Hark! [Author's note: Just like Paul Bettany in real life, Vision is forever saying things like "Hark!"] Becalm yourselves and heed me, for though you be but mortal folk, you are my allies and have shown me friendship, even though my origin story basically seems to have been "we ran Shaquille O'Neal through a ‘Consider the Lobster' simulator and came out with a Tilda Swinton parody of Orlando Bloom." Hark again! Our strength invites challenge, and challenge invites conflict, and just going by recent developments here, conflict seems to invite kind of a ton of wrecked airports and knocked-over skyscrapers, and I wonder, O my friends, if some of that is -- ahem -- on us?
Watching this scene, I couldn't help but flash back to a similar moment in last month's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, when Batman and Superman stage an extended debate over issues of power, oversight, and responsibility, conducted in director Zack Snyder's trademark style of rapid-fire dialogue.
OK, I'm kidding -- only 800 doves catch on fire. But Civil War and Batman v Superman, though they are very different films in crucial ways -- the primary one being that Civil War is good -- do have some important themes in common. I don't just mean the obvious one, i.e., that they both revolve around super friends learning the vital kindergarten-class life lesson that you can't process angry feelings by hitting your buddies with SUVs. They're also both windows into the strangely self-conscious politics of the modern comic-book movie. And they're both unusually lucid examples of a narrative archetype that resonates deeply in American culture right now, even outside the arena of magic shields and formfitting latex pectorals.
To understand what that narrative might be, it helps to think about all the ways in which superhero movies have become vehicles for talking about larger social issues. I hope it's clear that I'm not saying that just to be fancy. For the last several years, superhero movies have been practically beating us over the head with all the larger social issues they want to be about. Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy rasped its way through a meditation on the tensions of the post-9/11 security state. The X-Men films use the uneasy relationship between mutants and non-mutants to examine the dangers of intolerance. The films in the Avengers-verse run through a whole gamut of big contemporary anxieties, ranging from surveillance-state paranoia (Captain America: Winter Soldier) to the trauma felt by survivors of terrorism and war (Avengers: Age of Ultron, as well as Civil War and pretty much every "serious" Marvel product since the gang went out for shawarma in a still-smoldering New York).
Some of these movies are more coherent than others. Some of them are more proto-fascist than others. What they have in common is that they are obsessed with the problem of power -- its legitimacy, its limits, how it should be deployed and restrained in a world suddenly full of existential threats that the established social order is not equipped to handle. And where the comic-book films of the ‘80s and ‘90s mostly focused on the heroes' own perspectives and on their inner lives (compared to Christian Bale's crypto-authoritarian cipher, Michael Keaton's Batman was just a weird dude gaming out a fetish), post-9/11 comic-book movies have been astonishingly preoccupied with how their protagonists have been perceived by other people and by society in general.
Statues are built for them; statues are pulled down. They're credited with saving the world; they're blamed for not saving it carefully enough. They're on MSNBC crawls. They're dragged in front of congressional subcommittees. The truly weird proliferation of congressional subcommittee scenes in comic-book films, it seems to me, is an eloquent testimony to the destabilizing uncertainty of contemporary American political life; hey, democracy may be collapsing, but at least we can use its remaining instruments to interrogate the Flash. But if the heroes aren't being grilled by Congress, they're dealing with politicians in other ways. The Secretary of State is giving them a treaty meant to curtail the exercise of their powers. Important heads of state are frowning at them on hovering holo-video-y links. African kings are putting on rad unitards and acrobatically scratching them in highway tunnels.
I said before that the world the characters in these films inhabit is "suddenly" full of existential threats. That suddenness is interesting, because it marks a big way in which comic-book movies -- which are now often praised for sticking closer to the style and tone of actual comic books -- pretty dramatically deviate from their source material. Actual comic books depend on a sense of timelessness, one in which an endless series of earth-shattering plot developments only rarely changes the basic assumptions of the narrative. There are and always will be superheroes and supervillains; you have seen the Joker lose before, because the Joker has been losing and coming back for decades. The Joker is immortal, and when you see him go down again this week you know he'll be back in two months or in six months or in a year.
That is not how things work in contemporary superhero dramas. In the world of these films, there were no mutants or "enhanced humans" or benevolent alien overseers within living memory. Society was more or less just like our society. Then superheroes arrived. A line was crossed. Things changed. There is always, in these movies, a sense that the world has gone a little crazy, that we are dealing with a new order whose rules no one really knows. And that newness partly explains the extreme focus on the problem of whether and how the abilities of the heroes can be accommodated within the existing framework of governments and laws and the popular will.
The other explanation for that focus is an irony that, when you start to lay it out, is kind of gobsmacking, and that gets at an almost Greek-tragic dimension of recent comic-book movies. (Let's say Norse-tragic, because Thor.) The irony is this: The superheroes in superhero movies are always the only force capable of saving humanity from the threats it faces. But with astounding regularity in post-9/11 comic-book films, the threats mankind has to be saved from were either unleashed by the heroes themselves, came into being simultaneously with the heroes, or both. In other words, the chaos from which the heroes are required to save the world is implicit in the heroes' being in the world in the first place; even when the protagonists aren't actually the authors of the crisis they are fighting against -- something that, again, happens with startling frequency -- they are manifestations of the same fundamental shift. Hark!
By this point -- and in the Avengers series especially -- this basic plot seed has unfurled a whole dramatic poison flower of bloodshed and regret. Thor's arrival on Earth leads to Loki's attempted conquest of the planet, which leads to much of Manhattan being wiped out by Chitauri warships, which prompts Tony Stark to create the protective AI Ultron, who turns out to be a horrifying supervillain (whoops) who destroys a vast chunk of the nation of Sokovia, guilt over which motivates Stark to support the diplomatic accords that lead to the ruinous civil war with Captain America, which is furthered by the villainous scheming of Helmut Zemo, who is, in turn, motivated by personal loss incurred in the battle over Sokovia, which is, again, pretty much directly the Avengers' fault. The DC Universe is not nearly so baroque at this point. But it's pretty much the same deal. Superman's whole beef with Batman is prompted by fallout from Superman's battle royal with General Zod's terraforming platform at the end of Man of Steel, and the slavering whatever-beast Lex Luthor unleashes around the 15-hour mark of Batman v Superman is created by the Kryptonian scout ship whose presence on Earth is deeply linked to Superman's own. The scout ship also (accidentally) summoned General Zod in the first place. Earth needs Superman to save it from the perils it faces because Superman lives there. What a ... great deal for us Earthlings, I guess?
As fucked-up cultural projections go, I'd argue that this runs way deeper than the idea that since skyscrapers get so prominently totaled in comic-book cinema, the movies represent a mass-cultural response to the fear of terrorism. I mean, they do, but in 2016, they are also about the ways in which responsibility warps into anarchy and security warps into threat. They are trying, on some level, to articulate the paradox of living in a society in which danger has become curiously hard to differentiate from the safeguards danger generates, and in which the only powers capable of preserving order are apparently the same powers that threaten it. Maybe they're not articulating it well, maybe they're not saying it convincingly, but they're trying with more energy and directness than most contemporary art films I can think of.
And yes, I'm talking about military force here, obviously, which is the uppermost superhero-movie point of reference. (Civil War gives a prominent role to a drone!) But the logic permeates. Remember when Wall Street torpedoed the economy, then we more or less looked to Wall Street to save it? When Silicon Valley wipes out a whole segment of industry, or pops up on some random Tuesday to disrupt all previously established forms of human relationship, where do we look for a solution but Silicon Valley itself?
The glaring problem with viewing superhero movies as a venue for processing cultural anxieties about power is that superhero movies have to sell tickets, which means that Captain America is only ever going to be so wrong. The little guy's perspective is never really going to matter, because the little guy's CGI isn't expensive enough. We're not paying for peace in the third act. We want to see skylines leveled, and we want it again and again and again. Since we also want to identify with our protagonists, the heroes, almost all the time, are going to prove both right and necessary. The world really will end if they don't lash out with maximum force. Nice try, UN! Tell it to the encroaching wall of fiery death, Mr. Secretary! Civil War, which at least flirts with the idea that it was really all for nothing, is the rare exception to this imperative. But I don't think we can expect it to start a trend. Comic-book movies are going to continue to incorporate the pervading ambiguity of contemporary power, and the demands of the box office are going to continue to resolve those ambiguities in kinda fascist ways -- even if the deepest instincts of the film run the other direction, even if the worship of power is tempered by all sorts of unease and hesitation and brooding–Robert Downey Jr. regret.
Which also says something about American culture, probably, but I guess we'll have to wait until Infinity War to find out.


Haringey Council is committed to ensuring that all children and young people, whatever their circumstances, will achieve to the best of their abilities and we are looking for someone equally passionate to help ensure this becomes, and remains, the reality across our SEND and AP service offer.
As the lead commissioner for Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) support, placements and provision you will lead on all aspects of the Service including planning, commissioning, procurement and contract management; quality assuring all services to ensure that children receive access to high quality SEND and AP education and appropriate support of the highest quality, in line with value for money.
You will be an excellent manager, capable of providing strategic leadership for the Haringey Council AP and SEND Commissioning Team as well as working with a wide range of partners and stakeholders. With a proven record of partnership working you will lead the development of effective arrangements for collaborative working with Headteachers, Governors, AP lead professionals, SENCOs and other colleagues.
Accountable for the one of the Council's most critical and high-profile budgets, along with the monitoring of data collection requirements, you will have an excellent eye for detail and innovative ideas for ensuring value for money, whilst ensuring the LA fulfils its statutory duties within a frequently changing legislative framework.


Pads in India. Not iPads.
After headlines across the globe quoted a disturbing U.N. report published in April that revealed India has more cell phones available per capita than toilets, there is finally better sanitary news coming out of India. The government announced last week that it will be offering highly subsidized sanitary napkins to adolescent girls in rural India, a plan that will benefit 15 million girls in the first phase of the roll-out. Girls below the poverty line will now only need to pay 2 cents for a packet of six pads and will also be taught about personal hygiene in group meetings run by social-health activists who will be implementing the plan.
While we in the West snickered at Apple’s unfortunate choice of the name iPad and discussed the shocking absence of women in the upper echelons of Apple’s marketing machines, our sanitary needs are met by a wide range of products, including the eco-friendly mooncup . Not so in India. Rural Indian women not only face the risk of infections due to their reliance on cotton rags, but many are losing up to a week of school per month because parents consider it “dirty” to let their girls out of the home during menstruation. In the long-term, this contributes to high drop-out and illiteracy rates among young women.


For the first time in 22 years, the FDA has approved a drug for ALS, giving hope to some of those suffering from the illness.
ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a rare disease, affecting 12,000 to 15,000 Americans, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It attacks and kills the nerve cells that control voluntary muscles. Over time, patients with ALS have difficulty chewing, walking, breathing and talking. Most die from respiratory failure within three to five years.
The drug, Radicava, while not a cure, is a step in the right direction, say experts, and is giving hope to some patients.
Clay Ahrens was diagnosed with the ALS over three years ago.
"I am very, very excited about this new approval," he told CBS Minnesota. "This is the most exciting and optimistic news we've had in a long, long time in ALS."
The new drug (generic name: edaravone) is taken intravenously for 14 days, then a patient goes off the drug for 14 days. Subsequent treatments last 10 out of 14 days, then are followed by 14 days off the drug.
The medicine was tested in a six-month clinical trial in Japan. In the trial, 137 participants were randomized to receive edaravone or placebo. By the 24th week, people taking edaravone declined less on a clinical assessment of daily functioning compared to patients on the placebo.
The New York Times reports the drug will cost $145,524 a year, according to its manufacturer, MT Pharma America, a subsidiary of the Japanese company Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation.
The most common side effects reported were bruising and gait disturbance. The drug was also associated with hives, swelling, shortness of breath, and allergic reactions to sodium bisulfite (an ingredient in the drug) which can be life threatening in people with sulfite sensitivity. But for those facing a terminal diagnosis, a drug that could slow decline is welcome news.
"ALS is truly a disease that takes away power, the power to move. It's a disease of loss. Every day is a little bit worse than the day before," Ahrens said.
Radicava slowed muscle decline by 33 percent in people who were recently diagnosed with ALS, research showed.
"The effect is modest but significant," Dr. Neil A. Shneider, director of the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig ALS Center at Columbia University Medical Center, told the Times.
Ahrens isn't sure the drug will work for him, but he'd like to find out.
"I have my next clinic appointment in three weeks and that is topic one, two and three," he said. "This is how we will make progress — it is by drugs that will slow the progression down."
There are still questions about the treatment and concerns about the cost, but it gives patients hope.
"This really does offer hope for a condition that otherwise has very little good news attached to it," Ahrens said.
The popular fundraiser called the "Ice Bucket Challenge" helped speed the drug towards FDA approval, according to the The ALS Association. Without it, the group says Radicava could have been on hold for another 5 to 6 years.
"After learning about the use of edaravone to treat ALS in Japan, we rapidly engaged with the drug developer about filing a marketing application in the United States," said Dr. Eric Bastings, deputy director of the Division of Neurology Products in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
"This is the first new treatment approved by the FDA for ALS in many years, and we are pleased that people with ALS will now have an additional option," Bastings said in a statement.
Radicava is expected to hit the market in August.


It’s hard to think about climate change while most of the country is in a deep freeze. But while this part of the planet is freezing, other parts are baking, which is why climate change requires a global perspective.
It’s hard to think about climate change while most of the country is in a deep freeze – the Great Lakes are almost entirely frozen over and people on the East Coast are tunnelling out of their homes. But while this part of the planet is freezing, other parts are baking, which is why climate change requires a global perspective.
A snowball was thrown in the U.S. Senate this week by Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a vocal climate change denier, in an attempt to show that the unseasonably cold weather outside is proof that humans are not making the planet warmer. What he was really showing is his ignorance about the difference between weather and climate.
The phrase “Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get,” invoked by climate scientists, means that the weather we see happening outside our windows is a short-term effect, while climate is a global average measured over a longer period of time. So to judge the planet by what’s happening in your own backyard is narrow thinking.
While the central and eastern parts of the continent have suffered extreme cold for the last two winters, the thermometer here in Victoria hasn’t dropped below freezing at all, skiers along the West Coast are climbing to higher altitudes to find snow, many ski resorts have closed and my lawn needs cutting.
Australia is baking with record heat, California continues the longest drought in decades, Greenland continues to lose ice at an unprecedented rate and the Arctic Ocean shows more open water every summer.
Incorporating cold into climate models is all part of the global picture. That’s why scientists abandoned the term “global warming” years ago, and now talk about climate change, because change affects both warm and cold regions of the Earth.
Our atmosphere includes both hot and cold air masses, which are always jockeying for position around the globe. Cold air is denser than warm, so it tends to be more pushy, hugging the ground in big high-pressure pools, while lighter warm air bumps into it, rises over the top, cools with altitude and drops moisture as rain or snow.
It’s along the boundary between the warm and cold masses that we get storms.
Over the past two winters, the jet stream, which is that boundary between cold Arctic air and warm tropical air, has dipped south over the North American continent, allowing that big blob of frigid air to sit over the land and steer storms to the East Coast. But on the West Coast, that same jet stream curves upwards, producing what locals call the “Pineapple Express” of northward-flowing warm air.
Usually, the jet stream moves along, providing breaks from the cold during winter, but recently, it has been sluggish. Whether that's due to climate change cannot be determined yet because two years of cold is not enough to see a long-term pattern.
But a recent experiment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California has directly measured the warming effect of our carbon emissions, using data from instruments that measure the infrared radiation being reflected back to the ground by the atmosphere - the so-called greenhouse effect.
They found that the amount of radiation coming down increased between 2000 and 2010 in step with the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So, the effect is real. And since we are continuing to increase our carbon emissions, change will continue to happen, like it or not, both warm and cold.
Interestingly, one solution to this problem will be demonstrated next week, as Solar Impulse takes off from AbuDhabi, U.A.E, on the first solar-powered round the world flight.
The aircraft is capable of circling the globe non-stop, including flying at night, without using fossil fuels. Instead, Solar Impulse will take six months to complete twelve flight segments, stopping in various countries for educational tours, demonstrating the potential of clean alternative energy.
So, you could say that this is a case where, if we really don’t like the weather, we could do something about it - by not changing the climate.


Does the city listen to public input?
Yes, I feel my input matters.
Too much so; officials are too often swayed by those who show up at city hall.
There are times when facts matter more than “opinions.” City officials act accordingly and I value that.
Robert01 summed it up beautifully - "Their decisions are NOT transparent and they are NOT fiscally responsible."
The City Council seems to listen to the City manager and the individual who controls the budget.Their decisions are not transparent and they are not fiscally responsible.
They have already MADE UP THEIR MIND " on pre-briefed, new, controversial issue prior to disclosure to the public. They promoted themselves as being the " voice of the people " but instead have become jaded and opinionated . They look at the voters as " uninformed idiots". They have sadly become " The Bully Pulpit".
lwmjr -- Is not "talking the talk, but not walking the walk" the natural and normal characteristic of ANY so-to-speak "successful" elected Pol ? ?
They might listen, but far too often it goes in one ear & directly out the other. A few of them up on council are quite good at talking the talk, NOT walking the walk.


The legislation would declare that audio, video and transcripts of 911 calls involving injured people are confidential medical records.
The Iowa Legislature is reviving a bill that would limit the public's access to many 911 calls.
The Republican-controlled Iowa Senate put the measure on hold last year after concerns were raised about its far-reaching implications for accessing records. More than eight weeks into the session, a three-person panel is scheduled Tuesday to review it.
The legislation, House File 571, would declare that audio, video and transcripts of 911 calls involving injured people are confidential medical records and exempt from Iowa's open records law. If enacted, authorities' initial response to shootings, stabbings and many other incidents could face less public scrutiny. Another provision would make calls involving minors automatically confidential.
The GOP-controlled Iowa House passed the bill last year with unanimous bipartisan support and no debate. Some Democrats in the House later acknowledged they didn't realize the scope of the legislation, in part because it was framed as a measure about protecting children's privacy.
Sen. Dan Dawson, a Council Bluffs Republican who will oversee the upcoming subcommittee meeting on the bill, said the proposal needs changes, though he didn't specify how it should be altered. He sees room for records exemptions, particularly in cases where information becomes available quickly in the aftermath of a homicide case. He worries that could taint a jury pool tied to an eventual trial.
"This is something we're going to air out and see what we can and can't come to a compromise on," he said. "I don't think this is a piece of legislation that is certainly set in stone."
The legislation was introduced last year in response to the release of 911 calls to the Associated Press, which exposed a string of gun accidents in an Iowa county that killed two teens and injured a third.
Rep. Mary Wolfe, a Democrat from Clinton who voted for the bill last spring, said she now opposes the measure. Wolfe said she sees a need to clarify current exemptions in Iowa's open records law, though not through this legislation.
"I don't think we need that bill," she said.
The proposal would need to advance out of a full Senate committee in the next two weeks to survive a legislative deadline. If the bill is amended and makes it out of the full Senate, it would need to be approved again in the House.
Sen. Pam Jochum, who serves on the Senate State Government Committee that could soon take up the bill, said she values transparency and wants the bill to get major revisions. Yet the Dubuque Democrat also understands a desire to keep some records private, particularly those involving children.
"That's where I'm having some heartburn," she said about not dismissing some provisions in the bill.
Randy Evans, director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, emphasized the unintended consequences of lawmakers deciding some 911 records should be private based on a medical condition or age. The AP's access to 911 records involving children shed light on gun violence in Iowa, he said.
Separately, high-profile child abuse cases in the state have received more attention in part because news organizations accessed critical 911 records.
All this information is in the public interest, Evans said. He warned if lawmakers decide to add exemptions to public records, they need more time than the dwindling weeks of the current session.
"The Legislature needs to proceed cautiously," he said.


RCMP say a 30-year-old Calgary woman has died of injuries she suffered in a fall while hiking Saturday afternoon.
Police say the woman was with two friends when she slipped and fell while descending a short scramble section on the east end of Mount Rundle – a mountain just south of Canmore, Alta.
They say visibility in the area was poor at the time due to heavy smoke from wildfires raging in British Columbia.
Police say the woman’s friends, as well as some other hikers tried to help her, but she died at the scene.
They say the woman’s identity will not be released.


GM is posting huge gains in truck sales while Ford continues to struggle with short supplies of its new F-150.
Chevy Silverado sales rose 24% in February. Premium trim lines like this High Country model helped boost average transaction prices, too. Source: General Motors.
General Motors (NYSE:GM) had some happy news to report on Tuesday: Sales of its Chevy Silverado pickup rose 24% last month.
Sales of GM's trucks, including SUVs, vans, and pickups, were up 36% in February. That's a great result that should help drive strong first-quarter profits for GM.
But a lot of that gain is coming at rival Ford's (NYSE:F) expense.
The story here is that Ford is working to ramp up production of its all-new 2015 F-150. The new Ford has aluminum body panels, and the company has had to make extensive changes to its two truck factories in order to build it.
One of those factories, in Dearborn, Michigan, is already up and running: It began building the new F-150 in late November. But work at the other factory, near Kansas City, Missouri, is still ongoing. Ford says that it won't be producing new F-150s for sale until late this month.
Ford's Dearborn, Michigan, truck factory has begun producing its all-new 2015 F-150, but its Kansas City, Missouri, plant won't be up to speed until late March, Ford said on Tuesday. Source: Ford Motor Company.
That means that supplies of Ford's all-new truck are short. Ford's dealers are selling down the last of its old 2014-model trucks, along with a growing percentage of new ones. But that percentage is still small: Ford said on Tuesday that just 21% of its F-150 sales in February were of the new 2015 models. That has affected overall retail sales of the F-Series, which were up just 7% in February.
The good news for Ford is that the new trucks are selling quickly and getting good prices. Ford said that its new F-150s are spending an average of just 18 days on dealer lots before being sold -- less than any other Ford model. Higher-level trim lines like the King Ranch and Platinum models are moving even more quickly. And they're getting good prices: Average transaction prices for the F-150 (new and old models) were up $2,000 last month, Ford said.
That all bodes well for the longer-term prospects of Ford's new truck. But right now, supplies are tight -- and GM is taking full advantage.
But unlike years past, GM isn't goosing Silverado sales with huge discounts: Average transaction prices on the new Silverado were up almost $1,700 over year-ago totals, not far behind Ford's pricing gains. Strong truck sales and prices helped GM's profits beat expectations last quarter, and it appears that another strong quarter is taking shape.
GM introduced a new wrinkle in the pickup wars last year: Its new midsize Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon. GM is still ramping up supplies of its new midsize trucks, and total sales numbers are still small: Just 6,583 Colorados were sold last month, compared to 45,395 Silverados. But demand is very strong: GM says that Colorados are spending just 15 days on dealer lots -- turning over even faster than the new F-150.
The Colorado and GMC Canyon are giving GM's total pickup sales a nice boost: All together, GM sold 37% more pickups in February than it did a year ago. And GM's gains extended to its big (and hugely profitable) truck-based SUVs: Tahoe sales rose 49%, Suburban sales were up 118%, GMC Yukon sales rose over 43%, and the Cadillac Escalade posted a 92% gain.
Will GM be able to hold on to its market-share gains?
GM, like Ford, did see car sales slip significantly in February -- not a surprise given the harsh weather in many parts of the country. That could be a concern for both automakers if the trend continues as the weather improves, but strong truck sales continue to be good news.
But after a weak start last year, the Silverado and GM's other new trucks and SUVs have started to take off -- without huge profit-robbing discounts. That's great news for GM shareholders -- but will GM be able to hold on to its market-share gains once Ford's truck factories are back up to full speed? We'll find out this summer.


Worst: Real estate is in the tank and likely to stay there for some time. Venture capitalists are atrocious market timers, and this is, if anything, a sign things are going to get worse. Further, building a social network for real estate agents is like building one for residents of a rapidly southward-drifting ice flow.
Further, if $2.75 million buys a minority stake in ActiveRain, any guesses to the total valuation of the company?


Not Fit for Man nor Beast!
NBC 5 viewers shared videos of hail storms that rocked North Texas on St. Patrick's Day.
Hail Storm With Rushing Water Video On I30 Near Ridgmar.
From Deerwood Park in Arlington.
We live just south on Custer Rd and 380. Started out with pea size and got up to quarter size. Please see two vid and two pics.
This is the hail from 7:30 this morning off 20 and 820.


BEIJING — An American woman detained in China for more than a year has been indicted by prosecutors on charges of spying, a court confirmed Tuesday.
The Nanning Intermediate People's Court in southern China accepted the case against Phan "Sandy" Phan-Gillis on July 11, and no date has been set yet for a hearing, said a court official who gave only her surname, Chen.
Authorities detained the international business consultant in March 2015 when she visited China as part of an American trade delegation that was promoting business opportunities in her hometown of Houston, Texas.
Phan-Gillis' husband, Jeff Gillis, said Monday that her lawyer received the indictment "weeks after it was issued to the court."
He said in a statement that she is charged with being a spy for a foreign government from 1996 to 1998, and that the charges are "absolutely false."
Spying convictions carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
A U.N. panel ruled in June that China was arbitrarily detaining Phan-Gillis, 56, in violation of international human rights norms because she hadn't been brought before judicial authorities or given access to legal assistance.


Expect some delays Tuesday morning, and search for an alternative route, if you are headed downtown by way of Oxford Street.
The city has closed down Oxford Street between Richmond and Talbot streets after a water main break early Tuesday.
Due to a watermain break, westbound Routes 17, 91 will be on detour. The detour is as follows: West on Oxford, Right on St. George, Left on Sydenham, Left on Talbot, Right on Oxford to regular route.
Officials say the break has been repaired, but crews remain on site to complete road repairs.
A big hole on the street is visible in a video shared with The Free Press just west of Talbot Street.
City hall officials has not said when the area will be reopened.


Archives|FOUR ENTER FIELD TO SUCCEED BERRY; Retirement of National Guard Head Expected Jan. 1 When He Becomes Controller. COL. McLEER IS FAVORITE Generals Ward and Dyer and Col. Phelan Also Mentioned -- Appointment Rests With Gov. Smith.
FOUR ENTER FIELD TO SUCCEED BERRY; Retirement of National Guard Head Expected Jan. 1 When He Becomes Controller. COL. McLEER IS FAVORITE Generals Ward and Dyer and Col. Phelan Also Mentioned -- Appointment Rests With Gov. Smith.


Two weeks after a Special Committee set up to investigate unprecedented violence and raucous behaviour in Parliament in November last year presented a damning report, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya has forwarded the findings to the Attorney General for observations and decisions on whether to file legal action against lawmakers who have been found to be in breach of the Parliamentary Powers and Privileges Act.
The Privileges Committee, chaired by Speaker Jayasuriya has decided to forward the report to the AG to initiate legal action against the offenders, a spokesman for the Speaker’s Office said. According to the Speaker’s media unit, the report will be forwarded to the Attorney General’s Department in the coming weeks.
The Privileges’ Committee recommended last Friday that legal action should be initiated against seven parliamentarians in connection with their unruly behaviour on November 14, 15 and 16 last year.
Action will be taken against members Johnston Fernando, Prasanna Ranaweera and Padma Udaya Shantha for obstructing the duty of the police, attacking police officers with a chair and causing injuries and for the chilli powder attack.
UNP MPs Ranjan Ramanayake and Palitha Thevarapperuma will be charged with brandishing a knife in the Chamber and criminal intimidation.
Parliamentarians Dilum Amunugama and Ananda Aluthgamage will be charged for incurring a loss of Rs 325,000 by damaging the microphone on the Speaker’s table.
Attorney General Jayantha Jaysuriya told the Sunday Observer that they are yet to receive a direction from Parliament and after perusing the documents it will be decided as to how the offences will be drawn up depending on the evidence. Although legal action is not considered for the remaining MPs, the Privileges Committee will take action to reprimand them on their conduct in the well of the House.
When MPs are found to have committed offences specified in Part A of the Parliamentary Powers and Privileges Act, an application can be made in the Supreme Court, by the Attorney General to take action against errant lawmakers. Before this application can be made, under Section 25 (1) (a) of the Parliamentary Powers and Privileges Act, the Attorney General must furnish a report to the President or the Speaker of Parliament, stating that in the opinion of the Attorney General, there is sufficient evidence to warrant taking further steps under the act.
Once Parliament considers the AG’s report, the House must by resolution call on the AG to make the application to Supreme Court.
The report which stated that 59 members had breached Parliament decorum was handed over to the Speaker on January 22.
Fifty-four MPs of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), four United National Party (UNP) parliamentarians and one MP of Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna were held accountable.
State Minister Ranjan Ramanayake who declined to comment on this particular incident, said that he always acts in self-defence or is prepared to defend himself as one who is constantly being threatened. “I do not wish to harm others, but I always ensure that I defend myself. As a Minister who calls a spade a spade I have made more enemies, therefore I am always prepared,” he said.
Weighing in on the Parliamentary clashes report, UPFA Gampaha District MP Prasanna Ranaweera who has been named several times in the Report for serious breaches of the Parliamentary Powers and Privileges Act continued to blame Speaker Jayasuriya for the sequence of events in November last year.
“We requested the Speaker to suspend sittings at the beginning, he didn’t do it,” said the MP who was caught on camera slapping a policeman and throwing chillie powder mixtures in the faces of parliamentary police protecting the Speaker on November 16, 2018.
“First, steps should be taken against the Speaker for creating such a pandemonium in Parliament. We had to resort to such unparliamentarily behavior for the sake of the country,” Ranaweera claimed. “We will fulfill our duty to the country, even if we have to go to jail,” he asserted.


Ghana’s Dancehall artiste, Shatta Wale has said that the biggest crime in Ghana is being a Pastor.
According to him, Pastors have used several dubious means to get away with monies belonging to people and have broken several homes.
He indicated that Ghanaians who have been duped by so-called Pastors and have left them very poor and devastated should speak up because it is high time Ghanaians shame Pastors who have taken advantage of the gullibility of Ghanaians to enrich themselves.
Shatta Wale indicated that he had to go through the pain of life just because a Pastor broke his home adding that several other people have also gone through similar challenges at the hands of Pastors.
He charged Ghanaians to be fearless in their dealings to ensure they achieve greater results in life.


A red Cape Cod house on Bentley Street in the Staten Island neighborhood of Tottenville once had a backyard, but no longer. Where once was a lawn there now are two new two-family homes, bringing four new families to the neighborhood.
This scene, reported by the Staten Island Advance is being repeated throughout Staten Island, and through the rest of the city, in places like Bayside in Queens and Throgs Neck in the Bronx, where residents believe that an explosion of poorly planned, badly constructed, ugly housing developments threaten their attractive neighborhoods.
Old single-family houses have been torn down to make way for rows of flat-roofed, wooden townhouses in Staten Island and bulky brick apartment buildings in Queens. Developers have demolished bungalows in Throgs Neck and replaced them with as many as six attached houses. Few of the new developments offer open space, parks or play areas. Some have no trees or landscaping.
All of this construction adds to the number of people in the neighborhood. But the city has not increased basic services enough to accommodate the new people. The result is new burdens on the old residents.
But now the city is offering some relief. At his State of the City speech at the Silvercup Studios in Queens last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged to help fight overdevelopment. "Physical improvements and development are part of our efforts to improve neighborhoods, but we'll also work to end overdevelopment where it has gotten out of hand," he said. After tremendous applause he smiled and said, "I thought you'd like that."
But what is overdevelopment, particularly in a city whose fame and fortune come from its skyscrapers and towers, people crowding onto sidewalks and into trains, its sheer human density and diversity? And how can the city balance the need to protect neighborhoods with the demand for affordable housing? The problems encapsulated by the term overdevelopment are real, but they are also complex, messy, and not easily resolved.
Development in New York City is regulated by the zoning code of 1961. Written at a time when officials believed planning should be centralized, the code assumed the city would have a population of some 12 million people and zoned accordingly. It allowed for denser construction than had existed previously in many residential neighborhoods that had predominantly single-family homes. Along with conditions that make building new single-family homes onerous and expensive, the plan virtually required multiple units in many neighborhoods.
High market demand for the new housing accelerated the trend toward larger homes, townhouses and apartment buildings. Townhouses in Staten Island, for example, are priced between $250,000 and $500,000. Although loathed by longtime residents of the borough, they sell quickly, usually to New Yorkers moving in from other boroughs.
The reason is simple. As Alan Cappelli of the Building Industry Association points out, buyers get more house for their money in Staten Island than anywhere else in New York. The market demand is immense, and no amount of neighborhood protest is going to stem those forces.
Faced with the growing number of New Yorkers in search of housing, the city has two choices. It can adopt policies that would squeeze more families into existing units, producing the kind of crowding found in many parts of Queens where dozens of immigrants cram into housing designed for a single family. The second choice is to permit more construction.
New York City's well-being requires development â€“ particularly new housing to accommodate the hard-working people who want to live here and contribute to the economic and social life of the city. And it is certainly better for the city that home-owning, tax-paying New Yorkers move to Staten Island than to, say, New Jersey.
Yet Bloomberg, who generally supports economic development, has entered this war on the side of the anti-development forces, condemning "overdevelopment" and instructing the City Planning Commission to do something about it in the outer boroughs.
The mayor says he knows overdevelopment when he sees it. He describes "houses so poorly designed that they have front doors that open directly into the street and houses that have no front yards, that even lack sidewalks." The mayor went on to condemn developments "that seem, with little exaggeration, to pile homes, one right on top of one another."
The mayor's examples, however, are extreme and apply primarily to Staten Island. Indeed, the nature of the overdevelopment charge is generally that some new building is in the wrong place. Sensible regulation can easily address the problem of the poorly designed houses or those without sidewalks. The dense development the mayor cites, on the other hand, describes the very essence of Manhattan.
Despite what might look like a rush to judgment, however, Bloomberg intends to put expert opinion between him and angry residents: He has instructed city planning to carry out studies on growth management in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens, similar to the study already conducted in Staten Island.
The features of overdevelopment most likely to rile neighbors are traffic and the disappearance of open space. "Overdevelopment is the No. 1 issue here," James Vacca, district manager of Community Board 10 in the Bronx, which covers Throgs Neck, Pelham Bay and City Island, told the Daily News. "Our open space is disappearing, blocks are becoming congested beyond belief and there's not a parking space to be found."
The vanishing open space is usually, of course, private property and therefore available for development. When it is city property, such as a community garden, community boards have an opportunity to weigh in.
One only has to drive through some of the communities to understand the concerns about traffic. At its best, New York's planning has encouraged high-density development at places where subway and bus lines converge -- the West Side of Manhattan, downtown Brooklyn, Jamaica Center -- and low-density development far from transportation. Most of the neighborhoods reeling from overdevelopment are indeed badly served by public transportation. Thus more development and more people mean more cars and the parking woes, slow travel times, noise and pollution that they bring.
But a number of experts argue that choking off development is not the solution. Some say the focus should be on improving mass transit to serve the newly developed areas better. And others argue that what is needed is a judicious combination of allowing for more density in some areas â€“- or upzoning -- and downzoning, or permitting less density, in others.
Mobilizing the Region, a transportation advocacy group, points out that Staten Island's proposed huge downzoning -- which would make attached homes illegal and detached homes the norm -- is "a Band-aid solution for a larger problem," which "is too much unplanned, medium-density development. A better solution is to create growth centers with increased housing density and commercial areas.” This, it says, would focus the island's economic development where it makes most sense.
On the other hand, simply downzoning will freeze things as they are now and leave the traffic nightmare in place. While Staten Island needs more and better mass transit, Mobilizing the Region argues, its "de-centered nature does not lend itself to intensive transit investment. Without any centers, a good mass transit system is simply not feasible."
Some of the objections to overdevelopment focus on aesthetics and will not be addressed by changes in zoning. "The word overdevelopment doesn't quite describe the concern in Bayside and Bay Ridge, which largely has to do with the replacement of big old houses with rental units that are much less charming but that conform to the use and bulk restrictions of the zoning code," says Norman Marcus, former general counsel of the City Planning Commission and now a lawyer with Swidler Berlin.
Such changes are taking place in other attractive neighborhoods as well. As Brendan Sexton, who owns a house in Staten Island's historic St. George district, says a bit sadly, "the day of the detached single family home is probably over. They're just too expensive to build. The two- or three-family home is more realistic."
Some problems can be solved by the kind of sensible rezoning that the current city planning director, Amanda Burden, prefers. (See Embracing Growth, Preserving Neighborhoodsby Richard Barth.) In Staten Island, for example, the commission proposes that new one-family homes have two on-site parking spaces rather than one, and two-family homes have three spaces rather than two. The commission is also sensitive to the many ugly unintended consequences of earlier zoning restrictions and is proposing new homes that feature traditional pitched roofs rather than the flat roofs now encouraged.
City planning has also intervened piecemeal with some special district zoning, such as in Bay Ridge. While special districts allow planners to avoid having to overhaul the entire code, they only provide a stopgap.
But beyond zoning, the basic problem in many growing areas is that the city has been derelict in providing the new services needed by new residents. The city knew that the opening of the Verrazano Bridge in 1964 would set off a great migration to once unsettled Staten Island. But government never provided the necessary public transportation or roads to carry people to jobs and services. Nor is the government seriously contemplating further transportation investment in the near future.
In the end, the city is going to need to zone to increase density in some areas, particularly in desirable sections near both public transportation and the waterfront, and to downzone areas that truly cannot accommodate more people.
The city is proposing to do this in some neighborhoods. It hopes, for example, to convert large swaths of manufacturing areas to residential use. On part of the Brooklyn waterfront, this would allow for the building of apartment towers as high as 35 stories. In other neighborhoods, such as East Harlem and Park Slope, the city has rezoned to allow high-rise housing to go up on some avenues, while preserving lower density on side streets.
Although acknowledging that it is usually easier to change the zoning to decrease density than to increase it, Michael Schill, director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at the NYU School of Law, says he would like to see the city allow for increased density in some areas. “The city is doing all this good stuff in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, but why not comprehensively look at the entire city? Where is transportation strong? What neighborhoods have the infrastructure to add people?" he says.
Schill notes that when the city rebuilt certain neighborhoods over the last two decades, it deliberately focused on low-density housing. Now those neighborhoods could sustain higher density. "The city did such a good job that it created a market for those areas that can now be developed more intensively,” he says. “The Bronx has great transportation. It was built for a lot of people, then it emptied out, then the city rebuilt the Bronx but with fairly low density. We now need to recognize there is a market for density along with a scarcity of vacant land. We need to increase density when areas can support it."
Despite the attention paid to overdevelopment, Norman Marcus points out that overall, the outer boroughs may have suffered until recently from a "dearth of construction." The new development, particularly in the Bronx, he says, represents "a vote of confidence in the city, a sign that the problem all along hasn't been the zoning but the market's unwillingness to go into some of these areas."
But the political fallout for any mayoral administration proposing denser zoning could be immense. The solution is probably that time-honored device of all well-intentioned but uneasy elected officials: a commission to look at the proposal, with a report due at a date well into the future.
Julia Vitullo-Martin, former executive director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.


Comfortable, ergonomic grip. Sleek chrome design. Five customizable buttons. On-the-fly dpi switching. Easy-to-use software.
Wired. Shape won't appeal to everyone. Right-handed only.
Feature, Sept. 2, 2016, 2:11 a.m.


LAWRENCE, Charles Arthur (Chuck). 1 May 1926 - November 8, 2011. Born in Waihi, died in Whangarei Hospital, late of Moerewa at Taumatamakuku. Buried at Maitahi Cemetery near Dargaville 11 November 2011. Army no 654660, Air Force no 445076 and 2nd AF no 461314. Resting with Joyce (Toitoi) forever together. Tena Kourua.
What will you miss most about Charles Arthur (Chuck) LAWRENCE?


As soon as he hung up, the Managing Director of the Newspaper (Thisday), Eniola Bello, popularly known as Eni- B, called to reinforce the earlier message.
I quickly called my wife, Khadija, and told her to prepare my luggage. I was traveling to Sokoto. I guessed she wasnâ€™t less shocked than I.
But there was another snag, as it was already getting late. Kano to Sokoto is a journey of over 500 kilometers, and the road was notoriously bad. So I was pretty sure that it was going to be a rough, uneasy drive to my destination.
I, however, quickly came up with an idea: splitting the journey into two by taking myself to as close to Sokoto as possible. I actually didnâ€™t have to sleep in seat of the caliphate that very night since I could stop over in Gusau, the capital of Zamfara State and start afresh first thing in the morning.
Thatâ€™s what I did as I took my younger brother with me, Kabiru Gedu.
As soon as we set out, I called a friend who doubled as colleague based in Gusau.
He was Imam Imam, who just recently joined the company and was posted to Zamfara, as the state correspondent of the paper.
I actually knew Imam before he came to Thisday through a friend, Lamara Azare, who was the State Editor of the New Nigerian Newspapers where Imam was covering sports beat. He, therefore, used to come to Kano for assignments, and Sani Abacha Stadium was the usual rendezvous.
Indeed, Imam ensured our night was very comfortable in Gusau, providing everything we needed. We shall never forget the hospitality he extended to us.
The last time we met it was at an award-giving ceremony organised by the House of Representative Press Corp where Imam represented his principal, Governor Tambuwal of Sokoto State. I was also there to pick the award on behalf of my boss, Professor Umar Danbatta, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, who was adjudged by the reporters as the most responsive Chief Executive Officer, Public Sector, in the country.
We first sat on the same table with friends like Mohammed Isa, his former colleague and currently an aide of Senate President, Bukola Saraki, exchanging some pleasantries and banters as usual. I never knew that was our final farewell.
There may not be any silver lining in the death of a promising, dynamic young man like Imam. Yet we are consoled by the torrents of tributes greeting his death, since its announcement. It is an unmistakable testimony of the kind of life he lived. We can never forget that ever-smiling face and the milk of human kindness that epitomized the man, Imam. Imam was truly an Iman (leader), as the name connotes.
If there is anything Imam would be remembered mostly for, then it has to be his humility and professionalism in discharging his duties. In most cases, his simple, modest carriage hardly let anyone knows he actually represents Nigeriaâ€™s once No 4. Citizen, and the current Governor of Sokoto State. Today, Tambuwalâ€™s laundered image has to do with the silent work of Imam.
Throughout his work life, Imam remained professional. As a former journalist himself, he was a journalistâ€™s delight. On the social media where the commentaries usually get toxic, Imam was always cool and calm, responding professionally to trolls and stone throwers. Imam was always a reporter. Always striving for excellence. Always good to his friends.
May Allah forgive his sins and grant him the best of places in heaven. Rest in Peace.


Armando had been expected to break the previous record of 376,000 Euros paid for a pigeon called Nadine -- but not by such a wide margin.
Earlier this week it became clear that Armando would be the most expensive pigeon ever sold in an online auction, wrote the specialist website PigeonParadise (Pipa.be).
However, no one expected that the magical cap of a million Euros would be pulverized, it added. The final amount was 1,252,000 Euros.
Local pigeon fancying association president Fred Vancaillie told Belgian broadcaster RTBF that Armando was one of the best in the history of the sport and called him the Lewis Hamilton of pigeons.
Verschoot's stable of pigeons is based in Ingelmunster, in the west of Belgium, and his online auction of his pigeons has been open for several weeks. By Sunday, the family had sold 178 pigeons for around two million Euros.
Homing pigeons are raced by releasing them sometimes hundreds of kilometers from home, with the first back home winning. Racing them is a tradition in Belgium, Britain, northern France and the Netherlands, although it has been going into decline.
Tags: Belgium, bird, Entertainment, messi pigeon, pigeon, pigeon Armando, racing pigeon.


Donald Trump Says Heidi Klum 'Is No Longer a 10' -- See Her Amazing Response!
Although Donald Trump got into plenty of hot water for his comments about Megyn Kelly earlier this month, apparently, that hasn't stopped the 69-year-old Republican presidential hopeful from being as candid as ever about sensitive topics.
This time, the aim is 42-year-old supermodel Heidi Klum.
In an interview with The New York Times, Trump takes it upon himself to randomly rank the America's Got Talent judge's looks.
"Sometimes I do go a little bit far," he prefaces the diss. "Heidi Klum. Sadly, she's no longer a 10."
We, however, beg to differ. Check out Klum looking amazing just last Tuesday at a taping of her hit NBC show in New York City.
And of course, let's not forget her spectacular bikini bod she showed off this summer with her 29-year-old boyfriend, Vito Schnabel.
Klum responded on Monday via Twitter, with this hilarious video. "#TrumpHasSpoken #sadly #9.99 #NoLongerA10 #IHadAGoodRun #donaldtrump #HeidiTrumpsTrump #BeautyIsInTheEyeOfTheBeheld," she wrote.
Trump's plenty busy without another feud on his hands. The outspoken billionaire reported for jury duty on Monday morning at a Manhattan courthouse, showing up in a black limousine. Inside, another potential juror was able to snap this pic of him and post it on Snapchat.
Trump has, of course, been under fire for his comments on women before. During the Republican debate in Ohio, Kelly called him out for misogynistic remarks he's made in the past, which have included referring to women as "fat pigs" and "slobs." Trump quipped back, "Only Rosie O'Donnell."
But it was actually his words about Kelly that created even more controversy, and caused him to get the boot from the RedState Gathering, an annual conservative assembly he was slated to appear at in Atlanta. "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes," Trump said of the 44-year-old Fox News correspondent while speaking to CNN. "Blood coming out of her wherever."
Last Wednesday, Kelly announced she was going on an impromptu vacation for 10 days following the highly publicized exchange.
O'Donnell later defended Kelly in an interview with SiriusXM's Just Jenny.
"Bigger than any specific people, there is a war on women that is happening in this country," O'Donnell said. "Women fought for equality in this country, and right now, politically, it's being taken away from us."


Previous reports concerning a remaster of StarCraft and its release date turned out to be total bunk, so you may read this news of the game coming this year with heightened skepticism. It’s only March, however, so there is plenty of time for this to happen. The remaster should be near-identical to the original aside from higher-resolution graphics.
South Korean website Sports Seoul is reporting new rumors concerning a supposed remastered version of the original StarCraft that Blizzard would be preparing to launch this year. This new version would implement high resolution graphics and update the Battle.net service, with the objective of promoting the game in eSports circles. The information would come from sources in the industry, that got a heads up from Blizzard itself during the past BlizzCon game festival in November. The details of this remaster would have been revealed only to personalities involved with eSports, such as broadcasters, sponsors and important stakeholders.


Peace. Solitude. Beauty. It's all for sale within the city limits of Olympia.
OLYMPIA — If your dream is to live on your own private island, we know someone who can make it come true.
“Dollar Island is just shy of four acres and it's got tons of old growth,” said real estate agent Courtney Drannon.
The island can be part of a package deal. The family who owns Dollar Island is also willing to part with a 1947 cottage on the shore of Olympia's Lake St. Clair.
“The cabin itself is just 800 feet. They kept a lot of the pine that is in the home. It's one bedroom, one bath, but it's got this nice open living space and dining space."
Of course the main selling point is right outside: an island just 100 yards away.
In one minute, by kayak or motorboat, you can leave your crazy life behind and strand yourself on your own heavily wooded sanctuary.
“There's deer that swim across from the mainland,” said Drannon.
The current owners let Boy Scouts use Dollar Island for retreats, where they can gather around an outdoor fire pit and tell ghost stories.There is also a rustic cabin here.
“It is pretty rustic,” Drennon agreed. “It's about 462 square feet. You've got lake views, territorial views. You've got dock space to fish and a wood burning stove in here.
For years it has been the only structure on the island. But it doesn't have to be that way.
It's going to take somebody with an adventurous spirit, and maybe a desire -- since childhood -- to live the fairy tale life.
A Northwest sanctuary. An island -- almost untouched by man -- but just 25 miles from downtown Olympia.


A 41-year-old snowmobiler from Cross Lake First Nation was rescued after a single-vehicle crash on Wednesday.
The man was travelling near Paupanekis Point shortly after midnight on the Nelson River south of Cross Lake when he hit a pressure ridge and was ejected from the snowmobile.
Cross Lake RCMP used a newly-purchased rescue sled to transport the man to a waiting ambulance. He was later flown to Thompson Hospital with undermined injuries.
RCMP say the rescue sled was key to ensuring a safe and speedy rescue operation.


With Sarkozy & Juppe Voted Out, Araud & Allies to Cling On at UN?
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 -- The morning after Nicolas Sarkozy and thus his foreign minister Alain Juppe were voted out by French voters, despite or because of a plea for support from National Front militants, at the UN many asked: when will French Permanent Representative Araud and his allies be leaving?
But the answer, surprising to some in contrast to the "Arab Spring" and French statements about it, appeared to be that Araud will "not necessarily" leave.
The argument seems to be that Araud was not actually aligned with Sarkozy and Juppe, and / or that he has been doing a good job.
As previously noted, Araud has been the least transparent of all Permanent Five members of the Security Council's Permanent Representatives. During his Presidency of the Council in May 2011, Araud hit a new low with only three media stakeouts.
At one of the stakeouts, Araud refused to take any questions, by reading his statement in French then leaving while an aide read it out in English.
This refusal to communicate publicly has consequences. Several times, Alain Juppe has claimed that France was doing or would do something in the Security Council -- request humanitarian corridors, for example -- which Araud then did not do.
The same disparity occurred on other matters, including Iran, click here for that.
Nor would Araud explain the disparity, at least publicly. His "off the record" statements, which his aides jealously guard, put a lie to the claim that he is non partisan and should stay on.
A new French foreign minister is expected to be named by May 15; scrutinizing these things should be straightforward, and fast. Watch this site.


When stopped by the police, the GJM supporters turned violent and pelted stones.
Darjeeling: Gorkhaland supporters today pelted stones at the police in various parts of Darjeeling as they were stopped from enforcing their shutdown in many government offices in the hills, where their indefinite bandh entered its second day.
Police pickets and barricades were put up in front of the government and Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) offices and various entry and exit points of the hills while Rapid Action Force (RAF) and a sizable number of women police personnel were also deployed.
"The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha supporters pelted stones at police forces in various parts of Darjeeling as they were stopped by the forces from enforcing shutdown in government offices. After we chased them, they ran away," a senior police official said.
At around 10 am, a huge GJM procession chanting slogans against the state government and demanding separate Gorkhaland marched to various government offices in Chowkbazar area to stop people from reporting for work.
When stopped by the police, the GJM supporters turned violent and pelted stones. The police chased and dispersed the crowd, he said.
Senior police officers like Jawed Shamim, Siddinath Gupta, who are members of the three-member committee set up by the government in Darjeeling, were seen with huge police contingents in various parts of the hills.
Shops downed shutters where the stone-throwing occurred.
The GJM leadership has, however, accused the police of resorting to unprovoked lathi-charge on the GJM procession.
"The police resorted to unprovoked lathi charge on a peaceful rally. The more they use force against us, the more intense will be the struggle for a separate Gorkhaland state," GJM general secretary Roshan Giri told PTI.
The government offices yesterday recorded "normal" attendance although some stray incidents were reported during the GJM-sponsored indefinite bandh in government and GTA offices in Darjeeling hills which began on June 12.


Donna Kathryn Riggs Kopach, 79, of Evansville, Indiana and Lake Havasu City, Arizona, passed away Saturday, November 3, 2018, at Deaconess Gateway Hospital. She was born on May 19, 1939, in East Liverpool, Ohio, to the late Melvin Ireadous and Wilma Bernadine (McCullough) Riggs.
Donna attended Garfield and Wayne Town High Schools where she graduated. She then attended Indiana State University where she earned a BA in Physical Science, General Education, and Health and later earned her Master's. She taught school for about 50 years in Southern Indiana, Southern Illinois, Newberry, South Carolina, and Arizona. She also taught at Earl C. Clements Job Corps Center in Morganfield, Kentucky. Donna was a member of the Eastern Star, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and Grace Episcopal Church in Arizona, where she was in the Lake Havasu Community Choir and Director of Colomonde Chorus. She was a Girl Scout Camp Director, Girl Scout Leader and member of Southern Hollow dulcimer and folk group of Evansville, Indiana.
Donna is survived by her daughter, Anita Kathryn Louise Kopach (Harold Ray Darrow); grandson, Hunter Ray Darrow; and friend and caregiver, Fredericka Schmadel.
Funeral services will be held 1:30 p.m. Friday, November 9, 2018, at Alexander East Chapel, officiated by Rev. Holly Rankin Zaher. Friends may visit Friday from 1:00 p.m. until service time at the funeral home.
Memorial contributions may be made to ECHO in Evansville. Condolences may be made online at www.AlexanderEastChapel.com.
"Donna was a free spirited, unique person In our midst. We will miss her when we play dulcimer music, and her presence..."


The NFL is expected to consider allowing limited coaches’ challenges for judgment calls, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN. It would include a penalty or time run off if the coach is wrong to discourage abuse of the challenge.
The addendum is designed to get those against the use of coaches’ challenges for judgment calls on board, per Schefter.
This goes against what Competition Committee members John Elway and Stephen Jones have said publicly. Both expressed skepticism in allowing review of penalties.
But Sean Payton also is a member of the Competition Committee and is pushing for change. He said again Wednesday that he hopes the mistake in the NFC Championship Game leads to a rules fix.
Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman hit Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis before the ball arrived, with officials missing both the interference penalty and the hit on a defenseless receiver.
Officials did not penalize Robey-Coleman, but the league docked him $26,739 for an illegal hit.
The play and aftermath will take center stage this afternoon at Commissioner Roger Goodell’s state of the league address.
How about a replay official who buzzes down to the field on obvious and terrible calls.
I can’t wait for every big play in the 4th quarter to get wiped out from reviewed holding calls.
They should consider it, but the correct solution is a real time video ref watching the same live feed fans are watching. Calls are often missed, but the ones that become a big problem are the obvious ones missed that millions of fans watched happen on live TV. He needs to have direct, real-time communication with other refs and have ability to throw a flag in real time. This is not a review or challenge, and he’s not watching replays.
Stop it. All you are going to do is re-judge a judgment call under a completely different set of circumstances in slo-mo.
Next year a bad holding call will get blown, the team will take the “Who Dat” approach, sue the league and it will continue to expand.
Will it be allowed in the last two minutes of a half? If not, this wouldn’t have solved the NO issue.
If so, what happens when EVERY single hail mary is reviewed for PI, and the team gets an extra shot to score after the now-called PI?
It took you ‘slo-mo’ to see that?
Make the challenge flag useful for any kind of challenge.
Make the challenge apart of the coach’s 3 total, but max 2 on penalties. As there ‘is a foul on every play’, you will still have a judgment made by the official of ‘was it enough’? Because of this, you should have only been he blatant missed calls corrected and not every instance of excessive hand checking.
You aren’t going to see all that many challenges as if the call was made, there was likely some legitimacy to making it. This will end up correcting the big whiffs.
On a related note Sean Payton is wearing the Goodell clown shirt at his end of year presser.
One of the greatest things I have ever seen.
Again – I’m still asking where was all this outrage from WHO DAT nation after the 2 blown PI calls benefitted them against the Steelers in week 16?
So NON CALLS. Will now be able to be challenged???
Gee what could go wrong there??!!
No better place to start than right now in SBLIII.
The best idea I’ve heard is the one with the video official, as part of the whole crew, helping the guys on the field fix obvious mistakes. The video official communicating with the ref on the field is no different than when they all get together to discuss a call and either enforce the penalty or pick up the flag.
Yea on every deep touchdown pass throw a challenge. Heck, odds are one of the offensive lineman “held” somebody.
As a Saints fan, I don’t understand all of the hate! I’m not a fan of the commissioner, but he isn’t speaking bc his lawyers told him NOT to make a statement. I think McVay should have kept his mouth shut. By supporting the case that the officials missed multiple calls, including the face mask, supports the notion that Article 17, should be considered. The window has closed for these teams to replay the NFCC game. Article 17 is vague, when it comes to the referee’s missing so many calls, that led to an unfair outcome of the game. I think Payton has made his point and it’s time to move on.
Only use it in the 4th QTR so it doesn’t turn the game into a review-a-thon.
I like the idea of a dedicated video replay official to let the on-field refs know they messed up so calls can be quickly corrected.
The problem they would have to grapple with is non-calls. If holding is more or less committed on every single play, and refs typically let teams “play rough” on hail marys, how do you design a penalty (or non-penalty) system around that?
Why the paranoia that this will be abused or will slow down the game? Keep the # of coach’s challenges the same – challenging a call/non-call would be the same as challenging a turnover, incompletion, or anything else. Just expand what is challengable, not the # of challenges.
NO! Just NO! I hate that, as a fan, these replays take the joy out of the game. You can no longer have that incredible spontaneous feeling of a catch, a stop or a touchdown. I have been a season ticket holder since 1985 and now instead of the celebration engulfing the fans, it’s more like; hmm, we may have a touchdown here. Let’s see what the guys at HQ decide.
In the past, we argued bad calls but they moved on to the next play. Now we argue bad reviews. It’s ruining the game for me.
Pass interference and roughing the quarterback/kicker are the judgment calls where the replay can and should be available. If a guy is getting mugged or clearly faking there should be a call or reversal.
this, it’s pretty simple and I don’t understand why people are complicating it.
Keep the amount of challenges the same, but allow penalties to be challenged. Also, get rid of the booth review in the last 2 minutes, make it coaches challenge only.
if you want to challenge 3 penalties go for it.
As Mike Pereira said, allowing “judgment” calls to be reviewable opens up the WHOLE play. Everything is under “review” from offensive holding, a DB still making contact at the 6-yard line, a TE pushing off on his route 30 yards from the actual receiver, etc.
The official will also have to spend 5 minutes looking at all 22 players on that one play to make sure everything else was clean.
wait till after brady retires. We can’t risk taking away the phantom calls that benefit the NFL’s golden team.
Good grief. This is nothing short of passing the buck. No one is asking for more subjective beauracracy, just some accountability to attempt to get the calls right.
It’s not a bad idea – if handled correctly.
With only one shot at this, a coach would be wise to only use it in an extreme, game changing situation – kind of like what happened to the Saints.
We’re not asking for perfection – anyone with a brain knows that’s impossible. But the ability to correct something truly egregious, truly game changing when it happens – yeah, there should be a sensible way to do that.
Would have loved that during the “leg cramp” episode in the SB NE v NYG that gave them a rest when it mattered most. Losing on non-calls happens all the time.
They have it in the CFL and it really works. Yes it slows down the game a little but at least they get the right call 99.9% of the time. That’s what really counts.
They only have it on pass interference calls though not on holding calls that happen a lot during a game.
Slippery slope here….gotta be VERY careful. We can’t review everything nor do we want to.
How about hiring competant officials?


September 24, 2015 children, events.
Even though Charlotte has not yet seen an episode, “Sesame Street is already big in our house,” Clinton said in a phone interview Thursday.
Charlotte is part of the inspiration behind Clinton’s new book “It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going!” — a book to encourage kids and teens to become informed about the issues facing their communities and their world, as well as to get them active in creating solutions. Clinton will be at BookPeople Oct. 8 reading and signing from her book.
She says she had been thinking about “It’s Your World” before she became pregnant, but the pregnancy and motherhood added more attentiveness to the project. “I felt even more inspired and enthusiastic about trying to write (It’s Your World),” she says.
“I hope ‘It’s Your World’ impacts one kid the same way ’50 Simple Things’ impacted me,” she says.
Clinton continues to volunteer at a variety of organizations as she did throughout her childhood. Many of her volunteer work in high school and college were kept private. Only now as an adult does her service work sometimes get publicized, she says, specifically to encourage others to volunteer as well.
Growing up in Arkansas and Washington, D.C., she knew she was growing up “blessed” compared with the people around her. Her grandmother told her she needed to “expand her circle of blessings. It had a profound impact on me,” she says.
“It’s Your World” not only outlines the problems of poverty, diseases, access to education and gender equality kids in American and around the world face, it highlights organizations and kids that are making a difference. Some of the featured kids she knew about through the Clinton Foundation, on which she serves as vice chair; others she heard about through the organizations she highlighted and through other inspirational kids she found.
On the book tour, she’s now been able to meet face-to-face with some of the kids in the book. “It’s so fun,” she says.
Note: Tickets are required to join the signing line and available by purchasing a copy of “It’s Your World” from BookPeople. One ticket admits up to four family members. The line for signing will be a first-come, first-served line on the day of the event.


Finding that the police used ilegal wiretaps, a Supreme Court, justice has ordered a new trial for three men who got terms up to 25 years on charges of bribery and of oper ating a heroin processing “fac tory” in the Bronx.
The reversal culminates a three‐year legal battle by Her bert S. Siegal, defense attorney.
According to Mr. Siegal, the police lied in alleging that their case was built on information from an informer rather than from weeks of unauthorized wiretapping.
Harold Munger, 1311 Burke Avenue; Gerald Hartley; 2332 Tiebout Avenue, and Saint Julian Harrison, 1000 East 215th Street.
A United States Supreme Court ruling a few years ago knocked the main props from under the state's wiretapping law. Legal sources said yester day that the taps in the Bronx case were illegal primarily be cause no “probable cause of crime being committed” had been established prior to their use.
The so‐called heroin “factory” was in a three‐and‐a‐half room apartment at 2020 Arthur‐Ave nue in the Bronx. Narcotics agents who raided the premises in 1966 told of a “factory” oper ation with men and women at work “cutting,” or diluting, pure heroin and putting it in glassine enyelopes for sale on the street.
They reported that 26.4 pounds of pure heroin were seized, enough when “cut” to provide more than a half‐million injections.
“There was enough heroin there to supply all the addicts in the United States for a week.” In rounding up Munger, Hart ley and Harrison as the leaders of the ring, narcotics agents also reported receiving a $20, 221 bribe from Munger, and that money was exhibited along with the heroin at the original trial.
Mr. Siegal carried his fight about the wiretap to the Court of Appeals after being rebuffed at the first trial in Bronx Su preme Court and after the Ap pellate Division had affirmed the convictions.
After presenting an applica tion to Stanley H. Fuld, chief judge of the Court of Appeals, he was permitted to argue be fore the state's highest court. As a result, the Court of Ap peals ordered the case returned to Bronx Supreme Court for hearing that lasted eight weeks on Mr. Siegal's cha'rge that the police lied about how they got information on the defendants.
According to Mr. Siegal, the police committed perjury when they said in an affidavit that an informer had given them the information upon which they applied a search warrant that preceded the raid on the Arthur Avenue apartment.
At the trial, the District At torney based his case on reputed informant, and Mr. Siegal's effort to have the tapes produced was blocked.
During the wiretap hearings, about 50 tapes of telephone conversations were produced, and played back. Mr. Siegal argued that the prosecution had originally tried to conceal the existence of the tapes.
Justice Marks noted in his decision that the District Attor ney at the outset of the hear ings conceded the illegality of the wiretaps. The burden was then on the prosecution to show that the wiretap informa tion did not lead to any of the evidence used in the trial, he said.


By David Morris - posted Thursday, 19 April 2012 Sign Up for free e-mail updates!
Much has been written about the centre of the world's economic gravity shifting to our region, but no strong narrative about our place in the Asian Century has yet engaged Australians. A new debate about the republic will help, because any narrative for the Asian Century needs to be about us, our confidence in Australia, its national values, character and spirit. We can play to these strengths and take advantage of our unique position in the world. The Asian Century can be the century in which Australia comes of age.
There is an economic imperative for us to stop looking at the world through the lens of the past and to work out how to negotiate Australia's national interest in a different future. Our economy is more tied to China than it has been to any economy since its old imperial links to Britain early in the last century, and more integrated with other Asian economies than most in the region. But our Asian engagement has been narrowly based, primarily in the resources sector. It has not touched most people in the suburbs where we live. We haven't grasped that Asia is a big part of our future.
Digging things out of the ground and selling them overseas might make a buck while emerging economies are growing, but what happens when growth falters? To secure us from future boom bust shocks, we need much more diversified links (beyond mining) with the major economies of the region. That means people working in all kinds of industries need to be making plans to do business with Asia, if they are not already. We need our children to be learning much more about Asia and the languages of the region.
All of this becomes common sense if we share a narrative about Australian national interest and national challenges in this part of the world. But our media, culture and education are so dominated by UK and American influences that we risk seeing Asia through their eyes rather than our own national interest. For our traditional friends, Asia is either distant or even posed as a threat.
Australia is in a completely different position from either of our traditional friends. For us, Asia is the main game. It is our bread and butter. While our traditional friendships will and should endure, we need a national discussion about our own identity and interests, our hopes and aspirations as a unique nation on the edge of Asia, to develop our own story and to achieve our own safe and prosperous future in the region.
In the absence of any national consensus in Australia about our identity and our place in the world, our trading partners know that their relationships with us are shallow.
Australia will, of course, never dominate in the provision of high value goods and services to Asia in the way that we have been a major supplier of resources. We must, however, build our capacity to be a high value, niche provider across all sectors. We will be much better positioned to so with a strong Brand Australia.
Our national reputation and relationships will become much more important in selling high value goods and services than was ever the case in selling coal and iron ore, which virtually sell themselves.
Amongst the most serious challenges for our political leaders is to lead community discussion about the Australia's identity in the world in a way that brings us together as a nation and reinforces, rather than undermines, our relationships and reputation in Asia. Yet resolving our national identity and completing our democratic journey towards a republic has been off the agenda. It needs to be right back on the agenda, in this Asian century.
We need a strong and resilient Brand Australia that is confidently democratic, smart and engaged, rather than just happy and complacent and viewed in the region as a fair weather friend with a colonial ambivalence about modern Asia.
Indeed, a new consensus about Australia's identity would help position us where we should be, as a nation with a unique leadership role to play in regional affairs. We have had our moments of active leadership in regional and global issues, but these have been too narrowly focused on the passions and capabilities of individual foreign ministers or prime ministers. Australia should take its place as a major democracy and major player in the Asia Pacific region, but is held back by the lack of consensus about our readiness to present ourselves to the world as fully independent and comfortable about our place in the world of this century.
While Australia's ties to the region remain narrowly based on transactional resources trade and an incomplete national identity, we will be in for shocks, booms, busts and misunderstandings. An Australia that is confident about its national values, identity and character, projecting a coherent and compelling brand, will be better placed to build long term, strategic engagement with Asia.
David's MBA research at Henley Business School, University of Reading, was on "Brand Australia."
This is an edited version of a submission he made to the Henry Review of Australia in the Asian Century on 3 March 2012.


HONESDALE - The Cooperage Project has announced that they have a special model walking their runway during Main Wear Expo: A Fashion Show Fundraiser on Sunday April 7, Honesdale native Brian Balthazar.
Brian Balthazar is a television personality and executive producer frequently seen on the Today show with Kathie Lee and Hoda, The Wendy Williams Show, Page Six TV and The Talk.
He can be seen hosting the upcoming digital series Christina On The Coast: Unfiltered for HGTV and is a regular contributor on the French news program Inside50. As an executive producer and development consultant, he leads the creative direction of shows including Flip or Flop, Love It Or List It, the upcoming docu-series Christina On The Coast and more.
Previously, he launched the premiere season of Today with Kathie Lee And Hoda and served as co-executive producer of The View.
Cooperage models will be walking the runway to singing siren Veronica Daub. This show is curated by Alessandra Iavarone of the Velvet Maple Lifestyle Shoppe. This year will feature fancy eats out of The Cooperage kitchen and the Moka Origins chocolate fountain. Signature cocktails by Lang Beverage Company and wine will be available for purchase. Please do not BYOB. There is also a silent jewelry auction.
The third annual Main Wear Expo at The Cooperage starts at 2:30 p.m. The Cooperage is located at 1030 Main St., Honesdale. Doors open at 2 p.m.


Summer Day" (oil on canvas, 361⁄8 x 321⁄8 in.), painted in 1911 by Frank Weston Benson (1862 - 1951), exemplifies a late flowering of American Impressionism. It is also a highly personal expression of a time, place and quality of life that only existed for a passing moment and for a privileged few. The painting portrays a lingering vestige of belle époque luxury, casual elegance, and repose as experienced by a newly prosperous upper middle class that included the artist. The first decades of the 20th century were a time shaped by the rising aspirations of a nation that had achieved mercantile and industrial preeminence; a robust optimism that would be challenged by the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914; and subsequent carnage that deeply affected an entire generation, including artists. In Benson's painting, however, it is still high summer in Maine and America.
"Summer people," as they are still called by natives and year-round residents of Maine, began populating the midcoast region of the state in the last decades of the 19th century, building enormous "cottages" to house extended families, relatives, visitors and, of course, servants. In 1901 the Salem, Massachusetts-based Benson began renting and in 1906 purchased Wooster Farm, a house and property on North Haven Island in Maine's Penobscot Bay, set high on a meadow with vistas to the sea. Unable not to paint, even on holiday, Benson captured summer scenes that evoke a private world full of quiet, simple pleasures whether reading, picnicking, hiking, or, as in "Summer Day," watching casual, often impromptu boat races among rival summer residents and neighboring boat clubs.
"Summer Day" is a sunny outdoor scene depicting Benson's two youngest daughters - Elisabeth, age 18, and Sylvia, age 13 - casting their eyes toward the high horizon line where the boundary between sea and sky nearly dissolves. An earlier version of the composition included a third female figure - Benson's eldest daughter, Eleanor - holding an umbrella to block the sun, and an additional wooden railing behind the group. Apparently the artist reworked the painting to simplify and open the composition, thereby allowing him to focus more intently on the visual effects of Maine's flickering light radiating off the sea, sky and figures. More speculatively, Eleanor had just returned home that summer, a new graduate of Smith College, where, to her father's dismay, she was introduced to and espoused "parlor pink" liberal views. Her removal from the painting was, conceivably, Benson's method of segregating his rebellious daughter from her younger and, in his view, as yet, untainted sisters. Politics and family tension notwithstanding, removing the third figure also concentrates attention on the youthful innocence of Benson's daughters absorbed in a moment of wordless communion as they watch the passing sailboats, a nearly perfect consonance of meaning and medium.
The soft, billowing sails on and just below the horizon reinforce a sense of gentle movement, as do the girls' cascading gowns, loosely arranged hair, and decorative ribbons, all of which are enveloped by soft ocean breezes. The painting can be seen as Benson's affectionate comparison of his young daughters' radiance and beauty to that of nature itself; an assertion of the essential equivalence between feminine grace and nature's beneficence. Benson's soft, broken brushwork appears lightly but quickly stroked, and his high-keyed palette of whites and white-inflected blues glinting off the summer sea is a ravishing display of impressionist technique perfectly tuned to his ephemeral, sun-shot subject. "Summer Day" is more than a record of a passing moment; it is a memory lingering in the modern imagination of a younger, more innocent, and altogether idyllic time and place. Then and now, Benson's masterpiece elicits that oft-heard, low, soft exhalation of late summer: "Oh, Maine."


A handful of California families will find it hard to celebrate the holidays this year because they lost their fathers and brothers to senseless violence.
On Oct. 19, Modoc County Sheriff’s Deputy Jack Hopkins responded to a disturbance call and was shot and killed in the line of duty. He was only 31. On Oct. 6, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Steve Owen was shot dead responding to a burglary. The two deaths are a somber reminder that for our peace officers, their lives are on the line every time they are on patrol.
Each of these losses, hundreds of miles apart in our vast state, was a tragedy. But the same month, something far more sinister played out here, showing that America and our law enforcement have entered a new, more dangerous and shameful era that threatens the foundation of the society we enjoy.
Two Palm Springs police officers, Lesley Zerebny, 27, and Jose “Gil” Vega, 63, were murdered in a planned attack committed by John Hernandez Felix. These deaths did not occur during the commission of another crime; they were the crime. Felix set a trap for the officers and ambushed them, shooting them in cold blood. It was not a one-off event.
In late November, a San Antonio policeman was ambush murdered as well. And, devastatingly, this summer’s hateful and violent anti-police protests culminated in the sickening assassination of five innocent officers in Dallas. I only wish that the list was complete, but it’s not.
Driven by the media’s hysterical coverage of any shooting death that fits their political narrative of minority oppression at the hands of police, we’re trending into an upside down world where the protectors are viewed as predators. That’s wrong. It’s the open, politically inspired murder of police that is the real “hate crime” epidemic.
In this overheated environment, it’s little surprise that year-over-year law enforcement firearm-related deaths are up 67 percent in 2016.
This growing hostility toward the police is terrible for the men and women who serve to keep us safe, and it’s changing the way they police, with distressing effect.
The “Ferguson effect” describes a retreat from effective, proactive policing that has been one driver of a multi-decade crime decline that is in danger of reversing. It’s a term rooted in the Ferguson police shooting of strong-arm robber Michael Brown, where the infamous and false “hands up, don’t shoot” became the big lie slogan of rioters, activists and a complicit, left-wing media and political cabal.
Police around the country, fearful of becoming a media story, or tired of the jeering, snarling mobs that now surround and confront them in the course of their duties, have predictably begun interacting more cautiously and less frequently with the public, to dire effect.
In Chicago, for example, police stops were down 90 percent in the first part of 2016, compared to 2015. Shootings in that city have skyrocketed. Heather MacDonald, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, blames the crime spike in Chicago (and other cities — it’s not a Chicago-specific phenomenon) on the abandonment of “broken windows” policing that sees police actively intervening in small, low-level public enforcement crimes. This retreat leads to disorder and emboldens criminals to commit more serious crimes. It’s a troubling shift in nationwide policing.
To make it worse, California is undertaking an unprecedented de-incarceration effort that is putting tens of thousands of criminals back out on the streets before their sentences are complete and making it more difficult to put offenders behind bars.
It seems simple to understand that if you introduce more criminals into society, the result will be more crime. True to form, California violent crime jumped 11 percent in the first six months of 2015, compared to 2014. Expect crime to spike even higher.
This is the worst possible time for the police to step back because they fear attacks, shaming or other fallout from simply doing their jobs to preserve law and order and keep us safe. Are there abuses of police power and individual officers who use bad judgment? Of course. And it’s incumbent on us to hold those bad actors accountable. But it’s foolish to attribute sins of the individuals to the whole profession.
Sen. Ted Gaines represents the 1st Senate District of California, which includes all or parts of Alpine, El Dorado, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, Shasta, Sierra and Siskiyou counties. Visit http://district1.cssrc.us to learn more.


Jock Lawrie reviews the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, Parliament’s latest initiative to finally address the longstanding claims of the early suffragists — 125 years after women won the right to vote.
As we get ready for the thrills and (hopefully minor) spills of the upcoming festive season, it’s natural to look back and take stock of the preceding year. As we do so it’s heartening to think that, in at least one area, there is a growing mood for change to remedy a longstanding social injustice.
During the 2018 commemorations to mark the 125th anniversary of women winning the right to vote, some observers noted that the early suffragists’ call for ‘‘‘equal pay’’ had yet to be answered.
While legislation had long since prohibited express and lower female rates of pay in employment agreements, the concept of ‘‘pay equity’’ — equal pay for work of equal value — had been largely ignored by Parliament for over 40 years. Campaigners continued to highlight a persistent wage differential of 10%-12% between male and female rates of pay.
Yet following the crusading legal action of Kristine Bartlett in the aged care sector, a bi-partisan mood for change finally began to coalesce within Parliament.
The former National-led government set up a working group, including trade union and business representatives, tasked with developing principles that might underpin legislation to target historic and systemic undervaluation of pay in female-dominated industries.
Fast-forward to today and the Labour-led Government’s Equal Pay Amendment Bill utilises earlier National Party proposals by establishing a new pay equity bargaining process between claimants and their employer. The Bill does allow for the possibility of rates of remuneration being fixed by either the Employment Relations Authority or the Employment Court, but only in exceptional cases where a pay equity claim is established and the parties have exhausted all options for resolving the claim.
It appears that both the previous and current government effectively recognise that, following Kristine Bartlett’s swingeing victory before the Court of Appeal, establishing a pay equity bargaining process governed by good faith is preferable to pay equity claims being addressed through litigation.
As it stands, the current Bill represents an advance on National’s earlier proposals in regards to two key aspects. In establishing a simple and accessible process for progressing a pay equity claim, the Bill also removes any prospect of the floodgates opening on a tidal wave of claims by ensuring claimants first establish an arguable case. Only work that is predominantly performed by female employees and historically or currently undervalued can be subject to a claim.
Secondly, the Bill establishes a robust framework for identifying an appropriate male comparator so as to determine what an appropriate rate of remuneration might be for the undervalued work. The Bill reflects the earlier Court of Appeal ruling that, in order to define equal pay for work of equal value, it is essential to utilise a broad range of potential comparators. To do otherwise, by selecting comparators from the same or similar workplaces, would simply enable the perpetuation of low pay for female-dominated work.
The select committee charged with reviewing submissions on the Bill is due to report back to Parliament in the New Year. Inevitably, political parties will have their differences as to the final form the Bill should take. But overall the signs are Parliament is no longer prepared to tolerate ongoing discrimination in rates of remuneration based on gender. And surely, when we tally up the good things that 2018 has brought us, that’s something to celebrate?
- Jock Lawrie is a New Zealand Nurses Organisation employment lawyer.