The Good Attractive overall design; feels well built; comfortable keyboard and touch pad; three-year warranty.
The Bad Doesn't live up to performance expectations; integrated graphics leach resources from main system memory.
The Bottom Line Despite its excellent design and shiny, new Core 2 Duo processor, the Gateway M255-E fails to make strides with performance or battery life.
When we reviewed the Gateway M250E a year ago, we liked everything about the laptop, save its lackluster application performance. We feel roughly the same about the Gateway M255-E, which features a handful of minor design improvements, a Core 2 Duo processor, and less-than-stellar benchmark results. It will ably handle the rigors of business-class computing, but it failed to set the world on fire on CNET Labs' new benchmarks. With integrated graphics and no option for upgrading to a dedicated graphics card, the Gateway M255-E's performance potential is limited; your best bet for improving performance is adding more memory. Alternatively, if you are comfortable choosing an off-brand, the $1,499 PC Club Enpower ENP680 provides more features and better performance for less dough.
The M255-E is sold via Gateway's small-business site; the consumer equivalent is the NX260X, which lacks a TPM security chip but provides a consumer diagnostic tool called BigFix, which Gateway inherited from eMachines. The system features Gateway's tried-and-true silver-and-black color scheme but measures slightly wider and thicker than the previous M250E at 13.3 inches wide, 9.7 inches deep, and 1.3 inches thick. It weighs a hefty 6.2 pounds--heavier than the older M250E. The small, two-prong power adapter adds 0.8 pound to your travel bag. On the whole, its design is superior to that of the PC Club Enpower ENP680; not only does the Gateway present a more polished, professional appearance, but it also feels sturdier and more solidly built.
The 14.1-inch screen features a 1,280x800 native resolution. Business users will appreciate the absence of the Utlrabright glossy coating; while it makes movies and photos stand out--particularly in a dark room or an airplane cabin--the coating causes glare and reflection problems under normal working conditions. The keyboard retains the same, comfortable design of the M250E, and the touch pad is wider and deeper. The mouse keys have been improved; they are larger and easier to use than the M250E's narrow, firm keys. Other features we wish we saw on last year's models have been added, including Bluetooth, an S-Video port, and the TPM chip. One feature we are sad to see go is the old unit's volume dial on the front edge; you'll need to use function keys to adjust the volume on the M255-E.
The front edge supplies a multiformat media card reader and headphone and microphone jacks. The system features four USB ports, conveniently split between the left and right sides. A four-pin FireWire port and a modem jack flank the USB ports on the right edge, while S-Video and VGA connectors do the same on the left. An 8X double-layer DVD burner hides along the left side, as well. An Ethernet port is the only connection on the back edge other than the power. The integrated wireless chip supports 802.11 a/b/g networking.
Our review unit came equipped with a Core 2 Duo T5600 processor. It's the second-lowest chip in the line with a clock speed of 1.83GHz and 2MB of L2 cache. Rounding out the specs are 1GB of fast 667MHz DDR2 memory, an 80GB 7,200rpm Hitachi hard drive, and integrated Intel 945GM graphics. The PC Club Enpower ENP680 trumps these specs by including a faster Core 2 Duo processor (with double the L2 cache), twice the memory, and an Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 GS graphics card that supplies 256MB of dedicated video RAM.
We weren't surprised to see the PC Club Enpower ENP680 top the Gateway M255-E on CNET Labs' new benchmarks; it bested the Gateway on our Multitasking, Photoshop, and iTunes tests. More surprising was the fact that the M255-E lost badly to two previous-generation Core Duo-based laptops from Dell and HP on the Photoshop test. The scores make sense when you consider that our Photoshop test is memory intensive and that the Gateway M255-E supplies only half the memory of the Dell Inspiron E1505 and the HP Pavilion dv2000t, which the Gateway system then must also share with the graphics. We suspect the M255-E would fare better if it enjoyed the use of 2GB of memory. The iTunes scores for all four laptops were close; the Gateway's latest-generation CPU is offset by its slower clock speed.
On MobileMark, the Gateway M255-E enjoyed a 16 percent advantage over the older M250E but, frankly, we expected more. The Fujitsu LifeBook E8210 was 12 percent faster than the M255-E, and it uses an older Core Duo processor also clocked at 1.83GHz (it does, however, use an ATI graphics card with 256MB of video RAM).
The Gateway M255-E's 12-cell battery ran for 6 hours, 33 minutes, impressive until you realize that last year's M250E, also equipped with a 12-cell battery, lasted 21 minutes longer. Based on these two Gateway laptops, an admittedly small sample, Core 2 Duo does nothing to improve battery life.
The Gateway M255-E includes Windows XP Professional and comes with the pared-down Microsoft Works 8.5 productivity suite, CyberLink's PowerDVD for DVD playback and Power2Go for disc burning.


OneBeacon Insurance Group Ltd., a property casualty unit of Bermuda-based reinsurer White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd, has raised an estimated $600 million in its initial public offering.
OneBeacon’s 24 million class A common share offering sold for $25 per share.
The shares will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and will trade under the symbol “OB” beginning Nov. 9, 2006. The subsidiary of White Mountains Insurance Group, Ltd. will receive all of the proceeds of the offering.
The underwriters have the option to purchase up to an additional 3.6 million shares from the selling shareholder at the initial public offering price less the underwriting discount. White Mountains will remain the company’s majority owner.
Lehman Brothers Inc. has acted as the sole book-running manager of this offering and Banc of America Securities LLC has acted as joint lead manager.
You also forgot to mention the agencies that went out of business or sold because they ran their business into the ground, excluding this honorable group of course.
You question a guy\'s intergrity in an open forum like this? Why don\'t you identify yourself so people can line up for your testimonials? Gutless.


North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un inspecting tires at a factory.
It’s time to swallow hard and find a way to talk to Kim Jong Un.
Sure, North Korea recently fired a missile that appears powerful enough to put the entire United States in range. Sure, the U.S. will probably have to make some concessions if it’s serious about wanting to freeze Kim’s nuclear and missile programs. Sure, Kim would see it as a propaganda victory, and perhaps as a tactical victory.
And sure, the U.S. would be signing up for more years of threats and bluster aimed at extracting even more concessions. It would have to be practical, clear and consistent — probably through several presidential administrations — about what is unacceptable behavior. That’s very hard to do. And it’s by no means risk free.
But as long as you keep talking, you’re not shooting.
If recent experience shows anything, it’s that declaring it unacceptable for a country like North Korea to have nuclear weapons is mostly bluff, based on the bet that outside pressure can make it too costly to continue. If your opponent is securely in power, doesn’t care about the cost and doesn’t crave international acceptance, he’ll call that bluff. If you choose military action then, unless you’re incredibly lucky, you’re looking at a scenario in which tens of thousands of people — perhaps millions — will die, including a lot of Americans.
Declaring that Kim must first give up his nuclear program, matching him insult for insult and counting on China to pressure North Korea is encouraging a drift toward conflict. Kim isn’t listening to the Chinese, and he isn’t slowing down. The scenarios for military action only work out if everything goes perfectly. It never does. It would be foolish to expect success in a country as isolated and mysterious as North Korea.
Former U.S. officials and foreign policy experts were widely quoted this fall as giving estimates of the chances of war with North Korea ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent. Evan Osnos, the New Yorker writer who visited North Korea for a long story published this fall, finds that a worrisome indicator of groupthink on the U.S. side.
Furthermore, he argues, the Trump administration’s assumption that Kim would try to use his nuclear arsenal to reunify the Korean peninsula by force may encourage the same “strike first” mentality that led the United States into Iraq. While no one knows Kim’s intentions, he might well be satisfied with less — like ensuring his own survival.
Mark Bowden’s piece in the Atlantic, published this summer, remains one of the clearest and most sobering examinations of the options on North Korea.
Because of North Korea’s xenophobic isolation and difficult terrain, even a massive pre-emptive strike is unlikely to destroy all of Kim’s nuclear warheads, much less his chemical and biological weapons. He would almost certainly use those he had left.
How about a limited strike, aimed at taking out Kim’s nuclear arsenal but leaving him in power? It’s extremely difficult to keep that from turning into all-out war. Kim, not you, decides whether to escalate. He still would have a massive amount of artillery that could hit Seoul, the South Korean capital.
What about a decapitation strike, either a covert operation or an aerial bunker-busting attack aimed at taking out Kim? Both depend on superb intelligence, and there is no reason to believe the U.S. has it. If you miss, and you probably will, all bets are off.
Talking also means placing a bet: That despite the wild rhetoric, Kim is rational. He doesn’t want to die, and he wants to stay in power. It would cost you something. You might have to offer diplomatic recognition, a path to easing sanctions or a reduction in joint military exercises with South Korea.
Short of full diplomatic relations, James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, suggests setting up “interest sections,” that would provide a conduit for communications, much the way the U.S. dealt with Cuba for decades. Clapper, who once served as a military intelligence officer in South Korea, says it’s not unreasonable to discuss a formal peace treaty with North Korea.
Negotiations would have to be accompanied by a clear warning that you would fight if Kim dared touch U.S. territory or a U.S. ally. And that if you did fight, Kim would die and his country would be obliterated.
Ignoring Kim, as President Obama tried to do, didn’t work. Crazy doesn’t work, as President Trump is demonstrating. It’s possible that a combination of talk and pressure won’t, either. On a gut level, it’s less satisfying than making a dramatic move to eliminate the threat.
But this is a time for cool heads committed to a long, unglamorous slog. That is to say, diplomacy. How about shutting down his Twitter feed and seeing if Trump can cut a real deal to reduce a real threat? If so, he’d actually have something worth saying about the art of the deal.
Submitted by Ilya Gutman on 12/08/2017 - 09:43 pm.
It’s amazing how little all those “experts” are familiar with logic. The first obvious argument against “Talk” approach is that it (including concessions and help) has been tried for over 25 years and didn’t bring any positive results and if didn’t bring any positive results when NK didn’t have nukes, why would it when they have them?
But second argument is even more compelling. Let’s start with assumptions: Kim is not crazy, doesn’t want to die, and wants to stay at power – so far we are all on the same page. But then the “talking” proponents are saying that we need to give him something but include a warning that if Kim does something stupid (like attacking South Korea, for example, I guess), he “would die and his country would be obliterated.” So, logically, if he would be truly frightened by this threat and would not dare do anything stupid, why don’t we cut to the chase and give him this ultimatum right away: You either die and your country is obliterated (I guess the first one would be infinitely more important to him than the second, though) or you give up your nukes and after that we will let you live and stay at power (in which case China will be a guarantor). Because if he doesn’t care or won’t believe us now, how can one logically assume that he would later? And in this case the entire approach of more talks seems totally irrational and unreasonable.
Submitted by Dennis Litfin on 12/09/2017 - 03:02 pm.
want Trump in serious result talk with anyone. He carries no credibility in this Country or in other Countries….other than maybe now Israel, and that could go South anytime with Trump’s finicky, narcissistic persona. All we can do is hope that the Generals and adults within the power element that surrounds Trump will be able to convince and override him when and if that crucial time occurs.
Submitted by Carrie Preston on 12/09/2017 - 04:18 pm.
Do we know in what stage of defense NK is in? Are the nukes ready to go or do they need to be moved and assembled? ( A nightmare in itself. Who is doing the moving and are they capable of moving them w/o mishaps or accidents during a crisis).
Is there still a chance that Kim’s regime can be toppled? By assassination. Maybe someone connected with his inner circle?
Above all, President Trump should stop tweeting. About NK and a lot of other things. Not just because he rattles Kim’s cage but it makes Trumpf look weak and unstable on the world stage.


Natural gas overtook coal as the top source of U.S. electric power generation for the first time ever earlier this year, a milestone that has been in the making for years as the price of gas slides and new regulations make coal more risky for power generators.
The research company SNL Energy in a new report using data from the U.S. Energy Department says about 31 percent of electric power generation in April came from natural gas, and 30 percent from coal.
A drilling boom that started in 2008 has boosted U.S. natural gas production by 30 percent and made the United States the world's biggest producer of oil and natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing has allowed energy companies to tap huge volumes of gas trapped deep underground in shale formations.


Blondes may have a ditzy reputation, but their lighter locks are far more complex than scientists thought.
For true blonde hair requires some 200 genetic variants – compared with 60 for brown hair and even less for redheads.
In one of the biggest studies of its kind scientists at the Medical Research Council’s human genetics unit analysed DNA from 39,397 blonde women and men of European descent.
It was assumed that blonde hair had a basic genetic structure but the finding may explain why truly blonde people are rarer than other colours.
Only 12.7 per cent of women have pure blonde hair, and 9.9 per cent of men.
One theory is that blonde hair evolved at the end of the Ice Age, when females outnumbered males. Blondeness may have developed as a way to stand out.


President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 209 people on Jan. 17.
Obama commuted an additional 209 sentences Tuesday just three days before the end of his presidency — and more are still expected. Doing so brought his total commutations to 1,385, the most of any president in history, edging out Woodrow Wilson's 1,366.
But the big headline — record-breaking clemency — misses the nuance. Obama's record on clemency is different than his immediate predecessors, and it's also very much the same.
The president has the power to commute a federal prisoner's sentence or offer a full pardon. A commutation shortens sentences but does not restore civil liberties such as the right to own a gun or vote. A full pardon can restore voting rights but does not wipe away a criminal record. Obama only took the record on commutations — in other areas, he's still very much behind.
P.S. Ruckman, a political scientist and editor of the blog PardonPower, has spent years tracking the use of presidential clemency and says presidents should use the power regularly and often.
"Of course we have to give [Obama] credit for doing something," Ruckman says. "No one should be dismissing what he’s done. But the bigger picture is it highlights the need for regular, systematic exercise of clemency, throughout the term. For most presidents throughout history, they granted pardons throughout the term. That lasted until Eisenhower. With Eisenhower, he waited two or three months and post Eisenhower, presidents would wait even longer."
According to Ruckman's research, Obama's first term was least merciful full term since George Washington's second. Obama pardoned 22 people and commuted 1 sentence; Washington pardoned 30 people in his second term.
"It’s parts of checks and balances," Ruckman says. "The president, when he doesn’t pardon, he’s deferring and saying Congress is perfect and the courts are perfect. As long as sentences are regular and serving of sentences is going on and people are rehabilitating — and I think that stuff is going on every day of the week — there should be pardons, clemency."
In April 2014, the Obama administration announced a clemency initiative and asked for applications from low-level, nonviolent offenders who had served at least 10 years in prison and had no history of violent behavior before their conviction.
Thousands of applications poured in (even before the call, Obama was receiving record numbers of petitions), making Obama the most-petitioned president in history by a wide margin.
But the clemency project didn't begin until six years into Obama's presidency. His first commutation came on Nov. 21, 2011, and the next batch, only eight people, came Dec. 19, 2013. Most commutations came in the final year of his presidency: 86.7 percent of all his commutations occurred in 2016 and 2017.
Along with Obama's record-breaking number of commutations, Obama has issued a record number of denials, as well. His acceptance rate for pardons or commutations is 4.4 percent, which roughly matches the trend of modern presidents but is still far lower than most 20th-century presidents. Before Ronald Reagan, presidents approved between 20 and 30 percent of the petitions they received.
FDR surpasses all presidents since 1900 for clemency, though he also served the longest. Woodrow Wilson, ranked No. 2, is now second to Obama in commutations, but he granted commutations steadily throughout his presidency, instead of toward the end.
"It is true mathematically that most presidents have granted the largest number of pardons in the fourth and final year of their term," Ruckman says. "What’s not true is that presidents have bulked this up with outrageous splurges at the end."
Ruckman says he's thrilled with Obama's use of the pardon, but wishes that Obama had granted clemency steadily throughout his terms.
"I worry that while he’s doing short-term good, he’s doing long-term damage to the pardon power," he says.


The club confirmed in a statement on Thursday, Babel had accepted the charge but had also requested a personal hearing with the Football Association.
The hearing is set to take place on Monday January 17.
Babel sparked controversy after posting a mocked-up picture of Webb in a Manchester United shirt after Liverpool’s 1-0 defeat in the FA Cup third round at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Earlier this week, Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish defended the Dutch international , describing Babel’s comments as ‘a bit of fun’.
‘Maybe I’ve been out of the game too long but let’s see if they can find a sense of humour. He apologised straight away,’ the Anfield legend said.
What do you think, was Babel out of line in posting the Twitter picture?


In the 1950s, Jerome Robbins’ desire for a modern day version of “Romeo and Juliet” ultimately became “West Side Story,” a powerhouse Broadway production that continues to be far-reaching and multi-layered.
Two years ago, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute launched The Somewhere Project to honor the venue’s 125th anniversary and explore aspects of “West Side Story” with a year of events and songwriting workshops across New York City. In the workshops, high school students, single mothers and people from the criminal justice system wrote lyrics inspired from the musical’s song “Somewhere,” under the guidance of professional performers.
This year marks the 100th birthday of Robbins and Leonard Bernstein, who were the choreographer and music composer, respectively, of the iconic 1957 Broadway show.
Celebrations of the two American treasures are taking place across the country. In Atlanta, the Atlanta Opera will perform “West Side Story” starring Vanessa Beccera in November at Cobb Energy Centre.
Atlanta is the final city of opera director Francesca Zambello’s contemporary version of the Tony- and Academy Award-winning love story. Zambello created a production for the Houston Grand Opera last spring.
The Atlanta Opera’s show will be a mix of local and touring performers. Veering from the original Broadway and film productions, the gang members will not be represented as solely Caucasians vs. Puerto Ricans. The Jets gang is a mix of Caucasian, Asian and African-American dancers. And the Sharks are primarily Hispanic and African-American performers, Fogel says.
“Francesca said, ‘If you want to comment on original gang war in New York City or territorial rights in the U.S., it’s much more complicated than one race or another because our country is so integrated,’” Fogel says.
Francesca Zambello tasked Fogel and his fellow choreographer Julio Monge with leading the “West Side Story” show for local opera companies. Performances might differ slightly in each city Fogel says. For example, Lyric Opera in Kansas City may be different from the Atlanta Opera production depending on the level of cultural tensions in the respective cities.
Monge, appearing in a video for The Somewhere Project that’s set on an inner city basketball court, demonstrates and describes Jerome Robbins’ mindset behind movements for a “West Side Story” scene. The Jets are gathered in a tense circle at night against a similar playground backdrop, snapping their fingers in unison.
Monge comments that audiences might presume gang members were moving with intimidating finger snapping to keep beat with a jazz rhythm, but actually the scene was inspired by a stranger that Robbins observed showing nervous energy at a bus stop. Robbins translated his impression into an edgy, explosive cool for the “West Side Story” scene.
The book “Something Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination” by Misha Berson provides an insider’s look into the making of the 1957 Broadway production. In the book, published in 2011, Berson reveals how the show was nearly called “East Side Story” with Jews and Catholics as rival gangs. She also explains how the creators struggled with signing on investors because of the musical’s not-so-happy ending, which broke from tradition of the most successful Broadway shows.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra presents a tribute to Leonard Bernstein in January 2019. The “All Bernstein” production includes songs from “West Side Story,” “On the Town” and more.
The Atlanta Opera presents “Charlie Parker’s Yardbird,” a fictional story inspired by the life of the legendary saxophonist. The opera takes place as Parker composes music and reflects on his inner demons, addiction battles and the women he was closest to.


Ahh, summer. A time to cook out, hit the beach, and stay inside and watch movies because it's so dang hot out!
Sure, there's always a slew of great blockbusters in the theaters each summer, but why not save the trip (and the cash) with these five great family summer movies? BYOP(opcorn). Or ice pops. Hey, it's your house!
The Great Outdoors. All Chet (John Candy) wanted was a relaxing summer vacation at a lakeside resort for him and his family. Everything seems to be going as planned until Chet's obnoxious, know-it-all brother-in-law, Roman (Dan Aykroyd), and his family crash the trip. The result? Anything but the vacation Chet had planned.
Grease. A young John Travolta. Olivia Newton-John. Singing. Dancing. Rydell High! Really, this movie needs no description, just know you'll be singing "You're the One That I Want" for days to come.
The Parent Trap. You can watch the original eponymous 1961 one or the 1998 remake starring Dennis Quaid, Natasha Richardson, and of course, Lindsay Lohan. We, personally, are partial to the latter, as it's not only a really cute film, it's documentation that Lindsay Lohan wasn't always a bad influence!
Meatballs. Bill Murray's first film role, this movie will have you in stitches the entire time. All the kids wanted was a normal summer camp experience, but with Bill Murray as their counselor, that's not exactly easy.
What other family summer movies do you love?


Linus Soderstrom won the Swedish Hockey League championship over the weekend and Mathew Barzal is set to play for the Western Hockey League crown. Read more in the Islanders Prospect Report.
Linus Soderstrom, the Islanders' 2014 fourth-round pick (95th overall), backstopped HV71 to Swedish Hockey League title on Saturday night. The SHL is the premier professional hockey league in Sweden and this is the fifth title for HV71.
HV71 beat Brynas in seven games to take the SHL crown, winning Game 7 2-1 in overtime. Soderstrom turned aside 29 of 30 shots he faced in the championship game including all four shots in overtime. The 20-year-old goaltender was named the third star of the game.
Soderstrom started all 16 playoff games for HV71 on their title run, posting a 12-4 record with a 2.11 goals-against average and a .922 save percentage. The Stockholm native posted a 2.46 GAA with a .914 SV% in the championship series.
Mathew Barzal continues to lead the way for the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey, who clinched their place in the WHL final on Sunday night.
Barzal, who missed Seattle's first-round series against the Tri-City Americans with an illness, has scored a point in every game he's appeared in this post-season. Through 10 playoff games, the Coquitlam, BC native has posted 17 points (5G, 12A) with five multi-point games.
On Tuesday, Barzal had the secondary assist on the eventual game-winner for Seattle to take a 2-1 series lead over the Kelowna Rockets and followed that up with another helper in Wednesday's 4-2 loss, evening the series at two games apiece.
The series shifted back to Seattle on Friday where Barzal exploded for three assists in the T-Birds' 5-3 win, helping him earn First Star honors. The 20-year-old forward followed up his three-point night with another multi-point game (1G, 1A) to help Seattle advance to the WHL Final and end the Rockets' season for the second straight year.
The Thunderbirds will face off against the Regina Pats for the for the Ed Chynoweth Cup - the WHL championship. The Pats' 112 regular-season points will give them home-ice advance for the series. The T-Birds and Pats played just once this season, back on Oct. 30 in Regina, where Seattle lost 6-3. This will be Barzal's first meeting with the Pats as he was still with the Islanders during the late October meeting.
The winner of the Seattle-Regina series will take home the WHL title and advance to the 2017 Memorial Cup, a four-team tournament represented by the champions of the three leagues that make up the CHL (WHL, Ontario Hockey League & Quebec Major Junior Hockey League) as well as a host team. The Windsor Spitfires are hosting this year's Memorial Cup.
The 2017 World Championships start this week (May 5) in Germany and France. Current Islanders Anders Lee (USA), Brock Nelson (USA), Calvin de Haan (CAN), Thomas Greiss (GER) & Dennis Seidenberg (GER) have already been named to their national teams but stay tuned to @NYIslanders on Twitter to see if any New York Islanders prospects are named to represent their respective countries.


Working in the games industry can be a very good career choice due to the pay on offer for more senior roles. Deciding which developer or publisher to work for is obviously going to come down to how much they are willing to pay you and whether you are a good fit for the types of games they create. If your main concern is pay, and you want to work in Japan, then Square Enix is clearly the place to seek employment.
Nensyu Labo is a company that tracks salaries across a range of industries in Japan. One of those industries is video games and they have just published the latest compensation chart for Japanese game developers and publishers.
The top 10 includes the companies you’d expect to see such as Sony, Konami, Namco Bandai, Tecmo, and Capcom, but it’s Square Enix that pays the most, and by a huge margin if these figures are to be believed.
The average salary for an employee working at the Final Fantasy studio is 21,680,000 yen. That’s roughly $273,000 a year. To put that in context, the company coming in second on the list is Sony who pays an average of $116,000. That’s less than half what Square Enix is offering.
Nensyu Labo gather their information from public records, so there’s every chance these figures are off. That incredibly high pay for Square Enix may actually represent the average across the company’s Japanese management team, or they just have some very well paid employees that push the average much higher than it is in reality.
Even so, if you don’t count Square Enix you get a good idea of how well paid you could be working in the Japanese games industry. Of course, it’s going to take you a number of years to earn anything near the average at one of these companies.


Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Stir to mix. Set aside.
In a stand mixer, combine sugar, warm coconut oil, warm applesauce and vanilla. Mix on low until sugar is dissolved. 2-3 minutes.
Slowly add in the dry ingredients and mix on low until the dough comes together and all of the ingredients are combined. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15-30 minutes.
Pre heat oven to 350.
Clear work area and create space to roll out dough.
Roll dough to ¼” thickness and cut out 2” circles. Place circles on parchment lined cookie sheets. Cookies will not spread much so 1” apart is fine.
Bake at 350 for 7-9 minutes.
Cool Completely on a wire rack and make Cream Filling.
Using a whip attachment on your mixer, beat the palm shortening at high speed, until light and fluffy and doubled in size. About 3-5 minutes. Slowly add in the powdered sugar and rice milk, mix until incorporated. Add vanilla.
On cooled cookies, spoon out 1 TBL of Cream Filling onto ½ of the cookie sides and cover with opposing cookie. Allow to cool in fridge to set.


St. Paul, Minn.--President Bush was a man on a mission when he toured the Saturn School of Tomorrow here last week.
In scheduling the trip the day before his Administration's education package was sent to Capitol Hill, the President hoped to ensure that the nation's attention would be focused on education.
But he also used the trip--the first of what is expected to be many in the name of education reform--to highlight an example of a "new American school."
"You may not believe this," Mr. Bush told students in each of the three classrooms he visited, "but I learn from talking with you."
But he also acknowledged the political and public-relations purposes of his visit.
"Good examples will inspire others," Mr. Bush said. "I would like people across the country to see this and learn from it."
"You're on the cutting edge," he continued. "You're revolutionizing4education, and we have to do this across the country."
The President, accompanied on his trip by Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander, even made a direct reference to his desire to send a message via the news media.
"These guys," he said, gesturing toward reporters gathered in the back of the classroom, "they won't say it, but they'll be impressed by what they see here, and that will help other schools."
Later last Wednesday, in a speech delivered in front of the downtown branch of the St. Paul Public Library, Mr. Bush said he came to Minnesota because the state--which theoretically allows students to attend any of its public schools--is "a pioneer, leading the nation in educational choice," and the Saturn School is "exploring new frontiers in American education."
"Like any new idea, we don't know what tomorrow holds for the Saturn School," Mr. Bush said. "And there may be aspects of its approach that generate controversy."
"But when we say 'break the mold,"' he added, "we've got to give communities the power to experiment, think anew, be daring."
"I like what works. I'm confident about the prospect of new American schools in communities across this country," he said. "With more accountability and choice in our schools, with a national commitment to lifelong learning, with the active engagement of our business community in the business of education, we will embark on a new voyage in the American experience."
The plant, where workers and managers have collaborated to redesign the workplace, is often cited as a model by Mr. Alexander as well.
The Saturn School, which is located in downtown St. Paul, serves students who would be in grades 4 through 7 in a more traditional school. They are chosen by lottery and are a heterogenous group. Some of their teachers receive substantially higher pay than others in the district--a fact that has generated some controversy in the community.
The school employs a variety of unusual instructional techniques and organizational principles.
The school uses individualized programs for each student, is orgael10lnized into classes that include students at multiple grade levels, de-emphasizes grades, uses cooperative-learning techniques, assigns independent student projects, has a longer-than-standard school year, and makes extensive use of educational technology.
The first classroom Mr. Bush visited, for example, contained computers recessed into desks with clear tops and lap-level keyboards that pull out like a drawer. The students were studying different topics at different levels on a system their teacher said automatically increases the difficulty of the work as a student progresses.
In another classroom, Mr. Bush was introduced to a computer system called Discourse, which consists of small computers for each student and a central terminal for their teacher.
Because the central computer is linked with the students' computers and a television set above the teacher's desk, the teacher can "broadcast" a question on the TV screen and have the students transmit answers, which can also be selectively displayed on the screen.
Jane Barton, the class's teacher, said the system is used most often to conduct surveys of student knowledge, attitudes, and instructional preferences. Students said they also use the system for instructional purposes, such as writing exercises and math drills.
Mr. Bush used it to ask students whether they think they will go to college and where, and whether they prefer math or English.
Brandon Seeger, 11, who occupied the teacher's chair during the demonstration, typed for the President: "Will you go to collage someday, and if so witch one."
Mr. Bush then learned a lesson about the unpredictability of computers when an answer he typed in response to a student's question stubbornly refused to appear on the television screen.
He fielded several questions orally, ranging from whether the Secret Service follows him to the bowling alley to why he wanted to be President.
He talked about "doing good things for the country," and "contributing to world peace," adding, "It's a big-picture thing."
In the final classroom Mr. Bush visited, two students demonstrated miniature robotic devices they had designed, including cranes and vehicles. The motile projects, which look like Lego toys, are controlled by computer.
"Frankly, I was a bit surprised by the place," the President said after his tour. "Such high tech and such young kids."
Asked by a reporter how schools in poor communities would pay for such innovations, he said they should redirect their existing resources by eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy.


Wayne Shorter will be recognized at the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors in December. The Newark jazz great also announced a new album.
Wayne Shorter, the jazz saxophonist and composer from Newark, has been named a 2018 Kennedy Center honoree.
Shorter, 84, who has won 10 Grammys in his career, will be recognized at the 41st Kennedy Center Honors on Dec. 2 at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C.
The other honorees this year are Cher, the composer and pianist Philip Glass and country music star Reba McEntire.
In a first for the honors, "Hamilton" co-creators Lin-Manuel Miranda, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and music director Alex Lacamoire will also be recognized "as trailblazing creators of a transformative work that defies category." The gala will be broadcast on CBS at 8 p.m. on Dec. 26.
In 2013, Shorter performed at the Kennedy Center Honors to celebrate Herbie Hancock.
"I had no idea that they would reach that far away from the popular, well-known-artist box," Shorter told The New York Times, reacting to news of his honor.
Shorter, who was in Newark for NJPAC's Wayne Shorter Weekend in April of 2017, also announced his latest project, "Emanon," on Wednesday, a multiverse-inspired triple album that will be released by Blue Note Records on August 24.
The album will be accompanied by a a graphic novel written by Shorter, a longtime fan of comic books and sci-fi, and co-writer Monica Sly. NPR reports that the hero Emanon ("no-name" backwards), named after a Dizzy Gillespie work from the bebop era of the '40s, is the protagonist of the graphic novel.
"I want to do music that expresses eternity," Shorter told The Star-Ledger in 2008. "I want to do music that celebrates everybody who has had anything to do with expressing themselves -- as musicians, novelists, in dance, maybe even in politics."
When The New York Times asked Shorter if he would attend if President Donald Trump decided to come, he said he would be there either way. Last year, Trump and the first lady did not attend the event "to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction."
Wayne Shorter in the Arts High School yearbook in 1951.
The decision came in the wake of Trump's controversial comments about the white supremacist marches in Charlottesville, Virginia and after some honorees spoke out against the Trump administration and said they would not attend a related gala at the White House. The gala was ultimately canceled.
Shorter, a tenor and soprano saxophonist, graduated from Arts High School and grew up in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood, engrossed by the sounds of bebop.
"Only a few of the guys from Newark were into modern jazz -- most were listening to Stravinsky (and) Beethoven," he told The Star-Ledger in 2011.
Shorter's first band, the Group, was inspired by Gillespie's famous Big Band. He would go on to perform with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report and the Wayne Shorter Quartet.


For those of you who haven't taken Steep for a ride down the mountain just yet, Ubisoft has decided to open the slopes to all comers this weekend, offering free play across all platform for four straight days.
If you're looking to give Steep a try, the free weekend of play will run from March 10 through March 13 across the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. For those of you in the U.S., the PlayStation 4 and UPlay crowd can jump on board starting 1 p.m. EST tomorrow, March 10. The free play weekend will end Monday at the same time. On Xbox One, your start and stop time will be 4 a.m. EST.
As Ubisoft recently did with Watch Dogs 2, this isn't just a demo of Steep featuring a limit on the game's features. You won't, for instance, be able to only pick the snowboard and slide down one section of the mountain. As Gamespot is reporting, this is another full-blown offering, letting players download the entire game and play it to their heart's content for the next four days. You'll have access to the full mountain, all of the game's different modes, all of the modes of travel; everything. Even better is the fact that you'll also have access to the Alaska portion of the game, which was recently added via a free update.
You can think of Steep as a sort of MMO for snow sports. The game's massive landscapes are totally open, and you'll come across other players on the fly. You can quickly group up with them to tackle challenges together, or just ignore them. There are plenty of objectives to complete along the way, as well as the ability to create and accept challenges crafted by other players.
In Steep, the player has access to four modes of travel including skis, snowboard, wingsuit and paragliding. Once you're on the mountain, you can simply pick which activity you want to do and dive straight in. If you want to tackle objectives, go for it. If you just want to tool around while some relaxing music plays in the background, you can do that, too. If you want to seek out areas where the damn mountain will talk to you while you lazily ski down the slopes, that's also an option.
If you're picking up what Steep is putting down, you'll be able to purchase the game for 50 percent off throughout the weekend. If you want to upgrade to the Gold Edition, that'll be available for 40 percent off for a limited time on consoles, too. Both versions of the game will be 50 percent off on the Ubisoft Store.
Of course, since you'll be playing the full game, purchasing it will let you roll over all of your progress into the final build, so nothing you do this weekend will be lost.


December 18, 2016  Our current dilemmas require overcoming existential risk through new forms of cooperation and innovation as Earth potentially enters a new eon, the "Sapiezoic," says guest blogger David Grinspoon.
October 1, 2016  Looking at the Anthropocene through the lens of astrobiology could help us move on with the planet — so it doesn't move on without us, says physicist Adam Frank.
Peter Ward: Are We Headed Into Another Mass Extinction?
September 30, 2016  At various times, life on earth has come close to being erased. Paleontologist Peter Ward explains what we can learn from previous mass extinctions.
Are We Headed Into Another Mass Extinction?
Cary Fowler: Can We Preserve Seed Diversity For The Future?
September 30, 2016  Biodiversity archivist Cary Fowler explains how the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will prepare humans for the climate change and its effect on our environment and our food supply.
Can We Preserve Seed Diversity For The Future?
Kenneth Lacovara: What's The Anthropocene?
September 30, 2016  Have we entered a new age defined by humans? Paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara says there's "no doubt" that humans' impact on Earth will show up in the geological record.
Emma Marris: How Do We Embrace All Kinds Of Nature?
September 30, 2016  Environmental writer Emma Marris wants us to broaden our definition of nature to one that embraces urban and wild spaces in order learn to protect and care for it.
How Do We Embrace All Kinds Of Nature?
April 6, 2015  Some scientists suggest calling the era we live in the Anthropocene, to denote the time when humans came to dominate Earth's fate. But did it start with farming, the atom bomb or another event?
September 28, 2014  We must have the courage to accept our responsibility as our planet's — and our descendants' — caretakers without cowering before the magnitude of our challenge, says anthropologist Vincent Ialenti.
September 26, 2014  Commentator Adam Frank says if we're building cities that affect the entire planet, maybe it's time to start thinking about how nature and cities can evolve together.
September 21, 2014  Comparing and contrasting different times and places as analogues for one another could help us re-adjust our orientations toward time and our environment, suggests anthropologist Vincent F. Ialenti.
A Human-Driven Mass Extinction: Good Or Bad?
January 28, 2014  The real dilemma we face from climate change is keeping this machine we call civilization working in a rapidly changing natural world. Nature, life, will survive and thrive, regardless of what happens to humanity, says commentator Adam Frank.
March 26, 2013  The wilderness is not just a thing, it's a need. It's an idea that has grown up with humans and it will follow us from this planet to the next, and beyond. Commentator Adam Frank plots our future course.
October 9, 2012  The vast web of geometries traced out in light shows you cities as a kind of infestation. They're like living networks spreading across the planet.


CARACAS, Venezuela – As Gov. Henrique Capriles campaigned for president of Venezuela last April, he couldn't venture more than a few steps without being hounded by dozens of sharp-elbowed cameramen and photographers. Nearly eight months later, the visibly thinner and exhausted opposition leader is accompanied by just a handful of journalists at what was supposed to be one of the final, electrifying opposition rallies ahead of this weekend's mayoral elections.
Critics say the shrinking media coverage has been deliberate. Even while Venezuelans endure their toughest economic crisis in 15 years of socialist rule, the opposition has been largely knocked from public view by what they claim is a government-led campaign to intimidate media outlets that give airtime to the opposition and the nation's mounting woes.
Between January and September, the number of attacks on journalists, cases of harassment and reports of censorship has risen 56 percent compared with the first nine months of 2012, according to a complaint filed by press freedom groups in October to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Even more damaging has been the sale of several media outlets once critical of the government to owners who more closely follow the official line.
Capriles calls it an "information blockade," and warns that President Nicolas Maduro's alleged attempts to silence the opposition signal a more authoritarian style of rule to come unless resoundingly reject his policies at the ballot box this Sunday. The election for mayors and city councils is a dogfight in this deeply polarized country. It is also Maduro's first electoral test since he defeated Capriles in April by a razor-thin margin following Hugo Chavez's death from cancer.
"Without a doubt this is one of the toughest moments in our history to get our message out," said Capriles, who has been crisscrossing the country stumping for opposition candidates.
Yet for all the opposition complaints, analysts say the government's biggest trump card going into the vote isn't its grip on the media but rather Maduro's political instincts. Facing a steady decline in the polls, Maduro on Nov. 9 seized control of several retail outlets, arrested dozens of store managers and slashed prices on plasma TVs and fridges to strike a blow against opponents he accuses of waging an "economic war" against his government. The measures have led to a steady improvement in the president's approval rating, said Luis Vicente Leon of Caracas-based pollster Datanalisis.
The most likely result from Sunday's vote, Leon said, is the opposition winning in Caracas and other big cities while the government remains dominant in the countryside, giving each side a claim on victory.
"There's an economic crisis in Venezuela but paradoxically who has best capitalized on it politically is the government that generated it," said Leon. "They've combined rhetoric with action and, just as importantly, has managed to sell a narrative of who are the ones to blame for the economic troubles."
The government denies it is threatening journalists or forcing its viewpoint, and attributes the decline in coverage of Capriles to the fact that voters and media bosses alike were turned off by his unsubstantiated claims of fraud following his defeat in the presidential race.
"There's no campaign to make him invisible," said Igor Molina, a high-ranking official at telecommunications regulator Conatel. "Perhaps it is just that the overexposure which he was accustomed to is gone."
The most emblematic example of Venezuela's rougher media landscape is the takeover of TV station Globovision. When Chavez refused to renew the license of independent broadcaster RCTV in 2007, Globovision remained as the lone voice broadcasting criticism of the government. But after being fined $2 million last year for its coverage of the security forces' violent quelling of a prison riot, the channel was sold in May to three local businessmen with no prior media experience. Many veteran journalists were immediately fired or quit, and the channel overnight stopped broadcasting opposition news conferences and rallies.
"This is a sophisticated strategy because you're not closing down the company," said Carlos Correa, of Espacio Publico, the nongovernmental organization behind the complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. "You're simply asking someone you're close to, or have business dealings with, to do a favor and buy a media company to neutralize its coverage."
Globovision's owners haven't commented on their plans for the channel or the transaction. But last month the saga seemed to repeat itself when the editor of the country's main business newspaper, El Mundo, was fired after publishing an article on the hemorrhaging of the central bank's foreign currency reserves. Just a few weeks earlier, El Mundo's owner Cadena Capriles, the country's largest print media conglomerate, was purchased by a group of UK and Curacao-based investors. Cadena Capriles' founding owners aren't directly related to the politician who shares their last name.
In another episode with a chilling effect on coverage, Maduro in October publicly criticized newspaper Diario 2001 as "bandits" and called for it to be "punished" for publishing an article about gasoline shortages in Latin America's largest oil exporter. Within days of the tongue-lashing, federal prosecutors opened an investigation.
The government is also targeting the opposition on the Internet, until now a largely untouched forum for government criticism. Last month it blocked access to dozens of websites used to track the black market value of the nation's currency, which has plunged to 10 times its official 6.3-per-dollar value.
While coverage of the opposition is being curtailed, Maduro is making greater use of the airwaves. Data compiled by Andres Canizalez, a media researcher at Catholic University in Caracas, show the president has appeared on television an average of two hours a day, surpassing a mark left by his loquacious mentor Chavez, thanks to a law requiring radio and TV channels to interrupt normal programming to broadcast the president's activities.
It's not clear if the government tactics are actually persuading voters. While Capriles may be less visible, Venezuela's economic problems are readily apparent in most supermarkets, where staples such as milk and toilet paper are harder to find and prices for other goods have skyrocketed in line with an official 54 percent inflation rate. The opposition is hopeful that such hardships will allow it to build on the 56 municipalities that it and dissident factions of Chavismo won in the last local elections in 2008.
AP Writer Joshua Goodman contributed to this report.


NORWALK (AP) -- A Connecticut judge says information in search warrants should be released in the case of a newsman accused of trying to blackmail David Letterman.
Norwalk Superior Court Judge Bruce Hudock (HOO'-dok) ruled Thursday that the documents can be released, but only after information is removed that identifies witnesses and what prosecutors call "victims by association."
Authorities obtained the warrants to search the home and car of CBS News producer Robert J. "Joe" Halderman. He has pleaded not guilty to trying to extort $2 million from the late-night TV host in return for keeping some of the comedian's sexual affairs quiet.


Immigrants Are Scrambling To Submit Petitions For Family Members To Come To U.S. Facing a new law that slashes family-based immigration, immigrants who are legally in the U.S. are scrambling to legal offices to petition for visas for loved ones abroad to come here.
Immigrants Are Scrambling To Submit Petitions For Family Members To Come To U.S.
Facing a new law that slashes family-based immigration, immigrants who are legally in the U.S. are scrambling to legal offices to petition for visas for loved ones abroad to come here.
The Senate did not pass an immigration bill this week, and a major sticking point was legal immigration. President Trump wants Congress to limit the number of family members who immigrants here legally can sponsor to join them in the United States. As NPR's John Burnett reports, the proposal has caused panic in some communities.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: After Donald Trump won the presidency, frightened immigrants rushed to legal offices to get green cards, become naturalized citizens and apply for protection under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. That's the program for immigrants brought here as children. Now there's a new scramble.
KATIE MULLINS: They are calling. And to be frank, they are freaked out.
BURNETT: Katie Mullins is an immigration attorney in San Antonio. She works for an advocacy group called RAICES.
MULLINS: People are in a rush to try to get applications submitted as soon as possible just in case the law does change. They're very nervous that their 22-year-old daughter who lives in their country of origin is going to be completely denied the opportunity that she would otherwise have to come here on a family-based petition.
BURNETT: The president's immigration blueprint would dramatically reduce the number of green cards issued to immigrants for permanent residency in the United States. The proposal would make parents, siblings and adult children of U.S. sponsors ineligible. The Senate deadlocked over this and other divisive issues and could not agree on an immigration makeover, at least for now. President Trump in his State of the Union got booed by Democrats for misrepresenting how it works now.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.
TRUMP: Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children.
BURNETT: That got Nancy Burrion's attention. She's a customer service representative who lives in Houston. Her parents brought her here from Central America, and she became a naturalized citizen. That allows her to petition to legalize her Salvadoran mother, Brigida, who lives in California. Brigida and 200,000 other Salvadorans must leave the country in the next 19 months. They had been allowed to live and work in the U.S. since a pair of earthquakes struck El Salvador in 2001, but the Trump administration recently terminated their temporary protected status.
NANCY BURRION: I want to make sure that she doesn't go anywhere, that she is going to stay here with us, which is her family.
BURNETT: Nancy Burrion and her siblings anticipate paying up to $10,000 to an attorney to shepherd their mom's case through the Byzantine sponsorship process.
BURRION: We feel it was the best route to go before they do change any laws.
BURNETT: The American Immigration Lawyers Association says its members across the country are experiencing a surge of consultations. Maurice Goldman works in a small family firm in Tucson. He says he's working weekends and missing his son's tennis tournaments just to keep up with new clients. He says many are in for a long wait.
MAURICE GOLDMAN: For example, if you're from the United States and you want to sponsor your sister from Mexico, right now the processing time is looking like at least 20 years, if not longer.
BURNETT: Because of congressionally imposed caps on immigrants from individual countries and on categories of family members, the wait for an immigrant visa can be decades for some countries like Mexico, India and the Philippines. Now add to those waiting times the crush of new applicants.
GOLDMAN: And so you're going to see people potentially waiting an additional five years or longer.
BURNETT: The president has assured even if a new law sets limits on family-sponsored immigration, no one will be kicked out of line. John Burnett, NPR News.


LESS than a dozen of 150 parliamentary deputies listened to Ombudswoman Jana Dubovcová present her annual report on June 10. As she discussed the state of human rights in Slovakia for nearly one hour, Dubovcová spoke to a near empty discussion hall that only began to fill, according to reports by the Sme daily, when a scheduled vote on the report approached. It was approved.
“This is the working method of the Slovak parliament,” Dubovcová said, as quoted by Sme.
The experience, however, is nothing new for the ombudswoman, who has tried in vain to get the government to discuss her report, which points to serious violations of human rights by state bodies in its policy toward Roma, including the controversial and violent police raid in a Roma settlement near Moldava nad Bodvou.
Meanwhile, a global organisation of human rights guarantors is expressing concerns that Dubovcová’s work is being undermined.
“I urge you to address the situation as quickly as possible and thus confirm that the Slovak parliament promotes democracy, human rights and the rule of law,” European Board of the International Ombudsman Institute (IOI) President Peter Tyndall wrote in a letter addressed to Speaker of Parliament Pavol Paška and provided by Dubovcová’s office to the SITA newswire.
The organisation, with 160 members in 90 countries, suggests that undermining the work of any ombudsperson is understood internationally as evidence of a lack of respect for citizens’ rights.
Dubovcová in her annual report warned about the problem of malnourished children in reform centres and boarding schools and called on parliament to address the violation of the rights of these children. She also noted that the violation of children’s rights appears as a systemic failure, SITA reported.
Dubovcová had already warned about malnourished children in reform centres in May, based on a survey conducted in these facilities suggesting that breakfast for children aged 6-11 costs €0.33, while a whole-day meal costs €2.28 per day. Food for 18 year olds costs €2.69 per day. To demonstrate that the state financing of food for children in these facilities is insufficient, Dubovcová brought a sample of the daily menu to MPs on the parliamentary committee for education.
She also noted that these centres use dubious methods, such as gynaecological checkups of girls each time they leave the institution or shaving children’s head regardless of their age as a hygienic precaution, SITA reported.
Roma children made up the majority in most schools for children with special needs that she visited, Dubovcová noted in her report, adding that most of these children face language barriers and did not attend pre-school.
Parliament has requested the government to address the issue of the headquarters of Dubovcová’s office, which is now in rented premises, not a state-owned building.
The US Embassy in Bratislava however has noticed Dubovcová’s efforts and presented her with the Human Rights Defender Award on April 2 in recognition for “her efforts to defend and promote the rights of all Slovak citizens, and to ensure those rights are recognised and upheld by all relevant institutions throughout Slovakia”, according to an April memo sent to The Slovak Spectator.
Instead of seriously dealing with Dubovcová’s reports, state officials have shown a habit of accusing her of violating the law and mixing politics with her human rights agenda. At a specially summoned session of parliament on January 30, which featured what some have termed hate speech by a high-level Smer official, deputies of the ruling party rejected a resolution drafted by the opposition condemning the government’s treatment of Dubovcová.
When speaking to the press on June 10, Dubovcová noted that her recommendations pertaining to last year’s controversial police raid in Moldava nad Bodvou have not been carried out, the TASR newswire reported.


Dangerous tactics are being used to rip the cash machines from the walls of buildings.
A surge in ATM thefts over the past year has prompted an appeal for the public to remain vigilant.
They say increasingly dangerous tactics are being used to rip the cash machines from the walls of buildings.
There have been several cashpoint thefts, including the Co-op in Ackworth being targeted in August, while a digger was used to pull out the machine on Waggon Lane in Upton in April.
An ATM at an Aldi store in Pontefract’s was taken in November last year when a rope was tied around it and a van used to pull it free.
Detective Chief Inspector Andy Howard of the Regional Team, said: “Stealing a cash machine is not an easy task and criminals are using increasingly dangerous and desperate methods which are risking lives.


Budget writers at the state Capitol caught a bit of luck last week: They learned they would have about $860 million in extra revenue to work with as they craft the state’s next two-year budget.
Yet Democratic leaders in Washington’s House say that’s still not enough money to cover all of the state’s priorities, which include investing more in mental health services, higher education, early learning programs and K-12 schools.
On Monday, House Democrats released a new two-year budget plan that would include about $1.4 billion in additional taxes to help pay for some of their desired programs.
The House’s $52.6-billion proposal represents about an $8 billion increase over what the Legislature is spending in its current two-year budget. Leaders in the Senate, which is also controlled by Democrats, are expected to release a different spending plan in the coming days.
The House proposal would rely on a mixture of new taxes, including a tax on “extraordinary profits,” to pay for about $2.3 billion in new policy investments.
That $2.3 billion comes on top of a roughly $5.8 billion spending increase House Democrats say is needed to maintain existing programs.
House leaders said much of the new money that has filled state coffers in the past two years — about $4 billion — is needed to finish phasing in K-12 education investments the Legislature already approved in 2017. Those investments were part of the Legislature's answer to a 2012 state Supreme Court ruling known as McCleary, which found that the state was failing to provide enough money for K-12 schools. The case came to an end last year, when the high court ruled the Legislature had met its constitutional obligations.
But lawmakers across the political spectrum have agreed the McCleary deal fell short when it came to adequately paying for some K-12 needs, including special education. The plan the House released Monday would invest about $70 million more in special education over the next two years.
While minority Republicans have argued no new taxes should be needed to pay for those programs and others, House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan, D-Covington, forcefully rejected that premise Monday.
“Don’t be fooled when they say that we have $4.5 billion to spend on new things, because it is absolutely not true,” Sullivan told reporters.
The cornerstone of the House Democrats’ tax package is a 9.9 percent tax on the sale of high-valued assets, such as stocks and bonds, which House leaders are calling a tax on “extraordinary profits.” It is similar to past Democratic proposals to tax capital gains, but would apply only to profits above $100,000, or above $200,000 for married couples, a higher threshold than the capital-gains tax Gov. Jay Inslee proposed in his budget package last December.
With Democrats in control, will Inslee finally get his capital gains tax?
It's not the largest addition to the governor's proposed revenue plan, but it's likely to cause the most fuss.
That tax proposal would raise about $780 million in the current 2019-21 budget cycle and $1.9 billion in the upcoming 2021-23 budget cycle.
House Rep. Gael Tarleton, D-Seattle, said about 13,400 people would be subject to the tax, which she said equates to about 0.4 percent of the state's taxpayers. Retirement accounts would be exempt from the tax, as would sales of single-family homes, farms and livestock.
Tarleton, who chairs the House Finance Committee, said the House budget plan would help correct problems that have led Washington to "have the most upside-down, antiquated tax code in the country."
"Wealth continues to concentrate in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals, who pay less and less into critical public investments as a proportion of their accumulated wealth," Tarleton said.
Another part of the House Democratic plan would charge higher taxes on owners of high-value real estate when they sell their property. The proposal would increase the real-estate excise tax on properties above $1.5 million, while lowering the tax rate for properties selling for $500,000 or less. That plan will raise about $130 million through 2021.
Meanwhile, an increase in business and occupation taxes on some businesses — including Amazon and Microsoft — would help pay for about $427 million in college and workforce education programs in the next two years, House leaders said.
While Microsoft president Brad Smith has already signaled his support for such a plan, an Amazon representative declined to comment.
The House Democratic budget also relies on about $68 million in revenue from closing certain tax exemptions.
Other key spending elements in the House plan include about $426 million for school employee health benefits, along with more than $150 million for behavioral health programs, including increasing staffing at the troubled Western State Hospital in Lakewood. It would pay for already-negotiated raises for state employees, while adding nearly 1,500 preschool slots for low-income families.
Republicans are likely to vehemently oppose the proposal due to its tax components. State Rep. Drew Stokesbary, R-Auburn, said the billions in additional state revenues that have accrued since 2017 are “more than sufficient to cover our priorities” without new taxes.
Furthermore, Stokesbary said he is unsure any attempt to tax profits from selling stocks would survive a legal challenge. Should the Legislature pass either the House Democrats’ proposal or a similar capital-gains tax, the legislation would likely be challenged in court as an unconstitutional income tax, he said Monday.
He questioned the wisdom of House Democrats proposing a tax that might get struck down in court.
"That's even more unsustainable than using other taxes," said Stokesbary, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.
Nor is it clear whether the House plan would have enough votes to pass the state Senate. In the past, a handful of moderate Senate Democrats have expressed reticence about capital gains tax proposals that targeted sales of stocks and bonds.
Ultimately, the final budget will have to be negotiated between the two chambers. The final product will likely differ significantly from the proposal House leaders unveiled Monday.
The Senate is expected to release its budget plan Friday. The current state legislative session is scheduled to end April 28.


Gardaí patrolling the area made the discovery after a group of men fled the scene.
TWO TEENAGERS HAVE been arrested after gardaí on a routine patrol in Limerick seized a gun, an iron bar, and a baseball bat.
The gardaí discovered the weapons after a group of men fled as the gardaí walked down McDonough Avenue in the Janesboro area of Limerick on Friday afternoon.
The gardaí also seized a round of ammunition and a number of other unspecified items.
The two men, both aged in their late teens, were arrested in connection with the incident.
The two are being held at Roxboro Road Garda Station where they can be detained for up to 72 hours.
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Searching for jobs is rarely easy, so it's important to use the best strategies possible. Since it's usually a lengthy process, good job searching habits are key to staying in the game and landing the position you want. If you just spam resumes without a game plan in mind, you'll be giving yourself a huge handicap. The SFGate came up with the top five job search habits which we've collected for you below. While the points are broad, sticking to them will help you stay focused and on-track.
1. Persistence – Whether you've adopted a fire and forget attitude or have given up entirely, forgetting to be persistent can shut more doors than you might realize. Never assume that your applications and emails have been received, read, or processed. Companies and hiring managers tend to be overwhelmed with emails, and it's very easy to let one slip through the cracks – you might be that one. Rather than spamming companies, wait roughly one to two weeks before reaching out to a company or individual to confirm that they received your information. If you don't hear back after the second or third email, then you can forget about it.
In a general sense, don't ever give up the search. The day you wake up and decide to drop the whole thing is the day you've truly lost out. Just make sure you always evaluate your approach so you're not beating your head against a wall with strategies that don't work.
2. Follow Up – In lockstep with persistence, always follow up. Whether it's a call, text, or email, it's better to follow up on an initial outreach. Don't take silence as rejection: there are litanies of reasons why an individual or organization hasn't reached out to you. Following up, whether after a job application or an interview, puts you back in the minds of whoever you've contacted. Even if it leads to a confirmed rejection, it's better to know than to let your imagination run wild.
3. Resilience – Searching for jobs usually comes with a huge dose of rejection. If you have difficulty coping with it, you'll be worse for wear in the long run. There are many ways to handle it, so the important thing is to pick whatever works for you. Even at the best of times, searching for a job is a strenuous grind that can wear you down and a string of rejections will damage anyone's ego. Think about a job search as a marathon: you're in it for the long game, not a quick win.
4. Stay Connected – While it's possible to find a job with a cold application, it's generally a lot easier to find a position through your network. The people in your network can point you towards job openings in their company or to people they know who have them. Either way, staying connected broadens and reinforces your support system and the chances that you'll find an opening. Plus, once you find a position, companies tend to hire people who are recommended by people who know them. It's a lot easier to trust someone they can be vouched for.
5. Give Back – You've probably benefited from a helping hand during your career, so don't forget the people you know who could use one too. Whether you're in a low point during your job search or just landed your dream position, keep in mind the people you know who could use some help. This is a great way to tend and expand your network while strengthening ties with other professionals. You never know, advising someone on their resume might lead to a big payoff later in your career. Plus it's always a good idea to help those in need!


Bihar Board 12th Intermediate Result Out now: Bihar Board 12th Result Declared Today : The Bihar Board 12th Result 2019 was declared on Saturday at the official website of Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB).
The Bihar Board 12th Result 2019 was declared on Saturday at the official website of Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB). Candidates can check their results after it is uploaded on the BSEB websites.
The percentage of students who have passed in the exam is 79.76%. In arts 4 lakh, 25 thousand, 550 candidates have passed in the exam, while in commerce 59,135 have passed and in science 5,35,110 students have passed. The pass percentage is 76.53 in arts, 93.02 in commerce and 81.20 in science.
More than 13 lakh students had appeared for the BSEB intermediate exams 2019 held across 1,339 centres in 38 districts of the state.
Students who had appeared in the examination, can check their Bihar board intermediate exam results on the official websites of Bihar Board at biharboard.ac.in or biharboardonline.bihar.gov.inor www. bsebinteredu.in or www.bsebbihar.com.
The results have been declared for Class 12 arts, science, commerce and vocational streams. This year the results have been declared much earlier than previous years, most likely, to help students in applying for admissions to colleges in universities outside the state, like in Delhi University.
This is the first ever time that Bihar Board has declared the result within 44 days of conducting the exam. This year, the exam was conducted between February 6 and 16. Earlier, the Bihar Board results were declared in the month of May while in 2018, the result of BSEB intermediate exam was declared on June 6.


The new system won’t stop the use of Google’s platform to spread false stories but does make the fact checking sites stand out which could help users find accurate information more quickly.
The change will not improve the search rank for the fact checking sites or present the information in a “featured snippets” box at the top of the page.
Schema.org ClaimReview markup on the specific pages where they fact check public statements or they can use the Share the Facts widget developed by the Duke University Reporters Lab and Jigsaw.


Charter gives Melrose time | City A.M.
TAKEOVER target Charter International extended the timetable for potential buyer Melrose to make a formal offer yesterday, giving it two and half weeks more for its due diligence.
Charter asked the Takeover Panel to approve the extension to the put up or shut up deadline for Melrose to table an offer just a day after it admitted it was also in talks with US pump and valve maker Colfax.
Melrose asked for access to Charter’s books before it formalises its latest 850p cash and shares offer for the engineering group and can now do so until 21 September.
But the arrival of a second interested party makes a bidding war for Charter increasingly likely. Its shares outperformed the FTSE yesterday, falling just 0.4 per cent.
Sources close to Melrose said it believed Charter investors would still back its offer because they would gain shares in the enlarged group.
Alex White, corporate finance partner at BDO said this was a valuable element of the offer. “It is hard to see why an all cash bid from Colfax would be attractive given the significant upside from the ESAB turnaround plan, which forms part of the Melrose offer, and from breaking the group up,” he said.
About 30 per cent of Charter’s shareholders are also investors in Melrose and have said they would welcome more shares in a combined group.
But Colfax’s statement said it “takes a disciplined approach to acquisitions” and “is committed to maintaining a prudent capital structure”, making a high bid look unlikely.


Sources say every area location has closed with two exceptions: The location in Eastview Mall and the location in Geneva. However, the Eastview Mall location is expected to close next week.
Almost all local Friendly's locations either have closed or will be closing.
According to a sign posted at the Spencerport Road location, as well as comments from employees, every local location has closed with two exceptions: The location in Eastview Mall and the location in Geneva.
However, the Eastview Mall location is expected to close next week.
Workers at the Geneva location says they have not yet been told that they are closing and so remain open.
Calls to Friendly's and its corporate owner, Sun Capital Partners, have not been answered.
"We apologize for disappointing you on this visit, but this location is now closed for business.
We regret that we do not have another Friendly's restaurant near you, but we hope that you will visit one of our other locations when traveling.
We appreciate your patronage over the years and for allowing us to try and make the world friendly, one scoop at a time!"


Parents and educators at a struggling, racially isolated San Francisco school hope their changing community means better times ahead.
SAN FRANCISCO — In recent years, students at Malcolm X Academy in the city's Bayview section have been coming up with design ideas for a paved pathway that will eventually link their public elementary school to a housing complex that's under construction nearby. The complex is slated to replace a once-crumbling public-housing development that was torn down in 2010.
Some students have asked for benches in the shape of fruits and vegetables; others have requested raised planting beds. All voted for a mural paying homage to national heroes such as Rosa Parks and Sonia Sotomayor. Developers who are building the pathway have promised to include some of their ideas in the structure.
But having that promise fulfilled isn't the main objective for child advocates at the nearby Center for Cities and Schools, an urban-planning think tank that has spearheaded the conversation about the pathway in collaboration with a local chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects. "The pathway is a symbol of a larger goal," said Shirl Buss, the center's creative director who oversees its elementary-school workshops, helping students connect with the neighborhoods in which they live. "It represents a pathway into the new community."
Housed at the University of California at Berkeley, the Center for Cities and Schools spends a lot of its time pressuring local officials to address struggling public schools in their housing-redevelopment projects. And that is exactly what the center is trying to do now with Malcolm X — a small, underenrolled elementary school in which close to 95 percent of the students come from low-income families and more than 4 in 5 children are African-American, Hispanic, or Pacific Islander. In 2013, the last year California ranked its schools, Malcolm X performed in the lowest 10 percent of all the state's schools. If the organization's work is successful, advocates say, the K-5 school could become a model for a cooperative approach between cities and school districts seeking to overhaul troubled communities.
If the approach doesn't work, Malcolm X could join a long list of schools that were left to flounder when gentrification came knocking.
Finding ways to integrate the nation's most segregated neighborhoods and desegregate its public schools tend to be separate endeavors.
Finding ways to integrate the nation's most segregated neighborhoods and desegregate its public schools tend to be separate endeavors. The work is generally undertaken by different city agencies, culling from different budgets. And the officials doing the work rarely sit down together to debrief each other on their projects. "School-district planners are not often in communication with developers," said Heather Schwartz, a policy researcher who specializes in education policy at the RAND Corporation.
But in recent years, as racial and economic isolation continues to plague American cities, a small group of planners in Maryland's Montgomery County, Atlanta, St. Louis, and here in San Francisco are working to promote a more cooperative approach. Their motivation stems, in part, from a 2012 report showing that more than 15 percent of the nation's African-American students still attended "apartheid schools," a term coined by Gary Orfield, the codirector of the Civil Rights project at UCLA, to describe schools in which at least 99 percent of the students are black. The news has given planners a renewed sense of urgency about using neighborhood-integration efforts to bring about school integration. But it's not clear whether that urgency will translate into progress.
Despite its otherwise-picturesque location overlooking San Francisco Bay, drugs and poverty have long plagued the historically black Bayview neighborhood. Many of the residents live in shabbily built public-housing developments, and the crime rate is notoriously high. Because of this, in 2005, officials decided to include the neighborhood in an ambitious redevelopment program.
Broad in scope and utopian in vision, the $2 billion project, known as Hope SF, seeks to desegregate five of San Francisco's poorest pockets by tearing down federal housing projects and building mixed-income units in their place, which officials hope will bring greater racial and economic balance to the neighborhoods. The plan was undertaken in collaboration with affordable-housing developers and has been celebrated by city and state leaders, along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the Senator Dianne Feinstein. And while detractors complain that these types of programs sometimes push a community's original residents out during the construction phase, supporters say it is a way to make good on federal housing goals as laid out in the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which urged communities to do away with segregated public housing. But the program has worried educators and child advocates who want to make sure schools like Malcolm X aren't left out of the integration process.
The Center for Cities and Schools has worked with an array of stakeholders in an effort to make it a better place for current students and an attractive one for newcomers, many of them middle-class and white, who began moving into the nearby apartments in 2013 when the first phase of construction was completed. The final Hope SF project will contain a housing complex with up to 800 units, including 250 public-housing units, some market-rate homes for sale, and some affordable rentals. It already includes attractive walkways, courtyards, a concrete-floored community center, and lots of lighting for evening. Developers say the project will eventually include a store, a day-care center, and several play areas for children.
Carol Galante, a longtime affordable-housing advocate who served as the Federal Housing Administration commissioner in the Obama administration until this year, says the idea behind these types of redevelopment projects is to do something "holistic." "It's an opportunity to bring people into the neighborhood and make it better for the people who already live there," said Galante, now a faculty member at UC Berkeley.
School board member Shamann Walton says these projects are also an opportunity to invest in campuses that are often neglected. "We want to make sure our schools grow and get better with these new developments," he said, noting that the city is working to integrate schools in other redeveloping communities as well.
As part of that broader effort, the district has introduced Mandarin-immersion programs and strong science departments, features that are popular with middle-class families, at schools in and around the transforming Bayview neighborhood. One such school is the STEM-focused Willie L. Brown Jr. Middle School, which opens this fall. School officials have tried to encourage middle-class parents to enroll their children at Willie L. Brown by guaranteeing them a slot — a sort of "golden ticket" — into their high school of choice if they attend the school. It's a big sell in a school district with a highly competitive high-school entrance process.
Malcolm X, for its part, got a boost a few years ago when the district placed it on a list of schools in need of intensive support. That allowed the district to pump money and resources in, adding a full-time literacy coach and a facilitator to keep track of how students are doing and what strategies are working to keep them on target. In turn, the school hired a new principal and got grant money to purchase new iPads for each classroom. It retooled its reading program to be more appealing to both reluctant and voracious readers and to better serve students at all reading levels. The new system includes book bins inside each classroom, allowing students to choose what they want to read, rather than an all-class system in which everyone reads the same book.
School officials also tried to create a sense of community by instituting features common in upper-middle-class schools — such as nights for games, science activities, and movies — and added a robotics program and a school garden. It even added an outdoor classroom designed by fourth- and fifth-graders, who spent months determining its décor, building planting beds, walkways, and walls, with the help of the National Organization of Minority Architects and the Center for Cities and Schools.
On a recent morning this past spring, 10 fourth-graders were musing over the ideas they had come up with for a playhouse that will accompany the outdoor classroom; some wanted the playhouse to be decorated with large geometric shapes, while others thought it should include thick, painted plywood flowers. There was talk of a superhero theme, and a discussion of flooring options. Buss, with the Center for Cities and Schools, stood by a cardboard panel that incorporated all of the student's ideas. As they waited to vote, they were given one last chance to promote their proposals. "Do you want to talk about your idea?" Buss asked a boy sitting at a table near the front of the room. "You're lobbying for it. Talk it up." The boy mumbled something nearly inaudible, after which Buss went on to the next student, who wanted to incorporate several themes into one playhouse, a collaborative idea that had been bantered about earlier in the day. "If we do that, we can have a floor," the girl, Genesis Martinez, said. "And we can put the flowers on the floor."
Nearby, in a fifth-grade classroom, teacher Laura Walker was showing her students a documentary about their historic neighborhood. It was developed in the 1940s during the Great Migration, when African-American men flocked to the area with their families to work in the now-defunct naval shipyard. Walker said the film was part of a social-studies unit on migration and exploration, which would include lessons on the Vikings, Christopher Columbus, and the American explorers Lewis and Clark.
Families whose children attend the school say they have noticed a difference. Lisa Afalava, a mother with a fifth-grader, says Malcolm X offers impressive after-school programs, including Mandarin classes. The school, she says, has worked to improve attendance by offering students awards for coming to school on time, and has created a warm learning environment. "The staff is really passionate about the kids," she said. Others, like Brenda Rios, whose son graduated from the school and now attends KIPP Bayview Academy, a highly regarded charter nearby, said the staff members excel at helping to place students at good middle schools.
But Diane Gray, the executive director of the Bayview Association for Youth, which offers academic support to students in the area, says the school needs to do a better job of promoting itself. Gray pointed to other San Francisco schools that she said have been successful in diversifying their populations to reflect their evolving neighborhoods by targeting preschools, looping in middle-class parents, working aggressively with developers, getting their names on brochures and fact-sheets, and encouraging teachers to attend community meetings. "I have no doubt that the same thing can happen here," she said. "But there has to be a lot of work done on both sides of the fence."
Across the country, efforts to integrate public schools and keep them integrated have been fraught. Many school districts are finding themselves rapidly resegregating once released from federal desegregation orders put in place in the '70s and '80s, dipping back to pre-Civil Rights-era segregation numbers. San Francisco was released from its race-based federal desegregation order in 2001, and though it's tried to promote more integration with a race-neutral school-choice program, it's gotten mixed results.
In 2005, former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom added a new post to his staff: a special advisor to address issues related to education and families. Hydra Mendoza, who has held the post for the past decade, also sits on the school board, working to create collaborations between the city's housing authority and its school district, keeping key officials apprised of new developments, and telling them about development plans that might present opportunities to improve struggling schools. "We're building stronger ties between the school district and the city," she said.
But no one thinks turning Malcolm X into a coveted school will be easy. The school's poor academic performance makes it a hard sell to middle-income parents: The number of students proficient in reading dipped from 48 percent to 25 percent between 2011 and 2013, with math proficiency seeing a similar dip. The school lost more than 17 percent of its student body between 2009 and 2014, and according to teachers some of those who remain are homeless or living in unstable conditions. Teachers believe the construction in the neighborhood is partially to blame for the decline in enrollment because it forced some families to relocate. The first-grade teacher Anthony Arinwine says the loss of students and the poor test scores have given the school a branding problem, even with longtime Bayview residents: "It has a lot of reputation to overcome," he said.
But for Ray McClenter, who finished fourth grade this spring and recently moved into one of the new Bayview apartments with his family, there is much to be gained if the city can lure newcomers to the struggling school. "If more kids come," he said, "I can make new friends."
Reprinted with permission from The Atlantic . The original story can be found here.


The final appearance of 'X-Men' star Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in this year's 'Logan' proved a huge success despite its limiting R-rating, grossing over $600 million worldwide. Now, the film will make its way home and its coming with a little something extra.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 4K and Blu-ray versions of 'Logan' are set to include an additional black-and-white version of the film dubbed 'Logan Noir', alongside other extra features such as an audio commentary by director James Mangold, deleted scenes with optional Mangold audio commentary, and the full length 'Making Logan' documentary. 'Mad Max Fury Road' similarly hit Blu-ray in a 'black and chrome' version last year.
In convert to b&w , one must determine which hues go dark/ light, adjust contrast, blacks. Turning down color on tv just makes gray mush.
'Logan' is set to hit 4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD in the U.S. from May 23, and on July 12 in Australia.


It didn’t take long for IS (Islamic State) to find a new cartoon-style villain to fill the shoes of Mohammed “Jihadi John” Emwazi. The masked villain often appeared in high-value productions, narrating them with a perfect British accent, as the enemies of IS were slain in increasingly elaborate and equally gruesome manners.
Just as Jihadi John’s villainy reached a crescendo, the US claimed it targeted and killed him in a drone strike. Nothing resembling actual confirmation was produced afterward, and many questioned the value or impact of eliminating what was for all intents and purposes merely a figurehead.
However, Western audiences have a shrinking attention span coupled with a growing awareness that everything they see on the news is likely at the very least, ‘spun.’ Despite this skepticism, US and European news services insist on serving up intelligence-insulting narratives seemingly designed for the minds of children, not educated, informed adults.
So just as Jihadi John’s memory began to fade from the collective narrative the US and European media pummels its audiences with daily, Jihadi John version 2.0 has been introduced. This IS doppelganger denizen appears almost identical to his predecessor, with the only difference being his brandishing of a pistol instead of a combat knife.
An English-speaking child, and a British-sounding militant who brings to mind ISIS’ previous propagandist, ‘Jihadi John,’ appear in the latest, chilling propaganda video from ISIS.
In the video, which has not yet been independently verified, the child says that the group will kill “kuffar’ — nonbelievers — “over there,” referring to the West, while the adult threatens and insults British Prime Minister David Cameron.
The speaker’s accent and dress bring to mind the previous — masked — face of the terror group, Mohammed Emwazi, otherwise known as “Jihadi John.” Emwazi was understood to have been killed in Raqqa late last year in an airstrike which specifically targeted the Briton. His absence lends credence to Western intelligence agencies’ belief that he is indeed dead.
Jihadi John 2.0 is still narrating IS’ high-value productions, which include gruesome executions, and the US and European media is still using him as the very convenient, extremely easy-to-hate face of IS. That Jihadi John 2.0 is taunting British Prime Minister David Cameron, is highly suspicious, considering that the British have been “fighting” IS for over a month now, but have conducted only 3 airstrikes, versus dozens of strikes daily by Russia accompanied by offensives carried out by a reinvigorated Syrian military on multiple fronts.
It’s almost as if this cartoon character, Jihadi John, is meant to intentionally offend Western sensibilities, provoking support for an otherwise unpopular and unjustifiable foreign military adventure in a country the US and UK do not otherwise belong meddling in.
Who is Jihadi John 2.0? Who Knows? Who Cares?
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who any of the incarnations of Jihadi John are. The role this figurehead plays in IS’ overall operation is actually superficial at best, and under closer scrutiny, aiding and abetting US and European meddling in the region by providing an overly obvious justification to continually perpetuate geopolitical dynamics in the region aimed at transforming the Middle East into a shape more suitable to Western interests.
That the United States invested time, money, and energy into allegedly killing “Jihadi John,” instead of identifying, exposing, and dismantling IS’ logistical networks, including those stretching into NATO territory itself in Turkey, seems to indicate the US is not serious at all about actually fighting or stopping IS, and instead, just interested in appearing to do so.
That CNN thinks this is a story instead of asking just why the US is not trying to get to the bottom of IS’ source of money, supplies, weapons, fighters and political support, tells you that CNN is not interested in journalism, but like Jihadi John himself (selves?) they are nothing more than propagandists attempting to manipulate, not inform the public’s perception.


The entire concept of the “surge” of forces in Afghanistan was that the force levels were too low to meet specific targeted goals for establishing security in conjunction with Afghan government forces. The situation hasn’t changed–US Forces are still propping up the puppet regime in Kabul.
What I guess I don’t understand is what 10,000 troop in-country will get us if the US does not pull out entirely. From all indication, this would leave a group of “advisors” with barely adequate “force protection” and certainly not enough manpower to keep open massive military bases in Kandahar and Baghram. Even Karzai is drifting return reproachment with the Taliban, which is fast becoming the real power to be reckoned with.
So, Obama threatens Afghanistan that without a security agreement in place its time to plan a full withdrawal. Great. The problem with Obama’s ultimatum is that it fails to explain why the US shouldn’t be pulling out. Its not clear what the mission is, what the alternative is, or what the national sentiment is to those alternatives. Obama likes to criticize Congress, but one thing Congress does really well is deliberate. Slowly. Deliberately. Maybe Obama should put a force bill in front of Congress for debate, since the mission does not appear to be the same as it was in 2001.
But if not, its not clear why the best policy is not to rush for the doors. We should be out of there. Now. Unless a compelling reason can be found otherwise or can be expressed, we’ve worn out the welcome mat and American tolerance for a decades long conflict.


Determined to find more money to pay for the incoming F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, top Air Force officials are seriously considering plans to dump its F-16 fleet, a move that occurs amid stiff opposition in Congress to the Air Force’s latest attempts to kill the A-10 Warthog, according to the War Is Boring blog.
The cuts were necessary to free up funds for the incoming F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Air Force argued in a April 2015 memo to the House Armed Services Committee. More specifically, if the flying branch couldn’t retire A-10s at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, it would send the base’s Vipers to the boneyard instead.
After swift criticism from lawmakers, the Air Force recalled the memo, claiming it had not cleared the paper for release.
A new twist on an old military slogan is offering up a serious message to armed service members in the information age, revealing heightened concern about targeting by social media-savvy groups like ISIS, according to ABC News.