The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia today issued driver’s licenses to 10 women in a historic first for the Middle Eastern country. Government officials there say that women will be officially allowed to drive as of June 24. Officials noted that about 2,000 more women could receive their driver’s licenses next week.
Permitting women to drive is a component of modernization reforms being implemented by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, Fox News reported, who is the heir apparent to the king. The 10 new drivers already held licenses in other countries and, as such, received the expedited go-ahead after taking a driving test and eye exam at an agency called the General Department of Traffic, which is located in the country’s capital of Riyadh.
In denying licensing previously, Saudi Arabia previously imposed the world’s only de facto ban on female drivers, the Associated Press reported.
AP adds that the restriction has been targeted by women’s rights activists in the Muslim country, some of whom who are still in jail and could be put on trial for charges related to allegedly undermining Saudi Arabia’s security.
As a technical matter, Saudi Arabia apparently has never explicitly banned female drivers; it just never issued them licenses.
“To boost the economy and ease international criticism,…Mohammed bin Salman has been promoting changes, like the decision to allow women to drive, all while risking backlash from clerics and others who adhere to the ultraconservative Wahhabi interpretation of Islam,” AP added.
A video clip uploaded to Twitter purports to show one of the 10 Saudi women receiving her license today.
Other initiatives being pushed by Prince Mohammed include allowing women to attend sporting events, permitting movie theaters in Saudi Arabia, and enabling more women to work outside the home, the New York Times explained. In recent months, he also arrested various luminaries such as members of his own royal family and rich businessmen on charges of corruption, completely unrelated to the ban on female drivers.
The civil rights crackdown is still in effect, however.
“The recent arrests singled out a number of men and women who had been involved in challenging the driving ban, including some who drove around Riyadh, the capital, to publicly protest it in 1990,” the Times added about the detained civil rights activists in Saudi Arabia.


On this Theme Thursday Season Three webcast, Jim Collison, Gallup's Director of Talent Sourcing, and Maika Leibbrandt, Senior Workplace Consultant, talk about Significance with guest Lela Meinke.
You want to be very significant in the eyes of other people. In the truest sense of the word, you want to be recognized. You want to be heard. You want to stand out. You want to be known. In particular, you want to be known and appreciated for the unique strengths you bring. You feel a need to be admired as credible, professional and successful. Likewise, you want to associate with others who are credible, professional and successful. And if they aren’t, you will push them to achieve until they are. Or you will move on.
An independent spirit, you want your work to be a way of life rather than a job, and in that work, you want to be given free rein, the leeway to do things your way. Your yearnings feel intense to you, and you honor those yearnings. And so your life is filled with goals, achievements or qualifications that you crave. Whatever your focus — and each person is distinct — your Significance theme will keep pulling you upward, away from the mediocre toward the exceptional. It is the theme that keeps you reaching.
People with Significance aren’t usually just okay with doing the job. They want to do the job in a way that leaves a fingerprint on someone’s soul. They want to do lasting work that really outlives them and leaves a legacy. It is a life you live full of goals and accomplishments that you crave.
If as an individual with Significance it means you want to do something meaningful, than it translates beautifully for a leader who wants that meaningful impact to be for their organization. You are uniquely positioned to notice, therefore celebrate, meaningful milestones. This turns you into a promoter of others around you. Leaders with Significance want to feel that they are drawn to other people that are also making a meaningful impact. There is a constant curiosity about how you could do more, and how you could be more. How can you work in a way that leads to something greater, and elevate the kind of success you’re experiencing? That curiosity is infectious, and it is something you can use in order to build your reputation.
It is also in many ways a theme that helps you eliminate busy work. Significance doesn’t have any patience for tasks that do not help contribute to your legacy. There is also an independence to this theme. As a leader this can show up as courage. This independence can see potential in others that they themselves sometimes don’t see. The desire for feedback is something that can fuel very authentic relationships within a leader. This can mean building relevant customer offerings. It can bring you and your company on the leading edge of innovation for what is truly relevant and needed in a customer space. Significance can also make you a great developer of people. It helps you push for greater affect and impact. You can notice and you can really expect that full impact piece.
If you are a leader with Significance there are four different calls of action that you can really channel your talent into in order to provide what followers need from their leaders. Leaders with Significance should practice talking about their values and their goals to build trust. In many ways the desire for recognition and to be seen is not the end goal for Significance, but it is a way to help you get to those goals. Find great ways that you can talk about your goals and values, so that people can see the big picture. Help others see your investment, and not just your actions.
A leader with Significance might demonstrate compassion by being a promoter to those closest to them. How do you find out how other people like to be recognized, and then help align them for that kind of celebration? Because your lens is really aligned for recognition, it can help you put people in a place they belong in, and really judge that place on how they’re affecting everybody else. You can provide stability by talking about the potential that you see, and then confirming that with metrics once you land on a goal. A leader with Significance can find more ways to reach larger and more diverse audiences. Your message is wrapped in hope. It is all about what could be, and how what can be affects the lives of other people. Challenge yourself to expose yourself to more audiences so that others can experience that message of hope that you have to give.
How do you feel about the Signficance Theme in a leadership role? Share your thoughts and experiences on the Called to Coach Facebook page.
Lela Meinke is a Learning Leader who inspires individuals, leaders, and teams to transform their lives. She’s a highly engaging and bridge-building coach, facilitator, consultant, and author with a great aptitude for simplifying and personalizing complex topics. Her expertise spans from Lean Six Sigma to StrengthsFinder, CRM and Operations, to online Product Management and Business Analysis. Lela loves to connect people with their purpose by creating environments with high, authentic engagement. Her passion pushes people toward self-actualization, results, and life-long learning.
"I provide my clients with an inspirational environment which fosters individual and team brilliance. I do this by connecting people with their purpose, by cultivating strengths, and by creating personalized frameworks for navigation. These frameworks consist of just the right mix of understandable and actionable tools, coaching, facilitation, and instruction. I use my talents to keep focus on meaningful progress today as a stepping-stone toward a more significant tomorrow."
Lela's top 5 strengths are: Learner | Input | Significance | Connectedness | Futuristic.


The California as an Island map collection was built by collector Glen McLaughlin over a period of 40 years. The collections' 800 items include a broad variety of materials from hemisphere to world maps, from title pages to celestial charts - all depicting the state as an island. The collection includes multiple states of the same map, where minute differences between maps are preserved in sequence for the serious cartographic scholar.


The U.S. wireless consumer has taken a backseat to narrow self interest in industry consolidation.
NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- The consolidation of the U.S. wireless industry into four competitive nationwide players may be the most important consumer story of this decade. Too bad the process appears to be veering into a game of shakedowns and back-alley poker.
The brinksmanship exhibited by Dish Network ( DISH in trying to block Sprint's ( S - Get Report) acquisition of Clearwire ( CLWR and the carrier's planned takeover and recapitalization by SoftBank, in addition to a venomous hedge fund battle over the T-Mobile ( TMUS - Get Report) and MetroPCS merger, indicates the narrow interests of a few key players could govern whether or not the average American will see falling wireless bills and rising service, in coming years.
Wireless consolidation is a daily news item mostly because so many hedge funds, telecom conglomerates, card-playing CEO's and lobbyists have an economic interest in the eventual outcome. But in this Wall Street horse race, the ordinary consumer is poised to bear the risks taken by speculators who have nearly overrun the process.
Simply put, it is the Wild West in the wireless industry.
While there is time left to salvage the best outcome for the nation's 326 million wireless subscribers, it appears the handful of parties with a say have an incentive to promote a frenzied conclusion to consolidation, which may leave the industry worse off.
Hedge funds seem ready to squeeze every penny out of the successor companies to a scattershot wireless industry, after building large positions in consolidators such as Sprint, Clearwire, MetroPCS and Leap Wireless ( LEAP when they were priced for failure.
An increasing price paid by the acquirers of Sprint and Clearwire is likely to wind up the expense of consumers by way of higher wireless fees or patchy service, given the amount of money needed to put both companies in a sustainable financial position.
Meanwhile, Dish Network, a late entrant to the wireless industry, is trying to derail a consumer friendly combination of Sprint, SoftBank and Clearwire, in an effort to maximize the value of wireless spectrum it scavenged from bankruptcy courts.
Dish and its chairman Charlie Ergen are currently using a high cost tender offer for Clearwire shares to delay Sprint's takeover of the internet provider and its spectrum.
Dish has also resorted to not-so-coy xenophobia in a lobbying effort to thwart SoftBank's takeover of Sprint on national security grounds, claiming the Japan-based telecom has ties to Chinese cyber-attack artists.
Even after Sprint and SoftBank agreed to concessions on the usage of Chinese wireless equipment and passed a national security review, Dish pressed its fear mongering.
Dish has an alternative proposal for Sprint.
Instead of recapitalizing the money-losing telecom to debt levels in line with financially stable dividend payers like AT&T and Verizon, Dish wants to bundle its satellite TV service and its spectrum assets into a national broadband, wireless and TV player to challenge existing triple-play offerings.
Dish's bid to enter the wireless market with Sprint is a moonshot, because of debt needed to fund a deal, the expectation of upwards of $10 billion in cost synergies and the company's untested melange of spectrum and service offerings.
Were Dish to win Sprint, the combined company would also be the most highly leveraged among large telecoms, leaving little-to-no room for error.
Ergen's motives to enter the wireless market may be sincere; however, many industry analysts and investors have interpreted Dish's proposals for Clearwire and Sprint as a financially savvy way to broker a network sharing agreement with SoftBank.
Even after winning its tender, Dish would only hold a minority stake in Clearwire shares that would simply be used frustrate Sprint and SoftBank's efforts to utilize Clearwire's assets, according to industry analysts.
While such a strategy almost uses Clearwire as a form of extortion against SoftBank's takeover of Sprint, few on Wall Street appear alarmed by the tactics.
Predictably, hedge fund investors who speculated in Clearwire's shares at levels around $1 are cheering Dish's efforts to bolster the price of the cash strapped company. Dish's newest tender for Clearwire is $4.40 a share, or a total enterprise value of over $10 billion.
Crest Financial said earlier this week minority shareholders should support Dish's superior offer. Mount Kellet Management, another large minority Clearwire shareholder, also opposes Sprint's proposed $3.40 buyout of the company's remaining shares.
In fact, investors like Crest have lobbied for the Federal Communications Commission to deny SoftBank and Sprint's merger so minority Clearwire shareholders can get a better deal.
Crest reported a near 8% stake in Clearwire shares in June 2012 when shares were about $1, meaning the fund would likely triple its money in Sprint's offer. It also has a history with Cleawire that stretches back to 2004, when the company was privately-held.
Championing the interests of investors like Crest and Mount Kellett, appeased by Dish's efforts to boost Clearwire's price, could come at a big cost to the ordinary U.S. wireless user.
At worst, Dish's agitation of Clearwire could cause SoftBank to abandon its merger efforts with Sprint, which would pump over $8 billion in new capital to the company and help it complete a multi-year 4G service rollout called Network Vision.
Similar dynamics played out when hedge fund Paulson & Co. opposed MetroPCS's merger with T-Mobile on grounds that the deals shortchanged investors.
While Paulson & Co.'s objections put the merger at significant risk of collapsing and spurred a word fight between it and T-Mobile CEO John Legere, the fund was able to negotiate a better deal for shareholders that lowered overall leverage levels and interest costs of the merged entity.
Paulson & Co. and other hedge fund investors could play a positive role in the takeover of Sprint. Currently, Paulson and Omega Advisors are significant Sprint shareholders and have both said on dollars and cents terms Dish's proposal is superior to SoftBank's offer. However, they are yet to fully support a deal.
Both funds may end up using Dish's entrance into the Sprint takeover fray to negotiate a better deal from SoftBank.
As with Crest Financial and Mount Kellett's stakes in Clearwire, both Paulson & Co. and Omega Advisors have been particularly canny in investing in Sprint shares at bargain basement prices. Driving ever higher share prices on consolidation efforts, though, would likely lead to more leverage and less cash for the handset subsidies, network spending and data pricing discounts needed to win back subscribers.
U.S. consumers already have experience with highly levered, capital scare wireless industry competitors to AT&T and Verizon.
No matter the discounts offered by Sprint, T-Mobile and MetroPCS as independent wireless providers, consumers have regularly fled the networks when adopting smartphones, favoring higher priced but better data service offered by AT&T and Verizon.
Ultimately, SoftBank's deal for Sprint and Sprint's deal for Clearwire give consumers the best chance at price competitive nationwide smartphone service.
T-Mobile's acquisition of MetroPCS and its aggressive pricing plans also indicate a resurgence of competition in the industry, after many feared an eventual duopoly of AT&T and Verizon.
As Dish's chairman Charlie Ergen tries to thwart consolidation efforts to utilize the spectrum he's acquired in bankruptcy auctions and hedge funds push for rising takeover prices, risks have fallen onto the U.S. wireless consumer.
Charlie Ergen deserves every opportunity to put the billions he's spent on wireless spectrum to use and hedge fund investors deserve value for their well-timed investments, however, the incentive structure of Wall Street has turned wireless consolidation decidedly against the ordinary consumer in recent weeks.


In case you thought the war of words between President-elect Donald Trump and civil rights icon Representative John Lewis (D-Georgia) might die down ahead of the inauguration, outspoken and controversial Governor Paul LePage (R-Maine) has ensured that the debate rages on.
The Trump-Lewis spat broke out over the weekend, after Lewis said Friday on NBC News' ‘Meet the Press’ that Russia interfered in the US election campaign and therefore Trump was not a “legitimate president.” He also added that, for the first time in his political career, he will not be attending the inauguration.
Since then, nearly 60 other Democratic politicians, mainly in the House of Representatives, have said they will join Lewis in boycotting the inauguration, the Washington Post reported. While many of Trump’s opponents have said that not attending is an appropriate way to express displeasure with Trump, his election and his proposed policies, LePage took the debate a step further than most.
Dear Democrats: If Hillary Clinton can attend the Inauguration, so can you. Grow up.
LePage said Lewis, who marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and has been arrested more than 40 times, needed a history lesson.
Did @Governor_LePage really tell John Lewis to thank white people for ending slavery? Jesus Christ. That's a new low even for that slime.
LePage’s remarks served as a catalyst for historians and tweeters alike who lambasted LePage, noting it was Grant (1869-1877) who ended the Reconstruction period, which lasted from 1865 to 1877, allowing for the creation of Jim Crow laws, which Hayes (1877-1881) oversaw. Indeed, the Civil Rights Movement fought against Jim Crow laws, which were repealed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
‘‘Paul LePage is going to give John Lewis a tutorial on the history of black oppression in the United States? That’s rich,’’ Colby College history professor Dan Shea told AP.
The Maine governor tried to clarify his comments later in the day, but only made things worse by attacking the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the country.
Lewis’ office said that LePage’s remarks didn’t warrant a response.


Is It the Bottom or Bear Market Rally?
After suffering through one of the most significant market downturns in history, investors are asking if the worst is over ... if the bottom has been reached.
Some experts think so, although they are careful to hedge their comments. Monday's market surge might not be the absolute bottom, they note, but it is an indication that some stocks and sectors are too cheap to pass up. And that buying will put in a floor, if it hasn't already, they claim.
Others don't totally agree. They think the market surge is simply a spate of buying in a generally depressed and downward moving market. But they also suggest investors take advantage of it.
Amid the market fall, central banks and governments scrambled to formulate plans to prop up the world's financial sector. While the efficacy of those efforts remains to be seen, the moves have injected a glimmer of confidence into the markets. That makes now the time to buy, some market managers claim.
"If you wait for every thing to be solved the market is already going to have discounted that and probably be up 15-20 percent," Bill Smith, president, CEO and senior portfolio manager at SAM Advisors. (Smith suggested investors look at Apple and Textron: See his full recommendations here).
To be sure, many economic storms still beset the investing climate. Beyond the current banking crisis, many of the world's major economies are in or close to recession, some economists believe. That would limit growth prospects for many businesses and, as a consequence, their stocks.
Indeed, during Monday's market action there were some traders selling into the rally.
But in the recent market pounding some stocks have seen their prices fall drastically, even though their fundamentals and earnings potential remains solid. That is giving them very attractive valuations relative to their individual history and the general market, portfolio advisers argue.
"We think we're at the tail end of a panic which has disconnected stock prices from business realities," said David Katz of Matrix Asset Advisers. (He's advising investors to look at Dell , Cisco and Devon Energy - see his full comments here).
Still, some experts are urging caution.
"I do not see us defining a new bull market in equity risk assets until we know exactly what this recession looks like," Tim Harris from JPMorgan Asset Management told CNBC. The underpinning is in place for the market, Harris said, but the next twelve months will prove a very bumpy ride for investors and economic weakness will remain to the next two years.
Click here for more on what market pros are saying on CNBC.


In Jim Holt’s review of George Dyson’s Turing’s Cathedral he falls into the trap that Dyson set for him [“How the Computers Exploded,” NYR, June 7]. Dyson has amplified the importance of John von Neumann’s MANIAC project to a point where Holt got the impression that it was the first useful computer and it started a revolution. It wasn’t. It didn’t.
John von Neumann’s MANIAC was not the first computer. Nor was it, as Holt dubs it, the first “genuine” computer, or the first high-speed, stored-program, all-purpose computer. John von Neumann did not invent the stored-program architecture that often bears his name. By the time the MANIAC came online, several stored-program machines were operating and actually for sale in England and the US. Any number of computer history texts will bear this out.
Dyson does include these facts in his book. Yet they are mostly brushed over, in a mad love affair with all things von Neumann. So it’s not surprising that Holt’s review gets basic facts wrong.
If Holt had only doubted this revisionist history enough to check another source, he could have found that the ENIAC was very busy cranking through a variety of different computational problems from 1945 to 1955 (including one for the H-bomb). By 1948 it had a stored program. In 1949 the Manchester Baby and Mark I, the EDSAC and the BINAC were running. Eckert and Mauchly had contracts in government and industry to deliver UNIVACs. The world was lousy with computers!
The idea that von Neumann was some kind of torch carrier who convinced the world that computers were important just does not wash with the facts. It does, apparently, sell books. The insiders were convinced in 1946, when the ENIAC was revealed and the description of Eckert and Mauchly’s EDVAC was disseminated under von Neumann’s name. The population was convinced in 1952, when UNIVAC predicted the election on national TV. The fact that von Neumann continues to get credit for Eckert and Mauchly’s work is maddening.
Jim Holt begins his very interesting review of George Dyson’s book Turing’s Cathedral with the statement that the “digital universe” came into existence in 1950 with the construction of the MANIAC—an all-purpose computer built in Princeton. I believe that this statement is incorrect. The first such computer was the ENIAC, which was built at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946. It was conceived and designed by the engineers John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. It had all the features of what was later called the von Neumann architecture. Von Neumann got into this around 1944 as a consultant and reformulated the engineering into a mathematical structure. Among the features of the ENIAC that had been conceived by Mauchly and Eckert was what is known as “stored programming.” Hints of this can be found in previous work by Alan Turing. Programs are numerically stored in the computer’s memory where they can be manipulated like numbers so the computer can modify its program as it goes along.
Von Neumann was such a compelling figure that it is tempting to build the story around him, which by the way Dyson does not do. Holt makes much of the fact that the MANIAC was used to compute features of the hydrogen bomb. But this was first done by the ENIAC. Von Neumann had an abolute paranoia about the Russians and favored a first nuclear strike. Einstein referred to him as a Denktier, a think animal.
The history of the electronic computer is very complex and parts of it are still disputed, but Holt’s account is too simple.
Arguing about precedence of near- simultaneous inventions is generally fruitless, but it is strange that Alan Turing’s Pilot ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), which has at least some claim to be the first high-speed, stored-program, von Neumann-architecture digital computer, is often written out of the history: Jim Holt in “How the Computers Exploded,” which emphasizes Turing’s role, identifies MANIAC as the first practical realization of Turing’s “universal computer,” but makes no mention of the Pilot ACE.
Pilot ACE, which was based on Turing’s original design for a full ACE version, was built at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL) starting in 1946, and ran its first program in May 1950. Turing left NPL before its completion, frustrated by slow progress, but the work was completed by a team including Donald Davies (later director of what came to be called the Informatics division of the NPL), Jim Wilkinson, and Michael Woodger.
Pilot ACE used 1,450 vacuum tubes, had a mercury delay line main memory of 384 32-bit words (equivalent to 1,526 bytes in modern terms) and a clock rate of 1 MHz. A 4,096-word “hard drive” drum memory was added later. Between 1950 and 1954, when it was retired to the London Science Museum, Pilot ACE saw significant practical use, most notably in the analysis of the airframe structural stresses that caused the catastrophic breakup of some early Comet airliners (the first commercial jet).
Incidentally, Mike Woodger, Turing’s assistant from 1946, whom I worked with at the NPL in the early 1970s, never accepted that Turing’s death by poisoning was suicide. He claimed that Turing’s careless work habits with photographic chemicals made accident much more likely, and that suicide was not consistent with Turing’s personality whatever the stressful circumstances.
As for Turing, given room in Trafalgar Square for another column, instead of an apology he might well be placed atop it.
Mark Dowson, by contrast, nominates as the first computer the Pilot ACE—built in the late 1940s in Britain and partly based on the elegantly minimalist design of Alan Turing himself. That is more plausible, even though the Pilot ACE proved far less influential than von Neumann’s Princeton machine as a template for later computers.
Whether MANIAC or ENIAC or EDSAC or EDVAC or ACE deserves the laurel as the first genuine computer—not to mention UNIVAC, BIVAC, MARK I, LEO, Zuse Z4, and much of the rest of the alphabet—two things are certain. One is that the “Von Neumann architecture” for the modern computer is something of a misnomer, since the ideas behind it were not exclusively or even primarily due to von Neumann. The other is that “Turing machine” is not a misnomer at all, since it was Turing who came up with the original idea of an all-purpose computer. For that, and for his quietly heroic (and shabbily rewarded) role in helping Britain avert defeat in World War II, Turing probably does, as David K. Adams suggests, merit a column in Trafalgar Square.


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week gave its first green light to a company that wants to start selling a blood test to evaluate for mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion. The agency lauded the blood test as an innovative tool for speeding diagnosis and avoiding radiation exposure from brain scans. But some head trauma experts worry the authorization was pushed through too hastily.
“The data aren't as conclusive as we would have hoped, so I was surprised by the rapid FDA approval,” says Henrik Zetterberg, a professor of neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who was not involved with the project. The Brain Trauma Indicator, developed by San Diego–based biotechnology company Banyan Biomarkers, was reviewed and authorized for commercialization in fewer than six months. It was cleared under the FDA's Breakthrough Devices Program—an approvals process that aims to fast-track the development of promising and relatively low-risk medical technologies, after reviewing available data. Banyan says the new test will soon be available in hospitals.
The Brain Trauma Indicator measures blood plasma levels of the UCH-L1, a protein scientists believe helps dispose of cellular waste in the brain, and GFAP, a structural protein found in non-neuronal cells called astrocytes. Both are released at elevated levels following a concussion or other injury that damages nerve fibers, and both can be detected within 20 minutes of a head injury (although it may take longer for doctors and patients to get the results from a lab).
Concussions are notoriously difficult to diagnose, and patients suspected of having them are typically assessed by a doctor using the Glasgow Coma Scale—a series of physical tests for determining the level of consciousness—followed by a computed tomography (CT) head scan for brain abnormalities. CT scans are expensive, however, and many patients suspected of having traumatic brain injuries do not exhibit signs of visible damage when scanned. The blood test would provide hospitals and clinicians with a relatively quick screening tool to help them decide whether a CT scan would be likely to pick up any brain injury.
The FDA authorized marketing the Brain Trauma Indicator after examining data from a clinical study of nearly 2,000 blood samples from patients with suspected concussions. From that data, the agency concluded the test can predict the absence of lesions on a CT scan with an accuracy of 99.5 percent, making it reliable enough to rule out the need for a scan in at least one third of the patients.
“It's promising that the FDA has approved something,” Zetterberg says. “But much more research is needed,” he adds—especially comparisons of different biomarkers at different time points after injury—to develop a more reliable blood test for concussion. CT scan abnormalities, he says, are just one aspect of this type of injury.


In "The Darkest Minds," the plot feels like X-men in that a virus kills 90 percent of children and gives the other 10 percent potentially dangerous powers. The surviving 10 percent are taken away from their parents and locked in camps, with the most dangerous ones killed outright.
Rating: PG-13 for violence including disturbing images and thematic elements.
Screenplay by: Chad Hodge, based on the novel by Alexandra Bracken.
Directed by: Jennifer Yuh Nelson.
Starring: Amandla Stenberg, Mandy Moore, Gwendoline Christie, Harris Dickinson, Skylan Brooks, Miya Chech, Bradley Whitford and more.
When will Hollywood finally realize that it takes more than just summarizing a novel to make a good movie script?
That’s the biggest flaw with “The Darkest Minds,” the latest attempt at bringing young adult dystopian fiction to the big screen. Though the characters are engaging and some of the ideas are more relevant than ever, the plot feels more like a hurried synopsis rather than an actual story. That makes the dramatic development suffer, which also makes it harder to care about the larger trilogy the movie is inevitability hoping to kick off. Rather than being absorbed in each new development, I mostly just wanted to skip to the end to see how everything worked out.
The plot feels like X-Men by way of current events, with a virus that kills 90 percent of children and gives the other 10 percent potentially dangerous powers. The surviving 10 percent are taken away from their parents and locked in camps, with the most dangerous ones killed outright.
Ruby, one of the “dangerous ones” who survived because she managed to hide her power, is about to be discovered when she escapes the camp. With the help of other teens who are also on the run from the government and bounty hunters, the group tries to survive their enemies and find out if there’s any place safe enough to call home.
Given the stories that have popped up in the news over the past year, the early scenes in the camp are both particularly relevant and that much more chilling. The helplessness of the children and teens in the face of the guards is by far the most disturbing thing about the movie, and a more careful exploration of the idea of imprisoning children might have elevated the movie to profound, moving relevance.
Unfortunately, the creative team had an entire novel’s worth of plot to speed through. A painfully small number of Hollywood screenwriters seem to realize that novels and movies are structured almost entirely differently, and you do a story more justice by making the necessary adaptations rather than trying to simply shoehorn in the whole book. Screenwriter Chad Hodge unfortunately falls into the latter trap, condensing what must have been whole chapters into scenes so relatively brief they add little to the overall story. There’s no chance to build anything, because the movie is too busy checking off a chapter list.
The main characters, and the performances of those portraying them, are the biggest draw for the movie. Amandla Stenberg does a good job both of portraying Ruby’s fear and showing how she moves past it, and her utter heartbreak is a big part of what makes one later scene so searing. Harris Dickinson is a delight as Liam, with the perfect balance of sweetness and bravery that any young aduly heroine could want in her leading man.
Chubbs, played by Skylan Brooks, offers a wonderful touch of humor that never devolves into a joke. And, though her character never says a word, Miya Cech manages to make young Zu utterly endearing. Together, the four of them are among the most likeable young adult movie protagonists I’ve seen.
I only wish they’d been in a movie worthy of them.


There’s a common refrain in the startup world: “Pick one thing and do it well.” This is undoubtedly sound advice for the services and apps working diligently to make your life a little easier. With one tap of a thumb, your taxi is on its way or your dinner is being delivered. In just a few clicks you can buy and receive your movie tickets without even going to a theater. Hitting the refresh button allows the world’s news to unfold before you without glancing at a newspaper. In the tech world, this simplicity is considered the pinnacle of delivering satisfaction to consumers.
But what happens when your needs can’t be solved by a single click, a single feature, or even by a single company? What happens when achieving your goal requires dozens of steps, expert advice, ongoing motivation and inspiration, and often takes months or years to accomplish? Is there an app for that?
A new set of companies in multiple industries like food, fitness, and financial planning are looking to take on the role of a multifaceted hub offering everything you might need to upgrade your life, from free content to experts for hire. These companies want to help you finally reach that dream of redoing your house, mastering a new hobby, or finishing a marathon by bringing everything and everyone you need together in one place.
Think of it this way: if a typical, single-purpose app or website is your go-to shoe store, then these multi-purpose tools are the department stores, offering an extensive suite of relevant resources to mix and match into the solution that’s right for you.
For example, Porch.com was founded by Matt Ehrlichman in response to realizing that the advice and information he needed to build his dream home was spread across many different websites. Now, a homeowner on Porch.com has a hub for their project that puts all the tools and resources in one place — a model that appeals to consumers across industries.
And increasingly, these companies are selling products via a “Shop” tab, creating a new revenue stream and a new reason for consumers to come back.
How do Small Companies Offer So Many Resources?
Like a department store, small companies mostly provide only the infrastructure, content curation, and customers. The actual content comes from contributors like small retailers, bloggers, and service providers.
The model works to everyone’s benefit. In a fragmented market, content creators, experts for hire, and retailers battle for the customer’s attention. It’s expensive, inefficient, and stacks the odds against small players. On these hubs, contributors and service providers get a spot in the community alongside users, where they can share their expertise and engage with potential customers without needing a large advertising budget.
On the other side of the market, consumers have a hard time cutting through the noise. Questions often surface: Is this the right advice? Can I trust this contractor I found on Google? Beginners often end up feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. It’s hard to make a major lifestyle improvement, and it’s even harder when you have to piece together every step yourself. As a result, people give up and everyone loses.
But on a site like Craftsy, a hub for people who want to learn and discuss crafts like quilting and cake decoration, each customer can carve out their own path at their own pace, while still having reliable professional help at hand. A novice quilter might read some starter blog posts and take a beginner class, while an advanced knitter might post their latest project, stock up on supplies or answer community questions.
In a sense, these companies serve as engines for their ecosystem, handling the onboarding of new customers and growing the market for everyone.
Does this complexity deter consumers accustomed to a one-click world? It doesn’t seem like it. In less than three years, Porch.com has captured data on 132 million home improvement projects, grown to more than 300 employees, and according to The New York Times is valued at about $500 million.
Craftsy has more than 5 million members and said it was projecting nearly $50 million in revenues for 2014.
Companies like Food52 (become a better cook) and Learnvest (take control of your finances) offer similar assistance with large personal goals and are also seeing a growth trajectory. Sites like Monster.com (find a new job) and WeightWatchers.com (lose weight) have used a version of this hub strategy for years.
While the late 90s and early 2000s saw the rise of the portal, which stuffed everything from horoscopes to email to classifieds into one experience, the last few years were about the stripped-down, single purpose app. Today, one-stop shop destinations are blending these models to create a happy medium, focusing on just one category — and it seems like they are here to stay.
Rohan Deuskar is co-founder and CEO of Stylitics.


Just weeks after ESPN laid off about 100 journalists and on-air commentators, the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” unveiled a new programming slate on Tuesday filled with big personalities but short on the kind of highlight shows that for many years were the foundation of the network.
The revamped lineup underscores just how much the changing media landscape has unsettled even the world’s most powerful sports company. Once the undisputed king of sports programming, ESPN must now contend with companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, which not only offer statistics and highlights at the click of a button but are also increasingly offering the games themselves.
And in a world where viewers can catch a must-see play on Facebook or stream an entire football game on Twitter, who needs a traditional highlight show like “SportsCenter” that focuses on highlights and updates like player injuries and roster moves?
So ESPN is shaking things up.
The theme was a bet on the power of the network’s personalities. ESPN formally announced several new shows — including a three-hour morning block with the longtime ESPN host Mike Greenberg, and one that will feature the commentators Bomani Jones and Pablo Torre. In an apparent effort to draw viewers to “SportsCenter,” its crown jewel since 1979, ESPN has retooled the show, tying time slots to specific anchors, including Kenny Mayne, one of the network’s best-known personalities. The show will not air at all from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. on ESPN’s main channel.
The network has also signed new deals with other ESPN veterans, including Sage Steele and Hannah Storm, who will have a new role that includes hosting prime-time specials. Ms. Steele will host a three-hour morning version of “SportsCenter” on ESPN2.
In an effort to meet viewers on their various devices, the network announced SportsCenter Right Now, short news updates online and twice hourly on ESPN during the day. During the presentation, Mr. Skipper highlighted ESPN’s inclusion in television packages offered by the likes of Sling TV and Hulu.
ESPN’s efforts to adapt to the digital age are indicative of broader challenges facing cable television. Cord-cutting has accelerated sharply in the last quarter, with traditional cable and satellite providers losing 732,000 subscribers compared with a loss of 102,000 in the same period a year ago, according to research by Michael Nathanson, an analyst at MoffettNathanson. Lower-priced “skinny” online packages of channels have not made up the slack.
National television advertising fell 1 percent in the last quarter, the most in nearly two years.
The shifting media landscape has been particularly hard on ESPN. The network has dropped subscribers in the last several years even as sports programming rights have become more expensive. ESPN, for instance, recently paid $12 billion for a nine-year deal with the N.B.A.
Disney, ESPN’s parent company, has staked some hope on an ESPN-branded subscription streaming service that it plans to introduce by the end of the year. But at least initially, the service will mostly stream sporting events for which ESPN owns the programming rights but does not televise, like certain tennis matches, cricket matches and various college sports.
Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, told analysts on an earnings call last week that the ESPN service would allow people to tailor subscriptions based on their interest — “a given sport or a given team or a given region in a given period of time.” He also said that ESPN had been working to improve its mobile apps, which he said have recently attracted a relatively healthy monthly audience of 23 million unique users.
Wall Street, however, has looked mostly askance at Disney’s plans for ESPN. During the conference call, analysts bombarded Mr. Iger with questions about the network. The company’s share price is down 7 percent since the last week in April, mirroring an industrywide decline that was driven by fears of cord-cutting and weak ad sales.
At the presentation on Tuesday, ESPN acknowledged its troubles, but did not let them detract from the over-the-top ritual of television’s yearly pitch to advertisers. As they nibbled on breakfast sandwiches and avocado toast, the network paraded stars across the stage at a Broadway theater in Midtown Manhattan. Serena Williams sat for a short interview with Mr. Greenberg to promote his morning studio show that will start next year. Paul Pierce, the former N.B.A. star, appeared (“I’m still pulling for the Celtics,” he said), as did many of the network’s biggest names, including Scott Van Pelt, Suzy Kolber, Jon Gruden and Mr. Mayne.
Absent, of course, was the talent the network laid off last month, including the former N.F.L. players Trent Dilfer and Danny Kanell, the former baseball general manager Jim Bowden, and the longtime N.F.L. reporter Ed Werder. Mr. Skipper was not available to talk to reporters after the presentation.
But while the network threw out the occasional statistic — Mr. Skipper said ESPN’s prime-time audience was up 15 percent in the first quarter and digital products reached more than 100 million people — the program lacked the torrent of sliced-and-diced numbers that often invade such presentations.
ESPN was, for the most part, in sell mode, at times poking fun at the notion that television advertising was outdated.
At one point, Mr. Mayne, fitted with feathery wings and calling himself the Angel of Advertising, soared onto the stage. After landing softly, he momentarily tussled with the wires that had suspended him.


Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah could not have made his controversial speech in the state Assembly on Wednesday without giving much thought to its consequences.
Union Defence Minister A.K. Antony’s recent statement that India and Russia have sorted out all issues pertaining to the joint development of the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) and that the deal is slated to be signed during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to India in December is heartening indeed.
Every day, social networking sites have been throwing up new challenges and shaping how people interact with one another. Social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut enable people who are separated by geographical distances to interact and share each other’s lives, thus strengthening their bonds.
Bob Woodward of the Watergate fame is back once again with his new book, Obama’s Wars. Despite the hype, there is nothing in the book that is really shocking or revelatory. There is no analysis, commentary or policy assessment in the book.
POLITICS is one profession in which there is no retirement age (there are some other professions also, but less said about them the better). That is why one has never heard of an ex-politician. At worst, some of them become Governors.
When I was a college student in the 1940s we, like others, had a family doctor - a general physician (GP). He was the best friend of the family. Specialisation in medicine was yet in its infancy.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah could not have made his controversial speech in the state Assembly on Wednesday without giving much thought to its consequences. He had never been under so much pressure from separatists and others in the Opposition camp as he had been experiencing since June 11, when a cycle of violence began leading to the loss of 110 lives in the valley. The Centre’s announcement about the reopening of the educational institutions in the state and the lifting of curfew from Srinagar came when his ability to govern under difficult circumstances was being questioned. Despite this, he enjoyed the support of the Centre. This was, however, not enough for him. He noticed his popularity declining considerably. Hence his assertion that he was “not a puppet of the Centre” and that he ran the government as an elected Chief Minister of the state.
Mr Omar Abdullah, however, did not stop at this. He further declared that “Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India is under an agreement and it is not the merger”. Then he went on to make a terrible blunder by saying, “We want a resolution of the K-issue as would be acceptable to the three regions of Jammu and Kashmir and also to the neighbouring country”. His description of accession and mentioning of the “neighbouring country” (obviously, Pakistan) must have come to score a debating point, but this amounts to going too far. He has landed himself in trouble. This is not the way to tell the separatists that he felt for the aspirations of the people of Kashmir more than they do.
The separatists have their own game plan. Mr Omar Abdullah as an elected Chief Minister should not have thought of competing with them. He has only weakened his case by responding to the separatists in the manner they talk about Kashmir. He has provided a handle to the PDP, the BJP and other opposition parties to beat him with. The Chief Minister is a sensible person no doubt. But he must remember that his position cannot improve by raising issues that have nothing to do with the prevailing situation.
Union Defence Minister A.K. Antony’s recent statement that India and Russia have sorted out all issues pertaining to the joint development of the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) and that the deal is slated to be signed during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to India in December is heartening indeed. Considering that the joint development of the multi-role transport aircraft with Russia is also on the anvil and India has decided to go in for long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft from the US, among other equipment, it is refreshing that the need to upgrade India’s air firepower is being addressed after all. Only last week Air Chief P.V. Naik had sent shock-waves across the country when he admitted that 50 per cent of the Indian Air Force equipment, including fighters, radars, transport aircraft and air defence systems, was either obsolete or obsolescent.
That the Russians have settled for joint development of the fifth generation fighter aircraft and of multi-role transport aircraft is no flash in the pan. It is an index of their faith in India’s technological prowess as borne out by its indigenous development of the Light Combat Aircraft, the Advanced Light Helicopter and by co-production of the BrahMos cruise missiles with them in a cost-effective manner. Though the Indo-Russian FGFA will be based on the Russian Sukhoi T-50, which flew for the first time this January at their facility in Siberia, it will be built to the IAF’s specifications. Significantly, it is being touted as superior to the American F/A-22 `Raptor’, the world’s only operational FGFA as of now.
If there is a flip side to Indo-Russian defence cooperation it is that projects get delayed inordinately and this leads to considerable cost escalation. Not only has the FGFA been delayed, India had bought Gorshkov frigate in 2004 and its delivery, originally fixed for 2008, has now been finalised for 2012-13. In the case of the Akula-II nuclear-powered submarine, the two sides have now reportedly postponed the delivery to March next year, though India was supposed to get it last year after trials. This week’s talks between Antony and his Russian counterpart resolved to cut down delays but the proof of the pudding would lie in its eating.
Every day, social networking sites have been throwing up new challenges and shaping how people interact with one another. Social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut enable people who are separated by geographical distances to interact and share each other’s lives, thus strengthening their bonds. Their usefulness can be gauged by the fact that the market-leader Facebook has more than 50 crore active users, 50 per cent of whom log on on any given day. An average user has 130 ‘friends’ to share his comments with.
Sometimes, Facebook’s strengths create situations that throw up new challenges for its users, and the world at large. In a recent case, schoolchildren commented negatively against a teacher in words that were distasteful bordering on obscenity. The remarks were meant to be shared among “friends” and were not for the consumption of the public. The students were subsequently identified and punished for that act. The school’s action has brought to the fore the debate about whether Facebook information should be used to discipline students. How much of the students’ activities outside the campus should their schools monitor? What right to privacy do they have for online activities? There are no clear-cut answers to such questions.
Many issues arise when the cyber reality clashes with the real world, especially since this is uncharted territory as far as rules and regulations are concerned. The young people of today have many new modes of expression that cause anxiety among adults. For them there is no difference between a verbal and an online chat. Sometimes their activities are taken too seriously by administrators. On the other hand, those who use social networking sites, too, have to realise that what they do online has real-world consequences. What is online can never really be private. Thus, all those who spend an average of over 70,000 crore minutes per month on Facebook must be cautions about what they post. At the end of the day, it is the unwritten but widely accepted rules of civil behaviour that govern our social lives, both online and offline.
Bob Woodward of the Watergate fame is back once again with his new book, Obama’s Wars. Despite the hype, there is nothing in the book that is really shocking or revelatory. There is no analysis, commentary or policy assessment in the book. One finds only narrative and an unyielding focus on relationships among its principal subjects. What Woodward lays bare, however, are rifts at the highest echelons on decision-making in Washington over America’s mission and strategy in Afghanistan as well as the vociferous and highly personal nature of policy disagreements.
Woodward’s book is largely a near-verbatim account of US National Security Council meetings last fall where the administration hashed out its Afghanistan policy. It should come as no surprise to learn that the Obama Administration was deeply divided and riven with suspicions. America’s civilian and military leaders were divided on Afghanistan, and the level of distrust between the two was so high that Obama ended up designing his own strategy.
Obama comes across as a cold, calculating decision-maker who ultimately decides to pander to his base by including a deadline for withdrawal. He was frustrated with his military advisers who he felt were thwarting his search for an exit plan. In the end, all the US seems to have got is a plan to exit but no strategy to win the war.
The shadow of Vietnam looms large over the debate on the Afghanistan strategy. The US Vice-President, Joe Biden, is said to be “pessimistic and more convinced than ever that Afghanistan was a version of Vietnam.” The President himself is reported to be so determined to avoid a Vietnam-like morass that he ends up writing his own strategy memo. An administration review of the Afghan war is scheduled for this December and it is unlikely to convince the Obama White House that America needs to win the war in the Af-Pak area.
Though Pakistan remains the key to success in defeating the Taliban and eliminating Al-Qaida’s activities in the region, the Obama Administration has grown impatient with Pakistan for its foot-dragging against the militant sanctuaries in border areas. Fears about Pakistan — a nuclear power with a fragile civilian government, a dominant military and an intelligence service that sponsored terrorist groups - have shaped the trajectory of Obama’s Af-Pak policy. The US intelligence has been warning that not only does Al-Qaida and the Taliban continue to operate from safe havens within Pakistan but terrorist groups have also been recruiting westerners to wreak havoc in Europe and North America.
For Obama the reason to create a secure, self-governing Afghanistan was to prevent the spread of the “cancer” from Pakistan. Pakistan’s main priority has been to take on its home-grown branch of the Taliban, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). But the links between the TTP and other terrorist organisations are much too evident to ignore. The US has also pressured Pakistan with regard to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Though the Pakistan government is holding the commander of the Mumbai attacks, he “continues to direct LeT operations from his detention centre” and LeT is now even threatening attacks in the US. Pakistan has been successful in hoodwinking the Americans so far and there is little likelihood that anything will change in the near future.
India will have to fight its own battles. The US will start moving out of Afghanistan next year. As a consequence, the Indian footprint in Afghanistan should increase if it wants to preserve its vital interests. The Pakistani military has become adept at the double game it has been playing with Washington. It recognises that America’s reliance on Pakistan is at an all-time high and it will extract its pound of flesh from the West. As the threat of instability increases, the centrality of the Pakistani military is only likely to grow. And given the well-known anti-India views of the Pakistan Army Chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, New Delhi would be fooling itself if it believes that negotiations with Islamabad and Rawalpindi are likely to lead to any sort of a desirable outcome.
Much like General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, who continues to believe that he could “add time to the clock” and “get what we need” as long as some progress is shown, many in India also continue to believe that the US will retain a substantive presence in Afghanistan as long as the mess in the Af-Pak area is not sorted out. But Woodward makes it clear that this is a dramatic misreading of President Obama. He means when he says that America is not in the business of nation-building over the next 20 years.
India will be facing some tough choices in the coming months. It will have to raise the level of its game if it wants to retain any relevance in the evolving strategic milieu in the Af-Pak area.
Mamta Banerjee may open a chain of hospitals near railway tracks. The way the frequency of train accidents has been increasing, there will never be any shortage of patients.
Sharad Pawar can turn into a successful astrologer and fortune teller. He is a natural in the field. Whenever he said sugar or some other commodity was going to get costlier, it always did.
An out-of-politics Omar Abdullah will surely be lapped up by the film world. I am told he already has an offer to play Emperor Nero in a Hollywood production.
Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Badal can make a fortune by manufacturing power generators and inverters in Punjab.
Mani Shankar Aiyar is my candidate for being the Chairman of the Organising Committee whenever India gets to host an Olympics.
Once Bhupinder Singh Hooda is done with politics, he should become president of a khap panchayat.
Lalu Prasad Yadav is wasting his talent fighting elections and his brothers-in-law. He can be the fodder king of the country whenever he wants. He can make additional millions by being a Visiting Professor at various agricultural universities around the world, and share with them the secrets of how he made his buffaloes give quintals of milk every day, which he and Rabri Devi then used to bring up their children like kings.
Maneka Gandhi should raise a monkey brigade, which will be trained to catch human beings and put them in cages.
Her son Varun will do well joining the police force where his ability to curse, rave and rant will come in very handy.
L K Advani and Uma Bharati can turn into architects, specialising in temple architecture.
Mayawati ought to be a mall builder. The first one of these can be a 100-storey structure to come up in Agra at the exact spot where the famed Taj Mahal now stands. Marble from the dismantled Taj can be used to make elephant statues.
Once out of jail, former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda should become a mining magnate while A. Raja can float the world’s largest telecom company if at all he is kicked out of the Union Cabinet.
Our good old Suresh Kalmadi deserves to be a demolition expert, of course.
Even today, with so much specialisation, the backbone of the national health service in the UK is the family doctor - a GP. He decides if you need to go to a specialist. In fact, very few need to, for over 90 per cent suffer from less than 0.1 per cent of known diseases, and the family doctor can take care of such common diseases better than a specialist because he knows the patient very well.
But in our country today, while there is a specialist of one kind or the other around every corner in our urban areas, there are simply no GPs; as a class, they have vanished. Till a few years ago, no medical college gave a M.D. (a post-graduate degree) in family medicine. Following my convocation address to the University of Health Sciences in Calcutta a few years ago, the Government of West Bengal decided to have such a course. Even today it is probably an exception. We need to reinstate the tradition of family physicians or GPs as a first step towards ensuring effective and least expensive medical care.
In the absence of GPs, we all go to specialists, and the specialist generally finds a disease that you are not suffering from and prescribes a cure for it. I was told of a person who saw seven specialists in a major corporate hospital. None of the specialists asked him if he was taking any drugs, and each of them prescribed him a course of different antibiotic. He ended up in the hospital with antibiotic toxicity.
Commonsense tells us that, excepting in the case of an emergency requiring a specialist in a particular area, it would be in the interest of the patient to first go to a GP and then to a specialist only if referred to by a GP. The tragedy is that even multi-speciality hospitals in a country -- that are largely in the private sector - do not have enough GPs, if they have one at all. We need to urgently fill this lacuna.
The second problem is that of increasing commercialisation of medical and health care in the last three decades, during which period the government has been increasingly abrogating its responsibility in this area. Till, the 1970s the government hospitals and those rune by trusts (such as Christian Medical College Hospital at Vellore) were very good. They were the only kind we had and each of them satisfied a minimum requirement. Health care was not a business but social service; it is just that the number of hospitals was very small. Today, health care is big business and the government is a party to it. It has deliberately allowed the government hospitals to go to seed so that private hospitals can flourish.
For example, people being treated under Arogyasri go to private hospitals; so everywhere new private hospitals are coming up to take advantage of this situation. Why didn't the Government, instead of subsidising private hospitals through Arogyasri, spend that money to upgrade its own existing hospitals and open new ones of quality. Further, private hospitals are given all kinds of concessions, for example in respect of cost of land and duty on equipment, on the condition that they will treat a certain number of patients free ; not one is treated free and the Government ignores it.
I do not deny that we have some ethical, people-oriented private hospitals but their number and proportion is extremely small. For a vast majority of private hospitals, the primary objective (in some cases, the sole objective) is to make money; cures in these hospitals are mostly incidental. They engage in gross exploitation of a patient (particularly the uneducated and uninformed ones) by total lack of transparency, inflated bills and unnecessary procedures.
Thus, according to a recent report, private hospitals in Hyderabad carry out, per 100 patients, eight times more hysterectomies, two times more tonsilectomies, three times more caesarian operations, and 15 times more appendectomies than are needed or done in govenment hospitals. This is in addition to unnecessary tests!
Not only that, there is a nexus between private hospitals and private doctors on the one hand and diagnostic centres on the other, so that when a doctor or a hospital asks you to go to a particular centre for a diagnostic test (whether it was necessary or not is another question), he gets a commission from the diagnostic centre for this referral.
Many private hospitals and private doctors in urban areas have touts in rural area who bring patients to the doctor or the hospital for a consideration. The tout gets a commission for the referral and also for the unnecessary tests done on the trusting and ignorant rural patients. In one case, we provided incontrovertible evidence for such an happening, with a complete recording of the conversation between the doctor and the tout, to the Medical Council of India (MCI), but nothing happened. We all now know the extent of corruption in the MCI with its Chairman in jail and its Governing Board reconstituted by Parliament.
The pity of it all is that wherever it can get away with it, the government has been a party to all the above happenings. Not that it cannot run first-rate hospitals ; examples would be AIIMS at Delhi, PGI at Chandigarh, and JIPMER in Pondicherry. But their number is extremely small. Most of the government hospoitals are just bad, steeped in inefficiency and corruption.
Sometime back, we found that in one hospital in Bhopal set up to take care of Bhopal gas tragedy victims, all the drugs used were fake and from companies that are known to make fake drugs.
One of the reasons for the situation outlined above is that to get admission in a medical college, most of which are private, you need to pay huge sums (as much as Rs 1 crore) as capitation fee. This money will have to be earned by the individual after getting the degree which, of course, is guaranteed. The quality of medical education in the country is abysmally low, except in less than 10 per cent of the medical colleges ; most of such colleges are run by the government or non-profit-making trusts.
It is true that government doctors don't make as much money as good private doctors do. But good government hospitals, often attached to good medical colleges, provide facilities that private hospitals do not - for example, of research and security. But, then, the system of capitation fees will have to be abolished de facto, not just de jure.
What should, then, be our medicare policy, taking ground realities into account ? As was shown by the late N. Antia (one of India's foremost plastic surgeons), we can have a successful and validated computer programme which can tell trained, bright high-school-pass young persons coming from the village itself, as to what drugs or treatment should be given to a person in 80 per cent of the cases. The programme would also tell him/her to identify the remaining 20 per cent of the reporting patients who should then be referred to the district hospital which should have basic diagnostic facilities.
Out of these 20 per cent over 15 per cent would be taken care of at a good district hospital. The remaining 5 per cent or so should be referred to good private hospitals committed to following a carefully prepared code of ethics, and covered by insurance. Obviously, facilities for transportation from the village to the district hospital, or to the nearest approved private hospital, would need to be provided. This kind of public-private partnership in medical and health care could go a long way in effectively democratising it and building a sound base for further improvement as the economic status of the majority improves.
n Even multi-speciality hospitals in the country do not have enough general physicians (GPs).
n Increasing commercialisation of health care.
n The government abrogating its responsibility.
n Nexus between private hospitals and diagnostic centres.
n Reinstate the tradition of family physicians.
n All medical colleges should give a postgraduate degree in family medicine.
n Have a validated computer programme, which can tell trained, bright high-school-pass young persons coming from the village itself, as to what drugs or treatment should be given to a person in 80 per cent of the cases.
n The programme will also tell him/her to identify the remaining 20 per cent of the reporting patients who should then be referred to the district hospital which should have basic diagnostic facilities.


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Man's body found in Hertford, Cotton Road, Hertford, 17-12-17, Pictures by Alison Jenkins.
A man has been found dead in a Hertford street today, sparking a police investigation into what happened to him.
The 30-year-old, who has not yet been named, was found in Cotton Drive on the Pinehurst Estate shortly before 8.30am this morning (December 17).
Police were called by the ambulance service, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
A tent was erected and a cordon put in place, guarded by uniformed officers.
The cordon covered Cotton Drive and part of Stanstead Road until shortly after 4pm.
Man's body found in Hertford, Cotton Road, Hertford, 17-12-17, Pictures by Alison Jenkins.
White-clad forensics officers were at work for much of the day collecting evidence.
A police spokeswoman said that the death is being treated as unexplained and have appealed for anyone who has any information about what may have happened to contact police on 101.
The body was found a stone’s throw from Pinehurst Community Centre in Birdie Way.
A Hamels Drive resident added: "It's a shock, I've never known anything like this happening here. It's a shame just before Christmas."
Police have been approached for an update on the incident.


HP is attempting to up the game in VR with the launch earlier this past week of its newest Windows Mixed Reality headset called the Reverb.
While we have not got our hands on it, a press release directs us to the specifics—the headset would come in two options (consumer and enterprise) and will sport cracking 2160 x 2160 resolution optics.
Such resolution numbers make it one of the highest-fidelity headsets currently on offer for VR fans globally.
The Reverb, which was launched at HP Reinvent, the company’s largest global partner event, will also sport a lightweight design, and offer an expanded 114-degree field of view.
The Reverb will come with pre-paired motion controllers right out of the box and support for Windows Mixed Reality and Steam VR.
As for availability and pricing, HP says both models will go on sale in the UAE soon.
The HP Reverb Virtual Reality Headset – Pro Edition for enterprise customers is expected to be available in April for Dhs 2,380.
The HP Reverb Virtual Reality Headset – Consumer Edition for us regular joes is expected to be available in May for Dhs 2,000.
As per HP, the consumer variant has everything that the enterprise model but for the .6m headset cable and washable fabric face mask.


KITT.AI wants to help developers add voice activation features to almost any device for free.
The Seattle startup today unveiled its first software toolkit called Snowboy, which lets developers add verbal “hotword detection” to devices. It’s the same technology that tech giants like Amazon and Apple use for products like Alexa and Siri, but now KITT.AI is enabling anyone to easily add the functionality to their own hardware.
The idea is to let users talk to devices in order to “wake” or “command” them to do something. Snowboy uses deep neural network technology that learns and recognizes unique patterns in voices. It also utilizes sophisticated audio processing techniques and can work without an internet connection.
KITT.AI, originally incubated inside Paul Allen’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), launched last year and in January landed funding from Founders’ Co-op and Amazon’s Alexa Fund. It also recently received investment from Madrona Venture Group and the startup currently works at the firm’s downtown Seattle office.
KITT.AI co-founder and CEO Xuchen Yao, and co-founder Guoguo Chen, the main creator of Snowboy.
KITT.AI was co-founded by Xuchen Yao, a Johns Hopkins University PhD graduate who last year joined the AI2 incubator, led by Oren Etzioni, the former University of Washington computer science professor who now heads the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Yao said that Snowboy is unique because it gives developers access to the software, unlike other platforms like Sensory. KITT.AI plans to make money off Snowboy by charging enterprise customers for commercial use.
The startup’s other co-founders are Guoguo Chen, a deep learning and speech recognition expert who created the “OK Google” hotword detection prototype for Android; and Kenji Sagae former professor of Natural Language Processing at USC and an expert in natural language parsing and dialogue systems.
KITT.AI previously developed a prototype called Semantic Lighting based on its technology — letting people interact with smartlights by talking with them — demonstrating the early capabilities of its natural language processing platform.


The state’s largest rural election association last week once again elected just one green candidate in a bloc of three members looking to reform policies currently geared more toward conventional power sources. Mike Kempe, a chemical engineer and research scientist for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, was re-elected to the Intermountain Rural Electric Association board by a margin of 2,892 votes to 1,870 for challenger John Dendahl. Kempe is often to the lone dissenting vote on the board of the IREA, which has just under 140,000 members in the Front Range suburbs between Denver and Colorado Springs.
Colorado Sen. Mark Udall has walked a fine line the last several years, advocating for new nuclear energy because of global climate change concerns while running the risk of alienating his Democratic, environmentalist base, many of whom still bitterly oppose nuclear power because of its legacy of mining pollution in the state. In the wake of the Japan’s ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant northeast of Tokyo, more than just the so-called “dirty front end” of nuclear power – Colorado’s rich but sometimes toxic uranium mining history – is being called into question. The issues of waste storage at the state’s only nuclear power plant – the now-defunct Fort St. Vrain – and a lack of water to cool future reactors also are being hotly debated.
One is indeed the loneliest number, especially when it comes to reforming a rural electric co-op board bent on quashing clean-energy and conservation initiatives in the name of dirtier-burning coal.
Conservationists appear to be taking a more subtle approach to reforming the fossil-fuel-fixated ways of Colorado’s rural electric associations (REAs) this legislative session, introducing a bill that would daylight the co-op’s board of director elections, but not offering much more in terms of transformative legislation.


Delays are among the major difficulties most construction firms face, and can lead to numerous negative results, such as lawsuits among owners and contractors, increased costs, lack of construction productivity, and loss ofrevenue, as well as contract terminations, and negative influences on the economic and industrial domain of a community as a whole.
Through a systematic questionnaire design, this study involves a comprehensive analysis ofthe perceptions of construction delay-related reasons collected from (1) construction stakeholders from both public and private firms, considered to be experienced engineers, and (2) students in the civil engineering department at Western Michigan University, who are considered to be inexperienced construction engineers. This thesis presents the conclusions ofthis survey designed to identify and investigate the attitude and the point ofview ofpeople with different levels of knowledge and experience within the construction industry. Such results are useful in conducting curricula for construction engineering students to evaluate their knowledge and skill level for meeting the challenges in the real world ofthe U. S. construction industry, and identifying improved education strategies for preparing them to better meet these challenges.
El Kadeki, Salahedeen A., "A Comparative Analysis of the Sense of Construction Delays of Experienced and Inexperienced Engineers" (2011). Master's Theses. 391.


Marriott (MAR) and the hotel lobby American Hospitality & Lodging Association asked the FCC this summer to allow hotels to deploy equipment that prevents people from turning their phones into Wi-Fi hotspots.
At Marriott connection rates start at $14.95 per day. For $19.95, guests get "enhanced high speed Internet" which includes video chatting, downloading large files and streaming video.
In its petition to the FCC, Marriott and the hotel lobby argued that guests can use their smartphones or Mi-Fi devices to launch an attack against a hotel's Wi-Fi network or threaten other guests' privacy (by stealing their credit card data or other personal information). They also said that those gadgets can interfere with the hotel's Wi-Fi, slowing down speeds for other customers.
"If a hotel is powerless to address such activities to ensure the security and reliability of its Wi-Fi network on its premises, both the hotel and its guests would suffer," Marriott said in its filing.
Most of the 21 responses to Marriott's request basically boil down to this: The hotel industry simply wants to keep charging people exorbitant rates for Wi-Fi.
"If a customer arrives at a hotel with her own Mi-Fi device and the hotel interferes with the customer's connection to that personal hotspot, the hotel can effectively force the customer to purchase the hotel's Wi-Fi services to gain access, even though the customer has already paid her mobile operator for personal hotspot capability," said Microsoft (MSFT) in a filing to the FCC opposing Marriott's request.
Google (GOOGL) agreed. In its filing the search giant said blocking access to personal Wi-Fi hotspots "would undermine the public interest."
The wireless industry lobby and other wireless providers have also asked the FCC not to accept Marriott's request.


“It’s a very personal story, so I won’t elaborate upon too much. Suffice to say, it was a situation in my life I wasn’t very happy with or proud of… and sometimes when you can’t describe a feeling with your own words, it’s almost easier to express in a song. And then, when you get asked about the songs, it’s quite difficult to explain. It’s a conundrum — you don’t want to seem self-indulgent explaining yourself; it’s always awkward. Which is weird again, because it’s never awkward actually singing them. I suppose the song should stand on its own and people draw their own interpretation from the words. But for me, personally, it’s the lyrics that I listen to again and again in a song. I place specific importance on them. I can’t write lyrics unless I really feel them and mean them, which can sometimes be quite frustrating — because if you’re not feeling much at the time, you’re stuck.
The souvenir Hottest 100 edition of jmag smoulders with all the trippy tales and backstories behind the songs in the legendary national poll - straight from the songwriters' mouths. Out Feb 3 - Subscribe now.


The gin bubble shows no sign, whatsoever, of bursting this summer. Instead it grows bigger and more buoyant every month, bouncing along while bright, shiny, new distilleries pop up everywhere.
Premium gin is the darling of the UK spirits trade – domestic sales shot over the £1 billion mark for the first time last year, and we bought 43 million bottles, according to the Wine and Spirit Trade Association.
This prompted the Office of National Statistics to add the spirit to its “inflation basket” of regularly bought goods, for the first time in 13 years. And it helped the Treasury to take £3.38 billion from spirits last year, up seven per cent, narrowly beating the tax revenue on (shock!) beer.
The variety now dazzles. All gin, by definition, must have juniper at its heart, but the other botanicals (the natural products – seeds, barks, spices, peels and flowers – that make up each recipe) range hugely and as never before. Unusual ingredients include various kelps and seaweeds, moorland flowers, saffron, pomelo, kaffir lime leaves, rhubarb, tea and even wood-smoke.
There are the more traditional London Dry Gins (not indicating they are made in London, but a style whereby all ingredients are distilled, not macerated, for subtle complexity); more richly flavoured, infused gins with stronger ingredients added after distillation; powerful and punchy Navy Strength gins; sweeter Old Tom gins; or sweetly fruity, syrupy sloe and damson gins that taste more like liqueurs. Spiced gins, made with plenty of pepper, cinnamon, cardamom and so on, are especially on the rise.
And these gins hail from every corner of the UK, from Cornwall to Aberdeen, and from County Down to Suffolk. Many distilleries now use locally grown or foraged botanicals to try to capture the typical tastes of their region.
And the label and bottle designs – oh, swoon. I know the appearance really shouldn’t count for a lot, but in the hip world of “artisanal” spirits, such a glittering array of retro labels, apothecary bottles and glinting coloured glass really does tempt the eye.
We’re certainly buying the new swanky labels, that’s clear enough, but are we actually drinking it? I suspect many are collecting it, putting those beautiful bottles on display like trophies on a mantelpiece, dusting them from time to time.
But perhaps we all need some new ideas on how to serve the stuff. The welcome arrival of premium tonics such as Fever-Tree and Fentimans have certainly shaken up the plain old gin and tonic into something far more enjoyable, but even the keenest connoisseur can get a bit bored of that.
Garnishes, too, can offer a twist (literally) on a G&T, with pink grapefruit currently the fashionable wedge, and more imaginative “serves” including samphire, basil leaves, thyme and tarragon sprigs, rock salt and twists of pepper livening things up.
But the answer to making gin more versatile, ultimately, has to be gin cocktails.
Any decent bar, even pub, now has its own collection of gins and should be able to offer exciting concoctions. Gin cocktails have been around for a very, very long time, and the classics have certainly been revived in recent years.
Below, I’ve come up with some which are easy to shake up at home, and which don’t involve splashing out on lots of expensive ingredients (premium gin costs quite enough). They’re also presented here with summer, and seasonal, flavours firmly in mind. I hope they will inspire you to invent some of your own.
We’ve all got the gin, it would seem – now let’s mix it up a bit.
All recipes are for a traditional gin, not a specially flavoured one. I have put suggestions of specific gins for some, but you can use your favourite. You will need ice for all.
This recipe, adapted from one in the book Shake. Stir. Sip. by Kara Newman (Chronicle Books, £10.99), was originally created by Sam Ross of New York bar Attaboy. It calls for absinthe to rinse out the glass beforehand, but I have omitted it for simpler and softer citrus and floral notes. And out of cowardice.
Combine all four liquids in a cocktail shaker over ice cubes. Shake well and strain into a martini glass.
Garnish with a wide piece of lemon zest or strips of lime zest.
For when you see the first blackberries appearing in the hedgerows. Blackberry liqueur and gin have a natural affinity, more so than cassis and gin.
Pour all the liquid ingredients into a chunky tumbler half filled with ice and stir gently, garnishing with a perfect blackberry or two.
This cocktail has exotic, fragrant ingredients and quite a sweet finish from the cordial.
Chop the lemongrass and ginger into pieces and bruise them with the back of a spoon. Put them, and any juices from them, into a cocktail shaker with some ice, and add the gin and cordial.
Shake well then strain into a tumbler with more ice in it. Top up with ginger ale. Garnish with a thin slice of lime.
This concoction is hugely fruity, tangy and succulent, and not as strong in spirit. Use either apricot glaze (which comes in jars in the baking section of major supermarkets) or pass apricot jam through a sieve instead.
Pour the gin over the apricot glaze in a glass with a little crushed ice and stir very well until the apricot is more or less dissolved.
Add the passionfruit juice drink and lime juice and stir further, add more crushed ice, then serve with a straw.
My own favourite recipe, many times tried and tested (just to make sure…). The egg makes it silkier and richer, but note it is raw, of course.
Shake up the gin, lemon juice, sugar syrup, sugar and egg white (if using) in a cocktail shaker with a little ice and strain into a highball glass half-filled with ice cubes. Top up with soda water.
My adaptation of a recipe from saveur.com. Camomile tea and gin go together remarkably well.
To make the camomile syrup, soak the tea bag in 125ml boiling water for three minutes, then add the honey and stir to dissolve. Squash the bag with a spoon, then discard.
Let the syrup cool then refrigerate (leftover syrup will last several days in the fridge).
To serve, use two parts gin (I’d favour Greenall’s Bloom here) to one part each of camomile syrup and fresh lemon juice, combine in a cocktail shaker over ice and strain into a martini glass.
Flowers + gin = in vogue. Exotic, scented, and tastes a little like Turkish delight. Go very carefully with the rose water here – if it is a concentrate, you only need one or two drops. And don’t even think about diet tonic.
Pour the gin and rose water into a cocktail shaker with a few ice cubes. Stir briefly then strain into a white wine glass.
Add the tonic and float the rose petal on top just before serving.
A cheat’s cocktail, really, because you buy in the main mixer. It’s particularly refreshing, so make it in seconds in hot weather.
Pour the gin into a thick, stumpy tumbler half filled with crushed ice. Add the pressé and lime juice and garnish with the basil and cucumber.


A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a copyright infringement verdict against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over the 2013 hit song Blurred Lines.
In a split decision from a three-judge panel, the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals awarded $5.3 million to the family of Marvin Gaye, who said Blurred Lines is illegally copied from the late soul singer's Got to Give it Up.
The trial over "Blurred Lines," the biggest hit of 2013, ended in March 2015 with jurors awarding Gaye's family more than $7 million. The verdict was later trimmed to $5.3 million.
The Gaye family also received 50 percent interest in ongoing royalties from the song.


A popular documentary series profiling an eclectic range of notables, with each episode focusing on one figure. Based on a half-hour syndicated program that ran from 1961-64 and in 1979, the concept was successfully revived as an hourlong show with Peter Graves as host in 1987. Well-established and a franchise series for A&E by 1994, it later spun off t (more…)A popular documentary series profiling an eclectic range of notables, with each episode focusing on one figure. Based on a half-hour syndicated program that ran from 1961-64 and in 1979, the concept was successfully revived as an hourlong show with Peter Graves as host in 1987. Well-established and a franchise series for A&E by 1994, it later spun off the Biography Channel.
A history of the TV sitcom “The Brady Bunch” (1969-74), includes an exploration of its wide appeal, due in part to syndication; fashions; and behind-the-scenes conflicts and friendships. Among those commenting: creator Sherwood Schwartz; Florence Henderson; Barry Williams; Susan Olsen; Mike Lookinland; Christopher Knight; Debra Jo Rupp; and Carson Kressley.


A federal judge is allowing a lawsuit by the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community to proceed against BNSF Railway over oil train shipments.
The tribe sued BNSF in April, alleging the company is violating an agreement that restricts the number of trains that can cross its reservation on Fidalgo Island.
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik on Friday denied BNSF's request to have the case dismissed or stayed. The railway argued the matter should go before the federal Surface Transportation Board. The judge wrote that referring the case is "neither efficient nor necessary."
The tribe's lawsuit argues that a 1991 easement signed by the BNSF's predecessor only allows two 25-car trains each day. It says several 100-car trains carrying crude oil from the Bakken region cross the reservation each week. The tracks serve two oil refineries in Anacortes.
BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said the railroad is disappointed by the ruling and weighing its options to ensure the railway is not in violation of obligations to move regulated commodities.
"Nothing is more important to all of us at BNSF than safely operating through the communities that we serve, including along the easement on the Swinomish Indian Reservation," he said.
Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby says the matter should be decided in federal court.


Nancy Risinger Mills, 86, of Orange, died Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010, in Orange. Funeral services will be 2 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 26 at Claybar Funeral Home Chapel in Orange. Officiating will be Mickey McNamara. Graveside service will be 2 p.m., Wednesday, at Antioch Cemetery in Spearsville, La. Visitation will be from 12-2 p.m., Tuesday, before the service at the funeral home.
Nancy was born on May 24, 1923 in Junction City, Ark. She was the daughter of William Robert and Fannie Mae (Britt) Risinger.
She is preceded in death by her parents, William and Fannie Risinger and three brothers.
Those left to cherish her memory are her husband, Hank Mills of Orange; daughter and son-in-law, Margaret and Tom Kincannon of Flower Mound, Texas; sons and daughters-in-law, Jim and Elaine Mills of Fuquay-Varina, N.C. and Richard and Janet Mills of Orange; five grandchildren, Jeff, Colleen, Jake, Andrew, and Emily; and eight great-grandchildren.


On Wednesday Cook County Board president Todd Stroger sat behind the rostrum listening as commissioners led by finance chairman John Daley dissected and debated budget amendments. On Thursday he told them it was their job to get a budget passed; he'd already done his work by proposing a plan that would raise sales taxes and add jobs. On Friday he sued.
"In the performance of his duties, President Stroger submitted his executive budget to the board's finance committee on October 17, 2007," says the complaint, filed in county court by Stroger, state's attorney Richard Devine, and sheriff Tom Dart, naming all 17 board members as defendants. "All conditions precedent to the board's duty to adopt an Annual Appropriation Ordinance have taken place." The suit asks the court to order commissioners to keep meeting until they have a budget deal done and, in the event the deadline passes, to authorize county treasurer Maria Pappas to make payments to keep the government running.
Late Friday word circulated that a deal might be in place. Commissioners would agree to raise the sales tax one percentage point in return for Stroger agreeing to farm out management of the county health system to a private firm--essentially a compromise floated earlier by commissioner Larry Suffredin.
But a last-minute deal isn't going to undo the impression of many taxpayers that the board is full of ineffective grandstanders and the government dismally managed. And some of the most frustrated citizens are the people who work for the county and don't consider themselves waste.
"The taxpayers and citizens brought them in to do a job--and no one's doing it," one longtime county employee told me Friday evening. "It's time to get some younger people in there with some fresh ideas."
"I've worked for the county for more than 20 years, and last year they cut my pay. Some people who'd just come in didn't get their pay cut. It was about $7,000 a year; I was making about $79,000, but I've been working there more than 20 years. In fact I haven't had a raise since [my boss] came in there. Some of the people he's brought in have. But that's how this county works. It's all politics. All of the offices have stuff going on that shouldn't be. Our office isn't squeaky clean, either, but I really don't get involved in it. I usually do my work and keep to myself.
"Right now I don't think this is just Todd Stroger's fault. Everybody says he doesn't have the right experience, but they're just looking at him as a scapegoat. They should just sit down and work together. The problem is that everybody wants to be the commander in chief. Everybody wants to have the power.
"All this mess has got to go. Sooner or later they're going to have to change things. They're going to have to think of the people paying the taxes.
"I have bills to pay too, and taking $7,000 away from me--I worked more than 20 years for that salary. I haven't missed work. I've never been late to work, not one day. I've never played around on the job or anything like that. I'm from the south--my father was a sharecropper who worked hard, and I'm his son. I believe in working hard. I've worked hard and I have a home. I've got gas bills and kids I'm trying to support, but this is politics. What can I do about it?"


The governing board of the University of Texas is expected to extend football head coach Mack Brown's contract by four years, through 2020, a well-placed source told the American-Statesman on Monday.
The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak publicly, said Brown would continue to receive annual raises of $100,000. His current annual compensation is $5.2 million.
The UT System Board of Regents is scheduled to meet by telephone Thursday to consider changes in the contract, according to an announcement from the system.
A contract extension would be a signal to potential recruits that Brown isn't about to leave. But the regents are also expected to approve a provision that would in essence allow the university to dismiss Brown for $3.5 million with about six months' notice, the source said.
Brown, 60, went 8-5 last season, including a 21-10 victory over California at the Holiday Bowl. His team was 5-7 in 2010.
In his 14 years at Texas, Brown has compiled a 141-39 record, putting him 26 victories shy of Darrell Royal, the winningest coach in school history. Brown ranks 13th on the list of Football Bowl Subdivision coaches' lifetime victories, with 227. Joe Paterno, the former Penn State coach who died Sunday, leads all FBS coaches with 409 victories.


Apple won a preliminary sales ban on Motorola phones and tablets in Germany on Thursday when the regional court of Munich ruled that Motorola infringes on a touchscreen-related patent, a spokeswoman for the court said.
Apple sued Google-owned Motorola Mobility for infringing on its "list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touchscreen display" patent, said Stefanie Ruhwinkel, spokeswoman for the Munich court. The patent is also known as the "overscroll bounce" or "rubber band" patent and allows pages, documents or photos on touchscreen devices to scroll past their boundaries and bounce back when users release their fingers from the screen.
The Munich court ruled that Motorola Mobility infringes on the patent with its smartphones and tablet computers, said Ruhwinkel. Infringing devices include the Motorola Milestone XT720, the Motorola DEFY, the Motorola Atrix and Motorola XOOM, which all use the Android OS.
Motorola is not allowed to use the patent in Germany, said Ruhwinkel, "so you could call it a sales ban."
Besides an injunction, Apple also demanded that Motorola disclose its sales figures in the German market so the damages of the infringement could be calculated. It also demanded a recall of all the infringing products from the distribution channel and that devices be destroyed. All of Apple's demands were "granted in full" by the court, said Ruhwinkel.
The destruction of the devices "is to make sure they won't be sold again," she said. Consumers don't have to worry that their devices will be destroyed, she added. "They are not convicted, Motorola is."
The verdict, however, is not yet final. The judge granted Apple a preliminary injunction. Apple could enforce the injunction if it posts a bond of ¬25 million (US$32 million), if Motorola Mobility decides not to appeal the verdict or if the appeals court confirms the verdict, said Ruhwinkel.
Motorola could also decide to change the software used in its products and work around the infringement, which is what Samsung did last year.
It remains unclear what is going to happen next. Apple spokesman Alan Hely said in an email that he had no "specific comment on today's decision." Motorola did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment.


SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Some University of Notre Dame students, employees and alumni say 19th century murals of Christopher Columbus should be removed from a campus building because they depict Native Americans and blacks in stereotypical submissive poses before white European explorers.
More than 340 students, employees and alumni signed an open letter against the paintings published in the university’s student newspaper, the Observer. The letter says the paintings in an administrative building are equivalent to a Confederate monument, The South Bend Tribune reported .
“(The paintings offer a) highly problematic vision of Western triumphalism, Catholic militarism and an overly romantic notion of American expansion,” the letter said.
The 12 paintings by artist Luigi Gregori have been on display in the campus’ Main Building since 1884.
School spokesman Dennis Brown said the paintings have historic and artistic importance and the university has no plans to remove them. He said there are pamphlets available that explain the murals’ historical context.
John Slattery is a post-doctoral teaching fellow at the university. He approached the Native American Student Association with the idea for the open letter calling for the paintings’ removal.
A group of Native American students also called for the removal of the paintings in 1995. University leaders decided not to remove the paintings and instead created the pamphlets.