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2017-03-14 00:00:00

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Snoop Dogg's music vid depicting a President Trump assassination has caught the attention of the Secret Service. A spokesperson for the president's protective team tells us they were made aware of the video Monday. We're told Secret Service honchos are aware of Snoop's vid, but it's unclear if there will be any further investigation into whether the rapper poses a real threat. It's a similar situation to Madonna saying she's thought about blowing up the White House. We're told the Secret Service was aware of that incident as well. Ultimately, nothing happened to her ... but we'll see if the "Lavender" video's controversial imagery passes muster too.

2019-10-21 00:00:00

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Emperor Naruhito formally proclaimed his ascendancy to the throne on Tuesday in a centuries-old ceremony attended by dignitaries from more than 180 countries, pledging to fulfill his duty as a symbol of the state. Naruhito became emperor and his wife Masako became empress on May 1 in a brief ceremony, but Tuesday’s “Sokui no Rei” was a more elaborate ritual at the royal palace in which he officially announced his change in status to the world. “I swear that I will act according to the constitution and fulfill my responsibility as the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people,” the 59-year-old emperor declared, his voice slightly hoarse, in front of about 2,000 guests including Britain’s Prince Charles. “I sincerely hope that Japan will develop further and contribute to the friendship and peace of the international community, and to the welfare and prosperity of human beings through the people’s wisdom and ceaseless efforts.” Naruhito is the first Japanese emperor born after World War Two. He acceded to the throne when his father, Akihito, became the first Japanese monarch to abdicate in two centuries, worried that advancing age might make it hard to perform official duties. The long-planned celebrations, for which Japan declared a national holiday, were tempered following Typhoon Hagibis, which killed at least 82 people when it tore through Japan 10 days ago, and pouring rain early on Tuesday. A public parade was postponed until next month to allow the government to devote attention to the typhoon clean-up, while Tuesday’s weather forced the palace to scale back the number of courtiers in ancient robes taking part in the courtyard ceremony. But just before the ceremony began, the skies cleared and a rainbow appeared over Tokyo. “Storm-like rain and winds came to a stop right before the ceremony, and the sun came out. I, along with people around me, were moved,” tweeted lawmaker Kentaro Sonoura, who attended the ceremony. “BANZAI” CHEERS, 21-GUN SALUTE At the sound of a gong in the Matsu-no-Ma, or Hall of Pine, the most prestigious room in the palace, two courtiers bowed deeply and drew back purple curtains on the “Takamikura” - a 6.5-metre (21 feet) high pavilion that weighs about 8 tonnes. Naruhito was revealed standing in front of a simple throne, dressed in burnt-orange robes and a black headdress, with an ancient sword and a boxed jewel, two of the so-called Three Sacred Treasures, placed beside him. Fifty-five-year-old Harvard-educated Empress Masako, wearing heavy 12-layered robes and with hair flowing down her back, stood in front of a smaller throne to the side. Such traditional robes can weigh around 15 kilograms (33 pounds). Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered a congratulatory speech before assembled dignitaries including Crown Prince Akishino, the emperor’s younger brother, and his family, all adorned in brightly colored robes. Other guests included U.S. Transport Secretary Elaine Chao and Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Abe led a trio of cheers of “banzai”, or “long life”, for the emperor, before a 21-gun salute. Guests from overseas were not required to join in shouting the phrase, which for some raises memories of the wartime emperor worship. Naruhito had entered the palace to cheers from admirers before reporting his enthronement to his imperial ancestors at three shrines on the palace grounds, dressed in pure white robes. “As he is young and energetic with outstanding leadership, I hope he’ll support the people of Japan, which has faced continuous disasters and typhoons,” said Tomoko Shirakawa, 51, who was among the crowds of umbrella-clutching citizens packing the area in front of the palace. A court banquet was held on Tuesday evening, before Naruhito and Masako host a tea party for foreign royalty on Wednesday afternoon. The government pardoned about half a million people convicted of petty crimes, such as traffic violations, to mark the day. Although the public parade was postponed until Nov. 10, NHK public TV said there were 26,000 police providing security. Naruhito is unusual among recent Japanese emperors since his only child, 17-year-old Aiko, is female and cannot inherit the throne under current law. Unless the law is revised, the future of the imperial family for coming generations rests instead on the shoulders of his nephew, 13-year-old Hisahito, who is second in line for the throne after his father, Crown Prince Akishino. Naruhito’s grandfather, Hirohito, in whose name Japanese troops fought World War Two, was treated as a god but renounced his divine status after Japan’s defeat in 1945. Emperors now have no political authority. Though many Japanese welcomed the enthronement ceremony, there was a demonstration in downtown Tokyo in protest against the imperial system, and three demonstrators were arrested after jostling with riot police, Kyodo news agency reported. Tokyo police declined to comment. “There is no need for such an elaborate ceremony. Traffic has been restricted and it is causing inconvenience for ordinary people,” said Yoshikazu Arai, 74, a retired surgeon. “The emperor is necessary now as a symbol of the people, but at some point, the emperor will no longer be necessary. Things will be just fine without an emperor.” Additional reporting by Kwiyeon Ha, Linda Sieg and Billy Mallard; Editing by Paul Tait, Jane Wardell, Timothy Heritage and Chizu Nomiyama

2017-08-10 00:00:00

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Aug 10 (Reuters) - Viveve Medical Inc * Viveve Medical Inc - in connection with distribution agreement, company also entered into a membership unit subscription agreement with ICM * Viveve Medical Inc - pursuant to membership unit subscription agreement company invested $2.5 million in, and acquired membership units of, ICM. Source text: (bit.ly/2hOJftG) Further company coverage:

2018-02-14

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Democratic Sen. Tom CarperThomas (Tom) Richard CarperAmerica is in desperate need of infrastructure investment: Senate highway bill a step in the right direction FARA should apply to Confucius Institutes The 23 Republicans who opposed Trump-backed budget deal MORE (Del.) on Wednesday slammed the Trump administration's proposed budget, saying it represents a new level of out-of-control government spending and is an "insult to drunken sailors." Carper, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, criticized the administration for proposing cuts to domestic spending while offering major tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations in the GOP tax plan signed into law in December. “There’s an old saying about fiscal frivolity: ‘spending money like a drunken sailor.’ As a 23-year veteran of the Navy and Naval Reserves, I’ve known many sailors in my life," Carper said in a statement. "I can say with certainty that the way our federal government spends money is an insult to drunken sailors." "There are smart ways that we can save money without hurting people, and we have a fiscal and moral obligation to do just that. We can — and we must — save money across federal agencies without taking away people’s health care, eliminating protections for our environment and public health, and cutting programs that communities rely on," Carper added. President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump pushes back on recent polling data, says internal numbers are 'strongest we've had so far' Illinois state lawmaker apologizes for photos depicting mock assassination of Trump Scaramucci assembling team of former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump MORE unveiled his budget plan on Monday, which would eliminate 22 agencies and federal programs while making deep cuts to others. The plan hopes to slash the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next 10 years and has the support of congressional Republican leaders. “This budget lays out a thoughtful, detailed, and responsible blueprint for achieving our shared agenda," Speaker Paul RyanPaul Davis RyanEmbattled Juul seeks allies in Washington Ex-Parkland students criticize Kellyanne Conway Latina leaders: 'It's a women's world more than anything' MORE (R-Wis.) said. Democrats, however, have uniformly criticized the plan, with House Minority Leader Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiWhy President Trump needs to speak out on Hong Kong Anti-Trump vets join Steyer group in pressing Democrats to impeach Trump Pelosi warns Mnuchin to stop 'illegal' .3B cut to foreign aid MORE (D-Calif.) calling it a "brutal collection of broken promises" in a statement this week. “The budget is a statement of our values, but the President’s brutal collection of broken promises and staggering cuts shows he does not value the future of seniors, children and working families," said Pelosi. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2019-02-27 15:40:33

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Fashion’s favorite florist learned her trade at Tom Ford, watching all the bouquets go by. LONDON — Whitney Bromberg Hawkings never wanted to be a florist. “I still don’t dream of being a florist,” said the 44-year-old former communications director at Tom Ford. Yet there she was, sitting behind a big bunch of yellow parrot tulips at the headquarters of Flowerbx, her company in north London. Flowerbx, now four years old, has become the go-to florist in Europe for the fashion set — a consumer base that is as picky as it is needy when it comes to blooms. Louis Vuitton is Flowerbx’s biggest customer. (The sumptuous vegetal garlands for a V.I.P. client dinner last fall in the Orangerie at Versailles were Flowerbx work.) Another regular client is Dior. Ditto the Birley Group, owner of the clubs Annabel’s and Harry’s Bar. The River Café. Jimmy Choo. Tory Burch (in London and Paris). The Cheval Blanc hotel in Courchevel, France. Farfetch and the retailer Browns. Victoria and David Beckham have vase arrangements delivered weekly to their home and to the VB design studio. For Paris Fashion Week, Ms. Hawkings has been booked to decorate the Balmain post-show party and the Sonia Rykiel showroom. She is readying a small shop next to the Chiltern Firehouse hotel in London that she hopes to open in April. And in May, she plans to expand to New York. Her ambition: for Flowerbx to become the first international flower brand. Ms. Hawkings grew up in Dallas. Her mother was a chef and her father was a lawyer; neither was a gardener, so flowers didn’t have a regular presence in their home. At 23, freshly graduated from Columbia University with a degree in French literature, Ms. Hawkings landed a job in Paris as Mr. Ford’s personal assistant at Gucci, where he was creative director at the time. She quickly learned that flowers were vital to fashion: part of the “language,” she said. “With Tom, there was such a clear directive,” she said. “He would get so mad if he said, ‘I want to send white peonies,’ and they were yellow. I realized that there was this level of interpretation that florists have which I didn’t like.” She also realized that when Mr. Ford received flowers from fashion people, the bouquets were often a single variety, reflecting the sender’s taste. “Riccardo Tisci would send white roses,” she said. “Miuccia Prada would send pink roses. Karl Lagerfeld would send white orchids. Or I’d go to a chic house, like Tom’s, and there would be beautiful green hydrangeas in a vase, and that was it.” “I thought: ‘How come the fashion world does this, and the rest of the world hasn’t caught on? Why does everyone else have old-fashioned mixed arrangements that are so Dorchester hotel?’ It didn’t seem modern to me.” In May 2015, she began to think about what would happen if she treated flowers like a fashion brand. With varieties chosen by a creative department and a sharp logo (designed by her husband, Peter Hawkings, the senior vice president for Tom Ford men’s wear). She could democratize flowers and turn a mossy business into something hip and cool, and more affordable. “Usually, flowers go to a wholesale market like Covent Garden, where they sit for three or four days, then to a florist, where they sit a few more days,” Ms. Hawkings said. At each step, the price increases. Not so with Flowerbx. “You order the flowers, we cut them on your behalf in Holland,” she said. “They are delivered directly to you, within 24 hours. You buy the flowers before we buy them, so it’s a negative capital business. We offer fresher flowers at a better value. And we have no waste.” At first, she wanted to call the company Flowerbox because that is how the blooms would be packaged when they arrived at a customer’s door. But she couldn’t get rights to the web domain worldwide. “Then I said, ‘What if we just lose the ‘o’ in box? Like Spanx?’” She wrote a business plan, found a small warehouse — “a bike shed, really” — in the industrial neighborhood of North Acton, with easy access to central London. She leased a van, put up a website and financed the entire enterprise herself. In May 2016, she told Mr. Ford she was leaving after 19 years. “He cried, and I cried, and it was like the hardest breakup,” Ms. Hawkings recalled. But he became one of her early, and biggest, clients. “I let her do seasonal, big and tall — often branches, or pale Cymbidium orchids, since she knows my flower tastes,” Mr. Ford said. He also gives Flowerbx annual subscriptions to friends and colleagues. “And everyone says the flowers are always beautiful,” he said. “Whitney spent so many years battling with florists to get orders right for me. She knows.” She introduced the company that September by sending bouquets to 20 friends, like Alexandra Shulman, who then was editor of British Vogue; Elizabeth Saltzman, a Vanity Fair contributing editor; and Graham Norton, the British television talk show host. Some posted images of their Flowerbx bouquets on Instagram; Mr. Norton posted on Twitter about his delivery and the Flowerbx website had 150,000 hits the same day. Two weeks later, Ms. Saltzman called Ms. Hawkings and told her, “Michael Kors wants you to do the whole River Café in peonies.” “I was like, ‘Holy cow, I can meet my annual target with this one event!’” Ms. Hawkings said. Within six months, business soared. She needed another van. She needed more staff members. She couldn’t run the business and answer all the customer service calls. She needed money. She called Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter, who now runs a venture capital fund called Imaginary. Ms. Massenet had been one of Flowerbx’s first customers and had told her: “‘The second you need to raise money, let me know,’” Ms. Hawkings said. It was time. Ms. Massenet not only made a personal investment, she also introduced Ms. Hawkings to Mark Sebba, the former chief executive of Net-a-Porter. He, too, invested — giving the business a solid financial base — and also became Flowerbx’s chairman and Ms. Hawkings’s taskmaster. “He was like, ‘Your numbers aren’t right.’ ‘The meeting minutes aren’t right.’ He got us on track,” Ms. Hawkings said. “When we raised capital the second time, people said: ‘This is so sophisticated. You look like a business that’s 10 times your size.’” Mr. Sebba died from a heart attack last summer. His role hasn’t been filled, but in December Ms. Hawkings completed a fund-raising effort that pulled in $5.5 million. Last year, Flowerbx did $2.5 million in sales, Ms. Hawkings said. This year, she is aiming to top $6 million. If all goes according to her plan, by 2021, she’ll reach $30 million, and turn a profit. To achieve that, she has to expand her customer base beyond the fashion sphere, a shift that’s already happening. “A woman called this week,” Ms. Hawkings said during our discussion in late January. “They’re doing this huge thing at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and want us to handle the flowers.” Who were “they?” Knorr, the soup company.

2017-03-08 08:23:00

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This article originally appeared on InStyle.com. Still need help stripping away the last of the winter blues? Take a long look at Eva Longoria‘s new spring collection. Ahead of the official first day of spring (March 20), the Telenovela star announced the launch of the line, which offers everything from quilted baseball jackets and high-waist skinny jeans, to graphic tees that read “today’s forecast: 99% CHANCE OF WINE”. (You may recognize the wine pun tees from her initial collection, which she launched with The Limited last year, but with the news that that brand is declaring bankruptcy, Longoria is now selling her collection through her own site with Sunrise Brands.) In addition to off-duty looks, the collection features an assortment of dresses, skirts, and tops, including a floral halter dress, navy striped pencil skirt, and knit top, each of which Longoria models herself. “If a woman is comfortable in what she’s wearing, she’s going to have confidence and feel empowered,” Longoria said in a statement. “This collection is a reflection of my own lifestyle.” From Coinage: See Where 5 Stars Were Before They Were Famous  While Longoria was creating the designs, it was important to her to make sure there was an emphasis on comfort and stretch in the textiles and yarns, so fabrics like lightweight knits and 4-way stretch denim were incorporated into it. “I love working with great fabrics that are comfortable, soft to the touch, and feel good against the body” she said in a release. The collection, which ranges from $39 to $159, offers sizing from XS-XXL and 0-18. It is available now on evalongoria.com.

2018-02-08

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Feb 8 (Reuters) - ELLEN AB: * SIGNS DEAL WITH ‍MEDICANATUMIN​ Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

2017-01-10

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MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian online real estate services providers PropTiger.com and Housing.com will merge to create what the companies said would be the biggest player in the segment, accelerating a consolidation in the sector. News Corp (NWSA.O) is the biggest shareholder of PropTiger, while SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) is the largest investor in Housing.com. As part of the deal, Australia’s REA Group Ltd (REA.AX), 61.6 percent owned by News Corp, will invest $50 million in the combined entity, while an affiliate of SoftBank will invest $5 million, PropTiger and Housing.com said in a joint statement on Tuesday. Housing.com, once billed as one of India's most promising start-ups, has been struggling with losses and a management shake-up. The company fired its founding chief executive in 2015 after he was involved in a public spat with venture capital investors. reut.rs/2iXfrIj Housing.com’s current CEO, Jason Kothari, will leave the company after the deal, while PropTiger co-founder and CEO Dhruv Agarwala will head the joint entity, the companies said. In January last year, online classifieds company Quikr bought CommonFloor.com and merged it with its real estate vertical QuikrHomes. In 2015, PropTiger had acquired Makaan.com. Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy and Aditi Shah; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu

2018-02-20

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Sony Corp said on Tuesday it would become the latest blue-chip firm to jockey for position in Japan's taxi and ride-hailing market, with plans for a joint venture to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-based hailing system. Japan is seen as a potentially lucrative ride-hailing market, with regulators under pressure to ease stringent rules. Currently, non-professional drivers are barred from offering taxi services on safety grounds, and ride-hailing companies are limited to services that "match" users to existing taxi fleets via mobile platforms. Sony plans to build the AI-based hailing platform with Daiwa Motor Transportation and five other domestic taxi firms. This month, SoftBank Group Corp and China's Didi Chuxing said they would roll out a venture in Japan this year to provide matching services. Toyota Motor Corp has said it will take a stake in taxi-hailing service JapanTaxi, set up by Japan's largest taxi firm, Nihon Kotsu. Uber's new chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, is in Tokyo meeting regulators.

2018-07-17

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The following are some stories in Russia’s newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. www.kommersant.ru - Russian meat producer Cherkizovo has agreed to buy Altai Broiler, one of the largest poultry producer in Siberia. The deal value is estimated at 10 billion roubles ($160.37 million), Kommersant reports. www.rbc.ru www.izvestia.ru - The number of reported cases of cancer in Russia has increased by 3 percent in 2017 compared with a year earlier as the quality of diagnosis has improved. The most common type of cancer is skin cancer, the newspaper reports, citing data from Russia’s health ministry. ($1 = 62.3575 roubles) (Reporting by Margarita Popova Editing by Andrey Ostroukh)

2019-10-22 00:00:00

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As the nation plunges into an unsustainable financial morass, essentially spending four dollars for every three dollars it collects, the government confronts a daunting choice. Congress must be willing to significantly raise taxes, drastically cut spending, or some combination of the two. So far it has proven incapable of crafting solutions to address our fiscal challenges. One measure that would help reduce the trillion dollar deficits would be to arm the Internal Revenue Service with the compliance tools necessary to force tax scoffers to pay their fair share. This is not some loosely knit pipe dream. The size of the tax gap, or the difference between what taxpayers pay in taxes in a timely manner and what they should pay if they fully complied with the tax laws, is hundreds of billions of dollars every year. This monetary shortfall deprives the nation of much needed revenue. While fully funding the IRS would not eliminate deficits, it could make a measurable dent. In dictating whether the tax gap will grow or shrink, one unresolved yet critical question is about the role technology will play. Who is better positioned to capitalize on it? The government or those who would skirt the tax laws? Technological advances portend opposing outcomes. On the one hand, they play a vital role in keeping some taxpayer predilections in check. Think of all the tax forms filed annually and used for verification purposes, and how offshore accounts have shed their erstwhile veil of secrecy. The use of cash is ebbing in favor of credit card and other payment means that leave electronic marks that are readily traceable. On the other hand, technology presents novel avenues for taxpayers so inclined to cheat on their taxes. To illustrate, consider how bitcoin and other modern electronic currencies foster anonymity, an international economic landscape in which profits can readily be shifted from high tax jurisdictions to low tax jurisdictions, and a decentralized workforce epitomized by the gig economy in which taxpayers may readily mischaracterize their personal expenses as business expenses. As far as tax compliance is concerned, in light of the advantages and disadvantages associated with technology, you might think that members of Congress would do everything in their power to position the IRS ahead of the curve. For much of the last decade, however, the legislative branch has unfortunately done the opposite by actually cutting funding to the one governmental agency that could help fill federal coffers. If new technologies are responsibly deployed, including the institution of safeguards to ensure the government is not overly intrusive, the prospects for enhanced tax compliance would be promising. Utilizing artificial intelligence, researchers have developed algorithms that can detect tax shelter activity. These and other advances could yield billions of dollars of additional revenue without the need to raise taxes. They would also enable the IRS to make tremendous strides in augmenting the services the agency offers to taxpayers. Enhanced services generally result in more satisfied taxpayers and in turn greater tax code compliance. Congress is grappling with IRS funding levels for the new fiscal year. The House would modestly augment its budget, while the Senate would hold it essentially even. We support an enhanced budget that will fully fund critically needed IRS information systems modernization. Doing so would help the agency fulfill its compliance mission and, just as importantly, restore a modicum of fiscal solvency to the federal government. Mark Everson served as the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service under President Bush and is now vice chairman of Alliant Group. Jay Soled is a professor of accounting and information systems at Rutgers University. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2019-08-14

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Ivan Nova scattered four hits and retired 17 of the final 18 hitters he faced in a complete game to help the host Chicago White Sox salvage a doubleheader split against the Houston Astros with a 4-1 victory in the nightcap Tuesday. Nova (8-9) struck out three and walked none in his second complete game of the season. The only run he surrendered was unearned. Ryan Goins delivered a two-run single in Chicago’s three-run second inning, and Adam Engel and Ryan Cordell also had run-scoring hits for the White Sox. George Springer singled twice for Houston and had an RBI single in the third inning for the lone blemish against Nova, who threw 104 pitches. The Astros won the opener 6-2 behind six innings of two-run ball from Zack Greinke. In the nightcap, Chicago capitalized on a fielding error by Houston spot starter Chris Devenski to put up a crooked number in the second inning. With one run home on an Engel’s two-out RBI single, Devenski struggled to come up with Cordell’s dribbler down the first base line. That loaded the bases for Goins, who smacked a 1-1 pitch into center field for a two-run single that gave the White Sox a 3-0 lead. Gerrit Cole was scheduled to start the second game for Houston, opposing Nova in a rematch of a May 22 game the visiting White Sox won 9-4. Cole is 10-0 with a 1.98 ERA in 14 starts since. However, the right-hander experienced right hamstring discomfort while warming up in the bullpen Tuesday and returned to the clubhouse, leaving Devenski to take the Guaranteed Rate Field mound in the bottom of the first inning in an emergency start. Devenski (2-1) was the loser, yielding three runs, one earned, on five hits in two innings. After Springer singled home Aledmys Diaz in the third inning, Cordell provided an insurance run for Chicago with an RBI double in the fourth. James McCann and Goins had two hits for the White Sox. Springer collected half of the Astros’ four hits. Chicago played its fourth doubleheader of the season, including three at home, and they have produced one sweep and three splits. The White Sox have another home twinbill scheduled for Sept. 27 against the Detroit Tigers. —Field Level Media

2018-11-07 22:00:01

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daily crossword column Sam Ezersky shows us that a young man has to do what a young man has to do. THURSDAY PUZZLE — Ah, the freedom of youth. A time when there are few ties that bind and possibilities seem endless. A time when … hey, what happened to the theme entries? Sam Ezersky is back, and it appears that he — or someone like him — is moving. Perhaps he will take this opportunity to grow up with the country. That’s a hint but not a spoiler, because it has probably confused more people than it has helped. I’ll explain more below. During the meanwhile, enjoy the 10 debut entries and a lot of entries that are not debuts, but are cool nonetheless. I liked AMEN-RA, TWIST TOP and LAID IN, which I first heard when I was learning the fine art of canning. 1A. TIL a new way of saying “make crazy”: If you ADDLE someone, you are putting them at sea. 20A: I didn’t believe that VIKES was a legitimate nickname for the Minn. Vikings, but apparently it is. Go ahead, put VIKES into Google. The first thing that comes up is all about the Vikings. It is also apparently a nickname for the drug Vicodin, too. The things you learn in this job. 56A: “Tag line?” is better known as a punch line or line at the end of an advertisement, but not today. Today, we’re playing tag and the answer to that clue is I’M IT. The crossing of I’M IT with I AM ALI at 45D seemed like a dupe to me, but Mr. Ezersky says that type of dupe in a puzzle doesn’t bother him. 2D: Whew, that’s some tough wordplay there. “Arm for taking needles, for short?” is hinting at the arm of a larger department, not a human arm that might take a needle. The answer is D.E.A. 62D/63D: I really laughed out loud when I finally got this, because I got it without even knowing why it was right. I automatically filled in OMG for 62D’s “Texter’s ‘No 63D,’” because I read it as a solver being upset because a clue was missing (something that, in past years, used to keep me up at night). Once I moved on to 63D (“See 62-Down”), I could see that 62D needed to be read as “No WAY!,” which is a synonym for OMG. “GO WEST YOUNG MAN, go west,” was an expression first used by John Babsone Lane Soule in the Terre Haute Express in 1851. The author and journalist Horace Greeley — a proponent of western expansion into the territories — liked it, and rephrased it slightly for an editorial in the New York Tribune on July 13, 1865: "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." What does this have to do with our puzzle? Mr. Ezersky noticed that he could emulate that phrase inside a grid by taking a set of phrases that ended in LAD — a synonym for “young man” — and moving that LAD all the way to the left or west side of the phrase. I will admit that I got the revealer right off the bat, because what other advice is Horace Greeley really known for? (Horace Greeley experts appearing in force in 3 … 2 ... 1 ...) Once I got GO WEST, YOUNG MAN, though, I honestly thought that the theme entries were going to be written in backward, as if they were traveling from east to west. But no. That’s not enough for our Mr. Ezersky. He has to take an entire word and move it from one place to another. For example, at 17A, the clue is “Many a hit by Def Leppard,” and the answer is POWER BALLAD. But that’s not how you write it in. You take the LAD at the eastern end of the phrase, move him west, and you wind up with LADPOWERBAL. Now you move the other three young men west. Welp, this is about everything the constructor and solver side of me could have wanted: 1. A theme with an unconventional revealer that leads to quite the “aha!” moment. 2. Kooky bits of fill like I AM ALI and DVD-VIDEO to accompany a youthful, sportsy vibe in AIGHT, NOOB, VIKES and BREES. 3. Shout-outs to (objectively) awesome things in the clues, from Kendrick Lamar to Taco Bell’s Baja Blast. But constructor Sam is just one solver. Editor Sam certainly knows that this puzzle isn’t for everyone, and promises to make sure constructor Sam chills on those sick, twisted puzzles he creates ... it’s been quite the stretch as of late! That said, editor Sam is at least put at ease by the fact that there’s still universally fun fill in TWIST TOP, ROOM TEMP, ACTED BIG and HIP-HOP, as well as a nice theme set he hopes any solver can appreciate. Whether you’re a fan of constructor Sam, editor Sam or think Sam should just stick to leading the #HiveMind from his Twitter ... I hope you got something out of this one! Oh, and be sure to check out The New York Times’s official Facebook page today at 1 p.m. Eastern. See you there for the latest installment of Crosswords Live! Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered. Warning: There be spoilers ahead, but subscribers can take a peek at the answer key. Your thoughts?

2016-05-12

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Beekeepers in the U.S. lost nearly half of their honey bee colonies between April 2015 and April 2016, according to the preliminary results of a survey. In a blog post earlier this week, the Bee Informed Partnership said that rates of loss in both winter and summer had worsened compared to the year before. Beekeepers lost 44 percent of their colonies, it said. "We're now in the second year of high rates of summer loss, which is cause for serious concern," Dennis vanEngelsdorp, project director for the Bee Informed Partnership, said in a statement. "Some winter losses are normal and expected. But the fact that beekeepers are losing bees in the summer, when bees should be at their healthiest, is quite alarming," vanEngelsdorp added. The survey was conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership in collaboration with the Apiary Inspectors of America and with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Bee Informed Partnership said that the presence of the varroa mite was one contributor to the losses, with pesticides and malnutrition "also likely taking a toll." The USDA describes honey bees as being a "critical link in U.S. agricultural production" and says that pollination by managed honey bee colonies contributes "at least $15 billion to the value" of U.S. agriculture every year. "The high rate of loss over the entire year means that beekeepers are working overtime to constantly replace their losses," Jeffery Pettis, a senior entomologist at the USDA and a co-coordinator of the survey, said in a statement on the Bee Informed Partnership website. "These losses cost the beekeeper time and money," Pettis added. "More importantly, the industry needs these bees to meet the growing demand for pollination services. We urgently need solutions to slow the rate of both winter and summer colony losses."

2016-11-04 00:30:00

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Bruno Mars' new album is shaping up quite nicely. The pop star hasn't released a new album since 2012's mega-smash Uptown Funk. Now, he's released the second single about two weeks before the release of 24k Magic. "Versace on the Floor" is a slow jam that sounds like a lost Boyz II Men track, updated for 2016. And Mars says that the process of creating it was an arduous one. He told Rolling Stone that there were six distinct iterations of the song before he finalized it. The first version was a poolside jam with sappy lyrics."So I'm smiling at these lines," Mars tells the magazine. "I play it for people and they're smiling; it's awesome. But what's the beat doing? We're lounging. I don't want to make poolside music. Let's make it feel like these unicorns we're talking about."Four versions later, he arrived at his final track."At a certain point," Mars tells the magazine, "I needed to stop telling you we're gonna get down, and just get down."We think he succeeds. Listen below.

2016-03-29 00:00:00

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PARIS (Reuters) - Total has tripled the power of its Pangea supercomputer, making it one of the world’s most powerful and helping the French oil and gas company to speed up exploration studies and cut costs amid low oil prices. The computing power of the Pangea has been increased to 6.7 petaflops from 2.3 previously, Total said on Tuesday, the equivalent of around 80,000 laptops combined and making it the most powerful in the oil and gas sector. A prolonged fall in oil prices since mid-2014 has pushed companies in the sector to look for new ways to cut costs and make savings as they reduce investments. “This power will help us to improve our performance and to reduce our costs,” said Arnaud Breuillac, Total’s exploration and production president. “In the era of big data, state-of-the-art data-intensive computing is a competitive advantage.” Total did not say how much the upgrade cost, nor how much it expected to save. The supercomputer at Total’s research center in the southwestern French city of Pau was designed by California-based Silicon Graphics International. According to www.top500.org, which ranks supercomputers twice a year, Tianhe-2 in the National Super Computer Center in Guangzhou, China, is the world’s most powerful at over 33 petaflops. Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by Mark Potter

2018-06-21

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(CNN)Doctors don't know what causes Alzheimer's disease or the best way to treat it, but they have new evidence to suggest that a common virus may play a role in who develops the condition. In a study published Thursday in the journal Neuron, researchers say they've found strong evidence to suggest that two strains of the human herpes virus -- 6A and 7 -- may contribute to the disease that robs people of their memory and cognitive functions. Someone in the United States develops Alzheimer's every 65 seconds, and by midcentury, it's expected to be every 33 seconds, according to the Alzheimer's Association. With costs of care running into the trillions of dollars by that time, scientists are working urgently to understand the disease in hopes of finding a cure or at least an effective treatment. Alzheimer's is the sole disease in the top 10 US causes of death that has no significant treatment available. The researchers in the new study looked at data on 622 brains from people who had had signs of the disease and 322 from people who did not seem to be affected by it. The brains with Alzheimer's had levels of the herpes virus that were up to twice as high as in people who did not have the disease. Some scientists have long believed that viruses play a role in the development of Alzheimer's. One of the most prominent theories is that Alzheimer's may start in the brain as a response to injury from a virus. Another theory is that Alzheimer's is a mix of disease process in the brain, but experts don't know for sure. "I don't think we can answer whether herpes viruses are a primary cause of Alzheimer's disease. But what's clear is that they're perturbing networks and participating in networks that directly accelerate the brain towards the Alzheimer's topology," Joel Dudley, a geneticist and co-author on the study, said in a statement. Dudley is a member of the ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center. The researchers were surprised by the results of the study, he said. "The title of the talk that I usually give is, 'I Went Looking for Drug Targets, and All I found Were These Lousy Viruses,' " he said. Dudley believes the new study could help scientists identify virus biomarkers in the brain that could one day help diagnose the disease and assess a person's risk. He also hopes it could be the beginning of research that would provide new targets in the brain for drugs to treat the condition. "This is the most compelling evidence ever presented that points to a viral contribution to the cause or progression of Alzheimer's," said study co-author Dr. Sam Gandy, a professor of neurology and psychiatry and director of the Center for Cognitive Health at Mount Sinai in New York. The scientists caution that people shouldn't be alarmed by their discovery. This particular set of herpes viruses is common. About 90% of adults have been exposed to the herpes virus by age 50, research shows, and not all of them will go on to develop dementia. "While these findings do potentially open the door for new treatment options to explore in a disease where we've had hundreds of failed trials, they don't change anything that we know about the risk and susceptibility of Alzheimer's disease or our ability to treat it today," Gandy said. Keith Fargo, the Alzheimer's Association's director of scientific programs and outreach, said that more research will need to be done to prove that there is a connection between herpes viruses and Alzheimer's. "However, if viruses or other infections are confirmed to have roles in Alzheimer's, it may enable researchers to find new antiviral or immune therapies to treat or prevent the disease," Fargo said. "The Alzheimer's Association welcomes new ideas in the Alzheimer's field and new avenues to pursue for potential treatments and prevention strategies."

2016-01-18 13:15:00

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Kanye West is gearing up to release his new album, SWISH, on February 11. In preparation for the album's release, the hip-hop titan is giving his audience new music every week. The phenomenon is known as GOOD Friday, which references West's GOOD Music label. It's not Friday, but the Yeezus rapper still gifted the world his latest song, “No More Parties in LA," which features Kendrick Lamar. The song is classic Kanye West. He's using the happenings of pop culture to fuel his music. Even his children with wife Kim Kardashian are fair game. "That's why I'd rather take the 405, I be worried 'bout my daughter, I be worried about Kim, but Saint is baby 'Ye, I ain't worried about him," West raps on the new track.For curious minds, Kim tweeted about how the song came to be and promised more music in the near future.

2020-01-24 00:00:00

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - France’s Amethis is close to concluding the purchase of a stake in Kenyan general retailer Naivas, the investment fund told Reuters on Friday, entering a sector where the collapse of one of the major players in recent years has left a gap. Neither side disclosed details of the deal, citing ongoing regulatory scrutiny, but a Nairobi-based source with knowledge of the transaction and local media reports said Amethis will acquire a 30% stake in the Kenyan firm. “Amethis first reached out to Naivas over a year ago, and will be the first external investor in Naivas,” the retailer said in a statement seen by Reuters on Friday. Naivas, which was founded three decades ago and has 60 stores across Kenya, became one of the top three retailers after the collapse of Nakumatt, a local supermarket chain that had dominated the sector. The dissolution of the Nakumatt business has also created an opening for other international retailers, including France’s Carrefour (CARR.PA) and South Africa’s Shoprite (SHPJ.J). Naivas said the investment by Amethis will help it to expand its operations. “Having an experienced investor with us will further strengthen the business,” the company said. Amethis has a range of other investments in Africa including in banking, manufacturing and logistics. Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Jan Harvey

2017-09-12

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The Trump administration on Tuesday called out Russia and China for helping North Korea evade international sanctions, publicly detailing how the two countries help Pyongyang smuggle coal. “The intelligence community has provided to your committee today evidence of how vessels originate in China, they turn off their transponders as they move into North Korean waters and dock at North Korean ports and they onload commodities such as coal. They keep those transponders off and then they turn them back on as they round the South Korean peninsula, and they head into a Russian port,” Assistant Treasury Secretary Marshall Billingslea told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, pointing to a chart of satellite images and maps he said illustrate specific examples. “In this particular case, this vessel … sat in that Russian port for a period of time and then headed back out to water, ultimately docking back in China with North Korea-origin coal — sanctions evasion. “The second slide, which we’ll show, is yet another example. In this particular example you have a vessel that pulled into North Korea, kept its transponder off in violation of international maritime law, docked in Russia, offloaded the North Korean coal. Another vessel — that one was Panamanian — another vessel from Jamaican or Jamaican-flagged, picked up the North Korean and headed straight to China, again circumventing sanctions.” Billingslea's testimony comes a day after the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed tough new sanctions against North Korea. Those new sanctions, which come on the heels of North Korea’s latest and most powerful nuclear test, banned North Korean textile exports and capped its imports of crude oil. In order to get the support of Russia and China, which have veto power in the council, the sanctions were watered down from the Trump administration’s original goal of banning all oil imports and freezing international assets of the North Korean government and its leader, Kim Jong Un. Palpably frustrated members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee commended the latest U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang, but repeatedly pressed Billingslea and acting Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton on how they plan to ensure China enforces them and how the U.S. will punish Beijing if it does not. Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said the United States “cannot accept half-measures” from China and pressed Billingslea on the timing of sanctions on China’s biggest banks. “I understand that many of these banks have significant operations in the United States and that there would be consequences to our economy,” Royce said. “However, these banks’ U.S. presence is the very thing that makes these sanctions so powerful. They’d rather do business with us than North Korea.” Billingslea responded by saying China and Russia should both be recognized for supporting the two latest U.N. sanctions, but added that the administration has warned China that if it wishes to avoid further sanctions, such as the ones on its Bank of Dandong, the United States needs to “urgently” see action. “I cannot tell the committee today that we’ve seen sufficient evidence of China’s willingness to truly shut down North Korean revenue flows, to expunge North Korean elicit actors from its banking system or to expel the various North Korean brokers and middlemen who are continuing to establish webs of front companies,” Billingslea said. “We need to see that happen.” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) ripped into Billingslea and Thornton, saying he hadn’t heard anything different from what he’s heard for the last 20 years. He pressed Billingslea on whether the United States is considering sanctions against China, rather than sanctions on corporations. “While we haven’t made the American people safer, we have met the political objectives here in the United States,” Sherman said. “We don’t threaten China even a little bit with country sanctions because that would be politically difficult for the United States to do. We don’t adopt reasonable objectives, like a freeze in the North Korean program, because that would be politically difficult to do.” As Billingslea was about to describe the pressure campaign's recent "pace of action," Sherman interrupted to say sarcastically, “It’s unprecedented, just like the last 19 years.” Royce said that the issues raised by Sherman get to the “bottom line” of the issue. “It’s been a long, long time of waiting for China to comply with the sanctions we pass and frankly with the sanctions that the United Nations pass,” Royce said. “This is where the discussion needs to go next if there isn’t full compliance with the sanctions that the U.N. has passed because what’s at risk is our national security.” View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2018-08-29 00:00:00

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This is the second week of articles on assisted dying. All of the first week’s articles can be found here “Do no harm” is the clarion call of many of the voices against assisted dying. Doctors must not be asked to be involved in the death of a patient. After all, they aver, that is what the Hippocratic Oath says. In reality, doctors pledge no such thing. Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. “If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.” This is part of the oath that is used by most medical schools in North America. It contemplates taking life as much as saving it. Some have argued in The Economist’s Open Future initiative over the past week that no medical practitioner should be asked to take the life of another against his will. Fine. If doctors or patients have a moral objection, by all means do not participate. But to impose one’s own values on another, without regard for that person’s pain or poor quality of life, is high-handed and indeed playing God. Doctors, medical systems and governments must remember that the patient is supposed to be at the centre of everything they do. In modern democracies it is reasonable to expect to live 80 years as an average, and more than 100 as an outlier. We are now able to prolong life, but with the result that in some cases a person can suffer in pain for many decades. For those with no hope, living out their lives in pain is intolerable. Opponents of assisted dying (or dying with dignity) often use terms that are inflammatory and irrelevant. As I pointed out in my earlier article, the fudging of terms and lack of clarity are often intended to promote public policy that is intellectually disingenuous. Some comments in this forum have assumed that people can take their own lives at any point without hassling others. Another common assumption is that pain can be managed. Both assumptions are wrong. When you cannot get out of bed and cannot move a muscle, you are at the mercy of others. In hospital, for four months I was fully conscious, unable to talk, unable to move and perpetually on the verge of drowning in my own phlegm. No amount of pain medication would have helped me, unless it was a fatal dose. The terror of what may happen, of the pain that will come in the next moments, is worse than an Arctic night in winter and much longer. For me those moments turned into hours, hours turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. For some, the months turn into years. Peace of mind for many is to know that the terror can be mitigated through empowerment. I had a constituent, Susan Griffith, who travelled from my constituency in Winnipeg, Manitoba to Switzerland to avoid the inevitability of her diagnosis. Had she had the assurance of more power over her own fate, perhaps she would have lived months longer, even years. We will never know. She did not want to take the risk of waiting and becoming incapacitated and unable to travel. Better to die on her own terms in a distant country than to live with the unceasing terror of impending doom. Currently, many thousands of people starve themselves to death each year in nursing homes. Another type of horror is the practice of nurses and doctors quietly increasing morphine drips without consent and without accountability. It is difficult to prove empirically, as anyone who admits to this “nudge nudge, wink wink” approach to end-of-life care would be in jail. But we know it happens. Anyone who works in geriatric or palliative care will acknowledge this. Some of the arguments against assisted dying seem to rely on the idea that the collective good is more important than individual autonomy. The logic sounds rather communist to a conservative like me. The lowest common denominator becomes existence, not living. Most people in the West take a “live and let live” approach to social issues, as do a large share of the members of any conservative party. But within those parties the social conservatives are more organised than those in the “live and let live” category. Sometimes social conservatives push out the libertarians or alienate fiscal conservatives and the other factions. At last week’s Canadian Conservative policy convention in Nova Scotia, this happened once more, as the party strengthened its position against assisted dying, using the term “euthanasia”, as if they were one and the same thing. But euthanasia is murder, whereas assisted dying is the conscious decision of an individual based on their own values. Slippery slopes are common in Canada. This is particularly true on hockey rinks and Canadian roads in winter. A slippery slope is also one of the strongest arguments against assisted dying. However, the way to prevent a slippery slope of unintended results is through robust legislation, such as I put forward in the Canadian House of Commons. In liberal democracies debate goes back and forth and over time there is incremental change for the better. The fact that people have a different point of view on these issues in my own political party or in The Economist is a strength. Creating a society where each person can reach their full potential as a human being by living happy, long and productive lives is the greatest goal of humanity. Put another way, one could say ideally we could live a long life from birth to death with minimal suffering and maximum freedom. Assisted dying is needed to reach this goal for the individual and for those who love their fellow humans. Steven Fletcher is a member of the Queen’s Privy Council in Canada. He served for 11 years as a member of the Canadian parliament, where he had many roles including five years as a cabinet minister. At present he is a member of the legislative assembly in the province of Manitoba. This article is part of a series of viewpoints on assisted dying. Read more here:The case for and against assisted dying

2019-04-26

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KIEV, April 26 (Reuters) - A Ukrainian computer game that brings to life a town abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster may not sound like everyone's idea of fun but has attracted 60,000 people globally since its launch in October. Players of "Isotopium: Chernobyl" drive tanks around the ghost town of Prypyat near Chernobyl, knocking out competitors as they search for an energy source called isotopium and collecting points every time they find some. While the game takes its theme from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, which marked its 33rd anniversary on Friday, it was also inspired by the 2009 science fiction film "Avatar". Newcomers to the game think they have entered a virtual world when in fact they are controlling a real robot, equipped with a camera and computer, which makes its way around a model of the town rendered down to the tiniest detail. "When playing our game, for the first 5-10 minutes many players don't understand that it is not fictional," said the game's co-founder Sergey Beskrestnov. "They message us saying: 'You have cool texture, you have good graphics, your designer is good, well done. You have a cool operating system.' "People then reply: 'It is not an operating system, it is real,' and the player can't believe it is real," said Beskrestnov, speaking mid-game from Prypyat city square as he towers over surrounding five-storey buildings. Kiev-born Beskrestnov was just 12 years old when on April 26, 1986 a botched test at the nuclear plant in the then Soviet Union sent clouds of smouldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, forced over 50,000 people, including Beskrestnov's family, to evacuate and poisoned unknown numbers of workers involved in its clean-up. Beskrestnov and his partner Alexey Fateyev used Google maps and hundreds of pictures from the Chernobyl area to recreate Prypyat landmarks, including residential buildings, a hotel, concert hall, amusement park and a stadium. The game's real-scale model occupies a 180 square metre (1,938 sq. ft) basement of a residential building in the Ukraine city of Brovary, just 150 km (93 miles) from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and 30 km east of Kiev. Miniature radioactivity warning signs, graffiti on the walls of abandoned buildings and tables and chairs left scattered inside a small cafe all add to the creepy atmosphere of a once lively town. "It's a really neat concept ...," Shaun Prescott wrote in a review of the game published by PC Gamer magazine in January. "Controlling the tanks is kinda cumbersome, but they are tanks, after all." An attentive player will notice at least one inaccuracy the real Chernobyl nuclear power plant is not located in town as it is in the game. It costs $9 to immerse in the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic town for an hour but only 20 people at a time can play simultaneously. Beskrestnov's company, Remote Games, said 62,615 people around the world have registered to play the game, including around 15,000 in France and 10,000 in the United States. A camera fixed on top of a moving tank broadcasts high quality signal in real time, allowing players from as far apart as Australia and Canada enjoy the game without facing any time delay in delivering video signals. Its creators next ambition is to devise a game featuring the colonization of Mars in which 1,000 people will be able to simultaneously control robots on different missions involved in the operation. "Many people advise us to contact Elon Musk directly because it resonates his dreams and ideas," Beskrestnov jokes. (Editing by Susan Fenton)

2016-07-26 17:40:58

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Impossible Foods, the startup that has reportedly raised about $180 million from the likes of UBS and Bill Gates to make a better veggie burger, has found a restaurant partner to debut its lab-created meat. Starting Wednesday, Nishi, the newest restaurant in David Chang's Momofuku empire, will be the first place where the public can try the plant-based burger. Nishi opened in New York City in January as a full-service restaurant with a creative take on Italian cuisine. Though it's made of wheat, potato protein, soy, yeast, and coconut, the Impossible Burger looks, tastes, and "bleeds" just like a regular meat patty would. According to Business Insider's Jillian D'Onfro, who got the chance to try the Impossible Burger at Vox Media's Code Conference in June, the burger also has a molecule called "heme," which gives it its meaty characteristics. "Although the burger wasn't quite as succulent as what you'd find at your typical BBQ, it was still thick, tender, and absolutely delicious, with the slight crunch on the outside an unexpected benefit," D'Onfro concluded in her review. The absence of cholesterol, hormones, and antibiotics is just another perk. Chang has been a fan of the innovative veggie burgers for some time now. In a Facebook post on April 30, he wrote, "Today I tasted the future and it was vegan: this burger was juicy/bloody and had real texture like beef. But more delicious and way better for the planet. I can't really comprehend its impact quite yet...but I think it might change the whole game." Impossible Foods' founder Patrick Brown started the company in 2011, after learning about the harmful effects that raising livestock can have on the environment. Google reportedly expressed interest in purchasing Impossible Foods in the summer of 2015, but the deal fell through. "The burger is only the beginning," Brown said in a press release announcing the partnership with Nishi. "With its introduction at Momofuku Nishi, we have begun the movement to build a new kind of global food system, one that creates new markets for farmers, supports a more resilient food supply, and offers consumers new choices for the meat and dairy products they know and love - ones that are equally delicious but made from plants."

2017-05-08

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May 8 (Reuters) - EPISURF MEDICAL AB: * PATENT APPLICATION COVERS EPISURF MEDICAL’S SURGICAL DRILL GUIDE WITH A FUNCTIONALITY FOR DEPTH ADJUSTMENT Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

2016-03-29 00:00:00

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Chromebooks are finally growing up this year with bigger and sharper displays, premium design materials and ultra-long battery life. Acer's new Chromebook 14 ditches the usual plastic for an all-aluminum body that's both sturdier and sleeker looking. The 14 in its name has dual meaning: a 14-inch full HD IPS screen and up to 14 hours of rated battery life. Acer says the latter is the industry's first. Inside, the 3.42-pound and 0.67-inch thick Chromebook 14 is more typical. It runs Chrome OS and is powered by an Intel Celeron processor (quad-core or dual-core) with either 2GB of 4GB of RAM. The laptop is fanless. Above the 1,920 x 1,080 screen is a 720p webcam. For ports, the laptop has two USB 3.1 ports and an HDMI port. Internal storage is pretty limited — 16GB or 32GB — but you'll also get 100GB of free Google Drive storage to store files. The Chromebook 14 will be available in April at Amazon and Bestbuy.com starting at $299.99. Not bad for a Chromebook with a full HD screen and long battery life. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

2019-06-29 15:35:00

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Let the royal wedding festivities continue! Monaco’s Charlotte Casiraghi and husband Dimitri Rassam continued their wedding celebrations this weekend with a second, religious service and private reception in Provence on Saturday. The couple, who married in a civil ceremony on June 1 in Monaco, held their second religious ceremony at the Abbaye Sainte-Marie de Pierredon outside St. Remy de Provence in the south of France, sources tell PEOPLE. Charlotte’s uncle, Prince Albert II of Monaco, and her mother, Princess Caroline of Hanover, were on hand for the celebrations. Also in attendance were the bride’s brothers, Andreas and Pierre, her sister, Alexandre de Hanover and the groom’s mother, actress and model Carole Bouquet. Guests also received small fragrant wands of lavender produced by a local firm as favors. The couple, who have been together since December 2016, got engaged in March 2018. They welcomed a son together, Balthazar, who was born in October 2018. Charlotte and her film producer husband married in a civil ceremony on June 1 in the blue-hued Salon des Glaces of Monaco’s Palais Princier. Following an afternoon garden reception at the palace, they held a glittering evening event at the principality’s Villa la Vigie, where the bride wore a strapless white Chanel creation and paid tribute to her grandmother, Princess Grace, by wearing the same Cartier diamond necklace that the Hollywood star received as a wedding gift from Prince Rainier. While Charlotte does not bear the title of “Princess,” she is 11th in line of succession to the principality’s throne. Her son Balthazar became 12th in line with the marriage of his parents and the reigning sovereign’s acceptance. Charlotte’s older son, Raphael, 5, whose father is actor/comedian Gad Elmaleh, is not in line to the throne. The decision to hold her second wedding and reception in Provence is an emotional statement for Charlotte. Only 4 years old when her father Stefano died suddenly, she and her brothers were taken by their mother Princess Caroline to live in Provence. Moving them to St. Remy, Caroline hoped to provide her young family a life outside the spotlight. For Charlotte, that time was as peaceful as any she has ever known, a longtime acquaintance tells PEOPLE. “It is this particular love of Provence she wants to share with her family and friends. “ The site chosen for Charlotte’s second ceremony was a surprise for invitees who were directed to a rendezvous and then brought on by coaches to a location that exemplifies the beauty of Provence. Situated approximately 30 minutes outside the village of St Remy, the Abbey de Pierredon is located on a mountaintop aerie in middle of 600 acres of forest and scrubland. Surrounded by pine and cedar trees and acres of fragrant lavender, it has a chapel tucked into a valley hollow and first served as a religious abbey in 1205.

2018-03-26 00:00:00

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March 26(Reuters) - MiTAC Holdings Corp * Says it will use undistributed profit to pay cash dividends of T$1.3 per share to shareholders for 2017 * Says it will use undistributed profit to distribute stock dividend worth T$1.5 for every one share Source text in Chinese: goo.gl/EFUVG4 Further company coverage: (Beijing Headline News)

2017-01-11

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Labor Secretary Tom Perez wants the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to have an in-house chief cybersecurity officer. “I think this office should report directly to the chair," Perez, a top candidate to become the next chairman of the DNC, told Politico on Wednesday. "And, among other responsibilities, have them proactively monitor the DNC for attacks and breaches." Perez added he thinks it's equally important to make sure the chief cybersecurity officer works with all of the committee's state partners. "Yes, we have bad actors around the world. We have had bad actors, including the Russians," incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said during an interview on "Fox News Sunday." "But we also have a problem when we have a major political institution that allows foreign governments into their system with hardly any defenses or training." Trump tweeted earlier this month that "gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place." He said the Republican National Committee, on the other hand, had "strong defense." View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2019-04-24 00:00:00

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A social studies teacher at a juvenile detention center in Richmond, Va., was named the National Teacher of the Year on Wednesday by the Council of Chief State School Officers. Rodney Robinson, a teacher at the Virgie Binford Education Center, was honored with the award on "CBS This Morning," after previously being named Virginia's Teacher of the Year in October. "I try to treat my students with whatever they need to be successful," Robinson said Wednesday on CBS. "Some need more, some need less. But I'm going to be there to give you what you need." Robinson's application indicated that he assisted his students in readjusting to normal life upon reentry to society, including helping those with felony convictions regain their right to vote. “My lessons always contain a local reference or connection to inspire my students to change their surroundings and themselves. My most important duty to students is to inform them of their legal rights and responsibilities," Robinson added in his application. "One of the proudest moments is when my students are able to legally advocate for themselves, resulting in a positive outcome in their legal case," he wrote. Robinson, an educator for nearly 20 years, beat out three finalists to win the award Wednesday, including Washington, D.C.'s Teacher of the Year, third-grade teacher Kelly Harper at the Amidon-Bowen Elementary School, according to The Washington Post. He also was up against Alaska's Teacher of the Year, Danielle Riha, who works with indigenous communities in the state. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2020-03-06 00:00:00

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(Adds comment from cruise association) WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) - The United States is considering ways to discourage U.S. travelers from taking cruises as part of a broader Trump administration effort to limit the spread of coronavirus, according to four officials familiar with the situation. The officials, who asked to remain anonymous, said no decision had been made. The discussions were taking place ahead of a meeting this weekend between Vice President Mike Pence, who is in charge of leading the U.S. response to the coronavirus, and the cruise industry. The administration could advise some or all U.S. travelers to temporarily avoid taking cruises in the face of a growing number of coronavirus cases on cruise ships or potentially impose travel restrictions related to cruises, officials said. Pence's office did not immediately comment. Shares of cruise operators in U.S. trading turned negative after the Reuters report. Carnival Corp and Royal Caribbean shares dropped nearly 2% and Norwegian Cruise Lines stock was down nearly 1%. Shares in Royal Caribbean Cruises, Carnival and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings have fallen around 50% since January. U.S. President Donald Trump signed a bill on Friday allocating $8.3 billion to bolster the countrys capacity to test for the new coronavirus and fund other measures to stem an outbreak that has now infected some 100,000 people worldwide. Democrats have said Trump - a Republican who faces re-election on Nov. 3 - has not adequately prepared the country for the possibility of a pandemic. Trump said during a visit to a tornado-stricken area in Tennessee on Friday that his administration was exploring options to help airlines and other industries hurt by the coronavirus outbreak, according to a pool report. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow also told CNBC that the administration was considering targeted and timely tax relief for such industries. DEBATING MEASURES Trump said on Friday that he had spoken to Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom about a cruise ship that was barred from docking in San Francisco after at least 35 people developed flu-like symptoms. The ship has been linked to two confirmed cases of the illness caused by the virus. The administration is urgently debating measures aimed at reducing outbreaks on board cruise ships with several officials confirming the administration has reviewed potential restrictions on U.S. cruise ship travel. Officials differed on whether the dramatic step of temporarily barring new cruises was being seriously considered. Cruise lines in recent days have liberalized cancellation and rebooking policies and some cruise travelers reported ships are traveling with far less than maximum capacity. The Cruise Lines International Association said this week cruise lines would take steps to limit coronavirus concerns, denying boarding to all persons who had traveled from hot spots including South Korea, Iran, China and parts of Italy. The group also said cruise lines would conduct illness screening for U.S. citizens who have recently visited those destinations. The cruise industry contributed nearly $53 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018 and generated more than 420,000 jobs, according to an analysis by the association. "Singling out the travel and tourism industry, and cruise lines specifically, will have significant detrimental impacts - some possibly irreversible - on the national and local economies," the group said in a written statement. Senior Trump administration officials discussed the cruise ship issue on Thursday and expected to revisit it during a meeting on Friday, according to a White House official. The official called the ships "huge incubators" and said older passengers could be especially vulnerable. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said its current information suggests that older people and people with severe chronic health conditions such as heart disease, lung disease and diabetes, have a higher risk of developing a serious illness as a result of the virus. The U.S. State Department said in guidance last month that Americans should reconsider travel on cruise ships in Asia due to the coronavirus outbreak. The department said the situation remained "dynamic" and that any travel by ship could be subject to restrictions and quarantine by local authorities. (Reporting by David Shepardson, Alexandra Alper and Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Chris Sanders, Howard Goller and Daniel Wallis)

2019-03-12

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Millennials aren't buying homes like their parents and grandparents did. That's largely because it's harder to afford a house these days: high real estate prices, stagnant wages and student loans hold young people back. And a good chunk of those who have been able to purchase a home haven't done so on their own. New data from financial services company Legal & General finds that 43 percent of homeowners age 34 and younger got money from family or friends. Likewise, just over half of prospective homeowners 34 and under expect to benefit from financial assistance when they do take the plunge, L&G finds. "House price growth in the U.S. has outstripped wage growth in 2018, meaning that on average across the U.S.A., houses are becoming more unaffordable," the survey says. "This suggests the need for assistance [from family or friends] with a home purchase is on the rise. " The L&G survey found that 35 percent of college graduates who are carrying debt and don't already own say their student loans have made it "much more difficult" to save up to buy a home. As a result, "many millennials have effectively given up on owning their own home — at least in the near term," the survey says. "Of those under 35 who don't already own, 43 percent say they don't expect that to change in the next five years — most often (40 percent) because it's simply not feasible to save for a down payment in that time frame." It would take a lot to put together a sizable down payment in half a decade. To save up enough in five years to put 20 percent down on a $275,000 house, which is the cost of the median home in the U.S., you'd need to save around $800 a month with a 5 percent return on investment. Currently, millennials have a median amount of just $2,430 saved. And a down payment is just the beginning. You'll need more money to account for closing costs, insurance and other fees. Home prices vary, too, and it's possible that the median price will rise in the next five or more years. Apart from real estate, many millennials also routinely get help from their families to cover education costs, bills and child care expenses, reports Hannah Seligson for the The New York Times. And many parents are willing to step in. Around 90 percent say they would give their adult children money to pay off debt if they asked for it, for example, a 2018 survey from CreditCards.com found. More than 50 percent of parents said they'd be willing to give their kids $1,000 or more. As Seligson acknowledges, though, and as other research shows, not everyone can turn to mom and dad for help. In fact, millions of young people must use their often limited resources to materially and personally help support other members of their families. So it's crucial for young people who do get assistance to be honest about it. "There's a danger in not acknowledging the transfer of wealth," Seligson writes. "It creates a distorted idea of what it takes to attain success and what financial milestones are actually achievable if you are starting from zero or less."

2017-12-20 00:00:00

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Update: Street artist Sabo at Unsavory Agents has taken credit for the posters, selling them on their website for $25. "It was a collaborative effort, which I played a roll in," they told Refinery29 in a statement. "Hollywood thinks by throwing their own under the bus they'll be able to use the momentum they create to force President Trump out if office, they are wrong. It sickens me, it sickens us all, to know people like Streep allowed so many to get victimized in exchange for fame and fortune. Hollywood can no longer profess to be the arbiters on morality. #TheyAllKnew" Original story follows. On Tuesday, The Hollywood Reporter documented posters that have appeared all over Los Angeles that accuse Meryl Streep of being complicit with Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by over 80 women. Weinstein has denied all accusations of nonconsensual sex. The posters, which are influenced heavily by the style of artist Barbara Kruger, depict the words "she knew" over a photo of Streep and Weinstein, and appear near the SAG-AFTRA building as well as across from the 20th Century Fox studio lot. It is still unknown who is behind the art, but the display may have been inspired by a now-deleted tweet by actress Rose McGowan, an alleged victim of Weinstein, who wrote "Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @goldenglobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You'll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa." However, overnight, men have co-opted the so-called "She Knew" movement, particularly noted Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich. What perhaps started as an effort to dismantle the culture of secrecy in Hollywood that allowed this growing number of assaults to occur has now turned into another way for men to take the burden off of themselves and blame women for the very harassment they are victims of. Twitter users went on to point fingers at other women they believe facilitated the harassment, misplacing their ire onto peripheral targets rather than the men who actually allegedly committed the assaults. While Streep did not respond to comment about the posters in particular, she did issue a statement following McGowan's tweet. "It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein's crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others," the statement reads. "I wasn't deliberately silent. I didn't know." Even if women were aware of Weinstein's behavior, extensive reporting has shown that they had good reason to fear coming forward. The New Yorker published an article detailing the ways Weinstein would hire private investigators to find unflattering information about accusers and journalists looking to expose his alleged misconduct. The New York Times later referred to it as "Weinstein's Complicity Machine," — the way in which he pulled strings and used powerful relationships to keep women quiet by threatening their careers. Immediately hopping aboard "She Knew" overlooks the fact that any woman wanting to speak out, even if she wasn't a victim herself, could still be subject to Weinstein's manipulation. It also shows that society is conditioned to distrust women, and that we'd rather point fingers anywhere else than ever hold men accountable for their own actions. If men really want to be allies, then don't call out women for being silent, but instead work to dismantle the structure that often forces them to be — and that all starts with believing women in the first place. If you have experienced sexual violence and are in need of crisis support, please call the RAINN Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). Read These Stories Next: You Should Not Be "Shocked" By Harvey Weinstein Here's A List Of Every Woman Who Has Come Forward About Harvey WeinsteinHow These Powerful Celebrities Are Condemning Harvey Weinstein

2018-04-13 08:38:26

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Russia has been researching the application of chemical agents to door handles as a way to assassinate its enemies, and has been training personnel “from special units” to carry out such attacks, said Mark Sedwill, Britain’s national security adviser, on Friday in a letter to the secretary general of NATO. Mr. Sedwill’s letter, the most detailed account of British intelligence on the subject to be shared with the public to date, also reported that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was “closely involved in the chemical weapons program” beginning in the mid-2000s. During that period, the letter claims, Russia was secretly developing the nerve agents known as Novichok that British officials say were used in the March 4 attack on Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in the quiet cathedral city of Salisbury, England. Russian officials have strenuously denied producing Novichok or carrying out the attack, which has brought relations between Britain and Russia to a post-Cold War low. In a news conference Friday afternoon, the Russian ambassador to Britain, Aleksandr V. Yakovenko, dismissed the letter and “all these allegations” surrounding the nerve agent attack as having “nothing to do with reality.” Russia, he said, repeating a claim the Kremlin has asserted throughout the Skripal affair, eliminated all of its stockpiles of chemical weapons in 2017, and as for Novichok, “We did not produce it and didn’t store it.” Mr. Skripal remains hospitalized nearly five weeks after he was poisoned, but his daughter has recovered and was moved to a secure location this week. Mr. Sedwill’s letter also said that Britain has evidence that Russian security services have been monitoring the Skripal family. Cyberspecialists from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Services hacked Ms. Skripal’s email in 2013, the letter said. Asked about that at his news conference, Mr. Yakovenko responded sarcastically, “Big surprise.” The letter added that Russian intelligence services “view at least some of its defectors as legitimate targets for assassination.” “We therefore continue to judge that only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and motive for the attack on the Skripals, and that it is highly likely that the Russian state was responsible,” the letter said. “There is no plausible alternative explanation.” The letter comes as British officials try to consolidate European support for united actions against Russia. The central element of Britain’s case against Russia is the unusual nerve agent used in the attack, which was developed in Soviet laboratories during the last years of the Soviet Union. Last week, the chief executive of the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory in Porton Down, Britain’s premier chemical weapons laboratory, said its scientists could not identify “the precise source” of the chemical, though its purity indicated that it was almost certainly created by a “state actor.” Mr. Sedwill’s letter lays out further British intelligence on Russia’s chemical weapons programs, reporting that the Novichok agents, a strain referred to in Russia as Foliant, were developed at the State Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology at Shikhany, a small town on the Volga River, in southern Russia. It said that Russia continued to produce the agents after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but did not declare the work to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. It goes on to say that “during the 2000s,” Russia created a special unit to develop chemical weapons for use as tools in state-sponsored attacks and to “train personnel from special units in the use of these weapons.” “This program subsequently included investigation of ways of delivering nerve agents, including by application to door handles,” it said. “Within the last decade, Russia has produced and stockpiled small quantities of Novichoks under the same program.”

2018-06-10

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Washington (CNN)Peter Navarro, a trade adviser to President Donald Trump, escalated the White House's rebuke of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling him weak and dishonest on Sunday. "There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," Navarro said on "Fox News Sunday." He continued, "And that's what bad faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference. That's what weak, dishonest Justin Trudeau did, and that comes right from Air Force One." Navarro's comments added to the White House's continued criticism of Trudeau, who said after Trump left the G7 summit that Canada would impose retaliatory measures to answer Trump's tariffs and warned that Canada would not be "pushed around." "I will always protect Canadian workers and Canadian interests," Trudeau said. The comments from Trudeau prompted Trump to criticize the Canadian leader on Twitter and decline to endorse the G7 communique. Larry Kudlow, Trump's top economic adviser, took things further Sunday morning, saying on CNN's "State of the Union" that Trudeau's comments amounted to a "betrayal." Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Sunday in response to questions about Kudlow and Navarro's comments that she is thankful she is "not responsible for explaining the reasoning behind any comments made by the officials of any foreign government." Freeland touted Canada's retaliatory measures several times as she referred to Trump's tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum as "illegal and unjustified" and disavowed "ad hominem attacks." "Canada is very clear," she said. "We are very measured. We used fact-based arguments." Freeland said of the US tariffs, "The national security pretext is absurd and frankly insulting to Canadians, the closest and strongest ally the United States has had. We can't pose a security threat to the United States, and I know that Americans understand that. So, that is where the insult lies." European Council President Donald Tusk used Navarro's phrasing in a tweet backing Trudeau later Sunday. "There is a special place in heaven for @JustinTrudeau. Canada, thank you for the perfect organisation of G7!" Tusk tweeted. Navarro, in his interview on Fox, said Trump "did the courtesy to Justin Trudeau to travel up to Quebec for that summit" and that Trump had "bigger things on his plate" than the G7 meeting, namely his planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore. "He did him a favor," Navarro said. "And he was even willing to sign that socialist communique, and what did Trudeau do as soon as the plane took off from Canadian airspace? Trudeau stuck our President in the back." Asked if these were statements from the President, Navarro said they were his words, but that they reflected "the sentiment that was on Air Force One." CNN's Victoria Cavaliere and Deanna Hackney contributed to this report.

2016-01-29

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For some people, begging is a business. Abe Hagenston has been homeless in Detroit for the past seven years. It's been a struggle for him to find a job, so he recently decided to treat his pandhandling like real employment. While he once only accepted cash, he's now taking VISA, Mastercard, and American Express, thanks to an app he uses on his smartphone. On his website, Hagenston stressed that he will work — but he also wants people to understand the plight of homeless individuals like him. "Of course, there’s no snow removal. I used to look forward to that, doing some shoveling” Hagenston told CBS Detroit. The season's warm temperatures have made that work harder to find. So Hagenston, who currently lives near the 8 Mile overpass on I-75, decided to get inventive. “I take VISA, MasterCard, American Express," Hagenston said. "I’m the only homeless guy in America who can take a credit card. It’s all done safely and securely through Square.com." Square is an app, much like Venmo, that allows people to conduct online cash transfers. It also includes a card-reading feature that Hangenston currently uses. "People don't realize how tough it is to come from nothing when you don't have any family or any friends," Hangenston told local news station WDIV. There are an estimated 2,700 homeless people currently living in Detroit. That number excludes homeless individuals and families who reside in shelter.

2020-02-17 06:00:13

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On Soccer Almost a decade ago, Diego Simeone set out to annoy Europe’s elite with Atlético Madrid. But what happens when the underdog joins the aristocrats? MADRID — Diego Simeone loved the way the sunlight hit the stands at the Vicente Calderón. First as an Atlético Madrid player, and then as its manager, he relished home games in the stadium in late afternoon, when he could look up from the field and see the red and white seats glinting in the waning glow. That was when he felt the stadium’s energy on the touchline, when the sun shone and the banners fluttered and the songs drifted down from on high. Simeone spent a considerable portion of his professional life in that stadium, but he was never inoculated against its power. “The Calderón has an ability to affect you,” he said. Simeone knew, when he agreed to take charge of Atlético a few days after Christmas in 2011, that he would have to harness that power. He understood, he felt, what the club’s fans wanted, what sort of team would be in line with Atlético’s history, its identity, what style of play would win the backing of the Calderón. His team, he told The Coaches’ Voice a few years later, would have to be built on a strong defense, a deadly counterattack and an unyielding work ethic. Simeone, the player known as El Cholo, was creating his own philosophy: Cholísmo. “The only thing that is not negotiable is effort,” he told his players in their first meeting. Most of all, he said, Atlético had to be a thorn in the side of the superpowers. He and his team have delivered on that promise. By almost any metric, Simeone’s tenure as Atlético’s manager has been an unqualified, spectacular success. The trophies are, of course, the most obvious proof. Under Simeone, Atlético has lifted the Europa League and the European Super Cup twice, in 2012 and 2018. He won the Copa del Rey, against Real Madrid, in 2013, and led the club to the Champions League final in 2014 and 2016. Most important, of course, he led Atlético to the Spanish title in 2014 — sealed on enemy territory in Barcelona, too. It was the club’s first championship for almost two decades, and the first time in 10 years that a team other than Barcelona or Real Madrid had won the Spanish crown. It is a remarkable haul for a team that was, until recently, known for its ability to fall at the last, for its perpetual disappointment. Atlético has long been known, by fans and foes alike, as El Pupas: the Jinxed. The nickname does not come up so much, these days. There are other measures, beyond trophies, of what Simeone has achieved. His longevity, for one: He is, by some distance, the longest-serving manager at any major club in Europe, and at a club that until he arrived had been allergic to stability. Before Simeone, Atlético had employed 12 coaches in a decade. Even more telling, perhaps, is the sea change in Atlético’s fortunes off the field. His success has effectively wiped out the club’s soaring debts, and attracted the kind of deep-pocketed foreign sponsors — China’s Wanda group, Azerbaijan’s tourism board, an Israeli billionaire — that helped pay for a new stadium, for higher salaries, for new players. Last summer, Atlético spent $142 million on a single player — João Felix — and a further $100 million on strengthening the squad. Atlético, in other words, is no longer the poor relation: It has paid more for a player than Real Madrid, and it reportedly pays its coach more than any team in the world. On Tuesday, when Atlético hosts Liverpool in the last 16 of the Champions League, it will not be at Simeone’s beloved Calderón. The club left its longtime home in 2017 for the Wanda Metropolitano, a state-of-the-art but slightly soulless bowl on Madrid’s northern fringes, one grand enough to be the stage on which Liverpool won last season’s Champions League final. Atlético is close to opening an equally lavish training base, too, one that — according to Simeone — “lives up to what the club deserves.” At last, in his eyes, the “growth of the club is parallel to that of the team.” Simeone still regards Atlético as “socially, morally and emotionally the people’s team,” but even he acknowledges its image, and its status, have changed. In 2012, as his team prepared to face Chelsea in the European Super Cup, Simeone declared that the English club’s vast financial superiority was irrelevant. “Heart can cancel out budget,” he declared then. For years, that was how Atlético competed, how it ensured its cherished place as European soccer’s great irritant. Now it does not need to. That is the extent of what Simeone has achieved: He has helped the eternal outsider crash through the doors of the palace. Atlético is now part of Europe’s elite. The question most are asking, now, is where that leaves the coach who took it there. Simeone wanted more energy. Not, in that precise moment, from his team — toiling at home to Bayer Leverkusen in a Champions League group game in October — but from the fans. Midway through the second half, with the game goalless, he paused in his characteristic prowling around the technical area to turn to the crowd with his fist raised, demanding more noise, more power. In response, a portion of the fans whistled him. Simeone knows that soccer is fickle: Before his first game as Atlético coach, he told his players that the crowd that now stood in raptures before him had “at one point insulted” him as a player. “Soccer is like that,” he said. Even so, that moment was striking. Simeone always knew, instinctively, what Atlético wanted. The club’s modern identity was entwined with his. Yet for the first time in almost a decade, discord was in the air. As Simeone prepares for the visit of Liverpool, there is a fragile peace. This has been a testing season. Atlético sits fourth in La Liga, cut adrift from Real and Barcelona in the title race, and behind even Getafe, an unheralded team from one of Madrid’s satellite towns. It was eliminated from the Copa del Rey by a second-division side. Its defensive parsimony remains: Only Real Madrid has conceded fewer goals this season. Simeone’s training sessions are still a reference point for teams across Europe. Last summer, seeking inspiration for how to improve its own defense, Bournemouth sent a delegation just to watch how he worked. The problem is his team’s toothlessness. Atlético has scored only 25 goals in 24 games. Given the amount of money spent last summer, particularly on João Felix, to try to make the team more expansive, it is a paltry return. Simeone is conscious of this. He tried to sign Edinson Cavani, the Uruguay striker, in January to give the team more cutting edge. He has met in recent weeks with Miguel Ángel Gil, Atlético’s chief executive, and the sporting director Andrea Berta to discuss how to improve the team’s attacking performance without compromising its resilience. What Atlético — as a club, as a fan base — demands of its team has changed, mutated in some way along the road from the Calderón to the Metropolitano. As one associate of Simeone’s noted, there is an unavoidable incongruity in playing underdog soccer in an aristocrat’s home. “In Cholísmo, the result is God,” the former Argentina forward Jorge Valdano — now a columnist for El País, and one of Spain’s most erudite soccer observers — wrote last year. That was always Simeone’s logic, and his defense: As long as his philosophy produced results, there could be no complaints. This season, it is not working. Simeone has not been able to craft a more attacking team, and all of Atlético’s old virtues have not been enough. In the absence of God, Simeone’s congregation has started to doubt its faith. In recent years, Simeone has lent his name to two books, in collaboration with the journalist Santi Garcia Bustamante. Both sit more comfortably on the lifestyle shelves than in the sports section. In the second, longer edition — entitled simply “Creer,” or “Believe” — Simeone writes: “When the opposition team sense that there is fear, they take advantage without mercy.” For much of the last decade, that could have functioned as a summary of what made Atlético great. Now, it encapsulates as well as anything the problem it is facing. Opponents no longer fear Atlético; instead, they detect an uncertainty, an anxiety, in Simeone’s team, one that bounces and echoes between the field and the stands. Ordinarily, the visit of Liverpool — the reigning European and world champion, a side unbeaten in the Premier League and hailed last week by Lionel Scaloni, the Argentina coach, as the only “invincible” team in the world — would be a calvary for a team struggling for form. For Atlético, curiously, it is almost a blessing. There is scarcely an opponent Simeone will relish facing more. For 180 minutes, his team can be itself again: gritty and resolute and uncompromising. It can reclaim its old identity, slip into a role it knows perfectly. Atlético is at its best when it is annoying the superpowers. Currently, there is no bigger superpower to annoy than Liverpool. Far less certain is what comes after. Simeone retains his aura and the faith of most of his players, though those inside the club admit that perhaps the squad’s dynamics are suffering because so many of his most trusted lieutenants — the likes of Diego Godín and Gabi — have departed. His aura has not dissipated. As one player noted, Atlético is still the sort of club where nobody is ever late for a team meeting. A year ago, the manager extended his contract until 2022. But there is a feeling that change is coming. Germán Burgos, Simeone’s longstanding assistant, is keen to start his own managerial career; it was telling that he did not sign a new contract when Simeone did. The biggest question is what happens to Simeone. He might be able to go through his back catalog, to play the greatest hits, to pick a way past Liverpool. The greater challenge, though, is to find a way to update Cholísmo to reflect Atlético’s new circumstances, to develop a style that suits a team that is no longer always content to be the underdog and a club that demands entertainment with its efficacy. Atlético’s identity is now fused with Simeone’s. It is hard to imagine one without the other. But Simeone, for one, has never believed in his own immutability. “I always leave before they kick me out,” he once said. “And I always believe they can kick me out tomorrow.” After almost nine years, that moment of reckoning may be coming. Liverpool might be his last hurrah. It might also be his last stand.

2017-05-02 00:00:00

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May 2 (Reuters) - Univanich Palm Oil Pcl: * Acquired palm oil crushing mill and related assets of Chok Vallapa Palm Oil Company in Kura Buri district of Phang NGA Province Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2016-04-20 23:00:03

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Harriet Tubman is officially set to be the first woman in history on a US dollar bill — and most people don't know the half of what she did. In a 2015 episode of Comedy Central's Drunk History, Crissle — a comedian and co-host of The Read podcast — downs drinks and launches into a brilliant, booze-soaked tribute to Tubman, educating host Derek Waters and viewers on the activist's crucial contributions to the Civil War. "Harriet Tubman does not get her just due," Crissle says. "You hear her name and think, 'Yeah, she led the slaves to freedom,' but you most certainly do not know that she was a spy for the Union." From there, Crissle tells the story of how Tubman (played by Octavia Spencer) used her network and deep knowledge of plantations and their surrounding areas to spy for the Union. It eventually resulted in Tubman leading the Combahee River Raid, a full-on military operation that freed at least 700 slaves in one fell swoop. It's a fascinating story, made only better by Crissle's hilarious, sloshed commentary ("I got like a good 15 minutes in me before the liquor takes over, and God only knows what I'll say"). But it's even more than one isolated incident; it's a huge moment in history, and precious few people know why. As Crissle explained it: It was the first military operation that was executed and led by an American woman, and it was planned by a former slave who could not read or write, who was five feet tall, who was black, and a woman. And she still pulled that shit off. Or as she concluded even more simply, in between bursts of drunken laughter: "[Harriet Tubman] was just dope as hell." You can watch more Drunk History clips at Comedy Central's YouTube channel, and full episodes on Hulu.

2018-02-27

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Mr. Black' has pleaded guilty to federal fraud and money laundering charges. But so has 'Mr. White', 'Mr. Pink' and 17 other defendants in a telemarketing scheme with its center in Phoenix. That includes defendants with other aliases ranging from 'Fredo' to 'Brittany Wilson' and 'Hailee Randall,' according to federal prosecutors. Mr. Black is actually Timothy Murphy, who also went by aliases Colby Muhlberg and Arthur Whitton. He pleaded guilty in federal court in Missouri to a wire fraud charge and conspiracy to commit money laundering charge. Murphy, 34, is from Phoenix and the latest Arizona defendant to plead guilty in a telemarketing scam aimed at elderly victims. Michael McNeill, 48, of Phoenix — aka Mr. White and Todd Lockwood — and Joshua Flynn, 36, of Chandler — aka Mr. Pink and Jeff Thomas — also pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges late last year in the same case, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office and Internal Revenue Service. According to federal prosecutors, the Phoenix-based telemarketing group along with associated businesses in Missouri generated more than $20 million in phony telemarketing sales related to business opportunities and used the proceeds instead to buy gold and silver coins. The case has generated multiple indictments and guilty pleas with almost all defendants from Phoenix and its suburbs. Others pleading guilty in the case include: • Ashley Powell, aka Brittany Wilson, 26, of Phoenix. • Dean Miller, aka Jeffry Wilkes, 44 of Phoenix • Scott Shocklee, aka Fredo, 40, of Phoenix, • Jason Gallagher, 36, of Gilbert, • Andre Devoe, 43, of Tempe • Cybill Osterman, 26, of Scottsdale • Jennifer Hansen, ake Hailee Randall, 35, of El Mirage All those defendants inlcuding Mr. White, Mr. Black and Mr. Pink will be sentenced later this year. "All twenty defendants have now pled guilty in connection with a multi-count indictment arising from their participation in a fraudulent telemarketing enterprise that often targeted elderly victims," said IRS Special Agent Brian Watson. "The telemarketing enterprise sold false and fictitious business opportunities as part of a scheme that reached across the United States and Canada and generated in excess of $20 million in fraudulent sales."

2016-09-23 18:00:16

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Dror Ginzberg Contributor Dror Ginzberg is co-founder and CEO of Wochit. More posts by this contributor With Twitter’s NFL deal, social networks can take on traditional broadcasters at last What You Need To Know About Online Video Platforms With the start of the new NFL season upon us, fans across the U.S. — and indeed across the whole world — are turning their attention to who the winners and losers will be this year, and who’ll be making their way to Super Bowl LI on February 5, 2017 at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. With plenty of interactive and innovative ways for fans to get involved, such as Fantasy Football, perhaps the most exciting news for sports fans is the NFL’s deal with Twitter to live stream 10 games for free worldwide. This landmark deal, announced back in May, sees social networks finally able to take on traditional broadcasters, moving beyond being just a platform and into the business of content proper. It is clear that both the NFL and Twitter are seeking to tap into the explosion in popularity of streaming video, which now accounts for more than two-thirds of all internet traffic, and is expected to jump to a staggering 82 percent by 2020. For the NFL, this builds on a previous test case with Yahoo, streaming one game last season, which successfully yielded 15.2 million viewers and 33.6 million video streams. What is also clear is that sports fans love to watch events live, as 95 percent of total sports program viewing happens in real time, meaning Twitter is sitting on top of a massive opportunity here. The instant nature of Twitter conversation has always appealed to sports fans, with 50 percent of all Twitter’s TV conversations focused on sports. That many of us use social networks while watching live programming is behavior that both Twitter and broadcasters are aware of — but until now, neither have really made the most of this opportunity. The stage is set for some intriguing battles for live TV rights between established broadcasters and innovative technology companies. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has said much about how he sees live experiences as being at the heart of the future of Twitter. The aim is to keep people on the social network for longer, increasing the opportunity for users to be targeted by advertising. In this sense, the deal with the NFL represents a watershed moment not only for sports fans who now have a new, potentially much more interactive, way to watch their favorite teams, but also arguably Twitter’s best opportunity to date to prove that it can be a valuable platform for advertisers. So, the questions now revolve around how the content and accompanying advertising is going to be presented to users. Since the announcement of the deal, we’ve had some clues from other sports. In early July, Twitter unexpectedly began streaming live footage from the Wimbledon tennis tournament in a collaboration between Twitter, ESPN and the All England Club. However, it did also say that this experiment was “an extremely early and incomplete test experience, and we’ll be making lots of improvements before we launch it in its final form.” There was a lot of criticism of the Wimbledon experience, the small viewing area versus the size of the tweet stream being one. Twitter recently announced it had outsourced the back-end delivery of its sports streams to BAMTech, which powers over 25,000 live events, making obvious to all that it will instead dedicate many more resources to try to make the live video experience as good as it can be for football fans. While there is much to improve on, it’s clear that social networks are aware of the behavior and needs of fans — whether the sports have a global reach like tennis and the NFL, or whether they have a much more niche audience. Similarly, broadcasters recognize the importance of streaming — rather than broadcasting — so-called “minority” sports. At the end of June, Walt Disney Co. — owners of ESPN and ABC — agreed to acquire a one-third stake in the video-streaming unit of MLB Advanced Media, the digital arm of Major League Baseball. This deal shows just how important it is for ESPN to be able to offer digital packages, rather than just traditional cable TV packages, in its fight to regain lost advertising revenue. With the biggest sports media company in the world moving to ensure that tech giants like Twitter don’t steal a march on them, the stage is set for some intriguing battles for live TV rights between established broadcasters and innovative technology companies. The line between broadcaster and technology platform will continue to blur — NFL games broadcast live on Twitter is just the beginning. Hopefully the biggest result of this will be that consumers have a greater choice of more innovative, interactive ways to watch their favorite sports, while bringing sports like baseball — which don’t have a large following outside of the U.S. — to entirely new audiences. The potential for advertisers to then take advantage of an increasingly engaged and global set of fans will follow.

2020-03-27

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. airlines expect to learn the terms of federal aid meant to protect workers’ payrolls in the midst of a sharp downturn from the coronavirus in the next five to 10 days, senior executives at United Airlines Holdings Inc said on Friday. Under a relief bill approved Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin can demand equity, warrants or other financial instruments to compensate taxpayers, but executives have said they trust the terms would not be so onerous that they could not take the aid. Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Chris Reese

2016-01-15

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There was a time when traveling by trains meant passengers could sit down for full-service meals in dining cars just like in high-end restaurants. Everything was fancy, even the menus. The following selection of old menu covers does a brilliant job of showcasing the golden era of streamlined locomotives (watch out for the legendary Aerotrain!) and Charcoal Broiled Select Sirloin Steaks. We highlighted the most expensive dishes on each menus, if you want to know what other dishes were served, visit the source links under the images for more information.“Via the popular and scenic… Dixie Route (Chicago-Florida)” / Dixie Flagler tavern car menu, 1943Most expensive items on this menu: Southern Comfort whiskey and Scotch for $0.60.Image: From The New York Public LibraryAssociation of American Railroads, Burlington luncheon menu, 1943Most expensive dishes on this menu: Old Fashioned Stewed Chicken with Noodles, and Pan Broiled Hamburger Steak, Brown Onion Gravy, both for $1.25.Image: From The New York Public Library“The Century in the Highlands of the Hudson” / New York Central System dining car menu, 1943Most expensive dish on this menu: Country Sausage and Eggs for $1.00.Image: From The New York Public LibraryBurlington Zephyrs, 1943Most expensive dish on this menu: Roast Prime Rib of Beef Au Jus for $1.50.Image: From The New York Public LibraryAssociation of American Railroads, Burlington Club breakfast menu, 1943Most expensive dish on this menu: Breakfast No. 3. for $1.00.Image: From The New York Public LibraryBurlington Zephyrs, 1943Most expensive dish on this menu: American Pot Roast, Demi Glace Buttered Noodles for $1.50.Image: From The New York Public LibraryFresco Lines, 1943Most expensive dishes on this menu: Corned Beef Hash With Fried Egg for $0.85, or Menu No. 1 for $1.00.Image: From The New York Public LibraryThe Streamliner, City of San Francisco, 1943Most expensive dish on this menu: Charcoal Broiled Select Sirloin Steak for $1.75.Image: From The New York Public LibraryNew York Central, dinner menu, 1956Most expensive dishes on this menu: Breaded Large Milk Veal Cutlet, Fines Herbes, and Old Fashioned Pot Roast of Beef, Brown Gravy, both for $3.85.Image: The Culinary Institute of America, Archives and Special CollectionsSilver Streak Zephyr, dinner menu, 1943Most expensive dish on this menu: Small Dinner Steak, a la Minute for $1.50.Image: The Culinary Institute of America, Archives and Special CollectionsNew York Central System, dinner menu, c1950Most expensive dish on this menu: Fried Half Young Chicken, Southern Style for $3.15.Image: The Culinary Institute of America, Archives and Special CollectionsBurlington Route, Way of the Zephyrs Everywhere West - Transportation Giants, dinner menu, 1943Most expensive dish on this menu: Small Dinner Steak, a la Minute for $1.50.Image: The Culinary Institute of America, Archives and Special CollectionsNew York Central System, 20th Century Limited, dinner menu, c1943Most expensive dish on this menu: Lobster Newburg for $2.25.Image: The Culinary Institute of America, Archives and Special CollectionsNew York Central System, James Whitcomb Riley, dinner menu, c1943Most expensive dish on this menu: Grilled Small Stirloin Steak, Mushroom Sauce for $1.75. Image: The Culinary Institute of America, Archives and Special Collections

2016-08-19

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New York (CNN)Alice Cooper has been running for president as a joke since 1972 and the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Famer is now bringing a dose of satire to the 2016 election. Cooper told CNN that this year his campaign slogan is "I can do nothing as well as they can do nothing," his running mate is Tom Hanks (without Hanks' knowledge) and his platform is nonexistent. "I think the idea that I honestly have no platform is maybe the most honest thing I've heard in politics in a long time," Cooper said. "I have absolutely no idea what to do and if everybody said that, that would give me a guy I can vote for." Cooper, who became known as "The Godfather of Shock Rock," commanding stages strewn with blood and gore and acting out scenes straight out of horror flicks during his performances. Back in 1960s America, Cooper's high-powered performances, complete with his startling black and white stage makeup, guillotines and electric chairs elicited fear and horror, especially from the parents of rock fans. "When I first started I was sort of the most scary thing on the planet because nobody knew what to think of this guy with a bull constrictor and a woman's name, chopping his head off every night on stage," Cooper said. "That was probably the worst thing that happened to every parent." But decades later, Cooper said he is now "beloved," along with other artists like Ozzy Osbourne, who rose to fame around the same time and received similar backlash for his gory heavy metal performances as the lead singer of Black Sabbath "Anyone who's survived this long in rock 'n roll is beloved, so I'm a beloved presidential candidate," Cooper said. "Elected" is Cooper's 2016 campaign song though it was first released in 1972 (he's re-releasing it this year) when Richard Nixon was in the White House and the US was in the midst of the Vietnam War. "We're gonna rock to the rules that I make, I wanna be elected," the lyrics go. "I never lied to you, I've always been cool, I wanna be elected/ I gotta get the vote, and I told you about school, I wanna be elected." Cooper said that politicians consistently make empty promises that they can't deliver on because the president of the United States is "basically, a face." Alice Cooper: From black makeup to the White House? "Everybody seems to think the President's going to press a button and everything's gonna change," Cooper said. "Not gonna happen. He has to go through so many people before anything can change — that really it's a face value guy. So, what face do you wanna see for the next four years on CNN? That's basically what the president, I think, really is." Asked why Americans should vote for him, Cooper said he actually came name "many, many more" reasons why no one should vote for him — he doesn't want the job and refuses to turn gray like other presidents Map out the Road to 270 "Look at Obama. He went into office as a rock star and he came out with gray hair. I don't want that. I'm a rock singer," Cooper said. "I want to go on stage with my black hair, even though it's fake. It's still black hair. It is all mine, by the way, it's not fake." Cooper said that his hate for politics began at an early age and described a young Vincent Furnier (his real name) running up to his room and blasting The Who to drown out his parents' political discussions. "To me, rock 'n roll is the total opposite of politics. I hate to put them in bed together," Cooper said, but added that he likes to see rock artists taking on humanitarian causes. "That's what Bono does, that's what Sting does and that's what (Bruce) Springsteen and all the guys do," Cooper said. "They do humanitarian things and it gets confused as being political."

2020-01-30 00:00:00

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Drivers are suing the Kansas Highway Patrol in federal court, alleging that they target out-of-state vehicles for traffic stops, according to an amended lawsuit filed Thursday. The lawsuit, which has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges that 93 percent of the Kansas Highway Patrol’s traffic stops in 2017 involved vehicles with out-of-state licenses. The plaintiffs argue that the patrol is infringing on the constitutional protection from illegal searches and seizures, according to the lawsuit obtained by The Hill.  Two Oklahoma brothers originally filed a complaint in December but received legal backing with the ACLU and a Kansas City law firm, Spencer Fane LLP. Joshua Bosire, a black man from Wichita, filed the federal case, which seeks to achieve class-action status.  The ACLU and the law firm say in the suit that statistics show Kansas Highway Patrol targets out-of-state drivers, including several on Interstate 70 connecting Kansas to Colorado, which has legalized marijuana. Out-of-state drivers made up 96 percent of all the patrol’s reported civil forfeitures from 2018 to 2019, with two-thirds of those involving drivers of color or those carrying passengers of color in their vehicles. The complaint also alleged that troopers use the “Kansas Two Step” to gain access to the vehicle, a method mentioned in the patrol’s training materials.  After giving a ticket and a warning, the trooper steps away, turns back and then asks the driver if they will answer additional questions. The trooper would ask if the person is transporting anything illegal and ask to search the vehicle, and if the driver denies entry, they can be detained for a canine drug search. Bosire, who visits his 4-year-old daughter who lives in Colorado, was detained after a return trip when he was using a rental car with a Missouri plate when traveling 6 mph over the speed limit. He was detained for 36 minutes before a canine arrived to inspect the car and found no drugs.  Elontah Blaine Shaw and Samuel Shaw, Native American brothers from Oklahoma City, were traveling through Kansas to visit family when they were stopped for traveling 16 miles over the speed limit. They were detained in December 2017 for a canine search of their vehicle, in which no drugs were found. Lauren Bonds, the legal director for the ACLU of Kansas, said in a release obtained by  The Associated Press that beyond the canine searches, one of the drivers experienced a personal pat down while along the highway. “The standard for this kind of invasion of privacy has to be higher than out-of-state plates, a Colorado destination and minority status,” Bonds said. “This practice is unconstitutional on many levels.” Bonds told The Hill that the organization had heard "so many complaints about this practice" that she said was "widespread. "We didn't think there would be any way to stop it" besides going forward with a lawsuit, she said. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2020 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2016-08-03

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Aug 3 (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc reported a 5.3 percent fall in quarterly revenue in the absence of big hits from its Warner Bros movie studio, and disclosed a 10 percent stake in streaming TV service Hulu. The company’s net income fell to $951 million, or $1.20 per share, in the second quarter ended June 30, from $971 million, or $1.16 per share, a year earlier. Revenue fell to $6.95 billion from $7.35 billion. (Reporting by Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

2019-05-06

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The ongoing U.S.-China trade talks appeared to turn sour when President Donald Trump on Sunday announced a tariff hike on Chinese goods. China, in turn, is said to be considering skipping this week's planned negotiations. According to the director of Korean Studies at think tank the Center for the National Interest, that recent downturn in Washington-Beijing relations may not bode well for Trump's denuclearization dialogue with North Korea. "Donald Trump today tweeting out about increasing tariffs and things of that nature, he needs to be a little careful because his North Korea policy could blow up in his face," Harry Kazianis told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Monday. On Sunday, North Korean state media showed its leader Kim Jong Un overseeing live firing drills of rocket launchers and short-range missiles. This comes two months after denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang collapsed in Hanoi. Negotiations have been in a "lull state" since. The Trump administration has typically taken a "maximum pressure" strategy toward Pyongyang, which consists of military threats, diplomatic actions and harsh tariffs. However, this policy was "always" ultimately enforced by Beijing and not Washington, according to Kazianis. "Think about it this way: 90% of North Korea's exports go to China, " he added. That all means that China can use its North Korean ties as a form of leverage over Washington. If the U.S.-China trade deal falls apart, Beijing can use North Korea "as a weapon against the United States," Kazianis said. "(China) could end maximum pressure in days by just opening up the border." Pyongyang's weapons testing over the weekend was Kim's attempt to remind the U.S. that its military capabilities "will keep growing — essentially by the hour," Kazianis said. North Korea is still continuing to build ballistic missiles, he added. "Just because they're not testing them in the sky doesn't mean they're not testing them in their laboratory, that their scientists aren't working at it." "So what Kim is trying to say to us is: 'Look, if you're not going to make a deal, my weapons are just going to get better and it's better to make a deal now,'" Kazianis explained. According to Kazianis, the "only way" for Washington to strike a denuclearization deal with Pyongyang is to take a gradual step-by-step approach. "The only way to do this is a phased denuclearization, where the North Koreans make a concession, and we make a matching concession," Kazianis said. "I think the Trump administration would be quite foolish to keep going after this so-called big deal where the North Koreans basically give up all their nuclear weapons, and then when that's over, we remove the sanctions," he added. "I don't think that'll work."

2018-07-02

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An effort to let Montana voters decide whether to prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice has fallen short, according to The Associated Press. The measure’s proponents gathered fewer than 10,000 signatures — far below the 25,000 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot, the AP reported on June 30. LGBTQ activists said the failed effort represents a win for trans people. “We are thrilled, although not surprised, to learn this harmful measure failed to qualify for the November ballot,” said Marina Connor, chairperson of the Free and Fair Coalition, a group of LGBTQ+ activists that worked to defeat the measure in a statement. “The work we have been engaged in for the last several months to organize our community and educate Montanans about this measure being inconsistent with our shared values has won the day." If approved, the initiative, which was similar to North Carolina’s controversial “bathroom bill,” would have barred transgender people from using the locker rooms, changing rooms, restrooms and shower rooms aligned with their gender identity. It also would have allowed people to sue the government if they encountered someone of the “opposite sex” in a bathroom. Alaska voters in April defeated a similar initiative. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2019-08-29 00:00:00

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(Reuters) - Canadian tour operator Transat A.T. Inc (TRZ.TO) said on Thursday that the Superior Court of Quebec had approved its sale to Air Canada (AC.TO) in a C$720 million ($542.37 million) deal. The final court approval comes days after the Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau said the deal needed additional scrutiny, including its impact on competition, before being approved. Transat said on Thursday the deal is now expected to close by the second quarter of 2020, provided all the regulatory approvals and conditions are met. Reporting by Shanti S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva

2017-10-26

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View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2017-04-11

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A California appellate district court ruled unanimously on Tuesday to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the city of San Diego by the state’s Public Employees Relations Board. The decision upholds Proposition B passed by San Diego voters in 2012 that replaced defined benefit pension plans for newly hired public employees, except police officers, with 401(k)-style defined contribution plans. San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer tweeted on Tuesday that the court had “protected the clear will of voters and upheld pension reform.” Public workers in California and across the nation typically receive a “defined benefit” pension plan, that leaves the city or other governing municipality on the hook to pay the retirement benefit if invested contributions do not grow to the defined benefit amount. A 401(k)-style plan, on the other hand, is called “defined contribution” plan and does not guarantee a particular benefit amount, leaving the city with no risk. The appellate court’s ruling potentially saves San Diego millions of dollars that it could have been forced to spend creating pensions for roughly 2,000 workers hired since 2012. Michael Sweet, partner at Fox Rothschild, said this legal fight is ending with a whimper. “Certainly if the court had gone the other way, it might have taken some of the wind out of the sail of pension reform efforts,” said Sweet. “But it isn’t a grand ruling on the questions that are still out there: Under what circumstances, if any, can changes be made to pension plans of existing public employees?” California has long been a battleground for the fight over public pension reform. The largest debt for most California cities and counties is pension liability. Pensions were also a significant factor in the recent municipal bankruptcies of Vallejo, Stockton and San Bernardino, but pensions were not cut in those cases. Reporting by Robin Respaut; Editing by James Dalgleish

2016-08-23

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Aug 23 (Reuters) - Baida Group : * Says Ying Zheng resigned from general manager Source text in Chinese: goo.gl/CT3AuN Further company coverage: (Beijing Headline News)

2017-03-03

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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s unexpectedly strong economic growth since last June’s Brexit vote may be starting to fade as inflation picks up, according to a major business survey that chimed with notes of caution from several top companies. Slowing consumer spending started to hurt services companies in February, an unpromising signal for the economy ahead of Britain’s divorce with the European Union, Friday’s Markit/CIPS UK Services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) showed. As finance minister Philip Hammond puts the final touches on his first annual budget on March 8, the survey is likely to reinforce his sense that Britain’s strong growth since last year’s vote to leave the EU will fade this year. The services PMI fell to a five-month low of 53.3 from 54.5 in January and suggested the economy is now expanding at a quarterly pace of around 0.4 percent - much slower than the 0.7 percent expansion during the fourth quarter of 2016. Sterling slid to a seven-week low against the dollar after the PMI was published, prompting investors to discount further the chance of the Bank of England raising record low interest rates any time soon. Lacklustre reports from major British companies added to the sense of a tougher 2017 for the economy than last year. Advertising giant WPP WPP., the kind of company regarded by analysts as a bellwether for the economy, warned of a tough economic background and its forecast for growth this year came in below analyst forecasts. Earlier this week, British broadcaster ITV (ITV.L) reported the first decline in advertising revenue since 2009. Britain’s economy expanded faster than most of its developed world peers in 2016 but economists think rising inflation is starting to weigh on consumers and business profit margins, something corroborated by the PMI survey. “Notwithstanding the disappointment, that is what everyone has been expecting to happen - we just hoped we were wrong,” said Alan Clarke, head of European fixed income strategy at Scotiabank, on the PMI. Data company Markit said some firms in its survey reported cautious spending by British consumers. It highlighted strong inflation pressure with input costs and selling prices in services companies increasing at the fastest rates since mid-2008 when consumer price inflation hit more than 5 percent. “Weaker consumer spending was a key cause of slower service sector growth, suggesting that household budgets are starting to crack under the strain of higher prices and weak wage growth,” Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit, said. Despite the inflation pressure, Williamson said the PMI’s fall left it around levels more consistent with a further rate cut by the Bank of England than an increase. Last month BoE Governor Mark Carney said he remained convinced that inflation would go above the bank’s 2 percent target only temporarily and due entirely to the fall in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote, rather than more deep-seated price pressures. The pound may have further to fall, a Reuters poll of foreign exchange strategists and economists showed on Thursday. [GBP/POLL] Prime Minister Theresa May intends to trigger the formal process for separating from the EU by the end of this month. Although growth slowed in February, services firms remained confident about their prospects in the next 12 months, with optimism running just below January’s eight-month high. Editing by Toby Chopra

2017-09-19 16:25:00

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Sometimes practicality and sensibility go out the window in the name of creativity. As of late, one woman ignored all warning labels and coated her face with permanent, pink, glitter poster paint; someone else took eyeshadow inspiration from Hurricane Irma's satellite images. Today's break from reality and general wearability: cartoon-inspired, 3-D nail art from the popular Japanese comic series, Sailor Moon. One super fan and manicurist from Thailand took his fandom to the extreme by recreating the character figurines — and putting them atop his finger nails. And yes, it's just as impressive as it is impractical. Wuudy, a nail salon based in Thailand, posted the image to Instagram, and you can see that the manicurist designed a 3-D, acrylic manicure that is quite possibly the most intricate (not to mention, heavy) hand of nail art that we've ever seen. Based on the cartoon comic characters — which, considering the entire Sailor Moon squad is present on his fingers — it's safe to assume he's a fan. If you're wondering how in the hell he did it, turns out these acrylic characters are attached to the nails using small, magnetic attachments. The Instagram images show that the characters' heads and necks are glued to the actual nails, and the lower parts are attached using magnets. (The latter meaning that the the leg pieces can be removed from the torsos in case he needs to, you know, make food or use the bathroom.) While we're definitely impressed by the manicurist's dedication, you have to wonder: Don't your fingers get sore from all that weight? As for us, we'll stick to a more wearable nail trend, like a constellation design if we're feeling wild, or something that can be dotted-on with a Q-tip. Hey, we still have to type. Related Video: Read these stories next: The Real Reason This Woman Put On A Face Of Makeup While In Labor 9 Insider Hacks From Former Sephora Employees Under-$20 Makeup The Pros Actually Swear By

2018-11-02 10:30:01

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What to Cook Good morning. Tejal Rao delivered a paean to mushrooms in her “Eat” column in The New York Times Magazine this week, and it’s a delight to read, down to her imagining of a “20th-century food writer, rain boots caked with mud,” emerging from the woods with baskets full of wild varieties identified by sight amid the fallen leaves. This made me think of my late father, with whom I used to hunt pheasant in the fall. Often he’d disappear from the corn field or swale we were working, slowly move away from the dog and the birds, head off into the forest to return an hour or so later, the twin barrels of his gun broken over his arm, holding a hat full of late-season chanterelles, or a giant puffball. He was prouder of those finds than of any shot he took. Like Tejal, I think mushrooms are perhaps best expressed in the medium of cream. This recipe for mushroom toasts makes that argument plain. But also like Tejal I was delighted and amazed by this recipe for pickled roasted mushrooms (above) that she learned from the chef Patch Troffer, of Marlow & Sons in Brooklyn. Make that dish this weekend to eat with toast and, as Tejal suggests, a spoonful of crème fraîche. Then maybe you could make rigatoni with white Bolognese for dinner on Saturday night, with herbed garlic bread on the side? Set your clocks back after dinner, please. Daylight savings ends at 2 a.m. Sunday. Celebrate with migas breakfast tacos when you arise? (Soundtrack: Migos, of course, “Bad and Boujee.”) Here’s a recipe for a simple roast chicken. I include it because come Sunday you’re going to need some cooked chicken to shred into this recipe for Buffalo chicken dip. To serve with these stuffed jalapeños. And with these loaded nachos. Because: It’s Packers versus Patriots at 8:20 p.m. in the East. If you’re not watching the game, though, or if you are watching the game but the notion of stuffed jalapeños and Buffalo chicken dip makes you tired, try this Vietnamese-style dinner instead: rice noodles with seared pork, carrots and herbs. Whichever, do make sure to leave some time to sketch out some plans for Thanksgiving, now coming up on three weeks away. You could cook the whole feast on the day itself. That’s fun. But it might be better to avail yourself of our menu planner. At the very least, you could choose a turkey recipe. Me, I’m making stock. Join me? The recipe calls for a turkey carcass. You can roast some fresh wings or necks instead. That will take longer than we call for in the recipe — like, an hour? But then you can proceed apace. Thousands more recipes to cook this weekend await on NYT Cooking. Go browse among them (you’ll need a subscription) and see what you think. If anything goes wrong or you run into trouble when you’re there, write for help: cookingcare@nytimes.com. We will get back to you. Or reach us via Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. I’m available, too, though lousy with both technology and business rules. Existential dread, good new novels, the thin line between culture and politics? That’s me: foodeditor@nytimes.com. Also, @samsifton. Now, and more about food and hospitality than you’d think, check out Vince Dixon in Eater, with a history of the complicated African-American spiritual leader and restaurateur Father Major Jealous Divine, founder of the International Peace Mission movement. The San Francisco Chronicle recently published a “Food & Home” issue dedicated to the subject of matriarchy. It is wildly difficult to link to its content on the Chronicle website, I’m sorry to say, but Paolo Lucchesi, the paper’s food editor, thoughtfully published a thread on Twitter that provides clear entrances to the articles. They are legion and fascinating and worth your time. Finally, and some distance in subject matter from pick-your-own apple orchards and heritage-breed turkeys, today is the anniversary of the coronation of Haile Selassie as emperor of Ethiopia in 1930. He was named King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah. So this is Sizzla: “Praise Ye Jah.” See you on Sunday. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the beginning of daylight saving time. It began on March 11, not Nov. 4, the date when it will end. cooking cooking

2019-11-08 00:00:00

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(For a live blog on European stocks, type LIVE/ in an Eikon news window) * FTSE 100, FTSE 250 down 0.4% * Miners, HSBC slip as trade uncertainty prevails * British Airways owner falls after cutting forecast Nov 8 (Reuters) - A 3% drop in British Airways owner IAG led London’s FTSE 100 lower on Friday, as doubts about a U.S.-China trade deal halted a five-day winning streak for European markets. The main index was down 0.4% in early trade, with miners and Asia-focused bank HSBC also down after a report that Beijing and Washington’s “phase one” trade deal faced opposition on multiple fronts. The FTSE 250, up more than 1% to a three-week high a on Thursday after two Bank of England policymakers unexpectedly voted for lower interest rates, also shed 0.4%. (Reporting by Shashwat Awasthi in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham)

2019-03-26

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Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it has removed more accounts from Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo, citing what it described as  "coordinated inauthentic behavior." A total of 2,632 pages, groups, and accounts were removed from Facebook and Instagram for operations linked to the above mentioned countries, the social media platform said. 513 of those accounts were tied to Iran, while 1,907 were linked to Russia, Facebook said. The accounts tied to Russia were largely removed for spam with a small portion of those engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior, according to the statement. Facebook also said the pages and accounts were removed for their behavior and not content. The social media platform has recently been cracking down on such accounts in many countries after coming under fire in the last two years for its self-admitted sluggishness in developing tools to combat extremist content and propaganda operations. The company had also removed certain accounts tied to Iran earlier in January.

2017-06-14 13:45:00

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When it comes to the delicate balance between intimacy and privacy, even the closest couples will probably admit that there are at least some things they keep hidden from each other in their relationship. Or are there? In the case of #couplegoals reigning champs Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, it seems that there are fewer mysteries in the pair's marriage than Teigen once thought. In a new interview with Marie Claire, Teigen recounts the mortifying experience of finding out that her hubby was privy to a secret she firmly believed was hers, and hers alone alone — safely tucked away in a small, dark crevice. "John and I had a double date, and we were joking around, and I go, 'John's never seen my butthole,'" said the cover star — prompting Legend to shine some sunlight on the truth about his unsuspecting wife's derrière. Teigen continued, "And John says, 'Are you kidding? Every time anyone does anything doggy style, you see a butthole. I see it every time.'" Oh, dear. So, how did the 31-year-old supermodel take this traumatizing revelation? "I was like, 'We are never doing it doggy style again,'" said the July cover star. We can't tell how serious Teigen is being, here. But it definitely wasn't Legend's intention to eliminate that position from the bedroom when he unsheathed the naked truth. Lesson learned? Honesty is still always a good policy — butt sometimes, it might come back to bite you in the ass. Read These Stories Next:Are The Kardashians Doing Women A Disservice By Hiding Their Nannies On KUWTK? The Hottest Movie Sex Scenes, Ever (NSFW)This Actress Fired The Nanny Who Wanted To "F**k Her Husband's Brains Out"

2019-02-08

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(CNN)There's no indication that Americans like Howard Schultz two weeks into the rollout of his possible independent run for president; he had the worst numbers of any potential candidate tested, only one-in-five said they were likely to support him if he were to run in 2020, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released Wednesday. Schultz falls behind Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (21% likely to support), New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (22%), and the other billionaire businessman thinking about running -- former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (27%), who built a media company that bears his name and now might run for president as a Democrat. Schultz was tied with Bloomberg for those who said they were "not likely at all" to support the two candidates. They follow the more than half of Americans who said they were "not likely at all" to support President Donald Trump, according to the poll. Americans were 11 times more likely to say they were not at all inclined to vote for him (44%) than to say they were very likely to back him (4%). The number of people ruling him out at this point might be especially frustrating for Schultz, who is in the midst of a public tour pushing a possible run. He's a former Democrat who says his main goal is to defeat Trump, but has gained a lot of attention in recent weeks by attacking Democratic candidates for their progressive positions on health care and taxes. Schultz will be on a book tour this upcoming week and participating in a CNN town hall on February 12th. Schultz also had low name recognition, almost half of Americans (46%) had never heard of him, 13% had a favorable opinion and 22% who saw him as unfavorable. Just 4% in the poll said they were very likely to support Schultz in the 2020 race and another 16% said they were somewhat likely to support him. But there is also indication that Democrats may not be correct with their concerns Schultz could take votes away from their candidate that should he be on the ballot for the general election in November, 2020. The poll suggests that he is most appealing to groups that, generally, have supported Trump. Men, white Americans, and those who approve of the job Trump is doing as president are the most likely to say they'll support Schultz if he runs in 2020. Those who were least likely to say they'll support a Schultz run were Democrats (15% very or somewhat likely), women (16%) and non-white Americans (16%). Independents are one of the groups who are slightly more likely to support Schultz's bid for President, but they don't necessarily see him in a positive light. Twenty-two percent of independents reported they were very or somewhat likely to support him as a potential candidate, while only 14% of independents see him in a positive light. The CNN poll was conducted by SSRS January 30 through February 2 among a random national sample of 1,011 adults reached on landlines or cellphones by a live interviewer. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points, it is larger for subgroups

2017-10-19 00:00:00

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SOCHI/MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin launched one of his most stinging critiques of U.S. foreign policy on Thursday, listing what he called some of the biggest betrayals in U.S.-Russia relations. He declined to say if he would run for a fourth presidential term in an election set for March, though he is expected to stand after dominating Russian politics for 18 years. Instead, he used a high-profile televised discussion with foreign academics in southern Russia to reach back to what he regards as the darkest days of U.S.-Russia relations. Opinion polls suggest that harsh rhetoric towards the West plays well with many Russian voters, who credit Putin for restoring national pride and standing up to what they see as Western encroachment. Asked by a Germany-based academic to identify what mistakes Moscow had made in its relations with the West, Putin told the Valdai discussion forum in the Black Sea resort of Sochi: “Our biggest mistake was that we trusted you too much. You interpreted our trust as weakness and you exploited that.” Visibly angry at times, Putin cast Russia as the wronged party and its post-Soviet leadership as too naive and trusting. “Unfortunately, our Western partners, having divided the USSR’s geopolitical legacy, were certain of their own incontestable righteousness having declared themselves the victors of the ‘Cold War,’” said Putin. “They started to openly interfere in the sovereign affairs of countries and to export democracy in the same way as in their time the Soviet leadership tried to export the Socialist revolution to the whole world.” Putin said U.S.-Russia relations were in a lamentable state, referencing an “unprecedented” anti-Russian campaign in the United States, the closure of Russian diplomatic facilities there and pressure on Russian media by U.S. authorities. He did not single out U.S. President Donald Trump for personal criticism, but said Trump’s behavior was unpredictable as a result of political foes who were preventing him from fulfilling almost all of his policy pledges. Putin said the United States was trying to squeeze Russia out of European energy markets with its latest batch of sanctions, which Trump grudgingly signed into law in August after Congress approved them. “The recent sanctions package adopted by the U.S. Congress was openly designed to push Russia out of European energy markets and to force Europe to switch to more expensive liquefied natural gas from the United States, even though the volumes there are not yet sufficient,” he said. He criticized Trump’s predecessors, describing how he believed the United States had betrayed Russia in the 1990s by not reciprocating what he called the unprecedented access Moscow gave Washington to Russia’s secret nuclear facilities. He said the United States had flouted nuclear and chemical weapons treaties, saying Moscow had diligently complied with the same pacts only to be repeatedly let down by the United States. His speech and ripostes in a punchy question and answer session that followed often sounded like a history lesson. The United States had tried to stir up separatism in southern Russia in the 1990s, said Putin, something he said he knew for a fact from his stint leading the FSB spy agency. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia were bad, he said. And in comments that could have been drawn straight from the pages of the Cold War, Putin accused the United States of upsetting the strategic nuclear balance by modernizing its arsenal of weapons. Russia would develop new weapons systems, he pledged, if it was forced to, and if the United States withdrew from a landmark arms control treaty — the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty — Russia would hit back fast. “From our side, the response will be instant, and I want to warn, symmetrical,” said Putin. (This version of the story was refiled to fix a typo in the headline) Additional reporting by Maria Kiselyova, Vladimir Soldatkin, Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber, Denis Pinchuk, Dmitry Solovyov and Christian Lowe in Moscow; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg

2018-04-11 18:37:00

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The sexual assault case against Kevin Spacey have been turned over to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for further review, PEOPLE confirms. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department released the following statement to PEOPLE, saying: “The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Special Victims Bureau began an investigation into allegations of a sexual assault involving Mr. Kevin Spacey on December 11, 2017. The events were reported to have taken place in October of 1992 in West Hollywood involving a male adult. The investigation was completed and presented to the District Attorney’s Office Entertainment Industry Sex Crimes Task Force on April 5, 2018, for review and filing consideration.” A spokesperson for the D.A.’s office confirmed but did not provide further comment. The first allegation against Spacey was brought forward in October by actor Anthony Rapp, who alleged Spacey had previously made inappropriate sexual advances toward him when he was a teen. In response, Spacey issued a statement on Twitter addressing the allegations — and came out as gay. “I have a lot of respect and admiration for Anthony Rapp as an actor. I’m beyond horrified to hear his story,” he said. “I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.” “This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life,” Spacey continued. “I know that there are stories out there about me and that some have been fueled by the fact that I have been so protective of my privacy. As those closes to me know, in my life, I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic relationships with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man. I want to deal with this honestly and openly and that starts with examining my own behavior.” Several more people accused the actor of sexual harassment or assault, and Scotland Yard currently has several open investigations into alleged assaults by Spacey in London. He was also fired from the final season of his Emmy-winning Netflix drama, House of Cards. In November, he entered a treatment facility.

2016-05-06

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May 6 (Reuters) - Mediatek Inc * Says April sales at T$23 billion ($710.03 million) Source text in Chinese: bit.ly/24wSxMy Further company coverage: ($1 = 32.3930 Taiwan dollars) (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)

2019-02-03 17:00:00

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What’s Going On in This Picture? Updated: Feb. 7, 2019 Students 1. After looking closely at the image above, think about these three questions: • What is going on in this picture? • What do you see that makes you say that? • What more can you find? 2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.) 3. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly. Each Monday, our collaborator, Visual Thinking Strategies, will facilitate a discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern Time by paraphrasing comments and linking to responses to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own. 4. On Thursday afternoons, we will reveal at the bottom of this post more information about the photo. How does reading the caption and learning its back story help you see the image differently? _________ More? • See all images in this series or a slide show of 40 of our favorite images. • Learn how other teachers use it. • Read our introductory post. • Find out about the philosophy, curriculum and professional development opportunities offered by Visual Thinking Strategies. _________ Updated: Feb. 7, 2019 This week’s image comes from the Jun. 11, 2010 “Pictures of the Day: South Africa and Elsewhere” on the New York Times Lens blog. The original caption reads: Costa Rica’s education minister, Leonardo Garnier, authorized all schools across the country to have a television in their classrooms to watch the World Cup matches. A class in San José watched Mexico and South Africa play. Juan Carlos Ulate is the photographer.

2018-08-19 01:00:04

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The season finale of “The Affair” airs and a new show, “Dying to Belong,” debuts. THE AFFAIR 9 p.m. on Showtime. This show deals with the emotional tumult and collateral damage of an extramarital affair from the perspectives of the different people involved. The effect is different depictions of the same events as they might have happened, depending on whom you believe. Mike Hale wrote in The New York Times, “We come to the show for steamy adult melodrama, but we stay for the sheer spectacle of grown-ups acting, over and over, like petulant children.” KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS 9 p.m. on E. Season 15 of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” is underway and so far the main plotline has involved an ongoing fight among the sisters. In tonight’s episode, however, Kris tries to get a pregnant Khloé to loosen up by eating dozens of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Khloé, however, is trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle and feels misunderstood. Also on the episode, Kim studies mortuary cosmetology. DYING TO BELONG 7 p.m. on Oxygen. This new true-crime show documents the lives of obsessive individuals who are driven by a need for acceptance or a desire for access. In this series debut, a wealthy couple, Pam and Gary Triano, live the high life until Mr. Triano is killed in an explosion outside the country club where he golfs. CITY OF ANGELS, 7 p.m. on Dateline. In this hourlong production, Craig Melvin from NBC News reports on the homeless epidemic. Mr. Melvin will speak to residents of San Fernando Valley and Venice, Calif., about the growing homeless population in those areas. He will also chronicle the efforts of the violinist Vijay Gupta, whose dismay at the homeless crisis on Skid Row, just a few blocks from the Los Angeles philharmonic where he works, spurred him to create a music program for the homeless population. THE GOLDEN COMPASS (2007) on Netflix. In this fantasy world, based on the novel by Philip Pullman, children are born with shape-shifting animal companions that eventually settle into one permanent form as the child reaches adulthood. Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) is one such child, who leaves her life in the intellectual enclave of Jordan College for an adventure in the Far North. She soon encounters a mysterious and deceitful villain, Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), and uncovers a menacing organization called “The Magisterium.” The New York Times’s co-chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, lauded the choice of Ms. Kidman as Mrs. Coulter, calling the character a “goddess of icy perfection” who was “wickedly well-cast.” The film is a fairly faithful adaptation of Mr. Pullman’s novel, although it ends before the novel does, leaving some elements of the plot unrealized in the film. The film was directed by Chris Weitz and also stars Daniel Craig.

2018-06-19 00:00:00

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* Risk sentiment hurt as Trump threatens China with new tariffs * China shares slump almost 4 percent * MSCI Asia-Pacific index slides to lowest since early February * European stocks 1-1.5 percent lower, Wall Street futures down 1-1.3 pct * Industrial metals fall around 2 percent, oil waits on OPEC By Marc Jones LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) - Chinese stocks fell almost 4 percent and alarm bells rang across global markets on Tuesday, as trade tensions between the United States and China escalated further. The yuan also hit a five-month low overnight after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 10 percent tariff on another $200 billion of Chinese goods. Beijing in turn warned about $50 billion of retaliatory penalties on U.S. goods . Asian stocks wilted to a four-month low and Australia’s dollar, South Africa’s rand and the euro were among a diverse group of currencies caught in the crossfire. Europe’s main equity benchmarks sank 1 to 1.5 percent and Wall Street futures were pointing to similar declines, while Government bonds and the Japanese yen rallied as investors sought protection. “You only have to look at how far the main Shanghai index has fallen to see that people would probably want some safe-haven assets at this point,” said DZ Bank analyst Andy Cossor. China’s falls came after it had warned it would take “qualitative” and “quantitative” measures if the U.S. government published an additional list of tariffs on its products. The trade frictions have unnerved financial markets, with investors and businesses increasingly worried that a full-blown trade battle could derail global growth. “Trump appears to be employing a similar tactic he used with North Korea, by blustering first in order to gain an advantage in negotiations,” said Kota Hirayama, senior emerging markets economist at SMBC Nikko Securities in Tokyo. “The problem is, such a tactic is unlikely to work with China.” Shares of planemaker Boeing, which have acted as a proxy for U.S. - China tensions in recent months as it is the single largest U.S. exporter to the country, fell 2.1 percent U.S. ‘premarket’ moves. Overnight the Shanghai Composite Index had slumped nearly 5 percent at one point to its lowest level since mid-2016, as more than 1,000 stocks slumped by their 10 percent daily limit. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng also shed as much 3 percent and MSCI’s Asia-Pacific index fell 1.9 percent to its lowest since early December. The losses had intensified through the day as the rout deepened in China. China’s economy is already clouded by a sharp slowdown in fixed asset investment growth because of the government’s de-leveraging drive, a problematic property sector, mounting debt and rising credit defaults. “The rising risk of a disruptive trade conflict makes a bad situation tentatively worse,” economists at Nomura wrote. Japan’s Nikkei lost 1.8 percent and South Korea’s KOSPI retreated 1.5 percent. Australian stocks bucked the trend and stayed steady, helped by a depreciating currency and an overnight bounce in commodity prices. The dollar fell 0.75 percent to 109.715 yen following Trump’s tariff comments. The yen is often sought in times of market turmoil and political tensions. Most other currencies lost against the dollar, though. The U.S. currency gained 0.6 percent on the euro to a near 11-month high at $1.1554. The skid by China’s yuan to a five-month low was its biggest fall in a year and a half. The Australian dollar , often considered a proxy for China-related trades, brushed a one-year low of $0.7381 too. “In the global environment - and due in particular to this trade issue - the risks are more on the downward side and a little bit worrying,” European Central Bank policymaker Jan Smets said in a CNBC interview. “Basically it is not good news.” With Russia and Saudi Arabia pushing for higher output, crude oil markets remained volatile ahead of Friday’s OPEC meeting. Brent crude futures fell 0.6 percent to $74.88 a barrel after rallying 2.5 percent overnight, while U.S. light crude futures retreated 1.4 percent to $65.27. Lower-risk assets gained on the latest round of trade threats. Spot gold was steady at $1,282.26 an ounce. The 10-year U.S. Treasury note yield - yields move inversely to price - touched 2.871 percent, its lowest since June 1. Most European yields dropped, too, with Germany’s 10-year government Bund, the benchmark for the region, at a two-week low of 0.363 percent. At the same time, Italian government bonds, which are considered less safe and have suffered from recent domestic political ructions, sold off, with their 10-year yields up 2 bps at 2.58 percent. But the stress was highest in emerging markets, where the average yield on domestic currency debt was the highest since March 2017 and fast approaching 7 percent. Industrial metals also buckled with copper tumbling 1.9 percent in its ninth fall in the last 10 sessions and nickel down 2.1 percent. “Escalation (of trade tensions) is a sort of impossible thing to forecast, but if it stops at this level you have probably created some nice risk premia in Asia and emerging markets,” said Hans Peterson, global head of asset allocation at SEB Investment Management. “So if it doesn’t get worse, it is probably a buying opportunity.” Additional reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan in London and Shinichi Saoshiro in Tokyo Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg

2018-05-07 14:59:00

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On Tuesday, NASA announced that it completed its first full-power test of the Kilopower reactor, an experimental portable nuclear power plant that the agency hopes will one day power permanent settlements on Mars and the Moon. It’s a major milestone in the quest to establish a permanent human presence on other celestial bodies and launch energy intensive robotic missions to the outer solar system. About the size of a refrigerator, each Kilopower reactor will be capable of delivering up to 10 kilowatts of energy when they are ready to be deployed in space. To put this in perspective, this means each Kilopower reactor produces enough energy to power about 10 average American homes on Earth. NASA estimates that an array of four Kilopower reactors would be enough to sustain a decent-sized outpost on the moon or Mars for about a decade. Although the Kilopower reactor has been in development since 2012, testing on a 1- kilowatt prototype only began in November. The testing program, called the Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY), was undertaken at the Nevada National Security Site and meant to study the integrity of the reactor design in conditions similar to those in deep space. After placing the reactor in a vacuum chamber, researchers subjected the device to all kinds of critical failure scenarios, like power reduction, engine failure, and heat pipe failure. The experiments culminated in a full-power test that kept the reactor online for 28 hours. Everything worked flawlessly, even when the reactor was dealing with several failures at once. “We put the system through its paces,” Marc Gibson, the lead Kilopower engineer at NASA Glenn, said in a statement. “We understand the reactor very well, and this test proved that the system works the way we designed it to work. No matter what environment we expose it to, the reactor performs very well.” This is great news for NASA, which has struggled since its inception to integrate nuclear reactors and space exploration. After billions of dollars spent on nuclear reactor designs that never made it to orbit, much less the moon, the KRUSTY program was the first successful test of a nuclear reactor intended for space applications over half-a-century. In fact, it is the first new operable fission reactor concept designed in the US in over 40 years. It heralds the beginning of a nuclear-powered era of space exploration, which will open the door to previously impossible missions into deep space, whether this is powering settlements on Mars or using robotic submarines to explore the icy oceans of Jovian moons. On the moon and Mars, the most likely candidates for future human settlements, sources of energy are hard to come by. Unless Mars was once home to organic life, we’re not going to find any oil or coal there since these fossil fuels are mostly formed from dead plant matter. (Although Mars may harbor pockets of methane gas.) If Mars ever had an ocean or rivers, they have long since dried up, so no hydropower. The moon has no atmosphere and thus no way to harvest wind energy. Parts of the face of the moon can be shaded from the sun for stretches lasting up to 14 days, whereas Mars’ distance from the sun makes it hard to harvest enough solar power on the surface to power a rover, much less an entire settlement. “When we start sending astronauts for long stays on the Moon and to other planets, that’s going to require a new class of power that we’ve never needed before,” Gibson said. Shipping oil, coal, or the components for vast solar arrays to the moon or Mars is far too resource intensive to be practical—that stuff is heavy, and every pound sent to space costs about $10,000 to get there. NASA needed a relatively lightweight, yet highly efficient energy source if it ever hoped to establish a long-term human presence on the moon or Mars. Enter uranium-235, the radioactive material that powers nuclear power plants around the world and is one of the most energy dense materials known on Earth. In fact, just one pound of enriched uranium fuel can produce as much energy as about 3 million pounds of coal. NASA only needs a few dozen kilowatts worth of power for its initial lunar or Martian outposts. Since most nuclear power plants on Earth are designed to produce hundreds of kilowatts electricity, this meant that Gibson and his colleagues would have to come up with a new fission reactor design. Not only would it have to be compact enough to fit in a rocket fairing, it would also have to be powerful enough to host a settlement and designed in such a way that it could withstand the harsh space environment. If Gibson and his colleagues were successful, it would be an unprecedented feat of nuclear engineering. In the last half century, over 40 nuclear reactors have been sent to space and almost all of them were Soviet. The only nuclear reactor that the US has ever sent to space was the SNAP-10A, a reactor developed by the Atomic Energy Agency and launched in 1965 to test its feasibility as a power supply for the CORONA satellite spy program. The reactor was able to produce 500 watts of power and was in low earth orbit for 43 days before the Air Force decommissioned the satellite. It is still in orbit as a piece of space junk and is predicted to remain there for another 4,000 years. Nevertheless, nuclear power continued to play a major role in US space exploration, even if reactors had been tossed to the wayside. SNAP-10A, the only nuclear reactor the US ever sent to space. Image: Wikimedia Commons Since the 1960s, almost every major NASA mission into deep space has relied on electricity produced by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). These types of electric generators have no moving parts and don’t rely on nuclear fission. Instead, an array of electric conductors harvest the heat released by the natural decay of radioactive material (usually plutonium) and convert this heat into electrical energy. RTGs powered the Voyager 1, the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space; they powered the Cassini mission to Saturn for 20 years; they powered the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond; and continue to power a number of satellites and rovers on and around Mars. They are an ideal power supply for spacecraft insofar as they can produce a steady supply of electrical energy for decades with a relatively small amount of fuel. RTGs are, however, limited to an output of a few hundred watts. While this is enough to meet the demands of most spacecraft, which need to take measurements and communicate with Earth, more demanding robotic missions, like sending a submarine into the oceans of Europa, will demand a lot more energy. Nuclear fission is the process of splitting the nucleus of an atom, usually with a neutron, which releases a tremendous amount of energy. At the same time, the split knocks other neutrons loose from the nucleus, which themselves split other atoms. This results in a cascading process of nuclear fission and a constant supply of heat energy. This process has been used to make the most destructive weapons ever created, as well as providing a relatively clean source of energy for civilian applications. (The downside of nuclear energy is that we still don’t know how to properly dispose of the waste, which remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years.) In a nuclear reactor, the heat released by splitting the nucleus of an atom—usually uranium-235—is used to heat water and generate steam, which turns a turbine to generate electricity. While this works well enough on Earth, conventional power plants are too big to build on the moon or Mars, and definitely wouldn’t fit inside a spacecraft. Smaller fission reactors are found on naval vessels like aircraft carriers and submarines, but these types of reactors also use steam to generate electricity. This precludes them from being adapted to space applications because they require a lot of water to work and water is a precious commodity in space. NASA considered various reactor designs for space applications after launching its only reactor in 1965, but most of these designs were considered too expensive to make and would require too much of a runway to ever be made in time for particular missions. The SP-100 reactor prototype developed in the 1980s was terminated after a decade and more than a billion dollars was spent on research. NASA’s Project Prometheus began in the early 2000s to investigate the use of nuclear reactors in space for propulsion and powering flight systems, but was terminated after nearly $400 million was spent on research and development. The Kilopower reactor is put in a vacuum chamber for the KRUSTY project. Image: NASA After decades of failing to take a reactor design from paper into orbit, NASA joined forces with the Department of Energy and Lockheed Martin in 2008 to pursue a nuclear power source called an advanced Stirling radioisotope generator (ASRG) that would be four times as efficient as RTGs. The efficiency gains result from using a Stirling converter, a type of engine that relies on the heating and cooling of a gas to convert heat energy into electricity. The basic idea was that energy released by natural radioactive decay would be used to heat a gas, which would then expand. This pressure created by the expanding gas would be used to power an electric generator to produce electricity for a spacecraft. It was a novel design, but the research program on ASRG was mothballed in 2012 after costs began to drift tens of millions of dollars over budget without an end in sight. That same year, however, researchers at NASA Glenn and the DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory achieved a breakthrough in a different type of nuclear power source that also relied on a Stirling converter. Keeping with the Simpsons themed acronyms, the Demonstration Using Flattop Fissions (DUFF) used nuclear fission, rather than natural radioactive decay, as an energy source for a Stirling converter. The energy produced during fission is used to heat a sodium fluid in a “heat pipe,” and this heat is used to drive a Stirling converter which converts the heat energy into the mechanical motion needed to drive an electrical generator. Although DUFF only produced about 24 watts of power during its tests—not enough to power most light bulbs—it was the first successful test of a nuclear reactor intended for space applications made by NASA in nearly half-a-century. Its design prefigured Kilopower, which built on insights gleaned from the experiment to create a working prototype. The Kilowatt reactor prototype that has been tested over the last few months uses two Stirling converters (the reactors that will eventually be sent to space will have eight converters) to produce up to 1 kilowatt of power. It’s core is a solid piece of uranium-235 that is about the size of a paper towel roll and a rod of boron carbide acts as a neutron moderator to control the bombardment of the uranium by neutrons. Before flight, the boron carbide would be fully inserted into the reactor to prevent a fission reaction. Once it is extracted, however, the fission reaction will begin and cannot be stopped completely, although the rate of fission—and hence heat output—can be controlled by the depth of the boron rod in the reactor. The heat from the fission reaction is used to heat liquid sodium, which transfers this heat to eight Stirling engines that convert the heat into mechanical motion to drive electric generators and produce electricity. The StirlingStriling engines used in the prototype were repurposed from the failed ASRG experiments, although McClure said custom Stirling engines will be developed for missions in the future. One of the most staggering things about this design, however, is that this working nuclear reactor prototype was produced for only $18 million, an order of magnitude less than previous designs that never made it beyond the drawing board. “When we got started, we looked at all the projects that had gone on before us,” Patrick McClure, the lead Kilopower engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory told me on the phone. “We felt they made some mistakes by trying to build what I’m going to call a ‘sporty’ reactor. By sporty I mean they’re trying to get a lot of power for as low of a weight as possible. Some of their design choices were really pushing the bounds of engineering.” An artist conception of four Kilopower units on Mars. NASA estimates that four reactors could power an initial outpost for a decade. Image: NASA Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, McClure said he and his colleagues working on Kilopower opted for more simple, cost effective reactor designs. “We’d much rather have a reactor that’s real then one that’s a great design, but only exists on paper," McClure said. "We don’t want this to die.” McClure told me that he and his colleagues are excited that the reactor works, but that there’s still a lot of work to do before it gets to space, much less a lunar or Martian colony. In addition to a safety review by NASA and an “ independent, interagency nuclear safety review panel,” it will need to be integrated into a specific mission so that the prototype can be designed to accommodate that mission’s needs. He said the Kilopower team is working with NASA management to determine the future of Kilopower, which will need to be tested in space before it's brought to the surface of the moon or Mars. “We're excited and relieved that we got the test done, but anxious about where we go next,” McClure said. “Our ultimate goal is to get a nuclear reactor back in space, and if NASA’s ever going to use the reactor, you have to prove to the folks doing missions that it will really work in space.” “There's clearly a desire to try to put one on the moon, but that might not happen until the mid-2020s,” McClure added. “The team would like to get one in space before then, but in the meantime we’ve got to convince some people.”

2016-12-14 10:43:00

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Say hello to baby Esme: the real-life Elf on the Shelf! At only 9 months old, Esme Cope is too young to understand the magical concept behind the famed holiday toy. Instead, her parents decided to make her an elf and post a photo of the their daughter in a new location to her personal Instagram page every day. And we must say, the bubbly baby looks really, really adorable in her pointed hat and red suit. “Esme has such a big personality for having such a little body,” Esme’s mom, Gabi Cope, tells PEOPLE. “I thought maybe photos of her as an elf will help spread some holiday cheer.” Gabi, a 22-year-old professional photographer, says she was inspired to start the social-picture project after a friend told her that Esme “really lights up a room.” “As a photographer, I am always taking photos of Esme,” she explains. “So she’s used to it, and was just like, ‘Okay, Mom, I guess you can take another picture of me!’ “ For the most part, Esme is an “excellent model,” (although she’s recently taken to flinging off her hat) and it usually only takes five or six shots to get the perfect photo in their San Diego home. But if she becomes fussy? “We bribe her with food!” says Gabi with a laugh. “But mostly she’s so awesome on camera.” Need a little inspiration? Click here to subscribe to the Daily Smile Newsletter for uplifting, feel-good stories that brighten up your inbox. Gabi says she and husband, Chad, 28, have gotten amazing feedback from followers. “When Esme’s having a hard day and not up for the costume or a photo, we just think about how these pictures are bringing happiness to others,” she says. “It’s motivating.” Gabi’s favorite photo so far is one of Esme “reading” the children’s book That’s Not Santa! to her favorite stuffed animals. “The way she is looking over to the unicorn really makes you think she is telling them about a fake Santa,” she says. “It reminds me of the scene from Elf where Buddy realizes the Santa in the store isn’t the real Santa!” For her first Christmas, Esme’s parents are surprising her with a toy kitchen (“I can’t wait to see her face when she sees it!” says Cope), puzzles and books. “We’re hoping to make some lasting memories,” she adds. “And then hopefully she’ll have these photos forever too.” The new parents plan on printing out all of the Elf on a Shelf-themed photos of Esme and placing them in a scrapbook for her. “You know, for when she’s older and can understand the photos,” explains Gabi. “Hopefully she’ll laugh at the ridiculousness!” The Copes hope that one day Esme will have a brother or sister to dress up with for fun holiday photoshoots. “So someday we can have two elves on the shelf!” says Gabi.

2020-01-27 00:00:00

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Dr. Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Pfizer board member and the former commissioner of the FDA. Even though there's a lot that we don't know about the novel coronavirus that's burning its ways through China, there are some critical assumptions we should make about its continued spread. First, the epidemic in China is likely much broader than official statistics currently suggest. A lot of mild cases probably remain unrecognized. Even a lot of severe cases are unreported since diagnostic tests were only recently deployed to the front lines of China's healthcare system. Second, global spread appears inevitable. So too are the emergence of outbreaks in the U.S., even if a widespread American epidemic can still be averted. When pockets of the outbreak arrive on our shores, we shouldn't have undue panic. But we need to be ready. The most important public health measures to contain new outbreaks are the early identification and isolation of cases to prevent further spread. Key to applying these measures and limiting spread will be easy access to reliable and rapid diagnostic tests to enable widespread screening. These tools will allow us to identify new cases early and isolate sick individuals. Right now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a test that works by detecting parts of the virus' genome in the blood. CDC is working with the Food and Drug Administration to make this type of test more widely available to public health labs throughout the U.S. The agencies are working to advance the test under an authorization for emergency use. This is a regulatory designation that accelerates the normal FDA clearance process during public health emergencies. The CDC test is fast. It can diagnose a sample in a few hours once a blood specimen reaches a designated lab. The test is likely to be given primarily to state and local public health laboratories. But to adopt more widespread surveillance and diagnosis, we may need a diagnostic that's more readily accessible to providers on the front line of response. This includes tests that can be used right in the doctor's office, clinics, and hospitals – or even at ports of entry. Since the CDC's test requires samples to be sent to a reference lab, screening is largely a clinically driven decision. So, who gets screened is based on an individual's symptoms and their travel history. Only more severe cases that are most likely to have coronavirus are being tested. This approach will work well when the numbers of infected people are low. But if we have wider outbreaks in American cities, then containing further spread will require wider screening. We need to adapt technologies that can allow testing right at the point of care. These kinds of rapid diagnostics exist for diseases like influenza. In the case of flu, a nasal swab is used to make a rapid diagnosis in the doctor's office, where the strip test offers physicians a readable output. These same technologies can be tailored to coronavirus. One approach is based on the use of antibodies that adhere to parts of the virus that contribute to its symptoms called antigens. If virus is present, the antibodies bind to these viral antigens and produce a chemical reaction that signals the presence of an infection.Once a coronavirus is identified in a sick patient, doctors could then rely on more sophisticated tests done in public health and reference labs to confirm whether it's the Wuhan strain. Another approach, using platforms like GeneXpert, can rapidly amplify and detect specific parts of viral RNA. These tests are based on a self-contained machine that's widely used to test for things like hepatitis C. It was also used to screen for Ebola virus. Bringing more of these capabilities to the point of care can improve surveillance and diagnosis. Accurate diagnostics are key to enabling successful public health measures. They allow us to identify and isolate patients and allocate scarce medical resources for isolation and treatment. FDA would need to specifically authorize the adoption of such tests at the point of care, rather than only allow their use in sophisticated labs. In the setting of a wider outbreak public health workers won't be able to broaden testing without diagnostics that can be deployed in the field. Given past experience, we know that the public health labs performing the more sophisticated DNA tests that CDC is aiming to deploy will quickly become overwhelmed in the setting of multiple outbreaks here in the U.S. In that case, to prevent wider spread, what may be most needed are simple, reliable tests that let us screen more widely for the spread of this novel virus.

2016-10-05 13:20:00

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The parents of Jacob Wetterling, the 11-year-old Minnesota boy who vanished in 1989 and whose remains were found last month, have posted a short video to YouTube thanking their thousands of supporters for providing them succor during the decades-long search for their missing son. “We have been strengthened by the love and support of so many in our search for Jacob,” Patty Wetterling says in the 90-second video posted Tuesday. “After such a long time, the suddenness of the answer, the horrific last minutes or hour of Jacob’s life and the finality of his death have been so very hard for us to process.” Jacob was last seen on Oct. 22, 1989, while riding his bike home with his brother and a friend in the small town of St. Joseph, Minnesota. A masked man with a gun approached the boys and forced the three to lie face down in a nearby ditch. After asking the boys to tell him their age, the man told Jacob’s brother and his friend to run into the woods and not look back. Jacob was never seen again. And then, early last month, Daniel Heinrich confessed in open court to abducting, molesting and killing the boy. Heinrich was arrested in October on federal child pornography charges and soon after, authorities named him a person of interest in the Wetterling case. He later led officers to Jacob’s remains and gave a full confession to the crime as part of a plea deal to the porn charges. In return, he will not be prosecuted for Jacob’s death — a “bittersweet” deal authorities have described as the only option to “bring Jacob home.” In the video, dad Jerry Wetterling says the devastating revelation his son was indeed dead for so long has made it hard to sleep, eat, work or think. But he says, “We had to find a way to honor Jacob and strengthen Jacob’s hope for a better and safer world for children.”   According to Patty, her son “believed in a world where children have the right to grow up safe and follow their dreams,” which is now a cause she and her husband are “fighting for.” Patty says in the new video that “we need to build a world where children are not afraid.” To that end, the Wetterlings are urging people to join the #11forJacob movement. Named after the number that graced Jacob’s sports jersey, the movement encourages people to live by 11 simple traits the slain child valued: Be kind, understanding, honest, thankful, a good sport, a good friend, joyful, generous, gentle with others and positive. Heinrich’s federal trial in his child pornography case is set to begin next week in Minneapolis.

2019-10-17 00:00:00

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it has extended by 120 days a waiver to sanctions allowing Iraq to import gas and electricity from Iran as it pushes Baghdad to make the country more energy independent. “The waiver ensures that Iraq is able to meet its short-term energy needs while it takes steps to reduce its dependence on Iranian energy imports,” the State Department said in an emailed statement. “We engage regularly with the Iraqi government to support measures that improve Iraq’s energy independence.” The Trump administration granted the first waiver last year after it re-imposed sanctions on Tehran’s forbidding countries from purchasing Iranian energy. While the administration has pushed Iraq to find alternative resources as it pushes what it calls a maximum pressure campaign on Iran, Iraq has said it will struggle to generate enough electricity unless it continues to use Iranian gas for three to four years. Iraqi Electricity Minister Luay al Khateeb told reporters in Abu Dhabi last month that Iraq now had capacity for 18,000 MW, up from 12,000-15,000 MW last year, but still below peak demand that could reach about 25,000 MW and was rising every year. The minister said the power sector needed investment worth at least $30 billion to upgrade the grid, which was 50 years old and had lost 25% of its capacity due to Islamic State attacks. Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Steve Orlofsky

2019-04-23 00:00:00

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Seven Dreamers, the Japanese company behind the AI-powered laundry-folding robot Laundroid, has filed for bankruptcy. The company is now in the process of selling and transferring its business, it announced on its website today, which was spotted by Bloomberg editor Gearoid Reidy. Backed by companies like Panasonic and Daiwa House, Laundroid had ambitious dreams to be the ultimate wardrobe organizer for the entire household. It had multiple cameras and robotic arms to scan a load of laundry, and used Wi-Fi to connect to a server that would analyze the clothing using AI to figure out the best way to fold it. A companion app was supposed to be able to track every piece of clothing that went through Laundroid, and categorize the clothes by household member. One load of laundry would take a couple hours to be folded, as each T-shirt took about five to ten minutes. That’s how it was supposed to work in theory, anyway — when I tested it out at CES 2018 with my own T-shirt, the machine ate it up and Laundroid engineers had to work for about 15 minutes to pry it out. The explanation was that its cameras couldn’t recognize my black shirt, only the brightly colored demo shirts they’d prepared on hand. I suspected something might be wrong when the company was conspicuously absent at this year’s CES. Meanwhile, rival laundry-folding robot company Foldimate was back for a second year, enjoying large crowds gathered around its prominent booth and giving nonstop demonstrations with a fully working prototype. When I spoke to Seven Dreamers CEO Shin Sakane at CES 2018, he told me that he hoped to eventually bring the $16,000 product down to under $2,000. But according to credit research agency Teikoku Databank, the company racked up over $20 million in debt to 200 creditors while trying to get its product to market. It never actually shipped. It’s sad news for everyone involved, but maybe we don’t need an expensive Wi-Fi-connected machine to do our simple chores for us. After all, now we have Marie Kondo to teach us how to fold fitted sheets.

2018-02-13 18:32:00

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At the Winter Olympics, athletes are being presented with stuffed tigers after they win medals. The tiger — named Soohorang — is the official mascot of the Pyeongchang Games. The athletes still get medals — they're just handed out at a ceremony later in the night, rather than right after the event.

2019-03-05

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U.S. authorities in February arrested more than 66,000 people crossing the southern border illegally, the highest single-month total since March 2009. The February surge follows four months of notably high arrest levels, lending ammunition to President Donald Trump's argument that illegal immigration constitutes a national emergency. Border arrests are a standard metric for the volume of illegal immigration. Border agents have arrested 268,00 people since the start of the fiscal year in October — an average of 53,600 people per month, the highest rate since 2008. Administration officials laid blame on Congress and the courts for encouraging people to migrate illegally, even as Republican resistance grows against Trump’s national emergency declaration. “The system is well beyond capacity, and remains at the breaking point,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Director Kevin McAleenan told reporters. But border arrests still remained well below their levels in the 1990s and the 2000s, when monthly arrest levels were routinely twice as high or greater. In addition to arrests, authorities in February turned away 9,700 people at border points of entry seeking to migrate lawfully, nearly half of them families and unaccompanied children. The numbers are in line with February 2018, when 10,000 were turned away at border checkpoints. The Trump administration announced the numbers today amid growing congressional opposition to Trump's national emergency declaration to secure funding to build a wall along the southern border. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday agreed to take up legislation blocking the declaration of national emergency after it passed the House last week with support from 13 Republicans. “Regardless of anyone’s preferred policy outcome, the status quo is unacceptable,” McAleenan said, calling for Congressional action. CBP officials highlighted an increasing number of large groups and families crossing the border, many of them brought by smugglers to remote locations in Arizona and New Mexico. Since October, authorities have arrested three times as many families crossing the border as during the same time period in fiscal year 2018, burdening detention facilities built for single men. The agency announced a directive Tuesday to provide enhanced medical screenings, prompted by the deaths of an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy and 7-year-old Guatemalan girl in December. The agency said it will build a temporary facility in El Paso, Tex. to provide medical screening for children and families. McAleenan described the changes as a stopgap measure that is “not sustainable.” “Remote locations of the United States border are not safe places to cross, and they are not places to seek medical care,” he said.

2019-02-17

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BEIJING (Reuters) - Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country’s biggest-listed lender by assets, has won approval to set up a wealth management unit, China’s banking and insurance regulator said on Sunday. China’s five major commercial banks that have won a green light to set up wealth management units are preparing to launch operations, the China Banking and Insurance regulatory Commission said in a statement on its website, More banks have submitted applications for establishing such subsidiaries, the regulator said but did not give further details. In December, China issued rules for commercial banks’ wealth management subsidiaries to strengthen their risk management and support the real economy. Reporting by Kevin Yao; Editing by Mark Potter

2017-09-19 00:00:00

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Rick Caruso says O.J. Simpson is free to roam the grounds of The Grove once he gets out of prison later this year ... just so long as he's nicer, and more respectful than Donald Trump. We got the billionaire developer, who owns The Grove, Monday at his famous shopping center and asked if O.J. was welcome. Surprise! Holiday shopping just got more interesting in L.A.! Rick explained he only has issues with folks who are, essentially, meanies ... like he once thought Trump was when he initially banned him. Ditto for Manny Pacquiao. As we told you, O.J.'s Florida-bound, so the point could be moot -- but Caruso, at least, is open to give him a second third chance.

2017-01-30

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TOKYO, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power has found possible nuclear fuel debris below the No.2 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi, the power plant hit by meltdowns after the 2011 tsunami, public broadcaster NHK reported on Monday. Tepco detected a black lump directly below the reactor in an inspection by camera Monday morning but cannot yet confirm what it is, a spokesman told Reuters. The spokesman said Tepco is investigating and will announce its assessment at a regularly scheduled news conference at 6:30 p.m. (0930) GMT on Monday. (Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Chris Gallagher; Editing by Tom Hogue)

2017-03-14

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TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - Seven former felons sued Florida Governor Rick Scott and other state officers on Monday seeking to have their voting rights restored, claiming their disenfranchisement in the state is unconstitutionally arbitrary. Florida is one of four states that strip all former felons of their voting rights. The class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. Northern District of Florida by the non-partisan Fair Elections Legal Network takes aim at the process by which they can seek to regain their voting rights. Measures adopted in 2011 by Scott and other Republican state leaders require ex-felons to wait for five to seven years after completing their sentences before they can apply to regain their vote. Fewer than 2,500 petitions for voting rights restoration have been approved since Scott took office in 2011, while the backlog of applications stands around 10,500, the lawsuit said. Florida’s approach has disenfranchised an estimated 1.6 million people, more than any other state, research shows. The state has maintained some of the nation’s toughest voting rights restrictions, while many other states have taken steps to help convicted criminals regain access to the ballot after the completion of their sentences. Racial minorities are disproportionately impacted by the felon voting restrictions in Florida, which is the largest battleground state in U.S. presidential elections. “Florida’s voting rights situation has become just an unmitigated crisis,” said Jon Sherman, senior counsel with the Washington-based Fair Elections Legal Network, which is working with the firm Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll. State rules give Scott the deciding vote in serious cases on felon voting rights restoration that are heard in person before a clemency board composed of the governor and state cabinet officers. He has denied petitions over traffic tickets incurred after sentences were completed, the lawsuit said. It noted that he asks some, but not all, petitioners to account for histories of alcohol and substance abuse. Scott’s office said it was reviewing the lawsuit. “When it comes to the restoration of voting rights for felons, Governor Scott believes that they have to demonstrate that they can live a life free of crime, show a willingness to request to have their rights restored, and show restitution to the victims of their crimes,” spokeswoman Jeri Bustamante said in a statement. Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida are working on a ballot initiative to restore many felons’ voting rights, barred for more than a century in the state constitution.

2019-05-13

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Randomly getting inspired to clean the entire house sounds productive — until your hand-me-down vacuum craps out and everything comes to a standstill. It's about time you invested in a new one: The Dyson V11 is Dyson's latest and greatest stick vacuum, which has only been on the market since April — and Amazon is offering it for $100 off today. Once your cleaning has been made easy, don't stop there. Get a hand from Alexa with voice commands and video calls on the Amazon Echo Show, which will get you a free Echo Dot with your purchase. Connect it to smart lights, plugs, or even a TV. Check out more of today's best deals from Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, Best Buy, and B&H Photo-Video for Monday, May 13: AMAZON $199 $80.99 OFF (29%) $279.99 Ninja Foodi 8-Quart All-in-One Cooker From Amazon See Details AMAZON $524 $225.97 OFF (30%) $749.97 Traeger Grills Renegade Pro Pellet Grill From Amazon See Details AMAZON $599.99 $100 OFF (14%) $699.99 Dyson V11 Torque Drive Cord-Free Vacuum Cleaner From Amazon See Details Sponsored CVS Buy 1, get 1 FREE* on select Nature Made® vitamin. *Restrictions apply. From CVS See Details AMAZON Save up to 36% off select Anker charging accessories From AMAZON See Details WALMART $149.99 $149.01 OFF (50%) $299 Dell 24-inch 1ms 144Hz 1080p FreeSync Gaming Monitor From WALMART See Details Sponsored FELIX GRAY Felix Gray: Birthday Sale 15% off Sitewide From FELIX GRAY See Details AMAZON $369.99 $130 OFF (26%) $499.99 Xbox One X 1TB Console with NBA 2K19 From Amazon See Details BEST BUY $219.99 $130 OFF (37%) $349.99 NETGEAR Orbi AC2200 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi System (3-Pack) From BEST BUY See Details AMAZON $236.09 $63.90 OFF (21%) $299.99 TiVo Bolt VOX 1TB 4K Streaming Device for Cable From Amazon See Details AMAZON $46.99 $33.00 OFF (41%) $79.99 TP-Link Archer A7 AC1750 Dual Band Smart WiFi Gigabit Router with clip coupon From Amazon See Details AMAZON $29.99 $30.00 OFF (50%) $59.99 Kingdom Hearts III for PlayStation 4 From Amazon See Details WALMART $299 $39.98 OFF (12%) $338.98 Nintendo Switch Console with 2x Ematic Controllers From WALMART See Details AMAZON $49 $10.99 OFF (18%) $59.99 Roku Streaming Stick+ 4K HDR Streaming Device with Voice Remote From Amazon See Details WALMART $249 $80.99 OFF (25%) $329.99 Apple iPad 9.7-inch 32GB Retina Table (Latest Model) From WALMART See Details AMAZON $499 $900 OFF (64%) $1,399 Onkyo TX-RZ830 9.2Ch 4K Network Receiver From Amazon See Details WALMART $49.95 $10.01 OFF (17%) $59.96 Swiffer Continuous Clean Air System From WALMART See Details B&H PHOTO-VIDEO $279 $320 OFF (53%) $599 Xerox VersaLink C400/DN Color Laser Printer From B&H PHOTO-VIDEO See Details HOME DEPOT Save up to 30% off select Ceiling Fans From HOME DEPOT See Details AMAZON Save up to 30% off select Compatible Toner Cartridges for Brother From AMAZON See Details PHILIPS $154.67 $34.33 OFF (18%) $189 Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 Smart Light Starter Kit From WALMART See Details AMAZON $14.99 $9.99 OFF (40%) $24.98 Pokemon: The Movies Collection on Blu-ray From Amazon See Details AMAZON $229.99 $49.99 OFF (18%) $279.98 Amazon Echo Show with free Echo Dot From AMAZON See Details Ninja Foodi 8-Quart All-in-One Cooker Traeger Grills Renegade Pro Pellet Grill Dyson V11 Torque Drive Cord-Free Vacuum Cleaner Buy 1, get 1 FREE* on select Nature Made® vitamin. *Restrictions apply. Save up to 36% off select Anker charging accessories Dell 24-inch 1ms 144Hz 1080p FreeSync Gaming Monitor Felix Gray: Birthday Sale 15% off Sitewide Xbox One X 1TB Console with NBA 2K19 NETGEAR Orbi AC2200 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi System (3-Pack) TiVo Bolt VOX 1TB 4K Streaming Device for Cable TP-Link Archer A7 AC1750 Dual Band Smart WiFi Gigabit Router with clip coupon Kingdom Hearts III for PlayStation 4 Nintendo Switch Console with 2x Ematic Controllers Roku Streaming Stick+ 4K HDR Streaming Device with Voice Remote Apple iPad 9.7-inch 32GB Retina Table (Latest Model) Onkyo TX-RZ830 9.2Ch 4K Network Receiver Swiffer Continuous Clean Air System Xerox VersaLink C400/DN Color Laser Printer Save up to 30% off select Ceiling Fans Save up to 30% off select Compatible Toner Cartridges for Brother Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 Smart Light Starter Kit Pokemon: The Movies Collection on Blu-ray Amazon Echo Show with free Echo Dot

2017-07-10

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July 10 (Reuters) - Downer EDI Ltd * Downer’s stake in Spotless increases to 64.3% * Downer’s offer for Spotless scheduled to close on 11 july Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2017-09-05 09:20:20

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Europe’s human rights court ruled on Tuesday that companies can monitor their employees’ email if they are notified in advance, giving shape to a rapidly evolving area of the law at the intersection of technology, privacy and workers’ rights. In doing so, judges are scaling back a previous ruling that had stirred unease in Europe, where privacy is viewed as a fundamental right. That earlier decision had taken a similar approach to existing law in the United States, which gives companies wide-ranging powers to monitor workplace communications. The latest decision, by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, provides more protection by requiring companies to inform workers of their policies. Judges also urged European governments to establish safeguards against abuse, and said that businesses should consider using forms of monitoring that avoid infringing on an employee’s privacy. The case centered on Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu, a Romanian man who had created a Yahoo Messenger account to communicate with clients. But his bosses summoned him on July 13, 2007, confronting him with a week’s worth of chat transcripts in which he talked with his brother and fiancée about personal matters. Two weeks later, he was fired. Romanian courts ruled against Mr. Barbulescu, who then brought his case to the European Court of Human Rights. In January 2016, the court ruled, 6 to 1, that the employer was justified in reading the chat history in the context of enforcing discipline. “It is not unreasonable for an employer to want to verify that the employees are completing their professional tasks during working hours,” it said at the time. In the new ruling, the Grand Chamber, effectively the final appellate division within the European Court of Human Rights, dialed that back. In an 11 to 6 ruling, it found that Mr. Barbulescu’s privacy rights had been violated. “Today’s ruling is fairly clear in how it outlines the parameters of monitoring employees,” said Stephen Ravenscroft, a London-based partner specializing in employment law at White & Case, a law firm. “It won’t be sufficient for employers to have a general policy permitting monitoring — the policy will need to be much more detailed, outlining why, how and where employees may be monitored and explaining how any information gathered through monitoring may be used.” Although a colleague at the Romanian company had been fired for using her work computer, phone and photocopier for personal purposes, the court found that Mr. Barbulescu had “not been informed in advance of the extent and nature of his employer’s monitoring, or the possibility that the employer might have access to the actual contents of his messages,” it said in its ruling. Furthermore, the chamber found, Romanian courts did not sufficiently examine the company’s need to read the entirety of Mr. Barbulescu’s messages, or the seriousness of the consequences of the monitoring, which resulted in dismissal. It noted that only a few countries in Europe — Austria, Britain, Finland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Slovakia — have explicitly regulated the issue of workplace privacy through domestic legislation. Most countries in the region do, however, require employers to give prior notice of monitoring. In countries like Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden, employers may monitor emails marked by employees as “private,” but may not look at the content without permission. The chamber ruled that countries should ensure that companies’ efforts to monitor employees’ communications are “accompanied by adequate and sufficient safeguards against abuse.” The latest ruling in the case, Barbulescu v. Romania, applies to the 47 members of the Council of Europe, which includes nearly every country on the Continent, including Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. (The Council of Europe, which focuses on human rights, is separate from the European Union and is not to be confused with the European Council, one of the bloc’s governing bodies.) In a dissent, six judges wrote that the Romanian courts had not violated Mr. Barbulescu’s right to privacy. They argued that the Romanian authorities had carried out a “careful balancing exercise between the interests at stake, taking into account both the applicant’s right to respect for his private life and the employer’s right to engage in monitoring, including the corresponding disciplinary powers, in order to ensure the smooth running of the company.” All the talk about data privacy can get caught up in political wrangling. But the different approaches have practical consequences for people, too. In a statement, one of Mr. Barbulescu’s lawyers, Emeric Domokos-Hancu, said the court’s decision proved that “the right to privacy in the workplace does exist.” And, he said, the court had “correctly ascertained that a large part of the social, human, professional and personal relations are in fact initiated in workplaces.” The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which represented the country in court, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This was the first case that the court had taken up concerning the monitoring of an employee’s electronic communication by a private employer. When it comes to electronic surveillance, the court has focused mostly on government use and collection of personal data, often in the context of criminal law or health care, and not the conduct of private companies. In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights found that Britain had violated the privacy of a secretary at a government-run college in Wales by monitoring her phone calls, email and internet use in 1999. She had not been notified that her communications might be monitored, and the legal framework at the time wasn’t clear. Britain enacted regulations in 2000, giving employers broad power to record or monitor employees’ communications without consent, as long as they took reasonable steps to inform employees that their communications might be intercepted. In a case that is pending, an employee of the French national rail company, SNCF, has protested his firing. His employer had found pornography on his work computer, on a hard drive marked “personal data.” Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about a European court ruling on employers’ monitoring of their workers’ email misidentified the court that issued the ruling. It is the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, not the European Court of Justice.

2018-09-13

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ROME (Reuters) - The head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi should look after Italy’s interests and not just criticize the country, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, said in a statement on Thursday. The ECB’s Draghi, who is an Italian, earlier told reporters in Frankfurt that suggestions by some policymakers in Italy that the country’s 2019 budget may fail to comply with EU norms had impinged on the economy and hit financial markets. “I count on Italians in Europe to look after the interests of Italy as happens in all other countries, and that they help and advise and not just criticize,” Salvini said in a statement, adding that he was responding to the previous comments from Draghi. Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Andrew Heavens

2016-02-25 10:00:29

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Dennis Mitzner Contributor Dennis Mitzner is a journalist and writer with a focus on tech, culture and politics. He works in thought leadership and runs StartupStash, a curated directory of tools and resources for startups. He also writes about e-commerce and retail for Forbes. More posts by this contributor Magic Leap goes to Finland in pursuit of Nordic VR and AR talent Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Barak bets big on emergency app Reporty California-based secure smartphone manufacturer Turing Robotics Industries announced that it will move manufacturing and its new global headquarter to the Finnish city of Salo. Turing’s decision is rooted in security concerns. “Finland’s Act on the Protection of Privacy in Electronic Communications which safeguards confidentiality and privacy in telecommunications was the main reason behind TRI’s move to Finland. To ensure complete data security and privacy for TRI’s Turing Phone owners, TRI moved its manufacturing operations to Salo, a city with an impeccable history in mobile phone production,” said Steve Chao, the CEO of Turing Robotics. TRI, the maker of the liquid-metal cypherphone, the Turing Phone, “the company foresaw the potential issues of data encryption and global government covert surveillance programs ever since mid-2013 and it made a decisive move to be established in Finland,” the company said in a statement. Accompanying the announcement, TRI is switching its OS from Android to Jolla’s Sailfish. “We can now confirm that TRI has chosen to drop Android and use Jolla’s Sailfish OS. Sailfish is now running perfectly on the Turing Phone and we have started the final OS software testing phase,” the company announced on its Facebook page. Surveillance and privacy concerns have become central themes among mobile users around the world, highlighted by the ongoing spat between Apple and FBI. Indeed, TRI’s decision to both use Jolla OS and manufacture in Finland is about the primacy of privacy. Considering Android’s intimate relationship with Google growing security concerns around mobile security, the move speaks volumes. In 2015, Jolla announced a partnership with Finland’s SSH Communications – a security solutions company – to offer another version of its platform with stronger security credentials, a version now used in the new Turing Phone. “It is evident that the world needs a secure, transparent and open mobile solution alternative, which is not controlled by any country or major industry player,” Jolla said in a press release during the announcement. Jolla is focusing on security in order to distinguish from fierce and better-known competition. “The next era in mobile will be very much focused on privacy and that’s what we are already feeling with our partners when we are discussing with governments and different device vendors,” said Jolla chairman Antti Saarnio on Wednesday during the announcement of its partnership with African OEM Mi-Fone. New OS and a move to Finland The new phone – expected to be released in April 2016 – will be made in Salo, a small city located between the capital Helsinki and the provincial capital Turku. “TRI will start production of the Turing Phone in Salo starting April 2016 and have plans implemented to build the world’s most robust mobile phone devices and Future Network products for the next decade and beyond in Salo. For every 1,000 phones to be produced TRI will be recruiting 10~20 local staffs to perform both software and hardware testing, flashing and assembly. TRI has plans to ramp up production of the Turing Phone series to over 300,000 units in the year 2016, “ Chao said. The city’s claim to fame is its past role as hosting a plant for Nokia. Salo is largely considered the original home town of Nokia phones. Turing Phone is TRI’s first smart phone and entirely crowdfunded. The phone is made of liquidmorphium, an “amorphous “liquid metal” alloy tougher than either titanium or steel”. Turing is not without competition in Finland. Oulu-based Bittium is the maker of Tough Mobile, a secure smartphone tailored for governmental and military use. On Wednesday the company announced a deal worth 2.8 million euros to provide a software upgrade for the Finnish Defence Forces’ Tactical Wireless IP Network system.

2018-12-22 00:00:00

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THE MELLOW thrum of the Toyota Prius is to the streets of Ulaanbaatar what the screech of brakes and honk of horns is to New York: omnipresent. Beloved of eco-warriors worldwide, the Japanese car dominates the streets of Mongolia’s capital. If you stand on the corner of Sukhbaatar Square in the city centre, a good half of the passenger vehicles you see sailing past are Priuses. Dozens of garages cater exclusively to them. According to UN trade data and The Economist’s estimates, some 60% of Mongolia’s car imports last year were hybrids. They are popular in Mongolia, as elsewhere, because hybrid engines are efficient and fuel costs low. The cars themselves are also cheap: according to the UB Post, a local newspaper, you can pick up a used Prius for as little as $2,000. That is partly because most Mongolian ones are second-hand imports from Japan, where passenger vehicles more than three years old must undergo expensive safety tests. Rather than shell out for those, many Japanese drivers buy a new car. (That is the point of the tests, some say: to boost domestic carmakers.) In 2017 Japan exported 30,000 hybrid vehicles to Mongolia. Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. In addition, the government has exempted hybrids from various taxes, in an attempt to clear the air in Ulaanbaatar. The city is one of the most polluted in the world in winter because of the widespread use of coal for heating and power generation. Hybrid vehicles enter the country duty-free and, unlike most cars, are exempt from an air-pollution tax. But the clincher is the Prius’s reliability. Ulaanbaatar may be the chilliest capital in the world. On a winter morning drivers must sometimes start their cars in temperatures below -30°C. Cars that run on petrol and diesel tend to sputter and die at such temperatures. The Prius can use its battery to power its electrical engine until the car warms up enough for the petrol engine to run smoothly—saving many a Mongolian from freezing frustration.

2016-10-31 13:42:03

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This was certainly unexpected. For any number of reasons. A day before the planned shutdown of cloud-based storage service, lifelogging startup Narrative — or, rather, a group of former employees — has snatched itself from the jaws of death. In an email sent to Narrative users, the company announced the launch of “New Narrative,” rising like the proverbial phoenix or one of those four Supermen that sprung up after Kal-El was killed by Doomsday. The new version of the company is quick to explain to its loyal fan base that the continuation of the service is only the beginning. New Narrative will also be looking for funding to restart the production of the Narrative Clip 2, its second piece of lifelogging hardware that was introduced last year, offering up some key improvements over the first generation. In September, the company announced the end of both its hardware and software offerings. I’ll admit that, at the time, I wasn’t terribly surprised by the outcome. What started as an intriguing little piece of hardware designed to capture small slices of life at regular intervals ultimately didn’t make a ton of sense in a world in which we’re already carrying multiple cameras on our person at any given time. But the device did develop a loyal following. And a group of its former employees possess a strong enough belief in the product’s potential to press ahead. That doesn’t mean, however, that the company will operate as before. There will be a transfer of data to this new company that will result in some server downtime (though only one to two days, apparently) and there’s certain to be a shift in existing employment positions. Also, the company notes that since it will essentially be financing out of pocket, It’s not possible for us to assume all the obligations of the former company. There is a small number of customers to the former company that have seen problems with their Clips. We can’t resolve any of those cases today, but we’ll try to find ways to offer repairs or other kinds of help, and hope to be able to provide information about this down the line. We’ve reached out to reps from the new company for comment and will update as soon as we hear back.

2017-12-17 21:18:20

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The A.F.C. playoff race is suddenly wide open, with the Steelers going from presumptive favorites to being one of three teams fighting for the top spot, and in the N.F.C., the Carolina Panthers snuffed out most of what remained of the Green Bay Packers’ playoff hopes. Here’s a look at what we learned on Sunday in Week 15: ■ We still don’t know what a catch is. Jesse James, a tight end for the Pittsburgh Steelers, appeared to score a game-winning touchdown with a 10-yard catch in the final minute of his team’s huge matchup with the New England Patriots. After a review, it was determined that James’s catch did not survive the ground, and the touchdown was waved off, essentially handing the Patriots a victory. Depending on what happens in the next two weeks, that overturned call could be what determines home-field advantage in the A.F.C. playoffs. ■ Even Aaron Rodgers couldn’t save the Packers’ playoff hopes. Rodgers, Green Bay’s superstar quarterback, came back from a long injury absence with his team clinging to the idea that running the table would give them a shot at a playoff appearance. It was an up-and-down return for Rodgers, with three touchdowns and three interceptions, but a fumble by Geronimo Allison in the fourth quarter dropped the Packers to 7-7, and all but eliminated them from a chance at a wild-card spot. ■ The Jaguars can play offense, too. Jacksonville has relied mostly on the team’s star-laden defense on its way to a surprising 10-4 record, but in a huge win over Houston, the offense produced 464 yards, even without Leonard Fournette, the team’s star rookie running back. The Jaguars had the ball for more than 33 minutes of the game, and Blake Bortles made the best use of it, throwing for 326 yards and three touchdowns. Jacksonville still has a small chance of getting the top seed in the A.F.C. playoffs. ■ Playing in Seattle doesn’t bother the Rams. Los Angeles came in as a 3-point underdog, with no one sure how the second-year quarterback Jared Goff would respond to the hostile conditions at CenturyLink Field. There was not much suspense once the game began, as the Rams took a lead less than three minutes into the game, and had run up the score to 40-0 when Seattle finally scored a touchdown. ■ Teddy Bridgewater is going to have to wait until next season. The former starting quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings got into a game for the first time since the playoffs following the 2015 season, but it was in mop-up duty in a blowout win. Bridgewater, who had been expected to retake the job from Case Keenum once he was fully healthy, had a bad day, attempting two passes, the second of which was intercepted. Keenum, meanwhile, completed 20 of 23 passes for 236 yards and two touchdowns. Mark Ingram gave the Saints much more than the first-down run they needed to wind down the clock on the Jets. His determined burst across the line of scrimmage thrust him into the Jets’ defensive backfield with too much speed and vigor for anyone to catch him — a fitting finish to one of his better days in a memorable season. Ingram ran for two touchdowns and gained 151 yards from scrimmage, capped by his late 50-yard touchdown run, and host New Orleans overcame three turnovers to defeat the reeling Jets, 31-19. The Saints (10-4) needed to beat the Jets (5-9) to maintain their tenuous hold on first place in the N.F.C. South. New Orleans leads Carolina (10-4) on head-to-head results. Atlanta (8-5) can pull one game behind by beating Tampa Bay on Monday night. The Jets, who were eliminated from the playoffs, kept it close until Saints receiver Michael Thomas made a touchdown catch on a 4-yard slant in the fourth quarter, making the score 24-13. Bryce Petty made his first start at quarterback for the Jets this season, completing 19 of 39 passes for 179 yards and a touchdown. He was intercepted twice — once by Craig Robertson on a tipped pass and once by Marshon Lattimore on a long, inconsequential throw as the game ended. “As far as understanding the game plan and knowing what you see out there, I felt really confident,” Petty said. “The more times I get out there, the better I’m going to get.” Cam Newton proved the Carolina Panthers can win in multiple ways. After dominating opposing teams on the ground with three straight 200-yard rushing games at home, the Panthers turned to their 28th-ranked passing game and took a big step toward reaching the postseason. Newton threw for 242 yards and four touchdowns, and the Panthers spoiled Aaron Rodgers’s return from a broken collarbone with a 31-24 win over the visiting Green Bay Packers. Damiere Byrd had two touchdown catches, and Christian McCaffrey had 136 yards from scrimmage, including a 7-yard touchdown reception, as the Panthers won their fourth straight at home. Greg Olsen had his most productive game since returning from a broken foot, catching nine passes for 116 yards and a touchdown. The Panthers (10-4) kept pace with the first-place New Orleans Saints in the N.F.C. South. “It’s something we pride ourselves on, being a complete offense, being able to run the ball when we can and pass when we can,” McCaffrey said. “Guys showed up and made plays today.” That included Carolina’s defense, which forced four turnovers, including a strip by cornerback James Bradberry on Packers wide receiver Geronimo Allison with 1 minute 28 seconds left to seal the win and prevent the Packers from playing in a third straight overtime game. “I need to do a better job of squeezing and securing it, and there wouldn’t be an argument,” Allison said. Rodgers, making his first appearance since Oct. 15, threw for 290 yards with three touchdowns but was intercepted three times as the Packers’ playoff hopes took a severe blow. At 7-7, the Packers are on the cusp of not making the playoffs for the first time since 2008. “I’m disappointed in my performance today,” Rodgers said. “Obviously, I didn’t play well.” The Jacksonville Jaguars are returning to the playoffs for the first time in a decade thanks to a 45-7 drubbing of the visiting Houston Texans. Once the N.F.L.’s poster child for futility and a punch line for potential relocation, the Jaguars (10-4) are now one of the league’s top turnaround stories. Blake Bortles threw three touchdowns passes, including two to a reserve receiver who slept in his car earlier this season. The Jaguars won for the seventh time in eight games to clinch a postseason berth for the first time since 2007. Bortles finished with a season-high 326 yards and the best quarterback rating (143.8) of his career, including 186 yards and a touchdown pass to the rookie Keelan Cole. The primary punt returner, Jaydon Mickens, who stepped in for the injured starter Marqise Lee in the first quarter, caught four passes for 61 yards and two scores against the Texans (4-10). Joe Flacco threw a touchdown pass, ran for a score and beat Cleveland again as the Baltimore Ravens stayed on track for the A.F.C. playoffs with a 27-10 win over the Browns, who are now two losses from becoming the N.F.L.’s second 0-16 team. Flacco scored on a 2-yard run and threw a 33-yard touchdown pass to Benjamin Watson as the Ravens (8-6) took control with two touchdowns in the final few minutes of the first half. Defensive tackle Brandon Williams recovered a fumble and rolled in for a touchdown in third quarter to put the Ravens up, 24-10. The Browns (0-14) went 0-8 at home — 0-7 in Cleveland, 0-1 in London — for the second time and must win either at Chicago or at Pittsburgh to avoid joining the 2008 Detroit Lions in the notorious 0-16 club. Last season, the Browns avoided infamy by winning their final home game and finishing 1-15. Cleveland is 1-29 in two seasons under Coach Hue Jackson, who is expected to be back despite his .033 winning percentage. Eric Kendricks had an interception return for a touchdown, Case Keenum passed for 236 yards and two scores, and the Minnesota Vikings clinched the N.F.C. North title with a 34-7 victory at home over the depleted and disinterested Cincinnati Bengals. The running backs Latavius Murray and Jerick McKinnon combined for 37 touches and 242 yards from scrimmage for the Vikings (11-3), who were given a reprieve a week after their eight-game winning streak ended at Carolina in the last of three consecutive road trips. They were never challenged by a Bengals team that was missing more than half its starting defense because of injuries and that was met in the morning with a report by ESPN that Coach Marvin Lewis would not return next season. The game went so smoothly that Teddy Bridgewater even made his grand entrance, his first action in 16 months since a severe knee injury. Bridgewater’s first pass was intercepted, a high throw that bounced off McKinnon’s hands and into the arms of strong safety Shawn Williams deep in Vikings territory. That set up a short touchdown run by Giovani Bernard to keep the Bengals (5-9) from being shut out for a second time this year. LeSean McCoy scored twice and surpassed 10,000 career rushing yards, while helping the Buffalo Bills stay in the thick of the A.F.C. playoff hunt with a 24-16 win over the visiting Miami Dolphins. Tyrod Taylor also scored on a 9-yard touchdown run, and Shareece Wright and Jordan Poyer intercepted Miami’s Jay Cutler on consecutive drives to start the second half in a game in which Buffalo never trailed. The rookie Tre’Davious White sealed the win by intercepting Cutler with 28 seconds remaining — and a play after Miami punter Matt Haack recovered an onside kick at Miami’s 37. The Bills have won three of four and improved to 8-6 to match the team’s best start through 14 games during Buffalo’s 17-year playoff drought — the longest active streak in North America’s four major professional sports. The Bills were 8-6 in both 2004 and 2014 but missed the playoffs with 9-7 finishes. Buffalo also finished 6-2 at home to match its best finish at Orchard Park since 1999. The loss all but eliminated the Dolphins (6-8) from playoff contention, after they ended a seven-year drought last season. McCoy opened the scoring with a 4-yard run to cap Buffalo’s opening drive. Then, he put Buffalo up, 14-6, with a 16-yard catch with 6 minutes 5 seconds left in the second quarter on a drive during which McCoy became the 30th player to break the 10,000-yard milestone. Anthony Lanier sacked Blaine Gabbert and forced a fumble that Preston Smith recovered, and the Washington Redskins held on to beat the visiting Arizona Cardinals, 20-15, in a game that was a comedy of errors for each team. Smith also intercepted Gabbert and Lanier batted down three passes and had two sacks as they gave the Redskins (6-8) a glimpse of their potential as significant pieces of the defense for years to come. Gabbert was 16 of 41 for 189 yards with the interception and a fumble he recovered himself in the fourth quarter. Arizona (6-8), which got all its points on field goals by Phil Dawson, went 0 for 6 in the red zone and 4 for 19 on third down as it was eliminated from playoff contention. Todd Gurley rushed for 152 yards and scored four total touchdowns in just 2½ quarters, and the Los Angeles Rams moved to the cusp of their first division title since 2003 with a 42-7 thumping of the Seahawks in Seattle. The matchup to determine first place in the N.F.C. West was completely one-sided. Los Angeles (10-4) was dominant, embarrassing Seattle (8-6) in the worst loss during Pete Carroll’s eight seasons in charge. Jimmy Garoppolo led one final scoring drive in the closing seconds to cap a fantastic first home start, Robbie Gould kicked a game-winning 45-yard field goal as time expired, and the San Francisco 49ers topped the Tennessee Titans, 25-23. Garoppolo threw for a career-high 381 yards and a touchdown during a dominant day to give the 49ers (4-10) a three-game winning streak in a lost season. And Garoppolo showed he could do it at home as well as on the road — and against a playoff contender, no less — outdueling Marcus Mariota and Tennessee (8-6) down the stretch. Gould kicked three of his six field goals over the final nine minutes. Dallas kept its playoff hopes alive after Dak Prescott converted a fourth-down sneak by the width of an index card to set up Dan Bailey’s go-ahead 19-yard field goal, and Derek Carr fumbled the ball inches from the goal line with 31 seconds left to give the Cowboys (8-6) a victory over the Raiders (6-8) in Oakland.

2018-08-01 00:00:00

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Shaq is WRONG -- Kobe Bryant is NOT coming back to the NBA ... so says Mrs. Mamba herself, Vanessa Bryant. There have been rumblings that 39-year-old Kobe is considering a return to the Lakers to join LeBron James for one last shot at a ring before he rides off into the sunset. And, the rumors got even stronger when Shaquille O'Neal told TMZ Sports over the weekend, "Kobe coming back. You heard it here first." Now, Vanessa is finally weighing in -- and assuring Laker Nation, Kobe ain't pulling a Michael Jordan. "Kobe will not be coming out of retirement to play again," Vanessa wrote on Instagram. "He doesn’t want to play again and frankly we really enjoy spending time together as a family without the crazy game schedule interfering with birthdays, holidays and special events." Mamba out.

2020-03-24

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ALGIERS (Reuters) - An Algerian court has sentenced one of the most prominent figures in the protest movement that toppled longtime leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika to a year in prison, leading rights lawyers said on Tuesday. Karim Tabbou was charged with “weakening army morale” last year after criticising the then army chief, Ahmed Gaed Salah, who died suddenly of a heart attack in late December. He had become the most prominent figure in the Hirak protest movement, which emerged in February 2019, shaking Algeria’s deeply entrenched political establishment with weekly mass protests that forced Bouteflika to resign. Abdelghani Badi, a rights lawyer, said in a video posted online that Tabbou had been sentenced to a year in prison, and had been unable to defend himself after suffering a medical problem. “How can we prosecute someone who can’t speak because he has had a stroke?” he said in the video. Another rights lawyer, Mustafa Bouchachi, told local media: “This is a scandal”. The justice ministry has not issued an official statement confirming either the verdict or the sentence. Protests continued after both Gaed Salah’s death and the election of Bouteflika’s replacement as president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, in a vote that was opposed by the demonstrators. The weekly mass marches stopped on Friday, however, after more than a year of continual protests, because of the coronavirus. Reporting By Lamine Chikhi, editing by Angus McDowall and Philippa Fletcher

2018-06-08 00:00:00

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Several supply chain sources say that Apple is taking a "cautious" approach to production of its new iPhone models, according to the Nikkei Asian Review. It has reportedly lowered orders of new component parts by 20 percent, compared to production of last year's models. "Apple is quite conservative in terms of placing new orders for upcoming iPhones this year," one source said. "For the three new models specifically, the total planned capacity could be up to 20 percent fewer than last year's orders." According to Apple soothsayer and KGI Securities analyst Ming Chi-Kuo, Apple will release three new models in the fall: an updated iPhone X, a larger, 6.5 inch iPhone X Plus, and a new, more conservatively priced model, that will have an LCD screen (instead of the iPhone X's OLED).  But all might not be going according to plan. Just last week, reports surfaced that Apple was behind on production of the LCD model. And now, it has cut production from last year's 100 million orders to 80 million. This winter, initial reports of iPhone X sales were disappointing, reflecting an overall decline in smartphone sales across the market. However, on Apple's recent shareholder call, it showed that the phone sales were actually doing much better than the initial reports showed — and making Apple plenty of dough. CEO Tim Cook said that the iPhone X represented the first time that sales of the premium model outpaced the less expensive option. But these new reports of lowered component part orders could indicate that Apple may be taking pains to avoid a "flop" narrative. Perhaps it has set its sights on more conservative sales numbers. If the new phones are a huge success, sales blowing past expectations would paint a much better picture for shareholders this time around.

2018-02-22 15:45:11

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Sen. Marco Rubio hinted at some potentially significant shifts on gun legislation Wednesday night.It's a clear signal of how much the debate has moved since a 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

2019-08-22 06:00:12

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Google today announced a new long-term initiative that, if fully realized, will make it harder for online marketers and advertisers to track you across the web. This new proposal follows the company’s plans to change how cookies in Chrome work and to make it easier for users to block tracking cookies. Today’s proposal for a new open standard extends this by looking at how Chrome can close the loopholes that the digital advertising ecosystem can use to circumvent that. And soon, that may mean that your browser will feature new options that give you more control over how much you share without losing your anonymity. Over the course of the last few months, Google started talking about a “Privacy Sandbox,” which would allow for a certain degree of personalization while still protecting a user’s privacy. “We have a great reputation on security. […] I feel the way we earned that reputation was by really moving the web forward,” Justin Schuh, Google’s engineering director for Chrome security and privacy told me. “We provide a lot of benefits, worked on a lot of different fronts. What we’re trying to do today is basically do the same thing for privacy: have the same kind of big, bold vision for how we think privacy should work on the web, how we should make browsers and the web more private by default.” Here is the technical side of what Google is proposing today: To prevent the kind of fingerprinting that makes your machine uniquely identifiable as yours, Google is proposing the idea of a privacy budget. With this, a browser could allow websites to make enough API calls to get enough information about you to group your into a larger cohort but not to the point where you give up your anonymity. Once a site has exhausted this budget, the browser stops responding to any further calls. Some browsers also already implement a very restrictive form of cookie blocking. Google argues that this has unintended consequences and that there needs to be an agreed-upon set of standards. “The other browser vendors, for the most part, we think really are committed to an open web,” said Schuh, who also stressed that Google wants this to be an open standard and develop it in collaboration with other players in the web ecosystem. “There’s definitely been a lot of not intentional misinformation but just incorrect data about how sites monetize and how publishers are actually funded,” Schuh stressed. Indeed, Google today notes that its research has shown that publishers lose an average of 52% of their advertising revenue when their readers block cookies. That number is even higher for news sites. Google strengthens Chrome’s privacy controls In addition, blocking all third-party cookies is not a viable solution, according to Google, because developers will find ways around this restriction by relying on fingerprinting a user’s machine instead. Yet while you can opt out of cookies and delete them from your browser, you can’t opt out of being fingerprinted, because there’s no data stored on your machine (unless you regularly change the configuration of your laptop, the fonts you have installed and other identifiable traits that make your laptop uniquely yours). What Google basically wants to do here is change the incentive structure for the advertising ecosystem. Instead of trying to circumvent a browser’s cookie and fingerprinting restrictions, the privacy budget, in combination with the industry’s work on federated learning and differential privacy, this is meant to give advertisers the tools they need without hurting publishers, while still respecting the users’ privacy. That’s not an easy switch and something that, as Google freely acknowledges, will take years. “It’s going to be a multi-year journey,” said Schuh. “What I can say is that I have very high confidence that we will be able to change the incentive structures with this. So we are committed to taking very strong measures to preserve user privacy, we are committed to combating abuses of user privacy. […] But as we’re doing that, we have to move the platform forward and make the platform inherently provide much more robust privacy protections.” Most of the big tech companies now understand that they have a responsibility to help their users retain their privacy online. Yet at the same time, personalized advertising relies on knowing as much as possible about a given user, and Google itself makes the vast majority of its income from its various ad services. It sounds like this should create some tension inside the company. Schuh, however, argued that Google’s ad side and the Chrome team have their independence. “At the end of the day, we’re a web browser, we are concerned about our users’ base. We are going to make the decisions that are most in their interest so we have to weigh how all of this fits in,” said Schuh. He also noted that the ad side has a very strong commitment to user transparency and user control — and that if users don’t trust the ads ecosystem, that’s a problem, too. For the time being, though, there’s nothing here for you to try out or any bits being shipped in the Chrome browser. For now, this is simply a proposal and an effort on the Chrome team’s part to start a conversation. We should expect the company to start experimenting with some of these ideas in the near future, though. Just like with its proposed changes to how advertisers and sites use cookies, this is very much a long-term project for the company. Some users will argue that Google could take more drastic measures and simply use its tech prowess to stop the ad ecosystem from tracking you through cookies, fingerprinting and whatever else the adtech boffins will dream up next. If Google’s numbers are correct, though, that would definitely hurt publishers, and few publications are in a position to handle a 50% drop in revenue. I can see why Google doesn’t want to do this alone, but it does have the market position to be more aggressive in pushing for these changes. WebKit’s new anti-tracking policy puts privacy on a par with security Apple, which doesn’t have any vested interest in the advertising business, has already made this more drastic move with the latest release of Safari. Its browser now blocks a number of tracking technologies, including fingerprinting, without making any concessions to advertisers. The results of this for publishers is in line with Google’s cookie study. As far as the rest of Chrome’s competitors, Firefox has started to add anti-fingerprinting techniques as well. Upstart Brave, too, has added fingerprinting protection for all third-party content, while Microsoft’s new Edge currently focuses on cookies for tracking prevention. By trying to find a middle path, Chrome runs the risk of falling behind as users look for browsers that protect their privacy today — especially now that there are compelling alternatives again.

2018-11-09 21:18:16

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You hear it in every cop show, in every crime drama: “You have the right to an attorney.” It’s true. Anyone arrested on a criminal charge in the United States has the right to an attorney, even for an infraction as small as shoplifting, when you’re only facing a small fine or a few months in county jail. No matter the punishment, or the crime, you’re guaranteed a lawyer, even if you’re not a citizen. But if you’re arrested and brought to immigration court, that’s a whole other story. The stakes are really high; you’re facing deportation, often to some of the most violent countries in the world. Deportation can be a death sentence. And you are on your own. The reality of the American immigration legal system is that undocumented immigrants are treated like criminals without the rights guaranteed criminals. Since President Donald Trump took office, more and more immigrants are caught in this system. Enter Oakland, California. While the federal government is trying to deport as many immigrants as possible, Oakland is running a policy experiment to help immigrants stay in their communities. The city is giving as many immigrants as possible attorneys in court, free of charge. In this episode of the Impact, find out how Oakland pulls this off when the federal government is against them — and how immigrants’ lives change when they get representation.

2017-07-26 12:00:20

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Fiction When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. THE CRIME WRITER By Jill Dawson 246 pp. Harper Perennial. Paper, $15.99. In 1964, in an unlikely move, Patricia Highsmith settled in the English countryside, taking possession of Bridge Cottage (17th-century, pink-washed, with roses and camellias and a stream in the garden) in the Suffolk village of Earl Soham. Here, safely removed from the literary scene, but close enough to London to accommodate her affair with an unidentified married woman, she worked on a how-to book, “Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction,” and “The Storyteller,” a novel — not her best — about an American writer living in rural Suffolk who murders a love rival and dresses it up as suicide. In a letter to a friend, Highsmith noted some personal overlap with her protagonist: He “gets life a little mixed up with his plots. Something that may happen to me. I think I have some schizoid tendencies, which must Be Watched.” The slippery territory between reality and fantasy fascinated Highsmith and is at the heart of “The Crime Writer,” Jill Dawson’s strange and disorienting novel. Dawson has previously fictionalized the poet Rupert Brooke (“The Great Lover”) and the murderer Edith Thompson (“Fred and Edie”). Imposing a narrative structure on the messy facts of her subjects’ lives takes nerve as well as skill, and Dawson has both. But this episode in Highsmith’s life presents some particular challenges. Though “The Crime Writer” is billed as a psychological thriller, it’s probably more useful to see it as a meditation on the business of writing, or a character study of an alcoholic barreling toward a breakdown. In her ironed shirts, Levi’s and brogues, her pockets full of pet snails and lettuce leaves, Dawson’s “Pat” (that diminutive feels rather impudent) at first looks quite familiar. Here she is, the celebrated chain-smoking misanthrope, banging away at her Olympia typewriter or brooding over her wretched childhood, her toxic mother. Here she is, falling into bed with a bottle of whisky or somebody’s wife. But Dawson adds another dimension to Pat’s reality, a dreamlike layer that soon assumes the nightmarish dread of Highsmith’s own fiction. So there are two narrative strands to this story. The first, told in the third person, has Pat, jumpy and paranoid, stewing in the cottage, longing for her lover, Sam Gosforth, who is trapped in London with her boor of a husband. When Pat isn’t writing (her great solace) or studying her beloved snails, she buys biscuits at the village shop, rents a television and goes to the pub. She also receives visitors, the most bothersome being Ginny Smythson-Balby, who possesses “attention-seeking breasts” and claims to be a local reporter, though her home is in faraway Notting Hill and she doesn’t ask any good questions. (The reader has plenty: How has flaky Ginny secured this interview within days of Pat’s arrival? And why has the reclusive Pat agreed to the interview in the first place?) The second strand is written in the first person, from Highsmith’s increasingly agitated perspective. This version charts an urgent alternative reality, in which a reunion with Sam is finally achieved, with terrible consequences. Who, exactly, is this Pat? Is she a fantasy self, escaped from Highsmith’s famous cahier? Is she Highsmith in the throes of a psychotic episode? Or is she the protagonist of another work-in-progress? (It emerges that Pat has a third project on the go — a novel about “all of this: Suffolk, Sam. … First-person singular, and rather confessional.”) In the confusion, readers may find themselves rattled, pulling out various biographies and puzzling over the significance of moments when Dawson veers away from the facts. Did this happen? Did that? Why is Pat given an Anglia to drive, rather than the documented Volkswagen? Why does her writer friend Ronnie find Bridge Cottage poky and squalid, with “a faintly fishy smell as if an aquarium bubbled there,” when the real Ronald Blythe told Highsmith’s biographer Andrew Wilson it was “very clean and comfortable, orderly and warm”? But as the ground continues to tip and lurch beneath the reader, these questions matter less. In this alarming topsy-turvy landscape, it’s not always possible to distinguish between reality, imagination and psychosis. Even the frothiest of details are a little bit off. Early on, Pat thinks rapturously of “the bedazzling blond of Sam’s hair,” but in the novel’s later stages it becomes “black” or “dark.” Slips like this give the reader moments of doubt: best to assume they’re deliberate, part of the steady accumulation of emotional disorder that fuels the novel. In “The Crime Writer,” no one is reliable. Biographers lack curiosity. Policemen go out of their way to be incompetent. Pat herself makes a disappointing criminal: When presented with incriminating evidence, she rushes in panic from the room, or simply throws up. And yet no one suspects her of anything. Perhaps she’s right when she tells herself, “It’s all in your head, it’s all in your head.” Dawson has so much pomo fun with the conventions of noir and suspense that her sozzled protagonist (who lacks the charm of Tom Ripley as well as his more dubious talents) is not alone in losing the plot. By the end of this bleak and feverish novel, one thing is clear: Poor old Pat, full of Scotch and self-loathing, is just another victim.

2018-05-30 00:00:00

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Kim Jong Un is reportedly offering to open an American burger chain in North Korea as a "show of goodwill." (AP / iStock) Turns out Kim Jong Un might be as big of a fast food fan as Trump. According to a new U.S. intelligence assessment, while the North Korean leader is no longer willing to give up his nuclear weapons, he said he may open a “Western hamburger franchise in Pyongyang as a show of goodwill,” NBC reports. PARAPLEGIC MAN SAYS DOMINO&aposS WORKER DISCRIMINATED AGAINST HIM: &aposIT HURTS, IT HURTS BAD&apos This consolation prize of sorts is said to have possibly been suggested by Kim as a way to gain favor with the burger-loving president. In 2016 at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Trump said he’d invite Kim to the U.S. for a state dinner, but instead of doing something formal, the two would simply dine on the fast-food American staple. “We should be eating a hamburger on a conference table, and we should make better deals with China and others and forget the state dinners,” Trump said . POTUS’ love of burgers has been well-documented in the past, from his reported go-to McDonald’s order of two Big Macs to his request for an American-beef burger during a lunch in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS Most recently, Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, revealed the president has taken to ordering his burgers with only half a bun “in service to his health.”

2019-02-10 00:00:00

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Fyre Festival doc fans haven’t seen the last of Andy King and company. Turns out a spoof film about the dumpster fire of a festival is in the works, courtesy of Seth Rogen and The Lonely Island. The funniest part? Rogen said the idea of a festival going horribly wrong was theirs first. The project was first mentioned by Rogen and The Lonely Island back in 2017, shortly after what should have been a “fyre” festival took place. “This seems like a good time to mention the movie we are making with @thelonelyisland about a music festival that goes HORRIBLY WRONG,” Rogen tweeted at the time. The Lonely Island added, “For real, thinking about suing #FyreFestival for stealing our idea.” The real-life “luxury music festival,” helmed by Billy McFarland, CEO of Fyre Media Inc., and rapper Ja Rule suffered from horrifically bad planning, lackluster security, makeshift tents, and sad sandwiches. It resulted in numerous memes, lawsuits, GoFundMe pages and two documentaries. Additionally, McFarland currently sits behind bars on charges of fraud. Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone recently confirmed the spoof news during an interview with The Daily Beast. “I don’t want to divulge all the details but we’re figuring it out right now. You’ve seen the docs, right? It’s crazy. This is something that Akiva [Schaffer] and Seth cooked up, and we’re figuring it all out right now.” Taccone continued on to say that he has seen Netflix’s Fyre documentary three times and envisions their project as a satire similar to their 2016 concert mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which pokes fun at Justin Bieber. Best of all, an Andy King look-alike will likely be included, seeing as Taccone is a huge fan of the ridiculously loyal event producer. “I was like, I would hire that dude for anything...Hire that dude!” Taccone told the publication “That guy is a champion.” Who knows? King might even take another one for the team and appear as himself in the spoof.

2018-03-28 13:43:56

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Netflix has added a board member with some big political connections: Susan Rice, who worked in the Obama administration as national security advisor and ambassador to the UN. “For decades, she has tackled difficult, complex global issues with intelligence, integrity and insight and we look forward to benefiting from her experience and wisdom,” said founder and CEO Reed Hastings in a statement. Rice directed the National Security Council staff between 2013 and 2017 and also provided the daily national security briefing to President Obama. Compared to most boards of public tech companies, Netflix’s is diverse. The appointment of Rice means that four of the 11 board members are women. The company’s chief marketing officer Leslie Kilgore and entertainment execs Ann Mather and Anne Sweeney are also on the team. Other members of Netflix’s board include tech execs like Microsoft president Brad Smith and Zillow co-founder Richard Barton, and investors from TCV and Redpoint. Because of Rice’s political ties, the move was controversial, prompting a social media backlash. Netflix, which specializes in home entertainment, says it has 117 million subscribers of its TV and movie service. Many are using this as an alternative to a traditional cable TV subscription, making Netflix one of the leaders in “cord-cutting.” Hastings says that the company is forecasting $15 billion in revenue for the year. Netflix shares have nearly doubled in the past year. However, this past week it has fallen nearly 9% amid a volatile time for the stock market, due to speculation about a trade war. Shares closed Wednesday at $285.77. The company has a market cap of $124 billion.

2016-10-02

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(Repeats story first published on Friday with no changes to text) * Poll shows 26 of 44 economists see RBI repo rate kept at 6.5 pct * Eighteen expect RBI to cut * Rate decision to be taken by new monetary policy committee * New Governor Urjit Patel has casting vote if MPC is split By Rafael Nam and Suvashree Choudhury MUMBAI, Sept 30 (Reuters) - A month into the job, India’s new central bank governor will on Monday and Tuesday chair his maiden policy review, which for the first time will see a committee set interest rates, though views are divided on whether there will be any change this time round. If the six-member monetary policy committee (MPC) is split over whether to hold or cut, Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel could end up exercising his casting vote. Regardless of the outcome, market players will closely scrutinise how the newly-formed MPC votes, trying to spot the doves and hawks among the six panel members - Patel, two other RBI officials and three government appointed economists. The policy repo rate has stood at 6.50 percent since April. As inflation is likely to slow on the back of slumping food prices after a good monsoon, most analysts expect the benchmark rate to be cut by 25 basis points this year - which would take it to its lowest since November 2010. But the question is when. A Reuters poll showed 26 of 44 analysts surveyed expect the MPC to wait for more signs that inflation is easing and hold rates steady for now. But 16 economists see prospects for a 25 bps cut, while two expect an aggressive 50 bps cut. Leaving rates on hold would make it almost certain that the RBI would cut in December, analysts say. Some analysts urged the RBI to act now as inflation is fallen back within the RBI’s 2-6 percent target range. “We expect a 25 basis point rate cut at the October policy largely because inflation is at 5 percent and is expected to remain around 5 percent for most part of the rest of the fiscal year,” said Anjali Verma, chief economist at PhillipCapital. “Also, growth is largely tepid and therefore a rate cut is warranted now.” But the RBI could opt to wait. The U.S. Federal Reserve’s gradual approach to increasing rates has given India, and other emerging market economies, extra time in a low rate environment to support their economies. Though the MPC has been given a mandate of “maintaining price stability,” it must do so “while keeping in mind the objective of growth,” according to the amended RBI Act. India has been the fastest growing major economy, but it is still missing investment levels needed to sustain strong growth, and in the March-June quarter expansion slowed to 7.1 percent annually from 7.9 percent in the previous quarter. A flare-up on the border with Pakistan has the potential to upset India’s markets, though most analysts believe it would have to escalate markedly to impact RBI policy. Investors are keen to hear Patel’s views as he has made no public appearances since becoming governor on Sept. 4, following three years as a deputy to his predecessor, Raghuram Rajan. Patel is regarded as less likely to stir controversy than Rajan. The former International Monetary Fund chief economist had irked some members of India’s Hindu nationalist government with his socio-economic commentaries before quitting after just one three-year term. Investors say they will seek clues to how Patel plans to steer the rupee through some pressure over coming months due to expected outflows of $25 billion as dollar deposits raised during a rupee crisis three years ago are due to mature. Patel, a former executive at energy conglomerate Reliance Industries, will also be scrutinised to see how he follows through on a campaign to make banks clean up their balance sheets. Some bankers have complained that Rajan’s March 2017 deadline was pushing them too fast. “We would like to get some clarity on the governor’s thoughts on the banking sector, on the deadline of cleaning up bad debt as this is a priority for the economy,” said D.K. Joshi, chief economist at CRISIL Ratings. (Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

2016-07-20

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LONDON (Reuters) - The struggling Sauber Formula One team announced a long-awaited change of ownership on Wednesday, with founder Peter Sauber retiring and handing over control to the Swiss investment firm Longbow Finance. The Swiss team, based in Hinwil, said its name would stay the same and Monisha Kaltenborn will remain as principal and chief executive. Longbow president Pascal Picci will replace Sauber, 72, as chairman of Sauber Holding, the company that controls the team and group. “It is Longbow Finance S.A.’s clear intention to stabilize the group and create the basis for a competitive and successful future,” the team said in a statement before this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest. “The transaction also secures the continuation of the brand Sauber in Formula One and will open opportunities to further grow the engineering activities of the group.” Sauber, who entered Formula One in 1993 and won a race when it was owned by BMW, are the only team yet to score a point in 10 races this season. Sweden’s Marcus Ericsson and Brazilian Felipe Nasr are its drivers. The team has also been struggling away from the track. Some staff salaries have been paid late, and it skipped this month’s in-season test at Silverstone to save money. “We are convinced that Longbow Finance S.A. is the perfect partner to again make the team competitive and successful in Formula One,” said Kaltenborn. “At the same time the new structure will allow us to finally further expand our third party business in which we commercialize our know-how.” Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ken Ferris

2020-02-28 15:49:58

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She earned coveted endorsements and released racial justice plans that scholars agree could make a real difference. That hasn’t meant much on the ground. CHARLESTON, S.C. — The crowd at a music venue here was energized, on its feet, breaking out into an occasional chant of “dream big, fight hard” while waiting for a get-out-the-vote rally with Senator Elizabeth Warren and John Legend. But when one black City Council member from nearby North Charleston entered the auditorium, he immediately noticed a problem: The audience was almost entirely white. Just days before Saturday’s South Carolina primary, a contest in which black voters will likely make up around 60 percent of the electorate, Ms. Warren drew an audience in Charleston that more closely resembled those in Iowa and New Hampshire, more John Mellencamp than John Legend. Mike Brown, the North Charleston city councilor who is undecided in the primary, called it a troubling omen — a campaign that has tried to pitch itself as the uniting force within the Democratic Party that could not attract the party’s most loyal constituency. “Look at this audience, and it’s no representation from African-Americans. One percent? 2 percent?” Mr. Brown said. “Her message is strong, and those who hear her like her, but she just hasn’t reached people on the ground.” Ms. Warren has vocal support from some of the most prominent racial justice activists, online influencers and scholars — people with enormous digital followings, and visibility in the media. She won that support through a conscious political courtship, listening to black activists and releasing several policy plans to reflect how she valued their input. It has paid off with endorsements and presidential forums, and fueled a perception of Ms. Warren as the candidate of diverse coalitions. She scored highest among the 2020 candidates on the Center for Urban and Racial Equity’s “Racial Justice Scorecard,” lit up a crowd of women of color at She the People’s presidential forum last year, and announced the support of a collection of activists and organizers called Black Womxn For in November. “We are really focused on who is going to advance the best policies that will transform the lives of black people across the country,” said Alicia Garza, the activist and founder of the Black to the Future Action Fund, a political group that recently endorsed Ms. Warren, a Massachusetts senator. However, there remains a significant disconnect between that perception and the reality of securing black and Latino votes. And that disconnect is becoming harder to hide, as Ms. Warren lost decisively among Latino voters in Nevada and her prospects among black voters in South Carolina look equally grim. Recent polling averages project she will finish fourth or fifth in the state, behind more widely known or well-funded candidates like former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the businessman Tom Steyer. Don Calloway, a Democratic strategist specializing in field operations with black voters, said Ms. Warren’s problems winning them over threatened the viability of her campaign moving forward but should also serve as a cautionary tale: The progressive activists who have showered her candidacy with validation have a different electoral lens than the black electorate at large. That schism is a distinction some have labeled “grass tops vs. the grass roots” — or the belief that the leaders of liberal and progressive organizations have a different political lens than their more working-class members. Ms. Warren “did a great job of galvanizing internet-savvy, well-known personalities, but unfortunately it doesn’t look like that support has translated into populations on the ground,” Mr. Calloway said. There are signs Ms. Warren’s campaign long knew it was in trouble in the South and among black voters. Late last year, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions, Ms. Warren’s team called around to experienced South Carolina operatives, hoping to add experience and an “adult in the room” to a black outreach operation they admitted was inadequate. However, the time coincided with a rough stretch in Ms. Warren’s campaign nationally; including a downturn in polling, the departure of Ms. Warren’s national organizing director amid complaints of “inappropriate behavior,” the entrance of new Democratic candidates who snapped up some staff, and a fund-raising slowdown that halted its ability to recruit new blood. The Warren campaign’s struggle winning over black and Latino voters is a significant disappointment for a candidacy that once believed this would be its avenue to usurp Mr. Sanders, who struggled to attract similar voters during his previous run but has shown some growth by winning Nevada and making improvements among younger black voters in South Carolina. It has disrupted Ms. Warren’s ability to make the case that she, not Mr. Sanders, is the progressive capable of building diverse coalitions of Democrats. Throughout the campaign, Ms. Warren has won plaudits from elite black and Latino Democrats, both those in the more traditional party establishment and outsiders. She was praised as a model for how white candidates could use policy proposals and rhetoric to highlight their values, and a testament to the importance of building a diverse staff who could advocate the finer points of minority outreach — like engaging with the black and Latino press. Aides and surrogates for Ms. Warren’s campaign continue to point to these moments, arguing that they will — eventually — have an electoral payoff come Super Tuesday and beyond. They play down the Nevada results because the early vote took place before her lauded debate performance, and they look past South Carolina, arguing candidates who have higher name recognition have disrupted the playing field. “She has had a year to build her profile and name recognition and Sanders has had four years to do that,” Ms. Garza said. “And in South Carolina, they’d vote for Biden not because of his policies, it’s because he says Obama in every sentence.” Nelini Stamp, national organizing director with the Working Families Party, another progressive group that has endorsed Ms. Warren, said there is still time for Ms. Warren’s popularity among widely known activists to pay off, pointing to voters who remain undecided. “And just look at the support Senator Warren has gotten across the board,” Ms. Stamp said. “It’s movement people, leaders of organization, and individuals. In Black Womxn For, we have 400 women and gender nonconforming folks.” However, outside Ms. Warren’s group of surrogates, and on the ground in South Carolina, a sense of pessimism is growing. Local elected officials, party strategists and rival campaigns now say that Ms. Warren’s candidacy is a case study in the limits of using the language of progressive activists to speak to a black community that is more ideologically diverse. This week, at a minister’s breakfast in North Charleston that Ms. Warren attended, the older black voters who dominate the South Carolina electorate were not talking about policy — but electability. In interviews, residents universally praised Ms. Warren’s speech to the group that morning, but questioned her ability to beat President Trump, particularly after she failed to finish in the top two in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. The question was not whether they liked her, or whether she was prepared, but if they could trust her. “At this point it’s all about electability,” said Telley Lynnette Gadson, a pastor from Greenville who attended the breakfast. “I want someone who looks like they can win.” Even Ms. Stamp, who is supporting Ms. Warren, acknowledged the campaign’s disappointing early performance may have influenced black voters who are guiding their choices by the singular question: “Who can beat Donald Trump?” “It would not be responsible to say that the early states don’t have an impact,” Ms. Stamp said. “But I do think that last week’s debate showed she isn’t giving up the fight and people believe she’s a fighter.” Among younger black voters at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, where Ms. Warren held another rally this week with Mr. Legend, she had a different problem — many of the young voters who attended, and even those who liked her, still planned to vote for Mr. Sanders. The Vermont senator has his own collection of prominent black supporters, and has the added benefit of higher name recognition from his previous presidential run. The students said Mr. Sanders was the talk of their Twitter feeds, Instagram timelines and classroom political discussions — an organic omnipresence that did not need activists or big name surrogates to bolster it. “Bernie just sparked this movement for young people. He makes the impossible seem possible and I want to stand with someone who stood with me,” said Latayah Williams, 20, a student who attended Ms. Warren’s rally at South Carolina State but who called Mr. Sanders her first and “original” choice. Rashad Robinson, president of the racial justice organization Color of Change, said Ms. Warren’s plight highlighted the importance of growing trust in black communities, before those voters will believe in campaign plans. “It’s taken Bernie four years to do this well with young black people,” Mr. Robinson said. “Our community has deep loyalties and they stick with people. And it takes time for people to pick a new horse if that’s what they were going to do.” According to an analysis by The Post and Courier, the largest daily newspaper in Charleston, Ms. Warren has also held relatively few events in South Carolina. Mr. Steyer leads with 54 events in the state, while former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., and Mr. Sanders are tied at 41 and Mr. Biden comes in at 30. Ms. Warren’s tally was just 20 events going into Friday, fewer than former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, and former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, all of whom have left the race. Mr. Calloway said Ms. Warren’s trajectory should send a signal to other candidates: “You can be right on the policy but if you’re not there and don’t have a good team there, it’s all for naught.” Updated Feb. 29, 2020

2019-04-30 00:00:00

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday appeared to back Juan Guaido’s call for support after the Venezuelan opposition leader urged Venezuelans and the military to back his effort to oust President Nicolas Maduro. “The FANB must protect the Constitution and the Venezuelan people. It should stand by the National Assembly and the legitimate institutions against the usurpation of democracy. The United States stands with the people of Venezuela,” Bolton tweeted, referring to the FANB armed forces. Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

2018-04-30 10:22:00

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Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are celebrating 30 years of marriage with the help of their famous friends. The longtime couple toasted to their anniversary with a star-studded party in Los Angeles on Saturday. Mom-to-be Kate Hudson was seen arriving at the bash with boyfriend Danny Fujikawa, along with her parents Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Other A-list guests included Conan O’Brien, Martin Short, Isla Fisher and Jimmy Kimmel and his wife Molly McNearney. Hudson kept her growing bump covered in a black, off the shoulder dress for the occasion. Hawn was seen wearing a pair of black, polka-dot pants while Russell looked casual in a flannel shirt. The group of party guests was seen chatting outside the soiree before heading inside. And of course, Hanks’ future running-mate Oprah Winfrey was also seen arriving at the party. Hanks and Wilson, both 61, met shortly after the actor divorced his first wife Samantha Lewes in 1987. Hanks and Wilson were married the next year. “I wish there was a secret, you know. We just like each other. You start there,” Hanks previously said about what it takes for a successful marriage. “I still can’t believe my wife goes out with me,” he added. “If we were in high school and I was just funny, I’d never have the courage to talk to her.” Hanks also previously said his marriage to Wilson has been easy. “They say it must be hard work. No, it’s not,” Hanks said. “Every now and again you know, you gotta get over some stuff but life is one damn thing after another and it’s actually more pleasant to be able to go home with someone you like to spend time with in order to get with it.”

2019-04-04 18:45:15

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WASHINGTON — Lawyers for Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, told congressional lawmakers in a letter on Thursday that Mr. Cohen can best help their oversight inquiries if he remains out of prison to sift through millions of his documents — and they asked the help of Democrats in persuading prosecutors to help him do so. The lawyers told Democratic members of congressional committees who have either subpoenaed his testimony or have asked him to appear voluntarily over the course of the past year that Mr. Cohen has been essential to their investigations, and they reminded them of the help they have sought from him even after his public hearing in February. The lawyers — Lanny J. Davis, Michael D. Monico and Carly Chocron — wrote that Mr. Cohen was recently given access again to his files, which had been seized by federal investigators during a search in April 2018. The files include voice mail messages and recordings, as well as 14 million other documents, they said. With Mr. Cohen expected to begin serving a three-year prison sentence on May 6, the lawyers asked the committee members to provide documentation of his help, in the hopes of showing that he is still needed to assist them with their investigations — and of postponing his incarceration or even reducing the time he will spend behind bars. The lawyers sought the help of the Democrats in convincing federal prosecutors in Manhattan of “the need for Mr. Cohen to be readily available to Congress and to prosecutors conducting these investigations, such that his date to report for incarceration about four weeks from now will be substantially postponed while he is fully cooperating with prosecutors and Congress.” The lawyers cited the potential for his cooperation in the investigations to lead to a “reduced term” for Mr. Cohen. “There is no doubt that Mr. Cohen’s testimony, both public and private, has contributed substantially, with documents and other evidence, to triggering additional areas for investigation by law enforcement authorities and the Congress,” the lawyers wrote. “He has done so despite intense personal pressures and stresses he faces for himself and his family. However, with 30 days left before he surrenders to prison, time is no longer a luxury he is capable of.” The lawyers said they were not writing to Republicans because they were not sure they would be “interested.” The lawyers said they would reconsider, but “during his public appearance, virtually every single Republican member during the public and private testimony used all their time to attack Mr. Cohen personally, rather than to ask substantive questions.” Mr. Cohen is facing prison time after pleading guilty to financial crimes and to one count of lying to Congress about the length of time that a planned Trump Tower project in Moscow was considered during the 2016 presidential campaign. He also pleaded guilty to his role in a campaign finance scheme in which federal prosecutors in Manhattan have implicated Mr. Trump. That scheme involved hush payments during the 2016 campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. The lawyers asked that the members of Congress write letters stating that the “substantial trove of new information” that Mr. Cohen can share “requires substantial time with him and ready access to him by congressional committees and staff to complete their investigations and to fulfill their oversight responsibilities required under the Constitution as the Article I independent branch of government.” Over nearly a week in February, Mr. Cohen appeared before three congressional committees in the House and Senate investigating either Mr. Trump’s campaign or his businesses. Most of that testimony was kept behind closed doors, but the centerpiece was a public hearing before the House Oversight Committee in which Mr. Cohen accused Mr. Trump in vivid detail of a pattern of lies and criminal behavior. Much of that testimony revolved around the effort during the 2016 campaign to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress who alleged an affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen produced copies of checks issued by the president or his trust that Mr. Cohen said were reimbursements for $130,000 in hush payments to Ms. Daniels. He said the president had discussed the payments in the Oval Office. With his testimony televised across the country, Mr. Cohen went on to accuse the president of other potentially criminal acts. Among them was his assertion that Mr. Trump, without doing so directly, “made clear to me” that “he wanted me to lie” to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project. He also accused the president of inflating his net worth to a bank and of having greater knowledge about possible contacts between his associates and Russia than Mr. Trump has publicly maintained. House Democrats have continued to investigate many of the issues raised by Mr. Cohen, including the hush money payments and possible financial fraud, in addition to the president’s link to Russia. Mr. Trump, his lawyers and their Republican allies have denounced Mr. Cohen as a liar and have accused him of manufacturing information to reduce his prison sentence. Two House Republicans referred Mr. Cohen to the Justice Department for potential perjury charges stemming from his public testimony. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan wrote a blistering memo about Mr. Cohen before he was sentenced, but they called his information in relation to certain issues truthful. They have since interviewed him to glean additional information for open investigations, including those related to the Trump Organization and the president’s inaugural committee. Mr. Cohen, his lawyers wrote, “is going to prison for conduct almost all of which was for the benefit of Mr. Trump personally and indeed directed by him.” “In our opinion,” they wrote, “there is something unjust here.” They also argued that the length of Mr. Cohen’s sentence is “disproportionate given the particular facts and circumstances underlying each of the crimes to which Mr. Cohen pled guilty.”