Shazam! Story: Street-smart Billy Batson (Asher Angel) runs away from one foster home to the next, in search of his birth mother. Along the way, he encounters a mysterious wizard (Djimon Hounsou) who gives him the ability to transform into an adult with superpowers (Zachary Levi) by merely saying the word ‘Shazam’.
Shazam! Review: From its opening frames, ‘Shazam!’ sets out to address the origin tale pitfalls inherent to the superhero genre. It quickly establishes a comical, yet sensitive tonality which allows the audience to get on-board with an otherwise outlandish premise. Director David F. Sandberg captures the imagination, enthusiasm, and pure glee of a little kid playing with his/ her toys. He maintains an irreverent and exuberant approach throughout. But that sentiment wouldn’t translate if it wasn’t conveyed so well by the cast. Under Sandberg’s direction, they give their characters the right amount of self-awareness without veering too far into camp.
This is especially applicable to Zachary Levi, whose playfulness as the title character never gets old. He’s able to portray a sincere, yet immature adolescent trying to take on the big, bad world and yet, doesn’t know his own limits as a superhero. It also becomes obvious that Billy Batson (Asher Angel) isn’t familiar with how a powered individual works, and that allows superhero nerd Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer) to show him the ropes. Some of the best scenes include Shazam discovering his abilities with Freddy, and they’re a joy to behold. Family is the narrative thread that binds the film. Even the villain Dr Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong) is forged by how his father and brother treat him as a young boy. That, along with Billy’s search for his birth mother, and his inability to find a home he can fit into, is where the plot finds its footing.
Despite this, the screenplay never falls prey to melodrama, and the usual genre tropes are acknowledged, then promptly downplayed. The stakes are relatively lower than what we’re used to, and yet crucial enough within this film. Even the action set-pieces don’t focus on fight choreography. Instead, those moments are used to further character development. It’s a risky move that does falter slightly towards the finish line, but that’s excused because everything else leading up to it is so much fun. Bolstered by Zachary Levi’s undeniable charm, ‘Shazam!’ embodies the child-like wonder associated with superhero/ comic movies. In a welcome change of pace, it is undoubtedly the lightest and most entertaining entry into the DC roster.


If Dierks Bentley, Miranda Lambert and Lady Antebellum's Charles Kelley teamed up for a rockin' '90s revival, but there were no iPhones in the audience to post the performance to YouTube, did it ever really happen?
Yes, it did! Praise Yeezus, because these clips have made. our. day.
WATCH: Dierks Bentley Flies on the Set of 'Say You Do' - Behind the Scenes!
Bentley called on some famous friends Wednesday night, as his '90s cover band (appropriately dubbed Hot Country Knights) took the stage at the 2015 Country Radio Seminar for a raucous set. Bentley's alter-ego Douglas "Big Rhythm Doug" Douglason hit the mic for a rousing rendition of Alan Jackson's 1993 hit "Chattahoochee," while Kelley (aka Ronnie Bunns) joined in for a cover of Brooks & Dunn's 1996 tune "My Maria."
Unsurprisingly, it was Shelby Shelton (aka Lambert) who stole the show with her take on Shania Twain's "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?". Donning shredded jeans and a blue bandana on her head, "Shelby" snagged her pal's shades and dramatically ripped off her leather jacket halfway through the set -- further proving that Mrs. Shelton is always the truest badass of them all.
According to TheBoot.com, Kip Moore and Randy Houser were also in on the fun Wednesday night.
Like any legit band, Hot Country Knights now have their very own social media pages (complete with a delightfully awkward family photo) and are even selling their own merch. Limited edition Hot Country Knights tees are available now via Sweetkill Style.
Back in January, Bentley introduced his new side project with an old-school video promo.
Could we be seeing more of Big Rhythm Doug on the road? Bentley's Sounds of Summer Tour kicks off June 5 in Raleigh, N.C.


Kentucky basketball star PJ Washington is wearing a walking boot "for precautionary reasons" ahead of the NCAA Tournament.
LEXINGTON — Kentucky basketball's leading scorer is dealing with an injury in the buildup to the Wildcats' first NCAA Tournament game.
Sophomore forward PJ Washington has been wearing a walking boot "for precautionary reasons" since Sunday, his father, Paul Washington, confirmed to the Courier Journal in a text message.
"Any other updates we will have on site tomorrow in Jacksonville," the elder Washington said.
Washington, a third-team All-American according to the U.S. Basketball Writers' Association, leads UK in scoring and rebound at 14.8 points and 7.5 rebounds per game.


The great difficulty hitherto attendant on pressing goods in boxes, consists inthe parting of the sides and bottom of the box under tht pressure of the screw. To obviate this disadvantage, an improved method has been invented by J. E. Earle, Esq., of New York, who has taken measures to secure a patent. For this purpose two clamps are employed, which secure the bottom and likewise the sides of the box from the pressure of the screw-bed and follower. These latter are slotted, so that the clamps can pass through, and in like manner the clamps have apertures for fixing a couple of pins, against which the screw-bed bears when the screw is turned for forcing down the follower. .


Yet another iPod transmitter for your consideration, this time the iLuv i703 FM transmitter, which promises a strong signal for less interference.
Just in case you don’t know, this handy little gadget allows you to playback your iPod tunes via an FM radio or more commonly, an FM car stereo, with a range of up to 33ft. The benefit of this one is that stronger signal, so if you’re in an area with pirate radio stations cluttering up the airwaves, this should keep them at bay.
It plugs directly into your iPod and takes power from the music player too, so no batteries required and includes a mini USB port for recharging and synchronising music from iTunes.
The i703 is available now in black, red and white for £18.80.


Performing mobility exercises can help senior citizens retain their balance and leg strength or regain the ability to walk after being wheelchair-bound. Even senior citizens who exercise daily by swimming or walking can benefit from warming up their muscles with mobility exercises before engaging in a more vigorous workout.
Start your exercise program sitting in a chair to keep your muscles from straining with your weight before they get warmed up. Perform 10 shoulder raises, shrugging both shoulders up towards your ears, to limber up your shoulders and back. Lift one leg at a time so that it's parallel to the floor to warm up your thigh muscles, doing 10 repetitions on each leg. Then, lift one leg and hold it straight in front of you. Holding it straight, lift your thigh off the chair 10 times to warm up your thigh muscles. Repeat with the other leg.
Stand facing a sturdy chair. Place both hands on the chair and push up to stand on your toes. Lower yourself back down so your feet are flat on the floor, then repeat the exercise for 10 repetitions. This works your calves and ankles, helping to increase your balance while exercising. Performing a modified squat can increase strength and flexibility in your legs and hips. Stand in front of a chair, then lower your body as if you're going to sit down. Before you touch the seat, tighten your abdominal muscles and stand back up. If you're new to exercising, have someone stand in front of you and hold your hands to provide stability and to allow you to balance when standing up. You can also place large books or pillows on the chair so you only have to squat a few inches.
If swimming is your preferred workout, add mobility exercises in the water before starting your laps. March in place by holding on to the side of the pool in the shallow end, lifting your knees as high as you can. Turn around so your back is against the side of the pool and hold on to a ladder pole or attached grip bar. Lift one leg up, keeping it straight, then lower it and lift the other leg. This gets the hips warmed up. The water provides resistance while increasing your body's buoyancy, helping prevent injury while you work on your mobility.
As you're working to increase your mobility, be aware of falling hazards in your area. If you're using a chair for balance, make sure it's a heavy, sturdy chair. You can also use a counter, bar-height table or tall couch. When you're ready to walk outside for exercise, choose a route that's level and free from obstructions such as low-hanging tree branches, which could cause you to lose your balance and fall. Always walk with a partner if possible so one of you can get help if the other is injured. Seniors can quickly succumb to heat-related problems such as dehydration and heat stroke, so drink plenty of water while you're exercising -- even while swimming -- and try to exercise in cooler hours of the day.


Liz is the Chair of the firm's Estates, Wills, and Trusts practice group. Her practice includes planning for the management and distribution of clients' estates to accomplish their goals and to minimize estate taxes using sophisticated estate planning tools and techniques. She counsels business owners regarding succession planning. In probate administration, she assists in the orderly distribution of estate assets and planning for estate and income tax issues. Liz also works with clients to accomplish effective charitable giving and establishes both public and private tax-exempt, charitable entities.


President Trump overruled intelligence officials last year who raised concerns about Jared Kushner’s security clearance, ordering former chief of staff John Kelly to give top secret clearance to Kushner, the New York Times revealed in an explosive report on February 28.
The Times report was based on contemporaneous memos written by Kelly and former White House counsel Don McGahn. Kelly wrote that Trump had “ordered” him to give the high-level clearance to Kushner. McGahn wrote that the C.I.A. had raised concerns about Kushner, and that McGahn himself had advised against giving the clearance to Kushner.
Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell have all said at various times that Trump was not involved in the process to award Kushner the clearance. The Times report does not detail what the intelligence community’s concerns about Kushner were, but says that they were related to contacts in Israel, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Kushner has been deeply involved with the Trump administration effort to develop a new Middle East peace plan. He is also reported to be close to Mohammad Bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
This story "Jared Kushner Got Security Clearance on Trump’s Orders" was written by Josh Nathan-Kazis.


PHOTO BY JACOB GURNEY The band Dixie Peach performs at East Green Amphitheater, 167 E. Market St. Saturday evening.
A band with local ties may have played their last show in Tiffin Saturday.
The band, Dixie Peach — now comprised of Ira Stanley on lead and slide guitars and vocals, Tony Paulus on keyboards and guitar, Mike Rousculp on bass, Steve Williams on keyboards and Steve Benson on drums — played a show at East Green Amphitheater, 167 E. Market St.
Stanley, who is from Dayton, said for nostalgia reasons, he kind of hates to see it end. Tiffin was chosen as a last place for a concert because two of the band’s members, Williams and Paulus, are from Tiffin, and it was one of the first places the band ever played in 1972, he said.
Paulus said the group doesn’t play much anymore because “everybody is getting up there” and the group hasn’t played in Tiffin for some time.
Stanley said Saturday’s show was to include a long list of songs the band played over the years, including some from when they started in the 1970s to some original songs they recorded in the past couple of years.
He said the band started in 1972 in Dayton, and he, Williams and Rousculp previously had played in a band called the Pictorian Skiffuls. Stanley and Rousculp also played together since 1967, when they were in college, Stanley said. When they started Dixie Peach, he said the group practiced for about six months before they played a gig and when Paulus got out of the Army, he came to Dayton and joined the band.
“We enjoyed music so much and we caught the wave of southern rock that was really just starting by the Allman Brothers and Lynard Skynard and other groups of folks like that, so we started playing that music,” he said.
Stanley said the band had two drummers, but neither worked out and they were replaced by Jerry Barnhart. He said the band came up with its name on a suggestion by one of the former drummers, who was black, who said he used a hair pomade called “Dixie Peach” that was popular in the black community at the time.
“We thought that really did sound like a southern rock band, so we decided to use that name,” Stanley said.
He said the group really started its string of touring over the southeastern United States in 1973 and opened up for several headliner bands, including Joe Walsh, Blue Oyster Cult, Roy Buchanan and bands from that era, and the band recorded its first album, which contained half original material and half covers, in 1974. Stanley said touring took its toll on everyone and the band split up in 1975.
The group reunited for a show in 1985 and they played sporadically until they did a reunion show in Dayton in 1998, with everybody coming back except Barnhart, Stanley said.
“We have been playing ever since that time,” he said.
Stanley said the group became a house band for Gibson Custom Shop and in that role, the group had other Gibson artists play with them and their band.
Paulus said like anybody else, if he had to do it all over again, he would.
Stanley said to a certain extent, nobody is ever done as a musician, but they are musicians their whole lives. He said the last Dixie Peach show means it is time to reflect on what the band has accomplished.
Paulus said the band’s accomplishments included recording its albums, titled “Dixie Peach,” “Butta,” and “Dixie Peach Blues with Friends,” and getting to play a lot at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and for Gibson.
Most of all, Paulus wanted to thank the band’s fans.


After rising at a hefty pace in recent times, the prices at which farmers sell their produce in wholesale mandis could grow slowly in the coming months if past trends are an indication, an analysis presented in a Credit Suisse report has said.
This could spell trouble for the farm sector as wholesale food prices have remained tepid for a considerable period in the past couple of years. Research has also shown that a slowdown in the rate of rise in wholesale food prices also leads to a slowdown in rural wages, which could possibly add to worries.
Wholesale price index (WPI) food inflation rate was recorded at 4.3 per cent in February 2019. For the same month, the consumer price index (CPI) food deflation rate stood at 0.1 per cent. The gap between the two, at 4.4 percentage points, is the highest observed in the past decade, said the India Market Strategy report by the global brokerage.
In the past few instances when there was this huge a gap between the two inflation rates, it was the WPI which slowly "fell towards" CPI in subsequent months, and not the other way round, it noted.
If the same happens this time around, WPI inflation would reduce — meaning the wholesale price index would grow slowly. This nearly translates into slow growth in wholesale prices of farm produce.
On the current status of WPI food inflation, the report said: "Some have read better farm incomes (because of better procurement) into higher wholesale prices, and justifiably so." Lower wholesale prices would then, conversely, mean reduced farm incomes.
Economists said this widening gap is a result of the difference in composition of the two indices. While food articles have a weight of 15 per cent in the WPI, food carries more than 45 per cent weight in the CPI basket.
"The difference in this composition generally leads to CPI-WPI anomaly. For example, a drop in the price of vegetables would reduce CPI faster than WPI," said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at CARE Ratings.
Though the report did not give particular reasons for the huge gap between the two ratios, it said — using the data from the consumer affairs department — higher margins between the wholesaler and the retailer is unlikely to be the reason.
In comparison to the past few years, the markup between retail and wholesale prices "has not changed meaningfully", the Credit Suisse report noted, analysing eight food items.
India Ratings Chief Economist Devendra Pant said: "Convergence between the two indices is unlikely to happen for a prolonged period. It would happen more by chance than by economic factors."
The CPI and WPI inflation levels for milk and fruits, which are considered premium food consumption items, have remained similar, trouncing the overall trend.
However, if current drought-like conditions continue, WPI-food could rise faster than its CPI counterpart, the report said.
"CPI inflation should rise nevertheless, but only to 3.2-3.5 per cent, leaving room for rate cuts," it noted. The Reserve Bank of India reduced repo rate by 25 basis points to 6 per cent in its Thursday meeting.


NEW YORK (WFAN/AP) — Jason Kidd mentoring Jeremy Lin was a nice story last week.
Then Kidd was arrested on a drunken-driving charge, Lin’s departure from New York for a “ridiculous contract” in Houston became more realistic, and a position of strength suddenly was one of turbulence for the Knicks.
Kidd’s arrest came within hours of the Knicks agreeing to a trade for fellow point guard Raymond Felton, raising the possibility they will refuse to match Lin’s offer sheet with the Rockets.
Police said Kidd crashed his SUV into a telephone pole in the Hamptons on Sunday, days after signing with the Knicks.
Treated at a hospital for minor injuries after the crash, Kidd was arraigned on a misdemeanor driving-while-intoxicated charge and released without bail, Southampton Town police said.
An image published by TMZ.com reportedly showed Kidd being helped out of the East Hamptons nightclub SL East.
Phone and email messages were left seeking comment from Kidd’s agent. His attorney, Ed Burke Jr., said in a statement that Kidd was returning from a charity function before his accident, had pleaded not guilty to the DWI charge and was awaiting further court proceedings.
The Knicks, who signed the 10-time All-Star in free agency last week, had no immediate comment. Nor would they comment on their plans for Lin, even as speculation grew that Linsanity was headed elsewhere.
Kidd, 39, was alone in the 2010 Cadillac Escalade when it hit a pole and veered into the woods around 2 a.m. in Water Mill, police said. Water Mill is a serene, mainly residential community east of Southampton Village.
Kidd’s next court date wasn’t immediate available. The DWI charge carries the potential for up to a year in jail.
The Knicks signed Kidd away from the Dallas Mavericks in a deal that will pay him about $3 million a year. Kidd had played in New Jersey, leading the Nets to two NBA Finals appearances, before being traded to Dallas and remains fond of the New York City area, where his children continue to live.
The two-time Olympic gold medalist has been in trouble with the law before. While playing with Phoenix in 2001, he was arrested on a domestic violence charge, acknowledging he struck his former wife.
Kidd is second on the NBA’s career lists for assists and steals. Coach Mike Woodson said Kidd, who helped the Mavericks win the 2011 NBA championship, would be a good tutor and backup for Lin, whom he said would open next season as the starting point guard.
Now he may not even be in New York.
The Knicks have repeatedly said they would match any offer for Lin, but the Rockets made it difficult with a three-year, $25 million deal that’s worth about $15 million in the third year. New York has until 11:59 p.m. EDT on Tuesday to match the offer sheet for the restricted free agent.
Anthony, speaking before practice with the U.S. Olympic team, was then reminded it’s up to the Knicks, not Lin, to decide whether he stays or goes.
The Knicks wouldn’t comment on their plans and never even confirmed whether they had received the offer sheet from Houston to start the three-day clock for matching the offer.
Felton played well in half a season for the Knicks before he was dealt to Denver in February 2011 as part of the package for Anthony. He struggled this season in Portland, briefing losing his starting job, but was considered an option for the Knicks if they couldn’t land Steve Nash or Kidd to play with Lin.
Now it may be Kidd and Felton.


One company is hoping the promise of exotic vacations will lure the employees it needs for the holiday season.
JCPenney is looking for ways to stand out from the crowd as a "war for talent" hits the retail sector.
On Tuesday, JCPenney hosted a nationwide hiring day where applicants were invited to come in to its stores and interview for jobs. To entice workers, it offered expensive prizes to eight lucky candidates.
According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, there are 704,000 seasonal job openings for the holidays this year, which is the highest number reported since the company began recording the data in 2012.
As the "war for talent" intensifies with the beginning of the holiday-shopping season, JCPenney is doubling down on its efforts to entice workers.
On Tuesday, the department-store chain, which is on the hunt for 39,000 holiday workers, hosted a nationwide hiring day to aid in its search. Applicants were invited to come in to JCPenney's stores and interview for jobs, and offers were made on the spot.
To sweeten the deal and stand out from its competitors, JCPenney said in a press release that it would be offering eight successful candidates expensive prizes like $5,000 all-inclusive trips to New York City, Miami, or Banff, Canada; or thousands of dollars worth of technology or outdoor equipment.
This is the latest attempt by the retailer to woo workers in an increasingly tight labor market. And it's not alone — Target, Macy's, and Kohl's have all been rolling out new incentives to attract workers.
Kohl's announced 15% discounts and "associate shopping days" for seasonal workers. Macy's, which is looking to hire 80,000 workers for this holiday season, said its part-time workers would be eligible for its "Path to Growth Incentive Plan," which awards employees a quarterly bonus based on performance.
According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, there are 704,000 job openings this holiday season, which is the highest number reported since it began recording the data in 2012.
"The competition for seasonal workers is intense, especially as companies expand their compensation and benefits offerings," Andrew Challenger, vice president of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc said in a press release on Wednesday.
This surge in hiring has come as consumer confidence has hit its highest point in 18 years, according to Challenger. In September, the consumer confidence index reached 138.4, its highest level since September 2000, and close to the record of 144.7 in May 2000.
Retailers are expecting spending to rise 5.6% from last year to a record $1.1 trillion from $967.13 billion, according to the National Retail Federation.
Sears has filed for bankruptcy and is closing stores. Here are the retail rivals that could benefit the most from its downward spiral.


broad assortment of durable wall art will give you plenty of stylish opportunities to add personality to your space. Mix and match color schemes and patterns. Go crazy — we dare you!


There are new allegations in the continuing court battle between Mac clone maker Psystar and Apple: the Cupertino company is now accusing its rival of destruction of evidence: I’m still in shock that the battle has gone this long, but I do digress.
Specifically, Apple says Psystar erased “infringing versions of the software code used on computers sold to its customers.” According to Apple lawyers, during the discovery phase of the case it was found that prior versions of the software had been deleted off of its customer’s computers.
Apparently, these deleted files contained modifications to the Mac OS, which is the central complaint in Apple’s case against the company. Psystar has argued that it had no obligation to save these modifications.
Both Apple and Psystar are set to meet in San Francisco federal court in January of next year.
In related news, after Apple was able to question Psystar executives last week, Psystar has announced a list of nine Apple executives that it plans to question this month. While of course the company’s lawyers will have plenty of questions for these folks, it is also opening up the process to the public.
“Given that there is a significant interest in this litigation aside from the business interest of Psystar, in particularly those of the OSX86 community and others; we want all your input,” the company said in a blog post.
Interested parties can e-mail their questions to Psystar, however answers would not be released until after the conclusion of the case.


A Kenton man accused of breaking another man's jaw in jail earlier this week was among ten people indicted by a Marion County grand jury Wednesday.
MARION - A Kenton man accused of breaking another man's jaw in jail earlier this week was among ten people indicted by a Marion County grand jury Wednesday.
Ronnie Harmon Jr., 21, was indicted on one count of felonious assault, a second-degree felony in Marion County Common Pleas Court.
The charge stems from an incident on Tuesday when officers were dispatched to OhioHealth Marion General Hospital for an assault that occurred at the Multi-County Correctional Center earlier that day.
The victim told officers that Harmon had hit him in the face one time, according to an affidavit filed in Marion Municipal Court and signed by Marion Police Detective Scott Sterling.
Doctors advised officers that the victim's jaw was broken. A video obtained from the jail showed Harmon going up a flight stairs and hitting the victim once before walking away, the affidavit says.
Harmon is also facing a charge of corruption of a minor, according to the Multi-County Correctional Center. His bond has been set at $50,000.
A Marion man accused of tampering with evidence was also indicted on Wednesday.
Jeremiah Thrush, 34, was indicted on one count of tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony, in Marion County Common Pleas Court.
The charge stems from an incident on June 6, when officers received a trafficking in heroin warrant for Alexandria Justice, 33, who was also indicted this week on one count of trafficking in heroin, a fourth-degree felony, and one count of trafficking in heroin, a fifth-degree felony.
Justice was in a vehicle with Thrush when an officer approached them, according to an affidavit filed in Marion Municipal Court and signed by state trooper Jeremy Bice.
The officer ordered both of them to keep their hands visible, the affidavit says. Thrush was observed reaching for and moving a pack of cigarettes around, according to the patrol.
Thrush was then placed in handcuffs and was ordered to stand next to the front passenger tire of the vehicle, according to the affidavit. Officers said they observed a cigarette pack lying directly behind the tire.
The affidavit says that officers found a paper drug fold in the pack containing an unknown substance.
Thrush is being held at the Marion County Correctional Center. His bond has been set at $10,000.
Dazmond Smith, 27, 194 E. Fairground St., on one count of domestic violence, a third-degree felony.
Austin Rose, 18, 2686 Caledonia Northern Road, Caledonia, on one count of gross sexual imposition, a fourth degree misdemeanor, and one count of public indecency, a fourth-degree misdemeanor.
Jason A. Pollock, 34, 1597 Southland Parkway, one count of aggravated possession of drugs, a fifth-degree felony, and one count of possession of drugs, a first-degree misdemeanor.
David Mahoney, 44, 545 Bellefontaine Ave., on one count of receiving stolen property, a fifth-degree felony, and four counts of misuse of a credit card, all first-degree misdemeanors.
Steven Derfler, 55, 554 Girard Ave., on one count of violation of a protection order, a fifth-degree felony.
Kristopher Currington, 25, 215 Grace St., Bucyrus, on one count of forgery, a fifth-degree felony, and one count of theft, a first-degree misdemeanor.
Christopher Gates Jr., 28, 1527 Depot Road, Albany, on one count of possession of heroin, a fifth-degree felony, and one count of aggravated possession of drugs, a fifth-degree felony.


The Nifty was down 1.2 per cent for the week, falling to an intra-week low of 5,791 on Thursday. Higher Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) raised concerns about the extent of rate cut by the central bank in its monetary policy review next week. CPI climbed 10.9 per cent in February from a year earlier, compared with 10.8 per cent in January. Turnover in the Nifty index declined to Rs 29,925 crore compared with Rs 30,235 crore last week and the total number of shares of Nifty constituents declined by 11 per cent to 65 crore.
Traders can consider initiating a bear call spread in options of Nifty March series. This option strategy can be set by selling Nifty 5,900 call option and by buying Nifty 6,000 call options. These options were trading at around Rs 60.5 and Rs 23.3 at the end of Friday session. Since it is a bear call spread there will be an initial inflow which in our case comes at around Rs 37.2 (Rs 60.5 minus Rs 23.3). This will also be the maximum profit from this strategy.
If the Nifty declines further, both the call options will be worthless and the net premium collected of Rs 37.2 can be retained.
If the Nifty is above 5,937 at the time of expiry this strategy will lose money. The maximum loss will be capped at Rs 62.8 (6000 minus 5900 minus 37.2).
In the options segment, for March call series, 6,000 call has the highest open interest (OI) positions (76.87 lakh contracts) followed by 6,100 call (67.14 lakh).
For February put series, Nifty 5,700 put has the highest OI (1.08 crore) followed by the Nifty 5,800 put (85.9 lakh).
Consistently increasing number of puts suggests heightened risk aversion and generally does not bode well for the market.
In the futures segment, Asian Paints open interest (weekly basis) increased by 81.5 per cent followed by Jubilant Foodworks (46.8 per cent), GAIL (37.8 per cent) and Rural Electric Corp (31 per cent).
OI for NHPC declined by 13.3 per cent followed by HDIL (13.1 per cent), Unitech (12.5 per cent), Sesa Goa (11.7 per cent) and Sun TV (11.5 per cent).
India VIX that measures the expected volatility in the Nifty, closed at 15.16 compared with 13.4 last week.


Saturday, April 20 will mark 20 years since the Columbine Tragedy. While there is still a lot of hurt in the Columbine community, there has also been a lot of healing over the past 20 years.
JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. – Saturday, April 20 will mark 20 years since the Columbine Tragedy. While there is still a lot of hurt in the Columbine community, there has also been a lot of healing that has taken place over the past 20 years.
“There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about April 20, 1999,” former principal Frank DeAngelis told Denver7’s Anne Trujillo.
DeAngelis was the principal on the day of the shooting and stayed at the school until 2013, honoring a vow he made to the families touched by the tragedy that he would be at the school to keep watch over their kids.
“There’s nothing you can do to bring back the 13 but we could continue to make sure that they didn't lose their life in vain,” he said.
Because of Columbine, schools and students now practice lockdown and lockout drills. There are Safe-2-Tell programs and more of an emphasis on addressing mental health issues.
There is also improved communication between law enforcement and school administrators.
Since the shooting, many survivors of the shooting have found new callings.
“I definitely call myself a survivor. I feel strong in saying it too,” says Missy Mendo.
Mendo and Martin are just two of the Columbine alums who have started a nonprofit called The Rebels Project . They are among the first to reach out to other shooting victims, such as after the shootings in Parkland, Florida; Santa Fe, Texas; and Las Vegas, Nevada.
“A hug from another survivor is totally different than a hug from somebody trying to console you,” Mendo added.
“It's so important to connect so that you know you are not alone,” Martin said. “For so many years I thought that I was the only person who felt this way and that I was the only person still having nightmares."
The members of The Rebels Project know they have a unique gift to share: experience, time and a forever connection to a school that stands as a beacon of hope.
“We’re a school that went through one of the worst tragedies and it was so devastating,” said DeAngelis. “But we were able to reach out and offer hope for others."


Here are the latest VoIP URLs. I haven't listed these in a while but a few of these caught my eye. p2pvoip.org and p2pvoip.org are the ones. I actually found our own URL on the list: TMC VoIP which will point to our new VoIP service. We are still in the process of setting this up.
Another interesting one is voipandwimax.com registered to a Lea V. Lauzon in Canada.


DENVER (CN) – Seven years after becoming the first U.S. state to legalize marijuana, Colorado continues to struggle with what to do about old pot convictions.
“I’m running out of time,” said Pedro Ortiz, a New Jersey man who recently lost a job over a decade-old dime bag conviction in Colorado.
Ortiz moved to the Denver suburb of Aurora in 2008, taking a job as a cook. After a divorce and the death of his mother, Ortiz said he felt alone and fell on hard times.
He says things are different now.
It is now legal for adults aged 21 and over to possess up to an ounce of marijuana in Colorado. A 2017 law allows people with prior convictions for marijuana possession to seal their records in cases where what they were charged with is now legal. Denver and Boulder counties have set up legal clinics targeting the issue and waived the $65 filing fee for petitioners.
Colorado voters enacted Amendment 64 in 2012 legalizing recreational marijuana and eliminating one of the most prosecuted crimes from the legal system. According to a 2012 FBI report, 658,231 people were arrested for marijuana possession nationwide and 92,593 others were charged with selling or growing marijuana. By comparison, 521,196 people were arrested that year for committing violent crimes.
Dougherty estimates 4,000 residents of Boulder County are eligible to have their charges removed and records sealed. After running two free legal clinics, his office met with 21 individuals and found 9 eligible under the program.
Of 10,000 potentially eligible persons, Denver has received 176 applications since Jan. 1, of which 38 are eligible to have records sealed.
By contrast, the San Francisco, California, District Attorney’s Office expunged 9,362 criminal records last month after deciding to automate the process. California legalized the use and sale of recreational marijuana in 2018.
“California’s state statute is arguably the most progressive as it does not place the burden on those convicted to petition the court, but instead mandates the state to review prior criminal convictions and to automatically expunge those cases that are eligible,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the marijuana advocacy organization NORML.
Criminal convictions affect a person’s chances of securing a loan, a job, housing, admission into college, and even clearance by the Transportation Security Administration.
Commercial truck driver Ivan Newborn recalled the relief when his records were sealed this past October.
But critics of expungement say that is exactly the point.
Others argue lasting criminal records unnecessarily lengthen the punishment.
Attendees of Boulder’s “Moving On From Marijuana” clinic this past January received help navigating the legal system, which can be difficult and expensive for outsiders. Many attorneys charge up to $2,500 for their services.
“I’m here on behalf of my adult son who isn’t able to appear on behalf of himself,” said Jan V., who read about the legal clinic in the Longmont Times Call. Jan, who asked that her last name not be used, said her son’s case occurred in 1998 when he was 18.
A case might be made for expunging marijuana cultivation or distribution charges, but Colorado law only allows expungement of minor-in-possession convictions involving less an ounce.
The night Pedro Ortiz was arrested and charged with marijuana possession, he was driving his friend’s car and got stopped for speeding.
Ortiz paid a $235 fine on top of $300 for bail and thought the whole thing was behind him until a criminal background check for a school maintenance job unearthed the old conviction. He lost the job and his apartment.
He hired a lawyer, and a month later Judge John Wheeler of the 18th Judicial District found “unwarranted, adverse consequences to the defendant outweigh the public interest in retaining the records” ordered Ortiz’s records sealed.


In the second excerpt from the John Pilger Special, to be exclusively broadcast by RT on Saturday, courtesy of Dartmouth Films, Julian Assange accuses Hillary Clinton of misleading Americans about the true scope of Islamic State’s support from Washington’s Middle East allies.
“I think this is the most significant email in the whole collection,” Assange, whose whistleblowing site released three tranches of Clinton-related emails over the past year, told Pilger in an exclusive interview, courtesy of Dartmouth Films.
Assange and Pilger, who sat down for their 25-minute interview at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the whistleblower has been a refugee since 2012, then talk about the conflict of interest between Clinton’s official post, which held throughout Obama’s first term, her husband’s nonprofit, and the Middle East officials, whose stated desire to fight terrorism may not have been sincere.
John Pilger: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the first two, are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton is secretary of state, and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly Saudi Arabia.
Julian Assange: Under Hillary Clinton – and the Clinton emails reveal a significant discussion of it – the biggest-ever arms deal in the world was made with Saudi Arabia: more than $80 billion. During her tenure, the total arms exports from the US doubled in dollar value.
JP: Of course, the consequence of that is that this notorious jihadist group, called ISIL or ISIS, is created largely with money from people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation?
Pilger also questioned Assange over increasingly frequent accusations from the Clinton camp, and Western media, that WikiLeaks is looking to swing next week’s US presidential election in favor of Donald Trump – perhaps at Russia’s behest.
But Assange dismissed the prospect of Trump, who is behind in the polls, winning as unlikely – and not necessarily due to his standing with the electorate.
“My analysis is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he has had every establishment off his side.


Nabisco threatens to sue a Canadian man who registered "oreos.com" for his home page with adult links.
"Oreos.com" sat quietly on the Net for more than a year--however, it wasn't a hub to debate whether the cookie's crunchy chocolate outside is better than its creamy filling.
On the contrary, until today, "Oreos.com" was an Ontario man's personal Web page featuring links to some adult entertainment sites. While this may have been a treat for some, it is not exactly the one most people affiliate with Nabisco's famous sandwich cookie.
And so it was that Paul Figueiredo found himself in a legal dispute with one of the biggest food companies in the United States and Canada. Nabisco threatened a lawsuit if he didn't surrender the domain name by noon today.
Figueiredo is not the first private person to tangle with a corporation over a Net domain name, and he certainly won't be the last. For now, the nation's major domain name registry, Network Solutions, hands out Net site addresses on a first-come, first-served basis. So it is easy to get a name, but it can be hard to keep.
At first, "Oreos.com" was registered to be the site for the Ontario Real Estate Online Services, for advertising homes on the market, Figueiredo says. But his business idea never took off. He had already spent $100 to register the site name, so he turned it into a home page. When he got the letter from Nabisco's lawyers earlier this month, he knew the site's days were numbered.
"I don't want to fight these people. I would sell it to anybody else for $5 because I don't like being bullied," he said today.
He tried unsuccessfully to cut a deal that would have allowed him to point people to Nabisco's official site, if he took the adult links off the front page. But because the company markets its sweets to kids, Nabisco wouldn't go for it, he said.
"If it was my kid, I wouldn't want them to see adult banners when they type in 'Oreos,'" he admitted. "I had until noon today to take it off the Web or else, so I did."
Until then, cases such as the Oreo dispute will keep surfacing, because large companies will keep fighting for the limited name plates on the Net. And most won't take "no" for an answer. "He has faxed back the letter agreeing to cease all use of the Oreos trademark and domain name," Jonathan Colombo, an attorney for Nabisco, said today.


Something about the man in the banana costume appealed to Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga. Maybe it was the sign he wore that read, “A banana from my country can travel easier than me.” Maybe it was the fruit-wearer’s free-spiritedness as he paraded in his peel through public places. Or maybe it was the Latino roots they shared.
So when Mr. Zúñiga, 37, a graphic artist from Brooklyn who also works with new media, was looking through the portfolios of immigrant artists who were seeking mentors, he picked Hatuey Ramos-Fermín, 30, a conceptual artist from the Bronx who has made videos of himself playing Benito Banana, a character he created to reflect on migration.
The two have met at least 10 times, attending lectures and museum openings and discussing their work and the common themes within, like immigration and globalization. They are part of a mentoring program run by the New York Foundation for the Arts that helps artists from abroad gain a toehold in the city’s diverse arts community.
Mr. Zúñiga’s parents are from Nicaragua, and Mr. Ramos-Fermín was born in the Dominican Republic, raised in Puerto Rico and educated in the Netherlands.
Michael L. Royce, the executive director of the arts foundation, said the mentoring program began in 2007. It is an offshoot of the foundation’s New York Creates program that helps folk and craft artists, many of whom are immigrants and need to connect with established artists.
The mentorship program, which this year has 15 pairs of mentors and mentees, costs about $100,000 to run, and is supported with grants from the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation and the Independence Community Foundation. Mr. Royce said his foundation was seeking financing to expand the program, which does not inquire about the immigration status of the artists seeking mentors.
To get Mr. Ramos-Fermín closer to his dream of putting on a solo show and supporting himself through art, Mr. Zúñiga helped him with creating his Web site, www.hatmax.net, which recently netted Mr. Ramos-Fermín work with an Argentine magazine. Mr. Zúñiga also advised him on editing his artist’s statement.
“That sounds better, that definitely sounds better,” Mr. Ramos-Fermín said.
The relationship has helped Mr. Zúñiga as well. He included Mr. Ramos-Fermín in his Web project, at www.votemos.us, which asks immigrants whom they would vote for in this year’s presidential election.
Mr. Zúñiga, who won a fellowship from the foundation for his work, chose the mentoring program as part of the community service requirement. “I was actively missing teaching,” he said.
Likewise, Ted Mathys, 29, a Brooklyn poet and fellowship winner who had a valuable relationship with a mentor while in college, said he was glad to become a mentor to Pinky Vincent, 30, a poet from Calcutta.
Ms. Vincent, who had worked as a journalist in India, came to the United States in 2002 with “$2,500 in traveler’s checks and the blessings of my parents.” While studying, working at a nonprofit organization and trying to send money home, she found it hard to continue with her poetry.
Their time together since has been quite fruitful, he said. “Her work is crisp. She has very strong images, and some of the subject matter she was writing about was really quite wonderful,” said Mr. Mathys, the author of two books of poetry. They fine-tuned Ms. Vincent’s poems, discussing where they might sound anachronistic to an American ear, and explored how to carve out time to write poetry while trying to make a living.
The mentorship program helped her feel connected to other artists.
For poets, whose market is small and not particularly profitable, the help of a mentor can be crucial, Mr. Mathys said.


Banks must always focus on innovation to remain competitive to take a leadership position because the future of banking relies on significant customer inspiring innovations. Sampath Bank Senior Manager, Priam Kasturiratna said at the National Information Technology Conference 2011 recently.
He said if banks do not innovate, eventually someone else will innovate and enter into the bankers' market. Banking innovations must at least deliver basic services through all stable and popular channels and multiple technologies so that the customers will not be detached from their banks.
Kasturiratna said the banks also should recognize customer requirements and stay one step ahead of them focusing on customer experience. It is very important to recognize the fact that being innovative today will never be a final success destination, but just a status in a continuous mechanism of organisational success.
Referring to risks of decline in banking innovations he said a bank may have a well built infrastructure and good internal procedures but none of them would guarantee achievement of business goals and long-term sustainability unless correct strategic decisions are taken by the top management. Since none of the banks are enjoying the monopoly condition they need to compete among themselves and at the same time will have to compete with small scale innovators trying to enter into the banking market share.
Kasturiratna said Sri Lankan mobile operators entering the traditional banking business accepting deposits is a good example of banks being outsmarted in innovation. Over a period of time ,this opening can facilitate a series of other banking like services for the rural or untapped market sectors that have not yet been approached by the banks, he said.


Doulas want some respect around here, and also they want more insurance reimbursements.
So says the New York Times, checking in on the growing field. Not to be confused with midwives, who generally do more hands-on delivery work, doulas tend to serve more as advocates and assistants, and they don't have to be professionally certified. As one Brooklyn-based doula told the Times, "We're not there to change what the parents get," adding, "We're there to help get what they want."
Chances are you've already heard this—the piece certainly qualifies as a case of the New York Times being ON IT. The interesting part is the bit about the future of the discipline. Overall, doulas are still a small part of American birthing culture; in New York, they attend something like 5 percent of births. (And God knows, New Yorkers can't help but hop on the latest and greatest.) Many hospitals treat them more as friends-of-mom than health-care providers, and might require you to choose between having your sister or your doula in the room.
He said many doulas might be surprised to find they would have to take a cut in pay if they switched from cash to insurance. The $2,000 fee commanded by some experienced New York City doulas, he said, was "not far away" from his insurance fee for a normal birth, excluding prenatal care.


Archaeologists working in Mexico have announced a discovery of 2,500-year-old chocolate. While the existence of chocolate is not surprising, what did amaze researchers is that the traces of chocolate were found on a plate instead of a cup.
The discovery was made on Mexico's Yucatán peninsula.
According to NPR, archaeologists have concluded that ancient Mayans did not only drink chocolate flavored beverages, but also used it as a condiment or sauce on foods.
This changes earlier belief that chocolate was solely used as a beverage, typically for wealthy members of ancient societies in Mexico. The finding was made public by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.
"This is the first time it has been found on a plate used for serving food," archaeologist Tomas Gallareta said, reported the Associated Press. "It is unlikely that it was ground there (on the plate), because for that they probably used metates (grinding stones)."
Associated Press reported the plates examined date back to approximately 500 B.C.
These are not the oldest traces of chocolate located in Mexico, as older samples were found in other dig sites dating 1,000 years earlier. The significance of this find is that it may provide insight as to the dietary customs in these eras. This leads experts to believe that there may be ancient roots that connect to modern traditional dishes eaten in Mexico.
"This indicates that the pre-Hispanic Maya may have eaten foods with cacao sauce, similar to mole," the anthropology institute said in a statement.
National Geographic had reported in 2002 chocolate residue had been found in an ancient ceramic "teapot" and researchers said it had suggested that the Mayans and ancestors had been consuming chocolate as far back as 2,600 years.


Dr. Donald Rucker, the former chief medical officer of Siemens Healthcare who teaches at Ohio State University, was tapped as the new national health IT chief, multiple news outlets have reported. He replaces Dr. Vindell Washington.
Rucker will head the federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, which oversees all health care tech functions such as electronic health records and data sharing. Perfect timing, considering David Nather was just pondering about the office this morning.


Starbucks' business continues to thrive, and management is making moves based on the very long term.
Tea sales grew over 17% at Starbucks, the highest rate in over one year last quarter. Image source: Starbucks.
Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX) reported second-quarter earnings after market close on April 21, and early on April 22, the stock is trading down about 5.5%. So what happened? In short, Starbucks delivered another great quarter, with some metrics coming in a little softer than Wall Street analysts expected.
Here's a closer look at the company's financial results for the second quarter, as well as some key comments from management on the earnings call for added context of those results.
Revenue and operating income in millions. Data source: Starbucks.
For a little deeper context, Starbucks' comps numbers only measure company-owned stores. This is important for several reasons. First, this quarter was the first that included the 1,100 stores that Starbucks acquired from a Japanese licensee in 2015 in the comp numbers, making Japan -- not China -- the largest segment of the CAP comp base. Furthermore, approximately two-thirds of new stores opening in the CAP region are licensed stores and will be excluded from the comp base.
Nonetheless, CFO Scott Maw said they are still forecasting mid-single-digit comps growth for CAP in 2016, likely because more Chinese stores will enter the comp base over the next six months, and that market continues to perform exceptionally well.
Starbucks Chinese employees. Image source: Starbucks.
COO Kevin Johnson spoke about comps in the EMEA segment, which is now 72% franchised or licensed stores, a more successful model in those markets. Johnson said that on a systemwide basis in EMEA (including non-Starbucks owned stores), comps increased 4% in the quarter, even as Europe and the Middle East continue to face economic uncertainty.
In other words, comps is an important metric, but it has limitations in what it actually tells us about store performance and growth.
In the earnings preview, I pointed out the profit-producing value of Starbucks' channel development business, which is essentially everything Starbucks you buy somewhere besides Starbucks. In Q1, this segment produced 18% of the company's operating income on less than 10% of revenue. In the second quarter, channel development produced 9.2% of revenue and 21% of operating income, and its 39.5% operating margin makes it easily the most profitable segment of the company.
On the earnings call, CEO Howard Schultz talked about what could be a massive step forward for this segment, with two potentially huge developments: The planned launch of single-serve capsules for Nespresso machines and the ability to sell K-Cups directly to office and other distribution channels. Let's talk about the second one first.
Keurig Green Mountain Inc. is the undisputed single-serve coffee leader in North America, and Starbucks is the most popular brand of K-Cup for the company's machines. The company says it will sell more than 1.5 billion Starbucks K-Cups in 2016, a nearly 20% jump from 2015, and that its new agreement with Keurig offers improved economics and flexibility than the prior deal. In other words, this business is set to get bigger and even more profitable.
Starbucks is set to grow K-Cup sales at home, and will launch Nespresso pods in Europe soon. Image source: Starbucks.
At the same time, Keurig has essentially no presence outside North America, while Nespresso has more than 25 million espresso-based brewing machines globally. Furthermore, Starbucks estimates that 50% of its best European customers own a Nespresso machine at home. This is a market ripe for developing, and the company is (finally) ready to launch a single-serve Nespresso pod in Europe.
The company's Chinese partnership with Tingyi in China is also moving forward and is on track to launch this summer. This partnership will put Starbucks Frappuccino and other ready-to-drink iced beverages in more than 1 million points of distribution in the country, further expanding the brand's reach into essentially every major city in China this year.
Bottom line: Channel development may be a relatively small piece of the revenue pie, but it's an outsize slice of profits that is likely to only grow bigger over time and also an important way Starbucks leverages its brand appeal.
Starbucks management essentially reiterated its guidance for 2016, sticking to its guns on expectations for 10%-plus revenue growth for the full year, and comps "somewhat above" the mid-single digits, even after falling short on both of these metrics in the second quarter, and GAAP earnings per share in the range of $1.85-$1.86 for the full year, on slightly increased operating margin. For the third quarter, earnings per share are expected to be $0.47-$0.48.
The company also announced that it is selling even more of its EMEA stores to licensees, with AmRest Holdings SE set to acquire the company's stores in Germany in the third quarter.
Starbucks also continues to return capital to investors. It acquired 23 million shares in the second quarter, and has board approval to repurchase up to 125 million more shares. The board also declared a $0.20-per-share cash dividend payable in May, the same as last quarter and up 25% from one year ago.


Bob Parsons, the CEO of the web host GoDaddy.com, posted a video of himself killing an elephant in Africa, during which villagers wearing GoDaddy hats strip the elephant of its flesh. What do you think?
"Villagers wearing GoDaddy hats! This I’ve got to see."
"This would have never happened if Elephant.com would have just hosted with GoDaddy."
"Well, I do have to admit this is sort of a let down after that commercial where he went around wearing the dripping husk of Danica Patrick."


Citizens were very concerned about getting more of the derelict buildings in the city torn down, Beach said, and keeping buildings boarded up until they are torn down.
“There was also substantial interest in how home improvement assistance works, and the need for assistance with emergency housing needs,” he said.
Sallie Hatter, 84, said she wants the city to use the money to “take down all of these old ugly houses and do better at keeping the city looking neat and clean.” She also wants the streets repaired.
At the top of her list, though, is getting something done to keep her house from sinking.
The county’s consolidated plan runs from Oct. 1, 2015 to Sept. 30, 2019, according to Beach, and the action plan runs from Oct. 1, 2015 to Sept. 30, 2016.
The county took over the city of East St. Louis’ CDBG program three years ago. It is the county’s job to manage East St. Louis’ money, but Beach said they are not authorized to tell city leaders where the money is spent.
The ultimate decision on what projects the money will be spent on belongs to East St. Louis Mayor Emeka Jackson-Hicks, according to Beach.
He said St. Clair County needs to have the information from Jackson-Hicks fairly soon, because HUD needs it by Aug. 14.
Oct. 1 is the start of the fiscal year and the day when the St. Clair County Intergovernmental Grants Department can disperse the money for the projects the city chooses.
Beach said the money can only be used to fix streets, repair potholes, tear down derelict homes and to do housing rehabs.
Angela Burrage said Jackson-Hicks is trying to organize neighborhood watch groups, and when she talked to citizens while campaigning for the new mayor, she heard many citizens say they wanted their streets repaired and the derelict structures demolished.
Infrastructure improvements will remain the primary focus of the CDBG program, he said, and new single-family affordable housing will remain the focus of the HOME program.


Tell us: what was your favourite TV show of 2018?
Jodie Whittaker’s first series of Doctor Who, the surreal second season of Donald Glover’s Atlanta, Michael Palin’s journey to North Korea and a live Halloween episode of Inside Number 9 – all feature on the Guardian’s varied rundown of the top TV in 2018. Our rundown concludes on Thursday, where our number one show will be revealed but, now, we want to hear from you.
Tell us about your favourite TV show of 2018 and why in the form below, including the moment or plot point you think was most memorable. You have until 20 December to make your case and we’ll publish a selection of readers’ contributions before the end of the year.


A Nichols School hockey player just helped Team USA win a gold medal in the U-18 IIFH World Championships in Russia.
BUFFALO, N.Y.-- This week's "Great Kid" is a Western New York hockey player who is watching the Winter Games in PyeongChang and hoping she'll her have her own shot at an Olympic gold one day.
Katy Knoll, 17, lives and breathes hockey. She often spends more time at the rink than at home, but that's just fine for the junior at Nichols. Playing hockey is all she's wanted to do from the moment she could walk.
"We knew when she would put her skates on walked around the house and go up and down the stairs at 2 and a half years old, she was ready to get on the ice with her siblings," said Danny Knoll, Katy's father.
Katy was one of the only girls on the boys hockey teams for the Wheatfield Blades. She also played for the Niagara Junior Purple Eagles and several other teams. Hockey may have been her hobby growing up, but now it's her life.
Katy balances playing for Nichols 5 days per week, and driving to Canada 4 days per week to play for the Toronto Aeros where she's one of the leading scorers in the Provincial Women's Hockey League. She does all of that while keeping straight A's in school. Her parents couldn't be more proud.
"It's just amazing to watch this journey, and to keep seeing her set goals and then be able to reach them," said Sue Knoll, Katy's mother.
Nichols girls hockey coach Shelley Looney is also impressed by Katy. And that means a great deal since Looney herself is an Olympic gold medalist, scoring the game winning goal in Nagano in 1998. It was the first time women's hockey was in the Olympics and the only time Team USA won a gold in the sport. Looney also won a silver medal in Salt Lake City in 2002. She says the Olympics are a real possibility for Katy.
"Her dreams and goals are endless because of her work ethic and her God given talent," said Looney.
The highlight of Katy's young career came last month when she made USA's Under 18 women's hockey team. Wearing the red, white and blue, she scored twice in gold medal game for the IIHF World Championships in Russia. She helped Team USA win a fourth straight gold.
"I've dreamed about it for so long. To have the jersey on, with a gold medal around my neck, and to be singing our national anthem in a different country after we had just won the tournament, it was a surreal feeling for sure," said Katy.
Katy will continue to play for Nichols and the Toronto Aeros next year and she hopes to make USA's U-18 team again. Katy declared as a freshman to play hockey at Northeastern. Of course, for Katy the Olympics are the pot of gold at the end of this huge rainbow.


An app just launched for iPhone and iPod Touch claims to make headphone listening safer by letting in a limited amount of outside noise.
Awareness! The Headphone App allows you set the microphone on your iPod or Phone to pick up outside noises like traffic, car sounds or conversations and feed them into your earphones. You can control how much outside noise you want to hear.
It means that users will hear the world around them through the microphone and a headset – a funny concept.
Does an app like this exist for OS X?
Will have to download it and try it for myself but I think it’s an excellent idea.


Two men who ran for spots on the Bonita Springs Utilities board of directors claim they lost because the not-for-profit water utility rigs elections.
Two losing candidates for the Bonita Springs Utilities board of directors have sued the not-for-profit water utility in Lee County Circuit Court.
Jude Richvale and Edward FitzGerald, both of Bonita Springs, accuse BSU of rigging elections against them by fabricating votes.
In the lawsuit filed Monday, Nov. 26, Richvale and FitzGerald claim more ballots were counted by BSU than were sent through the U.S. Postal Service. The complaint points to mail records as proof and states that more than 500 votes were likely fabricated in the 2016 and 2017 elections.
"This is a very simple case," FitzGerald said in a phone call Tuesday. "Either the records are correct or there is something that went wrong."
BSU stated in a release that "independent election monitor" and the League of Women Voters handle the vote counts. The lawsuit has no merit, according to the BSU statement.
"We look forward to responding to this baseless suit," the release states.
"The lawsuit is that the election was corrupted, and we believe it was corrupted by BSU," FitzGerald said.
The way BSU counts votes is suspect because of a lack of oversight and transparency, the lawsuit claims.
Only a few officers have control and view of the ballots, according to the lawsuit.
“This presents opportunity for rampant fraud and abuse of counting votes,” the lawsuit states.
Richvale and FitzGerald’s lawsuit accuses BSU of breaching its fiduciary duty, negligence, gross negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, constructive fraud and violation of the Florida RICO Act, which is modeled after the federal anti-racketeering law.
The lawsuit seeks damages exceeding $15,000, exclusive of attorney’s fees and costs.
A PowerPoint presentation included in the lawsuit as evidence suggests one way to fix BSU's alleged election issues is by appointing FitzGerald and Richvale to an election oversight board immediately.
BSU was founded in 1969 by residents of south Lee County. It is member-owned and operates independently from the city government.
The utility provides potable and irrigation water between Williams Road, in the village of Estero, and the Lee-Collier county line.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Richvale and FitzGerald suggested being appointed to an election oversight board immediately.


Here’s another economy ad from Rudy Giuliani going on the air in Florida. It trumpets both the “biggest tax cut in American history” and the “Catastrophe Fund,” which sounds pretty expensive, but like tax breaks, will cater to coastal (wealthy) Floridians.
SEE ALSO: Is Codey a big fish, or is he irrelevant?


Sami Bensassi is an economist who works on North Africa at the University of Portsmouth.
The Tunisian revolution: a second decolonization?
The urban, educated, upper middle class were fed up with the Ben Ali clique which they viewed as corrupt. Thus, in contrast to Syria, this section of society chose to support the 2011 revolution which started in the midst of the poor Tunisian interior, and their support was pivotal.


When you think of a writer, do you imagine a person who is brilliant, eloquent and deeply philosophical? Someone who is charming and witty, able to hold forth on any subject and illuminate the workings of the inner and outer worlds? Or perhaps you think of a writer as a genius who worships at the altar of words, who is never seen without a book in their hand, who looks at the world and never fails to find inspiration in it. If you believe any of this, chances are you have never met a real writer.
It may be hard to identify a writer-in-embryo: children are all delightfully weird in their own way, and that little kid who can’t make friends and lives with her nose in a book may not necessarily be preparing to win the Booker Prize; she might just be intelligent and bored. Similarly, a child who is overly talkative or displays a faculty with words beyond his or her peers might actually grow up to be a smooth-talking con artist instead of a writer. Most teenagers feel, at some point in their lives, that they don’t ‘fit in’; some may start writing poetry or keeping a journal or putting out ‘thoughts’ on social media in order to express themselves. Don’t worry; your child is still normal — at least outwardly.
But then something happens inside the embryo’s mind: the bookworm realises that the books he’s reading aren’t fulfilling a deeper need inside. Writer Musharraf Ali Farooqi describes the moment he knew he was a writer when he thought, “I can think of a better story than this.” This is the point of metamorphosis for many writers: recognising the urge to create literature instead of passively consuming it. The change is irreversible; once the truth about what one aspires to do and be is glimpsed, it can’t be unseen. A writer will either spend all her life trying to write that better story or — thwarted by life’s circumstances and a lack of support and self-belief — become the most miserable person on earth. Sometimes both happen at the same time.
Not unlike Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, who goes to bed a human being and wakes up a cockroach, the writer goes to bed a human being and wakes up in a state not dissimilar to that of a cockroach, scrabbling around all night trying to escape the shoes hurled at its unsightly carapace. The carapace is actually an accumulation of habits and personality traits that serve to further the process of writing, but also makes the writer look incredibly strange to other people.
For example, James Joyce wore a white coat when writing to cast light on the cardboard he wrote on — in crayon. Virginia Woolf wrote only in purple ink. John Cheever wrote only in his underwear, while Victor Hugo took off all his clothes and wrote while wrapped in a blanket. Mark Twain, George Orwell and Marcel Proust could write horizontally but not vertically, lying in bed or on a sofa. Voltaire drank 40 cups of coffee daily, but Honore de Balzac beat him by drinking 60 cups a day. Agatha Christie sat in her bathtub, eating apples, waiting for inspiration to strike.
God help anyone who has to live with a writer; it has been described, variously, as ‘difficult’, ‘unpleasant’, and ‘hell on earth’. There is a reason V.S. Naipaul, a brilliant writer, ended up having so many divorces. If you are familiar with writers such as Ernest Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson, you’d be forgiven for thinking of all writers as irascible misanthropes who hate everyone and need to drink a bottle of whisky daily just to inoculate themselves from the mediocrity of the world. Or, as in the case of Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger, as recluses who are too sensitive to deal with their monumental success.
It’s true that writers sometimes come off as crabby, unfriendly, grouchy or utterly unsympathetic. Narcissistic is another descriptor for someone who spends a lot of time in their own head. While other people are enjoying the company of others, the writer’s mind is off working on something inexplicable.
It’s true that writers sometimes come off as crabby, unfriendly, grouchy or utterly unsympathetic. Narcissistic is another good descriptor for someone who spends a lot of time in their own head. While other people are learning social skills and enjoying themselves in the company of others, the writer’s mind is off working on something intangible and inexplicable. While you look at a beautiful evening sky and witness a magical sunset, a writer despairs over the end of time and the inability of humanity to escape its incessant pettiness. You can never quite tell whether a writer is listening to what you say or constructing a story in her head about someone who quits Earth and finds a happier life in outer space with a couple of aliens and a Mars Rover.
But it’s more than just eccentricity of behaviour that sets writers apart from the rest of the world. There’s a unique personality that develops, one that is geared towards being as protective of the writer’s inner space as possible. In this mental and emotional space, thoughts and ideas develop, and this is the writer’s most prized territory, more than any table and chair, beloved writing spot or daily habit. This inner space is cultivated by several things: silence and solitude; the absence of people who intrude on one’s concentration and focus; a discipline that gets the writer into the crucible where intellect and emotion interact; a fierce determination to guard that space because it is precious and sacred.
Writers come in many shapes and sizes, but there is one irrefutable truth about them: they are eccentric and weird, selfish and self-absorbed, somewhat cynical and always wary. But writers have made an art out of being crazy and, to paraphrase Rumi, that craziness becomes the art that they spend their lives trying to create, so that you, the reader, can enjoy. In the spirit of generosity, forgive them their foibles along the way, if you can.


A CDOT snowplow goes to work on Interstate 70 Thursday morning near Dillon. Even though there was no snow or reported wrecks on I-70 Sunday, the interstate still came to a crawl and crippled traffic on some Summit County highways and roads.
Some have blamed it on a fresh round of snow leading into beautiful weekend weather. Others think the hugely popular International Snow Sculpture Championships in Breckenridge had something to do with it.
The mass of Colorado ski areas certainly owns a share of the responsibility for Summit County’s weekend traffic woes, as resort guests spilled out onto the roads and plugged up Interstate 70 across the mountain corridor Sunday afternoon.
With all the powder-seekers, the snow sculputures, ESPN’s X Games going off in Aspen, regular traffic from the Dillon Ice Castles and the usual mix of snowmobilers and hunters, navigating one’s way around Summit County was a lesson in frustration on Sunday, even though there wasn’t a single wreck reported on the interstate that day.
On a popular Facebook forum, one Summit County woman described the traffic as “insane,” while another likened it to having Christmas, New Year’s and the Presidents Day weekend all rolled into one.
What exactly is drawing the large crowds might be up for debate, but the numbers are staggering as a high volume of traffic frequently leaves I-70 struggling to drain all of the cars, pickup trucks, SUVs and semitrailers headed east to Denver and the Front Range.
Based on figures provided by the Colorado Department of Transportation, this weekend was particularly bad for travel with 54,730 vehicles passing through the Eisenhower Tunnel on Sunday alone, only 3,000 shy of the single-day record.
The sheriff wasn’t offering up anything that most locals, law enforcement personnel and state transportation officials don’t already know: Summit County’s roads were never designed to handle this kind of traffic.
And so routes back up across the county.
On Sunday, reported travel times from Dillon to Colorado 470 — typically about a 50-minute commute — went well over two hours. That traffic also caused a domino effect of local congestion, as drivers waiting to get onto I-70 impeded main arteries in Dillon, Frisco, Silverthorne and Breckenridge.
Making matters worse, heavy weekend traffic was also reported on French Creek and Wellington Road in Breckenridge even though these roads cut through residential areas. That has some locals complaining that GPS navigation apps, like Google Maps, have been directing that traffic into Breckenridge’s residential neighborhoods as a way around the highway jams.
Breckenridge Police Chief Jim Baird said it’s common for folks to seek out easier ways around town during peak times and to use smartphone apps to help them do it. Whether that strategy is effective is a different question, however.
“My experience is that this normally depends on where you’re going or trying to park, and where you’re coming from, as well as what time of day,” Baird said, adding that most navigation apps offer multiple routing options and it’s likely those apps did push some drivers into Breckenridge’s neighborhoods on Sunday, at least until those streets also became saturated with cars.
The chief said that Breckenridge police have a traffic management plan, particularly for when people are trying to leave after a day on the slopes. The department response can vary depending on the volume of vehicles and pedestrians in town, but one of the biggest goals is to keep traffic flowing.
The sheriff and state transportation officials say there’s really not much they can do about the navigation apps driving motorists off highways and the interstate, though.
Short of closing a road, CDOT has little control over the decisions people make about which routes to take and the navigation apps that suggest them, Trulove said.
She said CDOT has reached out to Google in hopes of trying to work out some of the kinks in its navigation software — like directing motorists over a closed mountain pass in the winter — but has had little luck so far.
Rather, it’s just a fact of life that when the highways and interstate are jam-packed, drivers are going to look for alternatives, Trulove said. The state agency meters cars getting onto the interstate and at the tunnel with timed lights, but that’s a safety measure more than a means for reducing volume.
At the same time, FitzSimons said there’s little the sheriff’s office can do other than continue encouraging people to car pool, ask locals to avoid traveling at peak times and try to ensure that everyone drives as safely as possible so traffic jams don’t become car wrecks.
Trulove said she sees some hope on the horizon with advances in autonomous vehicles and smartcar technology. However, state transportation funding remains tight and, for the time being, drivers who “decide to roll the dice” by traveling I-70 at peak times are going to run the risk of getting stuck in traffic for two-plus hours — with or without a navigation app.


FILADELFIA, Paraguay – The Enlhet Indians of Paraguay’s Upper Chaco region have been the victims of the Bolivian and Paraguayan armies’ repression during the 1932-1935 Chaco War, as well as of the expansion of cattle ranches, which have wiped out a good deal of the forests.
The Enlhet, one of the last surviving native communities in the Paraguayan Chaco, have lost 98 percent of their territory in the past nine decades because of atrocities during the war, which left 50,000 Bolivians and 40,000 Paraguayans dead, and the unrestricted settlement of Mennonites.
The Enlhet communities are located a few kilometers from Filadelfia, the main settlement of the Mennonities, a religious group that has focused on cattle ranching and farming since its arrival in Paraguay in the 1920s.
Since then, the stories of the Chaco Indians and the European migrants, who headed to the Americas fleeing religious persecution, have become entangled.
Hanes Kalisch, a German linguist who has been living in the Enlhet community of Boqueron for decades and speaks the Indians’ language, told Efe the remaining groups are still struggling to keep their lands, language and culture, which vanish gradually with each new generation.
A community initiative has gained the support of the Paraguayan government, placing signs at different places in the Mennonite colonies to mark important sites in Enlhet history and culture, a project opposed by the settlers, who protest when people with cameras approach the signs.
The project, “The Country of the Enlhet,” aims to identify symbolic places where ancestors fished, hunted or gathered.
Some of the sites are outside and others inside the urban area of what is now the Mennonite settlement of Neuland.
Lack of government control over many decades allowed widespread deforestation, isolating the natives’ communities due to the absence of infrastructure in the region, Kalisch said.
The Gran Chaco, South America’s second-largest forested area and designated a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO, is shared by Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, and it is the region of the world with the fastest rate of deforestation, affecting the ecosystem, native populations and peasants, Kalisch said.
Some 2,300 hectares (5,700 acres) of land are deforested in Paraguay each month, environmental group Guyra Paraguay said.


Search engine giant Google has rolled out an update for its Chrome web browser, which will now feature an automatic translation tool, that will allow users to translate websites into their native languages in less than a second.
According to a blog post on the Google Blog, the Chrome web page translation feature is based on Google Translate, which ensures automatic translations of web pages in quasi real time.
The new feature, which supports 52 languages, was previously in beta test version before being added to Chrome's stable channel.
The update also includes a new overview of Google Update technology, which will now allow the company to remove the unique ID tags from Google Update while letting it keep track of active users and supplying security updates from time to time.
Every little helps and the addition of automatic translation will mean that we'll need less trip to Google's own Google.com/translate section. Chrome has become a major force in the browsing market thanks to Google's clout bu there is still some significant work to be done.


Creating a planning department that "starts with yes"
When Mayor Mike Duggan recruited Maurice Cox from New Orleans two years ago to become Detroit's new urban planner, the city planning department had six employees and was seen as a pass-through for developers.
"We hadn't had a world class planner in decades," Duggan said. "The planning department basically ran demolitions."
These days, Cox is focused on demolishing barriers in Detroit's Planning and Development Department. And he's pursuing a redevelopment strategy in the city's neighborhoods that reimagines vast tracts of vacant land where homes once stood.
In two years, Cox has hired 25 new planners and created teams with a city planner, urban designer, landscape architect and architectural historian to focus on four main regions in the city as well as big projects like the East Riverfront redevelopment and construction of Little Caesars Arena and the surrounding District Detroit.
Outside of the 7.2 square miles of downtown and Midtown, Cox is leading the charge for the development of "20 minute neighborhoods" where a resident can live, shop, dine and recreate within a 20-minute walk or bicycle ride from their house.
Cox's strategy is coming to fruition in the Fitzgerald neighborhood, where the city is attempting to string together vacant lots to build a quarter-mile greenway path connecting the University of Detroit Mercy with Marygrove College.
Instead of waiting for new construction of homes that may never get built, Cox is pursuing a strategy of infilling 192 vacant lots with a park-like landscape that he says "knits the fabric of a neighborhood back together."
Approximately 115 dilapidated homes in the Fitzgerald neighborhood will be rehabilitated. Vacant lots not used for the pathway or the new 2-acre Ella Fitzgerald Park will be converted to mini-parks or urban farming plots of land dotting the landscape.
"This is where the comeback will be tested," Cox said.
Downtown and Midtown Detroit are "humming along" with construction of new housing developments and high-rise buildings, Cox said.
"But ultimately, if we don't build neighborhoods that attract families and families with children, then the recovery will not be complete," Cox said.
Cox also is helping foster a culture change inside the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building — starting with the creation of an "Office of Yes," which does just what its title suggests.
"It comes from this notion that people don't expect City Hall to say yes," Cox said. "The city had a reputation of not being able to be very responsive. Our notion is we say yes until we have some reason that we can't get to yes. We start with yes."
Cox, who came to Detroit from the University of Tulane with an academic background, has used the Office of Yes to partner with the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Faculty and students at the college wanted to help the city develop planning strategies for building middle-density housing.
The U-M students provided "tens of thousands of dollars" worth of free consulting that the planning department can use as a guide for future neighborhood revitalization, Cox said.
"Being able to actually say 'Yes, we welcome your partnership,' has really been able to marshal those resources," he said.
As new construction projects have popped up in Midtown and downtown, Cox has challenged real estate developers to build housing, retail and office space differently with an eye toward building a more densely-designed city.
"He has absolutely pushed developers to step up their design game," said Sonya Mays, CEO of Develop Detroit, a nonprofit housing developer. "And as this process moves forward, it will continue to elevate the design aesthetic in Detroit. ... He's been pretty forthright about his expectations and his vision."


Live concert lineup for the week of March 24-30 including Chicago, Earth, Wind & Fire: Heart & Soul Tour 2.0.
Louisville Orchestra. Whitney Hall, Kentucky Center, 501 W. Main St., 8 p.m. Saturday. “Festival of American Music I”; Teddy Abrams, conductor and clarinet soloist; Aoife O’Donovan, vocalist. Part of the Classics Series. $26-$75. (502) 584-7777.
The Kody Norris Show, Gary Brewer & The Kentucky Ramblers. Shepherdsville Music Barn, 1833 Highway 44 W., Shepherdsville, 8 p.m. Friday. $12. (502) 541-2456; brewgrass.com.
University of Louisville Student Composers. Comstock Concert Hall, University of Louisville School of Music, First Street and Brandeis Avenue, 8 p.m. Thursday. Free.
“The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac The Blind.” Adath Jeshurun, 2401 Woodbourne Ave., 7 p.m. Thursday. Presented by a quintet of musicians from the Louisville Orchestra; Teddy Abrams, director. Free.
Louisville Orchestra. Whitney Hall, Kentucky Center, 501 W. Main St., 11 a.m. Friday. “Festival of American Music I”; Teddy Abrams, conductor and clarinet soloist. Part of the Treyton Oak Towers Coffee Series. $20-$42. (502) 584-7777.
Classical Hour. Clifton Center, 2117 Payne St., 4 p.m. Sunday. Kenji Tashiro, tenor; Karen Lord-Powell, violin; Cecilia Huerta, cello and Nada Loufti, piano. Free.
Moody Blues. Louisville Palace, 625 S. Fourth St., 7:30 p.m. March 30. $65-$125. (800) 745-3000.
Stephen Mattingly, guitar. Bird Recital Hall, University of Louisville School of Music, First Street and Brandeis Avenue, 7 p.m. Friday. Free.
Chanticleer, An Orchestra of Voices. St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church, 6710 Wolf Pen Branch Road, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. $30, $15 students. (502) 228-1176.


CYPRESS — Orange Coast College won the conference-opening event Wednesday at Navy Golf Course.
Tie at 71 Kyle Melchiorre and Michael Chen both shot one-under-par 71 to help the Pirates improve to 7-0 in conference.
Marcus Mercado-Kiel (73), David Pelekoudas (74) and Kyle Pollema (75) also scored to help OCC finish four-over 364 as a team.
Palomar finished second at 373.
Santiago Canyon's Nico Mendoza shot 69 to earn medalist honors.
OCC will next play in the OEC meet hosted by Cuyamaca College at Sycuan Golf Course in El Cajon March 11.
MISSION VIEJO — Nicole Watkins and Cat Osburn each had two hits and one run batted in for the visiting Pirates in the Orange Empire Conference game Wednesday.
Watkins also scored a run for the Pirates (1-11, 0-5 in conference).


It’s that time of year again, the reckoning for those baseball people whose transgressions against the game and others in the game have warranted them a place on the Daily News Top Ten Turkeys List. Like always, there will be no pardoning these turkeys, just a synopsis of what earned them their rightful place on this list.
We won’t know for sure the extent of financial pain inflicted on the Yankee support people until the postseason shares are officially announced in two weeks, but Robertson, who chaired the shares meeting as the Yankee player rep, was the front man for what appears to be a shameful greed on behalf of the other players. It was reported that assistant hitting coach P.J. Pilittere was voted only a half share and the analytics liaison with the coaching staff, who traveled with the team all season, got nothing. According to sources, Robertson and his co-conspirators cut a wide swath through the entire Yankee support staff, stiffing trainers, clubhouse attendants, BP pitchers and the like. In addition, they also attempted to have the media’s pre-game clubhouse access in Boston cut off in a September game because of the cramped conditions in Fenway Park. We don’t know what happened to Robertson in his second go-around with the Yankees. With his High Socks for Hope charity that helped hurricane victims in Texas, Florida and the Carolinas, he used to be one of the good guys.
As the man who broke baseball’s two longest world championship droughts, with the Red Sox in 2004 and the Cubs in 2016, Epstein is probably still going to the Hall of Fame, but his plaque will say nothing about the job he did in 2017 when he invested $164 million in two failed pitchers, Yu Darvish and Tyler Chatwood, who won a grand total of five games for him. Going all the way back to the regrettable eight years/$184 million he gave Jason Heyward in 2015, the bloom has been gradually wearing off Theo’s genius (though Heyward made good on that money with his rain-delay pep talk that preceded the Cubbies rallying to win Game 7 of that 2016 World Series). When other clubs like the Yankees backed off on Darvish’s agent’s excessive demands, Epstein paid no heed to the 31-year-old’s (two starts, nine hits, nine runs in four innings) red flag implosion against the Astros in the ’17 World Series, and instead caved with a six-year/$126 million contract. That was on top of the three years/$38 million deal he gave Chatwood, who’d led the National League in losses (8-15 with a 4.69 ERA for Colorado) in ’17. Darvish missed most of the season with elbow and triceps issues while Chatwood was 4-6 with a 5.30 ERA and lost his spot in the Cubs rotation in mid-August.
We know a lot of Dodger fans who maintain the Dodgers would have won the last two World Series were it not for the managing of Dave Roberts. We won’t go that far — after all, you’ve got to give the Astros and Red Sox credit for being the best teams in baseball the last two seasons, respectively. But, that said, Roberts (or is it really the analytics department upstairs, which most people believe?) sure mis-managed this last one. Where do we start? Keeping his top four home run hitters, Cody Bellinger, Max Muncy, Joc Pederson and Yasmani Grandal out of the starting lineup the first two games? Pulling Rich Hill after 91 pitches and a one-hit shutout for 6 1/3 innings in Game 4 (a repeat of his removing Hill after four innings in Game 2 of the ’17 WS when he’d struck out seven and given up only one run). Yanking Pedro Baez — who came into the seventh inning of Game 1 with a runner on second and was on the verge of pitching out of it with strikeouts of Mitch Moreland and Xander Bogaerts — and replacing him with Alex Wood, who gave up a three-run homer to pinch hitter Eduardo Nunez? The continued misguided faith in ineffective reliever Ryan Madson, who allowed all seven of his inherited runners to score? No surprise the Dodgers have declined to give Roberts an extension, and if he wants to get one, he might want to consider managing more from his gut than from the analytics.
Even though, at 89, he’s said to be largely incapacitated and no longer running the day-to-day operations of the team, someone has to take the blame for the Baltimore Orioles’ worst season (47-115, 61 games behind) in franchise history (including the St. Louis Browns), and Angelos is responsible for creating what is a hopeless situation that will take years (not to mention a change of ownership) to rectify. The worst owner in baseball constantly hamstrung his general managers, routinely ran off or fired veteran, accomplished scouts, would not allow investment in Latin America and, for the longest time, alienated Oriole legend Brooks Robinson.
The once-admired Yankee, who might well have been their first Dominican captain if only his agent, Jay Z, hadn’t swept him away to the Mariners for 10 years/$240 million, saved them a whole lot of embarrassment when he was busted for 80 games by MLB after testing positive for steroids in May. As with so many others, like his DR running mate Melky Cabrera, Cano, 35, claimed he didn’t realize the Furosemide he was given by a licensed doctor in the DR was on MLB’s banned substances list. Of course not. Another guy who was on his way to the Hall of Fame but couldn’t resist the temptation of enhancing his numbers so there would be no doubt. Now it’s the Hall of Shame for him, although given his longstanding close relationship with Cabrera and Alex Rodriguez, nobody around the Yankees was really surprised at his bust.
Bet you’d never see the day the Yankee deity would appear on this list with a beak and turkey feathers, but there’s just no getting around the disgraceful plundering Jeter and his partner, Bruce Sherman, have inflicted on the Miami Marlins after grossly overpaying $1.2 billion for the franchise in 2017. Upon taking control, Jeter set upon a process for paying down the $400 million in debt he and Sherman incurred, starting with the gutting of all the highest-paid Marlins players including 2017 NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton and 2018 NL MVP Christian Yelich — some $40 million all told. We can understand Jeter wanting to get out from under what is eventually going to be an onerous 13-year/$325 million Stanton contract when he had the chance, and even the remaining three years of 29-year-old Dee Gordon’s five-year/$50 million deal. But why did he feel compelled to also trade Yelich, who at 26, has an extremely reasonable seven-year/$49.57 million contract that keeps him under club control through 2022, instead of building around both him and franchise catcher J.T. Realmuto (who he’s now also going to trade). So far, the return from all these players has been minimal other than shedding payroll, with the Yelich trade to Milwaukee looking particularly ill-conceived as the principal return player, outfielder Lewis Brinson, hit .199 with 177 strikeouts and only 24 walks for the Marlins in ’18. With an investment in some pitching, the Marlins could have been a contender in the NL East. Instead, Jeter set them back another five years – at least.
Who else for top turkey honors than baseball’s bad boy who, in one stunningly deplorable performance on the grand postseason stage while auditioning for a $300 million free agent contract, gave all the potential bidders pause for thought. Do we really want to give ten years to this guy? A guy who Yelich, of all people, called the dirtiest player in baseball after Machado engaged in a couple of hard slides into second base and, in another incident, kicked Brewers first baseman Jesus Aguilar in the back of the leg during the Milwaukee-Dodgers NLCS. And then, of course, there were Machado’s infamous comments regarding his notorious lack of hustle: “Obviously I’m not going to change. I’m not the type of player who’s going to be ‘Johnny Hustle’ and run down the line and slide into first base. That’s not my personality. That’s not my cup of tea.” Comments that prompted Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner to call “troubling.” Nevertheless, some owner, probably Philadelphia’s John Middleton, will look past all that and give Machado the 10 years/$300 million he seeks – which if nothing else could put them in prime position for a spot on next year’s turkey list.


DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Asia Pacific Surgical Drains Wound Drainage Market (2018 - 2024)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.
The Asia Pacific Surgical Drains Wound Drainage Market is expected to witness market growth of 5% CAGR during the forecast period 2018-2024.
The regular use of drains in surgical procedures has been diminishing over the years, as better radiological investigation and confidence in surgical techniques have limited the need for the same. With advancements in the field, it is found that drains could hinder recovery by acting as an 'anchor' and at the same time limiting mobility post-surgery. It is also found that the use of drains may lead to infections in the wound. Despite the case, the use of drains is inevitable in some cases.
The growing demand for advanced wound care products in several Asian countries, rising geriatric population, an increasing number of surgical procedures, rising prevalence of chronic as well as diabetic wounds, and product enhancements are some of the key factors driving the growth of the surgical drains market in Asia Pacific region.
The market research report covers the analysis of key stake holders of the market.
8.1 Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc.


Two of the most respected players in the history of Americana music are getting together for a special Bearsville concert. David Bromberg, known for "Mr. Bojangles" and a career playing with Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Prine and more, will get beside Larry Campbell, who cut his teeth with Shawn Colvin, played with Dylan and helped shepherd Levon Helm through a career renaissance. This show is one not to be missed.


Irish-based health tech company, SilverCloud Health, has unveiled a new online therapy aimed at those caught up in financial difficulties and mental health challenges.
The Space from Money Worries programme will be available the company’s NHS clients, which currently cover about 60 per cent of NHS mental healthcare trusts, as well as health insurance firms Bupa and Nuffield Health. SilverCloud also plans to offer the programme to financial institutions.
The programme works on a number of fronts, targeting links between finances and mental health, teaching users about avoidance behaviour, and providing them with tools and strategies to help them tackle their financial fears. It will also help tackle issues such as impulse buying.
SilverCloud chief executive Ken Cahill described the programme as groundbreaking. “Given the success we have seen with our mental health programmes, with recovery rates in line with face-to-face therapy, we know that technology can play a vital role in extending and scaling care while improving outcomes on both the mental health and the complex interwoven financial challenges that individuals struggling with debt face,” he said.
The programme was developed in collaboration with clinical psychologist Dr Thomas Richardson, who is an expert on the relationship between financial difficulties and mental health problems.
“Financial difficulties and mental health problems are often part of the same problem, but most support options treat them individually, offering debt advice separately from mental health help,” he said.
“So, for example, you might be offered a debt advice appointment but if you are so anxious you can’t face it then it won’t help.
SilverCloud Health’s digital platform is a global standard platform providing evidence-based online mental health and behavioural healthcare solutions. Launched in 2012, the company has worked with 200 organisations to support more than 170,000 patients globally.
It recently signed a deal with the HSE for a pilot programme providing digital mental health services to support the self-management of people with bipolar disorder.