining that he would not review his grade.
Primal Scream, currently on a whistle stop tour of Europe, return to Britain to complete the second leg of their dates on April 13 with two hometown shows at Glasgow Barrowlands and round matters off with a huge all nighter at Brixton Academy on April 22 in the company of Death in Vegas.


Having already established his passion for education by accepting an honorary doctorate from one university and demonstrating how pendulums work at another, Sean “Diddy” Combs now intends to mold the bright young minds of tomorrow: The erstwhile Puff Daddy has just announced his plans to open a charter school in his native Harlem. The Associated Press reported on Combs’ latest venture, which the MMMogul shared himself via his Twitter account.
The Capital Preparatory Harlem Charter School will be a free, public school for grades 6-12 that will provide “year-round, college prep education.” The school is scheduled open this fall, and is already accepting applications. Combs has recruited Steve Perry (no, not the Journey man) to oversee the school; Dr. Perry, who’s contributed to CNN’s Black In America series, also founded the Capital Preparatory Magnet School, which has reportedly sent 100% of its graduates to four-year colleges and serves as the model for Combs’ school.


A Michigan woman said a dream of lottery luck came true when she won a $4 million jackpot from a scratch-off ticket.
A Michigan woman collected a $250,000 lottery jackpot eight years after she won a $252,074 payout using the same numbers.
Law enforcement agencies in Michigan located 123 missing children during a one-day operation, the U.S. Marshals Service announced.
A Michigan Lottery player said a clerk's "lucky" tip led to his winning a grand prize of $1,000 a week for life.
A day after Hurricane Florence slammed into North Carolina, at least 14 people died, nearly one million without power, hundreds rescued from rising waters.
Florence claimed its first victims, including a woman and her infant child in Wilmington, N.C., hours after landfall Friday.
A Michigan man credited a chance encounter with a lottery player with inspiring his own $2 million jackpot win.
A pair of Ohio train hoppers who came to regret their decision when the high-speed train carried them more than 60 miles ended up calling 911 for help.
A Michigan man who won $2 million from a scratch-off lottery ticket credited his "odd" strategy -- steering clear of even-numbered tickets.
A group of undercover Detroit police posing as drug dealers tried to arrest undercover police posing as drug buyers, resulting in a massive brawl.
Drugs were found in the biological system of rocker Chris Cornell but they played no active role in his suicide last month, a toxicology report said Friday.
Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell was remembered Sunday with a moment of silence during the 2017 Billboard Music Awards.
Chris Cornell's wife and lawyer say they are disturbed by a Michigan medical examiner's ruling that he committed suicide this week.
Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell died Wednesday. He was 52 years old.
A Michigan man is reveling in his luck after winning his third-ever lottery jackpot, bringing his total winnings to more than $780,000.
Wayne County is a county in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, its population was 2,061,162 with the July 1, 2008 estimate placing the population at 1,949,929 making it the 13th most-populous county in the United States. The county seat is Detroit, the largest city in Michigan. The County executive is Bob Ficano.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 672 square miles (1,741 km²)—614 square miles (1,591 km²) of it is land and 58 square miles (150 km²) of it (8.64%) is water (including parts of the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair).
Wayne County borders on Oakland County and Macomb County to the north, Washtenaw County to the west, and Monroe County to the south.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wayne County."


Regarding Syria, Crossfire's Stephanie Cutter and Newt Gingrich put aside their differences to find common ground.
But Ms. Cutter, WMD's were found in Iraq, as shown by WikiLeaks. Check your facts before spewing the party line.
Doesn't Newt have a book to sell or something? I have no idea why CNN is featuring this hypocritical grifter on a so-called news show. When Jon Stewart destroyed Crossfire a few years ago the world was better for it. Now they bring it back with, of all people, Newt Gingrich! Pathetic. At least they could find another real conservative, rather than this ridiculous money-grubbing loser.
With the Obama administration’s constant and heavy emphasis on the heinous murders of 429 Syrian children by ricin gas and the gruesome footage of that act, I suggest the United States should start putting its aborted babies on display. The aborted babies should be wrapped in shrouds and lined up on, let's see we'll need a pretty big area, perhaps on football fields for the whole world to see the heinous murders of abortionists. At the tune of approximately 4,000 aborted babies each day we'll need a whole lot of football fields. Maybe then those who are so appalled at 429 Syrian children in shrouds would see the irony of their misguided thinking and lead this country back to morality. Talk about a holocaust!
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Ask your friendly scientist: If a NUCLEAR BOMB -God forbid- drops on a city of 20 million souls -how many SURVIVORS?
How hypocritical is Kissinger's concern for the legitimization of poison gas, when the U.S. & Russia legitimize owning 16,000 NUCLEAR BOMBS?
Why's the world so keen on RED-LINING poison gas, but not NUCLEAR BOMBS? Gas=baby powder compared to one nuclear bomb on a city of 20 million souls.
I refuse, repeat, refuse to watch any show that features Newt Gingrich.
First, I like the basic format of this show but I think it would be an improvement if it was an hour long. The topics need more time to be explored.
Second, I think it is a serious detraction from the credibility of the show that Ms. Cutter consistently talks over her guest; at least one of them. As they should, both Ms. Cutter and Mr. Gingrich set up scenarios and questions but it seems Ms. Cutter could not abide anything Sen Paul had to say in response to questions. I do not often agree with Mr. Paul but I would like to actually hear his responses to direct questions. In addition, when she disagreed with Sen Paul, she would respond with sarcasm and even make immature faces. At times, she appeared to actually be completing Mr. Paul's statements in the manner she wanted him to respond. Ms. Cutter was both rude and unprofessional. I was especially entertained when she grabbed Mr. Gingrich's arm to restrain him when it appeared he was going to try to keep Sen Menendez on track with the question. Is it only she who is permitted to interrupt?


This is a smart little hardback with beautiful endpapers copied from the fabric design of one of Madiba’s shirts, and has a foreword by Graça Machel, whose idea the book was. It gathers together anecdotes and remembrances from people who worked with, for and beside Mandela, from household staff and bodyguards to advisors and secretaries.
This is the first and only authorised and authenticated collection of correspondence spanning the 27 years of Mandela's incarceration.
Illustrated with facsimiles and generously annotated, the letters provide new insight into his life behind bars and how he kept up his spirits during those long and lonely years.
Kate Sidley read every book she could find about Mandela before composing her book 100 Mandela Moments.
Sidley has an eye for the warmest and most humorous moments, as well as the momentous. Here he is eating melktert with Betsie Verwoerd in Orania, on his feet dancing to Ladysmith Black Mambazo in the Royal Box with the Queen of England, and donning an “HIV POSITIVE” T-shirt in support of TAC activists campaigning for the rollout of antiretrovirals.
Veteran anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain takes a close look at the life and legacy of Mandela, and analyses the state of the ANC then and now, in his book Mandela: His Essential Life.
Brett Ladds, former executive chef and manager of the Presidential Guesthouse in Pretoria, recounts tales of Madiba’s favourite champagne (Pêche Royale) and endless cups of rooibos tea.
He also tells entertaining stories of kings, queens and rock stars and the Saudi-Arabian sheik who had eight television sets installed in his room and bought 20 blankets at R5,000 each for his stay.
Ndaba Mandela provides an intimate family point of view in this book. The young Mandela was 11 when he was invited to live with his grandfather. Slowly they built a relationship that would affect both of them profoundly.
Mandela’s daughter Zindzi sits down with her grandchildren Zazi and Ziwelene to answer their questions about her father. Illustrated by Sean Qualls, Grandad Mandela is a delightful and inspiring.
Tafelberg has compiled Mandela’s favourite children’s stories in Madiba Magic, an enchanting kaleidoscope of tales told around the fires, tales of the San and Khoi people, of animals and mystical trees and Cloud Princesses. Charming.
• This article was originally published on Wanted Online, the digital home of Business Day’s luxury lifestyle magazine Wanted.


LONDON, Ontario -- After a sleepy morning at his parents' home, Los Angeles Kings forward Jeff Carter brought the Stanley Cup out for a brief tour of the city after making a public appearance Thursday.
About 100 employees at EllisDon, where Jeff's mom Sue works, lined up for pictures with Jeff and the Cup on a sweltering hot day. The Clarence Campbell Bowl was also on hand for the festivities.
The only other public stop before a private party at an uncle's house was Stronach Arena, where Carter played his first hockey as a 7-year-old. The ice was replaced with a sport court for summertime ball hockey, so the Cup was set at "centre ice" for some fun pictures.
Carter posed for shots in almost every jersey he's ever worn -- including one he wore when he was 7 that wasn't as ill-fitting as you'd think. Some children passing by saw the Cup and got some unexpected shots with it too.
Check back later for the full story of the day.


The Waves on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Slow Burn, and “peak desirability” in online dating.
On this week’s episode of the Waves, Christina Cauterucci, Kat Chow, and Veralyn Williams talk about Netflix’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, unpacking the standards it’ll be held to as one of the only teen rom-coms with an Asian-American lead—and what sets its central romance apart from the rest of the genre. Next, chart-topping historical podcast Slow Burn has turned its sights from Watergate to the Clinton impeachment. The hosts are joined by Leon Neyfakh to discuss what it’s like to re-evaluate the roles and reputations of women like Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky in 2018, why Bill Clinton has continued to loom large in the Democratic Party, and how we should reckon with his legacy now. Finally, a recent study of online dating found that men are perceived to peak in desirability at age 50, while women peak at 18. The trio explores how cultural norms might have reinforced these wildly uneven gendered expectations—online, on screen, and in their own lives.
And on Slate Plus: Is it sexist to call women “females”?
This podcast was produced by Veralyn Williams. Our production assistant is Alex Barasch.
The Waves plugs: Please remember to like our Facebook page. Send your emails to thewaves@slate.com. Tell us what we should cover in the next episode. Finally, our summer call-in show is coming up! If you have a question you’d like the hosts to answer, this week is your last chance to call (646) 907-9859 to leave us a voicemail.


A musical about emojis will make its debut in New York next month, and is seeking crowdfunding assistance.
Emojiland is the brainchild of married couple Keith and Laura Nicole Harrison and takes place inside a smartphone. It is not connected to The Emoji Movie.
After a software update introduces new emojis into the land, the balance of the emojis’ fragile ecosystem is tipped toward peril.
According to the Kickstarter raising funds for the musical, characters will include the smiling face, a power-hungry princess and a charming nerd face emoji.
The play took four years to develop, but has finally been selected to play a limited run at the New York Musical Festival.
The team behind the play is crowdfunding to raise a minimum of 15,000 US dollars (about £11,375) for sets, props, costumes and sounds, up to 100,000 dollars (£75,845) to pay for everything the musical needs including salaries, rehearsal space and insurance.


Up to 41 jobs are at risk across Reach’s regional editorial teams, most of them in print production, Press Gazette has learned.
The publisher (formerly Trinity Mirror) said its regional newsrooms were facing the potential cuts as it rolls out a “common production model” aimed at refining workflows.
Consultations with staff whose jobs may be at risk are underway.
A Reach spokesperson said: “Our investment in rolling out a common system allows us to introduce a common production model across Regionals editorial.
“This means regional teams will now work more closely together than ever before, which enables us to refine our workflows.
Press Gazette understands that among the jobs at risk are eight roles in the north west, where its titles include daily regionals the Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News, and six sub-editors, a deputy print editor and a property editor in the south east and Cambridge region.
Hold the Front Page has reported that up to six jobs mainly in sub-editing roles will be lost in the East and West Midlands, where daily titles include the Birmingham Mail, Burton Mail, Coventry Telegraph, Derby Telegraph, Leicester Mercury, Nottingham Post and The Sentinel.
Staff at the regions affected were told in memos sent yesterday, it is understood.
The news follows the loss of around 98 jobs across Reach’s regional newsrooms in the spring as the publisher continued its restructure to separate online and print teams nationwide under the Live rebrand.


Map of a New America by Neil Freeman. A radical re-mapping of the US that shows 50 states with equal population. (Larger version here).
The Four Kinds of Dog by John Tomanio for National Geographic. The genetic breakdown of 85 common dog breeds, showing how much they fall into four broad categories: wolflike, mastifflike, herders, and hunters. (Larger verison here).
Multi-Touch Paintings by Evan Roth. A document of today's ubiquitous smartphone gestures made with inky fingertips. Top left: "Username and Password." Bottom left: "Slide to unlock." Right: "Launch Twitter. Check Twitter. Close Twitter." (Larger versions here).
America's Most Popular Birthdays by Matt Stiles. A chart showing the frequency of births for every day of the year. (Larger version here).
Where Twisters Touch Down by John Nelson. The starting and ending points for fifty-six years of tornado activity in the US, with brightness adjusted for severity. (Larger version here).
The Last Forty-Five Seconds by Todd Lindeman for the Washington Post. A 3-D rendering and timeline of the moments leading up to Trayvon Martin's death.
The Quantified Self by Nicholas Felton. A page from the 2012 Felton report, an annual visualization of personal activity created by designer Nicholas Felton. (Larger version here).
The Popification of the Top 40 by Gavin Potenza for Billboard. A timeline of the last twenty years of Billboard Top 40 hits, showing the growing dominance of pop music.
Ten Artists, Ten Years by Arthur Buxton. A series of pie charts showing the evolution of ten Impressionist artists, made with the help of a color extraction script written in Python. (Larger version here).
How to Be Happy by Gustavo Vieira Dias. A flow-chart reminding you to ask a simple question.
Paths Through New York City by Eric Fischer. A flow map showing the most commonly-travelled paths through New York City, as gleaned from a database of geotagged Tweets. (Larger version here).
Your Microbiome by Jonathan Corum for the New York Times. An annotated chart of the myriad microbes that are hitching a ride inside your body. (Larger version here).
Last year, the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist was tapped to edit the first volume of The Best American Infographics, a job that involved poring over hundreds of examples to come up with the 60-some pieces that ended up in the book. Along the way he established a brain trust of designers, editors, artists and data experts to help him collect good examples of the craft, but he alone made the final call for what made it in the book, and that involved tackling one very tough question: Cook had to figure out what, exactly, the word "infographic" really means today.
>Cook had to figure out what, exactly, the word 'infographic' means.
"It was very clear to me at first that there's an orthodox view of what an infographic is," he explains. There are certain rigorous approaches to clarity and efficiency that have emerged as best practices for data visualizations–all encapsulated by what you could call "the Tufte approach," Cook says, referring to the influential data-viz master Edward Tufte, who advocated information density and highly distilled functionality. Still, Cook resisted that narrow view in making his selections. "I thought it would be a mistake to hew to that definition," he explains. "It's such a diverse and interesting medium, I felt like it would be a far less interesting collection–less satisfying for readers and less intellectually engaging–if we did only that one type of infographic." Ultimately, Cook found that the stuff popping up around the fringes of the burgeoning field was often the most interesting.
The book showcases plenty of orthodox work but includes a good deal of not-exactly-orthodox work, too. There are a full dozen pieces from the New York Times, where a team of incredibly talented designers have been putting out top-notch (and Tufte-approved) work reliably over the last several years. There are other polished, prime-time pieces from pubs like National Geographic and the Guardian. But there are also decidedly more idiosyncratic works, like Tom Scocca's hand-drawn chart ranking past Super Bowl halftime shows on Alfred Kinsey's heterosexual-homosexual rating scale, and Evan Roth's fantastic Multi-Touch Paintings, in which the artist documents today's ubiquitous smartphone gestures by swiping to unlock and playing Angry Birds with inky thumbs. Ultimately, the list of contributors includes not just the types of data journalists Cook once worked with in the newsroom, but a diverse cast of artists, statisticians, developers, and more.
"I tried really hard to give a sense of all the approaches people are taking with infographics, and the raw creativity that's out there," Cook says. "I know for a fact that there are entries in here that someone who is maybe more orthodox in their views are not going to care for, or thinks could be better in some way." Still, he's pleased with the inclusiveness of the collection. And recognizing that much of today's best data viz work doesn't remain static on our screens, Cook got Eric Rodenbeck, founder of Stamen Design, to pick 10 interactive pieces for the book. They include Bear 71, an astonishing hybrid documentary by the National Film Board of Canada and an eye-opening video clip that illustrates New York City's carbon emissions as a stream of huge, bouncing CG spheres.
So what do all these infographics have in common? What, ultimately, qualified a piece for the designation of one of the year's best?Cook spells out some criteria in the introduction: intellectual power, aesthetic sophistication, and emotional impact. But another thing Cook looked for was a sense that the pieces understood the questions they were trying to answer, and took a form that helped readers find those answers. Sometimes those questions are simple. Gustavo Viera Dias's "How To Be Happy" flow chart gets its point across succinctly: If you're not happy with your life, make a change. "In other cases, the questions are going to be more complex and the reader might have to do more work," Cook says. Many of the Times' visualizations, for example, come with a bit of a learning curve but ultimately reward the reader's patience with rich insight. "But if you haven't worked hard to anticipate those questions and make your infographic effective, then [readers are] doing unnecessary work, and that's when I think you start to get into some problems," Cook says.
When we talked, Cook was already busy amassing work for next year's edition. One piece had him stymied–it was a wooden cabinet whose irregular shelves had been formed by data related to local snowmelt. On one hand, the project is an unambiguous attempt to make data visual, but Cook admitted that the idea of a physical, three-dimensional object as an "infographic" might be a stretch. For now it's in the maybe pile. Still, don't expect next year's collection to retreat to orthodoxy. In addition to all the other criteria, next year's batch will be susceptible to the same gut check that brought about some of this year's most interesting picks. "Sometimes I included something just because I hadn't seen anything like it, and it had this unique integrity to it," Cook says. "You had this sense that something cool was happening there."


Eugene Kaspersky tells reporters Russian intelligence services have never asked his Kaspersky Lab to spy on Western targets and that he would leave Russia if asked to do so. Rough cut (no reporter narration).
ROUGH CUT. NO REPORTER NARRATION. Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab has never been asked by Russian intelligence services to spy on targets in the West, the company's founder and the chief executive said on Tuesday (November 29). "Never, never," CEO Eugene Kaspersky told reporters at a media briefing at the company's office in London, when asked if Russian intelligence had ever asked him to help them spy on the West. Kaspersky, who once served as an engineer for Soviet military intelligence before founding his company in the years following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, said he would move the company outside of Russia if he faced such a demand to spy. Fears about Kaspersky's ties to Russian intelligence, and the capacity of its anti-virus software to sniff out and remove files, prompted an escalating series of warnings and actions from U.S. authorities over the past year.


After suffering a regular season loss for the first time since his sophomore year on Saturday, Kyle Smith said he was glad to have a game again on Tuesday.
Smith responded to the loss with a pair of goals, but it was far from enough as Lyle Thompson scored five goals and recorded three assists to lead Albany to a 15-9 win over the No. 9 Massachusetts men’s lacrosse team at John Fallon Field yesterday.
The Minutemen (3-2) have now lost consecutive games for the first time since March 2011, and haven’t won at Albany since 2002.
UMass was deflated by its season-high 16 turnovers against Brown on Saturday, and matched that mark again on Tuesday as this young team continues to figure out how to move the ball efficiently without scoring threats Will Manny and Colin Fleming in the lineup.
Goalkeeper Zachary Oliveri had arguably the worst outing of his young career with the Minutemen. The redshirt freshman made 10 saves, but allowed a career-high 12 goals against.
Despite the team-wide struggles, UMass coach Greg Cannella took the blame for the loss.
UMass spent the majority of the contest playing from behind, but finally knotted the score at 5 apiece when Grant Whiteway scored his first of two goals fin the game early in the third quarter.
But that was as close as the Minutemen would get.
The Great Danes (2-2) outscored UMass 10-4 the rest of the way, netting five goals in each of the final two quarters.
After consecutive Albany goals made it 7-5, Matt Whippen cut the deficit in half when he scored his team-high 10th goal of the season with under 10 minutes left in the third quarter. The junior midfielder used his 225-pound frame to charge into the attacking end and beat goalie Blaze Riorden (12 saves).
The Great Danes once again responded furiously with three unanswered goals capped off by Kevin McNally’s marker to put them up 10-6 with 3:24 left in the third.
The Minutemen got back into it with 3:40 left in regulation when Smith put home his second goal of the contest to slice the Albany lead to 11-9. But Thompson struck again for the Great Danes, first assisting Jimmy Haugen to make it 12-9, then capping it off with his fifth goal of the game in the closing minutes.
Albany finished the game on a 4-0 run.
The Minutemen stayed in the game early on, tying it at 2-2 early in the second quarter on a Dan Muller goal. But the Great Danes quickly responded with three unanswered goals to make it 5-2 midway through the period.
Mooney scored an unassisted goal with 6:57 left in the first half to make it 5-3, then Andrew Sokol scored on a feed by Bobby Tyler to take a one-goal deficit into the half.
The lone positive for UMass was the two goals by each of its starting attackmen – Smith, Whiteway and Mooney – but it wasn’t enough to match the efforts of Thompson.
“He’s probably the best player in the country right now by far, in my opinion,” Cannella said.
The Minutemen try to end their first losing streak in nearly two years when they travel to Bethlehem, Pa., to take on Bucknell at noon on Saturday.
Nick Canelas can be reached at [email protected]student.umass.edu and followed on Twitter @NickCanelas.


Cisco projects total global data center traffic to reach 15.3 ZB annually by 2020, with 92 percent of all workloads being processed in the cloud by 2020.
Cloud data center traffic will exceed 14 zettabytes in 2020, an increase of 262 percent from 2015, according to the Cisco Global Cloud Index (PDF). Released Thursday, the report projects total global data center traffic to reach 15.3 ZB annually by 2020, with 92 percent of all workloads being processed in the cloud by 2020.
It also forecasts the number of hyperscale data centers to rise by 226 percent from 259 at the end of 2015 to 485 by 2020.
The majority of workloads will tip over from private to public cloud this year, Cisco says, and public cloud will continue to grow by 35 percent CAGR throughout the forecast period (compared to 15 percent for private), boosted by demand for cost efficiency and agility, along with strengthening public cloud security.
SaaS workloads will grow from 65 percent of total cloud workloads in 2015 to 74 percent by 2020, while the share taken by IaaS will drop from 26 to 17 percent, and PaaS will drop from 9 to 8. Cisco also forecasts enterprises’ share of workloads to decrease, while consumers’ share will rise, though the enterprise share will be buoyed by big data and IoT workloads. In its report last year, Cisco noted that personal cloud storage would be used by 55 percent (2 billion) of the consumer internet population by 2019.
While data center traffic is growing, architectural innovations like software-defined networking and network function virtualization are streamlining it, the index says, and the density of workloads per server is forecast to grow from 7.3 in 2015 to 11.9 by 2020.
Regionally, the Middle East and Africa will lead in data center traffic growth, with a 34 percent CAGR, but will still be “only” 451 exabytes in 2020. North Amercian cloud data center traffic is expected to grow by 27 percent, from 2.2 ZB in 2015 to 7.1 ZB in 2020.
The Internet of Everything (IoE) will generate 600 ZB of data by 2020, the report says, but hardly more than 6 ZB of that will be stored.
Data center space is being snapped up worldwide, with large chunks of data center space in particularly high demand. In October AWS announced the launch of three new cloud data centers in Ohio, leaving only a couple hundred to go by 2020.
This article originally appeared here at The Whir.


Aged 8: You take her to bed and tell her a story.
At 28: You don't need to tell her a story to take her to bed.
At 48: You tell her a story to avoid going to bed.
At 68: If you take her to bed, that would be a story!


During recent high-level talks, the two sides agreed to hold further talks before early November but Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, hinted at calling it off, citing cross-border tensions.
Just a day before the talks were held, the two nations traded machine gunfire across their tense border after Pyongyang apparently attempted to shoot down balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets floated by civic activists.
After some of the North Korean machine gunshots landed south of the border, South Korean troops fired back in response.
North Korea, taking part in the Games for the first time, are represented by nine athletes competing in archery, athletics, table tennis and swimming.
Their delegation, comprising of 29 members, arrived in Incheon last week.
Approximately 4,500 athletes from 42 countries will be competing in 23 sports at this year's Games, which are due to start tomorrow and end on October 24.
Training for the competition began earlier this week at the Incheon Asiad Main Stadium, the Songdo Global University Gymnasium and the Munhak Park Tae-hwan Aquatics Centre, named after the South Korean Olympic champion.


Winnipeg has a severe problem when it comes to stray cats on its streets. More than 50,000 homeless felines roam the city without permanent shelter, food or proper care to cure any illnesses they may pick up while fending for themselves.
Red River College Creative Communications student and freelance Free Press reporter Sandy Klowak has put together a spectacular documentary highlighting the problem.
According to Klowak, the Winnipeg Humane Society offered shelter to 6,083 cats in 2010, but ended up euthanizing 2,549. Calgary, on the other hand, put down 1,617 during the same year due to a successful no cost spay and neuter program for low income residents, supported by revenue generated from cat licensing.


The No. 1 broadcast network delivered a welcome jolt of energy to its day in the TCA press-tour spotlight when CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, one of network TV's most boisterous showmen and champions, took the stage Monday morning for the first time since 2005 (filling in at the last minute for entertainment president Nina Tassler, called away for a friend's funeral). Bluntly bullish on CBS's prospects for the new season ("We're confident we're going to be up this year"), Moonves credited stability as a primary factor for the network's long-term success.
"It's great to be able to renew 20 shows. It really is. ... When you can do that, it makes it easier to launch shows when you're launching them in positions that are behind successful shows. Obviously, it doesn't work all the time [RIP, Vegas and Golden Boy], but it leads to a degree of being able to win year after year." Moonves suggested the streak won't last forever, pointing to NBC's fall from grace when it couldn't find new hits to replace Friends and ER. But given the lackluster state of so much of this new fall season, it's hard to imagine any rival unseating CBS anytime soon.
Moonves became most animated when discussing projects that break from the CBS procedural formula, like the summer hit Under the Dome (renewed to absolutely no one's surprise) and another serialized shorter-run "limited series" Hostages, a 15-episode thriller that will air on Mondays at 10/9c for the first half of the season. "You're not going to see us veer off differently," Moonves cautioned. "What you're going to see is we're experimenting."
This trend of not-quite-miniseries has the potential to shake up an otherwise moribund season, the way Fox's The Following (for all of its flaws) did last midseason. With fewer episodes, there's more opportunity to pack more story into each hour, and as Hostages exec producer Jeffrey Nachmanoff noted: "It lets you really shape an arc without having to stretch out and tap dance." The Hostages pilot is one of the season's more exciting and twisty, starring Toni Collette as the president's doctor who's put in extreme peril (as is the commander-in-chief) when terrorists threaten her family, and I felt even more confident in its ability to sustain a high-wire act when it was revealed that the action of the first season will encompass a two-week period (roughly, a day per episode).
THE MILLERS (Thursdays at 8:30/7:30c) Sitcom inspired by series creator Greg Garcia's (Raising Hope, My Name Is Earl) own outrageous parents, not unlike how Everybody Loves Raymond was informed by its star and producers' home lives. This is a much broader, sillier, even cruder comedy, but with exec producer/director James Burrows at the helm, and a cast including Will Arnett as the newly divorced son of Beau Bridges and Margo Martindale, who promptly split upon hearing of their son's situation, this is a shameless spectacle of blue-chip talent proudly going for lowbrow belly laughs, including toilet and fart humor, which Garcia refused to apologize for. He mentioned sitting among Hollywood royalty at the recent AFI tribute to Mel Brooks, watching everyone "dying laughing" at the famous Blazing Saddles campfire scene. Not that The Millers is pretending to operate on that classic level. But as a companion to The Big Bang Theory on Thursdays, it's a step up from the played-out Two and a Half Men (which moves to 9:30/8:30c).
WE ARE MEN (Mondays at 8:30/7:30c) So-called comedy about the friendship among four unlucky-in-love losers (Tony Shalhoub, Jerry O'Connell, Kal Penn and newbie Chris Smith) nursing their romantic wounds in a singles' apartment complex. O'Connell's colorful Speedos (prominently displayed in the off-putting pilot) got the first question, and it went downhill from there. Expect Mike & Molly to be taken off the back-up bench before November sweeps.
THE CRAZY ONES (Thursdays at 9/8) The most high-profile new player in CBS's expanded two-hour Thursday comedy block, showcasing Robin Williams' return to weekly series TV, as a manic (what else) Chicago ad exec running an agency with his more uptight daughter (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Williams riffed to uneven effect before the tough TCA crowd, although it was impossible not to laugh when someone asked about him being a "sad clown," prompting an hysterical routine that brought him out of his chair: "Oh My God, what are those big feet doing in the bed?!?" The show could use a few more crazy moments like that, and exec producer David E. Kelley admits, "the half-hour genre is not my turf" (which is why he teamed with Modern Family vet Jason Winer to set the partially improvised tone). Good news: Outtakes of Williams cracking up cast and crew, a highlight of the pilot, are likely to be a staple at the end of most episodes.
MOM (Mondays at 9:30/8:30c) The latest from producer Chuck Lorre's empire - a word he shuns, noting in his self-deprecating manner, "Empires are always overrun and defeated" - this is a biting yet endearing sitcom about two generations of recovering-addict single moms: Anna Faris as Christy, an overwhelmed single parent, and Allison Janney as Christy's own prickly mom. Lorre likened Mom to two memorable shows from his storied past - Grace Under Fire and Cybill - which also dealt with women trying to start their lives over. "It's really easy to root for [Christy]," says exec producer Gemma Baker, and Faris's performance is appealing enough to turn her from movie to TV star. Adding to the show's early luster: news that Justin Long will appear in an arc as Christy's love interest (shades of New Girl) and that Octavia Spencer, who became a fan while attending the taping of the pilot, will do a guest spot as a woman who has even bigger problems than Christy. With talent like this signing on, Mom could evolve into a new Monday anchor, should audiences finally tire of the shrill mess 2 Broke Girls has become.


Jason Derulo - "The Other Side"
...16 months after fracturing his neck.
We have to hand it to Jason Derulo -- the R&B/pop crooner appears completely unafraid to return to his ambitious choreography after fracturing his neck while practicing a stunt in January 2012. Case in point: the music video for his new single "The Other Side," released on Wednesday (May 1), features the 23-year-old making an arms-free head stand at the 3:12 mark.
Directed by Colin Tilley, the "Other Side" clip finds Derulo engaged in a roller-coster romance in between fits of pinpoint dance moves. Or is it a real romance at all? "Are you sure you wanna do this?" the singer asks his lady friend at the end of the video, nodding to the lyrical deliberation of leaving the friend zone.
"The Other Side" will serve as the lead single to Derulo's next studio album, due out in late summer/early fall. The song debuted at No. 75 on last week's Hot 100, landing Derulo another chart placement after scoring hits like "Whatcha Say," "In My Head" and "Don't Wanna Go Home."
"It initially started off as a party song," Derulo says of "The Other Side" in a making-of video released last month. "The feeling of the song is very up-tempo, it's very fun, uplifting -- but I didn't want to talk about a party. I wanted to talk about something that was I was going through in my life, something that was personal."


The PoliceOne Academy is currently featuring Active Shooter: Phases and Prevention, a 1-hour course for law enforcement personnel. This course is designed to provide instruction to law enforcement officers in how to best – and most safely – respond to an active shooter incident. Visit the PoliceOne Academy to learn more and for an online demo.
Active shooter training exercises are becoming more commonplace across the country, but without proper planning, well-meaning exercises may leave responders no better off than before or possibly even worse.
Buy in from the responding disciplines.
Use these lessons from active shooter exercises I have observed to develop best practices for designing, implementing and executing a worthwhile, productive and enlightening exercise to better prepare all emergency responders to respond to an active killer.


A teenager found dead near a reservoir in Sheffield may have been killed with two large scythes, police have said.
Detectives investigating the alleged murder of 17-year-old Terry Hurst said they were found near the spot where his body was discovered on Tuesday.
He had suffered multiple injuries, including stab wounds, slash wounds, fractures and bruising.
Mr Hurst, from Penistone, was last seen in Bolsterstone on Monday at 1700 BST. He was with a group going camping.
South Yorkshire Police believe he was heading to a camping spot near Broomhead Reservoir, just off New Road.
A South Yorkshire Police spokeswoman added: "We are appealing for help from local people, particularly farmers, to trace the origins of the implements."
Police say it is too early to say if there was any motive for the murder or whether the incident happened at the spot where the body was found.
Inquiries were continuing today at the murder scene.
Two 17-year-old boys and a 15-year-old girl, arrested on Thursday, are still being questioned at separate police stations in the city.


The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority's (MHADA) Mumbai board has proposed to construct 26,959 houses in Aarey Milk Colony, to rehabilitate tribals and slum dwellers from National Park. While this will eat into 90 acres of Aarey land, the houses are expected to cost Rs 3,500 crore. Activists fear the human settlement will eventually involve heavy infrastructure and commercial development on this space in the near future.
The trigger for the trepidation was an advertisement calling for bids from developers for the construction of these houses. Instead of monetary benefits, the developer will be given development rights, which can be used anywhere in the city except Aarey, said MHADA officials.
We hope that this is not what sceptical activists fear, garb of housing and upping the life standard of tribals, but just another way of snatching more of the city's little green left.
The MHADA officials must be true and reassure people that they are not going to gobble up the green space. This can only come through dialogue and completely transparent process. We have seen the trust deficit thrown into sharp relief by the recent Metro car shed vs activists' battles.
It is time now to bridge this gap. Along with advertisements, once there is progress on this issue, clearly marked signboards must state what the project is all about, how much space is needed and how it will affect the ecology. Most problems and protests have arisen because there has been no channel of communication between people and officials.
Priority has to be to keep this green lung open. The second responsibility is to establish talks and third is to keep all promises given to the city. This is the path of least resistance and friction in the tug of war between so called development and environmental activism.


You specialise in Motion Interactive Media (MIM). How big is it here? We were the first to introduce MIM more than five years ago, and today leaders have embraced the concept. Although the mass market is still in its infancy, our ambition is to grow beyond limits.
How has MIM been affected by the economic crisis? We fortunately prioritised with alternative markets, which resulted in increased business this year compared to last year.
What is the best interactive experience you have worked on so far? I'm very proud of a project where we deployed a row of interactive experiences for Hydra Properties. Plus, during the World Leaders' Summit in Abu Dhabi, we had President George Bush Sr. and Gerhard Schroeder (former German chancellor) interacting with our displays.
What's next? We're keen to introduce new technology to the region, but our main focus is to solidify our regional presence.
Finally, if you could have one dream technology for the day, what would it be? Real free floating holograms, such as the one used when Princess Leia reached out via R2D2 to Obi-Wan in Star Wars.
Sho Cho, Dubai Marine Beach Resort & Spa I enjoy all kinds of food, but seafood would be my first choice. I like Sho Cho's style, because it combines an outdoor with an indoor environment, and has great food and good music.
Various publications I like keeping up to date with the business world through business magazines, but when it comes to books, my favourites are Eleven Minutes by Paolo Coelho, The Perfume by Patrick Süskind, and Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power.


An anonymous hacker who claimed to have broken into monitoring systems at a New Mexico wind turbine facility made the whole thing up, security experts said Monday.
The hacker, who called himself Bigr R, said he broke into NextEra Energy Resources' Fort Sumner wind facility in revenge for an "illegitimate firing". He posted what he said was proof of his exploits to several places Saturday, including the Full Disclosure mailing list.
In fact, the "proof" he provided had been gathered from public websites and contained contradictory information.
Ruben Santamarta, head of security assessment at the security consultancy Wintercore, was the first to uncover the hoax. He found that the screenshots allegedly proving Bigr R had access to the Fort Sumner management console were lifted from a file on a publicly available FTP server.
After pointing out a number of technical errors in the alleged proof, Santamarta concluded that Bigr R was a fake.
NextEra, owned by Florida Power & Light (FPL), had already said on Sunday that the material offered as proof was largely publicly available and that there was no evidence that its facility had been hacked.
Some Cisco routers cited by Bigr R were reported to have been accessible, but the proof he offered that he had hacked into industrial systems was all faked, Santamarta said via instant message.
Others agreed: "We now believe most, if not all, of this is a hoax and an attempt to embarrass [Florida Power & Light]," wrote Eric Byres, CTO with Byres Security, in a blog post Monday.
One expert, Wesley McGrew of security consultancy McGrew Security, had thought on Sunday that Big R's claims were probably legitimate. By Monday he had changed his mind and agreed that "it looks like a lot of it has been faked".
Bigr R insisted Sunday that he was not a hoaxer. However, late Sunday and Monday he did not respond to emails seeking comment.


Sundays are free all day.
In the surgeries first year of operation the Department of Health funded UK GP Survey results for 2009-10 showed that 95% of registered patients where satisfied at the overall quality of care received, ranking the surgery at 18th out of 92. However, patient satisfaction deteriorated significantly during the subsequent 12 months (2010-11) to rank the GP surgery at just 66th out of 92,(see table at end of article). The latest GP Survey results will be analysed and published shortly, which this review is in advance of as a summary of what patients can expect based on real experience of using the GP Surgery services as a registered patient for 6 months from mid 2011 onwards over a number of consultations as covered in greater detail in November 2011.
The surgery is easy to get through to on the phone and expect appointments to be available for 1 week in advance.
Expect to be kept waiting for upto 1 hour 20 minutes for a pre-booked GP Consultation appointment (way too long).
Despite the glossy leaflets and website, No new patient health check, even if an appointment specifically for a health check is booked in person at reception then still the patient is likely to receive just an ordinary GP Consultation on their next visit.
Quality of consultations is poor because the Surgery as personally experienced as a matter of routine dumps patients onto locum's (temporary GP's), as experienced in 2 out of 3 consultations. The flaw here is that these consultations can prove worthless, and have resulted in the locum stating that they are unable to deal with the patient symptoms and that they need to go and make another appointment with a regular GP, which the patient had already done so in the first place thus resulting in a wasted day and in having to wait for another week and associated 66% probability of being seen by another locum despite requesting to have an appointment with a regular GP.
This highlights the danger of letting the private sector contract for the NHS as without competition for patients between GP Surgeries then there is no incentive to deliver satisfactory GP or any other health services as monopolies will seek to maximise profits such as by cutting costs by contracting locum's.
Patients should aim to register with GP practices that rank in the top 1/3rd of GP surgeries as per the UK GP Patient Survey so as to increase the probability of being in receipt of satisfactory GP services. However the flaw here is that GP practices operate as local monopolies that do not allow patients to register from outside of catchment areas, which means you will likely have to move house to register with a 'good' GP surgery, hence an example of the NHS post code lottery.
An alternative is to pay for private GP consultations and referral which could prove costly (especially the referral and resulting treatment) which would mean that patients are effectively being FORCED TO PAY TWICE FOR HEALHCARE. Also private medical insurance can turn out to be worthless in many cases given the multitude of small print get out clauses observed.
In terms of the big picture, the One Medicare experience highlights the problem at the root of the NHS that the governments reforms of letting private sector firms to take up GP practice delivery is the lack of a market for patients, and not for services. For if there is no real competition between surgeries for patients then the patient will NOT come first, no matter who is delivering the service.
The core at the heart of Coalition Government's NHS reforms is to scrap ALL NHS Primary Care Trusts (PCT's) to be replaced by competing GP Consortia's to directly manage patient treatment commissioning (the process could fully take 2 years to implement, subject to revisions).
Unfortunately whilst the aim is for better value for money by means of competing consortia's, the implementation is proving to be resulting in the exact opposite anti-competitive consortia's, as virtually all of the Sheffield NHS 92 GP Practices have signed up with one of of 4 geographically located GP Consortia's in advance of the implementation of the Coalition Governments NHS reforms.
A very interesting commentry on what we are told should be the way forward, according to numerous Government politicians.
Your comments add weight to the recent 'Keep our NHS public' campaign by all the professional NHS bodies.
I will pass your commentry on to my colleagues in the retirement association I belong to (CSPA) as it is current to the joint campaigns being run by the National Pensioner Convention.
Fortunately I live in an area with a charmingly old fashioned practice of doctors who know you as an individual, surely vital to ones health?
The real problem is lack of competition for patients.


Kathleen Matthews sits down for an interview.
Congrats to Little Green Footballs for getting accredited by the U.S. Department of Journalism, i.e. The Washington Post.
We have to ask again: What is in the Post that you can’t get anywhere else beforehand?
The WP has led the way–and been just about alone–in detailing the administration’s push to water down the War Crimes Act. But one beef: The paper says it has a copy of the administration’s proposed legislation. If that’s the case, why not post it?


A bicyclist was shot early Thursday on the Southwest Side.
About 2:35 a.m., the 35-year-old man was riding a bicycle north in the 4100 block of South Western when another male fired shots from the sidewalk, according to Chicago Police.
The man suffered a gunshot wound to the left leg and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where his condition was stabilized, police said.


On Jan. 24, 2007, after the market closed, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) released fiscal first-quarter results for the period ended Dec. 31, 2006. Here are the quick and dirty details for the quarter.
Sales grew 16% to $2 billion. Growth was attributed to "record 3G handset and chipset shipments."
Total diluted earnings grew 5.6%, which includes stock-based compensation expense and other charges.
Management is targeting 8%-14% sales growth for fiscal 2007 and diluted earnings per share of $1.44-$1.49, or a flat-to-3% increase from 2006.
Three months ended Dec. 31, 2006 and Dec. 25, 2005.
Fool contributor Ryan Fuhrmann is long shares of Qualcomm, Motorola, and Nokia but has no financial interest in any other company mentioned. The Fool has an ironclad disclosure policy. Feel free to email him with feedback or to discuss any companies mentioned further.