OLSON: For Brother David, it is grateful living that makes everything come alive.
BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST, OSB: The practice of gratefulness that I’m concerned with is grateful living. That means every moment of your life you practice gratefulness. You practice awareness that everything is gift, everything is gratuitous, and if it’s all given, gratuitously given, then the only appropriate response is gratefulness What we really want is joy. We don’t want things. We don’t want to accumulate things. We forget that, and so gratefulness can help us see that, can help us realize that.
OLSON: Though Brother David acknowledges there are many things for which we cannot be grateful, he encourages people to be open to the opportunity being given in every situation.
BROTHER DAVID: We cannot be grateful for war. That’s an unmitigated evil. We cannot be grateful for exploitation, for untimely death. But we can be grateful in every situation. The key word is “opportunity.” If you catch onto that, then if we are in practice, when something comes along for which we cannot be grateful, spontaneously we will—our mind will say, “Well, what’s this the opportunity for now?” And there’s always an opportunity for something positive, usually the opportunity to learn something new, even in the worst situations, or for the opportunity to do something. If we learn of an injustice we have the opportunity to stand up and to speak up and to do something.
OLSON: During the day, people reflected on moments of ‘epiphany’ in their lives – what brother David calls mystic or peak experiences, which often include an experience of profound gratitude.
BROTHER DAVID: The mystic is not a special kind of human being, but every human being is a special kind of mystic. We all have mystic experiences, and in these peak moments, in these peak experiences, all of us have this experience of being one with all. Those are the moments in which we feel most alive, most truly ourselves.
BROTHER DAVID: “Word” is not just vocabulary, but “word” is everything that speaks to us, and in this sense a flower can be a word that speaks to me. A poem as a whole can be a word that speaks to me, a piece of art, everything. It speaks to me. It tells me something, it tells me something about ultimate reality. That’s a mystic insight that every human being can appreciate, I think, and experience, if we only allow ourselves.
OLSON: Cultivating this aliveness in life is central to Brother David’s vocation as a monk and to his message. Born in Austria, he immigrated to the US in 1952 and joined Mount Savior Monastery in Elmira, New York.
OLSON: For decades he has lived part of his life as a hermit, in prayer and contemplation and writing books. The other half he travels the globe lecturing and leading retreats, helping people discover this “aliveness” in their own lives. Finding the deeply shared personal experience is at the heart of Brother David’s work in interreligious dialogue.
OLSON: A pioneer in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue, he returns frequently to Tassajara, a Zen monastery in California where he lived for several years. As part of the dialogue with Buddhism, Brother David trained in Zen meditation and joined in Buddhist rituals. He says the task of interreligious dialogue today is to understand the meaning beneath the words of particular creeds or beliefs, to discover the faith that underlies these words that we all share.
BROTHER DAVID: Deep down there is only one faith that all human beings have, and that is that deep trust in life. Even our body expresses that trust in life by always taking another breath. We can’t even stop it. We can’t stop breathing. So that deep trust in life—that is what all humans share, and that expresses itself, then, in a Buddhist way, in a Christian way, and even in ways that we don’t recognize as explicitly religious. Many atheists have a deep faith. They all have that deep faith, but they express it very differently.
OLSON: Beliefs are not faith, he says. Faith is deep trust. And the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear.
BROTHER DAVID: The one most frequently repeated command in the Bible is not “love your neighbor,” but “fear not.” And if there is one thing that we need in our world, if there’s one thing that we should write on our mirror and see every morning when we look into the mirror, it’s “fear not.” If we went into the day with that command deeply tattooed on our heart, “fear not,” we’d be completely different people and create a completely different world—a world of faith.
For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Kate Olson reporting from San Francisco.


TAMPA – Joshua Heiman might be a 10th-grader at Jesuit High School, but he’s already proving himself to be a mover and shaker in Northwest Hillsborough County.
Heiman is the president of the Leader’s Club at the Northwest Hillsborough Family YMCA – having won out over three other candidates – and is the only student on the YMCA advisory board.
Heiman, who carries an almost straight-A grade point average at Jesuit, is responsible for running the YMCA Leaders Club, where the group formulates activities for community improvement, and he is looking for ideas to get teenagers more involved in the area.
Even if Heiman is the youngest person on the board, he doesn’t plan to just sit around and listen. He knows he is there to represent the teens of the YMCA, which he visits once or twice a week.
One of Heiman’s tasks is to help raise money through fundraisers and other community events involving the Leaders Club. Another is to provide volunteers for YMCA events, including Family Fun Nights for Kids. It’s all volunteer work and Heiman is in charge of making sure the events run smoothly from the teen angle, with plenty of participants and volunteers.
For now, Heiman is happy being a student, a member of Jesuit’s acclaimed chorus, and of his position at the YMCA. As for the future, he hopes to attend the Naval Academy where he wants to train to be a Navy Seal, one of the most dangerous units in the military. He said joining the service feels like a natural calling.


The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has said a total of 1,733,479 Permanent Voter Cards, PVCs have been collected by electorates ahead of Saturday’s election in Taraba state.
The Commission’s Public Relations Officer, Fabian Yame disclosed this to newsmen on Thursday in Jalingo.
He said 43, 626 PVCs are yet to be collected while, 1,733, 479 have been claimed by their owners as at the end of the collection exercise on Monday.
He also added that an additional 428,727 new voters made a difference between the total number of registered voters in 2015 and 2019 elections.
According to him, the number of registered voters in the 2015 general elections was 1,348,358, while those for the 2019 general elections is 1,777,105.


January 4, 2017 local news.
Other restaurants throughout New York, Michigan and Massachusetts have also signed the petition.
“Sanctuary Restaurants seeks to create the world we want – establishments free from hate and discrimination, where everyone has a seat at the table,” ROC United co-founder and co-director Saru Jayaraman wrote in the news release.
They experience increased patronage and support through a outreach partnership between ROC United and Presente.org.


The world recently lost a colossal intellectual figure. The name of Professor Adebayo Adedeji resounds in critical places across the globe where issues of regionalism, economic ideologies, engaged public administration and national and continental development constitute discourses that affect and transform lives, especially if these lives are Africans and Nigerians. In this sense, the whole of the African continent is left to mourn at a different level of loss. This is so because in the late Professor Adedeji, Africa had one solid pan-Africanist whose thinking and activities were even more solidly tied in with the postcolonial predicament and promises of the continent. Professor Adebayo Adedeji was an intellectual of many parts. He was also a Nigerian, and this was demonstrated in the seamless ways in which he was able to articulate the Nigerian economic predicament through an understanding of the larger continental debacle. This is one of the few scholars who were able to tie together the national in the regional. It is in this sense that he was both an African and a Nigerian, without any sense of contradiction involved in his fight for the economic betterment of both.
I share a sense of loss too, at a more personal and professional level. Let me put it on record that it was Professor Adedeji that discovered my potential as a public administration scholar. The year was 2000, and I was then the head of the policy division at the Federal Ministry of Education who was also struggling to make headway with my doctoral programme at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Professor Adedeji was also at that time coordinating the Federal Governmentâ€™s orientation programme for federal officers. Providence initiated our meeting when it was my turn to partake of the weeklong orientation seminar. On the first day, during the seminar, I stood to make a contribution, and his response was to ask for my name. I made another contribution on the second day, and his question to me was, â€œTunji, are you truly a career civil servant or you are here on sabbatical?â€ At that point, the orientation took on a renewed interest for me. The erudite professor would generate several administrative issues and asked for my opinion. By the third day of the seminar, he had already gone to meet the then head of service, Mr Abu Obe, to inquire more about me. His flattering thought was that it was really confounding to think that the civil service could still have something to teach him.
By the end of my setâ€™s participation in the orientation seminar, I had been appointed to a technical team. Professor Adedeji also delivered to me a letter to be the guest speaker at his 70th birthday that was to happen a week after the orientation programme. But the most far reaching of his efforts on behalf of my scholarship and career was that he put in a word for me with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Professor Akin Mabogunje. Chief Obasanjo took up his high recommendation and I was subsequently appointed as the technical head of the team that developed the 2003 national public service reform strategic at the Management Services Office at the Presidency. No one should therefore wonder why this tribute is not just another tribute for me. The late Professor Adedeji was critical to my scholarship and strategic placement within the civil service system in Nigeria.
And this leads me to my second point. Professor Adebayo Adedejiâ€™s public administration credential stands as a critical signpost for every aspiring Nigerian, and indeed African, public administration scholar and professional. Any significant effort to tease his contribution to public administration must be prepared to adequately rewrite a large portion of that contribution as a unique addition to the discourse and practice of public administration in Africa. Adebayo Adedeji embodies an essential legacy of administrative thinking that was motivated by the true essence of service. The trajectory of his scholarship and professional career makes for an interesting dissertation on patriotic public administration. And this is in a country where it is very difficult to be a patriot.
There are at least three crucial levels at which his contribution to public administration could be highlighted. The first is the level of professional service at the national level. This is where the Professor first cut his professional administrative teeth, and eventually laid the foundation of his engagement with development economics and national development planning. By the time he had finished deploying his significant knowledge to the problematic of post-war reconstruction efforts under the Gowon regime, Professor Adedeji had earned himself the sobriquet of â€œThe Professor of National Development Plan.â€ Appointed as the Federal Commissioner for Economic Development and Reconstruction, the then freshly minted Harvard University graduate was tasked with the onerous responsibility of mapping the economically messy terrain of post-war Nigeria. He definitely benefitted from the First National Development Planning (1962-1968). But the challenges involved in this cannot be compared with the post-war national planning that had to go into the second and the third national planning, especially for a 36 year old fresh graduate who had to piece together the fundamentals of economically designing a blueprint that will enable the government make sense of an ethnically divided nation. From the second to the third development plans, the young professor at the Obafemi Awolowo University had the brilliant collaboration of sound minds, from Chief Olu Falae to Chief Ime Ebong.
But Professor Adedeji had his eyes on more intellectual challenges. And this is to be expected as the first professor of public administration in Nigeria. The establishment of the University of Ife Institute of Administration marked a significant turning point for the domestication and further transformation of the study of public administration in Nigeria. It came at a very critical point because Nigeria had just gained independence, and the administration of the country was already an issue. There was therefore the urgent need to facilitate first a theoretical articulation of what public administration could mean for a newly independent country and what it could be used to achieve in post-independence Nigeria struggling with its own plural character. As first a deputy director (1963), and then the substantive director (1967), Adebayo Adedeji contributed to the inaugural task of fashioning a public administration curriculum that will be truly postcolonial. A similar experiment was going on at the ABU Institute of Administration. Professor Adedejiâ€™s pioneering intellectual work at the Institute of Administration remains a gold mine of historical and intellectual history of public administration that is not yet written. What is more, its contribution to the famous administrative successes of the Old Western Region, and especially the Awolowo-Adebo model that was central to the success of the civil service in the old Southwest, remains largely unstudied.
But even while laying multiple foundations for postwar reconstruction, economic viability and national consolidation, the late Professor Adedeji had his eyes on larger ideological objectives involving the West African regional integration and a larger continental economic profile. I am not sure of the curriculum contents that was fed Adebayo Adedeji while he was a student at Leicester, London and Harvard, but I suspect that he must have had some sort of contact with pan-African and other ideological literatures that not only stressed Africaâ€™s marginal relationship to the world economy but also the urgent need to undermine that marginality. And the ideological battles for the economic and administrative soul of Africa had to be fought against the behemoth Bretton Wood institutionsâ€”the World Bank and IMFâ€”and quite surprisingly too, against the orthodox assumptions about Marxism and its relevance for Africa. If we know that Adedeji came across the writings of Samir Amin and Immanuel Wallerstein, then we may likely understand this ideological stance the more. It just seemed to make sense to Adedeji that the neo-classical economic policies underlying the Washington Consensus, for instance, and all the economic policy doses that Africa was fed, could not in any way enable Africa make any tangible development progress.
With his fundamental knowledge of public finance and development economics, Professor Adedeji certainly saw the negative implications of the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) long before most governments in Africa experienced its terrible consequences, manifesting in the institutional dismantling of essential structures and processes around which African states could have facilitated their economic survival and transformation. By 1975, two distinct dimensions of Adedejiâ€™s ideological objective fell in place. Most importantly, he became the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). And that became his institutional platform for initiating the reforms he had written on for so many years as he gained more ideological and intellectual tractions on the problems confronted by Africa in the grip of neoliberal conditionalities.
Adedeji held on to the conviction in regional integration as the most pragmatic means by which Africa could be liberated from the global economic hegemony. This is one tough idea that the old school African social scientists, from Samir Amin to Ali Mazrui have emphasized as the way forward for postcolonial Africa for a long time. Adebayo Adedeji operated at the level of the theoretical and the empirical, and he had a measure of institutional successes. In 1975, he laid the foundation for the emergence of the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS). We can consider this to be Professor Adedejiâ€™s crowning glory as a public administrator and pan-Africanist. It was a short step from ECOWAS to other regional bodies like the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) in 1983, and the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) in 1993.
Regional integration, for Professor Adedeji, was supposed to serve as the ideological crucible on which Africa can forge national development in individual African states. As I see it, a serious relationship between ECOWAS, COMESA and ECCAS was meant to initiate a bold economic interactions and networking that could instigate internal economic development among African states, especially along the areas of comparative advantages. This internal development, in Adedejiâ€™a assessment, would be mediated pragmatically by the market economy as well as strong state interventions to push the market in the proper direction sometimes, and intervene in the case of a market bust or meltdown. Ultimately, regional integration is to be founded on national self-reliance. We therefore turn full circle to understand Adedejiâ€™s grounding of the second and third national development planning.
Professor Adebayo Adedejiâ€™s legacy in pan-Africanist thought could be considered in the light of his dedication to alternative frameworks and ideas around which Africa could redefine its identity and its transformation outside of the socioeconomic prescriptions of hegemonic global players, from the United States to the United Nations. From the Lagos Plan of Action to the Africaâ€™s Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programs for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation (AAF-SAP), Professor Adedeji dedicated himself firmly to ideological practical actions. He even founded the African Center for Development and Strategic Studies (ACDESS) as a demonstration of his total commitment to the progress of the continent. Of course, he did not always succeed. Indeed, the unfortunate part of Adedejiâ€™s narrative of renewal and renaissance for Africa is that he was undermined and undercut by the same people he was fighting for.
His ideas and legacies are still intact, left on the burner and awaiting that revolutionary government that would push them into bold implementation. Nothing else would constitute the proper honor for Professor Adebayo Adedejiâ€”pan-Africanist, public intellectual, economist, national development planner, and scholar.


Being told not to mention the Jussie Smollett case did not stop funnyman Chris Rock from blasting the embattled "Empire" actor at the NAACP Image Awards on Saturday night.
Smollett had claimed in January that he was attacked by two people who made racial and homophobic slurs and allegedly put a rope around his neck. He was later arrested by the Chicago Police Department for staging the attack, but the criminal charges were dropped by a prosecutor earlier this week.
Rock’s comments were met with laughter from the Dolby Theatre audience in Los Angeles. He continued by asking “what the hell” Smollett was thinking.
Smollett, nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, lost to Jesse Williams of “Grey’s Anatomy.” Smollett did not attend the 50th annual awards.
Anthony Anderson said he was happy that the charges were dropped and had hoped that Smollett would attend the awards.
“I’m happy for him that the system worked for him in his favor because the system isn’t always fair, especially for people of color," Anderson told Variety.


Schools in Gavin Elementary District 37 will receive a host of life-safety repairs as voters backed a referendum proposal to fund the projects.
Unofficial totals showed 1,598 "yes" votes, or 61 percent, to 1,026 "no" votes, or 39 percent, to support the measure.
District 37 in Ingleside was seeking voter approval to sell $6 million in building bonds to fund life-safety repairs and improvements at Gavin South Middle School on Route 134 and Gavin Central Elementary School on North Ridge Road over 20 years.
The work would included repairing or replacing aging roofs, asphalt parking lots, a boiler, chillers, improving science labs and extending air conditioning. Adding more secure building entrances at both schools is also on the project list. District officials said the items to be replaced or repaired are at the end of their useful lives. For example, officials said the Gavin Central roof is 20 years old and starting to leak and the 40-year-old backup boiler at Gavin South doesn't work.
The vote signals a change of heart after voters rejected a spring ballot proposal to borrow the money by establishing a "debt service extension base" of $500,000, starting in 2018 and running for "all subsequent levy years."


Zeppelin opened earlier this week in Shaw, bringing the neighborhood a karaoke bar that boasts sushi sourced from the Toyosu Fish Market in Tokyo and yakitori skewers cooked over Japanese charcoal.
The restaurant will showcase around 30 varieties of seasonal wild caught fish and shellfish via nigiri, sashimi, and maki rolls. An early sampling includes Pacific mackerel, Japanese amberjack, sea bass, and golden eye snapper.
Partners Adrian Williams, Ari Wilder, and Micah Wilder also own Chaplin’s, the always-packed ramen spot down the street. They teamed up with revered sushi chef Minoru Ogawa for the new two-story project a few blocks north (1544 9th Street NW).
To accommodate Ogawa’s preferences, the group installed a negative 100-degree freezer that will preserve fish and keep fat intact while Ogawa ages cuts on-site. It’s the same kind of freezer used in transit from Japan.
Zeppelin’s chef frequently imports fish from Tokyo’s famed fish market.
Shrimp and scallop skewers at Zeppelin. Ogawa made multiple trips to Japan with empty suitcases to bring back its colorful hand-painted plates.
Ogawa is a Tokyo native and second-generation sushi chef with four decades of experience. He founded D.C. staples Sushi Capitol and Sushi Ogawa, makes large-scale meals for the Japanese embassy, and recently opened the eight-seat sushi bar at the local Mandarin Oriental hotel.
But Zeppelin offers much more than sushi.
A gamut of chicken parts make their way onto Ogawa’s skewers (soft knee bone, gizzard, liver with salt or sauce, and skin). They’re joined by grilled rice balls with soy sauce, short ribs, Kobe beef, and Shishito peppers cooked with Japanese sea salt.
Skewers also make their way into cocktails. The Chesterfield (Toki, Banana Armagnac, Pineapple Pastis, Peychauds Bitters), comes with a yakitori “ice” skewer, which diners are instructed to nibble in between sips. Yakitori will make its way into more cocktails at brunch, which will join the mix later.
Yaki Onigiri (grilled rice ball with yakitori sauce).
It’s hard to remember the 3,000-square-foot space’s former life as the failed Shaw Bijou. A full redesign from Reid & Taylor Studio takes its cues from the bygone era of passenger airships. That includes vintage silk tapestries cast in resin on the walls and soundproofing to keep karaoke cornered to its upstairs area.
Crooning kicks off nightly at 10:30 p.m. in a room with a long communal table with partitions that can be moved around. Artwork spelling out song lyrics in Japanese hover above diners.
The Zeppelin team has history in D.C.’s karaoke scene, having worked at the now-shuttered Cafe Japone in Dupont Circle. The super-modern sound system at Zeppelin includes 30,000 songs to choose from.
At the centerpiece of its custom laser-cut steel bar is a highball machine, which makes six of its 16 cocktails ($8 to $14) for the energetic 20-seat setup. Magnetic agitators constantly swirl the liquid in the keg to produce a balanced cocktail.
A Kabuki Springs highball cocktail (Roku Gin, Italicus, grapefruit, lemon, bubbles) is inspired by a spa that Micah Wilder used to frequent in San Francisco’s Japantown.
Zeppelin will have highballs on draft.
Zeppelin makes an In Bloom cocktail (Haku Vodka, Cappelletti, Beaumes de Venise, Baller Bubbles) in its highball machine.
An 800-square-foot patio equipped with old lamp posts and a Godzilla mural will seat 65 once weather permits. A soon-to-bloom cherry blossom tree will add to the Japanese vibe, too.
The team plans to take advantage of the temperature-controlled wine room downstairs to expand upon its selection of sake, which has a limited shelf life. A collection of 80 premium varieties range from $7 to $30 by the glass and $30 to $600 by the bottle.
Three omakase menus are also available for guests who want to let the chef plot their courses (6 p.m. and 8 p.m. nightly seatings). Diners can order 15 pieces of nigiri for $65 per person. Add a trio of appetizers with clam miso soup and dessert costs $85. For $100, customers also get seven pieces of sashimi, and a hand roll. There’s also an option for sake, wine, and Champagne pairings.
The second-floor Omakase bar is a quiet departure from its lively next-door karaoke area, which kicks off after omakase dinners.
Zeppelin is located at 1544 Ninth Street NW. It’s open 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 4 p.m. to 2 a.m on Friday and Saturday.


While most investors are biting their nails over the eurozone's potential unraveling and a worldwide recession, contrarian investors are seeing opportunity in Europe.
The legendary Baron Rothschild, a great contrarian investor, reputedly recommended buying only when there was blood on the streets. There's not yet blood in Paris, but Greece has seen some rioting and bloodshed, and most observers believe the eurozone's troubles are far from over.
Financial adviser Kurt Brouwer, writing for MarketWatch, advises that this is indeed a good time buy certain European stocks. Brouwer recommends large European companies that do business outside Europe.
For instance, Nestle S.A. operates around the world. Around for 140 years, it has shown that it can survive tough times.
Novartis, a pharmaceutical firm, is another global company. It was formed when two large companies, Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz, merged in 1996. Their forerunners can be traced back to as early as 1758.
Royal Dutch Shell, the giant oil company, operates in 90 countries, and its predecessor originated in the 1800s.
Buying a mutual fund or ETF is the best way to get a piece of these kinds of companies, says Brouwer, noting that he's not recommending purchasing those individual stocks.
Brouwer himself owns Harbor International, a large cap value-oriented mutual fund with almost 70 holdings and about 70 percent of its assets in European stocks.
Vanguard European ETF, which tracks the MSCI European Stock Index, has a diverse group of almost 500 European stocks, he notes.
These funds have not done well recently, he admits. But that is the point of contrarian investing.
Financial analyst Tom Konrad agrees that European stocks offer opportunities for contrarian investors.
He recommends alternative energy companies, such as environmental services firm Veolia, Germany's SMA Solar, the Danish insulation manufacturer, Rockwool, and Dutch bicycle and e-bike maker, Accell.
"Europe, with its high energy prices and early acceptance of the science of climate change has for many years been growing industries with the technology and skills to confront peak oil and climate change," he writes for the website, alternativeenergystocks.com.


Buffett’s metaphors grab the reader’s attention and reduce complexity to a short sentence.
Take a page from the Warren Buffett’s annual letter to improve your communication style.
Analysts and Berkshire Hathaway shareholders look forward to reading Warren Buffett’s annual letter for its wit, wisdom, and insights. I enjoy it because I can always count on Buffett, a life-long student of communication, to use metaphorical references to explain complex financial topics. Once again, Buffett didn’t disappoint in his 2017 annual letter released on Saturday.
Buffett is frequently asked why 90% of his investments are made in the U.S. He answers in metaphor: “America’s economic soil remains fertile.” Buffett’s explanation could fill books, but in five words a metaphor allows him to communicate complexity, simply. And that’s the beauty of metaphor.
A metaphor is a literary device by which we describe one thing in terms of another, replacing the meaning of one word with another. Aristotle promoted the use of metaphor as an element of persuasion more than 2,000 years ago in his work called The Rhetoric. Buffett is a big fan of the technique because it still works. We are hardwired to process our world in metaphor. In a few short words, an appropriate metaphor can teach us volumes about an event or situation.
For example, in his 2017 letter, Buffett repeated his advice to invest for the long term and cautioned investors against borrowing money to buy stocks. “No one can tell you when these [big declines] will happen. The light can at any time go from green to red without pausing at yellow.” You don’t need to be an expert in the stock market to get a sense of how fast things can change. Anyone who’s been in a car gets it instantly.
Buffett is also known for unexpected metaphors and analogies. Buffett’s metaphors grab the reader’s attention and reduce complexity to a short sentence.
In his 2017 letter, Buffett addressed the few acquisitions his company made during the year. He said it was difficult to find stand-alone businesses with all of the qualities he looks for: competitive strength, capable management, good returns, and, most importantly, a sensible purchase price. Prices were simply too high to justify deals, he said. Next came a quip in the form of an analogy.
Metaphors and analogies do, indeed, make the complex simple to understand. The human brain doesn’t do well with abstractions. Take a page from the Warren Buffett’s annual letter to improve your communication style.


Re: "Merced jail raid yields gang info" (July 27, Page B-3): It's despicable and cowardly to shoot people who are locked up behind bars. Torture should not be allowed in our American jails or prisons. Rubber pellets and bean bags were developed to save lives, not for abuse. Our officers and military should beware "not to become that which we hate."


According to C/NET : - "The Treo 650 smart phone has fallen victim to the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive in Europe Palm has been forced to stop shipping its Treo 650 smart phone in Europe, because it violates new environmental laws [which imposed a July 2006 deadline] The company is expected to launch a replacement for the Treo 650 for Europe in the coming months". Unofficial sources also claim that Apple will be withdrawing peripheral equipment from the EU market, pending redesign work. Pentax also has been mentioned as withdrawing some products. We expect many more announcements on this subject as the end of year approaches .


DEAR SOS: For years I've been going to the Old World restaurant for their Veggie Burgers and love them. I've tried to re-create them at home, with no success. Could you get the recipe for me?
DEAR SUZANNE: You and hundreds, perhaps thousands of readers have hankered for these extraordinary burgers made exclusively with vegetables and eggs, and so have we. We've tried for years to obtain a recipe to no avail. Finally, a recipe arrived from Old World Westwood in response to yet another "oh, what the heck" request. Now we can all rest assured the recipe is safely in our hands.
The recipe goes back to the peak of the health food movement some 20 years ago, when Dr. Robert Frank, a prominent Los Angeles dentist, opened Old World restaurant in an attempt to help teach consumers how to eat well nutritionally. The burger was a development of the idea that even burgers can and should be healthful. These vegetable burgers contain assorted nutrient-dense vegetables, nuts, eggs and even corn flakes for a nutrient-packed meal-in-a-dish, served either as a hamburger, topped (or not) with tomato and cheese on a sesame bun or plain with baked potato and fruit. Thank you, Old World.
Chop carrot in food chopper or food processor. Add celery, green pepper, onion, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach and zucchini. Chop into small pieces.
Mix in salt and pepper to taste, walnuts, eggs, Worcestershire and corn flakes. Mix until thick.
Shape into 3- to 3 1/2-inch burgers about 1-inch thick. Cook on griddle, in nonstick pan or under broiler 5 minutes, turning once until golden brown. Makes 12 patties.
Note: Burgers may also be pan-fried in small amount of butter. Mixture is best shaped in the pan, as it falls apart easily.
DEAR SOS: Can you persuade El Torito Restaurant and Cantina to part with their Kahlua Mousse? It's so delicious.
DEAR CARRIE: The Kahlua Mousse recipe appeared in an El Torito Restaurant and Cantina brochure of favorite recipes sent to us some time back. We're delighted to pass this rather easy recipe on to you. Isn't it a perfect cool dessert for a hot summer evening?
Whip non-dairy whipped topping and whipping cream until stiff peaks form. Add coffee, cocoa and sugar, blending well. Add Kahlua, stirring mixture with rubber spatula. Chill in refrigerator.
When ready to serve, top mousse with additional whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles and serve with wafer cookies. Makes 8 servings.
DEAR SOS: Can you obtain a recipe for the Old Spaghetti Factory Clam Sauce? Thanks.
DEAR JEANNE: Yes, we can. We've printed the recipe several times by popular demand.
Melt butter in skillet. Add garlic, onion and celery and saute over medium-low heat until vegetables are tender, but not brown. Stir in flour until smooth and golden.
Combine drained clam liquid, half and half, pepper, thyme and salt in saucepan. Heat until just below boiling point (about 185 degrees on candy thermometer). Add clam meats. Stir in onion mixture and cook until smooth and thickened. Makes 6 cups sauce.
DEAR SOS: Would you please print the recipe for Chinese Chicken Salad served at Bullock's? It would be great for summer luncheons.
DEAR JAN: How right you are. This recipe has been printed in The Times frequently since 1979.
Deep-fry rice sticks, small handful at time, in hot oil few seconds or until puffed. Drain.
For each serving, place 1 cup chopped lettuce in bowl. Add 1 tablespoon Dressing and toss. Add 2 cups cooked rice sticks and toss. Top with 1/2 cup chicken and 1 tablespoon nuts.
Or combine everything in large bowl and toss with Dressing to taste. Makes 6 servings.
Combine mayonnaise, Worcestershire, soy sauce, oil, mustard and lemon juice and blend well. Makes about 2 cups.


LONDON, England (CNN) -- As the British government struggled in the 1970s to combat the Irish Republican Army's growing terror campaign, it had a secret tactic to undermine the IRA's efficiency, according to those interviewed for this report.
In the wake of the deaths of 234 people in 1972 alone, the British Army, according to the allegations, began recruiting Catholic Northern Irish soldiers to send home as deep cover agents.
In 1974, Willy Carlin says he was one such soldier.
"I served in the British army for nine years and was at the point where I needed to decide if I was leaving the army or signing on for the whole game, 22 years," says Carlin. "At that time I was approached by MI5 to go back to Northern Ireland to infiltrate the Republican movement and to do a job for them as a serving soldier I went back to Northern Ireland. It took a number of years to establish credibility within the Republican movement. Initially I just worked for Sinn Fein locally."
Carlin says he not only worked for Sinn Fein, the Republican political party believed to have links to the IRA, but for nine years also worked for MI5 and other parts of British military intelligence. In 1985 he says he fled Northern Ireland after his cover was blown. The British government, he says, relocated him, gave him and his family new identities and a house.
Another former British soldier, whom we were asked to call Kevin -- not his real name -- says he was able to stay hidden in the upper echelons of the IRA from the mid 1980s until last year. He saved lives, he says, by passing information, while at the same time helping to build bombs.
"I was a terrorist but I was a British agent," says Kevin. "You had to do things to stay there, otherwise, believe me, there would have been a lot more dead people. When I had to do my IRA job I had to do it. I'm not going to sit here and say that people lost lives at my hands, because basically the way the law works now is, I will go to jail for the rest of my life and I don't think I deserve that. I broke the law seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Everything I done broke the law. I helped to make bombs. Some of those bombs got caught. They were never used. Some of those bombs exploded and damaged property and that gave me credibility."
Kevin and other former agents and a former British intelligence handler interviewed for this report refused to discuss specific operations.
"You know and it's easy for people to say, 'Oh, he's tout and informer,'" says Kevin. "A tout and an informer is a real stigma in Ireland. And it follows the family for the rest of time. But the thing is, a lot of lives were saved, some were people who will throw stones and cast 'He's a tout. He's an informer.' I wasn't. I was a British soldier."
Shortly before Christmas last year, Kevin says his cover was blown. He says he received a letter from the IRA informing him of his violation of two IRA orders, for which the penalty is death. The death sentence, the letter went on, "will be carried out at our convenience."
Kevin asked Willy Carlin for help and appealed to the British government for protection. In its reply, the British Ministry of Defence said it was unclear on what grounds Kevin would qualify for help. Willy Carlin and Kevin then contacted Conservative opposition Member of Parliament Andrew Hunter. Hunter told CNN he has no reason to doubt Carlin and Kevin were agents. He has raised their case with the British government.
"Clearly, morally, the government is under obligation to ensure that the men who risked their lives in this form of service are looked after properly," says Hunter. "It doesn't seem to be happening. There is cause for concern."
Willy Carlin says others like Kevin have contacted him for help.
"The people I represent do not want medals," Carlin says. "They just want to get on with their lives I mean these guys saved people's lives, hundreds and hundreds of lives. A few lives might have been lost, but then there was a war on here."
Carlin's former handler was a man who asked to be called Martin Ingram, not his real name. Ingram says he served with the British Army's secretive Force Research Unit (FRU). The FRU's job, he says, was to spy on the IRA and disrupt IRA operations. Ingram believes Kevin and other agents have been abandoned by the government they served.
"They've been used, abused and they are of little more use to the British government and effectively they are of no consequence," says Ingram. "And I think it is disgraceful the way they have been treated, and they owe a debt of loyalty to these people who have served society."
In the meantime, the British government has sought to stop public disclosures about the activities of British undercover agents inside the IRA. Only this week, the government obtained an injunction banning the broadcast of an Ulster Television documentary. That documentary alleged the agents -- in order to maintain cover and ultimately save lives -- took part in the manufacture of bombs and assisted in the killings of soldiers and policemen. The government has also obtained an injunction banning publication against the Sunday Times newspaper.
The British government has been under pressure for several years by human rights groups and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges to investigate allegations the FRU also colluded with paramilitiaries opposed to a unified Ireland to commit murder.
"I think it looks very bad for a developed democracy, sanctioning, as it were, murder gangs and in particular to be covering up in retrospect what they were doing," says Jane Winter of British Irish Rights Watch. "Many newspapers have been gagged."
"There appears sufficient materials to begin an open inquiry and to lay to rest all these suspicions, all these concerns, all these frustrations," says U.N. Special Rapporteur Dato Param Cumaraswamy. "Until that is done, because there is no resolution to this concern, I think even any long-term peace process is, can be a problem for Northern Ireland."
The agents with whom CNN spoke say the lost lives amid the government campaign to defeat the IRA may cause the British government the most embarrassment.
"Some of the actions that the soldiers have been involved with need admitting by someone," says Willy Carlin. "To admit that, more or less, that -- shall we say -- the British government are guilty of allowing the murders to take place."
"The dangers posed by running agents in Northern Ireland is first and foremost if there is no rule book, which there wasn't in Northern Ireland," says Martin Ingram. "We miss the difference between right and wrong."
M.P. Andrew Hunter says he has no specific knowledge of incidents where agents contributed to deaths, but that "they had to endure certainly loneliness, certainly great personal danger, and obviously the uncertainty."
"I think in those circumstances," Hunter says, "people find it very hard to make the moral distinction between right and wrong."
The former agents interviewed for this report said they were recruited from the army, given early discharge papers, promised a secret paycheck, plus a savings account.
"So, they paid us to become terrorists, to fight the terrorists," says Kevin.
Kevin says he was 21 when he volunteered for what he thought would be exciting undercover James Bond type work. At the time he thought he could go back to his army regiment when it was all over.
Twenty years later, he says, he's wiser.
"We were a deniable commodity and now they are denying us," says Kevin. "The thing is we are an embarrassment A lot of those IRA men who are, were on the run, they can go home. I can't go home. I'm sentenced to death But I have certain things I can prove. It will be embarrassing for me at this stage. I'm dead, anyhow. I'm a dead man walking, so I really don't have anything to lose."
CNN asked several former secretaries of state for Northern Ireland and the British Ministry of Defence for comment about army infiltration of the IRA. CNN was told repeatedly that there would be no comment. The British government, a Defence Ministry spokesman said, "never discusses security matters."


NPR said late Saturday that it regrets reporting the “erroneous news” that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had been killed in the Tucson shooting — reports that were picked up and repeated by several top news organizations.
CNN, Fox News and other television outlets followed suit in the minutes after 2 p.m., and even The New York Times carried the incorrect reporting briefly, citing NPR and CNN as sources. Half an hour later, hospital officials told MSNBC that she was alive and in surgery, and within minutes the cable networks and the Times had pulled back their reports.


The Australian flew into Heathrow at the weekend and was met by his brother Shannon, who is already a British resident. They motored up to Leicestershire where Etheridge will be based this year, staying with his brother, who works for Triumph Motorcycles.
It is still over a month before Etheridge gets his first taste of track action but he is keen to get a feel for some of the tracks in the Premier League. And how quickly he adapts to some of the away circuits in the second tier could prove critical as Monarchs bid to win the championship crown for a third time in succession.
Etheridge told the Evening News: “I have arrived early in order to give myself plenty of time to get organised for my debut season in the UK. I’m going to take every opportunity afforded to me to get a spin on the other tracks before I get my chance around Armadale.
“I’m itching to get on my bike and get started and can’t wait to show Monarchs what I can do. They have given me a huge opportunity and I want to do my best for them.


SIR ALEX FERGUSON became frustrated with the commercial nature of Manchester United in his last years there as a manager.
That is according to former Manchester United boss Louis van Gaal.
Ferguson retired from United in 2013 after 27 years in charge, during which time he won 13 league titles, five FA Cups, four League Cups and two Champions League trophies.
His hand-picked successor, David Moyes, lasted only 10 months before he was given the boot for a terribly below-par season.
Van Gaal was selected by the United board to replace Moyes, arriving in Manchester with a wealth of experience at top European clubs.
The brash Dutchman was a constant source of entertainment for English football fans and the media - even if his football wasn’t.
Van Gaal instilled an insipid, possession-based style of football at Old Trafford, but was one of the most charismatic, provocative managers the Premier League has seen.
He did, however, struggle with the club’s white-collars, many of whom have no wealth of prior football experience.
Ed Woodward, a former accountant and investment banker, is the executive vice-chairman at United while Matt Judge, who has a masters degree in economics and finance, negotiates fees and contracts.
The pair joined as Ferguson left alongside Woodward’s predecessor David Gill, with whom he had a strong relationship, and have focused on the club’s commercial value more than footballing relations.
"Unfortunately, we are talking about a commercial club, not a football club,” Van Gaal told BBC Sport in a wide-ranging interview.
The club are in the process of appointing a director of football, but have not done so yet.
"At the moment there is a structure with a scouting division and above that is someone at Woodward's right hand,” Van Gaal added.


On Monday night, two of my sons and I saw “Avatar.” Wow. Most movies don’t blow me away, but this one did. For one thing, this was the first movie I’d ever seen in 3-D, and it was awesome.
On Monday night, two of my sons and I saw “Avatar.” Wow. Most movies don’t blow me away, but this one did.
For one thing, this was the first movie I’d ever seen in 3-D, and it was awesome.
One of my co-workers said she’s seen movies in 3-D, but this movie’s 3-D was better.
We sat in the front row, which I think added to the 3-D experience. I felt like I could grab the things that seemed to float near me, and once or twice I felt like ducking. It even felt like the bugs in the movie were buzzing around me. The entire movie, which lasted about three hours, was worth the $8 admission I paid. I learned admission to 3-D movies does cost a little more, probably because you get to use the glasses, and I’m guessing there’s more expense to making a 3-D movie.
I’ve heard “Avatar” cost $500 million ($300 million production, $200 million advertising) to make, so I feel like I contributed to the making of the movie in a small way.
The film involves a wheelchair-bound soldier, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), whose twin brother, Tom, a scientist, has died. On the lush, colorful moon Pandora, which is light years away from Earth, Tom is to be part of a highest-level program supervised by corporate and military strategists. Since Jake and his twin are genetic matches, this presents Jake with a unique opportunity to take over his brother’s contract with the military-corporate entity on Pandora.
Jake is linked to his Avatar and goes to the moon’s surface for the first time with scientists linked to their Avatars, one of whom is Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver). Throughout the movie, Jake is torn between his bonds with the moon’s native people, the Na’vi, and what the corporate-military program wants him to do — get a Na’vi clan to move so a valuable mineral can be mined.
He befriends a native female, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who trains him to become a warrior and teaches Jake her people’s ways. I won’t spoil it by telling you which side he chooses.
“Avatar” probably is the most beautiful movie I’ve ever seen, and I missed some of the dialogue because I was so enthralled with the action and 3-D-ness of everything. When I get visual, I don’t always hear what’s going on, but this gives me an excuse to go back (like I need one).
The action scenes are awesome in 3-D. They’d be awesome not in 3-D, but the 3-D definitely helped. The computer graphics, in which most of the movie was done, were great with the motion-capture work. Even a close-up of Avatar Jake made him look almost real with pores on his skin showing. The computerized creatures on the moon, such as the viperwolves and flying banshees, are done really well.
I’ve heard people say the plot isn’t that great, but I liked it. Since the movie has so much going on visually, I think a more complicated plot would’ve been too much — like eating really rich truffles for three hours.
I also like the way Cameron uses strong female characters in his movies and TV show, like Ripley in “Aliens,” Rose in “Titanic” and now Neytiri in “Avatar.” I enjoyed the way Neytiri hissed, rode banshees and protected her boyfriend. She rocks.
I recommend you see “Avatar” in 3-D in the movie theater. That experience cannot be duplicated at home on a little TV screen.
Wendy Nugent is an editor at The Newton Kansan, and she loves movies.


THE Chief Minister, the Hon Fabian Picardo QC travelled with Mrs Picardo to London on October 30 so that he could attend a number of functions in London during the forthcoming week.
On Sunday October 31, the couple attended what has become a traditional Gibraltar Day Mass at Our Lady of Dolours Servite church in Fulham after which he hosted a small reception at Fulham Palace, the former residence of the Bishop of London.
The following day the Chief Minister spoke at the Gibraltar Finance Services lunch at the Guildhall which was attended by over 300 members of London’s banking, insurance and financial services community.
During the latter part of the week, Mr Picardo will join other leaders of the Overseas Territories (OTs) at the annual Joint Ministerial Council which sees attendance by representatives of 15 Territories and a large delegation from the Foreign Office including the responsible minister in the first post referendum meeting of the OTs before he returns to the Rock on Saturday November 5.
How do Casino Bonuses work? And are they real?


REV. JESSE JACKSONJohns Hopkins University eye surgeons say they would be glad to examine singing sensation Stevie Wonder to find out if he is a good candidate for a high-tech eye chip implant that could restore his sight.
The singer’s friend, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said the 49-year-old superstar deserves to see again, and noted the work Wonder has done to help the blind children of Africa.
“It would be a great note to end this millennium on,” Jackson told The Post yesterday.
Jackson was present when Wonder stunned mourners at a recent Detroit funeral by saying he plans to undergo the procedure, being developed by Dr. Mark Humayun of the Welmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
The new-age procedure involves implanting a microchip the thickness of a fingernail sliver in the retina, the light-sensitive portion of the eyeball. Light and images stimulate electrodes in the chip to send impulses to the brain.
So far, people tested with the device have been able only to pick out shapes and individual letters. But in the next five years, scientists hope to develop more sensitive chips that will let people read newspapers.
The Welmer institute said yesterday that Wonder, who has been blind since infancy, met with Humayun to discuss the eye chip, formally called an intraocular retinal prosthesis.
Although the eye surgeon told Wonder the device might not help him, the surgeon offered to examine the singer to see what his chances are, the institute said.
“The prosthesis could possibly help people who once had vision and later went blind from conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa. Mr. Wonder has very severe eye disease” and has been blind since he was a baby, the institute said.
Nevertheless, its doctors “would be happy to evaluate Mr. Wonder to determine if he would be an appropriate candidate.” So far, no appointment has been set, it said.
The singer’s publicist, Shelley Selover, had no comment.
Wonder made his stunning announcement that he plans to undergo the procedure before singing at the Nov. 15 funeral of Gwendolyn Gordy Fuqua, the sister of Motown mogul Berry Gordy.


Sorry, had to be done.
I like to think it is short for "your welcome will ensure your survival when the day of the jellipocalypse arrives"
I have visions of the legendary "The Thing" being remade...as a documentary.
I'm curious as to how it escaped the usual 'blobomination' tag.
The XXXXXXXL orange shirt with the initials F.A. on it.
Skrill from Earth: Final Conflict?
"They then dropped Medusoid into a container of saltwater and shocked it into swimming just like the real thing."
Please, please tell me the researchers then clasped their hands together and shouted: "It's alive!", before laughing maniacally.
I do love it when we get to read about the more fun research that is going on around the globe. There are plenty of future practical applications for this sort of tech, but for now, it is just great to know that someone somewhere is being given the budget to make stuff like this work!
..brigade will attempt to squash this idea before it goes an further. And if they don't win, the bible bashers will be along right behind them. The kill joys.
But will you still be saying that when the Special Projects Bureau push the envelope??
<< because that's what it might look like!
Have these people not watched 'Sharktopus'?
I mean I'm not even a scientist and I've seen it.
Re: Have these people not watched 'Sharktopus'?
"In Deep Water, nobody can eat their cheese"
Not to detract from the efforts of these boffins, but weren't we on the verge of growing artificial hearts and or creating pigs with hearts that could be transplanted in to humans years ago? Did all these tacks dead end or were they sunk by the aforementioned killjoy brigades?
"weren't we on the verge of growing artificial hearts and or creating pigs with hearts that could be transplanted in to humans years ago?"
So all the promising pigs disappeared - and then these Rattus Cnidaria suddenly appear ?
or does it PROVE that the creationists were right all along?
It'll be a cold, cold day in hell before any of those twats are proven right.
The pun and irony of that statement was intended.
It looks like our favourite hack is confused between silicon and silicone. Let's hope the boffins know the difference.
Given the lack of popularity of plastic surgery in Switzerland and the lack of mating opportunities being buried in an underground tunnel 12hrs a day with other boffins entails...I doubt it.
Scientists with the best of intentions build jellyfish bio bot!
—will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
You were all thinking it, I jsut said it.
Some amazing stuff over the horizon though.
and the list goes on . . .
that the Necronimicon's prophecies were mis-interpreted, the rise of Great Cthulhu from sunken R'Lieh was actually a reference to the rise of the escaped hyper intelligent ratctopus from the depths.
Hopefully he will eat me first.
...on my part, but what would stop your hyper-intelligent jellyfish-rat heart from getting bored one day, ripping free from where it was implanted inside your chest, and swimming around your delicious, juicy, oozing internal organs and stinging you to death from the inside...?


It’s an obvious one, but President Higgins had an undeniably good week. From his very own town crier to Boris’s home-made biscuits, Higgins’s State visit to the UK was a major success.
He made several speeches during the historic five-day trip, the first-ever State visit by an Irish president to Britain, including one at a banquet in Windsor Castle and another to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.
He then raised a toast to “a creative cooperation and a sustainable partnership between our countries and our peoples; and to valued neighbours whose friendship we truly cherish”.
All eyes were on the PAC again this week as its cross-party members subjected Rehab executives to a seven-hour grilling about the group’s finances.
The Taoiseach loves a good photo op, so he was in his element while taking part in the State visit this week. Aside from donning his best dickie bow for the banquet at Windsor Castle, he got to sit beside former British Prime Minister John Major at a concert in the Royal Albert Hall.
The news that €2 million in budget cuts could be avoided and professional job vacancies are on the rise may also have even helped him forget he was publicly called 'Edna'. Again.
The attendance of the Sinn Féin MLA at the Windsor banquet during President Higgins's State visit will be seen by many as an important step in the peace process. He also stood for a toast to the Queen proposed by Higgins.
Northern Ireland's deputy first minister handled himself well on BBC's Newsnight when Jeremy Paxman asked: "What on earth are you doing breaking bread with the Head of State of an occupying power?"
McGuinness noted that there are "many reasons" on both sides as to why he and Queen Elizabeth should not meet, but added: "We both thought it was an important thing to do."
Earlier in the week, he said he was conscious that his decision "involves political and symbolic challenges for Irish republicans".
The Labour MEP received praise for the informative sexual education video she posted on YouTube on Tuesday. Prendergast was a nurse and sexual health expert before entering politics so she knows what she's talking about.
She's hoping to retain her seat in Ireland South in May's election but will face some, er, stiff competition.
The Finance Minister came under fire for denying suggestions that a property bubble is developing in Dublin. Noonan said that prices in the capital are 50 per cent lower than their 2007 peak, while nationwide prices nationwide are 47 per cent lower.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett also accused Noonan of showing “an unwillingness to acknowledge the seriousness" of the national housing shortage.
In a long week for the minister, it transpired that two letters regarding the recapitalisation of Bank of Ireland cannot be found by either the Department of Finance or the bank. Sinn Féin's finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty described the development as "highly suspicious".
The former Rehab CEO and Fine Gael advisor was a no-show at the Public Accounts Committee meeting on Thursday, saying that some members of the PAC held a political grudge against him and were attempting “to go far beyond their remit” and “raise personal matters that are not relevant to the committees [sic] work”.
A letter sent from the committee to Flannery's solicitor described his reasons for not attending the meeting as “nothing short of contemptible”.
Flannery and Angela Kerins, who stepped down as Rehab's CEO last week, ordered the representatives of the charity who were present not to reveal any further details on their remuneration or pension arrangements. Kerins did not appear before the committee, citing ill health. PAC member Shane Ross was not impressed.
Rebuttal on way from PAC to wilder claims in letters from Flannery 7 Kerins.Both likely be "reinvited2 before PAC considers nuclear option.
There was a further twist in the expenses row surrounding former Fianna Fáil senator Ivor Callely this week. Four out of seven Supreme Court judges voted against a High Court ruling that Callelly had correctly claimed his expenses.
Chief Justice Susan Denham and Justices Donal O’Donnell, Frank Clarke and Nial Fennelly voted in favour of the Seanad Committee on Members’ Interests, concluding that Callelly had misrepresented his normal place of residence.
An expenses row was also rumbling on across the pond. British Culture Secretary stepped down after she was accused of misusing the expenses system by claiming £90,000 (€108,000) for a second home. She was cleared of the charge but resigned as she said she did not want the controversy to be a "distraction" for the government. Miller was ordered to repay £5,800 (just shy of €7,000).
The Fine Gael councillor came under fire for sending a letter to constituents in South Dublin claiming she was "delighted" that a proposed accommodation scheme for Travellers would not be going ahead in Ballynakelly.
The letter was particularly poorly timed given the fact it was International Romani Day on Tuesday.
Email “'Nothing short of contemptible': 5 winners and 5 losers from the political week”.
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Between iLife ’06 and ’08, the timeline view was removed from iMovie. Instead of being displayed in a timeline, the video wraps around like text on a page. If you have iMovie ’11, there’s a way to get back the original timeline view, where the video is in one scrollable line.
Fire up iMovie ’11 and open up a project. The first thing you’re going to want to do is swap the project view and the events view so that the video you’re editing is along the bottom of the screen. To do this, click the ‘Swap Events and Projects’ button on the middle toolbar — it’s the one that looks a bit like a refresh button.
Once you’ve done that, there’s one more step. Just underneath the middle toolbar, on the right-hand side of the window, there’s a new button introduced in iMovie ’11 — it looks like a row of boxes. This is the ‘Single-Row View’ button. Click this and your project will rearrange itself into one long row which is scrollable to the left and right.
So there you have it, an emulation of the old timeline view in iMovie ’11. It seems Apple must listen to user requests after all, because iLife users have been complaining about the lack of a timeline view since it was removed two versions ago. It also suggests, along with the new audio editing features, that Apple is trying to make iMovie seem much more like its Final Cut products, which is great news for amateur videographers.
Can Online Video Show Us the Future of Newspapers?


Einar Thorarinsson, head coach at Whitworth College the past nine years, has been hired as the first full-time men’s soccer coach at Gonzaga, the university announced Friday.
Jeff Heimbigner has coached GU on a part-time basis for five years. GU was 2-13-1 last fall.
Under Thorarinsson, Whitworth has posted a 123-50-13 record and has been ranked in the NAIA national poll five of his nine seasons. The Pirates have won five conference titles.
“Einar comes to Gonzaga as the most highly recommended coach I have hired,” athletic director Dan Fitzgerald said.


Cary, North Carolina, lies in the heart of the Tarheel State’s Research Triangle, an area that encompasses the campuses of Duke University, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina as well as multiple private-sector research operations. A city of roughly 140,000, Cary is pretty high-tech in its own right, with almost 90 percent of its citizens having access to the Internet. Cary welcomes visitors and has a wide array of hotels to accommodate them.
This three-story, 140-unit Cary hotel is only 7.5 miles from center-city Raleigh and 22.5 miles from the heart of Durham. Each of its rooms and suites features cable/satellite TV, wireless Internet access, desk/work area, free local phone calls and clock radio. Other hotel amenities include a seasonal outdoor swimming pool, 24-hour exercise facility, complimentary breakfast, business center and laundry facilities.
This nine-story, all-suite hotel is only a short drive from both Research Triangle Park and the Weston Parkway Business District, where many of America’s largest companies have offices. Guests staying in one of the hotel’s 273 two-room suites enjoy a private bedroom, separate living area with galley kitchen, two cable/satellite TVs, desk/work area and high-speed Internet access. Other amenities include a heated indoor swimming pool, business and fitness center, bar/lounge, sauna, whirlpool and gift shop.
Close to the North Carolina State University campus, Raleigh Convention Center and RBC Center, this six-story, 120-unit hotel offers such in-room amenities as cable/satellite TV with HBO, high-speed Internet access, desk/work area and voice mail. Other hotel amenities include a restaurant, lounge/bar, exercise facilities, business center, whirlpool, gift shop/newsstand, self-laundry facilities and safety deposit box.
Within minutes of Cary Towne Center and Crossroads Plaza, two of the area’s most popular shopping malls, this five-story, 128-unit hotel is just across the street from the Western Wake Medical Center. In-room amenities at this property include cable TV, wireless Internet access and voice mail. Other hotel features and services include a seasonal outdoor swimming pool, spa, fitness center, complimentary breakfast, free newspaper and laundry facilities.
This seven-story, 150-unit hotel, given a four-diamond rating by the AAA, is surrounded by a 12-acre tract of gardens and natural scenic beauty, offering a peaceful respite from the stresses of 21st century life. Each of its rooms and suites features a 42-inch plasma TV, CD/DVD player, high-speed Internet access, mini-bar, bathrobes and turndown service. Other amenities include a full-service day spa, restaurant, lounge/bar, seasonal outdoor swimming pool and gift shop.
Amerman, Don. "Cary, North Carolina-Area Hotels." Travel Tips - USA Today, https://traveltips.usatoday.com/cary-north-carolina-area-hotels-22415.html. Accessed 19 April 2019.


Detectives are investigating a number of possibilities  "everything from a single perpetrator to some type of gang activity"  in the deaths of 12 women and one fetus whose remains have been found on the Far Southwest Mesa during the past month, Police Chief Ray Schultz told the Journal this week.
n A man who strangled a prostitute in December 2006 and was fatally shot by her associate while he was trying to move the woman's body.
n A prisoner incarcerated in the state. Schultz would not say why the person was in prison.
n Someone who "had something against prostitutes" or who "thought they were doing the Lord's work by killing these people."
The chief didn't say whether some of those possibilities are simply theories or that they involve specific individuals. He continued to keep most details of the investigation close to the vest, including previous cases detectives are looking into and whether any other evidence has been found with the bones.
There are other leads, and police are keeping all possibilities open, the chief said.
The body count stands at 13, and police believe the dead adults may all have been women who lived a shadowy, transient existence of drug addiction and prostitution and who disappeared between 2001 and 2005.
Detectives also believe the "same person or persons" created what is being called the "largest crime scene in Albuquerque history."
But they won't say the deaths are the work of a serial killer.
First, "This is a 360-degree investigation, and we want to make sure we don't limit our investigators to any one set theory," Schultz said. "Anything less could be used against us in court, for a possible future prosecution, if we somehow prejudice the case by speaking or acting too prematurely."
Second, the skeletal remains investigators have found in the area since Feb. 2 have been there between four and nine years. That means that determining cause and manner of death is difficult.
If the Office of the Medical Investigator, which determines cause and manner of death, can't say they were homicides, then police can't call anyone a suspect  much less a serial killer.
"We're looking at cases where the suspects are deceased," Schultz said. "We're looking into several cases involving the death or assault of prostitutes."
Two cases in particular that the chief has said police are interested in involve dead men.
One involved a prostitute who was slain in late 2006 in a southwest Albuquerque trailer a few miles from where the remains have been found. The suspected killer was fatally shot as he was moving the woman's body.
Police also are looking into the case of a well-known pimp who died of natural causes in January and who had pictures of missing prostitutes in his home.
The OMI has referred all questions about the crime scene on the mesa to APD. Schultz said the office has not identified any obvious signs of trauma on the remains, such as a gunshot or stab wound.
But that doesn't mean the cause of death won't be ruled homicide, the chief said. Facts such as the proximity in which the bones have been found, the time they were buried there and similarities in the victims' lives could lead to a circumstantial determination of homicide.
Only two of the 13 sets of remains have been identified: Victoria Chavez and Gina Michelle Valdez.
"We can only move as fast as some of the evidence allows us to," Schultz said. "Everything is still a possibility."
In the meantime, three branches of the 40-member 118th Street Task Force are investigating the case: one that's processing the 100-acre site where the remains have been found, one that's handling logistics and coordinating the massive amounts of information police have on the victims and cases they're looking into, and a third that's trying to figure out who is responsible.
"These are people who were handpicked for this investigation," Schultz said. "There are people who worked vice (when the women disappeared), senior folks and brand-new detectives. Everybody knows their objectives. It's a very well-organized task force."
The task force includes a couple of FBI criminal profilers, Schultz said, who are helping piece together a picture of the lives of the missing women and the person who may have killed them.


On the holiday HD sales front, there’s good news and bad news, and good news and bad news.
The good news is that a lot of retailers reported larger crowds than anticipated on Black Friday and through at least part of the first official weekend of the holiday season, and some shoppers were buying at sharp discounts.
The bad news is that this heavy concentration of shopping could indicate that once the big discounts are gone (and at least some of them already have vanished), any big-ticket buying could stop fast. Both CNBC and ABC News report this week that while some of the crowds did not die down appreciably after Black Friday, some of the sales numbers did.
The other good news is that “estimated” sales in general (electronics, clothing, etc.) on Black Friday rose as much as 3 percent over last year’s Black Friday, according to ShopperTrak. But the bad news is that last year’s Black Friday represented an 8 percent jump over the previous year.
Specific sales data on HD/Blu-ray products are not yet known (nor will Black Friday numbers alone tell the whole story), but business channel CNBC was reporting this week that some major retailers were reporting electronics sales roughly 14 percent below last year at this time. Some initial Black Friday-and-beyond sales figures for HD and other electronics are expected to be announced on Dec. 4.
And if timing is everything, this year retailers could have used more of it. This year’s holiday sales season is only 27 days long because of Thanksgiving coming very late in November. Last year’s sales period was nearly a week longer — at 32 days.
As for Cyber Monday on Dec. 1, its potential impact on sales is widely thought to be somewhat lessened this year as more potential online shoppers now have broadband at home and don’t have to wait to get to the office to quickly browse retailers’ Web sites. Also, the same patient wait-and-see attitude adopted by many brick-and-mortar shoppers—perhaps gambling that low prices will get even lower—seems to be held by cyber shoppers, too.
This week, the federal government said it’s now clear a full-blown U.S. recession actually began in December 2007, which means (among other things) that last year’s holiday sales season took place within the same recession as the current season.
While Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Amazon.com and other major retailers likely have some big (albeit perhaps brief) HD-centric sales up their marketing sleeves that typically are not announced until just prior to Black Friday, this year’s American economy—hampered by a housing crisis, the falling U.S. dollar and sharp jumps in gasoline prices—poses a big question mark for the holiday season.
And, past sales could be quickly reinstated.
Between a truly worrisome economy and some serendipitous over-supply of stock, HD products could hit record-low price points for this holiday selling season.
Early signs of how much the weakened economy will affect the HD/Blu-ray Disc market for the holidays will start to become apparent a week from today.
The strained economic climate now running into its second consecutive holiday season has led most retailers to start their sales as early as possible.
Judging from ad fliers, all three chains had nearly identical deals on similar sizes and formats.


Archives|TOPICS IN WALL STREET.; Short Covering Causes Further Rally in Stocks; Pan-American a Leader.
TOPICS IN WALL STREET.; Short Covering Causes Further Rally in Stocks; Pan-American a Leader.


Laura Ashley Holdings P.L.C. will sell a 15 percent stake in itself to a Japanese retailing group for $58.3 million. The British retailer said it would sell 35.2 million newly issued shares of its stock to the Aeon Group of Japan for $:29.9 million. The price represented a 73 percent premium over the closing price of the company's shares on Tuesday.
The agreement is being carried out through Aeon's British subsidiary, the Jusco Company. Laura Ashley will also sell 53 percent of its equity in its United States retailing subsidiary, Revman Industries Inc., the companies said. Aeon will take 48 percent and Revman management 5 percent. The deal values the whole of Revman at $35 million, they said, and leaves Laura Ashley with a 47 percent stake.


Has it been confirmed where he pays his taxes, he might not come under the jurisdiction of the Japanese taxation authorities. We don't know the wording of any contracts referring to his employment or the benefits he receives, or where those benefits are paid Everybody seems to have made up their minds about his guilt, how quickly he has been replaced at Nissan without even a conviction of any crime. The timing here , maybe the upcoming proposed merger , which Nissan was objecting to, could come into the equation.
Basically suspected of understating his income - a white collar crime? I guess that’s an arrestable offence in Japan unlike here but being in custody for up to three weeks doesn’t sound helpful either.
Japanese judicial system quite different to our own.
It has nothing to do with his taxes.
In Japan, high income earners like Ghosn, 50% of his income goes to tax. He might have thought his income was not enough for his work after tax. Ghosn is one of the top business managers in the world. Top athletes in MLB and NFL are getting more than him. When I think about it, I feel a bit sympathetic to him.
Shows how big business can bend the law when they want something.
Nissan and J-Inc's intention seems to be pretty clear- Rearrest him, keep him in detention for even longer, keep trying him in the press while he can't respond, and keep pushing to renegotiate the alliance while Renualt's leadership is incapacitated. Seems to be going according to plan so far.
I agree. Also, they want to charge him with a crime that wouldn't involve Nissan. Currently, if he goes down then all of their scheming is for nothing. Renault and the investors will still win in the end. Saikawa and J-Inc will only prevail on small fish in Japan. J-Inc is playing checkers, while Renault is playing chess. Their "re-negotiation will not give Nissan more power over Renault. At best, a Japanese person will appear to be running things at Nissan, but they will be a figurehead only because too many people and too much money are at stake to let another incompetent J-manager run the company into the ground.
Reuters was not able to contact them. Motonari Otsuru, a former public prosecutor who local media said has been hired as Ghosn's lawyer, was not immediately available to comment.
This is completly weird.. no interrogation of the Finance Dept at all, in my opinon he should destroy Nissan and Saikawa for everything and bring it into international attention and potentially international courts, as the courts here are highly biased to dinaosaurs of the old Japanese era..
I have a feeling this is going to do a lot of damage to Japan if they don't open these processes more openly.
The Ghosn case is just shining a HUGE SPOTLIGHT on an utterly PRIMITIVE "justice" system that is the ENVY of dictators worldwide!
Everybody seems to have made up their minds about his guilt, how quickly he has been replaced at Nissan without even a conviction of any crime. The timing here , maybe the upcoming proposed merger , which Nissan was objecting to, could come into the equation.
We do not know the details but those who have been helping investigations by the prosecutors for several months in Nissan must know. That may be enough for them to make a decision to oust Ghosn. According to a Nikkei report, the two French members of the board were skeptical in the beginning about the claims by the investigations, but after hearing the detailed explanations, the report says, they have agreed to oust him from the top position.
I agree with you that the proposed merger has played a role in this matter. Ghosn originally opposed to the merger plan, but this year for the first time he has shown a change in his mind about the merger, saying it's time to reconsider type of relationship. That must have damaged confidence Nissan executives had in him.
Lots of people in various threads have said this is all about getting the gaijin out. After seeing all he did, could that possibly be true?
A SNEAK ATTACK inside Nissan to reduce foreign influence on Nissan, am internal PEARL HARBOR if you will!
Worst case scenario is if the J government gets involved in the management of Nissan (or via stooges), they’ll be soon back in the same position as in 1999. This time they’ll drag down the half-dead Mitsubishi Motors with them.
As is the case with Pearl Harbor attack, there are reasons behind it - it did not happen out of blue. There are always reasons behind human actions.
It is pretty obvious that Nissan wanted to keep the alliance; however, they were certainly not ready for an idea French President Macron expressed a few years ago: to merge them into one company, of which French government is a majority stake holder. That is: Nissan to become a French company, the majority of which is to be owned by French Government. It is not very difficult to understand that the idea was not very well accepted by Nissan.
Ghosn immediately rejected the idea then. But this year he suddenly changed his tone: it's time to reconsider the relationship, he said. Then, as we know now, a whistleblower surfaced. It's not an accident, IMHO.
So it all hangs on whether his family staying in company buildings constitutes remuneration, and whether they can use the heavy arm of the law to influence enough shareholders, using annonomous whistle blower and plea bargaining scare tactics, the answer is probably yes, so the strength of France and Japan automobile industry working together is lost.
'Alliances' like this don't last, remember the Chrysler-Mercedez?
Just send French government sayonara and tell them to find other way to save Renault.
Many people in many threads are saying this is a plot to get rid of the gaijin. As more and more stuff he and his colleagues did (like paying Ghosn's sister 100,000 dollars a year for doing nothing), has this not changed your mind? Maybe he really was just a crook.
Look my friends, it is not so easy to cheat in a Japanese company, a small or big Japanese company is the same.K.K. or Nissan inc especially if U do not read & write Japanese. Every Japanese company has Kasayaku, accounts & top Japanese staffs, The next top sacho of Nissan provided all the proof of Carlos & Kerry. Whatever the outcome. It is a matter of , jealousy, bad heart and Japanese Guchi. I am surprised that every businessman in Japan including the Japanese themselves can believe this case.U want a crook, he is right in front of U, appearing in television every day. Share-holders of Nissan should be very worried . Thank god......Carlos provided a good case study.Only people who knows Japanese laws dare to do this kind of actions.This is a normal Japanese case of bad Japanese people.
He couldn't possibly have done it single-handedly...and it seems impossible that the accounting section was in the dark.


When the Onion's groveling, sniveling Board of Directors approached me with the idea of hiring someone to act as supreme imperator of all advertising-related matters, I was so shocked and enraged by their presumption that a fulminating cascade of bilious ichor shot forth from my nostrils. I appointed those spineless puppets to carry out my wishes, not to display any sort of initiative or independence what-so-ever!
However, once I had demoted my Director of Marketing to boot-black, I began to see that the idea had some merit. A supreme plenipotentiary of advertising would be extremely use-ful, after all, particularly if the man in question had the courage and backbone to kowtow to our advertisers at every opportunity, bravely sacrificing our journalistic standards to the slightest whim of any distiller, fried-meat purveyor, or slattern-clothier with enough capital to purchase space on our back page. That, if you ask me, is the sort of flexible, biddable leader this Republic is begging for!
Therefore, I am pleased to announce that we have hired Hammond Morris, lickspittle without peer, the living embody-ment of obsequity, master golfsman, and also, I am told, my five-times-great grandson-in-law. He is a master of "Social Net-Working," which, I am given to understand, is the use of certain vile technologies to advertise the existence of advertising itself, a practice which seems long overdue. He has participated in success-ful advertising campaigns for soft beverages, cigarillos, and sofas, increasing their sales despite the fact that so many of you slack-jawed lack-wits would have sat around on sofas drinking sugar water and smoking any-way. He is free of the tainted blood of the Irish-man. He has a handshake which caused me to experience exotic yet extremely businesslike flutterings in the ancient dust of my loins despite my loathing of the warmth and life of other human-beings. And he was willing to marry a Zweibel woman, all of whom are notoriously vapid inbred brood-mares concerned with only the accumulation of shiny objects and the time of their next feeding, and therefore he is exactly the kind of man we need for the job of Onion Advertising Czar.
I am reliably informed that Hammond, who was more than happy to indenture himself to us under the provision that we help him in his vendetta against a certain roots-beer company, will be analyzing the latest "trends" in advertising so that we may best employ them for our own purposes. He will also be keeping a careful eye on the advertising industry as a whole; and since I am given to understand that advertising is now the only industry remaining, he should never lack for work.
Therefore it is with full faith and conviction I introduce to you Hammond Morris, Czar of All the Advertise-Ments! All shall soon kneel before his pronouncements of quality, affordability, and availability. Now get back to work!


Whether we think trust in God is necessary or not, we can choose to trust one another and be confident in our best intentions.
Since I write so much about religion and faith I don’t usually try to nail it down, no doubt because I have doubts there are firm definitions in these matters.
Charles offered one use of the word. He said, “I have faith you are a good person.” That use of the word is quite different, so we agreed to continue the conversation.
I appreciate that, but suspect that’s not what most people mean when they use the word faith.
He grew up thinking that faith and belief were attached to a particular religion. His thinking changed over the years as his questions increased and “the church didn’t seem to welcome my questions.” He felt that he lost his faith and stopped attending church.
Though I usually don’t use the word faith in the same way Charles does, I’m right with him on the way to “live faithfully” in the sense he describes.
There are a number of ways to define faith.
There are those who say nonbelievers are actually not faith-less but “have faith” in science or reason or the fact that the sun will rise in the morning. I don’t see it that way. To me that’s not faith but reasonable conclusions drawn from experiential evidence.
I’m confident (another trust word) that Charles and others like him in religious communities, who understand faith in this broader, creative and inclusive sense, can be open to walking and working side by side with freethinkers and nonbelievers.
When the living foundation is trust, and trust grows straight out of relationships, then creeds, theologies, churches, religions and beliefs don’t need to divide us.
Does this still leave serious questions about faith in our world? Sure it does. But we sense a clearer pathway ahead. Whether we think trust in God is necessary or not, we can choose to trust one another, be confident in our best intentions and trust the questions to be assets on the way forward.
Chris Highland served as a Protestant minister and interfaith chaplain for many years. He is a teacher, writer, freethinker and humanist celebrant. Chris and his wife Carol, a Presbyterian minister, live in Asheville. Learn more at chighland.com. His new book, "A Freethinker's Gospel," is available from Pisgah Press.


It’s hard to argue that too much good came from the Star Wars prequels. But the YouTube channel Shahan Reviews makes a strong case that in small doses, the prequels can be quite effective. In a video entitled “Obi-Wan Remembers The Truth,” Shahan inserts clips of the climatic battle in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith into Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. And the results are unexpectedly moving.
Specifically, the video recontextualizes the scene in which Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker about the Clone Wars. As he explains to Luke that his father was murdered by Darth Vader, Obi-Wan flashes back to his own climatic lava fight with Anakin. “What I told you was true, from a certain point of view,” Obi-Wan later tells Luke in Return Of The Jedi. And this video drills home that tragic reality while also showcasing just how much weight Alec Guinness was able to bring to his performance even before his character’s full backstory had been established.


You only have to worry about orange dog caterpillars in the larval stage.
Only in pest control will you find the following three words strung together: orange dog caterpillar. Although the orange dog caterpillar (Papilio cresphontes Crame) might serve as one of mother nature’s grand irony’s, for it morphs into the beautiful swallow tail butterfly upon maturity, it’s no understatement to say this citrus-sucking, leaf-chewing pest has an appearance just as hideous as its name implies. With dirty-white mottled blotches that resemble bird droppings dripping off its light-brown body, the orange dog favors citrus trees, especially small specimens, and makes short work of their foliage. You can kill orange dog caterpillars the old-fashioned way, by crushing them, or by using a naturally occurring bacteria, such as bacillus thuringiensis.
Pull a suspect caterpillar from the tree and examine it to confirm you have an orange dog infestation. Orange dog caterpillars measure between 1-1/2 and 2 inches long, have light-grey to dark-brown bodies covered with creamy white mottled markings, and extrude their osmeterium gland, which resembles a forked snake’s tongue, when threatened. The osmeterium gland releases a rancid-butter odor when it emerges.
Pull orange dog caterpillars from small trees and place them in a plastic bag. Throw the bag of caterpillars in the trash bin or give it to your sanitation service on ecological waste pickup day. You also can throw the orange dog caterpillars on the ground and step on them, or place them in a container of rubbing alcohol to kill them.
Scrape the orange dog caterpillar egg sacs from the trees into a container of soapy water using a garden knife. Toss the egg sacs down the drain or onto bare ground.
Combine 4 teaspoons of a pesticide containing 15 percent bacillus thuringiensis as its active ingredient with 1 gallon of water in a tank sprayer if you have a major orange dog infestation. Spray the tree’s foliage until running off. Repeat the foliar application every two weeks if needed.
Mix together 3 tablespoons, or 1 1/2 ounces, of an insecticide containing 22.5 percent carbaryl with 1 gallon of water in a tank sprayer if bacillus thuringiensis proves ineffective. Spray the foliage from 1 foot away until covered on all sides. Wait at least five days before harvesting any fruit from the treated tree.
Spray insecticides on a non-windy, dry day.
Always wear protective glasses, chemical-proof gloves, long sleeves and long pants when working with insecticides.
Andrews, A.J.. "How to Get Rid of an Orange Dog Caterpillar." Home Guides | SF Gate, http://homeguides.sfgate.com/rid-orange-dog-caterpillar-73235.html. Accessed 25 April 2019.
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Secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, Jeremy Wright, promises to “do more” to increase broadband speed and mobile coverage across the UK.
Speaking at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham yesterday (1 October), Wright highlighted the importance technology plays in the 21st century, but warned that everyone must be able to benefit from it.
The digital minister, who has only been in post for a few months following prime minister Theresa May’s cabinet reshuffle, said he is proud of the party making superfast broadband available to 95% of premises, but added that it’s “not much comfort” for those 5% not covered.
“But technology is changing all the time and we must have infrastructure that can support whatever we will need in the future.
“That’s why we are investing in 5G mobile technology and developing what it can do,” said Wright, referring to the government’s plans for the West Midlands to become home to the UK’s first round of 5G trials, with connectivity hubs planned in Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton.
He also said that going forward, the focus will be on a “a fibre optic network for broadband that will really make us fit for the future”.
Recent Ofcom figures show that as of May 2018, about 1.4 million premises, representing around 5% of the total number of properties in the UK, are now able to access a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), or full-fibre, broadband connection. Although this is a significant milestone, there is still a way to go.
“We must also make sure everyone can benefit from what these technologies offer,” said Wright. “So as we build a fibre network, we will identify the places the market won’t reach on its own and we will connect them – not as an afterthought but in parallel with the places it’s profitable to connect.
He also warned against internet terror and abuse, saying there is nothing so special about the online world that normal rules of human behaviour and law shouldn’t apply.
“The time has come to define those rules and how they should apply online, and if that needs new law, that is what we will do. Britain can lead the world on this, and we should,” he said.
The digital minister also highlighted the importance of the UK’s digital economy, with tech firms in London receiving more venture capital funding in 2017 than all other major European cities combined – and the amount invested doubling since 2016.
Wright’s predecessor, Matt Hancock, was famously planning on delivering his speech as a hologram, but Wright quipped that he doesn’t think “our political debate needs more virtual reality, it needs more actual reality”.


Los Angeles Times sportswriter Andy McCullough talks with sports columnists Dylan Hernandez and Bill Plaschke as they break down the Dodgers' World Series Game 2 loss.
Let's preface this with a reminder that Dave Roberts' decision-making process remains a mystery.
What's known is that Roberts receives input from Andrew Friedman's analytically inclined front office before games on the situations he might encounter and how he should respond. Less certain is the degree to which Roberts is expected to follow the blueprint.
Roberts says he has autonomy, but transparency is not a trademark of the Dodgers' organization.
The point is that Roberts might not be entirely responsible for the choices he has made in this World Series, which the Dodgers trail two games to none. Maybe Friedman, general manager Farhan Zaidi and the army of number crunchers employed by the Dodgers are equally at fault.
Except the details have become insignificant. Regardless of how the decisions are being made, they're not working.
The single-most important at-bat of the 4-2 defeat to the Boston Red Sox in Game 2 on Wednesday night was in the fifth inning, when starter Hyun-Jin Ryu departed with two outs and the bases loaded. The Dodgers had a 2-1 advantage at the time.
With Steve Pearce batting for the Red Sox, Roberts called on Ryan Madson, the team's designated fireman.
"That was the difference in the game right there," Roberts said.
Of the previous six runners Madson inherited, four of them scored, including the two who were on base when he replaced Clayton Kershaw in the Dodgers' Game 1 loss. The 38-year-old right-hander also had shouldered a considerable workload this month, appearing in eight of the team's previous 12 games this postseason.
And in Pedro Baez, the Dodgers had another hard-throwing right-hander, albeit one who wasn't as tested with men on base. Baez has become the team's best reliever, giving up only one earned run in 71/3 innings this postseason. He registered a 0.47 earned-run average over his last 18 regular-season appearances.
"Madson has been our guy for quite some time and he's pitched out of big spots there," Roberts said. "The usage right there, I'm not worried about that. He's fresh. And I just really liked him against Pearce."
Only Madson walked Pearce on five pitches to force in the run that leveled the score 2-2.
"The ball's not going where I wanted," Madson said. "Last night, the ball was pulling down and to the left. And tonight it was high and to the right. Just trying to put it in there, throw it for a strike and let him beat me that way."
Madson gave up a flare single to J.D. Martinez that dropped easily in shallow right field because Yasiel Puig was positioned deep. Two more runs scored and the Dodgers were suddenly down 4-2.
Roberts said he didn't consider warming up another right-hander behind Madson in case he didn't like what he saw in Pearce's at-bat. The manager pointed to the veteran's track record, which included two World Series appearances with the Philadelphia Phillies and one with the Kansas City Royals.
"If I had any thought to have Baez or somebody behind him, then he was the wrong guy," Roberts said.
The decision to stick with Madson followed another pitching change gone wrong in Game 1, when Roberts replaced Baez with left-hander Alex Wood in the seventh inning and the Dodgers behind by a run. Baez has proved equally adept at retiring left-handers and right-handers. Wood has not pitched well since moving from the rotation to the bullpen in the middle of last month.
The pitching change prompted an offensive substitution by Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who batted Eduardo Nunez in place of left-handed-hitting Rafael Devers. With two on and two outs, Nunez blasted a home run to left field, extending the Red Sox's lead to 8-4.
All that said, it's only fair to point out the Dodgers didn't drop the first two games of the Series because of Roberts.
The Dodgers were limited to three hits in Game 2. They didn't have any after scoring their runs in the fourth inning.
In Game 1, they were behind 5-3 when they had the bases loaded with only one out in the seventh inning. They managed to score only one run and the Red Sox blew open the game in the bottom half of the inning.
But it's precisely because the Dodgers aren't hitting that Roberts has no margin for error. When a team barely scores, the manager can't afford a misstep. So far in this World Series, he has made two significant ones.
Los Angeles Dodgers utility player Cody Bellinger discusses what the Dodgers need to do now that they head to Los Angeles down two games in the World Series.