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Belinda Van Sickle was scared. What had started as an online debate over media ethics in video game journalism had erupted into a visceral campaign of harassment toward women in the industry. Threats to dox, rape or even murder were consolidated by certain gamers under the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate. It got so bad that Van Sickle, executive director of Women in Games International, bought motion-detector lights for her home and added multilevel password security to all her financial sites. Even today, two years later, Van Sickle says she sees how the controversy hurt the recruitment of female gaming pros, and the episode fueled perceptions of rampant sexism throughout the gaming world. “It was a scary time for the industry, and it really hasn’t ended,” Van Sickle told OZY. “If you were on the fence about staying, this pushed you over the edge.” The misogyny that boiled over then, and simmers today, has many roots, but much of it stems from the idea that women are impostors. Never mind that there are more adult women playing games than teenage-and-younger boys, according to the Entertainment Software Association’s 2016 report. Demographics aside, the assumption that women are less suited for gaming is on shaky scientific ground. Sorry to tell you, boys, but … Women advance as quickly as, or faster than, men in massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. That’s the finding of a recent study analyzing more than 10,000 men and women in two MMOs, EverQuest II in the United States and Chevaliers’ Romance III in China. In such games, a player’s progress is measured in levels, which are reached by gaining experience through killing enemies or accomplishing key tasks. If men are better gamers, they should advance to higher levels faster in the same amount of time. Studies have shown that women tend to spend less time playing, and choose more assistive characters, such as healers, which can make leveling up harder. But once those factors are controlled for, women level up just as fast as men, says Michigan State’s Rabindra Ratan, one of the study authors, proving it’s playing time, not gender, that affects player skill. This all matters because researchers have shown at least a partial connection between gaming and the decision to pursue work in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), in which women remain significantly underrepresented. Women do start, in aggregate, with less spatial awareness, which can be a roadblock in first-person shooter games like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. But that disparity all but disappears after just 10 hours of game time, according to a study published in Psychological Science in 2007. The MMO study wasn’t able to compare the most advanced gamers, since the leveling speed of a max-level player is essentially zero. Still, the study adds to a growing body of research suggesting one thing … one of the potentially more dazzling special effects in gaming: Give a girl a controller and watch the gender gap disappear — in a flash. More from ozy, below Enlarge Close

ArtStyle: 'DTS was a wild and exhilarating ride.' After his shocking departure from Na`Vi, users were polled on GosuGamers on whether they felt Na`Vi could bounce back from such a loss. Indeed, it was a relevant concern, seeing as someone of Artstyle's talent became the backbone for DTS and Na`Vi throughout their illustrious journey in the world of DotA and later, Dota 2. In an extensive interview with the legendary captain, Artstyle reveals much about his personal life, his opinions on Dota 2, and last but not the least, his views about the Russian DotA community. One of our GosuGamers users, Anton "Desolator" Kolyago, contributed extensively to the translation of this interview and its concise and accurate publication could not have been possible without his help. Enjoy! Let's start with the question that is on everyone's mind right now - are you returning to the competitive Dota 2 scene? -"Yup, I will be back. It has been on my mind for some time as well and if things go according to plan, I am sure that I'll come out with my strongest team to date. Up Close and Personal... DTS at Asus Spring 2011 Are you currently working or studying? What are your plans for the future? -"I'm literally nowhere at the moment and I don't have a job. I'm not sure what lies ahead but at the moment, I plan to just play and do some streaming until the next Dota 2 tournament." How about poker? Do you plan to make a career out of it, or just play it for fun? -"Well, I have not considered poker so I certainly have not earned money from it - if anything, poker has taken my money away *laughs*. Although I did initially consider poker as my career - seeing that there was a 200,000 prize pool event - I later changed my mind because it wasn't worth it and I could still earn money without playing poker." Do you have a girlfriend right now? -"I'll just say this - right now, my life is pretty much straightened out. I think you need not know any more." What do you do in your spare time? -"At the moment, I'm spending my time playing Dota 2, and getting to know more about her (Dota 2) *smiles*. Before that, I was taking a break." Are you an athlete of any sort? Do you play sports? -"*laughs* Yeah, I was previously an avid fan of football, but then I started playing DotA. It's not something I follow now since all my idols have aged and are no longer playing." With how quickly Dota 2 is developing right now, do you think it has the potential to be a major, full-fledged eSports title in the future? -"It's hard to say, really. Of course, I wish it it would be the case, but things are hard to predict at the moment." Are you involved in anything to help Dota 2 on that path? -"I'm not trying to make eSports into real sports or anything - I can see that it has developed into a growing industry and it will continue to prosper. Gaming will eventually become a huge social network and until then, I will be trying to open the game up to more and more people." Have you thought about going to start your career in China given the atmosphere there - decent salaries, broadcasting on TV, the huge crowds? -"Yes, I have thought about it. I would actually like to work with iG but I have no ties with anyone there and cannot speak the language. I won't be able to communicate with the team or the captain, so I guess that's out of bounds for me." You were awarded with a medal and a diploma by the Kharkiv City Council a few months ago (see]see). How do you feel about this honor? -"Indeed, I did receive a medal and a diploma. I was quite proud of myself although a dash of luck was involved (I earned it before I won the million dollars at Gamescom). In fact, I'm not sure whether I actually deserved it. What are your plans for the future? Do you plan on working or earning more money through events like The International until you've earned enough, and then retire? -"Money is never enough *laughs* so I will have to make plans about my future. I'm a gamer! I'm not sure if I can hold a normal job, and sit around doing boring things for a fixed salary - it's just not for me." Have you heard PGG's rap song? -"Yup, I have. I hope they don't do one about me because I'm normally quite shy and quiet myself." What music do you listen to? -"Oh, I listen to basically everything. Recently, I developed a taste for Leps but then again, I'm fine with anything. The only thing I can't appreciate would be rap music." Would you like to be immortalized in 'the history books'? What kind of a legacy would you like to leave behind? -"Yes, I would like that, but I certainly do not want to be remembered for DotA. I hope I will leave behind a meaningful legacy that people will remember." DotA - the big picture... Artstlye (right) with NS I have read over a dozen of your interviews, but you have never spoken about the origin of your nickname, Artstyle. How did it come about? -"It has been my nickname for a very long time now. It began when I was watching Maykera streaming Warcraft 3, and it was showing Happy playing. During an interview with Happy's opponent, he described the former's actions as being 'ArtStyle'. Since then, I began to adopt that nickname." There were rumors that you had been playing DotA on a regular basis. Is this true? What do you think is the difference between the two games? -"Yeah, it's true that I have returned to DotA although I switched to Dota 2 about a week ago. I love both games so it's hard for me to compare them but I would say this - with fewer and few tournaments in DotA, I don't think I will be playing both of them anymore. I'll just stick to Dota 2 from now on." You mentioned that you play Dota 2 for at least 15 hours a day. Is this because you are trying to get back on form? -"I am trying to study the game and pick up stuff like learning how to estimate damage output and cooldowns, as well as familiarizing myself with the attack animations. Yesterday, I saw something in Death Prophet that was missing from the hero in DotA. Her spirits will fly up into the sky before coming down to attack. It was such an unpleasant surprise!" Have you played 6.73 of DotA? What are your thoughts about it? -"If I had to sum it up, I would say that Legion Commander is way too overpowered. I was playing Pudge with 4,500 hitpoints and 20 armor and he was still able to take me down in five seconds. It was also the first time I saw so many critical hits on a hero. Usually, hero effects go away, but Legion Commander's damage gain stays permanently." 6.73 changes have been ported over to Dota 2. How do you feel about that? -"Honestly, I have not played the new version but even if I did, I would play the tournament version where the changes have not been applied. The new item, Tranquil Boots, is pretty imba and I call it the equivalent of a Vanguard for weak intelligence heroes. It's definitely a must-buy item for support heroes, considering how cheap it is." Do you play with Legacy hero keys or do you set your own keys? -"I currently play with Legacy keys but I'm starting to adapt to the new hotkey system." Many people call you Ivan Balanar because of how well you played the hero Night Stalker at The International. Could you share with us some tips on how to play the hero? -"For Night Stalker, I normally go for Urn of Shadows, Power Treads, Magic Stick, Vanguard and then Aghanims. If the game is going really well or late, then I will consider getting a Scythe of Vyse of a Skull Basher later on." Do you think an Aghanims is a must-buy for Night Stalker in any given situation? -"Of course! This is how I win games. You can see the entire battlefield while your enemy cannot. Furthermore, if you are getting ganked and chased, you will be able to plan your escape route." During a previous interview with Synderen, he mentioned that Night Stalker was also his favorite hero and later hesitantly accepted our hypothetical offer of a 1v1 between the two of you. Would you have also accepted the challenge? -"What happened that day was that I was chatting with a couple of teammates on Skype when it was brought to my attention. After skimming the interview, I related my surprised to my teammates because I felt the fact that Synderen, being a person who has actually not won anything except for some minor leagues, could actually accept such a challenge was incomprehensible." What are your thoughts on the league system in Dota 2? Which leagues would you play in? -"I'm not playing in any league currently so I don't have anything to say about them - I'm sticking with public games for now." When will you start streaming? Are you still working closely with Darer? -"I will start streaming very soon and yes, I am still in close collaboration with Darer. The owner of this project is actually one of the most trustworthy guys you will find on the Internet. In fact, I have a feeling you will be hearing alot from them soon." You mentioned once that 2010 was the best year in your career as a professional DotA player and that you had already achieved everything you wanted then. Looking back, how would you describe your career in 2011? -"I was playing for Na`Vi the whole time during 2011. I guess it was a good year in terms of achievements and how the team developed but it was also a good year for DotA and its evolution as an eSport in general." About competitive DotA... Na`Vi at Gamescom - Dendi, Light, XBOCT, Puppey, McDee, ArtStyle When and how did you assume the role of a captain? -"It all started when I was at DTS and our team was going through a rough patch - in fact, we were even on the verge of disbandment. I can't remember who was the captain then but someone suggested that I take the position. At that time, V1lat was looking for Light to assume that role but as it turned out, I was taking charge and leading the team. I should point out that NS was a great help while I was at DTS as he advised me on how I moved around the map. Dendi also helped out a lot with learning our opponents while we were at DTS. So yeah, I should say that everyone contributed equally to the team and it was not just about me." As the captain, did you make all key decisions yourself or did you listen to what your teammates have to say? -"I take into consideration what everyone on the team has to say, since I believe that there are no horrible decisions. It's hard to understand what your teammates are doing all the time, but once you step back and think about it, I guess they all make sense when you look at it from their point of view. For example, if your teammate insists that you gank a six-slotted Medusa with just a support Crystal Maiden, you have to understand that Crystal Maiden would play a key role in that gank even if she just prevents Medusa from teleporting away. At the worst situation, you would end up trading a support hero for a carry hero. This shows that there's a lot more to DotA and people than you think; somehow people are contented with sitting back and letting your main carry (i.e. the Spectre) farm a full build and then win." How about drafting? Did you consider what your teammates had to say? -"Always. I make sure everyone's voice is heard and that they do not feel left out of the conversation. We try our best to accommodate everyone's suggestions, though I must point out an exception in Dread - no one will ever understand his ideas, not even after ten years." You mentioned once that there was no such thing as an 'outpick' and it was possible to win with literally any lineup. Does that still hold true for you today or have you ever foreseen the outcome of a game just from the picks? -"Yeah, I still think so. You can't 'outpick' people; you win games by outplaying them. All you have to do is give certain heroes to a great player and you have yourself a strong combination. For example, if you give a Furion to someone who can play the hero well and pair him up with a couple of good heroes, your team can be guaranteed to control the game 100% the whole time." Do you still have the habit of coming up with innovative strategies? If so, do you consider other's ideas or stick to what you have in mind? -"Well, since I'm inactive now, I haven't been thinking about new strategies at all. It's a misnomer to call them 'strategies' actually - all you have to do is pair heroes with great potential and execute them well. I don't know what to say about my teammates ideas affecting the drafting stage; it's actually simpler than what people think it to be." Are you an adaptive player? Do you have your whole game planned out for you before the game or do you change it as the game progresses? -"Of course, things will change as we move along in picks. However, it is really all about the player the minute the game starts. If they can perform at their best, then there is not much I have to do - they already know what to do in that situation." I know that you dislike the idea of a 'push strategy' but let's just treat it as such. There are many ways of countering such strategies, so the question is - how would you counter the 'counter-push' strategy if you had already chosen a push lineup? -"Push and counter-push? Those terms sound funny to me. It's really hard to give you a proper answer, because a counter-push lineup, by definition, would counter a push lineup. At the end of the day, it really depends on the players themselves and how they react - you can always trick your opponents into winning the game for you. For example, you can go for a 'suicide barracks' attempt which will force them to defend while you have just taken out a large chunk of their raxes and used Necromonicons to push all three lanes." So there isn't any real way to counter a 'counter-push lineup' with a push lineup? -"Basically, engage your enemies outside of their base and while you are fighting them, have someone go for one of their important building structures." Seeing as how the Chinese metagame has become more aggressive and fast-paced with many games ending between 20 to 30 minutes, do you feel like you deserve some credit for this change? -"Maybe, but you will have to credit DTS and Na`Vi as well for that. I guess a bigger factor for this change would be the Chinese players themselves - they always play at such a high level and very smartly at that. Two years ago, I had already noticed that they could end games at 20 minutes but back then, their playstyles were very strange to me." Comparing DTS 2010 with Na`Vi 2011... An early 2011 picture of Na`Vi Tell us about the first Dota 2 team you originally joined. -"Actually, it was cool playing with Axypa and Goblak in the first Na`Vi roster. We played really well, losing only to GGnet and we opened the scene to a lot of push strategies. While it was fun playing with them, we did not have the performance that I saw in DTS 2010. In DTS, we could easily kill off five carries with five support heroes." How about the time you spent in Na`Vi following the arrival of Light and Puppey? How did that compare to your time in DTS 2010? -"Let's start from the beginning. In DTS, it so happened that even if we did not get the heroes we wanted (our supports were non-standard, Dendi did not play the solo-mid hero, etc) we still had a role to play and we played it well. After we had this settled, it was pretty easy picking at official games, because we had so much fun experimenting during training. I am saying this a lot, but we really had a ton of fun. We dived in for ganks without creep support, we stopped farming and just went around forcing teamfights 50 times in a row (later many would come to interpret this as our 'push strategy' which we already saw too much of). In general, DTS 2010 was just a wild and exhilirating ride. In Na`Vi, everything was simpler. Our approach was much more serious; we each had specific goals in mind and studied our opponents extensively. The only thing that affected us was our lack of training - yes, even before The International. Just imagine the four of us playing Warcraft 3 fun maps before the tournament, even though we had been issued Dota 2 beta keys longer before. By the way, we were one of the first teams to get our keys, but we still made sure we had fun. I guess that's one of the reasons why we won at Gamescom - we were incredibly united. In fact, before all the 'fun' we had and the times we shared, we hardly knew each other at all. About the players, Puppey and XBOCT replacing NS and Dread: obviously, they have different roles in the game, but I was closer to Dread and NS because of how much we clicked in personalities. After the latter pair's departure from Na`Vi, our team missed the two pranksters (or at least only one of them was successful). *smiles* If you compare them as players, there's not much to weigh in on since they are all great players. Dread's role within the team dynamic and also the roster as the carry and aggressive player was later on replaced by XBOCT in Na`Vi. If you want to talk about the skill difference, then I guess I don't have much to say." What about your departure? Was it a serious blow to Na`Vi or were they able to cope with it normally? -"In terms of team morale, I guess they were devastated. As for their performance, they still managed to keep a high level of play going because that's what they have going on within Na`Vi - excellence. I guess my retirement from Dota 2 was at least better than me transferring to another team." Have your already spent or invested your prize money from The International? You seemed to really want a nice car." -"*laughs*" In an interview conducted after your Gamescom victory, you remarked that you lost the motivation to play Dota 2. How is that possible after winning one million dollars off a game and later on not feel like playing anymore? -"Well, my sudden lack of motivation was unpredictable and, to me, incomprehensible. I don't know how others would have acted in my place, but before that, I would have been given it my all for $400 anyway. *smiles* I realize now that the essence of DotA lies not in the cash money but in the heat of the moment (the moment being the game, and the heat being the experience of playing your heart out with four other guys). Don't worry - I am as motivated and full of energy now as I was at Gamescom and I am ready to take anyone and everyone down." Did you still follow the progress of Na`Vi after you left? Did you see their performance at their last championship and what did you think about them then? -"To be honest, I did not follow them much before but I did watch them at the offline finals of the World DotA Championships (WDC). Though I wasn't looking out for them, I did enjoy the games they played. It would indeed be interesting to play with DK; it certainly would have been a great fight. *smiles*" What happens now and in the future... Na`Vi with the million dollar check What went wrong at the Intel Challenge Super Cup? Why did your team perform so badly? -"Actually, I disagree. Considering that we first met Na`Vi and beat M5 and Monkey (even though it was the group stages), whereby the latter two later went on to place top 1 and top 2, I don't think we did too badly." Tell us about your departure from the DTS roster. Aren't you ashamed that you disappeared once again after failing at a single tournament? -"I believe I spoke about this earlier, so I don't have anything more to add." What have you been doing after that? Did you watch the Dota 2 Star Championships - what did you think about the results? -"Well, I've been floating around.. As for the tournament, I was looking out for PGG's team. I liked the way Goblak and Blowa played and so I was pleased to find out that they won." What is your relationship with XPEH (DTS manager)? Will you play for DTS in the future? -"Our relationship is not very good at the moment. As for DTS - I don't really know." Tell our readers what you can about the team you will be playing for, and the competitions you plan to participate in. -"I can't reveal anything at the moment, though I do hope that it will be legendary and I will do my best to make sure our plans come to fruition." In a recent interview, you mentioned that your return to Na`Vi was impossible. Has anything changed in that respect, given that time heals all wounds? Have you made up with ZeroGravity? -"If we are to be completely honest, we actually got along and did not argue - our problem was that we did not understand each other. But as for returning to Na`Vi - absolutely not!" Will you be bootcamping soon? And if you do, will you be going to another country, or will the mountain move to Mohammad? -"Yeah, I will have to go to another country for bootcamp, though I don't know which country that will be. *shows tongue*" Will we see new push strategies by ArtStyle? -"Like I said, they are not push strategies and they are not 'ArtStyle's', but our enemies' towers will definitely be hit hard!" Are you stronger emotionally now than you were last year? After The International, you said that you had a couple of 'mini heart attacks' during the games. -"Hmm, that's an interesting question. I think everything will be okay at the next Gamescom, but we can only see then..." In the past, you used to make many decisions along with Dendi and Puppey, and your advice have gone a long way. Will someone take the charge this time or will you once again carry the burden of being a captain yourself? -"Yes, I will pitch in and help out my high-skilled teammates. *smiles*" One reason for your departure from Na`Vi was your reluctance to sign a contract. What about the new team? Most organizations have contracts as a prerequisite. -"Contracts create strife... Yes, we will have contracts but the ones I will sign are much better than what I proposed originally." Will we see you coach a team in the future? -"No, right now I have a strong desire to play competitively." In an earlier interview, you said: 'DTS is all for me!' Is this still the case with your new team? -"I hope that my experience with my new team will be better than what I had at DTS. I hope we will not just be teammates, but also good friends. At the very least, I'll make sure that we get off on the right foot." ArtStyle on the Dota 2 scene... Ivan "ArtStyle" Antonov You were almost sure with your prediction of the fate of team M5 with PGG in a previous interview, saying: 'I immediately thought of how hard it will be for them, but I don't know why. They are all strong players individually, but something in me just felt that it was going to be a failure.' Could you now predict the fate of the current DTS (ex-TR)? -"I will not give an accurate prediction for this one. If at any point in that interview, I felt that the M5 players were going to work with PGG for nothing less than 100%, then I guess maybe they would have succeeded." What is your opinion about the presence of six players in DTS? -"Six players is definitely a problem, but I hope that Blowa and Goblak will be part of the main roster. I really liked how they played at the Dota 2 Star Championships." What are your impressions of the top two Dota 2 teams in Ukraine at the moment - Na`Vi and eSahara? -"Let's not talk about Na`Vi; you'll know what I think about them when we meet in the finals of a tournament. *smiles* As for eSahara, they are great guys and I actually know some of the players for eight years now. I wish them all the best <3." What do you think is missing from the current lineup of M5 (ex-Garaj) with Klif and KyKy which is preventing them from winning tournaments? -"Someone or something is not up to par, that's all. It's probably the same couple of gankers who finished the game 0-10 on Dazzle and Alchemist." You previously singled out the team OSI as one of the potential top teams of the CIS. What do you know about those guys? -"Same as what I know about the team iG from China - nothing." Briefly describe the top Dota 2 teams at the moment, such as SK, Fnatic, mTw, Mousesports, etc. What European teams stand out to you and why? -"SK, the second best Dota 2 team to come out of Denmark. The first has alwayas been MYM, but they lost track of their Danish heritage. Fnatic, if I'm not mistaken, are the Serbs who, at Asus, lost seven games out of eight. I have no comments. mTw - oh sure, I guess that they are the elite of competitive Dota 2 now that they won DreamHack. *reveals shocked expression sarcastically* Mousesports are like a bunch of HoN players. I only know of one who happens to be a HoN player and that is Blowa. I should also give a special shoutout to EG. They are very good players individually, and even though they have failed in DotA many times before, I still feel they have the potential to demolish any team out there." Members of our forum are interested in what you think about organisations such as LLL, infused, SGC, and others who have recently signed up not-too-well-know rosters as their Dota 2 teams. -"Oh, they're great guys, and they all have a great future ahead in Dota 2. I even know all of them personally! *remarks sarcastically*" Not too long ago, Australian team Natural 9 defeated another strong team, Na`Vi, in under 20 minutes. Have you heard about them, or maybe even played with them? -"I actually heard about them a couple of years ago in DotA, when they managed to beat the top of Europe on bad ping connecting from Australia. I can still remember the nickname 'xMusica'. After a while, they fell out of the scene, and I guess were just sitting at the background. They're good players and their results show from the team play they exhibit." What do you think about Asian (particularly Chinese) teams in Dota 2? -"While China is still China, I feel the level of Dota 2 in Europe has grown a lot. I do not think that the history of Dota 2 will be another era of domination for the Chinese. It is possible that they win individual championships and fight on equal terms with everyone, but we definitely will not see total domination." A word about the Russians... ArtStyle with Na`Vi's earliest incarnation Are you still in contact with any professional DotA players? -"Of course - I would now like to give a shoutout to Eclipse. He is one of the few professional players who still talk to me. Everyone else just hates me because of what happened in the past." Can you describe Puppey and PGG as captains? -"They all have clear styles of play, but they still have their bad qualities." What do you think about Na`Vi's fifth player, Smile? Was God or someone else a better replacement? -"You know, I have many friends coming up to me and ask: 'Why Sergei? Why Smile?' And I reply to all of them that there cannot be a better replacement than Smile! This man is not only suited as a player for the role that Na`Vi lacks, but furthermore, he's a good friend that you can trust." Recently, there's a rumor on the forums that BabyKnight was returning to Dota 2. Is this true, and if so, do you think he can return to his former level of play? -"I have actually not heard anything about this at all, but if it is true, I believe this guy will be able to get back on form soon enough. Personally, I feel Dota 2 is his calling. He'll be able to find a professional team in no time and become the best player out there." Talk about Plet. You said he was almost like a second ArtStyle. Where is he now and will we see you on the same team as him? -"Hmm. No, unfortunately, my team will not include Plet. At a tournament in Kiev, he was unable to perform to expectations because he was not getting enough support. In general, he is aggressive; he is constantly running around the map, killing people all the time and very skilled in micro. Unfortunately, he's alone now and I do hope he finds a team." Just a few months ago, you made a serious claim that just_Error was the most promising player in Russia. What do you think about this and why is he not playing with DTS? -"It's because DTS is not ready to be the best team in Russia. *smiles* Seriously speaking, he is a good solo player who can really think on his feet. Somehow, he's nowhere to be seen now." As you went inactive, did you feel sorry for the DotA community? -"It was truly a pity to leave DotA then, while I may be indifferent to some people, the community really started to mean something to me. Yes, I did not like it, but I had no other choice..." Couldn't you bend over for the sake of the community and all yours fans? -"I could, but not at that moment - I just had to leave!" Do most of the bad mannered players in Dota 2 Europe come from Russia? Do you think they need a separate server from the Russian players? -"Nope, DotA scumbags are everywhere and they come in huge numbers. As for a separate server, I suggest moving them to HoN." Thank you for this extensive and interesting interview. The last word is yours. -"I just want to say hello to my friends and fans. Continue cheering for me, and do not leave me. Thank you for your support!"

I was going to write about last night’s Republican presidential debate. After all it was ostensibly about the economy. But I can’t. I won’t. There is nothing to say other than these two observations: First: the questions themselves were designed to allow the candidates to spout standard Republican ideology unfettered by reality. For instance, early on one question began with a meandering statement about how the national debt is unsustainable, and how the social security system is headed for bankruptcy. Neither is true. Neither is true at all. However, in the tightly controlled and hermetically sealed world of the GOP party base, both those statements are regarded as rock solid facts. Thus the candidates were able to answer with the necessary Republican critique that we must balance the budget, slash social spending, and cut taxes on the wealthy. In other words the answers were given to questions that did not reference the real economy, but only the make-believe economy that Republicans now inhabit. Second: this disconnect with reality gets even worse when we take a look at the various tax or economic plans on offer. They are all, without exception, based on the same supply-side twaddle that got us into the mess we are currently digging ourselves out of. The notion that by cutting taxes on the wealthy we somehow spur investment has been so thoroughly debunked by recent experience that it defies belief that anyone still trots it out as a viable policy. Yet every single one of them does. Not only this, they all imagine that the magic of supply-side economics will suddenly hurl the economy out of its present torpor and into an unprecedented period of growth such that the massive hole in the deficit caused by the tax cuts, and the subsequent loss in revenues, will be made up for by the lower tax rates being applied to all that new activity. We will, apparently, make it up in volume. This is, of course, fantasy. It always has been. It always will be. But it sounds nice and plausible. Especially if the people listening focus simply on the tax cut they will receive and not on the flood of red ink it will cascade through our national finances. At this point I must give Rand Paul some kudos: he, at least, bashed away at the idea – put forward by Rubio – that we can balance the budget and yet increase military spending simultaneously. What, Rand asked, is conservative about hiking any spending if it is not financed by taxes? Rubio blustered in response, presumably because he is unprepared for anyone asking simple questions about his math. And that’s it. The Republicans are stuck in a policy cut-de-sac because their base wants to hear certain things even if those things no longer relate to economic reality. So the holy trinity of tax cuts, smaller government, and deregulated business are trotted out over and over even if they are not solutions to what ails us. They are presumed to be solutions. So we have to assume a set of problems to make them relevant. Hence the questions that were devoid of recent fact. I doubt any of these people will get elected, but that doesn’t alleviate the problem: the entire Republican party is hiding within its alternative world. So Congress is steeped in these same solutions to the same imaginary problems. We have a Congress and a Republican party that wants to legislate for an alternative world and not the one they actually live in. So when reality and the imaginary worlds collide, and when the legislation has no bearing on what’s going on around us, nothing happens to move the lives of the voters forward. Hence the gridlock. There will be no change in the foreseeable future. Or until someone in the Republican party returns to earth and comes up with something new. Don’t hold your breath.

SEXUAL offences carried out by migrants in Germany have doubled in the past year, new statistics show. German authorities have released a report that shows 3,304 sex attacks involved migrants last year. AP:Associated Press 3 German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under pressure as her country tries to cope with an influx of refugees It compares to 1,683 sex crimes that were carried out in 2015, the government study said. Crimes ranges from sexual assault to rape. Of 37,442 sex crimes committed in Germany last year, just over nine per cent were carried out by migrants. most read in news Exclusive DARK PAST Homeless man doused in water by rail staff KILLED man who splashed him with paint MOMO NO-NO Momo Challenge in 'Peppa Pig and Fortnite vids' as YouTube and Instagram slammed TREE OF TERROR Mum horrified to learn what the strange 'pods' were hanging from branches SUICIDE WARNING What is Momo and how can parents protect their children? say no no to momo Expert advice on how to keep children safe from online suicide game Momo MOMO SHOCK Creepy 'suicide character' Momo told lad, 8, to 'stab himself in neck' Latest SCHOOLBOY STABBING Boy 'face down on the ground' after being knifed at London station ULTIMATE BETRAYAL Girl ‘came to school in love bites after dad let men molest her for cash’ Warning LEFT FOR DEAD Cruel thugs slice puppy's mouth open like Batman villain The Joker RED ALERT Baby rushed to hospital with 'singed scalp' after using 65p Aldi bath wash Chancellor Angela Merkel has overseen a wave of immigration in recent years as Germany attempts to ease the migrant crisis. More than a million asylum seekers fled to Europe's largest economy with Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis forming the bulk of those welcomed in. But the wave of migration has created friction around the country. Most notably 1,200 women were sexually assaulted by a group of around 2,000 men in Cologne on New Year's Eve 2016. AP:Associated Press 3 Police have been forced to make a series of arrests. Here, a stock file, shows a Syrian man accused of smuggling migrants from Austria to Germany being detained Getty Images 3 Police presence was ramped up in Cologne last New Year's Ever following a spate of sexual assaults a year earlier The majority of those involved are believed to have been recent migrants to the country. Similar incident took place around Germany with Hamburg, Stuttgart and Dortmund also hit by the wave of assaults. At the time, Merkel said: "The events of New Year’s Eve have dramatically exposed the challenge we’re facing, revealing a new facet that we haven’t yet seen. "We have to protect the many law-abiding refugees that have sought safety and refuge with us. "But against foreign criminals we have to be very determined.” We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368

The country's only playing cards manufacturer had been subtly marking its cards to help gamblers in the know cheat their way to a fortune. Officials at Caesar's Casino in Johannesburg first suspected something when over a three-week period blackjack takings dropped by 11 per cent, with total takings plummeting by $333,000 in 19 days. A winning hand at blackjack has a value close to but below 21 At least five gamblers behaved strangely, either darting their eyes quickly over the deck or making bets of widely different amounts. Investigators found that the patterns on the back of the ten, jack, queen, king and ace were almost imperceptibly different. Each were found to have a tiny blank space inside a repeated floral pattern on the horizontal edge on the back of the card, visible to players before the croupier deals. Over a year the equivalent losses across the whole industry would have reached some $10m, said Ernie Joubert, chief executive of Global Resorts which part-owns the casino near Johannesburg. The company said it had received 4,000 marked packs. Other casinos alerted Executives believe information about the marked cards was sold to gamblers either for a flat fee or commissions on their winnings. It was not clear exactly who was behind the operation and no arrests have been announced. Protea Playing Cards has been the sole card supplier to all 22 of South Africa's casinos and others in southern Africa for more than a decade. The company has not yet commented. Investigations are now under way to find out whether other casinos are affected. "People always thought ... that South African blackjack players were the best in the world," Mr Joubert said. "Now there may be another reason." Casinos in South Africa generate revenues of more than $333m a year.

In the past 15 months, police in British Columbia and Washington have been counting potential crimes by the foot. The total so far is seven, all apparently washing up in sneakers on remote beaches. The first human extremity was discovered by a shocked 12-year-old Washington girl who came upon it on a cool, clear Monday, Aug. 20, 2007, along Jedediah Island, a rocky isle in the Strait of Georgia’s Gulf Islands. Curious, the girl picked up the man’s size-12 Campus brand sneaker off the beach, and out tumbled a wet sock. Inside was a decomposing right foot. The find rated an intriguing news story in the Alberni Valley Times on Vancouver Island. Authorities were mystified. “There’s all kinds of scenarios and possibilities,” said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Garry Cox, noting he was unsure whether the foot had floated in or was the product of some kind of beach mayhem. “It was a regular foot with the skin intact,” he said. “It didn’t appear to be there too long because it wasn’t that decomposed.” Mounties bagged the foot and sent it to the British Columbia Coroners Service in Vancouver, where DNA testing commenced. That seemed that, and the story faded. Somewhere there was, presumably, a cadaver minus one foot. Officials could wait to see if the other shoe literally dropped. It took only six days. The second foot was found on Aug. 26, a calm, sunny Sunday. It too was inside a sock, and in a man’s sneaker, and was a size 12. And one more similarity: The second foot was also a righty. A case that had gone two feet forward suddenly took a step backward. “I’ve heard of dancers with two left feet, but come on,” the RCMP’s Cox told reporters, making it clear he had two separate floating-feet cases to investigate. And bizarre cases they were. “Finding one foot is like a million-to-one odds,” he said, “but to find two is crazy.” And 40 miles apart at that. The second foot, encased in a Reebok, was discovered by a Vancouver couple strolling along a beach trail on Gabriola Island, known for its shellfish and limestone formations, located down the strait from Jedediah. Another Mountie, Cpl. Brad Szewczok, seemed to be urging the media and public to stay calm. “My best guess,” he said, “is that they are from missing-persons cases. There have been people that fall off ferries, missing boaters, and a tugboat that went down within the last year. And people fall off fishing vessels all the time.” B.C. law enforcement has about 2,400 missing-persons cases on the books, and Washington 2,000. Many in both jurisdictions are cold cases dating back years, even decades. They include abducted children, the homeless, runaways, and those designated presumed dead/body not recovered. B.C.’s missing-person count is the highest of any Canadian province, according to a 2005 Simon Fraser University study, and many are thought to have drowned from accidents or suicides in B.C.’s vast waters. Some also might be victims of B.C. serial killer and pig farmer Robert Picton from 1997 to 2001. He was convicted last December, and is doing life for the murders of six women, parts of which he fed to his pigs. Officials say he once confessed to killing 49 women, the majority of them prostitutes and drug users from the mean streets of downtown Vancouver’s Eastside. The second foot joined the first at the Coroners Service in Vancouver for DNA tests. But for a test to succeed, a matching sample is needed, and that’s not often available in missing-persons cases. Medical examiners did confirm the disarticulated extremities were from males, but where the flesh and bone came from and who the owners had been, authorities couldn’t yet say. Within six months, that story also faded. Then came the third foot. It was another male righty size 11, inside a Nike sneaker, found Feb. 2 this year on Valdes Island, a short drift south of Gabriola. That sparked new interest by the public, some of whom began combing beaches for sneakers bearing feet—and finding them. The fourth foot, a female righty size 7, inside a New Balance, was found May 22 on Kirkland Island, across the strait from Valdes off the B.C. mainland, which catches the current coming out of the Fraser River. The fifth, a male lefty size 11, inside a Nike, was found June 16 on Westham Island, near Kirkland Island; DNA tests later confirmed it was the mate to foot #3. The sixth, a male righty size 11, inside an Everest sneaker, was found Aug. 1 mired in seaweed along the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Pysht, west of Port Angeles. That is more than 150 miles from foot #1, although Canadian currents flow that direction into the Pacific. And the seventh, a female lefty size 7, inside a New Balance, was found last month, Nov. 11, near Richmond on the B.C. mainland south of Vancouver. Last week it was confirmed as a mate to foot #4. By installments, newspapers tracked the carnage, which appears to total four male and one female footless victims, most discovered in the past 10 months along adjoining Canadian and U.S. waters. Forget Mountie Szewczok and his words of caution! It had become the Seven-Foot Mystery, a suspected epidemic of foul play. That’s what some thought, anyway, particularly Seattle and Vancouver radio talk-show callers, Internet bloggers, and newspaper reader-commenters. With the seventh floating foot came a tide of conspiracy theories: The straits had become a watery graveyard for Vancouver’s organized crime; the extremities belonged to illegal immigrants murdered by their smugglers; a foot-fetish serial killer was on the loose. “All these feets, all the wackings, all these people getting kidnap [sic] 5 years ago,” wrote a Vancouver Sun reader/commenter last month, making reference to a Vancouver crime wave, “all coming up now.” Actually, with the seventh foot, what’s coming up now are some answers, says former University of Washington oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer, Ph.D., known as Dr. Duck to the rapt audience of schoolkids he lectures on flotsam, jetsam, and buoyant body parts. Sorry, says Ebbesmeyer, who has kept a head and foot count of the serial washups. “It’s not much of a mystery.” At 65, semi-retired Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer is busier than ever, he says, keeping one boot in salt water and the other in his workspace at home in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood. The gray-haired, trim-bearded Ebbesmeyer says his daily goal is “trying to make sense of science.” He’s a protégé of Cliff Barnes, the respected UW professor of oceanography for whom the school’s marine research vessel is named. When Barnes died in 1995, Ebbesmeyer cleaned out the professor’s office—then took everything home and recreated the office in his basement. As a writer, leader of international science expeditions, and private consultant, Ebbesmeyer is immersed in the sea, specializing in its movements. He tracks surface currents and such watery curiosities as floating garbage patches and container spills to determine flow patterns. His unique research has helped such institutions as oil companies and the City of Seattle’s sewage treatment division chart the fateful drift of their products. A sideline to his research now and then is to work with forensics experts to divine the travel time and distance of a dead body or its parts, when there is some mystery surrounding their discovery. He’s often queried by reporters on such stories, to the point that he now gets calls from the kin of drowning victims, asking for estimates as to where and when a body is most likely to surface and be recovered. He also gives school lectures that include the subject of floating appendages. “The kids get real quiet,” he says with a grin. Over coffee at the Varsity Restaurant in Ravenna, Ebbesmeyer seems to brighten as he talks about one of his study cases, a man who, for extreme sport and without bungee cords, jumped 221 feet off the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1988. His friends were to pick him up at the beach below, but never saw him again until his funeral. He hit the water at 80 miles an hour, and washed up 32 hours later on Alki Beach in Seattle. “He drifted south to Fox Island and came around and up through Colvos Passage,” says the oceanographer, adjusting his bifocals. “Quite a trip.” Ebbesmeyer and then–King County Medical Examiner chief investigator Bill Haglund wrote a paper on the case for the Journal of Forensic Sciences in 1994, to aid other investigators in tracking floating carcasses. They charted tides and currents and recreated the whirling trip through hydraulic trajectory modeling, Ebbesmeyer says, trying to keep the macabre stuff academic. “My wife doesn’t want me to talk about this kind of thing at home—it’s not something you can bring up at dinner.” In a thoughtful tone, Ebbesmeyer rattles off a litany of the items found in recent years to have been sleeping with the nation’s fishes. “Let’s see. A head in Oregon, a complete skeleton in Hawaii, arms and legs in Texas, head in Florida…” And he knows this how? “I have a network of beachcombers worldwide, and they report in.” Go to Ebbesmeyer’s Web site, beachcombersalert.org (he also issues a quarterly newsletter), and you can find the link to report oceanic treasure and trash. Ebbesmeyer depends on readers to keep him posted on the global arrival of messages in bottles, incoming glass balls, telltale driftwood, and the contents of container spills. The reports augment his studies of ocean currents and help him map out floating garbage patches and junk beaches. You can’t necessarily see the semi-submerged ocean patches when flying over them, he says, but a closer look would reveal a plastic island that includes floating refrigerators, TVs, computer screens, tires, smashed-up yachts, and you-name-it. “The patches are twice the size of Texas,” Ebbesmeyer says. “Plastic has helped make them a global catastrophe. We dump this garbage and it ends up in the sea and the sea life we live off. Basically, we’re poisoning ourselves.” Also among the relevant oceanographic input is the migration of bathtub duckies, such as the 1992 toy spill in the Pacific. About 28,800 plastic ducks, turtles, beavers, and frogs packed in containers slid off a freighter; after drifting 2,200 miles, portions of the toy armada began washing up near Sitka, Alaska. Ebbesmeyer even tracked one frog and one duck in a watery trek across the North Pole to Newfoundland “where their paths diverged—one to Maine and the other to Britain.” The toys were still being discovered as late as 2004, helping him score some new hydraulic drift findings. The ducky is also now emerging as his personal logo: One is featured on the cover of his forthcoming book, Flotsametrics and the Floating World, written with local author and former Seattle Weekly staffer Eric Scigliano. The autobiography is due out in March from HarperCollins. Ebbesmeyer sometimes alerts his followers to hazardous finds—an ominous aluminum cylinder floating north of Guam—and splendid encounters—a 90-foot beer tank bobbing off Scotland. He gives the scoop on weather balloons, too:Almost a thousand are scattered worldwide each day, bearing miniaturized electronic weather stations known as radiosondes. But 100,000 balloons and sondes annually end up in the ocean, to scientists’ chagrin. “Sondes signify our throwaway society,” Ebbesmeyer says, figuring they have left a billion bits of Styrofoam on Earth’s 382,000 miles of shoreline. And, of course, Ebbesmeyer investigates floating sneakers, having made a big splash solving the Great Nike Shoe Spill of 2003. Global media tied up his phone line after he reported the spill from three shipping containers in the Pacific. One of his beachcombing correspondents had alerted him to the discovery of unmatched Nikes on the Washington coast near Queets and sent along the bar-code numbers. Ebbesmeyer broke down the code to determine the footwear was new. He e-mailed Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., and heard from exec Dave Newman. “Three containers went overboard in December 2002 off the northern California coast,” Newman confirmed, about 35 miles off Cape Mendocino, Calif. Generally, Newman said, 5,500 pairs fit in a standard 40-foot ocean container. That was enough to outfit 16,500 high-school hoopsters, at $100 a pair. Evidence in hand, Ebbesmeyer called up an Alaska science writer he knew, and the story broke on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News: Free shoes! Moochers stormed the beaches, and though no one was counting, scads of the shoes were found on the West Coast tides—with one catch: Nike forgot to tie the laces. Beachcombers would have to find matching mates on their own. It was with that background that Ebbesmeyer approached the Seven-Foot Mystery. Like all sneaker brands, plastic-and-rubber Nikes float soles to the sky, with or without a decaying human foot, and can bob great distances. In the 2003 Nike spill, they went almost 2,000 miles in 72 days, Ebbesmeyer deduced, from California to Rose Spit at the top of the Queen Charlotte Islands, B.C., near the Alaska border. Others curled around and went off to Hawaii, perhaps Japan. Some surprisingly heavy objects ride the surf almost as well. “I’m constantly amazed at what floats and what doesn’t,” Ebbesmeyer says, thumbing through a small spiral notebook he keeps. “On the beach I came across a bowling ball once. ‘What’s this doing here?’, I thought, and pitched it into the ocean. It floats!” Bodies, however, decompose in a comparatively short time, or can be partially or wholly dismembered by currents or eaten by marine life. “The head separates easily after a time in water,” Ebbesmeyer says, starting to shrug. “It’s just sitting here atop our spines.” He tilts his head as if making it fall off. The head that washed up in Oregon belonged to a headless body that washed up at Westport, Wash., the result of natural decomposition, separation, and tides, he says. Ebbesmeyer gave a legal deposition on currents in that 1995 case, in which an Oregon woman named Linda Jean Stangel, 23, was convicted of manslaughter for pushing her boyfriend, David Wahl, 27, off a beach cliff. But feet in particular detach naturally, below the ankle, and most important, through the aid and protection of sneakers, are more likely to drift off and be discovered—to the shock and suspicions of many. Examinations of the six feet found in Canada gave no indication of foul play, says Terry Foster, a spokesperson for the B.C. Coroners Service. “In all cases, these remains appear to have naturally separated from the body,” since no tool or trauma marks were found on the feet. That was also the case with the U.S. foot found near Pysht, Clallam County officials say. Yet the feet became serially linked by the media reports, and the assumption grew that they were related by a criminal cause of death. The discoveries puzzled Ebbesmeyer in the beginning, too. But not today. “It was baffling at the start—four right feet,” he says. That seemed to defy the odds, feeding suspicions of a serial killer leaving a calling card. “But then we started getting lefts and matches. And it began to look more commonplace.” With the seventh foot last month, he’s convinced there’s no widespread foul play. Actually, considering that thousands of people have been reported missing in B.C. and Washington, “I’m surprised we haven’t found more body parts,” Ebbesmeyer says. “We’re dealing with only a few people here, in an arbitrary period of time, and it’s routine for some to have fallen in the water and been there long enough for the feet to disarticulate and float away.” No one can yet say how victims in the Seven-Foot Mystery might have died—understandably, given the lack of evidence. But Ebbesmeyer typically finds such cases lead back to sunken craft, missing swimmers, and other accident victims whose bodies were never recovered. B.C. authorities have been focusing in that area as well, attempting to match the feet’s DNA with drowning, boating, and aircraft accident victims, including five who died in a 2005 B.C. float-plane crash. “The sensational aspect of this case,” Ebbesmeyer says, “the serial killer, was wild speculation. Quite a few people go overboard, jump off bridges, and so on—no crimes involved.” For example, the partial skeleton of a man found last year on a remote beach west of Point Lawrence, Orcas Island, was likely a drowning victim. Yet the seemingly benign find has now become part of the Seven-Foot Mystery. San Juan County Prosecutor and Coroner Randy Gaylord says a hiker made the discovery in March 2007, five months prior to the first B.C. foot find. A forensic anthropologist determined that the nearly decomposed man, who had a gold inlay, was about 5 feet 9 inches tall and likely white, Native American, or Asian. Gaylord and investigators found no evidence of foul play, though one arm and the other hand were missing from the corpse. Notably, so were both feet. That’s not unusual if the remains came in on the tide, says Gaylord. “Feet and hands are small and light,” he notes, “and with a wide range of motion and smaller connective tissue, it is part of the natural progression that they separate from the rest of the body.” Did the feet float off to B.C.? Ebbesmeyer says currents from the San Juans are capable of carrying objects up into the gulf waters. And B.C. investigators, who belatedly learned of the Orcas finding—though Gaylord had publicized it last year—recently asked for a DNA sample. B.C. Coroners spokesperson Foster says he doesn’t yet have any findings to release, and Gaylord says it’s his understanding that DNA profiling is still ongoing. (DNA testing, usually done on a priority basis, is delayed when no apparent crime is attached to a case.) Thus, Gaylord says, so far “nothing conclusive” links the Orcas remains with the Canadian feet, or the foot found near Pysht. There was no indication the Orcas corpse and its feet were forcibly parted, adds Gaylord. “The word ‘severed’ showed up in some early stories in the Canadian press, and seems to me to be a source of why it is so sensational there, and got so much less interest here.” Lost in the conspiracy noise is the understanding that Canadian authorities have made progress in their six difficult cases. They have matched shoes #3 and #5 as well as #4 and #7, and, thanks to DNA tests and a public tip, have confirmed the identity of the person whose foot started it all 15 months ago. In July, they announced that foot #1 on Jedediah Island belonged to a B.C. man—still publicly unnamed at his family’s request. He was indeed listed in the missing-persons database, and when he disappeared in 2007 reportedly suffered from depression. The possibility he was a suicide victim didn’t interrupt the serial count of extremities—his foot was included in the latest ominous-sounding reports on the seventh find, the sixth in Canada. But the mystery up north is in fact down to three unknown victims—the owner of foot #2 and the two owners of the matching pairs of sneakers. Still to be determined is any B.C. connection to the Pysht foot. Should any of the Canadian feet match the Orcas skeletal remains, in U.S. jurisdiction, that could leave B.C. with just two unknown victims. “Two. Nothing unusual about that,” says Ebbesmeyer. Of course, more feet could float in. In fact, Ebbesmeyer is almost certain they will. Blame it on style. People will die, he says, “and a lot of them will be wearing sneakers.” randerson@seattleweekly.com

poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201701/360/1155968404_5298675246001_5298660291001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true GOP leaders won't say how border wall will be paid for PHILADELPHIA — Republican leaders are vowing to pass a spending bill to build President Donald Trump’s border wall. What they won’t say is how they plan to cover the costs. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said Thursday that Congress will pass a supplemental bill before Sept. 30 that would fund a wall building project, which will cost about $12 billion to $15 billion, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. But Ryan dodged a question about whether Congress would raise taxes or cut spending to pay for such an endeavor. Story Continued Below “We’re going to wait and see from the administration what the supplemental looks like. I’m not going to get ahead of a policy and a bill that has not been written yet. But the point is we’re going to finance the Secure Fence Act,” Ryan said, referring to a 2006 bill. Later Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said a tax overhaul that includes a new 20 percent tax on imports from countries with which the United States has a trade deficit, such as Mexico, would sufficiently fund the wall. Speaking to reporters at the GOP retreat, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) suggested he would oppose such a funding bill without more details about using drones and towers to protect the border and said it's incumbent on newly installed Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to sell the proposal to Congress. McCain also said he was "confident" the initial bill would not include $15 billion in spending. "A major factor in this will be if Gen. Kelly can come before the Congress and say here’s my plan to give you a secure border," McCain said. “We have to see the details of it and the cost and if they aren’t going to use all those tools I'm talking about I’m not inclined to support it. Whether it will succeed or fail will be directly dependent upon Gen. Kelly’s presentation of a plan for how it’s going to happen. “ Promising that the fence will be paid for with taxpayer dollars could complicate things on Capitol Hill, where coming up with several billion dollars is no small task. Republicans could raise revenues, cut spending or require the U.S. Treasury to borrow money for the costs — a move that would increase the deficit. Later on Thursday, Ryan would not commit that this Congress would keep the deficit from growing, though he said items like infrastructure improvements would be paid for. “We are fiscal conservatives,” he said. “We have to get our fiscal house in order to prevent a debt crisis in the future.” Though leaders declined to say how the wall would be funded, rank-and-file conservatives began insisting that no matter what, the wall would be paid for. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said House appropriators were already crafting ways to offset the costs of the border wall. “I vote for things that are offset. I’m a stronger believer in offsetting, whatever it is you’re gonna be spending money on," said Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho). "The government today borrows one and a quarter billion dollars a day. And that can’t go on. So it needs to be offset.” Trump clearly wants to get going soon, saying Thursday that if Mexico ultimately doesn’t refund the U.S. for building a border wall “it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting” with the Mexican government. With that urgent directive coming from the new president, Republicans are promising to pass a bill funding the border wall even if they have no guidance on what exactly Trump wants in the legislation. “The last administration frustrated the deployment of the fence," Ryan said. "This administration is doing the opposite. They’re facilitating the deployment of the fence. We agree with this. We voted for this in 2006, along with plenty of people like our friend Chuck Schumer,” the Senate minority leader. Republicans will need at least eight Senate Democrats to come together and help pay for the wall — and Schumer (D-N.Y.) indicated earlier this month that he could oppose such legislation. Republicans think the 10 Senate Democrats up for reelection in Trump states could help fund the wall, but it’s going to be a heavy lift regardless. “The same Republicans who howled ‘fiscal responsibility’ when it comes to investments to help working families are apparently willing to light billions of taxpayer dollars on fire and add to the federal deficit in order to build Trump’s useless border wall,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “The wall is a multi-billion dollar boondoggle in the making."

When men were men, and verbs were passive Over the past few weeks, we've been discussing America's growing anxiety about passivity. That's the verbal voice, not the attitude towards life, though the composition mavens sometimes get the two mixed up. Arnold Zwicky found that the Avoid Passive rule originated in U.S. composition handbooks early in the 20th century (perhaps first in Strunk's 1918 Elements of Style), along with a metaphorical association between passive verbs and weakness. Today, after three generations of anti-passive propaganda, most American students are taught to "strengthen your verbs" to stimulate "active thinking and writing", and to avoid the "excessively wordy, weak" prose (and hairy palms?) caused by "the first deadly sin: passive voice". Because George Orwell recommended Passive Avoidance in his essay "Politics and the English Language", Geoff Pullum quoted an ironic observation from The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage: "Bryant 1962 reports three statistical studies of passive versus active sentences in various periodicals; the highest incidence of passive constructions was 13 percent. Orwell runs to a little over 20 percent in 'Politics and the English Language.'" Since Strunk & White provide another of the streams feeding the massive river of contemporary anti-passivity, I checked a couple of pages of E.B. White's prose, and found 21% passives. Yesterday, as I read Winston Churchill's The River War in search of collective nouns, I was struck by the frequency of passive verbs. And as you'll see below, the numbers back me up -- in the passages I checked, Churchill uses passive verbs about as often as active ones. But Churchill, even more than Orwell, Strunk and White, is a model of forceful eloquence. Should 21st-century composition teachers reverse course, and advise their students to bulk up on passives so as to develop powerful, muscular prose? The opening paragraph of The River War has about nine tensed verbs, depending on how you count (does "is drained and watered" count for one or two?). Of these, four (or perhaps five) are passive (in red below), three are active (in blue below), and two involve forms of "to be" that perhaps should not count one way or the other: The north-eastern quarter of the continent of Africa is drained and watered by the Nile. Among and about the headstreams and tributaries of this mighty river lie the wide and fertile provinces of the Egyptian Soudan. Situated in the very centre of the land, these remote regions are on every side divided from the seas by five hundred miles of mountain, swamp, or desert. The great river is their only means of growth, their only channel of progress. It is by the Nile alone that their commerce can reach the outer markets, or European civilisation can penetrate the inner darkness. The Soudan is joined to Egypt by the Nile, as a diver is connected with the surface by his air-pipe. Without it there is only suffocation. Aut Nilus, aut nihil! One of the three active verbs (lie) is intransitive and has no passive counterpart. So depending on how we count things, this is something between 4/9 (44%) and 5/7 (71%) passive verbs. Let's be conservative and say that 44% of the tensed clauses are headed by a passive verb, while 3/9 (33%) have an active verb as head. But wait, you say -- Churchill is just laying out the geography. Once he starts describing the actions of men at war, those active verbs will surely spring up on every side. But not so. Consider this vigorous and forceful passage: The known strength of the Khalifa made it evident that a powerful force would be required for the destruction of his army and the capture of his capital. The use of railway transport to some point on the Nile whence there was a clear waterway was therefore imperative . [...] The route via Abu Hamed was selected by the exclusion of the alternatives. [...] The pla n was perfect, and the argument in its favour conclusive. It turned , however, on one point: Was the Desert Railway a possibility ? With this question the General was now confronted . He appealed to expert opinion. Eminent railway engineers in England were consulted . They replied with unanimity that, having due regard to the circumstances, and remembering the conditions of war under which the work must be executed , it was impossible to construct such a line. Distinguished soldiers were approached on the subject. They replied that the scheme was not only impossible , but absurd. Many other persons who were not consulted volunteered the opinion that the whole idea was that of a lunatic , and predicted ruin and disaster to the expedition. Having received this advice, and reflected on it duly , the Sirdar ordered the railway to be constructed without more delay. [...] Lieutenant Girouard, to whom everything was entrusted , was told to make the necessary estimates. Sitting in his hut at Wady Halfa, he drew up a comprehensive list . Nothing was forgotten . Every want was provided for ; every difficulty was foreseen ; every requisite was noted . The questions to be decided were numerous and involved. How much carrying capacity was required ? How much rolling stock? How many engines? What spare parts? How much oil? How many lathes? How many cutters? How many punching and shearing machines? What arrangements of signals would be necessary ? How many lamps? How many points? How many trolleys? What amount of coal should be ordered ? How much water would be wanted ? How should it be carried ? To what extent would its carriage affect the hauling power and influence all previous calculations? How much railway plant was needed ? How many miles of rail? How many thousand sleepers? Where could they be procured at such short notice? How many fishplates were necessary ? What tools would be required ? What appliances? What machinery? How much skilled labour was wanted ? How much of the class of labour available? How were the workmen to be fed and watered? How much food would they want ? How many trains a day must be run to feed them and their escort? How many must be run to carry plant? How did these requirements affect the estimate for rolling stock? The answers to all these questions, and to many others with which I will not inflict the reader, were set forth by Lieutenant Girouard in a ponderous volume several inches thick; and such was the comprehensive accuracy of the estimate that the working parties were never delayed by the want even of a piece of brass wire. 25 passives, 12 actives, 11 copulas: we have 25/48 = 52% passives, 12/48 = 25% actives. OK, you'll say, people are making decisions and plans in that passage; but what about the fighting? Won't we get more active verbs then? Maybe. Here's the start of the battle of the Atbara: During the halt the moon had risen , and when at one o'clock the advance was resumed , the white beams revealed a wider prospect and, glinting on the fixed bayonets, crowned the squares with a sinister glitter. For three hours the army toiled onwards at the same slow and interrupted crawl. Strict silence was now enforced, and all smoking was forbidden . The cavalry, the Camel Corps, and the five batteries had overtaken the infantry, so that the whole attacking force was concentrated . Meanwhile the Dervishes slept . At three o'clock the glare of fires became visible to the south, and, thus arrived before the Dervish position, the squares, with the exception of the reserve brigade, were unlocked , and the whole force, assuming formation of attack, now advanced in one long line through the scattered bush and scrub, presently to emerge upon a large plateau which overlooked Mahmud's zeriba from a distance of about 900 yards. It was still dark , and the haze that shrouded the Dervish camp was broken only by the glare of the watch-fires. The silence was profound . It seemed impossible to believe that more than 25,000 men were ready to join battle at scarcely the distance of half a mile. Yet the advance had not been unperceived , and the Arabs knew that their terrible antagonists crouched on the ridge waiting for the morning; For a while the suspense was prolonged . At last, after what seemed to many an interminable period, the uniform blackness of the horizon was broken by the first glimmer of the dawn. Gradually the light grew stronger until, as a theatre curtain is pulled up , the darkness rolled away , the vague outlines in the haze became definite , and the whole scene was revealed . 10 passives, 15 actives, and 3 copulas: we're down to 10/28 = 36% passives versus 15/28 = 54% actives. For another sample, here's Churchill's description of the action at Om Debreikat that finishes the Khalifa: After about an hour the sky to the eastward began to grow paler with the promise of the morning and in the indistinct light the picquets could be seen creeping gradually in; while behind them along the line of the trees faint white figures, barely distinguishable, began to accumulate . Sir Reginald Wingate, fearing lest a sudden rush should be made upon him, now ordered the whole force to stand up and open fire; and forthwith, in sudden contrast to the silence and obscurity, a loud crackling fusillade began . It was immediately answered . The enemy's fire flickered along a wide half-circle and developed continually with greater vigour opposite the Egyptian left, which was consequently reinforced. As the light improved , large bodies of shouting Dervishes were seen advancing; but the fire was too hot , and their Emirs were unable to lead them far beyond the edge of the wood. So soon as this was perceived Wingate ordered a general advance; and the whole force, moving at a rapid pace down the gentle slope, drove the enemy through the trees into the camp about a mile and a half away. Here, huddled together under their straw shelters, 6,000 women and children were collected , all of whom, with many unwounded combatants, made signals of surrender and appeals for mercy. The 'cease fire' was sounded at half-past six. Then, and not till then, was it discovered how severe the loss of the Dervishes had been. It seemed to the officers that, short as was the range, the effect of rifle fire under such unsatisfactory conditions of light could not have been very great. But the bodies thickly scattered in the scrub were convincing evidences. In one space not much more than a score of yards square lay all the most famous Emirs of the once far-reaching Dervish domination. The Khalifa Abdullah, pierced by several balls, was stretched dead on his sheepskin; on his right lay Ali-Wad-Helu, on his left Ahmed Fedil. 10 passives, 11 actives, 5 copulas and similar things. 10/26 =38% of the tensed clauses are headed by passives; 11/26 = 42% by actives. Grand total for the samples of Churchill in this post: 45 passives (42%), 41 actives (38%), 21 copulas (20%). I'm not seriously advising composition students to increase their use of passive verbs. They should write clearly, and let the verbs fall where they may. But the passive voice definitely needs some better PR, if only among writing teachers. Perhaps we should start with a lexical make-over. We could try replacing the word passive with a competely new borrowing from a classical language, like the "hyptic voice". (Greek ὕπτιος meant "laid on one's back; turned upside down; backwards", and was also sometimes used to refer to the passive voice of verbs.) This might work -- hyptic is a little weird, but there are useful resonances with hip and hypnotic. Or we could try a positive-sounding name based on the value of the passive in focusing different thematic roles --"thematic verbs" or "the focusing voice". We could say, "use thematic verbs to maintain the velocity of your narrative". Or, "seize and hold your readers' attention with the focusing voice". I'm not very good at this naming business, so let's have a Rename the Passive contest. If you've got a great idea, let me know. The winner gets a year's subscription to Language Log, a lifetime supply of by-phrases, and other exciting prizes. Posted by Mark Liberman at August 4, 2006 07:33 AM

The Dow Jones Index had its best week since 2011, when it rose approximately 5.4 percent after President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory. “The Republican sweep across Washington should pave the way for tax reform at both the individual and corporate level. America’s largest multinational companies will almost assuredly have the opportunity to repatriate some of its foreign cash holdings for a modest penalty,” Jeremy Klein, chief market strategist at FBN Securities, told CNBC. Stocks skyrocketed after Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton, as investors considered the potential benefits of increased government spending and less regulation of financial markets. The Dow closed at an all-time high Thursday while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were close to reaching record highs for Friday. Financial markets, as well as many pollsters, political analysts, and the media, had expected Clinton to win the presidency.

EUGENE, Ore. -- When Oregon running back Royce Freeman left Eugene last winter after finishing up exams, he knew he wanted to spend some time consulting people in his life about his NFL decision. He expected to talk with his family and friends, former Oregon running backs coach Gary Campbell and some others who had coached him over the years. But he didn’t expect to hear from new Oregon coach Willie Taggart, who got to campus after most players had already left for winter break. And he certainly didn’t expect to hear from him in the form of a home visit, not unlike the ones Taggart was conducting with 2017 recruits last December. “It was a surprise to me,” Freeman said. “Not a lot of coaches would do that with me being a part of the team already, but he went out of his way to show much he cares about his players.” Willie Taggart keeps a watchful eye on Royce Freeman during a spring practice. Andy Nelson/The Register-Guard via AP Taggart wanted to let Freeman know -- in the running back's living room in Imperial, California -- that he saw him not only as a talented back who had plenty of options but as a player who could continue to be important to the program -- so much so that Taggart would come off the recruiting trail when he already had a condensed amount of time to sign a class. “It was good to get him around my family and hear what he had to say,” Freeman said. “Hearing all the little details and what he had planned for the future -- and he has followed up on all that. He didn’t make any promises that I didn’t feel like he’d be able to keep.” One of those promises was likely about how much Taggart expected to rely on Freeman -- FBS’ leading active rusher coming into next season (4,146 yards) -- during the 2017 season. “It’s not fitting [him] into what I do, it’s fitting into what Royce does,” Taggart said. “We’re not going to complicate it or reinvent anything. We’re going to let Royce be Royce and play ball.” And Freeman didn’t have to look too deep into the past of Taggart, a former triple-option quarterback himself, to get an idea of how run-heavy his final season at Oregon could be under Taggart. At USF, after transitioning into his “Gulf Coast offense,” Taggart’s team went from finishing near the bottom of the FBS in rushing yards in 2013 and 2014 to finishing 11th in 2015 (3,205 yards) and fifth in 2016 (3,709 yards). A lot of those rushing yards were thanks to mobile quarterback Quinton Flowers, who led the Bulls in rushing last season with 1,530 yards. With Flowers complemented by running back Marlon Mack, the Bulls leaned heavily on the run in offensive playcalling. They rushed the ball on 61 percent of offensive plays in 2016 and 66 percent of plays in 2015. During Freeman’s career, the most the Ducks have ever utilized the rush was 62 percent during his sophomore season in 2015. Those kinds of numbers certainly weren’t lost on Freeman. And better yet, one of Taggart’s holdovers from his USF staff now in Eugene was Donte Pimpleton, who coached the Bulls’ running backs the past two seasons. “Having Coach Taggart here adds to the comfort level,” Freeman said. “And the staff, seeing who he brought in, makes me feel as if we can do big things.” One main difference when translating Taggart’s Gulf Coast offense to Oregon is that quarterback Justin Herbert, who’s expected to retain his role as the starter, isn’t nearly as mobile as Flowers. In that regard, this team is far more like Stanford in the late 2000s, when Taggart coached running backs for the Cardinal. He has already said that Freeman reminds him a bit of former Stanford back Toby Gerhart, who combined for more than 3,000 rushing yards and 42 touchdowns in his final two seasons in Palo Alto. During his senior season, Gerhart led the FBS in rushing and won the Doak Walker Award. Taggart saw that kind of potential in Freeman and hoped he would return for a final go-round. But in order to do that, Taggart knew that just as he was out recruiting high schoolers for the future of the Ducks' program, he also would need to recruit Freeman, who would be more important to the 2017 future of this team than any other piece.

Research published in Evolutionary Psychological Science has found that men orgasm faster and ejaculate more semen when masturbating to unfamiliar women. “Our findings are the first to demonstrate that men’s ejaculate behavior and composition change in response to a novel female stimulus,” the researchers wrote in their study, which was published in June. In the study, the researchers examined the time to ejaculation, ejaculate volume, and number of motile sperm in 21 heterosexual men between the ages of 18 and 23 years old who watched seven sexually explicit films over the course of 15 days. The men in the study watched six films depicting the same actress and actor, then watched a similar film with a new actress but the same actor. The researchers found the time to ejaculation ranged between 4 and 21 minutes overall. There was no habituation effect — repeatedly viewing the same woman did not increase or decrease the time to ejaculation. But men did ejaculate more quickly when viewing the seventh film, which included a new woman. In addition, ejaculate volume and total number of motile sperm in the ejaculate increased significantly when viewing the seventh film. “Men produced higher quality ejaculates when exposed to novel, rather than familiar, women,” the researchers wrote. But why does ejaculate volume and total number of motile sperm increase for novel women? Men who produce higher quality sperm for unfamiliar women may have an evolutionary advantage, the researchers explained. The decrease in the time to ejaculation may make it easier for a cheater to copulate with another woman without his partner finding out. In addition, evolution “would favor males who invest more in ejaculates transferred to novel females for two reasons: (i) Males may have already fertilized the egg(s) of (or have their sperm stored by) females with whom they have already mated; and (ii) novel females may be more likely to have mated recently with another male resulting in increased likelihood of sperm competition,” they wrote.

A federal judge has granted a stay on deportations for people who arrived in the US with valid visas but were detained on entry, following President Donald Trump’s executive order to halt travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. The stay is only a partial block to the broader executive order, with the judge stopping short of a broader ruling on its constitutionality. Nevertheless, it was an early, significant blow to the new administration. US airports on frontline as Donald Trump's travel ban causes chaos and protests Read more Less than 24 hours after two Iraqi men were detained at John F Kennedy airport in New York on Saturday morning, Judge Ann Donnelly of the federal district court in Brooklyn ordered an emergency stay, blocking the deportation of any individual currently being held in airports across the United States. “I think the government hasn’t had a full chance to think about this,” Donnelly told a packed courtroom. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups filed the lawsuit earlier on Saturday, challenging the detention of the two Iraqi men, with two more plaintiffs later added to the suit, who were both valid US green-card holders. But the judge’s ruling extended to all individuals facing similar situations across the United States. The two Iraqis, who spent hours detained at JFK, were Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who had worked for the US government for a decade, and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who arrived in the country to join his wife, a US contractor. Donnelly, who was nominated by former president Barack Obama, ruled that the deportations could cause the plaintiffs “irreparable harm” by returning them to countries where they had been threatened. She also noted that the plaintiffs included visa-holders who had already been approved for entry to the US and who, only two days before, would have been let into the country without incident. “Obviously, we’re extremely pleased,” the head of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, told the Guardian. The judge, he said, “obviously gets the importance of the executive order and its impact on hundreds if not thousands of immigrants and refugees”. The stay, which applies nationwide, will last at least until a hearing scheduled for 21 February, the judge said, and includes people on valid visas of all kinds and green-card holders. However, it would only impact those who were “on American soil” – ie those who had been mid-flight or had landed while the executive order was being signed by the president, Romero said. He estimated that there were at least 100-200 people being held in airports across the country, but said the number could be higher. Asked by the judge to confirm the number, government lawyers were unable to respond with confidence. Donnelly ordered the government to provide a list of all people being held in violation of the order at US airports or in flights, to protests from the government lawyers. “I don’t think it’s unduly burdensome to get a list of names,” Donnelly said. Darweesh and Alshawi had both been released earlier on Saturday, the US attorney confirmed. However, Romero specified that Darweesh had been released “at the discretion of the executive branch”. Despite the stay, lawyers for the plaintiffs and civil liberties advocates raised immediate concerns for the wellbeing of those granted a stay, as it was widely assumed that they would be held in immigration detention facilities until their hearing, three weeks away. New York Yemenis stunned by Trump's ban: 'I feel like somebody has killed me' Read more “It’s a long time for people to be sitting in detention centers,” Romero said, adding that the ACLU would be monitoring the conditions in those facilities. Brian Chesky, the co-founder of Airbnb, tweeted that his company would provide “free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US” and suggested that anyone in urgent need of housing should contact him. Judge Donnelly suggested the lawyers should return to court if the travelers were to be placed in detention rather than be released. “I guess I’ll just hear from you,” she said. Earlier on Saturday, President Trump’s executive order, signed the day before, sowed chaos in airports, universities, corporations and living rooms in the US and abroad, as people grappled with the ramifications of its sometimes vague language. Travelers were pulled off planes or detained at checkpoints, universities urged at-risk students not to leave the country or to seek legal advice and tech giants recalled their workers from abroad. Families took calls from panicked loved ones who were unable to return to their homes, with everything from cars to pets waiting where they left them. While the ruling gave hope to those detained on US soil, millions of people around the world face uncertain futures. They include They include Farah Alkhafji, who came to the US as a refugee from Iraq having endured the killing of her husband, the burning of her house and the kidnapping of her father, was just weeks away from taking her US citizenship test. Another is Hayder, who has asked the Guardian not to use his real name. He survived multiple bomb attacks while translating for US troops during the war in Iraq. He has a plane ticket from Texas from Baghdad that he may never get to use. Shortly after Donnelly’s ruling, a federal judge in Virginia banned the deportation of detainees being held at Dulles international airport and ordered officials there to allow detainees to meet with their lawyers. Judge Leonie Brinkema’s temporary restraining order, however, blocked deportations for just seven days. In another case in Washington state, federal Judge Thomas Zilly stopped the US government from deporting two people. A hearing was set for 3 February for Zilly “to determine whether to lift the stay”. The hearing in Brooklyn, though short, was potent and dealt the first successful legal challenge to an administration which has barrelled aggressively through its first week in power, implementing a draconian set of “extreme vetting” measures. The swift pace at which the travel ban was drawn up was plain in the conduct of the court. Lawyers representing the government displayed a clear lack of information, echoing the confusion of various government agencies and officials in the past 24 hours, who had been implementing the order haphazardly. “Things have unfolded with such speed, that we haven’t had time to review the legal situation yet,” an attorney representing the government said. Alerted by the ACLU to the fact that a Syrian woman with a valid US green card had been detained upon arrival into the United States and had been placed on a plane due to take off “back to Syria” within 30 minutes, the judge moved swiftly to reach her conclusion. Iraqis lament Trump travel ban that disregards their service to America Read more “Apparently there is someone being put on a plane. What do you think about that?” an increasingly frustrated Donnelly asked lawyers for the government. “Back to Syria.” She pressed them further on whether the government could give assurances that the woman would suffer no “irreparable harm” upon her arrival in Syria. But Gisela Westwater, a government lawyer who spoke to the judge by phone from Washington, simply replied that the government did not have sufficient information about the woman or the circumstances of her detention. “And as your honor has suggested, we all do require additional time to have more facts.” “Well that’s exactly why I’m going to grant this stay,” Donnelly replied to muffled cheers in the room. Theaudience, which included civil liberties advocates, lawyers and journalists who had tunnelled through a crowd of protesters chanting “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here”, was told by the judge to rein in their palpable excitement. A lawyer with the ACLU later confirmed that US immigration officials were removing the Syrian woman from the plane. Several hundred people waited for the verdict outside the courthouse, holding signs and chanting “Let them go!” and “We believe that we will win”. When the verdict was announced to the crowd less than an hour later, those gathered in the bitter cold erupted in loud cheers. Similar protests were replicated at more than a dozen airports around the country. Hundreds of people gathered to demonstrate at Kennedy airport in New York and the international ports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia and other cities where people were detained and families separated overnight. Multiple immigration lawyers were also at airports, offering their services pro-bono to those detained. Additional reporting by Spencer Ackerman.

Dennis Kucinich asks for recount of NH Primary votes Click here for more info and video News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government09 Jan 2008Where Paper Prevailed, Different Results By Lori Price 09 Jan 20082008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary Results --Total Democratic Votes: 286,139 - Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008Hillary Clinton, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 39.618%Clinton, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 34.908%Barack Obama, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 36.309%Obama, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 38.617%Machine vs Hand:Clinton: 4.709% (13,475 votes)Obama: -2.308% (-6,604 votes)2008 New Hampshire Republican Primary Results --Total Republican Votes: 236,378 Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008Mitt Romney, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 33.075%Romney, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 25.483%Ron Paul, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 7.109%Paul, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 9.221%Machine vs Hand :Romney: 7.592% (17,946 votes)Paul: -2.112% (-4,991 votes)NH: "First in the nation" (with corporate controlled secret vote counting) By Nancy Tobi 07 Jan 2008 81% of New Hampshire ballots are counted in secret by a private corporation named Diebold Election Systems (now known as "Premier"). The elections run on these machines are programmed by one company, LHS Associates, based in Methuen, MA. We know nothing about the people programming these machines, and we know even less about LHS Associates. We know even less about the secret vote counting software used to tabulate 81% of our ballots. [ See also CLG's Coup 2004 and Yes, Gore DID win!.]Please forward this update to anyone you think might be interested. Those who'd like to be added to the Newsletter list can sign up: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg.Please write to: signup@legitgov.org for inquiries.CLG Newsletter editor: Lori Price, Manager. Copyright © 2008, Citizens For Legitimate Government ® All rights reserved. CLG Founder and Chair is Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.UPDATE: My video on this matter:

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Scenes from fatal Mumbai building collapse At least 21 people have died and 21 others have been rescued after a building collapse in Mumbai. Rescuers say they will keep looking for survivors through the night. A six-storey building toppled over in India's financial capital on Thursday. The building in the densely populated Bhendi Bazaar area was believed to be about 100 years old. Ambulances, fire engines and members of the disaster relief force are still working at the site. Mumbai is recovering from heavy rains and flooding. The residential building gave way around 08:40 India time [03:10 GMT], reports said. Image caption Ambulances, fire engines and members of the disaster relief force are working at the site 'High quality housing in short supply' Suranjana Tewari, BBC News Mumbai This is the third building collapse in Mumbai in less than a month. Police suspect that Tuesday's torrential rain weakened the structure of the building that collapsed. Whether that's proven or not, questions are likely to be asked about why so many residents of this growing city are allowed to go on living in old and dilapidated properties. Property prices and rent in Mumbai are among the highest in Asia. High quality housing is in short supply and so people have no choice but to live in sub-standard and crowded buildings. This particular building was slated for redevelopment but people were clearly still living inside it even though it was about 100 years old. Municipal authorities say they have stepped up efforts to evacuate dangerous buildings and demolish them. Clearly that isn't happening fast enough. Building accidents are not uncommon in India, particularly during the monsoon season. Poor construction standards and dilapidation are often to blame. Every year, dozens of people are killed in building collapses across India. There have been three in Mumbai in the past month. In July, 17 people were killed when a four-storey building collapsed in the suburb of Ghatkopar. Are you in the area? Share your pictures, video and eyewitness stories by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

Cartoonist Seth is one of many to have contributed new, rare or never-before-seen work. Photograph: Drawn & Quarterly As fat and as heavy as an old family Bible, Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels is the ultimate gift for the comics fan – and should no one close to you be capable of taking a hint, you should simply go straight out and make a present of it to yourself. For this 776-page celebration of the Canadian publisher of the world’s best cartoonists is unmissable. Adrian Tomine, Chester Brown, Jillian Tamaki, Tom Gauld, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman have all contributed new, rare or never-seen-before work (among many others). It also fairly bulges with archive photographs, reminiscences, interviews and essays: Margaret Atwood in praise of Kate Beaton; an appreciation of Tove Jansson by Sheila Heti; Lemony Snicket on how he discovered the mighty Seth. Really, what more could you want? D&Q, which was founded by Chris Oliveros in 1990, at first struggled to survive in the face of the widespread perception that comics were mostly about superheroes. But having clung on pluckily for more than a decade, it suddenly found itself riding the wave of interest in graphic novels that followed both the movie adaptations of Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and the crossover success of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (winner of the Guardian first book award in 2001). Since then, it has gone from strength to strength. In 2005, it published Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, a groundbreaking travelogue by Guy Delisle that went on to sell 50,000 copies. In 2007, it had the fantastic idea of putting together all Tove Jansson’s Moomin strips (it has since published nine volumes of them). In 2011, Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant enjoyed five months on the New York Times bestseller list. All these landmarks, and dozens more, are celebrated in Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years… Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joe Matt, ‘the comic-book king of confession’. Photograph: Drawn & Quarterly You feel a bit giddy turning the book’s pages. There’s something so generous about it, and so democratic, a lonely image from one of Chris Ware’s sketchbooks giving way to the strange watercolours of the Belgian cartoonist Brecht Evens; a full colour story by the peerlessly talented Israeli artist Rutu Modan following hard on the heels of a monochrome strip by Joe Matt (I am devoted to the cantankerous Matt, the comic-book king of confession). Peggy Burns, D&Q’s stalwart publicist, insists the compendium is a thank you to the more than 50 cartoonists whose belief in the publisher never wavered down the years. And perhaps it is. But it’s really us (and them) who should be thanking D&Q. The company, always punching above its weight, has helped to change the landscape of comics and even of publishing itself, for what self-respecting literary list does not now include the odd graphic novel? (D&Q sold its first UK rights to Jonathan Cape in 2005.) This column would probably not exist were it not for its determination, its (in the main) effortlessly good taste. Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning is published by Drawn & Quarterly (£30). Click here to order a copy for £24

The European Commission knows how important bees are: In 2011, it passed a two-year moratorium on a class of pesticides thought to be facilitating the decline of global bee populations. The chemicals, scientific studies suggested, could be contributing to colony collapse disorder, or CCD, the acronym that's come to define the frightening and mysterious disappearance, seemingly overnight, of entire hives. Over the past six years, the U.S. has lost about $2 billion in such hives and, as a result, $30 billion in crops, to CCD. The controversial move, of course, isn't enough to save the bees, but it's a start. The U.S., despite acknowledging a “complex set of stressors and pathogens,” including agrochemicals, as potential culprits in the die-offs, has yet do anything. In March 2013, a group of beekeepers and environmental groups sued the EPA for its failure to protect the insects, and, by extension, our food supply. The agency, however, said it won't complete its review of the pesticides until 2018. Advertisement: But the problem isn't limited to pesticides, says Dave Goulson, and it's not just honeybees that are feeling the stress. There are more than 20,000 species of bees in the world, and habitat loss and disease, in addition to pesticides, are threatening them all -- not to mention the other insects that are likely being affected, or the larger species that rely on those species for food. A professor of biology at the University of Sussex and founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Goulson is the author of more than 200 scientific studies on bees and other insects and, most recently, of "A Sting in the Tale," which chronicles his lifelong fascination with bumblebees and the quest to forestall their decline. "I think it’s clear that the world my children grow up in is going to be a poorer place than what we have today," he told Salon. However, he's careful to add, we still have a chance to makes things, if not all better, then at least a lot less worse than they could have been. And he has a lot of suggestions for how that might be done. A condensed and lightly edited version of our conversation follows: You've been studying the decline of bees for about 20 years now. Are the die-offs that we’re hearing about right now a recent phenomenon, or are they part of a larger pattern of decline? So the die-offs we’ve been hearing about recently mostly relate to honeybees, which are the managed bees that we keep in boxes and get honey from. A lot of people think that’s the only species of bee, and of course it isn’t. There really 20-odd thousand species of bee in the world. Almost all the others are wild bees that nobody looks after; they just look after themselves. They’re all important, but we actually don’t know what’s happening to most of them. Basically, though, the causes of these die-offs and generally of bee declines are broadly the same for all types of bees, as far as we know. And there are three main ones for which there are good evidence. You’ll read all sorts of nonsense about other things. People will tell you that mobile phones are the cause of bee decline; or genetically modified crops is a popular one -- it’s slightly more plausible, but not much more than mobiles phones. Firstly, is habitat loss. Farming has really radically changed in the last hundred years. In Britain we used to have about 50 million acres of flowery hay meadows, and nearly 98 percent of it was destroyed in the 20th century, when we intensified farming to try and increase food production. It was really kicked up with the second World War: Subsidies were introduced to pay farmers to rip out the hedges and to essentially destroy all this natural habitat and turn it into a crop monoculture. That happens or has gone on everywhere: These days much of North America has these massive fields because of the availability of pesticides, and herbicides in particular, which means you can grow a crop without any weeds at all. I would question whether it’s sustainable, but at least in the short term it produced heaps of food. But it also means there are a lot less flowers. That’s bad if you’re bee because all you eat is pollen, nectar and flowers. That’s probably still the biggest thing that's affecting all bees. Advertisement: Reason number two is disease. We accidentally redistributed bee diseases around the world. Honeybees aren’t native to the Americas at all; they come from Africa. Sadly, when people move bees around they accidentally move their diseases and parasites with them if they’re infected. And these are shared across bee species, so the diseases that affect honeybees will also spread to bumblebees and vice versa. Number three is pesticides, which is a whole story in itself, but some of the insecticides we use are really toxic to bees, and to wildlife generally, and that certainly contributed to the problem. So with those three things together it’s going to be bad. Just to clarify, what’s the main difference between honeybees, which we usually hear more about, and other species? Comparatively, how important are they for food, agriculture, pollination, that sort of thing? If you ask a child to draw a bee, they’ll draw something big and fat with yellow and black stripes. That’s a bumblebee. Honeybees are much smaller: they’re not very furry, they’re very slender, pale brown creatures and they’re what lives in honeybee hives. And then there are all these other species of bee, which are mostly small and quite inconspicuous. Advertisement: In terms of crop pollination, they're all important to some extent: Different crops tend to be better pollinated by one or the other. It has to do with the shape and size of the bee and the length of its tongue. Tomatoes are almost always pollinated by bumblebees, along with things like blueberries and raspberries, strawberries, beans and lots of other vegetables. Honeybees do a whole bunch of other things; almonds are almost always pollinated by honeybees. And many are pollinated by several different species of bee. But the long and short of it is that they’re all important. It would probably be wiser to make sure that we look at a range of bees, because one of the dangers of the modern world is that some crops very heavily rely just on honeybees. When you use lots of pesticides then you get rid of the native and wild bees, and then your only option is to buy honeybees. Almonds are a great example of this. They grow them very intensely and something like 1.5 million honeybee hives are transported to Northern California. Most of the honeybees in North America go to pollinate the almonds in one small area of California every spring. And if anything happens to that supply of honeybee hives then the almond growers are screwed, because they’ve got nothing else to fall back on. And that’s pretty worrying. It would be a much healthier situation if they encouraged and supported wild bees as well as honeybees so they’ve got a backup. As it is, it’s very risky. The European Union has been a lot more progressive than the U.S. on banning pesticides that may be harming bees. Can you talk a little bit about how the E.U. managed to pass its rule and whether it’s being seen as having any effect? Advertisement: Yeah, so in the European Union we recently banned, for two years, three particular types of neonicotinoids, a type of insecticide that’s chemically related to nicotine. It's a nerve toxin that affects the brain of the bee and any other insect. It’s really toxic to insects, much more than almost anything else we’ve invented before. To illustrate that, a fifth of a teaspoon is enough to kill 250 million bees. In the U.K., which is a pretty small area, we have to buy 80 tons of these chemicals every year -- the U.S. figure is much, much higher. So we’re putting tons and tons of stuff into the land which is persistent, it’s systemic, it gets into plants, it gets into pollen and nectar. Most scientists that work in this area are deeply concerned that this is basically harming our bees. Not necessarily by directly killing them, but there’s really good evidence that the doses they get are enough to mess with their behavior. As I said, these are nerve toxins; they affect the brain of the bee. The bee becomes less able to navigate and it can’t learn or associate; it’s kind of confused, it’s intoxicated. And bees need to be able to navigate; it’s one of the key things that they’re really good at. It’s essential for what they do because that’s how they find flowers and get to or from their nest. So with a honeybee or bumblebee, the workers go out and forage all day long and they can fly miles to find patches of flowers and bring food back. But if they’ve been given a dose of the nerve toxin, they can’t navigate, and they get lost, and that’s going to cut off the food supply to the nest. So there’s really good reason to believe these things are harming our bees. And as a result, thankfully, we decided to go ahead with this moratorium. But it hasn’t really come into effect yet. The moratorium came in the effect in December 2013, so five months ago, but all our autumn crops, which is when most of our crops are sown, were treated before the moratorium. So if you drive around Britain today, you’ll see lots of canola fields in full flower. They're all treated. So even with the moratorium now in effect we won’t see any benefits, at the very earliest, until next year. To be honest, it will probably take longer than that. Advertisement: A two-year moratorium doesn’t seem long enough to measure whether this is having any real impact. How long would we realistically need? Well, probably quite a few years, and I should emphasize that even with this moratorium in place, bees still have plenty of other problems, so populations are not going to go through the ceiling. But in any case these chemicals are really persistent; we know that they last in soil for five to 10 years, essentially. And they’ll last in plants for years. So it will take time for these things to slowly disappear from the environment, and nothing is going to happen quickly. I would hope that in three or four years, if the ban is renewed, we will start to see at least a small improvement -- not just in bees but hopefully in other wildlife, because I think there’s pretty good reason to believe that these chemicals have had negative effects on all insects: things like ladybirds, butterflies and all kinds of beneficial insects that we’d like to see, and probably the things that eat them, like birds, as well. So yeah, it will take a long time to benefit. But the sooner you start, the better. I don’t want to be rude about it to you guys, but it’s quite depressing that the U.S. is really slow on this. There’s nothing much happening in North America at all and I think it’s about time you guys caught up. So can it be argued that if bees are experiencing these negative effects from pesticides, that it’s likely to move up the food chain, and that large animals or people might be affected also? Advertisement: It’s very likely that a number of animals are being affected through lack of food. I’ve been some as yet unpublished studies and there’s various indirect evidence that’s pretty convincing, that seems to suggest that bird populations, particularly insect-eating birds, have been hit. Probably not because of direct poisoning, but simply because all of their food has been wiped out. It’s possible that there are direct toxic effects on the food chain as well. These particular pesticides are less toxic to us than they are to insects, but they’re still toxic. And all the safety testing is based on really short-term tests. Generally speaking, it’s just over 48 hours or barely a week at the longest, and if you test rat or whatever it might be is still alive at the end, then you assume that all is well. But actually what happens in the real world is that animals and humans are exposed continually throughout their lives. More or less everything you eat contains a whole range of chemicals. Getting back to the bees, some groups in the U.S. have pressured the EPA to enact a similar ban to the U.K.'s, but so far the EPA says it’s not going to even look into it for a number of years. Are there other things we can be doing to help preserve bees in the meantime? A lot of conservation stories are very depressing because you can’t get involved very easily. You can’t get involved to save polar bears or tigers or whatever, but you can help to save bees just in your back garden. It’s easy to find resources that list bee-friendly flowers: the Xerces Society has lists for North America, and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust has a list for the U.K. So anyone can quickly go to their local garden center and find some big, friendly plants. And as soon as those things flower, you’ll see bees -- even in the middle of a big city, bees will hunt you out and visit your flowers if you grow them. If you can provide them with some clean, healthy food that really helps, because that’s one of the big things they're missing at the moment. And maybe they can cope with diseases and poisoning if they’ve got access to some nice, healthy food every now and again. If you haven’t got a garden maybe there are local places where you work, or community parks and gardens that are owned by the city -- putting in bee-friendly plants will make a real difference. Advertisement: How hopeful are you that we'll be able to turn the overall decline around? The decline will continue for some time. Not just of bees, but of wildlife. The picture at present is quite depressing: We’re basically in the midst of what's called a mass extinction event. Probably several dozen species go extinct every day, and nothing is going to stop that quickly. But if we start changing, if we start stopping messing up the planet, at least we can make it less bad than it might be otherwise. It’s really hard to know. I mean, on a bad day I can get quite depressed about all this, and, to be honest, I think it’s clear that the world my children grow up in is going to be a poorer place than what we have today. It’s inevitable because this process is underway right now. We’ve already destroyed huge proportions of the natural ecosystems of the world and we destroy more every day. We grow food in an extremely environmentally unfriendly way and probably in an unsustainable way. We’re seeing massive soil erosion around the world, which inevitably will lead to crop yield dropping. So one might get pretty depressed and think the future is quite bleak -- I don’t know. I hope it’s not. All we can do is do our best right now. And anything we do will make it better than it might have been. Maybe this is a bit cheesy, but there’s an old proverb that goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And the second-best time to plant a tree is today.” Well, you know, if everyone starts doing something, then it’s certainly going to help. So you have to try and be positive, don’t you? If people give up and think there is no point, it’s all too late, then we’re definitely screwed. Some things are pretty tough. Some types of bee are much tougher than others, so we’re going to lose some -- we've already lost some -- but unless we’re really stupid we won’t lose all of them.

A dose of Lucentis is priced 40 times higher than a similar drug called Avastin. Both are made by Genentech, which profits far more when it sells the expensive drug. (Photo courtesy of Genentech) The two drugs have been declared equivalently miraculous. Tested side by side in six major trials, both prevent blindness in a common old-age affliction. Biologically, they are cousins. They’re even made by the same company. But one holds a clear price advantage. Avastin costs about $50 per injection. Lucentis costs about $2,000 per injection. Doctors choose the more expensive drug more than half a million times every year, a choice that costs the Medicare program, the largest single customer, an extra $1 billion or more annually. Spending that much may make little sense for a country burdened by ever- rising health bills, but as is often the case in American health care, there is a certain economic logic: Doctors and drugmakers profit when more-costly treatments are adopted. Genentech, a division of the Roche Group, makes both products but reaps far more profit when it sells the more expensive drug. Although Lucentis is about 40 times as expensive as Avastin to buy, the cost of producing the two drugs is similar, according to scientists familiar with the drugs and the industry. Doctors, meanwhile, may benefit when they choose the more expensive drug. Under Medicare repayment rules for drugs given by physicians, they are reimbursed for the average price of the drug plus 6 percent. That means a drug with a higher price may be easier to sell to doctors than a cheaper one. In addition, Genentech offers rebates to doctors who use large volumes of the more expensive drug. “Genentech continues to maintain that Lucentis is the most appropriate medicine,” the company said in a statement, adding that it costs “significantly” more to make and is tailored for use in the eye. The drug “has made an immense impact.” Many ophthalmologists, however, are skeptical that it provides any added value over the cheaper alternative. “Lucentis is Avastin — it’s the same damn molecule with a few cosmetic changes,” said J. Gregory Rosenthal, a Toledo ophthalmologist who, outraged by the price, co-founded a group called Physicians for Clinical Responsibility to protest its use. “Yet Americans are paying a billion dollars every year for no good reason — unless you count making Genentech rich.” The story of Genentech’s two drugs, Lucentis and Avastin, began with a scientific marvel — a breakthrough in biology that, thanks to the vast budgets of U.S. entitlement programs, has produced enormous financial returns. Those profits have yielded benefits. By paying for such drugs without regard to cost, the Medicare system has helped stimulate investment in medical research that contributes to the development of more lifesaving technologies. But the flow of cash also pushes up the health-care costs that are projected to deplete federal budgets. For while Genentech has aggressively marketed the more expensive drug and sought to restrict the use of the cheaper one, critics say, Medicare has been powerless to do anything but pay up. That’s because over the past seven years, despite pleas from the Food and Drug Administration and doctors groups, Genentech has maintained the barriers that make it harder for doctors to use the cheaper drug. Avastin was not originally intended for use in the eye, and the company has refused encouragement from the FDA to seek official approval for using it to treat eye ailments, according to unpublished internal FDA documents. This forces doctors to use it “off- label,” or in ways not specified on the medicine’s label. The company also packages the drug, which was approved for cancer in 2004, in doses far too big for use in ophthalmology, meaning that the drugs must be repackaged by other companies for use in the eye, raising the risk of contamination. Genentech has argued that Avastin may pose a greater danger of severe side effects than does Lucentis, although independent scientists say such worries are unsupported by the six trials that have been conducted. In a statement, the company said that it has not sought FDA approval of the cheaper drug for use in the eye because it has already developed one drug for the ailment known as wet age- related macular degeneration, or wet AMD. “Genentech continues to maintain that Lucentis is the most appropriate medicine for wet AMD as supported by clinical and other scientific data,” the statement said. “We specifically designed Lucentis for use in the eye and to clear quickly from the bloodstream after leaving the eye to potentially minimize side effects,” the statement said. “The two medicines were designed for different purposes and, we believe, may have different systemic and ocular safety profiles when used in the eye.” Genentech defended its pricing by noting that the Roche Group spends $9 billion annually on research and development. “The price of Lucentis supports the research and development of new potential medicines, including the 92 percent of drugs that never make it to patients,” the company said. “We re-invest a larger portion of our revenue into clinical research than most pharmaceutical companies. Genentech believes it is in the best interest of patients to continue to focus our efforts in ophthalmology on discovering and developing new potential medicines for other serious diseases of the eye.” Most doctors, however, prefer to use the cheaper drug. Despite the company’s position, U.S. doctors have been using Avastin in about 56 percent of such cases, according to Medicare data analyzed by The Washington Post. In the most recent survey by the American Society of Retinal Specialists, about 61 percent of doctors preferred using Avastin for macular degeneration, with the rest of the market split between Lucentis and Eylea, a new drug made by Regeneron that is almost as expensive as Lucentis. Because so many doctors continue to use Lucentis, Genentech has rung up more than $1 billion in U.S. sales of the drug for four years running. Roughly 80 percent of U.S. sales are paid for by Medicare and its beneficiaries. The rising cost of U.S. entitlement programs such as Medicare has prompted outrage in Congress, but it is Congress that has made it difficult in this case and others for Medicare to limit such expenses. To begin with, the Medicare agency is blocked from seeking better drug prices by negotiating directly with the drug companies, as health agencies in other countries do. Authorities in Britain, for example, have negotiated a price of about $1,100 per dose of Lucentis, and in the Netherlands a dose sells for about $1,300. Moreover, in cases in which two equivalent options are available, such as Lucentis and Avastin, Medicare is forbidden from restricting payment to the amount of the less costly alternative. After it sought to do so in 2009, a federal appeals court said it lacked that authority. It’s often difficult, of course, to know when two drugs are equivalent. When the debate over the two drugs and their pricing erupted more than six years ago, Genentech asserted that its more expensive new drug was superior. At the time, it was hard to show otherwise. No one had tested them in side-by-side comparisons. Since then, the six randomized clinical trials involving more than 3,000 patients have found the drugs to be largely equivalent. Yet in 2012, the Medicare program and its beneficiaries spent $1.2 billion on Lucentis, according to The Post’s analysis of Medicare data. Medicare officials said they have no choice but to pay the bill when a doctor prefers to use Lucentis. “We do not have the authority to dictate treatment based on cost,” Tami Holzman, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement. “Under current law, Medicare must cover treatment that is deemed reasonable and medically necessary by a physician or other provider.” Pharmaceutical firms argue that this is the way it should be. The industry’s main lobbying group, known as PhRMA, opposes allowing the government to negotiate prices with companies — a process it calls “price controls” — and similarly opposes attempts by Medicare to pursue a policy of paying only for the least costly alternative. The industry has spent more than any other in the United States to have its voice heard in Washington. Over the past 15 years, the pharmaceutical industry has far outstripped any other in the money it has devoted to lobbying, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Drug companies spent a total of $2.7 billion over that time. “Proposals to change this system by imposing price controls or only giving patients access to treatments deemed the ‘least costly alternative’ by Medicare would have severe unintended consequences,” Matthew Bennett, a senior vice president at PhRMA, said in a statement. Such proposals could discourage medical progress, he said. Moreover, because every patient responds differently to a treatment, it may be difficult for the government to set rules for coverage. “The cheapest option on average is not always the best option for many patients,” he said. What’s the right price for a miracle? Every year, about 200,000 people in North America are diagnosed with wet age-related macular degeneration, a chronic disease characterized by abnormal blood vessels that leak blood or fluid into the retina. Sufferers lose clarity in the center of their field of vision, and among older people it has long been the leading cause of blindness. Then came Avastin and Lucentis. Both are the outgrowth of pioneering work done by Napoleone Ferrara, a Sicily-born molecular biologist. Ferrara studied at the University of California at San Francisco and joined Genentech in 1988. First assigned to the company’s efforts to develop a hormone called Relaxin, Ferrara devoted his discretionary research to a theory that blood vessel growth could cause cancer and other illnesses. Over several years, Ferrara and his collaborators identified a protein called VEGF that causes blood vessel growth. They then linked that protein to cancer and macular degeneration. Finally, they developed an “anti-VEGF” drug that would attack VEGF, halting the harmful blood vessel growth. The first anti-VEGF drug was Avastin, which won approval from the FDA in 2004 for the treatment of colorectal cancer. Lucentis followed. It is a stripped-down version of the same molecule, and it can likewise attack VEGF and bind more closely to it. It won FDA approval in 2006. “People weren’t sure that VEGF would prove particularly important, but sometimes in science, you just follow your own ideas,” said Ferrara, now a distinguished professor at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine. “The magnitude of the benefit of these drugs far exceeded our expectations.” The company spent almost $1.4 billion on the development of Lucentis, which included 18 clinical trials, a Genentech vice president testified to Congress in 2011. The company appears to have recovered those costs and quite a bit more. In the first 2 1/ 2 years, it sold $2.1 billion worth of Lucentis in the United States alone. Another Swiss company, Novartis, in partnership with Genentech, sells billions more overseas. Much of that is profit. The company will not disclose how much it costs to manufacture a dose of Lucentis, saying only that it costs “significantly” more to make than Avastin. But scientists knowledgeable about manufacturing drugs of this kind say that the costs of making Lucentis are not much different from those of making Avastin. Indeed, some scientists said that some aspects of Lucentis make it cheaper to produce. The Avastin process begins with growing a culture from mammalian cells taken from the ovary of the Chinese hamster. The Lucentis process begins with growing cultures of the common bacteria E. coli, and these are easier to produce. The subsequent purification process with bacteria may be more complicated, but “production in bacteria is cheaper than in mammalian cells for several reasons,” said Herv é Watier, a medical professor at the University of Tours in France who has studied the drugs. While there are some “drawbacks” to the bacteria production method, Watier said, “the financial result still remains in favor of bacteria.” “I think the difference in cost in producing them is very modest. They cost almost the same, from what I can tell,” Ferrara said. If so, Genentech is making a lot on each dose. The manufacturing costs may account for 10 percent or less of the price of a Lucentis dose, according to a conservative calculation generated with industry experts. The company declined to reveal how much it is making from Lucentis above the drug’s manufacturing costs. “Lucentis and Avastin are not the same medicine and should not be treated, nor represented, as if they are,” the company said in a statement. After the development of Lucentis in the early 2000s, it was the only drug known to have such effects. It seemed to be in a class by itself and seemed poised to win even more in sales than it gathers today. But then Philip J. Rosenfeld, a Miami ophthalmologist, made a discovery. Rosenfeld was lead investigator on some of the Lucentis trials that Genentech had conducted, and he recognized how effective it could be. After reading the research that some Genentech scientists had published, he realized that Avastin and Lucentis were derived from the same antibody and thus were functionally equivalent. “I realized they would perform in the same way,” he said. Under a university-approved research program, he’d also learned that Avastin, injected into a patient’s arm as is done with cancer patients, had the same effects as Lucentis. The trouble was, since the Avastin was going into the entire body, a large dose was needed, and that could produce dangerous side effects. He calculated that a much smaller dose injected into the eye would be just as effective as Lucentis. In May 2005, Rosenfeld had a patient who was quickly losing her vision. A retired nurse in her 60s, she’d lost the use of one eye already, and none of the available remedies could slow the disease’s progression. Rosenfeld knew that Lucentis could help her, but it would be another year or more before the FDA would approve it. With the patient’s permission, he injected her eye with a small dose of Avastin — one milligram — and ordered her back the next week. “We were astounded by the results,” he said. The billion-dollar drug Lucentis was about to be beaten to market, and by one of Genentech’s own products. In July 2005, Genentech held what amounted to a coming-out party for its new drug. At the annual meeting of the American Society of Retinal Specialists, the company presented several detailed studies showing how effective it was in treating macular degeneration. With hundreds of ophthalmologists crowded into the room, speakers for Genentech described the marvel of Lucentis. “Our jaws were on the floor,” recalled Daniel F. Martin, chairman of the Cole Eye Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. Right after, Rosenfeld presented his Avastin experiment on one patient. “Phil showed one case report — no animal studies, no randomized trials,” Martin said. “But after this meeting, every ophthalmologist on the planet was injecting it. The therapeutic effect was so powerful.” Because Lucentis had yet to win FDA approval and couldn’t be sold, ophthalmologists quickly embraced Avastin, which had been approved the year before, albeit as a cancer remedy. When Lucentis did go on sale, Genentech’s blockbuster drug already had a competitor. How could the company convince doctors and hospitals that Lucentis had any major advantage over Avastin? Over and over again, it sought to discourage the use of Avastin by raising concerns about its safety. They told doctors that Avastin was not approved by the FDA for use in the eye — Lucentis was. They reminded doctors that if the repackaging firms cutting Avastin into smaller doses were careless, infection could be introduced. And despite the lack of conclusive evidence on the point, they said that Avastin patients might suffer more adverse events than Lucentis patients. Sometimes, senior FDA officials said, these warnings stretched the truth. In October 2007, the company announced a move that would severely restrict the supply of Avastin for ophthalmology: It would no longer sell the drug to the repackaging firms that were cutting it into eye-appropriate doses. The company’s president of product development at that time, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, explained in a letter that Lucentis was already available. Moreover, she said that during a routine FDA inspection of the company’s Avastin manufacturing facility, “concerns were raised by inspectors related to the ongoing ocular use of Avastin because it is not designed, manufactured or approved for this use.” An FDA ophthalmology official, Wiley A. Chambers, told colleagues that the company had misconstrued the agency’s position. That routine FDA inspection at a Genentech plant, Chambers told his colleagues, was unrelated to the intrinsic safety of Avastin in ophthalmology. Instead, it showed that Avastin had been contaminated by glass particles, a danger that could have harmed cancer patients or eye patients. “Genentech has found a way to blame FDA for their decision to limit the distribution of Avastin,” Wiley wrote to colleagues in an e-mail. “The manufacturing problem at their facility that resulted in glass in their product would be an issue for either the on-label oncology indications or the off-label ophthalmology indications.” Genentech said in a statement: “We have never sought to restrict the ability of physicians to prescribe Avastin as they see fit for their patients. . . . Genentech did not blame the FDA and took the decision independently.” Eventually, after ophthalmologists and their professional societies strenuously objected to Genentech’s move to limit Avastin sales — they even threatened lawsuits to make sure the flow of Avastin continued — Genentech backed down and continued to provide the drug to the repackaging firms. About the same time, Genentech asked the FDA for permission to change the Avastin label to instruct doctors that it was not to be used for eyes. The FDA said there was no evidence to support such a change to the label. The FDA believed “there was no safety-related basis adequately justifying that labeling change,” according to an internal agency e-mail, and the label was not changed. Today, millions of doses of Avastin have been administered successfully. Six randomized clinical trials around the world, beginning with one called Comparison of AMD Treatments Trials, have found its effectiveness equivalent to that of Lucentis. After the CATT study, the National Institutes of Health issued a news release headlined, “Study finds Avastin and Lucentis are equally effective in treating age-related macular degeneration.” The effort was funded by the NIH because Genentech had refused to test the drugs itself and, in a break from industry custom, had refused to provide the drugs to government researchers. An internal company document described the strategy of not performing a test or contributing the drugs as “in the interests of shareholders and the interests of patients,” according to a Senate Aging Committee investigation memo from 2008. Because it had developed Lucentis, the company said, “there was no need to invest substantial resources and years of clinical development to explore the safety and efficacy of another medicine.” Since the CATT study, five more head-to-head trials have been conducted. They also found Avastin just as effective as Lucentis. “There have now been six randomized clinical studies that show no difference in the major areas of safety concern — deaths, heart attacks and stroke,” said Martin, the Cleveland Clinic doctor who also led the CATT trial. Indeed, Genentech has acknowledged that the drugs are similarly effective. But the company has argued that Avastin may be dangerous when used in eyes. “The emerging data consistently show differences in safety — particularly in systemic serious adverse events — between Lucentis and Avastin,” Anthony P. Adamis, global head of ophthalmology at Genentech, said in an interview. These differences are “biologically plausible,” Adamis said, because studies have shown that Avastin remains in the blood longer. The main basis for Genentech’s safety argument is a finding in the CATT trial that has not reappeared in any of the following five trials and that some scientists involved regard mainly as a curiosity. The incidence of what are known as serious adverse events — a catchall category that includes hospitalizations for any reason — was slightly higher in the Avastin group: 40 percent vs. 32 percent. The adverse events included broken bones and urinary tract infections. “The majority of the adverse events would be difficult to imagine being caused by the drug,” Martin said. Martin noted that while small, probably random effects favored Lucentis in some cases and in others they favored Avastin. Neither should be viewed as conclusively related to the drug, he said. It is very difficult for such trials to detect differences in rare safety events. To do so, a trial might need more than 10,000 patients. Running a trial of that size could cost billions of dollars. To look for effects in large numbers of patients, researchers often turn to Medicare claims records, examining how patients fared on the treatments in question. It is this kind of review that Lesley H. Curtis, a Duke University medical professor, performed, looking at 146,000 patient claims. After fully adjusting for patient and provider characteristics, Curtis and her colleagues found that there was no difference in the safety profiles in the drugs. “In conclusion, we found no evidence of increased risks of mortality, myocardial infarction, bleeding, or stroke,” their research paper said. The other danger to using Avastin, however, has attracted a lot of publicity in recent years. The fact that the drug needs to be repackaged into smaller doses introduces an element of risk because it opens the possibility that the drug could be tainted during the repackaging process. (Genentech says because the FDA has not approved it for use in the eye, the company cannot legally distribute Avastin in doses appropriate for the eye. Indeed, in three cases that made the news — in South Florida, Nashville and Los Angeles — just such a problem has arisen. Several patients reportedly suffered vision loss as a result. “I’ve never used Avastin because of the potential for contamination,” Warren L. Herron Jr., a Pensacola, Fla., ophthalmologist, said after a morning in which he did 11 eye injections. “Is it a rare thing? Yes, it’s a rare thing. But I can’t stand the idea of ever telling my patients that they can no longer see because I used a tainted drug. “Besides,” he said, “I don’t think the extra money being spent for Lucentis is totally wasted because it’s going into research and development.” But as Herron noted, the likelihood of contamination is negligible. Globally, hundreds of thousands of injections are doled out every year without trouble, making the risk of contamination in repackaging smaller than the risks that doctors routinely ignore when deciding on a treatment. Whether a patient gets Avastin, Lucentis or the new drug Eylea depends on an array of factors. Some doctors use only one of the drugs; some let their patients choose; many decisions are guided by whether the patient’s insurance covers the entire cost or just a portion; and some doctors may consider how much they earn with each drug. John Thompson, a Baltimore ophthalmologist who is president of the American Society of Retinal Specialists, noted that most doctors use Avastin and that even more would do so if the company sought FDA approval for using it in eyes and packaged it in appropriate doses. “If Genentech decided to get FDA approval and make Avastin available in small quantities for the eye,” he said, “the American Society of Retinal Specialists would applaud.”

From the "nice work if you can get it" desk, the New York Times business section offered this headline the other day: "Pay Stretching to 10 Figures." No, this isn't about innovators being paid for their smart and indispensable products, a la Steve Jobs. It is a story of hedge fund managers, the tin-pot potentates of the financial world. They are America's top-dog moneymakers, pulling in more than movie stars, top athletes, even banking CEOs. They tend to shun the spotlight, and for good reason. An average family would have to work for 18 years and 146 days to make what an average hedge fund manager makes in one hour. We must all look like barbarians at the gate to them. Are they worth it? They certainly think so. But the system is rigged. Even when hedge funds, which are basically big, sparsely regulated pools of investment capital, don't do any better than market returns, their managers can walk away with the equivalent of a small nation's GDP. Take Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors. Cohen's 2012 pay was $1.4 billion. For this, he obtained a 13 percent return for investors. Sounds good, right? Except that the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index shot up 16 percent last year when factoring in dividends. SAC investors paid a 50 percent performance fee to Cohen despite the lagging numbers. Having no shame is one of the rules for success as a hedge fund manager. There are other rules, too, such as: "Don't ever get into the business of making things. Your job is to take money away from people who make things." The rules are entertainingly spelled out in How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour by Les Leopold, a book that carries the ominous subtitle, "Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning Off America's Wealth." As fun as this book is to read, its message is no laughing matter. Leopold makes a compelling case that hedge funds are destructive forces that suck money out of the productive economy — which creates products, innovates and provides real services — and redirects it into a financial services betting parlor. The funds also encourage some of the best young analytical minds to enter Wall Street's casino rather than apply their talents to a career in medicine or science, which might be of some real benefit to the common good. To make gobs of money and outsmart the next guy, Leopold says hedge funds rely on strategies that are often illegal or should be. They use insider information to transfer money from unknowing investors to themselves. (SAC is currently embroiled in an insider-trading scandal.) They spread rumors that manipulate the market to their benefit, another illegal act. Leopold points to an interview that Jim Cramer, the TV investment guru, did with TheStreet.com in which he let slip that dissembling is part of the business. This directly counters the claim of hedge fund supporters that the funds make market prices more accurate. And then there is high-frequency trading, or in Leopold's parlance: how to "bet on the race after you know who wins." Hedge funds now employ automated computers that are so fast they can elbow into a transaction a split second before a stock is bought or sold and make a tiny profit. This skims off millions of dollars from investors. It means the hedge funds don't care about the quality of the companies they are investing in — they are in and out in nanoseconds — and don't serve the function of allocating capital efficiently toward growth, as their supporters claim. Members of the million-dollar-an-hour club need to have their casino counter closed with fair regulations, more government enforcement and new taxes, such as a financial transactions tax (which would put an end to high-frequency trading). Their 10-figure pay has destroyed America's once-healthy distribution of rewards for work. They are the real moochers.

Is there a No. 1 tight end on Indiana's roster? Is Anthony Corsaro (88) the best of Indiana's tight ends? (Photo: Mike Dickbernd) If Indiana's wide receiver two-deep is fraught with uncertainty, then its positional neighbor, tight end, can empathize. IU hasn't been able to find a clear-cut No. 1 tight end since Ted Bolser's departure in 2013. While replicating Bolser's record-setting career probably isn't realistic, finding a legitimate blocking/receiving threat here would be a significant boost. Kevin Wilson should not want for options. Whether open competition breeds improved production remains to be seen. NAMES TO KNOW Michael Cooper, 6-5, 257 pounds, R-Sr. Anthony Corsaro, 6-3, 250, Sr. Sean Damaska, 6-7, 250, R-Jr. Danny Friend, 6-5, 261, R-So. Jordan Fuchs, 6-6, 233, So. Austin Dorris, 6-5, 225, Fr. IS THERE A FRONTRUNNER? First, it's worth mentioning that Tevin Coleman probably doesn't rush for 2,000-plus yards in 2014 without good tight end play. So it's not like Indiana is starting from scratch. The question is whether one of the aforementioned six players -- and that's every tight end on Indiana's roster at present -- can couple consistent blocking with some receiving threat. Last season, three players (Corsaro, Fuchs and Cooper) combined for 10 catches, 95 yards and one touchdown (Fuchs). That encompasses the entire receiving output of the position group in 2014. Indiana's limitations in the passing game certainly extended beyond tight end, but improvement here would bolster the Hoosiers' options through the air, perhaps significantly. Seniority and experience could give Corsaro the early edge. His contributions as a blocker last season are noted in his official team biography. Fuchs' athleticism makes him an attractive choice, invoking some comparisons to Bolser's style of play at the position. But, just as with Indiana's receiver corps, there are no guarantees anywhere on the roster right now. FINAL WORD NEWSLETTERS Get the IndyStar Motor Sports newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong The latest news in IndyCar and the world of motor sports. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-357-7827. Delivery: Sun - Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for IndyStar Motor Sports Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Bolser was a crucial piece of an offense that led the conference in passing two seasons consecutively. His absence last season was equally impactful. Again, this group deserves praise for helping build a record-setting rushing attack for Coleman last fall. And there's potential at numerous spots. But with Nate Sudfeld healthy and back for one more season, Indiana's passing game must carve the path offensively if IU wants to play into the postseason. So we return to the question: Is there a No. 1 tight end on Indiana's roster? If so, how quickly will he show himself? OTHER POSITION PREVIEWS Quarterback Running back Wide receiver Follow Star reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman. Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/1I7fB6E

Pushing for a huge, across-the-board tax cut in the final year of his life, President John F. Kennedy dismissed the idea that it would increase the debt in the long run: “By removing tax roadblocks to new jobs and new growth,” he declared, “the enactment of this measure next year will eventually more than make up in new revenue all that it will initially cost.” When assessing the legacy of President Kennedy 50 years after his death, journalist Ira Stoll makes the case that Kennedy wasn’t what we think: The title of his new book “JFK, Conservative” says it all. Stoll lays out Kennedy’s fierce anti-communism, his religious devotion (he gave faith-based speeches of a kind Michele Bachmann might consider extreme today) and his advocacy for low deficits, a strong dollar, free trade, tax cuts, free enterprise and individual responsibility. If JFK were here today, he would either have to renounce most of what he stood for or join the Republican party. Even as late as 1980, supply-side policies could be denounced as “voodoo economics” by George H.W. Bush, but before the term was popularized Kennedy was an instinctive supply-sider. It’s important to keep in mind how unusually courageous a stance this was. The triumph of Keynesian economic theory in the immediate postwar decades was complete. It was simply taken for granted by the leadership class that the government needed to stimulate the economy with centralized spending during downturns. One adviser to Kennedy, the Keynes disciple John Kenneth Galbraith, argued as much. The waggish Kennedy simply exiled him with the post of Ambassador to India. Kennedy inherited a major recession (a contraction at an annualized rate of five percent in the fourth quarter of 1960) but kept domestic spending basically flat while ramping up military and overseas spending. Though he did preside over a 25 percent increase (over two years) in the federal minimum wage and launch several domestic programs beloved by liberals including food stamps and what became Medicare when it was passed in 1965, he harbored deep suspicions of the creeping influence of the state. Albert Jay Nock’s anti-New Deal book “Our Enemy, the State” was a volume JFK kept at his Boston home in the 1950s and he sometimes echoed the book in public statements. “I do not believe in a super state,” he said in a 1960 speech in which he declared himself a liberal, with heavy qualifiers that made him sound more like one of today’s conservatives. “I see no magic to tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned,” he continued, smartly summarizing the voodoo economics of Keynesianism. “I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well.” Even Kennedy’s “ask what you can do for your country” line may not be as chilling an endorsement of state supremacy as it appears: longtime Democratic operative and pundit Chris Matthews believes it was simply a “hard Republican-sounding slap at the welfare state.” JFK didn’t seem to foresee what would happen to Medicare, calling it “a very modest proposal cut to meet absolutely essential needs, and with sufficient ‘deductible’ requirements to discourage any malingering or unnecessary overcrowding of our hospitals.” He also twice rejected a union proposal to reduce the work week from 40 hours to 35. He kept deficits modest (his budget shortfalls for 1961-63 were, when totalled, only slightly more than the 1959 deficit alone), maintained a strict, inflation-fighting price of $35 to the ounce of gold and, despite his gauzy rhetoric about a New Frontier, framed the Space Race as simply a new front in the Cold War: “Everything that we do really ought to be tied in to getting onto the moon and ahead of the Russians….Otherwise we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money, because I’m not that interested in space.” Kennedy reserved the bulk of his energy for opposing communism abroad and freeing up markets at home. Pushing for “the fullest possible measure of tariff reduction,” Kennedy made a stirring appeal. In 1962 he said, “The American consumer benefits most of all from an increase in foreign trade. Imports give him a wider choice of products at competitive prices….The warnings against increased imports based upon the lower level of wages paid in other countries are not telling the whole story.” And he added that the “philosophy of the free market” was “not a partisan philosophy” but is “as old as freedom itself.” Kennedy carried on a robust disagreement with statist Sen. Al Gore Sr. about the virtues of Keynesianism: Gore later said, “I thought the real needs of our society lay in the inadequacy of health, education, transportation. These were largely in the public sector. Not the private sector.” He also warned dourly that “once taxes are cut, they are not likely to be reimposed.” Exactly, replied Kennedy, who understood that only permanent tax cuts provide a true economic stimulus because consumers who expect their taxes to go right back up after a momentary easing tend to spend cautiously. “To increase demand and lift our economy,” he said in 1962, “the Federal Government’s most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures….the greatest danger is a tax cut too little or too late to be effective.” Republicans, in general, considered the idea of tax cuts reckless, and in the Kennedy-Nixon debates it was the former who mused about the presumed need to increase taxes. Kennedy even framed his tax relief as a Civil Rights issue: “In 1963 he counted on his tax cut to reduce Negro unemployment,” wrote his adviser Arthur Schlesinger. It’s almost impossible to picture a Democrat even speaking this way anymore, and yet Kennedy followed up on his beliefs with action. As his speechwriter Ted Sorensen put it, “In fiscal matters, he was extremely conservative, very cautious about the size of the budget.” He went on to say, years later that Kennedy, “never identified himself as a liberal….on fiscal matters he was more conservative than any president we’ve had since. On Nov. 22, 1963, the fateful motorcade through Dallas was headed for Fort Worth, where Kennedy planned to say these words: “by maintaining a more stable level of prices than almost any of our overseas competitors, and by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by some $11 billion, as I have proposed, [we will] assure this Nation of the longest and strongest expansion in our peacetime economic history.” Ronald Reagan couldn’t have said it better.

We’re always hearing how expensive it is to bring up a baby but this doesn’t have to be the case. You can afford that baby. If you’re thrifty and willing to compromise, there’s no need to blow the budget when your new arrival joins the family. Here are some tips on how to save money on baby items. 1. How vital is the item? The average list of baby-related must-haves is pretty scary but not all of them are vital essentials. If you’re new to the parenting world, it can be very hard to tell the difference between what you need and what are just fancy extras that are nice to have if you can afford it. Sound out people who have gone through the first year of parenthood and ask them which items they really needed. 2. Second hand isn’t necessarily inferior A lot of the things that you’ll be buying will only be in use for a matter of months so it makes little sense to buy everything brand new if you’re on a budget. Don’t be afraid to buy second hand items like baby mattresses where possible, but be sure to check that what you’re buying meets the relevant health and safety standards, especially for buggies and the like. Don’t look to buy used car seats though as you can’t be sure of their safety and whether they have previously been involved in an accident. 3. Delay your purchases as much as you can It’s tempting to rush out and start buying baby items from the moment that your pregnancy is confirmed but this will inevitably mean that you spend a considerable amount of money. If you know other people who have had kids in the last few years, you may well get given a lot of their cast-offs that they’re keen to get rid of. This can save you having to buy a lot of the basics and you can concentrate on filling in the gaps. For most parents-to-be, buying items on the off-chance that they’ll be needed means that they end up wasting a lot of money. If you’re brave enough, you might want to leave the items that you’re not sure whether you’ll need until after the birth so that you won’t waste money on things that you’ll never use. 4. Look for bargains Throughout your baby-related shopping, look out for sales and discounts that you can take advantage of. You can often save money by shopping online so it’s worth keeping an eye on what sales are on, even if your due date isn’t for several months. Shop around to make sure that you’re really getting the best deal. Having a baby doesn’t need to be as costly as is often claimed, and it’s definitely possible to save money in this area without compromising on your new-born’s start in life. Don’t feel that you’ll need to buy everything on recommended baby lists – if you talk to other parents, you’ll probably find that they wasted money and found that they were completely over-prepared. And if you want, check out Compare the Market. They can help you find 0% credit cards which will be really handy when making all of these baby purchases. Make sure you pay them off in full at the end of the month though, otherwise baby clothes won’t be your only worry. So, how have you saved money on baby costs? Please share.

Fahad Khan said either family or police confiscated Butt’s passport to prevent him travelling to Syria two years ago London Bridge killer Khuram Butt supported Islamic State and tried to travel to Syria but was stopped by family members, a relative has said. Fahad Khan, whose cousin Zarah Rahman was married to Butt, said he believed either family or police had confiscated Butt’s passport to prevent him from travelling to the conflict-torn country about two years ago. Khan, 36, from Upney, east London, said Butt had “fundamentalist views” that drove him to back Islamic State and would watch hate preachers online. He said: “I’ve heard from my family members that he wanted to leave her [his wife] as he had plans to go to Syria. I’ve heard that his family have stopped him and his passport might [have been] taken by his mother, father or police.” Butt had “fundamentalist views”, Khan said, which had led him to support Isis. “I know he was inspired by one of the preachers who are giving lectures on YouTube. He was of the opinion that what is doing in Isis, in the name of God, is quite justified.” Asked whether he had ever felt that he should have reported Butt to police, Khan said: “Police already know these things and he had already been given a warning.” Khan was speaking outside the Ummah Fitness Centre, a gym in Ilford attended by Butt, which was searched on Thursday by police officers. CCTV recordings obtained by the Times show Butt meeting outside the gym with fellow attackers Rachid Redouane and Youseff Zaghba at midnight on 29 May, five days before they launched their attack on London Bridge and Borough Market. The images show Redouane placing his phone on the floor, before the men move down the road for 10 minutes and then return. Butt enters the gym, which is understood to open until 3am during Ramadan to accommodate fasting Muslims. Khan said: “The last time I saw Khuram [was] the day before he did this thing.” They had bumped into each other at the gym, where Butt was praying. Khan said he joined him for a prayer, at the end of which Butt had left. Khan said: “My whole family’s life has dramatically and significantly changed. Everywhere we will go, regardless of whether we are the victims or not, we have to answer the question.” A cordon was put in place around the gym on Thursday and later removed. Management left a typed notice to the press outside denying reports that it was a Muslim-only gym. “At least half of our regular attendees are not Muslim. We are open and welcoming to all people,” it read. “In addition we at UFC gym are shocked and deeply saddened by the events that occurred at London Bridge and Borough on Saturday night. There is never any justification for indiscriminately killing civilians. “We have hundreds of people training at UFC each week. We are a welcoming and open part of the community. While Mr Butt did occasionally train here at UFC gym we do not know him well nor did we see anything of concern, we will of course help the police in any way we can. “In these challenging times it is important we all stand united, we must avoid scapegoating any part of the community.” Three men were arrested in Ilford in the early hours of Thursday as the investigation continued into the assault on London’s nightlife that claimed the lives of eight people and resulted in dozens of injuries. A 29-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism from a residential property in Wingate Road, just metres away from the Ummah Fitness Centre. Two others were arrested on the street, one on suspicion of preparation for acts of terrorism, the other on drugs offences. Fazal Mahmoud, 57, who lives opposite the raided house in Wingate Road, said the family there consisted of a mother, her three sons and the wife of the eldest son and their children. Another neighbour said he had witnessed the raid: “They [police] blocked both ends with an unmarked vehicle in the middle of the street. I heard people shouting ‘armed police’, waking up all the neighbourhood, then they take everybody out of this house. The neighbour said he saw two men being detained. “I saw them on the street, lying on the street when they put their handcuffs on – typical procedure for police,” he said. “I think there was around one or two teams of anti-terror squad.” The Met police said the police cordon around the scene of the attack was likely to stay in place until Sunday evening at the earliest as the continued the investigation. • The headline of this article was updated to reflect the developing nature of the story. A separate article about the police officer who was stabbed in the attack has been published here.

Chevrolet When the all-new model, known to aficionados as the C7, debuts at the Detroit Auto Show next January, Chevy is clearly hoping to deliver the sort of sports car that can challenge global leaders like Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini. It’s long been known as “America’s sports car.” But as Chevrolet gets ready to roll out the latest version of the Corvette, that’s clearly no longer good enough for the General Motors division. When the all-new model, known to aficionados as the C7, debuts at the Detroit Auto Show next January, Chevy is clearly hoping to deliver the sort of sports car that can challenge global leaders like Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini. "We set out to build a world-challenging sports car with design, refinement, efficiency and drive engagement that is second to none," declared Tadge Juechter, the program’s chief designer. The new model, as its code name signifies, will be only the seventh version of the Corvette since its debut in 1953. First seen in concept form at GM’s annual Motorama car show in New York City, the production “’Vette” quickly developed a following among those who wanted an alternative to the heavy steel land yachts rolling off Detroit’s assembly lines. Though early models were more show than go, they were popularized in song and on such TV shows as “Route 66,” a CBS series that followed two buddies cruising the back roads of the West in search of adventure. By the late 1960s, models like the legendary Corvette Stingray had evolved into some of the more powerful automobiles ever produced in the U.S. But the twin oil shocks of the 1970s changed the automotive equation. Downsized Japanese automobiles challenged the Detroit mainstream, while European brands delivered sleek and more nimble alternatives to U.S. luxury and sports car buyers. While the Corvette could still deliver neck-snapping acceleration off the line, it couldn’t come close to matching the handling of a Porsche or Ferrari in the corners. At the other end of the price spectrum, Americans discovered nimble little Japanese models like the Mazda Miata and so-called rice rockets such as the Honda Civic. The Detroit Bureau Chevrolet reveals the heart of the C7 Corvette. The GM division shifted gears with a fifth-generation Corvette introduced in 1997 and the even smaller, more nimble C6 that debuted eight years later, now about the size and weight of a Porsche 911 — though still boasting the trademark small block V-8 that had powered Corvettes since the mid-1950s. Despite such improvements, efforts by Chevy to sell its two-seater abroad gained little traction except among a few select fans who wanted something decidedly offbeat. But with Chevrolet today earmarked as GM’s lead brand globally, the automaker is clearly targeting its European rivals with the C7. And that’s led to an assortment of rumors about what’s in store. Early in its development, there was speculation that Chevy engineers would shift to a Lamborghini-like midengine layout, or migrate to the sort of small, high-tech turbo or supercharged six-cylinder power trains favored by other European competitors. As the development program heads for the finish line, spy shots have begun leaking out showing that the new Corvette won’t be nearly as radical as some had anticipated. The 2014 model appears to be roughly the same size as the current C6, although it’s expected to make use of new materials and advanced manufacturing techniques that will result in a sports car that’s lighter, more aerodynamically efficient and a lot more nimble. Meanwhile, the new C7 Corvette will deliver even more power than before. Chevy this week revealed the next-generation LT1 engine, a 6.2-liter small block that is expected to make “at least” 450 horsepower and 450 foot-pounds of torque — 20 horsepower and 26 foot-pounds more than the outgoing LS3 V-8. AP file This undated file photo released by General Motors shows a 1953 Chevrolet Corvette. When the all-new model debuts at the Detroit Auto Show next January, it will be only the seventh version of the Corvette since its debut in 1953. If the new two-seater is indeed notably lighter than the outgoing Corvette, that would signify a major improvement in its power-to-weight ratio. For the moment, Juechter is only hinting that it will deliver zero-to-60 times of 4.0 seconds or less, “and that is on the entry-level vehicle.” Chevy has yet to reveal what it has in store for the limited-edition Corvette Z06 and ZR1 versions. There may yet be some surprises, such as a small, high-tech power train option, more in line with the likes of Porsche or Ferrari, but that possibility — along with a shift to a midengine layout — appear likely to be on hold for the eventual C8 Corvette. The one other detail Chevy is confirming is that there’ll be an all-new “crossed flags” logo appearing on the 2014 Corvette. While the Corvette has always been a low-volume niche product, it is the halo brand for Chevrolet and takes on even more significance as the brand’s role grows for post-bankruptcy GM. So, anticipate plenty of media attention in the weeks building up to the January auto show in Detroit, including a flood of spy shots and endless reports and speculation. This could be a critical moment for America’s sports car and a critical opportunity to take on the world’s best. More business news: Follow NBCNews.com business on Twitter and Facebook

The attack at the Grand Mosque in Kano, the biggest city in the mainly Muslim north of the country, came just as Friday prayers had started. The mosque is attached to the palace of the Emir of Kano Muhammad Sanusi II, Nigeria's second most senior Muslim cleric, who last week urged civilians to take up arms against Boko Haram. The blasts came after a bomb attack was foiled against a mosque in the northeastern city of Maiduguri earlier on Friday, five days after two female suicide bombers killed over 45 people in the city. The Emir of Kano last week told worshippers at the same mosque that northerners should take up arms against Boko Haram, which has been fighting for a hardline Islamic state since 2009. National police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu said the bombers blew themselves up in quick succession then "gunmen opened fire on those who were trying to escape". Ojukwu said he did not know whether the suicide bombers were male or female, after a spate of attacks by women in recent months, and did not give an exact figure on the number of gunmen. But he said an angry mob killed four of the shooters in the chaotic aftermath. Witnesses in the city said they were set on fire. An AFP reporter at the Murtala Mohammed specialist Hospital morgue counted 92 bodies, most of them men and boys with blast injuries and severe burns. As night fell, hundreds of people were desperately trying to use the lights on their mobile phones to identify loved ones. But a senior rescue official said later that there were at least 120 dead and 270 wounded. Emergency workers were still trying to visit all hospitals, he added. The Emir of Kano last week told worshippers at the same mosque that northerners should take up arms against Boko Haram, which has been fighting for a hardline Islamic state since 2009. Boko Haram have a record of attacking prominent clerics. In July 2012 a suicide bomber killed five people leaving Friday prayers at the home of the Shehu of Borno in Maiduguri. Boko Haram attacks in recent months have ranged from the far northeast of Nigeria, across the wider north and northwest, using hit-and-run tactics, suicide bombings and car bombs. Authorities in Cameroon, Chad and Niger have all expressed concern about Boko Haram's ability to conduct cross-border strikes, particularly as the dry season approaches.

Tim Agaba will play for the Bulls in this year's Currie Cup, while four players have signed two-year extensions with the union. Agaba will join the Bulls in June and return to the sevens side after the domestic tournament. In more good news, former Junior Boks Hanro Liebenberg, Ivan van Zyl, Travis Ismaiel and Dries Swanepoel have all commited their immediate futures to the Bulls. 'The extensions of these squad members show that high quality players still want to continue their career and fulfill their dreams at the Bulls,' high performance manager Xander Janse van Rensburg said. 'They are among the best in their positions in the country, and it is a huge vote of confidence on our management and structures that they see their future with us. Their decision to extend their careers with us is also driven by a desire to play for South Africa in future and it is great that they see the Bulls as the vehicle to take them there.' Meanwhile, Janse van Rensburg confirmed that flyhalf Tian Schoeman will be leaving for French club Bordeaux at the end of the season. Photo: Anne Laing/HM Images

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Duncan Kennedy: "Ms Gillard was grabbed by her bodyguard, literally racing her along the ground" Indigenous leaders in Australia have condemned "disrespect" shown to Prime Minister Julia Gillard at a protest. She and opposition leader Tony Abbott had to be rescued by riot police after angry protesters surrounded them at a restaurant in Canberra on Thursday. Ms Gillard, dragged by her bodyguard, stumbled and lost a shoe in a dramatic rush to her car. Supporters of the city's Aboriginal Tent Embassy were apparently angered by comments Mr Abbott had made earlier. He had questioned the relevance of the camp in a TV interview, in light of current plans to recognise indigenous people in the country's constitution. The protesters saw the remarks as suggesting that it was time for the camp to come down. On Friday, a group of more than 200 activists marched on Parliament House, blocking a main road in the capital, chanting "always has been always will be Aboriginal land", Australian media reports. Police retreated as the protesters approached and stopped outside the front door. Some in the group burnt the Australian flag to loud cheers. They marched away after about an hour. Comments 'misinterpreted' Indigenous leaders expressed shock at the incident on Thursday and ''disrespect'' shown to the prime minister. Image caption Opposition leader Tony Abbott says his comments have been "misinterpreted" "While we need to acknowledge that there's a real anger, frustration and hurt that exists in some indigenous communities around Australia, we must not give in to aggressive and disrespectful actions ourselves," Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda told ABC radio. Another indigenous leader, Warren Mundine, called for those responsible to ''feel the full force of the law''. "No human being, let alone the prime minister of this country, should be treated in such a way," said the former president of the Australian Labor Party. On Friday, Mr Abbott defended his comments as "perfectly reasonable" and said they were misinterpreted - he did not say the camp should be taken down. ''I never said that and I don't think that," he said. "I ask you please, I ask you very respectfully, judge me by what I said.'' The tent embassy was established in 1972 by four men as a protest against the prime minister of the time's refusal to acknowledge indigenous land rights. Supporters had gathered for a three-day Corroborree for Sovereignty to mark the 40th anniversary. About 200 angry protesters surrounded the Lobby restaurant, banging on the glass and chanting ''racist'' and ''shame''. Riot police were called to escort Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott out. Speaking at an Australia Day function at her official residence after the incident, Ms Gillard said she was fine. "I am made of pretty tough stuff and the police did a great job." On Friday, Tent Embassy spokesman Mark McMurtrie hit out at police on ABC News Breakfast. "The only violence you can see came from the police, so don't say it was a violent protest, it was a violent reaction to the protest," he said. "We went there to ask her [the prime minister] and Mr Abbott to come down and speak to us, that's all we went there for. We went there [peacefully].'' An indigenous leader, Chris Graham of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, told ABC that ''an offer has also been made for the prime minister to come to the embassy to collect her shoe''.

A Facebook group has sparked online uproar in Thailand after ridiculing the placing of statues at dangerous road spots to ward off evil spirits, in a country where belief in the occult and supernatural is deeply held. The photo, which went viral this week, showed a man's foot standing on a row of zebra figurines at a busy road junction in Bangkok known locally as "Kong Roi Sop" -- the curve that claims 100 lives. Zebra statues are a common sight at locations where road fatalities occur under the belief that their stripes -- which remind people of pedestrian crossings -- will fend off the ghosts that many believe cause crashes. But the Thai founder of a Facebook group called "Fuckghosts", which has more than 200,000 likes and posted the picture, said he wanted to challenge those beliefs. "There are far too many superstitions or instances of people being besotted in Thailand and it annoys me," the man, who declined to give his name fearing reprisals, told Agence France Presse. "I wanted to show there are people out there who do not believe in superstition," he added. The photo, which he said was taken earlier this month, has been picked up and shared thousands of times on social media. "Show the middle finger... (to) ghosts", one Thai user named Thanakiet Thongchai wrote under the post in a message of support. "I do not understand why the heck we have these zebra statues?", asked another Facebook user. But other Thais were less than impressed by the image in a country where superstitious beliefs are deep rooted -- and stepping on something sacred is considered hugely disrespectful. "I hope that ghosts come to haunt you and stop you sleeping," one user wrote under the name "Sweetie November". "If you don't believe in superstitions why do you have to challenge it?", asked another using the name Wiriya Sodapattipon. Superstition and belief in ghosts is commonplace in Thailand, a nation still deeply influenced by pre-Buddhist animist beliefs. Drivers often wear amulets to protect themselves on the country's notoriously dangerous roads while leader of the ruling junta, Prayut Chan-O-Cha, last year accused his opponents of trying to wield black magic against him. The founder of the Facebook group said superstition caused real harm, with people preferring to put their faith in a statue than take their own safety precautions.

Most treaties submitted to the Senate have received its advice and consent to ratification. During its first 200 years, the Senate approved more than 1,500 treaties and rejected only 21. A number of these, including the Treaty of Versailles, were rejected twice. Most often, the Senate has simply not voted on treaties that its leadership deemed not to have sufficient support within the Senate for approval, and in general these treaties have eventually been withdrawn. At least 85 treaties were eventually withdrawn because the Senate never took final action on them. Treaties may also remain in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for extended periods, since treaties are not required to be resubmitted at the beginning of each new Congress. There have been instances in which treaties have lain dormant within the committee for years, even decades, without action being taken. The Constitution provides that the president "shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur" ( Article II, section 2 ). The Constitution's framers gave the Senate a share of the treaty power in order to give the president the benefit of the Senate's advice and counsel, check presidential power, and safeguard the sovereignty of the states by giving each state an equal vote in the treatymaking process. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist no. 75 , “the operation of treaties as laws, plead strongly for the participation of the whole or a portion of the legislative body in the office of making them.” The constitutional requirement that the Senate approve a treaty with a two-thirds vote means that successful treaties must gain support that overcomes partisan division. The two-thirds requirement adds to the burdens of the Senate leadership, and may also encourage opponents of a treaty to engage in a variety of dilatory tactics in hopes of obtaining sufficient votes to ensure its defeat. During the summer of 1787 delegates to the Constitutional Convention debated the structure and responsibilities of a new legislative body. One of the questions they posed was, should the power of treatymaking reside within the legislative or executive branch? Under the Articles of Confederation a treaty could be entered into with the consent of nine of the thirteen states, or two-thirds. Some delegates, such as South Carolina’s Charles Pinckney, urged that the Senate, where each state had equal representation, should have the sole power to make treaties. Alexander Hamilton argued that the executive branch should exercise powers related to foreign relations, and should therefore have the power to make treaties “with the advice and approbation of the Senate.” In the end, Hamilton’s argument proved most persuasive. Since the first Congress convened on March 4, 1789, the U.S. Senate has carefully guarded its concurrent power in treatymaking. On August 22, 1789, President George Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox arrived at the Senate Chamber seeking the Senate’s advice and consent to a treaty with Native American Indian tribes. While the president, seated in the presiding officer’s chair, and his secretary waited, the Senate voted to refer these questions to a committee rather than debate the issue in the presence of the august president. Irritated, Washington decided that, in the future, he would send communications regarding treaties in writing, setting the precedent that all of his successors have followed. The Senate approved the ratification of one of the most contentious treaties in U.S. history during the Washington administration. At the urging of Federalist Party senators, the president sent Chief Justice John Jay to London to settle open disputes with Great Britain. Washington did not consult the full Senate before requesting its advice and consent to the completed treaty, known as the Jay Treaty. The treaty's opponents, mostly Jeffersonian Republicans, supported New York senator Aaron Burr's motion to reopen the negotiations, pursuant to a set of specific proposals, but Federalist senators defeated that plan and secured the approval of the controversial Jay Treaty on June 24, 1795. Jeffersonian Republicans in control of the House of Representatives threatened to withhold the funding necessary to affect some of its provisions, but the appropriation ultimately passed the House on April 30, 1796, by a narrow margin. It was a critical victory for the Senate's unique and vital role in the making of treaties. Originally, the Senate had conducted its sessions behind closed doors, and debates over the Jay Treaty were no exception. Even after the Senate opened a public gallery in December 1795, the tradition of debating treaties and nominations in secret session continued into the early 20th century. Newspapers frequently published accounts of the secret discussions, occasionally printing the text of a treaty before senators received their official copies. The Senate investigated, fretted, and protested but proved powerless to stop the leaks, which likely came from the members themselves. Not until 1929 were executive sessions routinely open to the press and the public. Today the Senate holds closed sessions only under the rarest of circumstances, usually to deal with classified information. Advice and Consent The Constitution provides that the Senate exercise its “advice and consent” in treatymaking, an ambiguous phrase which presidents and senators have debated since the nation’s founding. During the War of 1812, Delaware senator James Bayard was a member of the delegation to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent. His presence raised the question of whether having senators on the negotiating team would make the Senate more favorably inclined to approve the treaty, or whether it would violate the separation of powers. That debate has continued for generations without resolution. The Senate rejected a number of treaties during the last quarter of the 19th century. In an effort to avoid the same fate for his peace treaty with Spain, President William McKinley shrewdly named three U.S. senators to negotiate the treaty in 1898. Senators from both parties roundly criticized his action, but the Senate ultimately approved ratification of the resulting treaty. A generation later, senators criticized President Woodrow Wilson for not including members in the delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I and establishing the League of Nations. Instead, Wilson personally negotiated the treaty. When the president hand delivered the treaty to the Senate on July 10, 1919, Democrats mostly supported it, but Republicans were divided. The “Reservationists,” led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, called for approval of the treaty only if certain reservations, or alterations, were adopted. The “Irreconcilables” opposed the treaty in any form. In November Lodge sent the treaty with 14 reservations to the Senate floor, prompting an angry Wilson to urge Democrats to reject Lodge’s plan. On November 19, 1919, a group of Democratic senators joined the Irreconcilables to defeat the treaty. The United States never ratified the Treaty of Versailles nor did it join the League of Nations. With the Treaty of Versailles in mind, Wilson's successor, Warren G. Harding—who had served as a senator during the fight for the treaty's ratification—appointed Senator Lodge and Democratic Leader Oscar Underwood as delegates to the Washington Arms Limitation Conference to improve the likelihood of the Senate’s consent to ratification. For much the same reason, Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman involved the chairman, Tom Connally, and the ranking Republican of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Arthur Vandenberg, in the creation of the United Nations. This action helped to spare the U.N. the fate of the League of Nations; there were only two Senate votes against its charter. Executive Agreements In addition to treaties, which may not enter into force and become binding on the United States without the advice and consent of the Senate, there are other types of international agreements concluded by the executive branch and not submitted to the Senate. These are classified in the United States as executive agreements, not as treaties, a distinction that has only domestic significance. International law regards each mode of international agreement as binding, whatever its designation under domestic law. The challenge of obtaining two-thirds vote on treaties was one of the motivating forces behind the vast increase in executive agreements after World War II. In 1952, for instance, the United States signed 14 treaties and 291 executive agreements. This was a larger number of executive agreements than had been reached during the entire century of 1789 to 1889. Executive agreements continue to grow at a rapid rate. In recent years, the growth in executive agreements is also attributable to the sheer volume of business conducted between the United States and other countries, coupled with the already heavy workload of the Senate. Many international agreements are of relatively minor importance and would needlessly overburden the Senate if they were submitted as treaties for advice and consent. Another factor has been the passage of legislation authorizing the executive branch to conclude international agreements in certain fields, such as foreign aid, agriculture, and trade. Treaties have also been approved that authorize further agreements between the parties. According to a 1984 study by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, "88.3 percent of international agreements reached between 1946 and 1972 were based at least partly on statutory authority; 6.2 percent were treaties, and 5.5 percent were based solely on executive authority."

Does the Constitution still matter? When it was written, Ben Franklin said the Founders gave us a republic, �if you can keep it.� Few people thought the republic would last another 227 years, but it has. The Constitution�s limits on government power helped create the most free and prosperous country on Earth. But now some Americans, right and left, give up on the Constitution whenever it gets in the way of policies they like. Some on the right defend anti-obscenity laws or want more mingling of church and state, while those on the left want endless economic regulation. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., asked President Barack Obama�s Supreme Court pick, Elena Kagan, �If I wanted to sponsor a bill and it said, �Americans, you have to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day,� does that violate the Commerce Clause?� Amazingly, Kagan wouldn�t say, �Yes, of course!� She dodged the question. Once on the court, Kagan was part of the 5-4 majority who concluded the government can force us to buy something much more expensive than fruit and veggies: Obamacare can force us to buy health insurance. Progressives have no problems with that. On my TV show, Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress.com said government making you buy vegetables isn�t so strange: �I don�t know how to tell you this, but government already makes you buy things like broccoli. What do you think food stamps are? What do you think school lunches are? The government has the power to tax you and buy things with it.� Even creepier than wanting government to have so much power is the way progressives shift their arguments to get policy outcomes they want. In 2009, Obama said while Obamacare imposes a penalty on anyone who doesn�t buy health insurance, �Nobody considers that a tax.� The next year, when it appeared the Supreme Court would allow a tax but not a penalty, The New York Times reported, �Administration, Changing Stance, Now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax.� How effective is the Constitution if the Supreme Court itself is willing to help the president and Congress weasel their way around the constraints on federal power that the document was intended to impose? Millhiser said Congress has broad power to regulate commerce, to control things like hiring and firing, but can�t pass laws against rape and murder. I�m glad Millhiser recognizes some limits, although he seems to suggest that the feds can do whatever they want except pass laws that might actually protect people. Tim Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation came on my show to rebut Millhiser, saying the Founders didn�t expect government to control everything that goes on in the economic realm any more than they expected it to control speech. �The Constitution is a promise about how government power is going to be used. It�s a promise written by people who had experienced life under tyrannical government,� says Sandefur. �The lesson they learned from that and from their knowledge of previous tyrannies was that the most important issue is to wall off government power from our private lives and to make sure that nobody � not elected officials, not a king, not a dictator � gets to dictate how we live our lives.� The Constitution doesn�t get the respect it deserves, but it still can slow the growth of government. In 1895, Congress passed an income tax, but the Supremes said �no,� the Constitution does not give you that power � and the income tax was struck down. America at least avoided a national income tax for the next 18 years, until Congress and state legislatures approved an actual constitutional amendment. The Constitution also has limited the power of politicians to ban handguns and political campaign contributions. Each time the Supremes say �no,� that might make the next crop of politicians a bit humbler. The Constitution reversed President Harry Truman�s nationalization of the steel industry. Maybe that deterred Presidents George W. Bush and Obama from nationalizing America�s banks after the collapse of the housing bubble. Maybe. We benefit from the Constitution�s existence nearly every time it stymies politicians� ambition to control us.

After a transgender woman was allegedly kicked out of a Giant store bathroom, News4's Mark Segraves reports local transgender discrimination laws. (Published Thursday, May 19, 2016) Where Does the DMV Stand on Transgender Discrimination? Gender identity discrimination laws in the D.C. area are receiving renewed attention after a security guard was charged Wednesday with assaulting a transgender woman who was using the women's bathroom at a Giant grocery store. Ebony Belcher, 32, said she was trying to use the bathroom at the Giant on H Street NE when a security guard grabbed her and threw her out of the restroom. "The restroom door came open. All I heard was, 'I know you are a man,'" Belcher said. The guard, identified in court documents as Francine Bernice Jones, was charged with simple assault. Jones plead not guilty on Thursday. According to the DC Office of Human Rights, the alleged assault violates the District's Human Rights Act. "Individuals have the right to use the bathroom based on their gender identity they feel comfortable using," Monica Palacio, director of the DC Office of Human Rights. Since October 2015, Palacio said the office has received 16 complaints from transgender persons who say they were denied use of a bathroom. "They can be victims of violence they can be harassed they can be kicked out of places," Palacio said. How the laws differ in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. In D.C., it's against the law to deny someone access to a bathroom based on their gender identity and the District requires that single-user bathrooms be gender neutral. "A business can only turn away someone if they’re not patronizing the business," Palacio said. The DC Office of Human Rights has had 300 complaints of public restrooms not complying with the gender neutral requirement since 2014, Palacio said. Seventeen states, including Maryland, have similar anti-discrimination laws that specifically protect transgender people. Virginia, however, does not have a gender identity discrimination law. Gov. Terry McAuliffe recently signed an executive order protecting state employees from gender identity discrimination. The role of federal law U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects people from discrimination in all 50 states. North Carolina is currently in a battle with the Justice Department over the interpretation of Title VII after passing a law that says transgender people must use public bathrooms, showers and changing rooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificate. The Civil Rights Act does not specifically mention transgender people. Palacio said it's important for states to have their own laws. "A local law provides much more immediate relief," Palacio said. "Fighting a claim with the federal government for Title 7 could take years for any type of resolution or relief." Palacio said local laws may also help to inform local businesses who may not be aware of the federal law.

A woman who continued receiving public assistance after winning hundreds of thousands of dollars in a Michigan lottery game was found dead in a Detroit suburb this weekend. Amanda Clayton, 25, was sleeping with her 18-month-old daughter at a home in Ecorse when, according to police, she died of a possible drug overdose. The baby "was right next to her sleeping. They were watching a movie together. She started crying, and that’s when Rachel walked in and she tried to see what was going on and she flipped (Clayton) and she was gone,” a friend's boyfriend told CNN affiliate WXYZ-TV, asking that he not be identified. The WXYZ story did not further identify Rachel, but the station reported that a friend and her boyfriend had been babysitting Clayton's daughter and son. An autopsy has been completed, according to the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office, and no definite cause of death can be determined until a toxicology report comes back in six to eight weeks, the Detroit Free Press reported. Clayton won $1 million in the "Make Me Rich" lottery game show in October. She took a lump sum, and after taxes, had a little more than $500,000 with which she bought a house and car. She also continued to collect $200 a month in state food assistance until the state learned of the lottery win and pulled her benefits in March. Asked by CNN affiliate WDIV-TV if she felt she was entitled to the money, she replied, "I thought that they would cut me off, but since they didn't, I thought maybe it was OK because I'm not working." After the state Department of Human Services and Office of Inspector General looked into the matter, the Lincoln Park woman was charged with two felony counts of welfare fraud. Michigan law requires that public aid recipients report any changes to their assets within 10 days, but the state inquiry revealed that Clayton collected $5,475 in food and medical benefits for which she should have been ineligible. Clayton pleaded no contest to the charges and was placed on probation in July, The Detroit News reported, adding that her attorney said she had paid back the inappropriate benefits. The case prompted state legislation barring lottery winners from receiving government benefits. The friend's boyfriend who spoke to WXYZ said Clayton had been in "a bad stage" lately and had been tormented in the aftermath of her lottery win. "So many people tried to take advantage of her, act like they are her friends just to get some money from her. It gets to the point where you start questioning yourself: Are they really my friends or are they using me?” he said. A neighbor who had known Clayton for at least 17 years described her to The Detroit News as "a nice, pleasant girl who never got in trouble, until she won the lottery." Sheryl Schonfeld also told the newspaper that Clayton had been going through a custody battle over her son, had recently moved to escape her boyfriend's pestering and that Clayton's mother recently said Amanda had been taking prescription drugs. In August, the paper reported, two men and two women were arraigned after Clayton and a neighbor were involved in a dispute over yard clippings. Clayton had cut her grass and left the clippings in the driveway of neighbor Victor Bartola, who swept them back into her yard, The Detroit News said. The two argued, and a friend of Clayton's left and returned with three other people, according to the paper. A fight broke out involving a knife, bat and airsoft gun, and Bartola was hospitalized and released, the paper reported. Clayton's funeral is scheduled for Wednesday in Allen Park.

Sultan Hussein Kamel (Arabic: السلطان حسين كامل‎, Turkish: Sultan Hüseyin Kamil Paşa[dubious – discuss]; November 1853 – 9 October 1917) was the Sultan of Egypt from 19 December 1914 to 9 October 1917, during the British protectorate over Egypt. Hussein Kamel was the second son of Khedive Isma'il Pasha, who ruled Egypt from 1863 to 1879. Hussein Kamel was declared Sultan of Egypt on 19 December 1914, after the occupying British forces had deposed his nephew, Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, on 5 November 1914. The newly created Sultanate of Egypt was declared a British protectorate. This brought to an end the de jure Ottoman sovereignty over Egypt, which had been largely nominal since Muhammad Ali's seizure of power in 1805. Tomb of Sultan Hussien Kamel in Refaii mosque - Cairo - Egypt Upon Hussein Kamel's death, his only son, Prince Kamal al-Din Husayn, declined the succession, and Hussein Kamel's brother Ahmed Fuad ascended the throne as Fuad I. At the beginning of Naguib Mahfouz's novel Palace Walk, Ahmad Abd al-Jawwad says "What a fine man Prince Kamal al-Din Husayn is! Do you know what he did? He refused to ascend the throne of his late father so long as the British are in charge."[1] Stereoscope photographs of the coronation procession and burial procession of Sultan Hussein are available on the Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library of the American University in Cairo. Honours [ edit ] References [ edit ] Media related to Hussein Kamel of Egypt at Wikimedia Commons Stereoscopes of Hussein Kamel's coronation and burial processions

How to tell your significant other? We can consider ourselves lucky about this as we’ve discovered nudism together and we both enjoyed it equally. (if you want to know how, see here and here But what if you’re already a nudist and your significant other isn’t? Or you’ve been wanting to give it a shot but you don’t know how to tell him/her? The key to failure You know the saying “Throwing a kid into the water is the best way to make him swim”? Well, we don’t know how it works out for those kids, but we can assure you that it’s a bad idea when it comes to nudism. Seriously, surprising someone into nudism is really NOT done. “We arrived at our holiday resort baby. Oh yeah, I didn’t tell you before but it’s clothing prohibited so please take off all your clothes” Really, we can’t stress this enough, NOT done! Going naked for the first time in front of others is a big deal and takes you way out of your comfort zone, so everything else should be as comfortable as possible. Having a husband or wife who suddenly pronounces to be a nudist doesn’t add to the comfort at all. So we’ll say it again: NOT done! A variation to this is to be naked when your husband or wife comes home. Then you have already an ice breaker for saying that you’re actually a nudist and love being naked around the house. This may sound like a good idea, and it is way better than the previous one. However, there is a big chance that when your partner comes home and sees you naked, he/she will link this immediately to sex. Because for many people who don’t know about nudism nudity equals (at least a desire for) sex. And you will have serious troubles removing that link again. The key to success If you only remember one word of this article we want it to be “conversation”. Now say that out loud! “CONVERSATION”. Conversation, conversation, conversation! In our relationship everything can be talked about as long as there’s no pressure, but things like this do need a bit of preparation. A good way to test the water is by asking if your partner has ever gone skinny dipping. Many people have done that at least once in their life. If so, you can talk a bit about that before announcing that you would like to try it again. If not, at least the ice is broken and you can tell about your experiences. Even before you’re actually saying that you’re a nudist you’ll get an idea of how they stand against it. Once the ice is broken, you’ll need to address many questions, so be prepared for that. But lucky you, you can find most of the answers on this site! It all depends on who your partner is. If you know that he/she is not very happy with their body shape, you can tell them that there will be people of any shape and that naturist places are the only places in the world where literally nobody cares. If he/she has been raised up conservatively, you can talk about how nudity has no direct link with sex. And so on, we’re sure you can find this out by yourself. She said yes! Congratulations! He or she wants to give it a shot! What do you do now? A good way to start is by being naked around the house. Don’t be afraid by making some kind of event of it, pick a date when you both have nothing to do and agree to spend the day naked in and around the house together. Or just take off all of your clothes right after the conversation if you both feel like it. It doesn’t really matter. The next step will be public nudity. A good way to start with this is by going to a clothing optional (not clothing prohibited) beach, campground or resort. In this way your partner can first adjust to the nudity around you and then decide when he/she is ready to take off some clothes. He said no! Unfortunately there is also a chance that your partner really doesn’t want to try nudism. Or did give it a shot but didn’t enjoy it. If they don’t feel comfortable being seen naked by others, you could agree on only visiting clothing optional places where you can go naked but your partner can remain clothed. If, on the other hand, your partner doesn’t want YOU to be seen naked by other men or women you will have to ask about their concerns and try to address them. Did you ever have this talk? How did it work out for you? Picture credit: The photos in this post are coming from Google and Twitter. If you find one of yourself and you don’t want it to be on our blog, let us know and we’ll remove it.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists have developed a polyurethane coating that heals its own scratches when exposed to sunlight, offering the promise of scratch-free cars and other products, researchers said on Thursday. “We developed a polymeric material that is able to repair itself by exposure to the sun,” said Marek Urban of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, whose study appears in the journal Science. “In essence, you create a scratch and that scratch will disappear upon exposure to the sun,” Urban said in an interview on the Science website. The self-healing coating uses chitosan, a substance found in the shells of crabs and shrimp. This is incorporated into traditional polymer materials, such as those used in coatings on cars to protect paint. When a scratch damages the chemical structure, the chitosan responds to ultraviolet light by forming chemical chains that begin bonding with other materials in the substance, eventually smoothing the scratch. The process can take less than an hour. Urban said the new coating uses readily available materials, offering an advantage over other self-repairing coatings, which he said were “fairly elaborate and economically unfeasible.” The team tested the compound’s properties using a razor-blade-thin scratch. “We haven’t done any of the tests to show how wide it can be,” Urban said in a telephone interview. He said the polymer can only repair itself in the same spot once, and would not work after repeated scratches. “Obviously, this is one of the drawbacks,” he said, adding that the chances are low of having two scratches in exactly the same spot. Howell Edwards, who leads the chemical and forensic sciences division of the University of Bradford in Britain, said the findings were novel. “Clearly, there are future applications of this work in the repair of automotive components, which extensively use polyurethane polymers, that have suffered minor damage,” Edwards said in a statement. Urban said the coating could be used in packaging or furniture or anything that requires a high-performance type of coating. “You can dream up anything you desire,” he said. Urban said his team has patents pending on the material and is considering commercialization.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption This photo shows Turing (right) and colleagues working on the Ferranti Mark I Computer in 1951 The earliest known recording of music produced by a computer - a machine operated by Alan Turing, no less - has finally been made to sound exactly as it did 65 years ago. It's hardly chart-topping material. The performance is halting and the tone reedy. It starts with a few bars of the national anthem, then a burst of Baa Baa Black Sheep, followed by a truncated rendition of Glenn Miller's swing hit In The Mood. ("The machine's obviously not in the mood," an engineer can be heard remarking when it stops mid-way.) But the rudimentary audio track is a landmark - the first time that music played on a computer is known to have been recorded. It was captured by the BBC in the Autumn of 1951 during a visit to the University of Manchester, where the Ferranti Mark 1 - the world's first commercially available general purpose computer - was based. Image copyright British Library Image caption Jack Copeland (l) and Jason Long (r) have restored the recording to how it would have sounded in 1951 The recording was captured on a 12-inch (30.5cm) acetate disc. But when Professor Jack Copeland of University of Canterbury in Christchurch and composer Jason Long examined the disc, they found the audio had been distorted. It "gave at best only a rough impression of how the computer sounded", Copeland and Long wrote in a blog for the British Library. But now they say they have restored it to how it actually would have sounded in 1951. The Ferranti Mark 1 may not have been the first computer to have played music - that distinction, it's been widely claimed, went to an Australian machine called CSIRAC that played The Colonel Bogey March some months before. But no recording has ever surfaced. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The world's first computer music The music program was written by a maths master at Harrow called Christopher Strachey, a friend of computing pioneer Alan Turing, who had written the Ferranti Mark 1's instruction manual in his role as deputy director of Manchester University's Computing Machine Laboratory. The Ferranti had the capacity to produce an instruction called a "hoot", which produced short burst of sound lasting a fraction of a second. Turing realised this could be used to produce musical notes. He intended that this would be used to issue alerts when a job was finished and so on, but Strachey saw the potential to perform proper melodies. Image copyright Bodleian Library and Camphill Village Trust Image caption Christopher Strachey said working at the huge computer felt like being at the controls of a battleship As well as being fascinated by computer programming - he would go on to become one of the UK's foremost computer scientists - Strachey was a skilled pianist. Turing trusted Strachey enough to leave him alone with the computer for a night. "I sat in front of this enormous machine," Strachey later recalled, "with four or five rows of 20 switches and things, in a room that felt like the control room of a battleship." There's some dispute about what he did next. Chris Burton of the Computer Conservation Society (CCS) says Strachey wrote a program for playing draughts on the machine, and when the program terminated it played God Save the King. Others say Strachey's program was purely for playing music. Find out more Prof Jack Copeland spoke to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 1 October shortly after 08:50 BST Listen here or get the Today podcast The result was crude at best. The machine could only approximate the pitch of many notes. "It was fairly imprecise," says Burton. But word spread that a computer was capable of performing music and a BBC outside-broadcast team arrived later in the year to record a segment for Children's Hour. Image copyright Chris Burton Image caption The original acetate disc was saved by an engineer at Manchester University It's not clear who programmed the three pieces of music they recorded. A number of technicians had begun programming melodies into the machine and even Strachey's version of God Save The King may have been amended. After the recording, a university engineer called Frank Cooper asked the BBC team for a copy. They cut him a version of the original, and this was eventually passed to the CCS and the unrestored version was made public in 2008. By analysing the recording, Copeland and Long realised it was playing at the wrong speed, possibly as a result of the recorder's turntable running too quickly as the acetate was cut. As they knew the notes the computer was actually capable of playing, the pair were able to calculate exactly by how much the recording needed to be speeded up in order to exactly match the sound made by the Ferranti Mark 1. They also removed extraneous noise from the recording - though not the engineer's voice. "It was a beautiful moment when we first heard the true sound of Turing's computer," Copeland and Long wrote. Now anyone can hear it in all its somewhat ramshackle glory. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter

The Atlanta Braves farm system, which has been the talk of the town the past few seasons, was in the news for all the wrong reasons this winter. Because of that, the Braves have a new look to their prospect rankings. Our own John Sickels began his Top 20 Preseason rankings, and named Ronald Acuña (surprise, surprise) the No. 1 overall prospect and Luiz Gohara the No. 2 — and top pitching prospect -- in a system loaded with young and exciting arms. With trade of Matt Kemp, the expectations are the Acuña will be in the Opening Day outfield somewhere, most likely left field if the current roster stays as is. While Luiz Gohara wasn’t at his best in his MLB debut, the 21-year-old southpaw successfully climbed three levels all the way to SunTrust Park. He could very well land a spot in the Opening Day rotation. So, if the top hitting and pitching prospects on the Braves’ farm could very well be full-fledged graduates come May, who would be the Braves top prospect on the bump and at the plate? MIKE SOROKA, RHP Most will tell you the Kyle Wright and Kolby Allard have higher ceilings, and they just may. But Soroka has done nothing but prove himself for the past two seasons. He was one of the Big 5 in the 2016 Rome Braves championship rotation, and was one of the best pitchers in the minor leagues last season. All of the minor leagues. As a 19 year old for most of the season. Skipping over High A and pitching the entire season in Double-A. The numbers speak volumes. Soroka pitched to a 2.75 ERA and a 1.09 WHIP. While names like Wright and Allard and Anderson may pump out higher velocities and strikeout numbers before it’s all said and done, Soroka’s command is second to none. He followed up a 2.01 walks-per-nine campaign as an 18 year old with a 1.99 walks-per-nine as a 19 year old. Soroka’s mechanics are just fine, and he has shown an uptick in velocity here and there, especially in his curve. He doesn’t allow a lot of home runs, and that’s thanks to a usually high ground ball rate (46.2 percent in 2017) and a little sink he gets on his fastball, a fastball that he can manipulate almost as two different offerings. In this era of big strikeout numbers and mind-boggling radar gun numbers, Soroka may be a bit behind. But if you want a guy that has done nothing but prove he can control a game — and go deep into those games regularly — than Soroka is your guy. That’s precisely why he is mine. AUSTIN RILEY, 3B People still don’t believe in Austin Riley. The 20-year-old, hulking righty has his flaws. But he’s also improved on almost all of them over the past two seasons. Riley could be the best straight up power bat in the system, especially with Kevin Maitan no longer a Brave. He was also arguably the worst disciplined hitter in the 2016 Rome Braves lineup in the first half of the season. That’s when he learned — as a teenager mind you — that the days of waiting dead red were gone and he had to improve his approach and recognition of breaking balls. Is he there yet? Not completely, but as he did in 2016, Riley showed tremendous adjustments in the second half of 2017. Riley struggled with the Florida Fire Frogs to start the season. He actually lowered his strikeout rate from the season prior while keeping the walk rate relatively the same. The contact, and thus the power, took a bit to come along, but by midseason Riley was rolling once again. Pair it with a .289 BABIP in the Florida State League and it all kind of makes sense. He finished the season in Double-A. Once he got there, he found his stroke, slashing .315/.389/.511 in 48 games. He walked at the highest rate (9.9 percent of the time) against the most advanced pitching he had ever faced. The power returned as well as he raked eight home runs and nine doubles in just 178 at bats. There were question marks about his defense, and they were deservedly so. But he has even shown the range required of the hot corner, and he always had the rifle, a pitcher in his past life in high school. He just had to put it together consistently. He seemed to do that in Florida, but struggled again in Mississippi. Riley isn’t the perfect prospect, but he has continually shown the ability to make the adjustments asked of him. There’s no reason to not expect to see him in Gwinnett next season. The Braves are in desperate need of an everyday third baseman. If they can be patient, Riley could very well be just that.

Syrian opposition members who travelled to Moscow thanked Russia for vetoing the UN sanctions resolution [Reuters] Russia has told both the Syrian government and the opposition that real actions are needed to solve the internal crisis in Syria, according to the Russian upper house of parliament's foreign-affairs chief. Following a meeting in Moscow with representatives of the Syrian opposition, Mikhail Margelov said on Monday the conflict sides should urgently start a broad and comprehensive national dialogue. "The Russian veto at the UN Security Council on the Syria draft resolution is no way a carte blanche for the current ruling Syrian regime to do everything they want," he said. "We are indulging neither the regime nor the opposition, no way, it is actually the last bell. "With our veto at the UN Security Council we have used up the whole tool kit which international law offers us. This is the last appeal to the authorities and the opposition to take their places around the table and to start a national dialogue." Margelov's appeal followed Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's statement last week that Syria's leaders should step down if they cannot enact reforms, but warned the West not to try to push President Bashar al-Assad from power. Towards compromise Medvedev's remarks appeared aimed to push Assad towards compromise and to patch up Russia's image after it blocked a Security Council draft resolution that would have condemned Syria's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. He also made clear that Russia opposes change in Syria on terms set by the West. For their part, the visiting Syrian opposition members praised the Russian efforts. "We, the representatives of the internal opposition, have come from Syria to say 'thank you for the veto' to the Russian Federation," Qadri Jamil, secretary-general of the National Committee for Unity of Syrian Communists, said on Monday. "Why? Because of the fact that it made it possible to prevent external interference in Syrian affairs, and opens the way for dialogue. "Preventing external interference [in Syria's affairs] provides safety guarantees for the civilians in Syria." Russia had said it will oppose almost any resolution condemning Assad, making Syria a red line for Moscow after it had allowed NATO air raids in Libya by refraining from using its veto in a Security Council vote in March. Russia said the draft UN resolution could have led to military intervention. Russia has repeatedly urged Syria's government to implement promised reforms, but has differed starkly with Western nations by saying Assad needs more time to do so, and has said his opponents share the blame for months of bloodshed. Russia has accused the West of betraying its trust, charging that NATO overstepped its mandate to protect civilians and used the UN resolution to depose Muammar Gaddafi by force. Medvedev suggested the latest draft resolution on Syria had a similar aim and said other Security Council nations had refused to include language ruling out military intervention. West warned On the domestic front, Syria's highest Sunni Muslim religious leader has given warning to Western countries against military intervention and also threatened to retaliate with suicide bombings in the US and Europe if Syria comes under attack. "I say to all of Europe, I say to America, we will set up suicide bombers who are now in your countries, if you bomb Syria or Lebanon," Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun said in a speech late on Sunday evening. "From now on, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Hassoun spoke to a delegation of Lebanese women who came to offer their condolences for his son's death by unknown assailants earlier this month. "Don't come near our country, I beg you." Hassoun's comments follow another warning by Walid Moallem, Syria's foreign minister, who told the international community not to recognise the new umbrella council formed by the opposition, threatening "tough measures" against any country that does so.

It's HOTSHOTS GOLF ON THE GO!! Let me start off by saying that this is one of those games that tests one patience level. If your like me who can put up with the high level of BS that this game will throw at you from time to time, then you should be fine. BUT if your not me and don't have a high patience level then you might want to stay away from this game bcos you most likely will end up breaking your PS Vita or something else near you. There Training mode where you can practice and Stroke mode where you can play freely at one maps 9 in, 9 out, and 18 holes and then Online mode where you can compete among hunderds of players in a map for bragging rights on the map leaderboards. But Challenge mode is where the focus point of this game is. This mode is very easy at the beginning, then it is a little hard half way through, but when you get up to sliver rank, it becomes a game where ONE mistake will send you from 1st place to 10th in a blinke of an eye. Sure there is easy mode for beginners, but in truth, it really doesn't help much. This game would REALLY benifite from having mulligans espically in challenge mode bcos if you made a bad mistake you should have a chance to retry that hole instead of having to redo the ENTIRE round. Pro - Unique characters, club and ball customization, lots of unlockables to buy, can customize lobby characters and golfer, online is enjoyable, maps are unique even if often difficult, graphics are above average for a launch game. Cons - No choice of automatic impact (Mario Golf Toadstool Tour), no mulligans in challenge mode, cannot tell windspeed, advanced maps are impossible to navigate through, unforgiving and frustrating gameplay, putting is nearly impossible outside 10ft, some gold crown requirements are ridicolous. This game by all means is a GOOD game, but if you aren't able to see through the constant BS this game will throw at you, your better off staying away.

I turned 31 a few months ago, and a month later I moved out of Brooklyn and back into my childhood bedroom in my parents' house in Oakland, Calif. At that point, my latest bout of unemployment had lasted about nine months, and the looming end of my Emergency Unemployment Benefits at the year's end prompted the begrudging decision to, at least temporarily, give up my independent life. I graduated from Vassar College 10 years ago with a BA in Film and dived into life in New York City full of optimism and excitement for my future. I imagined that I'd be "rich and successful" by the time I was 25. After failing to secure a job in my field immediately after college I turned to retail. It was fairly easy work to get, and once I ascended into the world of high-end luxury designer sales, it afforded me just enough money to live a fairly comfortable -- if still a paycheck to paycheck -- existence while I pursued my creative passions. A couple-year interlude working as a production assistant on films and television shows offered some brief hope that I may actually make it into the business, but life as a freelancer was hard and I spent months on and off unemployment waiting for new projects to materialize. The desire for something stable sent me back to retail, where I remained until I was laid off a few years later. In retrospect I probably could have been more aggressive in securing a career, but in a city like New York you either work or you starve, and jobs became harder and harder to come by as the years wore on and the economy crashed, so the motivation to take what you could get and not give it up was strong. Being poor anywhere sucks, but there's perhaps a particular kind of soul crushing that one experiences being poor in New York City. The cost of living is so high, and the constant inundation from all around you of experiences you could be having, things you could be buying, luxury apartments where you could be living, if only you had the finances, slowly break you down inside. Various people have asked about "savings" over the years; I think at one point I might have had two or three hundred dollars in a savings account, but honestly, I don't know how anyone who lives in New York City could have savings unless they make six figures. My "affordable" rent in Park Slope, Brooklyn was never less than $900 a month, and it never stopped going up, unlike my income. On average, after rent and bills, I probably had less than three hundred dollars per month to put toward food, other expenses and social activities. As the years wore on, and my employment became less and less steady, I relocated to a cheaper building in a less glamorous neighborhood, but since I wasn't making as much money, that did little to ease the stress of supporting myself. Sometimes after rent and bills I had nothing leftover, and the only reason my rent checks didn't bounce was because of my credit line with my bank. Sometimes I really didn't have the money to eat three full meals a day. I would splurge on a 10 dollar lunch to keep me going through the work day, and then I'd eat nuts, cheese and fruit for dinner, or a can of tuna, or a bowl of plain rice, and drink a cheap beer because I knew it would fill up my stomach. It always seemed like every time I could almost catch a break something would go wrong to keep my head under water. My bank would randomly seize a couple hundred dollars from my account because I had stopped making credit payments when I needed to pay rent, or a bedbug infestation in my building required me to wash everything I owned and buy a new mattress, or even though I had received taxed unemployment benefits somehow I still ended up owing the government money when I filed my taxes and risked having my wages garnished if I didn't come up with the money. Even having a steady full time job in the last few years didn't end up making that much of a difference. The last job that I had was in retail sales for a high-end subsidiary brand of a major global sportswear corporation. The type of company where they have clauses in your employment like caps on the hourly rate an employee can earn in a given position, regardless of performance or how long they've been with the company, as well as an "at will" agreement which basically means they can legally fire you without notice or reason at any time, which is what eventually happened to me. By that time the emotional anguish of trying and trying for so many years to succeed and continually feeling like I'd continually failed had taken its toll. I experienced panic attacks for the first time in my life in the last couple years I spent there. Living off credit cards in between jobs and subsequently maxing them out when work didn't come fast enough or didn't pay me enough to afford basic necessities and minimum payments decimated my credit, leading to regular harassment by creditors, who would ask me how much of my unemployment benefits I could put toward my debt, or if I had any family or friends who could pay off my debts for me. It's pretty brutal what happens to your morale after years of struggle and failure. You hope for the best but expect the worst. You learn to let go of desires and hopes for your future. My dreams of one day buying an apartment or a house or even a new car evaporated years ago. So far in the eight weeks I've been living in Oakland I've been rejected from eight low wage customer service jobs, from start ups to department stores to banks to cellular phone retailers, perhaps because they think that I'm overqualified for them, or not qualified enough, or perhaps because my ability to fake enthusiasm for them has waned. I just don't know anymore. Corporate or administrative positions don't even bother to send me rejection notices. At this point where I went to school doesn't mean much. My resume is 10 years of customer service and assistant work, and no one wants to give me a chance to prove I can do anything else. I want to go back to school, or get some kind of certification, but I need a job in order to pay for supplementary education. My friends, who are mostly settled in their careers, starting families and taking group vacations, tell me how "smart" I am, how they "don't understand why someone wouldn't hire me," and how I just have to "keep trying and not give up." It makes me sad to think about how much I became a ghost in my circle of friends in the last few years. Group dinners, vacations, brunches, shopping trips, nights out at bars and clubs just became less and less a part of my existence until most of the time nobody really bothered to try to include me. I never blamed any of my friends for that; you can only decline invitations because you're literally too poor to participate for so long until people just stop asking. I'm lucky, or perhaps unlucky enough depending on how you look at it, to have some incredibly successful friends who worked really hard and put in the effort to become very well paid in their respective jobs. It's not so much that you envy your friends' success or are jealous of them, it's more that being around people who you consider your peers who all managed to "make it" when you yourself continually stumble and fall makes you question whether you really even belong with that crowd. Being the only fuck up in the room becomes a pretty dark cloud that you'd rather not expose anyone to after a while. In comparison to many, I'm considerably lucky. I got to live this amazing life surrounded by amazing people for so long, even if most of it was living beyond my means, and even now that I've come to point where it's basically all disappeared, I still am fortunate enough to have family who's willing to give me a place to stay and feed me. But now, sometimes I honestly don't know what would've been worse, having experienced for so long a life of relative privilege only to have it all fall apart, or never having had the chance in the first place. I grew up actually believing in the stereotypical American Dream that I could be anything I wanted to be. And I had a good reason; I was afforded more opportunities and privileges than countless others. And I still blew it. So now I wake up some mornings optimistic and motivated that if I just keep trying something will change and I'll finally have the chance to prove I can be a successful person and restore the self-worth that has slowly been drained from me over the last 10 years. This morning, however, I just want to go back to sleep because it seems like no one will ever give me that chance. Christian's story is part of a Huffington Post series profiling Americans who work hard and yet still struggle to make ends meet. Learn more about other individuals' experiences here.

by The brave, non-violent Syrian challenge to a brutal dictatorship emerged as part of the Arab risings across the region. But that short Syrian spring of 2011 has long since morphed into an escalation of militarization and death. The International Committee of the Red Cross acknowledged what many already recognized: Syria is immersed in full-scale civil war. As is true in every civil war, civilian casualties are horrific and rising. Certainly the regime has carried out brutal acts against civilians, including war crimes. The armed opposition is also responsible for attacks leading to the deaths of civilians. Indications are growing of outside terrorist forces operating in Syria as well. Of course the normal human reaction is “we’ve got to do something!” But however dire the situation facing Syrian civilians, the likelihood that any outside military attacks would actually help the situation is very remote. Despite defections, Syria’s military, especially its air force, remains one of the strongest in the Arab world, and direct outside military involvement, especially by the United States, NATO, or other longstanding opponents of Syria would inevitably mean even greater carnage. U.S./NATO military intervention didn’t bring stability, democracy, or security to Libya, and it certainly is not going to do so in Syria. Syria’s war is erupting in a region still seething in the aftermath of the U.S. war in Iraq and the sectarian legacies it left behind. The fighting is also now taking on an increasingly sectarian form – and the danger is rising of Syria becoming the center of an expanded regional war pitting Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar against Shi’a-dominated governments in Iran and Iraq. Iran is the most important reason for U.S. interest in Syria. With continuing U.S.-EU sanctions on Iran, and Israeli threats of military attack, Syria remains a tempting proxy target. Damascus’s longstanding economic, political, and military ties with Tehran mean that efforts to undermine Syria are widely understood to be at least partly aimed at undermining Iran. Certainly the United States, the EU, and the U.S.-backed Arab monarchies would prefer a more anti-Iranian, less resistance-oriented government in Syria, which borders key countries of U.S. interest including Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey. They would also prefer a less repressive government, since brutality brings protesters out into the streets, threatening instability. But as has virtually always been the case, a U.S. decision to send fighter-jets or bombers or even ground troops to Syria, won’t be because Washington is suddenly worried about Syrian civilians. The Assad regime has brutalized civilians for years, but it has been way too useful for Washington to worry about such things. Damascus accepted U.S. detainees for interrogation and torture in the so-called “global war on terror,” it sent warplanes to join the U.S. Gulf War coalition attacking Iraq in 1991, it kept the occupied Golan Heights and the Israeli border largely pacified… and human rights violations were never a problem for the United States. As State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland admitted, “we are not always consistent.” Whatever our humanitarian concerns might be, real decisions about direct military intervention will be made with little regard for Syrian civilians, Syrian civil society, or Syria’s national survival – all of which will suffer consequences that could last a generation or more. A U.S./NATO air war against Syria would likely not end like Libya’s – with no western casualties and a quick exit. Given Syria’s military, especially air capacity, it will look far more like Iraq than Libya. Diplomacy is the only way this war will be ended. Accountability for war crimes, whether in national or international jurisdictions, is crucial – but stopping the current escalation of war must come first. The UN may be able to facilitate that process. The UN observer mission has been a political football, with the United States demanding the Security Council vote under Chapter VII, setting the stage for military intervention. Russia, determined to protect its naval base on the Syrian coast, rejected Chapter VII. A compromise allowed a 30-day extension, but the real goal should be expansion of both the deployment and its mandate, from observation alone to attempts at political negotiation. The head of the UN observer mission, Norwegian General Robert Mood, described his team’s success in some areas “to facilitate local dialogues between the parties as they seek to find a step by step way to build confidence and stop the negative spiral of violence. …We observe a significant reduction of violence and growing confidence in a possible step by step approach to stop the violence….[T]he political dialogue has to be brought inside Syria …Through that dialogue, and lifting it to the national level, we will then achieve a cessation of violence.” That kind of bottom-up ceasefire effort, moving from the local to the national level, may offer the best chance to re-engage the non-violent core of the Syrian uprising and those opposition forces inside who are prepared to negotiate, bringing some hope that the UN team on the ground may be able to bring about what the Security Council has so far failed to achieve – a real ceasefire. Then the work to achieve the Syrian Spring’s goals of democracy and human rights may have a chance. Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and author of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer. This column is distributed by Other Words.

PHILADELPHIA, PA (NBC News 10) – Philadelphia police accused a volunteer soccer coach illegally in the United States of fathering a child with a teenager who came to him for a job. Philadelphia police announced statutory rape charges Thursday against Francisco Prado-Contreras of South Street. DHS alert police to the report of a 15-year-old girl with a 7-month-old child who could belong to Prado-Contreras, police said. Prado-Contreras was a family friend of the girl’s and volunteered to coach her soccer team at the popular Capitolo Playground in South Philly, police said. She came to him in September 2015 asking for a job helping him clean houses, investigators said. Instead of offering the girl a job, Prado-Contreras had sex with the girl on five occasions, giving the girl money each time, police said. The girl learned of her pregnancy about a month later, police said. Prado-Contreras remained jailed in Philadelphia Police custody Friday on $750,000 bail. Court records listed no attorney who could comment on the accusations. ICE officials told NBC10’s Lauren Mayk that Prado-Contreras, a Mexican citizen, is illegally living in the United States. He was apprehended in August of 2001 upon re-entering the United States and voluntarily returns to Mexico but at some point after re-entered the U.S. The Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Department said Prado-Contreras had no affiliation with the organization.

It happens every fall. A player bursts onto the scene, makes a big play or helps his team win a pivotal game, and the collective football world celebrates his arrival as a true difference maker in the NFL. Let's get ahead of the curve! In advance of the 2013 season, NFL.com analyst Bucky Brooks identifies candidates for significant improvement, concentrating on linebackers below. Click here for other positions. Most Improved Linebacker for 2013: Whitney Mercilus Mercilus' backstory: The Houston Texans have fielded one of the NFL's top defenses since the arrival of coordinator Wade Phillips in 2011. Part of the unit's success can be attributed to Phillips' ability to identify and develop impact playmakers in the draft. From J.J. Watt to Brooks Reed, he has done a marvelous job of getting tremendous production from young players in his scheme. In 2012, the Texans selected Mercilus with the 26th overall pick of the draft to replace Mario Williams at outside linebacker. The team had planned to bring Mercilus along slowly, but he earned more playing time over the course of the season by flashing intriguing skills as a pass rusher. He finished with six sacks -- pretty impressive for a guy with just four career starts. Why he will improve in 2013: In the NFL, defensive coaches build around the talents of their personnel. Coordinators use various defensive fronts, coverage, blitzes and packages to best take advantage of the individual and collective skills of their top players. As he has demonstrated throughout his time as a distinguished coach and defensive coordinator, Phillips has a knack for getting maximum production out of his top pass rushers. This has been an integral part of his success as a defensive play caller for the Denver Broncos, Buffalo Bills, Atlanta Falcons, San Diego Chargers and Dallas Cowboys. Interestingly, in each of the two previous stops in Phillips' coaching career, he turned a young, athletic pass rusher (Shawne Merriman in San Diego and DeMarcus Ware in Dallas) into a Pro Bowl-caliber playmaker. Additionally, he helped each player's complement (Shaun Phillips for Merriman and Anthony Spencer for Ware) mature into effective playmakers by developing their talents on the practice field before unleashing them on opponents. In Mercilus, the Texans have a high-energy edge rusher with natural pass-rush skills. He excels at winning hand-to-hand combat battles on the perimeter while using his sneaking burst and acceleration to chase the quarterback in the pocket. These traits -- the same skills that helped him become the nation's sack leader during his final season at Illinois -- made him a legitimate threat as a designated rookie pass rusher. When I look at the tape, it is evident that Mercilus simply has a knack for getting to the quarterback off the edge. He displays excellent snap-count anticipation and possesses the kind of first-step explosiveness commonly found in Pro Bowl-caliber pass rushers. The video clip above showcases Mercilus' outstanding "get off" and burst at the snap; he simply blows past the right tackle on an upfield rush before recording an easy sack. Mercilus also displays the ability to read, react and explode quickly on play-action passes. As the edge player in the 3-4, he is expected to set a hard edge at the point of attack to keep runners from turning the corner on outside runs. This responsibility can make some pass rushers hesitate when run fakes are executed in their direction, but Mercilus has shown the intuition and awareness to sort things out while attacking the quarterback from the edges. In the video clip below, Mercilus sniffs out the passing play and registers a sack despite a strong play fake by Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco out of a traditionally run-heavy formation. These are the kinds of plays defensive coaches love -- because they result from instincts and awareness, not exotic play design. Lastly, Mercilus' relentless energy should make him an effective weapon under Phillips. The wily defensive wizard demands maximum effort from his players, and he expects his difference makers to deliver impact plays throughout the course of a game. Though he was limited to a situational role as a rookie, Mercilus displayed the kind of non-stop motor and ball awareness that Phillips covets, collecting sacks off of extra effort and exhibiting a strong nose for the ball in pursuit. Given the impact of sacks and turnovers in the NFL, Mercilus' impressive traits could make him a star in Phillips' defense. Impact on the team: The emergence of Mercilus as a Pro Bowl-caliber pass rusher could give the Texans -- who are already considered Super Bowl contenders -- a shot to win 12 games and secure home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Projected 2013 stat line: 58 tackles, 10.5 sacks, 3 forced fumbles and 1 interception. Other Linebackers to Watch Instant Debate: Sack king in 2013? Who will win the inaugural Deacon Jones Award as the NFL's sack leader in 2013? Reigning king J.J. Watt? Let's debate! Who will win the inaugural Deacon Jones Award as the NFL's sack leader in 2013? Reigning king? Let's debate! More ... Brandon Graham, Philadelphia Eagles: Every NFL team needs a few legitimate pass rushers who can get after the quarterback. Graham was expected to be an impact pass rusher for the Eagles when he was selected with the 13th overall pick in the 2010 NFL Draft, but he struggled to adjust to the pros and battled through an assortment of injuries during his first two years. However, the light seemed to come on for Graham in Year 3; he finished with 5.5 sacks and two forced fumbles while displaying explosive first-step quickness and acceleration racing around the end. Additionally, Graham flashed impressive hand skills and pass rush moves while thriving as the Eagles' designated pass rush specialist. Given more opportunities as a likely starter in an aggressive 3-4 scheme in 2013, Graham could post 10-plus sacks for the first time in his career. Bruce Carter, Dallas Cowboys: The Cowboys' transition to a Tampa 2 scheme requires that they have fast, athletic linebackers who can suffocate the explosive offenses thriving in the NFC. Carter is the prototypical Will linebacker in the scheme, with the speed and athleticism to excel as a sideline-to-sideline playmaker. While a few injuries have kept Carter from fulfilling his immense potential, the big-play talent is evident whenever he steps on the field. If Carter stays healthy, he could be pushing for Pro Bowl honors by season's end. Jacquian Williams, New York Giants: The Giants' linebacker corps has represented one of the team's most glaring weak spots in the past few years. However, the return of a healthy Williams could bring some speed and athleticism to a unit that has lacked both. The former sixth-round draft pick is a sideline-to-sideline player capable of chasing down backs from the backside or sticking with tight ends or receivers down the seams. Although injuries have helped limit the amount of action he saw in his first two seasons (he missed six games in 2012), Williams certainly possesses the talent to be a big-time playmaker in the Giants' scheme. If he can avoid the injury bug, Williams could help solve the Giants' biggest problem. Follow Bucky Brooks on Twitter @BuckyBrooks

Members of the Anabaptist Christian Bruderhof Communities live, eat, work and worship communally. An intentional community is a planned residential community designed from the start to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle. They typically share responsibilities and resources. Intentional communities include collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, communes, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, ashrams, and housing cooperatives. New members of an intentional community are generally selected by the community's existing membership, rather than by real-estate agents or land owners (if the land is not owned collectively by the community). Characteristics [ edit ] Purpose [ edit ] The purposes of intentional communities vary in different communities. They may include sharing resources, creating family-oriented neighborhoods, and living ecologically sustainable lifestyles, such as in ecovillages.[citation needed] Types of communities [ edit ] Some communities are secular while others have a spiritual basis.[citation needed] One common practice, particularly in spiritual communities, is communal meals.[citation needed] Typically, there is a focus on egalitarian values.[citation needed] Other themes are voluntary simplicity, interpersonal growth, and self-sufficiency.[citation needed][citation needed][citation needed] Some communities provide services to disadvantaged populations. These include, but are not limited to, war refugees, homeless people, or people with developmental disabilities.[citation needed] Some communities operate learning and/or health centers.[citation needed] Other communities, such as Castanea of Nashville, Tennessee, offer a safe neighborhood for those exiting rehab programs to live in.[citation needed] Some communities also act as a mixed-income neighborhood to alleviate the damages of one demographic assigned to one area.[citation needed] Many intentional communities attempt to alleviate social injustices that are being practiced within the area of residence.[citation needed] Some intentional communities are also micronations, such as Freetown Christiania.[1] Types of memberships [ edit ] Many communities have different types or levels of membership.[citation needed] Typically, intentional communities have a selection process which starts with someone interested in the community coming for a visit. Often prospective community members are interviewed by a selection committee of the community or in some cases by everyone in the community. Many communities have a "provisional membership" period. After a visitor has been accepted, a new member is "provisional" until they have stayed for some period (often six months or a year) and then the community re-evaluates their membership. Generally, after the provisional member has been accepted, they become a full member. In many communities, the voting privileges or community benefits for provisional members are less than those for full members.[citation needed] Christian intentional communities are usually composed of those wanting to emulate the practices of the earliest believers. Using the biblical book of Acts (and, often, the Sermon on the Mount) as a model, members of these communities strive for a practical working out of their individual faith in a corporate context.[2] These Christian intentional communities try to live out the teachings of the New Testament and practice lives of compassion and hospitality.[3] Communities such as the Simple Way, the Bruderhof[4] and Rutba House would fall into this category. These communities, despite strict membership criteria, are open to visitors and not reclusive in the way that certain intentional communities are.[5] A survey in the 1995 edition of the "Communities Directory", published by Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC), reported that 54 percent of the communities choosing to list themselves were rural, 28 percent were urban, 10 percent had both rural and urban sites, and 8 percent did not specify.[6] Type of governance [ edit ] The most common form of governance in intentional communities is democratic (64 percent), with decisions made by some form of consensus decision-making or voting. A hierarchical or authoritarian structure governs 9 percent of communities, 11 percent are a combination of democratic and hierarchical structure, and 16 percent do not specify.[6] Many communities which were initially led by an individual or small group have changed in recent years to a more democratic form of governance.[citation needed] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ]

Setting a Full Testing Framework for Django (and more!) Date Mon 20 July 2015 By Emmanuel Fleury Category tools Mon 20 July 2015Emmanuel Fleury Initial Thoughts Having a production website and making some development on it is sometimes quite dodgy. You really need to know what you are doing before pushing your new developments to the production site. That is why you really need to have a quite wide spectrum of tests and barriers to prevent you to push unwanted code or security issues, or broken features in front of your users. In fact, the Python language and the Django framework have already quite good tools to help you to do this. My point here will be to list the ones I tried and that I found useful for a few of my projects. Django Unit Testing The principle of Unit Testing is to check each unit (feature) of the software in an independent way from the others. Related to websites, it means that we have to identify each service it provides and to check each service independently from the others. Usually, we measure the quality of a test suite (the set of all the tests we have written) by measuring how much code we executed at least once when running the whole set. More you cover code, more your confidence in the code get higher. Of course, this way of doing is not always bullet-proofed, because the bugs may come from the interaction of services. But, at least, it gives you a basic criteria of quality that you can apply to your code. The Django framework has already integrated a full unit testing framework borrowed from the Python language itself. If you already developed a few unit testing in Python, things will not change a lot. First of all, a little bit of vocabulary: Test case : The smallest piece of a test suite, it is a single test (or several very similar tests) on a precise feature of your software. Test suite : A set of test cases that tries to cover as much code as possible of the tested software. Test fixture : Enclose all the operations that are performed before (to get the environment ready for the test) and after (to clean the environment after the test in order to get ready for the next one) the test get executed. The Python Unit Testing framework call the method setUp() before each test case and the method tearDown() after each test case. Test runner: The program that will find all the test cases present in the Django project, that will run it in a given order and that will collect the results and display it. Writing a test suite is quite easy, take the root of your Django project (where settings.py lies) and write a test.py file as follow: from django.test import Client , TestCase class TestLoggedUser ( TestCase ): def setUp ( self ): self . client = Client () self . user = User . objects . create_user ( 'test_user' , 'user@test.net' , 'secret' ) self . user . save () self . client . login ( username = 'test_user' , password = 'secret' ) def tearDown ( self ): self . user . delete () def test_logged_user_get_homepage ( self ): response = self . client . get ( reverse ( '/' ), follow = True ) self . assertEqual ( response . status_code , 200 ) def test_logged_user_get_settings ( self ): response = self . client . get ( reverse ( '/settings/' ), follow = True ) self . assertEqual ( response . status_code , 200 ) In the previous example, we check if a logged user can get the homepage of the website and its own settings. The fixtures take care of creating, logging and, then, deleting the user before and after each test. Executing the tests is done through the manage.py command (you may add the option --verbosity=3 to get more output): $> ./manage.py test Creating test database for alias 'default'... ............................................. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 45 tests in 13.102s OK Destroying test database for alias 'default'... Integrated HTML validator with django-html-validator The django-html-validator is a Django application developed to check automatically if the served HTML pages are valid for the W3C checkers. As usual, installation is quite simple through pip : $> pip install django-html-validator Then, add the following to your settings.py file: HTMLVALIDATOR_ENABLED = True Note that, by default, the validation is done on-line through a request to the W3C server. If you want to work off-line (or do not want to overload the network), you can use the Nu HTML Checker project to validate locally the webpages. Get the vnu.jar file from the last build and install this file somewhere in your project. Then, in settings.py , set the variable HTMLVALIDATOR_VNU_JAR to point to this vnu.jar file. HTMLVALIDATOR_VNU_JAR = './contrib/vnu.jar' Then, when you define a new test case, the only thing you need is to import a ValidatingClient which behaves exactly like a usual Client but that also check the HTML against W3C verifier. It is written as follow: from django.test import TestCase from htmlvalidator.client import ValidatingClient class CheckExample ( TestCase ): def setUp ( self ): self . client = ValidatingClient () def tearDown ( self ): pass def test_example ( self ): response = self . client . get ( '/example/' ) self . assertEqual ( response . status_code , 200 ) Then, when running the tests with ./manage.py test : $> ./manage.py test Creating test database for alias 'default'... .......VALIDATION TROUBLE To debug, see: /tmp/htmlvalidator/test_example-619.html /tmp/htmlvalidator/test_example-619.txt And, looking at test_example-619.txt shows: Arguments to GET: Error: Start tag "body" seen but an element of the same type was already open. From line 95, column 8; to line 95, column 13 There were errors. (Tried in the text/html mode.) After fixing the bug, the tests are running without any problem: $> ./manage.py test Creating test database for alias 'default'... ............................................. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 45 tests in 13.102s OK Destroying test database for alias 'default'... Code coverage with coverage.py coverage.py is a framework allowing to perform code coverage while your tests cases are walked through. Installation is quite easy: $> pip install coverage Usage is also a child play, just run your test base with the following command: $> coverage run --source='.' manage.py test $> coverage report -m Name Stmts Miss Cover Missing ------------------------------------------------------- my_program 20 4 80% 33-35, 39 my_other_module 56 6 89% 17-23 ------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL 76 10 87% And, generating a full HTML report to visualize which lines are covered and which are still to be covered is as follow (the tests must have been ran before): $> coverage html $> firefox htmlcov/index.html A full example of such HTML report can be seen on this page. So, here we only follow the covering of the code, but we can also follow the covering of the templates, together with the integrated HTML validator it might be useful to know if we covered most of the generated HTML or not. In fact, the coverage.py module has a django_coverage_plugin module that does exactly this. Install the module: $> pip install django_coverage_plugin Add the following lines to your ~/.coveragerc (create one if you do not have one): [run] # The 'timid' line might be unnecessary # timid = True plugins = django_coverage_plugin Then, run the coverage checking with the following command line: $> coverage run --rcfile='/home/user/.coveragerc' --source='.' manage.py test $> DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings coverage report -m --rcfile='/home/user/.coveragerc' Name Stmts Miss Cover Missing ------------------------------------------------------------------------- myproject/__init__.py 1 0 100% myproject/admin.py 30 0 100% myproject/models.py 78 3 96% 35, 60, 145 myproject/settings.py 49 0 100% myproject/templates/_account_bar.html 30 2 93% 14-15 myproject/templates/_footer.html 1 0 100% myproject/templates/about.html 51 0 100% myproject/templates/homepage.html 146 0 100% myproject/templates/site_base.html 16 0 100% myproject/templates/subnav_base.html 8 2 75% 11-15 myproject/urls.py 14 0 100% myproject/views.py 306 26 92% 129, 203-228 myproject/wsgi.py 15 15 0% 16-39 manage.py 7 0 100% ------------------------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL 752 48 94% Finally… We got something quite complete, we are able to run unit test cases on the whole project. test for W3C compliance of the generated HTML files and have a coverage report of all these tests over Python files and templates. I did not check for other web framework than Django, but I believe this one as already quite advanced. What could be improved is that most of theses features come from external development and are not fully integrated in the Django framework. It would be exremely nice to have it from scratch in the Django base libraries.

THE failure of police to conduct a proper investigation into the 2004 death of Palm Islander Mulrunji Doomadgee at the hand of a veteran policeman will not lead to disciplinary charges, with Queensland's anti-corruption watchdog powerless to take court action against any of the officers involved. Crime and Misconduct commissioner Martin Moynihan QC will today announce he is unable to challenge a decision by the Queensland Police Service to reject the watchdog's recommendation for disciplinary action against six officers involved in the now discredited investigations. The decision of police Deputy Commissioner Kathy Rynders to reject the CMC's recommendations and instead find that the officers face only "managerial guidance" is understood to have created a legal loophole that prevents a court appeal. Read Next The CMC can seek to overturn the decision only if it is in the formal police disciplinary process. Civil liberties lawyers last night called for an independent review of the police disciplinary process in Queensland. "The police complaints system has broken down," Australian Council of Civil Liberties president Terry O'Gorman said. "The need is exemplified by the fact that it has taken six years and still it is unresolved as to whether the circumstances of Mr Doomadgee's death was properly investigated." Mr Moynihan last year warned charges would be filed directly in Queensland's Civil and Administrative Tribunal against the six officers if he was unsatisfied with the response of Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson to a CMC report into the watchhouse death. The damning report echoed the findings of Deputy State Coroner Christine Clements in slamming the initial investigation as lacking "transparency, objectivity and independence". The CMC said Mr Atkinson needed to take responsibility for a "corrosive culture" that led to the "seriously flawed" Doomadgee investigation, and several other high-profile misconduct cases. It recommended four officers -- who led the investigation -- face disciplinary action for alleged misconduct, with the two senior officers -- handpicked by Mr Atkinson to review the initial investigation -- also face disciplinary action. After a series of court challenges about the report, Ms Rynders reported to the CMC in January rejecting the disciplinary recommendations and finding that the officers should only receive "managerial guidance". That decision cannot be challenged. Doomadgee's violent death, within an hour of being arrested for public nuisance by Palm Island police boss Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, sparked riots during which the police station servicing the Aboriginal community off Townsville was burnt down. Sergeant Hurley was acquitted in 2007 of Doomadgee's manslaughter.

Geist of Saint Traft Medium undead, lawful good Armor Class 16 (natural armor) 16 (natural armor) Hit Points 85 (10d8 + 40) 85 (10d8 + 40) Speed 40 ft. STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 18 (+4) 16 (+3) 18 (+4) 13 (+1) 18 (+4) 16 (+3) Saving Throws Wis +8 Wis +8 Skills Insight +8, Perception +12, Stealth +7 Insight +8, Perception +12, Stealth +7 Damage Resistances acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks Damage Immunities necrotic, poison, radiant necrotic, poison, radiant Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened, poisoned, prone charmed, exhaustion, frightened, poisoned, prone Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 22 darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 22 Languages Common, Celestial Common, Celestial Challenge 8 (3,900 XP) Ethereal Sight. Traft can see 60 feet into the ethereal plane when it is on the Material Plane, and vice versa. Hexproof. Traft can't be affected by spells or effects that target only one creature unless it wishes to be. Magic Weapons. Traft’s weapon attacks are magical. Actions Multiattack. Traft makes two greatsword attacks and then uses Summon Angel. Etherealness. Traft enters the ethereal plane from the material plane, or vice versa. It is visible on the material plane while it is in the border ethereal, and vice versa, yet it can’t affect or be affected by anything on the other plane. Greatsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) slashing damage. Summon Angel. An angelic figure appears next to Traft and takes one action. The angel has the same stats as a Deva (Monster Manual p.16) but has a translucent appearance and doesn't talk or interact with any creature. It disapears immediately after taking its action.

Conclusions A protective effect of living in areas of higher own-group ethnic density was present for common mental disorders for some minority groups. People living in areas of higher own-group density may report improved social support and less discrimination, but these associations did not fully account for density effects. Results Although the most ethnically dense areas were also the poorest, for each 10 percentage point increase in own-group ethnic density, there was evidence of a decreased risk of common mental disorders, for the full ethnic minority sample (odds ratio 0.94 (95% confidence interval 0.89 to 0.99); P=0.02, trend), for the Irish group (odds ratio 0.21 (0.06 to 0.74); P=0.01, trend), and for the Bangladeshi group (odds ratio 0.75 (0.62 to 0.91); P=0.005, trend), after adjusting for a priori confounders. For some groups, living in areas of higher own-group density was associated with a reduction in the reporting of discrimination and with improved social support and improved social networks. However, none of these factors mediated ethnic density effects. Objectives To determine if living in areas where higher proportions of people of the same ethnicity reside is protective for common mental disorders, and associated with a reduced exposure to discrimination and improved social support. Finally, to determine if any protective ethnic density effects are mediated by reduced exposure to racism and improved social support. We conducted a multi-level analysis of cross sectional survey data to address whether living in areas of higher own-group density would be associated with a reduced risk of common mental disorders, after adjusting for a number of a priori confounders. These effects were examined for five of the main ethnic minority groups living in England—Irish, black Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi people—as well as a white British group. We hypothesised that the odds of reporting discrimination would decline with rising own-group ethnic density, and that the odds of reporting improved social support and more extensive social networks would increase with increasing own-group ethnic density. Finally we assessed whether discrimination, improved social support, and more extensive social networks might mediate any observed ethnic density effects. There is a dearth of research into factors that might account for varying rates of common mental disorders among ethnic minority groups living in Britain. Compared with white British people, the prevalence of common mental disorders may be reduced among Bangladeshi people, increased among Irish people, and similar among black Caribbean, Pakistani, and Indian people. 1 The ethnic density hypothesis suggests that living in areas of higher own-group density may be protective for mental health. 2 3 Protective ethnic density effects may operate through a buffering effect for residents living in high own-group ethnic density areas through improved social support and social networks, or by reducing the frequency of adverse experiences such as racism. 4 5 6 However, empirical research on these mechanisms remains scant. Each of these conditions had to be met for mediation to be considered present. 15 We also checked for interactions between each mediating variable and each ethnic density variable. 16 4. The effect of ethnic density on common mental disorders was assessed after the addition of each of the mediators and then all of the mediators added together, to check for a sizeable shrinkage in the association. To account for intra-cluster correlation, and to enable the modelling of variance at both area level and individual level, we performed a multi-level analysis of unweighted data, with the middle layer super output area specified as the grouping variable and individuals nested within these areas. Two-level multi-level models with random intercepts and fixed effects for each predictor variable were specified. Each model assumed that common mental disorders varied by neighbourhood, and the models were run separately for each ethnic minority group. All analyses were performed in STATA 10. 14 Age, social class, educational level, sex, marital status, and area-level deprivation were analysed as a priori confounders. Interpersonal racism, social support, and social networks were analysed as potential mediators in the association between ethnic density and common mental disorders. For analyses not involving area-level measures, data were weighted and took into account survey structure, and we used the design based Wald test to assess the strength of associations. A structured validated diagnostic tool, the clinical interview schedule-revised (CIS-R) was used to assess common mental disorders (anxiety and depression). 13 Initial filter questions focus on symptoms experienced in the previous month, with more detailed questions asking about the previous week. We considered common mental disorder to be present if the CIS-R total score was >11. 13 Tests for trend and departure from linear trend were performed with likelihood ratio tests. We retained the categorisations as described above of the ethnic density variables when statistical tests did not suggest a straightforward linear relationship between ethnic density and dependent variable. When tests for trend or departure from linear trend suggested that the relationship of ethnic density with outcome variables was linear, we divided the original density variable by 10 so that we could estimate the association with common mental disorders for every 10 percentage point increase in own-group density. To determine cut points, we examined the total range for each ethnic density variable and divided it into equal widths along its measurement scale. The “random noise” added to each variable resulted in density ranges which were at times less than 0 (for example, for the Bangladeshi group the resultant range was from −1.87% to 61.54%). With this approach, the resultant cut points for each of the ethnic density variables were: Bangladeshi 14%, 30%, 46%; black Caribbean 5%, 11%, 18% (range −1.63% to 24.09%); Indian 15%, 33%, 51% (range: −2.71% to 68.53%); Pakistani 16%, 35%, 53% (range −3.07% to 72.20%). For Irish ethnic density (range −0.33% to 14.14%) and white British population density (range 7.35% to 107.24%), the extreme positive and negative skew of the two distributions respectively, led us to take a pragmatic approach whereby we used cut points at 1%, 2%, and 5% for Irish ethnic density and at 75%, 90%, and 95% for white British population density. We used the Index of Multiple Deprivation from 2000, in fifths, as a measure of area-level deprivation, matched to MSOA level. 12 Ethnic density was defined as the percentage of ethnic minority people living within each MSOA and was supplied by the National Centre for Social Research as a continuous variable with “random noise” added per case, in order to protect confidentiality of respondents. This meant that the correlation between the true ethnic density value and the values provided were 0.975. All area level measures were provided by the National Centre for Social Research and matched to anonymised participant records. In order to protect the confidentiality of respondents, the lowest geographical area at which measures were available was at the level of middle layer super output area (MSOA). 11 Such areas have a minimum population of 5000, and a mean population of about 7200 people. 11 Two measures from the Close Person’s Questionnaire were used to assess social support. 10 Respondents were also asked to report how many people they felt close to, and were asked to nominate the person who they felt closest to. 10 Respondents were asked to rate how far their nominated closest person provided them with practical support and confiding or emotional support. 10 Respondents were asked about any experiences of workplace based discrimination: “Have you yourself ever been refused a job for reasons which you think were to do with your race, colour, or religious or ethnic background?” and “Have you yourself ever been treated unfairly at work with regard to promotion or a move to a better position for reasons which you think were to do with your religious or ethnic background (I don’t mean when applying for a new job)?” All respondents were asked if, within the past 12 months, they had been physically attacked or had experienced deliberate damage to property which belonged to them. If they responded in the affirmative, they were asked: “Do you think you were attacked for reasons to do with your ethnicity?” or “Do you think any of these attacks on your property were for reasons to do with your ethnicity?” Respondents were also asked: “In the last 12 months, has anyone insulted you for reasons to do with your ethnicity? By insulted, I mean verbally abused, threatened, or been a nuisance to you?” Ethnicity for all people, except for Irish respondents, was defined according to self report criteria as used in previous UK censuses. 9 Irish ethnicity was determined according to country of parents’ birth. 7 Social class was determined according to the Registrar General’s Social Class, and was classified into I/II (professional or managerial); III (skilled non-manual or skilled manual); IV (semi-skilled manual); V (unskilled manual); full time student or never worked. Respondents were asked about their highest educational qualification, these were classified into four groups: higher education (degree or equivalent), secondary (A level, GCSE, or equivalent), foreign qualifications, or none. Respondents were also asked their age, sex, and marital status (in four groups: married or cohabiting, divorced or separated, widowed, and single or never married). Structured interviews were conducted in individuals’ homes, with a trained lay interviewer matched wherever possible to the respondent’s sex. 7 When survey respondents could not complete the interview in English an interviewer who was fluent in their mother tongue was provided. 7 Surveys were translated into Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, and Urdu by a professional interpreter service. 7 We used regression models based on data from the Health Survey for England to derive non-response weights. 8 Wherever possible, we have retained these survey weights for non-response in our analyses, as well as any weights to account for differing probabilities of selection in the original surveys. 8 Further details on the survey are available in the main report. 7 8 Of the 7009 individuals who took part in the original surveys and were contacted for follow-up interview in 2000, 738 (10.5%) had died, were older than 75 years, or had moved out of the survey area. 8 Of the 6271 respondents from the original survey who were eligible for re-interview, 1473 (23%) refused and 517 (8%) could not be contacted. 8 This resulted in 4281 achieved interviews (68.2% of those eligible for re-interview), which comprised the dataset for our present analysis. 8 For this analysis, we used data from the Ethnic Minorities Psychiatric Illness Rates in the Community Survey (EMPIRIC), a cross sectional, nationally representative survey of adults (aged 16–74) undertaken in England in 2000. 7 The survey was a follow-up of two representative, community based surveys conducted in England (the Health Survey for England 1998 and 1999). 8 Weights were used in the Health Survey for England 1999 to account for the differing probability of selection—by postcode sector, for households within sectors, and for the selection of adults from within households. 8 When each of the variables for interpersonal racism, social support, and social networks were individually added into final models and then added in together, none of the effects for ethnic density on common mental disorders risk were attenuated, suggesting that these variables were not on the causal pathway between ethnic density and common mental disorders (model 3 in table 3 ⇑ and web extra tables). There were no interactions noted between any of the mediating variables and own-group ethnic density. Across all of the groups except the black Caribbean group, each quintile increase in area-level deprivation was associated with an increased odds of common mental disorders (see web extra tables). Also, across all of the groups, experiences of racism and discrimination were associated with a roughly twofold increase in common mental disorders (see web extra tables). After adjusting for all a priori confounders, there was evidence of an association between a 10 percentage point increase in own-group density and reduced risk of common mental disorders for all ethnic minority groups combined (odds ratio 0.94 (95% confidence interval 0.89 to 0.99); P=0.02), for Bangladeshi people (odds ratio 0.75 (0.62 to 0.91); P=0.005), and for Irish people (odds ratio 0.21 (0.06 to 0.74); P=0.01) (see web extra tables 1, 3, and 5). For all of the other groups except the white British group, there seemed to be a protective effect of living in areas of higher own-group density, but the evidence was very weak. Table 3 ⇓ shows the association of increasing own-group ethnic density with common mental disorders for each of the groups in the study. (Web extra tables 1–7 on bmj.com show the associations by individual a priori confounders and potential mediators). Likelihood ratio tests did not support a departure from a linear trend for either ethnic density or index of multiple deprivation variables for any of the groups analysed in the association with common mental disorders. We therefore present the models in table 3 (and the web extra tables) with these as continuous variables. Table 2 ⇑ shows the association of own-group density with social support measures. Living in areas of higher own-group density was associated with greater practical support from the nominated closest person for the Bangladeshi group and for the combined ethnic minority sample. Also, higher ethnic density was associated with reporting being close to three or more people for the Bangladeshi group. In total, 2035 respondents (48%) reported that their nominated closest person provided high levels of practical support, 1399 (33%) reported that their closest person provided high levels of emotional or confiding support, and 3325 (78%) reported that they felt close to three or more people. Table 2 ⇓ displays the associations between own-group ethnic density and the odds of reporting workplace based discrimination or interpersonal racism. With each unit increase in own-group density, the data suggested a reduction in the reporting of interpersonal experiences of racism over the previous year for all groups except the Irish and black Caribbean group. Per unit increase in own-group density, the risk of reporting lifetime workplace based discrimination seemed to decrease in the white British group, with weaker effects for the Bangladeshi group. For the black Caribbean group, the trend for this association was reversed (table 2 ⇓ ). In all, 450 respondents (10%) reported interpersonal racism within the previous year, and 649 (15%) reported lifetime experiences of workplace based discrimination. The black Caribbean group reported the highest prevalence of interpersonal racism, at 13% (compared with white British and Irish groups at 6%, Indians and Pakistanis at 10%, and Bangladeshis at 7%). The black Caribbean group also reported the highest prevalence of lifetime workplace based discrimination at 36% (versus white British 4%, Irish 7%, Bangladeshis 8%, Indians 19%, and Pakistanis 16%). Table 1 ⇓ shows key demographic features for the sample. In general, Irish people in the sample had a similar demographic profile to the white British group on age, social class, education, and marital status. Other ethnic minority groups were more likely to be of lower social class than the white British group and tended to be younger; this was especially stark for the Bangladeshi group. The Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups also had the highest proportion of people reporting no educational qualifications. Discussion Principal findings Despite the fact that areas densely populated by ethnic minority groups are also the most deprived, our findings suggest that, for some ethnic minority groups (in particular Irish and Bangladeshi people), living in areas of higher own-group density may be associated with a reduced odds of common mental disorders. The Bangladeshi group seemed to show the most consistent associations between increasing own-group ethnic density and reports of decreased discrimination, higher practical support, and better social networks. Although there was good evidence to suggest protective ethnic density effects for the Irish group, the data did not support a mediational association between increasing Irish ethnic density and any of the measures for racism, social support, or social networks. The latter finding highlights that “ethnic density” mechanisms are likely to be heterogeneous and may not operate in the same way across groups. Our analyses did not confirm our hypothesis that the protective effects of ethnic density for common mental disorders might be mediated by reduced exposure to racism or improved exposure to social support or social networks, although increase in ethnic density was associated with a decrease in the frequency of racist experiences and improved social support for some groups. Limitations of study The findings of this analysis relate to a dataset which was collected in 2000. The landscape of migration in England and the settlement of ethnic minority communities has changed over this time,17 and it is possible that the effects reported here may no longer be relevant to the groups included in this study, or to some of the more recent migrant groups to England. Previous research has indicated that the measure used in this analysis for individual-level socioeconomic position (Registrar General’s Social Class) may not truly capture equivalent levels of deprivation in ethnic minority groups compared with white British people.18 The measure for area-level deprivation may have also inadequately assessed poverty for ethnically dense neighbourhoods. It is possible that the residual confounding effects of socioeconomic position or area-level deprivation may have masked or minimised potential ethnic density effects. Related to this was the assumption underlying our analysis that there were no other unmeasured confounding variables in the association between ethnic density and any of the mediating variables (racism and social support), or between mediating variables and common mental disorders.16 19 Although we have attempted to adjust for confounders, any residual confounding effects may have biased estimates of mediation.19 As this was a secondary analysis of an English dataset in a relatively novel area where effect sizes are not established, it was not possible to determine study power before analysis. Insufficient power may have accounted for the apparent lack of an effect for some of the ethnic groups. This is supported by the observation that effect estimates for all the ethnic minority groups tended to suggest a protective effect on the odds of common mental disorders among people living in areas of higher own-group density, and corresponding 95% confidence intervals were in some cases wide. Other weaknesses of this study relate to the cross sectional design. Reverse causality could have accounted for findings; it is plausible that people with common mental disorders may choose to isolate themselves and move away from their communities. Recall bias is also a concern, as people with common mental disorders may be more likely to recall negative events such as racism or negative aspects of relationships. Finally, aspects of this study highlight some of the challenges to understanding health effects among ethnic minorities. The psychometric properties of the questions around racism are not established, and it is possible that some of the groups may have under-reported experiences of discrimination as this was a sensitive area of inquiry. Nonetheless, measures such as these have been used in other studies exploring the impact of racism on health.20 21 22 Although the questions around social support have been validated, this was in a British population of civil servants,10 and they may have been less valid for the ethnic minority groups surveyed in our study. Previous research has suggested that people may derive support outside of their immediate locale which may include support through culturally specific organisations not based in the same neighbourhood.5 We included a measure to assess for social networks, but we were not able to assess the nature of these networks. It is therefore possible that the measures used in this analysis did not fully assess important support derived through other sources. Strengths of study To our knowledge this is the first study to examine the association of ethnic density with common mental disorders as determined through structured, validated instruments and using appropriate statistical methods to account for geographical clustering and non-independence of observations. By using multi-level models in analysis, we avoided the problem of ecological fallacy (where erroneous conclusions are made about individuals on the basis of area-level data) as we were able to model random effects simultaneously at both individual and area levels. A further advantage of the current study was in the use of data from a nationally representative survey of England, which we believe would make the findings highly generalisable to the experiences of ethnic minority groups living throughout England, albeit with the caveat that this dataset was representative of population composition in 2000. Finally, much previous research examining ethnic density associations has tended to use service contact data to determine rates of severe mental disorders.23 24 25 26 Our study avoided the selection biases inherent in such approaches by systematically assessing mental health outcomes using structured clinical assessments on population-level data. Implications and comparison with other studies In keeping with previous research,27 we found, for most groups, at least a twofold increase in the odds of common mental disorders among people who reported experiencing racism in the previous year or discrimination at work. Conversely, living in areas of higher own-group density was associated with a reduction in the reporting of racist and discriminatory experiences for some groups. One other study has suggested that ethnic density may buffer against interpersonal racism among ethnic minority groups living in England,4 which has been further supported through qualitative work.5 These findings, alongside the observation that for some groups living in areas of higher own-group density was associated with improved social support, serve to underline the potential “psychic shelter”5 function of ethnically dense neighbourhoods, although these specific factors did not translate into the mechanism by which the beneficial mental health effects of ethnic density were mediated, in our analyses. The measure we used to assess ethnicity (self ascribed descriptors based on the UK census in 2000) helps comparability with other research but has limitations.28 People may not define themselves as being in the same ethnic group over time,29 so self ascribed ethnicity should be viewed as a proxy for how people view their membership of an ethnic grouping28 30 and does not necessarily tap into notions of “cultural identity.”28 Recent research has, for example, suggested that cultural practices associated with cultural identity could be associated with mental health benefits31 and could “govern forms of social support, gender disadvantage and access to employment”28; therefore future research could examine how far cultural identity may mediate ethnic density effects, although attempting to assess “identity” may present additional challenges. Our finding of an ethnic density effect in some of the groups should not obscure the converse finding that area-level deprivation was associated with common mental disorders for most of the groups, and areas densely populated by ethnic minority groups were also the poorest. The association of neighbourhood-level poverty with common mental disorders has been broadly confirmed in one recent systematic review,32 although described as less consistent in another.33 An ecological study of antidepressant prescribing in primary care suggested that in areas of higher ethnic density, prescribing for some minority groups was reduced.34 The findings from the present study may support the assertion that such differences are a result of geographical differences in the prevalence of common mental disorders (as opposed to health seeking differences per se), although it is likely that area-level associations with common mental disorders will be complex, given associations with area-level deprivation. We did not have the necessary data to assess “social capital.” Previous research has suggested that social capital effects on mental health are complex,35 not always consistent,35 and may have interactional effects with area-level and individual-level poverty36 or play a lesser role in patterning geographical mental health variations than compositional factors.37 However, it has also been suggested that people living in areas of lower own-group density may feel marginalised as a result “of a high degree of cohesion among the majority group”38 and this could result in adverse mental health. The role of social capital and cohesion in accounting for ethnic density effects could be examined in future research. Related to this, we asked about discrete episodes of racism and discrimination, but we were unable to assess aspects of “everyday racism”39 or the effect of belonging to a stigmatised group living in areas of lower own-group density.40 This may be a more potent mechanism for accounting for group density effects than the effects examined here, and could be explored in future research. To our knowledge, no other research has examined the effect of ethnic density on mental health in Irish people. Irish people living in Britain have a longer history of migration, and so the levels of ethnic density reached for this group were not as high as for some other ethnic minority groups. It is therefore noteworthy that protective density effects were still seen for this group. Given previous findings that Irish people living in Britain experience a higher prevalence of common mental disorders,1 41 future research should aim to uncover factors at the contextual level associated with living in areas of higher own-group density which could be protective for this (as well as for other) groups’ mental health. There were also a few unexpected findings. For example, we noted that even the white British group reported less discrimination if they lived in areas of higher own-group density. The discrimination measure covered forms of discrimination other than race, such as discrimination due to religious beliefs, which may still be an issue for this group. For the black Caribbean group, ethnic density effects were also not as expected. Compared with the other groups, the black Caribbean group reported the highest prevalence of discrimination. However, black Caribbean people living in areas of higher own-group density reported more employment related discrimination than those living in areas of lower own-group density. We did not have information on the participants’ location of employment, which may not have been the same as place of residence. It is also possible that experiences of discrimination at work for the black Caribbean group may have been high even if workplaces were located in ethnically dense areas if employment involved contact with people outside of their community. Our findings around work related discrimination are consistent with another study conducted in east London, which suggested a higher prevalence of work related racial discrimination among black African-Caribbean people, which was associated with higher levels of psychological distress among female respondents.42 In addition, our findings are consistent with another analysis also using community-level data, which suggested that living in areas of higher own-group density was associated with a number of poorer health and social outcomes among black Caribbean people.6 Unanswered questions and future research There were no neat conclusions from our analyses: ethnic density effects were present for some of the ethnic minority groups, but—despite attempting to examine the role of racism, social support, or social networks in mediating these effects—we were not able to definitively unpack the meaning of ethnic density. Future research could focus on factors that we did not address, such as interactional effects with poverty, social capital, cultural identity, and acculturation, and the role of social support not limited to immediate personal relationships. Use of a longitudinal design in future research may deal with the issue of reverse causality and recall bias. In addition, future work may benefit from qualitative approaches to aid understanding of the role of “community” and “neighbourhood” in protecting health, from the point of view of residents.

The Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta has appointed a new president — one the organization believes will push unity with the Wildrose Party forward. Len Thom was appointed to the position at a board meeting Saturday. He most recently ran for the federal Conservatives in the 2015 election in Edmonton Strathcona, but lost to NDP MP Linda Duncan. "I'm honoured to receive the support of the board and I look forward to working closely with our leader, Jason Kenney," Thom said in a news release. Thom fills the spot left vacant by Katherine O'Neill, who stepped down last month, just three weeks after Kenney was elected PC leader. Katherine O'Neill stepped down from the PC Party in April. (Laurent Pirot/Radio-Canada ) Thom said with Kenney, they are looking forward to executing "the will of our members to create a single, free-enterprise party before the next election." "Party members voted overwhelmingly for unity, and I commend our board for its clear respect for the democratic will of members," Kenney said in the release. But Kenney says just because both are focused on unity, that doesn't mean they won't explore other options if necessary. "If we cannot reach a principled agreement with the Wildrose Party, or if the members of either party reject such an agreement, that I will do everything I can to build the PC party as the alternative to this disastrous NDP government." The six-week deadline the group gave itself to reach a deal passed on Friday, but Kenney said a deal is close.

Valve has used the original Source engine since the days of Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2, but the company used this year's GDC as a platform to announce the successor, Source 2. The announcement isn't exactly a surprise; years ago, Valve's Gabe Newell confirmed that company was working a new version of the engine. However, the formal announcement means that we have a better idea what the engine can accomplish. "With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games," says Valve's Jay Stelly in a press release. Valve also revealed a product called Steam Link, which is a unit that allows you to stream Steam content from your PC or Steam Machine to other devices on the same network. The basic unit will cost $50, but comes with a Steam Controller for an additional $50. Steam Link supports 1080p, and will be available in November. For more on Valve's GDC news, see these stories about SteamVR and Steam Machines. Our Take I'm sure that we will see the Source 2 announcement bear fruit in the future, but the reveal of a new engine falls a little flat without a new game to demonstrate the capabilities alongside it. I know that legions of gamers hoping to play Half-Life 3 are thinking the same thing.

PlanetSolar’s TRANOR is currently on its way to becoming the first solar-powered boat to circumnavigate the globe. Driven by a silent, pollution-free electrical engine that is powered exclusively by solar energy, the PlanetSolar team has two goals in mind. The first objective is to show that current technologies aimed at improving energy efficiency are reliable and effective. The second is to advance scientific research in the field of renewable energy. The world’s largest solar-powered boat has already been to Miami, Cancun, Brisbane, Hong Kong and just made its way to Vietnam. Measuring around 101 feet long and 49 feet wide, the $26 million TRANOR can comfortably transport 50 passengers. The Swiss-designed, German-built ship is powered by over 5,380 square feet of solar paneling. The panels power two electric motors, which can reach 15 miles per hour. The panels can also soak up enough stored energy to power the boat in cloudy weather for three days. The excess energy is stored in a giant lithium-ion battery. And, in case you were wondering how PlanetSolar came up the ship’s name, TRANOR is derived from the “Lord of the Rings” saga by J.R.R. Tolkien and translates to: “the power of the sun” and “victory.” PlanetSolar’s website

“I am excited that the region – home to a staggering number of species including some of the most charismatic fauna – continues to surprise the world with the nature and pace of species discovery.” Conserving Biodiversity One of the most biologically diverse places on Earth, the Eastern Himalayas—spanning Bhutan, north-east India, Nepal, north Myanmar and the southern parts of Tibet—are also under grave threat. Due to development, only 25% of the original habitats in the region remain intact and hundreds of species that live in the Eastern Himalayas are considered globally threatened. Climate change is by far the most serious threat to the region but population growth, deforestation, overgrazing, poaching, the wildlife trade, mining, pollution and hydropower development have all contributed to the pressures its fragile ecosystems. “The challenge is to preserve our threatened ecosystems before these species, and others yet unknown are lost,” said Sami Tornikoski leader of the WWF Living Himalayas Initiative. ““The Eastern Himalayas is at a crossroads. Governments can decide whether to follow the current path towards fragile economies that do not fully account for environmental impacts, or take an alternative path towards greener, more sustainable economic development.” WWF is actively involved in supporting the countries of the Eastern Himalayas’ progress towards green economies that value ecosystems and the services they provide to the millions of people in the region. Located in one of the most ecologically fragile regions on Earth, the WWF Living Himalayas Initiative urges a strong regional collaboration to ensure that people in this region, live within the ecological means and remain within the boundaries of one planet. And through the USAID-funded Asia High Mountains project, WWF is working with communities on the edge of the region’s snow leopard range, where the many impacts of climate change and unsustainable development are already being felt. We are also influencing policy, which governs natural resource management across snow leopard range, and contributing to a future where both people and biodiversity can thrive. Together we can secure a brighter future for the region’s people and biodiversity, including its rich array of species – those that we already know and those still waiting to be discovered.

The parallelization of numerical algorithms is constrained by overheads of communication and load imbalance, which are manifestations of the computation’s dependency structure and the parallel schedule itself. Therefore, accurate design of parallel algorithms requires modeling the communication and synchronization costs along any execution path in the schedule rather than solely considering the computational complexity. I will give a high-level introduction to a few parallel algorithmic techniques for avoiding communication and synchronization in dense numerical linear algebra and sparse iterative methods. Additionally, I will present lower bounds on communication costs, which demonstrate the optimality of the aforementioned parallelization strategies for computations with certain regular dependency structures. The theoretical analysis of these algorithms will be justified with performance results for dense matrix computations on massively parallel architectures. Lastly, I will overview Cyclops Tensor Framework, a library abstraction capable of mapping, decomposition, and redistribution of multidimensional data sets that facilitates communication-efficient algorithms in the context of scientific applications, in particular, high-accuracy electronic structure methods.

Yes, we live in a sexist culture, in which women have no good choices when it comes to our bodies. We live in a sexist culture in which women are valued primarily as sexual objects, and at the same time are shamed for our sexuality. It seems to me that we have two choices as to how to respond to this. We can try to navigate the narrow, essentially impossible shoals of these contradictory expectations, and try to find that perfect, socially acceptable line between slut and prude. Or we can say, “Fuck it. There is no way I can win — so I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want. I’m going to wear overalls, or I’m going to wear high heels. I’m going to have sex with twenty strangers in a night, or I’m not going to have sex with anyone. I’m going to dress conservatively and professionally in public at all times, or I’m going to sell naked pictures of myself on the Internet if I bloody well feel like it.” And in saying, “I can’t win, so I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want to do,” we can create the beginnings of a victory. We can create the beginnings of a world where we really can win. We can create the beginnings of a world where we’re a little more free than the women who came before us… and where the women who come after us are a little more free than we are. We probably can’t create a perfect world, where women’s bodies aren’t commodified in the slightest (not in this generation, anyway). But we can create a better world: a world where women’s bodies and minds belong less to the patriarchy, and more to ourselves.

Rep. Ted Yoho tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he is not concerned about reports that Donald Trump Jr. had a meeting in June 2016 with a reporter who turned out to be Russian. The New York Times reported this weekend that Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer for about 20 minutes on the hope that she could provide information about the Clinton campaign. "Do I think it is appropriate? I think I probably would have done the same thing," he said. "Anybody who has been in an election -- you're always trying to get information... And keep in mind she wasn't an agent for the Russian government, she was just a Russia lawyer, and if someone comes and says they have information about an opponent -- that is a good thing to do," he said.

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — It defies public-trust expectations, but there are rogue officers at the Transportation Security Administration who think nothing of stealing your stuff. Consider these reports: In June, a former supervisor at Newark Liberty International Airport was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for accepting bribes and kickbacks from a co-worker accused of stealing money. The supervisor admitted that he looked the other way when the co-worker stole from $10,000 to $30,000 in cash over a 13-month period. Since late May, there have been two separate instances reported at Los Angeles International Airport and a sting operation at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston that led to arrests and suspensions. In April, a lead TSA officer at Kona Airport in Hawaii pleaded guilty in federal court to misdemeanor theft charges after a sting operation caught her with two $100 marked bills stuffed into a pants pocket and other crumpled bills in shirt pockets. She allegedly had been stealing cash from Japanese travelers passing through her lane, according to reports. Overall, these and other arrests and allegations represent a small percentage of the more than 50,000 TSA officers at more than 450 U.S. airports. TSA says it inspects the baggage of some 2 million passengers daily. The TSA also estimates that for every TSA employee who touches a bag, some six to 10 airline or airport employees and contractors also have — mostly out of view of the passenger. The TSA has consistently stated that it has “a zero tolerance for theft” and its internal investigations and stings underscore that it is aggressive in rooting out the bad guys and women. To find them, it relies on security cameras, partnerships with local law enforcement and its own people. The Kona sting, for example, came amid complaints from fellow employees as well as customers. “We do not tolerate, condone, cover up or minimize theft by our officers by any stretch of the imagination and in most cases, it is fellow employees uncovering the theft and the organization pushing hard for prosecution of those (who) would abuse their authority,” the TSA Blog states. Tips to keep your property safe There are steps you can take to keep your things out of thieves’ hands: As much as possible, keep a watchful eye on your belongings. “You are responsible for your property as it proceeds through the screening process,” according to the TSA. Do not pack jewelry, cash, laptops, electronics or any fragile items in your baggage. Leave anything that you can’t live without at home. Skip the trays that the airport provides for jewelry, watches and wallets, and belts — using them invites theft. Take off those items before you get to the security line and put them in the pocket of a carry-on. If you have a lost or missing item from a security checkpoint, check the airport’s lost and found first. The TSA has a list of all the phone numbers at every airport. If you think your property was stolen, or damaged, during the screening process you can file a claim online. Remember, too, that not all airports contract security through TSA. There are 16 of them — seven of which are in Montana — that have private contractors. Be prepared. The claims form requires a lot of detail about when, where and what was taken as well as how much the item may be worth. “The more accurate and detailed the description, the faster an investigation and determination will be made,” according to the form. “Be sure to remembers names, places and events. Avoid assumptions, they can actually hinder the investigation and may delay your claim.” Be patient. The investigation process can take fewer than 60 days to as long as six months. If the claims management branch determines your claim is legitimate, you are entitled to a full or partial reimbursement — courtesy of your fellow U.S. taxpayers.

And he was right. In Islam, women are essentially chattel slaves. But the feminists remain mum. They have shown that for them, Islam trumps everything, even their raison d’etre, their supposed concern for women’s rights. “Man who made horrendous “rape-video” of wife told police Islam consented,” Cumbria Crack, August 15, 2017: A 35-year-old man has been jailed for ten years for a sexual assault after his victim, who is also his wife, refused to give evidence against him. In what is believed to be one of the first cases of its kind Northumbria Police proceeded with a prosecution after mobile phone footage of the assault was found on the man’s phone…. The man was initially arrested after his wife reported to police that she had been raped at their home address and handed police her mobile phone. The two minute video was described as disturbing and showed the victim, who had been largely naked and in a drug/alcohol induced state, being abused. The video showed the distressed victim crying and begging the man to stop. Although initially co-operative with the police, within a couple of months the victim refused to go to court, saying she wanted her husband released from custody and giving a retraction statement. The man said he needed to prove she drank alcohol and slept around and had made the video for divorce proceedings. The court heard that despite accusations of the woman having an affair he had no evidence to prove this and police secured a statement from an Imam to negate this saying he would not have required this evidence for a divorce. On a number of occasions the man gave differing accounts in court saying the couple often videoed each other and Islam consented to everything that was on the video…. Inspector Paul Young of the Rape Investigation Team, said: “Throughout this case this man showed little regard for women and thought he could do what he wanted to his wife. “This sentence sends out a message to people who think they are outside the law with behaviour which cannot be excused by any community or religion and we will, where we can, take forward a prosecution without a victim to protect that person and the wider community in which these people live.”

Lloyd Blankfein, whose bank employs more than 6,000 in London, says it has ‘contingency plans’ to move staff out of UK The chief executive of Goldman Sachs has warned that London’s financial centre will “stall” due to the turmoil of the Brexit process. Lloyd Blankfein, who runs the world’s second-largest investment bank, said a three-decade expansion that has turned London’s financial services sector into a world leader could grind to a halt. “It will stall, it might backtrack a bit, it just depends on a lot of things about which we are uncertain, and I know there isn’t certainty at the moment,” Blankfein said in an interview with the BBC. “I don’t think it will totally reverse.” JP Morgan to move hundreds of jobs out of UK due to Brexit Read more Blankfein also said there would need to be an implementation period of at least a “couple of years” after the Brexit deal had been agreed in early 2019 to allow companies to adjust. “We are talking about the long-term stability of huge economies with hundreds of millions of people and livelihoods at stake, and huge gross domestic product,” he said. “So, if it takes a little while, I’d rather get it right than do things quickly.” If not enough time were factored in, banks such as Goldman would have to act “prematurely” and possibly move some of their operations and jobs. A Conservative party spokesman said: “The City is the world’s leading financial centre and only Theresa May and the Conservatives have a plan to make sure it stays that way.” Catherine McGuinness, policy chairman at the City of London Corporation, said: “What Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs has said about the City is the same as a number of other leading international financial institutions. It is entirely right that firms plan for all negotiation scenarios and assess what impact this might have on jobs in the UK. Some of these may relocate to other global financial sectors and the City might not grow as quickly as it otherwise would have done. But this is entirely down to what sort of deal we get. “That is why our sector has a key role in communicating our priorities: access to international talent, a transitional agreement and a bespoke deal that enables two-way access from the EU27 to the UK. “My goal in taking up office is a vibrant, thriving City contributing to the prosperity and wellbeing of the capital and the country.” In March, it emerged that Goldman had started to transfer hundreds of staff out of London ahead of a Brexit agreement as part of “contingency plans”. The bank employs more than 6,000 people in the UK. On Friday, Blankfein said he hoped not to trigger a large-scale move out of the UK. “We don’t have big plans now. We are looking; we are trying to avoid,” he said. However, he added that the bank had held discussions with a number of cities across Europe, understood to include Frankfurt and Dublin. “Obviously, a lot of people elect to have their European business concentrated in a single place, and the easiest place, certainly, for the biggest economy in the world [the US] to concentrate would be the UK – the culture, the language, the special relationship – and we are an example of that,” he said. “If you cannot benefit from access to the EU from the UK, and nobody knows what those rules and determinations will be, then the risk is there will be some adjustment that will cause some people to have a smaller footprint in the UK.” Richard Gnodde, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs International, said in March that the bank was to take extra office space in Frankfurt and Paris, and planned to upgrade its facilities in several cities on the continent over the next 18 months. “We’ll be taking extra space in a number of them and be increasing our headcount and infrastructure around those facilities,” he said. “What our eventual footprint will look like will depend on the outcome of [the Brexit] negotiations and what we are obliged to do because of them.” Goldman has about 200 staff in Frankfurt and 100 in Paris. In January, the bank was the subject of speculation that it could shift half of its workforce out of London, with 1,000 of the jobs relocated to Frankfurt.

At confirmation hearings, Mike Pompeo and James Mattis both sounded warnings over Russia’s growing global ambitions in light of the leaked dossier Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency sided with intelligence officials who accuse Moscow of attempting to skew the US election on Thursday, as the rift between Trump and his spy chiefs intensified barely a week before the president-elect takes office. Mike Pompeo’s comments to the Senate intelligence committee came amid an increasingly bitter row between Trump and the American spying agencies, which he has accused of leaking a dossier of salacious allegations against him. Donald Trump's truce with spy agencies breaks down over Russia dossier Read more Relations between the president-elect and the country’s 17 intelligence agencies reached a new low on Wednesday when he accused them of behaving like Nazis after the leak of the report which alleged that Moscow had personally compromising material on Trump. As Trump’s ties with Russia continue to overshadow the build up to his inauguration: A senior member of the House intelligence committee called for a full congressional hearing to investigate Russian attempts to disrupt the US election. The justice department’s watchdog announced it would investigate the FBI’s handling of a probe into Hillary Clinton’s personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state – an issue that Democrats believe swung the election in Trump’s favour Republican senator Lindsay Graham rebuked Trump for questioning the competency of the intelligence agencies. At confirmation hearings on Thursday, Pompeo and Trump’s nominee to head the Pentagon both sounded warnings over Russia’s growing global ambitions. Pompeo stated unequivocally that he accepted the intelligence community’s conclusions that Moscow had sought to influence the election. “It’s pretty clear about what took place here about Russia involvement in efforts to hack information and to have an impact on American democracy,” Pompeo said. “This was an aggressive action taken by the senior leaders inside Russia.” The Kansas Republican congressman and former army officer was asked by Senator Angus King to comment on Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. “I share your view that these are unsubstantiated media reports,” Pompeo said, but he pledged to investigate the allegations and “pursue the facts where ever they take us”. Russia is trying to smash Nato, James Mattis says in confirmation hearing Read more In his Senate hearing, James Mattis, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, told the Senate armed services committee that Russia has “chosen to be a strategic competitor, an adversary in key areas”. While Mattis said he was “all for engagement” with the Russians, he warned of “increasing number of areas in which we will have to confront Russia”. Separately, Representative Eric Swalwell, the ranking member of the CIA Subcommittee of the House permanent select committee on intelligence, called for an independent bipartisan commission to investigate Russian attempts to disrupt the US election. Writing for the Guardian, Representative Eric Swalwell said that the commission was needed “to set the record straight on what happened, and to recommend how best to protect ourselves from now on”. Swalwell wrote: “The dire need for an independent commission is brought into even sharper focus by the president-elect’s ongoing and baseless accusations of bias against the 17 US intelligence agencies”. Democratic politicians have voiced growing concern over the outbreak of open warfare between Trump and his intelligence chiefs barely a week before the president-elect takes office. “It is really very damaging, in my view, to our standing in the world for a president to take one of the crown jewels of our national defense and denigrate it,” said outgoing vice-president Joe Biden on Thursday. “It plays into, particularly now, the Russian narrative that America doesn’t know what it’s doing.” Barely a week before Trump enters the White House, US intelligence chiefs have made it clear they are still investigating the material authored by a former British counter-intelligence official, Christopher Steele, originally as opposition research during the election campaign. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, issued a statement on Wednesday, saying he had talked to Trump that evening, expressing dismay about continuing leaks on the issue, and informing him that the US intelligence community “had not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions”. “However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security,” Clapper added. By Thursday morning, Trump tweeted a distinctly different account of their conversation: “James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts. Too bad!” At his press conference on Wednesday, Trump simultaneously accepted and diminished the intelligence assessment that Russia was responsible for the Democratic National Committee hack, saying “I think it was Russia” and later adding the caveat: “You know what? It could be others also.” On Sunday, aide Reince Priebus insisted that Trump “is not denying that entities in Russia were behind this particular hacking campaign”. The BBC has reported that there may be more compromising material about Trump in Russian hands that previously reported. We need an independent commission on Russia hacking now | Rep Eric Swalwell Read more Correspondent Paul Wood said he had heard from serving CIA officers that there was “more than one tape”, “audio and video”, on “more than one date”, in “more than one place” – in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St Petersburg – and that the material was “of a sexual nature”. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee and a consistent critic of spycraft excesses, told the Guardian it was “profoundly dangerous” for Trump to continue his feud with the agencies. “The president is responsible for vital decisions about national security, including decisions about whether to go to war, which depend on the broad collection activities and reasoned analysis of the intelligence community. A scenario in which the president dismisses the intelligence community, or worse, accuses it of treachery, is profoundly dangerous,” Wyden said. Vicki Divoll, a former attorney for the CIA and the Senate intelligence panel, saw little chance for a rapprochement between the intelligence agencies and Trump. “After disparaging and demeaning the hardworking officers of the intelligence community, then grudgingly accepting their conclusions about Russian election hacking, Mr Trump is now hurling the worst epithet out there – comparisons to Nazi Germany – against them, without basis and on the eve of taking office,” Divoll said. “We are at our peril to be entering an era in which there is such open, irrational and hysterical hostility by a president against a community of 17 agencies whose mandate is to keep us safe.”

The death of Nelson Mandela reminds us that often the first step towards the resolution of a conflict is the release from prison of a national leader who has the authority to unite, negotiate and resolve. Marwan Barghouti has been in jail since 15 April 2002 when Israeli security agents, posing as ambulance workers, seized him in broad daylight and took him to Israel. In 2004 he was convicted by an Israeli court of involvement in five murders, which he denies. Despite nearly 12 years behind bars, Barghouti remains the most popular politician in Palestine, capable, according to recent polls, of beating either President Mahmoud Abbas or his Hamas rival Ismail Haniyeh for the presidency. Many believe he could come out of prison, stand for election, win the presidency, unite the Palestinian factions, negotiate a settlement, put it to his people, win their support and then preside over a process of "truth and reconciliation" in a newly independent country. With the final prisoner release linked to peace talks due to take place on Saturday, and the end of the talks themselves due a month later (on 29 April), this might just be the dramatic gesture that could save the negotiations from ending in total failure. Abbas has offered to prolong them a little, but only if Barghouti and 12 other MPs are released. Even Shimon Peres, when he was running for the presidency of Israel, declared he would sign a pardon for Barghouti. In the event, the Knesset never approved his pardon because of the vehement opposition of ministers such as Silvan Shalom, who said: "It is out of the question to free an assassin who has blood on his hands and was duly sentenced by a court." Photograph: Eitan Hess-Ashkenazi/AP But if peace is ever to come, Israel will have to acknowledge that Barghouti was a political and not a military leader, that he never carried arms and that he always opposed actions targeting Israeli civilians, even while defending the right of Palestinians to resist. An international campaign has been launched to free Barghouti and the 4,227 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. It is supported by every party in the Palestinian parliament, with Fatah and Hamas united for once, and by the overwhelming majority of Palestinians. The campaign was launched in Mandela's old prison cell by the veteran South African politician Ahmed Kathrada, who started the first Release Mandela campaign back in the 1960s and was then jailed himself and spent 18 years on Robben Island with Mandela. He will be in London next week to urge British MPs to sign the "Robben Island declaration" in support of Palestinian prisoners, alongside Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Taoiseach John Bruton, Nobel peace prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire, political activist Angela Davis and many others. For British politicians it should be easy to grasp the essential argument for his release. It is not on the basis that he is innocent (though he may be), or that his arrest was illegal (it almost certainly was), but because he is uniquely well placed to negotiate a peace agreement. Britain jailed Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in 1942, but they released Nehru in 1944 and two years later he was negotiating Indian independence. He became the first prime minister of an independent India in 1947. In Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta was put in prison by the British in 1952 and released in 1961. One year later the British were negotiating independence with him and in 1963 he became prime minister of an independent Kenya. In South Africa, Mandela was released from jail in 1990 and within months was negotiating independence with his captors. It took just four years from prison cell to president's palace and the hope is that Barghouti, now 54, can do the same. Between August 2013, a month after the talks started, and February this year, 34 Palestinians have been killed and 1,535 injured (in the same period there have been three Israeli deaths and 53 injuries). Meanwhile, 10,509 housing units on illegal settlements have been approved by the Israeli authorities. Is there any wonder the Palestinians don't want to continue the "peace" talks? As the 29 April deadline approaches, it would take a really bold initiative by the Israelis to prove they are interested in peace. If they release Barghouti the world will recognise that they are serious. If they refuse, many will conclude they are not.

CCP announced today that, effective November 8th, all gambling involving EVE assets will be considered a breach of the EULA. While we remain supportive of actions CCP takes to address violations of the EULA, we are concerned that the scope of this action, and particularly the broad expansion of the EULA’s scope going forward, will negatively impact numerous community-driven enterprises. Crossing Zebras is fortunate. We have an established brand, stable leadership and have been able to plan for the future. We will adapt and find new ways forward. In this case, however, change is inevitable as a direct result of this update to the EULA. We believe that our staff’s hard work should be rewarded, and will do everything possible to make sure that our writers and podcasters continue getting paid for what they bring to you. That will be harder now, though. Without our sponsors, we must seek new ways to compensate our writers, editors, IT staff, administrators, video makers, and podcasters for the hard work they put in to bring you content. CZ isn’t a site that runs on goodwill, or pays its writers based on real-world revenues. We value our independence from ingame political entities. You probably won’t see much change out of Crossing Zebras, at least not at first. We’ll be fine, at least for a while. The Crossing Zebras content you enjoy will continue to be available free of charge, regardless of changes we make to our funding model. Our true concern today is for those in the community without the stability we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to establish. Valuable community resources like Crossing Zebras, Eve News 24, EVE_NT, along with a considerable number of other sites, podcasters, streamers, contests, in-game events, meetups, content creators, E-sports, and other entities in the EVE community, will need to reinvent themselves. Creative voices who can afford to take time to tell stories because they’re paid in ISK for their work may find less incentive to speak. Fewer stories from fewer voices may be shared by the community. We can assure you, as longtime participants in the EVE media world, that no one gets into this business to get rich, but it certainly makes it easier to devote some of your gaming time to creative pursuits if you know you’ll be paid for your work. As already stated, we’ll be fine here at Crossing Zebras, but we and our staff value so many other voices, events, and groups within the community who may not be so lucky, and we are saddened that CCP is taking actions that sweep them, and longtime partners like EVE-Bet, up alongside those few bad eggs in the gambling community We are concerned that a major part of what we broadly call the EVE media will be severely diminished because of the actions of a few individuals. We fear that these changes may prevent the next generation of voices from sharing their views, displaying their talents, or devoting their time to fleshing out the EVE universe and contributing to its community. We hope CCP will consider the substantial secondary effects brought about by today’s actions as they move forward. – The CZ Management Team

Campaign coverage often gets bogged down in trivia—inconsequential polling data, the latest “off message” comment by an associate, and so on. But then there are the “gaffes,” when politicians say something that we’re told means a lot more than it might seem. Barack Obama’s 2008 comment about small-town voters clinging to their guns and religion was one. In 2000, Al Gore was a Media Gaffe Machine: Love Canal, internet inventing, etc. Most of them didn’t check out, but that’s not what matters. Gaffes are elevated when reporters think they reinforce something about a politician. In 2000, NPR‘s Cokie Roberts said it best when she explained why certain stories matter more to journalists: “The story line is Bush isn’t smart enough and Gore isn’t straight enough.” Thus, anything that could feed that story line got more attention. The 2012 campaign season is just getting started (ugh), but it’s not too early for media to spot a Very Important Gaffe. Barack Obama, in fact, delivered one on Friday when he said this: The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government—oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in. This is mostly accurate, and made perfect sense in a conversation about private sector employment and public sector jobs. But obviously saying any part of the economy is “doing fine” is bound to attract criticism. The Romney campaign pounced, and the comment became an official “gaffe.” From the Boston Globe came the all-encompassing headline, “President Obama’s ‘Private Sector’ Gaffe a Possible Window to Soul Like Other Recent Gaffes.” Later in the day Obama tried to send out a second, clarifying message, and surrogates were dispatched to try and clean things up. The comment was still part of the conversation when the Sunday shows rolled around. The point is gaffes don’t just “happen.” A political rival takes note, sure; but a gaffe is a gaffe when reporters say so. This one, according to Washington Post reporter Dan Balz, was “a major gaffe.” In a sense that’s true—because journalists decided it was. But some reporters prefer to believe they’re observers of—and not active participants in—a political campaign. The media attention to this event started to attract some criticism—which inspired Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza to write a piece (6/11/12) titled “Why Obama’s ‘Private Sector’ Gaffe isn’t Going Away.” Cillizza opened by stating his “unpopular opinion: Political gaffes matter.” Well, that settles it. As Cillizza sees it, Obama’s defenders are saying, among other things, that this was a “single out-of-context statement.” He responds this is “true, but “missing the point.” As he explains, we live in a media world where even the smallest comment can be amplified into a national headline in minutes. Is there anyone paying even passing attention to politics who hasn’t seen the Obama clip five times at this point—which, by the way, is less than 96 hours after he said it? Answer: no. To hear Cillizza tell it, this is a big deal because Obama’s political rival thinks so. “You can be sure that the Romney campaign isn’t finished making political hay from Obama’s gaffe.” And that hay-making “can be amplified.” The question is: Who amplifies all this hay? Cillizza writes somewhat passively about a media system that can make a headline in minutes, but someone decides it’s headline-worthy. In many cases, it’s the very same people who decide that a White House’s drone kill list is of little importance. But elite media choose which gaffes are gaffes. (Also: George W. Bush told reporters on two different occasions that the Iraq War happened in part because Saddam Hussein was not allowing weapons inspectors into the country–even though Hussein had let weapons inspectors back in and their inspections were major news every day in the weeks before the war. This was not a “gaffe” of any sort.) Instead of honestly acknowledging the media’s role in defining gaffes, Cillizza actually downplays what journalism can do with this aside: (Yes, any claims that Romney makes in ads will—and should—be factchecked by the media. But if you think that media fact-checks sway people more than scores of TV ads, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.) So journalists are the powerless figures in the corner, churning out their inconsequential fact checks. For Cillizza, this particular gaffe fuels a narrative: The problem for Obama is that his remark plays directly into the story that Republicans are trying to tell about him—that he is a big-government liberal who thinks the answer to all problems is expanding the federal bureaucracy and who lacks even a basic understanding of how the private sector works. This narrative doesn’t much resemble Obama’s tenure, which has seen declines in the public sector workforce, the rejection of a public option in the healthcare law, and so on. It is, nonetheless, the story that Republicans are telling. If only there were someone around to do a factcheck.

The Arizona Republic made waves yesterday when it reported that Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers would be filing a Open Meeting Law (OML) complaint with the Arizona Attorney General's Office. In particular, one passage set many a Coyotes fan's heart aflutter: Media attorney David Bodney, who represents The Republic, said the deliberations by the four council members who voted for the Coyotes deal were not held in a public meeting and "would be a likely violation of the Open Meeting Law." The council approval of the Coyotes deal would be voided if it is determined that the Open Meeting Law was violated, he said. So let's take a look at the information provided by the Republic, and existing Arizona law, to figure out how serious these allegations are and whether or not they pose a threat to the Jobing.com Arena lease agreement. The Open Meeting Law Open Meeting Laws in Arizona are codified under A.R.S. § 38-431. A "meeting" is defined by the law as: the gathering, in person or through technological devices, of a quorum of members of a public body at which they discuss, propose or take legal action, including any deliberations by a quorum with respect to such action. In the City of Glendale's case, a quorum is four members of the seven member city council. The allegations set forth by the mayor relate to a meeting between Renaissance Sports & Entertainment attorney Nick Woods and councilmembers Yvonne Knaack, Sam Chivara, and Gary Sherwood. By itself, there is no OML violation here because there are only three councilmembers present, which isn't a quorum. But the story doesn't end here. What's in an Email? The event in question that potentially results in an OML violation is an email sent by CM Sherwood to CM Manny Martinez, during which he discusses the product of the conversation with Woods: In the e-mail from Sherwood to Councilman Manny Martinez, Sherwood wrote that he and Knaack "spent over an hour with Nick Woods last night." Woods is an attorney representing IceArizona, the entity that owns the Coyotes. He went on to write that, "Sammy (Chavira) is already on board as he was with us last night" and closed the e-mail by writing "Manny, please delete this email after you've read it." So it seems apparent that CM Sherwood engaged in some conversation with CM Martinez via email (though to be fair, CM Sherwood maintains that CM Chavira was not actually present during the conversation with Woods, but more on this in a little bit). The problem here is that CM Sherwood's email exchange with CM Martinez falls under the definition of "meeting" established above. The fact that the events did not happen simultaneously does not matter either. Arizona Attorney General's Opinion I05-004 (2005) established that The OML does not specifically address whether all members of the body must participate simultaneously to constitute a "gathering" or meeting. However, the requirement that the OML be construed in favor of open and public meetings leads to the conclusion that simultaneous interaction is not required for a "meeting" or "gathering" within the OML. So even though the conversation between CMs Sherwood and Martinez was not in person and did not occur during or immediately after the conversation with Woods, the fact that the subject matter was the same means that the OML still applies. And this makes sense because it would be easy to circumvent the OML if such serial communications were allowed to happen. The Consequences of Disobedience State law empowers the Attorney General's Office to investigate violations of the OML. While there are civil penalties for public officers who are found to have violated the OML, Coyotes fans are undoubtedly concerned about A.R.S. § 38-431.05, which says that: All legal action transacted by any public body during a meeting held in violation of any provision of this article is null and void Therefore, it is possible for a court to decide that the Jobing.com Arena lease agreement was a product of legal action that occurred during the OML violation, and therefore is no longer valid. The City Council would have the ability, under Subsection B of the same statute, to re-vote on the Arena lease agreement within thirty days after the discovery of the OML violation, but if there are changes to the composition of the City Council in the interim, then it is possible the re-vote doesn't happen or turns against the lease agreement. Unless the process doesn't get that far. Hopeful Outcomes There are two ways that the OML investigation could have zero impact on the agreement between the City of Glendale and Jobing.com Arena. The first, and most straightforward, is if the Attorney General's Office agrees with CM Sherwood's assertion that CM Chavira was not in fact present during the meeting with Woods. If that was the case, then even with Martinez's involvement only three councilmembers discussed the agreement, which is still not an OML violation. This is speculation on my part so it should not be interpreted as CM Sherwood's argument, but it is conceivable that Sherwood meant by "he was with us last night" as Chavira was on board with supporting the arena lease agreement. This seems like a stretch, but if there is no evidence to the contrary, the AAG's Office may not have enough evidence to rule an OML violation actually occurred. The stronger argument has to do with existing Arizona caselaw. The Arizona Court of Appeals addressed the issue of what extent OML violations nullify the previous actions in the 1980 case Cooper v. Arizona Western College District Governing Board (125 Ariz. 463, 610 Pd.2 465). The Court said that: We find no provision in the Arizona statutes relating to public meetings which precludes a public body from adopting at a subsequent public meeting action which was legally ineffective from a previous meeting of the public body. In other words, actions that occurred during an OML violation are not necessary nullified if they were subsequently enacted in a meeting that did comply with the OML. The Court of Appeals again in Valencia v. Cota (126 Ariz. 555, 617 P.2d 63) determined that: Even though plaintiffs have properly alleged a violation of the open meeting law, plaintiffs' complaint also alleges that the prior action was subsequently ratified at a meeting complying with the law. Under these circumstances the trial court properly concluded that plaintiffs' complaint failed to state a cause of action. Two separate appellate cases in the same year concluded that an Open Meeting Law violation does not negate the legal action taken if the final action occurred in a normal meeting. Since the final vote on the Coyotes lease agreement occurred in public, with proper public notice posted beforehand, the agreement could still be found valid if the AAG's office concluded that an OML violation did occur. Conclusion All of the above analysis would inevitably have to be litigated, should the AAG's Office find an OML violation did take place. The presence of existing caselaw does not preclude the court from taking a different stance now. But if nothing else, Coyotes fans should breathe a little easier knowing there is law that supports keeping the arena lease agreement in place.

Amongst one of the many books that has come highly recommended to me, especially from my fellow graduate students, was Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. Published in 1974, Haldeman's book is an interesting one, tying together a stiff criticism for the Vietnam War, in which he was a participant and recipient of the Army's Purple Heart, a look at the future of humanity and a romp through futuristic military battlefields. The book is scattered, to say the least, through these three larger themes, and while the book as a whole is a pretty strong one, reading it brought up some larger issues that I have with the whole of the military science fiction subgenre. Branching off from the 1980s, humanity has taken to the stars fairly early in its history, travelling the galaxy via collapstars, which fires off a ship around the galaxy. During the course of humanity's exploration, they come into contact with a race of aliens known as the Taurans, and inevitably, war breaks out. The story's protagonist, William Mandella, is conscripted into the military, where he's trained and sent off to the distant front lines to fight, eventually becoming part of the first engagement against the Taurans. With that battle completed, he is shipped home, along with his lover, Marygay Potter, to an Earth that they hardly recognize. After a short period of time, they leave again, rejoin the military and rejoin the fight. Over the next several hundred years (only a couple for them, subjectively), they are retrained, and eventually separated, before one last battle brings Mandella back home, where he is eventually reunited with Marygay. The book is ultimately lackluster as a military science fiction novel: the action scenes are nothing new, and anyone reading Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers or John Scalzi's Old Man's War will recognize the basics when it comes to this sort of novel - there are powered suits, the requisite training portion and rise of the protagonist, not to mention the action. Taken at face value, it's a bit of a miss for me. The biggest saving grace is Haldeman's conceptualization of space warfare, where tactics take days, weeks, even months to carry out, over hundreds of millions of kilometers. This gives the book a bit of a realistic edge that does make it stand apart from other military Science Fiction novels, something that I greatly appreciated. However, where the book succeeds the most is in Haldeman's look to the future. As Mandela lives out his life through the military actions that he takes, long stretches of his life are relatively slowed down while travelling through space, allowing for jumps in time as he comes back into contact with Earth and sees just how society has changed over time. Upon his first return, humanity has united on Earth, under a largely repressive, Children of Men style world where human civilization has faced enormous hardship under the interstellar war. Leaving the world as it has changed too much for his liking, William and Marygay return to space, to find several major changes as they continue to jump around space. Eventually, the world as they know it has changed completely - humanity has gone from a recognizable society to one where homosexuality is the norm (as a form of population control) to a world where humanity has essentially merged into one asexual entity, with each generation cloned from the last. Elements of this remind me heavily of another book that I've been recently reading, Olaf Stapledon's The First and Last Men, published in the 1930s, and dealing with much the same thing: looking at how humanity as a species and culture will change in the future. Mandela's vantage point in the military is an interesting story element that allows Haldeman to not only tell an interesting story, but present a compelling future for humanity. Another book that I read last year, George Friedman's The Next 100 Years, noted that society and cultural norms can change vastly over even the period of just one hundred years, and to an extent, that lends Haldeman's and Stapleton's ideas some reality: what will happen to humanity over the next thousand years, with technological and societal advances altering what is normal? It is here that The Forever War is especially interesting. Another major element of The Forever War is Haldeman's pointed look at the Vietnam War, no doubt inspired by his own experiences with the US Army. The book is considered a reaction to Starship Troopers, in that it takes a largely anti-military stance throughout most of the book. Mandella is a reluctant soldier, at best, often delegating his responsibilities away to subordinates and avoiding killing when he can help it. But throughout the book, there are examples of Vietnam, as humanity faces an enemy that is largely unknown, never knowing exactly what they are fighting for. More so, it is alluded to in the book that the war was fought simply because it was desired, something that was the main focus of a documentary, Why We Fight, that looked to that central theme in regards to American foreign policy. However, the core focus of this book isn't the Vietnam War itself, but the soldiers who fight there. Soldiers returning from Vietnam found themselves back home in a strange place, not as heroes of the war, but as murderers and criminals, something horribly unjust, considering that many were conscripted. This is a prime example of how science fiction should function: acting as allegory for current events, pulled out of context. Mandella returns home after hundreds and hundreds of years away from Earth; vast changes occurred while he was away. The Vietnam comparison, however, is something that bothers me, and helps to underscore a larger issue that I have with military science fiction as a whole, something that I brought up with my review for Old Man's War: while there is a lot of discussion about the nature of war, there's very little discussion towards the institution of warfare. Tactics are almost always something out of the Second World War, with plenty of hand to hand combat scenes and all that, but there is very little on the overall impact of warfare. Sometimes, it's on the soldiers, other times, on society, but there's very little to bridge the gap. The Forever War does this in part. Part of my issue comes from my training as a historian, and particularly, in military history. Amongst all of the theorists out there, a number of historians have come up with a number of theories on how warfare works - Clausewitz, Jomini, among others, who have both conflicting and interesting views on the nature of war. I particularly like Clausewitz's analogy that warfare is simply a duel on a larger scale, and that war is an extension of foreign policy. It makes little sense to me that humanity would simply go to war against an alien race, something fairly common in science fiction. Humanity seems to drop everything and take to the stars with lasers and rockets, but the goals of warfare are never clearly stated? Is it, as Clausewitz suggests, an effort to completely bend an enemy to one's will, something incredibly difficult when attacking someone profoundly alien and unknown to humanity, or is it something deeper, such as perceived competition for living space, ensuring that humanity will have space to grow? To date, I've never found a good military science fiction book that's really covered that territory, and at times, the genre makes me want to throw things, simply because warfare doesn't work like that. Similarly, while powered robotic suits are very cool, the other problem that I have is tactical. Robotic powered armor laden down with guns simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, especially when the authors talk much about dropping soldiers onto the planet from orbit in a glorified Omaha Beach scenario, where these soldiers are not only placed into hostile territory, but usually without support: it reminds me very much of airborne doctrine during the Second World War, where highly mobile forces were used to secure areas and wait for heavier things, such as artillery and armor to arrive. It's a good concept, to be sure, but it's deeply flawed in that these soldiers are usually out matched by the occupying force. Science Fiction takes many similar themes, but fails to follow up these sort of tactical options in any way that makes sense. Thus far, the best thing that I've seen was here, The Physics of Space Battles, which talks much about orbits and how that aspect would work, on a tactical level. Haldeman gets some points for interesting scenes and more science to the battles than most, but still misses part of the mark. Part of that reason might be that The Forever War isn't really a military science fiction book, despite some of the content. In that instance, the book works wonderfully, hitting all of the marks of a fantastic science fiction novel. Still, I enjoy a good romp with powered armor and shooting, so it works fairly well when it comes to that, but not as much as I'd like.

Perhaps mindful of such criticism, Benedict told reporters on his flight from Rome that the church’s “first interest is the victims” of abuse, and that the church needed to ask, “How can we repair, what can we do to help them to overcome the trauma, to refind their lives?” Responding in Italian to reporters’ questions submitted in advance and relayed to him by Vatican officials, the pope’s words marked an evolution in the Vatican’s response. In the heat of the crisis last spring, top Vatican officials at first blamed the news media for stirring it up. Critics quickly pounced on the statement, calling it evasive and out of touch. In a statement, the United States-based group Bishopaccountability.org, which tracks abuse cases, said the pontiff’s words “ring hollow,” adding that he had said similar things for years with little action. “In researching this crisis for seven years, we have not found one documented instance before 2002 of a top church official contacting civil authorities to report an allegation of sexual abuse,” the group said. Benedict’s visit to Britain comes as part of his sustained effort to counter a perceived loss of religious belief in Europe and to urge a new struggle against secularism. Photo Benedict’s is the first state visit to Britain by a pope in which he is meeting the queen and political establishment as a fellow head of state. In 1982, John Paul II paid a pastoral visit to Britain, but did not meet Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and was received by the queen privately. The pope’s first appointment on Thursday was with Elizabeth and Prince Philip at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, a medieval castle in Edinburgh that is the queen’s official residence in Scotland and a place that figures large in the history of the schisms within Christianity that marked Britain’s evolution as a nation. Advertisement Continue reading the main story It was at Holyroodhouse that Mary Queen of Scots lived during her brief reign as the Catholic queen of Scotland, only to be executed in 1587 by Henry VIII’s daughter Queen Elizabeth I of England. Henry had broken with Rome earlier in the 16th century, provoking centuries of anti-Catholic passions that linger still in parts of Britain. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Benedict said he was eager to visit a society often critical of the church. “Naturally, Great Britain has had a history of anti-Catholicism as we all know, but also a history of great tolerance,” he told reporters. In Scotland, crowds were not as tumultuous as those that had greeted John Paul — British news reports said many tickets for papal events during Benedict’s visit remained unclaimed — but the mood for the pope’s arrival was upbeat. People lined the streets in Edinburgh as the papal motorcade passed, many of them waving the Scottish flag and cheering. Inside his vehicle, with a blue-and-green Scottish tartan scarf draped over his white papal robes, the pope smiled broadly as he made the sign of the cross. Benedict used his visit with the queen — the formal head of the Church of England, a church whose relationship with Roman Catholicism remains uneasy — to evoke what he depicted as Britain’s drift from Christianity, saying the country should “not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms.” “Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi regime that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live,” the pope said in English, speaking as Britons mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, a turning point of World War II. He also cited the “Nazi tyranny” as an example of “the sobering lessons of atheist extremism in the 20th century,” prompting an angry response from the British Humanist Association, one of the country’s leading atheist organizations. “The notion that it was the atheism of the Nazis that led to their extremist and hateful views, or that it somehow fuels intolerance in Britain today, is a terrible libel against those who do not believe in God,” the group said in a statement. Last year, the Vatican upset many Anglicans when it announced a fast-track conversion to Catholicism aimed at Anglican traditionalists uncomfortable with that church’s acceptance of female priests and openly gay bishops. (So far, it seems, few Anglicans have accepted the offer.) On Friday, Benedict is expected to meet with the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the two are to participate in a rare ecumenical service in Westminster Abbey, where the pope is expected to deliver the central speech of his visit.

Media playback is not supported on this device Highlights: Ghana 1-2 USA John Brooks headed a late winner for USA in a dramatic finale to their opening Group G game against Ghana. Clint Dempsey put USA ahead on 29 seconds with the fifth-fastest goal in World Cup history, cutting inside John Boye before sweeping home. Ghana upped the tempo and equalised when Andre Ayew latched on to Asamoah Gyan's backheel to fire in a leveller. Analysis "One of the moments of the World Cup for me was the reaction of John Brooks for the winning goal. That was priceless. That is what the World Cup is all about. "The way Ghana conceded the corner kick that led to the USA winner was poor. In these games, you can't do that. They are in trouble. They still have to play the big dogs in the group." USA looked tired but Brooks nodded in from six yards following a corner to give his side a winning start. Centre-back Brooks reacted with a mixture of disbelief and delight, the Germany-born 21-year-old marking his Fifa World Cup debut and fifth cap in style. The victory also gave USA a measure of revenge for being knocked out of the past two World Cups by Ghana. They had looked to be tiring, and a winner seemed unlikely as Ghana dominated the second half and pulled themselves level. But their tenacity was rewarded to leave the Black Stars precariously placed, with both teams having to face Germany and Portugal. Ghana exited the World Cup four years ago in tears, when Gyan's missed penalty in the last minute of extra-time against Uruguay denied them the chance to become the first African side to reach the semi-finals. Media playback is not supported on this device USA score after 29 seconds If they were still nursing that pain, they did not show it as they sang and danced their way into the dressing room at the Estadio das Dunas. But they fell behind within the first minute. Dempsey collected a Jermaine Jones pass on the left wing, cut inside right-back Boye and shot into the far corner. Ghana struggled to mount a response as the USA consolidated their lead with a work-rate and organisation that kept their rivals at bay. Indeed, Jurgen Klinsmann's side could, and maybe should, have extended their lead. Striker Jozy Altidore controlled a low, right-wing cross but his shot from 10 yards was blocked by Boye. That was Altidore's last major act of the game, a hamstring injury seeing him replaced by Aron Johannsson. Key facts Hertha Berlin's John Brooks was left out of a match against Bayer Leverkusen in April after a newly-inked tattoo caused him to miss training. Clint Dempsey has scored in three successive World Cups, with two of his three goals coming against Ghana. Ghana had 21 shots, a joint-high in the World Cup so far (along with Ivory Coast) but only three were on target. USA scored more than once for only the third time in their past 12 World Cup games. USA centre-back Matt Besler also left the field injured, and his exit, combined with Ghana increasing the pace of their play, resulted in the Black Stars piling the pressure on Tim Howard's goal. Most of the chances fell to Gyan, but he nodded high from 10 yards when unmarked before having another header tipped wide by Howard. Gyan may not have scored, but he set up his side's equaliser as his lovely backheel teed up Ayew to shoot home with the outside of his right foot. It seemed Ghana might have enough time to engineer a winner, but Hertha Berlin defender Brooks had other ideas, and his first international goal following Graham Zusi's corner proved decisive. Klinsmann has a 100% record in opening World Cup games United States manager Jurgen Klinsmann: "I said to the bench a few minutes before our winner, 'We are going to get some chances - we need to push and grind it out.' We trained over and over on set-pieces and it was well deserved. "We have a great spirit and fight until the last minute. It was a grind but it was a wonderful one at the end of the day. "There is stuff we need to improve. We had problems with keeping the ball." Ghana coach Kwesi Appiah: "What I can say is that it was a very tough game. Playing at this high level, any little mistake can cost you dearly. "We didn't deserve the first goal against us and we did create a lot of chances. "Unfortunately we could not take our chances and the US took theirs. "Any loss of concentration can cost the team big time. I believe the first goal unsettled us a little bit but I never expected it to end this way." Dempsey has scored in three successive World Cups Altidore could be out of the World Cup with a hamstring injury Andre Ayew and brother Jordan both play for Marseille

(CNN) When John Haygood, a 10-year-old boy with autism, was arrested last week at a school in Florida, he kept repeating that he didn't know what was happening, as seen in shaky cellphone video taken by his mother . "I don't know what's going on. I don't understand," he cried out. In the video, his hands are cuffed as two officers escort him to the back seat of a police car. His mother, Luanne Haygood, followed behind them while recording the incident on her phone. In the video, John appears distraught, and yells some profanities. Luanne is heard in the video speaking to the officers, "Excuse me, do you have any paperwork or anything you can say to me?" John, a student at Okeechobee Achievement Academy in Okeechobee, Florida, was arrested at the school lastweekfor felony battery against a paraprofessional in anOctober incident, allegedly punching and kicking his paraprofessional, which left scratches and marks, according to an incident report from the Okeechobee County Sheriff's Office The incident occurred after John was being disruptive in class, throwing paper balls around the classroom and hitting other students, the report said. His paraprofessional asked him to go to time out. When John refused, the paraprofessional attempted to remove him, and that's when John attacked, the report said. The report also noted that John had allegedly made threats to kill the paraprofessional in a previous incident. On November 1, the paraprofessional requested to pursue criminal charges since John "had been given plenty of opportunities to change his behavior and has not," the report said. JUST WATCHED From the archives: What it feels like to be autistic Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH From the archives: What it feels like to be autistic 02:10 In October, John was expelled from the Academy and has been completing his schoolwork from home since then, according to CNN affiliate WPBF . Last Wednesday, he returned to the Academy to take a standardized test, but "was not being compliant and refused to test," the incident report said. After John was given time to test, the arresting officer notified Luanne that John had an active warrant and had to be placed under arrest, the incident report said. The arresting officer asked John if he would be willing to walk to the patrol car, and John replied, "Don't touch me. I don't like to be touched," according to the incident report. He can be heard making similar comments in the video. John was then handcuffed and transported to a juvenile detention center, where he spent the night. scheduled to appear in court again on May 11, WPBF reported. The next day, John appeared in court on charges of assaulting his paraprofessional , was then released, and is nowscheduled to appear in court again on May 11, WPBF reported. Luanne said she was never warned of any warrants for his arrest or imminent problems with law enforcement. "When it happened I was angry, like really? He's been out of school for six months; he could have been arrested at any time," Luanne said. "The school could have let me know, the police officers could have let me know. And then try to act like he's dangerous and you got to get him off this campus and he has an arrest warrant and I had to make sure it was real." Luanne said police "were gentle with him," but expressed dismay that a child with autism could be taken into custody. "They're being treated as criminals rather than children with special needs," she said. On Tuesday, Luanne posted to her Facebook page that she obtained copies of police records for John. The incident report noted that Luanne thought the charges against her son were dropped. Additionally, the school district sent a statement to CNN on Friday indicating that the paraprofessional requested to drop the charges. "I pressed charges in order to get the ball rolling to get his mother to realize he needs additional help. I think it is now understood the additional help is needed," the paraprofessional wrote about John in a copy of the request to drop charges Yet, state prosecutor Ashley Albright said that the charges have not been dropped. Once the paraprofessional filed to press charges, the legal process was set into motion. "In any criminal case, it's the state of Florida versus whoever is being charged," said Albright, who met Wednesday with the paraprofessional who pressed the charges. Albright added that instead of pursuing any criminal charges, this case will be approached "nonjudicially." "In this case, we are not seeking to give him a criminal record or anything of that nature," Albright said about John. "The goal is to get the Department of Juvenile Justice and the state of Florida to provide some additional assistance and counseling for him." The school district sent the following statement to CNN in response to John's arrest: "It has been district procedure to invite students in to take the Florida Standards Assessment. The district would not invite someone to one of our campuses for the sole purpose to arrest. The district routinely assists students by providing services from our board certified behavioral analyst, licensed mental health counselors, school social workers, and psychologists. "As a team, these individuals develop interventions, conduct assessments, and offer support both at school and in the home in order to assist students and families. "The district is unable to provide specific information as to both current and past incidents regarding this or any other student due to educational laws and rules. It is our hope that we can continue to work with all families to help their students improve both behaviorally and academically." Ann Abramowitz, a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, with no firsthand knowledge of the situation, said the sequence of events didn't provide her with enough information to comment on John's incident. However, various students with autism tend to benefit from certain types of carefully planned disciplinary strategies, compared to other types of discipline. Join the conversation See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter. Those strategies include maintaining a calm and orderly environment, maintaining a schedule for the student, and preventing any outbursts of distress, anger or aggression, she said. "Keep kids engaged to prevent outbursts, because once outbursts occur, they can be very challenging to manage and can lead to situations where it exceeds the school's capacity to manage the behavior," Abramowitz said, adding that "I can't really think where being put in handcuffs would be helpful to a child, and of course it just seems intuitively obvious that it could be traumatic."

Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. We asked a range of authors and creative types to name books that bring solace or understanding in this age of rancor. More than two dozen responded. Here are picks from the prolific author and McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers, who recently co-wrote and co-directed (with James Ponsoldt) the movie version of his 2013 dystopian novel, The Circle. Latest book: Heroes of the Frontier Also known for: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Recommended reading: Over the holidays I read It Can’t Happen Here, and that was a helpful bit of fascist prophecy. But the book I’m going back to now is one a friend of mine, Flagg Taylor, edited a few years ago, called The Great Lie. The book collects essays by a wide range of writers who lived under tyranny, and the results are richly rewarding and surprisingly accessible. Taylor is a professor at Skidmore College and the book is about 800 pages, and yet it’s eminently approachable by anyone interested in seeing the parallels between our current flirtations with truthless fascism and those societies that were truly crushed by totalitarianism. Everyone you could think of is in there—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Václav Havel, Hannah Arendt—and some lesser-known essayists like Aurel Kolnai and Waldemar Gurian get their due, too. The title, of course, references the sort of lie told by authoritarian governments that’s so outrageous and unbelievable that citizens feel it must be true. In our age of alternative facts, this collection is timely and deeply unsettling. _______ The complete series: Daniel Alarcón, Kwame Alexander, Margaret Atwood, W. Kamau Bell, Ana Castillo, Jeff Chang, T Cooper, Michael Eric Dyson, Dave Eggers, Reza Farazmand, William Gibson, Mohsin Hamid, Piper Kerman, Phil Klay, Alex Kotlowitz, Bill McKibben, Rabbi Jack Moline, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Peggy Orenstein, Wendy C. Ortiz, Darryl Pinckney, Joe Romm, Karen Russell, George Saunders, Tracy K. Smith, Ayelet Waldman, Jesmyn Ward, and Gene Luen Yang.

Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico | Holy smoking Jesus, America is losing its middle class! "We're taxing the middle class out of existence," charge the conservatives. "The middle class is being hollowed out," wail the liberals, pouring forth great mock turtle tears (although one wonders how such a vacuum, as middle class life in America could be further hollowed). For both political camps, high dudgeon over "the vanishing middle class" is supposed to represent some sort of "new populism." Not that the populace disagrees with them, mainly because the populace, if we are referring to the genuine America populace, hasn't the slightest notion of the definition of populism. But the word sounds like it has to do with popularity, the highest virtue in the American mind, and can even lead to the celestial heights called celebrity. So what the hell, they're willing to run with it. In any case, much overwrought political theater is being dedicated to the subject of the middle class' demise. If demise is the right word for losing its ability to engorge on commodities at obscene levels. A month or so ago I watched news footage of some fat guy being interviewed inside his the three car garage of his $300,000 cardboard house. The poor fellow was about to lose his bass boat, and maybe his home too. From the looks of it, I'd say the bass boat was a Ranger X520. Now these babies start at $45K, not to mention the $30K for the four wheel drive usually seen pulling. Looked like it was sitting on a 20-plus foot Hurricane boat trailer, another $4K or $5K. My wife, who was watching the show with me, turned and said, "What class is this man supposed to be in?" "I don't know, they say middle class." "Hmmm. Whatever it is, we've never been members." George Jones and Tammy Wynette said it all when they sang: No we're not the jet set We're the old Chevrolet set Our steak and martinis Is draft beer with weenies Indeed, we are witnessing the death of the American lifestyle, bass boats and all. Unless of course, the Chinese banksters will keep on loaning us enough dough for one more fix, one more snort of crank to keep the American lifestyle from going into withdrawal. Yeah, sure. That does not keep both political parties from assuring us that "the great American middle class lifestyle is not negotiable," then proceeding to negotiate the hell out of it. God save the middle class! Whatever the middle class is, they have the assurances of every administration of its eternal preservation. When asked exactly what constitutes being middle class, most typical Americans, which is to say working class Americans, talk in terms of income. Better educated and more erudite Americans mumble some vague litany about college and home ownership, etc., then attach an annual income number about twice as high as the average working mook's. Neither of them ever comes close to a real definition. Nevertheless some 300 million Americans fancy themselves as middle class, chiefly because they: (A) own microwaves and a car with plastic bumpers; and (B) live in perpetual hock to MasterCard and Visa. Debt, stress and insecurity being the only observable characteristics of middle class America, they rally round those things in a show of class solidarity. "Hell no! Our pointless stressful lifestyle is NOT NEGOTIABLE! No goddamned socialist is gonna take away my constitutional right to medical bankruptcy. God bless the middle class!" In essence, preservation of the American middle class is an assertion we are entitled to waste as least as much of the earth's limited vital resources as their fathers and grandfathers did, preferably more. Political assurances of the sanctity of the middle class come down to promising that the six percent of the world's population called Americans may continue to rip through 36 percent of the earth's resources in its endless pursuit of obesity and carcinogenic intake. Not to mention taking everybody else out with us in the process through ecocide. Nobody but an unmitigated psychopath would even make such a case, much less hawk it to the American people as being in their best interests. In their best interests to wipe out our dwindling planetary sustenance and to piss off the rest of the world enough that a significant number are willing to strap on explosives and buy a plane ticket for the States. Unfortunately, the psychopaths are in charge. And they are charging over the rest of us like rutting bull elephants on Jimson weed. There doesn't seem to be enough Thorazine on earth to take 'em down. Consequently, their delusion have escalated to the point where believe they are exempt from planetary catastrophe. Assumedly this is due to their wealth and authority. Which in America are the same thing. However, you can never rule out that they may believe they are gods. Which comes down to being bullet proof to the afflictions of common mortals, the shit that makes ordinary life miserable and in many cases, snuffs it right out -- lifetime debt, lack of health insurance or the chain smoking that so often comes with such stress chew through your health. Let's get real here folks. Do you think Barack Obama or Rahm Emanuel worry about ever being homeless or having a credit card company haul them into court and garnish their wages? Or that they will develop lung disease from living in or near Camden, New Jersey? Of course not. Because, in fact, they really are exempt. But when the planet's condition, which, despite Republican claims otherwise, affects human beings, gets bad enough (and that appears to be sometime next week) their children may not be exempt. This of course, matters not a twit to a psycho. Especially if the psycho is rich, powerful, and saluted by media networks wherever he/she goes, and has not the faintest clue that he/she is a psycho to begin with. The "or she" refers to Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin or any of the other power crazed warped out bitches who've slit enough throats to make made it into that gladiatorial arena inside the beltway. White males by no means have a franchise on naked political blood lust. America's constellation of psychos occupying the real estate up there on Mount Olympus includes just about everybody with a few hundred million or a billion bucks behind their hallucinations -- from Oprah Winfrey, who, despite her own delusions, is not responsible for the nation's moral, spiritual and financial well being, to Ben Bernanke, who actually holds a great deal of responsibility for the latter, but is convinced the world begins and ends along the length of Wall Street and consists entirely of derivatives brokers and the money printing crew at the Fed. Such people presume their anointment to rule, if they are willing to play the game hard enough. And why shouldn't they? They've experienced nothing but success through gaming the system and the rest of humanity -- dicking the proles in the ear and running the nation and its institutions for their own benefit as elites. Needless to say, they do not see things that way. To them it's just the natural order of the universe. Raw personal power has a way of justifying itself as having been inevitable. Over my 35 years as a journalist, I have met and/or interviewed many, and I have met only a couple who showed real humility or attributed their national influence, or fame and social status and national influence to simple good fortune. Paul Newman was one. Kurt Vonnegut was another. When you are pissing down on the world from the balcony of your suite on the 44th floor, it's hard to be humble, or concerned about the pissant swarm on the streets below. Even if you are not the kind of psycho our political system attracts and legitimizes, it isn't easy. At the same time, for a person like, say, Hillary Clinton or Joe Lieberman, there is always the worry that one of your vengeful peers may have moved in on the 45th floor and is waiting on their balcony for you to come out. Even for princes and ladies of the royal court, our system holds its fears and frights. Ah, the system! Hallowed legacy of Jefferson and the port besotted founding elites. Our system, owing to the magic of its "checks and balances," holds all possible solutions. So we must "work within the system" for any desired change. Be an active factor within the rules. These rules are sanctioned by big shots, a big shot being defined as anyone whose bullshit is beyond questioning because he has made his fortune by bullshitting millions of typical Americans. Which is not difficult because as both Goering and Hitler pointed out, then proved, if the bullshit is huge enough, normal people will not believe that anyone would have the balls to tell such a lie, and accept it as the truth. And so The Big Lie is sold. Next, the big political players, Republican and Democrat, determine some minute variations on the most current lies being sold. These slight variations are proclaimed as profound differences between the parties, because both parties' role on the political stage is to act as opponents. So cosmetic differences are netted out and then savagely contested in the theater state as life or death issues for the American people. That's how we got such massive public agitation and incitation regarding just how hundreds of billions more will continue to be delivered to health insurance companies. Yes, dear, they are unnecessary. But they are players. They are sitting at the national poker table because they have the muscle get into the most important backroom game in town -- the one where the people's wealth is divvied up before the people ever see it. ----- If you have watched any old mob movies, you know that any racket needs a front. In America the front is called democracy. Like the term populism, the people have no idea what democracy really is, but has something to do with the free market capitalism that issues forth such things as bass boats. And it certainly it has to do with every citizen having a small piece in the determination of national matters. Clearly untrue as that is, nevertheless it is one helluva a sales point, revered by the proles and not to be fucked with if you are to maintain the illusion of the consent of the people among the people. The front. So the people are given such narrow electoral choices as not to even be real choices, but packaged in somewhat different wrappers -- such as skin color. Or if a president and Congress can see a clear path in rolling over the dimwits out there, the dimwits are given no choice at all. Such as going to war against Iraq. Still, there are always those citizens who will not settle for simply voting based on what they have been fed. They detect the odor of swill, but cannot quite name the ingredients. So they feel they must test democracy, exercise their uncontrolled "freedom of choice," as fully as possible through activism. So they turn to one of the two controlling political parties to put them to work. After all, anyone who doesn't is considered a kook. Right? In a marvelous bit of Mobius strip logic, the activists end up working toward the success of some minute difference in national policy that serves the purposes of the established power cartels. The main difference is in the degree of profitability for the corporate state. More profit or a helluva lot more profit. In the end the activists find themselves working for the election of someone who, by the very nature of being selected as a candidate by the system, has been vetted by his or her own elite peers as one who will -- ta ta! -- preserve the system from change. ----- Nevertheless, the activists have their issues by god and by golly, and cling to them every step of the way. The issues come prepackaged to fit their established belief systems. No great trick really, given that the corporate people at the top own all the media and information distribution and make the first cut. And there's something for everybody's political stocking. When the issue is not wrapped up in religion or blood-in-the-face patriotism by corporate managed conservative elves, it is packaged as a moral or social justice issue for liberals. And so, charged up on emotion, activist proponents of both minute differences attack one another at every turn, both sides convinced they are fighting the good fight in one or another "important issue of our times." Gay marriage, gun laws, abortion, animal rights, you name it. It's small stuff in the big picture. None of these mean anything in the monotonic gray life under the emerging corporate totalist state. So you both have the same plumbing and are married. So what? What is that worth if you spend your life chained to a headset in one of the corporate gulags' cubicles punching out digits for the overlords so you can keep your health insurance? Terrified of losing your job or insurance, or being forced to join the Army and go to Iraq to put bread on the table? Freedom is freedom, and you have it across the board or you do not. It does not come piecemeal and is not defined by any single freedom. Human freedom is holistic -- full spectrum. It covers everything because, well, it's freedom. In a free country none of the above pseudo issues would be being debated. Bottom line on freedom: You have the right to fuck any other adult you want to by mutual consent. You can marry anyone you choose regardless of sex or race or religion. Even a member of the US Senate if you have the stomach for it. Your body is your own to do with as you see fit, not governable by state laws or for profitable abuse by pharmaceutical corporations or the medical industry. ----- The 24/7 deluge of falsely manufactured issues has done more than detract from comprehension of the real and life or death issues at hand. Over a couple of generations, it has rendered us incapable of ever grasping the real ones and what is at stake. The ability to do so dies out, as each subsequent generation is conditioned by the reality (or state induced non-reality), it comes up in. Important as they look and feel because we have lived our entire lives amid these so-called national debates, they have nothing to do with our freedom. Freedom itself was always, and will always be The Issue. The only issue. Everything else follows. The Big Lie is that it does not. Lies for the sake of generating emotion enough to destroy reason have been a mainstay of American politics from the beginning. Jefferson spread lies about Madison. Madison returned the favor. The lies served the purposes of two ambitious individuals. Now they serve the purposes only of those forces who can afford to buy politicians. Nor are they the simple sort of lies told by fallible human beings such as Jefferson or Madison, but rather the lies of massive faceless, deathless entities subject to no man, only the accounting regimen of postindustrial capitalism. They have not become pathogenic; they are pathogenic by nature and from the outset to society. To the world too, given what our nation is doing and willing to further do not just to ourselves, but also to the world. It is increasingly said, and not unreasonably, that the United States has reached the same level as those malevolencies" that poisoned Nazi Germany. You may not believe folks who say that. The Germans did not believe it was happening to them either. Can we change? Or is it too late? Most days I feel it is too late. Well hold on now, Jake! Didn't we just see change? Didn't we just throw out the sickest regime in US political history? Remember all those people and all that conviction and activism that delivered us from heaven only knows what Cheney and Sparky Bush might have done? How can you say conviction and activism, especially liberal activism, is useless?" No arguing that activism is considered absolute proof of conviction by most liberal political lights. Activism is the unarguable stigmata, the nail hole in the palm as proof. Yessir, when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is, when it comes to "put up or shut up," when it comes to "lead, follow or get out of the way," political activism answers any and all charges of faintness of heart. It requires tremendous amounts of time and energy and has only one small flaw. It doesn't work. Not for liberals. Tea partiers armed with baseball bats and megaphones get results. But liberal activism is sort of like sending a rabbit to sell wolves on the benefits of veganism. Liberal activism requires convincing the pissed off and scared citizenry that your guy is different, better, more kind and possessive of the higher moral ground than his opponent, and will govern accordingly. This is hard stuff to peddle in a nation that has, for quite understandable reasons, grown meaner, more distrustful and more ideological over the past 30 years, not to mention demonstrably more stupid, and more ideological (which comes along with becoming more stupid) over the past thirty years. Hell, even liberals are becoming mean ideologues these days. Many want a candidate who will break some GOP knees on their behalf. I cannot say I blame them. Murder, mayhem and global warfare are by no means out of the question in achieving any goal. Just listen to the political chatter at any cocktail party. When Code Pinkers declare that the bloody killing of men, women and children in Afghanistan is justified -- because the war may one day enable Muslim women to go braless and tell their husbands, "Go go to hell, Buster, I'll drive if I want to" -- well, you gotta call that some hardened liberal ideology. ----- I never subscribe to email or organizational mailings. Well, almost never -- I get truthout.com and Patrice Greanville's Cyrano. I'm not really an Internet denizen or a liberal blog freak. So I notice when there is a sudden unsolicited surge in my personal account with aim.com (yeah, I know it's a piece of AOL shit, but now I'm stuck with it). Anyway, there has been a surge lately in heated liberal calls to action, mostly pleas for money. Nearly all of them are from some tentacle of the Democratic Party. With Obama safely in office, three years to go before next election, and no sign of George W. Bush, not even an empty malt liquor can, it seems a bit early for raising cries demanding more liberal activism. It that's what they are, the calls for "a renewed effort at changing American hearts and minds" toward "social justice" and "a more humane human society" [sic]. In typical Dem fashion, you seldom get specifics, just noble words like "justice" and stuff nobody can disagree with, like being humane to humans. I reckon though, that by next election enough disappointed Obama-ites will have recovered from their current depression to resupply the Dems with ground troops. The party will have plenty of sincere liberals out on the streets again. Partly because Obama will be spearheading the effort, and partly because the Republicans have an endless supply of embalmed brain dead geezers, any of whom could be slipped into a good suit and a red white and blue tie and dollied onstage. Not much legwork involved for Goppers, really. They just yell 'TEAAAAA PARTY!" and throngs of trained simians come running.The Dems have no equivalent liberal mating call, except possibly "Free Argentinean Malbec." The saddest part is that you could put every sincere liberal in America on the streets knocking on doors and I dare say damned little, if anything, would ever change (although there is rumor of possibly limiting handgun owners to 60 weapons per person and 100,000 rounds of ammo. Most of my family in Virginia is dead agin it!). About the most that can happen is what happened the last time liberals effectively mobilized in force: We will reelect Barack Obama, yet another pure product of the system, yet another candidate who has deeply interiorized the processes, values and folly of a spent and exhausted hyper capitalist state. OK, so I will drop the "exhausted hyper capitalist state" stuff, though it's true. No matter whom we elect, he is not going to beat the odds against eco-collapse and resource depletion. Throw in the current human overpopulation -- which our free market capitalists assure us are, oh joy of joys, an "expanding customer base" -- and you have a guaranteed disastrous outcome for, oh, let's see now, human civilization for openers. Maybe even our species, if Big Energy and da miltury industrul cumplex has any say so in it. Which they do. You do not need a PhD in physics to figure out that a geometrically expanding hydrocarbon based civilization fueling itself at unsustainable levels of consumption, waste and toxicity on a finite resource is bound to hit the wall at some point. "Earth to Congress, we have a problem. My wife just sprouted an extra row of teeth; my heating bill is $6,000 a month and my 12-year-old weighs in at 250 pounds and is stuck in a booth at the food court." I am no political genius, which I prove regularly by writing these columns and essays. But I dare say leftish activist energies could be better spent than by selling the latest political greaseball to one's neighbors and/or perfect strangers willing to answer the door. One option would be to expend that effort in destroying the genuine common enemy of the people, all the people: Capitalism and its brutal commoditization of our very lives and breath. Which would make one a socialist. True, socialism has not a chance in hell in the USA. So there is no use in even discussing our little problem of thug capitalism and rogue nation warfare in that context. Forget that democratic socialism by its very nature (along with a few buckets of hot tar and thumbscrews judiciously applied on Wall Street) is the solution to the most brutal material aspects of our degenerative capitalist disease, now nearing its full-blown outcome. If you haven't noticed, the rich and the mean have prevailed. Only a fool would believe that having prevailed, they are going to mellow out, become kinder and more compassionate. However, if there is a God in heaven, or even of there ain't, then the traditional cruelty of the unleashed rich could work in the people's favor for a change. Even by the monkeys and typewriters rule, at least some portion of "the people" must eventually wise up. There are hopeful signs that a significant number of Americans are sick of watching the cash laden cargo planes pass overhead on their way to gated CEO compounds in Zurich and Dubai. And they have a gnawing suspicion that somehow in the big picture, somewhere backstage, something or someone has been relentlessly working to fuck them at every turn. Not that most Americans can see the big picture. They were blinded at birth, so as not to view the monstrous system that has taken on a life of its own. One that rules their lives through the small elite class it created and governs. Blame it on water fluoridation, lousy education or degraded breeding stock, but not one in a hundred Americans can grasp that monolithic ideo-economic systems can become intelligent entities of their own sort (although capitalist state indoctrination has conditioned Americans to readily accept that Soviet Communism did just that). Nurtured on the national mythology of freedom and American individualism, we cannot imagine anything larger than the citizenry itself affecting the nation's direction. We find no contradiction in 300 million totally unique, ruggedly individual Americans, a people blessed with free choice in life, swarming the same mall stores coast to coast -- and living under the same hard edged capitalist philosophy and ever tightening laws. Obviously they all made exactly the same choices as to their destinies -- to live their lives as debt ridden shoppers and television addicts. I admit though, I cannot say for sure. They may have all taken a vote at some convention behind my back. Given such belief in the individual, Americans tend to believe that some individual or group of individuals elsewhere is in control of the state of the union (though apparently not in Washington, where nobody seems in charge of anything, so near as we can tell). Therefore, some individual or group of them can be blamed for their increasingly bleak situation. And by that same logic, some other individual or individuals can set things right. Now of course there are a few assumptions in this postulation: That the magic fix candidate can raise a few hundred million campaign dollars to get onto the game. Run the gauntlet of a stacked electoral college. Tap dance through gerrymandered voting districts. Pole vault over black box voting fraud. Circumvent nine glory whores on the Supreme Court who will throw up their skirts for whichever party bought them their robes. Despite their mounting insecurity and fears, that is what most of the American people still believe is the best of all possible political systems now and forever more. They believe it enough to bomb other people into accepting its graces and benefits. The fact that it does not work worth a damn and that the system is as crooked as a dog's hind leg does not interfere with our reverence and obedience to it. Because the alternative, socialism, as we have been so indoctrinated to believe, is "too terrible to contemplate." By now you have figured out there never was theme or thesis to this screed. So let's put it out of its misery and bring it on home. Besides, who wants to contemplate anything on a good Tuesday night when Sarah Palin is gonna shake it on the Fox Network, not to mention the Conan vs Leno title fight for the hearts and minds of the nation. Later. --- Postscript: It is all well and good for me to sit here at a safe distance and criticize the folly of my native country. But Mexicanos in my working class neighborhood in Ajijic are burning candles and offering prayers for their Haitian brothers. We should all do the same. _______ About author Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (Random House Crown), about working class America. A complete archive of Joe's essays can be found at Joe Bageant is author of the book,(Random House Crown), about working class America. A complete archive of Joe's essays can be found at http://www.joebageant.com

Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world A popular gay events promoter in Israel has been strongly criticised for using images appearing to mimic recent Islamic State beheading videos. The events promoter Drek (דרעק), owned by Imri Kalman holds club nights across Tel Aviv. Kalman owns other gay events, and the bar Shpagat which has been named the most popular gay bar in Tel Aviv by Time Out. The poster was released to promote an club night on Friday, and included an image of a man kneeling in the sand wearing orange, with another man, wearing black, and features the flag of ISIS in the top left hand corner. It has been criticised for mimicking the videos released by ISIS which appeared to show James Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines, being beheaded. The event was held at Tel Aviv’s Haoman 17 club called “Drekistan at the Haoman”. Ynet News reports that an accompanying description read: “As the new Islamic State gains traction in the Middle East, we at Drek have decided to give in to Sharia law and cheer the stubborn Da’esh [ISIS].” Others have noted that the Hebrew word for stubborn translates as “hard-necked”, and that it was an apparent reference to the beheadings. The image was deleted after Facebook followers criticised it, some calling the image “disgusting”.

Penn State Scandal: Trustees' Support For Paterno Said To Be 'Eroding' Enlarge this image toggle caption Matt Rourke/AP Matt Rourke/AP Catching up on some of the latest developments in the scandal at Penn State University — where former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged with sexually abusing young boys, two university officials have been charged with lying to a grand jury and not alerting police, and there have been calls for legendary coach Joe Paterno to step down because of concern that he didn't do enough to alert authorities to what was allegedly happening: -- Paterno's Fate: Support for the 84-year-old Paterno and school President Graham Spanier is "eroding" among the university's board of trustees, the Harrisburg-based Patriot-News reports, citing "sources close to the board." Related NPR Stories Penn State Abuse Scandal: A Guide And Timeline That follows yesterday's story by The New York Times that "Paterno's tenure as the coach of the Penn State football team will soon be over, perhaps within days or weeks, in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal that has implicated university officials, according to two people briefed on conversations among the university's top officials." Paterno, according to a grand jury report, told the school's athletic director in 2002 that a graduate assistant had reported seeing Sandusky engaging in a sex act with a young boy in the football team's shower. But the report went on to say that no one from the school, including Paterno, told police about the allegation and that Sandusky allegedly went on to abuse other boys. Paterno has not been charged with any crime. -- Trustees To Launch Investigation: Late last night the trustees issued a statement that says, in part, that they are "outraged by the horrifying details contained in the Grand Jury Report" concerning Sandusky's alleged actions. (Sandusky says he's innocent, as do the two university officials swept up in the case.) The statement also says that on Friday: "The Board will appoint a Special Committee, members of which are currently being identified, to undertake a full and complete investigation of the circumstances that gave rise to the Grand Jury Report. This Special Committee will be commissioned to determine what failures occurred, who is responsible and what measures are necessary to insure that this never happens at our University again and that those responsible are held fully accountable." -- Students Show Support For Paterno: Last night on campus, "an endless stream of more than 1,000 students" marched, according to the student-run Daily Collegian. Most expressed anger at Spanier and support for Paterno. " 'We are ... Penn State' and 'Hell no, Joe won't go' chants echoed through the night." Police in riot gear, The Patriot-News says, eventually cleared the street. At one point, "several hundred students converged" on Paterno's home, the Philadelphia Inquirer writes. And, it adds: "An upbeat Paterno said he appreciated the support. In response to chants of 'We want Joe!,' Paterno, wearing his trademark Coke-bottle glasses and sporting a gray sweatshirt, shouted, 'And I want you guys!' " " 'It's hard for me to tell you how much this means to me,' Paterno said amid the mob of students, reporters, and photographers. 'I've lived for this place. I've lived for people like you guys and girls. And I'm just so happy that you can feel so strongly about us and about your school.' " There's a "guide and timeline" on the scandal posted here.

George Takei is walking back questionable comments he made about grabbing men to “persuade” them to have sex in the wake of a sexual assault allegation against him. Days after former model Scott R. Brunton said Takei groped him without his consent 36 years ago in the actor’s home, a month-old interview between the “Star Trek” star and radio host Howard Stern resurfaced that certainly didn’t do him any favors. In the conversation, Takei jokes about touching men against their will back in his “Star Trek” heyday, seemingly admitting to some inappropriate behavior, while still maintaining that everything was consensual. On Monday, the actor apologized for the comments he made on-air, explaining that he was playing a “naughty gay grandpa” caricature, something he now regrets. “Many have raised concern over a back-and-forth between Howard Stern and myself, where we joked about me touching men during my Star Trek days fifty years ago,” Takei wrote on Facebook. “Out of context, I agree that the joke was distasteful, and I’m very sorry he and I made fun out of a serious matter.” “I want to be clear: I have never forced myself upon someone during a date. Sometimes my dates were the initiators, and sometimes I was,” he continued. “It was always by mutual consent. I see now that that it has come across poorly in the awkward sketch, and I apologize for playing along with Howard’s insinuation.” He then reiterated that non-consensual acts go against everything he believes in and that he would never engage in this kind of behavior. Well, at least he’s not blaming Russian bots for this scandal anymore.

I type this with icy white fingers. It's August - normally king of the summer months - and yet here I am, very seriously considering digging out some gloves. Serves me right for living in the north of England, I suspect. But all is well, for in these disappointingly chilly times I've managed to locate six more fabulous free games. Read on for the best of the bunch from August. The Journey Down - Chapter One: Over The Edge Theodore Waern. Grab it at Big Blue Cup . Adventure Game Studio might spawn countless games which look like they've been drawn with a mouse in Microsoft Paint, but every now and then someone uses it to create something really special. Theodore Waern has spend the last five years - five! - honing this first chapter of his point-and-click epic, The Journey Down , and that dedication shows. This is supremely professional for a solo effort, and brings back all the right memories of the '90s. It's about as traditional as adventure games get, but if that's your bag, you won't find many better free ones than this. It's just a shame Chapter Two isn't due until some time next year, especially since the story ends so abruptly. By The Numbers AJA. Get it from Big Blue Cup . Another title created in Adventure Game Studio, By The Numbers is unusual for featuring full voice acting. It's especially unusual - across gaming generally - for featuring quite good voice acting. However, it's also intriguing in a couple of other, more fundamental ways. This is a one-room point-and-click adventure game in which you interrogate an eyewitness of a kidnapping. The game never moves beyond this one room (and another one beyond a two-way mirror), and focuses purely on dialogue. It's also fully motion-captured, with the resulting 3D animations converted to 2D animations in the engine. Well-written and neatly produced, it's a genuinely interesting experiment. Morplee Ninjadoodle. P lay it on Newgrounds . Morplee is a frantic and unusual browser game, part Space Invaders -esque shooter and part collection of mini-games. You've to shoot the baddies down as they attack, lest they begin to eat worryingly quickly at your health (as above), while at the same time increasing your score by completing as many mini-games as possible within a one-minute time limit. It's that time limit, combined with the ever-present threat of alien invasion, that makes Morplee so brilliant. You wouldn't expect such a bizarre mashup of a title to work well at all, but in fact it's a minute-long thrill ride, as you desperately try to multitask through your panic. A simple but inspired idea. Alchemia Springtail Studio . P lay (some of) it on the website . Okay, this one's slightly out of the ordinary to place on a free games list, because it's not actually free. It's $7. But! There is a delightfully sizeable chunk of the game available to play for free online. So I'm going to awkwardly shoehorn it in here, mainly because I absolutely love games like this, and I want you to play it immediately. As a sort of tactile point-and-click adventure, there's no escaping the fact that it's a lot like Amanita Design's adventure games, especially Samorost. It's also not quite in the same league. However, it captures that same sense of exploratory magic, and it's absolutely, staggeringly beautiful to look at. Give it a go. And then pay $7 to finish it off. Go on. The Curfew Littleloud / Channel 4. Play it at Channel 4 . Channel 4 are getting in on the games scene at the moment. Technically developed for educational purposes, the best thing about their output this month has been the fact that they're enjoyable educational games. That's an all too rare breed. The first, The Curfew , was written by Kieron Gillen - a name you might recognise if you're on the British side of the PC Gamer pond. It's an FMV-centric adventure game set in a future where second-class citizens aren't allowed out at night. Think a British City 17 in vibe. It's your job to decide which of four people to trust with some secret data, which you're told absolutely cannot get into the wrong hands. Well-written and with mostly decent acting, it's well worth playing, despite the occasional bug. Privates Zombie Cow / Channel 4 . Download it from Channel 4 . Bottoms, and vaginas, and lots of sperm. Yes, it's Channel 4's other educational game! Just, y'know, one that's a little less grown-up. But no less wonderful. Privates is aimed at teenage boys, and attempts to teach them about STIs and condoms and things like that. It's approximately four hundred billion times funnier and more fabulous than any sex education lesson I ever sat through in school. We used to laugh at those classes for the wrong reasons, but this side-scrolling shooter from Time Gentlemen, Please! developers Zombie Cow gets you laughing in the very best way. If you're a young 'un, just promise you'll remember to learn something.

The failure of John Carter started a feeding frenzy in the press (realistically the feeding frenzy began months in advance), yet the failure of Battleship has been largely ignored. As the LA Times points out this is interesting because the two failures are kind of comparable: Their overall numbers aren’t all that different. Disney’s “John Carter” did a paltry $72 million in the United States and an additional $210 million overseas; “Universal’s “Battleship” is on track to do even less in America than “John Carter” while so far making $232 million overseas. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Universal could lose $150 million on “Battleship,” while Disney took a $200-million write-down on “John Carter." The article lists some valid reasons why John Carter became such an icon of flops, including the simple fact that it was first and the first story is always the bigger story. But the reasons the LA Times gives don't add up to the whole story. Battleship has been given a complete free pass for one simple reason: Hollywood hates creatives. That may sound like an oxymoron or counterintuitive, but it's the fundamental basis of much of this business. Hollywood is run by money men in suits, and these guys often hate the unpredictable, sometimes uncontrollable, creative types who are necessary to keep the industry going. The suits want product, but they haven't figured out a way to cut the human element - writers, directors, FILMMAKERS - out of the process of creating that product. I always suspect that it's jealousy, that the lowliest screenwriter can do things that the president of a studio can't - come up with new worlds, bring characters to life, share imagination. It's probably also just a simple irritation at the fact that creatives have demands and they fight against the wisdom of marketing and they try to make good movies instead of saleable movies. The world would be easier for the suits if the creatives were all like Dennis Dugan and Brian Robbins, but that isn't the way of Hollywood. So knowing that the suits hate the creatives, you can begin to see why John Carter got roasted. It was the work of a singular creative vision, that of Andrew Stanton. Battleship was a packaged deal put together in boardrooms and legal documents, with creatives only being needed to do the messy work of actually getting the product onto screen. Before you say that we're talking about the press obliterating John Carter, not the suits, you have to understand that 90% of the industry reporters in this town take their stories directly from marketing and executives. Disney was especially active in throwing Stanton under every single available bus. And members of the media like a good juicy story of the fall that comes after perceived pride - how dare Stanton, two time Oscar winner, think that he could make a live action movie and spend this much? Hollywood industry reporting always, always, always sides with the executives because numbers are quantifiable - the Times can declare a movie a winner or a loser based on box office - while art is much harder to nail down. Most of the industry reporters don't know jack shit about what makes a movie good in the first place, and I'm convinced most don't actually care. The real tragedy of this, in my opinion, is that John Carter isn't a bad movie. It has problems, but it's not bad. But the stink of death that the mainstream media has put on the film means it's going to be languishing for years and years as an untouchable film. Maybe cable broadcast will help people see that it's not a bad movie after all, but I believe that it's going to be five or ten years before people actually bother reevaluating the film and figuring out that it's well made and didn't deserve all the hate.

Book Review Book Review Poem Strip A- Book Review Poem Strip A- A- Poem Strip Author Dino Buzzati Publisher NYRB Classics Based on the Greek mythological story of Orpheus and Eurudice, Dino Buzzati’s pioneering graphic novel Poem Strip was originally published in Italy in 1969 (as Poema A Fumetti), and it’s surprising that it’s taken four decades to see print in the U.S.—Marina Harss’ English translation is its first. Comics have been described as movies on paper, and this one reads like a rock ’n’ roll-sexploitation-fantasy-occult midnight cult favorite. Poem Strip is mostly an excuse for Buzzati to reimagine Milan as a phantasmagoria as alluring as any of the artists he liberally borrows from: His plot centers on a guitar-carrying young male singer who pines for the love of his life, the spectral Eura, and literally goes to hell and back to find her. (Buzzati’s prefatory note cites a number of painters, filmmakers, and photographers—including Salvador Dali, Irving Klaw, F.W. Murnau, Hans Bellmer, and Federico Fellini—for “their valuable input” to specific pages.) Buzzati’s linework is wonderfully loose, but always concise. One agent of the underworld looks to be modeled on James Dean, then the young Ronald Reagan, though his green coloring keeps him identifiable; even Buzzati’s super-long-shot stick figures have a wiggly, wriggling life. Advertisement This being Italy in the swinging late ’60s, there’s a lot of sexuality on display: Buzzati clearly reveled in drawing nude women, setting one passage in a brothel (whose host, humorously, is an uninhabited, anthropomorphic overcoat) and crafting several of his more disturbing images around sexual torture, as with his simultaneously gauzy and hellish rendering, largely in dots, of a nude woman in the shape of a rubber duck. (Eura seems to have left her clothes behind in the afterworld as well.) Buzzati intersperses these with several outright classical images, such as the classical Greek profile, times seven, of our hero asking to see Eura, as well as more modernist touches like the buildings of Milan’s Via Saterna collapsing into each other after he knocks on the door Eura has entered. The writing itself can be windy—surrealism doesn’t always translate well. But Buzzati’s eye-stopping linework makes up for that.

Three juveniles in custody following fights w/ Students & PPD , 1 officer injured , taken to hospital, poss rib injury @6abc pic.twitter.com/YF8LVP6PU1 — Annie McCormick (@6abcAnnie) May 22, 2017 EMBED >More News Videos 3 arrested, officer injured in fight near Philadelphia train station. Annie McCormick reports during Action News at 5 p.m. on May 22, 2017. Three students are under arrest and one police officer is injured after a large group gathered near a SEPTA station in the Juniata Park section of Philadelphia.It happened around 3:30 p.m. Monday near Erie and Torresdale avenues.Philadelphia police called in extra officers to assist breaking up the group.Action News is told students from three area schools were involved in the incident.SEPTA officials say there was a social media post calling for the large group to gather at the Erie/Torresdale Station on the Market-Frankford Line.Police were able to stop the apparent flash mob from impacting service."Some got off of the El, came down here, and were fighting with some of the students who were trying to get up onto the El. They had a fight out here. There was an officer who got injured in the melee. There were two juveniles arrested for that. There was another fight around the corner. Another juvenile was arrested for that," Philadelphia Police Inspector Ray Convery said.Action News is told the hospitalized officer injured his rib after he was knocked down by students.In the second fight, police say students actually stole an officer's baton; the officer was able to get it back.----------

After a miscarriage in July I gained 180 to 192..I became anemic, took medications for it and finally feeling good. So I have not worked out for 3 months with all the sad things going on. Decided to start workout but since I gained pounds I started off with walking for 2 hrs which will come to 5 to 6 miles. Also watched my food intake cut back on white rice and including salads for meals. The lowest I saw in the past month was 187 otherwise I just see 189 or 190 which is discouraging. I know weight loss is not magic but am too frustrated with scale not moving. I started feeling like walking does not help me and may be I have to start a diff activity. Just venting here and please give your support and advice that will give me a boost. Thanks in advance!! 0

On Nikita Kucherov and the Tampa Bay Lightning … Bob McKenzie: The Lightning and RFA Nikita Kucherov’s situation is complex because of their salary cap situation. Bob McKenzie: Most high-end offensive forwards that are looking at their second contracts get close to the standard six-years, $6 million per year – Filip Forsberg, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle etc. Bob McKenzie: The Flames gave Sean Monahan six years and $6.375 million. The Predators bought only one year of Filip Forsberg’s unrestricted years. Bob McKenzie: A six-year deal for Kucherov would buy two unrestricted years, so he could be worth well more than $6 million a season. Bob McKenzie: Don’t think the Lightning could do that right now given their cap situation without moving a contract. If they do a two-year bridge deal, it would be really hard to determine a value. Bob McKenzie: Not sure if Kucherov is the player that would do a bridge deal, but the Lightning may not have a choice. Bob McKenzie: Being able to sign both Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman to hometown discounts was a good start. The Lightning will also have to deal with Jonathan Drouin, Ondrej Palat and Tyler Johnson as RFAs next offseason. Bob McKenzie: Ben Bishop will get moved at some point, but he’s expected to start the season with the Lightning. Chris Nichols of Today’s Slapshot: Bob McKenzie was on TSN 690 talking about Tampa Bay Lightning RFA Nikita Kucherov. “If you’re going to give Nikita Kucherov a long-term contract – five, six, seven years, or whatever the case may be – at a number that makes sense for Kucherov, Steve Yzerman will have to trade a player and clear some cap space in order to do that,” said McKenzie. “If you’re going to do a bridge deal, then you probably could do that. But again, if you’re Kucherov – this is not the type of player that should be bridged.” Filip Forsberg received a six-year deal at $6 million a season coming out of his entry-level deal. Taylor Hall and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins also got the same deal. Jeff Skinner and John Tavares got less. The Predators bought one UFA year in Forsberg’s deal. The Lightning would be buying two years of unrestricted free agency if they signed Kucherov to a six-year deal. Six-years at $6 million a season likely isn’t enough for Kucherov. The Lightning can’t fit that in without trading someone. Would a bridge deal, two or three years at $4 or $5 million? “So if ever there were a golden opportunity for somebody to come in with an offer sheet, this would be it. If you really wanted Nikita Kucherov. Because if the Lightning are going to match the offer sheet – boy, does it cause them enormous heartache. And Steve Yzerman is going through this all again next year. Jonathan Drouin. Ondrej Palat. Tyler Johnson. Welcome to my nightmare.” The Lightning will need salary cap room at some point. Moving a goaltender is the logical choice, but there is not much of goalie market right now. With the expansion draft coming, many teams might be looking to move a goalie. Ben Bishop is better than a lot of guys that might become available.

Gardaí falsely inflated their figures for roadside breath tests - including by accidentally adding "zeros" to the results being inputted to the force's computer system. Gardaí falsely inflated their figures for roadside breath tests - including by accidentally adding "zeros" to the results being inputted to the force's computer system. This was one of the factors uncovered by an internal Garda investigation into the figures being exaggerated by around 1.5 million tests over seven years. There will be no criminal inquiries arising out of the findings of the investigations. But it is expected that a number of gardaí around the country will face disciplinary probes, which could result in fines or other sanctions. The investigation led by Assistant Commissioner Michael O'Sullivan has resulted in a report to Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan. A separate report has been compiled by Mr O'Sullivan on his examination of the wrongful prosecution of 14,700 people for road traffic offences. His investigation into the breath tests is understood to have found the figures were grossly exaggerated. It came about by a combination of carelessness when putting the statistics into the Garda Pulse computer, IT glitches in the system, and inflated numbers being filed as a result of administrative errors or incomplete records not properly stored. The report also established a lack of consistency in the proper application of procedures for breath test recording across divisions and districts. The Wexford division was found to have recorded the least number of wrong figures, while Dublin West was the worst. Senior Garda officers are to review the results of the two investigations this week after the return to work of Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan. Mr Flanagan is also expected to brief Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Copies of the report have also been sent to the Policing Authority, which has commissioned financial auditors Crowe Horwath to carry out a review of the findings. Mr Flanagan has promised that the Garda report will be published - but it is not yet clear if this will be before or after the auditors have completed their review. The report also revealed problems with the inputting of figures at the Garda information services centre in Castlebar, Co Mayo. The report did not include pointing the finger of blame at individual gardaí, but where instances of figures being falsified have been highlighted these will be examined by senior officers and disciplinary inquiries may be initiated. Separate disciplinary inquiries are already underway into the wrongful recording of figures in counties Cork and Galway, but these are all related to alleged cases, which pre-dated the O'Sullivan report, launched last March. Irish Independent

Spaghetti Squash Hash Browns I’ve concluded that this is the year of squash. At least in my kitchen. There has certainly not been a year in which I consumed more squash than I have in 2014. This is apparent from the (almost) weekly posts during the summer featuring zucchini and now my new obsession with all the winter squashes. I first tried making these hash browns in a waffle iron. I had this grand idea in my head of waffle iron spaghetti squash hash browns. But, the universe did not agree with this idea and I’m still trying to pick bits of spaghetti squash off of my waffle iron. You win some, you lose some. The idea for spaghetti squash hash browns arose from the constant need to do something with leftover spaghetti squash. I always buy them, eat half, and then let the other half sit in the fridge for too long. Does this happen to anyone else? Enter breakfast spaghetti squash hash browns! MY LATEST VIDEOS MY LATEST VIDEOS I wanted to keep these super simple and (most importantly) EASY. I love the idea of being able to throw this together quickly in the morning to eat before work. I baked a spaghetti squash one night recently, prepared half of it for dinner and then placed the other half in the fridge. That “other half” is what we’re going to make this dish with. The spaghetti squash is removed from the skin and placed in a large bowl. Taking handfuls of the squash in your hands, SQUEEZE the heck out of it to remove excess water. This is important so don’t skip this step!! Once squeezed, place the squash back in the bowl. Add some garlic powder and chopped chives for flavor. And then one egg to hold it all together. Add a touch of S&P, mix thoroughly, and it’s ready to cook! Simply cook the squash over medium heat in a lightly greased skillet. I used ~teaspoon of coconut oil. Cook for about 10 minutes, continuing to stir, until the “hash browns” have a nice golden brown color to them. The squash is already cooked so it’s not really possible to under cook this dish. If you don’t cook it long enough, however, they simply won’t have any crunch to them at all (and you want a little bit of crunch!). Once plated, immediately top with some cheddar cheese (or not if you have more self control than me) and enjoy immediately. I thought these were perfect paired with a fried egg. See How to Make the Hash Browns here:

Eminem is the epitome of a dual diagnosis. Several years ago, the rapper, who is now 40 years old, spoke out about the depression that took hold of his life. In his book, The Way I Am, Eminem, real name Marshall Mathers, described his emotional reaction to the 2006 murder of Proof, a member of Eminem’s group, D12. “I have never felt so much pain in my life,’ Marshall told Now Magazine, ‘It was tough for me to even get out of bed and I had days when I couldn’t walk, let alone write a rhyme.” The effects of Proof’s death were leading Eminem to gain an unhealthy amount of weight, and to increase his drug use. MENTAL ILLNESS Depression is one of the most prevalent mental illnesses, but as a society, we don’t always take it seriously. 15% of our population will experience the symptoms of depression at some point in their lifetime; that’s 47 million people. If it’s not you, it is certainly someone close to you who is feeling hopeless, worthless, and disinterested in life. Like Eminem expressed, the feelings of seemingly chronic sadness are debilitating. Not wanting to get out of bed becomes an inability to do almost anything. Activities you once enjoyed and relationships you once valued are now meaningless, and there appears no reason to engage in any form of self-care. SUBSTANCE ABUSE In many cases, someone with the symptoms of depression attempt to self-medicate. Alcohol offers a (temporary) way to escape from the pain and despair, but depression is also an effect of drinking. Treating depression with alcohol makes the symptoms of depression worse, which makes you want to drink again, which makes you depressed, and so on, and so forth. Heroin and prescription painkillers (opiates like Vicodin, Percocet, and OxyContin) take away all pain. Eminem found out firsthand just how much opiates can make you feel like grief has been erased. When heroin use, or one of its pharmaceutical look likes, stops, all of the pain that was numbed comes rushing back. What could have been managed by processing the pain each day has essentially been put away in a closet whose door has been flung wide open and now feels overwhelming and almost paralyzing to face. The solution to unwanted pain? More alcohol, heroin, or painkillers. The cycle continues: depression paired with a substance abuse disorder. DUAL DIAGNOSIS Eminem is the perfect example of dual diagnosis, or two disorders co-occurring. He was addicted to Vicodin (and other substances) and suffering from clinically-diagnosable depression. Like Marshall Mathers, millions of people are diagnosed with a mental illness and a substance abuse or dependence disorder, and do not get help. When each diagnosis is not understood, and the combination is not addressed, addicts with depression, overdose, get arrested, or end up dead. Eminem completed rehab and immediately relapsed when a friend gave him a handful of blue pills. Later, after nearly dying from an opiate overdose, the rapper was told that the pills were methadone and that he ingested the equivalent of shooting 4 bags of heroin. The almost fatal incident did not change Eminem’s ways. Addiction is powerful, and in an effort to keep depression “treated”, in his mind, he needed to continue abusing prescription drugs. THE HOLLYWOOD WAY In the documentary, How to Make Money Selling Drugs, writer and director Matthew Cooke presents the business of drugs, with the true risks and inevitable consequences of selling and using. The “War on Drugs” has been fighting against illegal street drugs for decades. The documentary alerts its viewers to the legal drug game the pharmaceutical industry and the government has created, through a Chris Rock standup clip. Our country sends the message: don’t use marijuana, cocaine, or heroin, but drink alcohol at every occasion, give your kids Adderall, and keep popping a few Vicodin or OxyContin for that pain you had months ago. Eminem shares his introduction to the drug that lead to his addiction: “When I took my first Vicodin, it was like this feeling of ‘Ahhh.’ Like everything was not only mellow, but didn’t feel any pain. It just kinda numbed things. I don’t know exactly when it became a problem, I just remember liking it more and more.” Drugs are created that hook the user (i.e. a long-term customer.) Marshall is one of the 1 in 10 people who become addicted when using any drug. From all his prescription drug use, Marshall’s organs started shutting down. He nearly died; doctors told him had he gone to the hospital just hours later, he would not still be here. There is no other way around addiction, you must be professionally treated. Addicts cannot control their own use and will not make changes until completely clean and sober. Eminem knew he was going to die if he did not stop. Depression and drug abuse, or dual diagnosis, was ruining his life. He is now clean and trying to set a good example for his kids. Marshall’s words to other addicts: “It does get better. Ya know. It just, it does.” Learn more about Sovereign Health Group’s dual diagnosis treatment program by watching this video:

Former Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi greets his lawyers and people from behind bars at a court wearing the red uniform of a prisoner sentenced to death, during his court appearance with Muslim Brotherhood members on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, June 21, 2015. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh/File Photo CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced ousted president Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood to 25 years in prison in a final ruling over a case accusing him of spying for Qatar, judicial sources said. Mursi, democratically elected after Egypt’s 2011 revolution, was overthrown in mid-2013 by then-general Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, now the president, following mass protests against his rule. He was immediately arrested. Egypt’s Court of Cassation reduced Mursi’s sentence in the Qatar case to 25 years in its final ruling, from an original 40 years. Mursi is already serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted for the killing of protesters during demonstrations in 2012. Since toppling Mursi, Sisi has clamped down on dissent. Mass trials have been held for thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, and hundreds have received death sentences or lengthy prison terms. In 2014, Egypt charged Mursi and nine others with endangering national security by leaking state secrets and sensitive documents to Qatar. Egypt’s relations with Doha were already troubled by Qatar’s backing of Mursi. Egypt is one of four Arab nations in a Saudi-led bloc that cut relations with the Gulf state on June 5, accusing it of backing militant groups and cooperating with their arch-foe Iran, allegations Doha denies.

MIT postdoc Emile Bruneau has long been drawn to conflict — not as a participant, but an observer. In 1994, while doing volunteer work in South Africa, he witnessed firsthand the turmoil surrounding the fall of apartheid; during a 2001 trip to visit friends in Sri Lanka, he found himself in the midst of the violent conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military. Those chance experiences got Bruneau, who taught high school science for several years, interested in the psychology of human conflict. While teaching, he also volunteered as counselor for a conflict-resolution camp in Ireland that brought Catholic and Protestant children together. At MIT, Bruneau is now working with associate professor of cognitive neuroscience Rebecca Saxe to figure out why empathy — the ability to feel compassion for another person’s suffering — often fails between members of opposing conflict groups. “What are the psychological barriers that are put up between us in these contexts of intergroup conflict, and then, critically, what can we do to get past them?” Bruneau asks. Bruneau and Saxe are also trying to locate patterns of brain activity that correlate with empathy, in hopes of eventually using such measures to determine how well people respond to reconciliation programs aimed at boosting empathy between groups in conflict. “We’re interested in how people think about their enemies, and whether there are brain measures that are reliable readouts of that,” says Saxe, who is an associate member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “This is a huge vision, of which we are at the very beginning.” Before researchers can use tools such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate whether conflict-resolution programs are having any effect, they need to identify brain regions that respond to other people’s emotional suffering. In a study published Dec. 1 in Neuropsychologia, Saxe and Bruneau scanned people’s brains as they read stories in which the protagonist experienced either physical or emotional pain. The brain regions that responded uniquely to emotional suffering overlapped with areas known to be involved in the ability to perceive what another person is thinking or feeling. Failures of empathy Hoping to see a correlation between empathy levels and amount of activity in those brain regions, the researchers then recruited Israelis and Arabs for a study in which subjects read stories about the suffering of members of their own groups or that of conflict-group members. The study participants also read stories about a distant, neutral group — South Americans. As expected, Israelis and Arabs reported feeling much more compassion in response to the suffering of their own group members than that of members of the conflict group. However, the brain scans revealed something surprising: Brain activity in the areas that respond to emotional pain was identical when reading about suffering by one’s own group or the conflict group. Also, those activity levels were lower when Arabs or Israelis read about the suffering of South Americans, even though Arabs and Israelis expressed more compassion for South Americans’ suffering than for that of the conflict group. Those findings, published Jan. 23 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, suggest that those brain regions are sensitive to the importance of the opposing group, not whether or not you like them. Joan Chiao, an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University, says those brain regions may be acting as a “thermometer” for conflict. “It’s a really fascinating study because it’s the first to examine the neural basis of people’s behavior in longstanding conflicts, as opposed to groups that are distant and don’t have a long history of intergroup strife,” says Chiao, who was not involved in the research. However, because the study did not reveal any correlation between the expression of empathy and the amount of brain activity, more study is needed before MRI can be used as a reliable measure of empathy levels, Saxe says. “We thought there might be brain regions where the amount of activity was just a simple function of the amount of empathy that you experience,” Saxe says. “Since that’s not what we found, we don’t know what the amount of activity in these brain regions really means yet. This is basically a first baby step, and one of the things it tells us is that we don’t know enough about these brain regions to use them in the ways that we want to.” Bruneau is now testing whether these brain regions send messages to different parts of the brain depending on whether the person is feeling empathy or not. He hypothesizes that when someone reads about the suffering of an in-group member, the brain regions identified in this study send information to areas that process unpleasant emotions, while stories about suffering of a conflict-group member activate an area called the ventral striatum, which has been implicated in schadenfreude — taking pleasure in the suffering of others.

Cultural appropriation is, at least in part, an accusation about authenticity. When Katy Perry aspires to hip hop dance moves, she's picking up something which isn't hers and (perhaps more importantly) getting paid a lot for it. She looks awkward, out of place, ridiculous. She looks fake. One person who’d no doubt be eager to weigh in on Katy Perry's fakeness, or on anyone's fakeness, is Baby Boomer critic Robert Christgau. Christgau is something of a legend. He's been called the Dean of American Rock Critics, and he was the chief rock critic at the Village Voice for decades, when that was a big deal. He's known as a contrarian—but that only makes him more representative of rock critics generally. He's not unique, but his work is convenient shorthand for a certain critical consensus. That consensus centers in particular around race. Like many white rock critics of his age, Christgau is obsessed with black authenticity. He has policed the borders of real black expression, praising those who are truly black, and casting scorn upon the mere poseurs. Early in Christgau's career, those inauthentic poseurs included Jimi Hendrix. These days Hendrix is seen as the quintessence of realness; he's a rock touchstone, the foundational artist who confirms rocks essential blackness. Back in 1967, though, when Hendrix performed at Monterey, white critics like Christgau were turned off by Hendrix's flamboyant performance style and, especially, by his appeal to a white audience. Christgau infamously called Hendrix "a psychedelic Uncle Tom," though editors changed it to "just another Uncle Tom" under the misapprehension that that was somehow less offensive. Christgau also approvingly quoted another critic who said that Hendrix had a "beautiful Spade routine." Jack Hamilton, in his recent book Just Around Midnight, argues that Christgau has been unjustly pilloried for his comments, which Hamilton argues were more a dig at the audience than at Hendrix. Rereading Christgau's original dispatch, though, Hamilton is too generous. Christgau uses "spade" throughout the article to refer to other black performers. His description of Hendrix's music is both voyeuristic and contemptuous. He says Hendrix's performance was "terrible" and accuses him of catering to sexual stereotypes when he straddles his guitar and lights it on fire. The crowd loves it, as crowds loved the sexual gyrations of Elvis and Ma Rainey. But Christgau is more sophisticated; Hendrix isn't really black. "[Hendrix] had tailored a caricature to their mythic standards and apparently didn't even overdo it a shade," Christgau sneers. The use of the racially-tinged "shade" has to be intentional. Christgau's racist assessment of Hendrix was an early low, but it wasn't uncharacteristic. A decade later, in 1978, he accused Nina Simone of not being authentic enough. "[H]er penchant for the mundane renders her intensity as bogus as her mannered melismas and pronunciation (move over, Inspector Clouseau) and the rote flatting of her vocal improvisations." He then chastises her for skipping the lyric "bitch" in "Rich Girl." Black women who don't say "bitch" aren't real. White men know. Christgau doesn't just sit in judgment on black artists; he’s also eager to kick white artists for not being black enough. In a 1976 review of an ABBA album he says, "their disinclination to sing like Negroes reassures the Europopuli." That "Negroes" is meant as an insider sneer; Christgau is parodying the European distaste for black people, supposedly. The actual effect, though, is to cosign the idea that black people sing, and should sing, a certain way. Moreover, ABBA is as influenced by disco as Eric Clapton is by blues. Why is one unconscionably white while the other gets praised as "honest"? Who is Christgau to rule on what's really black, anyway? The answer is as inevitable as it is depressing. Christgau gets to rule on what is black because he's white. White critics have always abrogated to themselves the right to decide which black people are really black and which aren't black because they have a white audience or don't have a white audience, because they're too sexual or not sexual enough, because of no reason or any reason. Just last week Carrie Battan at the New Yorker declared that Nicki Minaj is plagued by "a lack of substance" and that her focus on chart success is "grasping for a kind of relevance that she is struggling to tap into organically." Surely all pop stars are driven by chart success—that's what being a pop star is. But Battan claims to see to a deeper lack. Like Jimi Hendrix and Nina Simone, Nicki Minaj is a fraud. White people say so. You could say that arguing about cultural appropriation is counter-productive. White critics use the idea of authentic blackness against black people all the time. Black performers who don't conform to white stereotypes about what black people should be are denigrated and called Uncle Toms and sell-outs. Maybe it's best to get rid of the idea of authenticity altogether, as poptimists argue. But cultural appropriation perfectly captures what Robert Christgau has done throughout his career. Say what you will of Katy Perry, dancing away; at least she’s working with and paying some black artists. Christgau's lifelong dabbling with blackface is substantially more presumptuous. What does it mean when Christgau says ABBA, Jimi Hendrix and Nina Simone aren’t black enough? What it means is "I, Robert Christgau, am the single, solitary, authentic black person on earth." Blackness is treated as a mystical truth, detachable from black people who, Christgau suggests, often don't really appreciate it anyway. Over the decades it's been an article of faith with white rock critics that the truest black people are white rock critics. That's how cultural appropriation works.

The city of Vancouver has the most pampered pets in Canada, according to data released by Amazon.ca. Amazon’s fifth annual pampered pets list was compiled using sales data for pet related items from Amazon.ca from August 2016 to August 2017 on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents. Sales data was collected from products for dogs, cats, birds, fish, reptiles and small animals. Along with Vancouver at No. 1, three other Lower Mainland centres — Burnaby (5), Richmond (13) and Surrey (17) — cracked Amazon’s list of top 20 most pampered pets cities in Canada. According to Amazon, Vancouver has the most mollycoddled mutts. “The city of Vancouver was top dog in the pooches’ category, purchasing the most accessories, grooming products, toys and treats,” Amazon said in a release. Burnaby, meanwhile, has the most pampered cats in the country. “Not only did Burnaby make its return to the top 20 this year after falling out last year, but residents ranked the highest in purchases for cat products. From beds to grooming to litter, they were all about the cattitude this year,” the release said. Vancouver also ranked first in the small animals category as well, which includes products for everything from guinea pigs to hamsters. The top 20 most pampered pets cities in Canada are:

Jorgensen has played every game for Huddersfield this season since joining from Copenhagen in the summer Defender Mathias Jorgensen has offered to buy every Huddersfield Town fan who travels away to Southampton on Saturday a Christmas drink as thanks for their "amazing" support this season. The gesture could cost the Denmark international more than £8,000. The Terriers have a 472-mile round trip to Southampton as they look to build on last weekend's 4-1 victory at Watford. Jorgensen, 27, who is known as Zanka, wrote on Twitter: "I hope you like the gift. Zanka Claus is coming to Town!" In a video message, he added: "Your support this year has been truly amazing, so I thought I would think up something special for those of you travelling to Southampton this weekend." The club said away fans will be presented with a voucher when they enter St Mary's Stadium for the Southampton game, and can redeem for a drink at Huddersfield's next home match on Boxing Day against Stoke. They have been given an allocation of 2,596 tickets for the match at St Mary's. Huddersfield charge around £3.20 for a pint of beer - and if they sell out at Southampton and all of the fans take up the free drink offer, it would cost Jorgensen £8,300. The club are playing in the top flight this season for the first time since 1971-72 after winning the Championship play-off final in May and are in 11th place.

Actually, it’s about Ethics in Shilling Videogames The following is a reprint from Unwinnable Weekly Issue Forty-Three. If you enjoy what you read, please consider purchasing the issue or subscribing. ——— We are all in marketing. That might sound cynical, but it is a basic fact you will embrace as you get older. Give it time. If you’re online, using social media or commenting on things on the Internet, you’re cherry picking and curating who you are, what you put forth, and what image you want to present to others. You’re a marketer for who you are and what you’re about and what you stand against. And nowhere do I see a greater reluctance to face this than in videogame circles online, where it is especially true. It is a space where most public conversations typically devolve into discussions of “ingroups” and “outgroups.” It doesn’t make one “right” or the other “wrong.” It’s just a byproduct of the Internet and the hummingbird mentality it can foster when frantically navigating it. It’s human nature, confused. We are primal hunters with devices, bottomless information stones, gathering others we can hang with online and sometimes hunting for those we cannot. It’s an Internet binary and it presupposes that there are only two ways of looking at things. We need buckets and we need to put everything around us in them. I’d like to posit there might actually at least be a third way of looking at things. This extends to videogames as well – again, especially. By way of example, there are other types of people besides the ones who either care or don’t care about videogames. There are plenty of people who care, don’t think about them that much and just go about their days without feeling the need to discuss them. And lots of other gradations therein. Whether we play videogames or not, we are simply individuals trying to make sense of this world and our place in it. But I see a lot of this fussing happening in videogames over buckets. People want labels for other people and their roles. The labels must be right or else chaos. It is masturbation. And so, in that spirit, indulge me. I want to zoom in on one label I’ve been struggling with lately, and seeing others struggle with as well – whether they know it or not. There’s been a sharp uptick in my brain in recent months since launching my counterculture game-industry interview repository, don’t die, of trying to unpack and unravel the label “videogame journalist.” It’s not at all the focus of the site, but a byproduct of deeply pondering the stuff around videogames that consciously or otherwise has been swept to the side the last few decades. Why are some people considered “true gamers” and others will preface things they say by copping to that? Why do games want to be so narrow? When was the last time a big studio opened, and why are the ones that are open today remaking the same games over and over? Stuff like that. That’s what my site is about. But when it comes to “videogame journalism,” I realize that, really, I’ve been struggling with this since I started writing about games professionally in 2007 as an editor at The A.V. Club. I remember people in gaming circles being legitimately bewildered, though enthusiastic, at my wanting to be a part of their world. I remember hearing “you do real writing, so why would you want to waste your time here?” Back then, the answer was simpler: It was fun and it was a change of pace from my other duties. Normally I wouldn’t rattle off what I had to do, but would like to use this opportunity to illuminate because it’s germane here. In addition to constantly being pitched “funny” headlines by people outside the office, I managed the local section online and in print. One time I interviewed Gallagher. I was hired specifically to help bring the now-defunct local sections online and set the tone, template and voice for the whole thing while running my own doomed section for Chicago in print and on the new (also doomed) website. But covering games for the national-facing side of the publication enabled me to flex and strengthen different writing muscles as a burgeoning critic and in time build a Rolodex of colleagues from all facets of the games industry. I also remember this question coming not just from other writers, but PR people as well: “Are you a games journalist?” I didn’t understand. This is not meant to be arrogance but just a reflection of how my brain worked from the outset with this stuff: I never considered games writing “journalism” because there are no Pulitzers for covering marketing. These days I don’t think I’d say it takes a third party to crystallize the respectability of any endeavor, but that’s what I used to think. And really, who cares, anyway? Sure, call it journalism, if that means something to you. To be fair, I’m not sure I considered what I did at The A.V. Club journalism either. I called it entertainment writing. But I think for my friends at all those (also doomed) game publications that are now gone, they were speaking of their self-conscious desire for legitimacy in the eyes of others, which no reasonable person can honestly fault. They wanted it to mean something to them and the people around them. The people they didn’t even know or had just met. There have always been many stigmas around videogames. Who would want to be associated with them? But a lot has changed since 2007. There are many new, more toxic stigmas now plaguing videogames. If I am again being honest, usually what I see online when people discuss “videogame journalism” is people self-consciously fancying themselves as philosophy majors or intellectuals out of some sort of desire to justify that their time spent playing and writing about games was not in vain. That it meant something. To anyone. I’m not sure I can blame them there, but I’m also not sure that it does mean much. Yet. I think what we are seeing play out in videogames right now is an industry attempting to grow up and struggling. Hard. The writers have a hand in this, but it is not entirely their fault. But I think that unless the mentality of this group of writers shifts, they too are as doomed as The A.V. Club’s local section and the many games outlets my colleagues used to manage and write for. You can’t keep doing the same things and expecting different results. * * * It’s time we retire the term “videogame journalist.” Most writers in the field need to accept that they, too, are marketers unless their approach or something else in the landscape shifts and changes. One approach I usually see as people attempt to intellectualize games is to compare them to other mediums – music, books, etc. But something I haven’t seen much of is people contrasting those who write about videogames as part of the equation also holding back the medium from meaningful progress and evolution. You know, comparing the people who write about games to the people who write about music, books, etc. In 2006, pop-culture essayist and author Chuck Klosterman wrote a piece for Esquire wondering why there isn’t a Lester Bangs of videogames. It’s an interesting point to read again in 2015, but I think the reason we can still wonder this sincerely is because most people in 2006 who actively played videogames weren’t reading Esquire. I remember tweeting that piece out last year and sending it to some colleagues. The general response? Games have a few people who are “pretty close.” We need more: more than a few people, and to be more than “pretty close.” I am not saying there aren’t talented people who write about videogames. Far from it. I’m just saying it’s time we consider different approaches to covering the medium, and not allow PR companies or marketing firms dictate the tone or gatekeep too aggressively the sorts of stories we can or cannot go after. I think we’re making tiny inroads here and there, but “pretty close” isn’t nearly enough. It’s a phrase that passes the responsibility to someone else and seeks to take refuge in the fact that there are not many outlets doing more than talking about games solely in the context of being products. My mind also turns to another music writer, Richard Goldstein, who in the ‘60s was considered to be one of the first rock critics. A recent LA Times profile on Goldstein describes him as: …one of the earliest practitioners in the burgeoning field that would come to be known as rock criticism, writing about music was a lifeline. Fresh out of Columbia University’s journalism school in 1966, the utopian energies of rock provided a window through which he could glimpse a very different kind of future being born. And he recognized instinctively that this new music required a new kind of writing to comprehend it. So he invented it. It, of course, isn’t that simple. As Goldstein says, he did not set out to “invent” anything, he was just pulling a thread. As he tells his interviewer: There has to be an experiential connection to the music that’s manifest in a strong style. It’s a very personal kind of writing, even when it involves expertise. That was the basic element in my work, and I think it still distinguishes the genre. Rock writing is a holdout against the idea that the author is dead. To be clear: I am not planting a flag and calling myself something so self-important as “one of the first videogame journalists” or anything so trivial. I, too, feel I am pulling a thread with my don’t die project, and found it surprising that an “experiential connection” that exists in games is simply reaching out to the people who buy and play games and talking to them for their stories. If the videogame industry wants to better understand itself it should ditch its cliquishness and be better about reaching across the aisle far more – to anyone and everyone. And so, for this, I again reached out to the audience. In preparation for this story, I circulated an online survey. I asked a couple of questions about game journalism. What is it? What is it not? What is the harm in blurring the lines? Who does it hurt or help if the audience isn’t clear about what it is or its role? Most of the people who responded are consumers. You know, the folks all this fuss about videogames is ostensibly to benefit. Chief among the reasons we should retire the term “videogame journalism” is that 50 random different people across the globe cannot agree on a single definition of the phrase. Not even a single part of the definition. And it isn’t just these folks I heard from who I talked about this with in the last month. There are plenty of people who work in games PR and at publishers I talked to last week alone who are equally confused and concerned not so much about the term or what it means, but the fuzziness and the relative damage being done with this needless confusion. In answering my question on game journalism, and how it differs from music or sports journalism, one person wrote: “Neither music journalism or sports journalism is quite as concerned with evaluating the consumerist worth of products. Both tend to focus more on the human stories which emerge from their respective industries, whereas modern games journalism is more concerned with product reviews.” I know some people who have been upset over some of my Kill Screen reviews because they “more resemble film criticism” and I have been publicly prickly over review scores and how they can oversimplify or dumb down conversation around games. Really, some people just want to know whether they should buy a thing. And I can’t blame them. I use Metacritic as a consumer. I bet you do, too. It’s a useful tool. But is it the only tool we can or should have at our disposal in sifting through games to spend our time on? Absolutely not. It devalues the medium. Imagine if you heard classical music or fast food only discussed like this: “Yeah, I mean, that Whopper was pretty good. I’d give it a 78. But that Rigoletto is a slouch, barely better at 79.” You wouldn’t. It tells you nothing at all about anything, other than the fact that your friend may be, well, slightly off. But a few weeks ago when a dev colleague of mine was expressing surprise on Twitter over the lack of mixed or negative reviews Bloodborne on the review-score aggregator Metacritic, I hopped in and said this is yet another example of how numbers being considered so important in the industry is dumb. A colleague of mine who works in PR dismissed my opinion, saying actually Metacritic is very popular. Of course Metacritic is popular. I just said I use it myself. But if we want to act like the game industry is doing well and creatively growing, we should re-examine the fundamental parts of it and not just keep going with what has worked before – because what has worked before is not only breaking, but it is changing whether we embrace it or not. It’s best to at least understand and label what’s going on here and, you know, put it in a bucket so we can move on. * * * We cannot talk about videogame journalism and what it is or isn’t without talking about the Internet. And we can’t talk about game coverage on the Internet without discussing YouTube and Twitch. There’s a generational divide here, a growing schism between those of us who grew up when the biggest debate in videogames was Nintendo or Sega and those of us when the biggest debate in videogames is…well, actually, I don’t know what kids these days think about videogames. I just know that my friends in their twenties and students I’ve had in the past in game design programs say things like they want to make games to prove themselves as artists and yet will outright dismiss people whose opinions don’t instantly mesh with their own. The challenges they prefer to take on come exclusively from games, not discourse. It is the march of progress and technology. Why would anyone want to read a wandering column when you could watch a to-the-point video that tells you in an entertaining way what a personality thinks and, hey, you get to see the game too – all inside two minutes? Again, I don’t blame anyone for favoring that. But I do think when, as The Observer reported in January that “Minecraft is more popular on YouTube than Frozen, Drake and Beyonce,” it’s worth hitting pause and reflecting on what’s going on here. From The Observer: One bleak doomsday projection about the Internet Age is a future world where instead of living our own lives, we simply watch other people living theirs. Finally, it looks like we’re approaching that dystopia… The number one personality behind the trend of people watching other people play games is the notorious Pewdiepie, a Swedish YouTube star and multimillionaire who records himself playing video games. Basically, he sits in his home screaming “Nooooo” and “Fuck you!” at a screen for about ten minutes at a time. Obviously, not all videos or streamers covering videogames online are like this. And I am certainly not saying written outlets are inherently “better” than this not just emerging, but already dominating space. The audience has spoken, and they are watching while they are also listening. This stuff is popular. As it should be: The Food Network is also hugely popular, and it’s the same basic concept. I have no issue with this, even though this same technological march has gutted or killed – or at least lobotomized – many of the publications I used to write for in this space. It’s just how things go. Streamers didn’t kill The A.V. Club local sections, the Internet’s disdain for print and physical objects did. It’s just how things went. But I don’t think this is the way things always need to go. It’s worth noting a few things here. Pewdiepie, 25, is one of many, many streamers who have devoted followings. He tends to be the common example here because, well, buckets. His YouTube channel currently has more than 36 million subscribers. The excerpt above just casually mentions he is a multimillionaire. But really, think about it in more digestible terms. With 36 million subscribers, every video he releases – and he creates steadily, and not just stuff about games, which of course helps sustain and grow his popularity – he gets more potential exposure shortly after clicking on his mouse to upload than many of the best-selling albums have over the course of their being on shelves or available online for decades. Thirty-six million subscribers means roughly anything he puts online is more popular than Nirvana’s Nevermind (somewhere around 30 million sales) or Michael Jackson’s Bad (also around 30 million). Think about it. An audience that size, bigger than the population of Canada (a country), and they are all paying attention to one person’s opinions about videogames. That is staggering on a basic human level. As a species with technology, we are passing the torch and the megaphone to a group whose biggest personalities can’t yet buy beer. That’s fine. Really. I’m not shaking my fist at a cloud or telling these kids to get off my lawn. Plenty of room. The objective truth of the situation is that many streamers who gain access to developers are being favored over traditional writers. There are plenty of personalities in their own right in the writing landscape, but not likely to be more new ones anytime soon. As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a case of good vs. bad. Many of these streamers have great big audiences – from another objective standpoint, it makes sense for games PR companies to start favoring them over us. They have bigger reach, as the kids like to say. The new normal for games PR in this landscape is get these people talking about your game and evangelizing for it. In many ways, it is no different from the old landscape. It’s just that the old landscape had built-in filters. Workflows. Processes. Editors. People who will send stuff back and ask, “Are you sure you want to say that?” or “Where did you get that information?” The trade-off is we all – viewers, PR, writers – have to spend so much more time understanding streamers and YouTubers to get a feel for them and their political slants or the other various lines we as a society have decided you should not be crossing. It’s the trade-off in favoring individuals over publications. Whereas the latter have established voices and tones – the individual, who knows? Maybe you watched the 40 hours that person seemed totally fine and relatable, and then you flip away and then they go on a racist tirade or who knows what. And we’re not necessarily talking about adults with lengthy careers behind them. We’re talking about teens or people in their twenties finding audiences and making decisions along the way you may or may not agree with that they may not even find objectionable themselves. When you’re making $8,000 or $200,000 a month playing videogames via partnership programs and you’re effectively living out a childhood wet dream, are you really going to pump the brakes and worry yourself over editorial control and things like native advertising? Do you want to risk your reputation and audience by hating on the “wrong” game? So, in a general sense (for PR people) it isn’t about who is or isn’t a journalist, it’s simply about that reach. And the truth is we’ve all been marketers all along. Let’s not fool ourselves: Writing about games on a professional level has roots back to Nintendo Power and EGM. Back when there was no industry and the media around them needed to be propped up exclusively on information coming from game companies. They were enthusiasts, much like how we were enthusiasts, much like how streamers carry on in that fashion. We all love games. This desire to make covering it something more than it isn’t makes it something else altogether. Can you write artfully about games? Of course. If you have talent, are insightful and have a broad frame of reference, you can entertain your audience in any medium. But gaming’s inferiority complex manifests itself in so many strange ways: Are videogames art? Are videogames a sport? All these things are self-conscious distractions that ultimately only serve to do the audience a disservice. Before I elaborate further – the next example requires quotes from a variety of anonymous sources – I’m just going to dive in with an anecdote from my own career to substantiate these following claims. (I just checked with me; I’m fine with me going on the record.) As I got a year or two into my games writing at The Onion, I started to notice it getting increasingly difficult to get review copies in time for my deadlines as I explored the full spectrum of grades and opinions you can have on a chosen game. I noticed I had to handhold a lot of games PR people a tad more aggressively in a way that I never had to when, say, arranging interviews with Robert Smigel or all the members of The Kids in the Hall or getting albums to review from publicists. I had to remind people in games PR they owed me games so I could do my job. I had to ask for tracking numbers to assure it was put in the mail. I cannot tell you the number of times I ended up having to buy a game off the shelves, get reimbursed by The Onion, and have a review run later after a game came out rather than coincide with its release, just because PR was reluctant to prioritize a more mainstream outlet that felt just as comfortable running positive reviews as it did negative ones. Along the way, I simply lost count. If you’re PR, of course you will send out review copies to writers who tend to be more favorable. Again, I don’t blame them for that. They’re just trying to do their jobs, much like I was mine. It’s a silly thing to be self-righteous about, but I remember a friend not in the industry at the time advising me to “just start writing positive reviews” to make this stuff less of a time suck. But for some reason, I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t – I was putting my name on it. What I wrote had to be what I felt. Honestly, the reviews that are always the hardest to write are the ones where you are left feeling indifferent. Writing “positive” reviews is not any easier than writing “bad” reviews, and I never took pleasure in slamming titles. I had to write my truth. Even if it’s just what I thought about some videogame. I took it seriously. It was my name. It was my job. But the game industry is not one that welcomes and encourages healthy criticism on the whole. It wants to keep things narrow. The human stories that survey respondent was referring to earlier are, honestly, difficult to do in the current media landscape. * * * As games have gotten increasingly more expensive to make and the industry as a whole, as it likes to brag, is becoming “bigger than Hollywood,” access to developers with stories that stray from what PR would prefer to focus on are getting tougher and tougher to pull off. They are not impossible, but as one anonymous dev told me for don’t die: …there needs to be this steady information drip to all the websites, and it’s kept on a very tight schedule. They want it all feeding into their grand marketing plan. And so when you’re talking about something that they don’t want you talking about, that throws off and endangers their schedule. This is not unique to games. That’s just PR. That’s their job. But oddly, I heard about a strange surge of this around the marketing for the new Mortal Kombat game, Mortal Kombat X. I say “oddly” because it’s a series that is hugely popular and should have no problem garnering attention and sales. It has a proven track record, its fair share of nostalgia among people who played games for a long time and people know what it is and what to expect. It’s like Madden: there’s a new one, so people will buy it. The surge I am speaking of here comes via my email inbox from a few writers who prefer to also remain anonymous. They were frustrated over the preferential treatment they perceived YouTube personalities were getting over them at a studio visit to NetherRealm Studios in Chicago. The reason? YouTube personalities stick to the script. As one of these writers told me, “YouTubers don’t ask hard questions, they ask about fact sheet features list bullet-point shit. Because that’s what their audiences want…they just want to know how long the campaign is, who’s on the roster, DLC, and whatnot. They wanna know how good the graphics are, not the context for all this stuff. And fine, that’s totally okay, it’s just not what I want to write about.” And the thing about covering games that aren’t yet out, interviewing developers, requires going through PR to gain access. They are the gatekeepers and the devs have a script of their own they need to be sticking with. It’s a tricky balancing act for PR. I do not write this at all saying their jobs are easy or that they are single-handedly responsible for warping the conversation around games. Their side just have a hand in it like everyone else. Both these writers wanted to cover Mortal Kombat’s violence conceptually, and were met with resistance in a variety of ways. The same writer from before told me, “I went to the studio day because [a PR rep] told me the team would be stupid-busy with crunch and I couldn’t visit solo or at any other time. Then, at the event, some tall English guy…was talking with one of the devs and asked if they were still on for solo time the next day. So there’s that.” Another writer, also via email, preferring to be called a “veteran news journalist” said they were not allowed to bring their photographer “despite the fact that half the people that come are YouTubers and streamers…just filming themselves playing the game.” They both told me about PR “hostage holding” with members of the dev team – basically, because PR didn’t feel comfortable with the angles for these stories, these writers were kept from spending time talking to certain members on the dev team. One of them told me they were “told I don’t get any other interviews because ‘I wouldn’t get any different kinds of comments.’” These writers felt as I did: Their names were on these pieces and they wanted to do the pieces they wanted to do. Not only that, but they were the pieces they already got greenlit by their editors to do. It was the work they were expected to do. It was their job. And just as I rarely ran into resistance on, say, my unusual interview angles with Jeff Tweedy or Lewis Black – I continue to find it so odd that there is so much reluctance for transparency and cooperation in videogames on stuff like this. This story about a PR event with writers being jerked around is the same at any game event you can imagine or have heard about. Regardless of who is seeming to be “favored” in this hierarchy of influencers, if you’re at E3, GDC, or a pre-arranged studio visit, there is a script that must be stuck to. I know because I’ve done my fair share of these and they are not fun if you want to do something different or more ambitious than play a game while people narrate the game at you while you play the game and then listen to people, also gated by PR, discussing at length the things they’re supposed to be talking about in the game you just played and nothing further. Again, this is not unique to games. I’ve just never seen it so severely practiced anywhere else. I reached out to a number of streamers as well as people involved with PR on Mortal Kombat for comment on this story and received no response. I have no judgment on this at all, just letting you know: I did reach out, and I did try. And so, we have an industry here with roles that cannot function as they are traditionally defined. “Games journalist” or not, we have people doing marketing – trying to write something inventive and a little creative but being told “no”. Please don’t confuse my name-dropping of comedians and rockstars I spoke with as intended to impress. They are conversations I will always treasure having had and appreciate that I got paid to have them: But I know they were only talking to me to sell tickets or shift units off shelves. That doesn’t mean there can’t be creativity at play here and that if we work together we can’t entertain the audience a bit more together, though. But videogames by and large will have none of that: Just tell people why they should buy stuff, or give preferential treatment to those with a bigger reach who can just show them why they should buy it. It is very odd that there was pushback on Mortal Kombat X and discussing its violence on Conan O’Brien’s “Clueless Gamer” that featured the title back in January and they, of course, discussed its violence. In the hierarchy of videogames and games publicity, though, PR bows to mainstream media expressing an interest in your title. It is a big boon: remember the incredulousness I was met with I started covering games? And like videogames themselves, believe me: The Onion is nowhere near as mainstream as you might think they are. Conan is a household name pretty much no matter where you live. But this sort of stuff didn’t start with Mortal Kombat and I know it also didn’t start just as I was coming of age in this landscape. I’ve spoken with people who wrote about games since the late ‘80s who for a variety of reasons fizzled and moved on from that pursuit. Part of it’s just that writing for the Internet is a grind and burnout is a thing, and part of it is that being an intelligent and curious individual doesn’t vibe well with trying to write about games on an ongoing basis if you want to support yourself and keep feeding your brain. In the late ‘80s and ‘90s, the rates at most places are what most people who don’t write perceive them to be – which, without naming outlets or their rates, I’ll just tell you this: think of your typical games outlet today, and most pay freelance writers, if they have a budget for such things at all, one-fifth of what you think they’re getting. Wouldn’t you want to move on, too? And so, I know I am nowhere near the first person to try to articulate this strain of symptoms and the condition they add up to comprise. It’s just that most people who write about games move on or they’re so grateful they get to live out that aforementioned wet dream they choose not to rock the boat. But that harms the consumer in the end. A colleague of mine who used to be my reviews editor at a magazine that’s now gone – and how sad is that my stating this conjures up multiple possible places this could be – told me the other night he never explicitly heard marching orders to only give positive reviews. But there’s an unspoken, apprehensive fear of crossing game publishers or game PR people: If you give negative press, they’ll delay you in getting stuff to write about. And in those days, good luck finding games to write about if you aren’t being given the competitive edge of advance copies and access to developers for features and comments. But those days are long gone. Today, everyone is a journalist. Everyone is a writer. Everyone has an opinion, and so we are all equally drowning each other out. Very few are saying anything new. And so, forgive me for again dipping a few decades back again, but this talk of the early days of rock criticism and Lester Bangs offset by exploring the thriving streaming scene makes me think of another comparison I haven’t heard others levy: payola. If you have streamers encouraged to stick to the script who are making cash hand over first, don’t you sort of wonder where all that money comes from? And doesn’t this term, really, sort of apply to before the rise of streaming, anyway? Where’s that article or mindset of recognizing that in games? Calling it what it is? I’m not at all accusing anyone of anything and I don’t know who that would really harm, but if individuals can be made irrelevant or at least late to the party for expressing less than glowing opinions at times, and we’ve seen publications fall in favor of individuals – isn’t it at least worth pondering the possibilities therein? And isn’t it worth pondering the fact that with all these dollars behind games, a responsible press would be sniffing around on such things? And isn’t it reasonable to also wonder whether the audience for games might want something more and something different from the bigger companies who could reasonable afford to? Doesn’t the potential audience for games get a voice in this, too? It might not be on your script, but shouldn’t it be? * * * So, I don’t know. As is my wont, and why I started don’t die: I don’t have many answers myself. Given the above, how could I possibly? How could any writer in this field? I have worked in and around this industry for a long time and honestly just found it embarrassing that there are so few answers. I just have questions and recognize patterns of behavior. That’s hardly a poignant note to go out on here, though. So, instead, I will turn, again, to one of my survey responders: The vast majority of writing about games would be more accurately identified as criticism, opinion writing, bland news-cycle churnalism which involves no reporting work, or ideologically-based cultural commentary. On the rare occasions that an act of journalism is performed by a member of the games media, the reporters doing the work (original, objective reporting telling a story using multiple sources) are almost never working under an editor that has produced original reporting in a non-videogame context… Slapping the ‘journalism’ label on everything a ‘games journalist’ produces also results in irrational expectations from readers: ‘aren’t these game reviews supposed to be objective, since you’re a journalist, and journalists are supposed to strive for objectivity?’ No, they’re not, because reviews aren’t journalism. There you go, all of #gamergate solved in one Q&A. All I can add to this is that I don’t ever remember people talking about pinball journalists. Maybe some of what us marketers do can be occasionally considered journalism, but are we journalists? Hardly? Does it matter? No. Should we be focusing instead on games and how they can continue to grow and shift? Yes. Eventually. But we need to reframe the conversations that feel so omnipresent elsewhere if we want to move on. Until then, we are all only in marketing. ——— David Wolinsky has opinions about videogames. He’s the creator of don’t die, a videogame-industry confessional forum and the co-producer of The Electric Cybercast II: Online, the world’s only podcast about videogames. Support his Patreon and follow him on Twitter @davidwolinsky.

More good news for network security: It turns out that the tools attackers use to control compromised computers are themselves full of security holes. A couple of undergrads interning for Matasano Security have reverse-engineered the Remote Access Tools (RATs) that attackers use to gain control of compromised machines. According to Dark Reading, Jesse Hertz and Shawn Denbow found numerous flaws in commonly used RATs, including SQL injection, arbitrary file reading, and weak encryption. “This shows that it is possible, and that it’s not hard, to pick apart attacker tools and come up with proactive defenses against them,” says John Villamil, senior security consultant with Matasano, who served as Denbow and Hertz’s adviser for the project. “If nothing else, it can help forensics companies analyzing traffic from compromises … and help build tools that analyze these Trojans, and provide signatures [to detect them].” Vulnerability research into attacker tools is rare, but not unheard of. “It’s very rare to see this type of research,” Villamil says. RATs, which typically conduct keylogging, screen and camera capture, file management, code execution, and password-sniffing, for example, basically give the attacker a foothold in the infected machine as well as the targeted organization. This is great news for cybersecurity. It opens new opportunities for attribution of computer attacks, along lines I’ve suggested before: “The same human flaws that expose our networks to attack will compromise our attackers’ anonymity.” In this case, the flaws identified by Hertz and Denbow could allow defenders to decrypt stolen documents and even to break into the attacker’s command and control link – while the attacker is still on line. That opens up the possibility of a true counterhack, in which the defender exploits a flawed attack to gain control of the attacker’s machine. It’s only a matter of time before counterhacks become possible. The real question is whether they’ll ever become legal. Both the reporter and the security researcher agree that, “legally, organizations obviously can’t hack back at the attacker.” I think they’re wrong on the law, but first let’s explore the policy question. Should victims be able to poison attackers’ RATs and then use the compromised RAT against their attacker? We’ll start with the obvious. Somebody should be able to do this. And, indeed, it seems nearly certain that somebody in the U.S. government — using some combination of law enforcement, intelligence, counterintelligence, and covert action authorities — can do this. (I note in passing, though, that there may be no one below the President who has all these authorities, so that as a practical matter RAT poisoning may not happen without years of delay and a convulsive turf fight. That’s embarrassing, but beside the point, at least today.) Asking government to do the job has some drawbacks, though. Counterhacking is likely to work best if the attacker is actually on line, when the defenders can stake out the victim’s system, ready to give the attacker bad files, to monitor the command and control machine, and to copy, corrupt, or modify exfiltrated material. Defenders may have swing into action with little warning. Who is going to do this? Put aside the turf fight. Does anyone think that NSA or the FBI or the CIA have enough technically savvy counterhackers to stake out the networks of the Fortune 500, waiting for the bad guys to show up? And even if they do, who wants them there? Privacy campaigners will hate the idea of giving the government that kind of access to private networks, even networks that are under attack. For that matter, businesses holding sensitive data won’t much like the stark choice of either letting foreign governments steal it all or giving the US government wide access to their networks. From a policy point of view, surely everyone would be happier if businesses could hire their own network defenders to do battle with attackers. Hiring defenders would greatly reinforce the thin ranks of government investigators. It would make wide-ranging government access to private networks less necessary. And busting the government monopoly on active defense would probably increase the diversity, imagination, and effectiveness of the counterhacking community. But, you ask, what about vigilantism, that tired bugaboo of the Justice Department’s Old Guard? First, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, allowing private counterhacking doesn’t mean reverting to a Hobbesian war of all against all. Government can set rules and discipline violators, just as it does with other privatized forms of law enforcement, from the securities industry’s FINRA to private investigators. Second, the “vigilatism” claim depends heavily on sleight of hand. People who hate this idea invariably call it “hacking back,” with the heavy implication that the defenders will blindly fire malware at whoever touches their network, laying indiscriminate waste to large swaths of the Internet. For the record, I’m against that kind of hacking back too. But RAT poison makes possible a kind of counterhacking that is far more tailored and prudent. Indeed, with such a tool, trashing the attacker’s system is dumb; it is far more valuable as an intelligence tool than for any other purpose. Of course, even if they aren’t trashing machines, the defenders will be collecting information. And gathering information from someone else’s computer certainly raises moral and legal questions. So let’s look at the computers that RAT poisoning might allow investigators to access. First, and most exciting, this research could allow us to short-circuit some of the cutouts that attackers use to protect themselves. I grant that I’m beyond my technical capabilities in saying this, but it seems highly unlikely to me that an attacker can use a RAT effectively without a real-time connection from his machine to the compromised network. Sure, the attacker can run his commands through onion routers and cutout controllers. But at the end of all the hops, the attacker is still typing here and causing changes there. If the software he’s using can be compromised, then it may be possible to reverse the flow of code inject arbitrary code into his machine and thus compromise both ends of the attacker’s communications. That’s the Holy Grail of attribution, of course. Is there a policy problem with allowing private investigators to compromise the attacker’s machine for the purpose of gathering attribution information? Give me a break. Surely not even today’s ACLU could muster more than a flicker of concern for a thief’s right to keep his victim from recovering stolen data. The harder question comes when the attacker is using a cutout — an intermediate command and control computer that actually belongs to someone else. In theory, gathering information on the intermediate computer intrudes on the privacy of the true owner. But, assuming that he’s not a party to the crime, he has already lost control of his computer and his privacy, since the attacker is already using it freely. What additional harm does the owner suffer if the victim gathers information on his already-compromised machine about the person who attacked them both? Indeed, an intermediate command and control machine is likely to hold evidence about hundreds of other compromised networks. Most of those victims don’t know they’ve been compromised, but their records are easy to recover from the intermediate machine once it has been accessed. Surely the social value of identifying and alerting all those victims outweighs the already attenuated privacy interest of the true owner. In short, there’s a strong policy case for letting victims of cybercrime use tools like this to counterhack their attackers. If the law forbids it, then to paraphrase Mr. Bumble, “the law is a ass, a idiot,” and Congress should change it. But I don’t think the law really does prohibit counterhacking of this kind, for reasons I’ll offer in a later post. PHOTO: iStockPhoto UPDATE: I modified a phrase that turned out to be more colorful than helpful to literal-minded readers.

THE Israeli ambassador to Australia has been rebuked for reportedly referring to Asians as "the yellow race" with "slanted eyes". Naftali Tamir was reported to have made the comments during an interview with Israel's Haaretz newspaper, in which he made his case for greater co-operation between his country and Australia. "Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia," Mr Tamir was quoted as saying. "We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not - we are basically the white race." Speaking in Jerusalem last night, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ilana Ravid said officials were checking whether the ambassador had been quoted accurately. "If they are accurate, these are grave and inappropriate expressions that the Foreign Ministry will not allow to pass without a response," she said. Ministry officials said Mr Tamir was on a flight to Australia and had not yet been reached for clarification. According to Haaretz, the ministry said it would not return to business as usual if an internal examination confirmed that Mr Tamir made the comments attributed to him. Mr Tamir met Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni during the week, emphasising the potential for developing trade and other links in Asia through Australia. Mr Tamir told Haaretz he did not raise the subject of reopening the Israeli consulate in Sydney during the meeting. The consulate's closure after budget cuts four years ago was fiercely protested by Australia's Jewish community, which offered to finance its operations to keep it open. "I am very much in support of reopening the consulate," Mr Tamir told the newspaper. "But at the present time, due to budgetary limitations - which are even greater than they were before - it's simply not feasible." A career diplomat who served in Tokyo, Washington, Strasbourg and as ambassador in Finland, Mr Tamir is also Israel's non-resident ambassador to Papua New Guinea, Fiji and New Zealand. AP

If Mexico fails to reach the World Cup for the first time since 1990, it would be a costly failure for the country's national soccer federation, the players and numerous sponsors and businesses. According to the U.S. business and technology website Business Insider, Mexico sitting out next summer's tournament in Brazil could result in $600 million in lost TV, merchandise and sponsorship revenue -- not to mention lost prestige for Mexican soccer. Mexico, fourth in the regional World Cup qualifying standings, needs only a draw Tuesday night in Costa Rica to hold on to that spot and advance to a two-leg playoff next month with New Zealand. The winner of the series would earn one of the final World Cup berths. But if Mexico loses and Panama beats a depleted U.S. squad Tuesday, then Mexico would be out and Panama would play New Zealand. Mexican sports marketing expert Rogelia Roa says if that happens, TV broadcasters would take a hit on ad revenue, and not just in Mexico, where Televisa and TV Azteca paid a reported $100 million for rights to the tournament. Univision paid $325 million to broadcast the 2010 and 2014 World Cups in Spanish in the U.S. And while ESPN has been breaking World Cup qualifying ratings records with its broadcasts of U.S. men's national team games, its audience still lags behind its Spanish-language counterparts.

ALHAMBRA (CBSLA.com) — Alhambra High School officials have dismissed the institution’s football coaching staff after it emerged players had been given nutritional supplement Creatine to enhance their performance on the field. Head coach Chuck Leonardis told the Pasadena Star News seven players had been given the organic acid by his staff after the students had asked about it. Athletic director Jerry DeSantis confirmed the school was “in the process of a coaching change”. Leonardis denied doing anything wrong. He said players were given “extremely low dosages” of Creatine, which is naturally synthesized in the human body for muscle use. He also said he asked students to alert their parents. “We were very up front and did not recommend it. We had the kids talk to their parents. It’s a legal over-the-counter supplement and we did not break any school rules,” Leonardis said. Principal Duane Russell announced the decision after a parent who was not notified complained, according to the Star News. The outlet reports Leonardis had been appointed to the position in December after his predecessor, Joe Kanach, was fired mid-season for alleged misconduct. The school’s football season is scheduled to kick off August 30. Officials expect to announce Leonardis’ replacement before that time.

AFP via Getty Images An Indian tuberculosis patient rests while a stray dog drinks water from his mug underneath his bed at the Rajan Babu Tuberculosis Hospital in New Delhi on March 24, 2014. India must stop its doctors prescribing 'irrational' treatments to cure tuberculosis, medical humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres said March 22, warning the practice is increasing drug-resistant strains of the disease. AFP PHOTO/Chandan KHANNA (Photo credit should read Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images) March 24 was World Tuberculosis Day. Not a day for celebrations in India if we consider that we have the highest TB burden globally with a million "missing" cases that remain undiagnosed, untreated and possibly undocumented. What's worse is that India's TB crisis -- the result of years of bureaucratic neglect and private sector disease mismanagement-- is now creating an epidemic of drug resistant (DR) TB with nearly a 100,000 DR TB cases. These are difficult to diagnose and treat, with less than 50% chance of recovery. World TB Day then, if anything, is a reminder of the crisis ahead. India wasn't always the global problem of TB control. A decade ago, it was considered a leader and its TB programme cited as a successful example of infectious disease management. A combination of poor management, apathy towards the private sector and its patients and the continued resistance to addressing the problem of DR TB created what is nothing short of a public health crisis and an epidemic. Of these, perhaps the most critical factor has been a continued apathy towards private sector patients. By some estimates close to 70% of all TB patients first seek care in India's vast, heterogeneous and unregulated private sector where there is extensive misuse of diagnostics and appropriate treatment is rarely available. From quacks, compounders to Ayush doctors -- anyone may treat TB without being checked or appropriately trained. Even if accurate diagnosis is available, appropriate treatment is rarely assured. "The government's inability to view TB in a broader public health framework and its failure to effectively engage the private sector as a partner in controlling TB continues to cost India thousands of lives." Despite widespread knowledge of this, the government over the last few decades did little to curb or change these practices. Ethically, this is the equivalent of deliberate negligence. Unfortunately, the government's inability to view TB in a broader public health framework and its failure to effectively engage the private sector as a partner in controlling TB continues to cost India thousands of lives. A decade of neglect has now resulted in an epidemic of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB) with close to 100,000 cases. A single case of MDR-TB can infect another 10-20 cases a year unless the patient is started promptly on effective treatment. In many of India's urban centres the MDR-TB case burden is significant with some strains resistant to all available drugs as was reported in Mumbai in 2012. Yet there seem to be no alarm in the government. Despite its extensive human costs, TB gets little or no political attention. Most politicians continued to remain uninformed about the epidemic and its magnitude. This continued apathy has led to budget cuts in a tuberculosis control programme that needs more resources and personnel - it is often barely able to pay its workers on time. Meanwhile, India's poorest and most vulnerable have few options -- if they go to the public health system they are faced with endless waiting, mistreatment, poor diagnostics and frequent drug stock outs. In the private sector, there is poor quality of care and the cost of diagnosing and treating TB is prohibitive, pushing families into debt and poverty. In the end, many give up and disappear becoming one of the missing million in India. "A decade of neglect has now resulted in an epidemic of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB) with close to 100,000 cases. A single case of MDR-TB can infect another 10-20 cases a year unless the patient is started promptly on effective treatment." A recent open letter put together by some experts and endorsed by leading citizens (including Aamir Khan, Adi Godrej, Aruna Roy and MS Swaminathan among others) puts together some suggestions on TB management to the Prime Minister's office. These could be useful in determining how we need to address TB in India. These recommendations are available here. If India wants to address its TB epidemic it must begin by looking at these recommendations and finding and treating these missing million patients. It essential India begin by providing free and accurate diagnosis to every single patient whether in the public or the private sector. The government also needs to provide all TB patients with an upfront Drug Susceptibility Test, to rapidly identify MDR and more severe forms of DR-TB. Instead of giving a standardised regimen we need to individualise treatment regimens, choosing only drugs to which we know the TB bacteria to be sensitive to. The government must also consider introducing, under controlled conditions, new drugs that have the potential for curing the most resistant TB strains. Simultaneously, we must recognise that we have failed on issues of prevention, community engagement and empowerment. This can be remedied through comprehensive multi-media campaigns to ensure awareness of TB, community engagement and empowerment programmes to help fight stigma. Most critically, the government must give up its ambivalence and actively and effectively engage the private sector. That is where India's real crisis of TB exists. TB in India will never be controlled without participation from the private sector. We must learn from experiments currently underway in India where local city governments have transformed how TB is diagnosed and treated ,addressing the crisis upfront. Finally, the programme must recognise the economic and social dimensions of TB. TB often afflicts those between the ages of 15-44 leading to poverty and a loss in income. The government needs to provide nutrition supplements for all TB patients with low body weight and those below the poverty line. It should also create economic support programmes for TB patients and their families during the treatment period, to avoid further impoverishment. Yet none of this will be possible until sufficient political attention and resources are combined with innovative thinking and deep focus on the patient to address this imminent crisis. Until then, TB will continue to remains India's silent killer and the missing million will remain missing.

To be clear, what you are looking at is not Dave Bermingham's glove right after fellow adult league hockey player Zung Nguyen defecated in it following a fight. What you are looking at is Dave Bermingham's glove a week later, still pregnant with feces. Bermingham took this photo on his phone and shared it with teammates, one of whom shared it with us. "We played the following Friday in the same rink and got the same bench, and lo-and-behold, the glove was still there. The ref had tossed it in the trash barrel during our game, but you can imagine what happened…'Hey, there's a new-looking glove in the trash! That can't be right! Let me just grab this…ugh!' I can imagine that it must have happened multiple times during the week." In the past few days, we've heard from multiple people who have played with and against Nguyen, and every single one stresses what a nice guy he is and how shocked they are that he'd do something like this. In other circumstances, it might have even been funny. (Sure, when 16-year-old Nyjer Morgan creatively poops at hockey camp, he's a prankster, but when a 37-year-old man does it, he's banned for life.) So we're more than willing to chalk this up to a moment of foolishness and feculence.

“What I’m hoping, quite frankly, is that Sen. Tester moves rapidly to the middle,” Rep. Ryan Zinke said of the two-term incumbent he is considering taking on. “His votes have not been consistent with Montana.” | AP Photo 2018 showdown looms: House Republicans vs. Democratic senators Reps. Ryan Zinke and Kevin Cramer eye Senate bids in friendly territory represented by Democrats. As Democratic senators weigh when to fight and when to compromise with Donald Trump, Republicans on the other side of the Capitol are watching — with 2018 in mind. Several of the 10 Democrats up for reelection in states that Trump won are likely to face off against members of the House Republican Conference. And on Thursday, one of those potential Senate hopefuls, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, fired a warning shot at his possible rival, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. Story Continued Below “What I’m hoping, quite frankly, is that Sen. Tester moves rapidly to the middle,” Zinke said of the two-term incumbent he is considering taking on. “His votes have not been consistent with Montana.” Zinke said he’s preparing “to get a lot of pressure” to run against Tester, who chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during a disappointing 2016 election cycle for his party. The two-term congressman has met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) about a possible bid. Tester would be “a formidable opponent, should I run,” Zinke added. “I’m in no hurry to make a decision.” Democrats had hoped to defeat Zinke this year to kill off the Senate prospects of the affable former Navy SEAL. But despite Tester’s personal attention to the campaign of Democrat Denise Juneau, who challenged Zinke for Montana’s at-large House seat, the Republican coasted to an 18-point victory. Tester said Thursday he’d bet a steak dinner that Zinke will run against him. No matter what, the Democrat is girding for a fight. “They’re going to get someone tough,” Tester said Thursday. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who was elected in 2014 in the increasingly red state, said it was “too soon” to say definitively how much trouble Tester might be in. “Every election has a different dynamic,” Daines said. "You saw what happened last cycle. It was assumed we were going to lose the majority." Beyond Montana, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) could face a strong challenger in Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). Like Zinke, Cramer was an early backer of Trump’s presidential bid even as the Republican establishment chafed at the New York developer. Cramer often appears on short lists to lead Trump’s Department of Energy, though one source working on the president-elect’s transition said the two-term Republican is expected to take on Heitkamp rather than join the administration. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), the former House member chairing the National Republican Senatorial Committee for 2018, praised Cramer as a “tireless advocate.” “He puts the people of North Dakota before everything else, and that’s what people want in their elected member of the Senate,” Gardner said. “And obviously, in the 2018 election cycle, we just have to plan on winning every race. And of course, he’d be very good at it.” Heitkamp has long made clear that she expects a bruising reelection battle and plans to remind voters of her work with the GOP. “My whole purpose in being here is trying to bridge some of these partisan divides and try and get things done,” Heitkamp said. “I don’t care what their label is. When I agree with them, we’re going to do business. When I disagree with them, we’re going to have a conversation.” Democrats are expecting a challenge to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) from either Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) or state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. Manchin is hoping for a repeat performance of this year's election, when his state installed a Democratic governor at the same time it overwhelmingly voted for Trump. “It’s a very good sign. Basically people look at the individual,” Manchin said. Voters "know who I am.” Still, Manchin acknowledged that his next campaign is “going to be more challenging.” He joined an expanded Senate Democratic leadership slate on Wednesday, giving him a chance to make his case for making deals with Trump — but also potentially allowing Republicans to directly tie Manchin to any Democratic obstructionism. Given how quickly his state has gone from blue to red, it’s unclear how effective Manchin's earlier campaign strategies for governor and senator might be. “I’ve been in office since 2001, the state has dramatically changed its politics,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who added: “Every election’s a challenge and he knows that, I think. He’s up for the challenge. He’s a very intuitive politician.” In Missouri, which Trump carried by 19 points, several GOP House members are seen as potential challengers to Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill: Reps. Vicky Hartzler, Ann Wagner, or Billy Long. Incumbent GOP Sen. Roy Blunt just survived a nimble challenge in the state by Democrat Jason Kander. In Indiana, meanwhile, Republican Rep. Luke Messer could end up squaring off against Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly. Trump won the Hoosier State by a staggering 28 points. Historically the party in power has lost ground during the first midterm election under a new president. In 2010, Democrats lost the House and relinquished six Senate seats as voters recoiled at some of Barack Obama's early initiatives, especially his health care law. The 2018 Senate map gives the GOP a buffer to weather that trend. But if the country doesn't like what the next two years out of Washington brings, Republicans won't be able to shirk the blame. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said he and other Republicans who were elected to the Senate in 2014 ran as outsiders vowing to shatter the status quo. Asked if Republicans will have to retool that message after they take the wheel in Washington, he said, "That depends on whether or not we actually deliver on what we said we were going to do. So the first 100 days with the new president are going to be critical.”

The mainstream media seems to have slept on this story, and it does us all a great disservice, but I’m hoping to correct that. Last month, the New Hampshire Institute of Politics invited sixteen lesser-known candidates for president, including nine republicans and seven democrats, to a forum, where they could outline their views and engage in lively debate. It was there that Rockport Massachusetts’s ‘Vermin Supreme,’ (seen at right sprinkling glitter dust over West Virginia’s Randall Terry) won the official endorsement of FilmDrunk.com. While we certainly can’t overlook the importance of his awesome hat, it was his positions on the issues that matter to us that ultimately won him this coveted endorsement. Vermin Supreme, the perennial satirical candidate who runs on a platform of zombie preparedness and a pony for each American, came wearing about seven neckties and a giant boot over his head. [unionleader] Stronger zombie defense and universal pony access are exactly the kind of common sense platforms we need in these tough economic times. The head boot and glitter bombs, that’s just good showmanship. And if, in the spirit of bipartisanship, Supreme chose as his running mate The Rent is Too Damn High Party’s Jimmy MacMillan, I think MacMillan’s karate expertise could give this ticket the shot in the arm it needs. As a side note, Vermin Supreme is exactly how I always imagined Quentin Tarantino’s cocaine wizard. [hat tip: TheDailyWhat]

Five people have been shot and injured at a Black Lives Matter protest in Minnesota in an attack that activists claim was racially motivated. The Minneapolis police department said officers responded to reports of a shooting at 10.30pm on Monday evening where a protest against the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a policeman last year was taking place. While police confirmed on Tuesday that they were looking for three white males in connection with the attack, a Black Lives Matter spokeswoman claimed that the men were white supremacists. In a month which has been punctuated by fear-mongering from right-wing politicians over the threat posed by refugees following the attack in Paris, many in the US have pointed out that perhaps the country needs to have a re-think over who poses the bigger threat. Which, as many have pointed out on social media, does sound quite similar to the events in Paris: Subsequently, the use of the word "terrorist" has been noticeable in social media coverage: Which has led many to question how we define the term: Following Monday night's attack, the family of Jamar Clark, the black man shot last year, called for the protest to be cancelled "out of imminent concern for the safety of the occupiers".

Join renowned economist Michael Hudson as he discusses his new book, J is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception at Busboys & Poets (1025 5th St NW location) at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, February 21. In this follow-on to his Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroyed the Global Economy (2015), Hudson discusses how mainstream economic vocabulary has been contorted to obscure the manner in which financial giants extract wealth from rest of the economy. This A-Z user's guide will serve as critical reading for those seeking to understand the broader economic system during this new "post-fact" era. A former Wall Street analyst, government adviser, and fierce critic of neoliberal economic order, Hudson is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Professor of Economics at Peking University in China. He gives speeches, lectures and presentations all over the world for diverse academic, economic and political audiences. He is the author of many books on the global economy, with a focus on financial history, debt, land tenure and related economic institutions from antiquity to the present. The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited so please register here. Hudson will be signing copies of J is for Junk Economics, which will be available for purchase at the event. You can learn more about Michael Hudson here.

Today was going just fine, I woke up, took a shower, and was heading down to get clean fresh clothes. I notice me sister in the kitchen looking for something, I say to her "What's poppin jimbo" and she goes nuts, calling me names telling me to get the fuck away from here, so I do. I start to head down to the stairs and she gets in my face, I tell her to hit me, I dare her, she backs off. So I go down and get fresh clothes and once I come up she tells me to leave her alone, despite the fact I didn't do anything to her. I tell her to stop talking to me if she wants me to go away, she gets mad, I tell her if she has a problem she can go somewhere else. At this point am I pissed at her feminist equality bullshit, as I am walking away I call her a trigger cunt, she can't take that and goes nuts, getting in my face about to do something. She tells me to call her that again so I do, she slaps me in my arm, I call her a trigger cunt again and as I am about to go away I can tell she is going to hit me soon. She keeps calling me stuff and I can't take it, I hit her straight in the jaw, she is shocked I hit her back, she goes in to kick me, I raise my leg up to block her and I then push her to the ground. She calls the cops and said something along the lines of "I am dangerous I am on meds and I can't control myself". I come up from putting clothes away and I talk to the cops that are now in my house, I am calm and tell them what they want to know, explaining the laws here and how she attacked me first, the cop says I am a man and I shouldn't do that blah blah blah and tells my sister she can get charges pressed if she wants to. You guys wanted your pussypass content well here it is, sorry for the wall of text.

On 3 October 2017, a Facebook user shared a photograph of a racist letter that he said was sent anonymously to a daycare center with which his family is affiliated: Hello I am writing this as a concerned parent and friend! So most of us noticed you have a black girl working for the daycare. Our problem is she’s too dark most of the kids is scared of her. I am only telling you this because some of us are planning to pull our kid form the daycare shes an eye sore. I see you’re trying to touch all of the nationalities but maybe hire a light skinned black she would blend more and not look like a “NANNY”. She’s not the first thing a child nor the parents want to see soon as they walk in the daycare. So the choice is yours! Choose wisely remember WE THE PARENTS PAY YOUR MORTAGE. I hope you make her aware shes not wanted. I’m sending her a copy as well. However if she needs a job Mcdonalds is always hiring her kind. So work your magic and make it disappear!!! P.S. Just trying “TO MAKE YOUR DAYCARE GREAT AGAIN” Although it is not uncommon for nasty letters and other controversies to be faked by social media users for attention or viral fame, this appears to be genuine — at least to the extent that we reached out to the daycare center, who averred that they received the letter but didn’t know who sent it or why. Sarah Wojcik, a reporter for the local Morning Call, told us that that police were also aware of the letter:

Donald Trump (Screenshot/ABC News) GOP nominee Donald Trump said in an interview on Saturday with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that he got a letter from the National Football League saying they were unhappy that upcoming presidential debates conflicted with scheduled game broadcasts — but the NFL has denied sending Trump any such letter. Trump was responding to Stephanopoulos’ question on Saturday about whether he’d accept the three-debate schedule proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates. “Well, I’ll tell you what I don’t like,” Trump responded. “It’s against two NFL games. I got a letter from the NFL saying, ‘this is ridiculous, why are the debates against — because the NFL doesn’t want to go against the debates because the debates are gonna be pretty massive, from what I understand, OK. And I don’t think we should be against the NFL. I don’t know how the dates were picked.” Stephanopoulos asked if he were against the dates picked. “Hillary Clinton wants to be against the NFL,” Trump said. “Maybe like she did with Bernie Sanders where they were on Saturday nights when nobody’s home.” A spokesman for the NFL told CNN’s Brian Stelter that the organization had not sent a letter to Trump. “While we’d obviously wish the debate commission could find another night, we did not send a letter to Trump,” Stelter quoted the spokesman saying. Watch Trump’s comments, as posted by ABC News, here: ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

Red Dead Redemption players, you've done some very bad things. Just pretending, of course! GameSpy has been collecting data from players of Rockstar Games' hit Western and the results are amazing. 12.6 million characters trampled by horses. 5,600 cumulative years spent in virtual jail. And that's just in two weeks! Earlier this week, we posted a snapshot of stats involving animal-hunting in Red Dead Redemption. At the time, we believed those stats, pulled from gamers networked to Rockstar's website, showed the full rankings of animals slayed by RDR players. Turns out that was just a tiny slice. The data we have for you today, via GameSpy, shows a whole lot more: Advertisement (Click the graphic to enlarge it) The huge graphic here shows a much bigger haul — numbers pulled by stat-tracking service GameSpy from almost three-million Red Dead Redemption players, from all of those who played the game on an online-connected Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 in the game's first two weeks of release. The GameSpy team told Kotaku today that the numbers pulled from Red Dead have continued to skyrocket. As of this past Tuesday, gamers have logged 3.6 billion minutes in the game. GameSpy works with Red Dead's creators at Rockstar Games to track more than 1000 statistics from each of the game's players. The companies use the statistics not just to wow gamers with nice infographics but to track playing patterns and learn how their games — and the elements within them — are being experienced by players. Ideally, this will lead to better games. Some of those stats can be seen on the Rockstar Social Club, the game maker's free site for all of its recent games.