Datasets:

stas

/

openwebtext-10k

like 14

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Paul Wood in Homs says there is "nowhere to hide" for the city's people Heavy artillery fire has been rocking Homs, as Syrian troops step up an assault on the restive city. A BBC correspondent there describes almost constant blasts, in the fiercest attack in the 11-month uprising. US President Barack Obama said it was important to resolve the conflict without outside military intervention. Meanwhile, Russia and China defended their veto of a UN draft resolution criticising Syria - a move that angered opponents of President Bashar al-Assad. Later the US State Department said it had closed its embassy in Damascus and pulled out all remaining staff because of security concerns. Washington had warned in January that it would close the embassy if the government did not step up security. 'Not safe at all' Homs, one of the main centres of resistance to Mr Assad's rule, has been under attack from government forces for several days. Shelling resumed shortly after daybreak on Monday, says BBC's Paul Wood who has managed to get into the city, and hundreds of shells and mortars have been fired throughout the day. Analysis Syrian state television denied that there had been any bombardment. It said residents were setting fire to piles of rubbish on the roofs of their homes to trick the world into thinking that there was an attack. There is no doubt, however, from what we have seen and heard, that hundreds of shells and mortars have been fired at this place during the day. As I write this, the windows of the house we are in are still reverberating from the impact of a shell, probably in the next street. It is true that people have been setting fire to rubbish in the streets. They believe it will confuse the guidance systems of rockets apparently being fired at them. They are probably mistaken. People in this part of Homs say these attacks are the worst they have known since the beginning of the uprising, almost a year ago. The bombing has been going on for several days now. 'They are still picking up the bodies' Homs: 'Who will help us now?' Avoiding Syria's secret police Eyewitness Danny Abdul Dayem told the BBC the army was using rockets for the first time, with more than 300 falling on his locality since dawn. "It's not safe at all, a rocket could land in this house right now," he said Some rebels fighters have been firing automatic weapons in return, in what our correspondent calls a futile gesture. The rebels claim that the shelling has hit a field hospital in the Baba Amr district, causing casualties. However, our correspondent says this is impossible to verify. The facility is treating dozens of people wounded in previous assaults on Homs. Mr Dayem said only one field hospital with four doctors was still operating in the city, and it was virtually impossible to get additional medication without being shot. Another anti-government campaigner told the BBC the government was also using helicopters and tanks in the assault. Activists say at least 40 people were killed on Monday. Syrian state TV said "terrorist gangs" had blown up buildings in Homs. The state-run Sana news agency reported that an oil pipeline near the city had been hit by an explosion on Monday. It also blamed "terrorists". Both Syrian media and activists are also reporting clashes in the northern city of Idlib and the town of Zabadani, north-west of Damascus. The government says it is fighting foreign-backed armed groups. Thousands of former army soldiers have defected to the rebel side, forming the Free Syrian Army. The BBC's Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon says the conflict is beginning to look increasingly like a civil war with dangerous sectarian overtones. The uprising is largely rooted in poorer sections of the Sunni community, our correspondent says, while the government draws its support mostly from Alawites, Christians and other minorities fearful of an Islamist takeover. The Assad regime is feeling the noose tightening around them US President Barack Obama Russia keeps Syria options open 'Inexcusable' The Syrian opposition says Saturday's veto by China and Russia of a UN draft resolution condemning the crackdown will encourage the government to act without restraint. President Obama vowed to apply sanctions and put pressure on Mr Assad. "I think it is very important for us to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention. And I think that's possible," he said in an interview for the NBC network's Today programme broadcast on Monday. He added that a negotiated solution was possible and said the US was "relentless" in demanding that Mr Assad leave power. "The Assad regime is feeling the noose tightening around them," he said. "We're going to just continue to put more and more pressure until hopefully we see a transition." UK Foreign Secretary William Hague described the Russian and Chinese vetoes as "a grave error of judgement". Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Danny Abdul Dayem in Homs: "Pieces of bodies, children, women" French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would discuss the situation in Syria with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev later on Monday. "France and Germany will not abandon the Syrian people," Mr Sarkozy said after a meeting in Paris with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "We will not accept that the international community remains blocked." However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the resolution, drafted by Arab and European countries, would have meant taking sides in a civil war. Speaking in Bahrain on Monday, he said encouraging "armed extremist groups" would only cause more casualties, and said Moscow supported peaceful dialogue in Syria. Mr Lavrov is due to travel to Damascus on Tuesday for talks with President Assad. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Homs resident: "I watched a three-year-old girl dying" The Chinese government also defended its veto. It said the draft resolution would only have complicated matters, and said Beijing sought to "avoid the scourge of armed conflict". Human rights groups and activists say more than 7,000 people have been killed by Syrian security forces since the uprising began last March. The UN stopped estimating the death toll in Syria after it passed 5,400 in January, saying it was too difficult to confirm. President Assad's government says at least 2,000 members of the security forces have been killed fighting "armed gangs and terrorists".

"This monument reminds us all how important it is for us to respect every human being," remarks Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai at the unveiling Published 10:53 PM, January 10, 2014 TEL AVIV, Israel – Israel unveiled Friday, January 10, a memorial in Tel Aviv to remember the gay and lesbian victims of Nazi persecution, in a ceremony attended by Germany's ambassador. Members of Tel Aviv's gay community turned out to see the stone monument, modelled on the pink triangle Nazis made homosexuals wear in concentration camps during World War II, and features inscriptions in German, Hebrew and English. "In addition to the extermination of Europe's Jews, the Nazis committed many atrocities, in an attempt to destroy anyone who was considered different," Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said at the unveiling. "This monument reminds us all how important it is for us to respect every human being," he said. The heart of Israel's cultural life and a bastion of secularism, Tel Aviv hosts an annual gay pride parade with relatively few objections from the country's religious community, unlike similar events in Jerusalem that have seen violence and even one stabbing. Israel is widely seen as having liberal gay rights policies, despite the hostility shown towards homosexuals, particularly men, from the ultra-orthodox Jewish community. German Ambassador Andreas Michaelis said "it is important that we put up monuments and name streets, in order to remember things that happened in the past. But they must be first and foremost reminders for the future." Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany sent thousands of homosexuals to concentration camps in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Gestapo secret police arrested an estimated 100,000 men for being gay. – Rappler.com

KABUL, Afghanistan — Coalition forces killed the top-ranking Taliban official in restive Kunduz Province during an overnight raid, according to the Afghan police and a local governor. The officials said that Mullah Bahador, the Taliban’s shadow governor in the province, was killed late Thursday night. Abdul Rahman Saidkhaili, the provincial police chief, said the target of the raid was a house in the Chardara district. In a statement, coalition forces confirmed that they had killed an insurgent leader who “makes improvised explosive devices and suicide vests, leads a group of Taliban fighters and employs antiaircraft weapons against Afghan and coalition forces.” Coalition officials could not be reached Friday to try to confirm the name of the man who was killed. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Several suspected insurgents were arrested in the operation, the statement said. Formerly stable, Kunduz Province, which borders the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan, has become increasingly violent in the past two years, as Taliban fighters have relocated there after coalition operations against them in southern Afghanistan. Kunduz City is now nearly cut off by violence, with all roads leading out controlled by the Taliban and other armed groups. 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. The governor of Kunduz was killed in October by a bomb as he prayed in a mosque, and four Taliban suicide bombers killed five policemen two weeks ago.

Last year Ann Leckie’s novel Ancillary Justice won almost every major award in science fiction. It’s the story of Breq, a hive mind consisting of a sentient starship and its crew of networked soldiers. When an act of betrayal destroys the ship and all but one member of its crew, Breq sets out in her last remaining body to seek revenge. Breq’s story is told against the backdrop of the Radsch empire, a delightfully complex and colorful milieu. Leckie worked hard to create a plausible future free of any incongruous modern trappings, a common pitfall of far-future sci-fi. “It’s more easily noticeable in older science fiction,” says Leckie in Episode 120 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “We’ve got this future society and the technology’s all very different, but people are smoking cigarettes and using slide rules, and the social relationships are exactly like they would have been in the 50s. You know, the wife is bringing in coffee.” Wives bringing in coffee is the last thing you’d find in the Radsch empire, where citizens are so indifferent to gender that men and women act and dress alike and are often hard to distinguish, especially for an AI like Breq. The Radsch language also makes no distinction between men and women, a fact that’s reflected in the text by the decision to use the pronouns “she” and “her” for every character regardless of gender. The fact that readers will never really know the genders of most of the major characters has created an interesting challenge for fan artists, who have to rely on personal impressions when it comes to depicting the characters. “It’s clear that each of these artists who’ve done this have a very definite vision in their mind of what the characters look like,” says Leckie. “And they’re all very different from each other, and they’re all very different from my internal vision of the characters, and yet at the same time they all work.” This also makes the book a bit of a Rorschach test for readers, who sometimes form strong opinions about the gender of different characters and become convinced that their guesses have been confirmed by the text. Mostly they’re wrong. “There was one review where someone was saying that … the characters are straight who are involved in sexual relationships,” says Leckie. “And I was like, ‘How do they know that?'” Listen to our complete interview with Ann Leckie in Episode 120 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above), and check out some highlights from the discussion below. Ann Leckie on the pitfalls of portraying music in fiction: “I think a lot of times our culture has an attitude toward art and the production of art that separates artists from the rest of us, like making art or music or painting or whatever is some magical thing that you have to be inspired to do, and special people do it. Sometimes when somebody will write a character who’s musical there’ll be touches of that, there’ll be an almost Mary Sue-ish ‘they play and sing beautifully and all the animals stop and listen.’ I’m exaggerating, but that kind of fetishization of music and musical talent and singing, I’m not comfortable with myself. … I feel very strongly that art—and music in particular—is something that really everybody has some kind of ability to do, and that when you separate that out as something only special people can do, who are specially talented, you cut off that avenue of artistic expression for tons of people who would be able to enjoy it otherwise, but who think of it as something they can’t do, and I feel kind of strongly about that.” Ann Leckie on writing from the point of view of Breq: “Like a lot of writers, I’m a serious introvert, and talking to strangers, going out into a place—the grocery store or whatever—and talking to somebody I don’t know is really very difficult. … In college I got a job as a waitress, and in a lot of ways it was not a fun job, but in a lot of ways it was really very beneficial, because I didn’t know how those interactions were supposed to go with people I didn’t know well. But working for several years as a waitress you learn really quickly a couple of default scripts, so you know exactly what the interaction is going to be when the person sits down at the table. And then after a few months I’m like, ‘Oh, I can switch it up a bit. I can say, ‘Hey, it’s pretty rainy outside,’ and get a particular response to that. … And that’s something I found really very useful. But what it means is that I’m not the kind of person that those interactions come to naturally, and so when I’m thinking about Breq, I’m thinking about my own experience of, ‘Here I am talking to a person, now I need to pick a script.'” Ann Leckie on criticism of her use of pronouns: “I’ve been surprised at the number of people who were really angry that I tried to convey gender neutrality by using a gendered pronoun. Even if it was ‘she,’ which undercuts a masculine default, they feel as though it would have been much better if I had used an honest-to-goodness gender-neutral pronoun, and that would have conveyed it better. People have also been feeling angry that the male characters in the story are persistently mis-gendered, because they’re continually referred to as ‘she.’ I understand where that’s coming from, and it certainly wasn’t my intention to make anybody feel like they were being maliciously mis-gendered, and in some ways I share the frustration of folks about the third person neutral pronouns. I wish they were used more. … I think at the time I was working very strongly from an assumption … that in fact gender is a binary, and the implications of that do turn up in the text, and I know some people have pointed it out, and they’re right, it’s there, and had I been writing it now I probably would have handled those moments a little bit differently, but I think I would still have gone with ‘she,’ because I think it has a much stronger, more visceral effect.” Ann Leckie on ancient religion: “It’s a common part of the narrative of the history of Christianity that it was ‘real’ religion that involved real spirituality and real faith, and that’s why it’s completely superseded the more pagan polytheistic practices. I grew up Roman Catholic in a majority Roman Catholic city, and it wasn’t until I was about college age that I discovered some of the attitudes people who aren’t Catholic have toward Roman Catholicism—that it’s pagan superstition which has been superseded by true religiousness. … I’m not Catholic anymore, I’m an atheist, but I find that really offensive and hateful. If you look at anybody’s religious beliefs and practices that aren’t yours, they seem kind of shallow, and they don’t make sense, and they don’t have any resonance. … It’s really easy to look back, particularly with the way we’re taught in school about Greek and Roman paganism, that they’re just these stories, and these stories ‘explain’ why there’s lightning or why there’s winter and why there’s spring, because otherwise they didn’t understand it, they were just so ignorant, right? I think a lot of ancient polytheistic religions worked very differently from the way that Christianity works, but I do not think they were any less important to the people who lived those religions.”

Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email The Crown Prosecution Service has been fined £200,000 by data watchdogs after sensitive video interviews given to police by victims of sex abuse and violence were stolen from a private film studio in Manchester . The filmed statements involved were given to police by 43 victims and witnesses concerned in 31 separate criminal investigations. They included testimonies of alleged victims of disgraced radio DJ Jimmy Savile’s ex-chauffeur and flatmate Ray Teret , who was subsequently jailed for 25 years in December last year for rapes and indecent assaults on young girls. The videos, saved on laptops, were being edited by Manchester-based Swan Films for the CPS to use as evidence in court. All the cases involved allegations of violence or sexual abuse. The film company used a flat on Wilmslow Road, Rusholme , as a studio. Two laptops were stolen in a burglary there in September last year. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) launched an urgent investigation into the CPS’ contract with the company. The probe found the videos were not being kept in a secure environment. They were left on a desk and were password-protected, but not encrypted. The ICO said the studio had no alarm and ‘insufficient security’. The ICO’s head of enforcement, Stephen Eckersley, said the probe ruled the CPS was ‘negligent’ and failed to take into account the ‘substantial distress’ that would be caused if the videos were lost. The laptops were recovered by police eight days later. It’s understood that they hadn’t been accessed. Mr Eckersley said: “Handling videos of police interviews containing highly sensitive personal data is central to what the CPS does. "The CPS was aware of the graphic and distressing nature of the personal data contained in the videos, but was complacent in protecting that information. “The consequences of failing to keep that data safe should have been obvious to them.” The ICO said the alleged victims were vulnerable and had already endured ‘distressing interviews’. They talked openly in their statements, and named names. Mr Eckersley added: “If this information had been misused or disclosed to others, the consequences could have resulted in reprisals.” It was discovered during the probe that the CPS had been using the same film company since 2002. Arrangements surrounding collection and delivery of un-encrypted DVDs were found by the ICO to constitute an ongoing contravention of the Data Protection Act. The CPS said its contract with Swan Films was terminated immediately. Security arrangements have now been assessed and tightened. A spokesman said: “It is a matter of real regret that sensitive information was not held more securely by our external contractor, and that we, as an organisation, failed to ensure that it was. "We are grateful that the material was recovered without being accessed by those who stole the computer equipment but accept that this was fortuitous. "It is vital that victims of crime feel confident that breaches like this will not happen and, following a full review after this incident, we have strengthened the arrangements for the safe and secure handling of sensitive material.”

Getty Image Donald Trump wants to be hailed as the “Make America Great Again” president, but on Twitter, he’s known as another four-word expression: “A tweet for everything.” No matter what Trump does, there is an old tweet of his that applies (and is usually in direct opposition) to everything, especially when it comes to his predecessor, Barack Obama. There was the time the White House announced that visitor logs will not be made public (“Why does Obama believe he shouldn’t comply with record releases that his predecessors did of their own volition? Hiding something?”). Or when the Trump administration ordered an attack on Syria (“AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA – IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!”). Or when the president went on a 17-day vacation to play golf (“Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf?”). Trump’s latest “should regret, but doesn’t regret” tweet dates back to December 2014, when he wrote, “Obama has admitted that he spends his mornings watching @espn. Then he plays golf, fundraises & grants amnesty to illegals.” We already know about his propensity for playing golf, but he’s also an avid follower of ESPN. After SportsCenter host Jemele Hill called Trump a “white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists” and “the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime,” he tweet-demanded that ESPN “apologize for untruth.” Obama has admitted that he spends his mornings watching @ESPN. Then he plays golf, fundraises & grants amnesty to illegals. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2014 ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017 A president who spends his mornings watching TV? It’s hard to believe.

HUMAN FAMILY TREE used to be a scraggly thing. With relatively few fossils to work from, scientists' best guess was that they could all be assigned to just two lineages, one of which went extinct and the other of which ultimately gave rise to us. Discoveries made over the past few decades have revealed a far more luxuriant tree, however—one abounding with branches and twigs that eventually petered out. This newfound diversity paints a much more interesting picture of our origins but makes sorting our ancestors from the evolutionary dead ends all the more challenging, as paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood explains in the pages that follow. More on this topic: The Latest Fossil Finds Make the Puzzle of Human Evolution Harder Than Ever to Solve New Evidence Shows How Human Evolution Was Shaped by Climate New Twist Added to the Role of Culture in Human Evolution

Please enable Javascript to watch this video #1 of 2: Donald Trump's indecent comments in 2005 (11 yrs ago) - were made when he was a Democrat. The hypocrisy of HilaryClinton to say.. — Susan Hutchison (@Susan_Hutch) October 8, 2016 SEATTLE -- Taking a partisan view of Donald Trump's lewd comments about women, Washington State Republican Party Chairman Susan Hutchison said Friday night that the GOP presidential nominee's "indecent comments in 2005 ... were made when he was a Democrat." She added, "The hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton to say Trump does not belong in the White House when her husband defined this behavior." Hutchison tweeted her statements after she reportedly told a Seattle news outlet that 11 years ago, Trump was channeling Bill Clinton with his crude comments at the time. #1 of 2: Donald Trump's indecent comments in 2005 (11 yrs ago) - were made when he was a Democrat. The hypocrisy of HilaryClinton to say.. — Susan Hutchison (@Susan_Hutch) October 8, 2016 #2 of 2: ...The hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton to say Trump does not belong in the White House when her husband defined this behavior. — Susan Hutchison (@Susan_Hutch) October 8, 2016 Meanwhile, the highest-ranking Republican woman in Congress, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, has condemned Trump's crude comments. Multiple news outlets are reporting that in a Friday evening statement McMorris Rodgers said, "It is never appropriate to condone unwanted sexual advances or violence against women." She also said, "Mr. Trump must realize that it has no place in public or private conversations." She did not say she would withdraw her support for the Republican presidential candidate, to whom she had given a lukewarm endorsement. In a debate earlier this week, McMorris Rodgers said she would vote for Trump and praised his acumen as a businessman.

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform, “The truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry.” The Big Short opens nationwide today. But it happened to have one showing last night at a theater near me. My youngest son and I hopped in the car and went to see it. I loved the book by Michael Lewis. The cast assembled for the movie was top notch, but having the director of Anchorman and Talledaga Nights handle a subject matter like high finance seemed odd. The choice of Adam McKay as director turned out to be brilliant. The question was how do you make a movie about the housing market, mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, collateralized debt swaps, and synthetic CDOs interesting for the average person. He succeeded beyond all expectations. Interweaving pop culture icons, music, symbols of materialism, and unforgettable characters, McKay has created a masterpiece about the greed, stupidity, hubris, and arrogance of Wall Street bankers gone wild. He captures the idiocy and complete capture of the rating agencies (S&P, Moodys). He reveals the ineptitude and dysfunction of the SEC, where the goal of these regulators was to get a high paying job with banks they were supposed to regulate. He skewers the faux financial journalists at the Wall Street Journal who didn’t want to rock the boat with the truth about the greatest fraud ever committed. What makes the movie great are the characters, their motivations, their frustrations, their anger at a warped demented system, and ultimately their hollow victory when the entire edifice of fraud came crashing down on the heads of honest hard working Americans. The movie does not glorify the men that ended up making billions from the demise of the housing bubble. But it clearly defines the real bad guys. Steve Carell plays Mark Baum (based on the real life character Steve Eisman). He’s the kind of prick who would fit in perfectly on TBP. He is abrasively hysterical with his foul mouthed commentary and insults to authority. He is the heart and soul of the movie. You feel his pain throughout. Carrell should win an Academy Award for his performance. Christian Bale’s quirky performance as one eyed Dr. Michael Burry, whose Asberger’s Syndrome actually allowed him to focus on the minutia and discover the fraud before everyone else, is top notch. Ryan Goseling is hysterical in his role as the narrator of the story. Brad Pitt plays a supporting role, but does it with his usual class. Ultimately, it is a highly entertaining movie with the right moral overtone, despite non-stop profanity that captures the true nature of Wall Street traders. This is a dangerous movie for Wall Street, the government, and the establishment in general. They count on the complexity of Wall Street to confuse the average person and make their eyes glaze over. That makes it easier for them to keep committing fraud and harvesting the nation’s wealth. This movie cuts through the crap and reveals those in power to be corrupt, greedy weasels who aren’t really as smart as they want you to think they are. The finale of the movie is sobering and infuriating. After unequivocally proving that Wall Street bankers, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve, Congress, the SEC, and the mainstream media, destroyed the global financial system, put tens of millions out of work, got six million people tossed from their homes, and created the worst crisis since the Great Depression, the filmmakers are left to provide the depressing conclusion. No bankers went to jail. The Too Big To Fail banks were not broken up – they were bailed out by the American taxpayers. They actually got bigger. Their profits have reached new heights, while the average family has seen their income fall. Wall Street is paying out record bonuses, while 46 million people are on food stamps. Wall Street and their lackeys at the Federal Reserve call the shots in this country. They don’t give a fuck about you. And they’re doing it again. Every American should see this movie and get fucking pissed off. The theater was deathly silent at the end of the movie. The audience was stunned by the fact that the criminals on Wall Street got away with the crime of the century, and they’re still on the loose. I had a great discussion with my 16 year old son on the way home. At least there is one millennial who understand how bad his generation is getting screwed. Merry Fucking Christmas America from a Wall Street banker

Family members among 157 asylum seekers being detained on the high seas in separate rooms on a customs vessel are allowed out for meals and ''approximately three hours'' of daylight a day, according to a document lodged with the High Court on Tuesday. While it was previously stated 153 asylum seekers were on a boat that was intercepted off Christmas Island more than three weeks ago, the document says there are 157. Scott Morrison arriving for talks with India's Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Rajnath Singh. Credit:Jason Koutsoukis A document filed by the government reveals the national security committee of cabinet decided on July 1, two days after the boat was intercepted, that those on board ''should be taken to a place other than Australia''. The document says the asylum seekers are permitted ''approximately three hours' outside during the day in natural light for meals'', but says it would be unsafe to give them unrestricted movement.

If you’re a fantasy reader (and, if you’re reading this, I suspect you are), 2006 was a vintage year. One for the ages, like 2005 for Bordeaux, or 1994 for Magic: The Gathering. The Class of 2006 includes Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire. All of which, remarkably, are debuts (except Mistborn, but Elantris was only the year before and Mistborn was the breakout hit, so we’ll roll with it). And hey, if we stretch the strict definition of “2006,” we can even include Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind in the mix as well. These are five authors that have dominated the contemporary fantasy scene, and to think that they all published more or less simultaneously is, well, kind of ridiculous. However, as tempting as it is to examine the lunar conjunctions of 2006 in the hopes of finding some sort of pattern, the fact that these books all published at the same time is total coincidence—and, in many ways, irrelevant. Publishing ain’t quick, and by 2006, these books had all been finished for some time. For some of these authors, their books had been out on submission for several years. If anything, we’re actually better off prying into 2004, since the process between acquisition and publishing is generally around two years. What was in the air when five different editors all decided to lift these particular manuscripts from the stack? Or do we go back further? We know, of course, that these books were all written at completely different times. The Name of the Wind was the culmination of a decade’s hard labor, beginning in the 1990s. Mistborn, given Sanderson’s legendary speed, was probably written overnight. But what were the influences of the late 1990s and early 2000s that would’ve led these five different people to all write such amazing, popular books? In the years leading up to 2006, there are some clear trends. These trends may have impacted the authors as they wrote these stunning debuts. They may have influenced the editors as they chose these particular books out of the pile. Or, of course, they may not have. But where’s the fun in that? So let’s take a look at some of major touchstones of the period: Harry Potter From 1997 onward, the world belonged to Harry Potter. And by 2004, five of the books were published and the end of the series was on the horizon. Publishers, as you might expect, were pretty keen to finding the next long-running YA/adult crossover series with a fantasy inflection. Moreover, Potter proved that a big ol’ epic fantasy had huge commercial potential, and could be a massive breakout hit. It also showed that the hoary old tropes—say, coming of age at a wizard school, detailed magic systems, and a villainous Dark Lord—still had plenty of appeal. The British Invasion Rowling—deservedly—gets the headlines, but the Brits were everywhere during this period. Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was one of the breakout hits of 2004, a fantasy that couldn’t be more British if it were served with scones and a gently arched eyebrow. China Miéville collected every major genre award between 2000 and 2004. Looking at the Hugo finalists in from 2000, you can also see Stross, Richard Morgan, Ken MacLeod, Ian McDonald, Iain M. Banks… and that’s just in the Novel category. Seeing so many British authors up for what’s traditionally been a predominantly American award shows that the UK was, well, trending. That could only help inform—or sell—a UK author like Joe Abercrombie, or a British-set novel like Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon. A Game of Thrones This is a little weird to think about—by 2006, every A Song of Ice and Fire book (save A Dance with Dragons) had already been published. The Potter arguments apply here as well—ASoIaF was proof of concept: big fantasy series would sell, and publishers were on the prowl for the “next” one. And, for authors, ASoIaF had dominated the scene since 1996: even before the HBO show, it was a massively popular series. Big Fantasy, again, could be successful—and by subverting the tropes, Martin ushered in a new world of possibilities. Characters could die. Good guys could lose. Surprise was as interesting—and as rewarding—as simply doing the expected. * * * But if we simply limit ourselves to books, we’re missing out. A lot. The Class of 2006 was surrounded by storytelling in a host of formats, both personally and professionally. Abercrombie and Novik, for example, worked in the film and the gaming industries, respectively. So let’s also consider the impact of the following: The Lord of the Rings The three most successful fantasy films of all time were released in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Everyone knew how to pronounce “po-tay-to” and had an opinion on eagles. The films were ubiquitous, breath-taking and, most of all, lucrative. Jackson’s trilogy meant that Hollywood wouldn’t shy away from Big Fantasy, and, as with Harry Potter, everyone was on the prowl for “what would be next”… Gaming The biggest and best fantasy worlds weren’t in cinemas—they were in your home, to be devoured in hundred-hour chunks. 1998 alone saw the release of, among others, Thief, Baldur’s Gate, Half-Life, and The Ocarina of Time. By the early 2000s, games weren’t just hack-and-slash; they were about stealth, storytelling, meandering side-quests and narrative choice—with a rich visual language that stretched the boundaries of the imagination. From Baldur’s Gate 2 (2000) to Final Fantasy (1999-2002), Grand Theft Auto (2002, 2004) to Fable (2004), huge worlds were in, as were immersive stories and moral ambiguity. Games were no longer about levelling up and acquiring the BFG9000; they involved complex protagonists with unique skills, difficult decisions, and complicated moral outlooks. Whether it’s the immersive environments of Scott Lunch’s Camorr, the unconventional morality of Abercrombie’s Logen Ninefingers, the deliciously over-the-top Allomantic battles in Sanderson’s Mistborn books, or the rich and sprawling world of Novik’s Temeraire, it is easy to find parallels between game worlds and the class of 2006. The Wire Television’s best drama started airing on HBO in 2002. Critically acclaimed (and sadly under-viewed), it’s had a huge impact on the nature of storytelling. Big arcs and fragmented narratives were suddenly “in.” Multiple perspectives, complicated plotlines: also in. Immediate payoffs: unnecessary. Moral ambiguity: brilliant. Pre-Netflix, it showed that audiences—and critics—would stick around for intricate long-form storytelling. The Wire’s impact on fiction in all formats can’t be underestimated. Spice World In 1998, the Spice Girls had sold 45 million records worldwide. Their first five singles had each reached #1 in the UK. The previous year, they were the most played artist on American radio—and won Favorite Pop Group at the American Music Awards. Yet, later that year, Geri Halliwell split from the group. Sales foundered. Lawsuits abounded. The Spice World had shattered. As an influence, we can see here the entire story of the Class of 2006. The second wave British invasion. The immersive, transmedia storytelling. The embrace of classic tropes (Scary, Sporty, Ginger)—and their aggressive subversion (Posh, Baby). The moral ambiguity—who do you think you are? The tragic, unexpected ending: what is Halliwell’s departure besides the Red Wedding of pop? The void left by their absence—a vacuum that only another massive, commercially-viable, magic-laced fantasy could fill. * * * Okay, fine. Probably not that last one. But it still goes to show the fun—and futility—of trying to track influences. With a bit of creativity, we can draw a line between any two points, however obscure. If anything, the ubiquitous and obvious trends are the most important. We don’t know everything that Rothfuss read or watched while crafting The Name of the Wind, but we can guarantee that he heard the Spice Girls. If a little bit of “2 Become 1” snuck in there… well, who would ever know? Chasing an author’s influences—or an editor’s—is nearly impossible. There are certainly those inspirations and motivations that they’ll admit to, but there are also many more they don’t. And many, many more that the authors and editors themselves won’t even be fully aware of. We are surrounded by media and influences, from The Wire to BritPop, Harry Potter to the menu at our favourite Italian restaurant. Trying to determine what sticks in our subconscious—much less the subconscious of our favourite author—is an impossible task. What we do know is that, for whatever reasons, many of which are completely coincidental, 2006 wound up being a remarkable year. Thanks, Spice Girls. With huge thanks to r/fantasy and /u/TeoKajLibroj for kicking off the conversation. Jared Shurin is the editor of Pornokitsch and over a dozen anthologies, the latest of which is The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories.

It was one of many ads that John Geer, a Vanderbilt University political scientist, and I showed to panels of people throughout the campaign. We ran a weekly experiment called SpotCheck in which we randomly assigned a representative sample of 1,000 people to see one of two campaign ads. We evaluated the ads’ persuasive effects and asked people to evaluate the ads on such criteria as whether the ad made them happy, hopeful, angry or worried. By far, Mr. Sanders’s “America” was the ad from 2016 that made SpotCheck’s raters the happiest and the most hopeful. Nearly 80 percent of viewers said the ad made them at least a little bit happy and hopeful in the week it debuted — including over half of the Republicans who saw it. We paired the ad with a spot from Hillary Clinton called “All the Good,” which also tested well. It featured the commanding voice of Morgan Freeman and a moving string soundtrack, yet only half the raters said this ad made them happy and hopeful.

Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Radical plans to merge Manchester’s three hospital trusts have moved a step closer after health chiefs backed the move. The move could see North Manchester Hopsital, MRI and Wythenshawe Hospital - currently under three separate NHS trusts - all come under the same NHS management. And now the city’s health and wellbeing board, chaired by council leader Sir Richard Leese alongside GP, patient, charity and hospital representatives, have given their green light to the plan this morning. The trusts in charge of the hospitals - Central Manchester, University Hopsital of South Manchester and Pennine Acute - will now spend six weeks hammering out the finer detail of how that process should happen and what it could mean for patients. However patient group Healthwatch, while broadly supportive, has sounded out a warning over the speed of the move. It says that Manchester patients and residents must be more actively involved in the process before the resulting plan becomes a ‘done deal’. Read: Read: Last week it emerged Sir Jonathan Michael, a King’s Fund health expert commissioned by the council to look at the best model for running hospitals in Manchester, had concluded that one single trust was the best way forward, meaning North Manchester General could be removed from struggling Pennine Acute. The plan would create a much clearer, more consistent level of healthcare in the city, the expert claimed, making health bosses more accountable and lining up services with GPs and social care. It is estimated the move would save around £20m a year, although the reorganisation itself is likely to be expensive. So far it is unclear what the impact will be on services in the city, but it is likely to mean some services being closed or moved. Nevertheless a restructure is absolutely not ‘an end in itself’, stressed Sir Jonathan, but simply a vehicle through which to make care better. The plan had immediately prompted fears that taking North Manchester General Hospital out of Pennine would hit the trust’s other hospitals in Rochdale, Oldham and Bury. But Sir Richard said he had spoken to council leaders in the areas, who he said were ‘supportive’, while a separate review being led by consultant Mike Farrar is reviewing health care in general across the north east of Greater Manchester. He also said parts of Pennine Acute, which is currently being overseen by Salford Royal, has effectively been ‘in intensive care’ of late. Read: Read: The city’s other two hospital trusts must now play their part in supporting North Manchester General hospital, he said. Meanwhile Mike Wild, representing the city’s voluntary sector, said it was vital patients were put at the heart of the process - stressing trusts should not just ‘broadcast’ their plans at residents but have a proper discussion with them. And Vicky Szulist, chair of patient organisation Healthwatch, warned against the move being a ‘done deal by the time it gets to patients’. Nevertheless all the GPs, commissioners, councillors and hosptial leaders - including board chairs - around the table said they were supportive of the move. Councillor Paul Andrews, who is in charge of health and social care for the council, said he was delighted such an agreement between so many organisations had been reached. Two years ago trying to get to such a point had felt like ‘walking through custard’, he added. Central, UHSM and Pennine will now report back in August.

I am a colorful creature that values love and equality above all else. I have a loving home environment and am a strong advocate for women's rights and LGBTQ equality. I have a loving boyfriend and a terrorist disguised as an orange cat with an vendetta against paper towel rolls. I am very opinionated and very loud at times, but I always mean well. Cheers! As people, we rely way too much on appearance and how people perceive us. There is a need to be accepted and liked ingrained within almost every mind. It is such that in today’s society, it is difficult to find any single person, let alone any company that accepts all the colours in the crayon box. This needs to be rectified. There are many topics of discussion that this article could be referring to with the above statements, but we’re going to start with something as simple as hair colour. I have never understood dress code rules and regulations regarding hair colour. They make zero sense. Hair colour does nothing to deter or take away from work performance. The only excuse I have ever heard is that it’s ‘distracting’. You know who it distracts? 3 year olds…but even then they move on once you sate their curiosity. Adults should be well past the stage of believing that hair colour has any iota of sway in productivity, but time and time again, I see hair colour included in my friends’ dress code rules for employers. If I want my hair to resemble unicorns fluffy and magical behind, well, that’s my prerogative. Blue hair colour does not cause Jan in billing or Eric in tech to do their job any less fabulously. Hair colour can be a way to express ones’ personality in a way that clothes may not always be able to. While I’m on the topic, clothes should not determine ones’ social status or ability to hold a job. I would be perfectly fine if Sebastian in collections came to work sporting goth attire with a few extra piercings, but the fact of the matter is that people simply do not accept others for who they are. Strange and unusual is a big ol’ fat no no in the work place. You simply don’t see the CEO of most companies with purple hair and skinny jeans, but I don’t know why. I feel like there are so many standards in society that were established eons ago that simply do not hold a candle with today’s society. Personally, I would feel much more comfortable if Jan from billing decided to change up her hair from conservative blonde to coca-cola bottle red. If Eric in tech wants to wear fine tailored suits everyday and gauge his ear lobes to see through proportions, that’s just fine with me. I feel like we need to be a little more accepting of change, because the world as we know it is changing…and the strict stubborn rules of yesteryear are being left for the birds.

The first annual Ultimate Classic Rock Awards are here, and they are your chance to vote for the best rock music of 2011. Over the next week, we will be announcing nominees for the year's best classic rock albums, songs, tours, artists and more -- 10 categories in all -- and allowing our readers to pick the winners in each. We'll begin with the Tour of the Year category: After all, if there's one place classic rockers undeniably dominate the music landscape, it is in the live performance setting. This year featured two big summer tour team-ups: Journey , Foreigner and Night Ranger combined to bring fans a hit-packed evening, and Motley Crue brought Poison and the New York Dolls along for their typically extravagant trek. Of course, some bands decided to go it alone, too. Rush continued their 'Time Machine' tour, which featured the band playing their 1981 'Moving Pictures' album in its entirety. Kiss proved the worth of their music by scaling down their stage show to play long-awaited concerts in smaller cities for much of the summer, and even as we speak, Guns N' Roses are making an emphatic case for the power of their new lineup and the 'Chinese Democracy' album with 3-hour marathon shows all across the land. Let's not forget Alice Cooper , who dazzled audiences around the world with a career-spanning show of surprising ferocity prior to the release of his 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare' album. That album, by the way, has already earned the No. 1 spot on our list of the Top 10 Albums of 2011, in addition to spawning what we've labeled the year's best new song, ' I'll Bite Your Face Off .' But those were our staff's choices; this one is up to you. Select which one of the six aforementioned tours you thought was the best. You have until 11:59 PM on Jan. 1, 2012, and the winners will be announced Tuesday, Jan, 3.

The father of Daron Wint, the man suspected of killing a Northwest D.C. couple, their young son, and their housekeeper, had been so frightened by threats his son made to shoot his own family that he sought a protective order barring the man from contacting them for a year. Maryland court records show that over the last decade Mr. Wint has been the subject of numerous peace and protective orders. One taken out by his own father in 2005 describes how the then 21-year-old Mr. Wint stood outside of his father’s Lanham home and threatened to shoot his father and step-mother. Police were called to the scene, but Mr. Wint came back afterward. “He stood in the street in front of the house and continued to threaten me and my wife,” wrote Mr. Wint’s father in a handwritten application for a protective order filed in Prince George’s County District Court. “Threats were to be on the lookout for him, I should have made the officer pat him and they would have found what he had under his clothing for me.” D.C. police have named Mr. Wint as a suspect in the gruesome killings of Savvas Savopoulos; his wife, Amy; their 10-year-old son, Philip; and their housekeeper, Veralicia Figueroa. First responders found their bodies May 14 inside the Savopouloses’ multi-million-dollar Woodley Park home after responding to extinguish a fire there. The family is believed to have been held captive in the home the night before, and media reports indicate that $40,000 in cash was delivered to the home shortly before the fire broke out the afternoon of May 14. In a press conference Thursday, Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said Mr. Wint at one point had worked for Mr. Savopoulos at his business, American Iron Works, which is based in Hyattsville. The D.C. Medical Examiner has not ruled a cause of death in the four homicides, but there is speculation that the victims may have been beaten while held captive as at least three of the four victims suffered either blunt force trauma or wounds from sharp objects. Police said the fire at the home was set intentionally. The protective order sought by Mr. Wint’s father sought to ban him from the family’s Lanham home, which was one of several locations in Prince George’s County that police searched Wednesday night. The order also sought to keep Mr. Wint away from the elementary school and day care that his then 8-year-old sister attended. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

* Israel says major operation may last days * Does not rule out ground invasion of Gaza * Hamas, militant groups vow to fight * First target was Hamas commander * Southern Israel braced for Gaza rockets By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Israel launched a major offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza on Wednesday, killing the military commander of Hamas in an air strike and threatening an invasion of the enclave that the Islamist group vowed would "open the gates of hell". The onslaught shattered hopes that a truce mediated on Tuesday by Egypt could pull the two sides back from the brink of war after five days of escalating Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli strikes at militant targets. Operation "Pillar of Defence" began with a surgical strike on a car carrying the commander of the military wing of Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls Gaza and dominates a score of smaller armed groups. Within minutes of the death of Ahmed Al-Jaabari, big explosions were rocking Gaza, as the Israeli air force struck at selected targets just before sundown, blasting plumes of smoke and debris high above the crowded city. Panicking civilians ran for cover and the death toll mounted quickly. Seven people including two girls under the age of five were killed, the health ministry said. A second Gaza war has loomed on the horizon for months as waves of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli strikes grew increasingly more intense and frequent. Israel's Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 began with a week of air attacks and shelling, followed by a land invasion of the blockaded coastal strip, sealed off at sea by the Israeli navy. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed and 13 Israelis died. Hamas said Jaabari, who ran the organisation's armed wing, Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam, died along with an unnamed associate when their car was blown apart by an Israeli missile. The charred and mangled wreckage of a car could be seen belching flames, as emergency crews picked up what appeared to be body parts. GATES OF HELL Israel confirmed it had carried out the attack and announced there was more to come. Reuters witnesses saw Hamas security compounds and police stations blasted apart. "This is an operation against terror targets of different organisations in Gaza," Israeli army spokeswoman Colonel Avital Leibovitch told reporters. Jaabari had "a lot of blood on his hands", she said. Other militant groups including Islamic Jihad were on the target list. Immediate calls for revenge were broadcast over Hamas radio. "The occupation has opened the gates of hell," Hamas's armed wing said. Smaller groups also vowed to strike back. "Israel has declared war on Gaza and they will bear the responsibility for the consequences," Islamic Jihad said. Southern Israeli communities within rocket range of Gaza were on full alert, and schools were ordered closed for Thursday. About one million Israelis live in range of Gaza's relatively primitive but lethal rockets, supplemented in recent months by longer-range, more accurate systems. "The days we face in the south will, in my estimation, prove protracted," Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai, Israel's chief military spokesman, told Channel 2 TV. "The home front must brace itself resiliently." Mordechai said Israel was both responding to a surge in Palestinian rocket salvoes earlier this week and trying to prevent Hamas and other Palestinian factions from building up their arsenals further. Among the targets of Wednesday's air strikes were underground caches of longer-range Hamas rockets, he said. Asked if Israel might send in ground forces, Mordechai said: "There are preparations, and if we are required to, the option of an entry by ground is available." HAMAS EMBOLDENED Israel's intelligence agency Shin Bet said Jaabari was responsible for Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, when the militant Islamist group ousted fighters of the Fatah movement of its great rival, the Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. It said Jaabari instigated the attack that led to the capture of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit in a kidnap raid from Gaza in 2006. Jaabari was also the man who handed Shalit over to Israel in a prisoner exchange five years after his capture. Israel holds a general election on Jan. 22 and conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to retaliate harshly against Hamas. Hamas has been emboldened by the rise to power in neighbouring Egypt of its spiritual mentors in the Muslim Brotherhood, viewing them as a "safety net" that will not permit a second Israeli thrashing of Gaza, home to 1.7 million Palestinians. Egypt condemned Israel's strikes on Gaza and urged it to end the attacks at once. Hamas has historically been supported by Iran, which Israel regards as a rising threat to its own existence due to its nuclear programme. In the flare-up that was prelude to Wednesday's offensive, more than 115 missiles were fired into southern Israel from Gaza and Israeli planes launched numerous strikes. Seven Palestinians, three of them gunmen, were killed. Eight Israeli civilians were hurt by rocket fire and four soldiers wounded by an anti-tank missile. Helped by Iran and the flourishing contraband trade through tunnels from Egypt, Gaza militias have smuggled in better weapons since the war of 2008-09. But Gaza's estimated 35,000 Palestinian fighters are still no match for Israel's F-16 fighter-bombers, Apache helicopter gunships, Merkava tanks and other modern weapons systems in the hands of a conscript force of 175,000, with 450,000 in reserve. Israel's shekel fell nearly one percent to a two-month low against the dollar on Wednesday after news of the Israeli air strikes broke. Earlier, Israel killed the head of the Hamas military wing, Ahmed Jabari, in an airstrike. In all, Palestinian officials say six people have been killed in the Israeli attacks. Israel says the airstrikes are the beginning of a broader operation, launched in response to days of heavy rocket fire from Gaza.

Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. An NGO on Thursday accused the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), IDF, police and Prisons Service of a spike in alleged torture and abuse of detainees starting in June, during Operation Brothers’ Keeper. The Shin Bet gave an extensive rejection of these claims, as well as of torture that allegedly continued through the Gaza war and elevated tensions in the area through the end of 2014. According to statistics presented by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) based on hundreds of prison visits, there were 66 alleged acts of torture or abuse in the second half of 2014, up from 19 alleged acts in the first half of the year.PCATI did not distinguish between acts of torture and acts of abuse. It generally takes the position that it is simply fighting all deviant interrogation practices.What is considered illegal torture or abuse versus, sometimes permitted under Israeli law, “moderate physical pressure,” is hotly debated both domestically and globally, with international law often giving few specifics.“Moderate physical pressure” is a synonym for enhanced interrogation or pressure short of what the High Court of Justice would forbid as torture, and has been permitted for the sake of stopping a “ticking bomb” terrorist attack since a 1999 court decision – which also prohibited anything more than moderate pressure.Of the 85 alleged acts for 2014, PCATI said that 48 complaints were submitted “to various investigatory powers,” including the Justice Ministry.The 48 complaints themselves involve fewer than 48 Palestinians as some of them submitted multiple complaints.Breaking down the 48 complaints: 23 were filed against the Shin Bet, 14 against the IDF, nine against the police or border police and two against the Prisons Service.Since June 2014, 18 complaints claimed their interrogators used the “frog” or “banana” (contorted) positions against them, 19 complained of sleep deprivation, 12 of beatings during interrogation, eight of sexual harassment or assault during the interrogation, seven of physical violence during arrest and two of being physically shaken against High Court dictates.PCATI said that the use of the “frog” and “banana” positions were most noteworthy since these methods had been used only 10 times in the prior four years.No specifics were provided regarding the individual cases that made up the basis of the statistics, though some information is protected under gag order.On March 3, 2014, the state attorney confirmed to the High Court that the Shin Bet does currently use moderate physical pressure in a small number of ticking bomb cases.On June 18, 2014 multiple media reports said that a senior military source had told them that the Shin Bet was using moderate physical pressure on certain Hamas agents to get operational information for finding the kidnappers of three murdered Jewish teens, whose kidnapping brought about Operation Brothers’ Keeper.The military source also said that the Shin Bet had gotten special approval for using enhanced interrogation from Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein.A number of harsher and controversial tactics have been employed by the state in responding to increased security challenges since June 2014, such as house demolitions, though unlike torture, house demolitions were never forbidden by the High Court.The Justice Ministry at the time referred all question to the Shin Bet.The Jerusalem Post investigated the reports at the time, and each media source stood by the story, while security officials neither confirmed nor denied the statement, other than that the Shin Bet said that it neither asked for nor needs prior approval to undertake interrogations.If true, the new PCATI statistics would confirm the June reports.However, without assessing individual cases regarding each complaint’s veracity and whether, if moderate physical pressure was used, the Shin Bet would have a necessity defense for having tried to prevent a “ticking bomb” attack, it is impossible to know whether the complaints could legally carry criminal charges.PCATI director Ishai Menuchin said, “some of the torture methods that were used are in full violation of High Court decisions... including giving advance approval for torture.”He said that at least three detainees had been told by their interrogators that their torture had been approved by the attorney- general or other officials – which he called illegal.Menuchin added that some detainees were allegedly tortured only after having been in administrative detention for some time, such that he questioned how they could provide updated and current information to help stop a ticking bomb attack.The IDF, police and Prisons Service said that they could not respond without information about the specific allegations.The Shin Bet did say, however, that it “acts solely within the law and is open to both internal and external oversight and criticism, including the state comptroller, the state attorney, the attorney-general, the Knesset and the courts.”It continued, “Shin Bet detainees receive their full humanitarian rights that they are entitled to under the law, including: medical attention, meetings with lawyers and ICRC visits.”Further, the Shin Bet stated, “every detainee complaint is passed on directly and immediately to the Justice Ministry’s head Shin Bet investigator, and handled by her.”The statement concluded, “all decisions regarding handling of the complaints and taking follow- up actions regarding them, on the basis of reviews, are decided by the Justice Ministry.”Of around 1,000 similar complaints filed since 2001, not a single criminal investigation has been opened to date, leading the Justice Ministry to take over investigations of complaints of torture against the Shin Bet in June 2013.The new Justice Ministry division, which became fully operational in 2014, has sped up processing of complaints, but the jury is still out on whether it will be viewed as handling complaints better than the Shin Bet did.Yaakov Lappin and Ben Hartman contributed to this report. Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>

ACTA has received a knockout blow from the European Parliament as the majority of MEPs voted in favor of rejecting the controversial trade agreement, which critics say would protect copyright at the expense of freedom of speech on the Internet. MEPs voted overwhelmingly against ACTA, with 478 votes against and only 39 in favor of it. There were 146 abstentions. “In am proud to say that the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will not come into force in the European Union,” the Treaty’s rapporteur in the European Parliament, David Martin MEP, wrote on his blog after the session. Martin recommended that Parliament reject the treaty as it would not effectively tackle online piracy. The anti-ACTA mood was strong among MEPs during the session, with some members holding banners reading “Hello democracy. Goodbye ACTA”. The ACTA-killing vote came despite an attempt by supporters of the treaty to postpone the crucial vote at the Parliamentary plenary session on Wednesday. However, as Martin writes, MEPs “were able to build a strong majority and defeated the call for a postponement.” “This is a historic day in terms of European politics,” he wrote. The European Parliament vote means that 22 European member states cannot ratify ACTA into their local sovereign law. Earlier all five parliament committees reviewing ACTA voted in favor of rejecting the international treaty. The European Parliament was supported by 2.8 million European citizens around the globe who signed a petition calling for MEPs to reject the agreement. Thousands of EU citizens lobbied for blocking ACTA in street demonstrations, e-mails to MEPs and calls to their offices. “On July 4, Europe celebrates a day of independence from American special interests. Today, we stood up for our most basic rights against corporate giants, and won,” Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party , wrote. “This is a huge victory for the citizenship, for democracy and for freedom online. We worked very hard for the last four years to achieve this,” Jeremie Zimmermann, a co-founder and spokesperson for civil advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, told RT. ­ What's next for ACTA? In theory, ACTA could still come into force outside the EU, between the United States and a number of smaller states like Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea, where the treaty is widely supported. ACTA was developed with the participation of a number of countries, including all those listed above and others since 2007. When the ramifications of the agreement came to wider public knowledge this year, a wave of protests hit several countries. The EU suspended the ratification of ACTA in February to reconsider it. ACTA could still be revived in the EU if the European Commission, the bloc's executive body, calls for the agreement's implementation and wins a court decision over it. However, non-EU countries will still be able to shape laws around the treaty's mandates, but ACTA will be significantly reduced without Europe's support. ACTA “was wrong from the start” says Martin, adding that they “need to start again from scratch.” The proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is aimed at protecting copyright over a wide range of industries. ACTA would require signatory states to impose draconian restrictions on online privacy in the drive to eradicate content piracy and the sale of counterfeit branded goods through the internet. The main focus of criticism was targeting the impact it would cause to internet freedom. AFP Photo/Frederick Florin AFP Photo/Frederick Florin Image from Twitter/@judithineuropa Image from Twitter/@judithineuropa

× Terms of Use Terms of Use of Shoney’s Sites and End User License Agreement for Shoney’s Apps Please read these Terms of Use of www.shoneys.com, www.shoneysfranchise.com, www.shoneysinternational.com, www.shoneyscatering.com, www.shoneys5k.com and any other site (collectively, the “Sites”) operated by Best American Hospitality Corp. on behalf of Shoney’s North America, LLC (collectively, “Shoney’s) carefully before using the Sites. These Terms of Use may be modified at any time and are effective immediately upon posting to the Sites. By using the Sites, you agree to the then-current terms of use. If you do not agree with any of the terms of use, do not use the Sites. These Terms of Use also contain an End User License Agreement that covers your use of all software published by Shoney’s, for use on mobile devices, tablets, personal computers and other devices, as well as all related elements including, but not limited to updates and upgrades, manuals, online materials, files and documentation of any kind (collectively, the “Apps”). Be sure to read the following before using the Apps. By installing, accessing and using the Apps, you are hereby agreeing to be legally bound by these provisions. If you do not agree to the following, do not download or use the Apps and remove all copies from your devices.

Of all the billionaires that come and go on the Forbes China Rich List, Liu Yiqian is certainly the one with the biggest appetite for art. Liu, who ranked No. 220 with a net worth of $ 1 billion, yesterday bought a 600-year-old imperial embroidered Tibetan tapestry at a Christie’s auction for $ 348 million Hong Kong dollars ($ 45 million), setting a record for any Chinese works of art sold by an international auction house. For the art-savvy Liu, the magnificent piece is too important to miss. The silk tapestry, known as a thangka, is more than three meters tall and two meters wide. The work, created more than five centuries ago during the Ming dynasty on command of Emperor Yongle, is excellently preserved. The still brightly colored gold and silk threads depict the story of Raktayamari, 'The Red Conqueror of Death', embracing his consort, Vajravetali, according to Christie’s. The thangka is the only one of its kind still in private hands - two other known examples are in the Jokhang Monastery in Tibet. Liu, who bought the piece for his private Long museum in Shanghai, said he is “proud to bring back to China this significant and historic 15th century thangka, which will be preserved in the Long museum for years to come.” In his WeChat message now widely circulated on Chinese media, Liu said the auction was a tough battle. The 50-year-old collector has an eye for all sorts of artwork. In April, he spent $36.3 million on a tiny porcelain cup with a humble chicken painted on its surface- he also took a celebratory swig from it. Liu’s collection also includes revolutionary pieces from the Mao period and modern Chinese artworks by celebrated artists such as Chen Yifei and Fang Lijun. Liu, who sometimes is dubbed the eccentric one, has a penchant for paying his purchases through American Express . He paid for the chicken cup by swiping his American Express card an individual 24 times and confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that he intended to settle payment for the thangka through American Express again. Liu is chairman of Shanghai-based investment company Sunline Group. Born in 1963 into a working-class family in the city, he left school at 14 to help with his mother’s handbag business. After amassing a small amount of fortune by selling bags, he learned stock trading at 27 and was one of the earliest investors in the Shanghai stock market. He started collecting art about two decades ago with his wife Wang Wei.

As expected, Nokia has officially announced the Lumia 920. The leaks of this device have been spot on. The 920 has a Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, a PureView camera on the back, and wireless charging. We’ll have more details as they are revealed. The PureView camera is very special. It reacts to the movements of your hand, and lets the shutter stay open longer. They haven’t said exactly how many mega-pixel the camera is, but the leaks said 8 and they have been correct so far. The display is called “PureMotion HD Plus.” It has a fast refresh rate to reduce blur when scrolling. The ClearBlack display is even better now, and the color tones adjust to glare from the sunlight. The display can “even bee seen in the dessert.” The battery on the Lumia 920 is 2,000mAh. Combined with the efficient processor, this makes for a long lasting display. The wireless charging comes with a Fatboy pillow, a plush charger that can be set comfortably on your bed. Nokia has also announced wireless charging partnerships with Virgin Atlantic and The Coffee Bean.

“Buckle your seatbelt and get ready.” That’s Jon Stewart‘s message to us. The former Daily Show host spoke with the TimesTalks’ Chris Smith on his thoughts regarding the coming Donald Trump era. “It is odd to be in a position of knowing that the leader of the free world tweeted that you were a p*ssy at 1:30 in the morning,” Stewart said regarding Trump according to The Huffington Post. At a certain point in the interview, Stewart extended an olive branch of sorts to the folks responsible for putting Trump in the White House. “Not everybody that voted for Trump is a racist,” Stewart said during the interview. “I don’t give a f*ck what any of you say to me. You can yell it at me, you can tweet it at me. They’re not all racists. Or they’re not giving tacit support to a racist system … We all give tacit support to exploitative systems as long as they don’t affect us that badly.” "I'm optimistic because I can't believe how much greater this country is than when it started." – Jon Stewart on #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/UXvATQINTS — TimesTalks (@TimesTalks) December 1, 2016 He gave an example: “…guess how those are made, guess who makes them?” Stewart said asking an audience member to pull out a phone. “’Oh yeah, but that’s … ‘ What, what is it? It’s not different, we all do that. All of our shit stinks and getting beyond that takes incredible work.” Stewart talked about Trump’s rhetoric versus his actions, recalling how he attacked Hillary Clinton as an “unqualified Secretary of State because the way she handled classified material.” “His selection for Secretary of State will be David Petraeus, who pled guilty to mishandling classified material,” Stewart continued. “He said [Clinton] was unqualified because she gave a speech to Goldman Sachs. His Secretary of the Treasury is somebody from Goldman Sachs. We’re in post-accountability.” “Let’s look out for the losers. Having somebody you agree with have greater control over the levers of power might be a comfort, but it’s not a solution. Unfortunately, I think our expectation now is, ‘Oh, great, one of our team is in charge. I don’t have to think about this anymore.’ And I think it’s never actually been the case.” A transcription of the most notable moments from the interview can be found at HuffPo. Featured image via YouTube

When Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chief received a bogus email that an elite Russian hacking unit allegedly sent, he clicked on its infected link, giving the hackers access to 58,000 or so emails. Such a hack is known as “spearphishing,” and it turns out to be only the simplest tool in a sophisticated Russian hacking kit, according to a report issued Wednesday by FireEye, a Milpitas, California, cybersecurity company whose experts have been examining the group since 2007. Other tools include setting up “watering holes” on websites likely to be visited by individuals of interest, infecting the users in the equivalent of a drive-by digital shooting, or finding “zero day” flaws that allow hackers to control every aspect of targeted computers, servers or networks and the material they store. The techniques are malicious and nearly impossible for nonprofessionals to block. “They are so capable,” FireEye’s Jonathan Wrolstad said of the Russian military unit. “In some ways, it may seem futile because they are so skilled. If you block them one way, they are going to look for the next way and the next way until they achieve their goal.” SHARE COPY LINK Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday took turns questioning top intelligence officials, who say investigative agencies found compelling evidence of Russian cyber-hacking throughout the 2016 election cycle. The Russian hackers are linked to the Russian military intelligence service, known as the GRU, and its targets span the globe and parallel the interests of the Russian state, FireEye said. In late 2014, FireEye dubbed the Russian hacking unit APT28, a name derived from “advanced persistent threat.” Other cybersecurity firms have given the unit names like Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Tsar Team and Pawn Storm. All the names refer to the same hacker team. EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM The FireEye report says APT28 hackers have targeted areas of strategic Russian interest including “the conflict in Syria, NATO-Ukraine relations, the European Union refugee and migrant crisis, the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics Russian athlete doping scandal, public accusations regarding Russian state-sponsored hacking and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” The 13-page FireEye report is called: “APT28: At the Center of the Storm: Russia Strategically Evolves its Cyber Operations.” EDITORS: END OPTIONAL TRIM Targets of APT28 hacks, compiled by FireEye, include government entities or political parties in Germany, Poland, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and the United States, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and French TV5Monde as well as active or retired political figures, including former Clinton campaign chief John Podesta and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. While it’s not included in Wednesday’s report, Wrolstad said APT28 had also targeted U.S. defense contractors, military attachés in Europe and Asia, and the governments of Georgia and Chile. “We saw the Chilean government as a target of this activity back in 2014. And you wonder: How does that fit with Russia at all? So we started researching and we found that at that time there were discussions between the two militaries of Russia and Chile over some sort of arms sale or cooperation,” Wrolstad said. APT28 and other hackers alleged to be linked to the Russian state under President Vladimir Putin have used spearphishing thousands of times. EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM The Obama administration’s declassified intelligence report on Russian hacking, released Dec. 29, said a parallel Russian hacking team known as APT29, thought to be operated by a domestic spying agency, the FSB, launched a massive spearphishing campaign in the summer of 2015, sending targeted emails “to over 1,000 recipients, including multiple U.S. government victims.” It said that Russian team had routed the fake emails through domains belonging to universities and other respected institutions or groups, worming their way into the network of “a U.S. political party,” known to be the Democratic National Committee. EDITORS: END OPTIONAL TRIM APT28 used a different technique to get into the DNC, luring one or more employees to click on a link to a fake webmail domain that mimicked Gmail or another service and tricked them into changing their passwords, thus sharing the new passwords with unseen Russian hackers observing from afar, the report said. The FireEye report says, however, that the malicious toolbox owned by APT28 is large and growing. It listed six so-called “zero day” vulnerabilities the unit is known to have utilized, allowing its hackers to use software flaws in products that U.S. vendors, such as Adobe, Java and Microsoft, hadn’t known existed, although they were eventually patched. The flaws bear the name “zero day” because they allow hackers to take over systems the moment the flaws are known, leaving victims unaware that they have been compromised. APT28 has shown over the past two years that they are able to procure these vulnerabilities called zero days at a rate much higher than any other group we’ve observed. Jonathan Wrolstad, FireEye “APT28 has shown over the past two years that they are able to procure these vulnerabilities called zero days at a rate much higher than any other group we’ve observed,” Wrolstad said. When a zero-day flaw is known only to hackers, there’s no defense until it is discovered and patched. EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM The Russian hacking toolkit includes other methods, such as creating a “watering hole.” If hackers want to penetrate a network of an organization, they might first hack into the website of a nearby business that employees use, perhaps a restaurant. (The hackers) can just insert a line of code that tells the viewer’s browser to go load another page. Patrick Neighorn, FireEye “The attackers, if they gain access to that restaurant’s website, they can just insert a line of code that tells the viewer’s browser to go load another page,” said Patrick Neighorn, head of global media relations for FireEye. That activity would be invisible to the victim, beginning a process of deeper control of a targeted computer. The FireEye report says this technique “was used to compromise and infect visitors to numerous Polish government websites in 2014.” EDITORS: END OPTIONAL TRIM APT28 hackers can even beat vaunted two-factor authentication, which requires users not only to type in passwords but also to type ever-changing security codes, the report says. They also can spoof a Google App authorization request, such as when a user visits a retail or other site that allows visitors to log on using Gmail accounts, the report says. “In a matter of about 20 minutes . . . they would have the entire contents of both your Google Drive and your Gmail account,” Wrolstad said.

Dealers get drugs and mobile phones thrown over prison walls They are raking in tens of thousands of pounds from operations while inside jails. With a captive market, they can charge fellow inmates more for drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine than they can sell them for on the outside. In some cases, heroin is 10 times dearer inside prisons than out on the streets. Dealers are deliberately setting out to get caught for ­relatively minor offences they know will result in a three-month jail term. Having already set up bank accounts, they smuggle mobile phones into the prison. Drug-using inmates then call friends and relatives with the account details so they can make cash deposits into the dealer’s bank. The dealer is able to use either phone or internet banking via the smuggled mobile to check the money has been deposited. Once it is in his account, a drug drop is arranged. A source released from Hull Prison last week told the Daily Express that dealers boast about making more than £20,000 during three months in jail. The 37-year-old former burglar said: “The dealers are laughing at the prison officers because they say they can make more in just a couple of weeks than they earn in a whole year. “Most use mobile phones but some are so brazen they even use the prison phones which are recorded. Getting the drugs into jail is no problem. They are thrown over the wall at designated times, again organised via the mobile phones. “If the phones get confiscated, a new one can be delivered in much the same way.” The source said prison visitors also bring in large quantities of drugs, often hiding them in the clothing of young child­ren. A common ploy is to smuggle the drugs inside a baby’s nappy, as these are not checked by the guards. Because of the high profits to be made, there is also a strong temptation for prison officers to assist in smuggling in drugs. The Government said 64 prison officers were investigated for involvement in the trafficking of drugs last year. No figures were available for how many of these investigations subsequently led to prosecutions. The source has just completed four-year jail term for burglary and has spent much of the past two decades in prison. He has never developed a drug problem and is amazed at the scale of the illicit trade. He said: “I have been moved between 13 different prisons during this last stretch, all across Britain, and this scam was happening at every prison. It would be so easy to stop but most of the screws can’t be bothered because it would only mean more grief and paperwork for them to do. “A prisoner who is an addict is a lot easier to handle if he has got his fix than if he’s being deprived it. “I reckon about 80 per cent of the prisoners I have come into contact with are addicts. Even if they’re not smack heads when they go inside, there is so much temptation and boredom once they are banged up that most give in. “Proper policing of jails could stop drugs quite quickly but nobody seems to care and that is allowing dealers to flourish ­within the system.” Tory justice spokesman Nick Herbert reacted with astonishment at the revelations. He said: “These are extraordinary allegations which the Ministry of Justice should investigate without delay. “The idea that criminals might actually want to return to prison to conduct criminal activity offends against the fundamental tenet that jails should be secure.

Stabilizing the System of Mortgage Finance in the United States Author/Editor: Richard Koss Publication Date: August 8, 2017 Electronic Access: Free Full Text. Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file Disclaimer: IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management. Summary: It has been over a decade since the peak of house prices in the US was attained, and while there has been a concerted regulatory response to the subsequent collapse, the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) remain in conservatorship. While this action served to forestall a deeper crisis at the time, over the past several years risks related to the system of mortgage finance can be seen building across several dimensions that need to be addressed. While reforms to the GSEs are an important part of dealing with these concerns, this paper argues that broader changes need to be made across the entire mortgage landscape to stabilize the system, even before the final state of the GSEs is fully determined.

In one of the more surreal chapters in the ongoing Trumpcare saga, the Independent Journal Review’s Haley Byrd reports that some of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) Republican colleagues hope to entice her into supporting their latest effort to repeal Obamacare by letting Alaska keep much of Obamacare. Under the reported deal — alternatively nicknamed the “Alaska Bribe,” the “Alaska Purchase,” the “Polar Purchase,” and the “Snow Job” — Alaska and Hawaii “will continue to receive Obamacare’s premium tax credits while they are repealed for all other states.” The proposal reportedly also includes favorable treatment for these two states under Medicaid. After Byrd’s report became public, for what it’s worth, one of the leading Senate sponsors of the new Trumpcare bill reportedly went into damage control mode. Sen. Graham is telling other senators that reports about a special deal for Alaska are "complete bullshit" per a senior GOP aide — Leigh Ann Caldwell (@LACaldwellDC) September 21, 2017 If Murkowski ultimately is offered the deal described by Byrd, however, it would raise serious constitutional concerns. According to Georgetown law professor Brian Galle, the Alaska Purchase probably runs afoul of a provision of the Constitution requiring the U.S. tax code to have a degree of uniformity. Advertisement Though the Constitution gives Congress the power to tax, it also provides that “all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” This clause has not played much of a role in American tax policy, but it creates a problem for the Alaska Bribe should Murkowski’s state be offered tax credits that most states will not receive. As Galle writes, “the leading recent authority on the uniformity clause is, coincidentally, also a case from Alaska, U.S. v. Ptasynski.” There, the Supreme Court held that “where Congress does choose to frame a tax in geographic terms, we will examine the classification closely to see if there is actual geographic discrimination.” For such discrimination to be permitted, “Congress has to show ‘neutral factors’ that justify its distinction. A purpose to ‘grant…an undue preference at the expense of other…states'” would flunk the test. So a provision of Trumpcare whose purpose is to provide particular states with favorable tax treatment, in order to entice a wavering senator into supporting the bill, could be struck down under Ptasynski. Would it actually be struck down? That decision would ultimately rest with an increasingly partisan Supreme Court that may be reluctant to undo major legislation pushed by Republicans. And if it is struck down, it is far from clear that the Court would strike down more than just the one provision involving the tax code. At the very least, however, if Murkowski were to agree to the enticement described in Byrd’s report, she would likely see her name in unfavorable headlines for years as the legal challenge to the Alaska Purchase wound its way through the courts. Advertisement Republican officials were once quite bothered by the idea that one state might receive favorable treatment in order to buy an uncertain senator’s support for a larger bill. In 2009, thirteen state attorneys general wrote Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatening litigation against the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback,” an enticement for Nebraksa Sen. Ben Nelson (D) that was ultimately removed from the Affordable Care Act. Their letter offered several theories, including allegations that the now-defunct special treatment for Nebraska was a “display of arbitrary power” and that it could violate various constitutional provisions because it “is a disadvantage to the citizens of 49 states.” These were weaker legal arguments than the case against the Alaska Purchase, largely because the Nebraska deal did not involve the tax code. But they are indicative of what Republican officials thought was an appropriate way to secure votes when Democrats controlled the Congress.

Mike English of the Blaze shoots during their round one NBL match against the New Zealand Breakers. CJ Bruton of the Breakers shoots during the round one NBL match against the Gold Coast Blaze. Gary Wilkinson of the Breakers takes a shot on goal under pressure from Larry Davidson of the Hawks during their round one NBL match. Mika Vukona of the Breakers clears the ball under pressure during their round one clash with the Wollongong Hawks. Joevan Catron of the Hawks drives to the basket under pressure from Gary Wilkinson of the Breakers during their round one NBL match. Guard CJ Bruton waves to the Vector Arena crowd as the Breakers leave the court after warm-ups. Coach Andrej Lemanis talks to his team during a first half timeout. Breaker Tom Abercrombie tries to drive by Kings guard Luke Cooper. Breakers guard Cedric Jackson tangles with Sydney's Luke Martin going for a loose ball. Out in the open, Alex Pledger drives to the hoop, being blocked by the rim on a one-handed dunk. In a New Zealand basketball record crowd 6383 filled Vector Arena to watch the Breakers and Kings. Breakers forward Tom Abercrombie throws down as easy dunk during the first quarter against the Sydney Kings at Vector Arena. Breakers guard Cedric Jackson in action, defended by Nathan Crosswell during NZ Breakers v Adelaide 36ers basketball match at the North Shore Events Centre. Breakers guard CJ Bruton shoots a three pointer against the Wollongong Hawks at North Shore Events Centre. Breakers player Tom Abercrombie looks to get past Hawks forward Oscar Forman. Breakers guard Cedric Jackson tussles for the ball against Glen Saville (left) and Dave Gruber of the Hawks. Breakers Forward Gary Wilkinson fires up after colliding with Hawks player Glen Saville on the way to the hoop. Breakers forward BJ Anthony and Hawks forward Dave Gruber scramble for the ball. Breakers coach Andrej Lemanis appeals to the referees for a call. Tom Abercrombie soars over Townsville's Michael Cedar to block his shot. Breakers coach Andrej Lemanis gets his message across against the Melbourne Tigers. Breakers guard Cedric Jackson looks for a way through the Tigers defence. Breakers guard Thomas Abercrombie completes an impressive slam dunk against the Melbourne Tigers. Both teams erupt into an all out brawl. Blaze's Anthony Petrie is ejected from the match. Breakers Mika Vukona in action against the Gold Coast Blaze. Tom Abercrombie of the Breakers under pressure from Chris Warren of the 36ers. Cedric Jackson of the Breakers goes for the basket against the Adelaide 36ers. Diamon Simpson (L) and Daniel Johnson (R) of the 36ers competes with Dillon Boucher (C) and Tom Abercrombie of the Breakers. Mika Vukona of the Breakers competes with Diamon Simpson of the 36ers. Gary Wilkinson of the Breakers reaches for the basket against the Adelaide 36ers. Cedric Jackson drives to the basket during the Breakers game against the Perth Wildcats. Jesse Wagstaff of the the Wildcats and Breakers' Benny Anthony Jnr. compete for the ball. Tom Abercrombie of the Breakers drives past Ayinde Ubaka of the Melbourne Tigers. CJ Bruton goes up for the lay-up. Cam Tragardh of the Melbourne Tigers tries to get past the Breakers' Alex Pledger. Breakers forward Dillon Boucher puts up a shot against the Adelaide 36ers. Breakers forward Thomas Abercrombie hangs off the hoop against the Adelaide 36ers. Breakers forward Mika Vukona helps up guard Cedric Jackson against the Melbourne Tigers. Breakers forward Thomas Abercrombie flies at the basket against the Melbourne Tigers. The North Shore Events Centre crowd gets behind the Breakers during their top-of-the-table defeat of the Perth Wildcats. Breakers centre Alex Pledger grasps possession during the 73-67 win over the Perth Wildcats in Auckland. Leon Henry shows his emotion after Breakers team-mate Cedric Jackson sunk a buzzer-beating shot against the Perth Wildcats. CJ Bruton fights for posession during the Breakers clash with Wollongong at the NSEC. A bemused Andrej Lemanis jokingly applauds the referee after a foul is called on Mika Vukona. Tom Abercrombie rises above Glen Saville of the Wollongong Hawks. Dillon Boucher tussles for position during the Breakers win over the Wollongong Hawks. Gary Wilkinson of the Breakers wins the ball against the Adelaide 36ers. CJ Bruton of the Breakers surges forward against the Adelaide 36ers. Dillon Boucher of the Breakers celebrates after the match against the Adelaide 36ers. Cedric Jackson of the Breakers goes for the basket against the Adelaide 36ers. The teams are seperated by the ref after an unsportsman foul against Gold Coast Blaze forward Stephen Hoare. Breakers coach Andrej Lemanis during the match against Gold Coast Blaze. Gary Wilkinson of the Breakers beats Ben Allen of the Crocodiles to the rebound. Peter Crawford (centre) of the Crocodiles looks to get past Dillon Boucher (right) and Tom Abercrombie of the Breakers. Alex Pledger (right) of the Breakers contests for the ball with Elvin Mims of the Townsville Crocodiles. Dillion Boucher of the Breakers in action against the Blaze. Morgan Natanahira of the Breakers shoots against of the Blaze at the Gold Coast Convention Centre. Jason Cadee of the Blaze shoots during their match against the Breakers at the Gold Coast Convention Centre. Breakers point guard Cedric Jackson finished with 17 points and seven assists as the Breakers rolled by the 36ers 91-76 in Adelaide. Jason Cadee of the Blaze passes against the New Zealand Breakers at the Gold Coast Convention Centre. Leon Henry of the Breakers in action against the Gold Coast Blaze. If there was any doubt these New Zealand Breakers are something special it was removed tonight in a pulsating, dramatic overtime opening game of the Australian NBL's grand final series. The Breakers somehow, some way were able to take the best shots of a very, very good Perth Wildcats side and - on the back of some overtime heroics from CJ Bruton and Mika Vukona - nail a pulsating 104-98 victory to begin this best-of-three series in the perfect fashion. They did so without getting a single minute out of arguably their best, certainly their most explosive, player in Thomas Abercrombie who had to sit and watch the best game of the season from the comfort of the bench. 1 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Tom Abercrombie holds the championship trophy aloft. 2 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Rio Bruton shows his dad is number one after CJ collected the grand finals MVP award. 3 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Alex Pledger shows off his championship ring. 4 of 57 Photosport Cedric Jackson delivers the ball to centre Gary Wilkinson as Perth's Shawn Redhage attempts a block. 5 of 57 Getty Images Dillon Boucher jumps for joy as the Breakers win their second straight Australian NBL title. 6 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ CJ Bruton of the Breakers ducks through the arms of Matt Knight and Brad Robbins of the Perth Wildcats. 7 of 57 Getty Images CJ Bruton gets the crowd going after hitting a three pointer in the grand finals decider. 8 of 57 PETER MEECHAM/Fairfax NZ Dan Carter and Jerome Kaino show their support for the NZ Breakers. 9 of 57 Getty Images New Zealand Breakers' coach Andrej Lemanis with the ANBL championship trophy. 10 of 57 Photosport New Zealand Breakers' Dillon Boucher participates in the championship-winning tradition of cutting down the nets. 11 of 57 Photosport The New Zealand Breakers' celebrate their victory in the ANBL finals series. 12 of 57 Jason Oxenham/Fairfax NZ Breakers' guard Cedric Jackson takes the ball to the hoop in game three of ANBL finals series against the Perth Wildcats. 13 of 57 Jason Oxenham/Fairfax NZ Breakers' Alex Pledger climbs high for a dunk. 14 of 57 Photosport The New Zealand Breakers and the Perth Wildcats get involved in an altercation in game three of the ANBL finals series in Auckland. 15 of 57 Peter Meecham/Fairfax NZ Breakers' forward Mika Vukona avoids the attention of Perth Wildcats' forward Shawn Redhage. 16 of 57 Peter Meecham/Fairfax NZ Breakers' guard CJ Bruton goes past Perth Wildcats' point guard Brad Robbins. 17 of 57 Getty Images Breakers and Wildcats players get involved in an altercation. 18 of 57 Peter Meecham/Fairfax NZ The crowd cheers as the Breakers take to the court during the third and deciding game of the ANBL finals series against the Perth Wildcats. 19 of 57 Getty Images Leon Henry and Dillon Boucher of the Breakers look on from the bench during game two. 20 of 57 Getty Images Shawn Redhage of the Wildcats celebrates with supporters at the end of the game during game two. 21 of 57 Getty Images Breakers playing discuss tactics during a break in play of game two of the ANBL finals series in Perth. 22 of 57 Getty Images Kevin Lisch of the Wildcats and Cedric Jackson of the Breakers contest for a loose ball during game two. 23 of 57 Getty Images Breakers and Wildcats players get involved in an altercation. 24 of 57 Getty Images Breakers big man during game two of the ANBL finals series in Perth. 25 of 57 Getty Images Leon Henry of the Breakers lays-up against Matt Knight of the Wildcats during game two. 26 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Cedric Jackson gets amongst the front-row fans after making a basket and being fouled. 27 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Mika Vukona looks to score down low under pressure from Luke Nevill. 28 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Small forward Leon Henry defends Perth's Cameron Tovey. 29 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Tom Abercrombie gingerly runs onto the court during player intros. 30 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Gary Wilkinson gets the Breakers fired-up pre-game. 31 of 57 Getty Images Dillon Boucher celebrates the Breakers win over Perth Wildcats in game one of the ANBL finals series. 32 of 57 Getty Images Leon Henry of the Breakers lays the ball up over Luke Nevill of the Perth Wildcats in game one of the ANBL finals series. 33 of 57 Getty Images Alex Pledger of the Breakers battles with two Perth Wildcats players for the ball in game one of the ANBL finals series. 34 of 57 Jason Oxenham/Fairfax NZ Breakers guard CJ Bruton on the ball. 35 of 57 Jason Oxenham/Fairfax NZ Breakers centre Gary Wilkinson drives into Perth Wildcats centre Luke Nevill in game one of the ANBL finals series. 36 of 57 Photosport Tom Abercrombie is treated on the floor while team-mates go after the referee. 37 of 57 Photosport Tom Abercrombie lies on the court in agony after severely straining ligaments in his left ankle. 38 of 57 Photosport The moment before Tom Abercrombie was taken out by Townsville's Peter Crawford on a breakaway dunk. 39 of 57 Photosport CJ Bruton raises his arms after a crucial fourth quarter three-pointer in the game three win. 40 of 57 Photosport Cedric Jackson hits the hardwood to grab possession for the Breakers. 41 of 57 Photosport MAKE OR BREAK: The Breakers are getting ready for a do-or-die match against Perth tonight. 42 of 57 Getty Images The Breakers celebrate after winning game two of the NBL Finals series against the Townsville Crocodiles. 43 of 57 Getty Images Eddie Gill of the Crocodiles passes the ball past Tom Abercrombie of the Breakers during game two. 44 of 57 Getty Images Russell Hinder of the Crocodiles looks dejected in game two of the NBL Finals series against the New Zealand Breakers. 45 of 57 Getty Images Dillon Boucher of the Breakers drives past Jacob Holmes of the Crocodiles during game two. 46 of 57 Getty Images Dillon Boucher of the Breakers makes a lay-up during game two. 47 of 57 Getty Images Michael Cedar of the Crocodiles attempts a jump shot over Cedric Jackson of the Breakers during game two. 48 of 57 Getty Images Mika Vukona of the Breakers drives past Todd Blanchfield of the Crocodiles during game two. 49 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Breakers forward Thomas Abercrombie keeps the ball in play. 50 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Breakers head coach Andrej Lemanis talks to his players. 51 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Breakers forward Dillon Boucher scoots around Townsville Crocs forward Jacob Holmes. 52 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ High-fives for the Breakers in the NZ Breakers. 53 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Breakers guard Cedric Jackson scoots around Townsville Crocs point guard Eddie Gill. 54 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Breakers forward Thomas Abercrombie charges into Townsville Crocs forward Todd Blanchfield. 55 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Breakers forward Dillon Boucher battles with Townsville Crocs forward Peter Crawford. 56 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Breakers forward Dillon Boucher on the fast break chased by Townsville Crocs guard Michael Cedar. 57 of 57 JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax NZ Breakers guard Cedric Jackson passes under pressure from Townsville Crocs centre Luke Schenscher. Without Abercrombie, the Breakers did extremely well to go toe-to-toe with this rugged Wildcats outfit and their outstanding MVP guard Kevin Lisch. That they were able to come from six down late in regulation to nail a brilliant overtime win was the icing on the cake. The Breakers now head to Perth for game two in eight days' time able to play with the freedom of a side one up knowing at worst they'll be coming home for the decider. Getty Images MAKING THE PLAY: Matthew Knight of the Perth Wildcats lays the ball up under pressure from Cedric Jackson of the New Zealand Breakers. A second straight championship is now just one tantalising win away for a club who simply do not know when to quit. What a game it was. And at the end, even though there was the usual Perth chippiness, both sides can hold their heads high. A record crowd of 9125 was treated to an instant classic between two clubs who do tend to produce the memorable when they meet. In a game of runs, it had looked as though the Wildcats' steaming third quarter had put them in position to seal victory. They got their noses in front in the final period and looked like they were on their way with an 85-79 lead with just under two and a-half minutes remaining. But key buckets down the stretch to Cedric Jackson and Vukona and some outstanding defence helped the Breakers force overtime as the referees put their whistles in their pockets over a frantic finale. Then in the five minutes of overtime, first Vukona and then Bruton stepped up splendidly to make nerveless plays to enable the Breakers to take the final grip on proceedings. Vukona was a monster early, grabbing rebounds, powering inside; then when his body finally wore down up stepped Bruton to nail a pair of triples that sealed the deal. Jackson had a huge game for the victors, finishing with 25 points and eight assists as he slipped back into his best form. But Bruton was not far behind him, going five-of-12 from deep, six-of-15 overall for 20 points to go with three assists and two boards. Of course no one loves the big moment like the veteran Aussie, and down the stretch it was clear to all that the Breakers had the game-winner in their midst. Daryl Corletto added 16 points (5/10 FG, 4/6 3PT) for the winners, Gary Wilkinson had 12 points and seven boards and Dillon Boucher nine points, seven rebounds and four assists as he continued to make big plays when it mattered. Vukona came good late to finish with 14 points and five rebounds. Alex Pledger weighed in with a solid eight points and four boards and made two huge free-throws in overtime when Vukona had to retire with cramp. Lisch led the Cats with a game-high 27 points and had quality backup from Matt Knight (17 points/five rebounds) and Shawn Redhage (15 points/five boards). But they will be cursing letting this one slip through their grasp after a magnificent third-quarter fightback that put them in the box seat. The signs hadn't looked good early when the Cats, perhaps buoyed by Abercrombie's absence, got off to an explosive 14-2 start inside the first four minutes. But then the home team exploded on a 22-4 run of their own to roar into the lead, 28-24 at the end of the first. The Breakers knocked down five triples in this period, a pair apiece to Bruton and Corletto as they showed they were here to play - even without their classy Tall Black Abercrombie. That intensity continued in the second quarter when the Breakers held the Wildcats to just 11 points and, on the back of some inspirational play from Jackson, forged out to a 15-point lead. Jackson, playing like the MVP he perhaps should have been, was magnificent in the first half, knocking down six of his eight shots for a game-high 14 points to go with four assists. Corletto weighed in with 11 points as he nailed three of his four looks from deep, while Bruton and Wilkinson added eight and seven points respectively. The Breakers also did a great job of restricting MVP Kevin Lisch to just five first-half points, as the Cats offence cooled off after their fast start. But the men from the wild west, chasing their sixth NBL title in their 26th consecutive playoff appearance, are nothing if not fighters. Back they came in the third quarter, a 17-2 run early in the third erasing the deficit and leaving us with a thriller on our hands. NZ Breakers 104 (Cedric Jackson 25, CJ Bruton 20, Daryl Corletto 16, Mika Vukona 14, Gary Wilkinson 12), Perth Wildcats 98 (Kevin Lisch 27, Matthew Knight 17, Shawn Redhage 15, Luke Nevill 13, Jesse Wagstaff 12). 1Q: 28-24; HT: 50-35; 3Q: 68-66; FT: 84-84.

Four Chicago suspects pled not guilty on Friday to several charges related to kidnapping and torturing a young schizophrenic man, which they allegedly broadcast on Facebook Live. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, public defenders for Brittany Covington, 18, Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Jordan Hill, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24, entered not guilty pleas during their arraignment. All four suspects are charged with hate crimes, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Three are also charged with residential burglary. One offender faces robbery charges, along with the possession of a stolen motor vehicle. The video played on Facebook Live showed a bound and gagged white victim huddled in a corner while assailants are heard saying “Fuck white people” and “Fuck Donald Trump” as they beat him and cut his scalp with a knife. Another video clip shows assailants forcing the victim to drink toilet water. The suspects are due back in court March 1. Previous coverage of the case and the national reaction to it can be found here.

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – State commerce officials say a statewide sweep of gas stations last month found nine hidden credit card skimmers, which criminals use to steal credit and debit card information from unsuspecting customers. Mike Rothman, the Minnesota Commerce Commissioner, announced on Thursday that the inspection was conducted over a three-week period, examining readers at more than 1,000 gas stations in the Twin Cities metro and Greater Minnesota. “The Commerce Department is cracking down on these skimmers to protect Minnesota consumers against identity theft and fraud,” Rothman said in a statement. “We are working to make sure the state’s gas pumps are secure and customers’ credit and debit card information is safe.” The recent inspection checked 8,500 credit card readers. There are about 52,000 such readers in the state. Moving forward, the Commerce Department says its inspectors will be looking for skimmers or any sort of tampering with gas pumps as part of their routine. Officials say they are also working with gas stations to train their operators on how to protect against skimmers. Consumers are advised to inspect card readers at gas stations before swiping a card. If one sees signs of forced entry or tampering, the gas station clerk should be alerted. To avoid skimmers, it’s advised that consumers pay inside the gas station or with cash. To protect against fraud, one should be sure to monitor bank and credit card accounts.

Interview Fatah insisted that the idea of Pakistan ended in 1971 when the "majority of its people said we do not want Pakistan and created Bangladesh". Mohd Asim Khan Pakistan-born Canadian writer Tarek Fatah (he objects to being called a Pakistani) is offending and entertaining in equal measure. From Partition to the interpretation of Islam, he has views that verge on the extreme, and even when speaking on serious topics he glides from the sombre to the ludicrous, blurting out profanities now and breaking into a childlike giggle the next moment. At times, he contradicts himself. Such is the charm of the man that you may disagree with him on all that he is saying, but you just can't dislike him. This is because whatever he says has that tinge of sincerity you can't ignore, even if it is outright controversial. For example, he said communal riots in India would not happen if Indian Muslims forgo their personal law, and objects to names like Taimur (as Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan has named his son) and Aurangzeb. Fatah is proud of his roots in India and his Hindu ancestry. He eulogises the great Indian civilisation and calls Pakistan an "abstract idea". But his snide remarks are not reserved only for Pakistanis or Muslims; he also takes India's Hindu right to task over love jihad and their perceived fondness for Hitler. "India is a civilisation that has a past and a future. It's the only civilisation that has that. In spite of being assaulted and attacked and plundered over a thousand years, it has risen up again," Fatah, whose books include "Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State" (2008) and "The Jew Is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism" (2010), told IANS in an interview. "On the other hand, Pakistan is not a nation, it's just a state of mind. There is no such people as 'Pak', like we have Afghans in Afghanistan, Kazakhs in Kazakhstan and Balochs in Balochistan. Where are the Pak people?" he asked. Fatah insisted that the idea of Pakistan ended in 1971 when the "majority of its people said we do not want Pakistan and created Bangladesh". Asked why he doesn't like to be called a Pakistani, Fatah said: "India is a republic rooted in 5,000 years of Indus Valley civilisation, the other (Pakistan) is a concoction of hatred. Pakistan is merely a military enterprise for the jihadis." Fatah went on to say that all the proponents of Pakistan were "Hindu hate mongers", including the celebrated Urdu poet Allama Iqbal. "Iqbal's ancestors were Hindus but he was a Hindu hater. He went to the extent of plagiarising his own poetry to attack the Hindus. I would call people in India who are still celebrating Iqbal and singing his tarana (anthem) as idiots," Fatah said. However, despite calling Partition a tragedy, Fatah has little tolerance for the idea of Pakistan -- or any of its component territories -- merging with India. "Why should Pakistan merge with India. Bhutan is an independent country; so why not Balochsitan or Sindh? What is this obsession with territories? It's a very feudal concept," he said. Although he believes that Balochistan and Sindh should be independent countries, he dismisses separatist movements within India such as that for Khalistan or Azad Kashmir or Bodoland as "ideas drawn up in Pakistan's boardrooms". On Kashmir, he said that although the Kashmiris fit his definition of a nation, like the Balochs, they can't be given independence as "Kashmiris themselves opted to join India in 1947". Fatah also has an objection to Indian Muslims naming their children after kings and Sultans such as Aurangzeb and Taimur. "Indian Muslims have made people like Aurangzeb their heroes. That's why Saif Ali Khan has named his son Taimur. His wife says my husband is a historian. Is this what they got in history?" Fatah asked. So what should have been the baby's name, in his opinion? Pat came the reply: "Hitler rakh lete jee, toh Hinduon ko bhi thand par jaati. (They should have named him "Hitler" instead, so that even Hindus would have liked it). Because the (right wing) Hindus are so fond of Hitler. It's only in India that Hitler's books sell like hot cakes." The Canada-based writer has no love lost for Indian Muslims who flaunt surnames which show their Arab lineage such as Hashmi, Naqvi and Bukhari. "By flaunting surnames like Hashmi and Qureshi, they are saying 'we are not Indians, we are Arabs'. Only the Muslims who have converted from Hindus are Indians," he said. "But this phenomenon plagues all Indians. Even Hindus who have made money take fancy names. So Namrita becomes Nikki Haley and Piyush becomes Bobby Jindal. They are all liars," Fatah said. While slamming the mullahs for stopping inter-religious marriages -- which he said happened quite frequently in undivided India -- Fatah does not spare the Hindus. "The mindless Hindus are talking of love jihad. What nonsense is this? It is the fundamental human right of a man or woman who they choose to marry," he said. Fatah said that Indian Muslims are to be blamed for communal riots in India. "You end Muslim personal law, the communal riots would end. Muslims want communal riots and blame Hindus," he said. (Mohd Asim Khan can be contacted at mohd.a@ians.in)

At 49-43, the Minnesota Twins are engaged in a three-team battle for the A.L. Central crown. The Twins are 1.5 games back of the resurgent Chicago White Sox following yesterday’s victory over the Pale Hose (the Detroit Tigers also sit a game and a half back of the division lead). There is essentially no chance that the Wild Card comes out of anywhere but the AL East, so it’s division title or bust for the Twins. The club’s odds of playing postseason baseball — currently 36 percent according to Cool Standings — are heavily influenced by Justin Morneau’s return to health. But the Twins could also use a return to 2008 form from Kevin Slowey. A second-round pick out of Winthrop in the 2005 draft, Slowey has always boasted off-the-charts control. He issued just 1.3 walks per nine innings in the minors, punching out 8.8 per nine, and surrendering 0.5 HR/9 despite a low ground ball rate. According to Minor League Splits, Slowey induced grounders 41.1 percent of the time on the farm, but many of the fly balls hit against him were weak — his infield fly rate was 19.5 percent. Slowey made his big league debut in 2007, tossing 66.2 innings with 6.35 K/9, 1.49 BB/9, and a 4.78 xFIP. He owned one of the five lowest ground ball rates among pitchers with 60+ IP, at 28.9 percent. Converesely, the low number of grounders led to lots of round trippers — Slowey gave up 2.16 HR/9. The prospect often compared to Brad Radke had a higher-than usual home run per fly ball rate (13.3 percent), but with so few grounders and ample fly balls hit, homers figured to be a big problem for Slowey if hitters continued to loft the ball so often. The next year, Slowey’s ground ball rate increased (relatively speaking), and he posted a 4.02 xFIP in 160.1 innings after coming back from an early-season biceps strain. Since then, Slowey’s xFIP has gone in the wrong direction: in 2009, he had a 4.23 mark in 90.2 IP before right wrist surgery ended his season in July, and he currently holds a 4.68 xFIP in 100 innings this season. Slowey’s control remains superb, though he’s walking slightly more hitters (1.35 BB/9 in ’08, 1.49 BB/9 in ’09, and 1.71 BB/9 this year). His K rate, 6.9 per nine in 2008 and 7.44 per nine in 2009, is also a little worse than usual at 6.3 K/9. Another disconcerting sign for Slowey is his ground ball rate. I used Pitch F/X data from Joe Lefkowitz’s site to find Slowey’s batted ball distribution over the 2008 to 2010 seasons. I also included the MLB averages for pitchers, provided by Harry Pavlidis at The Hardball Times. These numbers differ from the BIS data on Slowey’s player page, but you’ll note a clear change in his batted ball profile: (Note: Pitch F/X is showing more of Slowey’s fastballs as “sinkers” this season. It seems like this could be a classification change by Pitch F/X instead of a change on Slowey’s part, so I decided to lump all his fastballs together. For the purposes of this article, the MLB averages for the fastball are for four-seamers.) Slowey’s ground ball rate, already low, has declined sharply. Some of those grounders have been replaced by pop ups, particularly in 2009. But this season, Slowey’s giving up lots of balls classified as flies and liners, which is not a happy development, given that fly balls typically have a slugging percentage between .550 and .600 (Slowey’s career SLG% on fly balls is .639) and liners fall for hits about 72 to 73 percent of the time (about 75 percent for Slowey). Is Slowey doing anything different in terms of pitch selection this season? He is using his fastball less often, in favor of mid-80’s sliders and mid-70’s curveballs: Using Lefkowitz’s Pitch F/X tool, I broke down Slowey’s batted ball distribution by pitch type: In 2010, Slowey’s ground ball rate on his fastball is down, with more flies and liners hit. The rate on his slider has remained about the same, though that GB% is still well under the MLB norm. His GB rates on the curve and changeup are down, with more curves classified as flies and more changeups classified as liners. How is Slowey faring when batters put these pitches in play? Here are his slugging percentage on contact numbers by pitch type, along with MLB averages from Pavlidis’ article: Slowey’s slugging percentage on contact with the fastball remains slightly below average, while the SLGCON on his slider has improved. But he’s looking like Charlie Brown when he breaks out the curve or the change. Six of his sixteen homers given up have come on curveballs and changeups. With opponents rarely chopping the ball into the grass, Slowey has coughed up 1.44 homers per nine innings this season. Also not helping his case is Minnesota’s outfield D — typically featuring some combination of Delmon Young, Michael Cuddyer and Jason Kubel in the corners; Twins fly catchers have a collective -6.8 UZR/150 this season (all have poor career marks, too). Even with outstanding control, it’s going to be hard for Slowey to be more than a league-average starter if he keeps generating so few grounders.

The Illinois Department of Public Health has confirmed that eight refugees were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) “during the initial health screening or within 90 days of the refugee arrival” in the four years between 2012 and 2015. This data was not included in the Reported Tuberculosis in the United States documents published annually by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) between 2012 and 2015. Those reports confirmed 1,565 cases of active TB diagnosed among refugees in the 46 states that reported immigration status upon first arrival among foreign-born residents of the United States diagnosed with active TB. Illinois is one of four states that do not share this data with the CDC. Arizona, Virginia, and Washington are the other three states. “Illinois reports all data elements required by the CDC. It would be inaccurate to try to compare the Illinois data to the data in the CDC report due to different reporting methodologies,” spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Health (IDPH) told Breitbart in an emailed statement. “Background information-the IDPH Refugee Health Program does track TB among refugees,” the spokesperson added, noting: The IDPH Communicable Disease Control Section does not report refugee TB data to the CDC in the same manner as some other states, but Illinois does report all data elements required by CDC. In some states, the refugee program is part of the communicable disease section. That is not the case in Illinois. The reporting methodology is different, therefore comparing Illinois data with the CDC report would be comparing apples to oranges. The Illinois Refugee Health Program captures active TB cases during the initial health screening or within 90 days of the refugee arrival. This is one reason why Illinois’ data is not included in this CDC report. The data provided in the CDC report comes from our Communicable Disease Control Section. While the IDPH Communicable Disease Control Section tracks foreign-born cases of TB as this information is important for evaluation, testing, and treatment decisions, the Section is not required to collect and report refugee information to the CDC. “However, it would be inappropriate to try to compare the Illinois data to the data in the CDC report due to different reporting methodologies. 2015 – 4 TB cases (calendar year), 2014 – No TB Confirmed Cases Reported (Federal Fiscal Year), 2013 – 2 TB cases (Federal Fiscal Year), 2012 – 2 TB cases (Federal Fiscal Year),” the spokesperson noted. Twenty-six thousand four hundred and six refugees were resettled in Illinois by the federal government between 2003 and 2015, according to the Department of State. Surprisingly, CDC does not require Illinois or any other state to provide data related to immigration status upon arrival for patients diagnosed with active TB for its annual Reported Tuberculosis in the United States. “CDC encourages states/jurisdictions to provide as complete information as possible, but there is no requirement that they provide immigration status as part of routine surveillance,” a spokesperson told Breitbart News on Monday. Limiting reporting of cases of TB diagnosed upon arrival, however, fails to capture the majority of the refugee TB cases which develop and are diagnosed more than a year after their arrival. As the annual Reported Tuberculosis in the United States, 2015 stated, only 17 percent of the 6,350 cases of active TB diagnosed among foreign-born residents of the United States that year, or 1,003 out of 6,350, were diagnosed less than one year after their arrival in the United States. Twenty eight percent of those cases, or 1,779 out of 6,350, were diagnosed more than one year after but less than ten years after their arrival, 19 percent, or 1,240 out of 6,350, were diagnosed more than ten years but less than twenty years after their arrival, and 26 percent, or 1,682 out of 6,350, were diagnosed more than twenty years after their arrival. (Nine percent of cases were classified as “unknown/missing.”) In Illinois, 18 percent of foreign-born TB cases diagnosed in 2015, or 43 out of 243, were diagnosed less than one year after their arrival in the United States. Nine percent those 43 foreign-born cases, or 4 out of 43, were refugees. Eighty two percent of foreign-born TB cases diagnosed in 2015 in Illinois, or 200 out of 243, were diagnosed one year or more after their arrival in the United States. If nine percent of those 200 cases were refugees, that would mean there were 38 additional cases of refugee TB diagnosed in Illinois that year. Discovering that information, however, seems problematic, since “the IDPH Communicable Disease Control Section tracks foreign-born cases of TB as this information is important for evaluation, testing, and treatment decisions, the Section is not required to collect and report refugee information to the CDC.” The eight cases of refugee TB reported to Breitbart News by Illinois, combined with the eleven cases in 2015 reported to Breitbart News by the state of Washington, brings the total known cases of active TB diagnosed among refugees in the United States between 2012 and 2015 to 1,584. This latest estimate understates the true number of refugee TB cases in the United States during these four years because Arizona and Virginia do not collect refugee TB data or report it to the CDC, New York City and Washington, D.C. do not report this data to the CDC (and have not commented to Breitbart News whether they collect it), Illinois does not track cases of TB diagnosed in refugees after their initial medical screening in the first year after their arrival, and the state of Washington has not provided refugee TB data to Breitbart News for the years 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Let’s start with the good news. Heinz Hollerweger, head of Audi’s Quattro GmbH, says that expanding sales in the U.S. is vital for improving the division’s performance. “Europe is becoming a less important market, the U.S.A. and China are where we see growth happening,” he told us at the press launch for the new Audi R8. So naturally we asked him about the replacement for the current RS4 (pictured)—specifically its prospects for America. And those prospects look good. Firstly, as previously reported, Hollerweger confirmed that the new car will switch to six-cylinder power, with a turbocharged unit in place of the outgoing model’s charismatic naturally aspirated V-8. “I think that power has increased more than enough, and of course other performance is improved too,” he said, adding that the upcoming car will have a higher output than the last one’s 420 horsepower. Although he wouldn’t discuss exact timing, he said the RS4 will be launched relatively early in the production cycle of the new A4. We’re presuming that means shortly after the S4, which is due next year and which will stick with a modified version of the current car’s supercharged V-6. The more pressing question is whether the new RS4 will make it to the U.S. Hollerweger confirmed that it will launch as an Avant station wagon, saying, “that is what people expect from the RS4.” Based on past experience, that means Audi America is likely to deny it to us. But there is a glimmer of hope. “The U.S. is changing, and there is more demand there [for wagons], so maybe that will change,” Hollerweger said. So will there be a sedan? Hollerweger suggested not: “we have to think of where we want to sell cars, and what is expected there. The potential in China and the U.S. for RS models is getting us thinking about body styles that may work there—maybe a hatchback, like the RS7.” Advertisement - Continue Reading Below With a Sportback four-door version of the current S5 having already been sold in certain markets, that sounds like a pretty broad hint that we’re likely to get an RS5 Sportback rather than an RS4. RS4 Avant or RS5 Sportback, we’ll take Audi’s maximum A4 however we can get it.

Irish musical duo John and Edward Grimes (born 16 October 1991), collectively known as Jedward, are an Irish singing and television presenting duo. They are identical twins and first appeared as John & Edward in the sixth series of The X Factor in 2009, generating a phenomenon of ironic popularity described as "the Jedward paradox".[1] They finished sixth[2] and were managed by Louis Walsh, who was their mentor during The X Factor.[3][4] Jedward have released three albums: Planet Jedward, Victory, and Young Love. The first two went double platinum in Ireland.[5][6] They have released nine singles, including "Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)", a mash-up of "Under Pressure" by Queen/David Bowie and Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby"; "Lipstick", with which they represented Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest 2011; and "Waterline", with which they represented Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest 2012. Jedward are also known for their television work, including presenting children's series Jedward's Big Adventure and OMG! Jedward's Dream Factory, and for participating in Celebrity Big Brother 8 [7] and Celebrity Big Brother 19 of which they were announced runners-up missing out on the winning spot to Coleen Nolan. John and Edward's combined net worth was estimated at €6m in September 2013, and they have been ranked as the fifth most financially successful former X Factor UK contestants.[8] They also appeared on the fourth series of Celebrity Coach Trip in 2019. Early and personal life Identical twin brothers John Paul Henry Daniel Richard Grimes and Edward Peter Anthony Kevin Patrick Grimes were born in Dublin. John and Edward's first school was Scoil Bhríde National School in Rathangan. They then attended King's Hospital School for four years before being moved to the Dublin Institute of Education. The twins competed in school talent shows during their school years and were inspired by Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. They were also members of the Lucan Harriers Athletic Club and Dundrum South Dublin athletics club and have competed in several Irish athletic tournaments.[9] In addition, they briefly worked as games testers for Xbox 360 format holder Microsoft and support football clubs Newcastle United and Celtic.[10] Career 2009–2012: The X Factor and Planet Jedward Jedward performing live on the X Factor Tour, in 2010 In 2008 John and Edward formed a duo and the following year they auditioned in Glasgow as a group for the sixth series of The X Factor, under the name John & Edward.[11][12] Despite being described by judge Simon Cowell as "not very good and incredibly annoying", John & Edward were put through to bootcamp, then made it to judges' houses, where Louis Walsh selected them for the live shows.[13] The twins' inclusion in the final 12 was a controversial decision, due to their lack of experience,[14] but Walsh stood by them, saying "I don't know how people can hate two nice young kids from Ireland. They've been edited really badly and come across as the people everyone loves to hate... but they're just raw, naïve and innocent and they have the potential to be really good."[15] John & Edward became known for their unpolished but enthusiastic performances,[16] famously including a version of Britney Spears' "Oops!... I Did It Again", during which they reenacted the Titanic monologue.[17] After their departure from The X Factor, Jedward were signed to Modest! Management, however it was later announced that Louis Walsh had reached "an amicable agreement", which allowed him to take the twins on.[18] From February until April 2010, they performed on the X Factor Live tour, where they were credited with the boost in demand for tickets, that led to an extension in the tour run.[19] Their debut single "Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)" was a mashup of "Under Pressure" and "Ice Ice Baby", with Vanilla Ice contributing guest vocals. In March Jedward's Sony contract ended, but the following day Universal Music Ireland signed them on a three-album contract.[20] In April 2010, Jedward began their first solo tour, a 27-date tour of Ireland called the Planet Jedward Tour. Due to popular demand, it was extended with a second 43-date leg in the UK and Ireland. The Irish Independent rated the tour positively, saying that "Jedwardmania is right up there with Beatlemania."[21] Jedward's second single, a cover of the Blink-182 song "All the Small Things", was released in July 2010 and peaked at number 21 on the Irish charts and number 6 on the UK Indie Chart. The same week, Jedward released their debut album Planet Jedward, consisting of cover versions. It which went straight to number one on the Irish Albums Chart and number 17 on the UK Albums Chart.[22][23] In August 2010, Jedward appeared in their own ITV2 documentary, entitled Jedward: Let Loose, a three-part series in which they moved out of their home for ten days.[24] 2011–2012: Victory Jedward performing live on the X Factor Tour, in 2010 On 12 February 2011, Jedward released their third single and Eurovision Song Contest entry "Lipstick", which peaked at number one in Ireland. Jedward successfully qualified from the second Eurovision Song Contest semi-final, eventually finishing in eighth place. After the Eurovision Song Contest, "Lipstick" was released digitally across Europe, where it charted in many countries such as Belgium, Sweden, Germany and most notably Austria where it peaked at number three. The song also peaked at number 8 in the South Korea's international artists' chart.[25] "Lipstick" had featured in a Hyundai advertising campaign in South East Asia.[26] Shortly after the Eurovision Song Contest, on 23 May, Jedward performed in front of an audience of 60,000 people at College Green in Dublin City ahead of a speech by visiting U.S. President Barack Obama.[27] In April 2011, Jedward began their second tour, the Bad Behaviour Tour, with a series of dates across Ireland.[28] Jedward's next single "Bad Behaviour" was released in July and reached number one in the Irish charts.[29] This was followed two weeks later by their second album Victory, consisting entirely of original tracks. A new version of Planet Jedward was released by the German branch of Universal Music in July, featuring a mix of tracks from Planet Jedward and new songs from Victory.[30] On 31 July, the twins began the first leg of their third tour, The Carnival Tour, with 12 shows across Ireland and Northern Ireland.[31] In September Jedward played their first European tour, with dates in Sweden and Germany,[32] followed by a UK tour.[33] Three days after the first leg finished, Jedward entered the Celebrity Big Brother 8 house. They made it to the final, eventually finishing in third place. The third single from Victory, "Wow Oh Wow" was released in August 2011, with a music video featuring their Celebrity Big Brother housemate Tara Reid. In December, Jedward starred in the pantomime Jedward and the Beanstalk, a musical comedy version of the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk. 2012–2013: Young Love Jedward performing at Eurovision Song Contest, in 2011 In 2012 saw Jedward again win the Irish national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, this time with their song "Waterline". In May, Jedward performed "Waterline" at the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 in Baku, Azerbaijan. After qualifying from their semi-final, they eventually came in 19th place in the grand final.[34] "Waterline" was also the lead single on the twins' third album Young Love, released in June. The tracks "Young Love" and "Luminous" were also released as singles. Jedward released the charity single and "unofficial" Irish UEFA Euro 2012 song "Put the Green Cape On", a reworking of "Lipstick".[35] The duo embarked on the European leg of their Victory Tour in January, playing in Austria, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Estonia. This was followed by the Young Love Tour in Ireland in August.[36][37] They also visited Singapore, where the new album had enjoyed popular success.[38] In June they ran as part of the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay in Dublin on day 19 of the relay.[39][40] The twins starred in their own TV series Jedward's Weird Wild World on UK TV channel 5*, with John and Edward humorously presenting a selection of popular internet videos.[41] Over the Christmas and New Year period RTÉ broadcast the second series of their show OMG! Jedward's Dream Factory,[42] and the second season of their BBC series Jedward's Big Adventure screened in early 2013.[43] Over the festive season, Jedward starred in their third annual pantomime, Jedward & the Magic Lamp.[44] In January 2013, the twins made a promotional visit to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, appearing twice on MuchMusic's New Music Live show[45] and also made an appearance on Canada AM.[46] While in Toronto, Jedward also filmed a promotional video for the Young Love album track "Happens in the Dark" and previewed a clip from the video on New Music Live.[47] Later in the month, it was announced that Jedward's three-album contract with Universal Music Ireland would not be renewed.[48] The music video for "Happens in the Dark" was premiered on Much Music in March, with the video having been shot in Toronto earlier in the year.[49] In April the twins filmed a video for the song "What's Your Number?" in New York City.[50] Later in the month they made a promotional visit to Australia, including radio and television appearances.[51] In June, Jedward joined the line-up of A Night for Christy, a gala concert in aid of Aslan frontman Christy Dignam. The twins performed Aslan's song "She's So Beautiful" with the band.[52] In July the twins performed live shows in Cork and Limerick, with a UK live tour scheduled for September.[53][54] In November the twins toured Australia, with performances in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. While in Australia they also released the music video for Young Love album track "Can't Forget You".[55] 2014–present: Fourth studio album In January 2014, the third series of their CBBC television programme Jedward's Big Adventure was broadcast. Due to its popularity, the series run was doubled to 10 episodes.[56] They also provided weekly style commentary of the contestants in Sweden's Melodifestivalen competition and made a guest performance at the Melodifestivalen Second Chance show in early March.[57] In April 2014, Jedward debuted their new single "Free Spirit" on Australian radio station KIIS 106.5. This was followed by news of the duo's fourth studio album to be released later in the year. The album will contain songs written and produced by Jedward.[58] The duo's follow-up single "Ferocious" was released in November 2014, charting at No.15 on the Irish singles chart.[59] In November 2014 it was announced that John and Edward would be joining the cast of ITV's new circus reality show Get Your Act Together in 2015.[60] Between 2014 and 2016, they released several new self-penned singles and directed the accompanying music videos. The twins appeared on The Ray D'arcy Show in February 2017 and confirmed that they are working on their fourth studio album, which is due for release in the near future[when?]. Philanthropy Jedward are involved with many charity projects, and were one of the highest rated charity ambassadors in Ireland for 2011.[61] Jedward are ambassadors for the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) and have fronted an ISPCC poster campaign.[62] The proceeds of their Euro 2012 charity single "Put The Green Cape On" also went to the ISPCC. From 2010 to 2013 Jedward performed annually at the ChildLine Concert, which benefits the ISPCC's ChildLine service.[63][64] Also in Ireland, Jedward have been involved with the ISPCA's My Dog Ate It campaign,[65] and promote the Concern Worldwide Fast fundraiser.[66] Jedward have also been involved with Comic Relief,[67] Sport Relief[68] and Children in Need,[69] in the UK, as well as giving their time to visit children in hospitals.[70] Other ventures Advertising Jedward have been involved with many advertising campaigns in the UK and Ireland. In 2009, agreed to be the subject of a Tourism Ireland radio campaign, which made a tongue-in-cheek apology to the UK for Jedward's antics on The X Factor.[71] In 2010, Jedward fronted an advertising campaign for Irish fast food chain Abrakebabra.[72] Jedward have also fronted advertising campaigns for East Midlands Trains,[73] Rowntree's Randoms,[74] Disney Universe[75] and a Travel Supermarket commercial with comedian Omid Djalili. The latter was later banned after the UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the advert was misleading.[76] In 2011, they fronted an advertising campaign for mobile network 3 Ireland, including their own Jedward-branded mobile phone.[77] Stage Since 2010, Jedward have performed in an annual pantomime over the Christmas and New Year period. Based at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, the pantomimes also star Linda Martin. John and Edward play themselves and the shows feature Jedward songs. The twins' first show was Cinderella in 2010, where they played the fairy godbrothers.[78] They returned in 2011 with a sell-out season of Jedward and the Beanstalk,[79] and again in 2012 with Jedward and the Magic Lamp.[80] In 2013 their fourth pantomime was Jedward in Beauty and the Beast.[81] Fashion career Jedward have also been signed to Next Models and appeared in fashion magazines such as i-D, Esquire and Grazia. Impact Their fans include Pixie Lott and Robbie Williams.[82] Taoiseach Brian Cowen also backed the singers,[83] while Leona Lewis said that she worried about them.[84][85] Two leading British political parties, Labour and the Conservatives, each released campaign posters parodying the twins.[86][87] Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown came under fire in November 2009 for describing Jedward as "not very good" and later apologised for doing so.[88][89] Following this, Walsh stated "So Gordon Brown and Simon Cowell both have something in common: neither of them know what the public want." Former Prime Minister David Cameron admitted that he enjoyed watching The X Factor and that Jedward were his favourite act. Cameron also bought a T-shirt with their faces on it.[88][90][91][92] The Irish Independent called Jedward "tone-deaf twins", even though the pair were voted more popular than The Beatles in a teenage poll. Comedian Oliver Callan has parodied them on his RTÉ 2 show Nob Nation.[94] Their 2017 court case[95] was later the subject of a stage musical starring comedians Kevin McGahern and Tony Cantwell.[96] Discography Studio albums Filmography Awards and nominations See also

SARASOTA, Fla. - The search for Cuban outfielder Henry Urrutia has come to an end. Urrutia obtained his work visa and made it out of Haiti. I’m told that he’s in Miami and will take his physical before reporting to the Orioles’ minor league complex at Twin Lakes Park in Sarasota. Executive vice president Dan Duquette confirmed tonight that Urrutia had arrived in Florida. “He needs to get in shape and we need to see how far along he is,” Duquette said. “He needs to get the rust off. I’m not sure how much he was able to train in Haiti. Urrutia, who received a $778,500 bonus from the Orioles over the summer, batted .397/.461/.597 with 12 homers, 32 walks and 23 strikeouts in 305 at-bats in his final season in Cuba. He played for Las Tunas in the Cuban League from 2006 to 2010 and batted .350 with 72 doubles, nine triples, 33 home runs, 219 RBIs and 209 runs. He also represented Cuba in the 2010 World Championships. The 6-foot-5, 195-pound switch-hitter didn’t play in 2011 due to a suspension after an unsuccessful attempt at defection. The Orioles wanted to assign Urrutia to Double-A Bowie over the summer, but he was stuck in Haiti while attempting to obtain his visa. The club will decide on an affiliate for Urrutia after he works out in Sarasota. “Let’s see where he is,” Duquette said. At least the Orioles know that he’s in Miami and able to officially join the organization. Here’s a scouting report on Urrutia from July. In other news, Tsuyoshi Wada will throw his third bullpen session from a regular mound on Saturday, according to manager Buck Showalter. Wada threw 25 pitches today and said he continues to feel stronger.

The European election in Greece By Christoph Dreier 29 May 2014 The outcome of the European election in Greece reflects the population’s resolute opposition to the Greek government and the European Union’s austerity drive. Support for the ruling New Democracy (ND) and its social democratic coalition partner PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) fell to an all-time low. For the first time, the United Social Front (SYRIZA EKM) emerged as the strongest contender. Third place was taken by the fascist Golden Dawn. Compared to the Greek parliamentary election of two years ago, the two governing parties lost more than 10 percentage points. The ND garnered only 22.7 percent of the vote (compared to 29.7 percent two years ago). Although PASOK had affiliated with other parties in the Olive Tree coalition, the grouping received only 8.0 percent (as compared to 12.3 percent for PASOK in 2012). Compared to the last European election five years ago, the governing parties lost almost 40 percentage points, losing considerably more than half of their erstwhile voters. The SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) breakaway organisation, the Democratic Left (DIMAR), which was part of the coalition government until a year ago, also collapsed. Two years ago, it won 6.3 percent of the vote. In this election, it obtained only 1.2 percent of the votes cast, well below the 3.0 percent parliamentary threshold requirement. SYRIZA is now the strongest party electorally. It was able to match its result in the previous national election with only slight losses (26.6 percent compared to 26.7 percent). However, its success in concurrent local elections was more limited. SYRIZA was the winner on the Ionian Islands and in the region of Attica, where more than a third of the Greek population lives. Contenders from the ruling parties were able to prevail in seven regions, but four other regions elected independent candidates. The fascists of Golden Dawn were able to increase their share of the vote in the European election as compared to the Greek parliamentary election two years ago from 6.9 percent to 9.4 percent. They are now the third strongest party. Golden Dawn, which has carried out repeated attacks on political opponents, immigrants and homosexuals, has been promoted by the state apparatus and is closely connected with the ruling ND. Election analyses revealed that over 50 percent of the police voted for Golden Dawn. For the first time, the new liberal Potami (the River) group gained 6.6 percent of the vote and will send two deputies to Brussels. The arch-Stalinist Communist Party (KKE) received 6.1 percent, slightly improving its result from the last parliamentary election (4.5 percent). The right-wing populists of the Independent Greeks (ANEL) dropped from 7.5 percent to 3.5 percent. The election result places the coalition government under heavy pressure. Over the last two years, the coalition’s once comfortable majority has declined by some 27 deputies. Currently, it is based on only 152 of the 300 deputies. If the European election results were repeated in a national parliamentary election, the ruling coalition parties would lose 94 seats. Despite the disastrous result for the ruling coalition, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras ruled out any prospect of early elections. “Those who tried to turn the EU into a plebiscite election failed,” Samaras said in a brief televised address. “They failed to create conditions of instability, uncertainty and political ungovernability.” The premier said he knew what he had to do. “We will proceed as quickly as possible,” he said, without being more specific. According to press reports, Samaras is planning a radical reshuffle of his government. On Thursday, he will meet with President Karolos Papoulias to discuss the future course. This will be followed by planned coalition talks. At noon on Monday, SYRIZA Chairman Alexis Tsipras met with the president, who has a purely symbolic role in Greece. Afterwards, Tsipras said: “We should move to national elections as soon as possible in an organised and calm manner to restore democratic normality.” He added that Samaras had lost moral legitimacy to lead new negotiations with the European Union and impose new austerity measures. The election result signifies a clear rejection of the policy of the Greek government, which has been imposing Brussels’ austerity dictates on the population for the past two years. During this period, wages have fallen by up to 60 percent, general taxation has increased, and unemployment has risen to over 27 percent. The health and education systems are on the brink of collapse. Approximately 40 percent of workers are already excluded from health care because they are unable to afford treatment. Workers are overwhelmingly opposed to this policy. Since 2010, some 6,300 demonstrations and protests have been held in Athens alone. That amounts to 14 per day. It includes as many as 36 general strikes, which have sometimes been attended by hundreds of thousands of workers. On Tuesday, May 20, teachers demonstrated outside the Ministry of Education against the government’s plans to cut jobs and merge or close more schools. This popular opposition is expressed in the election results for the ruling parties, which in recent weeks have once again been openly supported by the German government and EU officials. In light of the turnout of around 60 percent, only about a fifth of the electorate actually voted for one of the governing parties. Samaras’s intention to continue the government’s policy unchanged is a clear warning to the working class. In the last elections, only the undemocratic electoral system enabled the coalition to maintain its majority. Since then, the coalition has systematically curtailed workers’ democratic rights. Striking workers have been placed under martial law, demonstrations have been outlawed and fascist gangs encouraged. The social attacks that have been launched in Greece cannot be imposed by democratic means. The opposition of the workers, however, finds no expression in the program of the main opposition party, SYRIZA. Although the party uses its election campaigns to pose as an opponent of the austerity policy, it actively supports the EU and its brutal program of social reaction. Only two weeks ago, Tsipras declared at a congress of the German Left Party that a SYRIZA government would in principle recognise Greece’s debt and sit down with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to negotiate the terms of new loan agreements. Last year, Tsipras made several trips to the US and other European countries to meet with representatives of the EU, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and various governments. Each time, he assured his hosts they had nothing to fear from a SYRIZA government. On the contrary, Tsipras claimed, a government under his leadership would bring more stability to the country. A SYRIZA government would be a thoroughly right-wing regime. It would continue the course of the Samaras government and follow the dictates of Brussels. As is the case in France under the Socialist Party government of François Hollande, the right-wing policies of an ostensibly left-wing government in Greece would strengthen the fascists. SYRIZA has already collaborated with the right-wing populists of ANEL on a number of occasions. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Black Friday 2016 For Mobile World If it is November, then it is Black Friday. Black Friday is the last Friday in November when you are thinking about those amazing gifts that will bring joy for your dear ones in December. If not, you certainly are in that category of people who makes long, long, long lists since last Black Friday with things you want to buy, waiting for this specific day when they are cheaper. Either way, there are two sure facts: everybody knows what Black Friday is and all customers buy in one day more than they could imagine (or they could use in their entire lifetime) just because of the huge sales. If years ago, people were making long queues early in the morning, in cold, outside the store and they were fighting for products inside, now this battle became online and since last year mobile devices have a bigger impact for this event. If we take a look at some stats published by Techcrunch we realize that 35% of Black Friday purchases in 2015 where made via mobile. Moreover, AppAnnie revealed a study after Black Friday 2015 where it shows a list of retail apps that won last year with this occasion. In 2016, the competition is fierce for mobile shoppers that need to make the best deal using their phones and tablets but for marketers, too because they have to stand out of the crowd to attract customers. Black Friday For Mobile Shoppers If you want to enjoy more these days and to eliminate the stress of getting the best price for the most incredible products in the shortest amount of time we have some tips to turn all this craziness in a pleasant adventure. Make your wishlist before the big day. Go to stores and analyze those products to be sure about their quality and their features. Check the store policies and be sure that you can return a product if you don’t like it or it doesn’t fit you. Then wait to attack the sales from the comfort of your home. Focus on mobile apps. A recent study published by Apptentive shows that 88% of consumers use retail mobile apps. This makes sense because apps are more customized and user friendly and they know what you are looking for before you press any button. Trust the evolution of technology and forget about the tiring mornings when you were waiting for stores to open their doors and after that you were struggling to reach other promotions. That’s history. Show your fidelity for some brands. Many companies offer special promotions for loyal customers who use frequently their app. Opt for receiving push notifications and wait for those messages that will announce top sales for your favorite products. If you still like to go to some specific stores for Black Friday choose those apps that can help you find the best route to get there or other apps that allow you to compare very fast, prices and characteristics of products. Test them before to be sure that they do what you want. Be careful for the shipping fee. There are a lot of retailers that offer free shipping. These benefits make you save time and money, which is the main target of using your mobile devices for Black Friday. Black Friday For Mobile Marketing In order to avoid the chaos in that short period of time and to handle better the entire process, follow our best practices to reach as many customers as possible. Update your application. Prepare your app for this “holiday” and offer your users an unforgettable experience. Let images and layouts to tell the story of this event and don’t forget that your app should fit perfectly for all types of devices. Don’t wait for the big day to arrive. Start now to change your app’s interface as a promise of professionalism to your users and allow them to imagine what will happen for Black Friday. Keep in mind that mobile purchases are expected to hit 20 billion in the next period, as Apptentive NO errors. It is great to change colors and images for this period but, this effort means nothing if your app will crush in that specific day. The time is limited and it is unacceptable to let users struggle to make their purchases or to view your offers. Should I say more? Test your app 100 times if need it to be sure that everything will go as planned. Implement easy payment methods. All what users want in that day is to complete as fast as possible a transaction and to move on to the next one. If they need to remember their card number and all the personal information they will abandon the shopping cart in an instance. Allow people to use any fast payment services like Apple Pay or Android Pay and everything will go faster. Messaging is the key. Use in – app messages and push notifications to announce your users about the improvements you made to your app and about the promotions for this occasion. It’s useless to make the best offers if nobody knows about them. Use deep linking. If you spread the word about the huge advantage of using your app during Black Friday, be sure that users won’t get lost inside your app in that rush and allow them to land on the same page where they can find the promotion they are looking for. Take advantages of mobile moments. This is the perfect period of the year not only for increasing your revenue, but for user acquisition and especially for user retention. Focus on attracting your customers offering an amazing experience overall and they will come back to your app after the Black Friday, too. Final Thoughts Over the last few years retailers began to start Black Friday earlier. So, it is almost Black Week than Black Friday. In case you are a shopper that dreams to buy whatever he wants with no restrictions be careful not to lose time with useless actions and prepare your techniques starting now. If you are a retailer this is the biggest reason to prepare your promotions and your app to achieve the success you are dreaming for. It is all about the strategy to turn this madness in an organized opportunity in terms of earnings.

Bakaki tskalshi kikinebs – ring any bells? When I think back to my first days in Georgia, as a foreigner and not having much of an idea about the culture, identity or indeed, language of the former soviet republic, it makes me smile. Not simply because they are fond memories, but because the identity of that person eludes me. I don’t really recognise her anymore. This, if memory serves, was back in 2014. Personal ties took me, quite happily so, to the country. I remember it vividly. I instantly fell in love with Tbilisi, coming from London, I had never seen such contrast before. Yet, one prominent memory will always stay with me. Looking out of the window of a cab from Tbilisi airport to Didube, with a jaw-dropping type expression on my face, trying to avidly comprehend how people could actually understand the Georgian alphabet, and pronounce letters that, to my naive ears, sounded incomprehensible. I’m not going to bore you with anything other than my quest to learn the language, for fear of rambling on. Suffice to say, my initial trip took me to three Georgian cities, all in stark contrast to the other. Tbilisi, Batumi and, rather significantly, Zugdidi. I had already brushed up on my Russian before arriving, as I knew that English, at least outside of the capital, was not widely spoken. Sitting around the table in the Kakhati region of Zugdidi, at a Supra my hosts had put on in honor of my arrival, I vividly remember a dear, dear lady, whom will always stay in my heart, slowly going through the Georgian alphabet and asking me to repeat. Wait right there; let me paint you a little picture, this very evening was the first time I’d ever ‘tasted’ Chacha. I was already two shots down. Megrelian Chacha is stronger than any other, and at this early stage and in my slightly intoxicated state, I pathetically thought I could repeat back what was being said to me. Wrong. My vain efforts were met with uncontrollable laughter. Three letters in particular. If you are not Georgian, and have had some time in this country, no doubt you’ll know what these three letters are. ყ – Well blow me down, this ain’t a letter, it’s a trick of the tongue, no?! No. It is a letter, and one I thought I would never be able to master კ– Ok, so a hard ‘K’ right? So why am I being told that I’m pronouncing it incorrectly? It’s what I like to call ‘the click’ – The word Yes (in Georgian: კი) is a prime example of this, and where ‘the click’ is best displayed. წ– A jumple of letters all rolled into one! ‘Tz’ was a real enemy of mine in the beginning. So I suppose back then, looking back, I admitted defeat. I gave up trying and stuck to Russian. Then something weird happened.. My life then took me back to London for a while, but I would come back to Georgia every couple of months and drive by the same places. So, to my actual point, what was the triggering factor in my learning of the language? The word ‘Lombardi’. I kid you not. There in an area stretching from the church on Rustaveli, up until the beginning of Vake on Chavchavadze, that has Lombardi’s (Bureau de change) a plenty. So those were my first letters, simply because they were blasted everywhere and I knew what it said. Having 8 letters under my belt, I thought I’d test the waters and see if I could go any further. I went to Biblus books and bought a children’s book on the Georgian alphabet. A….B…..G….three more. Maybe this seemingly impossible language was possible after all, just maybe? My linguistic skills improved slowly over the next year, with frequent visits to Georgia, me listening to Georgian radio and news in my office in London, and a year to the day that I first visited Georgia, I decided to move there. I got a job as a Medical Director and my daily sentence structure mostly consisted of an English base, with some Russian words thrown in and ending it with ‘Aba ra’ – I didn’t really know what I was saying, but knew I could finish off a sentence this way without sounding too conspicuous. I recently had a conversation with my friend about the meaning of the word ‘Aba’, and how it can be translated into English. To this day, I cannot find one single word to define its numerous connotations in Georgian. I owe a lot to my job there, and to the people I had around me. I truly believe that if they had have spoken more English, my level of Georgian would not be where it’s at today. As the days, weeks and months rolled by, I found myself conversing more and more in Georgian; sometimes without even realizing it. I am frequently asked by Georgians and foreigners alike, how I learnt the language and more specifically, how I learnt to pronounce the letters. The secret? I have no friggin’ clue. All I can say is I immersed myself in Georgian life. Not an ex-pat one. I had one British friend in Tbilisi, that was it. The rest of my beloved friends were Georgian speakers only. So, the only methodology I can come up with to explain my attainment was that firstly, I had no choice, I chose to really listen and mostly importantly, I TRIED. Sure, I failed on many an occasion, but if I hadn’t given it a go, I’d be no nearer to success. As I look back on my article here, I realize that, once again, I’ve swayed from point to point. Let me conclude by saying this: I am now somewhere near fluent in Georgian. However, I’m not exceptionally intelligent, don’t have a ridiculously high IQ, nor am I a book worm who studied the language nonstop until perfection, at least in my eyes, was attained. No, I lived it. I breathed it. Most importantly still, I had a true passion for the language, and the country. I still do. I encourage those of you who may have some reservations about giving it a go, to really try. It’s possible. I arrive at Tbilisi airport to the greeting of ‘’You’re the English girl who speaks Georgian, right?’’ – enough of an incentive for me. By Tamzin Whitewood 30 May 2017 18:58

Are you familiar with the internet? If so, you're probably familiar with The Oatmeal. The Oatmeal is a ridiculously popular online comic that tackles topics from grammar to the mantis shrimp to Nikola Tesla to paradoxical dogs, with smart writing and illustrations that are equal parts sweet, grotesque, and laugh-out-loud funny. The man behind it all is Matthew Inman, a 30-year-old former website designer turned comic artist in Seattle, Washington. As it turns out, Matthew is also a runner, which I only recently found out after seeing his six-part comic The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances. Think of it as a graphic, online version of Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, only with fewer words and more Blerch. Shortly after reading that, and re-reading it, I got to thinking, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I could somehow persuade Matthew to do an interview with me for Remy's World? Shortly after that, I thought to myself, Maybe I should try contacting him to see. And shortly after that, I actually followed through. To my surprise and delight, Matthew responded right away and agreed to answer some questions via email. Our exchange is below. (I should pause at this point to stress that -- unlike most of the crap I write -- the following interview is an actual, real thing that happened. Not just something I made up. FYI.) Remy's World: When did you start running? Matthew Inman: Ten years ago. Were you athletic at all before you took up running? Not at all. I hated any kind of exercise, especially running. Do you remember the first moment you felt “like a runner”? Running used to feel like a chore. The day I truly became a runner was the day that I realized that being sedentary now felt like a chore. Running makes me feel relaxed, healthy, and great. Not running makes me feel like a bloated pile of uninspired, forgettable crap. Being a bloated pile of forgettable crap is more of a chore for me now than just putting my running shoes on and sweating for 20 minutes. What was the last race you did, and how'd it go? I ran the White River 50-mile ultra at the end of July, and then a week later ran the Grande Ridge 13.1. The ultra didn't go so well. I'd done it two years before and flew through the course, loving every minute of it. (Almost every minute, anyway. I'm not sure love adequately describes how I felt at mile 47). This year when I ran it I got really sick at mile 17: nausea, dry-heaving, and stomach spasms. I managed to lumber my way to mile 50, but I was an hour slower than my previous time. A week later I ran the Grande Ridge half marathon trail run. It had some respectable elevation gains, but the race went really well. After running WR50 I wanted to do a quick race that I could just sail through and enjoy, without all the relentless 11 hours of agony that comes with running an ultra. What's next, racewise? The Seattle Marathon. I'm running it mostly because I want to see all my fellow Seattleites wearing "I believe in The Blerch" shirts. What, if anything, does your job have in common with running? Both produce an endless supply of poop jokes. Has running affected your work in any unexpected ways? The majority of my comics are written in my head while I run. I find when brainstorming ideas, if I focus really hard trying to come up with something I wind up empty-handed. If I focus on something else, however, such as running, showering, or even having a conversation, I find that those ideas will spring up. The tough part is getting them down on paper before they disappear back into the ether of my brain. A few surprisingly heavy themes pop up fairly often in your comics: life, death, loss, the nature of existence… Are these things you think of while you run? Or is running an escape from such thoughts? We've all got loudspeakers in our heads that are constantly shouting fears, worries, and doubts at us. Running, at least for me, turns the volume on that loudspeaker way down. It's my way of saying "Hey brain, shut the f**k up for a half-hour. I'm taking a little vacation from you." It makes terrible thoughts seem trivial, albeit temporarily. I don't know if it's just the endorphins doing the work on that one, but if so it's a drug-addiction I fully endorse. What are your lifetime running goals? (I refuse to use the phrase “bucket list.”) A [Boston qualifier], maybe, although probably not realistic -- I can't run very fast. I'm more of a slow and steady kind of guy, so I think running Western States would be a more realistic goal. Plus I really want one of those belt buckles. How do you measure success as a runner? Have you ever tried to chase a deer? They are REALLY hard to catch. I've never seen a wild animal in the forest that I didn't chase. I think success as a runner means eventually overtaking a deer and tackling it. I would even settle for a caribou, or even something fatter and slower like a mountain goat, but ideally it would be a deer. Aristotle once said that the true measure of the human spirit is the ability to outrun and pile-drive a wild animal. I subscribe to that philosophy completely. You seem to be a bit of a contrarian when it comes to things like nutrition. Yes? Yeah, I run well and eat badly. Explain your philosophy on diet and nutrition, assuming you have one (and maybe you don’t)? My eating habits are that of a circus animal. Every time I do a trick, I get a reward. Ran 20 miles? Heck yes it's time for meatloaf and gummy bears. The best advice I can give other runners is to not eat like I do. Are you a “follow a training plan to a T” sort of runner? Or a “make it up as you go along” sort? I just make it up as I go along, mostly. I know the importance of having a training plan but I just tend to do my own thing. Do you run alone, mostly, or with a club or group? A few years ago I ran with a group, which I really enjoyed. We'd meet at various trails all over Washington state and I'd get paired up with various runners. Nowadays I run by myself most of the time. Running is kind of a private matter for me. I'm not one of those people that slathers their Facebook wall in posts every time they go outside and exercise. How often do you get recognized while running or racing? I don't typically post photos of myself on my website so very few people know what I look like, but in Seattle it's becoming a bit more common for people to stop me and ask if I'm The Oatmeal. When people meet me in person they always say the same thing: "I thought you'd be fatter! :(" [ED: See above for a photo of Matthew racing.] If you could guest-edit an issue of Runner’s World, what would you add or change? I'd write a six-page piece on how to effectively chase, catch, and tackle a deer. Deer-tackling is the new 5K. What’s the coolest place you’ve ever run? The Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica. Imagine a forest with trees that are hundreds of feet tall laced with vines, rolling fog, and crazy amounts of jungle critters -- it looked like a scene from Avatar. Our hotel was near the park entrance so we snuck in at night and went for a short run. Overhead was an ocean of falling stars, and below us was a glittering sea of lightning bugs. Eventually the park rangers chased us out on motorcycles for being in there after-hours, so technically it was a night run lit by stars and lightning bugs, followed by a dramatic car chase. If you could deliver one message to every runner reading this – and you can! – what would it be? When stopped at an intersection, don't jog in place. You look like an idiot. [ED: As readers of The Runner's Rule Book know, I agree.] Have you ever pooped yourself while running? Be honest. Like, in my pants? No. Although I did get the runs pretty bad while out on an 18-mile trail run by myself. I wound up crapping all over the place and using my 2009 Seattle Marathon shirt as toilet paper. It was one of my favorite running shirts so I had this idea in my head that I could just wash it in a stream and then properly wash it when I got home. I eventually defiled the shirt enough times that I wound up throwing it into the woods. As far as I know that shirt is still out there on a mountain somewhere, along with my dignity. Lightning round! Beer or wine? Wine. Running with music: Yes or no? No. Don't try to drown out the agony of running with music and other distractions. Hills or heat? Hills hills hills. I'm from the Pacific Northwest so heat is like my Kryptonite. Energy gel or banana? Banana. Road or trail? Trail. Meb or Ryan? I don't know what that question means, so I'll just reply and say that I really enjoyed all of Meg Ryan's films. Short-shorts or regular shorts? Short-shorts. They look horrible on 99.9% of people, but running isn't about looking good. NYC Marathon or Boston Marathon? I want to run both of them while wearing Heelys. Fill in the blank: Barefoot running is _________. ...a good way to DNF. If we were supposed to run barefoot we'd have evolved hooves by now. My favorite thing on the internet (besides RunnersWorld.com) is _________. Zombo.com If you're one of the 18 people in the world who aren't familiar with Matthew's work, check it out at TheOatmeal.com.

American manufacturer of glass & ceramics Not to be confused with Owens Corning Corning Incorporated is an American multinational technology company that specializes in specialty glass, ceramics, and related materials and technologies including advanced optics, primarily for industrial and scientific applications. The company was named Corning Glass Works until 1989.[3] Corning divested its consumer product lines (including CorningWare and Visions Pyroceram-based cookware, Corelle Vitrelle tableware, and Pyrex glass bakeware) in 1998 by selling the Corning Consumer Products Company subsidiary (now known as Corelle Brands) to Borden, but still holds an interest of about 8 percent. As of 2014 , Corning had five major business sectors: display technologies, environmental technologies, life sciences, optical communications, and specialty materials. Corning is involved in two joint ventures: Dow Corning and Pittsburgh Corning. Quest Diagnostics and Covance were spun off from Corning in 1996.[4] Corning is one of the main suppliers to Apple Inc. since working with Steve Jobs in 2007 to develop the iPhone;[5] Corning develops and manufactures Gorilla Glass, which is used by a large number of smartphone makers. It is one of the world’s biggest glassmakers.[6] Corning won the National Medal of Technology and Innovation four times for its product and process innovations.[7][8][9][10] History [ edit ] Corning Glass Works was founded in 1851 by Amory Houghton, in Somerville, Massachusetts, originally as the Bay State Glass Co. It later moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, and operated as the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works. The company moved again to its ultimate home and namesake, the city of Corning, New York, in 1868 under leadership of the founder's son, Amory Houghton, Jr. Over 147 years later, Corning continues to maintain its world headquarters at Corning, N.Y. The firm also established one of the first industrial research labs there in 1908. It continues to expand the nearby research and development facility, as well as operations associated with catalytic converters and diesel engine filter product lines. Corning has a long history of community development and has assured community leaders that it intends to remain headquartered in its small upstate New York hometown.[11] The California Institute of Technology's 200-inch (5.1 m) telescope mirror at Palomar Observatory was cast by Corning during 1934–1936 out of low expansion borosilicate glass.[12] In 1932, George Ellery Hale approached Corning with the challenge of fabricating the required optic for his Palomar project. A previous effort to fabricate the optic from fused quartz had failed. Corning's first attempt was a failure, the cast blank having voids. Using lessons learned, Corning was successful in the casting of the second blank. After a year of cooling, during which it was almost lost to a flood, in 1935 the blank was completed. The first blank now resides in Corning's Museum of Glass. In 1935, Corning formed a partnership with bottle maker Owens-Illinois, which formed the company known today as Owens Corning. Owens Corning was spun off as a separate company in 1938. 1917 advertisement for the Corning Conaphore headlamp lens shown above. The company had a history of science-based innovations following World War II and the strategy by management was research and "disruptive" and "on demand" product innovation.[13] In 1962 Corning developed Chemcor, a new toughened automobile windshield designed to be thinner and lighter than existing windshields, which reduced danger of personal injury by shattering into small granules when smashed.[14] This toughened glass had a chemically hardened outer layer, and its manufacture incorporated an ion exchange and a "fusion process" in special furnaces that Corning built in its Blacksburg, Virginia facility.[13][15] Corning developed it as an alternative to laminated windshields with the intention of becoming an automotive industry supplier.[13] After being installed as side glass in a limited run of 1968 Plymouth Barracudas and Dodge Darts, Chemcor windshields debuted on the 1970 model year Javelins and AMXs built by American Motors Corporation (AMC).[15] As there were no mandatory safety standards for motor vehicle windshields, the larger automakers had no financial incentive to change from the cheaper existing products.[13][15] Corning terminated its windshield project in 1971, after it turned out to be one of the company's "biggest and most expensive failures."[15] However, like many Corning innovations, the unique process to manufacture this automotive glass was resurrected and is today the basis of their very profitable LCD glass business. In the fall of 1970, the company announced that researchers Robert D. Maurer, Donald Keck, Peter C. Schultz, and Frank Zimar had demonstrated an optical fiber with a low optical attenuation of 17 dB per kilometer by doping silica glass with titanium.[16] A few years later they produced a fiber with only 4 dB/km, using germanium oxide as the core dopant. Such low attenuations made fiber optics practical for telecommunications and networking. Corning became the world's leading manufacturer of optical fiber. In 1977, considerable attention was given to Corning's Z Glass project. Z Glass was a product used in television picture tubes. Due to a number of factors, the exact nature of which are subject to dispute, this project was considered a steep loss in profit and productivity. The following year the project made a partial recovery. This incident has been cited as a case study by the Harvard School of Business.[17] Company profits soared in the late 1990s during the dot-com boom, and Corning expanded its fiber operations significantly with several new plants. The company also entered the photonics market, investing heavily with the intent of becoming the leading provider of complete fiber-optic systems. Failure to succeed in photonics and the collapse in 2000 of the dot-com market had a major impact on the company, and Corning stock plummeted to $1 per share. However, as of 2007 the company had posted five straight years of improving financial performance. Current technologies [ edit ] The turning point for Corning came when Apple approached it to develop a robust display screen for its upcoming iPhone. Later, other companies also adopted its Gorilla glass screen. In 2011 Corning announced the expansion of existing facilities and the construction of a Gen 10 facility co-located with the Sharp Corporation manufacturing complex in Sakai, Osaka, Japan.[18] The LCD glass substrate is produced without heavy metals. Corning is a leading manufacturer of the glass used in liquid crystal displays[citation needed]. The company continues to produce optical fiber and cable for the communications industry at its Wilmington and Concord plants in North Carolina. It is also a major manufacturer of ceramic emission control devices for catalytic converters in cars and light trucks that use gasoline engines. The company is also investing in the production of ceramic emission control products for diesel engines as a result of tighter emission standards for those engines both in the U.S. and abroad. In 2007 Corning introduced an optic fiber, ClearCurve, which uses nanostructure technology to facilitate the small radius bending found in FTTX installations. Gorilla Glass, an outgrowth of the 1960s Chemcor project, is a high-strength alkali-aluminosilicate thin sheet glass used as a protective cover glass offering scratch resistance and durability in many touchscreens.[19] According to the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Gorilla Glass was used in the first iPhone released in 2007.[20] On October 25, 2011 Corning unveiled Lotus Glass, an environmentally friendly and high-performance glass developed for OLED and LCD displays.[21][22] Corning invests about 10% of revenue in research and development, and has allocated US$300 million towards further expansion of its Sullivan Park research facility near headquarters in Corning, New York.[23] Corning Incorporated manufactures a high-purity fused silica employed in microlithography systems, a low expansion glass utilized in the construction of reflective mirror blanks, windows for U.S. space shuttles, and Steuben art glass. The number of Corning facilities employing the traditional tanks of molten glass has declined over the years, but it maintains the capacity to supply bulk or finished glass of many types. Corning is engaged in research and development on green lasers, mercury abatement, microreactors, photovoltaics, and silicon on glass. Through its Life Sciences division, the company offers products to support life science research, including stem-cell culture products.[24] Other activities [ edit ] Corning employs roughly 34,000 people worldwide and had sales of $10.217 billion in 2014.[25] The company has been listed for many years among Fortune magazine's 500 largest companies, and was ranked #297 in 2015. Although the company has long been publicly owned, James R. Houghton, great-great-grandson of the founder, served as chairman of the board of directors from 2001 to 2007. Over the years Houghton family ownership has declined to about 2%. Wendell P. Weeks has been with the company since 1983 and as of March 2013 was chairman, chief executive officer, and president.[26] Over its 160-year history Corning invented a process for rapid and inexpensive production of light bulbs, including developing the glass for Thomas Edison's light bulb. Corning was the glass supplier for lightbulbs for General Electric after Edison General Electric merged with Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1892.[27] It was an early major manufacturer of glass panels and funnels for television tubes, invented and produced Vycor (high temperature glass with high thermal shock resistance). Corning invented and produced Pyrex, CorningWare Pyroceram glass-ceramic cookware, and Corelle durable glass dinnerware. Corning manufactured the windows for US manned space vehicles, and supplied the glass blank for the primary mirror in the Hubble Space Telescope. In July 2008 Corning announced the sale of Steuben Glass Works to Steuben Glass LLC, an affiliate of the private equity firm Schottenstein Stores Corporation. Steuben Glass had been unprofitable for more than a decade, losing 30 million dollars over the previous five years.[28] In February 2011, Corning acquired MobileAccess Networks, an Israeli company that develops Distributed antenna systems, which are often used by universities, stadiums and airports to ensure seamless wireless coverage throughout a facility. MobileAccess Networks became part of Corning’s telecommunications business unit.[29] In July 2017, Corning acquired SpiderCloud Wireless.[30] Board of directors [ edit ] As of 2016 :[31] Donald W. Blair: retired executive vice president and chief financial officer, NIKE, Inc. Stephanie A. Burns: retired chairman and chief executive officer, Dow Corning Corporation John A. Canning, Jr.: chairman, Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC Richard T. Clark: retired chairman, president and chief executive officer, Merck & Co., Inc. Robert F. Cummings, Jr.: retired vice chairman of investment banking, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Deborah A. Henretta: retired group president of global e-business, Procter & Gamble Company Daniel P. Huttenlocher: dean and vice provost, Cornell Tech Kurt M. Landgraf: retired president and chief executive officer, Educational Testing Service Kevin Martin: vice president, mobile and global access policy, Facebook, Inc. Deborah D. Rieman: executive chairman, MetaMarkets Group Hansel E. Tookes II: retired chairman and chief executive officer, Raytheon Aircraft Company Wendell P. Weeks: chairman, chief executive officer, and president, Corning Incorporated Mark S. Wrighton: chancellor and professor of chemistry, Washington University in St. Louis See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ] Media related to Corning Inc. at Wikimedia Commons

Why cook and clean when you can have a sexy maid come in and do it for you. While the concept isn't new, a Dallas company now offers a sexy, discreet and professional housekeeping service that can include nude and topless maids. I'm sure all the guys reading this are rejoicing internally. Texas Maidens is the name of the place that boasts employing the most desirable women in Texas as their sexy maids. Before you go thinking you'll score with one of these 'sexy maidens', their website states these ladies are not escorts and do not provide illegal services. Regardless, I'm sure there are a lot of guys out there that wouldn't mind watching the game while a topless gal roams the house tidying things up. The prices aren't too bad either, ranging from $100-160 per hour. Better yet, these gals also clean offices. So, next time the boss starts complaining that your current cleaning service isn't doing a good job, just offer up Texas Maidens as an alternative. Water cooler talk will never be the same, that's for damn sure. Speaking of housekeeping, this is one of the greatest movie scenes ever.

With a headline like “Hillary Clinton uses obscenity on TV describing reaction to Trump’s inaugural speech,” you could be excused for thinking she went on an expletive laden rant. But Fox News’ headline is exactly what’s wrong with the right wing outrage machine. Appearing on the British late night talk show, The Graham Norton Show, Clinton and the out gay host, started chatting about the Trump inauguration and her attempt to get out of attending. (Because, seriously, would you want to go? You didn’t even run against him and the ceremony probably turned your stomach.) Clinton recounts that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, thought they might have found a way out, but it depended on what the other former presidents would do. “We thought, okay maybe others aren’t going, so we called the Bushes, and the elder Bushes were in the hospital, which I think was legitimate,” she said as the audience laughed. “So then we called the younger Bushes and they said ‘yeah we’re going’.” When the Carters told them they would also attend, the Clintons knew they were stuck. But when she talked about Trump’s inauguration speech, she told a quick anecdote that has the right wing in an uproar. “I was sitting next to George W. Bush and Bill was on my other side and we were listening to this really dark, divisive speech that I describe as a ‘cry from the white nationalist gut. I was so disappointed. Really so, so sad that it wasn’t an outreach; it was a narrowing and a hammering of what he had said before,” she told Norton. “It was reported that George W. Bush, as it ends, said, ‘That was some weird shit’,” she said as the audience roared. And it was,” Norton replied. Despite the headline, the actual Fox News article devotes about half of one sentence and the quote from Bush to justify the hand wringing. The rest of the piece is about her thoughts on Trump’s tweets and her attempt to avoid the inauguration. This Story Filed Under

Former Trooper Scott Kunstmann was accused of perjury and falsifying arrest reports. Prosecutors have offered the former Florida Highway Patrol trooper accused of perjury and falsifying reports a no-jail plea deal. Former trooper Scott Kunstmann was suspended, investigated and later fired and charged with falsifying documents and perjury — both felonies — after a Herald-Tribune investigation revealed that what transpired on his DUI stops did not match what he wrote in his official reports. Prosecutors offered Kunstmann a plea deal consisting of two years of probation and two years of counseling, according to Dr. Robert G. Culbertson, a retired criminology and sociology professor from Fort Myers who Kunstmann arrested for DUI in November 2011, while the 72-year-old retiree was southbound on I-75. Culbertson is livid that the former trooper will likely not be going to jail. "I think it's horrible a state trooper can go out and arrest someone, put them in jail, tell a pack of lies and then walk away," Culbertson said Friday. "This guy should never have been on the road." Neither Kunstmann nor his attorney Nevin Weiner returned calls seeking comment for this story. Culbertson said he learned of the possible deal Thursday evening, after the prosecutor assigned to the case, Assistant State Attorney Shanna Hourihan, told him a deal had been offered. Hourihan said the former trooper's lack of criminal history played a role in the decision. "I cannot tell you the specifics of the actual plea offer, as this is a pending case, but we believe an appropriate plea was offered based on the defendant's lack of criminal history, the facts of the case and substantive mitigation by the defense," Hourihan said. Kunstmann's conduct first drew scrutiny last year, when Culbertson noticed that what he read in the trooper's arrest report and heard when the trooper testified under oath in a deposition did not match his recollections of events. It also did not match the events recorded on the trooper's own dash-mounted video camera. Culbertson retained Sarasota attorney Andrea Mogensen, who has said the trooper was not truthful in either his arrest report or during a deposition she conducted. The State Attorney's Office threw out Culbertson's case last year, just as jury selection was set to begin. Kunstmann, 47, had been a trooper since 2007.

EDMONTON - Love them or hate them, more traffic circles are coming to city streets. Traffic planners have concept designs finalized for a “turbo roundabout,” a new design first used in The Netherlands that forces drivers in the outside lane to exit at the first or second opportunity rather than endlessly circling, changing lanes and causing fender-benders. “A lot of our traffic circles are set up so you could go around four or five times,” said Rob Gibbard, director of transportation planning. The turbo roundabout still needs community consultation and funding, but traffic engineers are hoping to try it out at 118th Avenue and 101st Street. In Europe, engineers use concrete curbs to keep traffic in the right lane and out the right exit, Edmonton hopes textured surfaces will accomplish the same thing without impeding snow removal. Edmonton was the traffic circle capital of Canada in the 1950s, then moved away from the design and even removed several near the University of Alberta. People complain other drivers don’t understand the rules. But they prevent high-speed, T-bone collisions and are safer than a signalled intersection. At the city’s annual traffic safety conference next week, expect roundabouts to be a topic of conversation. The conference focuses on a new approach called Safe Systems, which aims to re-engineer the road system to prevent major injuries and fatalities. “We know a crash will happen despite all of our best efforts,” said Australian Bruce Corben, a consultant making a presentation to the conference Wednesday. “Humans do make intentional and unintentional mistakes. How do we design an intersection so that any crash has a very low chance of a severe outcome?” In 2012, Corben was hired to analyze eight poorly performing intersections in Edmonton, Sherwood Park and St. Albert. All have common safety flaws that created the possibility of a T-bone crash when a person turns left or runs a red, which is the most dangerous way for a vehicle to get hit. “We believe the use of roundabout is the single most effective tool. But it’s a culture change, getting used to these new tools,” he said. In Victoria, Australia, he oversaw the change of more than 100 intersections to roundabouts and studied the effects, he said. “We find a 80- to 90-per-cent reduction in the most severe injury crashes.” In Edmonton, Gibbard’s department approved concept plans for at least two traffic circles on 92nd Avenue between 215th Street and 231st Street. A two-lane roundabout is planned for 112th Street and 167th Avenue, and a single-lane roundabout for 112th Street and 176th Avenue. Other new areas will also be considered. Gibbard said the province now has a policy to consider a roundabout whenever they are thinking of installing signals at a rural intersection. “At the right traffic volumes, they work very well,” he said. Edmonton is reconsidering where to place crosswalks around the circles, in some cases moving them further from the entrance/exit to increase visibility. estolte@edmontonjournal.com twitter.com/estolte

Editor's note: Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz are the sarcastic brains behind humor blog and book Stuff Hipsters Hate. When they're not trolling Brooklyn for new material, Ehrlich works as a news editor at Mashable.com and Bartz holds the same position at Psychology Today. (CNN) -- As anyone passing through a U.S. airport discovered last week, privacy is a precious thing. And while we can't expect it from grope-happy TSA officers, everyone should be able to demand a certain level from family and friends. So let's start with this week's most obvious shining bauble of a takeaway point: Don't snoop. A few decades ago, snooping had pretty clear-cut definitions: jimmying open the lock on Sally's diary and reading about her awkward fumblings with Billy, listening behind a closed door with a tumbler pressed against the wood, or slicing open a neighbor's mail. (We soon learned this last one is illegal, meaning that 10-year-olds still freeze in abject fear whenever they realize they've accidentally ripped open their sister's card and brace themselves for policemen to swing in through the windows, handcuffs at the ready.) Nowadays, accidental espionage is the norm. You grab your girlfriend's phone to check the time -- and bam, there's a text from her ex-boyfriend. You crack open your daughter's laptop to show her a Flickr album -- kapow, there's her friends-only Blogspot in fully accessible glory. You surf to Gmail the day after your friend used your computer, and hello, friend's inbox. And if you do suspect bad behavior, e-investigation is almost too easy. Like it or not, from time to time your eye will fall on something that's not meant for you, and when that happens you're a big fat privacy invader. In fact, a recent British survey found that 14 percent of wives spy on their hubbies' e-mails, 13 percent read his texts and 10 percent check his Web-surfing history. (The same survey found that about half as many men keep up the same spousal spying). An Australian survey found that 73 percent of those who check their partners' texts found out things they later wished they hadn't. So hang on, snoopy. You can minimize the damage both to your own conscience and to your relationship by following our three rules of digital snooping. (They're completely made up, but this is a netiquette column so we get to do that -- deal with it.) 1. Don't click on anything. The second you make a move to read the rest of the text or scroll to see more of the illicit e-mail, you've gone from the snooping equivalent of manslaughter to murder. No matter how intensely your curiosity was piqued, no matter how tantalizing the first few words are -- it's a dark road and a slippery slope and all sorts of metaphorical directions you'd best avoid. Make like an uncomfortable traveler watching a fat man entering the full-body scan and avert your eyes. 2. Figure out why you want to snoop. Everyone's favorite cat-killer (curiosity, that is) is a powerful force, but for most of us it's not potent enough to compromise our personal moral codes. So if you're just dying to check a certain relation's browsing history or e-mails or texts, there are likely some real-life red flags that are bugging you. If, pre-snooping, you can't shake the feeling that your beau is still in contact with that ex in Phoenix despite his impassioned assertions that she's out of the picture, or your motherly spider sense is tingling with suspicion that little Suzie is addicted to her classmate's Adderall, your best bet isn't to grab a magnifying glass (or hit ctrl-F) and go all Encyclopedia Brown, it's to man up and ask him or her about it. (Without any mention of his or your digital habits, of course). Here's the cool part: If you're a trusting person (read: not maniacally exploring his or her smartphone in the dead of night), that doesn't mean you're gullible. In fact, a study from the University of Toronto suggests you'll actually be better at judging whether he's telling the truth when you ask him point blank what's up. 3. Know when to call yourself out. What's making you feel all squirmy? Are you bothered by the fact that you saw something that wasn't meant for you, or by the content of what you saw? If it's the former, hats off to you for having a superhuman guilt reflex; there's no reason to tell your friend you saw that embarrassing follow-up e-mail from her gynecologist, so get over it, even if 'fessing up would make you feel better. (Exception: If she never, ever remembers to, say, log out of Facebook when she's done perusing at your place, the dingbat could probably benefit from a lesson in Protecting Your Personal Info 101.) But what if your accidental indiscretion really is weighing on you? You truly didn't mean to glimpse a text from her ex, and now it's bugging you, or he doesn't know that you know that that flirtatious co-worker of his is sending him Facebook messages. So you walk around with narrowed eyes, thinking, "Gah, you're keeping a secret from me. Why don't you just tell me?!" Well, here's the missing piece, folks, the oft-overlooked sucker-punch from reality: You're keeping a secret now, too -- the fact that you read a private missive. So take a deep breath, and reveal exactly what you were doing (grabbing her phone to find Tommy's number, as requested), exactly what you saw (Was that a MySpace shot of a dude with his shirt off?!), and exactly how it's making you feel (ashamed that you accidentally snooped; suspicious of this beefcake; inadequate about your own pecs; slightly turned on). Then you'll be back on the road to Trusting Relationship Town, population: you and your circle of not-hating-you friends. Or at least, you'll be on the road to passcodes and phone locks all around. Judging by those gloved, blue-shirted airport employees now pawing through your toiletries, it might be the last bastion of privacy you get.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Prime Ministerial candidate Beata Szydlo: ''We wouldn't have won, had it not been for the Polish people'' Poland's opposition Law and Justice party - conservative and Eurosceptic - has won parliamentary elections. Preliminary results gave the party 37.6% of the vote, but it was not immediately clear if that would be enough for it to govern alone. Its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski claimed victory, and the outgoing Prime Minister, Ewa Kopacz of the centrist Civic Platform, admitted defeat. Law and Justice (PiS) has strong support in poorer, rural areas. Civic Platform, the pro-market party that governed for the last eight years, got 24.1% of the vote. Three other parties also won enough votes to get seats in parliament: a new right-wing party led by rock star Pawel Kukiz with 8.8%; a new pro-business party, Modern Poland, with 7.6%; and the agrarian Polish People's Party with 5.1%. The election authority is expected to announce how many seats the parties get in parliament on Tuesday. Exit polls suggested Law and Justice would have a small majority - making it the first time a single party has won enough seats to govern alone since democracy was restored in 1989. Image copyright EPA Image caption Some observers said Mr Kaczynski (left) could take the job of prime minister from Beata Szydlo (right) in months to come after the euphoria of victory has died down "We will exert law but there will be no taking of revenge. There will be no squaring of personal accounts," said Mr Kaczynski. "There will be no kicking of those who have fallen through their own fault and very rightly so." Analysis: Adam Easton, BBC News, Warsaw It was a historic election. It will be the first time since 1989 that there will be no left-wing party in parliament. Law and Justice won big because they offered simple, concrete policies for the many in Poland that feel untouched by the country's impressive economic growth. It offered higher child care benefits and tax breaks for the less well-off. After eight years in office many Poles had grown weary of the governing centrist Civic Platform's unfulfilled promises, scandals and what was perceived by some to be an aloof attitude. Law and Justice also stuck with its winning formula of presenting a more moderate face than its rather combative leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski. That moderate face belongs to Beata Szydlo, a 52-year-old miner's daughter and avid reader, who will become the country's next prime minister. Poland returns to conservative roots Poland elections: Conservative swing grips media Polish miner's daughter set for top job Beata Szydlo said she was grateful for the support of the Polish people. "We have won because we have been consistent in facing all the challenges ahead of us and we followed in the footsteps of the late President Lech Kaczynski," she said. "We wouldn't have won had it not been for the Polish people who told us about their expectations and needs, and who in the end voted for us." Europe's refugee crisis also proved to be a key topic of debate before the election. While the government has agreed to take in 7,000 migrants, opposition parties have spoken out against the move. Mr Kaczynski, 66, was not running as prime minister and instead nominated Ms Szydlo, a relative unknown, as the party's choice for the post. However, some observers said Mr Kaczynski - the twin brother of Poland's late president Lech - could take on the top job himself in the months to come. Last week, Mr Kaczynski was criticised for suggesting migrants could bring diseases and parasites to Poland. PiS is close to the country's powerful Roman Catholic Church and has promised increased benefits and tax breaks. It supports a ban on abortions and in-vitro fertilisation and believes a strong Nato is necessary to offset the perceived threat from Russia. Civic Platform for its part sought closer ties with the EU. Despite overseeing eight years of impressive economic growth it was beaten into second place and will become the main opposition party.

The I.W.W. - Its History, Structure, and Method Vincent ST. JOHN (1876 - 1929) “We must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wage system’” The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies," is an international labor union that was founded in 1905. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism," with ties to both socialist and anarchist labor movements. The IWW promotes the concept of "One Big Union," and contends that all workers should be united as a social class to supplant capitalism and wage labor with industrial democracy. Vincent St. John (1876 – 1929) was an American labor leader and prominent Wobbly, among the most influential radical labor leaders of the 20th century. - Summary by Wikipedia Genre(s): Essays & Short Works Language: English

They say breast is best when it comes to nurturing a baby. That message doesn’t translate well when it comes to baked goods. An unnamed mother has stirred up outrage on Facebook after she made brownies with breast milk for a school bake sale. A post on the Sanctimommy Facebook page revealed the mother’s dilemma when she ran out of cow’s milk as an ingredient for her baking and decided to use her own breast milk as a substitution. “I didn’t have time to run to the store and didn’t think it was a big deal (some of those kids could use the nutrition let’s be honest),” the mother wrote. “And it wasn’t even that much.” The mysterious mommy stated another parent found out about the secret ingredient and was “blowing it way out of proportion.” The woman foolishly turned to the Internet for suggestions. Let’s just say the reaction to the post – which has garnered 921 shares and more than 1,000 comments on Facebook – has been mixed and emotional. “Honestly this is actually a damn near criminal offense,” one outraged commenter stated. “Breast milk, like blood or semen, can carry diseases, which is why legit donation services screen the milk before passing it along to moms and their babies.” “Secretly feeding children that aren’t yours baked goods with your bodily fluids in them is gross, shady and borderline psychotic,” another angry commenter wrote. While most of the comments were hateful, some people were confused over the situation. “But…milk isn’t even one of the ingredients for brownies…human or cow,” wrote a confused commenter. Others found humour in the situation. “But was it homogenize?” joked one person. “‘Susan. These brownies are DELISH! What’s in them? …me,’” another humourously chimed. While breast milk is good for babies, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that HIV and other serious infectious diseases can be transmitted through the liquid.

THE definition of ‘sexy news’ has been taken to a whole new level after a Swedish TV station accidentally broadcast porn in the background of a news show. THE definition of ‘sexy news’ has been taken to a whole new level after a Swedish TV station accidentally broadcast porn in the background of a news show. Station TV4 was broadcasting a discussion segment on Russia’s involvement in the Syrian crisis when viewers noticed the erotic material on a screen behind the host. Viewer Daniel Ek told Swedish paper The Local: “At first I realised I was looking at a naked woman and it quickly became clear she was having sex. It didn't take long before I realised it was a porn film. "The image wasn't exactly in focus, but it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on”, he continued. He offered his own theories as to how the mix up happened: “I had two theories. One is that someone was pissed off after getting fired and put the porno up as act of revenge. My other thought was that someone had simply screwed up.” The channel stated the incident was caused by a mix up in the feed – as the station’s parent company also operate adult channels. News editor Andreas Haglind said: “It's not like we were directly broadcasting porn. Put simply, it's crap that it happened. We're going to do everything we can so that it doesn't happen again.”

The English Channel in 6h 57min 20sec! Eric Defert and Pierre Yves Durand broke Yvan Bourgnon and Karine Baillet record. Eric Defert: “We had 25 knots of wind, reaching in 3 to 4 meters sea. We left at 8:26 am and arrived at 3:23pm! When we left for Plymouth wednesday, the forecast announced 15 knots, then in the next 48 hours, the prevision were for 20 + knots from the east. Since we were already in England, we decided to give a try. Our driver, in the ferry back to France, recorded wind up to 35 knots. It made for a strong sea. I think the record can be taken… Anybody?” Sunday morning Eric Defert was in Brest for the inauguration of the “Port of Records”. Eric was able to see in own plate made in bronze of his hands after his previous successful Atlantic Crossing on a Class 40, single handed. – Laurent Apollon.

The big 2-part Dark Matter season finale is coming up this Friday (I know … already) and to celebrate we had the opportunity to be a part of a conference call interview with several of the cast along with lead mystery wrangler, Joe Mallozzi. Joining Joe were Melissa O’Neil (Two), Jodelle Ferland (Five), Alex Mallari, Jr. (Four) and Roger Cross (Six) who answered every question we threw at them. It was a lot of fun and laughter accompanied most of the conversation. Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves and with the exception of a few phone line issues, it went off without a hitch. Before you read any further, be warned that HERE THERE BE SPOILERS! There aren’t any large, hairy, wookiee-sized spoilers inside, but there are a few, fuzzy tribble-sized ones tossed about. I know some people would rather avoid such teases and hints, so please avert your eyes and read no further if you are one of them. For the rest of you nerds, keep on readin’ on, but before you do, remember that the Dark Matter finale is a two-parter beginning at 9/8c this Friday. That’s one hour earlier than usual. Don’t miss it! Hi, Space Cadets! Cross: No hugs, Tom. No hugs, no hugs. (This is from me frequently teasing Roger about hugs on Twitter. The fact that I’m still alive is proof he’s a very tolerant man.) With Five proving herself to be a very capable member of the crew, can you each talk about your character’s changing opinions of her? Cross: I still think Six kind of feels like he has to protect her, but he starts slowly realizing, “Wait a second, she’s smart.” There’s a comment, and it’s pretty subtle, too, that Joe wrote in there where they’re coming off the ship and she goes, “Oh, I would’ve just reprogrammed it.” And all of a sudden the bells go off and he’s like, “I didn’t know you knew how to program.” She throw him things and all of a sudden you’re like, well, maybe she’s not as helpless as she appears. Who, other than Melissa, is the best singer? And who thinks they’re the best singer that might not necessarily be? Ferland: Melissa’s the best singer. Mallari: Roger’s a nice second. Cross: Alex, you’re right there, brother! For some reason, from day one … I think it’s a very odd group of us, but we all seem to know the same songs. And we might have some sing-alongs that kinda might drive our first ADs crazy going, “They’re laughing and having too much fun! Like, stop!” And we’re like, “What? We’re just singing!” O’Neil: Alex, Roger and I all really love 90s soul and R&B. We should do a 90s music video! Cross: That would be fun. We should do that. Mallari: On the Raza. Cross: We’re still trying to get Jodelle to sing, but she keeps refusing. I don’t know why. Ferland: One day, I’m just going to belt out into song and you will all be shocked. Melissa, here’s a question for you. Dark Matter is your first television series experience. What was the most interesting or surprising thing you learned from this? O’Neil: I didn’t expect to come out with so many new friends. My entire summer has just kind of been filled with crew members and AD people and my stunt double. It’s cool. I’ve created this new posse in Toronto and besides learning a whole ton and learning a different way to tell a story, I’ve made so many new friends. Like, life-long ones, you know? How are each of you most like and most un-like your characters? Mallari: I’m not like Four at all. [laughs] Yeah, he’s too serious for my liking. Cross: You’re not serious. Mallari: That’s what I’m saying, I’m not like Four at all. I mean, the only thing I have in common with Four is I can kick ass. Ferland: I think I’m most like Five because of her quirkiness and her weirdness. I just kind of consider myself a really weird person and I’m proud of my awkwardness and strangeness. I think I’m like Five in that way, she’s pretty different and I relate to her because of that. I don’t know how I feel about her sense of style. I tend to wear one or two colors at once instead of all of them, but I love dressing like that on set and it’s a lot of fun because that’s not normally how I’d go outside. I love being able to play Five and be completely different than how I normally am, except for the quirkiness, as I said. So, yeah, other than the colors and all of the pink, we’re pretty similar. O’Neil: I don’t know, I don’t think I find as much comfort in my own skin as Two, but I don’t know. I can be pretty forthcoming with my thoughts. You’re not a custom-built biosynthetic organism, are you? O’Neil: I’m not a biosynthetic organism. I don’t think. But maybe there’s going to be a dun, dun, dunnn(!) moment in my life, I have no idea. But no, not to my knowledge. What piece of technology from the show would you want to have in real life? Mallari: Transfer Transit. O’Neil: That would be so great! Cross: That would be awesome. Ferland: It freaks me out a little, I have to admit, but I would try it. It would be cool, yeah. Mallari: Oh, and FTL! Ferland: If we’re just talking technology here, I just want the fish. Do you each have a favorite part of the ship’s physical sets? O’Neil: I like the corridors. Cross: The corridors are cool O’Neil: I love the hallways, they’re so great. They just look so industrial and grimy. I feel like in those areas, that’s where you can see that we’ve got a “beater” for a ship. It’s not like we’re flying around in some Cadillac. It’s utilitarian and I feel like the corridors really show that off the best. Ferland: I really love the bridge as well just because there’s lots to look at. There’s so many buttons and it’s fun to hang out in. Cross: We’ve got a pretty cool screen in the commissary, too. It’s the screens that never line up and drive Jodelle crazy. Jodelle, we were surprised to see that you didn’t say you liked the air ducts. With all that crawling, you need some knee pads for those. Ferland: You know, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. When I saw that I was going to be crawling through all those vents I thought, “that will be fun” and then I actually got in there and I was like, “I might’ve been a little bit wrong.” I can’t say that if I had a little bit of free time that I wouldn’t go find some vents to crawl through, but it’s definitely worth it when I watch afterwards because I go, “Wow. That looked really cool, I’m glad that I did it.” But, yeah, it’s never as much fun as you think it’s going to be, but I still enjoyed doing it. Jodelle, I know you’re a big fan of Doctor Who. There’s a great “technobabble” line uttered by the third Doctor when he says, “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.” It became a kind of catchphrase in its day. Back in episode 10 when you were wiring up the android to open the vault door you said, “If I don’t adjust the inverter to minimize harmonic distortion we’ll get pulsating torque and the whole thing will fry.” Am I the only one who made this association? Because when I heard it I thought, “She’s got her Doctor Who moment here!” Ferland: You know what? I didn’t even think of that, but I’m so glad you mentioned it because that makes me really happy. I love my Doctor Who references even if it was by accident! Cross: And Joe will tell you it wasn’t an accident. Ferland: You never know with Joe. There are some things that seem like references to something and I’m never sure if he did it on purpose. Joe, what gave you the idea to try Periscope after the Dark Matter broadcasts? Mallozzi: Syfy UK asked if I would be interested and I was like “sure” and we did it for one of the Syfy UK broadcasts and it was delightfully awkward, but fun. And then I decided I would follow through. I’ve been live tweeting almost every week and hopefully I’ll have time to do an east and west coast Periscope and possibly one for the UK viewers as well. Do any of you have any other upcoming projects that fans can look for while we wait for a second season of Dark Matter? Cross: The final season of Continuum is coming out, as most of you probably know, September 11. I have a movie, Lockdown, that’s going to be out soon. I’m doing some episodes of Bones and I’m doing a bunch of other stuff. You’ll see me all over the place. O’Neil: I’ve just finished my last two days of shooting on a show called Rogue on DirecTV. I play this hacker girl. That’ll be out, I think, over the holiday season. And a new CBC show called This Life, which stars Torri Higginson, our Commander Truffault. I just finished doing a video game, but I can’t talk too much about that yet. Jodelle: I’ve had a pretty chill summer, actually, since Dark Matter finished. I have a couple of things I’ll be working on with friends, but nothing I can give a lot of information on at the moment. Are you or any of the writing staff fans of Big Brother? The finale reminded me, in parts, of the general distress and alliances that show up so much in that show. Mallozzi: Well, I’m going to show my age, but I don’t watch Big Brother. When I was a kid I read a lot of Agatha Christie and the finale is essentially Ten Little Indians where basically you’ve got a group of people and they start dropping one by one. There’s a dying realization that if there’s no outside force here, then it’s one of them, and as the mystery deepens distrust grows and you see alliances shift. Really, that’s where my inspiration comes, but Big Brother is a good reference, too. Can you all talk about working with Wil Wheaton? Cross: Poor Wil. Airplanes killed us that day. Remember that, Joe? Mallozzi: We were actually shooting by an airport and the poor guy has to deliver this incredibly long monologue. He’d get into it and then 30 seconds in a plane would buzz the area and we’d have to cut and start over again. He ended up delivering an entire monologue in pieces, but he was super professional and super focused and just a very nice guy to work with. Ferland: I knew we were going to have Wil Wheaton on the show, but I never got to meet him! I was so sad. What happened is that I … nobody told me. I was at the computer at home after work and I saw something on his Instagram of Facebook and it was a small piece of the Dark Matter logo and he was saying it was a hint of what he was working on. And I looked at it for a while and I thought that looks really familiar, then I was like, “Wait a minute!” Then I texted Joe right away and I was like, “Wil Wheaton’s on our show! Why didn’t you tell me?” I was very excited about it and hopefully I’ll get to meet him some day. What was everybody’s biggest surprise when you all read the finale script? Ferland: Every episode had something that shocked the team. Every time we got a script we just wanted the next one. Cross: These last few episodes, especially, we were just like, “Ahhh….” Ferland: Yeah, and we were bothering Joe non-stop asking, “Please, please give us the next episode. Tell us what happens. You can’t do this to us!” but we got nothing out of him. Cross: Except for that grin. That Mallozzi grin. O’Neil: I was watching the finale on my iPad and yelling at the screen. So we better find out, we really better get a second season. I want to know how it ends. For the rest of our extensive coverage of Dark Matter, CLICK HERE. Like this article? Share it with your friends using our social share buttons found both on the left and at the top. Subscribe to Three If By Space to keep up with all the latest posts. It’s super easy! All you have to do is click on the big, blue “Subscribe” button located in the right panel near the bottom of each post or just Click Here. Stay connected: Follow @ThreeIfBySpace on Twitter for all the latest geekiness from all your favorite shows, movies, comics, conventions and more! For all the latest Dark Matter news and reviews, follow me (@Thogar) on Twitter. The Dark Matter 2-part finale airs Friday, August 28 at 9/8 central on Syfy Dark Matter official website Like Dark Matter on Facebook Follow Dark Matter on Twitter

An exclusive Mitchell FOX 2 Detroit Poll of Michigan finds that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton hold large leads over their nearest GOP and Democratic opponents, respectively. In a head to head matchup, Trump holds a 47 - 43 percent lead over Clinton with 10 percent undecided. The latest Mitchell poll data has Trump holding a 3-1 lead over his two closest opponents in the Michigan Republican Presidential Primary. Trump has 51 percent compared to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz who is in second place at just 15 percent and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio who is in third with 12 percent. They are followed by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Michigan native Dr. Ben Carson, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie all at five percent. Three percent are voting for someone else and 5 percent are undecided. The automated survey of 493 likely March 2016 Michigan Republican Presidential Primary voters was conducted by Mitchell Research & Communications January 25, 2016 and has a Margin of Error of + or - 4.41 percent at the 95 percent level of confidence. On the Democratic side former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is at 61 percent with a big lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (34 percent) and Martin O'Malley (four percent) in a trial ballot test. The data comes from the latest Mitchell-FOX 2 Detroit IVR (Interactive Voice Response) survey of 344 March 2016 Michigan Democratic Presidential Primary voters conducted by Mitchell Research and Communications January 25, 2016. The poll has a margin of error of + or - 5.28 percent at the 95 percent level of confidence.

Got a cool 2.4 million dollars sitting around and a love for 80’s movies? The home made famous by a crashing Ferarri and Cameron’s refusal to give into his father any more is currently on the market. THE BEN ROSE HOME-site of the famous movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, cantilevered over the ravine, these two steel and glass buildings, which can never be duplicated, have incredible vistas of the surrounding woods. This is a unique property designed by A. James Speyer and David Haid, both notable architects of the 20th Century. Estate Sale Sold “As Is” No disclosures! This is an amazing architectural treasure. As is? Does that include all of the movie memorabelia reportedly still in the home? It’s a 4 bedroom, 4 bath home with roughly 5300 square feet of living space. If I can get 2,400 to each contribute $1000 . . . well, I’ll be leaving the country. But wow, that would be a cool home to own. [tags]movies, beuller[/tags]

Bank of America and Citigroup incorrectly accounted for billions of dollars in debt over the past three years, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The report highlights a form of corporate borrowing increasingly under scrutiny since the financial crisis began. The loans, known as "repos," or short-term repurchase agreements, allow banks to increase the amount of risk they can take in securities trading. Both BofA and Citigroup disclosed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that they have over the last three years accidentally classified some repos as sales when they should have been classified as borrowings, the newspaper reported. The amounts involved were small for the banks, though they totaled billions. It is illegal under federal securities rules to intentionally conceal debt and mislead investors. Bank of America and Citigroup claim the accounting flaws were purely accidental and represent minute portions of their overall operations. Bank of America, in addressing errors that reached up to $10.7 billion per quarter, noted that the flaws ”represented substantially less than 1 percent of our total assets," the Wall Street Journal reports.

Image caption One of the freshwater arowanas that has been rehomed at a Cheshire aquarium Four large fish used in a drug smuggling operation have been re-homed at a Cheshire aquarium. The freshwater arowanas were used in an attempt to smuggle 17kg of cocaine, with a street value of £1.6m, from Colombia to the UK in 2011. The drugs were hidden in sealed bags containing more than 16,000 tropical fish, most of which died in transit. The fish, along with eight pacus and a large catfish, were transported to Blue Planet Aquarium, near Ellesmere Port. Of the 16,000 fish found, only 34 fish survived. Some were looked after at London Zoo and some were transferred to Bristol Zoo. Aquarium curator David Wolfenden said: "Clearly the smugglers did not care at all about the fishes' welfare and the fact that nearly all of them perished during the smuggling operation is extremely sad. "It's something of a miracle that any managed to survive the ordeal and we're glad they can now live out their time here with us in a large, purpose-built display." The largest of the pacus is a metre long and weighs almost 40kg. The aquarium hopes to use the fish to promote the Big Fish Campaign - an initiative to try and raise awareness of the problems caused by the sale of fast-growing exotic fish species.

The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon. 1. Not unconstitutional as an invasion of the reserved powers of the States. Citing Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U.S. 506 , and Narcotic Act cases. P. 177. The National Firearms Act, as applied to one indicted for transporting in interstate commerce a 12-gauge shotgun with a barrel less than 18 inches long without having registered it and without having in his possession a stamp-affixed written order for it, as required by the Act, held: Opinion MCREYNOLDS, J., Opinion of the Court MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS delivered the opinion of the Court. An indictment in the District Court, Western District Arkansas, charged that Jack Miller and Frank Layton did unlawfully, knowingly, willfully, and feloniously transport in interstate commerce from the town of Claremore in the State of Oklahoma to the town of Siloam Springs in the State of Arkansas a certain firearm, to-wit, a double barrel 12-gauge Stevens shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches in length, bearing identification number 76230, said defendants, at the time of so transporting said firearm in interstate commerce as aforesaid, not having registered said firearm as required by Section 1132d of Title 26, United States Code (Act of June 26, 1934, c. 737, Sec. 4 [§ 5], 48 Stat. 1237), and not having in their possession a stamp-affixed written order for said firearm as provided by Section 1132c, Title 2, United States Code (June 26, 1934, c. 737, Sec. 4, 48 Stat. 1237) and the regulations issued under authority of the said Act of Congress known as the "National Firearms Act," approved June 26, 1934, contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the United States. [n1] [p176] A duly interposed demurrer alleged: the National Firearms Act is not a revenue measure, but an attempt to usurp police power reserved to the States, and is therefore unconstitutional. Also, it offends the inhibition of the Second Amendment to the Constitution -- "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." [p177] The District Court held that section eleven of the Act violates the Second Amendment. It accordingly sustained the demurrer and quashed the indictment. The cause is here by direct appeal. Considering Sonzinsky v. United States (1937), 300 U.S. 506, 513, and what was ruled in sundry causes arising [p178] under the Harrison Narcotic Act [n2] -- United States v. Jin Fuey Moy (1916), 241 U.S. 394, United States v. Doremus (1919), 249 U.S. 86, 94; Linder v. United States (1925), 268 U.S. 5; Alston v. United States (1927), 274 U.S. 289; Nigro v. United States (1928), 276 U.S. 332 -- the objection that the Act usurps police power reserved to the States is plainly untenable. In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158. The Constitution, as originally adopted, granted to the Congress power -- To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress. With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces, the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view. The Militia which the States were expected to maintain and train is set in contrast with Troops which they [p179] were forbidden to keep without the consent of Congress. The sentiment of the time strongly disfavored standing armies; the common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the Militia -- civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion. The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. "A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline." And further, that ordinarily, when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time. Blackstone's Commentaries, Vol. 2, Ch. 13, p. 409 points out "that king Alfred first settled a national militia in this kingdom," and traces the subsequent development and use of such forces. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Book V, Ch. 1, contains an extended account of the Militia. It is there said: "Men of republican principles have been jealous of a standing army as dangerous to liberty." In a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character, and in this distinction seems to consist the essential difference between those two different species of military force. "The American Colonies In The 17th Century," Osgood, Vol. 1, ch. XIII, affirms in reference to the early system of defense in New England -- In all the colonies, as in England, the militia system was based on the principle of the assize of arms. This implied the general obligation of all adult male inhabitants to possess arms, and, with certain exceptions, to [p180] cooperate in the work of defence. The possession of arms also implied the possession of ammunition, and the authorities paid quite as much attention to the latter as to the former. A year later [1632] it was ordered that any single man who had not furnished himself with arms might be put out to service, and this became a permanent part of the legislation of the colony [Massachusetts]. Also, Clauses intended to insure the possession of arms and ammunition by all who were subject to military service appear in all the important enactments concerning military affairs. Fines were the penalty for delinquency, whether of towns or individuals. According to the usage of the times, the infantry of Massachusetts consisted of pikemen and musketeers. The law, as enacted in 1649 and thereafter, provided that each of the former should be armed with a pike, corselet, head-piece, sword, and knapsack. The musketeer should carry a "good fixed musket," not under bastard musket bore, not less than three feet, nine inches, nor more than four feet three inches in length, a priming wire, scourer, and mould, a sword, rest, bandoleers, one pound of powder, twenty bullets, and two fathoms of match. The law also required that two-thirds of each company should be musketeers. The General Court of Massachusetts, January Session 1784, provided for the organization and government of the Militia. It directed that the Train Band should "contain all able bodied men, from sixteen to forty years of age, and the Alarm List, all other men under sixty years of age, . . ." Also, That every noncommissioned officer and private soldier of the said militia not under the controul of parents, masters or guardians, and being of sufficient ability therefor in the judgment of the Selectmen of the town in which he shall dwell, shall equip himself, and be constantly provided with a good fire arm, etc. By an Act passed April 4, 1786, the New York Legislature directed: That every able-bodied Male Person, being [p181] a Citizen of this State, or of any of the United States, and residing in this State, (except such Persons as are hereinafter excepted) and who are of the Age of Sixteen, and under the Age of Forty-five Years, shall, by the Captain or commanding Officer of the Beat in which such Citizens shall reside, within four Months after the passing of this Act, be enrolled in the Company of such Beat. . . . That every Citizen so enrolled and notified shall, within three Months thereafter, provide himself, at his own Expense, with a good Musket or Firelock, a sufficient Bayonet and Belt, a Pouch with a Box therein to contain not less than Twenty-four Cartridges suited to the Bore of his Musket or Firelock, each Cartridge containing a proper Quantity of Powder and Ball, two spare Flints, a Blanket and Knapsack; . . . The General Assembly of Virginia, October, 1785, (12 Hening's Statutes) declared, The defense and safety of the commonwealth depend upon having its citizens properly armed and taught the knowledge of military duty. It further provided for organization and control of the Militia, and directed that "All free male persons between the ages of eighteen and fifty years," with certain exceptions, "shall be inrolled or formed into companies." "There shall be a private muster of every company once in two months." Also that Every officer and soldier shall appear at his respective muster-field on the day appointed, by eleven o'clock in the forenoon, armed, equipped, and accoutred, as follows: . . . every non-commissioned officer and private with a good, clean musket carrying an ounce ball, and three feet eight inches long in the barrel, with a good bayonet and iron ramrod well fitted thereto, a cartridge box properly made, to contain and secure twenty cartridges fitted to his musket, a good knapsack and canteen, and moreover, each non-commissioned officer and private shall have at every muster one pound of good [p182] powder, and four pounds of lead, including twenty blind cartridges, and each serjeant shall have a pair of moulds fit to cast balls for their respective companies, to be purchased by the commanding officer out of the monies arising on delinquencies. Provided, That the militia of the counties westward of the Blue Ridge, and the counties below adjoining thereto, shall not be obliged to be armed with muskets, but may have good rifles with proper accoutrements, in lieu thereof. And every of the said officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates, shall constantly keep the aforesaid arms, accoutrements, and ammunition ready to be produced whenever called for by his commanding officer. If any private shall make it appear to the satisfaction of the court hereafter to be appointed for trying delinquencies under this act that he is so poor that he cannot purchase the arms herein required, such court shall cause them to be purchased out of the money arising from delinquents. Most if not all of the States have adopted provisions touching the right to keep and bear arms. Differences in the language employed in these have naturally led to somewhat variant conclusions concerning the scope of the right guaranteed. But none of them seems to afford any material support for the challenged ruling of the court below. In the margin, some of the more important opinions and comments by writers are cited. [n3] We are unable to accept the conclusion of the court below, and the challenged judgment must be reversed. The cause will be remanded for further proceedings. MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS took no part in the consideration or decision of this cause. That for the purposes of this Act -- (a) The term "firearm" means a shotgun or rifle having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length, or any other weapon, except a pistol or revolver, from which a shot is discharged by an explosive if such weapon is capable of being concealed on the person, or a machine gun, and includes a muffler or silencer for any firearm whether or not such firearm is included within the foregoing definition [The Act of April 10, 1936, c. 169, 49 Stat. 1192 added the words], but does not include any rifle which is within the foregoing provisions solely by reason of the length of its barrel if the caliber of such rifle is .22 or smaller and if its barrel is sixteen inches or more in length. Sec. 3. (a) There shall be levied, collected, and paid upon firearms transferred in the continental United States a tax at the rate of $200 for each firearm, such tax to be paid by the transferor, and to be represented by appropriate stamps to be provided by the Commissioner, with the approval of the Secretary, and the stamps herein provided shall be affixed to the order for such firearm, hereinafter provided for. The tax imposed by this section shall be in addition to any import duty imposed on such firearm. Sec. 4. (a) It shall be unlawful for any person to transfer a firearm except in pursuance of a written order from the person seeking to obtain such article, on an application form issued in blank in duplicate for that purpose by the Commissioner. Such order shall identify the applicant by such means of identification as may be prescribed by regulations under this Act: Provided, That, if the applicant is an individual, such identification shall include fingerprints and a photograph thereof. (c) Every person so transferring a firearm shall set forth in each copy of such order the manufacturer's number or other mark identifying such firearm, and shall forward a copy of such order to the Commissioner. The original thereof, with stamps affixed, shall be returned to the applicant. (d) No person shall transfer a firearm which has previously been transferred on or after the effective date of this Act, unless such person, in addition to complying with subsection (c), transfers therewith the stamp-affixed order provided for in this section for each such prior transfer, in compliance with such regulations as may be prescribed under this Act for proof of payment of all taxes on such firearms. Sec. 5. (a) Within sixty days after the effective date of this Act every person possessing a firearm shall register, with the collector of the district in which he resides, the number or other mark identifying such firearm, together with his name, address, place where such firearm is usually kept, and place of business or employment, and, if such person is other than a natural person, the name and home address of an executive officer thereof: Provided, That no person shall be required to register under this section with respect to any firearm acquired after the effective date of, and in conformity with the provisions of, this Act. Sec. 6. It shall be unlawful for any person to receive or possess any firearm which has at any time been transferred in violation of section 3 or 4 of this Act. Sec. 11. It shall be unlawful for any person who is required to register as provided in section 5 hereof and who shall not have so registered, or any other person who has not in his possession a stamp-affixed order as provided in section 4 hereof, to ship, carry, or deliver any firearm in interstate commerce. Sec. 12. The Commissioner, with the approval of the Secretary, shall prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary for carrying the provisions of this Act into effect. Sec. 14. Any person who violates or fails to comply with any of the requirements of this Act shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $2,000 or be imprisoned for not more than five years, or both, in the discretion of the court. Sec. 16. If any provision of this Act, or the application thereof to any person or circumstance, is held invalid, the remainder of the Act, and the application of such provision to other persons or circumstances, shall not be affected thereby. Sec. 18. This Act may be cited as the "National Firearms Act."

And for this sparsely populated land, the recent fighting seems a step beyond the army’s desert skirmishes with the Tuaregs in the 1960s, the early 1990s and again in 2006. This time, the rebels are not being quickly stamped out or fleeing to the rocky mountains of this vast, inhospitable region. To the contrary, officials now say they are facing perhaps the most serious threat ever from the Tuaregs. Emboldened by their new weaponry, they have formed a made-to-order liberation movement, the M.N.L.A., or Mouvement National Pour la Libération de l’Azawad — Azawad being the name they give to northern Mali. “Our goal is to liberate our lands from Malian occupation,” said Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, one of the rebel spokesmen in exile in France. The rebels — perhaps as many as 1,000, commanded by a former colonel in Libya’s army — brought with them enough of an arsenal to create a kind of standoff with the Malian Army. Photo “Heavy weapons,” said Mali’s foreign minister, Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga, referring to the new arms. “Antitank weapons. Antiaircraft weapons.” Malian military officials agree. “Robust, powerful machine guns,” said Lt. Col. Diarran Kone of the Defense Ministry. “Mortars,” he added, describing the weaponry as “significant enough to allow them to achieve their objectives.” About a half-dozen towns in the north have been attacked, including Niafounké. Both government and rebel forces have suffered casualties, and nearly 10,000 civilians have fled the fighting, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The situation appears to have worsened for the Mali government over the past few days. The rebels have retaken the town of Ménaka, a military spokesman, Idrissa Traoré, acknowledged Friday, adding that a number of soldiers and civilians — he refused to say how many — had been killed by the rebels in the town of Aguelhok. In Bamako, the capital, families of soldiers have demonstrated against what they say is the government’s poor handling of the rebel offensive, blocking roads and burning tires. The defense minister has been replaced, and reprisals have been reported against Tuareg citizens living in the south. Officials in Bamako make no secret of their shock at what one Western diplomat called the “robustness” of the rebel incursion. “All of a sudden we found ourselves face to face with a thousand men, heavily armed,” said Mr. Maïga, the foreign minister. “The stability of the entire region could be under threat.” 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. The Malians, who viewed Colonel Qaddafi as a generous benefactor — he helped build an administrative complex here, among other things — now find themselves gnashing their teeth over this less beneficent aspect of his legacy. Still, officials here insist that the situation in the north is under control, while acknowledging that the threat is not over. Analysts who study the region agree that the latest Tuareg resurgence is something new, and that Colonel Qaddafi is largely responsible, posthumously. “This is a fairly significant military force,” said Pierre Boilley, a Tuareg expert at the University of Paris. “The game has changed. They can directly attack the Malian Army. I think the army will have trouble.” The new Tuareg campaign “shows a pretty serious military and logistical capability,” said Yvan Guichaoua, a Sahara expert at the University of East Anglia, in Britain. The Tuareg spokesmen are cagey about disclosing the precise dimensions of their arsenal, hinting only that they owe Colonel Qaddafi a good deal. “The Libyan crisis shook up the order of things,” Mr. Acharatoumane said. “A lot of our brothers have come back with weapons.” Photo In some ways, the aggressive new Tuareg campaign represents the kind of support the rebels had long sought from Colonel Qaddafi, who for years alternately aided and betrayed the desert warriors, according to a recent study by Mr. Boilley. After the great regional droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, young Tuaregs migrated north to the colonel’s military training camps, to later fight for him in places like Chad, while at the same time destabilizing the governments in Niger and Mali. Libya, with its World Revolutionary Center, where the warlords Charles Taylor of Liberia and Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone were schooled in Colonel Qaddafi’s doctrines, became the regional matrix of instability. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The center’s mission was to “train volunteers in revolutionary warfare from all over the world,” according to a 1999 book by Stephen Ellis of the African Studies Center, in Leiden, the Netherlands, in keeping with Colonel Qaddafi’s belligerent anti-Western posture. The Libyan training camps under the center’s auspices “became the Harvard and Yale of a whole generation of African revolutionaries,” Mr. Ellis wrote. Mr. Taylor, who is awaiting a verdict after a trial on war crimes charges, recruited his first troops there, leading to years of chaos in Liberia, while Mr. Sankoh’s murderous brigades also had a Libyan genesis, in part. Colonel Qaddafi backed independence movements all over Africa, including a coup attempt in Sudan in 1976, and he supported pariah governments the West shied away from, like the military junta in Gambia in 1994. His most significant African venture was in Chad during the 1980s, when he backed a rebel group against the government, with an eye toward capturing a mineral-rich border area. His surrogates were defeated by Chad’s government in 1987, but Libyan troops did not leave the disputed border strip until 1994. And yet, Mr. Boilley writes, the Tuareg distrusted Colonel Qaddafi, whose rhetorical gestures on their behalf were rarely matched by material support. Now, unwittingly, the picture is different. Outside a villa in Bamako recently, a dozen or more pro-government Tuaregs glumly contemplated the new order of things back home. “When they came into Ménaka, they were yelling, ‘Allahu akbar.’ What does that mean? We don’t do that sort of thing when we fight,” said Bajan Ag Hamatou, a lawmaker from Ménaka. His brother, Aroudeïny Ag Hamatou, the mayor of a small town outside Ménaka, said, “A lot of buildings were destroyed.” Bajan Ag Hamatou angrily blamed the West for having created a mess in his backyard. “The Westerners didn’t want Qaddafi, and they got rid of him, and they created problems for all of us,” he said. “When you chased Qaddafi out in that barbaric fashion, you created 10 more Qaddafis. The whole Saharo-Sahelian region has become unlivable.”

by Marilyn Price-Mitchell, PhD Ability to meet and overcome challenges in ways that maintain or promote well-being. One of the first things you might associate with teenagers is their risk-taking behavior. And most of the time, those associations are negative. Right? That’s because we are deluged with stories of troubled youth whose risk-taking actions got out of hand —sometimes with tragic results. But what if there was a flip-side to youth risk-taking? A side that would make us encourage teenagers to stretch their comfort zones? In a recent article, What Happy People Do Differently, positive psychologists, Robert Biswas-Diener and Todd Kashdan, claim that truly happy people understand “happiness is not just about doing things that you like. It also requires growth and adventuring beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone.” “Curiosity,” they say, “is largely about exploration…the most direct route to becoming stronger and wiser.” A study led by Kashdan and psychologist Michael Steger found that “curious people invest in activities that cause them discomfort as a springboard to higher psychological peaks.” Teens Find Identity through Discomfort In Tomorrow’s Change Makers: Reclaiming the Power of Citizenship for a New Generation, young people, like adults, said they found happiness when they experienced risk-taking. At the peak of their discomfort, students made comments, including: “I crossed barriers in my mind.” “I felt scared.” “I felt liberated.” “What a powerful experience.” “I was way out of my comfort zone.” What risk-taking experiences caused them to make these comments? Were they high on drugs or alcohol? Quite the opposite. These students were describing the positive experience of pushing their psychological boundaries as they participated in a variety of community service activities. Some had come face-to-face with people living in situations very different from their own. Others were doing physical labor that stretched them to new levels of endurance. Several feared failure as they set their sights on unimaginable goals to benefit others. These students came from highly diverse backgrounds. But what they shared in common was a sense of accomplishment and self-esteem that came from learning to solve problems, working with others, and pushing their comfort zones. The bottom line? The students in this study discovered their identities through the process of risk-taking. Simultaneously, they found a path to happiness. The Teen Brain Craves Risk-Taking Much of the research on happiness has been conducted with adults. But what we’ve learned about the teen brain sheds light on their happiness too. Before adolescence, children learn how to fit into society. With parents and teachers as guides, they absorb the norms and unspoken rules of how to behave at home and school. They are like little sponges, soaking up megabytes of information! As children enter their teen years, they begin to merge what they know about society with their psychological selves. They search for their own identities, separate from their parents. Changes to the limbic system of the brain cause teens to seek risk, challenge, and emotional stimulation. While some parents fear this phase of a child’s life, it’s really quite natural. And it’s a time to be embraced as a positive transition to adulthood. Of course, we mostly associate teen risk-taking with drinking, drugs, smoking, and sexual experimentation. But risk-taking is equally associated with positive activities, like mountain climbing, community service, politics, faith groups, and other experiences that can push young people out of their comfort zones and reward them handsomely. Like the teens that were part of my research study, risk-taking can seed happiness, life purpose, and well-being. When young people learn to overcome challenges and meet risk head on, they learn to be resilient. They learn that exploration beyond their comfort zones often leads to unexpected rewards and psychological peaks. They develop courage, curiosity, self-confidence, and persistence. Can we reshape the idea that teen risk-taking is always negative? What positive experiences have you or your teen enjoyed that pushed psychological comfort zones and increased happiness? Photo Credit: Basketman23 Published: July 12, 2013 Share Article: Tags: character strengths

Paul Manafort, back when he was still Trump’s campaign chairman. Drew Angerer/Getty Images The resignation of Paul Manafort Friday morning, just six months after he signed on to Trump’s campaign and two days after the ascension of Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, proves the very thing about Donald Trump we were loath to admit. At a time when Trump is sinking in the polls and seems unable to right the ship, it’s easier than ever, if you are not a Trump supporter, to indulge in a measure of relief. He’s probably not going to be president. But at the same time, the lack of a Trump pivot, his astounding ability to continue to “be himself” even at the cost of his base, means another, complementary truth must be acknowledged: Donald Trump is an incomparable figure, more untamable than even some of the worst people in the world. These two realizations go hand in hand. Had Manafort, a dark mage of political image-making, been successful in reshaping the Trump campaign, we would have declared Trump a clown who got lucky in the primaries and smartly bent a knee to the party apparatus. But it seems the correct view now is that an unstoppably destructive force has, in the span of a year, laid waste not only to the brightest lights of the Republican Party, but to the party’s own best attempt to give him the very thing he’s ostensibly running for. It’s impressive! When Manafort first “volunteered” for the campaign, it was seen as an act of salvation, a professional hand coming on to replace the ramshackle operation run by a dinghy-full of people, one of them being the promptly ousted and now gleefully gloating Corey Lewandowski. Franklin Foer was one of the earliest to sound the alarm bells about Manafort’s evil genius here in Slate, with a frightening portrait of a man who had been a longtime GOP operative, who had crafted the 1984 “Morning in America” convention, and gone on to a lucrative career rehabilitating tyrants and taking money from Russian oligarchs. This was the guy, it seemed, to really be afraid of. This was the guy who was going to take the wildly veering Trump canoe and rebuild it into a wave-chopping tanker of a presidency-winning machine. This, and the growing reports of connections between Manafort and pro-Russian interests, played into the illusion that Trump was a mindless Manchurian candidate of some kind, beholden if not directly to Putin, then to Manafort and his needs, or, opportunistically, to a white nationalist movement. In trying to imagine a convergence of networked interests, we underestimated Trump’s singularity. How wrong we were. Paul Manafort was able to stage-manage Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Mobutu, Angolan guerrilla fighters, Lebanese arms dealers, and Viktor Yanukovych. But he wasn’t able to reform Donald J. Trump. Through some alchemy of pathological striving, bitterness, narcissism, canniness, force of will, and starter funds, we have ended up with a presidential nominee who, we finally have to accept, is the furthest thing from a joke. Trump is a towering figure in American cultural—and now political—history. Paul Manafort is but a footnote. You’ve won, Donald. Even if you don’t become president, you’ve won. There is nobody like you. There never has been. And with any luck—though luck rarely holds—there never will be. Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.

Journalists follow the presentation of Huawei's smartphone, the Mate S, ahead of the IFA Electronics show in Berlin, Germany, in this file picture taken September 2, 2015. Journalists follow the presentation of Huawei's smartphone, the Mate S, ahead of the IFA Electronics show in Berlin, Germany, in this file picture taken September 2, 2015. Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke The new Huawei P10 picks up where its predecessor left off the year before. It’s an improvement over the Huawei P9 in nearly every facet, including camera, design and display protection. But when it comes to battery performance, how far off are the two P series siblings? Huawei P9 - Battery specs and features The Huawei P9 is powered by a robust and non-removable 3,000 mAh battery. The P9 has rapid charging support and is able to provide about 40 percent of power in just 30 minutes of plug time using 9V/2A charger. Unfortunately, the handset comes with a regular 5V/2A charging unit, so those who want fast charging will have to purchase the 9V charger separately. During GSMArena’s battery test, the Huawei P9 scored a pretty good rating. The phone battery can endure a few hours north of three days if the user does an hour each of phone calls, web browsing and video playback per day. The P9 has three power modes: Performance, Standard and Ultra Power Saving. The Performance mode goes all out and does not enforce any kind of limit whatsoever on the hardware while the Standard mode supplements an additional couple of hours of use. The Ultra Power Saving keeps the handset going for a significant amount of time. There’s also the ROG power saving option that takes down the native screen resolution to 720p to provide more battery life and extend playing time. Huawei P10 - Battery specs and features Meanwhile, the Huawei P10 houses a 3,200 mAh battery, sealed just like its predecessor. The bundled charger is strapping, tough enough to churn out 5V/4.5A, 4.5V/5A and 5V/2A. P10 owners have to use the handset’s charger and USB cable together in order to fully take advantage of the numbers, though, as the charging speeds considerably drop off when another cable is used. The P10 is able to provide about 55 percent of battery life in just 30 minutes of plug time using the bundled charging accessories. Although the new P series smartphone has a slightly more powerful cell than its older brother, it provides roughly the same performance as the P9. Huawei P9 vs Huawei P10 – Battery performance test When TechRadar pitted the P9 and the P10 against each other in a series of rigorous battery performance tests that involved an hour and a half each of web browsing, gaming, YouTube playback and native video playback, the P10 came out on top. After 90 minutes of web browsing, the P9 had 57 percent remaining battery life while the P10 had 67 percent. Following the YouTube playback test, the older handset’s battery level further stumbled to only 17 percent while the new phone hung on with 38 percent. Both handsets didn’t even get to complete the gaming portion. The Huawei P9 finished with a total performance time of three hours and 20 minutes while the Huawei P10 lasted four hours and 10 minutes. RELATED STORIES: LG G6 vs Apple iPhone 7 camera review and comparison [VIDEO] Apple iPhone 8 / Edition to sport front and back glass, but may scrap Touch ID due to production difficulties

Insect collection worth $100m providing answers to science, technology, agriculture Posted Entomologists at an insect collection in country New South Wales have a party trick they like to play. Visitors are given a pair of 3D glasses and asked to first close one eye and then the other while looking at a tray of small beetles, pinned to the cardboard of a specimen tray. As if by magic, the beetles change from plain brown to vibrant, sparkling gold and green and then back again, as the viewer wearing the glasses closes each eye in turn. The explanation, given by Dr Ainsley Seago, technical manager of the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (DPI) insect collection, is that the beetles are using a tricky system called "a circulatory polarised multi-layer reflector". "There are number of optical and photonic mechanisms that beetles have evolved that are years ahead of anything humans have created," Dr Seago explained excitedly. The self-described "bug nerd" is part of the intriguing story of the collection, housed at the Orange Agricultural Institute in central west NSW. Collection dates to 1890s The NSW DPI collection, which totals an estimated 650,000 specimens from all over the world, was recently valued at $100 million. Specimens have been obtained through a range of means: from donations by private collectors to the confiscations of illegal insect importations at Australia's ports and airports. There are whole drawers full of ticks taken from humans, dogs, cats, rabbits, rats and just about anything else unfortunate enough to have encountered one of the potentially paralysing parasites. The collection's creepy crawlies are stored in 270 green metal cabinets, housed in a climate-controlled, fire-door-protected room with an overpowering smell of the preservative naphthalene. The collection is large but also significant because it is one of the oldest in Australia, having been started by the-then Department of Agriculture in the 1890s. Peter Gillespie, collections curator at the NSW DPI, said then, as now, the key aim of the collection was to help farmers deal with pests and parasites in their crops and livestock. "Agriculture was the backbone of the country ... but a lot of people didn't know what was here [and] we'd deliberately or inadvertently brought in a number of things that impacted on agricultural production," he said. Earliest specimens The earliest specimens in the collection were gathered from all over the state by keen bug collectors on horseback or using Cobb and Co coaches. One of the most prolific collectors was Walter Wilson Froggatt who travelled to some quite inaccessible places, such as west of Brewarrina in outback NSW. His legacy lives on in the spidery handwriting on the labels attached to the specimens he collected while the state's chief entomologist for about 40 years from the 1890s. Mr Gillespie said as well as setting the foundations for the collection, Froggatt was also an early ecological warrior and was one of the only dissenting voices against the introduction of cane toads into Queensland. Bugs with history and hidden stories Mr Gillespie said the insects in the collection act as a window to the past; for instance, some come from locations once vegetated but which are now all "steel and concrete". "All collections are ultimately a biodiversity inventory; they point to a particular species being there at a place in time and collected by someone or other," Mr Gillespie said. Dr Seago said what fascinated her were the stories behind individual specimens. "I love pulling out a beetle specimen that was collected say, in North Africa in World War II, and I can kind of guess at the story behind that," Dr Seago said. "I think who was this hapless soldier out fighting Nazis in the middle of the desert who saw a beetle and thought 'I've got to have that and take it home' and now it's in our collection." Significance of collection today Insects may not always grab the public's attention, or the research dollar, until it comes to the more aesthetically pleasing specimens, such as the iridescent butterflies. But that does not deter bug fanciers such as Mr Gillespie and Dr Seago who said even the more common-looking insects were making a big difference economically and scientifically for Australia. Mr Gillespie said the collection was a biosecurity and agricultural aid because it could be used to identify an insect and determine whether it was found in a particular area. "We facilitate trade decisions; [for instance if] Australia wants to sell a crop to somewhere in south-east Asia, they want to buy it so long as it's free of diseases X or Y or pest Z," Mr Gillespie said. Dr Seago agreed that not everyone might be as fascinated by bugs as she was, but many saw the value in collecting and studying them. "While people might not look at this little brown beetle and say 'wow, that's exciting', they will say 'what's this thing eating my truffles or my lucerne'," she said. "We have a whole group of growers and industry groups who are very interested in our findings." Work is currently underway at the NSW DPI to increase the amount of information available to the public via a digital database. Topics: invertebrates---insects-and-arachnids, agricultural-crops, community-and-society, regional, science-and-technology, animal-science, library-museum-and-gallery, pests, orange-2800

Jung's split with Freud in 1913 was costly. He was on his own again, an experience that reminded him of his lonely childhood. He suffered a breakdown that lasted through the years of the first world war. It was a traumatic experience. But it was not simply a collapse. It turned out to be a highly inventive period, one of discovery. He would later say that all his future work originated with this "creative illness". He experienced a succession of episodes during which he vividly encountered the rich and disturbing fantasies of his unconscious. He made a record of what he saw when he descended into this underworld, a record published in 2009 as The Red Book. It is like an illuminated manuscript, a cross between Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Its publication sparked massive interest in Jungian circles, rather like what happens in Christian circles when a new first-century codex is discovered. It is of undoubted interest to scholars, in the same way that the notebooks of Leonardo are to art historians. And it is an astonishing work to browse, for its intricacy and imagination. But it is also highly personal, which is presumably why Jung decided against its publication in his own lifetime. So, to turn it into a sacred text, as some appear inclined to do, would be a folly of the kind Jung argued against in the work that followed his recovery from the breakdown. In particular he wrote two pieces, known as the Two Essays, that provide a succinct introduction to his mature work. (He can otherwise be a rambling, elusive writer.) On the Psychology of the Unconscious completes his separation from Freud. He shows how tracing the origins of a personal crisis back to a childhood trauma, as Freud was inclined to do, might well miss the significance of the crisis for the adult patient now. In The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, he describes a process whereby a person can pay attention to how their unconscious life manifests itself in their conscious life. It will be a highly personal and tortuous experience. "There is no birth of consciousness without pain," he wrote. But with it, the individual can become more whole. By way of illustration, Jung considers the example of a man whose public image is one of honour and service but who, in the privacy of his home, is prone to moods – so much so that he scares his wife and children. He is leading a double life as public benefactor and domestic tyrant. Jung argues that such a man has identified with his public image and neglected his unconscious life – though it won't be ignored and so comes out, with possibly explosive force, in his relations with his family. The way forward is to pay attention to this inner personality, literally by holding a conversation with himself. He should overcome any embarrassment in doing so and allow each part of himself to talk to the other so that both "partners" can be fully heard. A non-judgmental attitude is critical. If one side judges the other, then the other side actually gains power because it feels wronged, and so justified in its complaints. This is where therapy can help. "The course of therapy is thus rather like a running conversation with the unconscious", Jung writes. And when properly heard, the tensions between the inner and outer personality should subside. The result will be a more honest saint who is a lot easier to live with. Moreover, he will find that he has more energy for life because he will be less at war with himself and those around him. The Red Book, then, can be interpreted as Jung's conversation with his unconscious. The devotee of Jung who reads it as if it were a conversation with their own unconscious diverges from the particular path towards individuation that they themselves must forge. Needless to say, a discussion with the unconscious is not straightforward. If conscious life is not wholly rational, driven as much by emotions and intuitions, then the patterns and instincts of the unconscious are even more buried and obscure. Worse, Jung argues that the modern world has developed a positive fear of the unconscious because it escapes the precise determination, analysis and control promised by modern science. The natural language of the unconscious is not exact like mathematics; it is flexible like mythology. It is at this point that the links between Jungian psychology and religion emerge particularly clearly, because if symbolism and mythology are the natural languages of the unconscious, they are the natural languages of spiritual traditions too. Jung found continual inspiration for his psychology in spiritual writings. The Talmud says that "The dream is its own interpretation." Jung agreed. Heraclitus, influenced by Eastern philosophies, wrote, "Out of discord comes the fairest harmony". Jung adopted this principle of enantiodromia as his own. Further, Jung understood spiritual traditions to be a kind of psychotherapy avant la lettre. (Or to put it the other way round, he thought that psychotherapy emerged in the 19th century precisely because religious systems had begun to fail.) Human beings cannot stand meaninglessness in life, he argued. The decisive question we pursue is whether we are "related to the infinite or not?" Religious traditions provide frameworks within which this question can be approached, not primarily in an empirical or rational sense, but rather in an experiential and practical one. For the Christian, the symbol of Christ represents complete humanity. The Buddha holds the same hope for the Buddhist. "The Christ-symbol is of the greatest importance for psychology in so far as it is perhaps the most highly developed and differentiated symbol of the self, apart from the figure of the Buddha," Jung averred. Further still, he argued that Christ and the Buddha had both experienced their own confrontations with the unconscious, respectively in the stories of the temptations of Jesus and the Mara episode in the Buddha's legend. They are experiences that individuals shouldn't seek to imitate, but might expect and follow.

(Updates with background) By Katharine Houreld KABUL, March 11 (Reuters) - A gunman shot dead a Swedish journalist outside a restaurant in a brazen attack in one Kabul’s most heavily guarded districts on Tuesday, police and embassy sources said, underscoring growing insecurity threatening next month’s elections. The Swedish Embassy identified the victim as Nils Horner, 51, who worked for Swedish Radio and had dual British-Swedish nationality. “Nils was one of our absolute best and most experienced correspondents and what has happened to him today is terrible,” said Swedish Radio’s director-general, Cilla Benkö, who described this as one of the worst days in the corporation’s history. “We are now trying to get as many details as we can.” Horner had been waiting outside a Lebanese restaurant with his driver and translator when two men in Western clothes approached and one shot him at point-blank range in the back of the head, said Zubir, a guard at the restaurant who uses only one name. The guard and a nearby shopkeeper said only one shot was fired. The attack took place barely a minute’s walk from the site of another Lebanese restaurant, where Afghan Taliban fighters killed eight Afghans and 13 foreigners in January. Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, who are seeking to oust foreign forces and set up an Islamic state, said the group was unaware of the attack but would investigate. Hashmatullah Stanekzai, chief spokesman for the Kabul police chief, said Horner’s driver and translator were being questioned but there were no suspects in custody. The neighborhood is home to several embassies, supermarkets and cafes frequented by foreigners. Police vehicles are permanently stationed at a roundabout a block away and the mansions that line the road have guards at each gate. A daytime attack on a civilian walking in that part of the capital is highly unusual. The attack comes as Afghanistan prepares for the withdrawal of NATO forces and landmark presidential elections scheduled for April 5. The Taliban have threatened to attack anyone who takes part. Afghan troops with support from NATO are helping secure the elections. A small contingent of Americans may remain behind if the next government signs a deal to allow them to stay, something President Hamid Karzai has so far refused to do. (Additional reporting by Jessica Donati, Hamid Shalizi and Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Overnight Valve released the Dota 2 Workshop tools, and some people reckon in doing so the company soft-launched the long-awaited Source 2 game engine. "Everything in this package is a new game," wrote RoyAwesome on the Dota 2 subReddit. A reference to Source 2 in the Dota 2 mod tools. "It's all the Dota assets and code ported over to Source 2. That's why Hammer is different. That's why the console is different." Hammer is Valve's map creation program for Source. A video of the new version being messed about with is below. "The general consensus around the Source reverse engineering community is that this is really Source 2," RoyAwesome continued. Valve, which operates on US West Coast time (eight hours behind UK time), is yet to make any announcement around Source 2, but it has been rumoured for some time. Gamer Network's tech wizards tell me Valve may have simply released tools that relate to the Source 2 engine to be used to mod Dota 2, rather than launched the engine proper, but Valve's plan is unclear. We'll have more on Source 2 as the story develops.

Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump in seven key battleground states on Election Day 2016, though some races look to be close, according to early, live estimated results from the new election data service VoteCaster. VoteCastr cautions that none of its data constitute “predictions” for who will win any specific state. For an explanation of how VoteCastr compiles voting data throughout election day, well before polls close, see the article by Slate.com senior writer Josh Voorhies at this link. As of 7:15 p.m. Eastern Time, Clinton held leads in both Florida and Ohio — two key states that Trump must win to keep his path to the presidency alive — according to the VoteCastr data, which can be accessed via the online political magazine Slate.com at this link. VoteCastr sees very close races in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Ohio https://t.co/YSk7PEglh6 pic.twitter.com/GpiQ3J1HvJ — Josh Levin (@josh_levin) November 8, 2016 With polls just minutes from closings Ohio, VoteCastr sees the race there as neck-and-neck. Clinton has won an estimated 2,534,965 votes, while Trump claims 2,516,534, VoteCastr estimates — a difference of just over 18,000 votes statewide. Using data from all 67 Florida counties, Clinton has turned out an estimated 4,712,021 votes so far, while Trump has collected 4,404,119. VoteCastr also began posting county-level breakdowns for each state in the afternoon. By 5:50 p.m. VoteCastr had taken into account about 94 percent of Florida’s expected turnout, with Clinton holding a 48 percent to 45 percent lead over Trump. See the full interactive map at this link. Clinton’s total, if accurate, would give her more votes in Florida than President Barack Obama won there in 2012. Obama, who won the state, collected 4,161,850 votes to 4,050,540 for Republican Mitt Romney. Sorting the VoteCastr data demographically shows that in “predominantly nonwhite counties” in Florida, Clinton had 1,366,755 votes to 770,485 for Trump, a lead of more than 500,000 votes in the minority-dominated counties. But in mostly white counties, Trump led by roughly 300,000 votes, 3,008,657 to 2,703,849 in the VoteCastr estimates. In Ohio, as of 5:50 p.m., VoteCastr had reported that Clinton had turned out 2,353,327 voters, while Trump trailed by under 22,000 votes in a nail-biting race, with 2,331,714. In fact in the VoteTracker county breakdown, VoteCastr has Trump leading by one point, 46 to 45 in Ohio. Much of Clinton’s total in Ohio comes from the rust-belt state’s heavily populated, urban counties. In Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located, Clinton led 62.6 to 30.3 percent over Trump. In Cincinnati’s Hamilton County, the Democrat held a 50 to 40.2 lead according to the VoteCastr estimate. And in Franklin County, home of the city of Columbus, Clinton led Trump 53.8 to 36.5 percent. VoteCastr had accounted for 88.4 percent of the expected turnout in Ohio. Obama won Ohio narrowly in 2012, 50.1 percent to 48.2. In New Hampshire, a state that had moved into the toss-up column thanks to a recent Trump surge in polling there, VoteCastr estimates put Clinton narrowly ahead with 279,140 votes as of 6 p.m. Eastern Time. Trump had collected 258,989 estimated votes. In Colorado, Clinton has so far collected 767,953 votes. Trump’s estimate stands at 722,891 according to VoteCastr data. That’s Clinton with 46.3 percent of the vote to 43.6 for Trump, VoteCastr has calculated. Nevada, a state where early voting results appeared to indicate a close but solid Clinton victory, saw Clinton clinging to an extremely precarious lead with an estimated 473,173 votes to Trump’s 465,706 by VoteCastr by 6 p.m. Eastern Time. But Nevada political expert Jon Ralston saw problems with the VoteCastr results. So Stein on the ballot here (she's not), bizarre Clark numbers and wrong number (off by 150K) of reg voters there. Model probs, @votecastr? — Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 8, 2016 VoteCastr acknowledged, and said it had fixed, the error. Our Nevada results showed Jill Stein with ~1.7. She was in our survey: we messed up and we are correcting the Nevada results accordingly. — VoteCastr (@votecastr) November 8, 2016 However, VoteCastr showed Clinton leading in Clark County, where about 70 percent of Nevada residents reside — and home to Las Vegas — 49.4 to 41.8 percent, a 7.6 point lead. In Pennsylvania, however, the early VoteCastr count did not look nearly as good for Clinton. But by 6 p.m. Eastern she had pulled ahead in the crucial state, albeit about 130,000 votes. But her lead lagged behind Obama’s 2012 performance in the state, mainly due to an unexpectedly soft turnout in Philadelphia County, home to the state’s largest city — and the nation’s fifth-largest. The former Secretary of State had 2,310,013 votes by the VoteCastr estimate. Trump had collected 2,170,963. Clinton is nonetheless expected to win Pennsylvania, with the final Pollster.com polling average showing her leading 46.4 to 41.2, more than a five-point polling advantage. Whose voters are going to the polls? Follow our @VoteCastr Turnout Tracker for the latest estimates: https://t.co/TEojnpFdaW pic.twitter.com/19hsZMVjgQ — Slate (@Slate) November 8, 2016 If the very early VoteCastr count held, Pennsylvania would have gone down as a major polling failure. But with the updated vote count, the Democratic candidate appears to be on her way to a close but comfortable victory in the state. After a strong start for Trump in Iowa — where he was leading by nine points in the final Survey Monkey poll released on the morning of election day, Clinton had pulled ahead by 6 p.m. Eastern Time, according to VoteCastr estimates. Clinton had 614,338 votes to Trump’s 599,045, in VoteCastr estimates. But Iowa was another state where VoteCastr sees a disparity between vote totals and the percentages in its county-level breakdowns, as seen in the map at this link. Trump was leading by a point in Iowa in the county-level iteration of VoteCastr numbers, 46-45, with about 76 percent of the vote account for. Clinton took an estimated 614,338 votes in Iowa, with Trump at 599,045 by 6 p.m. Eastern according to the estimated vote totals. In a state where polling showed Clinton on her way to an easy victory, Wisconsin, VoteCastr results appear to bear out the polling prediction. Clinton had built a lead of more than 163,000 votes at 1,242,938 to 1,079,266 for Trump as of 6 p.m. The live election day VoteCastr results are available from Slate.com at this link. VoteCastr data will also be announced and analyzed as it comes in to the “War Room” at Vice.com, in the live stream video at the top of this page. By compiling and posting live estimated election day results before polls close, VoteCastr is breaking with a longstanding tradition in the media, in which news organizations stick to a kind of gentleman’s agreement that they will not publish or broadcast results until after polls close across the United States. “The posture the media have collectively adopted on Election Day is paternalistic toward voters and puts journalists in the awkward and unfamiliar position of concealing information from their readers,” wrote Slate.com Editor-in-Chief Julia Turner, explaining why Slate and VoteCastr are taking the controversial step of making information on voting results public throughout election day. “It’s also unsupported by social science. The news blackout that usually prevails is premised on the idea that publishing information about voter behavior may depress turnout. But such fears are unsupported by research. Academics examining the question have found no consistent effects on voter behavior. Which means that journalists are withholding information on a hunch,” Turner wrote. This post will be updated with more details, as well as further data as soon as it becomes available.

Simple and Easy Vegan Waffles |Serves 3-4| Ingredients 1 cup whole wheat flour 1 Tbsp ground flaxseed 2 tsp baking powder 1 Tbsp sugar (turbinado, coconut sugar, or maple syrup) pinch of salt 1 Tbsp oil 1 cup almond milk Instructions Preheat waffle iron to your desired setting (we like ours more crispy). In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients (flour, flaxseed, baking powder, sugar, salt). In a small bowl, whisk together wet ingredients (oil, almond milk). Pour wet ingredients in dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Do not over stir! Pour batter onto waffle iron (I use about 1/4 - 1/3 cup) and cook until golden brown. Enjoy! Notes *I always double this recipe and freeze any leftovers to use for quick breakfasts when I'm in a hurry. *This recipe is designed for traditional waffle irons, not Belgian waffle irons. xoxo, Lauren

Last Thursday, a reporter with La Presse caught Thierry Bordelais outside of his Chateauguay home and asked him what he made of his neighbours’ concerns about his family taking up residence in the Montreal suburb. “If they are worried, all they have to do is move,” Bordelais said, visibly irritated according to La Presse. “We’re free, we’re in a free country.” “Has anything happened over the past 10 years?” he continued. “So why are they worried? I don’t see why they are worried.” One would expect the same sort of exasperated defence by a husband of his wife if, say, she downed a bottle of schnapps at the last neighbourhood barbecue and started uncouthly hitting on someone’s teenage son. But Bordelais’ wife, Karla Homolka (or Leanne Teale as she is now known) did a little bit more than embarrass herself in front of the neighbours when she helped her former husband, Paul Bernardo, drug and rape her own teenage sister and participate in the rape and murder of at least two other girls. Indeed, I think Bordelais’ neighbours can be forgiven if they’re not entirely over that yet. What was striking in the exchange between Bordelais and La Presse was not merely its tone-deafness, however, but just how utterly normal it all seemed: Here was a guy, returning home to his wife and three kids, pissed off to find reporters waiting for him in his driveway. Eventually he would go inside, maybe get something to eat, talk to his kids about their days and go to sleep beside one of the most reviled serial killers in Canadian history. Just like he had done every day for the past seven years. It’s not unusual to hear of violent criminals attracting the attention of “serial killer groupies,” as they are colloquially called, or what is classified by psychology texts as those with “hybristophilia,” a sexual attraction to people who have committed violent crimes. Hybristophilia tends to affect more women than men and, according to at least one school of thought, can be explained as a consequence of a woman’s evolutionary drive to seek out a partner who can physically protect her offspring. Female admirers have reached out to notorious serial killers such as Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez and, so too, have some male admirers, including one who recently propositioned Rohinie Bisesar, the 40-year-old woman accused in the stabbing death in Toronto’s underground PATH system last year. Despite this particular psychological explanation, some “serial killer groupies” claim that their attraction to certain criminals is bred not because of his or her violent past, but despite it. In a documentary TV series produced and directed by Errol Morris, true crime writer Sondra London adopts that position in attempting to explain her attraction to the “Gainesville Ripper” Danny Rolling, with whom she had a relationship while he was behind bars. When pressed by the interviewer about why she’s attracted to serial killers, London shoots back, saying, flatly: “That’s a lame question.” But when asked “Why the attraction to Danny Rolling?” she responds: “That’s different” and goes on to describe Rolling’s many endearing qualities, as if she was talking about any normal guy who didn’t happen to tape his victims’ mouths shut, stab them until they bled to death and mutilate their corpses. [np_storybar title=”Read & Debate” link=””] Find Full Comment on Facebook [/np_storybar] There is no answer as to whether the greater aberrant mind is one that’s attracted to a violent murderer or one that can separate a person from his or her murderous acts. And, indeed, in the case of Thierry Bordelais and Karla Homolka, it’s impossible to say whether their relationship was borne from a hybristophilia-type of attraction or a phenomenal ability on the part of Bordelais to see the new “Leanne Teale” as a woman distinct from “Karla Homolka” — mostly because all the public really knows of the courtship is that the pair was connected through his sister Sylvie Bordelais, who was Homolka’s lawyer. Plenty of observers have remarked that one of the great tragedies of the Homolka story will come when her children realize that their mother committed some of the most horrific acts humans can do to one another. But it’s worse than that; since once that initial shock has worn off (if such a thing is possible) those kids will inevitably start thinking of their father, and wonder just what’s wrong with him that he could fall in love, and marry, a monster. There’s no comfort in mom or dad. National Post • Email: rurback@nationalpost.com | Twitter: robynurback

THEY spend hours wearing orange makeup and rigid smiles, trying to sell over-hyped items to viewers. But would you buy from someone who doesn’t know the Moon is a moon? An unbelievable video has emerged showing two hosts from US shopping channel QVC discussing what the moon could be. Showing off a hideous patterned cardigan, Jane Treacy says: “It kind of looks like what the Earth looks like when you’re a bazillion miles away from the planet Moon.” Her co-host, designer Isaac Mizrahi, chimes in, thoughtfully. “The planet Moon...” Realising her mistake, Ms Treacy tries again. “Isn’t the Moon a star?” “The Moon is a planet, darling,” Mr Mizrahi corrects her. But she’s sharper than that. “Is the Moon really a planet?” she demands. “Don’t look at me like that. The Sun is a star ... Is the Sun not a star?” Mr Mizrahi replies: “I don’t know what the Sun is.” They get into an argument, with Ms Treacy insisting the Moon is not a planet, and both pleading with viewers to Google the answer. “So what else is it?” Mr Mizrahi asks, stumped. “I believe it’s a star ... or something,” Ms Treacy answers. Looking a little sheepish, she adds: “I feel like sometimes, though I am educated, I expose in this show that this blonde could be real.” Viewers of the clip on YouTube were incredulous. “This should serve as inspiration,” wrote Troy. “The man who believes the Moon is a planet ‘that things live on’ is a millionaire who was a household name in the 90s for his eponymous fashion line. If he can do it, we all can.” YouTube user paddles409 added: “The moon is a hollow, artificial satellite inhabited by giant, superior, hyperintelligent, ants. Hail Ants!” MrJohn2010 was more despairing, calling it a “shameful display of scientific illiteracy”. For all the QVC hosts still confused: the Moon is a moon, a natural satellite that orbits a planet — in this case, Earth. Its weak atmosphere and lack of water cannot support life as we know it. The Moon has no moons.

Yesterday it was reported that a group of scientists had put forward a new theory that epigenetic marks may play a key role in determining why people are gay. According to press reports, these “epi-marks” determine how genes are expressed and are normally “erased” between generations, but in cases where they are not erased, they may be passed on from a mother or father in a way that can lead to a child becoming gay. Which means, according to Bryan Fischer, that homosexuality might be a “birth defect” which could lead prospective parents to choose abortion: As I have said before, I suspect that not even homosexual activists today want the gay gene to be found, even if it exists, because of advances in prenatal genetic testing. It is now possible to routinely screen for 3500 genetic defects while a child is still in the womb. So these activists rationally fear that preborn children who are detected with this gene will be aborted before they even have the chance to be born. After all, if 90% of babies in the womb who are diagnosed with Downs syndrome never draw their first breath, what are the chances that parents disposed to abortion will not exercise the same choice with regard to the gay gene? The scientists in Koebler’s article, in my view, are now resorting to genetic subterfuge and are coming dangerously close to saying that homosexuality is the result of a genetic defect, a genetic abnormality. In other words, read from one angle, these same scientists are saying that homosexuality is the result of a birth defect. … So in other words, when something goes wrong genetically, and these markers are not erased, the epi-markers which provide an evolutionary advantage to parents instead do evolutionary damage to their offspring. Now these researchers are quite at pains to avoid saying anything like this, but the logic to me seems inescapable: Homosexual children, on this theory, are born evolutionarily and genetically disadvantaged. They have been overexposed or underexposed to testosterone because something has gone wrong in the process of genetic transmission. In other words, they are the product of a genetic abnormality at best, a birth defect at worst. … I expect many abortion-minded parents will want to know exactly how strong this epi-marker is in their unborn children so they can decide whether or not to exercise reproductive choice. In fact, I expect that if this theory gains some currency, it will not be long before we have legislation from the homoexual lobby prohibiting “sex-selection” abortions on any child carrying this epi-marker.

A 2-year-old boy died this month after taking a drug-laced drink from his sippy cup, and a Jacksonville woman has been charged in his death. Dana M. Anderson, 30, was arrested Monday, about a week after the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said an unresponsive child, Masia James Wright, was transported from a home in the 11000 block of Alta Drive. The child was pronounced dead at Shands Jacksonville hospital, and an autopsy determined methadone toxicity was the cause. Methadone is a pain reliever and is used as part of drug addiction detoxification. Anderson and her boyfriend, Ernest Wright, the child's father, went in for questioning by police. She said she left a purple child's cup with some of the drug on a bedroom dresser, the arrest report said. Anderson was charged with aggravated manslaughter on a child younger than 18 years old by culpable negligence and was booked into the Duval County jail on $1 million bail. She's been arrested in Jacksonville about a dozen times since 2006 on charges ranging from petty theft to possession of crack. Matt Coleman 2 murder charges dropped by judge A Jacksonville man who had been charged as the triggerman in a 2007 drug shooting has been cleared of the charges. Cedric Cutter, who was released from jail in time to celebrate his 30th birthday Tuesday, had been locked up since Sept. 19, 2008, on two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of David R. Holmes, 41, and Martin Surapol, 37, at a boarding house off Lone Star Road in Arlington in 2007. Cutter was accused of shooting the men on orders from Anthony W. Vaughan, 25, who remains convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting. Although prosecutors argued for the death penalty, a jury recommended a life sentence for Vaughan in October. According to the Times-Union's news partner First Coast News, Circuit Judge David Gooding dismissed the case Monday after Cutter's defense team proved Cutter wasn't the accomplice. A description initially given of the murder suspect was 6 inches taller than Cutter and the lawyers also said Vaughan told people in jail that he didn't know Cutter. The State Attorney's Office also said without the testimony from a key witness who since died, prosecutors saw no possibility of a conviction and made the decision to not pursue a trial in this case. David Hunt 18-year-old arrested in September drive-by Jacksonville police announced Tuesday the arrest of an 18-year-old in a drive-by slaying in September. Shaheim Hasaan Lomax of the 200 block of East 48th Street is charged in the slaying of Spencer Eugene Winkfield, 20, who was shot Sept. 15 in the 5400 block of Liberty Street in North Jacksonville. Winkfield, of the 100 block of West 44th Street, was wounded in the foot and stomach. He died two days later. An arrest report said Winkfield and at least two others were walking on the street when a car drove by and the driver began firing a handgun from the window. Police did not discuss a motive for the shooting. Investigators collected several shell casings from the scene and they were matched to a gun found in a car driven by Lomax when police stopped the vehicle Monday. Police also recovered drugs in the vehicle. Jim Schoettler 2 seriously injured when car strikes power pole A man and a woman suffered life-threatening injuries after their car veered off the road and struck a power pole on Jacksonville's Westside early Tuesday. The car was southbound on Rampart Road just south of Morse Avenue about 3 a.m. when the driver failed to negotiate a curve and hit a power pole at a JEA facility, said traffic homicide detective John Hurst of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. A man and woman in the back seat were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. The woman driving the car was ejected. She and a male passenger in the front seat had minor injuries. Hurst said speed was a factor in the accident. It did not appear anyone was wearing a seat belt, he said. Dana Treen BAKER COUNTY Macclenny man faces 22 counts of child porn possession A 43-year-old Baker County man was arrested Tuesday on 22 counts of possession of child pornography following an investigation into a computer at his Macclenny home, according to the Florida Attorney General's Office. Randall W. Lyons was booked into jail shortly after 9 a.m. on $3.4 million bail after investigators traced numerous images of child pornography to his computer, including some children as young as 1 year old. Lyons and his wife have children, including one adopted from China, according to a website for Children's Hope International (www.childrenshopeint.org). So the Florida Department of Children and Families is involved in the case, said Jacksonville office spokesman John Harrell. "The children are with family," Harrell said. "We are working closely with law enforcement and the family to ensure the safety of the children." Attorney General's Office spokeswoman Sandi Copes said no specific victims have been identified. Dan Scanlan Alachua man killed in collision with truck An Alachua County man was killed and another driver seriously injured in a collision Monday in Baker County. Robert Harvis Gasche, 54, died at the scene of the 6:20 a.m. accident after his pickup truck veered in front of a northbound tractor-trailer rig on County Road 121 just north of the Union County line, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Gasche was southbound when his truck drifted onto the eastern shoulder of the road and then overcorrected onto the road into the path of the rig driven by Matthew Lee Ellis, 50, of Bradford. Both drivers were wearing seat belts, according to the Highway Patrol. Ellis was taken to Shands at the University of Florida. Dana Treen CLAY COUNTY Jail inmate tests positive for TB; about 30 exposed A male inmate at the Clay County jail has tested positive for an active case of tuberculosis, the Sheriff's Office said Tuesday. The agency is working to identify jail employees and inmates who might have had direct contact with the inmate, according to a Sheriff's Office news release. The current estimate is about 30 people. The Sheriff's Office didn't identify the inmate, citing medical privacy laws, and declined to comment. The inmate was arrested and booked into jail Nov. 3. The medical screening questionnaire responses were all negative with no indication of sickness or symptoms, the Sheriff's Office said. Tuberculosis was discovered later following a standard physical exam that included a TB skin test. Matt Coleman ST. JOHNS COUNTY Motorist hits, kills bear crossing Interstate 95 A bear crossing Interstate 95 about 5 miles south of International Golf Parkway was killed early Tuesday when it was hit by a southbound pickup truck. Camille Henderson Poirier III, 37, of Hastings was not hurt in the 12:45 a.m. collision with the bear that was crossing the highway from the west, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. The bear continued across the road and about 400 feet into the woods where it died. Poirier's Chevrolet truck had to be towed from the scene, said Highway Patrol Lt. Bill Leeper. Poirier was wearing a seat belt. Dana Treen

Obama Offers Second Chance For Missouri Court Nominee Enlarge this image toggle caption Kelley McCall/AP Kelley McCall/AP President Obama has made it a priority to choose federal judges who are diverse in terms of race or gender. But for the most part, he's avoided controversy for those lifetime appointments. That's why the nomination of a Missouri lawyer named Ronnie White has raised the eyebrows of experts who've been around Washington for a while. Old hands remember that White was rejected for a federal judgeship back in 1999 after a party line vote by Senate Republicans. Now, in what experts say could be an unprecedented step, he's getting another chance. White has already made history, in more ways than one. The Democratic lawyer served three terms in the Missouri House of Representatives. He became the first African-American to sit on the state Supreme Court, sworn in at a courthouse where slaves were once sold on the steps. And 14 years ago, White suffered a rare defeat on the U.S. Senate floor in his bid to become a federal judge. "We rarely ever see floor votes rejecting a nomination," says Sarah Binder, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "That's what is so unusual and why I think almost everybody who's followed judicial nominations remembers the Ronnie White case." Binder and other experts who study nominations say they can't remember a time when a judge who's been voted down in the Senate has been renominated. "There may be a case way back when in the early 19th century but for all intents and purposes this is unprecedented for a president to come back and renominate someone," Binder adds. White is unusual for another reason: He took the opportunity to defend himself and his record by testifying against his chief antagonist, former Missouri GOP Sen. John Ashcroft, during Ashcroft's own confirmation hearing to become attorney general in the George W. Bush years. White told the Senate back in early 2001 that he once thought he had a clear path to become a judge. "And then I learned that Sen. Ashcroft was opposing me," White recalled. "I was very surprised to hear that he had gone to the Senate floor and called me 'pro-criminal,' with a tremendous bent toward criminal activity. That he told his colleagues that I was against prosecutors and the culture in terms of maintaining order." White told lawmakers that Ashcroft had distorted his record: "I deeply resent those baseless misreputations. In fact, and I want to say this as clearly as I can, my record belies those accusations." Sen. Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, followed up with Ashcroft himself. "Sen. Ashcroft, did you treat Ronnie White fairly?" Durbin asked. "I believe that I acted properly in carrying out my duties as a member of the committee and as a member of the Senate in relation to Judge Ronnie White," Ashcroft replied. Ashcroft said he was bothered by White's record in death penalty cases and that the judge went out of his way to support defendants' rights, even in violent crimes. Anger from minority groups in Missouri ultimately helped cost Ashcroft his Senate seat, but it didn't stop his bid to become U.S. attorney general. And White — now 60 years old — may yet have a second act too. A spokesman for Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, told NPR the past criticism of the judge is "completely unfounded" and said she "looks forward to supporting his nomination." Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, told reporters he won't block White's bid for a Senate vote either. Conservative groups who follow judicial candidates are digging through his record. Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network says given the recent change in Senate rules, she thinks White will get through this time. "It's definitely clear that with the new 51-vote threshold it's going to be very difficult to stop his nomination," Severino says. "So I think they're hoping to get through now some of these more extreme nominees that before would have required a bipartisan consensus to move on." The White House didn't respond to questions about why it renominated White for a federal judgeship. But White may have offered an answer, in his Senate testimony a dozen years ago. "There was a lot of outrage about my nomination being rejected and particularly in the African-American community," White said. "And the reason for that outrage I believe, is when you have an African-American judge, African-Americans see that as one more step toward true equality." For President Obama, who's made diversifying the bench a top priority, that may be reason enough to revisit the case of Ronnie White.

Matt Renshaw saw the shadow people. They hadn't been there for four days, but someone had opened a door and now there they were, right in his vision, running, walking, swaying from side to side. Once he saw them he couldn't concentrate. He had to pull away as the bowler ran in. This enraged Ishant Sharma, who threw the ball down in anger and started a fight with Steven Smith before being moved away. Angry Ishant, too rarely seen, is by far the best Ishant. He roars in next ball and follows right through to Renshaw to let him know how he's feeling. Soon he hits Renshaw on the hip. Another ball gets stuck in Renshaw's helmet after rattling around his face for a second. Then there is a bouncer that Renshaw barely avoids. When Ishant goes straight and gets one to skid a bit, Renshaw is trapped plumb in front. He shrugs his shoulders and leaves the ground, practising the shot he should have played as the shadow people dance and rejoice. A few minutes later, the shadow people dance again. Smith didn't make many bad decisions in his first innings of 127 overs, or even when he was in the field for 210 overs. But this one is bad, and Australia have spent all tour doing the right thing. Australia have made a collection of decisions so far in this series. It started when S Sriram went from a development coach into the change room for this tour. He coached the batsmen on how to survive, and at times thrive, in India. But perhaps his greatest work was making Steve O'Keefe believe in himself. It was playing inside the line as Sriram had suggested and his constant mentoring of O'Keefe meant the weakest team to tour India, according to Harbhajan Singh, won a Test with a spinner who was fourth best , according to Shane Warne. They were supposed to be embarrassed. Instead they had done the thing that teams had been trying to do all season in India. In Bengaluru, Nathan Lyon got them off to a great start, and then it was the batmen's turn to step up. On a day when India were outstanding, Australia tried to just get far enough in front to win the game. As good as Shaun Marsh had been, it was his wicket at the close on day two that ultimately kept India in it. When Smith dropped Pujara, India battled to a lead big enough that Australia with a team of their very best players of spin would have struggled to get over the line. The chase and pitch was set up for an Australian collapse. Australia have also been clever at little things. After O'Keefe's 12-wicket haul in Pune it would have been easy to think he would be a strike bowler in India, but Australia went straight back to using him as their stock bowler. It allowed Hazlewood more rest, it allowed Starc (Cummins) to be Starc (Cummins), and when Lyon's callous opened up, for O'Keefe to at least stop India getting away. They also got the ball to reverse while using their bowlers far better than Kohli used his. They played spin better over the first two Tests, they fielded and caught better, and they came up with intelligent plans and stuck to them well. It's perhaps the most unAustralian they have been in India. Shaun Marsh stood tall and blunted India Associated Press An hour into this match, on a pitch so doctored that the Ranchi rolled mud was supposed to swallow the Australians whole, they looked completely at home. But then their first real problem on this pitch had nothing to do with this pitch: Warner failed again and they were leaving their fate in the hands of Glenn Maxwell. Maxwell was a bizarre choice, as Australia had barely used Mitchell Marsh's allrounded-ness, and perhaps the more sensible thing to do was bring in Usman Khawaja. Very rarely is Maxwell a sensible thing to do, and when Australia needed someone to play very long innings, him coming out to bat at 140 for 4 with Australia at least 300 behind where they would need to be, few would have been confident. But Maxwell played either the best innings of his life, or the one that sets up the rest of it. But as good as he was, and as just phenomenally good as Smith continued to be, 451 never quite felt enough. When they had India at 328 for 6, with Pat Cummins defying pretty much everything to storm through the crease, it did seem like it might be enough. Australia had tried all the tricks they had. Bowling dry with interesting fields designed to stop batsmen scoring efficiently, short quick spells of reverse from Hazlewood, and short quick cutters from Cummins. India crawled past them, but no matter how good Cheteshwar Pujara looked, or how well Wriddhiman Saha timed the ball, Smith refused to concede a single run. Pujara made a double-hundred that was essentially a three-day arm wrestle with Smith's fields. They let him stay in; they rarely let him score. They were tired, and never looked like getting a wicket, but they never rolled over, they never let India score. If India was going to score, it was going to be out of the footholes or with significant risk. Forget the part-timers, forget taking chances. There were no easy runs for India, and that took time, which turned out to be very important. Even with the restriction of India's lead, and how long it took them to get there, there were problems for Australia. They had only faced more than 100 overs in the fourth innings of an Asian Test once, against Bangladesh, in 2006. The last time Australia batted an extended period to draw a game was six years ago in Sri Lanka. They hadn't won a series since then either. They had only batted 100 overs in their second innings in Asia 16 times. This is a team that doesn't win series in Asia, doesn't bat out draws. Going into a final day with two wickets down, against the two best spinners in the world for these conditions, and a pit of despair outside the left-handers' off stump, this team was not equipped to draw this match. Not that Australia were the team that should have won in Pune, or stayed in the game in Bengaluru for as long as they did. What makes this series more remarkable is that this isn't a great time for Australian cricket. It's hard to praise the selectors too much, when part of their plan was replacing Peter Nevill with Matthew Wade as wicketkeeper. Wade has averaged less with the bat since coming back into the team than Nevill did when he was axed. And it was Wade's drop that ultimately cost them a chance of winning this Test. Then there is Mitchell Marsh, who even if he wasn't injured - even if he had never been injured - was an odd choice for a team with an underperforming No. 7. He became odder when he barely bowled a charity over in two Tests. Then there was the fact that about five minutes ago, Callum Ferguson was playing. Or that the selectors seemed to pick Renshaw on a whim, and then started to second guess themselves when they realised the India tour was coming up. And they also threw Nic Maddinson into Test matches while they publicly slated the man who has now replaced him. But there was some method to their madness. Australian selections are still based on things like grit, youth, and aesthetic wonders that are apparently natural talent. However, when they turned their team around after the debacle in Hobart, they made three interesting calls with their batting. They went for a young kid who would become a star, the guy with the best recent first-class record, and the most naturally talented player they had. That got them two players who have been important since, Renshaw and Handscomb, and to be fair, Maxwell was out of favour, and Chris Lynn was injured, so Maddinson was probably third choice anyway. They continued to make big calls for this tour. At times it seemed like almost everyone did not rate Shaun Marsh outside of people who know his father, Western Australians, and Australian selectors. There is sometimes an overlap in those categories. Marsh is not a great batsman. If he was, with all the advantages he has had, he would have played a lot more than 22 Tests by the age of 33. He certainly would have averaged a hell of a lot more than 40 in first-class cricket and he would have averaged over 40 in more than one country. It just so happened that one country was Sri Lanka, and he also has a huge average in the IPL. So it made sense to see him as an Asian specialist. But it was still a risk. Marsh might know his game, he might be better in Asia than most Australian players, and he might also be one of Australia's best players of spin - averaging 62, double his average against pace. While that might seem enough, in India you need big scores as well, and Marsh doesn't do that. He can score, but he doesn't score big daddy runs. His highest in first-class cricket is 182, and that is part of the reason he doesn't average more. Matthew Wade and Virat Kohli shook hands and called it a draw after Australia had batted out 100 overs Associated Press That hasn't been a big problem on this tour as Marsh has never gone past 70, and yet both of his fifties have been very good knocks. His 66 in Bengaluru ended up being remembered for its limp end, but in the context of the game it was a terrific knock. The incredible part was how he found a way to survive on that pitch. And that is what he needed to do today. The thing is, unlike in Bengaluru, Marsh had some help in Ranchi. Peter Handscomb has made three hundreds in each of the last three Sheffield Shield seasons. He played IPL and county cricket, and for someone still pretty young, he is a well-rounded and experienced. But he's also weird. That's okay if you're chosen as a kid on a whim because you have something special about you. When you're 25, and you've never played for Australia, and your batting technique looks like a drunk guy trying to imitate Steve Smith, getting into the Australian team is not a sure thing. Had there not been a crisis of faith after losing to South Africa, Handscomb might have had to wait a couple of years for a spot. Instead he was thrust in, and runs followed. Even in India, where he hasn't gone on with it, he has almost always looked better than most of the other batsmen. In Bengaluru, on a pitch where to survive you had to cobble together three or four ideas and hope for the best, he was the one player who looked like he could have chased down the total. It was that cricket brain that shone again today. For 28 straight balls Marsh, who had fought hard against Jadeja in the rough, didn't have to face Jadeja in the rough. When India finally got Jadeja back at Marsh, it was halfway through the day, the ball was softer, Jadeja wasn't in rhythm, and the spit and fire were long gone. For the rest of the day, the two played so incredibly smart. Marsh made sure to get outside the line, Handscomb took 13 runs off a poor over from Ashwin, so India would have to take him off and change their plans. They looked for runs, turned the strike over when it suited them, and played the kind of cricket Australians don't play in India that often. While India might have looked flat and out of ideas, and could blame the soft ball and the fact the pitch didn't fall apart as they wanted, they also had to credit this partnership because both players were in control of over 90% of the balls they faced. That would be incredible on day one, but for the fifth day, with one guy still proving himself at 33 and another in his first Tests outside home, it was a tremendous effort. When the new ball did start to play up again, and Marsh struggled before getting out, it was Handscomb who remained. Had those two got out, the Test could have ended poorly for Australia. Wade could have got a ball from the rough, and then the tail would have not only had to handle the spinners and the pitch, but also the crowd. Instead, the crowd was quiet. Handscomb had silenced them and they were a shadow of how it had been the evening before. It even turned out that it wasn't the shadow people distracting Renshaw. It was M Vijay on the field. The only shadows Australia saw at the end of the day were those of disappointed Indian fielders, as they knew a win was slipping away. When Handscomb knocked a ball gently through the covers, the shadows went to collect it, but Handscomb stood still. He could have run, but if he did there was a chance that Wade would have to face Jadeja out of the rough, so he refused the runs. While it probably wouldn't have mattered much - the game was drawn shortly after - Hanscomb had made another sensible decision. Australia have no Starc, a barely functioning David Warner, and with one Test to play the score is 1-1. They haven't been jumping at shadows like they usually do in India. They are determined to do the right thing. And more often than not, they have.

Miss Peru pageant contestants share violence against women statistics instead of body measurements Updated When it came time for contestants at this year's Miss Peru pageant to give their waist, hip and bust sizes, more than 20 women instead recited facts about trafficking, femicide and harassment. Leading the protest was Camila Canicoba of Lima who said "my measurements are: 2,202 cases of femicide reported in the last nine years in my country". The winner, 20-year-old Romina Lozano, said her measurements were "3,114 women victims of trafficking up until 2014", on the most watched show in Peru on Sunday (local time). "My measurements are: the 65 per cent of university women who are assaulted by their partners," Bélgica Guerra, representing Chincha, said. "My measurements are: more than 70 per cent of women in our country are victims of street harassment," contestant Juana Acevedo said. The organisers also projected newspaper clippings of stories about violence against women as the contestants posed in bikinis at a theatre in the capital city, Lima. The women are hoping to represent Peru in November's 66th Miss Universe competition in Las Vegas. Miss Peru 2018 organizer Jessica Newton told Buzzfeed: "Everyone who does not denounce and everyone who does not do something to stop this is an accomplice". "Women can walk out naked if they want to. Naked. It's a personal decision," she added. "If I walk out in a bathing suit I am just as decent as a woman who walks out in an evening dress." The protest comes amid a slew of sexual harassment accusations towards film mogul Harvey Weinstein and now House of Cards actor Kevin Spacey. The allegations towards Weinstein, originally sparked by a New York Times article detailing harassment towards Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd, prompted the #MeToo social media campaign. Thousands of women began sharing their personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse using the #MeToo hashtag. Sorry, this video has expired Video: Meet the woman behind the Me Too campaign (ABC News) In the weeks that followed, countless numbers of women working in the film industry spoke out, accusing Weinstein of making unwanted advances towards them, and of sexual assault and rape. Spacey is the latest prominent man in Hollywood to be called out for his behaviour. Actor Anthony Rapp, best known for starring in the musical Rent and Star Trek: Discovery, said he was invited to a party at Spacey's apartment in 1986 when he was just 14 and said Spacey, then 26, put him on his bed and climbed on top of him at the end of the night. A second actor has now made a sexual harassment allegation towards Spacey. Mexican actor Robert Cavazos said he encountered Spacey at the bar of London's Old Vic Theatre where he tried to fondle him against his will. Reuters/ABC Topics: arts-and-entertainment, sexual-offences, women, peru First posted

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the U.S. is “going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future” after he abruptly canceled a scheduled vote on the contentious Republican health care bill Friday. “Obamacare is the law of the land, and it will remain the law of the land until it’s replaced,” Ryan said. Republicans pull Obamacare replacement as bill fractures party The vote on the American Health Care Act planned for Friday afternoon was scuttled minutes before it was to be held. House Republican leaders and the White House failed to win over a bloc of conservative members who thought the measure didn’t go far enough in repealing the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. “Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains,” Ryan told reporters Friday afternoon. “We’re feeling those growing pains today.” The failure to bring the bill to a vote is a major embarrassment for President Trump, Ryan and congressional Republicans, who had vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act since its passage in 2010. “We came really close today, but we came up short,” Ryan said. U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan arrives to talk to reporters on March 24, 2017, during a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images Republican members of the conservative Freedom Caucus had balked at the bill’s failure to repeal insurance regulations and presented a unified front that ultimately forced Ryan to pull the measure. A House Republican aide told CBS News that Mr. Trump spoke to Ryan at 3 p.m. Friday and asked him to cancel the vote. Ryan said Mr. Trump has “really been fantastic” in advocating for the bill, saying he “gave his all in this effort.” Ryan informed members of the Republican caucus of his decision to cancel the vote during a meeting shortly after the cancellation. Following the meeting, Rep. Bill Flores of Texas told CBS News’ Walt Cronkite that Ryan told members the GOP would be pulling the bill and moving on to another subject. Flores said Ryan told the caucus they would focus on other reforms for now.

Argentina's foreign minister pales at the thought that anyone would compare the country's current scandal with Argentina's dark past known as the "Dirty War." In his first in-depth U.S. television interview, Hector Timerman dismisses talk that the mysterious death of a prosecutor about to charge him and the country's president with serious crimes is anything like the "terrible" times three decades ago. Timerman speaks to Lesley Stahl about the death of Alberto Nisman and the charges he made before his untimely death in a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, March 8 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. An excerpt from Timerman's interview will be broadcast tonight on the CBS Evening News. Nisman died from a bullet to the head just one day before he was to formerly present his case against Timerman and President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner accusing them of conspiring to protect Iranian officials implicated in the 1994 bombing of AMIA -- the Buenos Aires Jewish community center -- that killed 85 people. All of Argentina is debating over whether it was suicide or murder. Some say it is reminiscent of the Dirty War. "Nah, it's impossible,"scoffs Timerman. "We are talking about things that were terrible, terrible," he says, referring to the thousands who disappeared and died at the hands of the military junta or its proxies, including horrific executions when they were pushed out of aircraft over the sea or jungles. Timerman says he will not speculate whether Nisman was murdered or killed himself, but denies the charges of the 51-year-old prosecutor. Nisman lay out his case in a 289-page report. He accused Timerman and Kirchner of seeking a trade deal with Iran in return for protecting the officials, a deal Timerman had secretly made with the Iranians. "Well, that's a lie. That's a total lie. I never said that. Nisman never showed any evidence that I said that," he tells Stahl. Furthermore, says Timerman, only a judge could rescind the standing order that Interpol detain the Iranian officials in question, which would have been part of any deal. Stahl also speaks to the last known person to see Nisman alive. In a rare interview, Diego Lagomarsino was a tech worker in the prosecutor's office. He gave Nisman a gun - the one that was used in his death - because the prosecutor said he wanted additional protection; Lagomarsino says Nisman told him he did not trust his 10 bodyguards. Nisman was very upset, recounts Lagomarsino, "He told me, 'Do you know how it feels that your daughters don't want to be with you because they are afraid that something will happen to them...', I had never seen Nisman so concerned," he says. The latest twist in a tale that has transfixed Argentinians and captured the world's attention is what a forensics report commissioned by Nisman's ex-wife concluded: he was murdered and that his body was moved after his death.

To be skilled in critical thinking is to be able to take one’s thinking apart systematically, to analyze each part, assess it for quality and then improve it. The first step in this process is understanding the parts of thinking, or elements of reasoning. These elements are: purpose, question, information, inference, assumption, point of view, concepts, and implications. They are present in the mind whenever we reason. To take command of our thinking, we need to formulate both our purpose and the question at issue clearly. We need to use information in our thinking that is both relevant to the question we are dealing with, and accurate. We need to make logical inferences based on sound assumptions. We need to understand our own point of view and fully consider other relevant viewpoints. We need to use concepts justifiably and follow out the implications of decisions we are considering. (For an elaboration of the Elements of Reasoning, see a Miniature Guide to the Foundations of Analytic Thinking.) In this article we focus on two of the elements of reasoning: inferences and assumptions. Learning to distinguish inferences from assumptions is an important intellectual skill. Many confuse the two elements. Let us begin with a review of the basic meanings: Inference: An inference is a step of the mind, an intellectual act by which one concludes that something is true in light of something else’s being true, or seeming to be true. If you come at me with a knife in your hand, I probably would infer that you mean to do me harm. Inferences can be accurate or inaccurate, logical or illogical, justified or unjustified. Assumption: An assumption is something we take for granted or presuppose. Usually it is something we previously learned and do not question. It is part of our system of beliefs. We assume our beliefs to be true and use them to interpret the world about us. If we believe that it is dangerous to walk late at night in big cities and we are staying in Chicago, we will infer that it is dangerous to go for a walk late at night. We take for granted our belief that it is dangerous to walk late at night in big cities. If our belief is a sound one, our assumption is sound. If our belief is not sound, our assumption is not sound. Beliefs, and hence assumptions, can be unjustified or justified, depending upon whether we do or do not have good reasons for them. Consider this example: “I heard a scratch at the door. I got up to let the cat in.” My inference was based on the assumption (my prior belief) that only the cat makes that noise, and that he makes it only when he wants to be let in. We humans naturally and regularly use our beliefs as assumptions and make inferences based on those assumptions. We must do so to make sense of where we are, what we are about, and what is happening. Assumptions and inferences permeate our lives precisely because we cannot act without them. We make judgments, form interpretations, and come to conclusions based on the beliefs we have formed. If you put humans in any situation, they start to give it some meaning or other. People automatically make inferences to gain a basis for understanding and action. So quickly and automatically do we make inferences that we do not, without training, notice them as inferences. We see dark clouds and infer rain. We hear the door slam and infer that someone has arrived. We see a frowning face and infer that the person is upset. If our friend is late, we infer that she is being inconsiderate. We meet a tall guy and infer that he is good at basketball, an Asian and infer that she will be good at math. We read a book, and interpret what the various sentences and paragraphs — indeed what the whole book — is saying. We listen to what people say and make a series of inferences as to what they mean. As we write, we make inferences as to what readers will make of what we are writing. We make inferences as to the clarity of what we are saying, what requires further explanation, what has to be exemplified or illustrated, and what does not. Many of our inferences are justified and reasonable, but some are not. As always, an important part of critical thinking is the art of bringing what is subconscious in our thought to the level of conscious realization. This includes the recognition that our experiences are shaped by the inferences we make during those experiences. It enables us to separate our experiences into two categories: the raw data of our experience in contrast with our interpretations of those data, or the inferences we are making about them. Eventually we need to realize that the inferences we make are heavily influenced by our point of view and the assumptions we have made about people and situations. This puts us in the position of being able to broaden the scope of our outlook, to see situations from more than one point of view, and hence to become more open-minded. Often different people make different inferences because they bring to situations different viewpoints. They see the data differently. To put it another way, they make different assumptions about what they see. For example, if two people see a man lying in a gutter, one might infer, “There’s a drunken bum.” The other might infer, “There’s a man in need of help.” These inferences are based on different assumptions about the conditions under which people end up in gutters. Moreover, these assumptions are connected to each person’s viewpoint about people. The first person assumes, “Only drunks are to be found in gutters.” The second person assumes, “People lying in the gutter are in need of help.” The first person may have developed the point of view that people are fundamentally responsible for what happens to them and ought to be able to care for themselves. The second may have developed the point of view that the problems people have are often caused by forces and events beyond their control. The reasoning of these two people, in terms of their inferences and assumptions, could be characterized in the following way: Person One Person Two Situation: A man is lying in the gutter. Situation: A man is lying in the gutter. Inference: That man’s a bum. Inference: That man is in need of help. Assumption: Only bums lie in gutters. Assumption: Anyone lying in the gutter is in need of help. Critical thinkers notice the inferences they are making, the assumptions upon which they are basing those inferences, and the point of view about the world they are developing. To develop these skills, students need practice in noticing their inferences and then figuring the assumptions that lead to them. As students become aware of the inferences they make and the assumptions that underlie those inferences, they begin to gain command over their thinking. Because all human thinking is inferential in nature, command of thinking depends on command of the inferences embedded in it and thus of the assumptions that underlie it. Consider the way in which we plan and think our way through everyday events. We think of ourselves as preparing for breakfast, eating our breakfast, getting ready for class, arriving on time, leading class discussions, grading student papers, making plans for lunch, paying bills, engaging in an intellectual discussion, and so on. We can do none of these things without interpreting our actions, giving them meanings, making inferences about what is happening. This is to say that we must choose among a variety of possible meanings. For example, am I “relaxing” or “wasting time?” Am I being “determined” or “stubborn?” Am I “joining” a conversation or “butting in?” Is someone “laughing with me” or “laughing at me?” Am I “helping a friend” or “being taken advantage of?” Every time we interpret our actions, every time we give them a meaning, we are making one or more inferences on the basis of one or more assumptions. As humans, we continually make assumptions about ourselves, our jobs, our mates, our students, our children, the world in general. We take some things for granted simply because we can’t question everything. Sometimes we take the wrong things for granted. For example, I run off to the store (assuming that I have enough money with me) and arrive to find that I have left my money at home. I assume that I have enough gas in the car only to find that I have run out of gas. I assume that an item marked down in price is a good buy only to find that it was marked up before it was marked down. I assume that it will not, or that it will, rain. I assume that my car will start when I turn the key and press the gas pedal. I assume that I mean well in my dealings with others. Humans make hundreds of assumptions without knowing it---without thinking about it. Many assumptions are sound and justifiable. Many, however, are not. The question then becomes: “How can students begin to recognize the inferences they are making, the assumptions on which they are basing those inferences, and the point of view, the perspective on the world that they are forming?” There are many ways to foster student awareness of inferences and assumptions. For one thing, all disciplined subject-matter thinking requires that students learn to make accurate assumptions about the content they are studying and become practiced in making justifiable inferences within that content. As examples: In doing math, students make mathematical inferences based on their mathematical assumptions. In doing science, they make scientific inferences based on their scientific assumptions. In constructing historical accounts, they make historical inferences based on their historical assumptions. In each case, the assumptions students make depend on their understanding of fundamental concepts and principles. As a matter of daily practice, then, we can help students begin to notice the inferences they are making within the content we teach. We can help them identify inferences made by authors of a textbook, or of an article we give them. Once they have identified these inferences, we can ask them to figure out the assumptions that led to those inferences. When we give them routine practice in identifying inferences and assumptions, they begin to see that inferences will be illogical when the assumptions that lead to them are not justifiable. They begin to see that whenever they make an inference, there are other (perhaps more logical) inferences they could have made. They begin to see high quality inferences as coming from good reasoning. We can also help students think about the inferences they make in daily situations, and the assumptions that lead to those inferences. As they become skilled in identifying their inferences and assumptions, they are in a better position to question the extent to which any of their assumptions is justified. They can begin to ask questions, for example, like: Am I justified in assuming that everyone eats lunch at 12:00 noon? Am I justified in assuming that it usually rains when there are black clouds in the sky? Am I justified in assuming that bumps on the head are only caused by blows? The point is that we all make many assumptions as we go about our daily life and we ought to be able to recognize and question them. As students develop these critical intuitions, they increasingly notice their inferences and those of others. They increasingly notice what they and others are taking for granted. They increasingly notice how their point of view shapes their experiences. This article was adapted from the book, Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life, by Richard Paul and Linda Elder. Back to top

Throughout history, doubles teams come and go. Some duos have great runs for a single tournament, or even a couple months, but few teams stick together and take their synergy to the next level. These 10 teams, although varying in time spent playing together, have all made their mark on the Melee doubles scene, and will go down in history as the 10 best teams of all time. 10. Husband and Wife Although Kevin "Husband" Dassing and Christopher "Wife" Fabisczak do not share the same level of victories or dominance as other doubles teams on this list, they should be mentioned for their prominence in the early years of competitive Melee. Their combination of Marth and Peach, each in their white outfits, facing off against old school legends like Ken and Isai have earned them a spot in memorable doubles play. 9. Shroomed and S2J Dajuan "Shroomed" McDaniel is a highly skilled doubles player, and his recent run with Johnny "S2J" Kim have seen them rise through the ranks at a fast pace. In a doubles environment full of deadly teams at their prime, taking third or second consistently at tournaments like Royal Flush and Smash'N'Splash 2 make their Sheik/Falcon combination not one to disregard. 8. Plup and Hungrybox Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma, one of the Five Gods of Melee, teamed with top player, Justin "Plup" McGrath, and won several tournaments in a short period of time. The height of their team was 2014, where they took first at EVO 2014 and Smash the Record using a combination of Jigglypuff and Sheik/Samus. 7. Leffen and Ice William "Leffen" Hjelte and Mustafa "Ice" Akcakaya have teamed on-and-off since 2013, but they have established a strong presence in doubles tournaments in recent times. Although they tend to fall short of first place, their double Fox play has introduced an alternative to the usual doubles meta, and the two have taken out other powerful doubles teams in 2017. 6. Lucky and Mang0 The team "4 Leaf Mango" cemented their legacy in doubles tournaments from 2007 to 2014, where they consistently placed first more often than not. In 2007, they defeated Ken and Isai at Super Champ Combo, and despite losing the tournament, the victory signaled a time of transition. Their combination of Jigglypuff/Fox and double spacies earned them big wins at Pound 4, the APEX series, and Kings of Cali. 5. Hungrybox and Mew2King Hungrybox and Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman are monsters in their own right for Melee singles, and even bigger monsters in Melee doubles. When the two Gods team up, they rarely lose to anyone. Jigglypuff is a huge menace in doubles play because of its ability to wall out opponents, save teammates, and work as part of a team while still being a powerful single character. Mew2King's support-heavy style matched up perfectly with Hungrybox and the two won every tournament they entered together until The Big House 5. They placed first in key tournaments like The Big House 3, EVO 2013, and APEX 2015. 4. Armada and Android In recent tournaments, Adam "Armada" Lindgren and Andreas "Android" Lindgren have used the power of the brother meta to dominate the international stage. After winning first place in numerous European doubles tournaments, Armada and Android have shown their ability in 2017, taking first in GENESIS 4, and Royal Flush just a short while ago. The Lindgrens use a combination of Sheik/Peach or Sheik/Fox. They are best known for creative combos and innovative teammate saves that showcase their high levels of synergy. 3. PewPewU and SFAT Kevin "PewPewU" Toy and Zachary "SFAT" Cordoni have rarely teamed with anyone other than each other, instead developing Melee's most synergistic doubles team over time. "Pewfat" is a major threat to any other doubles team. Their combination of Marth and Fox has granted them first place at EVO 2015, Smash Summit, and they were virtually unbeatable in 2016. PewPewU and SFAT know each other's movements and combos so well that it seems like they share one mind as they play. SFAT tends to close in and output damage, while PewPewU uses Marth's attack range to keep the momentum in their favor. 2. Ken and Isai Some smashers argue that Ken and Isai dominated the doubles scene in the early years of competitive Melee because of a lack of competition at the time. From 2003 to 2007, no other doubles team could even touch the duo, regardless of whether they went Marth/Sheik or Marth/Falcon. When the best singles player in the world at the time (Ken) and the best doubles player in the world at the time (Isai) work together, the result is four straight years of domination with a handful of second place wins. They definitely win first in terms of team name, as they called themselves "El Chocolate Diablo." 1. Armada and Mew2King Armada and Mew2King take the top spot for taking first place in Doubles nearly every time they have ever entered. Starting with a first place win in APEX 2012 and 2013, the two proceeded to win every doubles bracket they entered together until Paragon 2015. Mew2King is known for being the best doubles player in the world, but also stubborn in counter-picking and character choice. Armada commented that, while at SKTAR 3 against Mang0 and PPMD, he had to persuade Mew2King to stay Sheik, having already won the first two games with their Peach and Sheik combo -- a decision that Armada believed would win them the game. While they butted heads, they also balanced each other out in-game. Unfortunately, since Armada consistently teams with Android now, we'll never know of the potential legacy and dominance these two could have kept for years on end. Their winrate and domination whenever they decided to team won them the No. 1 spot as the best doubles team of all time.

published in Trail Walker Spring 2014, official publication of New York/New Jersey Trail Conference, nynjtc.org By Howard E. Friedman DPM High tech companies keep trying to push their products onto the trail either in your backpack or on your wrist. Mapping apps for smart phones and ipads. Solar powered recharging stations so you can recharge your ipad and smart phone. But many hikers, backpackers and trail runners continue to eschew the idea of letting technology get between them and the trail. But this spring the newest high tech product for hikers will actually come between you and the trail – as long as you are wearing socks. Really smart socks. This spring a new high-tech sock will be available to runners and hikers that will record and project an image of exactly how your feet are striking the ground. Are you a heel striker, forefoot striker or mid-foot striker? Do you put all your pressure under your great toe but no pressure under your smallest toe? Understanding how the foot strikes the ground can be an important distinction especially for runners since many researchers suggest that mid-foot and forefoot strikers are less prone to injuries than heel strikers. (Walkers and hikers are normally heel strikers). The socks can also detect if the wearer’s gait has changed during a hike or run. Called Sensoria, these socks will also record distance traveled, cadence (number of foot strikes per minute), number of steps taken, calories burned, as well as other metrics. A number of existing products can also tell you similar information, such as the Nike+Sportswatch. But no other device on the market geared for the athletic consumer can generate data and images of the pressure generated under your feet. The Sensoria sock made of a washable, synthetic wicking fabric will be available this spring from Heapsylon LLC, a Redmond, WA based technology company, Ceo Davide Vigiano said in a telephone interview. The company also manufactures a shirt and sports bra that use a sensor to record heart rate. The sock incorporates three sensors, one each under the heel, near the big toe and near the small toe, which are less than 1 mm thick. To activate the sensors, the hiker or runner attaches an anklet to the sock via snaps. The battery powered anklet contains an accelerometer and other technology which allow it to capture data from the sensors in the sock. The user can then see the data as it is being collected on his or her smart phone or even Google glasses, with pressure reflected as either green, the lowest reading, or yellow or red, a high reading. Or the user could download the data from the anklet via Blue Tooth technology or using a USB connection, after the hike to see a video strip of their foot strike history and other data, like distance traveled. Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman Ph.D, who has authored many studies on barefoot running and is the author of The Story of the Human Body (2013 Pantheon) is collaborating on the mobile application, according to Mr. Vigiano. The sock sensors do not have a GPS but can be paired with existing GPS units, Vigiano said. These smart socks are ideal for trail or road runners who not only want to know how far and fast they have traveled but also want to modify their gait, be notified if they have started suddenly pronating or supinating and want to try and minimize injury. Moreover, the sock could give a before and after look at exactly how an arch support or foot orthotic changes the pressure under the foot. Howard E. Friedman Advertisements

Washington (CNN) -- Frank Buckles, the last living U.S. World War I veteran, has died, a spokesman for his family said Sunday. He was 110. Lawmakers Monday began to move ahead with proposed resolutions that would allow his casket to be displayed at the Capitol Rotunda, and plans were already in the works for his burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Buckles "died peacefully in his home of natural causes" early Sunday morning, the family said in a statement sent to CNN late Sunday by spokesman David DeJonge. Buckles marked his 110th birthday on February 1, but his family had earlier told CNN he had slowed considerably since last fall, according his daughter Susannah Buckles Flanagan, who lives at the family home near Charles Town, West Virginia. Buckles, who served as a U.S. Army ambulance driver in Europe during what was then known as the "Great War," rose to the rank of corporal before the war ended. His assignments included that of an escort for German prisoners of war. Little did he know he would someday become a prisoner of war during World War II. He came to prominence in recent years, in part because of the work of DeJonge, a Michigan portrait photographer who had undertaken a project to document the last surviving veterans of that war. As the years continued, all but Buckles had passed away, leaving him the "last man standing" among U.S. troops who were called "The Doughboys." His death leaves only two verified surviving WWI veterans in the world, both of whom are British. President Obama issued a statement Monday on Buckles' passing, saying he and first lady Michelle Obama were "inspired" by Buckles' story. Frank Buckles lived the American Century," Obama's statement said. "Like so many veterans, he returned home, continued his education, began a career, and along with his late wife Audrey, raised their daughter Susannah. ... We join Susannah and all those who knew and loved her father in celebrating a remarkable life that reminds us of the true meaning of patriotism and our obligations to each other as Americans." Buckles told CNN in 2007 he accepted the responsibility of honoring those who had gone before him, and to be their voice for permanent, national recognition after he was gone. DeJonge found himself the spokesman and advocate for Buckles in his mission to see to it that his comrades were honored with a monument on the National Mall, pushing for improvements to a neglected, obscure city memorial nearly in the shadow of the elaborate World War II memorial. Buckles wanted national status granted to the D.C. War Memorial, a marble gazebo built in the 1930s that, for now, honors only his comrades from the District of Columbia. His call was to elevate the designation of the site to join U.S. honors accorded to those who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. "We have come to the end of a chapter in history," said Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a House sponsor of legislation to upgrade the DC War Memorial. "Frank was the last American Doughboy -- a national treasure," Poe said in a statement provided to CNN. The "Frank Buckles WWI Memorial Act" passed the House but had not cleared the Senate before Congress adjourned. Poe on Monday restated his support for a House resolution that would allow a public display for Buckles in the Capitol Rotunda. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia is a co-sponsor of the Senate proposal. Buckles, at the age of 108, came to Capitol Hill from West Virginia in 2009 to testify before a Senate panel on behalf of the D.C. War Memorial bill. He sat alongside Rockefeller and fellow proponent Sens. John Thune, R-South Dakota, and Jim Webb, D-Virginia. "I have to," he told CNN when he came to Washington, as part of what he considered his responsibility to honor the memory of fellow veterans. Rockefeller praised Buckles in a statement Monday, calling him "a unique American, a wonderfully plain-spoken man, and an icon for the World War I generation." "His life was full and varied and an inspiration for his unbridled patriotism and enthusiam for life," the statement said. Buckles, after World War I ended, took up a career as a ship's officer on merchant vessels. He was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II and held prisoner of war for more than three years before he was freed by U.S. troops. Never saying much about his POW experience, Buckles instead wanted attention drawn to the plight of the D.C. War Memorial. During a visit to the run-down, neglected site a few years ago, he went past the nearby World War II memorial without stopping, even as younger veterans stopped and saluted the old soldier in his wheelchair as he went by. Renovations to the structure began last fall, but Buckles, with his health already failing, could not make a trip to Washington to review the improvements. The National Park Service is overseeing efforts that include replacing a neglected walkway and dressing up a deteriorated dome and marble columns. Details for services and arrangements will be announced in the days ahead, the family statement said. Flanagan, his daughter, said preliminary plans began weeks ago, with the Military District of Washington expressing its support for an honors burial at Arlington, including an escort platoon, a horse-drawn casket arrival, a band and a firing party. "It has long been my father's wish to be buried in Arlington, in the same cemetery that holds his beloved General (John) Pershing," Flanagan wrote as she began to prepare for the inevitable in a letter she sent to home-state U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia. "I feel confident that the right thing will come to pass," she said. Manchin issued a statement Monday that read, in part, "He lived a long and rich life as a true American patriot, and I hope that his family's loss is lightened with the knowledge that he was loved and will be missed by so many." Buckles in 2008 attended Veterans Day ceremonies at the grave of Pershing, the commander of U.S. troops during World War I. He also met with then-President George W. Bush at the White House, and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon. "The First World War is not well understood or remembered in the United States," Gates said at the time. "There is no big memorial on the National Mall. Hollywood has not turned its gaze in this direction for decades. Yet few events have so markedly shaped the world we live in." Buckles' family asks that donations be made to the National World War I Legacy Project to honor Frank Buckles and the 4,734,991 Americans with whom he served. More than 116,000 Americans were killed, and more than 204,000 wounded, in the 19 months of U.S. involvement in the war, according to the Congressional Research Service. The overall death toll of the 1914-18 conflict was more than 16.5 million, including nearly 7 million civilians, and more than 20 million wounded. Details can be found at: www.frankbuckles.org.

Now that Congress is back in session, it's time to do the people's business again. So let's get on with the nuisance hearings again, shall we? Topic A: Thanks to the McClatchy folks, let's look in on the scandal that is the administration's giving Iran its own fcking money back. GOP Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee on oversight and investigation, said the evidence presented made it difficult to believe the payment wasn't a ransom. He asked the witnesses if they could guarantee that the money will not fund terrorism. "I can't speak for every dollar that goes in and out of Iran, as you know," Backemeyer said. Hold on a second. Common sense got caught in my throat there for a minute. The crime dog on this case is…this guy? I mean, really, this guy? At least Trey Gowdy was a prosecutor once. This guy is a former reality show star who first got famous as a politician by whining about his congressional salary. This is that deep bench again. But, since we are handed this lemon, let's make some lemonade, shall we? Let's go back to the golden days of early 1981, when the great sunshine of Amon-Ra Reagan had fallen upon the land, and some hostages came home—after which $12 billion in Iranian assets that Jimmy Carter had frozen suddenly were thawed. Six years later, he let them have $454 million more of their assets. There was a great unfreezing under the Reagan Administration. In between, of course, the administration sold them some lovely missiles at a decent price. Even if you don't believe that William Casey jacked around with the mullahs during the 1980 campaign—And I do believe that he did—there's no question that Ronald Reagan was in business with Iran almost from the moment he first sat down in the Oval Office, and a helluva lot more business than Barack Obama ever thought of doing. And it all proceeded from the release of the hostages in 1981. Plus, really now, this guy? Meanwhile, elsewhere in Our Nation's Capital, McClatchy reports that another predictable hooley has broken out in another committee room. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, opened the hearing by condemning Clinton for intentionally making a "mess" of the system for archiving and retrieving documents at the State Department that has frustrated legitimate requests for information from Congress, the media and the public…For example, Chaffetz noted, The Associated Press had to go to court to obtain all the detailed planning schedules from Clinton's four-year tenure as the nation's top diplomat. Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, told the committee the agency is improving its records management but continues to struggle with the heavy volume of open-records requests it receives. For more than two hours, Kennedy sparred with lawmakers over a range of questions related to Clinton's records. He said the department is currently sorting through thousands of records it received from the FBI following its investigation of Clinton. Welcome to the next four years. Maybe. Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice star Jesse Eisenberg is doing some damage control after comparing his experience at Comic-Con International: San Diego to “some kind of genocide.” "Maybe on some cellular memory level, that's the only thing that seems like an equivalent social experience," Eisenberg told The Associated Press during another stop on The End of the Tour’s press tour. "Even if they're saying nice things, just being shouted at by thousands of people, it's horrifying." He went on to state that he was honored to be at Comic-Con, and was only making use of hyperbole in his genocide remark. "I of course was using hyperbole to describe the sensory overload I experienced. I sometimes do employ that," he said. "I'm a normal person who has normal sensory experiences, so Comic-Con was very overwhelming for me. That said, it was really an honor to be on that end of such jubilation." Eisenberg will play Lex Luthor in Batman v. Superman, and explained that such hyperbolic statements are just what’s expected of a villain. "They expect me to use hyperbole!" he said. "If I didn't I'd be the hero who usually speaks pretty practically."

With less than one week to go until polling day, and irrespective of the fact that the polls are extremely close (they are), we should focus on whether the electoral system helps one or other of the two largest parties, argues Tom Lubbock. In recent years the system has had a skew to Labour resulting from its biases. Will it this time around? Unlike so many of the outstanding questions about this intriguing election it is possible to give an answer to the electoral skew question before in-person voting begins on May 7th. By taking a forecast of the election result and running it through some simple equations it is possible to give a rough and ready verdict on who is going to benefit from the electoral system. I’ll present the results of this analysis and then move further into the weeds to explain what is going on and how it was carried out. Graph 1 illustrates the skew from previous elections since 1983, and the finding that on the basis of the best forecast of the 2015 election Labour and Conservatives are almost exactly equal beneficiaries of the electoral system in 2015. Labour benefit to the tune of 41 seats and the Conservatives benefit from a 40 seat skew. As you can see from Graph 1 the last time the system was in the habit of rewarding both large parties anything like this equitably was in 1997 and since then it has been one way traffic to Labour. With the headline out of the way its time to unpack. The skew has four distinct causes: Geographic distribution of votes Presence of minor parties in constituencies Different abstention rates Different constituency sizes Graph 2 shows how the 4 different sources of skew have changed since 2005. It is important to note that these components of skew are independent and whilst one may be positive for a given party others may be negative for that party. It is clear from the graphs that the largest contributor to the overall skew in the system is vote distribution bias. Therefore I’ll describe how this distribution bias comes about, spell out the method that produced these results, and give a few caveats. We can’t talk ex ante of skew and the biases that cause it and we can’t do so separate from a specific election. Each component part depends on the behaviour of voters. In the case of distribution bias the advantage or disadvantage that the system gives a party is determined by how efficiently its vote is ‘used’ to win seats. If a party wastes millions (literally) of votes which are cast in seats where it finishes second or third then this counts against it. The way to calculate how a party is affected by the way in which its vote is distributed is to add up the results of hypothetical elections where each party swaps its vote share with its competitors. We can then see whether, with a given vote share Labour does relatively better than, say, the Conservatives with the same vote share. By taking the predicted percentage vote for each party in each seat (produced by the www.electionforecast.co.uk team) and using the electorate and turnout figures for each constituency from 2010 we can analyse the bias at a hypothetical 2015 election as forecast by electionforecast and it is these calculations that produce the above figures for 2015. For the existence of this method we have to thank a Kiwi political scientist, R. H. Brookes. The even more extraordinary feat of adapting the method to the three party case has to be credited to Galina Borisyuk in papers written with her colleagues at Plymouth Michael Thrasher and Colin Rallings. Despite the fact that it seems that the two largest parties are being rewarded evenly by the electoral system in this election smaller parties whose vote is not supremely regionally concentrated are harshly treated by the current system. Chris Hanretty has run the numbers and found that, on the same forecast being used here, this will be the most disporportional election ever (with a Gallagher index value of 20.4). And it is this skew against UKIP, the Lib Dems and in favour of the SNP that is driving calls for electoral reform (although oddly sometimes from the two largest parties who are still benefiting). Some caveats: The method used to derive the biases and skew is designed for 3 rather than 5 party politics. Anyone who can come up with a method for the n-party case gets themselves a published paper. We don’t know turnout in each seat as the election hasn’t been run. Therefore I have to just use the turnout from last time in each seat. The results are based on a forecast of each party’s vote share in each seat. It’s just a forecast and the result may be different (although I have faith in the forecast). I am grateful to Matt Singh for encouraging use of the term skew. Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the General Election blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting. About the Author

Two Michigan state senators are pushing a bill to allow pharmacies to sell medical marijuana—if the federal government approves—the Detroit Free Press reported last week. “The voters decided that medical marijuana was a good thing for the state of Michigan, but unfortunately, very few parameters were put around that,” Republican Senator Randy Richardville told the paper. Most interestingly, Prairie Plant Systems—the company that held the sole contract to produce medical pot for the Canadian government until recent changes in that country’s medical marijuana program—is lobbying hard for the bill. The company hired Chuck Perricone, a former state house speaker, to move the medical marijuana bill forward. “The market for this is virtually untapped. The potential for the product is tremendous,” Perricone told DFP. But patient advocates are skeptical of the corporate pharmacy pot push. “If you’re able to grow in your basement there’s no reason to go to Walmart,” Americans for Safe Access chapter spokesman Rick Thompson told the Associated Press. He suggested the goal of the bill is to eliminate patient home growing rights in Michigan, and said such a move is against the spirit of the medical cannabis law approved by voters in 2008.

Inquiry will hear from men abused as boys at Northern Ireland children’s home and allegations that perpetrators were protected by working as spies An inquiry into child abuse across a range of institutions in Northern Ireland will focus on Tuesday on the Kincora boys home scandal including allegations that MI5 blackmailed a paedophile ring which operated there in the 1970s. The historical institutional abuse inquiry will hear evidence from men who were abused at Kincora when they were children and their allegations that the perpetrators were protected because they were state agents spying on fellow Ulster loyalists. A number of Kincora abuse victims have tried through the courts to force the scandal to be included in the national investigation into allegations of establishment paedophile rings operating in Westminster. Gary Hoy tried and failed last month to force the home secretary to include Kincora in the Westminster inquiry. Hoy and others fear that the Kincora inquiry, which is based in Northern Ireland and taking hearings at the court in Banbridge, County Down, will not have access to sensitive MI5 intelligence files on the people who ran Kincora. Amnesty International has described the Kincora scandal as one of the most disturbing to emerge from the Ulster Troubles. Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty’s director in Northern Ireland, said: “Nothing less than a full public inquiry – with all the powers of compulsion which that brings – can finally reveal what happened and the role that the security services may have played in the abuse of these vulnerable boys.” At least 29 boys were sexually abused by Kincora housemaster and prominent Orange Order member William McGrath and others at the east Belfast home. One boy is said to have committed suicide following years of abuse by jumping off a ferry into the Irish Sea in the late 1970s. Another of the abuse victims at Kincora, Clint Massey, told the Guardian last year that he even tried to file a report at a local police station in east Belfast about what was happening to him and other boys at the home in the mid-1970s. However, Massey said he was forcibly marched out of the RUC station by police officers and that his complaint was not recorded. Former army intelligence officer and whistleblower Colin Wallace has consistently claimed that MI5, RUC special branch and military intelligence knew about the abuse going on at Kincora and used it to blackmail the paedophile ring to spy on hardline loyalists. In 1980, Wallace was arrested and convicted of manslaughter. He spent six years in jail despite suggestions he had been framed. His conviction for manslaughter was quashed in 1996 in the light of fresh forensic evidence and shortcomings at his trial. In 1990, Margaret Thatcher was forced to admit that her government had deceived parliament and the public about Wallace’s role. An independent investigation by David Calcutt QC found that members of MI5 had interfered with disciplinary proceedings against Wallace. As a result, Wallace was awarded £30,000 in compensation. Three men were jailed for their part in abuse at Kincora in 1981, but attempts to establish the truth about British state involvement have been blocked. It has persistently been alleged that McGrath, who was a leader in an extreme evangelical Protestant group called Tara, was an informant for British intelligence. McGrath was jailed for sexual offences in 1981 and is now dead. Theresa May, the home secretary, has insisted that the chairman of the Banbridge-based inquiry, retired judge Sir Anthony Hart, will have full access to government and intelligence files relating to Kincora. The historical institutional abuse inquiry is investigating 22 orphanages, care homes and other institutions where child sexual abuse took place. The inquiry team is expected to hear from around 450 witnesses, some of whom have travelled from as far as the United States and Australia to give evidence.

Everything's obvious in hindsight. That's a lesson that Fire Hose Games founder Eitan Glinert has learned at least twice in the past few years. The first time happened at PAX Prime 2011, way up on the sixth floor where many of the indie developers had rented small booths two floors above the show floor. There was no good reason for everybody to keep doing this alone, Glinert thought. And out of that thought grew the Indie Megabooth, a collection of developers who band together and stake their claim on the main floor of PAXes east and west. More recently, Glinert realized he had the power to organize something else for the tight-knit indie development community, many of whom he's seen fail "for just some stupid, avoidable problem." And the realization, coupled with what he'd been able to accomplish with the Indie Megabooth, kind of pissed him off that nobody'd figured this out before — including him. "That really set me off thinking that, if indies can do such a good job getting together for something like showing off at a conference, imagine what they could do if they kind of banded together a little bit more when it came to making their own games," Glinert told Polygon in a recent interview. That idea's been bouncing around in his head for the last year or so. Now he's figured out what to do with it. Tonight at a monthly gathering of indie developers called the Boston Post Mortem, Glinert will outline his plans to help fellow indies by turning Fire Hose Games into an indie developer incubator. "Imagine what they could do if they kind of banded together a little bit more." "You know how you kind of have an epiphany on this sort of thing and and after you have it, it's like, 'Oh, my gosh! That was so obvious. How did I not realize that sooner? Well, that's exactly where we are, and frankly. I'm shocked that we don't see more people doing it." Glinert isn't interested in a classic incubator model, which he said were designed for businesspeople who want to create businesses. Instead, he wants to incubate games and the people who make them. He wants to create an environment where it's safe and sustainable to make games. "It's no secret that all of indies talk to each other, right?" he said. "There's just been uncountable numbers of times when I've seen people failing with their project for just some stupid, avoidable problem. Maybe they just didn't have a little bit of money that they needed. Maybe they made a bad business decision. Maybe they didn't understand that it was time to iterate on their game. Maybe they didn't make the right connection, they didn't talk to the right person. Maybe they had some sort of healthcare issue. "There's all these really solvable problems that come up, and it prevents a lot of indies form making a good game or from being successful. And we realized that that's the sort of thing that Fire Hose is set up to help people with. That's something that we can do to help people with." He has "spreadsheet after spreadsheet after spreadsheet" which he thinks proves that the model can make money. And he's currently talking to investors to raise funds for the quasi-incubator that envisions. In the gaming world, he said, the way it often works is that publishers look for good games to fund. But for Glinert, the goal will be different. The goal will be to find good developers, who will make good games. He believes it will work because he's seen it work in the studio he founded. "We eat our own dog food. We are living it right now." "Instead of us trying to pick the winner games, we're trying to pick the winner developers," he said. "And that's a really big difference, right? I think it's actually a much easier problem to identify people that are really good at making games, and really good at making indie games. I say that because we've done that. We have great people at Fire Hose." There's something else he's doing inside the studio that he hopes will teach him about how the incubation model he envisions will work: Fire Hose has been practicing the model for months. "We eat our own dog food. We are living it right now. We are currently working on four fucking games. We have lost our goddamn minds," he said with a laugh. "We're working on all these games in tandem. We're giving people huge amounts of creative control while they make the games. And we're pushing this forward as we speak." That's Eitan Glinert's idea in a nut: Use the success of Fire Hose games to find and empower other developers to make great games. He doesn't have all the details yet — he's considering an interview process that doesn't even ask about games, at least for now — but he's working on it, and he's sure of a couple things. He wants the developers to stick around to make second, third and fourth games. But he also wants an escape lever built into the contract, so they can leave if and when they want to and their their intellectual property with them. And he wants Fire Hose Games to be at the forefront of this evolution in how he hopes indie games are made. As he sees it, it's a way to help others and help his business, too. It's a lot like what he did with the Indie Megabooth. "That's how I feel about the games industry," he said. "Why aren't people fixing this indie problem? Why the fuck do I have to go do it? Alright, I'll do it. Somebody's got to."

A serious security vulnerability in Windows code is currently being exploited, Google researchers said on Monday. Google discovered the flaw, which also affects Adobe's Flash media player, on Oct. 21. Adobe issued a fix a few days later, but Microsoft still has not issued its own, according to a Google blog post. Google said its policy is to publish actively exploited critical vulnerabilities seven days after it reports them to the software's creator. The flaw, which exists in the Windows kernel, can be used as a "security sandbox escape," according to Google. Most software contains sandboxes in order to stop malicious or malfunctioning programs from damaging or snooping on the rest of the computer. It's unclear how extensively the Windows flaw has been exploited. Google said only that it is being "actively exploited." In a statement, Microsoft acknowledged the security flaw and criticised Google for disclosing it before a fix was ready. "We believe in coordinated vulnerability disclosure, and today's disclosure by Google puts customers at potential risk," a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. "Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible." The company added that it recommends Windows owners use the Microsoft Edge browser, though it did not say whether Edge can prevent the vulnerability from being exploited. Google, meanwhile, said its Chrome browser prevents the exploit. Citing a source close to Microsoft, VentureBeat reported that the vulnerability requires Flash to be exploited. Since Adobe has already issued a fix for Flash, users with the latest Flash updates may be protected even without a Microsoft fix. This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.

Current Treasurer Joe Hockey and former Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello both criticised Mrs Bishop's use of expenses on Sunday, with Mr Hockey pointedly noting that he hadn't "heard of anyone who has taken a helicopter to a fundraising event". Defiant: Bronwyn Bishop attends a memorial service at the Sydney War Memorial on Sunday to commemorate the Battle of Fromelles. Credit:Steven Siewert The Department of Finance is now conducting an audit of Mrs Bishop's expenses, despite Labor writing to the Australian Federal Police and requesting an investigation, as happened with former Speaker Peter Slipper. But in comments that ratchet up political pressure on the Prime Minister for the mistakes of the Speaker, Mr Shorten said on Sunday that Mr Abbott needed to act and remove his "captain's pick", Mrs Bishop, from the Speaker's chair. "This has now become a test of Tony Abbott's leadership. Does Mr Abbott have the character to tell Bronwyn Bishop to stand aside? Because he knows - and the world knows - that this arrogant misuse of taxpayer funds needs to be held to account," he said. "He can't dismiss this, as he apparently has, as village gossip ... Mr Abbott's Liberals are addicted to privilege. Expenses: Bronwyn Bishop at Saturday's press conference. Credit:James Brickwood "<!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-AU JA X-NONE <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <![endif]--><!--StartFragment-->There is not a hint of apology in the ranks of the Liberal Party, there is no apology from Mrs Bishop, she just doesn't seem to understand what the fuss is about." Earlier on Sunday, Mrs Bishop was swamped by journalists after the unveiling of a new Anzac memorial in Sydney's Hyde Park. She faced further questions about the $5000 charter helicopter flight from Melbourne to Geelong – a journey that takes as little as an hour by car - and dismissed suggestions she should apologise. "When we talked about the helicopter, that is now with the Department of Finance so I don't think it's appropriate to talk about it any further, except to say, if you look at other people's charter allowances, I think Mr [Tony] Burke spent in the same period $31,000. You have got to get things into proportion," she said. "The best form of apology is to repay the money." A journalist countered: "The best form of apology, Mrs Bishop, is to say 'I'm sorry.' " But she swatted away that question and claims her case was comparable to that of Mr Slipper, who faced public wrath over his use of Cabcharge dockets, describing it as "totally a different matter altogether". And Mrs Bishop also attempted to justify the huge expenditure involved in a recent two-week trip to Europe. "It wasn't $90,000, it was $88,000," she said of Fairfax's recent coverage of her fortnight-long trip to Europe, including time spent campaigning for an international job. And she repeated her claim that the money on the helicopter flight was spent within the rules, which requires expenditure to relate to the duties of office, even though she was attending a party political fundraiser. The event was, in fact, a form of community outreach, she said. Loading "The [criticism about the] grandiosity [of arriving in a helicopter] is quite right," she said. "That's why I've repaid the money."

The family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath and Children’s Hospital Oakland have reached an agreement to allow a critical care team to transfer the brain-dead girl to another medical facility. Under the agreement reached Friday, her mother, Naliah Winkfield, will be “wholly and exclusively responsible” for Jahi during the transfer, including in the event that the teen’s heart stops beating. For weeks, the McMath family has been searching for a medical facility to accept Jahi while simultaneously fighting in court to keep her on life-support. She was declared brain dead on Dec. 12– three days after a tonsillectomy surgery aiming to alleviate her sleeping problems resulted in heavy bleeding and cardiac arrest. Alameda County Superior Judge Evelio Grillo refused the family’s request for hospital doctors to insert feeding and tracheostomy tubes for the move, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Two hospital physicians and three outside doctors requested by the family have deemed Jahi brain-dead. Children’s does not allow physicians to perform procedures on the deceased. ”Right now, arrangements are being made, and what we needed to know was that when all the balls were in line, that we could move quickly, and not to have impediments, so that we all understood what the protocol was,” said Christopher Dolan, attorney for the family. “So this is a victory in terms of getting us one step closer.” Meanwhile, the case continues to make headlines across the globe and foster discussions about the ethics of artificially prolonging life. Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, an organization launched shortly after the contentious death of Terri Schiavo in 2005, has been overseeing efforts by several groups to assist in Jahi’s transfer. “Together with our team of experts, Terri’s Network believes Jahi’s case is representative of a very deep problem within the U.S. healthcare system– particularly those issues surrounding the deaths of patients within the confines of hospital corporations, which have a vested financial interest in discontinuing life,” the organization said in a statement. Ronda Hughes, an associate professor at Marquette University’s College of Nursing specializing in health services research and patient safety, said Jahi will not benefit from more treatments. “When someone is brain-dead that means that the brain cannot function to support life on its own,” Hughes told Life Matters Media. “In this case, the hospital has said the patient is brain-dead. There is no technology, there is nothing to bring the patient back to life, no matter the hospital.” Death is difficult for many Americans to accept, partly because modern medical technologies have made it possible to prolong life longer than ever before. “This is an extremely difficult situation for anyone to go through, because it involves the death of what appeared to be an otherwise normal, healthy child. No parent expects anything to go wrong with their child,” Hughes said. “We can keep her alive for years on life-support, but to what end? Are we doing what is best for the patient or what is best for the family?” Hughes said that Americans are much more accepting of deaths after a long illness, and even of those as a result of automobile accidents. “As a society, we have a lot of faith that our medical technology can do things that in reality it can’t.” [Jan. 6 Update: Brain-Dead Girl Released From Oakland Hospital]

About 10 days ago, his backup point guard situation seemed destined to cause Stan Van Gundy indigestion or insomnia. Not so much anymore. Van Gundy saw enough from Steve Blake in his only preseason appearance – Friday’s 28-point win over Atlanta in the finale – to feel comfortable going into Tuesday’s season opener with Blake as his backup point guard. But he also saw a different Spencer Dinwiddie over the second half of the preseason. “He’s just got a lot of experience. I like the way he moves the ball, passes the ball,” Van Gundy said of Blake after Sunday’s practice. “I thought Spencer, though, has played four pretty good games in a row. I’ve been happy with him. He’s played a lot better. I thought early in the preseason he was not real solid. He was very up and down. But over the last four games, I think he was good.” Things are falling into place for the Pistons on the health front, it appears. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope threw a scare into Van Gundy when he limped off in the first quarter last Wednesday against Charlotte, but he’s on course to play Tuesday. He missed Sunday’s practice, but was scheduled to run on a treadmill with 100 percent body weight after taking it to 70 percent on Saturday. Van Gundy expects confirmation on Monday that backup center Aron Baynes will have the conditions under which he played in the preseason – a 15-minute limit per game and a ban on playing in back to backs – lifted by the doctor in charge of Baynes’ rehab from off-season ankle surgery. Blake and Baynes will play key roles off the bench along with rookie Stanley Johnson, Jodie Meeks, Anthony Tolliver and Reggie Bullock. Blake, in fact, could be used in tandem with Reggie Jackson if Van Gundy sees a need to inject more ball movement. The Pistons spent part of Sunday’s practice with that look, he said. Van Gundy says how deep he does into his bench from game to game will vary. “It’ll be situational,” he said. “My guess is we’ll use at least 10, maybe 11. All depends.” Marcus Morris and Ersan Ilyasova will be the starting forwards, Van Gundy confirmed. They started against Charlotte and Van Gundy said last week that unless something caused him to change his mind, that would be the starting combination for the season opener. Two other bits of housekeeping to note: The Pistons picked up fourth-year options on both Caldwell-Pope – there was never a doubt about that – and Bullock. That completes a remarkable month for Bullock, who entered training camp competing with Adonis Thomas and Cartier Martin for a roster spot and now has two more seasons of salary guaranteed – a measure of how good he was throughout the preseason.

Call it the curious case of gold and bonds. Typically, the yellow metal and U.S. Treasurys move in opposition as investors shift from one to the other in search of a safe haven amid changing economic conditions. However, Dennis Gartman, editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter, highlighted some very unusual activity that's been underway in recent months. "Having been at this for 40 years, I always look for anomalies," explained Gartman on CNBC's "Futures Now" on Thursday. "It's very strange to me that, since June, as went gold so went the bond market." To this end, both gold and the U.S. 10-year Treasury note remained nearly unchanged in the last quarter. And, as Gartman pointed out, the absolute prices of both have rallied and fallen in tandem. "It doesn't make any sense to me," said Gartman. "If you go back over the course of the past many years, they move in contravention."

HYDERABAD: Renowned historian Dr Mubarak Ali has criticised the syllabus being taught at educational institutions of the country and called for rewriting it to make it more realistic. “The existing syllabus is meant for [producing] people of a particular mentality. If we teach such things to our young generation then what do we expect from them,” he said while delivering a lecture on ‘Role of youth in the country’s development’ organised by the Centre of Excellence in Art and Design of the Mehran University of Engineering and Tech­n­ology at Jamshoro on Saturday. He said that educational institutes should be free from law enforcement agencies personnel but the situation in Pakistan, particularly in Sindh, was different. Many countries had developed only through education and it still remained the only weapon to bring about a revolution in a society, he said. He said that he was proud of being a student and teacher at the Sindh University but at the same time expressed disappointment over the fact that SU, Sindhi Adabi Board and other educational institutions were not delivering as was expected from them in the fields of culture, history and education with the result that today’s students were unaware of their rights. “If we look at history, students have produced great leadership in the world. In Pakistan and Sindh students have played a vital and productive role in the past even during the rule of military dictator Ayub Khan,” he said. He said that students played a central role in the freedom struggles in Bangladesh, Germany and several other countries and they were playing a similar role to bring about change in Pakistani society when Gen Ayub imposed a ban on student unions. But they led from the front and forced him to take back his decision, he said. He said the countries like Germany where education was free right from primary to university level were developing by leaps and bounds as they knew they needed skilled youth to maintain the progress but Pakistanis did not pay the attention to education it required. About pitfalls of writing fragmented history, he said, for instance people quoted examples of Quaid-i-Azam and Allama Iqbal without giving necessary details to enable youth to make their own opinions about them. MUET Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mohammad Aslam Uqaili said that Dr Mubarak had contributed enormously to the history of Pakistan and Sindh and his books were guidelines for the youth. He said that unfortunately people’s attitudes had hardened and no one was ready to listen to the other’s point of view and accept him as he is. “Sindh is a citadel of Sufi teachings but prolonged Afghan war has had a bad impact on its dwellers’ behaviour, which needs to be changed to promote harmony,” he said. CEAD director Prof Dr Bhai Khan Shar said that it was an honour for Sindh and Pakistan to have towering scholars like Dr Mubarak Ali. The CEAD would continue to organise such informative and highly enlightening lectures to educate its students, he added. Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2015 On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play

After years of declared victories, Cuyahoga County's public health advocates and leaders fear that once again they are losing the battle against smoking. The county's smoking rates had fallen to less than 19 percent of residents in 2007. But that rate is back up to about 24 percent. And in in some Cleveland neighborhoods, more than 30 percent of adults smoke. For Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman, the statistics are a call to action. "Our goal is to change the culture of smoking in Cleveland and if people have a problem with that than that's good," Cimperman says. "People should have a problem with people dying too soon from diseases like emphysema and lung cancer." The city had already banned cigarette smoking in publicly-owned outdoor areas such as parks, community gardens, and within 150 feet of public places like City Hall and the convention center. Now, that law extends to e-cigarettes. Nigel Aviles, who sells e-cigarettes at Record Revolution in Cleveland Heights, rolls his eyes when he hears the new rules. "It helps people to stop smoking traditional cigarettes. They wean off of it through various dosages of nicotine," Aviles says. Executives in the e-cigarette industry have said the product can help people quite tobacco. But Cuyahoga County's Health Commissioner Terry Allan says there's no definitive proof and disagrees. Instead, Allan says, e-cigarettes are another way to become addicted to nicotine. "Public health people see e-cigarettes as a renormalization of tobacco use. It's a tobacco product," Allans says. "And we consider it a tobacco product." Other cities that have banned smoking e-cigarettes include New York and Chicago. And, closer to home, Lakewood banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors earlier this summer.

Instant public surveys on Barack Obama's address before Congress showed, by and large, that the public was incredibly receptive to his speech, regardless of political party. But that did not hold true for every single study. A CBS News poll of approximately 500 people saw approval of the president rise from 62 percent before the speech to 69 percent afterward. Meanwhile, a poll on CNN showed that 68 percent of respondents -- who skewed a bit Democratic -- viewed the speech positively, 24 somewhat positively, and only eight percent not positively. Eighty-two percent supported the president's economic plan as outlined in the speech, while 17 percent opposed it. Those results were buttressed by the findings of longtime Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. In his own dial poll, which included 50 participants of mixed gender, education and politics, Greenberg found a large swath of bipartisan support for Obama's addres. That included a 14 percent jump, from 62 to 76 percent, in the favorability rating for the president. Saying at the onset that this was an "immensely successful speech," he highlighted a few issues on which Obama won over the audience. * On taxes, "there was a 26-point gain," from 38 to 64 percent, "the biggest gains that he made." * On the deficit, "there was an 18 point swing... from 42 percent to 60 percent." * On Iraq, "there was a 18-point swing" (no numbers were offered) "I've never seen this," Greenberg added. For a large part of the speech, all three, the Republican, Democratic and independent line where virtually in the same place." What was striking, Greenberg concluded, was "how un-polarized the reaction was to this speech. I have not quite seen that." He should tell that to the generally conservative Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research group. Mike Maslansky, the CEO of that firm, when speaking with the Huffington Post, said he found "some of the biggest partisan divides that we ever see" in the reaction to Obama's address. In a survey of 29 registered Democrats and Republicans in suburban Virginia, who Maslansky said were ALL generally skittish about Obama's economic plans and housing proposals, Obama managed to win over a large chunk of the crowd. Eleven respondents, nine of whom were Democrats, thought that the speech exceeded expectations. Only three thought it failed to meet expectations, all of whom were Republicans. But the responses often broken down by political affiliation. Talk on the stimulus, Maslansky said, proved most divisive, as did talk of repairing the housing industry and, more generally, health care reform. On energy, Obama won bipartisan plaudits, as he did when he emphasized personal responsibility both for parents dealing with their kids' education and politicians dealing with on pet interests.

How To Talk About A Significant Other's Weight Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer "radical empathy" and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. toggle caption Courtesy of WBUR Today the Sugars take on a sensitive issue for millions of Americans: physical appearance — and specifically, how much someone weighs. A young man writes to the Sugars, wondering how to talk about his girlfriend's weight. It's an especially complicated issue, given how society has historically treated women related to their appearance. They're joined by Lindy West, a writer, editor and performer whose work focuses on pop culture, social justice and body image. She's the author of Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. Dear Sugars, I am a 24-year-old college graduate in my first serious romantic relationship. My experience with girls before this was extremely limited. I've been dating my girlfriend for over six months now, and she is wonderful. However, her weight has always been a minor issue in the back of my mind: She is not fat but she has a few extra pounds and this can be seen more when she's wearing fewer clothes. I love her and would never ask or demand her to change just for me, but I've been thinking more and more about how her weight bothers me a little bit. I'm a very thin guy and have naturally gravitated physically toward thinner girls. Until now, I have avoided talking about the matter with my girlfriend except in general terms about others, or the few times she has brought up and engaged with me directly on the matter. When her doctor told her she needed to lose some weight to be healthier, she was upset, although she did not disagree. So I spoke to my therapist and my roommate, and although they're both men, they both thought that if it was something on my mind and was making me a little uneasy that I should bring it up with her. I did, and she did not respond with as much understanding as I hoped. She felt hurt and a little violated, like the one guy who's supposed to love and accept her and find her beautiful just the way she is was attacking a part of her identity. She was shocked, confused and taken aback. She tried to explain how some issues are so sensitive, touchy and personal for women that they should never really be brought up for the sake of the satisfaction in the relationship. In all fairness, I did bring it up a little suddenly and not in the most tactful or direct way, but I didn't know how else to start a hard, uncomfortable conversation I was not looking forward to. She has genes that make it easier for her to gain weight and harder to lose. She has recently started going to the gym, and I was trying to support and encourage her to go more consistently. My question for you is: Was I wrong for not being sensitive to how women think? Should I have let it go if I considered it a smaller issue in our relationship? Would it have made a difference if I spoke to another woman to ask her thoughts beforehand on if and how I should bring this up with my girlfriend? Did I need to? I love her and she is very big on being honest and open and comfortable in trusting each other. Our relationship never hinged on her weight, but I just want to come out stronger. Signed, The Question of Weight Cheryl Strayed: The Question of Weight, you sound like such a sweet and innocent and naive young man, and I think you made a big mistake. Indeed, you are supposed to love and accept her and find her beautiful just the way she is. I think you stepped into something that has a deeper and more complicated social and cultural history. Women are under scrutiny in enormously harmful ways when it comes to their bodies and their appearance and their weight in relation to their value to men, especially in romantic relationships. Listen To The Podcast Subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio: RSS iTunes Stitcher Enlarge this image toggle caption Jennie Baker Photography/Courtesy of WBUR Jennie Baker Photography/Courtesy of WBUR And I think that, honestly, if you found her to be chubbier than you want her to be, you maybe should have not dated her to begin with, or you should have decided that it was worth ending this relationship with this person. Steve Almond: I have a slightly different take on this. I think he's coming to us in his first serious relationship with insecurities of his own about his body. There's something in him that feels a little bit unmanned by her being larger. It's not just about her body. His attitudes toward this woman, who isn't thin, somehow is triggering within him a kind of self-doubt about his own body image that he hasn't quite recognized. Cheryl: The Question of Weight, I have strong feelings about what you did because I know how it feels to be that woman who is being told by a man, "You don't meet this ideal that I've constructed and that society has helped me construct. And even though I love you and you're wonderful and I don't have any complaints about you, I've decided that I'm going to ask you to be physically perfect for me, too." I don't know what's going to happen in this relationship. I do think that this was hurtful to your lover, and she's probably going to carry this into your sex life, as well. I do think that honesty is really important. I think kindness is too, and generosity. I think that, Question of Weight, your relationship might be permanently damaged because of this. But whether it is or not, I encourage you to examine those messages that you've received about what women should look like, and how you might open your mind a bit. Lindy West: What comes through in this letter is that their relationship isn't "real" until she can fix herself. That's how I felt about myself; I needed to fix this problem that made me not a real woman and not worthy of the respect that every other human being deserves. Everything was on hold until I could make myself thin. There was just this really low-grade despair all the time, because the narrative that you're fed is that as a woman, your job is to be pretty and small — small physically and small in your presence. And then you wait for someone to pick you. I was always very aware that I didn't look like the kind of girl who got picked, and so I was sort of resigned to the fact that I would be alone. But what you learn when you grow up is, what you look like is irrelevant compared to what you are like. If you're confident and fun and engaged with people and you go out and are yourself, that's extremely attractive. And that proved true for me. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear more discussion about how weight and physical appearance can affect relationships. Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail.com and it may be answered on a future episode. You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app.

If the international spread of SlutWalk means anything, it means this: You should never underestimate the power of a simple idea. Nor should you expect that idea to remain simple for very long. SlutWalk has become massive; its website lists completed or planned events in several dozen American and Canadian cities, with still more marches occurring in Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK. But it’s worth noting that its inspiration was relatively small and local. This January, at Osgoode Hall Law School, a Toronto policeman giving a lecture on campus safety told students that, although he’d been “told not to say it,” he thought women should stop dressing like “sluts” so as to avoid being sexually assaulted. Which, of course, is one of the oldest and worst lines in the book, when it comes to excusing rape. The fact is, anyone can be sexually assaulted; young or old, of any gender, of any race, conventionally attractive or not. The only common denominator in any rape or sexual assault is the presence of a sexual assailant. But the fact that a police officer, someone to whom a victim would be expected to turn to after an assault, could include victim-blaming in his “safety tips”: Well. It was a small incident. But it spoke volumes. Hence, SlutWalk: Women and men taking to the streets to demand accountability from the Toronto police. Its goals were small and local focused; its message was equally simple and unequivocal. Its branding, however, stood out. “Whether dished out as a serious indictment of one’s character or merely as a flippant insult, the intent behind the word [‘slut’] is always to wound,” said the organizers, “so we’re taking it back. ‘Slut’ is being re-appropriated.” And so they did. The SlutWalk movement said — indeed, implicitly demanded — that those who participated in the march should be willing to identify as “sluts or allies.” It was an incredibly catchy, implicitly theatrical premise. Many of the protesters played that up, dressing in the sorts of revealing and provocative outfits that the Toronto policeman had condemned. The cameras tended to find those protesters first. For some of those who joined, it was a simple way to identify. Some were sex workers, used to hearing that their impermissible sexuality was an excuse for police brutality, legal oppression, and violent assault or even murder. Others were women who enjoyed casual sex, or people who had sex in non-vanilla ways. For others, the label came less naturally; still, since any given woman can be labeled a “slut,” even the most monogamous or virginal among us, it made sense to march in solidarity. The simplicity of the message — no matter who you are, or how anyone else views your sexuality, you deserve safety — made it possible for the movement to gain ground anywhere that message rang true, until the outrage was not so much about anything that one man had done, but about the rage and pain that come with being sexual in a rape culture. And so, SlutWalk transcended Toronto, and the offending police officer, and became an international movement. And yet. Several women of color have written that the event is based in white culture, white problems, and white assumptions — for example, the idea that one can expect “safety” when dealing with law enforcement in the first place. “This event will not stop the criminalization of black women in New Orleans,” wrote Aura Blogando, “nor will it stop one woman from being potentially deported after she calls the police subsequent to being raped. SlutWalk completely ignores the way institutional violence is leveled against women of color. The event highlights its origins from a privileged position of relative power, replete with an entitlement of assumed safety that women of color would never even dream of.” Still others have pointed out that the mere fact of wearing a “slutty” outfit does not always signify freedom, and feeling pressured to do so, or to reclaim the “slut” label, can in fact intensify and re-iterate their oppression: “In the post 9/11 climate,” wrote Harsha Walia, “the focus on a particular version of sex(y)-positive feminism runs the risk of further marginalizing Muslim women’s movements who are hugely impacted by the racist ‘reasonable accommodation’ debate and state policies against the niqab.” Simply telling women that they “can” or “should” be more sexually open or dress more scantily does not make sense, if those women are routinely persecuted for a seeming lack of sexual availability, or for wearing clothes that cover “too much” of their bodies. In a virgin-whore dichotomy, women are of course assaulted on both ends of the spectrum; anyone who plays the game will lose. That’s how rigged games work. This matters. Because these are the dangers of making an international movement out of a simple, local protest. “SlutWalk” made sense, as an immediate reaction to the events in Toronto: When the police officer blames rape on revealing outfits, you wear a revealing outfit. When the police officer uses the term “slut” in a derogatory way, you use it in a positive one. But once it was exported, its flaws became apparent. It did not, and could not, speak to the needs of every woman; nor could it adequately sum up and address every facet of rape culture. And so, removed from its original context, it stopped being simple, and became simplistic. Simple ideas are great for attracting crowds, especially when they come with camera-ready spectacle. But there is no way that SlutWalk can be made to bear the entire weight of anti-rape activism; relying solely on SlutWalk as our means of protesting anything — rape, sexism, even something as specific as slut-shaming — will invariably reveal that it does not measure up. No one protest or movement, not even one as widespread and as great at calling attention to itself as SlutWalk, can do that. Feminism cannot live on SlutWalks alone. The fact that the movement has been so widely embraced does not mean that we should turn to it exclusively. What it means is that other protests can and should be happening; in addition to making the SlutWalk movement itself more inclusive and responsive, it’s essential that its organizers turn the mic over to other organizers, with ideas about protesting rape culture that extend beyond the “reclaiming slut” banner. The best thing for SlutWalkers now is to listen to the people who feel left out, and help them. The Sluts can and should keep Walking. But they should also recognize when to follow someone else’s lead.

TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) — Judges may have another way to help repeat DUI offenders sober up for good. Instead of blowing into a machine which keep their cars from starting, they may have to get their breath tested twice a day. The proposal, approved by a House committee last week, would allow judges to place repeat DUI offenders into a new program, known elsewhere as “24/7 Sobriety,” instead of having ignition interlock devices installed on their vehicles. State law currently requires interlock devices for drivers with more than one DUI. Judges would have the discretion to order the devices as well as the 24/7 program. In general, the program outlined in HB 7005, approved unanimously by the House Economic Affairs Committee, would require that drivers submit to twice-daily breath tests, random urinalysis or continuous monitoring devices, such as drug patches or ankle bracelets. Supporters say the 24/7 abstinence-based programs have shown significant reductions in drunken driving and other alcohol- or drug-related offenses such as domestic violence, and have better compliance rates than the interlock devices. The proposal is the latest salvo in a vendor-driven fight about possibly expanding the use of ignition interlock devices, used by more than 10,000 Floridians, to first-time DUI offenders. Vendors have pushed that idea over the objections of state highway safety officials. But instead of adding to the vendors’ market share, an amendment slipped onto HB 7005 last week would lead to the new 24/7 program — possibly shrinking the use of interlock devices. The bill also includes a priority of House Speaker Will Weatherford dealing with driver’s licenses. Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Executive Director Julie Jones, who recently lost a court fight to interlock-device vendors, is one of a growing number of driving safety experts who believe the abstinence-based programs are a better way to ensure that repeat offenders clean up their act. Jones has proposed shifting half of interlock-device users into a 24/7 program and measuring the effectiveness of both programs for five years. “The current IID (ignition interlock device) program has been very helpful for the treatment of impaired driving offenders. But why limit ourselves to one method that is exclusive to drinking while driving while drugged-driving violations continue to increase?” Jones said recently. Jones said she was not responsible for the amendment that would give judges the option to impose the 24/7 program instead of the interlock devices, but she did change it so that her department would have to authorize the program. And she has repeatedly objected to efforts by the vendors to expand the interlock-device program — a $10 million a year industry in Florida — to first-time offenders, something backed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and favored by federal transportation officials. But Jones said research shows that the majority of first-time offenders don’t need more intervention to stay out of trouble. The amendment was proposed by a vendor for Intoximeter, a hand-held breath testing device used by 24/7 programs elsewhere and already in use in other programs in Florida. Letting drivers with multiple DUI offenses get behind the wheel without interlock devices would be a major shift in policy, Douglas Mannheimer, a lobbyist for Alcohol Countermeasure Systems, told the House panel last week. ACS is one of three interlock vendors now doing business with the state. “The difference in policy now is that person that’s in the program may … go to the convenience store, buy something, get in that car. Right now … the car would not start,” Mannheimer said. But under the proposed changes, “we could have second, third or even fourth offenders driving when I think the word is they proverbially fell off the wagon that afternoon,” he said. Meanwhile, a pilot 24/7 program in Jacksonville, the first in Florida, is slated to begin during the first week in May. The program was developed by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and the Northeast Florida Safety Council, the organization that provides court-ordered services, including DUI programs, in a nine-county region including Jacksonville. Bill Mickelson helped create the country’s first “24/7 Sobriety” program in 2005 when, as a deputy state attorney general in South Dakota, he was intent on reducing the number of prisoners locked up for alcohol- or drug-related offenses, about two-thirds of those behind bars in the state at the time. Mickelson, now a consultant, came to Florida to try to convince sheriffs and others to embrace the 24/7 abstinence approach for habitual offenders. In the eight years since South Dakota implemented 24/7, 37,000 individuals have participated in the program and provided a total of 7 million breath tests. A RAND Corp. study found a 12 percent reduction in repeat DUI arrests over a five-year period. “It’s the first time in their alcoholic careers that somebody’s held them accountable for their sobriety,” Mickelson, who also consults for Intoximeters, Inc., said. “There is a sure and measured and a swift consequence for a bad act, unlike other testing methodologies where there’s a time delay.” South Dakota’s 24/7 program has become a model for the country, and federal highway safety officials are encouraging states to adopt it. So far, only two other states — North Dakota and Montana — have implemented similar programs statewide. The programs are premised on frequent testing paired with immediate consequences, usually jail time, for individuals who fail breath tests. In Jacksonville, those who fail breath tests for the first time will go to jail for 12 hours and face 24 hours for a second slip. The same consequences apply for individuals wearing patches or bracelets measuring alcohol or drugs. A third failure would result in an appearance before a judge and incarceration. The interlock devices have been in use in Florida for a decade. Since then, nearly 6,000 of the 68,048 drivers ordered into the program received subsequent DUIs, and about 1,000 received DUIs while they were in the interlock program, according to data provided by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. The Jacksonville pilot project will give judges the option of ordering the 24/7 program as a requirement for pretrial release, probation or bond, and is not limited to driving offenses. Drivers ordered into the program may also have to participate in other programs, including rehab or counseling, required separately for some DUI offenders. Northeast Florida Safety Council Executive Director Sue Holley, who helped develop the Duval County pilot project, said interlock devices work well for some drivers. But the devices don’t stop people from drinking and driving or from drinking altogether. “The substance abuse issue is so complicated and complex and it’s very difficult to find the one thing that works for everybody,” Holley, who has worked with DUI programs for three decades. Like DHSMV Director Jones, Holley views 24/7 sobriety as a more modern, holistic approach toward treating repeat offenders before allowing them to have their licenses fully reinstated. “We’re looking at this program, the 24/7 program, as probably being the next revelation for the DUI programs to be able to better serve the DUI offender, to provide better outcomes as far as their success with not re-offending, which is our goal,” she said. “I want to be able to go home and sleep at night. I don’t want to have to rely on one single tool to be the magic torch.” “The News Service of Florida’s Dara Kam contributed to this report.”

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A U.S. Navy commander was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison for his role in a fraud and bribery scheme that cost the government about $35 million. Cmdr. Bobby Pitts, 48, of Chesapeake, Virginia, was the latest person to be sentenced in connection with a decade-long scam linked to a Singapore defense contractor known as “Fat Leonard” Francis. Francis bribed Navy officials to help him overbill the Navy for fuel, food and other services his company provided to ships docked in Asian ports, according to prosecutors. The bribes allegedly ranged from cash and prostitutes to Cuban cigars and Spanish suckling pigs. Pitts pleaded guilty in 2015 to charges that alleged he tried to obstruct a federal investigation while in charge of the Navy’s Fleet Industrial Supply Command in Singapore. In handing down the sentence against Pitts, U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino told him that he had “betrayed the Navy and betrayed the country,” prosecutors said in a news release. “Pitts deliberately and methodically undermined government operations and in doing so, diverted his allegiance from his country and colleagues to a foreign defense contractor, and for that, he is paying a high price,” said Adam Braverman, the U.S. Attorney in San Diego. In addition to his prison sentence, Pitts was also ordered to pay $22,500 in fines and restitution.

Jan 20, 2013; Atlanta, GA, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) runs for a touchdown against the Atlanta Falcons during the third quarter of the NFC Championship game at the Georgia Dome. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports The San Francisco 49ers are very angry about last year, so they want to take out their anger on Matt Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons. And Colin Kaepernick and company are more than capable. San Francisco and Atlanta meet today at 12 PM PT at the Georgia Dome with a berth in Super Bowl 47 at stake. Colin Kaepernick accumulated 444 total yards last year, and he is trying to exploit a defense that has struggled against the read-option. Ryan and his star receivers are going to try and tear up San Francisco’s secondary. But they won’t be able to do that if Aldon and Justin Smith apply pressure. Stay tuned here for updates and analysis of the 2013 NFC Championship.

PULLMAN, Wash. - Researchers at Washington State University have discovered a new type of cooperative photosynthesis that could be used in engineering microbial communities for waste treatment and bioenergy production. They report today on the unique metabolic process seen for the first time in a pair of bacteria in Nature Communications. Photosynthetic bacteria account for nearly half of the world's food production and carbon-based organic material. The research could also improve understanding of lake ecology. Phototroph + electron generator Prosthecochloris aestaurii , a green-tinged, plant-like microbe, comes from the extreme environment of Hot Lake, a high salinity lake in northern Okanogan County near Oroville, Wash. Discovered and identified a few years ago by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Southern Illinois University, the bacterium is able to photosynthesize, using sunlight along with elemental sulfur or hydrogen sulfide to grow. The researchers noticed that P. aestuarii tended to gather around a carbon electrode, an electricity conductor that they were operating in Hot Lake. The researchers isolated and grew P. aestuarii and determined that, similar to the way half of a battery works, the bacterium is able to grab electrons from a solid electrode and use them for photosynthesis. The pink-colored Geobacter sulfurreducens meanwhile, is known for its ability to convert waste organic matter to electricity in microbial fuel cells. The bacterium is also used in environmental cleanup. G. sulfurreducens, like animals and humans, can't photosynthesize. It consumes organic compounds, such as acetate, and "breathes" out carbon dioxide. The bacterium is known for its ability to donate electrons to a solid electrode. As it consumes acetate, it generates electrons, which can be collected as electricity. Microbes paired up in WSU lab Led by Haluk Beyenal, the Paul Hohenschuh Distinguished Professor in the WSU Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, and postdoctoral researcher Phuc Ha, the research team surmised that the bacteria might be able to help each other grow and put them together in the lab. The researchers found that P. aestuarii could accept electrons generated from G. sulfurreducens and use them in a new type of anaerobic photosynthesis never before seen. Similar to how a battery or fuel cell works, the bacteria transfer electrons. They feed off each other to grow under conditions in which neither could grow independently. Ecology-friendly implications From an ecological perspective, this new form of metabolism may play an important role in carbon cycling in oxygen free zones of poorly mixed freshwater lakes. It may also present new possibilities for engineering microbial communities for waste treatment and bioenergy production. "We think this could be a common bio-electrochemical process in nature," said Beyenal, whose team is working to better understand the electron transfer mechanism. ### The work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Researchers from PNNL and China University of Geoscience also collaborated on the project. The work is in keeping with WSU's Grand Challenges, a suite of research initiatives aimed at large societal issues. It is particularly relevant to the challenge of sustainable resources and its theme of meeting sustainable energy needs while protecting the environment.