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OPEC agreed to renew its oil production cap of 30 million barrels a day for the first half of 2014, as oil prices remain well above the cartel’s threshold.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has 12 members, alters its output based on oil prices. With Brent crude at $112 a barrel, prices currently sit higher than OPEC’s preferred level of $100 a barrel.
Libya is already producing below its capacity due to civil unrest, while Iran’s production is limited as a result of sanctions. Both scenarios have helped lift oil prices.
Also on Wednesday, OPEC extended Abdalla el-Badri’s term as secretary general for another year.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, was trading 57 cents lower at $112.05 early Wednesday morning. Nymex WTI crude rose 95 cents, or 1%, to $96.99.


Many veterans struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, after returning home from war. Symptoms of this invisible wound may manifest as panic attacks, flashbacks of horrible memories or nightmares.
People with PTSD may also have problems concentrating and sleeping. They may suddenly get angry or develop unhealthy habits such as smoking, drinking and doing drugs.
Some of them are dancing their symptoms away.
More than two dozen veterans gather once a week in Louisville, Kentucky, for a dance session. They’re clapping, moving to the music and taking a break from the overwhelming symptoms of PTSD.
These dance-as-therapy sessions are organized by Deborah Denenfeld.
According to the U.S. Veterans Administration, between 10 and 20 percent of war veterans are living with PTSD. Roosevelt Smith, who served in the Gulf War, is one of them and says dancing helps.
Denenfeld developed the “Dancing Well” program for veterans with PTSD in 2013. The group sessions are kept small, usually less than 30 people. Each session runs for 10 weeks. The lights are kept low and the music is cheery without heavy beats.
War veteran Darlene Messler says following the music helps her focus on herself and live in the moment.
Denenfeld’s next step is to train volunteer leaders so more classes can be offered to help veterans fight PTSD.


Pioneering craft beer brand Little Creatures has spread its cherubic wings to land in Hobsonville Point’s sun-drenched Catalina Bay, where it is opening its first New Zealand brewery. To celebrate the opening, the brewery will host a free-to-the-public launch extravaganza today, Waitangi Day, February 6th, 2019.
A festival of curiosities, the opening will offer fun for the whole family including wizardly face painting and spray tattooists, kids’ games, drag performances, a bouncy castle, mind-bending contortionists and mystical fortune tellers, as well as looping sensation Josh Leys, the phenomenal DJ Alisha and Kiwi legends Sola Rosa Sound System as headliners. Many more surprise performances, prizes, and entertainment will be on offer throughout the day.


I can't believe the Wild's catching the Vancouver Canucks without Pavol Demitra.
You can hear more great jokes like this tonight from 6-7 p.m. on KSTP (am1500.com) when the award-winning (in my own mind) "Russo Radio" comes to you live from inside Matt Thomas' luxurious studio.
Good afternoon everyone from the Twin Cities, where I just returned from practice. Amazing what a couple wins and a few days off will do for a team. The batteries are recharged and for the first time since really training camp, smiles and laughs and downright fun ensued during another loose, yet hard-working Wild practice.
The Canucks come to town Thursday, and they're demolished with injuries. Yet, other than one minor -- OK, major -- hiccup to Anaheim -- the Canucks have won three of four as Andrew Raycroft has provided solid goaltending, Ryan Kesler's provided his usual strong, and gritty, play all over the ice and Mikael Samuelsson's been scoring.
Kesler leads all U.S.-born players in NHL scoring (16 in 16), and it's funny. The Canucks media's putting pressure on GM Mike Gillis to sign the guy to an extension already. Remember just a few years ago how "overpaid" Kesler was after the Canucks matched an offer sheet given to him by Philadelphia.
Kesler's game has developed bigtime in recent years, and he's now the Canucks' "unofficial" captain it would seem. And of course, he is still a pain if the #%&%. As was the norm when he used to play against the Wild during the Gaborik era, Kesler went after Gaborik last night and almost started a riot. Kesler got mauled by about 10 Rangers, and somehow the Rangers wound up with a power play out of it.
Speaking of the above-mentioned Samuelsson, I mentioned on Twitter late last night, but I continue to be surprised by his play. I covered Samuelsson in Florida, and he was nowhere near this type of player (although he didn't get a lot of ice time down there after being traded to Florida with the No. 3 pick for the No. 1 overall pick that turned out to be Marc-Andre Fleury).
I really believed playing for the Red Wings the last bunch of years was solely the reason why Samuelsson racked up points, but he's clearly turned himself into a player.
Roberto Luongo's still out for the Canucks with a broken rib. Demitra's out til January with a second shoulder surgery. Daniel Sedin's out with a broken foot. Henrik Sedin may be out with an ankle injury. He had a negative x-ray yesterday but was to get another today. Thunder Bay's Ryan Johnson, one of my all-time favorite players that I've covered, is skating again after being taken off the ice recently on a stretcher. There are three other Vancouver injuries, and reportedly, Shane O'Brien has a disciplinary hearing with the discipline czar for his undisciplined attempted stabbing of the always-undisciplined Sean Avery last night.
So, not too many regulars in for Vancouver. Enforcer/real estate guru Darcy Hordichuk is in though. I think I once wrote a column about a conversation Hordy and I was having in the press box one night when he was a scratch for Nashville. It was a pretty cool story, so google it if you want.
Andrew Brunette returned to Minnesota's practice today as he received maintenance on what I'll call a "left-body" injury. As I mentioned during training camp, the entire left side of Brunette's body is achy as he continues to compensate for his right reconstructive knee surgery. He said the break for him personally couldn't come at a better time.
Kim Johnsson, who has missed the last five games with a shoulder injury, skated today, but he's still a ways away, said coach Todd Richards.
Lots of special teams work in today's practice. Derek Boogaard played the PK, as did Benoit Pouliot!!! But I don't see that happening tomorrow. Richards mixed up his d-pairs today, but we'll know more tomorrow what he plans to go with.
What else, what else? I'll be writing a story on Boogaard for Thursday's paper. He hasn't scored since the 2005-06 season -- my first year as the Wild beat writer. How long ago was that?
I was so new to Minnesota, I called Wild PR guy Aaron Sickman one December day to ask if by chance practice would be cancelled because it was snowing out.
"Mike," Sickman said, "Just get to practice."
Yes. Boogaard hasn't scored in a long, long time.
It'll be an interesting couple of weeks for the Wild. I think we'll learn a lot about this team now. In my opinion, there's a lot of winnable games on the horizon. Do the Wild take advantage? We will see.
If they do, the Wild players may all look like Rollie Fingers by the end of the season. I'll explain what I mean in my game notebook Friday.
The Olympics are in 100 days, and team Strib will be there in force -- Olympics writer Rachel Blount, columnist Jim Souhan and your truly. Check out the IIHF web site for all sorts of hockey info, but to get you started, here's the link for when the rosters will be announce.


I had a pretty good idea of where “Django Unchained” was going from the first credit. It went to the Weinstein Company. The Weinstein Company once fought a legal battle (settled out of court) over the right to distribute “Precious,” which is, in my opinion, the worst film ever made about black life. The company’s name in the credits for “Django” also meant that the movie was aimed at a mainstream audience.
Though German, the bounty hunter character played by German-Austrian actor Christoph Waltz seemed to speak with a British accent, which is all the rage in the media, though I need subtitles to understand what Piers Morgan is saying half the time. The German dentist dazzles the screen with his eloquent talk and vocabulary and puts together constructions like “shan’t.” I would loved to have been present at the marketing meetings about this movie. The cynicism must have been as thick as cigar smoke. Jamie Foxx has been promoted as the star of “Django Unchained,” and has assumed the role as movie defender–the same role played by Viola Davis in the promotion of the equally offensive “The Help.” Foxx serves as a buffer between the producers and the wrath of blacks like those who attended a recent showing where the film’s writer and director Quentin Tarantino reportedly faced hostile questions from a black audience.


September 11 two years on - has our region woken up to terrorism at home?
When will we see some realistic moves to resolve the problems in Iraq?
How can the current decline in the status of the Union be reversed?
Does Japan's national consciousness make it a regional ally or dangerous?


They Amarnath Yatra will begin on June 28 and conclude on August 26.
Amarnath Yatra registration is done on first-come-first-serve basis.
The first batch of Amarnath Yatra pilgrims was flagged of from the Bhagwati Nagar camp in Jammu at 04:45 am on June 27 and they will start their journey to the cave shrine from Baltal and Pahalgam routes on June 28. Officials said a total of 1,904 pilgrims including 330 women and 30 children were part of this batch of Amarnath Yatra pilgrims. The Central Reserve Police Force also launched bike-borne quick reaction teams on Tuesday that will not only respond to any attack or sabotage incident on the yatra route but also double up as an ambulance to rescue unwell pilgrims, security personnel or locals.
They Amarnath Yatra will begin on June 28 and conclude on August 26, coinciding with Raksha Bandhan.
Vehicles tagged with electromagnetic chips, bike and bullet-proof SUV police convoys and scores of bullet-proof bunkers have been deployed as part of the "biggest-ever" security blanket thrown to secure pilgrims undertaking the Amarnath Yatra.
Over 40,000 armed CRPF and state police personnel have virtually dotted the yatra routes from Jammu via Pahalgam and Baltal-- with their overwhelming presence in armoured vehicles.
The advance online booking for Amarnath Yatra helicopter tickets began on April 27, 2018. Pilgrims could book the tickets through the websites of the heli-operators with which the arrangements had been finalised - UTAir India Private Limited and Global Vectra Helicorp Limited for the Neelgrath-Panjtarni-Neelgrath sector and Himalayan Heli Services Private Limited for the Pahalgam-Panjtarni-Pahalgam sector. The helicopter service can be availed at Rs 1,600 for one way for Neelgrath-Panjtarni and Rs 2,751 for Pahalgam-Panjtarni route.
The devotees start their Amarnath yatra from Srinagar or Pahalgam on-foot and take one of the two possible routes. The shorter but steeper trek via Baltal, Domial, Barari and Sangam is 14 km long and allows people to take a round trip in 1-2 days. This Amarnath Yatra route is considered more favourable for returning. It is steep hence, difficult to climb.
The longer Amarnath yatra route via Pahalgam is generally preferred by most of the devotees. The length of the trek varies from 36 to 48 km. The trek usually takes 3-5 days one way. The Amarnath route is much wider than the Baltal trek and slopes gradually.
Registration and issue of yatra permit is done on first-come-first-serve basis. Travellers can get themselves registered at 440 designated bank branches of the Punjab National Bank, Jammu and Kashmir Bank and YES Bank in 32 states and Union Terriories across the country.
Over two lakh pilgrims have registered for the annual pilgrimage to the 3,880 metre high cave shrine of Amarnath in south Kashmir Himalayas till now. Last year, over 2.6 lakh people registered for the annual pilgrimage.


While Brussels is proud of one urinating boy, Manneken Pis, Bratislava has four.
The fountain marking the first coronation in the city will get back its Renaissance look.
The Maximilian Fountain on the Main Square of the Slovak capital, also known as Roland Fountain, will have its Renaissance look again. Not only will it be rid of the inappropriate modern stone ring, but the fountain’s urinating boys will return.
Work on the fountain will be carried out in two phases, with the expected end date in the spring of this year. The price will be about €180,000, stated Iveta Kešeľáková from the press department of the Bratislava City Council.
The restoration work will be carried out by sculptor Vladimír Višváder. During the restoration, all water pipes will be replaced and the water tank will be fitted with colourful illumination to be used on festive occasions. The city promises that all work will be under the supervision of the Regional Monument Office in Bratislava.
Maximilian Fountain is the oldest fountain in the city. It was sculpted from sandstone by stonemason Ondrej Luttringer from the Austrian village of Deutsch Altenburg in 1572.
“It was a bit of a delayed gift by Maximilian II, because during his coronation - the first that took place in then Pressburg - a fire broke out in which a large majority of the city’s houses was burned,” said Štassel.
The monarch gave the city a fountain that reminded the city of this exceptional event but at the same time fulfilled a practical function. Housekeepers took water for their households from the tank, and it also served as a reservoir of extinguishing water during fires.


The remote Galápagos Islands host many species found nowhere else on Earth, making it one of the world’s best tourist spots for wildlife viewing. Yet land tourism seems to be hurting the Galápagos. Unlike cruises, land tourism is lightly regulated and oftentimes tourists will break the rules by touching the islands’ famous wildlife, such as the giant tortoises or iguanas. Additionally, scientists believe that if a tourist walks among Galápagos penguins and their young, the animals might experience a sort of stress which may prevent them from parenting adequately.
Like many tourist attractions, the Leaning Tower of Pisa attracts many visitors all year round. But large crowds aren’t the most annoying part about the well-known landmark — it’s what everyone in the crowd is doing. Not only is everyone hovering in the same radius, but they’re all trying to get the iconic “leaning tower photo” by twisting their bodies and extending out their arms. Other than spending 30 minutes trying to get a good photo, there’s nothing else to do here.


SHEBOYGAN - The Jets made all four of their 3-pointers in the first half, including three by Lily Nelson, as they built a 15-point halftime lead over the Eagles.
Bryannan Wallander scored eight points in each half and finished with 16 to lead Roncalli. Nelson finished with 13 points.
Megan Moeller led Sheboygan Christian with 12 points.
Roncalli: Lusk 6, Pritzl 4, Nelson 13, Stelzer 10, Moczynski 3, Cvetezar 2, Pajula 4, Wallander 16, Freis 2. 3-pt: Nelson 3, Wallander. FT: 4-7. F: 25.
Sheboygan Christian: Zylstra 7, Moeller 12, VanEss 4, Steenwyk 9. 3-pt: Steenwyk 2: FT: 6-20. F: 11.
JACKSON - Emma Dufour scored 19 points and Keri Walker had 15 to lead the Timberwolves over the Crusaders.
Dufour scored 12 points and Walker had eight in the first half, when the Timberwolves built a 26-17 lead at the break.
Katelyn Witte scored 14 points and Emma Egbert had 10 for Sheboygan Lutheran.
Sheboygan Lutheran: Pingel 6, Matz 6, Witte 14, Dirkse 2, Egbert 10, Schreurs 2. 3-pt: Witte 2, Egbert 2, Matz, Pingel: FT: 10-15. F: 14.
Living Word: Plopper 4, Wink 6, Walker 15, Juergensen 3, Dufour 19. 3-pt: DuFour 3, Walker 3, Wink 2 . FT: 11-16. F: 13.
TWO RIVERS - Kiley Graff scored 19 points to lead the Purple Raiders to the win over the Foxes.
Omro was led by Danycka Milis with 15 points.
Omro: Eichmann 2, Hanson 2, Milis 15, Lewis 4, Yonke 6, Allison 6, Davis 3. 3-pt: Allison 2. FT: 8-15. F: 22.
Two Rivers: Greenwood 5, Zimney 6, Cooley 4, Henrickson 3, McLinn 2, Ki. Graff 19, Ke. Graff 9. FT: 16-30. F: 19.


LONDON — Hackers obtained the credit card details of some 380,000 British Airways travelers during a two-week data breach this summer that leaves the customers vulnerable to financial fraud, the airline says.
It advises people to contact their bank or credit card company if they used the airline’s website and mobile app to make or change a booking between 10:58 p.m. London time on Aug. 21 and 9:45 p.m. London time on Sept. 5.
Some angry travelers complained to Britain’s Press Association that they had already noted bogus activity on credit cards that had been used to make British Airways bookings during the time when the breach was undetected.
Britain’s National Crime Agency says it is investigating.
Shares in BA’s parent company, IAG, were down 3 percent on Friday.


Is everything okay with Tesla and Elon Musk?
A BIZARRE outburst from Elon Musk this week has Wall Street anxious and investors worrying about the famous CEO.
IN 2001, during a conference call with investors to discuss first-quarter earnings Enron CEO Jeff Skilling got a little testy, calling one listener an a**hole.
He was responding to Richard Grubman a managing director at a hedge fund who was known for shorting companies, betting on their share price falling. Mr Grubman was asking for a balance sheet for the first quarter of 2001 and not just the income statements provided.
As it turned out, the hedge fund manager was right to pry. Later that year Enron collapsed in scandal in one of the biggest cases of corporate accounting fraud in history.
This week the bizarre behaviour of arguably the world’s most visible CEO, Elon Musk, drew comparisons to that now infamous call. During his own conference call with investors and the media, he avoided rudimentary questions because they were “boring” and “not cool”.
“Excuse me. Next. Boring, bonehead questions are not cool. Next?,” he said, interrupted one analyst.
On Tesla's earnings call just now, Elon Musk got so tired of investors' "boring" questions about the company's finances that he cut them off and started taking questions from a YouTuber instead.
Just after the electric car and solar panel company announced a record first- quarter loss, the Tesla CEO cut off two analysts who sought some basic answers: details about the company’s cash needs and orders for its all-important Model 3 mass-market electric car.
“These questions are so dry. They’re killing me,” Musk said as he dismissed an RBC Capital Markets analyst in favour of a blogger who served up queries more to his liking.
You can listen to the bizarre outburst below.
It didn’t long before people started making the comparison to the fateful Enron call.
elon rudely dismissing analysts politely asking simple questions feels like an enron conference call.
Investors have for years endured millions of dollars in short-term losses in hopes of a long-term pay-off. They might have even been able to stomach the $A10 million that Tesla burns through each day. But it was a conference call Thursday that left many wondering how much more they can take.
Shares fell quickly in after-hours trading, and analysts began writing that Musk shouldn’t bite the hands that feed his company’s enormous cash needs because soon he may need more. By Friday, Tesla stock had lost nearly six per cent of its value.
Marketing and selling flamethrowers is one thing, but the behaviour of the eccentric billionaire is causing anxiety for investors on Wall Street.
The heat is on for Tesla, but it remains to be seen if the CEO can handle it.
When asked by the Associated Press, a Tesla spokesman wouldn’t comment on Musk.


RFTA hauled a record number of passengers exceeding 5.5 million this year. The regional bus agency is considering seeking a property tax hike in November to help fund its operations and expansion.
RFTA isn’t certain yet if it will seek a property tax from voters in November to support the local bus system, but if it does it’s got a catchphrase to help sell the idea.
Consultants told the RFTA board of directors at its monthly meeting Thursday that something catchier must replace the Integrated Transportation System Plan — the name of the blueprint for keeping the bus system healthy and growing over the next 25 or so years.
The tag line plays off the idea that getting people out of their personal vehicles and into mass transit is vital for mobility in the narrow valley served by one primary artery.
RFTA board members agreed it would be tough to excite voters about something called the Integrated Transportation System Plan. They had a few suggestions about the tag line but generally expressed support.
“It’s clever,” Basalt Mayor and RFTA board member Jacque Whitsitt said.
RFTA depends on a sales tax collected in member towns from Aspen to New Castle as well as Pitkin County and the Roaring Fork portion of Eagle County. In addition it collects fares and has traditionally reaped state and federal grants. The grants are largely drying up, so RFTA commissioned a study to determine how much money will be needed to cover everything from replacing aging buses to expanding service to meet growing needs.
Work headed by Parsons Transportation Group identified tens of millions of dollars of capital projects the bus agency needs to pursue over the next 30 years.
A property tax of between 3 and 5 mills is being contemplated to pay for future service and capital improvements. A property tax hike of 5 mill would raise an estimated $17.5 million annually while 3 mill would raise $10.5 million annually.
“At 5 mill, there’s enough to fund the whole enchilada, essentially,” said Ralph Trapani, an executive with Parsons Corp. and a former CDOT engineer who oversaw construction of Interstate 70 through Glenwood Springs and widening of Highway 82 in the Roaring Fork Valley.
A property tax increase of 3 mills probably wouldn’t cover all of RFTA’s needs, Trapani said. That assumes the agency must provide funding for about 68 percent of all its capital improvements over the next 30 years.
RFTA conducted a survey of likely voters in the region earlier this winter and found that while there is solid support for the agency, approval of a ballot question isn’t a slam-dunk.
A series of public outreach meetings and consultations with elected officials are planned in April to provide information and gauge reactions to the tax concept. RFTA’s board of directors will digest the information at a retreat in May and likely determine in June if a ballot question should be pursued in November. If so, ballot language would have to be set by late August.


The boy should be sitting in an elementary school classroom learning beginning algebra and studying how Congress works. Instead, police say, the East Baltimore youth, age 10, sells crack cocaine.
The youngster is one of seven teens and pre-teens indicted recently by a grand jury on drug distribution charges and targeted yesterday during a police sweep of three neighborhoods north of Patterson Park and east of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
On one level, the operation was similar to dozens of other drug raids conducted by city police over the past 18 months, which have put hundreds of violent dealers behind bars. Yesterday, police charged 58 people in connection with a drug network linked to nearly 60 shootings and three homicides this year.
But it also reflects -- once again -- the troubling increase of child criminals.
Besides the 10-year-old, police obtained warrants for the arrests of a 12-year-old and two 15-year-olds.
And on Thursday, police jailed two Prince George's County girls, 12 and 14, for using a toy gun to hijack cars from elderly women.
"Undercover officers [in Baltimore] were shocked," said Officer Ed Bochniak, assigned to the Violent Crimes Task Force, which conducted the probe with the Southeastern District drug unit. "And in these current times, it is kind of hard to shock an undercover cop."
Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, who accompanied police on the raid, said she was troubled by the age of some of the suspects. "Some of these kids, it's all they know," she said. "It's very unfortunate. They are adults before their time."
Last night, officers were still looking for the 10-year-old -- a 5th-grade student who is less than 5 feet tall and weighs 75 pounds. Police say he sold $10 bags of cocaine near East Fayette and Rose streets.
The 12-year-old was taken into custody for selling drugs. Police said the seventh-grader worked near East Monument and Rose streets. Both youths, police said, sold cocaine with a trademark strawberry stamped on the packaging.
Officer Bochniak has traced patterns of drugs and shootings for years on the city's east side. He said that typically, young children involved in the drug trade act as lookouts to warn of police. Sometimes they conceal contraband for dealers -- who are generally older and face stiff, adult sentences if caught.
Selling to customers is a step up in the hierarchy of the drug business, police said, earning the youngsters more money but carrying additional risks.
"It's kind of upsetting to see someone so young and involved in a dangerous type of activity," Officer Bochniak said. "You wonder how long they can last out here."
In Baltimore, Maj. John E. Gavrilis, commander of the Southeastern District, said that detectives first noticed in August that younger children were acting as drug dealers. The evidence came during a sweep through the Fayette Street corridor where police seized a dozen shotguns and 20 pounds of cocaine.
They began an 8-week investigation that culminated yesterday afternoon and targeted 15 houses and nearly 60 people, many of whom were indicted and given preset bails ranging up to $400,000.
The houses raided were in the communities of Baltimore-Linwood, McElderry-Decker and Madison East. By yesterday evening, police had arrested dozens, including 15 of those wanted on warrants.
Police said that most of the drugs were found in a rowhouse in the 100 block of N. Montford Ave, described as an active stash house.
Officer Bochniak said officers recovered 143 small bags of crack cocaine. In another house, they seized $13,000 in cash.
Many residents came out to watch the officers as they streamed through the houses about 1 p.m. "I don't know what goes on over there," said an 81-year-old man who has lived in the 2500 block of McElderry St. for 40 years. "I mind my own business. I just want the drugs to stop."
Added a delighted Rose Street resident who lives next door to a raided house: "Now I can sleep tonight."
Major Gavrilis said the raids were timed to avoid the time when schools let out, so the heavily armed officers would not be running around streets filled with children.
The operation was dubbed "Southeast Safeguard."
"We want the community to know that we won't tolerate it," Major Gavrilis said. The arrested teens were taken to the Northern District's Youth Detention Center, where they could be held until they see a Juvenile Court judge or are released to their parents.


Seattle Seahawks fan Mr. Mohawk faces off with a Green Bay Packers fan during Monday Night Football on September 24, 2012 at CenturyLink Field in Seattle.
Seattle Seahawks fan Andrew Rucker, center, ribs Josh Macri over his Green Bay Packers jersey outside the stadium during Monday Night Football on September 24, 2012 at CenturyLink FIeld in Seattle.
Seattle Seahawks fan Lorin "Big Lo" Sandretzky grates cheese as the Hawks play the Green Bay Packers during Monday Night Football.
Green Bay Packers fan Sarah Hinkhouse wears a 'cheese top' during Monday Night Football against the Seattle Seahawks.
The 12th Man makes noise during a Green Bay Packers possession as the Seattle Seahawks play the Packers during Monday Night Football.
Seattle Seahawks Seagals perform as the Hawks take on the Green Bay Packers during Monday Night Football.
Former Seattle Seahawks quarterback Trent Dilfer hypes up the crowd after he raised the 12th Man Flag before a game against the Green Bay Packers.
CenturyLink Field is shown as the Seattle Seahawks take on the Green Bay Packers during Monday Night Football.
A Green Bay Packers fan cheers for his team during Monday Night Football against the Seattle Seahawks.
Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll talks to his players as they play against the Green Bay Packers during Monday Night Football.
Green Bay Packers fan Kirk Zach of Hood River, Oregon, sports a unique hat.
Former Seattle Seahawks quarterback Trent Dilfer raises the 12th Man Flag.
Seattle Seahawks player Sidney Rice (18) has a pass broken up by Green Bay Packers player Sam Shields.
Seattle Seahawks player Golden Tate is surrounded by cameras after his game winning, and controversial, touchdown against the Green Bay Packers.
Seattle Seahawks Seagals perform as the Hawks take on the Green Bay Packers.
Seattle Seahawks player Golden Tate emerges from a mob of players and cameras after his game winning, and controversial touchdown.
The 12th Man makes noise during a Green Bay Packers possession.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is sacked by Seattle Seahawks player Chris Clemons.
A Seattle Seahawks fan cheers for his team against the Green Bay Packers during Monday Night Football.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers prepares to throw the ball in the first quarter of play against the Seattle Seahawks.
A Seahawks fan makes noise during a Green Bay Packers possession.
The Seattle Seahawks and Green Bay Packers meet at the line of scrimmage during Monday Night Football.
The Seattle Seahawks take the field against the Green Bay Packers.
The 12th Man makes noise as the Seattle Seahawks play the Green Bay Packers.


Five-month-old Udal Faisal died two days after the photo was taken.
The image of 5-month-old Udai Faisal in a hospital bed didn’t find its way on to newspaper front pages or go viral on the internet like the picture of Alan Kurdi’s drowned corpse did. Yet it is every bit as heartrending. The tiny boy’s wide eyes glare from his skeletal face, his bony hand closed just beneath his chin.
He was admitted to Yemen's al-Sabeen hospital late last month, suffering from malnutrition, diarrhoea and a chest infection, which was where this photograph was taken. Two days later his parents took him out of the hospital. His father said it was because the doctors told him the situation was hopeless, but the head of the hospital's emergency ward told the Associated Press he didn't think the family could afford the medication he needed.
A few days after the picture was taken, Udai died.
"He didn't cry and there were no tears, just stiff," his mother, Intissar Hezzam, said. "I screamed and fainted."
Karlien Kleijier, an emergency manager for Médecins Sans Frontières (also known as Doctors Without Borders, or MSF) who has recently returned from the country, told BuzzFeed News Udai was clearly malnourished – and that the issue of hunger in Yemen was “very real”. According to a recent Unicef report, 320,000 children are at risk of severe acute malnutrition, and 1 million children are projected to suffer from moderate acute malnutrition.
“They need medical care – it’s a giant crisis,” Kleijier told BuzzFeed News. “The health system has collapsed.” Food and medical care had been in short supply before the crisis, according to Kleijier, but the situation has significantly worsened, in large part due to blockades. She said MSF had to increase its staff salaries by 50% in some areas just so they could buy food and supplies. Yemen imports 90% of its food and already had one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world, according to the AP.
Faisal Ahmed, the father of Udai Faisal, pours water on his son's grave in Hazyaz village, on the southern outskirts of Sanaa.
Rajhat Madhok, a Unicef worker in Yemen, told BuzzFeed News that an average of six children have been killed or maimed every day in Yemen in the past year. "Children represent one third of all civilian deaths. Those who survive are being recruited to fight in a war not of their making," he said.
Madhok said that in a city called Ibb he had met a mother with 13 children living inside a classroom. "They had fled from Aden and had taken refuge in the school seven months ago," he said. "The family shares space in a classroom with four other families or 20 other women and children."
According to Madhok, there are 2.5 million people across the country who have been displaced from their homes because of the conflict and live with their relatives, with host communities, or in makeshift camps.
Without the direct involvement of Western military forces and increasing danger to journalists on the ground, the war in Yemen is unfolding with little limelight. The battle for Yemen has been raging far longer than most people realise: Skirmishes between Shiite rebels known as Houthis and forces loyal to the government go back over a decade. But the situation that led to ongoing war began last year in February, after Houthi rebels forced the beleaguered president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, to flee the capital city of Sanaa.
Since then, the Houthis, who have been backed by security forces loyal to the exiled former president Ali Abullah Saleh, have continuously clashed with Hadi, Saleh’s successor, who has the support of local militia and tribespeople in the predominantly Sunni south of the country.
But the overall picture is messy. Both these groups have at various times fought with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (a group known as AQAP) and, of late, a Yemen-based affiliate of ISIS. The Houthis took control of the capital, Sana'a, in January this year, forcing the resignation of Hadi, who eventually fled to Aden in the south, from where he has denounced the takeover.
Loyalist forces stand guard outside the central prison in the Mansoura residential district of Aden, Yemen's second city, on 30 March 2016.
Outside interests complicate the picture further. Hadi says the Houthis are proxies for Iran (both follow forms of Shiite Islam), an allegation denied by Iran. He also claims he was “left with no choice but to call for the assistance of our brothers in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries".
Airstrikes have claimed thousands of lives, many of them civilians. “Recently 180 people – 22 of them children – were killed in a market. It didn’t even make the headlines," Kleijier told BuzzFeed News. She said international conflict laws were made “so that humanity can continue after the war” and that this was in jeopardy in Yemen.
“We cry out about the incidents in Brussels or Paris – for the people living there it’s no different,” Kleijer said. On top of the death toll from bombs, nearly 10,000 children under the age of 5 have died from preventable diseases.
It’s the Saudi-led coalition offering "assistance" to Hadi — including the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Jordan – that directly ties what is happening in Yemen to the West. The coalition receives intelligence and weapons from the UK and the US. Canada has also sold arms to Saudi Arabia, while France has provided logistical support.
Allegations of war crimes have been levelled at the coalition for months. A UN report in September found that almost two-thirds of the civilians killed in the war between 26 March 2015, when the coalition began its campaign, and June the same year had died due to airstrikes by the coalition. The war has claimed the lives of nearly 900 children and wounded as many as 1,300, largely because of airstrikes, according to Unicef. A report by the UN in January this year found “widespread and systematic” attacks on civilian targets.
Faisal Ahmed, the father of Udai Faisal, sits with his nine remaining children at his house in Hazyaz village, 28 March 2016.
If public outrage has been limited, the political ramifications are substantial. In the US, questions have been asked about what is being achieved by the partnership. In Britain, the House of Commons international development committee has recommended the government suspend all sales of arms to Saudi Arabia “until evidence can be provided that the risk of such arms being used in serious violations of international humanitarian law has subsided”.
It pointed out a paradox at the heart of the British government’s policy: the “important leadership role" the Department for International Development, or DfID, "has played in the humanitarian response, including last week’s pledge to provide an additional £10 million in assistance”, on the one hand, and the sale of £3 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since the start of the crisis.
Udai Faisal, suffering acute malnutrition, is fed by his mother, Intissar Hezzam, at al-Sabeen Hospital in Sanaa, 22 March.
Not all of the condemnation has been confined to parliament: Anti-arms-trade campaigners have even mounted legal action against the British government.
The government’s response to the UN’s findings has been far from convincing. Foreign secretary Philip Hammond has said he wants to “see the Saudis investigate allegations of breaches of International Humanitarian Law which are attributed to them”, a statement that, in the view of satirical magazine Private Eye, “shows either a touching faith or a desire to cover-up for our friends and customers in Riyadh". In its letter to government, the international development committee had said it was "astonished" at this policy, adding: "It is a longstanding principle of law that inquiries should be independent of those being investigated."
Human Rights Watch has accused Hammond of making “the false and misleading claim that there is no evidence of laws or war violations by the UK’s Saudi ally and other members of the coalition". The head of UNICEF in Yemen has told the British parliament that the bombing "is almost guaranteed to lead to civilian deaths... these are huge bombs dropped into a city of millions of people." As the parliament has noted, the situation is deteriorating not only due to the bombing, but "atrocities" committed by the Houthis.
“We need absolute transparency about the UK’s involvement in the war in Yemen – the public have a right to know if British-built bombs are responsible for civilian deaths," said Angus Robertson MP, who has raised the issue during Prime Minister's Questions, in an interview with BuzzFeed News.
“The world’s attention on conflict in the Middle East has been focused on Syria and Iraq in recent years and sadly the catastrophic war in Yemen has been largely overlooked, even though it too is claiming many lives and causing millions of people to flee their homes and become refugees."
It’s a thorny issue for the British government: The multibillion pound market for Britain to sell arms to Saudi Arabia has existed since 1965. As BuzzFeed News revealed, David Cameron’s governments have overseen the sale of over £5.6 billion of military licenses to Saudi Arabia since 2010, and the economic stakes are huge. There was reportedly a furious row between Michael Gove, the justice secretary, and Hammond, after the former attempted to pull out of a contract to provide advice to the kingdom’s prison regime.
The voting public may conclude that ultimately, the nation’s financial interests should trump potential human rights concerns. But more and more images like those of Udai Faisal will no doubt appear. Those human rights concerns now have a face.


Dr. Prabhat K. Sehgal, 70, of Southborough Massachusetts, passed away on Sunday, August 29, 2010. He is survived by his loving wife Neena; three daughters, Anupama and son-in-law Thomas Sealey; Neetu and Renika Sehgal; and three grandchildren, Raiya, Shaila, and Ajay. He is also survived by his two younger brothers, Kamal Sehgal and Harsh Sehgal and their families.
At the age of 29, Dr. Sehgal ventured from his homeland of India to the United States to pursue his career aspirations. He had 36-years in a prestigious position in veterinary medicine at Harvard Medical School�s New England Regional Primate Research Center in Southborough. At his retirement in 2006, Harvard honored Dr. Sehgal�s accomplishments and contributions to medical science by naming one of their conference rooms after him during his retirement celebration.
In his retirement, Dr. Sehgal found enjoyment in flying toy helicopters with his grandson, tending to his rose and vegetable gardens with his wife and son-in-law, and teaching his granddaughters the same life lessons he had once taught his daughters. He began and ended every day with his good morning and good night calls and kisses from his three daughters. He could never spend one of those days without his wife, to whom he was endlessly devoted.
Known for his cheerful smile, kind heart and sense of humor, Dr. Sehgal, was always willing to lend a helpful hand and gave continuously and selflessly to both his family and life-long friends. He was the best son, brother, husband, daddy, and nana that any family could ever hope for. He will be honored and missed.


Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Sunday he wants to "see all" of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Trump campaign collusion, including what was behind the FBI’s "extraordinary use of government surveillance power."
In an interview on NBC News’ "Meet the Press," Rubio, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said "we want to learn as much as we possible can that’s allowed and permissible" under Justice Department policy and "of course, the law."
"I want to see all of it, what was the underlying criminal predicate for the entire investigation," he said. "Let's see the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] investigations because this is an extraordinary use of government surveillance power…. Show us what those were."
"Let's see all of that and put all of that out there so we can pass judgment about how the investigation was conducted or at least the predicate for the investigation was conducted during the Obama years," he added.
According to Rubio, the completion of the the Mueller report now also means the intel committee can question people that it has wanted to interview for its own probe.
"The end means there should nobody out there, and there shouldn't be anyone out there that we shouldn't be allowed to interview … There's no reason for anyone to not talk to us," he said.


With only two months to go, Chicago's homicide total on Monday reached 435, matching last year's total murder count, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The 435th homicide victim of the year was a man in his 30s, who was shot on a South Side street.
The city's homicide count grabbed international attention when it spiked during an unusually warm spring.
President Barack Obama has talked about the violence in his adopted hometown, including in an MTV interview on Friday.
"I live on the South Side of Chicago," said Obama. "Some of these murders are happening just a few blocks from where I live. I have friends whose family members have been killed."
"What I know is that gun violence is part of the issue," he said. "But part of the issue also is kids who feel so little hope and think their prospects for the future are so small that their attitude is, ‘I'm going to end up in jail or dead.' And they will take all kinds of risks.
"If they've got mental health issues, are they getting the kind of services and counseling that they need early on?" he said.
"Are we making those investments in those young people so that by the time they're 11, 12, 13, 15 … they can make responsible choices because they feel they've got something at stake?"
While the city had reported there were 433 homicides in 2011, a police official on Sunday said the number of homicides last year has been updated to 435 after two deaths were reclassified.
We can only hope that things will get better for the city and its residents in 2013. The violence has to stop.


Afghanistan is truly an under-reported war—and, more important, an under-discussed and under-debated war. Last week, for instance, Andrew Breitbart must have received a thousand times the ink and hits that the war did, and even he might think that wasn’t right. This conflict is costing the nation about $100 billion a year, at a time when our federal budget is under great pressure. The loss of American lives in Afghanistan has been increasing. Civilian casualties have created resentment against US and NATO forces. The US military and civilian agencies are involved in a tremendously complicated endeavor in a land very few Americans know anything about, and US success depends on collaborating with Afghan political and security institutions that are often inept and plagued with corruption. Yet this war receives little air-time in the United States. There is the occasional hearing on Capitol Hill, but no rousing debates. The media and public pay attention in spurts—such as when President Barack Obama conducted a review that led to increasing the number of US troops in Afghanistan, or when Gen. Stanley McChyrstal and his staff dumped on the White House while talking to a Rolling Stone freelancer. Yet these short bursts come and go—while the war slogs on, with much of the United States remaining detached from and ignorant of what is happening day to day in their name, with their tax dollars, in Afghanistan.
A huge leak of U.S. reports and this is all they get? I know of more stuff leaked at one good dinner on background.
Know-it-all cynics can be dismissive and claim, Well, it isn’t big news to me that the war is not going as well as depicted by the Obama administration (and, prior to that, the Bush administration). Yet when 92,000 military reports emerge supporting this point, it ought to be significant—even for the jaded.
In combing through the documents, the Times did find some notable news: the Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against US and NATO aircraft (a fact the US military has not disclosed); the performance of drone aircraft in Afghanistan is less impressive than maintained by US officials; the CIA has run the Afghan spy service as a “virtual subsidiary.” Each of these stories would be page-one material. Yet perhaps because they have been lumped together in a Afghanistan-war-is-grim package, these revelations have less punch. They’ve been diluted.
each of the WikiLeaks documents—from an account of an armed showdown between the Afghan police and the Afghan Army, to a few lines about a local interdiction official taking seventy-five-dollar bribes, to a sad exchange about an aid scam involving orphans—is a pixel in a picture that does, indeed, contradict official accounts of the war, and rather drastically so.
These documents—snapshots from a far-away war–show the ground truth of Afghanistan. This is not what Americans receive from US officials. And with much establishment media unable (or unwilling) to apply resources to comprehensive coverage of the war, the public doesn’t see many snapshots like these. Any information that illuminates the realities of Afghanistan is valuable—especially if it shows (or reminds those already in the know) that government officials are overselling what’s happening in this insufficiently examined war.


A crook robbed a woman in the Classon Avenue G Station on Aug. 21.
The 24-year-old victim told cops she was in the station near Lafayette Avenue at 2 pm when a man displayed a switchblade and pushed her against a wall, taking her pocketbook. After she protested, he said, “Stop making noise, I’ll stab you,” and then fled.
Two gun-wielding thugs robbed a man on DeKalb Avenue on Aug. 22.
The 47-year-old victim told cops he was at Vanderbilt Avenue at 1:45 am when the teenaged jerks walked up to him and asked him for a cigarette. One of them pulled out a handgun, and pointed it at the victim, he said. The crooks fled after the man handed over $10.
Cops arrested a teenager who they say tried to grab a lady’s cellphone on Washington Avenue Aug. 22.
The 22-year-old victim told cops she talking on her iPhone at Gates Avenue at 12:30 am when the teen hit her in the head and grabbed her phone. Police said two bystanders helped grab the suspect.
A burglar tried to steal some electronics from a house on Adelphi Street on Aug. 20, but was caught in the act.
The 39-year-old victim told cops she was at her home at Greene Avenue and Fulton Street at 4:55 pm when she heard a loud noise. She went to the backyard and saw the crook trying to hop the back fence with her stuff. Police said she was able to get it all back, though the jerk got away.
A thug shot a man inside the Greene Playground on Aug. 20.
The 17-year-old victim told cops he was inside the park at 10:50 pm, when a man shot him in his shoulder.
Police arrested two teens who they say stole a man’s iPhone and bag on DeKalb Avenue on Aug. 22.
The 29-year-old victim said he was between Clermont and Vanderbilt avenues at 1:45 am when someone grabbed his cellphone and bag out of his hands.
Two crime-mongers punched and robbed a woman on Clinton Avenue on Aug. 22, taking her purse and cellphone.
The 26-year-old victim told cops she was between Greene and Gates avenues 12:10 am when the two jerks grabbed her from behind, punched her in the face, and took her belongings.
A crime duo attacked and robbed a woman in Fort Greene Park on Aug. 23.
The 27-year-old victim told cops she was in the northwest corner of the park at 11:45 pm when a man and woman approached her and asked her for the time. When she told them she didn’t know, the man punched her while the woman held her down and went through her purse.
A thief stole two bicycles from a house on DeKalb Avenue sometime between Aug. 25 and 26.
The 35-year-old victim told cops she left her bicycles in the garage of her house between Waverly and Washington avenues at 3 pm, returning at 4:30 pm the next day to find the garage door open and the bikes gone.
Three jerks took another man’s phone on DeKalb Avenue on Aug. 26.
The victim told cops he was at Carlton Avenue at 4:30 pm, when the three crooks surrounded him.
“Don’t want to fight you, give me your phone,” one of them said.
The crew fled after he handed over his iPhone.
A crook stole a computer from a Clermont Avenue home on Aug. 20.
The 44-year-old victim told cops the crook entered her home between Greene Avenue and Fulton Street by breaking her screen door sometime between 3:30 and 4:30 pm, and stole her MacBook Air.
A crook stole from a woman’s purse at the Atlantic Terminal Mall on Aug. 24.
The 19-year-old victim told cops she was at the Marshalls in the plaza at 9:45 pm when she left her purse in her shopping cart. When she returned five minutes later, her Ukranian driver’s license, debit card, MetroCard, and some cash were gone.
Two teenagers stole an iPhone from a woman on Willoughby Avenue on Aug. 24, say cops who arrested the pair.
The 23-year-old victim told cops she was at Clinton Avenue at 9:50 pm when the two grabbed her iPhone out of her hand. Cops said two witnesses stopped the suspects and held them until an officer arrived on the scene.
A crook stole a woman’s wallet in an ice cream store in the Atlantic Terminal Mall on Aug. 26.
The 28-year-old victim told cops she was at the Cold Stone Creamery in the Flatbush Avenue mall at 2:15 pm when her wallet disappeared from her baby’s carriage.
The 46-year-old victim told cops he left his Audi S4 at Clinton Avenue at 9 pm, returning at 8:30 am the next day to find the car gone.


His prime minister, Camille Vital, appeared on national television to denounce the officers as mutineers.
Vital called on soldiers to "respect discipline, respect institutions and show professionalism," and said soldiers who supported Rajoelina had been sent to dismantle road blocks around the base where Andrianasoavina had made his declaration. Vital also said witnesses in the area say civilians were destroying materials at polling stations.
Col. Charles Andrianasoavina, who last year backed Rajoelina's move to take power, told reporters the military will pursue national reconciliation, is dissolving government institutions and putting in place a national committee to lead the country at least provisionally. He said political prisoners would be freed and called on exiles to return "to work together to save our fatherland." He did not say who would form the provisional governing committee.
The military has repeatedly intervened in politics on the island, undermining democracy.
"The people should remain calm and help preserve the peace," Andrianasoavina said at a military base near the capital's airport.
In making the announcement, the colonel was joined by a general who had served as Rajoelina's military chief and by the former head of security, also a soldier, of Marc Ravalomanana, the president who was ousted in 2009. It was a striking demonstration of unity, given signs in the past that the military has been divided by Rajoelina's rise.
Rajoelina won't be able to hold onto power long without the military's support. Since this Indian Ocean island gained independence from France in 1960 it has struggled to establish stability and democracy.
Despite the officers' declaration, which was broadcast only in part on one independent TV station, voting continued on the island of 20 million. It appeared few were initially aware of the officers' move.
The military was growing increasingly impatient with Rajoelina, who has been internationally isolated and accused of trampling on democracy. The West has frozen all but emergency and humanitarian aid for the impoverished island.
In his statement, Andrianasoavina said Madagascar's people have been awaiting a resolution of the political crisis for months.
Rajoelina has refused to allow Ravalomanana to return from exile in South Africa. In August, a court Rajoelina established convicted Ravalomanana in absentia of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced him to life in prison in a case related to the turmoil of the coup that toppled him.
Madagascar's southern African neighbors, including regional heavy weight South Africa, have led mediation efforts that have so far failed. The main southern African political grouping appointed former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano mediator.
"Alas! The different parties continue to hold onto their respective positions, and the people of Madagascar are suffering the consequences of false pride," Andrianasoavina said.
The proposed constitution largely resembles the existing one but a key new clause states that the current leader of a so-called High Transitional Authority — Rajoelina — would remain in power until a new president is elected. That was seen as a bid by Rajoelina to stay in power indefinitely because there was no certainty new elections would be held.
Supporters of Ravalomanana and two other former presidents — Didier Ratsiraka and Albert Zafy — had called for a boycott of the referendum.
Ravalomanana ran a multimillion dollar food and broadcasting empire and Rajoelina himself owns radio and TV stations and is from the wealthy elite that has long dominated politics here.
Most Malagasy, as citizens of the island are called, live in poverty, which ecotourism, vanilla production and the recent discovery of oil have done little to alleviate. The island is famed for its lemurs and other unique wildlife and was the inspiration for two animated films of the same name.


Pedestrian deaths in Chicago have risen over the last five years, according to the city's Transportation Department.
Pedestrian deaths in Chicago have risen over the last five years, up to 46 fatalities in 2017 compared with 27 in 2013, the city’s Transportation Department said Wednesday.
Most of the deaths occurred in neighborhoods on the South and West sides. The overall increase echoes a national trend of higher pedestrian fatalities in recent years, which safety experts say could be the result of more vehicles on the roads, high vehicle speeds and electronic distractions for both drivers and walkers.
Chicago saw 44 pedestrian deaths in 2016, down slightly from the 46 reported a year earlier. Two deaths were reported in January of this year.
“As we have said repeatedly, every one of these fatalities is an unacceptable tragedy that should have been prevented,” said Michael Claffey, spokesman for the Transportation Department.
The city put forward a “Vision Zero” plan last June to eliminate traffic deaths and serious crashes. Under the plan, the city said it is pushing for more safety education, intersection changes like curb “bump-outs” to shorten walking distances across streets, and encouraging policies and technologies that make for safer vehicles and professional drivers.
The city said it is also focusing efforts on high-crash areas, which are mostly in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods on the South and West sides.


Pamela Fletcher oversaw the development of the breakthrough Chevrolet Bolt EV, a $37,500 all-electric hatchback that can go 238 miles on a single charge—the first electric car to achieve that kind of range at such a low price point. Fletcher explains her approach to building the well-reviewed vehicle, which is rolling out nationally in 2017.
How much pressure did you feel to get the Bolt to market before Tesla released its competing Model 3? "We wanted to be fast, and we wanted to be first. With all the products we’ve done, we’re highly motivated—and I’m personally motivated—to make technology available to as many people as possible."
Was there a key development step? "All of our experience has built to let us deliver a car like the Bolt. A decade ago, we started developing the control system—all of the software that it takes to run these kinds of vehicles. When we went into production with Chevy Volt [a plug-in hybrid that debuted with the 2011 model year], we had no idea how people would use the car, so we built this 85,000-square-foot battery lab and created all kinds of user profiles and environmental conditions. That’s how we predict the future. When it came to developing the Bolt quickly, we already had all of this [research] under our belts."
What’s your approach to leading your team? "We operate like a little startup within GM. I love to spend time with people on, Okay, how do we make something better? What are the obstacles? Do we have a big enough vision for what “better” is? How do we get it there? The other side of my world is looking to the future: What’s our portfolio of technologies and products, and what do we think the customer-facing wins are going to be, and how fast do we think we can deliver them? When you look at our industry, the revolution that’s going on is mind-blowing. I just can’t imagine a more exciting place to be."


Childish Gambino won Record of the Year at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards here for his political anthem 'This Is America', making history as the first rap song ever to take home the honour.
With Gambino, whose real name is Donald Glover, absent from the festivities, the prestigous award on Sunday night was accepted on behalf of co-writer and producer Ludwig Goransson, engineer/mixer Derek 'MixedByAli' Ali and mastering engineer Mike Bozzi.
"Creating music with Childish Gambino has been one of the greatest stories of my life," Goransson told the audience.
"As a kid growing up in Sweden, loving American music, I always dreamt of migrating here, working with an artiste like Donald Glover.
"I really wish he was here with us right now, because this truly was his vision, and he deserves this credit," he continued.
"No matter where you're born or what country you're from, you connect with it. It speaks to people. It connects right to your soul. It calls out injustice, celebrates life, and reunites us, all at the same time."
The producer also took a moment to shout-out to rapper 21 Savage, who is currently being held without bond by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and therefore wasn't able to perform at the Grammys.
"21 Savage, you should be here tonight," Goransson added.
"This is America", an intricately woven protest song that touches on racism, discrimination and mass shootings in the country, among other topics, also became the first rap track to win Song of the Year earlier on Sunday.
The song also won Best Rap/Sung Performance and Best Music video for its Hiro Murai-directed viral clip.


What Constitutes a Hazard in a Workplace?
A frayed wire is one example of a physical workplace hazard.
2 What Determines Initial Hazards in the Workplace?
Any practice or situation that occurs in an occupational setting and has the potential to cause bodily or mental harm or poses any other risks to the health of one or more workers constitutes as a workplace hazard. Different occupations pose different types of potential hazards to employees. According to the Ontario Ministry of Labour, there are four broadly defined categories of workplace hazard: physical, biological, chemical and ergonomic.
The Ontario Ministry of Labour reports that physical hazards constitute the majority of hazards in most workplaces. Any situation that can lead to a trip, slip or fall is a common physical hazard, such as wet floors or icy walkways. Any dangerous workplace equipment, from sharp knives to heavy machinery, are examples of physical workplace hazards. Physical hazards also include electrical hazards, such as frayed cords or poor wiring, working from heights or other situations that present a risk of falling, and noises at decibels that have the potential to cause hearing damage.
According to the Ontario Ministry of Labour, biological workplace hazards include any bodily harm or sickness that can result from coming into contact with other living organisms. Working with other people exposes employees to airborne illnesses, such as the common cold and influenza, as well as potential exposure to illness through contact with blood or other bodily fluids. Workers in pet stores, agriculture and other outdoor settings may also be exposed to biological hazards via contact with animals and their droppings, exposure to insect bites or contact with potentially infectious plants or fungi.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, chemical workplace hazards include exposure to any chemicals that may cause either short- or long-term bodily injury or illness. In many workplaces, solvents and other cleaning products are the only chemical hazards present. Asbestos may also present a chemical hazard in some work spaces. Exposure to gasoline, paint, smoke, carbon monoxide or any other substances that produce fumes with potentially long-term health effects are categorized as chemical workplace hazards.
The Ontario Ministry of Labour defines ergonomic workplace hazards as working conditions and workplace processes that have the potential to cause bodily injury over time. Repetitive motion injuries, including carpal tunnel syndrome and injuries sustained from repetitive lifting, are common ergonomic hazards. Chairs, desks, phones and computers that are at the wrong height or distance or otherwise improperly adjusted pose ergonomic hazards to employees. Poor lighting, which can cause strain to the eyes, is another common example of an ergonomic workplace hazard.
Ontario Ministry of Labour: What is a Hazard?
Time, Forest. "What Constitutes a Hazard in a Workplace?" Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/constitutes-hazard-workplace-44079.html. Accessed 21 April 2019.
What Are the Consequences of Not Reporting Work Hazards?
"The Potential Roadblocks, Ethical or Otherwise, in Promoting a Diverse Workplace"


Gunfire struck and injured two minors in South El Monte on Saturday, Jan. 12.
The shooting was near the intersection of Klingerman Street and Continental Avenue at about 10:30 p.m., said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lt. John Wargo. He said two juvenile victims were hurt and taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries. They were recovering and listed in stable condition Sunday, Wargo said. Their identities were not immediately released.
Authorities on Sunday afternoon had not disclosed information on the circumstances of the shooting or any possible suspects. Homicide detectives were investigating.


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BEAVER CITY, Neb. (AP) - A man being held in a south-central Nebraska jail cell is awaiting a Jan. 30 hearing on returning him to face charges in Tennessee.
Furnas County Sheriff Kurt Kapperman said Thursday that 55-year-old Michael Parsons was arrested without incident Jan. 12 at the Arapahoe Airport. Kapperman says the FBI, working with Tennessee authorities, had tracked Parsons‘ cellphone to the area.
Kapperman says investigators think bad weather forced Parsons to land a single-engine plane there two days earlier. Kapperman says Parsons hasn’t been forthcoming about where he was headed.
An arrest warrant says Parsons is wanted in Tipton County, Tennessee, on charges of failure to appear and possession of a weapon by a felon. Kapperman says Parsons was unarmed when taken into custody.
It’s unclear whether Kapperman has an attorney.


The agent ... Printed for T. Paine and M. Simmons represents an entity (e.g. person, organization, etc.) associated with resources found in Boston University Libraries.


CHICAGO - 'Tis the season - for heart attacks? Not to dampen any spirits, but studies show heart troubles spike this time of year.
It's not just a Western phenomenon; recent research in China found the same thing. The increase includes fatal and nonfatal heart attacks and a less serious condition dubbed "holiday heart syndrome" - an irregular heartbeat caused by too much booze.
Reasons for the seasonal increase are uncertain. Theories include cold weather, overindulgence and stress.
"The other day we had three heart attacks come in within four hours," said Dr. Charles Davidson, chief of Northwestern Memorial Hospital's cardiac catheterization services. The hospital's usual rate is two or three a week.
American Heart Association spokesman Dr. Richard Stein, a cardiologist at New York University's medical center, said most studies investigating holiday heart trends have found a statistical increase in heart attacks and other problems - not a giant surge but worth noting just the same.
It happens in cold climates, sometimes when sedentary people or those with heart disease take on too much snow shoveling, or spend too much time outdoors. Cold weather can constrict arteries, increasing demand on the heart, he said, But it also happens in warm places. Flu season coincides with winter holidays and Stein said that might be a factor since the virus can cause inflammation that also can stress the heart.
Stein recommends the usual preventive advice, including flu shots, avoiding excessive eating and drinking, and getting enough exercise throughout the season.
David Phillips, a sociologist at the University of California's San Diego campus, has long studied when people die. His research, based on millions of death certificates nationwide, shows that cardiac deaths including fatal heart attacks increase almost 5 percent on Christmas Day, the day after and on New Year's Day. Deaths from other causes also increase at holiday time, but not as much.
Phillips estimates that there are 2,000 extra deaths each year, mostly from heart-related problems, linked with Christmas and New Year's. He says hospitals' holiday staffing is a factor, with fewer doctors and nurses working and the most senior employees often on vacation.
Also, he said, in the rush leading up to the holidays, people tend to ignore symptoms and put off going to the doctor - which can be dangerous if heart problems or other serious illnesses are brewing.
His advice? Head to the emergency room with life-threatening symptoms such as chest pain, unexplained falls, numbness or tingling. But for non-emergencies and elective surgeries, you might want to consider holding off until hospital staffing is back to normal.
Nashville dentist Jason Cabler fell victim last year. After opening presents on Christmas morning with his wife and two teens, Cabler headed downstairs to lift weights in his basement gym when he started to feel a little odd, including tightness in his chest.
Ten minutes later he was in a hospital emergency room. Doctors diagnosed a heart attack and implanted two stents to open blocked artery.
Cabler was 45, had always been healthy and active, so the diagnosis was a surprise. So was learning about the possible seasonal connection. Now he says the stress of running around buying gifts and braving crowds might have been a factor.
Doctors also found he had high cholesterol and triglycerides, prescribed medicine and recommended cutting down on fat and sugar.
Cabler said he's trying to cut the stress this holiday season - buying fewer gifts and spending more time at home.
"We're keeping it a little more low-key," he said.
Then there's "holiday heart syndrome," a type of irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation brought on by too much alcohol.
It involves irregular contractions in the heart's upper two chambers that patients often feel as palpitations, a funny fluttery sensation in the chest, or chest pain. It's like the heart's rhythm has gone "haywire," according to a report last year in the Harvard Heart Letter.
"People who come in with this, they're shocked that it happened," said Dr. Deepak Bhatt, a heart specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Heart Letter. Many aren't chronic drinkers and "may not realize that excess drinking at the annual Christmas party has its own risks," he said.
The condition typically happens in otherwise healthy adults, and resolves within 24 hours, though teens aren't immune. Medical literature includes a "holiday heart" report from doctors at Miami Children's Hospital involving a 16-year-old boy who developed atrial fibrillation after a drinking bout - his blood alcohol level was slightly higher than the legal limit.


When a 7-year-old Iraqi boy lost his right arm and eyesight after being caught in the crossfire between American forces and guerrillas, a U.S. Army major in Baghdad called Elissa Montanti.
“She said, ‘Can you help this child?’ ” recalled Montanti, founder of the Global Medical Relief Fund, who has made it her life’s work to bring children who have lost limbs due to war or natural disaster here to be fitted with prostheses.
“I picked Ahmed Sharif up at the Iraq border. The poor kid was holding on to his teddy bear. It was heartbreaking,” said Montanti, who depends on donations.
“I do it on a prayer,” said Montanti, a Staten Islander who has brought 52 children here since 1997 and sends them home with prosthetic limbs and eyes.
Montanti, a 2002 Liberty Medal nominee, was nominated again this year for the Ambassador Medal by Paul Nicholls, a 2004 winner.
Last year, Montanti brought Ahmed to the United States, and he was fitted with an artificial arm at Shriners Hospital in Philadelphia at no cost. She said Ahmed, now 9 and learning Braille, also received prosthetic eyes through NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia.
All the children return annually to be refitted until they stop growing.
Ahmed’s here now, staying with Montanti at a Staten Island facility provided by Mount Manresa Jesuit Retreat House, where she runs the program.
Montanti was first moved to help the children of war in 1997, when she read a letter written by then-14 year-old Kenan Malkic, whose arms and a leg were blown off when he stepped on a land mine in his native Bosnia.
“He’s the reason I started this,” she said of Malkic, whom she brought here to be fitted with artificial arms and a leg.
Malkic, now 24, attends college in the city and will soon graduate.
“All the children I bring here look up to him and say, ‘If he could do it, I can,’ ” she said.
For more information, visit http://www.globmed.org.


New businesses could enter Bermuda’s electronic communications sector when a freeze on the market ends soon.
Walter Roban, the Minister of Home Affairs, instructed the Regulatory Authority to lift a moratorium on the granting of both Communication Operating Licences and Integrated Communication Operating Licences.
He said yesterday: “This move will ultimately result in the opportunity for new entrants into the Bermuda telecommunications market.
Mr Roban explained that when the RA started its work in 2013 the approval of new ICOLs was suspended.
He said: “The rationale at that time was that there were already about 20 licensees at that point, and more would simply dilute the market even further.
“Over the years, with that moratorium in place, Bermuda has gone from a vibrant and competitive environment to one far less dynamic, and, arguably, less competitive — all through a series of mergers and acquisitions, where the electronic communications market has become an oligopoly, perhaps not serving the public as well as it might.
A RA spokeswoman said: “The RA has begun the process of establishing the framework to apply for and issue new licences to deliver electronic communication services to the Bermuda marketplace.
“Prior to granting the licences, the RA will hold a consultation period from April 5 to April 26 to gain feedback from the public regarding the criteria, conditions, requirements and procedures necessary to receive a COL or ICOL.
Denton Williams, chief executive at the RA, added: “One of the mandates of the RA is to promote and preserve competition in the interest of residents and consumers of Bermuda and to promote the development of the economy, Bermudian employment and Bermudian ownership.


There is certainly more awareness about the importance of cybersecurity now than ever before, but are things in cybersecurity better or worse than they were 12 months ago?
In the past year, we have seen mega-malware such as Wannacry and NotPetya temporarily wipe out some enterprises and services. We have seen new records set by DDoS attacks, with the largest event hitting a giddy 1.7 Tbps – and we have also seen that simply handling the capture and sharing of digital personal information about your subscribers in ways they do not like (even if they originally consented to it) can wipe a sizable percentage from the value of a company.
The nature of attacks is changing, too. Twelve months ago, cryptojacking (the hijacking of computer resources to perform paid cryptocurrency mining work) had rarely been heard of and fileless malware (malicious software that can persist and operate in the memory of computer devices) was a rare exploit type.
According to VirusTotal statistics, there were an average of more than one million potential new threat files submitted to them each day in March 2018. On some days, that figure came close to two million.
The speed and pace of the threat landscape evolution is overwhelming. To keep pace, cybersecurity teams are having to continually evolve and adapt to the new threat types, often needing to invest in new security technologies and adjust their defensive processes. They also have to invest in continual training, research and threat intelligence.
Are boards and CEOs taking security more or less seriously than a year ago?
Are enterprises really keeping pace with these emerging threats?
Have the opportunities for cybercriminals increased or decreased in the past 12 months?
It seems that over the past 12 months, security has slipped down the boardroom agenda. According to the survey results, only 20% of organizations have their security function reporting to the CEO or main board. This represents an even lower figure than the 24% from last year (although the question in the previous year was phrased slightly differently).
Also, 57% of the practitioners surveyed believed that their main board was adequately supporting security initiatives, a 10% decrease from the 67% figure from the previous year.
On the bright side, 64% of enterprises were expecting to increase their cybersecurity budget this year, which also means that in 36% of enterprises, the expectation is to make do with the same or less money on their security efforts. That is an improvement over last year (where only 50% of respondents expected a security budget increase) but still shows a degree of complacency or risk-optimism in a sizable number of organizations.
Are enterprises keeping pace with emerging threats?
A good indicator of whether an organization is keeping pace is to understand how they are doing with their recruitment of skilled cyber professionals. In this area, 59% of organizations reported they had one or more unfilled vacancy within their teams.
There also was an 11% increase in the number of organizations reporting that the lead time to fill open security positions was now three months or longer (73% reported a recruitment lead time of three months or longer, up from 62% in the survey from the previous year).
Respondents to the survey also reported that over 50% of the candidates that applied were not qualified for the roles they were applying for.
According to the survey, the most frequent and difficult skills shortage area was acquiring people with appropriate operational technical cyber skills. More than 3 in 4 (77%) respondents thought they had needs for more technical staff, whereas only 21% thought they needed more executives and only 46% thought they needed more non-technical staff.
Have the opportunities for cyber-criminals increased or decreased in the past 12 months?
From the survey results, it looks like an overall win for the cyber-criminal. The chances are very good that many organizations have yet to acquire the budget, skills and controls required to match the increase in cyber threat and risk levels from the past 12 months.
Most organizations are still reporting challenges in filling their security team roles. If an enterprise does get hit, in about 80% of cases, the board or CEO will have to face questions about why the security function was not even reporting into the main board.
It’s time for every enterprise to think with far more care about their security function. Cybersecurity is a tough business. It requires people willing to continually learn and adapt their skills as the threats evolve. If your enterprise is not making the right investments in the training, recruitment and tooling for your critical security staff, the impact may be far greater than you ever thought.


There was a time, not long after the cold war ended, when it looked as though the vast investments the west had made in Kremlinology were about to be liquidated. Having failed to foresee communism’s collapse, the west’s Soviet experts faced grim prospects in a world that had apparently left them behind. How fast things change: today, Russia is back in the news, reprising for the internet era its familiar role as antihero to the freedom-loving west. Putin’s muscle-flexing has produced an old-fashioned territorial struggle in Ukraine and Crimea; the Kremlin’s newfangled cyberwar has generated a firestorm in the US and the results of the 2016 presidential election, far from calming relations between the two old superpowers, have made them tenser than they have been for years.
Yet amid this drama, the response to the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution has been curiously muted and not only in Russia itself. Fifty years ago, there was an outpouring of high-calibre work that testified to the west’s desire to understand its adversary. This year, there has been relatively little. One reason for this is obvious. Communism itself, as a system of thought counterposed to capitalism and private property, is more or less dead in Russia and moribund outside. And with communism gone, anti-communism has become meaningless. But not only communism. Socialism more broadly suffered a heavy blow after 1989. Most leftist parties tacked sharply to the centre, drawn by the dream of a new third way and only austerity economics has done anything to staunch the trend.
There is, I think, another reason for the strangulated response to 1917 and that is that the things that seemed to matter in the Bolshevik Revolution a couple of decades ago are no longer all that important today. Do we really care what the causes of the revolution were, now that we no longer believe in revolution at all? Does it matter how Lenin seized power or whether there was ever the chance of a western-style liberal democracy taking hold in Russia? To some, Russia still remains a way of thinking about liberalism, even if as a counter-example. Masha Gessen’s excellent and readable The Future Is History approaches the Putin years in this way, as a story of totalitarianism and repression returning after yet another brief moment of liberal hope. But given the pessimism that underlies her account, it isn’t really surprising that there seems to be zero interest in all the noble revolutions that didn’t happen in 1917, whether liberal or Menshevik.
In Serhii Plokhy’s Lost Kingdom, the Bolshevik years become merely one episode in a longer story of Russian nationalism. Boiling this down chiefly to the question of Russia’s tortured relationship with its western borderlands, Plokhy’s study reads like a background briefing on the current Ukraine crisis. Both books cast Russia as constantly succumbing to the totalitarian temptation and posit a western alternative that is always just out of reach.
If we want to try to get a handle on what totalitarianism once meant in Russia, we need to turn to two gargantuan studies focusing on the Stalin years. Yuri Slezkine has written a mammoth book about a mammoth building, the so-called House of Government, which was constructed at the start of the 1930s in central Moscow to house much of the new ruling elite. More than 2,000 people lived in it and the book takes well over a thousand pages to tell their stories.
A sprawling “saga of the Russian Revolution”, it has at its core a remarkably interesting subject: the domestic habits and habitat of the men and women who were turning Russia into a socialist society. Architecture often tells the truth where words lie and what was so striking about the House of Government were the assumptions built into its design. Its architect described it as “transitional”, but “traditional” might be a better word. Scores of prison-hardened former underground activists entered middle-age domesticity with their wives and children in rooms lined with handmade bookshelves packed with the treasures of world literature, elegantly furnished dining rooms, linen tablecloths and even space for a bunk bed for the maid. They read [incessantly], played tennis and attended the theatre.
In many ways, their lifestyle was not hugely different from their equivalents in the Dakota on Central Park West in New York, except that their maid’s family might be starving in Ukraine rather than living in poverty in Alabama or Oklahoma. This was totalitarianism committed to family life. Yet at the same time the old revolutionary ethics retained their force. Slezkine argues that Bolshevism was a kind of millenarian sect, but makes the point so often and at such length that by the end it no longer seems to explain very much.
For a more overarching and comprehensive understanding of what drove one old Bolshevik, the place to turn is Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Waiting for Hitler. This is the second volume in his projected biographical trilogy and it is a masterpiece, surely one of the most remarkable books on 20th-century history to have been published in many years. It is not only the depth of research that takes the breath away; it is the scale and range of Kotkin’s framing of his subject and the acuity of his observations.
The author made his name with a pioneering study of a Stalinist steel town but said little in it about the terror. In this book, the terror looms over everything and Stalin owns it. Never mind millenarianism – Stalin had been a believer for years before the terror – nor psychopathology, Kotkin is categorical: what led to the death of millions was the impact upon Stalin of a style of government, a conception of his own role in the building of socialism and the country’s geopolitical predicament.
Kotkin’s staccato, episodic narrative is enlivened by grim humour. What we get is the USSR as Stalin saw it; the view from his office in the Little Corner, his private offices in the Kremlin, or from the dacha in Sochi, where he liked to spend weeks at a time in the summer reading dozens of reports, or taking the waters. This is history as chronicle, a daringly old-fashioned genre for a very contemporary story, like turning the pages of an agenda as the files cross the despot’s desk. At one point, Stalin falls ill for some days. Nothing happens. The narrative resumes once he is better. Suspicious of his own guards, he nevertheless goes on a spur-of-the-moment jaunt on the Moscow subway, nearly giving his entourage a heart attack. Never seriously under threat of assassination, he comes close to death when a conscientious border guard opens fire on his boat as they are sailing on the Black Sea.
This is the story of the things Stalin cared about, which means thick accounts of NKVD infighting, a commitment to Marxist theory and tank technology and, above all, a view of the world that encompasses the threats besetting Soviet socialism from inside and out, east and west. The volume ends on a cliffhanger, a tour de force reconstruction of the last hours before Hitler invades on 22 June 1941. Tyranny on a world scale; a war that would provide its greatest test: the Bolshevik Revolution has things to teach us yet.


The below is summary of my comments provided on Wednesday, January 29, 2014, at the Alfresco Content.Gov event in Washington, DC.
In my 27 years of federal service, I've watched the growth in federal records and the implementation of new executive orders and regulations aimed at improving records management across the federal space. There are immense challenges associated with litigation, review and release, tracing factual evidence for analysis, managing information legal proceedings, and overseeing a plethora of authorized and unauthorized disclosures of classified and/or sensitive information.
Federal records management professionals are true, unsung heroes in helping our nation protect information while also protecting the civil liberties and privacy of our nation's citizens. The job has become increasingly more difficult in today's era of "big data." Records management and information management in the 1980s was hard and that's when we thought big data was hundreds of gigabytes. As we consider today's generation of data, four (4) decades later, federal records professionals are charged with managing tens of thousands of gigabytes-petabytes and zettabytes of data. It's an especially daunting task.
The federal workforce creates content every second of every day. The content is created in formal and informal ways. It's an email, a meeting maker, an instant message communication, a voice communication, a VTC session, PowerPoint deck, meeting minutes, collaborative engagement session, memorandum, written paper, analytic notes, and so forth.
The federal workforce stores this created content in just as many formal and informal ways. It's stored on local hard drives, mobile phones, corporate storage, shadow IT storage, public clouds, and private clouds.
In short...it's a mess for the records management professional.
What is needed are solid systems and capabilities that demand capture on content creation. Simplistic and non-intrusive ways to drive the creator to label information will help tremendously. Non-intrusive doesn't mean voluntary; actions for content creation need to be forced and demanded. Not everything is a record, but many things deserve to be preserved for after action review, lessons learned, and knowledge management training over time.
Many of today's technologies make it far too easy to create content and far too difficult to manage it in perpetuity. Content creation with longevity in mind is critical for the federal records management professional and for the federal government in general.
Implementing technologies that work together to achieve the longevity goal is paramount. No federal agency can survive on one tool; one tool rarely meets the variety of end user needs or requirements. Discovering and implementing technologies with easy interfaces, open APIs, and purposeful data exchange bases will be most successful in the federal government. Often this equates to open source tools, which are naturally built for easy expansion and integration with other tools.
Very little happens in the federal government without being attached to a workflow.
Employee time is a workflow that leads to paychecks.
Purchasing small and large good is a workflow that leads to vendor payments and receipt of goods.
Asset management is a workflow from asset need to asset receipt to asset long-term disposition.
Analytic products are a workflow from inception to review to edit to publish.
Meetings are a workflow from establishment to agenda to minutes to action capture and tracking.
Federal budget creation is an uber-workflow from planning, programming, budgeting, and execution.
Grants management is a workflow from idea submission to review to approval to tracking progress.
Citizen services contain many workflows for social security payments, passport processing, visa approvals, small business loans, and so forth.
Introducing solid records management to these macro and micro workflow environments is necessary and important.
The federal government needs tools that understand the intricate workflow processes and seamlessly captures the changes, approvals, and actions for the workflow throughout the entire process-from creation to retirement. A suite of tools-built on open platforms for easy data exchange-is likely to be required for any federal agency. Working through big ERP systems and through small purpose-built systems, workflow foundations can capture information necessary for approvals and for long-term retention.
Equally necessary are workflow tools that maintain data integrity, individual privacy, and agency security. The Federal Government demands absolute security in processing workflows, especially for citizen-based services that span public and private information processing environments. It's simply not enough to have workflow tools which are fundamentally secure in a private environment. Federal agencies need confidence when exchanging data from a mobile, citizen platform to a private, agency platform.
Fundamental to our form of government is trust. Trust of our people is fundamental. Trust by our federal workforce is fundamental. Trust in our records and information is equally fundamental. When the Administration or the Hill or the People want to know what we knew and when we knew it, federal agencies need to be at the ready to provide the truth - with facts and records to support the facts.
The Federal Government and its agencies aren't private institutions. Although there is information that we should not keep, federal agencies should continue to err on the side of caution and keep anything that seems worth keeping. We should be prepared to keep more information and more records than legally required to lend credibility and understanding of historical decisions and outcomes.
Again, we need tools and technologies that make responsible records management and archival easier for everyone. The amount of resources spent by the federal government on review and redaction of federal records is staggering. If we could have technologies to cut the resources just by 10 percent, that would be awesome. Reaching 20 or 30 percent cost reductions would be phenomenal.
Key to reducing manpower in archival, review, and release, is solid creation at that start. At the risk of creating a circular reference, I'll take you back to my initial point of Content Management at Creation.
Federal agencies create more data and content than any of us cares to understand.
It's not all useful data and finding our way through the mountains of data to know and keep what's important is a tough job.
Securing the data to prevent harmful use and unlawful disclosure needs to be easier for federal agencies.
Knowing when a leak is harmful also needs to be easier for federal agencies.
Responding to appropriate releases of information-whether through freedom of information act requests or congressional inquiries-shouldn't be as hard as it is today.
Guaranteeing the safety and security of private citizen data isn't a desire...it's a demand.
Tools that make a records management professional and an end user's job easier on a day-to-day basis.


Khaled El-Enany, Egypt's new minister of antiquities, told Ahram Online that plugging the hole in the ministry's finances will be his top priority, because when funds are available projects that were put on hold could be resumed.
El-Enany completed his doctorate in Egyptology in 2001 at Montpellier III University in France, writing about ancient Egyptian royal names.
He then began an academic career in the Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management at Helwan University, where he rose through the ranks.
While at Helwan, El-Enany was director of the Open Learning Centre, head of the Tourism Guidance Department, vice-dean for education and student affairs and professor of Egyptology. He is also an associate scientific expert and member of the board of administration at the Institut français d'archéologie orientale (IFAO) and a visiting professor at Montpellier III. He has lectured in France and Switzerland.
In October 2015, the French government awarded El-Enany the French Chevalier (knight) of the Order of Arts and Literature for his achievements in archaeological studies and his efforts to preserve Egypt's heritage and create a strong bridge of cooperation between Egypt and France in the field of archaeology.
El-Enany told Ahram Online by phone after swearing the oath of office in front of President El-Sisi that he would continue what his predecessors started, as the post does not suggest one should start from scratch, or erase all previous efforts exerted. Rather, the aim must be to build on what has been done.
Helping junior Egyptian archaeologists and curators to develop their skills to meet their counterparts abroad is another goal that El-Enany vows to work hard to achieve, through the establishment of workshops on research methodology in Egyptology as well as sending archaeologists for training abroad.
El-Enany promised to have a soft opening of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC) in 2016. The press conference on the results of the radar survey of Tutankhamun’s tomb is to be held 1 April according to schedule.
El-Enany told Ahram Online that Prime Minister Sherif Ismail assured him he would remove all obstacles the ministry has faced in the pursuit of its archaeological work.
He added that Ismail encouraged him to work in collaboration with the ministries of tourism and civil aviation to improve Egypt's heritage profile and build up the country.
Upon arrival to the ministry El-Enany met with former Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty and all heads and directors of sections in the ministry, in order to put in motion a plan for the ministry’s future work.