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Editor’s note: This post was written by Jonny Rowntree, a freelance writer working with digital printing company Elanders UK. Jonny has a background working in technological media, writing articles for The Next Web, Creative Bloq and Buffer. You can find him on Twitter: @shoutjonny and Google+ Jonny Rowntree. In order to entice customers during busy shopping periods, for instance Thanksgiving and Christmas, businesses and retailers alike need to brainstorm and create innovate ideas and marketing campaigns that help promote their range of items in all of their glory to potential customers. Digital printing partner, Elanders UK Printing, have put together this array of packaging designs for your viewing pleasure and critique – let us know what you think in the comments! Paper Doll Party UK supermarket giant, Tesco, wanted to create a campaign that would target British bloggers who are interested in fashion and beauty. As these bloggers have thousands of readers not only in the UK but also around the world of whom they share their specialist advice on how to put the perfect outfit together. The Paper Doll Party campaign consisted of different packages customised for bloggers in the industry and contained a selection of handcrafted cookies bearing the Florence and Fred (Tesco’s own clothing brand) logo, a number of miniature paper doll outfits and a paper doll designed to look like the blogger themselves. The paper dolls and outfits were all designed in house by Tesco. Sarah, founder of the Temporary Secretary blog, received one of the packages said, “F&F has been one of her favourite brands to work with in 2013, as they really understood the principles of social media and the impact of collaborating with bloggers and YouTubers.” Water in a Box Following the recent environmental concerns, the packaging industry is moving away from plastic solutions like Tetra Pak – which constructs the packaging for Vivid Water’s Water in a Box range. The packaging design team opted for a simple and clean design, using a white and blue colour scheme to symbolise water along with a water drop icon in order to make the product instantly associated as a water product. Meat Gift Wrap Believe it or not but this meat gift-wrap was inspired by an earlier design consisting of burgers by Gift Couture. This time around, they have gone a little more upmarket and produced some supreme steak gift-wrap. Co-founders, Justin Colt and Sarah Fay started their wrapping business in their New York apartment. Their initial cheeseburger design was incredibly popular and sold out, which made the gift-wrapping duo to decide to further their foodie passion. Perhaps keep this one from your vegan friends! BANDiful Bandages usually find their way into your shopping basket whilst at the local pharmacy and we tend to typically ignore the product packaging entirely usually because it’s too plain to comment on. The designing duo, consisting of Vivi Feng and Yu Ping Chuang, have recreated the bandage and the packaging it comes in with the vivid brand of BANDiful. The new brand takes into consideration that consumers who will use the bandages are physically hurt and have designed the packaging to be as accessible as possible. The design is minimalistic but is decorative enough to stand out. Fruit Juice Skins We’re all encouraged to eat more fruit and vegetables per day and what better way is there to do so but to drink fruit juice? Most of us purchase it in a cardboard carton or plastic bottle straight from the refrigerator in our local café but Japanese designer, Naoto Fukasawa, produced Japan’s first fruit constructed packaging. The packaging is only available in Japan at the time of writing this article and is created out of the skin of the individual fruits, which have been juiced. Parmesan Pencils Kolle Rebbe, a design agency based in Germany, pride themselves on supporting small manufacturers of delicacies, such as cheese. The German design agency made a quite small idea into something that those who are passionate about cheese would opt for simply because of the way it’s packaged. Using the form factor of a pencil, they designed the cheese to form that particular shape and included a sharpener, which acts as a grater to grate the cheese so you can have as much as or as little as you’d like on your meal. Tear and Share Storage We all need to share files on the go and when internet isn’t available to access Dropbox or Google Drive, these storage drives were funded from a Kickstarter campaign. Gigs 2 Go manufactured these drives out of 100% post consumer recycled paper, making it renewable and biodegradable, are lightweight and cheap. They are packed in 4’s so one credit card sized package will consist of 4GB worth of storage. Fred and Friends Salt and Pepper Shakers When you’re in the market for a new salt and pepper shaker, finding the ideal one can be a rather mundane affair. Whilst there are some rather impressive designs around the world, they usually aren’t practical when it comes to everyday use. Although such shakers aren’t usually wrapped in a package, Fred and Friends decided to break this trend by opting to use packaging and of a design that is similar to the packaging batteries are normally delivered in. The packaging consists of a simple cardboard back with plastic casing with the shakers enclosed. Even though it’s a rather simple design, its probably one of the most eye catching designs in this list. Toscatti If you’re a designer, its more than likely you’ve heard of the brand Pantone. Plastic storage container manufacturer Anagrama came up with the design of these storage containers whilst solving the problem of categorising container capacity sizes. The packaging is straight forward, clear and eye catching whilst using a Pantone inspired colour scheme. SVBSCRIPTION These male subscription boxes are geared towards those who have an appreciation for design, culture and quality. Designed by RoandCo Studio based in New York City, worked on a brief from SVBSCRIPTION, which asked for packaging that would be beautiful, practical and iconic. The result was natural wooden crates, nailed shut and wrapped in brown kraft paper for shipping. Festina Watches Thus far in this collection, we’ve covered two other water-based products. Now, watch manufacturers, Festina Profundo, have packaged their watches, which are waterproof, suspended in a bag of water. Designed by Scholz & Friends, the ingenious solution tells you everything you need to know without any words.

The past and future of the Jurassic Park franchise exist alongside each other on the Louisiana soundstages that house the set of the upcoming film Jurassic World. In fact, they’re literally linked by an ordinary hallway: Just down the corridor from the soundstage that’s home to the high-tech control room for Jurassic World’s titular amusement park — where big-spending tourists come to gawk at genetically reborn dinosaurs — there’s another set that re-creates a key location from Steven Spielberg’s 1993 franchise-launching blockbuster, the original Visitor’s Center where Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and his makeshift family faced down a gang of wily velociraptors before being saved by the arrival of a snarling T. rex. The center may be a weed-covered ruin now, with dinosaur bones strewn about and the “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” banner still lying where it fell two decades ago. But seeing this particular Jurassic Park locale preserved in such loving detail can’t help but send a shiver of excitement through any visitors, just as its appearance in the new film will no doubt thrill audiences when Jurassic World opens its doors to the general public on June 12. So it’s only appropriate that this is the place where Jurassic World’s director, Colin Trevorrow, is spending his lunch break one day in July of last year with a group of visiting reporters, including one from Yahoo Movies. And even though he’s been on this stage many times before — having directed a set piece that will unfold in this location about halfway through the film — like those of us sightseers, he seems galvanized to be standing in a place that’s hallowed ground to the millions of moviegoers who visited Jurassic Park over and over again back in the summer of 1993. Trevorrow would have been one of them; born in San Francisco in 1976, the filmmaker was a teenager when Park hit theaters. Now, two decades later, he’s shepherding the franchise’s rebirth after two disappointing sequels, 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park and 2001’s Jurassic Park III. Watch the ‘Jurassic World’ trailer: It’s a task he didn’t take lightly when he was initially offered the job by Spielberg himself. Ultimately, it was his passion for Jurassic Park that made him want to be the one to continue its legacy. “I felt like I had a responsibility to do it,” he explains. “Mostly for Steven, in thanks for all he’s done for all of us and how much his movies meant to me in my childhood. But also, if one is asked to do this, it’s almost insulting to everyone else to say no. We’d all love this privilege — to be able to re-create a film that meant so much to us.” Of course, Jurassic World isn’t a mere re-creation of Jurassic Park; it’s a direct sequel to the original, set some 20 years after the events of Spielberg’s film. (According to Trevorrow, the previous sequels aren’t being written out of continuity so much as placed to the side, as they both unfolded on a different island.) In that time, a functioning theme park has been constructed on Isla Nubar, overseen by operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and employing hundreds of staffers, including velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt). And, of course, there are dinosaurs. Lots and lots of dinosaurs, all grown in labs via the same process that John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) developed — and Mr. DNA so helpfully explained — in the first movie. Industrial Light & Magic once again provides the digital magic that brings these creatures to life, using both traditional CGI imagery and, in a franchise first, motion capture for specific dinosaurs. And, just like their ancestors, these dinos turn on the human interlopers at a certain point, and the theme park becomes a feeding ground. View photos

NEW DELHI: A wife will have a share in her husband’s inherited or inheritable marital property on divorce, though the exact quantum of the compensation has been left to the discretion of the judge, according to a legislation that was cleared by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday.The Cabinet also cleared the proposal that in cases where divorce has been sought on mutual consent of both parties the judiciary has been given the discretion to grant divorce to one party after a period of three years, even if the man and the wife are no longer on the same page. These were part of the recommendations of the GoM on Marriage Laws Amendment Bill which will now be amended suitably before being brought to Parliament during the monsoon session, beginning August 5.By not quantifying the amount of compensation the government has moderated its earlier proposal to give a wife "equal" share in marital property. The ministers felt that a judge could decide on the quantum of compensation after taking into account an entire set of considerations such as the disposable income of both husband and wife, conditions like who will bear the primary responsibility of raising the children and claimants on the "inheritable property."The proposal to give a woman share in "inheritable" property had run in to rough weather in May because of a conflict of opinions within the government. While the law ministry had proposed an equal share in both inherited and inheritable property, the ministry of women and child development (WCD) had expressed concern over the implementation of the decision. Faced with conflicting views the cabinet had referred the matter to the group of ministers (GoM) whose recommendations to leave the final decision with the judge has been accepted.While the bill has a provision for share in a husband's self-acquired property, a new clause, 13F, was discussed by the GoM, headed by defence minister A K Antony It says if the ancestral property cannot be divided, then the woman should get sufficient compensation by calculating husband's share in it. The amount of the compensation can be worked out by the court hearing the divorce case.The GoM was also asked to take a view on whether a judge can exercise discretion in granting divorce if one of the partners does not move a second 'joint application' for divorce with mutual consent.The Cabinet has also left it to the judge’s discretion granting of divorce applied for under mutual consent after a three year period. According to sources, there are instances when one party develops cold feet or changes his or her mind after applying for divorce under mutual consent clause. "This can lead to unnecessary harassment of one party. So an amendment has been introduced to allow the judge to grant a divorce if one party does not appear in court," the source said.

How Signing A Major Record Deal Nearly Destroyed My Music Career The following comes from Terra Naomi, who was the #1 most subscribed musician on YouTube in 2006 (Puff Daddy was #2). She started the music revolution on YouTube and paved the way for every other musician who followed. ** In June of 2006 I became the first musician to build a worldwide following on YouTube. I posted videos every couple of days and called it my “Virtual Summer Tour.” I played my own original songs and some covers. I talked into the camera and answered questions submitted by my nascent online audience. At first a few hundred people watched my videos, then it grew to about 1,000, mostly fans from Myspace and the email list I’d built playing little clubs and venues around the US. And then one day the video for my song “Say It’s Possible” landed on the front page of YouTube. Emails flooded in from all corners of the globe. I spent 12+ hours a day responding to messages from people whose connection with the song inspired them to connect with the person who created it. I saw an opportunity and quickly recorded an acoustic EP called “Virtually.” I enlisted the help of a friend and together we shipped 5,000 CDs in one month. No manager, no label, no marketing, no touring. It was revolutionary. The music industry took notice of the attention I was getting and quickly jumped in with various offers, each one better than the last. I was deeply in debt and barely getting by as an independent artist, and I was also very much attached to the old paradigm – I valued the support of a major label as much as I needed the acceptance and approval of the industry that had ignored me for what felt like so long. In January 2007 I signed with Universal Music Publishing and Universal Island Records, out of the London offices. I’d become friendly with the guys at YouTube, and they asked if I could hold out on signing for a bit; told me they were developing ways to monetize the platform, and predicted I would eventually make even more money with YouTube while retaining the creative control I’d be forced to give up at a major label. Their newly crowned independent artist poster child, the bright light of hope for a changing, artist-friendly business model, was threatening to cross over to the dark side. The only people in my life who saw my selling out as a plus were my parents and my creditors…and the managers I’d signed with when everything started happening, and the attorneys who made 5% of the massive advances I would receive from any of the labels who were courting me. Smart people who saw the future of music, and saw me as a leader and an innovator, rallied against it, but to no avail. The pull of big money was too strong, given the debt I was in, and the instability I’d lived with for years. I was tired of struggling. And besides – look what I’d created on my own – imagine what I’d be able to do with the seemingly unlimited resources and expertise of a major label! And that’s where I was wrong. It was a fatal mistake that nearly killed not only my career, but even worse, the passion and love I had for music. I arrived at Island Records for my first meeting with my new team, excitement overriding the sluggishness of jetlag. I was stepping into my ideal situation – everything I’d ever hoped for as an artist. I was signed by the president of the label to one of the last old-school record deals in a rapidly changing world of 360 deals (where the label takes a % of all revenue, vs. their % being limited to album sales). My team at the label was welcoming and enthusiastic. I was the shiny new toy, a bridge between the flailing old-school music industry and the new world of digital sales. I represented a business model where artists would take all the risk, build everything on their own, and hand it over to the record label once it became profitable. What company wouldn’t be excited about that? I remember the moment I walked into my Marketing Manager’s office. He was a somewhat gruff but stylish English guy in his late 30s. He emphatically slammed his hands onto his desk, nearly shouting with excitement, “So! Tell us about this YouTube!” It was 2007, I knew about YouTube, all my friends knew about YouTube, I’d launched my career on YouTube, and the people now in charge of my career knew nothing about YouTube?! In that moment I knew I was doomed. I thought perhaps I could still reverse the mistake I’d made. I played “Say It’s Possible” at Live Earth, in front of an audience of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium. I hoped my performance would be strong enough to reach the people who loved “Say It’s Possible” the first time around, on YouTube, and I hoped my fans would see this performance as a major win for all of us, but by this time the audience I’d built online was starting to see me as a sell-out. Their indie poster child had tossed them aside for a shot at the major leagues. “The audience I’d built online was starting to see me as a sell-out. Their indie poster child had tossed them aside for a shot at the major leagues.” – Terra Naomi Contributing further to their feelings of betrayal was the mandate that came from my team at the label. They needed me to be “less accessible” and more untouchable. All these kids on YouTube saw me as an equal, as “one of them” – did I want to be a YouTube star, or did I want to be a rock star? They threw down the gauntlet, and there was no question in my mind. I wanted to be a rock star. I handed over my mailing list and social media logins to the record label. I trusted this team of professionals to grow it into something much bigger than I could ever hope to create on my own. I backed off, disappeared, focused on writing songs and hanging out with the “right” people rather than connecting with my fans and the community I’d grown to love and depend on, prior to signing my deals. I figured I’d play by their rules for a little while, build my career into something even bigger, and reunite with my community once the label was satisfied with my rock star status. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Life moves so quickly, especially online, and I emerged from my major label experience broken and defeated. I’d lost my deal with Island Records when the president who signed me left the label, and by the time I moved back to LA and tried to reengage my online following, I found that my people had pretty much moved on. There were new, more exciting YouTube musicians to connect with. People were collaborating, forming alliances, new stars were born, new communities had formed, and I was seen as the one who started it all and then jumped ship for something “better.” I felt ashamed and embarrassed by the mistakes I’d made, especially since I could see my missteps but did not have the strength to stop the train I was on and get back on the right track. I did not trust myself. I thought the trepidation I felt was fear about making the jump to the major leagues, and I trusted the advice of the people I’d put in place to manage and advise me. The producer I worked with told me we only had one shot, and I needed to make the album he wanted to make – with its “radio-ready” production – and once I had a few hits, I could make any album I wanted. So I made the album he wanted to make, and things didn’t happen the way he said they would. Instead of the big commercial radio success that would give me the freedom to seamlessly transition into the music I truly wanted to make, I had a big commercial flop (I think we sold something like 25,000 albums), an album I didn’t like, and I’d wasted what could have been the biggest opportunity of my life. The exposure I built independently on YouTube was more than the record label ever did for me, and I couldn’t believe I’d been so willing to hand it over for a longshot gamble on mainstream stardom. My biggest takeaway from this time was a lesson in authenticity. It’s tempting to listen to people who want to change us, even just a little bit, and steer us in a direction that isn’t authentic. It’s easy to doubt ourselves, especially when we’re just starting out. We think people with more experience know better than we do about what’s best for us, and it’s simply not the case. We fall for the hard sell, the glitz and glamour, but for every massive major label success, there are dozens of disappointments and disastrous failures. Two years after I left my label, the former president, the man who signed me, ended up sitting next to my manager on a transatlantic flight. When my manager mentioned my name, my ex-champion’s response was: “We sure fucked that one up, didn’t we…” I was “that one” – one of many botched attempts. I walked into my label offices one morning in April 2007, full of hope and excitement, and in the end, I was nothing more than a tax write-off. The weekend I moved to London, in April 2007, was the very same weekend I accepted the first YouTube Award for Best Music Video. I did 40+ press interviews, including all the biggest morning shows, radio shows, and newspapers in the United States. If I could do it over again, I would have postponed my relocation to London, jumped in my car immediately, and played shows in every city and town across the US, capitalizing on the exposure I’d received from the YouTube Awards. I would have continued to build the audience I had created on my own, with nothing more than a camera and a tripod. I could have lived more than comfortably on the 5,000 CDs I was selling each month (I’m in shock thinking about those numbers today!!), and I might have been able to grow my little business into an empire. At the very least, I could have taken my career to the next level on my own, giving myself enough space and time to gain the confidence I needed to stand my ground when people tried to change me. I have nothing bad to say about major labels in general, and I know my experience is one of many and not the only experience to be had. I’m not one of those bitter label-bashing artists. Major labels can provide incredible resources; they paid my bills for a while and gave me some pretty phenomenal experiences and memories. The most important thing to remember is that no one will ever care about your career as much as you do. People say whatever they think you need to hear, the kind of stuff we artists crave on such a deep level. It might even be heartfelt and honest at the time, but you must remember that you are nothing more than a bottom line to most executives. I know there are exceptions, but there weren’t in my experience. Once you take the money, you are no longer an artist. You are a product, and a business will only spend so much time and money on any product, even one they claim to believe in a whole lot. Once the business feels the product is not going to be profitable, it will not continue to promote the product. Seen a McDonald’s Arch Deluxe lately? Yeah, I didn’t think so. McDonalds spent $100 million promoting that epic flop of a burger before shutting it down. Best believe a record label won’t have any qualms about dropping (or even worse, shelving and not dropping!) an artist they signed for $250,000. The most important thing is to stay true to who you are, no matter which path you choose. It’s such a cliché, but I cannot stress it enough. These days, the fact that most artists will never sign a major label deal is actually a good thing. We have countless resources to help get our music out to the world. Grow your business on your own. Find your audience. Put in the work to become the very best version of yourself, and create the music that moves you. Because if it moves you, chances are it will move someone else. We no longer need millions of fans to create a meaningful career in music, as long as we’re smart about the steps we take, honest with ourselves about the artists we truly are, and unafraid to commit to being those artists, 100% of the time. Terra Naomi lives in Los Angeles and spends her time performing, coaching other artists, and writing songs, books, TV shows, and musicals. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The experts who brought you the “Cadillac tax” aren’t about to let it go without a fight. On Thursday, 101 economists and other health policy experts signed an open letter defending the controversial levy, which takes effect in 2018 as part of the Affordable Care Act. In the letter, the economists describe the Cadillac tax as an essential, if blunt, tool for controlling health-care costs. They warn that eliminating it could mean higher premiums for people with private insurance and less take-home pay for workers who get benefits from their employers -- unless, somehow, lawmakers find an alternative policy that serves the same purposes. The letter appears on the website of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But it does not represent an official position of the Center and the economists signing the letter represent a broad ideological spectrum, including veterans of both Democratic and Republican administrations. “We ... hold widely varying views on other provisions of the Affordable Care Act,” the experts write. “But, we unite in urging Congress to take no action to weaken, delay, or reduce the Cadillac tax until and unless it enacts an alternative tax change that would more effectively curtail cost growth.” Officially, these experts are addressing the heads of congressional committees with jurisdiction over taxes. Unofficially, they are also talking to a bipartisan chorus of lawmakers and presidential candidates that want to eliminate the tax -- a group that, as of Tuesday, includes Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton. That position puts Clinton and other politicians at odds with officials in the Obama administration, including the president himself. In 2009 and 2010, the White House fought hard to keep the Cadillac tax in the legislation that eventually became Obamacare. Not surprisingly, several economists who played key roles in shaping the health care overhaul are among those now defending the tax most vigorously. But they don't have a lot of company. The purpose of the Cadillac tax is to reduce health care spending by counteracting a decades-old tax break that gives employers (and, indirectly, employees) incentive to spend more money on health insurance. Along the way, the tax will also generate revenue to help offset the cost of the law’s expansion of health insurance. The tax will phase in gradually, and some experts hope that, over time, employers will respond by seeking out more efficient insurance carriers who could provide equivalent coverage for lower premiums. Critics of the Cadillac tax, so-called because it affects the most expensive plans, take a different view. They fear that some employers would opt for an easier way to avoid the tax: simply shifting more costs onto workers in the form of higher deductibles and co-payments. That could cause real hardship for people with serious medical problems, particularly if those people don’t make a lot of money or have savings with which to pay large out-of-pocket bills. Among those most spooked by the prospect of employers reacting this way are labor unions that negotiated generous insurance benefits for their members, creating just the sorts of plans likely to incur the tax. Their pressure undoubtedly figured into Clinton’s calculus when she decided on her position, just as it has with other Democratic leaders -- and just as pressure from employers and insurers (not to mention anti-Obamacare animus) has likely persuaded some Republicans to oppose the tax publicly. One other reason politicians are lining up against the tax is public opinion. Just this week, a poll from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation showed that a majority of Americans were opposed to the tax, although respondents to the survey sometimes changed their minds after hearing arguments for and against the measure. Economists don’t deny that some employers will respond to the Cadillac tax by raising out-of-pocket expenses -- or that it will penalize firms that happen to have older workers whose significant medical needs lead to higher premiums. But given the need to reduce health care spending over the long term, these economists say, the Cadillac tax does much more good than harm. “The Cadillac tax was the only feasible way to curb the bad effects of the unlimited exclusion from income and payroll taxes of employer-finance health insurance,” Henry Aaron, the respected Brookings economist who helped organize the letter, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday. “It may not be the best way, but it is the only game in town. Until such time as Congress enacts something better, it would be bad policy to repeal, delay or weaken the Cadillac tax." Conspicuous among the economists signing Thursday’s letter was Douglas Elmendorf, the Brookings economist who was in charge of the Congressional Budget Office from 2009 to 2015. During the debate over the Affordable Care Act, Elmendorf famously warned Obama that, without a provision like the Cadillac tax, health care legislation was likely to increase the deficit and have little effect on overall health care spending. That warning likely played a critical role in convincing Obama to embrace the tax. Shortly after Clinton announced her position on Tuesday, Elmendorf made it again, explaining via email that: The biggest problem with repealing the excise tax on high-premium plans isn't replacing the lost revenue, it's replacing the lost incentive to control health-care spending. Without the excise tax from the ACA, our tax code effectively subsidizes higher premiums, which leads to higher health care spending and lower wages. Within the Obama administration, the strongest advocates for the Cadillac tax were members of the president’s economic team -- starting with Peter Orszag, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget. Orszag is not among the experts on the letter. But, in an interview with The Huffington Post, he echoed the arguments: Right when there's a risk of health spending accelerating again, the political pressure to repeal the tax rather than mend it is quite unfortunate. Offsetting the impact of repeal on the deficit is the easy part. Offsetting the adverse effect on health spending is much harder -- and I haven't seen any credible proposals that would do so." Two other administration veterans who worked on the crafting or implementation of the Affordable Care Act signed the letter: Ezekiel Emanuel, who was at OMB with Orszag and is now a vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, and Sherry Glied, who was at the Department of Health and Human Services from 2010 through 2012 and is now dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Among the other experts on the letter are Alice Rivlin and Robert Reischauer, both former CBO directors, and Gail Wilensky, a top health care adviser in the administration of George H.W. Bush. "Repealing the Cadillac tax will be worse for middle-class Americans," Emanuel said, noting that liberal and conservative experts agree about the importance of the tax. "It will raise health care spending, raise health care premiums, lower wages and raise taxes. None of these is good for people." Clinton on Tuesday did acknowledge the importance of the tax and addressed many of the concerns the economists are raising in Thursday’s letter. Specifically, Clinton said she would insist on finding another source of revenue to provide the money that the Cadillac tax would. She also pledged to keep finding ways of making the health care system more efficient, so that costs don’t go up quickly in the absence of the Cadillac tax. But measures that would accomplish these goals, like raising new taxes or slapping tougher regulations on the provider of medical goods and services, come with their own trade-offs -- and would face stiff political opposition. Clinton hasn’t yet provided details on what alternatives she has in mind, let alone how she’d pass them. That, plus Clinton’s own experience working on health care in her husband’s administration, may be why so many observers found her position -- although hardly unusual among politicians -- particularly noteworthy. “It is ironic that Secretary Clinton, who is probably better informed about the drivers of health cost inflation than any candidate in history, is proposing to eliminate a measure that almost all economists agree would actually work to slow health spending,” said Len Burman, director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Also on HuffPost:

Case Wallet Bitcoin Hardware Devices to Shut Down From November Bitcoin hardware wallet Case Wallet will halt service starting 1st November 2017. Manufacturer Cryptolabs said it’s due to mobile internet providers phasing out 2G networks faster than they anticipated. Also read: North Korea Starts Accepting Bitcoin – Maybe Devices Sold for $199 It’s a blow to customers who bought Case Wallet devices, which sold for about $199 USD. Users need to contact Case support for instructions on how to retrieve their private keys and move their BTC balances to a new address. The company‘s email statement read: 2G is being sunset globally at a faster pace than we originally anticipated and Case becomes unusable in an area where 2G gets retired since it can’t access the Internet to perform transactions. The “Buy and Sell” functionality within Case has been suspended because Celery has discontinued their service. Additionally, Cryptolabs is “parting ways with our third key recovery partner. We were unable to find an adequate substitute who met our strict guidelines for transparently managing customer recovery keys.” Cryptolabs will now shift its attention to a new two-factor hardware signing device called Token. Case Wallet an Ambitious Product Case Wallet devices were pretty revolutionary when they first appeared in 2015, with an ambitious feature list. They included multisig functionality with one embedded private key and another stored remotely on a server. The devices communicated with the network via a 2G GSM connection. The credit card-sized hardware included a keypad, camera, screen, and fingerprint scanner to send, receive and authenticate transactions. It also connected to an exchange service to buy and sell BTC. Anecdotally, we didn’t see many Case Wallet devices in the wild and some users reported multiple issues. Its official Twitter account has posted only once in the past year. Cryptolabs also appears to be pivoting away from the digital currency space, and has no immediate plans for a new version of the Case Wallet hardware. 2G GSM Networks Disappearing Faster Than Expected Speaking to Bitsonline, Cryptolabs’ community manager Steve Dunkel said they chose 2G because the goal was a device that could work in both developed and developing countries. However they didn’t anticipate the rate at which developing nations would abandon the frequency band altogether for 4G/LTE. “Cellular infrastructure does update at a relatively high frequency but we believed that to be in our advantage initially … We predicted that the rate of adoption for remote regions would increase due to lowered infrastructure costs as more developing nations would move to 3G and 4G/LTE. This improve the rate of financial inclusion in these regions which was a great pull for us to stick with a 2G modem at launch.” Dunkel added the company has always been open about how its ecosystem worked from the beginning, and the team hopes no-one thinks they had any intention of obscuring that information. Cryptolabs’ site features a white paper and detailed FAQs. The upcoming Token device isn’t a Bitcoin wallet though. It’s similar in that it will store credentials locally and employ a biometric security key to unlock them. However Token will have uses beyond the blockchain, and will use Bluetooth and NFC instead of cellular technology. Dunkel said Cryptolabs may revisit the Bitcoin space in the future if customers demand it. Complex Systems a Challenge to Build and Maintain The Case Wallet shutdown and Cryptolabs’ broadening focus highlights the difficulties hardware makers face in this fast-changing industry. This is especially true when designing complex security ecosystems that rely on external technology and relationships with third-party providers. Back in 2015, TechCrunch called Case “an insanely secure hardware bitcoin wallet”, but questioned its $199 price tag given Cryptolabs’ goal to reach developing markets. The company said its price was aimed more at developed-world consumers at the time, and hinted it would come down in future. However it appears that future may be further off than many expected, even in 2015. The Case Wallet was a great proof of concept, but probably needed a larger user base and further refinement to fulfill its expectations. Have you owned or used a Case Wallet? What was it like? Let us know in the comments. Images via Cryptolabs Join the Bitsonline Telegram channel to get the latest Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and tech news updates: https://t.me/bitsonline

LJ Scott Is Flying Under The Radar In A Very Talented 2018 Running Back Class. LJ Scott, Michigan State, Running Back, 6’1″, 231 lbs There are a lot of really good running backs in this upcoming draft class. LJ Scott has been a very overlooked but talented part of this class. LJ Scott had a successful season last year. He almost eclipsed the 1000 yard mark, compiling 994 yards on 184 carries while notching six TDs on the ground. He also added 147 yards and a touchdown through the air on ten receptions. His previous year was also productive with 699 yards and 11 touchdowns on 146 carries. He did all of this without having a complete year of a full work load. This upcoming season should give LJ Scott the opportunity to finally see that full workload. Michigan State is lacking in a lot of different areas on offense, and LJ Scott should be the focal point of the offense next season. He has an interesting skill set, and that is combined with a productive running style. I’m excited to see what this upcoming season holds for Scott. Despite flying a little under the radar, and going largely underappreciated, LJ Scott is expected to enter the NFL Draft after this season at this point in the process. If Michigan State can improve from their disappointing season last year, Scott should see a significant work load that will be a much larger sample size for evaluation. As it stands, LJ Scott has a lot of talent and just needs a better opportunity to showcase it. http://gty.im/627062190 Vision LJ Scott displays very good, if inconsistent, vision. He does a really good job picking his way through traffic at the line of scrimmage and finding tight holes to squeeze through and get up field. This is something that he shows on the majority of his runs. There are times where, when watching the film, you wish he had hit a different hole or gotten up field instead of bouncing the run outside. Overall this is a strong aspect to his game. I’d like to see him develop this going forward and, not just see the hole, but process things better and make the right decision more consistently. At the second level, LJ Scott does a really nice job of using his blockers. He understands the angles of defenders and how to use blockers against them. This is one of the most effective traits of LJ Scott once he gets past the initial defenders. Patience/Aggressiveness Behind The Line Of Scrimmage LJ Scott has an effective running style. He does a good job of knowing when to hit the hole, and when to be patient. He has a habit of bouncing runs outside, and doesn’t necessarily have the speed to get there. I’d like to see him be more aggressive getting up field in those scenarios. He does his best work between the tackles. Whether it is shifting through traffic, using his blocks and getting up field or lowering his shoulders and running through defenders, he is a strong runner between the tackles. His patience works well for him when he is making his way up the field. It is his patience, or in many cases indecisiveness, that results in sideline to sideline movement that becomes a problem. Once LJ Scott gets past the line of scrimmage, his patience helps accent his vision. He understands how to change speeds. Sometimes he will change down a gear to gain a positional advantage on a defender. Sometimes he will take it up a gear and run a defender over. He utilizes changes of speed in open field to his advantage, and it works for him. Backfield Creation This is an area that LJ Scott excels. He can create his own space in multiple ways in the backfield. Scott is a powerful runner, and he doesn’t need a lot of momentum to win with power. He drives through players and keeps fighting, maintaining his balance, even at minimal speed. He is a surprisingly “slippery” runner that can spin out of tackles and get moving forward in a hurry. LJ Scott also processes incoming defenders in a hurry. When defenders break through the line of scrimmage, Scott is preparing to make a move on them before he even takes the hand off. Michigan State did not have the most talented offensive line last year. There were plenty of plays where he was seeing defenders in the backfield before he even had the ball in his hands. He reacts quickly and has really quick feet right out of the gate. He uses immediate cuts to either avoid defenders or at least avoid head on contact. Initial Burst LJ Scott has really good initial burst. He is much more explosive up field than he is vertically. He has complete control of his burst through the hole. Scott has the ability to take a strong, quick, explosive step through the hole and then change gears, slow down and adjust to the second level of defenders. He is at his best laterally behind the line of scrimmage or when he is moving in traffic. LJ Scott is not an exceptional player in space, but he displays that explosive side to side quality when he isn’t moving at full speed, particularly when he is working around blockers. http://gty.im/500378562 Pad Level Scott’s pad level is inconsistent. He has good natural football instincts, so it doesn’t affect his game much at the college level. With the ball in his hands, LJ Scott often runs a little high. When a defender is incoming, and he plans on lowering his shoulder into a hit or making a move on him, his pad level lowers significantly. He has a good idea of when this is necessary, and he doesn’t take many hits that make his pad level an issue. That said, I’d like to see LJ Scott work with a more consistently low pad level. This is more of a luxury than a necessity at this level, but it is something that I’d like to see him improve before reaching the next level of his career. Second Gear This is a little bit of a concern for LJ Scott. He isn’t slow by any means, but his speed isn’t going to run away from defenders. He struggles, at times, to beat defenders to the corner, and his speed is not something that is a weapon in the open-field. This is something that isn’t likely to see significant improvement before he enters the NFL, and will likely be something that hampers him in the NFL. Top-speed just isn’t a tool in his tool belt. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t win in other ways. He just doesn’t win in this way. He has adequate speed to get up field, and his burst allows him to reach that speed in short time, but he isn’t going to beat defenders in a 60 yard foot race. Something worth mentioning is that his speed looks like much less of a liability early in games. He seems to lose it a little more than other running backs as he gets more carries, or more specifically, more consecutive carries. It will be interesting to track how he does with a larger workload this year. It may be a conditioning issue, or it may just be the fact that he is not used to seeing a ton of carries in a game. Hopefully he improves his play-to-play athletic consistency going into next year. http://gty.im/500210292 Leg Drive LJ Scott maintains consistent effort when wrapped up. He drives forward and doesn’t just fight for yards, but fights to break tackles, long after he is engaged. There is something to be said for a back that will not just fight for every yard afforded to him, but also fight to break tackles when wrapped up. He isn’t a huge power-back that you expect to move the pile every time he touches the ball, but he does so on a pretty regular basis. More importantly, he keeps his legs moving through hits that aren’t wrapped up. He is good at maintaining forward momentum, and Scott does a good job of recovering from hits and readjusting in order to regain that momentum. Power And Balance Through Contact LJ Scott is exceptional in contact situations. He does a good job of running through arm tackles and bouncing off player that don’t wrap up. Beyond that, Scott is violent at the point of contact. He shows good awareness and knows when to lower his shoulder and take on a defender. He does a good job in those scenarios. This isn’t even the strongest part of his power game. LJ Scott is violent when taking contact from defenders at non-ideal angles. He doesn’t just take hits. If a guy gets his shoulder, he doesn’t just give the shoulder and try to keep running. Scott actively will throw players off of him and play physically in contact situations. This is an excellent trait for a running back. It is just another way that he can win against defenders He has a vicious stiff-arm that helps him when making his way to the sideline or anywhere outside the tackles. He doesn’t just use it to gain a few yards as the defender drives him to the boundary, he throws a punch to throw off defenders. This is a move that is nice to have in the arsenal, and while it may not be a big determining factor of his value at the next level, it is something that helps his power ability in open-field. All of these things are tools that LJ Scott utilizes to his advantage in the power game. Not only does he have these tools, but he has a good understanding of when to use each of them. http://gty.im/611921776 Elusiveness Elusiveness is not a huge part of LJ Scott’s game in open-field. It is a large part of his game at the line-of-scrimmage and working through traffic. Scott does an excellent job of making cuts off blocks and finding creases to squeeze through. He looks explosive in the first five yards. He makes cuts to avoid defenders and leave them grasping for air. This doesn’t happen down the field. LJ Scott appears to be explosive in short areas but lose that ability once he gets up to speed in a straight line. Once LJ Scott gets moving down the field, he isn’t going to juke defenders. He isn’t going to leave them in the dust the way that he does within the first five yards. This is a skill that I’m not sure whether he can improve or not. It is something that would be really nice to add to his primarily-power skill set. When he gets in the open field, LJ Scott is primarily trying to outrun defenders or run them over. He hasn’t shown elite speed, and power tends to be a better tool for adding a few yards rather than “breaking the big one”. I’d like to see Scott improve his elusiveness in the open field, but I’m not sure that his skill set allows it. Slippery It is not just power that helps LJ Scott win at the point of contact. He is “slippery”. There isn’t really a better word for it. Scott has shown the ability to slip out of tackles once wrapped up, not necessarily with the power to run the defender over, but to break free anyway. He routinely fights off fully wrapped up tackles and spins out of contact. This is something that he utilizes primarily withing the first five yards, stopping and spinning away, while he is still working through a congested area, or while he is getting attacked in the backfield. Pass Blocking He needs work. LJ Scott has the frame to be at least an adequate pass blocker, but he doesn’t utilize his frame well. Too often you see him diving at legs or just having no idea where he needs to be. Even once he is engaged with a defender, he doesn’t show skill in this area. The good news is that he seems willing to block. He may not be effective, but his frame offers potential. His effort offers potential. He has the tools. Someone just has to teach him the technique. http://gty.im/500378562 Receiving LJ Scott has very little experience in this area. However, he has flashed ability in this area. Despite his low usage in the passing game, LJ Scott has split out as a receiver, displayed average hands, and flashed good route running ability. This is an area that I hope to see more of LJ Scott in this upcoming year. The sample size is so small that it is very unclear what LJ Scott is capable of as a receiver. While he has shown ability in this area, more reps in the passing game would go a long way toward increasing his value as a three-down-back. Overall LJ Scott has a lot of things going for him. He is a power back that knows how to use his power to his advantage. He has a lot of different ways that he wins with power and uses his above-average instincts to know when to best deploy these tools. Scott isn’t exceptionally athletic, but displays above-average athleticism and good short area burst. His short area burst is accented by his vision and ability to pick through traffic. LJ Scott needs to show, and will have the opportunity to show, that he can handle a full workload and still maintain his productive tendencies. He has a lot in the way of instincts and talent but needs to put it together on a consistent basis. He also needs to show better ability as a blocker and have a larger sample as a receiver. These are areas that he doesn’t have a lot of experience in, but they are areas that are important to NFL teams. His progression in these areas will dictate whether or not NFL teams see him as a three-down-back at the next level. Thanks for checking out the article everyone. Go Lions! You can follow me on Twitter @Lanny1925 and be sure to join the community on the Detroit Lions subreddit. http://gty.im/624400000

An unverified tip claims Apple CEO Tim Cook is planning to make an important announcement in the augmented reality/virtual reality space in Austin, Tex., on Friday, and might also reveal the date of an expected September iPhone event, AppleInsider has learned. Apple CEO Tim Cook visits students at Waukee APEX in Iowa. | Source: Tim Cook via Twitter According to an anonymous tipster, Cook flew into Austin on Thursday after visiting with lawmakers, students and Apple store employees in Iowa. Cook was in the Hawkeye State to announce a $1.4 billion investment in a new data center facility in Waukee.Flight information provided to AppleInsider shows a plane co-owned by Apple made the nearly two-hour flight from Des Moines, Iowa, to an airport in Austin, Tex., late Thursday. Whether Cook was on that plane could not be confirmed.The person said Cook is set to make an AR/VR announcement on Friday, potentially in partnership with a local AR firm. What exactly Cook plans to unveil is unclear, but Apple has invested heavily , and publicly, in AR technology over the past year.Presaging future products and software, Apple in June announced ARKit , a set of developer tools that will help app makers roll out AR solutions when iOS 11 ships this fall."We believe AR has broad mainstream applicability across education, entertainment, interactive gaming, enterprise and categories we probably haven't even thought of," Cook said during an earnings conference call this month. "With hundreds of millions of people actively using iPhone and iPad today, iOS will become the world's biggest augmented reality platform as soon as iOS 11 ships."The tipster also said Cook might also reveal a date for the company's annual iPhone event, which current rumors peg for early to mid September. This latter tidbit could be erroneous, as news of large Apple events are typically heralded by press invitations.Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Industry whispers earlier this week suggested Apple would hold the event on Sept. 12 . Alongside new iPhone models, including a hotly anticipated "iPhone 8" flagship, the company is expected to debut a revamped Apple Watch with LTE connectivity and a 4K Apple TV Austin Mayor Steve Adler in a "tech town hall" meeting on Thursday confirmed Cook will be in town to announce a nation-wide training program. In a video of the Q&A session, spotted by MacRumors, Adler does not make clear whether the program is geared toward developers or consumers.

To study the neural underpinning of sleep deprivation in the human brain, we investigated the selective responses of individual neurons and how such responses change upon cognitive lapses. Twelve individuals with pharmacologically intractable epilepsy, who were undergoing depth electrode monitoring to identify seizure foci for potential neurosurgical treatment, performed a face/nonface categorization variant of the PVT in 31 experimental sessions (Fig. 1a and Supplementary Table 1). Each session included two 12-min blocks in which six images of famous people, familiar landmarks, and animals were presented (24 trials for each image) for 200 ms with long, unpredictable interstimulus intervals (2–8 s) as participants performed the face/nonface categorization task. In four individuals, pairs of PVT sessions were conducted before and after full-night sleep deprivation that was carried out for clinical purposes (time spent awake after sleep deprivation = 24.1 ± 1.6 h; mean ± s.e.m.), thereby providing a unique opportunity to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on behavior and the underlying activity of individual neurons. We were also able to acquire data for two individuals from four PVT sessions conducted before and after normal sleep to address possible circadian and learning effects. Subjects performed the task successfully and accurately (percentage correct = 94.1 ± 1.9%, no response = 2.9 ± 1.1%; mean ± s.e.m. across 31 sessions). We focused only on correct responses in subsequent analyses to maximize the chances that changes in behavior or neuronal activity in some trials were driven by the internal state of the subjects rather than by an impoverished visual stimulus. Figure 1: Sleep deprivation leads to cognitive lapses in a face/nonface categorization PVT. (a) Schematic illustration of the modified PVT in which images of people, landmarks, and animals were presented infrequently as participants performed a face/nonface categorization task. (b) Distribution of RTs before and after full-night sleep deprivation (SD) in two representative individuals. For each session, an ex-Gaussian fit (Online Methods) defines the right exponential tail of cognitive lapses (orange; highest RTs), and an equal number of trials with the fastest RTs (green) was used for subsequent comparison of neuronal data. (c) Left, mean 1/RT in four session pairs conducted before and after full-night sleep deprivation (black) and two session pairs conducted before and after normal sleep (red). Right, the τ parameter (exponential tail in the ex-Gaussian distribution defining cognitive lapses) before and after sleep deprivation (black; n = 4 paired sessions) and before and after normal sleep (red; n = 2 paired sessions). (d) Scatterplot showing significant correlation (Pearson's r = 0.39, P < 0.03) between τ (ordinate) and TSA (abscissa) across all sessions (n = 31, not only including those conducted before and after sleep deprivation). Full size image The distribution of behavioral reaction times (RTs) during the PVT experiments was best fit by an ex-Gaussian function, representing a mixture of a normal distribution (standard RTs) and an exponential distribution for slow RTs ('right tail') with large variability between sessions and between participants in the predominance of the exponential component (Fig. 1b and Supplementary Fig. 1), as has been previously observed in healthy individuals21. In each experimental session, 'fast trials' (fastest RTs) and 'slow trials' (slowest RTs) were defined according to the fitted ex-Gaussian distribution (Online Methods), with slow trials comprising 16.9 ± 1.0% of correct responses (mean ± s.e.m., n = 31 sessions). We use the term 'cognitive lapses' throughout to refer to these slow trials characterized by delayed behavioral responses (rather than a complete absence of response), as is customary in the sleep deprivation PVT literature20,21,22,23,24. Other strategies for defining cognitive lapses, such as selecting the slowest 5–10% of trials, yielded similar results (data not shown). Figure 1b illustrates how sleep deprivation altered the distribution of RTs. The reciprocal of behavioral RTs (1/RT) is a sensitive marker of slower performance after sleep loss20 and was decreased after sleep deprivation (–21.3%; Fig. 1c). The parameter τ, denoting the exponential decay component of the ex-Gaussian function, increased from 122.9 ± 41.7 ms (mean ± s.d.) to 306 ± 237 ms (+128 ± 79%; Fig. 1c), whereas the parameter μ, denoting the mean of the normal distribution, was only modestly increased (+14.4 ± 8.1%, mean ± s.e.m.), indicating that sleep deprivation exerted its greatest effect on cognitive lapses, as previously reported23. We also observed a 'time-on-task' effect23, whereby the frequency of cognitive lapses increased with the time spent performing the task (Supplementary Fig. 2). Given that sleep deprivation had a marked effect on cognitive lapses, we next examined whether the time spent awake (TSA) before each session could predict the measures of slow trial prevalence across the entire data set, such as elevated τ and elevated mean RT in cognitive lapses. ANOVA analysis using TSA and the number of times a participant had performed the task (training effect) as between-session factors revealed that only TSA significantly predicted slow trials (F = 4.3, P = 0.047; mean RTs for cognitive lapses across sessions, training effect and interaction, P > 0.05) and average RTs (F = 4.4, P = 0.046; other, P > 0.05). None of the variables analyzed could significantly predict mean RTs for fast trials across sessions. Time of day (circadian effect) did not correlate with RTs (fast or slow: all, P > 0.5); however, the lack of significant circadian effects here could stem from variability in the precise hours when sessions were conducted (Supplementary Table 1). In contrast, accuracy of performance in the face/nonface categorization task was not affected by TSA (F = 0.03, P = 0.86). Likewise, a relationship between TSA and slow trials was evident when conducting ANOVA on μ, σ, and τ (the parameters of the fitted ex-Gaussian distribution corresponding to the mean, left tail, and right tail, respectively): a significant effect was found for TSA on τ (F = 4.7, P = 0.04; Fig. 1d), but no effect of TSA was found on μ (F = 0.54, P = 0.47) or σ (F = 0.69, P = 0.41), verifying the specific relationship between TSA and cognitive lapses during slow trials. We did not find an effect of repeated sessions (training effect) on performance, in accordance with the literature23. In addition, subjective sleepiness (Online Methods) was significantly correlated with TSA (Spearman's r = 0.42, P < 0.05), but ANOVA did not reveal a significant relationship between subjective sleepiness and slow trials (F = 1.5 and 2.2 for mean RTs and τ of the slow trials, respectively), replicating results from previous studies on the limitation of subjective sleepiness estimates25. Altogether, behavioral data showed that TSA was the dominant factor influencing performance on the task and primarily increased the occurrence of cognitive lapses. Next, we examined the neuronal activity evoked by the stimuli used in the face/nonface categorization PVT task. An image of the intracranial electrodes used and a schematic of the 104 brain regions monitored in the study are provided in Figure 2a,b. The visual stimuli used in the face/nonface categorization PVT paradigm elicited robust responses in individual neurons (Fig. 2c; 1,481 units recorded in total), especially in the MTL, but occasionally also in cingulate cortex, with variability in the precise intensity, selectivity, and latency of responses across individual neurons. Whenever possible, images were selected that elicited responses in prior screening sessions in order to maximize the likelihood of effectively driving activity in the recorded neurons. Of the 611 recorded neurons in the MTL, 106 (17%) responded significantly to at least one stimulus (Online Methods). When pooling the activity of all responsive neurons (n = 162) irrespective of brain region, an average response profile emerged consisting of increased firing rates at 200–500 ms after stimulus onset (Fig. 2d), with an orderly progression of temporal latencies from the high-order visual cortex to the hippocampus and frontal lobe (Fig. 2e). Robust differences in response latencies across MTL regions were also evident when quantifying the precise timing of the responses detected in each trial separately (Online Methods and Supplementary Figs. 3 and 4), in line with previous findings26,27. Single-unit spiking responses were highly selective and could not be observed when averaging the activity of neighboring neurons not categorized as responsive (Supplementary Fig. 5). Crucially, the robust and highly selective profiles of single-neuron responses allowed for study of the effects of cognitive lapses at the single-neuron level. Figure 2: Human single-neuron responses during the face/nonface categorization PVT experiment. (a) Macro–micro depth electrodes with eight 40-μm (diameter) platinum/iridium microwires protruding 4–5 mm from the most distal macroelectrode contact. 6–12 of these electrodes were implanted into each subject to simultaneously monitor activity in multiple brain regions. (b) Overview of the 104 brain locations monitored by depth electrodes in 12 individuals, as seen from a medial view. OF, orbitofrontal cortex; AC, anterior cingulate cortex; SM, supplementary motor area; PH, parahippocampal gyrus; HC, hippocampus; E, entorhinal cortex; Am, amygdala; LH, left hemisphere; RH, right hemisphere. Red circles mark more lateral regions, such as superior temporal gyrus. (c) Four representative examples (raster plots and PSTHs) of single-unit spiking responses to different pictures (stimulus 1, 2, and 3) recorded from the anterior fusiform gyrus (top left), anterior hippocampus (bottom left), anterior cingulate cortex (top right), and parahippocampal gyrus (bottom right). Green boxes mark stimuli eliciting significant responses (red bars) above baseline firing (horizontal red lines), and insets show action potential waveforms. (d) Average response (raster plot and PSTH) across all neurons tagged as responsive (n = 162) to pictures that were effective in driving a response. (e) Average response to the same stimuli as in d for each brain region monitored showing an orderly progression of temporal latencies (black arrow; hot to cold colors) from high-order visual cortex to hippocampus and frontal lobe. FG, anterior fusiform gyrus; TPO, temporal–parietal–occipital junction. Full size image We examined the relationship between cognitive lapses and underlying neuronal activity by testing how the responses of the same neurons to the same physical stimulus might change as a function of behavioral performance (comparing neuronal activity in fast trials versus slow trials in the same session). Importantly, such 'within-session' comparisons minimize confounding by increased epileptogenic activity after sleep deprivation. Given the relationship between cognitive lapses and TSA (Fig. 1d), we compared neuronal responses across all sessions (n = 31): 15.3% of these responses were obtained before and after sleep deprivation, and 71.4% were obtained when subjects were awake for >12 h. In individual neurons, cognitive lapses in slow trials were associated with weaker and delayed neuronal spiking discharges relative to responses in fast trials, with differences particularly evident around 200–300 ms following image onset (Fig. 3a). We proceeded to examine the average normalized response in fast versus slow trials across the entire data set. Slow trials were associated with attenuated, delayed, and prolonged responses to identical stimuli (Fig. 3b–d; Supplementary Fig. 6, data for individual subjects; Supplementary Fig. 7a, non-normalized peristimulus time histograms (PSTHs)). A quantitative paired comparison between the responses of each individual neuron in fast and slow trials (Fig. 3e and Online Methods) revealed that the response magnitude was attenuated by 17% in slow trials (z(376) = −3.05, P = 0.0023, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Additionally, in slow trials, response latency (detected in individual trials; Online Methods) was delayed by 27 ± 6.9 ms (mean ± s.e.m.; z(376) = 3.5, P = 4.8 × 10−4, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Analysis that quantified response latency as firing above baseline in PSTHs yielded similar results (data not shown). Response duration in slow trials was increased by 52 ± 19 ms (mean ± s.e.m.; z(376) = 3.2, P = 0.0012, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Notably, analysis of spiking activity in neighboring nonresponsive neurons during the same trials did not reveal significantly different firing rates between fast and slow trials (P = 0.36, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Thus, altered neuronal spiking activity during cognitive lapses was specific to responsive neurons and does not reflect a global reduction in activity at those times. Neuronal spiking responses were primarily associated with stimulus onset rather than motor responses (Supplementary Fig. 7). Correlation between the latency of MTL neuronal responses and RTs was also observed across all trials without focusing a priori on comparing fast versus slow trials (Supplementary Fig. 8). Figure 3: Reduced, delayed, and lengthened single-unit responses during cognitive lapses. (a) Spiking responses (raster plots and PSTHs) in fast trials (lowest RTs; green) versus slow trials (highest RTs; orange) for two representative neurons in the anterior hippocampus and the parahippocampal gyrus (same neurons as those in the bottom row in Fig. 2c). Trials in the raster plots were sorted on the basis of the RT in each trial (slowest on top). Black ticks, action potentials; open red circles, response latency detected automatically; green, gray, and orange circles, behavioral response in fast, other, and slow trials, respectively. Vertical gray bars mark the absence of response in slow trials around 200–300 ms after stimulus onset. (b) Normalized PSTH of all responses (each row represents a response to 1 of 469 stimuli; 162 responsive neurons) during fast trials (left) and slow trials (right). Responses are aligned to the onset of response for each neuron across all trials (x axis), and amplitude (color scale) is normalized to the peak response of each neuron to take into account variability across neurons in response timing and amplitude. Vertical and sloped blue lines mark the average time of response onset and response termination, respectively, for each neuron (sorted by response duration). Green and orange vertical lines mark mean behavioral RTs in fast and slow trials, respectively. (c) Color superposition of PSTH responses (each row represents a response to 1 of 469 stimuli; 162 responsive neurons) in fast and slow trials. Responses are aligned (x axis) and normalized (y axis) as in b. Color intensity (inset legend) corresponds to firing rate magnitude, and hue (green versus orange) indicates stronger responses during fast versus slow trials at that time, respectively (Online Methods). Vertical and sloped white lines mark the average time of response onset and response termination, respectively, for each neuron (sorted by response duration). (d) Grand mean PSTH of all responses (n = 469 responses in 162 neurons) in fast trials (green) and slow trials (orange). Responses are aligned (x axis) and normalized (y axis) as in b. Green and orange arrows mark the mean behavioral RTs in fast and slow trials, respectively. (e) Quantification of response magnitude (left), response latency (middle), and response duration (right) in individual responsive neurons during fast trials versus slow trials (n = 376 pictures in 142 units). Slow trials are associated with statistically significant firing rate reduction (**P < 0.005, Wilcoxon signed-rank test), increased temporal latency (***P < 0.0005, Wilcoxon signed-rank test), and longer response duration (**P < 0.005, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Gray dots and lines depict 16 individual sessions with at least 5 unit responses each. Error bars denote s.e.m. across responses. Full size image We also examined responses to images using locally referenced LFPs recorded from the same MTL microwires with which single-unit neuronal activity was observed (Fig. 4). The robust increase in broadband LFP gamma power that occurs following sensory stimulation in multiple modalities is an extensively studied phenomenon. This LFP signal is linked to the neuronal spiking activity of local neuronal populations28 and typically co-occurs with a decrease in low-frequency power, also termed 'desynchronization' (refs. 28, 29, 30, 31). In line with these findings, the 'induced power' LFP response to images (Fig. 4a) consisted of an increase in broadband gamma power (>45 Hz, 50–600 ms after stimulus) and a decrease in slow/theta power (2–10 Hz, 300–700 ms) (Supplementary Fig. 9, examples of the LFP dynamics in single trials). LFP responses were selective: some MTL microwires (n = 270 channels in 31 sessions) showed a robust response (Fig. 4a, MTL responsive channels) whereas other neighboring channels (n = 198 channels in 31 sessions) did not show significant modulations (Fig. 4c, MTL nonresponsive channels), despite the presence of high-quality signals that allowed isolation of neuronal units (Online Methods). Figure 4: Cognitive lapses are associated with weaker gamma power increase and weaker slow/theta power decrease in MTL LFPs. (a) Time–frequency decomposition of induced power changes in LFPs of MTL responsive channels (n = 270 channels in 31 sessions). Columns show the average power changes for all trials (left), fast trials (lowest RTs; middle), and slow trials (highest RTs; right). Hot and cold colors mark increases and decreases in power, respectively. Black rectangles highlight stimulus-induced increased power in the gamma frequency range (>45 Hz); pink rectangles highlight stimulus-induced decreased power in the slow/theta frequency range (2–10 Hz). (b) Time course of gamma power increase (top) and slow/theta power decrease (bottom) for fast trials versus slow trials. (c) Decomposition as in a for neighboring MTL nonresponsive channels (n = 198 channels in 31 sessions). (d) Time course as in b for neighboring MTL nonresponsive channels. (e) Quantification (median) of gamma power increases (45–100 Hz, 50–600 ms) for responsive (left) and nonresponsive (right) MTL channels. Asterisks indicate significant differences (Wilcoxon signed-rank tests comparing fast trials with slow trials: **P < 0.007). (f) Quantification (median) of slow/theta power decrease (2–10 Hz, 300–700 ms) for responsive (left) and nonresponsive (right) MTL channels. Asterisks indicate significant differences (Wilcoxon signed-rank tests comparing fast trials with slow trials: ***P < 1 × 10−7). In e and f, error bars denote s.e.m. computed across LFP channels (n = 270 and 198 for responsive and nonresponsive channels, respectively), and gray dots and lines denote 22 (responsive channels) and 17 (nonresponsive channels) individual sessions that had at least 5 LFP channels each. Green, fast trials; orange, slow trials. (g) Scatterplot of single-neuron response latency versus strength of gamma power increase showing that during slow trials increased latency in spiking responses is significantly correlated with weaker increase in LFP gamma power (Spearman coefficient r = −0.17, P = 0.007, n = 255 pictures that elicited significant responses across 87 units and 21 sessions; Online Methods). (h) Scatterplot of single-neuron response latency versus strength of slow/theta power decrease showing that during slow trials increased latency in spiking responses is significantly correlated with increased slow/theta LFP power (Spearman coefficient: r = 0.22, P = 4.5 × 10−4, n = 255 pictures that elicited significant responses across 87 units and 21 sessions). Full size image In responsive LFP channels, cognitive lapses during slow trials were associated with a weaker increase in gamma power in comparison to fast trials (Fig. 4b,e; −19.1%, z(270) = 2.72, P = 0.006, Wilcoxon signed-rank test) and a weaker decrease in slow/theta power in comparison to fast trials (Fig. 4b,f; −76.2%, z(270) = −5.2, P = 2 × 10−7, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). In contrast, no significant effects of cognitive lapses were observed in neighboring nonresponsive MTL channels (Fig. 4d–f; gamma: z(198) = −0.57, P = 0.57; theta: z(198) = −0.98, P = 0.33; Wilcoxon signed-rank tests). In contrast to induced power changes, the power of the evoked (average) LFP at 2–10 Hz was lower during cognitive lapses (Supplementary Fig. 10), suggesting that induced power effects reflect changes in ongoing activity rather than changes in the stimulus-evoked event-related potential. Furthermore, during cognitive lapses, the latency of spiking responses negatively correlated with LFP gamma power (Fig. 4g; r = −0.17, P = 0.006) and positively correlated with LFP slow/theta power (Fig. 4h; r = 0.22, P = 4.5 × 10−4). The significant coupling between the degree of degradation in LFP and neuronal spiking responses suggests that these effects are tightly linked manifestations of neuronal lapses in selective circuits engaged in the task. Whether the cognitive lapses (and underlying neuronal activity) observed after sleep deprivation are qualitatively similar or different from sporadic slow responses occurring throughout wakefulness remains an open question for future studies3,6. Considering the growing amount of literature on increased theta power (6–10 Hz) as a correlate of sleep pressure16,19,32, we examined theta power during baseline intervals preceding stimulus onset (Online Methods and Supplementary Fig. 11). First, we established that theta power in MTL LFPs was indeed associated with sleep pressure and cognitive lapses. We found that baseline theta power was (i) significantly correlated with TSA (Supplementary Fig. 11a; r = 0.26, P < 4.07 × 10−6), (ii) elevated after full-night sleep deprivation (Supplementary Fig. 11b; P < 2.74 × 10−5, Wilcoxon signed-rank test), and (iii) higher before cognitive lapse trials (Supplementary Fig. 11c; P < 0.0001, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Baseline theta power also exhibited a modest albeit highly significant correlation with the level of slow/theta power (2–10 Hz) during the response interval (Supplementary Fig. 11d,e; r = 0.05, P < 4 × 10−37), suggesting that baseline theta activity might influence the degraded LFP response during cognitive lapse trials (Fig. 4). Overall, ongoing theta activity is increased with sleep pressure, and its decreased attenuation during cognitive lapses may lead to impoverished neuronal and cognitive responses. Finally, we ruled out a potential contribution from pathological epileptiform activity. First, we confirmed that all the main findings (degraded neuronal and LFP responses) held when all data collected in regions eventually declared as being within the seizure-onset zone (SOZ; data not shown) were discarded. Second, we detected interictal spikes (IISs) across the entire LFP data set (n = 1,648 LFP channels) to test whether such events might occur more frequently around cognitive lapses (Online Methods and Supplementary Fig. 12a,b). IISs were detected in few trials (5.0 ± 0.23%) and were significantly more frequently detected within the SOZ than in other regions (Supplementary Fig. 12c; 2.7-fold increase, P < 10−48, Mann–Whitney U-test), attesting to successful IIS detection. However, cognitive lapses were not associated with increased frequency of IISs when considering all data (Supplementary Fig. 12d; P = 0.46, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 1,533 channels) or when considering only MTL regions in which selective neuronal effects were observed (Supplementary Fig. 12f; P = 0.48, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 619 channels). In fact, when considering only sessions after complete sleep deprivation, we found a small but significant reduction in the frequency of IISs around cognitive lapses (Supplementary Fig. 12e; P = 0.025, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 186 channels). Thus, we could not find a consistent or robust relationship between IISs and cognitive lapses. Altogether, these findings show that in sleep-deprived humans engaged in a visual categorization task selective neuronal spiking responses to images are attenuated, delayed, and lengthened before cognitive lapses, and such MTL modulations of spiking activity are associated with a selectively weakened decrease in slow/theta power in responsive LFP channels. Thus, degraded neuronal activity is already evident at the perceptual stage, in which responses of individual neurons in selected trials can predict subsequent cognitive lapses. The extent to which these effects are regionally specific remains unclear, but the current results establish that, within MTL regions, cognitive lapses specifically affect responsive circuits engaged in the task. Progressive delays in neuronal activity may further accumulate in downstream decision-making and/or motor regions during cognitive lapses, ultimately leading to slower behavior. In line with the biased competition model of selective attention33, degraded sensory cortical activity during cognitive lapses may fail to elicit high-quality perceptual representations, and visual information therefore cannot be effectively fed forward to the frontal lobe regions that ultimately determine behavior. It still remains unclear whether degraded MTL activity strictly reflects impaired bottom–up signaling or whether additional top–down attention mechanisms are at play. Brief periods of silence (OFF periods) accompanied by slow waves in field potentials are hallmarks of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep in both animals34 and humans35, and they are associated with behavioral immobility and unresponsiveness. Following sleep deprivation, awake rats exhibit local sleep-like slow/theta waves and shorter OFF periods that are associated with degraded behavioral performance19. Given that we could only record a few neurons simultaneously in each brain region and that OFF periods in wakefulness are short (∼80 ms), it was not possible to determine reliably whether such brief OFF periods occur in the human brain during sleep deprivation. However, we find that slow/theta activity, previously linked to sleepiness16,17,19,32, is increased before and during cognitive lapses, and these changes were associated with degraded spike responses. Impaired spike responses are observed in individual neurons engaged in a cognitive task without concurrent changes in the firing of neighboring neurons, and these changes predict specific cognitive impairments in sleep-deprived humans. The tight relationship between MTL activity and perception36 suggests that visual recognition itself may slow down as a result of sleep deprivation. PVT lapses are stochastic; i.e., they are unpredictable moment to moment owing to the influence of a random variable. The present findings suggest that degraded neuronal and LFP responses in the MTL do predict such lapses to some extent, which pushes the formal cause of cognitive lapses back another step in the neurobiological chain of events. The mechanisms underlying local neuronal lapses remain to be determined, although it is likely that transient instability in the activity of neuromodulatory systems, including cholinergic and noradrenergic neurons, may play a role37. Indeed, instability in pupil size (tightly linked with central noradrenergic activity38) is correlated with alertness39, and the synaptic release of acetylcholine is transiently diminished during poor behavioral performance40.

Warner Music Group announced Thursday that it has acquired the Dutch dance-music label Spinnin’ Records, which since its founding in 1999 has released music by artists like Afrojack, Martin Garrix, Martin Solveig, Tiesto and many others. The company, which also includes music-publishing and management divisions, has a current roster that includes Alok, Bassjackers, Bob Sinclar, Chocolate Puma, Kris Kross Amsterdam, Oliver Heldens, Quintino, Sam Feldt, Vinai and others; it also has deals with smaller labels including Tiesto’s Musical Freedom, Don Diablo’s Hexagon, and KSHMR’s Dharma. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Music Business Worldwide put the price at more than $100 million. While a rep declined to confirm that figure, sources close to the situation tell Variety it was Warner’s biggest acquisition since the company’s purchase of Parlophone Records for $765 million early in 2013. According to a release, Spinnin’ will continue to be run by its co-founder Roger de Graaf as CEO, who will work closely with Bart Cools, WMG’s EVP, Global A&R and Marketing of Dance Music. Co-founder Eelko van Kooten will step down from his roles in the company and “has decided to leave the music business to pursue interests in other industries.” The move comes less than a month before Warner Music UK chairman/CEO Max Lousada takes the helm as Warner Music’s new CEO of recorded music on Oct. 1, and continues the company’s international push: In recent months WMG has purchased Gala in Russia, Gold Typhoon in China and X5 in Sweden. De Graaf said: “Spinnin’ has found the perfect home at Warner Music. They share our vision for growing Spinnin’ by creating even bigger opportunities for our artists and their music. It’s been an incredible journey so far and, as we look to the future, everyone at Spinnin’ Records would like to thank our close friend Eelko for everything he’s done for our company, artists, and industry. His partnership and leadership mean he will forever be part of the Spinnin’ family.” Related Warner Music Group Shows Robust Third Quarter Earnings: Revenue, Digital Up Lousada said: “Warner’s past, present and future are all about creating an environment in which incredible artists and entrepreneurs thrive. That’s why I’m pleased to welcome Spinnin’ to our growing family of labels, each with its own cultural identity. Roger and the team aren’t just world leaders in dance music, but pioneers of new ways to break artists and build music brands.” Stu Bergen, CEO, International & Global Commercial Services, said: “We continue to expand our A&R activities around the world, through acquisitions, as well as organic investments. Spinnin’ is a company built for the streaming age, where the line between a local and a global hit, as well as the distinction between marketing and commerce, is blurring.” Van Kooten said: “Each of the Spinnin’ companies has matured successfully which makes it a good moment for me to step down. With pride and joy I look back on 25 exciting years in the music industry and feel grateful to have worked with so many talented artists and an incredible team at Spinnin’. I want to thank them for their dedication and unlimited efforts. A special thank you to my business partner and best friend Roger de Graaf for all the laughs, the challenges and the success we’ve experienced together. As I look ahead at the next chapter in my life, I remain confident that the team will continue to accelerate and that Spinnin’ will enjoy continued success.”

Former House Speaker John A. Boehner said current Speaker Paul D. Ryan should be the Republican nominee for president if the party fails to chose a candidate on the first ballot at its national convention this summer in Cleveland. “If we don’t have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I’m for none of the above,” Mr. Boehner said at the Future Industry Association conference in Boca Raton, Florida, Politico reported. “They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I’m for none of the above. I’m for Paul Ryan to be our nominee.” Mr. Ryan and his staff have maintained that the Wisconsin Republican and 2012 vice presidential candidate will not seek the White House this year. A spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan said he would not accept a nomination for president. The speaker is grateful for the support, but he is not interested. He will not accept a nomination and believes our nominee should be someone who ran this year,” AshLee Strong said Wednesday in an email to the Reuters news agency. Mr. Boehner, who stepped down from the speakership last fall, has long whispered to friends that he thinks Mr. Ryan could be the savior of the Republican Party. He told the crowd Wednesday that “anybody can be nominated” at the Republican National Convention. Businessman Donald Trump leads the pack of Republican candidates, but he will need to win 1,237 delegates to take the nomination. During the same question-and-answer session in Florida, Mr. Boehner referred to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, another Republican presidential candidate, as “Lucifer.” Mr. Boehner has previously called the senator, who led a failed Republican effort to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act, a “jackass.” Mr. Boehner said he voted for Ohio Gov. John Kasich in his state’s primary Tuesday. The two worked together in the House for 10 years. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

UNITED NATIONS — The American envoy to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, described the United States on Wednesday as the “moral conscience” of the world, and she dismissed the United Nations Human Rights Council as “so corrupt” without offering evidence. Ms. Haley said the United States would never close its doors to foreigners who flee persecution, even as she defended the Trump administration’s travel ban, which closed the door to refugees from six war-torn, mainly Muslim nations. She insisted that American taxpayers should get value for the money they contribute to the United Nations. She said nothing about whether the United States would help head off a potential humanitarian disaster from famine that the United Nations has warned is looming over 20 million people abroad. Ms. Haley’s remarks, made at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York early Wednesday morning, were her first as ambassador to an audience of foreign policy experts. She called it “an intimidating crowd.”

Numerous species of krill inhabit the world’s oceans.(One world ocean http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/literacy/ocean_literacy.pdf.)One particular species, Antarctic krill, has made headlines lately because of its alarming decline. What’s driving this decline? Why is Euphausia superbain (Euphausia superba?) such an important species? Research the issue and identify what, if anything, can be done to curb the loss of Antarctic krill. Second, imagine that the stock of Euphausia superbain(superba)is wiped out. What impacts do you foresee within the Antarctic food chain, and what would the impacts be for humans? Some good sources of information include:Antarctic Krill Conservation Project http://www.krillcount.org/index.html Australian Government’s Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population, and Communities: Antarctic Division: KrillNature: Ecologists fear Antarctic krill crisis (09/01/2010) http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100901/full/467015a.html The New York Times: Team tracks a food supply at the end of the world (03/13/2012) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/science/tracking-antarctic-krill-as-more-is-harvested-for-omega-3-pills.html The ocean plays a vital (and often under- appreciated) role in sequestering carbon—something that’s become increasingly important as the planet’s human inhabitants increase their carbon emissions. What role do plankton play in creating this incredible “carbon sink”? Investigate the roles of phytoplankton and zooplankton like copepods, krill and other organisms. Create a diagram that explains how the ocean captures carbon and how different types of plankton are involved.Tara Ocean expedition: an exploration of plankton in all oceans http://oceans.taraexpeditions.org NHPTV NatureWorks: Plankton http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/nwep6d.htm NASA Earth Observatory: What are phytoplankton? http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Phytoplankton/ The New York TimesDot Earth: On plankton, warming and whiplash (04/26/2011) http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/on-plankton-warming-and-whiplash/#

Revolutionizing it I could watch Jensen Huang read the damn phonebook and be enthralled. He’d make me willingly, and enthusiastically believe that not only did Nvidia invent the phone and the phone book, but all the people in it as well. And, as soon as the presentation was over, I’d rush out and buy a phone book, and a phone—but only if it had a little green eye on it. At SC17 Captain Huang, fashion darling that he is in his latest black leather jacket, armed only with a hand mic, paced the stage and showed us the powerful, but not power consuming DGX-1 replacing six racks of conventional servers, while delivering the same or more TFLOPS Nvidia is bringing supercomputing to the masses. Not the common folks like you and me, but the masses of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and researchers. Those smart guys struggle with funding, and cycle-allocations to solve big problems. Imagine how fast science and society could progress if researchers could get enough machine time on a super powerful machine? They could either get the job done in their life time, or expand the resolution and accuracy parameters to get even better answers. What if they could just tap into a supercomputer without even knowing where it was? Well they can now because Nvidia’s Voltas and/or DGXs have been installed in all the major clouds worldwide. Amazon Web Services led the way in late October with an announcement that it would offer Volta in its cloud. Since then, Microsoft announced it would offer it in the Azure cloud. In fact, Nvidia says every major cloud is on board, including Alibaba, Baidu, Oracle, and Tencent Cloud also have announced cloud services based on Volta. Not only that, but you can access to a Volta for as low as $3 an hour, less than a café latte’. And if you don’t want to use the cloud and want to own your own supercomputer than you can call Dell EMC, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, IBM, Lenovo, or Huawei Technologies, and probably MicroStar. “We’re in every cloud, every single server, every data center,” said Huang. That’s one hellofa statement. One of the major applications that will exploit all these supercomputers is deep-learning and AI. AI as you know was just invented last week, and in that short amount of time dozens of specialized training programs have been developed by researchers, some which can only be loaded and run by advanced level researchers because the programs are so complicated. That’s a speed-bump in the road to progress and so Nvidia sought a way to accelerate the process. After all, what good is a supercomputer if it’s just idling while the researcher compiles, links and does other mundane setup operations instead of crunching and then analyzing numbers? The answer is to stuff it. Yes, stuff it in a container. Nvidia took it upon themselves to collect the most popular, and a few esoteric AI and DL programs and bind them up in a simple to use container, with common I/O and file links. Not trivial or fast work, the effort has been a major investment using expensive engineer time, and a gift to the world from Nvidia. Just as an FYI, I recently participated in a discussion where we were told about a customer who spent six-months getting the software set up that took less than a day to run—that’s a terrible duty-cycle. Containers will take that six months and cut it down to six hours or less. Now extrapolate that – if a researcher could only run two or three analysis a year, now (assuming they have the dataset) they could run two or three a week. What would that do for society? Jensen explains how containers will speed things up (Nvidia) Nvidia is offering an end-to-end solution for researchers and scientists. They can take their datasets, stuff them into a container on a DGX or server full of Voltas, crunch the data, and then render a beautiful visualization on an Nvidia graphics board. No other company can, nor is, offering this range of capability to the scientific community—and at prices that are a fraction of what a conventional solution would have cost less than two years ago. Go get a phone book and you can learn all about it.

Search Gallery Protomen Fanart Fire and Light Steve8238 2 The Church of Light Act II Steve8238 21 Advertisement Advertisement The Church of Light: ACT 1 Steve8238 12 Lady Emily Steve8238 2 The Lost Son Steve8238 5 The Fallen Son Steve8238 6 Tonight the streets are ours. Steve8238 6 Brothers in Arms Steve8238 10 Three Son's Logo Steve8238 3 Shadows of the Night Steve8238 2 For the First Son of Light Steve8238 10 For the first son of Light Steve8238 8 Your Eyes Shine Just Like Mine Steve8238 14 If Fate Had Sons... Steve8238 16 Proto Church Inked Steve8238 2 Emily Stanton Steve8238 2 A little less Rock and a little more Roll Steve8238 7 Braver than we are Steve8238 2 Heroes, just for one day. Steve8238 3 The lights in our hearts Steve8238 3 Church of Light ACT I ink Steve8238 5 The Martyr Steve8238 2 The Good Doctor Steve8238 2 The Betrayer Steve8238 3

Divorce theft is a common term in the manosphere, but I have noticed that there is some skepticism amongst our feminist guests on this concept (who often use the term in quotes). I suspect they would be very surprised to learn that this is a commonly accepted concept among economists studying the issue of marriage and divorce. It also is at the core of one of feminists’ most cherished fallacies about marriage, the fallacy that divorce is driven by men who dump their wives and trade her in for a newer model once they feel it is to their advantage. Here is an economists definition of divorce theft from the working paper No-Fault Divorce and Rent-Seeking: Let us take a look at the family from a contract-theoretical point of view. Before doing so, it is important to define a concept used in contract theory, namely quasi-rents2 . Quasi-rents are defined as “a return to one party to a contract, above what the party could receive if the contract could be dissolved at will at that moment” (Cohen, 1987). Marriage is intended to be an agreement for life, so it makes sense that during any given period one party or another will be getting more benefit out of remaining married than the other party does. Quasi-rents are the benefits a spouse experiences if the marriage vows are honored. The whole point of marriage is to create a condition of trust where both spouses can work towards the long term goals of the couple. The changing quasi-rents creates a changing incentive to break that trust by divorce or exploitation. Basically, if there is no method to enforce honoring the contract, at any given time one spouse will have the opportunity to hold the other spouse over a barrel. They use the apex fallacy of a husband waiting until he has received the early benefits of marriage and then divorcing his wife as an example: Let us consider the traditional family as described in Becker (1991). In the traditional family wives focus on domestic production whereas husbands focus on labour market production. Thus, as Cohen (1987) and Parkman (1992, 2002) point out, in the beginning of the marriage the husband will enjoy more quasi-rents from marriage since he can focus on a career while caring less about e.g. childrearing. The wife on the other hand will enjoy more quasi-rents in a later stage of marriage when the children are more able to maintain themselves and she can benefit from the larger family income and/or a higher social status. Thus a husband has a clear incentive to appropriate the wife’s future quasi-rents, by divorcing her unilaterally after having extracted most of his quasi-rent from the marriage. This is called quasi-rent destruction. While the example is provably the exception, it still is helpful in illustrating the concept. Clearly if a man was able to get away with this he would be rewarded materially for betraying his wife. But divorce theft isn’t the only option available to the spouse which has the other one over a barrel. They could also use this change in fortunes to renegotiate the terms of the marriage in their favor under threat of divorce, which economists call exploitation: Brinig and Allen (2000) argue that there are two different types of quasi-rent destruction. First of all, quasi-rents could be appropriated within marriage through the renegotiation of the rent distribution. They call this exploitation. Secondly, and more important in this paper, quasi-rent may be appropriated through divorce. This is what they call appropriation. Renegotiation of the rent distribution within marriage may lead to divorce if one of the spouses has too little bargaining power, which leads her or him to perceive divorce as a better alternative to being married and heavily ‘exploited’. Brinig and Allen may seem familiar to you, because they wrote the paper I quoted in The child support catastrophe (the same paper these authors are citing above). The Brinig and Allen quote I shared from the previous post is right on topic here (emphasis mine): Our results are consistent with our hypothesis that filing behavior is driven by self-interest at the time of divorce. Individuals file for divorce when there are marital assets that may be appropriated through divorce, as in the case of leaving when they have received the benefit of educational investments such as advanced degrees. However, individuals may also file when they are being exploited within the marriage, as when the other party commits a major violation of the marriage contract, such as cruelty. Interestingly, though, cruelty amounts to only 6% of all divorce filings in Virginia.50 We have found that who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce, particularly when there is little quarrel about property, as when the separation is long. What Brinig and Allen found is that children are typically a marriage’s most valuable asset, and that women are using the near guarantee that they will get custody against their husbands. Making matters worse unilateral no fault divorce laws give the upper hand to whichever party wishes to engage in divorce theft or exploitation, as the authors of the working paper explain: If only one of the spouses wants to divorce, spouses engage in ‘bargaining in the shadow of the law’ (Mnookin and Kornhauser, 1979), where the existing law becomes a threat point for one of the spouses. In a legal system with only consensual divorce the spouse not seeking divorce has the bargaining power…. When the law allows for unilateral divorce the bargaining power shifts to the partner seeking divorce, who can always threaten with unilateral divorce (Fella et al., 2004). Under a consensual system, the process naturally deters the would be divorce thief or exploiter. The shift to unilateral no fault divorce shifts the power to the spouse who wishes to abuse the system. This is bad for marriage as an institution, and therefore bad for children, as Brinig and Allen explain: The legal ramifications of the no-fault variable are perhaps the most interesting. In the jurisdictions we studied, even taking into account the higher divorce filing rates, women take advantage of the no-fault option more than do their husbands.51 From the woman’s perspective, repealing no-fault laws may cause harm as compared to passing reforms that will make marriages better.52 However, if filing behavior is mostly driven by attempts to exploit the other partner through divorce, tougher laws may be socially more beneficial. Because the custody coefficients were the largest by far, family law reformers may want to concentrate on formulating custody rules that will alter the spouses’ relative gains from marriage. The authors favor custody rules that replicate the patterns in marriage as closely as possible while giving each spouse a meaningful role (i.e., not zero) after divorce, as opposed to either a “winner takes all” rule like “maternal preference” or “primary caretaker” or a presumption of equal joint custody shares. A replication rule would not make either spouse better off divorced than during marriage (Altman, 1996). Interestingly, the authors of the working paper touch on the issue of declining sexual marketplace power (SMP) for wives as they age. This reduces women’s opportunities to engage in divorce theft and/or exploitation: Other authors point out that during marriage the sex ratio – the ratio of single women to single men per age cohort – evolves unfavourably over time for women (see Browning et al. (2008), Chapter 1; or Chiappori et al. (2002) who uses the evolution of the sex ratio to identify the distribution rule in the collective model), reducing the outside options for women, and thus further limiting their bargaining power. As Chiappori et al. (2002) point out: when there exists a relative abundance of women, bargaining power and therefore the gains from marriage will shift in favour of the husband. This may in turn affect the behaviour of the husband who might engage in exploitation or appropriation. The figure below clearly shows that from the age of 40 the sex ratio rises steadily indicating relatively more and more single women. Unfortunately they are laboring under a very limited understanding of the SMP since they lack knowledge of game. They see the changing sex ratio as the cause and not the symptom of women’s changing SMP options. They also assume that men turn around and use their opportunity to engage in divorce theft and exploitation against women as their wives age. We know from Brinig and Allen that who files is a strong indicator of which party is attempting to engage in divorce theft and/or exploitation, and that while divorce rates fall dramatically as wives age women are still initiating divorce twice as often as men. If men were truly taking their turn at divorce theft and exploitation the way women are, we would expect to see divorce rates spike when women reached middle age. We would also expect to witness a corresponding flip in the ratio of initiation with men initiating divorce more often than women. But we don’t see this. What we see instead is steadily declining divorce rates as the potential for women to engage in divorce theft declines, and a constant relationship regarding who initiates divorce. While fewer and fewer women are attempting divorce theft and exploitation as they get older, the pattern remains the same. Advertisements

CoreOS founder Alex Polvi Twitter/@polvi Google Ventures is leading a $12 million investment in CoreOS, a tiny startup that's changing the way modern web applications are built and maintained. The startup will also use a recently released Google technology called Kubernetes in one of its own products, which is aimed at helping companies run their data centers more efficiently. CoreOS makes a super-lightweight version of the free Linux operating system, which reduces the amount of hardware you need to run applications in big data centers. That's made it popular among software developers looking to do more with less. For a while there, CoreOS was tight with Docker, one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley, and it's no surprise why — they both had the mission of taking apps and putting them into what we call "containers." Think of containers as a metaphor. Shipping yards put goods into a bunch of shipping containers all the same shape and size because it makes them easy to stack onto boats. In the same way, containers let you take an application (an email server, a blogging platform, whatever) and whatever else it needs to run and throw it into a standard virtual "box." You can put this box on your own servers in your own data center, or upload it to Amazon's or Microsoft's or Google's cloud service and it'll run the exact same way, without the extra effort of having to struggle with it to make it work. It's all self-contained. (Hence, "containers.") CoreOS made a version of Linux that went into these boxes, and Docker made the boxes themselves. Docker Founder and CTO Solomon Hykes Flickr/ 97226415@N08 But Docker and CoreOS had a falling out late last year. A container on its own doesn't really do much, it needs to be overseen and managed. Docker wanted to sell this management technology as well. CoreOS had an issue with what it saw as Docker getting too big for its britches, and made its displeasure clear with the public launch of Rocket, a competitor to Docker. Suddenly, developers had two options for building those self-contained apps-in-boxes. Meanwhile, Google has quietly been using containers in its own huge data centers for many years now. As Docker made containers popular to the rest of the world, Google released some of its own technology for managing them, dubbed Kubernetes, for free. Kubernetes seen some uptake in both the CoreOS Rocket and Docker communities. Today, in addition to the funding, CoreOS is announcing a new product called Tectonic, which combines the CoreOS operating system and the Rocket container technology and a management system for those containers based on Google's Kubernetes into one package. "With Kubernetes, we have a complete platform," says CoreOS CEO Alex Polvi. It's also the first purely commercial product that CoreOS has: The operating system and Rocket containers are both free; the company sells consulting and support services to make money. This whole Tectonic platform, though, will cost enterprise clients some cash. Why is Google so interested? Because Kubernetes is supported by Google's own Cloud Platform, where applications can be run at high scales. A customer using Tectonic would likely be attracted to the Google Cloud Platform, since it wouldn't require them to change anything at all to get it running at large scale. While both the Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services clouds do support Kubernetes, reigning cloud champion Amazon Web Services primarily publicizes its own products for managing containers. This may be too early to say, but the fact that CoreOS is opening some doors for Google Cloud Platform could make CoreOS an attractive acquisition for Google. Other investors in the round include Kleiner Perkins, Fuel Capital, and Accel Partners.

Turkey’s Ministry of Education has introduced a school text book which Christian Solidarity Worldwide says encourages discrimination of the country’s small Christian community, despite growing international concern over increasing violence against non-Muslims in Turkey.The book, Primary Education, History of Republic Reforms and Ataturkizm, Lesson Book 8, is aimed at thirteen year olds and was published this year by Devlet [State] Books.The controversial text describes missionary activity as a threat to national unity by destroying national and cultural values through converting people to another religion. The text accuses missionaries of using natural disasters, such as earthquakes, to serve their own interests and warns children of the subversive aims of missionaries as well as tips on how to recognise their activities.A spokesperson for the Alliance of Protestant Churches of Turkey said: "To the Turkish State and society, the words ‘missionary activity’ encapsulates not only the work of foreign missionaries, but all Christian activity in the country."The state and various groups have for years, through endless disinformation, spread the belief that Turkish Christians are part of a secret foreign plot to destroy Turkey."This is the same twisted mindset that has led to numerous attacks on our churches by young people who are convinced that we are CIA agents or similar."Local Christian communities form less than one per cent of Turkey’s population of 70 million people. Concerns are growing that the education system is further marginalising the indigenous Christian population.The Turkish Government has used state-initiated campaigns to influence public opinion over Muslim apostates and Christian activities in Turkey since the year 2000. The authorities have informed security and military forces about missionary activities, sponsored and disseminated reports, conducted seminars, preached sermons in mosques, published sensationalist articles in the press and ordered state officials to speak publicly about the dangers posed.In 2006 and 2007 there were a number of fatal attacks against Christians, including the grotesque murders in April 2007 of two Turkish Muslim-background Christians and one German missionary in Malatya. Shortly after these murders, Niyazi Guney, from the Ministry of Justice, declared before the Justice Commission at the Turkish Grand National Assembly that missionary activities in Turkey were more dangerous than terrorist attacks and likened their activity with the end times of the Ottoman Empire.CSW’s Advocacy Director Alexa Papadouris said she was "deeply concerned" over the "destructive content" of the compulsory school text book."It is extremely distressing to see that the Turkish Government has not taken proactive steps to address increasing attacks on Christians, but instead continues to promulgate disinformation about the small Christian community," she said."CSW calls on the European Union to urge the Turkish authorities to respect and promote religious freedom for all, at every level in Turkish society, particularly in the media and in educational material."Moreover, we call on the European Union to continue to address with Turkey the issue of violent attacks against religious minorities, seeking guarantees that the perpetrators of violence will be brought to justice through the courts in accordance with due process of law.”

Young elephant in Zambia strays from its mother and seems in great peril, but holds its own and reunites with its herd; 'We’ve named the little fella Hercules' It would seem that a 1-year-old elephant would have no chance after becoming surrounded by 14 hungry lions. But not all baby elephants are of the same mettle, perhaps, and at least one young pachyderm is deserving of its valiant new nickname: Hercules. That would be the elephant in the accompanying footage. According to the New York Post, it had strayed from its mother but was able to fend off the lions and ultimately reunite with its herd. The Post uploaded the video Tuesday and viewers might find parts of the footage difficult to watch, as lions can be seen using their sharp claws to climb onto the back of the elephant. But the footage, captured by a team journalists at the Norman Carr Safaris Chinzombo Camp in Zambia, also shows the elephant turning the tide periodically by false-charging the lions to keep them at bay. The elephant, which probably learned some valuable lessons during the harrowing encounter, can be seen using the water to its advantage. But it makes at least one painful mistake by becoming emboldened and exiting the water, only to be attacked anew. "In the 30-plus years that I have been a safari guide in Zambia at the Luangwe Park, never have I seen anything like this," said a guide named Innocent, who was with the group. "We were all so worried the baby elephant would be killed right before us." Instead, the feisty mammal attained at least a small measure of fame, and a new moniker befitting only the brave and strong. "We've named the little fella Hercules," Innocent said. "What a fighter." –Follow Pete Thomas on Facebook and Twitter More from GrindTV Rescue dog takes up skateboarding Man surfs dead whale surrounded by sharks Surfer's close call with sharks surfaces in photos

Pyramid Razor Sharpener: Pyramid Powers Let’s take a more scientific look at this Pyramid Razor Sharpener stuff. There really is a great deal of talk about Pyramid Razor Sharpeners, but not much research to back it up. I don’t believe in the psychic stuff, but there’s one thing regarding the power of pyramids I am personally forced to believe. O.K., so if you know about the power of the pyramid and just want to make one to see how it works, Click Here and Get You own Pyramid Razor Sharpener! Now I am quite a cynical person and at first I basically wasn’t excited about hearing about my friend’s story regarding the secret of pyramids. He is right into his Pyramid Razor Sharpener and says there are a lot of secrets that pyramid structures hold. According to him you will come across mysteries surrounding the power of pyramid structures, but I told him the only power Pyramid Razor Sharpeners hold is over his sanity. How a Pyramid Razor Sharpener Would Make me Rich! So Dave placed a bet. He bet me $20 he could prove to me a secret regarding the pyramids in a sensible scientific way. We can make a test, he said and I would essentially prove it to myself. I said I wasn’t inquisitive about his pyramid healing powers and his meditation stuff, but he assured me that it was to be a straightforward revelation concerning a test of the Pyramid Razor Sharpener. He sounded a bit certain of himself, as he always does, but who cares, I am going to be making 20 bucks! So now, let me tell you that which we were to do. Dave reckoned that pyramids can sharpen razor blades.I reckoned I could buy something nice with 20 bucks. So, we’re to set up an exercise to confirm it. I sure was completely happy to go along….. Dave brought out a little cardboard pyramid shaped type of..box..thing. It looked the same shape as the pyramids we have seen in pictures and it had a flat bottom part on it, a bit bigger than the pyramid shape on top. He opened one side, just like a door and inside was a small platform with a twin blade razor cartridge on it. Now the deal was that I was to shave with that razor blade and that blade only for 2 months. I said I was just looking forward far too much to my 20 and how about one month. The purpose was to see if the blade got dull in that time. Now I would typically get a month out of a blade, but by then it is really getting time to chuck it out. He agreed to one month on the condition that when he was ahead at that point, I would keep using it. So, I thought that was really good. I would get my 20 in a month – without a doubt. If there was a remote likelihood he was right I would have another month to figure a way out of it. Its win / win. I knew there are really no truth to the Pyramid Razor Sharpener. I stuck to the deal and did precisely as he explained. The razor had to be placed in the Pyramid Razor Sharpener after each shave and sat properly on a small stand attached to the base. Everything needed to be stored with the side of the pyramid aligned to the Earth’s North, South axis. A touch unusual, though not much to ask for 20 bucks. Then Dave told me he had actually been using the razor for three weeks. Twenty dollars flashed before my eyes. So, I took it home and cleaned it (no, I’m not fussy, I appreciate cleanliness) and placed it in the pyramid aligned with the use of a compass my Dad gave me as a kid. I left it for a week and when I used it I couldn’t call it super sharp, like a new blade, but it certainly worked fine. I actually preferred it over a spanking new blade due the the fact I find them a bit harsh and scratchy to use on the first couple of days. (No, not fussy, I have sensitive skin). O.K. I’ll cut to the chase. That darned blade just kept on giving me a perfect shave day after day. I used it for the month. There seemed to be some truth to the Pyramid Razor Sharpener after all. I gave him his twenty. So what is it? Well, I was just a bit taken aback. I could have kept making use of it, but Dave said he wanted it back. I really hope he cleaned it. Most likely not, knowing Dave. I was determined to find out what was going on, so I contacted another old friend of mine. He’s a scientist type who works with the university. Now it was actually a bit hard to broach the subject with him. I thought I was skeptical, but he’s 10 times worse than me. To my surprise he had been aware of the Pyramid Razor Sharpener and had even determined how it works! Now, after this rather long-winded blog (I just needed to get it off my chest). I’m giving you two choices. 1. You will be able to build yourself a Pyramid Razor Sharpener exactly the same as Dave’s (I have) by downloading a file, printing it out, cutting it out and placing your blade inside. All it takes is about 10 minutes. Send Me To My Pyramid Razor Sharpener Now! Now, since Dave got my twenty, I just have to get it back (people say I’m a bit anal about getting my money back) though this time I’m not complaining – just making myself feel good, O.K? So, if you’d like to make a Pyramid Razor Sharpener and bet with your friends (I did) Just Click Here. Or……2. You can sort through the scientific explanation. Now, its in my own words and I did need to have to go back to Murray a number of times, so it doesn’t sound too sciencey. O.K. If you are interested, here’s what he thinks about the Pyramid Razor Sharpener. It has to do with three things – a crystaline build-up on the blade, static electricity and dehydration. The repeated rubbing of the blade on the face hairs induces an ionic crystal formation of the water molecules upon the skin. Ions are electrically charged atomic particles. The positively charged ionic water based crystals gather on the edge of the blade and consequently the sharp edge of the blade results in being thickened and so less sharp. Now a pyramid is basically a cone shape, but with flat sides and corners. Another character of static electricity is that it moves towards the ends of objects, as it did on the blade – the sharp edge. The end of a pyramid side is a corner. Static charges concentrate in the corners. It also gets concentrated directly above the point of a cone, or as in this instance – a pyramid (a square cone, if you like). It seems that pyramid powers come from static electricity. Alignment with the magnetic field provides for the naturally present charged particles to be “entrapped” by the pyramid and their resulting focus at the corners. The charged particles are entrained by the magnetic field, just as happens with the aurora. The particular dimensions of the pyramid cause a concentration, or focus of a negative static charge at one third of its height at an equal distance from the four corners. The positive ions form just above the apex. This makes the pyramid a static electricity collector and focusing device. It must be electrically non-conductive. Cardboard is useful for containing and focusing pyramid powers. The blade is placed at the center of the focal point of the pyramid. The result is that the positive ions of the crystals on the blade are effectively neutralized by the negatively charged ion concentration inside the pyramid. The crystals are stripped of their bonds and water molecules are released. This results in the dehydration (this is the same with mummification) of the crystals, which are destroyed. The blade is now clean and feels sharp once again. Sceptical about the pyramid razor sharpener? There’s only one way to find out. How else are you going to verify it – and you could make 20 bucks with it just like Dave. Give me the Pyramid Razor Sharpener kit Now! Advertisements

A Pennsylvania family has filed a lawsuit against the Pittsburgh police department, claiming that two dozen SWAT team members raided their home and terrorized their two children in retaliation for a prior incident involving an officer outside a local bar. Surveillance video captured in December 2010 outside a Pittsburgh bar shows Michael Murray, an off-duty police officer, trying to help a bartender escort an unruly patron out of the establishment. A fight breaks out in the process, with another customer – later identified as William Moreno – jumping into the fray and throwing Murray to the ground. The policeman was knocked unconscious, his leg broken, and tooth chipped. Moreno, who would later be convicted of aggravated assault in 2012, left the bar to return home to his family. A new lawsuit filed by Moreno’s wife alleges that on December 7, 2010 - less than 24 hours after the bar fight - a team of at least 23 officers dressed in full SWAT gear detonated flash grenades at the Moreno family’s door and forced their way into the house. Although the officers had a warrant and evidently sought to arrest William Moreno, they are accused of putting his family through 45 minutes of “terrorization” in the process. The SWAT team allegedly handcuffed Moreno, his wife Georgeia, Georgeia’s stepfather, and Georgeia’s adult son Billy. In court, Georgeia said that Billy was forced to lie on broken glass. She recalled pleading with officers, telling them there were young children upstairs. “Then they threw us all on the ground and were handcuffing us, kicking us, screaming,” Georgeia Moreno told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “They had rifles pointed at our heads.” At one point, the officers were too rough with the stepfather’s surgically repaired arm. He said the altercation necessitated another surgery. “You think you can get one of ours, and we won’t get one of yours?” the officers are accused of saying. “They just ransacked the house,” said Tim O’Brien, the family’s attorney. “Everything was done wrong. Everything they did was in complete disregard of the Constitution.” According to the lawsuit, police then violently dragged Georgeia’s 10-year-old son from the bathtub, injuring his ankles. Officers reportedly humiliated the boy by forcing him to stand naked next to his four-year-old sister at gunpoint. “Officers have continued to harass and threaten the family since the raid, telling them "That’s how we do things here" and that they should move out of Pittsburgh,” the complaint reads. The family is seeking $50,000 in damages, claiming the SWAT raid was in breach of their Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. US District Judge Nora Barry Fischer refused to dismiss the case earlier this week, citing inconsistencies in officers’ explanations and saying there is not a time limit by which the family would have needed to sue. William Moreno, who has a lengthy criminal record, is in the midst of serving an 8 ½ to 20 year prison sentence for his role in the initial bar fight.

Please enable Javascript to watch this video Police were investigating a double shooting that left a 17-year-old boy dead and a 15-year-old boy hospitalized in East Los Angeles on Friday. The shooting was reported at 4:22 p.m. at the intersection of Ditman Avenue and East 6th Street, according to a news release from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The two teens were standing on the corner when a four-door white Dodge Charger stopped in front of them, the release stated. Several men got out of the vehicle and one of them opened fire, hitting both teens, sheriff's officials said. The gunman and the other men got back inside the vehicle and sped away westbound on 6th Street, according to the release. Both teens were transported to a local hospital. The 17-year-old later died and the 15- year-old was undergoing emergency surgery, officials said.

A man in Kentucky claims a fight over a lawnmower led to his beard being cut off and stuffed in his mouth before he was forced to eat it. Harvey Westmoreland told police the argument between himself, his brother and two other men started when one of the latter drunkenly offered to buy said grass-cutting tool. He explained that the pair, James Hill and Troy Holt, had invited him and his brother to their house on the day of the incident in May. More: Man finds bearded mother after 30 years Harvey Westmoreland: ‘Everything went haywire and before I knowed it there was knives, guns…’ (YouTube) ‘My brother was cleaning out the stalls out there for Troy, you know, working for him,’ he remembered. ‘They called and wanted me to come around there and when I got there, I realised they were already drunk.’ In the course of their exchange, Troy apparently offered to buy Harvey’s lawnmower for $250. Advertisement Advertisement ‘I paid twenty bucks for it. He thought I was trying to cheat him,’ noted Westmoreland. ‘One thing led to another and, before I knowed it [sic], there were knives and guns and everything just went haywire. ‘They cut my beard and forced me to eat it.’ ‘OMG is this for real? It’s like a symphony of stereotypes!’ commented one viewer of YouTube footage of the incident. ‘Yo buddy, where’s Cletus?’ mused another. ‘Sounds like he had a close shave with death,’ was the inevitable quip from another viewer. Hill and Holt, who pleaded guilty to the attack, are expected to be sentenced in court this week.

@cmb: @dgcom: Any plans to get such patches easier in the future? As much as I like to hope, but I do not think this is the last one :( It depends on the issue. This one's difficult because it requires recompiling a slew of PBIs, which is very time consuming, and building an entire release. If it were as simple as "here's a file, copy this and you're fixed", we would have provided that file 24 hours ago. It's also not something that's exploitable in the common uses of the system and where people are using reasonable security practices. Spend a lot more time looking at your web servers, mail servers, etc. right now, and follow my recommendations in the post above. I perfectly understand implications of this particular issue, and yes - it is not just a matter of replacing openssl executable… What I am saying is that recompiling everything is not very efficient. But, I guess, you know your product :) As for "not something that's exploitable in the common uses" - my major concern is web UI, which I would think is exposed often for remote management and packages like stunnel, HAProxy, Squid... Whatever deals with SSL frontend in any way - shouldn't build system be smart enough to recompile only if dependencies changed? I, personally, do not run anything, based on recent versions of openssl - except pfSense.

Drone Racing League announced the close of a Series B investment round of more than $20 million, led by U.K. satellite provider Sky, Liberty Media and Lux Capital. The two-year-old New York startup, which is trying to establish remote-controlled lightweight aircraft races as a spectator sport, also brought in WWE and Allianz (its global title sponsor) as new investors in the round. DRL also announced additional partners and sponsors including Swatch, Forto Coffee Shots and the U.S. Air Force. The league’s 2017 television broadcast season kicks off on June 20 on ESPN, and will be broadcast in more than 75 countries with broadcast partners including Sky Sports, ProSiebenSat.1, Disney XD and OSN. Earlier this month Drone Racing League recently announced a partnership with Amazon Prime Video’s “The Grand Tour” as part of its 2017 Allianz World Championship Race in London, taking place on Tuesday, June 13. The deal includes a custom Grand Tour Finish Gate at the race at Alexandra Palace; a branded “Grand Tour” commentator booth for guest play-by-play announcers on-site; and the creation of digital content showcasing “Grand Tour” and DRL. “We’re incredibly proud to announce new partners and investors aligning with DRL to solidify drone racing as the sport of the future,” said Nicholas Horbaczewski, CEO and founder of DRL. In addition to Liberty Media — which now owns Formula 1 — Sky, WWE and Allianz, other existing investors that participated in the latest round of funding in DRL include Hearst Ventures, RSE Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and Courtside Ventures. DRL has also added as an investor CRCM Ventures, supporting its expansion into China. LionTree acted as financial adviser for the company and Morrison & Foerster was the company’s legal adviser. The DRL’s final race in the 2017 Allianz World Championship Season, will feature eight top pilots competing for the winner-take-all 2017 season finale — flying drones at speeds over 90 miles per hour. Horbaczewski, a former exec with endurance-competition event producer Tough Mudder, founded privately held DRL in 2015. The league launched in January 2016 as the only global professional drone racing organization, hosting five professional races in its inaugural season. In 2017, DRL is hosting a global series of six races, the Allianz World Championship, to be broadcast on ESPN, Sky Sports, ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, Disney XD, OSN and other broadcast channels around the world. Watch the DRL 2017 season teaser trailer:

Some politicians come under fire for being corrupt or incompetent, but Belgium's new Minister of Public Health is the first political figure to come under fire for being too fat for the job. Maggie De Block - who is Belgium's most popular politician and was once tipped as a future premier - surprised many when it was announced she would take up the role of Health Minister in the centre-right coalition which has just taken office. The 52-year-old, who weighs in at more than 20 stone, was not considered to be exactly setting a good example in a country where obesity is a growing health problem. Scroll down for video Prejudice? Maggie De Block, Belgium's new Minister of Public Health. Her suitability for the role has been questioned because of her weight. The country is facing a growing obesity problem Defiant: The politician has shrugged off the criticism, pointing to her experience as both a GP and a minister in the nation's previous government The anti-Maggie charge was led by Tom van de Weghe, a Washington-based correspondent for Belgium's VRT television station. In a tweet he questioned whether she would be 'credible' in her new post. NOS, a top Dutch TV channel, likened her to a larger-than-life figure from a Rubens painting and said her 'obvious corpulence' would cause 'sniggering.' But Ms De Block, who practised medicine as a GP for 25 years, has shrugged off the criticism. Merit: Ms De Block urged her countrymen to look beyond her appearance when deciding if she was an able and effective politician 'I know I'm not a model but you have to see what's inside, not the packaging,' she said. According to the World Health Organization data from 2008, a total of 47 per cent of the adult population in Belgium were overweight. As Minister for Immigration in the last Belgian government she was praised for slashing the number of asylum requests by almost half, from 27,000 per year to 15,000.

Following the death of Fidel Castro, it’s perhaps a good time to think about the malign impacts of totalitarian government, and the damage that political agendas can do to science. I was recently discussing Lysenko with a friend (as you do), and naturally we turned to Wikipedia to clarify a point. And I came across a quote that hit me between the eyes (figuratively speaking); “The term Lysenkoism can also be used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives”. Dear Reader, you’re way ahead of me. Yes of course, I was struck immediately by the read-across to climate science. The parallels are remarkable. You’ll be familiar with the story of Lysenko. He was a Russian biologist and agronomist who rejected Darwinian evolution and the rôle of genes, and preferred instead the Lamarckian concept of “inheritance of acquired characteristics”. Of course that concept is difficult to accept – especially when you reflect that a man who has lost a leg is perfectly capable of fathering a child with two legs. With the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult to believe that Lamarckism was once regarded as a credible alternative to Darwinian theory – but so it was. And Lysenko, in the late 1920s, took that view, and built a whole theory of plant breeding on it. More than that, he had the ear of Stalin, and Lysenkoism became official Soviet doctrine. The theory was imposed rigidly. More than 3000 mainstream biologists were fired, imprisoned or executed for challenging it. Lysenkoism held sway in the USSR until the sixties, with dire consequences for Soviet agriculture. Again with hindsight it is difficult to credit the fact that it survived so long, when plainly it did not work. But worse than that, not only did it fail in the field (literally), it also totally blocked proper academic study and research in Russia in the area of plant breeding and Mendelian genetics for decades. So how close are the parallels with climate theory? Of course Lysenkoism was restricted to the USSR. And it was imposed by a totalitarian régime that could, and did, shoot dissenters. Climate alarmism, on the other hand is broadly speaking global (even if some countries merely pay lip-service to the orthodoxy). It is imposed not by a violent autocracy, but by an intolerant and often vindictive establishment – scientific, media and political. It threatens not imprisonment and murder, but the destruction of careers. Scientists who dare to challenge the prevailing view are denied tenure, and publication, and perhaps worst of all, grant funding. As a result, those who do dare to challenge the orthodoxy tend to be older scientists secure in their careers (and their pension funds). In fact the parallels with the Soviet Union go further. On the outer fringes of the Warmism movement we see demands for “Nuremberg-style trials” of “climate deniers” and the imprisonment of directors of fossil fuel companies. Nor is it just scientists and company directors in the firing line. The BBC, for example (always achingly, painfully “on message”) seeks to exclude climate sceptics, and it famously dropped David Bellamy, who was once nearly as popular a presenter on nature and wildlife issues as Attenborough, merely because he dared to express doubts about Global Warming. We saw with the ClimateGate scandal how leading IPCC scientists engaged in “the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias”, just as Lysenkoism does. We see that their prescriptions are utterly failing. Björn Lomborg famously demonstrated (for example) that all the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in solar panels by Germany would have the effect (on the IPCC’s own estimates) of delaying the trajectory of global warming by only a few hours — by 2100. An utter waste of money and misallocation of resources. Now, of course Warmism has become a multi-billion dollar industry, with money flooding in from governments, think tanks, academia and the capital markets. The vested interests are huge. It is both comical and pathetic to hear green apologists still complaining about “fossil fuel funding for climate denial” when any spending of that kind is utterly dwarfed by funding for the Green Blob. And just as Lysenkoism prevented Russian agronomy from doing the right things, so Warmism, by focussing on mitigation, blinds us to the possible need for adaptation (in the unlikely event that warming becomes a significant problem). Wealthy economies and societies are far more resilient to adverse conditions. But prosperity depends critically on the availability of secure and affordable energy – which mitigation and greenery militate against. Warmism prescribes vast up-front investment to guard against highly speculative and uncertain long-term outcomes. By the time you realise you’re wrong, you’ve blown billions. Adaptation on the other hand is proportionate, and involves spending money on targeted projects only as and when (and if) circumstances justify it. The main difference between Lysenkoism and Warmism, as I see it, is that the damage done by Warmism is on a far larger scale and will be far more difficult to reverse. Advertisements

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, a performance collective from Mexico City, will bring its multi-media work "El Rumor" to CounterCurrent 14. The piece about people who participate in armed political movements in Mexico will be performed in Spanish at Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (MECA). El Rumor de Incendio rancisco Barreiro éŠ éŠ Luisa Pardo éŠ éŠ Gabino Rodr’guez éŠ éŠ éŠ éŠ éŠ Creaci—n Lagartijas tiradas al sol éŠ Coordinaci—n Luisa Pardo y Gabino Rodr’guez éŠ Investigaci—n Iconogr‡fica y dise–o Juan Leduc éŠ Video Yulene Olaizola éŠ Asistente Mariana Villegas éŠ éŠ éŠ éŠ Fotograf’a Andrea L—pez éŠ Producci—n Teatro UNAM Andrea Poceros y Ricardo de Le—n éŠ Producci—n Teatro UNAM éŠ less Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, a performance collective from Mexico City, will bring its multi-media work "El Rumor" to CounterCurrent 14. The piece about people who participate in armed political movements in ... more Photo: Courtesy The Artists Photo: Courtesy The Artists Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Houston to get new performing arts festival 1 / 8 Back to Gallery Houston may have been lauded last year as one of America's coolest cities, but it's about to get more hip. CounterCurrent 14, a new festival of experimental performances organized by the University of Houston's Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts and a handful of presenting partners, debuts April 9-13. The festival will feature about a dozen performances, installations and experiences plus lectures, parties and happy hours. All defy traditional boundaries - think mash-ups of dance, music, theater, film, visual art and literature. "It's really about new art forms, challenging our traditional notions of what arts are," said Karen Farber, the center's executive director. "We're trying to put Houston on the map for new performing arts." While experimental, the festival's offerings will also be mainstream- and free, Farber said. "We're trying to break down all barriers, so people who typically don't go to see contemporary performances and visual art might encounter them accidentally and end up with a different perception." With a headquarters in Midtown, the festival will unfold at venues between the University of Houston and downtown, including the university's Quintero Theatre and Blaffer Art Museum, DiverseWorks, Project Row Houses, Hermann Park and Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts. The events include performances by Mexico City's Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol collective, New York choreographer Jonah Bokaer, New York installation artist Suzanne Bocanegra and Los Angeles filmmaker Wu Tsang. Harder-to-define experiences feature Houston talent, including location-based storytelling by Lacy Johnson and Josh Okun that unfolds via participants' cellphones; a sound art installation by Abinadi Meza; and the launch of a bilingual book by the "experimental language" duo Antena (Jen Hofer of Los Angeles and John Pluecker of Houston). The cost for the festival will be about $500,000, Farber said. It's being funded through the Mitchell Center's endowment, with some funds coming from grants from the Houston Arts Alliance. The full schedule and more information will be available soon at countercurrentfestival.org.

While it's hard to understand how thousands of investors around the world could have been duped by fund manager Bernard Madoff, it is even more difficult to figure how it happened to people down the hall. While lawmakers blame regulators for failing to pick up on the fraud, it's clear from court documents that dozens of opportunities were missed to catch it, even by those who were closest to the action. More than one dozen individuals or entities listed in a 162-page court document filed Wednesday had an address listed at Madoff's firm, Bernard Madoff Investment Securities. Full Text: The Madoff Victim List Interactive: Mapping Madoff's Victims For some of these individuals, the address was purely administrative. But not all. One, Noel Levine, had an office on the very floor the fraud was alleged to have been carried out. Levine's real estate investment company, Troon Management, has an address on the 17th floor of 885 Third Avenue in Manhattan. Bernard Madoff Investment Securities occupied the 17th through 19th floors of that building, and the investment advisory business (alleged Ponzi operation) Madoff himself ran was run on the 17th floor. Levine could not be reached for comment. Levine and his wife, New York socialite Harriette Levine, are listed a half-dozen times as Madoff account holders, either through her interior design firm, their family foundation or Troon Management. Levine is not as universally famous as some other big victims of the alleged swindle, but he is believed to have lost a substantial fortune. He and his wife travel in New York society and live in a posh Park Avenue apartment building that is also home to Oscar de la Renta. He used to run a company that made bathroom accessories before registering Troon Management in the early 1990s. He is also on the board of a 3-year-old-start up bank in Greenwich, Conn. Swindler's List (as it's called by Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal newspaper), is loaded with more than 13,000 names, including celebrities Kevin Bacon and John Malkovich, wealthy businessmen like Carl Shapiro and Larry Silverstein, and philanthropists like the late Avery Fisher and others. In a hearing earlier this week, members of the Senate Banking Committee lambasted representatives from the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to detect the fraud even after repeated warnings from a Boston-area investigator, Harry Markopolos, who first raised alarms about Madoff with the SEC in 2000. The Madoff affair has become a lightning rod for those who want to dramatically overhaul the way financial companies are regulated. Madoff's firm was a registered broker dealer and one of the biggest over-the-counter market makers on Wall Street, yet Madoff's investment advisory business wasn't registered with the SEC until 2006 and was never examined as an adviser. The mystery is how Madoff, who prosecutors say confessed to the Ponzi in December, could have pulled it off undetected for so long. Markopolos claims Madoff's scheme was a widely held suspicion on Wall Street. Many of Madoff's own family members worked at the firm, including his two sons, his brother and his niece, all of whom are listed as having had accounts there. Madoff, prosecutors say, told police in December he acted alone. Another firm, Cohmad Securities, is listed as having an office on the 18th floor of the building, the same space occupied by the Madoff broker-dealer operations. Cohmad is a combination of the last names of Maurice Cohn and Bernie Madoff. Cohn, whose firm employed the son-in-law of Carl Shapiro, one of Madoff's oldest friends who lost hundreds of millions in the scheme, is also said to have been an early Madoff investor. The company declined to comment for this story. Hines Interests Limited, a real estate investment, development and management company, has offices in the building, though not on the corresponding floor. It is listed as a Madoff account holder, as is its eastern regional executive vice president, Kenneth Hubbard. Many of Madoff's earliest investors are believed to have substantial ties either as family or as friends from the old neighborhood in Queens, where Madoff and his wife grew up. A heavy concentration of the U.S. investors come from predominantly Jewish social circles in the New York and Palm Beach, Fla., areas. Levine's sisters appear to have been victims of the alleged fraud as well. In a death notice last May, Levine is listed as a brother of Myra Levine Davis of Palm Beach. She appears on the list of Madoff clients that was filed this week. Another sister, Norma Shapiro, is also named in the death notice as well as on the list of Madoff clients. The one connection that has yet to be made is whether Norma Shapiro, also of Palm Beach, is related to Carl Shapiro. A Shapiro spokesman had not confirmed or disputed it by deadline.

Scott Skiles has been announced as the Orlando Magic’s new head coach. A press conference is being held at 6 P.M. (EDT) to announce his hiring. Scott Skiles has been named as the head coach to take this Orlando Magic team to the next level. Tom Thibodeau was surely considered after he was released by the Chicago Bulls, but the Magic ultimately stuck to hiring their former player in Skiles. This hiring comes with mixed emotions from fans. Early Magic fans may like the deal due to sentimentality, but Skiles has had middling success thus far as an NBA coach, and it is difficult to say he is the “final answer” for this team as the wind-up towards contention continues. Skiles is just 18-24 in the postseason in his career, though just getting there right now is imperative for the Magic. Thibodeau represented the loftier option, but he indicated he was not interested in the gig. Orlando has won just 68 games in the past three seasons combined, and with a defensive minded coach like Skiles, the Magic should vastly improve. On an effort basis alone, Skiles will not accept anything less. Welcome home, Scotty.

In commemoration of our 20th anniversary, the ARISS team is planning to transmit a set of 12 SSTV images that capture the accomplishments of ARISS over that time. While still to be scheduled, we anticipate the SSTV operation to occur around the weekend of July 15. We are planning for at least a 2 day operation, but are working for a potential longer operation. Note that all of this tentative and may change based on crew scheduling and ISS operations. Starting with our first meeting in November 1996, our joint operations on Mir, becoming the first operational payload on ISS in November 2000 to our 1103rd school contact (so far), ARISS’ accomplishments have been tremendous. We have touched the lives of many and inspired and educated countless students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math careers. Please stay tuned as more details on our SSTV event will be communicated in the coming weeks. Please spread the word. And think about how you can get students in your area involved in capturing these images. We would love to hear your stories on how that goes. 73, Frank KA3HDO —————————— ————– Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO ISS Ham Radio Program Manager & PI ARISS International Chair AMSAT V.P. for Human Spaceflight Programs About ARISS: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support the International Space Station (ISS). In the United States, sponsors are the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students in classrooms or informal education venues. With the help of experienced amateur radio volunteers, ISS crews speak directly with large audiences in a variety of public forums. Before and during these radio contacts, students, teachers, parents, and communities learn about space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For more information, see www.ariss.org, www.amsat.org, and www.arrl.org.

What about adding in size 1 the following 6 caps for the 75% keyboards: PG Up (R2), PG Down (R3), End (R4), FN (R4), CTRL (R4), ALT (R4) ? These are only 6 keycaps but I think many of us have this size of board... :-) Or alternative have an extra extension set for 75% keyboards? In this set it would include the above + the Arrows (R4) and the Win/CTRL/ALT on the left? The 75% keys will be included in the base set, as stated in the original post. SKIDATA+ will be following the conventional Cherry 75% layout, so that is (from top to bottom) Home, PgUp, PgDn, End.I am not sure what you mean by arrows + Win/CTRL/ALT on the left, as these keys will for sure be included in the base set, in both Winkeyless and Winkey sizes.The base set will include keys for 1800, HHKB, 75%, and some extras, all in Skidata colours. There won't be many keys, if any, that you will lack from the baseset.Do not worry, as a keyboard enthusiast like yourself, my intentions have always been to offer aSkidata keyset for the community, with enough keys to fit every conventional Cherry-style keyboards out there. (Unfortunately, there are weird keyboards that use strange layouts like the Filco Minila; there is simply no way to support those unconventionally sized keys).It will be a lot more clear once the mockups are posted; please look forward to that

Rise Against are in the early stages of writing a new album, and the material may shape up to be more political and raw and exposed. Check out what the band had to say below by clicking “Read More." Recently you announced that you are working on some new material. What can we expect? I really don’t know ! We never know to be honest. We just get in a room and play the same way we all started bands when we were kids. I’ve been missing some of the heavy and fast and screamy parts we used to do more often, maybe something like that, something a little more raw and exposed, we still have that fire inside us and we’re unapologetic about it. Your previous album Endgame touched social topics such as hurricane Katrina and homophobia. What has left an impression in this recent period to get you writing again? I feel like my generation has an unclear take on issues like gun control and labor unions. I feel like these are two important issues and I meet too many people who don’t understand what a union is and why it exists, and I meet too many people who don’t realize that the rest of the world does not wrestle with anything close to what America wrestles with in terms in gun control. I don’t know if this will be something that will end up on our record by the time we make it, but they are weighing on me at the moment.

Likud MK praises US strike on Syria, says Israel needs to strengthen presence in Golan. Transportation and Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) spoke on Sunday morning about US President Donald Trump's recent actions in Syria. In an interview with Kol Israel Radio, Katz praised Friday's air strike as "moral and logical" and said it serves as a warning to Hezbollah and Iranian leadership. According to Katz, the strike shows a change in American policy, since under former US President Barack Obama left Israel to deal with evil on its own. The recent US air strikes show this policy has changed. Katz also said the new policy would prevent Iran's military intelligence and expansion, both of which have cost Israel economically by forcing the country to invest resources into dealing with them. Israel must show its determination to keep control of the Golan Heights by sending another 100,000 citizens to settle it more efficiently, he concluded.

Sand blowing into homes, gardens, roads and paths is causing a headache for residents of Poplar Road in Burnham, but is that just the price of living next to a beach? Peter Alexander of nearby Rectory Road said the sand was a regular problem potentially blocking drains and accumulating along footpaths and in the road. “Nobody wants to take responsibility for it,” he said. “I’ve contacted the council and Sedgemoor and nothing happens. The wall at the top of Poplar Road has been damaged by vandals and when people clear up the sand they dump it over the wall where it blows back again with the next strong wind.” Sedgemoor District Council said the beach was their responsibility but they could not control either the weather or strong winds. They confirmed it was nothing to do with the town council but said if anyone had a problem with sand they should call Sedgemoor to discuss the matter. It has emerged that the Environment Agency are responsible for the wall and its upkeep along with the railings, but sand in the road and pavements falls under the jurisdiction of Somerset County Highways. Any issues with the wall or sand on the road should be directed to those two organisations said a spokesperson for Sedgemoor. Is sand causing your property a problem? Email harry.mottram@nqsw.co.uk with your concerns.

Earth is a 2007 nature documentary film which depicts the diversity of wild habitats and creatures across the planet. The film begins in the Arctic in January of one year and moves southward, concluding in Antarctica in the December of the same year. Along the way, it features the journeys made by three particular species—the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale—to highlight the threats to their survival in the face of rapid environmental change. A companion piece to the 2006 BBC/Discovery television series Planet Earth, the film uses many of the same sequences, though most are edited differently, and features previously unseen footage. Earth was co-directed by Alastair Fothergill, the executive producer of the television series, and Mark Linfield, the producer of Planet Earth's "From Pole to Pole" and "Seasonal Forests" episodes. It was co-produced by BBC Natural History Unit and Greenlight Media, with Discovery providing some of the funding. In North America, the film was released by Disneynature, the first film under Disney's recently formed nature film label. The same organisations collaborated on Fothergill's previous film, Deep Blue (2003), itself a companion to his 2001 television series on the natural history of the world's oceans, The Blue Planet. The British version of Earth was narrated by Patrick Stewart and the US version was narrated by James Earl Jones. Earth was released in cinemas internationally during the final quarter of 2007 and throughout 2008.[3] With total worldwide box office revenue exceeding $100 million, Earth is the second-highest-grossing nature documentary of all time.[2] A sequel, titled Earth: One Amazing Day, was released in the United States on 6 October 2017. It made its world premiere in Beijing.[4] Plot [ edit ] Over the course of a calendar year, Earth takes the viewer on a journey from the North Pole in January to the South in December, revealing how plants and animals respond to the power of the sun and the changing seasons. The film focuses on three particular species, the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale. Starting in the high Arctic in January, as the darkness of winter gives way to the sun, a mother polar bear is shown emerging from her den with two new cubs. She needs food and must lead her cubs to her hunting ground on the sea ice before it begins to break up. By April, the sun never sets, and by August all the sea ice has melted. The mother and cubs have retreated to dry land, but a male polar bear is trapped at sea and must seek out land by swimming. He reaches an island with a walrus colony but is too exhausted to make a successful kill. He dies from injuries sustained in a walrus attack. African bush elephants are filmed from the air as they negotiate a dust storm in the Kalahari Desert. June is the dry season and they must follow ancient paths passed down through generations to reach watering holes. A mother and calf are separated from the herd in the storm but manage to reach shelter. The matriarch leads the herd to a temporary watering hole, but they must share it with hungry lions and scavenger white-backed vultures. The lions are shown attacking a solitary elephant at night, when their superior vision gives them the upper hand. The herd times its arrival at the Okavango Delta to coincide with seasonal floodwaters which transform the desert into a lush water world. A humpback whale mother and calf are filmed from the air and underwater at their breeding grounds in the shallow seas of the tropics. There is nothing here for the mother to eat, so she must guide her calf on a 4,000-mile (6,400 km) journey south to the rich feeding grounds near Antarctica, the longest migration of any marine mammal. En route, they navigate dangerous seas where great white sharks are filmed breaching as they hunt. Sea lions, and sailfish and dolphins combine to bait a shoal of small fish. By October they enter polar waters, and by December the Antarctic sun has melted the sea ice to form sheltered bays. Here, the whales are shown feeding on krill by trapping them in bubble nets. The stories of these individual creatures are woven into the film alongside a great many additional scenes. The supporting cast of animals include mandarin ducklings filmed jumping from their tree hole nest, Arctic wolves hunting caribou, cheetah hunting Thomson's gazelle, elephants charging at white-backed vulture, birds of paradise displaying in the New Guinea rainforest, Adelie penguins in the Antarctic and demoiselle cranes on their autumn migration across the Himalayas. Time-lapse photography is used to show the blossoming of spring flowers, seasonal changes to deciduous forests, clouds sweeping up Himalayan valleys, and the growth of jungle spores and fungi. Themes [ edit ] The narration is woven around the theme of anthropogenic environmental change. The three species it features are used to illustrate particular threats to the planet's wildlife. In the Arctic, rising temperatures are causing a greater area of sea ice to melt and threatening the polar bear with extinction as early as 2030. Global warming is also disrupting the planet's weather systems and making seasonal rainfall patterns less predictable. This poses a threat to creatures like elephants, which must travel greater distances to reach water. Rising ocean temperatures have started to kill the plankton on which humpback whales and most other sea life depend. The film ends with the message that "it's not too late to make a difference." Production [ edit ] Earth was produced by Alix Tidmarsh of BBC Worldwide and Sophokles Tasioulis of Greenlight Media. Following Deep Blue, it is the second film of a five-picture deal between the two companies. The process of bringing Planet Earth and Earth to the screen took over five years. With a budget of $47 million, the film was the most expensive production in the history of documentary filmmaking at the time, later to be surpassed by Oceans.[5] Principal photography began in 2004 and was completed in 2006. Release [ edit ] Earth received its world premiere at Spain's San Sebastián International Film Festival in September 2007. It was released across Europe in the fourth quarter of 2007 and early 2008 to much success. In April 2008, it was announced that Earth would be the first feature released by Disneynature, a newly-formed film unit of the Walt Disney Studios, specialising in natural history documentaries since True-Life Adventures.[6] The film was released in the US on April 22, 2009, with James Earl Jones narrating in place of Patrick Stewart. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures also handled distribution in Canada and Latin American countries.[7] Outside of those territories, the film's distribution rights were sold to various independent distributors including; Lionsgate in the UK and Australia, Gaumont in France, and Universum Film AG in Germany.[8] Regional differences [ edit ] In addition to replacing Patrick Stewart with James Earl Jones as a narrator, the U.S. version uses a more dramatic soundtrack and runs only 90 minutes, compared to the original cut's 99 minutes. Reception [ edit ] Critical response [ edit ] Rotten Tomatoes reported that 87% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 91 reviews, the second-highest score of all the Disneynature films (behind Monkey Kingdom, which has a score of 93%), with an average score of 7.2 out of 10. Its consensus stated: "With its spectacular and extensive footage, Earth is both informative and entertaining."[9] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, gave an average score of 72, being a generally favourable review, based on 26 reviews.[10] Box office [ edit ] On its first day of release in the US, Earth opened at #1, grossing $4,023,788 from 1,810 theaters. For its first weekend, it opened at #5, grossing $8,825,760, as well as $14,472,792 over the five-day period. Despite dropping to #7 the next weekend, taking in $4,340,235, it took in $12,017,017 over the previous week (including Sunday), and ending up with a two-week total of $22,004,284. It closed on July 30, 2009 after 100 days of release, ending up with a final gross of $32,011,576, making it a modest success in the US. Earth picked up an additional $76,931,115 at the international box office. It took over $30 million in Germany alone, became one of the three highest-grossing films of the year in France and had the best opening of any natural history documentary in Spain. By contrast, in the UK Earth debuted on just 14 screens and amassed less than £75,000 in ticket sales. In January 2008, the Japanese version of Earth, narrated by actor Ken Watanabe, knocked Hollywood blockbuster I Am Legend off the top of the box office despite opening on half the number of screens. It went on to gross more than 2 billion yen ($18.5 million), making it the most successful documentary there of the last 10 years. Its worldwide total of $108,942,691 made Earth a commercial success and placed it second on the all-time list of highest-grossing nature documentaries, behind March of the Penguins. Sequel [ edit ] In 2017, a sequel, Earth: One Amazing Day was released. Robert Redford provided the narration.[11][12] Further reading [ edit ]

There are a number of things Wikipedia discourages its users from doing when editing or adding to the site. Actions that incur a good bit of wrist-slapping include, for example, the construction or amendment of autobiographies. The reason of course for this is that subjectivity (as opposed to objectivity) can be tricky thing, and for that it is a soft line that users are told not to cross. Another no-no is spreading falsities and generally causing a ruckus in one or more pages on the encyclopedia through some digital hooliganism. That kind of stuff annoys the heck of out administrators and editors alike, so any naughtiness may well bring the people with power to lock any page(s) temporarily and bar the bad blodd from perpetrating any further disturbances. We’d now like to add another guideline to the list: Post no romantic break-ups to the Wikipedia. Especially if your name is Jimmy Wales and happen to be the site’s founder and chief evangelist. ‘Cause, as you know, the site is an information reference. It’s pretty much Britannica version Web 2.0. Not place for personal gossip. As some of you may now, A so-called tryst (we use this term loosely) between Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and conservative commentator Rachel Marsden leaked to the Web not too long ago, according to Valleywag’s Owen Thomas. It was an alleged match made very evident that you may have in turn found quite unappealing. But that’s neither here nor there. What’s more pertinent is Wales’s recent “slippage” where his adamance for that good ol’ by-the-book behavior he’s requested of all Wikipedians, including himself. This weekend’s news of Wales’s public disavowal of any existing or past relationship with Ms Marsden is quite unbecoming of the man, wouldn’t you say? He knows better than any other that Wikipedia has no rightful home for such chatter. Any severance with Marsden would probably have been better left noted in Jimmy’s Facebook profile. Which is apparently where all the kids these days are hooking up and cutting ties with one another. We understand Jimbo’s all about open, but come on now. Some decorum, sir. Please.

About “Dots & Lines” The cover art Lupe posted on Instagram is the insignia of the Bavarian Illuminati. The owl on top of the book is the owl of Minerva, who symbolizes wisdom. Lupe posted the cover art on his Instagram with the Latin caption Mille Annorum Lumen, which translates to mean “a thousand years old.” http://instagram.com/p/xNGjycsKfD/?modal=true The title Dots and Lines refers to the Pigpen cipher, a very basic cryptographic system that uses monoalphabetic substitution to replace characters with dots and lines. Freemasons began using the Pigpen cipher, subsequently called the Freemason’s cipher, in the early 18th century to keep their records of history and rites private, and for correspondence between lodge leaders. The title refers to Lupe’s ability to communicate with certain listeners. The first Freemasons used the three dots to symbolize the past, the present and the future, but also the three degrees of the blue lodges (entered apprentice, fellowcraft and master).

PFT Commenter goes back to the 80s with a very special NFL version of Miami Vice. Sorry, not sorry. All spelling errors are intentional, we think. -Ed. Here at SB Nation were celebrating the decade of the 80s this week, so I tought theres no more appropriate time to tell the craziest story of the 1987 ofseason. Its a story that has remained uknown to most outside of league circles but it could very well be the defining moment of three Hall of Fame coaches careers. May I present to you: Miami Heist The year is 1987. Don Shula is working just his absolute tail of. Larry Csonkas not walking through that door and his young hotshot QB seems to be more concern with getting bronzed on the beach then winning a silver Lombardi. Lets get real here the only thing emptier then Marinos personality is his trophy case folks. Shulas got alot of thinking to do, somthing that you'll never hear any one say about Marino. His Dolphin's didnt even make the playoffs after coming into the season as a favorite. To top every thing off even his idiot son's are thinking about coaching. Retirements clearly on the horizon for Don, and hes been thinking about life after football. He needs to set his famly up with some income because lets face it his sons arent exactly the Wright brothers. I mean even Orville and Wilbur got there careers off the ground for a few seconds. EXT- SHULA STEAKHOUSE BUILDING UNDER CONSTRUCTION Don Shulas smokin a stogie- the tightest would Cuban that would exist in Miami until Olindo Mare. His restraunt is rally coming into its own. Hes going to serve the biggest steaks in south beach and he can even insure that his sons Mike and Dave have jobs for the rest of there lifes. The first shipment of black angus cattle is do in at any time. They need to be here by noon so Don has time to slaughter all of them before the grand opening tomorrow. Don check's his watch like every 30 seconds hes a real organized no muss type. His sons are late with the first delivrey of steaks. Shula lights his second stogie of the days with the charcoal out door grill he built with his bear hands. CUT TO INT. OF THE CAB OF A CATTLE TRUCK Dave and Mike Shula are crusing down the highway, windows down. There blasting Two Love Crew and rocking out. Mike: Me me me so horny! Dave: Me love you long time! Just than, a shawdowy figure steps into the road with a ski mask on and a literally assualt rifle and points it at the truck, bringing it to a full halt. Mike: Hey whys that guy wearing a ski mask its 90 degree's what a buffoon!!! Dave pick's his nose and eats the booger. Robber: Gimme all youre fuckin cows!!! Hand em over!!! Dave: Ok well give you the bulls we dont want any trouble. Whatever you do just dont take this hundred thousan dollars I have in the glove compartment! Mike look's at Dave like hes a idiot. Mike: Dave you idoit! You just told him we had a hundred thousan dollars in the glove compartment!!! Dave: Yeah, so? Mike: We have TWO hundred thousand dollar's in the glove compartment. Robber: Gimme all that money to are I'll blow your brains out. Mike: Id like to see you try. The Robber coldcocks (no offense to Brett Farve) both of them and takes the money and all the steaks out of the truck. 10 minutes later they wake up. Dave: Mike, Mike, wake up. Mike: What happen? Dave: Some skier stole all are steak cows and money!!! Mike: Dangit!!!! The restraunts suppose to open this weekend and we have to have steaks to serve or else Dads going to have to depend on are coaching careers for financial support when hes older! Hes going to be so mad at us! Dave: What are we gonna do? Mike: I got a idea. Lets leave town. heck, lets leave the country. Cubas what 90 miles away? Lets drive this truck straight down to Havannah. We'd probably be at least one of the top 32 football coaches in Cuba I reckon. Just then Don Shulas Cadillac pulls up behind them. He tracks his sons locations via all of the customer complaint calls he gets via the "Hows my driving" sticker on the back of there cars. Hes gotten like a dozen in the last half hour so he knows exactly where they are. Don: The hell are you boys doing here pulled over in the literally middle of the streat? Mike: Dad Im sorry we got robbed. He took all your meat and money. Don: This is a worst robbery then Nutrisystem!! What am I going to do??? Just then a big black refrigerater truck rolls by with a big flashy ass logo on it reading "Ditka's Steakhouse." Don: That son of a bitch. Don gets into the truck with his idiot kids. Don: Follow that truck boys. The unassuming white truck follow's the black truck throgh the streets of Miami (back in the day there were no PC Police yet so no one was racist by the way.) They eventualy get to a fancy building in the downtown Miami area next to the bulding where every character on the TV show Dexter would be grossly negligent at there jobs and keep getting promotons for 6 years. Sure enough theres a sign outside for "Ditkas Steakhouse." Shula gets out of the car and walks up to the entrance. Coach Ditka had a rough year to. Fresh off a Superbowl win, his Bears team got smoked in the playoffs and Ditka literaly had a heart attack but returned like the next week because hes oldschool. His doctors recommended he take it easy in the offseason and start thinking about retirement so he also started opening up his own steakhouse. Hes inside also smokig a cigar and punching a brick wall just to keep his toughness up. Don look's Coach in the eye and the two maintain locked eye contact for about a full calender minute before Don starts speaking. Don: Well well well look who it is. Ditka: Well well well I'll be dammed. Don: Well well well you old son of a bitch. Ditka: Wel- Don punches Ditka in the face. Ditka punches Don in the face. There both bleeding pretty bad but this is basically how football coaches said Hi to each other back when are country had a real leader and we were more tough. They both crack a smile and hug each other. Ditka: What brings ya hear Don? Don: I couldnt help but notice you were opening up a little steakhosue here. Ditka: People love there steaks Don. Don: Tell me about it. As Im sure you know Im also opening up a steakhouse. Nothin like a little friendly competiton off the field. Now fairs fair and its just good gamplanning on your part if you hijacked all my livestock- but making my sons Mike and Dan wet and poo themselfs? Thats crossing the line. Ditka: Now you lissen here, Don I dont have any idea what the damn ass hell your talking about. If I wanted any rotten meat Id just pick up one of your free agents you old bastard. Jim McMahon comes sprinting in to the restraunt wearing a Ditka Steakhouse uniform hes out of breath. Jim: Coach!!! Someone just stole your truck! Ditka: Or you sure you just dindt forget where you put it again? Your brains not very tough. Jim: I swear its gone. Ditka: What in the hell.. They walk outside and the big black refrigerator truck is gone. Ditka: They stole it they really stole it. Get on the phone with the cop's tell them to be on the lookout for a Big Black refrigerator truck Lisense plate "WLLAMPRRY". Don are you thinking what Im thinking? Don: That the west coast offence is just a gimmick fad and will never work in the NFL? Ditka: No you numbskull!!! That the same guy stole are dang cattle!! And its up to us to track em down. MIAMI VICE MUSIC PLAYS Ditka and Shula and crusing around in there camino smoking stogies and doing good detective work. usually there known for stumbling assbackwards into leads because they have Walter Payton, Mike Singleterry, Dan Marino, and Larry Csonka, but this time its because there pounding the pavement instead of the rock. There driving down a highway and see a big refrigrated commerical meatpacking boat. They immedately pull over and break out the binoculars to get a better look. Theres a shady guy in sunglasses and a Hawwain shirt looking around all shadylike and wiping his hands, which are covered in blood. Theres a sound coming from inside the boat that sounds a suspicous amount lik Cows dying. The Shady guy outside looks awfully familar. Ditka: Wait- is that who I think it is? Don: Your damn right it is. Thats Bill Parcells. MIAMI VICE MUSIC PLAYS Ditka and Shula hop over the side and scale the boats ladder up to the top deck. There so quiet, there like Ninjas or there wives when having sex with them. They get to the top and see Parcells whose totally caught off-guard (Ditkas favorite play) Ditka: Freeze Bill! Ditka is pointing a gun at him. Don: Mike why do you have a gun Parcells trys to make a run for it but Ditka pounces on him like a dog in heat. He shoots Parcells in his mouth but the bullet bounce's off his teeth. Then he shoots him in his fupa from point blank range but the bullet is unable to hit any vital organs. Irregardless. Parcels is hurt. Bill: Ok ok ok. I give up I surrender. Im sorry. Don: Bill you son of a bithch how could you? Bill: I needed the money. Ditka: Thats are livlihood you rascal. Now you tell me right now how many of are cows did you slaughter??? Bill: Cows? I didnt kill any cows. Don: Dont lie to me. Bill: Honest. Ive been taking this boat out to see and catching dolphins, then killing them and canning there flesh Im starting my own fishmeat company for when I retire called Big Tuna. Ditka: You sick bastard. If you wanted to detsroy the Dolphin's you should of just waited 20 years and hired Jeff Ireland. Don: Im turning you in Bill. Don turn's to leave. Bill: Wait wait. did you say your missing your steak cows? What if Ic an help you get them back??? Ill give up the illeagal fishing for ever please please dont turn me in. Ditka: Do you no who stole them. Bill: I do. I do. Ditka: Well then get in the car string bean. Its time to go to work. MIAMI VICE MUSIC PLAYS Ditka Parcells and Shula are driving around Miami inthe camaro now. No radio. Each mans football minds are playing sweet music of bluecollar gameplanning. Bill leads them to a abandoned warehouse just outside of town. They see the Ditka Steakhouse truck parked out back. Bill: Theres your truck. The cow's should be inside. Just dont say I told you. Bill lower's himself down into the seat so no one can tell hes in the car accept for his dorsal fin of fupa is sticking out throug the sunroof so every one passing by knows its pretty much either Parcells or Charlie Weis taking a nap in there. Ditka and Shula kick the door in like a couple hardasses and pull there weapons. What they see would shock even the hardest crimnal investigator or NFL commisoner. Its literally a superlab of bulls in tiny tiny stall's each one hooked up to a cow milking machine with tubes running into a giant steel vat. These arent cows though,, there bulls. Whats going on here? Ditkas jaw hit the floor, literally. The approach the vat and Ditka stick's his finger in the liquid. Ditka: Its urine. Its fresh urine. Sweet Mary and Joeseph. They see a shadowy figure in a skimask underneath one of the bulls attatching his milker. Ditka pulls his weapon. Shula: Freeze you son of a bitch!!!!! Shula tackles the giant skier and stnads him up. Exellent police work on their part. Shula: Now lets take a look at who you realy are. Shula pulls of his ski mask to reveal... Ditka: Lawrence Taylor!!! How could you you bastard. LT: Im sorry coach its just I keep doing drugs and the league makes me taek so many drug tests that I need my own farm of cows to harvest there urine. Shula: Your a discrace to the shield. I mean I allways knew that you liked your meat to be aged for a very short peroid of time but this is ridiculus. They perpwalk the hell out of LT into there car and then realise they arent really cops so its like, "where are we going to take him?" They didnt really plan in advance. They release him into the custody of his father figure, Parcells. The Coaches get there cattle back and sit down for a stogie on the beach. Ditka: you know what Don? I kind of enjoyed working with you this weekend. Don: It was kinda fun wasnt it? Just then a out of breath Joe Gibbs sprints up to them. Gibbs: Help!!! fellas fellas i need your help. Some one just stole a truckful of Bibles from me! CUT TO Reggie White behind the wheel hi-tailing it to Mexico. Ditka and Shula: Here we go again

Martin Brodeur and Braden Holtby shook hands, and with that, their new connection seemed to be cemented. One was a goaltending legend, and the other had taken a significant step to one day joining him among those ranks. This was a congratulations. With the Washington Capitals’ 5-1 win over the St. Louis Blues on Saturday night, Holtby got his 48th win of the season, tying the NHL record that Broduer set for the most in a single campaign. In 2006-07, Brodeur did it in 78 starts for the New Jersey Devils, and Holtby reached that mark in his 66th start on Saturday. Fitting for an accomplishment that Holtby has repeatedly referred to as a team one, he got some significant help from his teammates. Washington’s captain was adamant about wanting to help Holtby at least tie the record, and against the Blues, Alex Ovechkin recorded a hat trick, reaching a milestone of his own with his 50th goal of the season. “It’s not an individual thing,” Holtby said. “You come back to alumni things years in the future, and you can share it with the same guys who have been a part of it. We can look back on it together, so it’s pretty neat that way.” [Capitals now know their first-round for: the Philadelphia Flyers] Brodeur was in Washington last month with the Blues — he serves as an assistant general manager in the St. Louis front office — but Holtby tended the Verizon Center bench in a baseball cap, a rare night off for him. Their names had been intertwined for months as Holtby chased the record that Brodeur set nine years ago, and with every Holtby win, Brodeur’s name would be mentioned and it’d get back to him. Capitals Coach Barry Trotz said after Saturday’s game that backup goaltender Philipp Grubauer will “probably” start in Washington’s season finale on Sunday night against the Anaheim Ducks, meaning Holtby is unlikely to have the opportunity to pass Brodeur with a 49th win. “Me and him will be in the same boat when the next one comes in [to challenge the record],” Brodeur said on Saturday night in the press box. “At least I’ll have somebody to share it. Now, I’m by myself and don’t know how to react. I think it’s great.” Holtby’s last two chances to tie the record resulted in overtime losses by the Capitals, and he said he was starting to worry it was becoming a distraction. Ovechkin told reporters to “let it go” when asked about it after the Capitals’ loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday night. “I wasn’t kidding when I said it was hard,” Brodeur said. “People thought he was going to wrap this up like about two weeks ago. It’s just hard. You get to those last few games to tie it or break it, and it takes a toll on you a little bit, you know? You’re thinking about it; players are almost overdoing it for you.” The team responded with one of its most dominant performances against the Blues on Saturday, all but securing the result after two periods with a three-goal lead. Holtby didn’t have to do much, seeing just 10 shots through 40 minutes and 20 for the game. [Trotz wants to see some players ‘get going’ before the postseason] It was a night of personal milestones, and not just for Holtby. Ovechkin scored two goals within three minutes in the first period, and then added his third in the third period. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Ovechkin is the first player to earn a hat trick in the same game he reached 50 goals since Corey Perry in 2011. He is also the first player in NHL history to score 50 goals in three consecutive seasons twice. Jason Chimera scored his 20th goal of the season. Nicklas Backstrom got his 50th assist of the year. “It was full commitment from start to finish in all areas,” Holtby said. “Guys were working hard. Smart plays and hard plays. It was Capitals hockey, and games like that is what got us all these wins.” Holtby was a 16-year-old when Brodeur and Roberto Luongo, then with the Vancouver Canucks, were in a race to set the wins record during the 2006-07 season. Brodeur set the record with 48 wins, and Luongo finished with 47. Before that, legendary Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Bernie Parent had owned the record with 47 wins during the 1973-74 season. It took 33 years to topple that mark, and before the game, former NHL goaltender and current TV analyst Darren Pang told Holtby that Brodeur broke the record in 2007 in front of Parent in Philadelphia. Holtby never considered the record a personal goal entering the season, aiming instead for 40 wins again because that’s usually enough for a top goaltender to guide his team to the playoffs. “We tried to play for him and try to get him this win,” Ovechkin said. “Last two games, I think we were close, and we missed it. We were happy for him and he deserves it. He’s the best goalie in the league right now. It’s pretty huge for him.” One member of the elite company Holtby joined congratulated him with a handshake after the game. First, Holtby was the center of a group hug by his teammates. “He probably doesn’t think about it right now, but after when his career is done, he’s going to look back on it and think it’s a cool thing,” Backstrom said. “For us guys, we’re really happy for him. He really deserves it, the way he’s been playing this year. We’re happy for him.”

News broke Friday that 23andMe, the provider of genetic testing services built around a $99 kit you can use at home, would cease providing health information to consumers while the product underwent a Food and Drug Administration approval process, because the FDA considers the test a medical device that requires regulatory review. While the FDA reviews the product, 23andMe will continue to provide customers ancestry data and raw data. Coincidentally, right when the news was posted, I was speaking with celebrated behavioral economist Dan Ariely about 23andMe. Ariely saw an ad for the kit and his curiosity prompted him to take the test. When he got the results, he knew he wanted to direct a researcher’s lens on it, because “this was standard, classic, even an exaggerated case of information overload. I wanted to analyze it from the point of view of what we can do with this information, and what should we do. I also had the thought, maybe we could use it for our research on decision making.” So Ariely got kits for all of the researchers on his staff. He spoke to me about the results of that experiment, and how he hopes products like 23andMe could improve based on behavioral science. What was it about the results that made you think that the 23andMe service warranted more attention? So I got all these results about my future health and illness, and didn’t know how to digest them. It was overwhelming, and not necessarily useful information. I was also anxious about it. I found myself wondering how my kids were doing. So I also got kits for my family. And then I also got the kits for everyone in my lab. What was the reaction to the kits in the lab? One person did not take the test, because she didn’t want to know. Most of the other researchers reacted negatively to the information they received. And in particular they didn’t like that the system did not help you separate things you could do something about from those you couldn’t. If, for example, I know that I might have a chance of high cholesterol, maybe there’s something I can do about it. On the other hand, if I’m likely to have colon cancer, I don’t know what I can do about that. After the initial trial, as far as I know, no one from my research lab went back to the website to get more information. Curiosity drove the initial use, but there wasn’t much interest afterward. So it was dissatisfaction with the presentation of results. It was more than that. People were sort of frightened, and we’re a lab of people who work on decision making. On the other hand, they highly valued the family finder aspect — where do you fall on the family tree and what’s your ancestry and who you’re related to. For me it was great to realize my kids were 99.7% mine [LAUGHS]. You said people were sort of frightened. Do you think 23andMe is scaring people to sell their product? No. But I do think it relates to what psychologists call the burden of choice. If a doctor tells you that you have to make a decision about what to do about a very sick child, that choice becomes a burden in itself regardless of the results. You wake up every day wondering if you did the right thing. If the doctor says “here’s what I think you should do,” the doctor takes on the burden. In the 23andMe case, I think there’s similar thing happening but it’s a burden of knowledge. If you know even possible future illnesses based on genetics, are you already paying a price just by having that knowledge? I’ll give you a personal example of the burden of knowledge. When I was 25, doctors found out I had Hepatitis C. One of my doctors told me that my life expectancy was 30 years. Later, I found out that wasn’t true and since then I’ve been treated with Interferon and I haven’t had the disease for many years now. But that number, 30 years, stayed with me. It never went away. I have that burden of knowledge. In this case with 23andMe, the test service is creating a burden right now, and not helping to reduce it. Does 23andMe have an obligation to be better with the information. I think that they want to get better at it. It’s their mission to get people to make better decisions. In the realm of information that is frightening and worrisome, that’s not an easy thing to do. I met people in 23andMe and they are interested in the well-being of their users. When we did the tests with the people in my research lab I sent a report to them with our thoughts. My sense is that their heart is in the right place. From my perspective, doing the right thing and profiting form it is perfectly fine. It’s a simple starting point they began with: just give people the information and they’ll be better off with it. Now 23andMe need to refine their use of data. They have to have behaviorists on their staff and use them to make the information more useful. If you think you can just give people information and expect good response, no way. It’s way too much information and it is too expensive emotionally. So how can they start to get better? If I were their advisor I would make decisions for people. If the test reveals that you have a relatively high chance of colon cancer, but you can’t do anything about it, maybe we don’t even tell you that, but for sure not lead with this news front and center. But, if results suggest that you have a moderate chance of diabetes that you can control by changing behavior, I would emphasize that. I would lead with the family history and genetic mapping. It’s popular and less controversial. Next I would offer information and general suggestions for how you could improve life expectancy and quality of life, based on results that are actionable. Then, I would create another layer that would cost more to access and in that layer I would give all of the detailed information, including information about things that are largely out of your control. I would make that layer cost more because I want people to make an active choice to get that level of information. I basically want to make sure that people who go for that level of information want to invest in the burden of knowing. Even with all of this, I still think that the information communicated has to be better. We know from research that most people are innumerate when it comes to risk. It’s not easy for us to understand what it means that you have a one in a thousand chance of something happening to you. How can you communicate risks like the chances you’ll get breast cancer in a way that doesn’t frighten people? This is a really complex issue. If it says you’re likely to get Alzheimer’s–what does likely mean? And at what age? And how severely? There’s also something called focalism. Even if it’s an outcome that’s far away, by reporting it, you make a person focus on it and then they will exaggerate its likelihood or importance. Are you making people miserable, worried and upset for nothing? That was a big missing link for me in the results. It sounds like this maybe shouldn’t be a consumer product yet? I’m a big believer in technology and I think if it’s done right 23andME is a great product. I worry a lot that people don’t think about the future enough, and the lack of thinking about the future is a big part of my research. I think the ability to get people to look at the future in a meaningful way and help them shape it, could be very powerful. The promise is tremendous, the execution right now is not my favorite. I don’t’ want people to have the burden of information. I don’t want to frighten people. I don’t want to make them unnecessarily worried. And I suspect that simply giving people all the information will get them to act in all kinds of ways that aren’t optimal. You said you were surprised by the one researcher who never used the kit. That seems to me to be, maybe not an optimal choice, but a very human one. This person was thinking that there’s not much she would be able to do about most of what she would learn so the test would just reduce her enjoyment of living. That’s perfectly valid. We know many people get tested for dire diseases all the time and never pick up their results. It is a human response. We researched this general topic once. We asked people on a hot summer day at a local pool, what are the odds that someone had peed in that pool at some point earlier in the day, and the results came back where most people say something close a 100 percent, it was virtually certain that some kid peed in the pool. But people still used the pool. Then we asked them to imagine someone peeing in that pool right there while they were there watching, and asked how they would feel about going in after? You can figure out what they said. Sometimes a little ambiguity makes life much more bearable.

89 Shares Jean Todt says the FIA cannot be swayed by Ferrari’s threats about quitting Formula one. Amid Liberty Media’s plans for new engine rules and a budget cap for the future, the Italian team is warning that it may not sign up for 2021 and beyond. “That’s their choice,” said FIA president Todt, who led Ferrari through the ultra-successful Michael Schumacher era. “We do not want any manufacturers to leave the sport. “Ferrari is an icon and it is unique, and it would be very painful if they were not in formula one anymore. But that’s not my responsibility,” the Frenchman is quoted by Speed Week. Todt said the decision to sell F1’s commercial rights to Liberty a year ago was “right”. “Chase Carey is a great CEO and I recognise a structured organisation with real professionals like Ross Brawn and Sean Bratches. The sport is in good hands,” he added. Ferrari’s F1 latest quit threat is real – Ecclestone Ferrari’s reverberating to quit F1 over the sport’s planned upcoming rules and regulations should be taken seriously by Liberty Media, according to former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone. FOM and new F1 owner recently unveiled a proposal of new changes about F1’s power unit regulations for 2021 with the aim of producing simpler, cheaper and louder engines. Top two engine makers Mercedes and Renault stated doubts over the new plans, while Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne said F1’s most well-known team “will not play” unless circumstances are favorable. The Italian F1 outfit has issued a number of quit threats in the past and failed to carry them out, but former F1 CEO Ecclestone believes the Ferrari’s latest warning should not be taken informally. “If they can’t win, they will put forward new regulations,” Ecclestone told The Independent on early of this month. “If the regulations come out where Ferrari think it is going to be a struggle and they can’t support the money then they will leave.” “They don’t want budget caps and all that,” Ecclestone added. “They want to spend what they can afford to spend and I’ve always said the same thing. If people can’t spend they have to go. “If there are then only three or four teams something would have to be done but until that actually happens nobody is going to do anything. All the teams that say they can’t afford it shouldn’t put an entry in.”

[Haskell-community] Next Steps in Downloads Page Discussion Hi all. Let me try to sum up the state of the discussion and propose next steps -- please feel free to disagree with my summary if you are so inclined. I'm trying to capture the current state and help move discussion, so if people feel this doesn't capture it, its good to know sooner rather than later. == Key Points == * We distinguish between "download method / installer" and "getting started". We add a new page "Getting Started" with links at the top level just like "Downloads / Community / Documentation / News". * The Downloads page points to the minimal platform installer (however named) that includes GHC, stack, cabal-install, and a few other binaries (but no extra global libraries). Below that we can have links to other mechanisms as well, but the minimal platform is the clearly distinguished recommended way. * The "Getting Started" page proceeds to describe next steps for new users to get up and running right away after installing the minimal platform. Since many people have made the case that for someone who hits the page without some prior guide, a stack workflow is the easiest to get running on and best documented at this time, I imagine this workflow will be stack-oriented. == Additional Considerations == * People have pointed to some issues in the windows platform installer. We are going to work to resolve these. A patch for one (which improves stack behavior when it can find ghc but not msys) is already submitted. Sorting out the other (which pertains to enterprise installs, not single-user installs) is underway. * As in the past, we shouldn't focus our discussions on what the answer is "for all time" -- tech will change, things will evolve. We should think of this as something that does the job reasonably well for say the next six months, give or take. == Next Steps == * There is a mock-up of a new download page already on github (Thanks so much Jacco!): https://github.com/haskell-infra/hl/issues/176 Under its "getting started" I would propose something like: 1. Download and run the Haskell Toolchain installer 2. Follow the _getting_started_guide_ to start running some code! with the latter linking to the new getting started page. I hope this is acceptable to people? Maybe some other bullet points should be there too... * I would like to solicit a kind volunteer or two to draft up what they think a "getting started guide" should look like so we can spawn a separate discussion on that. Given that we've decoupled this guide from the download page, it can afford, I think, to have a bit more text than just how to compile and run "hello world"... == a few other thoughts == We've had a productive discussion on this list, I think. But as many probably know, not all the discussions over this have been so positive. I just want to make a general point that has been nagging at me, and apologies for the sappiness that follows. While there is some commercial support, Haskell is an open-source language and community at heart that historically has and currently still relies on people volunteering their time. Be it in writing code, writing documentation, teaching others, and especially in working on tooling and infrastructure. (This goes all the way up to GHC which also runs on donated time and effort in many ways). Being run on volunteer steam is great in many ways. But it has one important caveat. People have to want to volunteer, because they enjoy the technical challenges, but especially because they want to help others, and because they find it rewarding to contribute to things which bring joy and benefit to others. All of us, working on installers, working on fundraising efforts, working on documentation, working on compilers and libraries, or trying to sort out weird issues with mailservers and proxying content delivery networks or php bugs impacting wikis or google-analytics tokens or whatever else, we're all here not because we have to be, but because we want to be. And that's great! But it is also precarious and fragile, because if it becomes not fun, or not rewarding, or we feel that what we do is being disparaged and attacked (and this goes for everyone, i think, on all sides of recent discussions) or diminished, then we change our calculus, and we stop wanting to participate, and stop wanting to fix things for others. And that's understandable. So, if we let our discussions or language play out in a way that can hurt others, can make them feel that their work is no good, or not appreciated, then they have no reason to want to help anymore. And they won't. And I can't blame them. And if we all start to hurt one another too much, it will become no fun for any of us, and then the whole endeavor falls apart. So I want to extend my gratitude and thanks to everyone working on any element of our open-source tooling and infrastructure, or even lending a voice to give insight into how to improve it. And I also want to ask us all to remember this in our interactions with one another, and to remember that people will say things we find unbelievably wrong at times, and discussions may stall at times, and things may get stuck for longer than we'd like. And we have every right to get frustrated when that happens. But we can't let our frustrations at difficult _situations_ turn into words that diminish other _people_, other potential collaborators, others also freely giving of their time trying to improve and help others, whatever our disagreements. I have more to say, but I'm not sure how, and this is long and inarticulate enough. Anyway, onto the next steps (I hope), and please everyone consider stepping forward to help with this stuff, in drafting language, or helping with design and implementation of the actual changes to the site (on which more volunteers welcome -- please email me!), etc. (By the way I want to put out more calls for help on more concrete infra stuff soon, not at all web related -- but in the immediate future, if you have experience running a mail server and dealing with the many painful hassles therein, and are willing to help a bit, please contact me soon). Best, Gershom

About 'Requiem For The Big East' Launched in 1979 -- the same year that ESPN was born -- the Big East used the burgeoning cable TV channel and the media as a whole to help spread its gospel and product to fans and future players across the country. But "Requiem For The Big East" is also a tale of change as the super conference eventually found itself in a new era fighting for survival. Told primarily through the lens of famed Big East coaches such as Jim Boeheim, Lou Carnesecca and John Thompson as well as some of its most iconic players such as Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin and Ed Pinckney, the film chronicles the story of an extraordinary group who rode the rivalries and successes of their teams to become household names. The Big East was a groundbreaking athletic and business creation that encapsulated the era and region in which it was born -- from the toughness of the players and coaches hailing from some of the Northeast's most storied cities, to the executives and Wall Street brokers who thrived because of it. "Requiem For The Big East" explores the meteoric ascension of the Big East Conference and how, in less than a decade under the innovative leadership of founder and commissioner Dave Gavitt, it became the most successful college sports league in America. For most of my adult professional life, there has been one week each year that I looked forward to more than most: the week in early March when the Big East tournament was played at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Having grown up a rabid Georgetown Hoyas fan in Washington D.C., the allure of the tournament inspired me on more than one occasion to play hooky and drop hundreds of dollars on a scalped ticket when I should have been hard at work. With the proximity of its schools, the competitiveness of its rivalries and the ambience of the World's Most Famous Arena, the Big East tourney was always worth the price of admission. But when I heard in 2011 that Syracuse and Pitt, two Big East schools I'd grown up watching and rooting against, were leaving the conference to join the ACC, I knew that the Big East tournament that I knew and loved would be no more. No more afternoons watching Syracuse wrestle against Georgetown. No more six-overtime games between the Orange and UConn. And I didn't exactly understand why. In setting out to make a film about the Big East, I hoped to not simply tell a story about the rise of a great basketball conference but also understand and ultimately convey the causes of its fall. That, in doing so, I would get to sit down and talk with many of the players and coaches who were a part of so many afternoons and evenings during my childhood was an added benefit. And what I quickly realized in talking to them was that it wasn't just fans like myself who were saddened, even angry, by the Big East's demise: so, too, were many of those who helped build the league from nothing. Hopefully, "Requiem For The Big East" will educate the uninitiated on what made the Big East great, while also informing long-time fans why it was doomed to fall apart.

A rare win for the state in the gay-marriage wars — the first in federal court since Anthony Kennedy’s game-changing Windsor opinion last year, if I’m not mistaken. The judge, Martin Feldman, is a Reagan appointee. (Then again, so is Kennedy.) Ed e-mails to note that he’s the same judge who held the Obama administration in contempt a few years ago for its moratorium on permits for deep-water oil drilling. His opinion is here. It’s a mix of deference to federalism, judicial modesty absent guiding precedent, and warnings of a slippery slope. Key bit from the end: On the law itself, he declines to declare that gays are a “suspect class” under the Equal Protection Clause — that’s a job for the Supremes, says Feldman — which means that laws targeting them are owed no special scrutiny by the courts. In that case, all Louisiana needs to do is show that its gay-marriage ban is rationally related to some legitimate state interest. In most SSM cases since Windsor was decided, this is where the state’s case breaks down. Courts have repeatedly found that gay-marriage bans, which are supposed to foster procreation and encourage child-rearing by parents of different genders, have no rational basis because marriage isn’t reserved for straights who are willing and able to have kids. Feldman breaks from the pack: It’s a matter of deference, in other words. Just because Louisiana allows some exceptions for infertile straight couples to its overall scheme of using marriage to encourage procreation and child-rearing doesn’t mean the court’s going to force it to make other exceptions. If a judge isn’t dealing with a “suspect class” then he owes the state’s legislature every benefit of the doubt. As for the other perennial argument in SSM cases, that bans deny gays their fundamental right to marry under the Due Process Clause, Feldman knocks that down by disputing the definition of the term. The right to marry is deeply ingrained in the country’s law and history and is therefore fundamental, he says; the right to marry someone of the same-sex, specifically, isn’t. How broadly you imagine the scope of the right determines whether you agree. No telling how Anthony Kennedy will come down on that, but re-read some of the key passages in Windsor for a clue. One of the core points in Kennedy’s prior landmark opinions in gay-rights cases, especially the case striking down sodomy laws, is that gays are entitled to the same constitutional protections for intimate behavior that straights are. It would be odd if he followed that up by reading the right to marriage the way Feldman does, as a right inherently limited to people of different genders. And it’s not just RINOs who think so: Scalia, dissenting in the Windsor case, laughed at Kennedy’s opinion for being a transparent precursor to eventually finding that the Due Process Clause grants citizens the right to marry another person, not a right to marry only a person of the other gender. I think Feldman’s destined to be overturned, but this is a hopeful note at least for opponents of SSM.

It can be hard to tell if that craft beer on the grocery shelf comes from the vats of a small, independent brewer, or if it is the product of a commercial vat. That’s the crux of a new class-action seeking lawsuit that claims Walmart is deceiving consumers with its private label “craft” beer brands in an effort to inflate prices. A beer drinker’s lawsuit [PDF] filed in the Hamilton Count, OH court of Common Pleas claims that calling the beverages — made in collaboration with Trouble Brewing under the names Cat’s Away IPA, After Party Pale Ale, Round Midnight Belgian White, and Red Flag Amber — craft beer is a “wholesale fiction,” because they’re actually mass-produced. According to the complaint, Trouble Brewing “doesn’t really exist,” echoing a recent Washington Post article that pointed out the applicant listed on filings with the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is ‘Winery Exchange Inc.’, which has since turned into WX Brands. “WX Brands ‘develops exclusive brands of wine, beer and spirits for retailers around the world’ according to its website,” the lawsuit notes. “But under the ‘brewery address’ section of the TTB filings, Genesee Brewing’s business office in Rochester, NY, is listed instead. Genesee is owed [sic] by another company that brews Costa Rican lager among other industrial brands. Upon information and belief, Genesee produces well over the prescribe amount that would be considered ‘small.’” The complaint also points to the Brewers Association definition of a craft brewer as “small, independent, and traditional,” and a business that produces less than six million barrels of beer annually; is less than 25% owned or controlled by a non-craft brewer; and that makes beer using only traditional or innovative brewing ingredients. Walmart’s line of beers “is a wholesale fiction created by the defendant … designed to deceive customers into purchasing the craft beer at a higher, inflated price,” the lawsuit claims. “Defendant stocks its craft beer next to other ‘craft beers’ for sale in its stores, rather than with other mass produced beers, such as Budweiser, Miller, or Coors products,” the complaint reads. “Again, by placing the craft beer on its shelves with other ‘craft beers’, defendant is further perpetuating the myth that it’s a craft beer.” The lead plaintiff is seeking to represent a class of Ohio residents who have bought the beer in question, as well as compensatory and punitive damages for violations of the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act, fraud, and unjust enrichment, and an injunction preventing further false and misleading advertisements regarding the beer. [via Courthouse News]

Our original plan was to go to the schools on Monday. But there happened to be a district wide strike called. The schools are in Morigaon which is about 1.5-2 hours one way from Guwahati and traveling the long distance during the strike was not recommended. We headed out on Tuesday and were completely floored at the welcome we received upon our arrival. As we arrived at the Morigaon Jatiya Vidyalaya school gate, we saw a beautiful banner the school had made welcoming Kids on Computers. The entire school was outside waiting for us. They greeted us with a small Puja and each of us received a hand-woven shawl with a design that is unique to Assam. As we saw the kids and their eager, smiling faces, I couldn’t help but get tears in my eyes. Morigaon is a rural district with miles of beautiful farm land and rice paddies. Cows and goats roam the roads as if it were their own. It is also the poorest district in Assam and has a literacy rate of 69.37% as of 2011. These computer labs have been a long time in the making and we are so happy to finally set them up. We first visited the room that had been set up for the computer lab. We determined the room was too small (we tested by having students come in and sit and saw that it would be difficult to have 12 computers running in there). We decided to use a larger room the school had. The school personnel and electrician proceeded to discuss what would need to take place in the next 2 days to convert the room into a computer lab. After this discussion, we then visited each classroom and were greeted with a huge “Hi!” and “Namaskar!”. This school has classes from Kindergarten to 10th grade. There is one class for each grade, except for Kindergarten which has two, and approximately 15-30 students per class. The teachers had prepped the students and instructed each of them to greet us formally. The classroom walls were constructed from woven bamboo. The students sat at simple desks and benches. You could see the joy in their eyes as we spoke to them. In the afternoon, we headed out to the second school – Jatiya Vidyalaya Charaibahi. This school is about twenty minutes away and in a more rural area. Both schools are privately run by an NGO which hires the teachers, sets the student tuition (100 rupees (~2 USD)/month for younger students and 150 rupees for older students), and makes decisions on what courses are taught. The committee which runs the NGO meets monthly. We worked with Nilutpal Kakati, the committee Secretary, on the creation of these labs. The reception at the second school was just as grand as the first one. We were again presented with custom hand-woven shawls. As they presented them to us, they said Namaskar to us. We quickly adopted to saying it back to them. The whole school had assembled outside – the students had carried their school benches outside. We were all asked to sit at a make-shift stage with a canopy, tables and chairs facing the students. There were microphones and speakers set up for us. Nilutpal gave a small introduction and we were then all asked to say a few words. Afterwards, a group of students sang a beautiful song accompanied by live music. The students then went back to class carrying their benches back. We went to view the computer lab and then visited each classroom here as well. As we walked back outside, we saw that a group of parents had convened outside the school gate. We proceeded to go back to the first school. When we got back, the computer vendor from Guwahati had arrived with the computers. To be more streamlined, we decided to use the small room as a staging room where all the computers would be installed. This way, we could work on software installations while the larger room was being prepared and the second school’s computer room was being made more secure. This first school will receive twelve computers. The second school will have six as their computer room is much smaller. I was eager to test out the OS install via USB pen drive so we pulled out one computer and put it together. Success! We were able to get Lubuntu 13.04 on there – everyone cheered for joy (well, maybe only in my head). What an amazing day! We were so excited to come back and install the computers the next day. KOC’s goal is to provide access to education and learning materials via technology to kids who don’t otherwise have access. We believe and hope the content we put on the computers will open more doors and provide for more opportunities for the kids (and adults) and they will be able to improve their own communities with this knowledge.

The provincial government subsidized passengers on the troubled Union Pearson Express last year at a rate of $52.26 per ride. The astounding sum, which far exceeds the subsidy received by other Toronto-area public transit projects, was revealed in an annual report that came before the Metrolinx board Tuesday. Passengers enter a UPX train at Union Station. ( Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star ) The regional transit agency, which has faced fierce criticism over the $456-million air rail link, did not explicitly publish the per-ride subsidy. But calculations based on ridership numbers and operating expenditures that the agency did make public reveal the extent to which the UPX’s costs exceeded its revenues in its first 10 months of operation. “It demonstrates a complete lack of competent planning,” said Councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul’s), who in 2014 brought a motion to council asking Metrolinx to set the UPX fare at an “affordable” rate. “To subsidize a boutique train focused on business travellers is a real slap in the face to Toronto residents who have been waiting far too long for transit dollars to come their way.” Article Continued Below The UPX launched June 6, 2015 and was designed to provide air travellers with a quick trip between Pearson airport and downtown’s Union Station. Its fare revenues were supposed eventually to cover its operating costs. But with the price of a ride set at $27.90 — $19 with a Presto card — the line struggled to attract riders and was often running mostly empty trains. The newly released figures show that between its launch and the end of the fiscal year on March 31, the line had operating expenses of $63.2 million and revenues from fares and other sources of $23.9 million. The government subsidy was $39.3 million. Ridership was 751,500 over that period. Asked about the per-ride subsidy Thursday, Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins told the Star “we always expected the service to require a subsidy for the first few years. That has not changed.” She noted that on March 9 the agency dramatically lowered UPX fares, to $9 with a Presto card and $12 without, which has led to a significant boost in ridership. “Metrolinx continues to monitor ridership levels and the implication of the reduced fares on the per-rider subsidy,” Aikins said in an email. “Public transit in North America has traditionally required some level of operating subsidy beyond the fare box. We expect that UP Express will be the same.” However, the UPX per-ride subsidy is much higher than is typical for a public transit system. According to the TTC, its passengers receive a per-ride subsidy of 90 cents, almost all of which comes from the city. Jessica Bell of TTCriders, a transit advocacy group, said the province should be subsidizing trips for people who rely on public transit instead of riders on a “boutique service.” Article Continued Below “If the province truly cared about improving service today and truly cared about riders, which is a third of the city, they would prioritize funding the TTC,” she said. “It shows that they don’t care, and they’re not prioritizing everyday transit riders.” Read more about:

Mumbai has been struck with such a heinous event, Amitabh Bachchan said. Expressing profound grief over the gangrape of a young photojournalist in the city, megastar Amitabh Bachchan today demanded harsh punishment for the perpetrators of the crime. "It is a shameful act. It is a matter of shame and insult to the city of Mumbai for such a disgraceful thing (gangrape) that has happened here. A photojournalist who was deputed for her work, became a victim. It makes us saddened," he told reporters here at an event. The 23-year-old photo journalist working with an English magazine, who was on an assignment, was allegedly gangraped by five men in Parel area in central Mumbai last night. "The authorities concerned need to immediately catch hold of the victims and proper rigorous action needs to be taken at the earliest," Amitabh Bachchan said. "Just a day prior we have all celebrated rakhi, which bonds us with woman as a sister. This festival also reminds us of protecting any girl... and at this point of time, Mumbai has been struck with such a heinous event," he said. "We are a country that professes cultural bonding through varied festivals celebrated here. It makes us realise how we need to respect our women," he added. The megastar was angry with the fake video posted on YouTube that shows him endorsing Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the next Prime Minister. When asked about it, he said the matter has been resolved. "Narendra Modi has assured to take right legal action. The Cyber Crime Department has been entrusted to do their job. I cannot say anything more, unless I am informed who is the actual person who initiated to make this video with my voice-over." Bachchan was talking at an event where he flagged off 'Kaun Banega Crorepati - Hot Seat Aapke Shehar' van. The promotional van will travel to 12 cities starting from Surat, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Ludhiana, Meerut, Lucknow, Varanasi, Patna, Kolkata, Nagpur, Indore and Nashik. ... contd. Please read our terms of use before posting comments

A Visit to Kim Jong Il's Russian Birthplace The legend surrounding the birth of North Korea's Kim Jong Il is extraordinary. But outside North Korea, few take that legend seriously. NPR's Lawrence Sheets traveled to a humble Russian farming town to learn about the real birthplace of the North Korean leader. A Visit to Kim Jong Il's Russian Birthplace Listen A Visit to Kim Jong Il's Russian Birthplace A Visit to Kim Jong Il's Russian Birthplace A Visit to Kim Jong Il's Russian Birthplace Listen The legend surrounding the birth of North Korea's Kim Jong Il is extraordinary. But outside North Korea, few take that legend seriously. NPR's Lawrence Sheets traveled to a humble Russian farming town to learn about the real birthplace of the North Korean leader. NPR thanks our sponsors Become an NPR sponsor

Image copyright Bloomberg Image caption The dispute concerns about 4,000 staff who have joined the airline since 2010 About 2,000 British Airways cabin crew have voted overwhelmingly for strikes in a dispute over pay, the Unite union said. The workers, who represent about 15% of the airline's cabin crew, were balloted about the plan to strike at Heathrow. The vote comes after cabin crew rejected a 2% pay rise. Strike action could begin after 21 December, but Unite has not confirmed whether the strike would affect travellers over Christmas. BA said Unite was "creating uncertainty" for passengers. Tensions have been running high over pay and conditions at the airline. Some 79% of crew that took part in the ballot voted for action, Unite said, urging British Airways to return to the negotiating table. The dispute concerns about 4,000 staff who have joined the airline since 2010 on "Mixed Fleet" contracts, who do not feel they are paid enough. About 2,500 of them are Unite members. Earnings were advertised between £21,000 and £25,000 but, in reality, start at just over £12,000 plus £3 an hour flying pay, Unite said. Second jobs "Not surprisingly, the crew have rejected a 2% pay offer and on-board customer service managers are furious," the union said. "They do not have collective bargaining rights. The managers have also endured a six-year pay freeze." Image copyright Getty Images According to a recent Unite survey, half of Mixed Fleet staff have taken on second jobs to make ends meet, and more than two-thirds were going to work "unfit to fly" because they could not afford to be off sick. It said 84% reported experiencing stress and depression since joining BA because of their financial circumstances. Some even admitted sleeping in cars between flights, because they could not afford the petrol to get home. Unite regional officer Matt Smith said: "Not only are the pay rates indefensible, but in aviation, low pay is a safety issue." A BA spokesman said: "We are extremely disappointed that the union is creating uncertainty for our customers. "Mixed Fleet Unite represents about 15% of our cabin crew. We remain focused on resolving this issue as quickly as possible without any disruption to customers." The spokesman added: "We have proposed a fair and reasonable pay increase to Mixed Fleet cabin crew which is in line with that accepted by other British Airways colleagues and which will ensure their reward levels remain in line with cabin crew at our airline competitors."

David Morales teaches social studies at Mayfield High School, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a city of a hundred thousand people, located fifty miles north of the Mexican border. Some of his students are the children of undocumented immigrants, and a few of them might even be undocumented themselves. He doesn’t know which ones, exactly, and he doesn’t care. “When they’re in my classroom, I’m there to teach them,” he told me recently. “I make a point of not knowing, unless the student wants me to.” His classes are small, with around twenty students each, and when any kid is out, “it’s obvious,” he said. “But last month it was painfully obvious.” On February 15th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducted a raid in Las Cruces, arresting people at a trailer park on the outskirts of town. The raid came a few weeks after President Trump signed two executive orders, signalling his plans to fulfill a campaign promise of cracking down on undocumented immigrants. Rumors spread that there were further raids planned, though none took place. On February 16th, a Thursday, Las Cruces’s public schools saw a sixty-per-cent spike in absences compared to the previous week—twenty-one hundred of the district’s twenty-five thousand students missed school. Two thousand students stayed away again the next day. Attendance returned to normal the following week, which made the two-day rash of absences all the more pronounced. “It was alarming,” Greg Ewing, the district’s superintendent, told me. News of the raid caused such fear in the community that Ewing wrote a letter to parents on the 16th, in English and Spanish, reassuring them that “we do not anticipate any ICE activity occurring on school campuses.” His reassurances only went so far. Students might not have been at risk, but their parents seemed to fear that they themselves would be stopped coming or going from the schools. “Parents often don’t have legal papers,” he said. “They just have to survive day by day so their kids can get educated.” At the city’s high schools, absences went up by twenty-five per cent in the two days after the raids, but the numbers were even higher at the schools for younger students, where many still rely on their parents to drop them off and pick them up every day. In the two days after the raids, absences at elementary schools rose by almost a hundred and fifty per cent. “As my students filed in, I was worried,” Morales said. “Who’s not going to be here?” In one of his classes, three students were missing on the 16th. The next day it was five. “My first thought was, Are they O.K.?” he said. “Then, What if their parents got picked up? Do they have a place to stay?” Jennifer Amis, the principal of Arrowhead Park Early College High School, where the student body is almost entirely Hispanic, received a call from the nurse’s office on the morning of the 16th. A freshman had been there, sobbing, since her mother dropped her off that morning. They had been in the car, en route to school, when they spotted roadblocks set up by immigration officers checking for citizenship papers along the highway; they doubled back, taking back roads to get to school. The mother had decided to stay home from her job at a restaurant, but the girl’s father had gone to work earlier that morning. “She and her mother called him as soon as they arrived at school,” Amis said. “They said they hoped to see him that night.” The student was rattled, but she came to school both that day and the next. “There were other students we just stopped seeing,” Amis said. One morning the next week, several parents, still concerned, came in after requesting to meet with her. “The families were afraid to express anything factual about themselves,” she said. “They are reluctant to tell us what’s going on. We have to do most of the talking. We have to reassure them that their kids are safe.” Fears about immigration raids extend well beyond the borderlands, and community-wide reactions like the ones in Las Cruces were seen during the Obama Administration, too. A former Department of Homeland Security official under Obama, who asked that his name not be used, told me that the department used to receive anguished letters not just from educators who witnessed spikes in student absences after immigration raids but also from doctors whose patients missed appointments because they were scared they'd be targeted by ICE agents at hospitals. In the winter of 2016, community concerns regarding possible raids prompted the C.E.O. of Prince George’s County public schools, in Maryland, to write a letter to D.H.S., lamenting the “devastating impacts . . . on the academic, social and emotional well-being of all of our students.” A month later, attendance at a high school in Durham, North Carolina, dropped precipitously after a student was taken into custody by immigration agents while walking to school. Last month, a few school districts around the country noted that a large number of student absences coincided with “Day Without Immigrants,” a nationwide work boycott, on February 16th, organized in response to the Administration’s anti-immigrant policies. But in Las Cruces school officials had no doubts that it was the raid that caused attendance to drop. “There's always some recoiling after raids or policy announcements,” Roberto Gonzales, a professor of education at Harvard and the author of “Lives in Limbo,” told me. “But in the last month or so there have been conflicting messages from the Trump Administration regarding its enforcement policy. There have been several large-scale and visible enforcement actions. Parents have been picked up after dropping off their children from school. All of this fuels rumor and dread for worst-case scenarios.” In Las Cruces, the district’s social workers have been making house calls to visit families whose children were absent from school after reports of the raid. One day late last month, a social worker named Julie Kirkes drove to a dilapidated, flat-roofed stucco house in town. A small window on the front side of the house was covered by a sheet. It was the address she’d been given for the family of an elementary-school student with a good attendance record who hadn’t shown up for several days after the raid. When Kirkes knocked on the door, a middle-age woman answered, and led her inside. “The inside of the house was almost cave-like,” Kirkes said. As they walked into a small, dark living room, she noticed a large blanket hanging from the ceiling of the hallway, blocking her view. “The families don’t know me personally, and when they hear ‘social worker’ they get scared and often think that it’s the person who takes their kids away,” Kirkes said. She asked the woman whether the child needed health care, clothes, or food. After a few minutes, the woman seemed to relax. She called out to the rest of the family, who’d been hiding in the hallway, behind the blanket. “You can come out now,” she shouted, and three children, their father, and grandfather appeared. A few days later, the child returned to school. During the last month, Kirkes has visited a few other houses that had been abandoned before she arrived—the residents had fled. In 2011, D.H.S. issued a policy memo to field officers outlining a list of so-called “sensitive locations”—including schools, churches, and hospitals—where they should refrain from searching, interrogating, or arresting individuals “for the purpose of immigration enforcement.” D.H.S. insists that its agents still follow the policy, but immigrant-community advocates are concerned that a new culture is taking root among the agency’s rank and file. “The Administration has embraced the notion that it has removed the handcuffs from ICE and C.B.P. personnel, which is likely to lead many to believe they can ignore written policies with impunity,” Tom Jawetz, the vice-president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, told me. The principle of “sensitive locations” has always been ambiguous, which only compounds the current fears in Las Cruces. “Where does the safe zone end? At the bus stop? On the school bus?” Maria Flores, the president of the city’s board of education, said. Ewing, the superintendent, shared with me a note he had distributed to the city’s school-bus drivers, to carry with them while transporting students on field trips. Because Las Cruces is so close to Mexico, Border Patrol checkpoints are common along the highways leading in and out of town. Forty students from various district high schools recently attended a language expo at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, which meant passing through these checkpoints. “I authorize that the students, staff, and chaperones on this bus travel together for an educational activity,” Ewing wrote. So far, at least, the power of his note to prevent federal agents from conducting immigration enforcement has not been tested. Last week, I spoke by phone to an undocumented woman whose two daughters, aged ten and thirteen, are enrolled in elementary and middle school in Las Cruces. She asked me not use any of their names, and would only speak to me in the presence of her younger daughter’s school principal, whom she trusted. Each morning, she drives her two daughters to school, dropping them off, one after the other, before heading to her job as a home-aid worker. “School goes hand in hand with the home,” she said. “I speak to my daughters’ teachers all the time to make sure everything is going well. They are going to attend college someday.” The decision to keep her daughters home from school wasn’t something she took lightly. But for four days after the raids, the three of them stayed inside their house. “They wanted to leave, but I told them we couldn’t—not yet,” she said.

"Purple Progress at Last" I woke up. Something wasn't quite right. Turning in my bed, I saw that my sister wasn't lying next to me. Wait, Sister? I've never had a... No, I do have a sister. Of course I have a sister. Neptune's always been there. Still, it's strange to see her up before me. ...Where did she go? I should look for her. I walked around the tower to finally see Neptune at her desk, writing on some kind of document.. She... looks smaller than I- Oh, I remember now! Even though she's my older sister, I'm the taller one. Because of that, people mistake me as Neptune's older sister... Neptune looked up and saw me, smiling.. "Good morning, Nep Jr. How'd you sleep?" "Big sis?" Wait, I'm not the one who's talking. But why is my mouth moving? ...It's weird. It's like I'm on autopilot or something. "What's going on?" Neptune sat up in her chair and grins. "We got a lead on that syndicate that's been stealing Shares from us, so the gals and I are going to Nep them up!" "Oh, that's great!" "You know, it's meant to be just us CPUs, but this kinda thing is gonna be a breeze." Neptune looked up in thought. "Would ya like to come with us, Little ol' Nep o' mine?" I could feel my eyes widen in excitement. My head nodded enthusiastically. "Yes!" My voice was just as enthusiastic. Suddenly, the image in front of me- my sister grinning at me- cracked. Then it shattered, leaving me to see nothing… but a blank white void. "...That was the day we went to the Gamindustri Graveyard," I heard my voice again, in the void. But I wasn't talking. Instead, the voice sounded like it was coming from behind me. Turning around, I saw an exact copy of me looking off into the white void. "My world opened up, from then on..." Wait, that's not me! I'm right here! The other copy glanced at me, making a sorrowful smile. "Hello, Alexandra Rose. My name is Nepgear." ...I'm Alexandra? No, that's not right… "You need to remember. Our personalities are fusing." We… "...We're fusing?" "I'm sorry," Nepgear says while looking me in the eyes. "My spirit is sort of taking over yours. I can't really control it, but It shouldn't be too bad. I'll still be me, and you'll still be you, for the most part. As long as we can recognize ourselves as two different people, we should be okay." Then… I'm not Nepgear. I-I… "I... I..." I can't say the words, but they're coming to me. I think.. I'm Alexandra Rose… I'm a girl from… from… "Don't hurt yourself trying to force things. I know it's very overwhelming." "Nep...gear..." Nepgear's lips turned upwards, putting me at ease. "Miss Rose, I truly am grateful for everything you're doing. Please find my sister, okay?" Wait, what's going on!? A bright light is blinding my eyes! W-Wait, Nepgear! Alex stirred on her cot. Opening her eyes, she found IF and Compa were sitting beside her. "Feeling better, Lex?" Alex weakly turned her head towards IF. "I-Iffy…" "Heh, I guess you do know us." Compa leaned in and gently placed her hand on Alex's forehead. "Are you sure you're okay, Lexi? You were hurt real bad before you transformed." Compa said. Alex twitched a bit as she tried to push past Compa's hand. "I-I'm fine Compa… Just… a headache… that's all" Alex said as she sat up. "Running off like that was very irresponsible, Miss Valera!" Histoire scolded. "There are monsters everywhere and none of you girls have experience! Not only that, you put Miss Rose in danger!" "Hm?" Alex looked towards the door. IF chuckled, "Histoire's been preaching to your friends since you guys got here. Something about a riot act and whatnot." Alex got up from her cot and walked into the room where they were told about the spirits, hearing the faint voice of Histoire coming from it. Sure enough, Histoire was on her Tome chewing Maya out. Despite her small stature, Histoire's voice was loud and booming. Alex was surprised she didn't hear Histoire in the first place. Maya was on her knees as Histoire floated back and forth, her lecture continuing without a seeming end. Maya refused to make eye contact with the book fairy, staring at her lap as Histoire droned on. Maya felt smaller than Histoire, which is actually quite the accomplishment. Lara and Hotaru were taken aback by the surprising ferocity of the small fairy. The latter was hiding behind the former, trembling. Alex chuckled nervously. For some reason, she felt like she's seen many of such scoldings from Histoire, and has been on the receiving end of some, too. The four girls looked behind them and immediately showered Alex with hugs. Lara and Maya buried Alex deep into their arms as they could. Maya nuzzled her face into Alex's, ignoring the other girl's surprise. Meanwhile, Hotaru tried to push her way into the group hug as well. However, the tightness of the hug prevented her from doing so. With each push, Hotaru bounced away from the group until one hard push knocked her onto the ground. Glancing around, the smaller girl squeezed her eyes shut and tried to hug the entire trio. Hotaru's arms barely reached past Lara and Maya's waists. Eventually, Alex nudged towards the other two and gestured towards Hotaru. Smiling, the three broke free of Hotaru's pseudo-cling and engulfed her into the hug as well. Histoire was content to place herself on top of Alex, using Lara and Maya to keep her balance. Histoire let out a small sigh, calming herself down, "Alright girls, that's enough. It seems that a lot of good came from such irresponsible actions." She floated over to Alex. "Are you okay, Miss Rose? Compa told me about your injuries." Alex nodded. "I'm fine. All the pain, and the injuries, disappeared when I transformed." Alex reported. "So you did acquire a spirit?" Alex nodded again. Suddenly, she started to glow a pinkish purple light and the spirit coalesced itself and materialized as a small statue in front of her. Histoire stared at the statue when tears began falling from her eyes. "Nepgear… I'm so sorry." "Aw, don't cry, Histy," Alex consoled. "I'm here now!" Alex paused and blinked, then shook her head. "Histy? I never called you that before… But I feel like I have…" Alex put a finger on her cheek. "I think it was in my dream." Histoire wiped her tears away, catching onto Alex's last sentence. "Your dream?" Alex gave a slight nod, crossing her arms and closing her eyes. "Yeah, I had one while I was unconscious. In that dream, I was Nepgear. And Neptune was asking for me to go to the Gamindustri Graveyard with her." Histoire gaped, "Interesting… Could it be that Nepgear's memories are bleeding into your own?" "W-what the Goodness?" Alex cried. She clapped her hands over her mouth. After a second, she shook her head. "What does that even mean?" Histoire made a small gesture towards Alex, eventually tracing a circle around her. "It means that you and Nepgear have formed a bond, one that is slowly manifesting Nepgear within you." Histoire stopped tracing the circle and pointed straight at Alex. "As such, this is causing Nepgear's and your personalities to merge into one being." Alex took a step back slowly reaching a hand over her heart. "D-D-Does that mean I'm slowly turning into Nepgear?" Histoire nodded and Alex turned away, wide-eyed."Then, that means all that stuff that Nepgear was telling me was true?!" Histoire tilted her head to the side, crossing her arms. "Although it shouldn't be anything too drastic; but you will inherit certain characteristics of Nepgear's. In some cases, you may even emulate her completely for a bit.. Fortunately, you will still be yourself for most of the time." "Oh… " Alex glanced at her own hands, both of them suddenly feeling heavier than before. "I don't think I can handle this, Histy," Alex muttered nervously as she looked down with her hands on her skirt. "I'm not ready to be some kind of Video Game Goddess and save Gamindustri..." Histoire floated in front of Alex and gently touched her face. "I know you and your partners can save our world, Alex. I believe in you." Histoire assured in a very firm tone. "Umm. Thank you, I guess..." Alex felt a small amount of pressure float off her shoulders. It wasn't much, but Alex was grateful for it. "So, Miss Histoire, does this mean the same will happen to us when we get our spirits as well?" Hotaru said, popping out behind Lara. "Unfortunately yes, Miss Iwata." Histoire turned to Hotaru. "If this has happened with Alex, it will most certainly happen to you." Histoire visibly shuddered after she said that line. She can't imagine the currently meek and shy Hotaru having the violently colorful personality of Lowee's Goddess. She shook her head to get rid of such thoughts. "Anyway, Miss Rose. Are you ready to introduce yourself to the Resistance?" Histoire asked, shifting the topic to prevent herself from thinking about the image that popped into her head.. "I am ready, Miss Histy!" Alex responded with confidence. Histoire led the four girls to another room within the base with IF and Compa following close behind. Inside the room was another computer with several monitors, and standing in front of the computer was a small blonde girl in an orange dress. Behind her were two other girls sitting at an orange table minding their own business. One was a girl with red hair polishing a large sword. The other one was a young teen with long purple hair wearing a black hoodie, who was currently scarfing down a plate of pudding. The blonde-haired girl turned around once she heard the doors open. "Hey, Histoire! Did we finally get some new recruits?" The small girl asked with excitement in her voice. "Yes, B-Sha. More accurately, these four girls are the ones I brought in from the VR Dimension," Histoire answered. "Wait, does that mean…?" The red haired girl, Falcom, placed her sword on the table and trailed off. Histoire nodded. "These girls have been chosen to be the Champions of Gamindustri." Maya chuckled, feeling bubbles of pride rise within her. "Champions, huh? I kinda like it." "And it just so happens that Miss Alexandra Rose here is the Champion of Planeptune." Alex squeaked and stood at attention, a blush tingeing her cheeks. "She has acquired the spirit of Purple Sister." Histoire continued. Alex once again started to glow a pinkish purple as her spirit manifested beside her. The now dubbed Champion of Planeptune was startled. "Why…" Alex started but stopped when she noticed the statue shake. Almost as if the statue was happy. Feeling warmth grow in her chest, Alex realized what was happening and smiled.. "I see, she wants to see her—our friends again…" The girl wearing the black hoodie with purple accents, stood up, her long purple hair swaying as she sauntered up to Alex. "So I guess that means you're my new little sister, huh?" Alex blinked once. When the girl in the black hoodie didn't say anything, Alex blinked twice. "Um… what?" The girl in the black hoodie grinned, giving Alex the peace sign. "Oh, of course! I'm Neptune, nice to meetcha, little sis!" Alex gaped, combing through Nepgear's memories for help. "Oh, don't act so surprised, the readers would riot if there wasn't at least one Nep in the first few chapters." "You're… from another dimension... " Alex said, trying to wrap her head around the bigger Neptune's utter disregard for the fourth wall. It's at this point that the two authors can and will try to reign Neptune in, even with the changes. We'll see how that goes. Our Beta readers don't think so. Neptune smiled at the author's exasperation. "Yep! I actually came from the Ultradimension, although I haven't been there in, like, forever! Lil' me and Nepgear were letting me crash at their place until… well…" Neptune made an awkward shrug. Alex could see a pained look in Neptune's eyes. "...you know…" Alex felt a pang of sadness surge through her. She could practically feel Nepgear's lingering regrets. "At least the citizens are safer in your dimension and didn't suffer the same fate as this dimension's Neptune and Nepgear..." Falcom pointed out. B-sha coughed into her fist, grabbing the attention of everyone in the room. "Anyways... Now that we have a spirit, we can finally try to take the Basilicom back!" Hotaru tilted her head. "Basilicom?" "The base of operations for the goddesses," Alex explained. "My-er, Nepgear's home." "All four Basilicoms were taken by ASIC after the CPUs fell." Histoire explained, "I suppose we can claim it now that we have Purple Sister." "Is there a security measure that requires some sort of identity verification in order to break in? I can't seem to recall installing one myself." Alex placed a finger on her chin, but then shook her head, "I mean… Nep—... Ugh, you know what I mean." Histoire smiled sadly as Alex tried to straighten herself out. "Like everything, the Sharicite within the Basilicoms has been corrupted. To truly claim it for ourselves, we have to purify it, and only the goddess that came from the sharicite can do that." "Alright!" B-sha shouted, jumping on the table and producing her Preto mask, "It's going to be our standard moving plan. Neptune, IF, Compa, you guys are escorting the Champions while Falcom and I provide cover! That's going to be 1000 Credits." "Hold on!" Maya cried, "What's a 'credit'?" "The 'Credit' is the currency of Gamindustri, used across all nations." Alex explained "And... wait a second B-sha, are you trying to charge us again?" "B-sha, Please…" Histoire chided. B-sha scratched the back of her head, making an embarrassed smile. "Sorry, old habit…" "Wait, you said something about a moving plan?" Lara cried, "And we're coming too!? But I don't know how to fight!" Lara turned to Hotaru and Maya. "Do either of you know how?" Hotaru shook her head violently while Maya scratched the back of her head. "I mean, I've gotten in a couple of scrapes before, but I don't think I'd be able to take on an actual monster." "Yeah, sorry about this," IF apologized, "But this base is temporary, always was." "The monsters made it impossible to stay in one place for too long, so we just keep moving around the city." Compa added. "You girls don't need to worry!" Neptune cheered. "Iffy, Compa, and I are something of a dream team! We'll make sure you girls are safe." "Still the same Nep, no matter what dimension she's from," IF mused. "Which reminds me…" IF walked over to a chest and grabbed something that looked like a white handle attached to a purple circle. She tossed it to Alex. Alex inspected it and a pink blade suddenly popped out of it. Despite this being her first time seeing it, Alex felt as if the blade's appearance was normal to her. "The Beam Saber…" Alex said as she did a couple of practice swings. "Thought it could come in handy," IF said as she winked at Alex. "Come on, It's time to go home." "You really think it's a good idea for us to do this?" a small black mouse, Warechu, asked. "I don't know what you're so worried about, that crystal's been pumping out monsters ever since we took the Planeptower. Only an idiot would try to raid the place," his companion, a young gray-skinned girl with elf ears named Linda (called Underling by most people), replied. The two were within Virtua Forest, on the outskirts of the city. Weaving through its many trees and ignoring its pitifully weak monsters, Warechu and Linda were planting red X-shaped crystals on the ground as they walked. "Besides," Linda continued, "do youwant to be the first person the Boss sees when she gets back?" "You got a point there, that blue-haired weirdo scares me more than the Hag ever did. She kept muttering things like plunging the world into eternal despair and stuff. Honestly, where did she even come from?" Warechu complained. "Don't know, don't care. I just want to get this done so she doesn't plunge me into eternal despair." The pair walked off, as the patches of grass that the crystals were dropped on started to turn from a healthy green to a dull brown. "Hi-yah!" Alex yelled as she sliced through the last of the monsters with her saber. With their health at critical, a shard of the Share Code appeared all around them. "Share Code, Digitize!" Alex made short work of scanning the code, causing all the monsters to disappear in a cloud of pixels. "I'm glad I can do that without transforming," Alex said with a sigh of relief. "You're a real natural with that sword, Lex" IF said, an impressed smirk on her face. Alex blushed while scratching her cheek, "I-It's more Nepgear than anything." "So this is Planeptower's inner sanctum?" Neptune said, inspecting her surroundings. What Neptune saw before her was a finely decorated room. Fancy colored lights dotted the walls and a long purple carpet had been laid upon the floor leading up to a gigantic set of double doors which would even dwarf an ancient dragon. "Can't say I've seen this before in any of the dimensions I've been in." Neptune finished her thought. "It's usually locked off from everybody except the CPU and their Oracle. Sometimes really close friends come by here." IF looked at Alex, "Anything could be behind this door, Lex, Are you ready?" Alex nodded. IF opened the door to reveal an Ancient Dragon waiting for the group in the Sharicite sanctum. Neptune's eyes lit up, "Ooooh, an Ancient Dragon! Never thought I'd fight one in this dimension!" "Focus, Nep!" IF shouted, "We're going to have to go all out." Alex took out her Digivice and fragments of Share Code wrapped around her, forming some sort of egg-shaped cocoon. In a flash, the Share Code dissolved and revealed Purple Sister in Alex's place. Gunblade in hand, Alex lifted off the ground and darted towards the monster. Neptune and IF covered their faces as the wind blast from Purple Sister's flight obscured their vision. "Wha-Hey!" IF shouted. Alex turned her head around, eyes wide. "Sorry!" As Alex was calling back at IF, the Ancient Dragon raised one of its large, powerful claws. "Lex, above you!" Alex looked up to see the Dragon's claw falling towards her. Whipping her body around, Alex created a platform under her feet and kicked off of it. The Ancient Dragon's claw slammed the platform into the floor. The monster's palm crushed the platform and part of the floor with it. Alex skidded across the ground, jumping into the air. Holding her weapon high above her head, Alex cleared the dragon's height and fell straight for the monster's head. "Take this!" Alex swung her weapon into the dragon's head, expecting another clean cut like many of the monsters before. However, her weapon stuck into the dragon's thick scales upon contact. "...Huh?" The Ancient Dragon roared as it shoved Alex off of it, and knocking her weapon out of her hands. Her eyes following her weapon, Alex suddenly felt a crushing grip around her entire body. The dragon had her in its claws and she couldn't break free. Alex stared at the monster, eyes widening. "Uh oh…" The Ancient Dragon brought Alex close to her, opening its mouth wide. Gasping, Alex desperately reached out for her weapon. "Lex!" IF, who was running into the fray, sped up. Meanwhile, Neptune was rubbing tears out of her eyes. Quatars out and ready, she began slicing at the Ancient Dragon's legs as soon as she reached it. Just like with Alex's gunblade, IF's weapons bounced off the dragon's scales harmlessly. As the Ancient Dragon's jaw began to close over Alex's upper body, her gunblade reappeared in her hand. Alex, acting on instinct, thrusted her gunblade upwards and her free arm downwards. The gunblade lodged itself between the dragon's upper rows of teeth, while Alex hand clasped onto the dragon's gums. The latter of which caused Alex to convulse and nearly have the dragon's jaw collapse on her. "Ew- Ew- Ew!" Even with her newfound strength, Alex was struggling to keep the dragon's teeth at bay. "This. Is. Gross!" Glancing up, IF let out a frustrated grunt and pulled out her pistol. The girl began frantically alternating between swiping and shooting at the dragon. "Hold on little sis!" Neptune, having cleared her eyes of any annoying tears, rushed onto the scene. "Imma comin!" The dragon's jaw began to start closing on Alex. "Please, hurry!" A sparkle appeared in Neptune's eyes as she held two large sword in both hands. "Don't ya worry!" Neptune leaped towards the Ancient Dragon's stomach, crossing both arms. "Raging Rush!" Alex froze as the attack's name reached her ears. "That sounds like…" Releasing a flurry of slashes into the Dragon's softer belly, Neptune raised both arms above one side of her head and swung down as hard as she could. Noticing Neptune's attacks causing the dragon to flinch, IF kicked off the monster's leg and swung her quatars into the cuts that Neptune made. Backflipping off of the Ancient Dragon's stomach, IF pointed her pistol at the injuries and emptied her clip into it. Neptune also pulled out her own pistol and did the same. The barrage of bullets forced the Ancient Dragon to yank Alex out of its mouth, crying in pain. Relieved from not being eaten, Alex felt herself slam against the floor with a loud thud. The dragon had thrown her with all its strength as it backed up in pain. Rushing towards Alex, Neptune picked up the girl while IF kept her eyes on the Ancient Dragon as she backed up. Once Neptune had moved a considerable distance away from the monster, she gently placed Alex on the floor. "You okay, Lexi?" Alex pushed herself to her knees, nodding in a jerky fashion. "I'm good. I… think?" Neptune smiled and turned back to the Ancient Dragon. The monster had turned away and its head bent forward. The sounds of licking could be heard coming from it. "Alright, here's the deal. You know the thing where I did something cool back there? That was one of my special attacks. All of us have one. You should find yours and use it!" Upon hearing Neptune's voice, the Ancient Dragon whipped its body around and released a fiercer roar than before. "Look deep inside your mind, Lex. Try to remember." The monster began thundering over to the trio. IF patted Neptune on the shoulder, with the purple-haired girl nodded in response. Without another word, IF ran towards the dragon. Alex tried to reach out to IF but Neptune caught her arm, put at her side, and then put both of her hands on Alex's shoulders. "Okay. The two of us will distract it, and we'll try to take its attention to us. Aim for its belly and unleash your special attack. Ready?" Alex stared at her hands, closing her eyes. "Ready!" Neptune grinned and pulled Alex to her feet. "Alrighty! Let's do this. Raagh!" Letting out the most cheerful battle cry that Alex could ever hear, Neptune ran ahead. Using her speed, Neptune caught up with IF and the two looked towards each other. With one quick nod between the two, and the duo restarted their assault on the dragon. The Ancient Dragon thrusted both of its claws at the two girls. The two pulled away from each other, dodging both arms. Running behind the dragon, IF and Neptune slashed at its legs, and made noticeable cuts into back of its legs. Small drops of blood began to slowly leak out from the cuts. The Ancient Dragon turned around, attempting to use its tail to swipe at Neptune. Acting quickly, Neptune leapt over the dragon's tail and continuously ran behind the dragon. Firing at the injuries at the dragon's legs, the monster desperately continued its assault on Neptune. With each swipe the dragon made, Neptune danced out of the dragon's grasp. Occasionally, the girl made a pose or a face as if she was enjoying herself. Meanwhile, IF took the chance to step back and glance at Alex. The girl back on her feet, to IF's relief. Alex currently had her eyes closed, one of her eyes twitched as she racked her brain and Nepgear's memories to find her special move. Letting out a concerned but faithful grunt, IF turned back and held a palm out towards the dragon. "Demon Flames!" Bursts of fire spontaneously appeared around the dragon's body, causing to flinch. Neptune took this chance to back away from the monster and collect herself. The dragon reached out to Neptune, but retracted its arm as it was engulfed in flames. IF turned to Alex once again. Alex was now pressing her fingers against her temples, slightly slouching and bending her knees. "Anything?" IF called out to Alex. The girl responded by frowning. "I'm trying!" Alex said as she began knocking against her head with her knuckles. "Why can't I think of anything?!" Alex thought to herself. "Help me, Nepgear..." Alex took a deep breath, remembering Nepgear's words. "I am Alexandra Rose, but I'm also Nepgear... I just need to accept her as a part of me…" Alex's mind was filled the precise schematics for Purple Sister's gunblade. "These images!" Alex smiled as her chest welled with hope. "I can feel our bond! I'm getting there!" Alex saw several memories of Nepgear using her weapon, sometimes as an outright gun. Other times, she'd summon her own robots to give her cover fire while she combo-ed the enemy. While this was useful, and cool, Alex knew that she didn't have enough power to pull it off right now. "ALEX! You can do it! Nngh!" IF had caught the dragon's claw between her quatars, her legs shaking underneath the dragon's force. Opening her eyes to see IF struggling against their opponent, Alex hastily closed her eyes again, her breathing speeding up. "Just a little bit more…" Alex thought to herself. "There's one last memory! One where she-" Alex's eyes opened up, shining as the name came to her. "That's it!" Alex cried as she flipped a dial on her sword, "Limiter Release!" "Yeah, Lil Sis!" Neptune cheered as she dodged the dragon's tail again. "You can Nep this thing up!" A sudden spike in Share Energy resonated within Alex's body. As the energy within Alex grew, her Gunblade and her eyes began to glow.. Taking a deep breath, Alex then shouted, "M.P.B.L. Overdrive!" Leaping off the ground, Alex flew towards the dragon. "I'll use all I have on this!" Holding her gunblade out, she spun into the dragon with her sword. The sword plunged into the dragon's abdomen, and with all her might, she lifted the dragon off the ground and threw into the air. This allowed IF to drop onto the ground, relieved. While Neptune rushed over to her friend, Alex rapidly shot at the dragon. With each shot, the Ancient Dragon rose higher and higher. As the dragon was reaching the peak of its forced flight, she shot the dragon one last time to keep it airborne a little longer. Then, Alex flew towards it and stabbed the monster right in the stomach, using her new CPU strength to hold her gunblade- and the monster- kept in in it a bright yellow energy from her weapon, she pulled away from the dragon, leaving it in the air inside an electric cage. Alex landed and raised her gunblade high into the air, then lowered so that she was pointing straight at the Ancient Dragon. After a moment, Alex pulled the trigger. A huge laser released from the gunblade. As the laser connected with the monster, Alex grabbed steadied her sword-arm and closed her eyes. Pulling the trigger further, the laser grew in size and enveloped the Ancient Dragon in white light. Alex turned away, her eyes still closed. Once her back faced the monster, the Ancient Dragon suddenly exploded in a sphere of blue energy. Once the sphere dissipated, the dragon dropped onto the floor. The monster lay still without breathing. Alex smirked to herself as the name of Nepgear's special move came to her. "Celestial Severance." "Woah…" IF gaped as she witnessed the whole thing, "That was awesome, I knew you had it in you Gea- Lex…" IF was breathing heavily as she let her muscles rest from the Ancient Dragon's standoff. Share code appeared around the beast, and Alex immediately took out her digivice and pointed it at the monster. "Share Code, Digitize!" The Dragon disappeared as its code was absorbed and purified, leaving only the Sharicite covered in a shadowy aura. Alex landed in front of the crystal. The Sharcite flickered in her presence and her digivice reacted to the crystal. Share Code erupted from the device and flew into the crystal. The crystal slowly lost its dark aura and began to glow brightly. It flew around, circled Alex for a second, and placed itself in the center of the room. The Sharcite began to release its own energy, which started flowing through Planeptower. Soon, the tower began powering up. For some reason, Neptune was singing some sort of triumphant song that felt at home in Lowee as this was happening. Every light in the Planeptower powered on, giving the place the purple color that it had previously lacked. With the power back on, every single of the computers in the Basilicom began to turn on as well. Histoire sighed happily. "We aren't winning yet, but it's nice that we're starting to make some headway now. It's better than running away all the time." "Miss Histy?" Alex called. Alex was standing over by one of the larger terminals showing a larger map of the city. While the Planeptower had regained its luster, the rest of the city still looked pretty rundown. "That's strange…. The Sharicite should be giving power to the rest of the city…" IF mused as she stared at the terminal. Alex stared at the terminal. Suddenly, her eyes widened. Alex immediately punched in some commands on the keyboard. According to Nepgear's memories, she was the one who designed the system, Alex knew the system very intimately. Alex internally thanked her bond with Nepgear once again. With a couple more commands, the terminal began change the outlook of the city to a grid-based version of it and filled it with color. While Planeptower was highlighted with a purple overlay, the rest of the city was a dull grey. "It seems like there's something blocking the share energy from reaching the rest of the city." Alex reasoned. "Look, the purple light means that this area has power." She then pointed to the grey regions. "These areas don't have power." "That is troubling…" Histoire held her chin in thought, "Miss Rose, I want you and the others to investigate this with Compa and IF." "Are you sure? I-I'm the only one who can transform… I couldn't bear it if any of the others got hurt." Histoire shook her head, giving the girl a reassuring smile. "IF and Compa are more than capable of protecting you all. We do need to cover as much ground as possible to find the cause of this share blockage." Alex nodded, still nervous, but with a renewed sense of responsibility. Not just because of Nepgear, but also because she promised to help in any way she could. ==NEPSTATION 02== Neptune: Nepstation! And even though Big Me is in this chapter, no one can beat the OG Nep Master! With me is Alexandra Rose and Underling! Underling: That's not my damn name! Alex: To be fair, Miss Underling, that's the only name I remember you having. Underling: *Growls* Neptune: Well to settle the issue, Can you tell us what your actual name is? Underling: It's Lin- Neptune: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR NAME IS! Underling: W-What? Neptune: Cause next time, The Resistance is going to find you guys and my beautiful country will be restored! Tune in next time for, "The Tallest of mountains"! Underling: Did you seriously just set me up to do an episode preview? Alex: Miss Neptune sure is a handful.

Nepalese authorities warn death toll is likely to rise following worst quake in Himalayan nation in more than 80 years More than 1,000 people have been killed after a major earthquake hit Nepal, toppling buildings in the capital, Kathmandu, and triggering avalanches in the Himalayas. Nepalese police said the death toll in the Himalayan kingdom had risen to 1,130, while 34 fatalities were reported in northern India and one in Bangladesh. Most of the Nepalese fatalities are from the Kathmandu Valley, where 634 people were reported to be dead, with at least 300 more in the capital. Nepalese authorities earlier warned there were also likely to be significant casualties in the remote districts nearer the epicentre of the earthquake, 50 miles north-west of Kathmandu. Deadly Everest avalanche triggered by Nepal earthquake Read more At least 13 people were killed on Everest after the quake triggered a massive avalanche. It trapped other climbers higher on the mountain while those in base camp ran for their lives to escape falling ice and rock. Other base camps nearby are also thought to have been affected, possibly hit by major avalanches triggered by the tremor. Thousands of people in Kathmandu are bedding down outside for the night, fearing further aftershocks. In the old city of Patan, which adjoins southern Kathmandu, residents clutched blankets as they gathered in open areas and temple grounds. “Everyone is scared of a repeat”, said Rabin Shakya, 29. “I rushed outside when I felt the earthquake. I was terrified. I’ve stayed outside all day.” Shakya will spend the night in a local plant nursery along with about 200 other residents of Tapahita Nyadhal. Laxmi Bhatacharja, 70, who was also planning to spend the night outdoor, said: “When the earthquake happened, I ran outside without my shoes. My heart was racing. I’m staying here outside. I’m too afraid to go back indoors.” In the neighbouring community of Nyakha Chowk, about 1,500 residents assembled around a Buddhist temple for the night where dinner was being cooked in two giant pots for the whole community. “Everyone has made a donation,” said Vidho Ratna. At least two ancient temples in the historic Patan Durbar Square have been completely destroyed. Victims from the square were taken to the nearby Bir hospital, where doctors battled to save lives and treat the wounded. Nepal earthquake: nation hit by worst tremor in 80 years - live updates Read more Gajendra Mani Shah, a doctor, said the hospital was dealing mainly with head traumas and limb injuries from falling rubble. He estimated that the hospital had treated about 400 patients and at least 50 had died. Victims at the hospital were lying in rows on mattresses, surrounded by blood-soaked tissues and overflowing bedpans. Patients also lined the corridors, hooked up to IVs hanging off metal railings. A family were sat with their 20-year-old relative, Kanchan Sunwar, who had collapsed when the earthquake struck. She had been with friends in the main square when they saw the buildings sway and start to fall. Her friends said she fainted and has been in and out of consciousness since she was brought to the hospital. “She’s in shock,” her family said. The hospital was working over capacity into the evening, with doctors being called in from leave. Erabesh Gyawali was not meant to be on shift on Saturday, but he came into work after the first tremor hit. Gyawali said he was with his wife riding their scooter when the quake happened. They were thrown off the bike and narrowly missed being hit by falling rubble from a building. For the most part, Kathmandu has shown remarkable structural and communal resilience. Subarna Khadka, 44, of New Baneshwor, was bathing when the first tremor struck. “I tried to come out hurriedly when I experienced the shake, but couldn’t come outside as the door was jammed,” he said. “I almost lost my hope of life, as I was trapped in the bathroom. But my wife rescued me once the shaking got quiet. I could only pray to God for life.” Officials in India said 34 people had been killed in the country, with dozens more injured. More than 100 people were injured, as well as the one death, in Bangladesh. The earthquake, which measured 7.9 on the Richter scale, sent tremors throughout much of south Asia at 11.41 Nepal local time on Saturday. Within minutes, hundreds of people with injuries were being brought to the main hospital in central Kathmandu, with further reports of damage and injuries coming in from nearby towns and the city of Pokhara in the west of the country. Jamie McGoldrick, the UN resident coordinator for Nepal, said: “It’s difficult to say the extent of the damage. A full-scale assessment is not yet complete, but this was a particularly large earthquake and a very shallow one so we are expecting high and significant damage, especially in Lamjung, Gorkha district [the epicentre of the earthquake]. There’s no doubt it’s a very big earthquake, but we are fortunate it was not in, or closer to Kathmandu, or the impact would have been catastrophic.” Kathmandu’s Dharhara tower, a popular tourist site, has collapsed, raising fears of significant loss of life. Two police officers at the 60-metre tower said up to 160 tickets had been issued to visitors at the time of the quake. Sujata Thapa, 22, said: “I was passing by Dharhara [tower] when I felt a huge tremor of earthquake. I stood still. In a few seconds, I saw Dharhara falling down. People were screaming in pain.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Historic Dharahara tower collapses in Kathmandu, Nepal, after the earthquake Photograph: EPA Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world and ill-equipped to deal with a major disaster. The country’s only international airport – in Kathmandu – was closed as the tremors continued. People tried to shift piles of rubble with their bare hands in a bid to reach survivors. Most of the buildings that collapsed appeared to be older, weaker brick structures. The quake brought scenes of panic. Hospitals reported hundreds of people seeking treatment for injuries from falling debris in the city. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A map released by the US Geological Survey showing the location of the 7.9-magnitude earthquake. Photograph: USGS/EPA National radio warned people to stay outdoors and maintain calm because more aftershocks were feared. A 6.6-magnitude aftershock hit about an hour after the initial quake. Smaller aftershocks continued to arrive every few minutes throughout much of early afternoon. Earthquake in Nepal - in pictures Read more The Kathmandu valley is densely populated with nearly 2.5 million people and the quality of buildings is often poor. Nepal suffered its worst recorded earthquake in 1934, which measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan, killing more than 8,500 people. It was hit by another deadly quake in 2011, when at least five people died.

If you're not a Linux or Unix developer, you've never heard of systemd, the new Linux-specific system and service manager. In Linux developer circles, however, nothing else ticks off many programmers more than this replacement for the Unix and Linux's traditional sysvinit daemon. Systemd provides a standard process for controlling what programs run when a Linux system boots up. While systemd is compatible with SysV and Linux Standard Base (LSB) init scripts, systemd is meant to be a drop-in replacement for these older ways of getting a Linux system running. Systemd, which was created by Red Hat's Lennart Poettering and Kay Sievers, does more than start the core programs running. It also starts a journal of system activity, the network stack, a cron-style job scheduler, user logins, and many other jobs. That may sound good to you, but some developers hate it. On the site Boycott Systemd, the authors lash out at systemd stating: "Systemd flies in the face of the Unix philosophy: 'do one thing and do it well,' representing a complex collection of dozens of tightly coupled binaries1. Its responsibilities grossly exceed that of an init system, as it goes on to handle power management, device management, mount points, cron, disk encryption, socket API/inetd, syslog, network configuration, login/session management, readahead, GPT partition discovery, container registration, hostname/locale/time management, and other things. Keep it simple, stupid.” Because systemd puts so many of a program's eggs in one system basket, systemd's critics argue that "there are tons of scenarios in which it can crash and bring down the whole system. But in addition, this means that plenty of non-kernel system upgrades will now require a reboot. Enjoy your new Windows 9 Linux system!” They go on to argue that systemd's journal files, which are stored in a binary format, are potentially corruptible. In addition, they find that systemd is incompatible with other members of the Unix operating system family. They also flaw it for its "monolithic, heavily desktop-oriented,” design, which makes it a poor choice for many Linux use cases Poettering has addressed these concerns many times since systemd appeared but the criticisms keep coming. What makes all this arguing over systemd especially odd is that, despite all this hate, it's been widely adopted. The GNOME 3.8 desktop and newer now requires systemd. Fedora, Red Hat's community Linux, was the first major distribution to start using it as a default. Since then, Debian Linux , openSUSE, and Ubuntu have all adopted systemd. So what do Linux's leaders think of all this? I asked them and this is what they told me. Linus Torvalds said: "I don't actually have any particularly strong opinions on systemd itself. I've had issues with some of the core developers that I think are much too cavalier about bugs and compatibility, and I think some of the design details are insane (I dislike the binary logs, for example), but those are details, not big issues." Theodore "Ted" Ts'o, a leading Linux kernel developer and a Google engineer, sees systemd as potentially being more of a problem. "The bottom line is that they are trying to solve some real problems that matter in some use cases. And, [that] sometimes that will break assumptions made in other parts of the system.” Another concern that Ts'o made — which I've heard from many other developers — is that the systemd move was made too quickly: "The problem is sometimes what they break are in other parts of the software stack, and so long as it works for GNOME, they don't necessarily consider it their responsibility to fix the rest of the Linux ecosystem.” This, as Ts'o sees it, feeds into another problem: "Systemd problems might not have mattered that much, except that GNOME has a similar attitude; they only care for a small subset of the Linux desktop users, and they have historically abandoned some ways of interacting the Desktop in the interest of supporting touchscreen devices and to try to attract less technically sophisticated users. If you don't fall in the demographic of what GNOME supports, you're sadly out of luck. (Or you become a second class citizen, being told that you have to rely on GNOME extensions that may break on every single new version of GNOME.)” Ts'o has an excellent point. GNOME 3.x has alienated both users and developers. He continued, "As a result, many traditional GNOME users have moved over to Cinnamon, XFCE, KDE, etc. But as systemd starts subsuming new functions, components like network-manager will only work on systemd or other components that are forced to be used due to a network of interlocking dependencies; and it may simply not be possible for these alternate desktops to continue to function, because there is [no] viable alternative to systemd supported by more and more distributions." Of course, Ts'o continued, "None of these nightmare scenarios have happened yet. The people who are most stridently objecting to systemd are people who are convinced that the nightmare scenario is inevitable so long as we continue on the same course and altitude.” Ts'o is "not entirely certain it's going to happen, but he's afraid it will. What I find puzzling about all this is that even though everyone admits that sysvinit needed replacing and many people dislike systemd, the distributions keep adopting it. Only a few distributions, including Slackware, Gentoo, PCLinuxOS, and Chrome OS, haven't adopted it. It's not like there aren't alternatives. These include Upstart, runit, and OpenRC. If systemd really does turn out to be as bad as some developers fear, there are plenty of replacements waiting in the wings. Indeed, rather than hear so much about how awful systemd is, I'd rather see developers spending their time working on an alternative. Related Stories:

This is Smoky, a female Yorkshire Terrier that served in World War II. Taken on Biak Island, Indonesia in Sept. 1944. About 5,000 enemy soldiers were trapped in caves two miles away. Smoky was found in a foxhole by an American solider during the war and later sold to Cpl. Bill Wynne. She became a wartime sensation, backpacking through the New Guinea jungle and visiting injured soldiers to become one of the first therapy dogs. Wynne found her exceptionally easy to train and she was soon aiding in the war effort, including an assignment to help string communication lines between outposts in the Philippines. You can read Wynne's description of the event in the caption below. Bob Gapp and Bill Wynne set up Smoky when it became imperative that phone wires be strung to the airfield from three squadron areas. A culvert 8" in diameter and 70-feet-long under the taxiway was the logical place. If dug up by hand it would have required many men three days work and the planes to remain operational would have to be moved to the steel matting along the runway. The runway was being bombed daily. Wynne coaxed Smoky through from the far end. She had to climb 4" mounds of sifted sand every 4" feet. She did it in a few minutes. She did it because she was asked to. This was a stunt I dreamed up in New Guinea to draw judges' attention to Smoky for the Best Mascot of the Southwest Pacific Area, SWPA, Theater of Operations. It worked as Smoky was chosen First Prize Mascot in the YANK Contest over more than 400 entries. In my book, you will find the wind collapsed the chute and Smoky was blown clear of the catching blanket on the seventh jump -- one jump too many. She could have been killed. June 1945. The U.S. Army 120th General Hospital in Manila, took in the Battle of Luzon casualties. Smoky is held by Barbara Wood Smith American Red Cross on a bed of a wounded GI. After the war, the pair traveled the country, visiting Hollywood and performing on local television shows. Smoky died in 1957, but a statue in Cleveland, Ohio immortalizes her, and at 91, Wynne still remembers his companion's heroic efforts. Smoky Yorkie Doodle Dandy and Dogs of All Wars Memorial, Cleveland Metroparks. Dedicated Nov. 11, 2005. If you'd like to read more about Smoky and Bill, head on over to Facebook, or you can pick up a copy of Wynne's memoir, "Yorkie Doodle Dandy: Or, the Other Woman Was a Real Dog." Take a look at more photos of the pair below, and if you're looking for a companion of your own, head on over to the ASPCA adoption site or Petfinder.com. Smoky served as a therapy dog in Army and Navy/Marine hospitals in Australia. She began in Nadzab, New Guinea in July 1944 at the 233rd Station Hospital when she was taken on rounds with C/O Maj. Dr. Charles W. Mayo of the Mayo Clinic. YANK Down Under Magazine selected Smoky as the best Mascot in the Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations in July 1944. Her silver trophy is in her display case at the AKC Museum of the Dog in St. Louis. Newly discharged Cpl. Bill Wynne of Cleveland and Smoky are glad to home from the far Pacific. Smoky spent 18 months in combat. Dec. 1945.

Now playing: Watch this: Verizon to offer unlimited and rollover data? Verizon is about to shake up its wireless plans. An image from a Verizon test site spotted by The Consumerist has the nation's largest wireless carrier offering a rollover-like feature that allows customers to take unused data with them to the following month. There's also a "safety mode" that removes overage fees, and some customers will get more access to their plans while in Canada and Mexico. A Verizon spokeswoman declined to comment on the image or the changes, only noting, "We're going to have some fireworks next week -- stay tuned." Verizon It's no coincidence that Verizon may be targeting these three areas; rivals AT&T and T-Mobile have rolled out some or all of these features over the last year. The move underscores the competitive environment that even market leader Verizon faces, which has yielded better deals and more perks for consumers. Verizon calls its rollover plan "Carryover Data," which according to the image will be available to all customers. It's similar to AT&T's Rollover plan and T-Mobile's Data Stash program (AT&T owns the rights to the term "rollover," which is why T-Mobile uses a different name), which were both announced within a month of each other starting in December 2014. This marks a reversal of Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo's comments from last year that it wouldn't offer a rollover plan of its own. "We're a leader, not a follower," he said in an interview in January, just weeks after AT&T introduced its data rollover plan. "Safety mode" eliminates the prospect of an overage fee, and reduces the speed of the service until the end of the month. It's similar to plans offered by T-Mobile and Sprint, which have previously been touted as "unlimited plans." It will be a free option to anyone with an XL plan, which offers 12 gigabytes of data for $80 a month, or an XXL plan, which offers 18GB for $100 a month. Customers with smaller plans can pay $5 extra to access "safety mode." Likewise, customers on XL or XXL plans will get unlimited calls from the US to Mexico and Canada. They'll also be able to take the talk, text message and data allowance on their plans and use them while in those two countries at no extra charge. Customers with lower plans can pay an additional fee to access this benefit, but it's unclear what the fee is. Both AT&T and T-Mobile offer similar features for their customers.

Share Pinterest Email Alex Zanardi faces obstacles if he is to fulfill a quest to race in the Indianapolis 500 next May for the first time. Passing an IndyCar physical and driver's test or maneuvering a retrofitted race car with hand controls shouldn't be among them, said series race director Beaux Barfield. Zanardi won't be afforded special treatment, Barfield said, and he likely wouldn't need it anyway. “He would have to pass the same sort of physical and test that any other driver would, and based on what I've seen his physical ability is, it certainly doesn't look like there would be any problems or stumbling blocks. I could confidently say he would likely get his physical passed and get a license,” Barfield told Autoweek. “Some of the modifications to the car, in terms of how he controls the throttle and brake, would obviously have to be dealt with, but there again, I don't necessarily see any of that as something that would keep him from doing what he wants to do, if he so chooses to come this direction.” Zanardi, a two-time CART champion who lost both legs in a Sept. 15, 2001 Champ Car crash at Lausitz, Germany, has become an international sensation again after winning two individual gold medals and a team silver for Italy last week at the London Paralympics. The gregarious 45-year-old has been a source of amazement and inspiration to friends and onlookers alike, thanks to the zeal and fortitude with which he approached a new, potentially devastating chapter of his life. Zanardi set the collective hearts of the motorsports community atwitter by quipping that former Ganassi Racing teammate, current IndyCar team owner Jimmy Vasser had tacitly offered to field a car for him at Indianapolis next season if he won gold. Zanardi, who has driven touring cars competitively since his accident, never started the Indianapolis 500 because of the CART-IndyCar split. Barfield said the design of the current IndyCar race vehicle “takes out several steps of what they had to do to put him in an Indy car the last time,” when a Champ Car machine was rigged with hand controls so he could ceremoniously complete the last 13 laps he missed at Lausitz. He finished those laps at a speed that would have qualified him fifth in the race. “The reality is, with the new car, the clutch is already on the steering wheel,” Barfield said. “I think there was a cable or a fly-by-wire system where he had literally a little trigger in his right finger to control the throttle (on the Champ Car). I don't remember what the brake situation was on that car, but it obviously worked and was effective.” Barfield added that Zanardi would have “plenty of time” to complete any pre-Indianapolis vetting if a program was launched by February or March. Barfield said he has not heard if Zanardi or surrogates have inquired about a possible bid, would expect first contact to come through the commercial division. Vasser, who co-owns KV Racing, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel last week, “I said, 'You go win the gold, and we'll talk about the 500. We'll figure it out. We'll get it done.' Vasser added, however, a better fit for Indianapolis would be with Ganassi Racing. The remaining hurdles are emotional, financial and logistical. As Vasser told the Journal-Sentinel, “The biggest hurdle is for Alex to 100 percent decide that he wants to do it. Then the second is obviously to put the funding package in place, the sponsor package. There should be a lot of support for it, I'd imagine.” If anyone is to rebuff Zanardi and his possible historic bid, it won't be Barfield, he said. He knows better. “A person like that–and I'd stop short of addressing his physical abilities as any kind of disability–but anybody with any kind of disability like that, with his kind of spirit, if you even imply 'you can't' he's certainly going to figure out a way he can,” he said. “I certainly wouldn't be one to be in the way of that.”

Ben Hogan hits a 1 iron approach on the 18th hole at Merion during the 1950 US Open.The photograph taken became one of the most famous golf photographs of all time. By: Mark Baron – On June 10, 1950 Ben Hogan played in the third and fourth round of the U.S. Open (the final two rounds were played in one day up until 1965 when the USGA changed it to a four-day tournament) In the third round, the morning round on the final day Saturday, Lloyd Mangrum shot a one under par 69 to take a one shot lead over Dutch Harrison and two strokes over Ben who shot a two over par 72. In the fourth round, Ben needed a par on the final hole to tie Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio. However, getting to the 72nd hole was almost a miracle in itself. It was a mere 16 months prior that Ben was involved in a near fatal head on collision with a Greyhound Bus and was given the prognosis that he would never be able to walk again without being in excruciating pain and that he would most certainly never be able to play competitive golf again. On the 12th hole, Hogan almost fell down, and he could barely walk. Hogan told the caddy that he could not go on, but the caddy reportedly said, “No sir, Mr. Hogan. I don’t work for no quitters. I will see you on the next tee.” He played the 18th heroically, slashing a second shot, one iron, to 40 feet from the pin. It was at that moment that Hy Peskin snapped arguably, the most famous golf photograph, perhaps the most famous in all sports photograph. Taken from behind Hogan, at the end of his follow through, in perfect form, with his right heel up exposing the extra spike Ben had customized in his shoes, his 1-iron parallel to the ground and with the thousands of spectators mesmerized by the flight of the ball. Ben finished the 18th hole with a par and shot a three over par 74 to finish in a three way tie with Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio. He went on to win the playoff the next day completing the greatest comebacks in sports history. Mark Baron Mark Baron is a Ben Hogan expert who posts daily about the legend. Check out Mark's huge following on the Ben Hogan Facebook Page and stay tuned for special Hogan anniversaries for Mark's insight. Check out the page here: www.facebook.com/benhogangolf

If anything is reliable these days, it’s people’s ability to become outraged and offended over seemingly well-meaning gestures. Case in point, the United Nations dropping Wonder Woman as it’s honorary ambassador amid claims that she is too hot. The Amazon was chosen because, the U.N. said, it addresses the issues “about women and girls everywhere, who are wonder women in their own right, and the men and boys who support their struggle for gender equality.” Seems pretty straight-forward.. Apparently, though, some people took offense to this particular selection, starting a petition claiming that “a large-breasted white woman of impossible proportions, scantily clad in a shimmery, thigh-baring body suit with an American flag motif and knee-high boots” was not someone people around the world should be looking up to. First of all, what is wrong with a large-breasted woman with knee-high boots? As someone who has both, they are 1. fun, and 2. awesome. And a thigh-baring suit? Sorry, let me just take out my ruler and make sure I’m abiding by the modesty policy. Anyone who’s gone to the movies or watched a cartoon in the last fifteen years knows that female leads in the superhero universe are uncommon–and ones that aren’t completely damaged, evil, or a living embodiment of Curate’s Egg are even rarer. That’s been changing lately, but what we’ve been seeing so far isn’t much. Wonder Woman is one of the few strong female superheroes who isn’t always finding herself in an abusive relationship, or who lets herself get kicked around by other men in her universe. She kicks ass, is concerned about the environment, and encourages women everywhere to be better and stronger before they are told they can be otherwise. She’s even pro-trans (If you’ll notice, by the way, her costume in Justice League: War is more conservative than usual, and they even point out her controversial looks in the clip provided). Wonder Woman is aware of her sexiness, and she owns it. She stands up to Superman, and, frankly, she’s kind of a bitch… Sure she’s got big tits. Sure she’s white. That doesn’t mean she can’t be a role model. The people condemning her for her appearance are no less shallow or superficial than the fans they’re trying to shame. If you want to decry the U.N.’s choice for an arguably trivial position being filled by a fictional character, do so because of what Wonder Woman stands for: maybe she’s too violent, maybe she is so pro-feminism that she can sometimes put the pussy on a pedestal. Don’t chain her to your oppressive, narrow-minded standards because she fails to check every box on your progressivity requirements.

The director of The Old Republic says it would be terrible if something went wrong just as the game was getting going. After so many years of work on Star Wars: The Old Republic BioWare wants a smooth, bug-free launch, and that's one of the reasons the studio hasn't announced a launch date yet. Game director James Ohlen says that BioWare is keeping quiet about release dates in order to give itself the time to make sure that the game lives up to expectations. He said that with so much excitement and hype around the game - The Old Republic is apparently breaking EA pre-order records - it would be devastating if the game's servers went down or some other catastrophe occurred. Not just for the fans either, the development team - some of whom had been working on the game since 2006 - would be pretty disappointed, too, if something went wrong. Ohlen also said that players didn't quite know about everything that The Old Republic had to offer yet. He said that while most of the game's really big components - things like the space battles or the warzones - had been revealed, there was at least one more announcement to come on that scale. There would be a steady stream on information right up until launch, he added, but he could say any more without getting in trouble with the game's PR department. Star Wars: The Old Republic is available to pre-order now, and theoretically comes out later this year. Source: Newsarama

The man behind many jazz greats has passed away. Jazz engineer Rudy Van Gelder has died at age 91. He recorded with legendary artists like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and more and an impressive majority of the Blue Note Records catalog. He was viewed by some as the most important jazz engineer of all time. He also worked with Prestige Records and Savoy Records. Rudy Van Gelder has died, at 91. Truly sad news for the world of recorded music, jazz first and foremost. #RIP #RVG pic.twitter.com/VfpdVEVgkR — Nate Chinen (@natechinen) August 25, 2016 One of Van Gelder’s biggest contributions to the genre was recording Coltrane’s definitive A Love Supreme over 50 years ago in December of 1965. It was recorded in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, the state that Van Gelder called home and carved out a special place for jazz by working out of his own studios, his first being a special control room designed and built by his parents in their Hackensack, NJ home in 1946. The studio was immortalized in the mid-1950s by Monk’s song ‘Hackensack’. Listen to the track below.

Mayors in Brampton and Mississauga welcomed proposed Ontario government legislation that could bring photo radar to local roadways. On Tuesday, Nov. 8, Premier Kathleen Wynne revealed her government’s plan to introduce legislation that would allow Ontario municipalities to use the cameras in school and community safety zones. Measures under the legislation include the use of automated speed enforcement (ASE) technology, which could take photographs of a speeder’s licence plates. Municipalities could also lower speed limits and expand the use of Red Light Cameras. “I welcome news that the Wynne government will empower municipalities to install safety cameras near schools to reduce dangerous speeding and protect families,” Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie said in a news release. Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey was also thankful for additional tools to keep roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists of all ages. “Far too many cyclist and pedestrian injuries have been attributed to car speed and driver distraction and as such city council will consult with our local school boards, cycling committees and seniors groups for their opinions and advice,” said Jeffrey in an email to media. The former New Democrat government introduced photo radar as a pilot project in 1994, but the program was criticized as cash grab and shelved when the Conservatives took office in 1995. Crombie, who promised to hold council discussions with the community, insisted safety and not tax revenues must be the main objective. Revenues must be invested in community safety, Crombie said.

Spin had a great blog post a few days ago on Mean Shift Clustering. It’s a powerful algorithm with a ton of applications, but an Achille’s heel: The most glaring disadvantage is its slowness. …it can take a long time to execute. The one silver lining is that, while it is slow, it is also embarrassingly parallelizable. How many times has that happened to you? Your code solves a small problem perfectly, but it just isn’t fast enough for the real world. Sometimes the solution can be to just find a bigger computer. Luckily almost every computer has a bigger computer inside it: the graphics hardware. Where your computer’s CPU might have 8 cores, its GPU can have hundreds. OpenCL is a standard framework that gives you access to all that power. The sample I’m going to show was built on Mac OS 10.10 running Xcode 6. Apple has done a nice job integrating OpenCL into their environment while preserving the data types and language features defined in OpenCL. Hopefully Windows and Linux will be in similar good situations. Much of it will come down to your graphics hardware vendor support for OpenCL–debugging especially may be rough. I’ve found online materials and Apple’s documentation to be usable, but a good book really helped. “OpenCL Programming Guide” was a nice introduction and also included useful summaries of data types and built-in functions that really helped. I started by creating a Mac OS X command line app in Xcode. Then I added the OpenCL framework. The OpenCL documentation on Apple’s developer site is brief and worth reading. Apple’s OpenCL can use a grand central dispatch queue on either the GPU or the CPU. Be very careful running OpenCL code on a CPU queue because it’s a lot less efficient than the GPU for running massively parallel code. My machine was completely hammered at 800% utilization with the fans at max. Running on the GPU queue in comparison has machine utilization at less than 100% with the fan off. dispatch_queue_t queue = gcl_create_dispatch_queue(CL_DEVICE_TYPE_GPU, NULL); if (queue == NULL) { queue = gcl_create_dispatch_queue(CL_DEVICE_TYPE_CPU, NULL); fprintf(stderr, "Warning: Running on CPU "); } else { char name[128]; cl_device_id gpu = gcl_get_device_id_with_dispatch_queue(queue); clGetDeviceInfo(gpu, CL_DEVICE_NAME, 128, name, NULL); fprintf(stderr, "Running on GPU %s ", name); } That said, there’s one good reason to run on the CPU during development: your GPU has no memory protection. A bug in the code running on the GPU can be very difficult to find. I strongly recommend a disciplined approach going from verification of the algorithm in plain C code, followed by porting to OpenCL on the CPU and finally to the GPU. Which brings us to the code that actually runs on the GPU: kernel void mean_shift_point ( global float2 * points , global float2 * original_points , size_t num_points , float bandwidth , global float2 * shifted_points ) { float base_weight = 1 . / ( bandwidth * sqrt ( 2 . * M_PI_F ) ) ; float2 shift = { 0 , 0 } ; float scale = 0 ; size_t i = get_global_id ( 0 ) ; for ( size_t j = 0 ; j < num_points ; j ++ ) { float dist = distance ( points [ i ] , original_points [ j ] ) ; float weight = base_weight * exp ( - 0.5f * pow ( dist / bandwidth , 2 . f ) ) ; shift += original_points [ j ] * weight ; scale += weight ; } shifted_points [ i ] = shift / scale ; } kernel void mean_shift_point(global float2 *points, global float2 *original_points, size_t num_points, float bandwidth, global float2 *shifted_points) { float base_weight = 1. / (bandwidth * sqrt(2. * M_PI_F)); float2 shift = { 0, 0 }; float scale = 0; size_t i = get_global_id(0); for (size_t j = 0; j < num_points; j++) { float dist = distance(points[i], original_points[j]); float weight = base_weight * exp(-0.5f * pow(dist / bandwidth, 2.f)); shift += original_points[j] * weight; scale += weight; } shifted_points[i] = shift / scale; } That looks like C code, but it’s really a “kernel” that is compiled by a separate OpenCL toolchain provided by your graphics hardware vendor. The language has nice support for small vectors ( float2 for example is a 2D point) and lots of built-in and optimized math routines. The main difficulty in writing OpenCL code is getting the data in and out of the GPU. You have two copies of the data that the kernel will work on: one is accessible by the CPU and the other by the GPU (called the “device” by OpenCL). The CPU is responsible for preparing the data, loading it from disk, sending it to the GPU, etc. The copy of the data in the GPU is only for use by the GPU–it’s not in the same memory as your CPU uses. Here are the data buffers that the CPU uses: cl_float2 * points = ( cl_float2 * ) malloc ( BUFFER_SIZE ) ; cl_float2 * original_points = ( cl_float2 * ) malloc ( BUFFER_SIZE ) ; cl_float2 * shifted_points = ( cl_float2 * ) malloc ( BUFFER_SIZE ) ; for ( int i = 0 ; i < NUM_VALUES ; i ++ ) { points [ i ] . x = ( cl_float ) i ; points [ i ] . y = ( cl_float ) i ; } memcpy ( original_points , points , BUFFER_SIZE ) ; cl_float2 *points = (cl_float2 *)malloc(BUFFER_SIZE); cl_float2 *original_points = (cl_float2 *)malloc(BUFFER_SIZE); cl_float2 *shifted_points = (cl_float2 *)malloc(BUFFER_SIZE); for (int i = 0; i < NUM_VALUES; i++) { points[i].x = (cl_float)i; points[i].y = (cl_float)i; } memcpy(original_points, points, BUFFER_SIZE); Here are the associated data buffers that the GPU uses: void * device_points = gcl_malloc ( BUFFER_SIZE , points , CL_MEM_READ_ONLY | CL_MEM_COPY_HOST_PTR ) ; void * device_original_points = gcl_malloc ( BUFFER_SIZE , original_points , CL_MEM_READ_ONLY | CL_MEM_COPY_HOST_PTR ) ; void * device_shifted_points = gcl_malloc ( BUFFER_SIZE , NULL , CL_MEM_WRITE_ONLY ) ; void *device_points = gcl_malloc(BUFFER_SIZE, points, CL_MEM_READ_ONLY | CL_MEM_COPY_HOST_PTR); void *device_original_points = gcl_malloc(BUFFER_SIZE, original_points, CL_MEM_READ_ONLY | CL_MEM_COPY_HOST_PTR); void *device_shifted_points = gcl_malloc(BUFFER_SIZE, NULL, CL_MEM_WRITE_ONLY); At first I was confused as why they were not properly typed like the CPU data buffers, but then I realized that’s sort of a feature to help prevent you from accidentally using those buffers on the CPU. The only thing you can do with them is pass them to OpenCL functions. Everything is now setup and ready to schedule the kernel on the GPU. This code fits into Apple’s normal multi-threading approach quite well. It will look much different on Windows or Linux, but I’m not so worried about portability that this glue code bothers me. dispatch_sync ( queue , ^ { size_t work_group_size ; gcl_get_kernel_block_workgroup_info ( mean_shift_point_kernel , CL_KERNEL_WORK_GROUP_SIZE , sizeof ( work_group_size ) , & work_group_size , NULL ) ; cl_ndrange range = { 1 , { 0 , 0 , 0 } , { NUM_VALUES , 0 , 0 } , { work_group_size , 0 , 0 } } ; mean_shift_point_kernel ( & range , ( cl_float2 * ) device_points , ( cl_float2 * ) device_original_points , NUM_VALUES , BANDWIDTH , ( cl_float2 * ) device_shifted_points ) ; gcl_memcpy ( shifted_points , device_shifted_points , BUFFER_SIZE ) ; } ) ; dispatch_sync(queue, ^{ size_t work_group_size; gcl_get_kernel_block_workgroup_info(mean_shift_point_kernel, CL_KERNEL_WORK_GROUP_SIZE, sizeof(work_group_size), &work_group_size, NULL); cl_ndrange range = { 1, { 0, 0, 0 }, { NUM_VALUES, 0, 0 }, { work_group_size, 0, 0 } }; mean_shift_point_kernel(&range, (cl_float2 *)device_points, (cl_float2 *)device_original_points, NUM_VALUES, BANDWIDTH, (cl_float2 *)device_shifted_points); gcl_memcpy(shifted_points, device_shifted_points, BUFFER_SIZE); }); If you’re interested in building the code yourself, it’s on github under an MIT license.

After a series of wild outbursts and derivative art stunts, former Disney property Shia LaBeouf is "voluntarily seeking treatment for alcohol addiction." But what precipitated LaBeouf's unraveling? Was it a systemic failure in his MK-ULTRA Monarch slave conditioning? Unblock your Ajna chakra and examine the facts. Item: Roseanne Barr Told Russia Today that "MK-ULTRA Mind Control Rules in Hollywood" Roseanne Barr has talked about this sort of thing before. In 2001, she told Larry King that she believed she had an induced multiple personality disorder because she had "this head shrinker and he says it's deliberately induced, because the CIA is where they started inducing it when after they brought all the Nazis over from Germany to run [the] American Psychiatric Association." Shortly after Michael Jackson's death in the summer of 2009, Roseanne took to her blog to accuse Jackson's father of being "an MK-ULTRA operative [whose] abuse of his own children was used to profit the CIA's programs that follow and study the effects of child abuse on the young, and how their minds can be controlled to such an extent, and with such abuse, that they can be forced to develop talent." These are serious allegations. As you open the gate to your Ajna chakra, (your "third-eye charka" at the center of your brow), breathe deep and let Roseanne's statements pass through into your higher mind. Now, breathe out. Roseanne had been sounding the alarm about MK-ULTRA indoctrination in Hollywood for over a decade when — last year, in the middle of what had clearly been slated as a more jejune sociological segment on Hollywood and America's "culture of rape" — she surprised RT with her even more serious, more sweeping allegation: As a rule of thumb, you can probably infer that your CIA mind control conspiracy must implicate only the highest global elites, if your choice celebrity interview criticizing them is one that even Russia Today no longer wishes to host on its YouTube page. But, where did Roseanne learn about this MK-ULTRA program aside from that one shrink she once had? The shortest possible answer is Cathy O'Brien, a self-professed survivor of an MK-ULTRA sex slavery initiative codenamed Project Monarch. Unlike the many other real, disturbing, and chilling operations and experiments pursued under the CIA's MK-ULTRA program, no records exist about Monarch aside from O'Brien's personal recollections, first published in her book Trance-Formation of America, self-published in 1995. O'Brien co-wrote the book with her husband Mark Phillips, who claims to have been the intelligence operative that rescued O'Brien and her daughter "from White House/Pentagon level MK-ULTRA mind control victimization." According to Kenn Thomas, an archivist for the the University of Missouri–St. Louis' Thomas Jefferson Library and long-time publisher of the conspiracy theory magazine Steamshovel Press, O'Brien and Phillips became a wildly popular team of speakers when Bay Area UFO conference promoters began their Conspiracy Con in 2001. As Thomas describes it in his book on American parapolitical culture: Fanciful or not, O'Brien and Phillips opened the door for other such victim/lecturers as Bryce Taylor and Arizona Wilder to come forward, to near celebrity status on this newfound lecture circuit. By August 2003, no less than eight former subjects of MK-ULTRA spoke at the Sixth Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference in Windsor Lock, Connecticut in the US. As with less immense, phantasmically hegemonic cases of sexual assault and abuse, these are dicey, non-falsifiable claims that are difficult to investigate skeptically without resorting to callous and inhumanely dismissive presuppositions. Does it disqualify O'Brien's account in Trance-Formation of America (and elsewhere) that she claims that George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Dick Cheney, and Hillary Clinton all ritually abused her under the Monarch program? Does the fact that she quotes long extended conversations from these events, which she claims to remember verbatim, strain credulity to the point of making her statements wholly unvalid? Difficult as it may be, we all have to check our privilege before honestly answering these questions: our privilege as Americans who were never ritually abused and experimented on by the elite masters of the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind control program. Close your eyes. Take a minute of silence to mediate on what you have just learned. Now open them. Regardless of one's opinion on O'Brien's veracity, Roseanne Barr believes her. She spoke at a Conspiracy Culture event in Toronto last October with Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips. What's more, many people who have come to love and trust Roseanne's brash, "tell it like it is" style also believe. They believe, because Roseanne believes. But, enough about Roseanne. Where's LaBeouf? Item: Shia LaBeouf Was In a Richly Symbolic, Sexually Disturbing Sigur Rós Video If you've ever read anything online about Hollywood, MK-ULTRA, and ritualistic sex slavery, you should have known this was coming. The whole community of researchers/believers in this area are fixated on the idea that either a.) programmed celebrities are trying to secretly communicate warnings about their present predicament; or, more insidiously, b.) that the masters of the Monarch program choose to craft these coded Pop Culture messages, the way that Frank Gorshin's Riddler would always give Adam West's Batman ornate clues to his malfeasance. As the dean of this school of reasoning, the Vigilant Citizen, describes Shia Labeouf's appearance in this (incidentally NSFW) Sigur Rós music video thusly: After the dance, two strange dudes enter the room and give the couple suspicious-looking lollipops with scorpions inside. Since scorpions are known to be venomous insects, there is reason to believe that these lollipops aren't simply pieces of candy but most probably mind-altering drugs, such as those used in mind-control programming. The couple eagerly sucks on these lollipops, indicating that they are helplessly addicted to them. Simply by blowing on them, the handlers are able to get the couple to go where they want it [sic] to go. The fact that no physical contact is necessary to control the couple implies that it is all about … mind control. This may not be as convincing as simply watching the video with your own eyes and seeing all the potent Monarch imagery yourself. (There is, for example, a poisonous species of butterfly, Danaus plexippus, commonly known as the Monarch featured in the video. It was also in that movie Silence of the Lambs — a Hollywood blockbuster.) Now. Relax and, very carefully, watch the video: Item: Shia LaBeouf Knew the Scope of the U.S. Government's Warrantless Surveillance Program From Working on the 2008 Action-Thriller Eagle Eye In a recent post, the Vigilant Citizen speculated that LaBeouf's recent meltdown was in some way related to a September 2008 interview that the star did on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Promoting the paranoid, political thriller Eagle Eye, LaBeouf told Leno that one of the film's FBI consultants revealed to him that 1-in-5 phone calls made by Americans is logged — proving this to LaBeouf by playing for him one of his very own, very intimate, phone calls. How this reflects on LaBeouf's current behavior, the Vigilant Citizen can only speculate: In February, Shia appeared at the Berlinale International Film Festival with a bag over his said [sic] saying "I am not famous anymore". Was the "paper bag" incident actually a sick way for his handlers to humiliate him, perhaps to show that his career is purposely being destroyed? [...] Is Shia's "meltdown" a result of actual MK programming? Is he purposely being placed in awful situations to hurt his career by industry handlers? His situation is strikingly similar to other stars who, after years of success, spiral into a self-destructive pattern. Like Britney Spears and others, Shia was a child star raised in the Disney system. While it is easy to put all of the blame on "drugs and alcohol", there is something more at play here. Drugs and alcohol are usually symptoms of a deeper problem. Here's what a younger, more clear-minded Shia LaBeouf had to say in 2008, five years before Edward Snowden said a single word. Is this why he is "not famous anymore"? Do not let your ego answer this question for you. Calm your mind, still your heart, and access your spirit. Repeat the question to yourself, quietly, over, and over again. Keep away all of your other worries, from the materialistic outside world. Breathe out your stress. As you find yourself drifting, return to the question, "Is this why he is 'not famous anymore'?" Item: Hollywood is in California, a Seething Hotbed of Fringe Beliefs and Carnal Exploitation From the Manson family, to Scientology, to Heaven's Gate, to that time a rocket scientist at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tried to impregnate a woman with the Antichrist, to what all Bryan Singer was doing, to the Source Family, to Jonestown — California is really just one big, tectonic fault line where strange (sometimes drug-induced) belief systems and depraved (sometimes drug-induced) sexual activities converge. For all we know, the CIA has had its claws in Shia LaBeouf since season one, episode one of Even Stevens. Without ever having had a Disney Channel show, who's to say? LaBeouf seemed fine playing baseball this weekend. Spiral energy freely through your fifth chakra and express your truth in the Kinja discussion below. [image screen capture via the music video for Sigur Rós' song "Fjögur píanó" via Parlophone Records]

Undersea New Zealand Only 7% of New Zealand is visible above sea level! Zealandia in 3D The largely submerged continental landmass of Zealandia consists of a series of plateaux and elongated ridges, and covers a seafloor area of over 6 million km2. This undersea realm is more than 20 times greater than New Zealand’s onshore area of 280,000 km2. The vast stretches of Zealandia intercept powerful ocean currents and waters of tropical to polar origin. The ocean floor is subject to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, as well as vigorous weather systems, resulting in an array of dynamic marine environments teeming with life in the deep. New Zealand’s geological foundation is split by the Pacific-Australian tectonic plate boundary, resulting in frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity. You can watch a virtual fly-by over it here. Learn more about this vast underwater world:

Title: Discovery of a Thorne-Zytkow object candidate in the Small Magellanic Cloud Authors: Emily M. Levesque et al. First Author’s Institution: Center for Astrophysics & Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA Status: Accepted to MNRAS As all who study astronomy know, one of the most incredible things about the universe is the never-ending potential for wonderful discoveries that sound more like fiction than fact. With this paper, the authors are pushing the boundaries of fiction into fact with the potential discovery of a new exotic object, known as a Thorne–Żytkow object (TZO). First predicted in the 1970s by Kip Thorne and Anna Żytkow, these bodies occur when a neutron star in a binary system with a red supergiant (RSG) merges into the second star. This merger creates an unusual system where there is a neutron star surrounded by a large, diffuse envelope of material. The system still produces most of its energy at the core of the material envelope through thermonuclear energy, and a smaller amount (about 5% of the total energy) from the gravitational accretion of material onto the neutron star. Eventually, after several hundred years, the core of the envelope and the neutron star would merge, resulting in either a larger neutron star or a black hole. TZOs are fascinating objects in a special state of a binary system’s evolution, and there is a lot of new physics that can be learned from such a system, but there has been one problem with them until now: they are identical in appearance to typical red supergiants. There are a lot of normal red supergiants no matter where you look, and knowing if a RSG is a TZO is only possible when you look in detail at the stellar spectra for the over-abundance of lithium and other specific heavy metals. Finding a TZO is definitely a “find the needle in a haystack” kind of observing problem! Luckily for science, the authors successfully found the needle. They did this by conducting a survey of stars in the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds from previous stellar surveys where effective temperature and photometry data indicated a RSG. The authors then took the stellar spectra of the 62 stars in their sample at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico and the Magellan telescopes in Chile, and then analyzing the spectra for the ratios between elements in order to see whether there were any anomalies. In one case, for a star known as HV 2112, in the Small Magellanic Cloud, and found it had unusually high concentrations of lithium, molybdenum, and rubidium. These elements, especially in the amounts found in HV 2112, are indications the star is not a RSG at all, but rather a TZO. Some spectral features were also observed that are not predicted in TZO models, but the authors aknowledge that available TZO models are older and do not take into account some recent advances in stellar convection modeling. This TZO discovery, if confirmed from follow-up theoretical models, is exciting because HV 2112 would be the archtype of a whole new kind of system. But beyond being a scientific curiousity, a TZO can provide a new environment for answering several questions, such as a new fate of massive binary systems. Further, because this is a completely new kind of stellar interior, we are also looking at a different kind of stellar nuclear synthesis process for heavy metals than anything previously observed. It is like being handed a new laboratory in which to test astrophysical ideas, and to distinguish the fact from fiction.

To island-hop some of the most beautiful havens in the world, book a trip to Asia, which lays claim to six of this year’s top 15 destinations. But if you only have a week, you’ll hardly suffer. Each of the islands on this list is worth a visit on its own, from the perennial World’s Best list-makers Maui and the Galápagos to Portugal’s rising star, the Azores, with its friendly locals and awe-inspiring landscapes. Every year for our World’s Best Awards survey, T+L asks readers to weigh in on travel experiences around the globe — to share their opinions on the top cities, islands, cruise ships, spas, airlines, and more. Readers rated islands according to their activities and sights, natural attractions and beaches, food, friendliness, and overall value. Related: The 2018 World's Best Awards This year’s winners include surprises as well as familiar favorites. The Edenic Philippine outpost of Palawan scored the top spot on this list in 2013 and in 2017; it also makes the grade this year, although it cedes the top spot to a surprise entry. It remains in fine company, voted in along with its sister island Cebu. A returning favorite is Tasmania, beloved for its wild beauty as well as its burgeoning culinary scene, which has food and wine fans singing its virtues between courses. Explore the northern coast of the island, to which fairy penguins return at night to roost, and the secluded Boat Harbour beach, where you may not see another living being. Also heralded for its seclusion — as well as its beaches, diving, and mountainous beauty — is Indonesia’s Lombok, an island just east of Bali that one reader dubbed “Romance Island.” In fact, Indonesia seems to have the joys of island life down to a science, laying claim to the top three spots people most enjoy visiting. Read on for the full list of 15 winners.

Microsoft has just unveiled a new look and feel to its corporate logo. Following 25 years from its former iteration, this is the first major Microsoft logo change in the company's history. The new logo includes a multicolored symbol that's typically found on the company's Windows products — the first time the wordmark has been accompanied by an image. Speaking to The Seattle Times, Microsoft's Jeff Hansen reveals that the new logo is designed to "signal the heritage but also signal the future — a newness and freshness." Microsoft is preparing to launch a range of products this holiday season, including its Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 operating systems and a new Surface tablet. The software giant's new logo reflects a change in the company's branding that has been triggered by the new look Windows 8 interface and branding. Microsoft's Office team has also adopted a similar interface and style, and Windows Phone 8 completes the trio of products for Microsoft's major rebrand this fall. The new logo will take time to filter across the company's products, Hansen says "there may be other instances where you will see the old logo being used for some time." Overall the new symbol is "important in a world of digital motion" says Hansen, one that the company is "excited about" using.

Mr. Gunter, who helped clients with software issues, said he was barely six months on the job at Vurv when the family car broke down. He had to ask a neighbor for a ride to work that day, and he feared his new job was at risk. That same day, Vurv bought him the used car. “It wasn’t the nicest car,” he said. “It wasn’t the prettiest car. It wasn’t fresh off the lot with new-car smell. But boy, did my overwhelming feeling of dread go from that to enlightenment. This is what this company is about. This is what Derek is about.” At that point, Mr. Gunter said: “I was just hooked. The 80-hour weeks we worked after that never meant anything. It was give and take. I was giving and the company was definitely giving back.” Ms. Richmond, who helped companies deploy Vurv’s software, was a single mother of two in 2000. Her Chevrolet Cavalier, with 270,000 miles on it, “finally took its last breath,” she recalled. “I lived 45 miles away from the office, so I had quite a hike back and forth.” Her supervisor, who is no longer with the company, and Mr. Mercer knew of her troubles, she said, and at her annual evaluation offered to buy her a car instead of giving her a $3,000 raise. They also helped her find the right car, a Diamanti, and paid $4,500 for it, she said. She told them to work out an installment so she could pay the difference. They never did. And then she got a second pleasant surprise: her raise started showing up in her paycheck as well. “A company that takes care of their employees,” Ms. Richmond said, “it definitely is returned to them tenfold because their employees are going to take care of them and do a good job.” Creativity and sensitivity meshed with good business sense at Vurv, and that is a crucial aspect of problem solving, according to Glenn Okun, clinical professor of management and entrepreneurship at the Stern School of Business at New York University. “Entrepreneurs must remember that resources have costs that must be borne by the firm,” he said. 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. Small-business owners should approach such instances analytically, Professor Okun said, examining risk and opportunity. Act as if you are a third party interested in financing your own company, he suggested, and then decide how to proceed. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Especially now, when economic times are tough, Professor Okun said, business owners will have to weigh unexpected outlays against the knowledge there will be potentially less revenue coming in and less credit extended by lenders and investors to smooth rough patches. In this environment, he said, “problems get magnified, even if the firm is solid.” The solution at Vurv was a balancing act of trying to help employees while not hurting the bottom line. The same was true for the Transtec Group in Austin, Tex., which helps public and private agencies in street, highway, airfield and seaport projects. Dan K. Rozycki, its president, recalled what happened when an employee had to get out of her apartment after a relationship broke up. “In a matter of days,” Mr. Rozycki said, “we helped her find a new apartment and we furnished the whole place from sofa to spatula.” The company has done so many things for employees, he said, that “it’s hard to remember stuff we’ve done over the years.” “When you’re small and flexible and put co-workers first,” he said, “stuff just happens, but nobody records it or thinks it’s that shocking.” When another employee had serious personal problems, he said, the company offered and paid for the professional therapy. And when a new employee from China needed to learn how to drive, colleagues took him for driving lessons and helped him shop for a car. In addition, he said, over the years, the company has learned how to avoid common pitfalls that could fester as problems. Asking for raises is often tricky for employees and employers, Mr. Rozycki said, “so we give out raises every Jan. 1 to everyone.” No one has complained in the last seven years, he said. As to industry conferences, he said, the company decided to invite every one rather than select a few so that no one felt left out. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “What it really comes down to,” he said, “is we’re trying to create the ultimate workplace. We believe you can do the right thing and be profitable.”

Amid the endless oil spill, endless war, and endless unemployment crisis, the past summer brought us the more punctual and considerably more imaginary Shirley Sherrod affair, in which a black Department of Agriculture official was accused of discriminating against white farmers in Georgia. The accusation was made on the basis of a distorted edit of a speech Sherrod gave to the NAACP back in March. In her speech, Sherrod spoke of struggling to overcome her reluctance to help the same kind of people who had murdered her father during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. A classic piece of the Christian forgive-your-enemies rhetoric of the civil rights movement, Sherrod’s talk was misleadingly cut and pasted onto YouTube by the blogger Andrew Breitbart, in such a way as to imply unrepentant “reverse racism.” The clip received wide airplay on Fox News and was then picked up by less partisan news organizations, leading Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to order Sherrod’s resignation. Some days later, the record was set straight after left-wing bloggers circulated the full speech, and the same white farmer Sherrod had apparently discriminated against, if only in thought, came forward to say how much she’d done for him in deed. In spite of Sherrod’s vindication, the affair was another political triumph for the right. The White House went no further than to blame the fake scandal on technology and the 24-hour news environment, probably because polls show that distrust of the media is bipartisan. The actual content of the fake scandal, unlike its form, could hardly be discussed by respectable parties. We all know that racism has been sufficiently anathematized in America that it can no longer present itself directly, perhaps no longer even to the minds of those who engage in it. A paradoxical consequence of this apparent progress is that only in extreme cases can racism be referred to publicly by people in a position to condemn it. One begins to think of race in Obama’s America like sex in some caricature of Freud’s Vienna: simultaneously the main theme of all conversation, and the one that can’t be mentioned. Instead of being “overcome,” historic American racism against nonwhite people has gone into deep cover and, with the irrefutable illogic of the unconscious, emerged as a newfangled American antiracism for the protection of white people. In a polite New Yorker profile back in May, Breitbart had come across as a jovially savage, “just joshin’ you” provocateur, a Mexican-Jewish disciple of Camille Paglia. Calling himself “pro-miscegenation,” he compounded the confusion with some schizophrenic pronoun use: “There’s nothing in this country that is a worse accusation — in America, if you accuse somebody of racism, you have to disprove that.” He was sticking up for Rush Limbaugh, but now we know he was also articulating the right’s new strategy. “This guy, is, I believe, racist,” said Glenn Beck of Obama back in 2009, probably because he believed, like Breitbart, that when you accuse somebody of racism, however baselessly, the burden of proof shifts to the accused. Crucially, too, these arbitrary, almost spasmodic cries of “racist” serve to devalue the word, paralyze public discourse, and make it easier for actual racist ideology to resurface under the guise of its opposite. Like Breitbart, Beck is a buffoon, but he’s not an idiot, and he’s certainly not harmless. The crowds thronging to join Beck’s march on Washington — conveniently coinciding with the 47th anniversary of King’s “I had a dream” speech — showed the rest of us that Obama’s “postracial” America looks a lot like racial America. Tens of thousands of white people gathered at the bidding of a man who’d claimed, with the easy demagogic facility of George Wallace, that our president has “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” No one bothered to ask Beck whether the Constitution is part of “white culture.” In fact there has been an authentic white culture in American history, or rather a way of life concerned above all with the protection and preservation of white ethnic domination, and playing up the white victim has always been a part of it. The present blooming fantasy of white victimization has roots in the peculiar violent institutions of the 19th-century American South. In the distant mirror of history, it’s easy to spot the irony and the guilt: even before the Civil War began, whites worried that their slaves would rise up and repay their masters in kind — filch the fruit of their labor, rape them, and beat them, sometimes to death. As soon as the balance of power shifted and news of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse circulated throughout the former slave states, those fears ran amok. Mark Summers, a historian of the disastrous “Reconstruction” that condemned recently freed blacks to another century of oppression, has observed that the South, unlike the North, had no truly independent newspapers or magazines. What fair and balanced organs then existed reported rumors and falsehoods, like the arrival of a “liberating” French army sent by Napoleon III the same week of Lee’s surrender, or the forced seizure of former plantations by mobs of roving blacks. In Summers’s telling phrase, “the white south saw with dreadful clarity things that did not exist.” Despite “40 acres and a mule” talk of land redistribution, most freed slaves signed contracts to sharecrop for their former masters within a few months of the war’s official end. Defeated only on the battlefield, the Confederate army rapidly reorganized into the rifle clubs and citizens’ watch councils that would come to be known as the Ku Klux Klan. President Andrew Johnson granted full amnesty to all but a handful of secessionist Southern representatives, because he was their President too, and one year after Lee’s surrender, a former slave-hunter turned gunman could openly plot race murder, writing in a local paper about the need to “thin the niggers out and drive them to their holes.” The Civil War continued by other means and the South did rise again. Racist vigilante groups derived a sense of their legitimacy from the idea that they were defending themselves against lawless blacks and Northern “carpetbaggers.” Their tactics were the perennial tactics of terrorists everywhere: attacks on lines of communication, both railway and telegraph; attacks on schools and teachers who wanted to educate the minority population; night visits to prominent but poorly protected ideological opponents. Cross burning happened later. In those early days, the Klan was likely just to beat a man for twenty minutes with a horse stirrup before either hanging him or agreeing to let him go as a warning to others. More relevant for our more repressed era, they also scored a remarkable PR success with the aid of rehabilitated Southern congressmen, who dismissed reports of white Southern violence as mere “waving the bloody shirt”; that is, as fictions spread by northern “radicals” to incite more civil violence. In a 2008 case study of what he calls “terror after Appomattox” in Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina, the historian Stephen Budiansky concludes that the Confederate vigilantes “made a victim of the bully and a bully of the victim, turned the very act of Southern white violence into wounded Southern innocence, turned the very blood of their African American victims into an affront against Southern white decency.” It can be tempting to write about America the way our newspapers often write about foreign countries, where ancient resentments or archaic tribal structures still determine the course of modern politics. Even though we’ve mostly done away with outright racial violence, the memory of violence survives in the symbolism of the Shirley Sherrod affair, the signs at Tea Party protests that say “the zoo has an African Lion and the White House has a Lyin’ African,” and the “open carry” demonstrations sponsored by the NRA, descendant of the Confederate gun clubs, at the town hall meetings for national health care. Sure, race relations in America are no longer just black and white. The “Minutemen” patrol the Arizona desert looking not for newly freed slaves but for “illegals.” And yes, since 1968 we have witnessed a measure of individual African-American achievement, of which the “historic” election of 2008 is only the most recent instance and perhaps culmination. Even so we have not yet achieved a more intriguing benchmark of progress: the election to the presidency of the descendant of an actual slave. The most enduring behaviors of nations, like the hardest-to-break habits of individuals, are those we are least aware of. The new racists — that is to say, “concerned citizens” of Caucasian descent — seem only dimly conscious of past American racism, an ignorance no doubt unconsciously maintained, but more potent for that. Journalists for supposedly liberal publications like the Times and the New Republic have sought “actual racists” in the Tea Party movement and, because no one would say the N-word on the record, duly exonerated the Tea Partiers of racist intent. In exchange, Tea Party spokespeople acknowledge that the odd unreconstructed crank might turn up at one of their rallies. It’s a free country. All the reporters could find was that self-identified Tea Partiers were more likely than most Americans to pick a poll option asserting that “too much attention has been paid to problems facing Black Americans.” Ostensibly, then, all the Tea Partiers want are the same contradictory things that most real Americans want: Medicare benefits, disproportionate federal spending on rural districts, and no taxes. As a T-shirt puts it, “I’ll keep my guns, money, and freedom, you can keep the ‘Change.’” But the summer’s events show that the defense of unthreatened freedoms counts for less than an apparently widespread white wish to make more out of their difficulties than other people. This is no longer a culture war, a revolt of stoics against the “culture of complaint,” but something deeper and older that precedes the identity politics movements it aims to subvert. Forty-two years after the Civil Rights Act, white people who still think of themselves predominantly as “white people” want to air their grievances with the aid of a social movement. One half of what passes for American two-party discourse calls now for another rebirth of a nation: the Caucasian States of America, a postmodern ethno-nationalist republic. To say that the Republican Party these days stands for white ethno-nationalism is not an op-ed exaggeration or Washington parlor-game witticism on par with Jonah Goldberg’s deliberately thought-annihilating oxymoron “Liberal Fascism.” The Confederacy provided us with our own native opposition to classical 19th-century Liberalism, both economic and political, and it shouldn’t really be that surprising that contemporary antiliberalism with strong support in the former slave and border states borrows its language and gestures. The revolt of the Southern states in 1861 was a failed second American Revolution to create an ethnocracy, rather than a democracy — that is, rule by a particular kind of person, rather than “the people” as a deliberately vague and open-ended group. Whatever its faults, the original Constitution did not contain this clause that the Confederates put in: “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed” (Article 1.9.4). In the Southern ethnocracy, the “We the people,” became restrictive rather than inclusive, and so solved all sorts of troublesome questions about universal rights. The freedom most enjoyed by the citizens of the Confederacy was the freedom to deprive other people of their freedom. The robust case for dominating other people sounds awful to most American ears today. So the contemporary idea of ethnocracy relies instead on an opposite rhetoric of victimization. The simple-minded mantra we’re taught in grade school goes like this: blacks good because oppressed, whites bad because oppressors. So if whites suddenly became oppressed, even while remaining the majority, they would magically become good again. Many Americans are now being taught to think this way. The manufactured controversy over lower Manhattan’s Cordoba House Islamic center offers one more example of how the contemporary right seizes on a trivial event to create a false choice between ethnic minority and majority, in which the majority emerges — an increasingly familiar surprise — as terrorized victim. There is no dispute that both American common-law traditions of liberty of conscience and the First Amendment protect the construction of the center, regardless of its popularity. It shouldn’t be a big deal. And yet: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate,” tweeted Sarah Palin, white goddess of the victimization movement. This opening salvo was later amended, with little more grammatical success, to “Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.” The idea that 9/11 somehow taints all of Islam, so that all Muslims should be honor-bound not to practice their religion within an unspecified radius of Ground Zero for fear of hurting other people’s feelings — this is like the blood libel meets Oprah. In defending themselves, right-wingers are quick to make an analogy to symbolic politics on the left, as when South Carolina was lobbied not to fly the Confederate battle flag. The parallel, however, is only negatively instructive. The Confederate flag is a political symbol, not a religious one. The United States grants freedom of religion and individual expression, but it does not grant the freedom for states, or individuals, to enter and leave the Union at will. When a state makes treason part of its coat of arms, it sends a signal that it may not be bound by the same laws binding other states, including those that protect against racial or religious discrimination. But it’s futile to insist on nuances of history and law when we’re speaking the language of “offense.” The mythical heartland Sarah Palin speaks from, or for, is full of these voiceless, downtrodden plain folk who are constantly being offended, for whom there is no end to the offenses, real or imagined, perpetrated against them: the Mexican immigrant speaking his native tongue, the Muslim at his prayers, the black man drinking from a public water fountain (oh wait, that one’s not offensive anymore . . .). One of the more charming stories in Budiansky’s history of Reconstruction concerns a Southern gentleman who wanted a freed slave whipped because he had the temerity to wish him “good morning” without being spoken to first. These offended people see with such dreadful clarity things that don’t exist, and so remake reality to suit their grievances. Of course, the majority of white Americans, like the majority of all other kinds of Americans, have good reason to feel aggrieved. They are the victims of bad economic and foreign policies; their state budgets are crippled by debts, their federal legislature is paralyzed, environmental catastrophe stalks their shores, oceans, and atmosphere. But when they go to the polls in November, if they go at all, a fair number of them will cast their vote on the basis of who stood up for them against imaginary Muslim hordes invading lower Manhattan to pray to their terrorist God. In a late interview by turns confessional and triumphant, Lee Atwater, author of the strategy that turned the solidly Democratic, racist South into the solidly Republican, racist South, described the Southern Strategy’s metamorphosis over the years, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” Partly through Atwater, Republicans developed a kind of reverse means test, an economic version of the old “one-drop rule.” Policies that were likely to help blacks, even if they were also likely to help poor whites, because they were policies largely designed to help the poor, regardless of color, became issues to campaign against: welfare, health care, federal education funding, progressive taxation, clean air regulations, funding for public transportation, just about any “progressive policy” you can think of. Some whites would be hurt, but blacks would be hurt worse. This has proved true. African Americans as a group are still poorer than whites as a group, regardless of the achievements of this generation’s talented tenth and of the growing army of the unemployed of all colors. Atwater’s explanation, delivered with the bland amorality of the pure strategist, accidentally illuminates what has really changed in American racial history since the Civil Rights Act and MLK’s assassination. After 1968, it became embarrassing to be perceived as a racist, and ultimately more beneficial to the former racists to transform the struggle for greater equality into a simple denial that racial inequality was ever a problem. Thus the postmodern approach most articulately espoused by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who has argued that Atwater’s strategy did, in fact, successfully emancipate itself from its referents and intentions; that people are now drawn to the Republican Party or the Tea Party not because a part of them wants to yell racist epithets but because they really believe in states’ rights and an end to progressive taxation. Libertarianism, Douthat claims, is not just esoteric language for old racism, but the actual substance of the party’s aims. No doubt there are people for whom The Road to Serfdom is more important than black Americans’ road out of serfdom, just as there are also people more likely to worry about whether affirmative action is keeping them out of law school than whether their top-choice program was built with the profits of slave labor. It’s ancient history, after all — 1787, 1857, 1865, or 1968. Yet the Tea Partiers, by their name alone, have chosen to steep themselves in that history. This too is bad conscience, pomo evasiveness, an assault on national memory, and yet another ploy to claim victimhood by playing dress-up. Good ol’ Americana from our “good” revolution covers, like a creeping vine, the more relevant foundations of today’s American right. The ideology of states’ rights against federal enforcement, the metastasized right to bear arms, the fear of “big government” intervention — these were the pillars on which the Confederate and later segregationist South sought to erect a white plantation nation. The use to which these ideas were put in the American past forever taints their invocation, as it rightly should. While not even Sarah Palin would suggest that we bring back slavery, the ferocity of the right-wing opposition to the disappointingly moderate technocratic policies of this Democratic administration cannot be explained in merely strategic legislative or electoral terms. It’s about more than winning elections for people like Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, who, as part of a plan to intimidate undocumented immigrants, recently called for the repeal of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to former slaves; it’s about rewriting American history as the travails of a trod-upon Caucasian nation. As of right now, there exists no serious strategy to combat this new bigotry. The Democratic leadership appears content to hope that once these radical Republican race-baiters take control of Congress after the midterm elections, the ordinary responsibilities and realities of power will force them to abandon the strategies they used to obtain power. That is, after all, what the Democrats do. The activist left, marginalized by the centrist Democratic party yet always hoping to be led by it, never imagined that they’d have to refight political racism, and so failed to try to force Republican bigots to defend their unacceptable rhetoric and even more unacceptable policies in the few neutral media venues that still exist. And it did seem improbable that we’d have to refight the old civil rights battles so soon after an election that so many wished was the “historic” culmination of African Americans’ struggle for equal rights. If we lived in better times, it might have sufficed to let the Tea Party’s reactionaries dig their own graves. The trouble now appears to be that a new white ethno-nationalism of imaginary victimization — something that can only be racism, but can’t publicly be called “racism” — will infect American politics for years to come.

The Vampire Diaries The Originals Season 4 Episode 20 Editor’s Rating 5 stars * * * * * « Previous Next » Photo: Skip Bolen/The CW Last night, we took a little trip to New Orleans for the Originals’ backdoor pilot. Klaus followed Katherine’s letter to the French Quarter, where we met his mentee, Marcel, found out Hayley is in the Kate Middleton way, and got our palms read for twenty bucks. We contemplated doing a Klaus-versus-Elijah debate, but let’s be honest — it’s really no contest. Elijah in a suit is the thing. So we’re going to do a quick points recap for this one. What we liked, what we loved, and what we hope will fade come fall. All in all, we gotta say we’re pretty sold. It takes a great man to tear us away from Stefan Salvatore, and that man is Elijah Mikaelson. * We began the episode in Mystic Falls with the classic Salvatore Plot Breakdown. Not to hate on our show that we love and honor and will absolutely obey until six-year contracts do us part, but how kinda annoying did Damon and Stefan seem compared to EVERYTHING that came after? Perspective is the cruel mistress of truth. Or something. Point is: Klaus and Elijah > Damon and Stefan? Yikes. Plus 8. * “The one and only. Sorta.” Oh, Katherine. We’ve missed your snark. Too bad this was the last we saw of it. Plus 2. * New witches! And their magic was awesome. Old-school Bonnie hijinks. Plus 4. * Klaus sat down to get a reading. You know he totally wanted to ask about Caroline. “Do you see a future?” Plus 4. * We LOVED that we met Marcel sexy-dancing, because dude is HOT. We’re really, realllllyyy looking forward to all future encounters with him. Plus 19 * When Marcel embraced Klaus and said, “My mentor. My savior. My sire,” we thought it was pretty sweet. No one is respectful of the first generation in Mystic Falls. Plus 4. * Klaus and Marcel walking down the street from the bar was awesome. The music. The booze. The city seemed to just ooze sex and secrets. This is a good time to talk about the tone of this show. It’s definitely older and darker (and decidedly less comic) than The Vampire Diaries, and we’re willing to wager its subject matter will be, too. We’re in the big leagues now, and we like it. Plus 10. * Marcel killing Jane Anne was an interesting moment. The look on Klaus’s face almost seemed … remorseful? Or maybe we’re just confused because we last saw him at prom. No points, but man are we glad this dude is moving on. * Elijah just kept showing up in places. Beautifully. He kept showing up in places beautifully. Everything Elijah does is beautiful. So, yeah. Elijah showing up in places gets a plus 12. * “I’m Elijah. You’ve heard of me.” Best. Pickup. Line. Ever. Plus 20. * Marcel took Klaus on the roof to talk to him about progress and, it seemed, strategy. “I should limit the number of things I’m vulnerable to.” These two already have such an interesting dynamic. Klaus’s pride at creating such a powerful creature, his jealously of all that Marcel has accomplished in his absence, and his hatred of anything that threatens his position as the One and Only. Plus 15. * WOAH. OKAY. Before we follow the rabbit hole all the way down to Rupert Sanders, let’s just take a deep breathe and see where this goes. Yes, Hayley is pregnant. With Klaus’s child. But we’re going to go ahead and give this a plus 9. It’s bold. And the writers know it. We can’t wait to see how this all unfolds. After all, The Originals is a show about family. * “Enough of this. If you want Marcel dead, he’s dead. I’ll do it myself.” Elijah is so unconcerned. He’s like the goddamn Buddha. Dude definitely meditates. Probably taken a few Tony Robbins workshops, too. Identify the source of fear. Acknowledge it. Let it go. Plus 8. * Elijah telling Klaus to “listen,” and then hearing the baby’s heartbeat was a phenomenal moment. Nice work, writers! Plus 8. * Of course, when Klaus told Elijah to kill Hayley and the baby it was kinda ruined. So, minus 3? Don’t worry, H — he’ll come around. * “Family is power.” —Elijah. Does this guy have a book deal yet? Plus 12. * “Save this girl. Save your child.” We just got a flash of Elijah holding a baby and … what? Where am I? Who are you? What is happening? Plus 6. * We’re kind of surprised Rebekah wasn’t more psyched about this baby. Isn’t that her thing? She wants a family? We know she wants her own, but we don’t totally buy that she’d be able to resist even the idea of Bebe Klaus for long. What if it’s a girl? Who will dress it?! Minus 7. We need Rebekah to be around more. * “I know you consider yourself an expert in brotherly dynamics.” Ha. Hahahaha. Good one, R. Plus 4. * “We’re alone. And we hate it.” For Katherine, there is a fine line between a revelatory human moment and just randomly being super vulnerable. Scratch that. It is not a fine line. It’s the Atlantic Ocean. Look, I know we’re all growing here, but we like Katherine better when she’s being a bitch. Please cross back over. Minus 5. * “I’m not the prince of the Quarter. I’m the king.” Marcel with the dialogue. Plus 8. * Klaus saying “I am immortal” was intense. We’ve seen him soften over in Mystic Falls. He’s buddied up at the bar with Damon, fallen for Caroline, practically spooned with Stefan. But he’s evil. We just forgot for awhile. Maybe this show will be his story of redemption, but as stories go, we’re only at the very beginning. Plus 13. * Klaus and the bartender looking at the painting was sorta hilarious. Way too overly metaphoric, but we’ll forgive it because Klaus and his art, man. Also — we think this girl is important. There is a reason she is not dead. Plus 3. * “I made him in my image, and he has bettered me. I want what he has. I want to be king.” Well, there you go. It’s on. Plus 9. * “Every king needs an heir.” Klaus as a dad, you guys. I cannot even with how awesome this could (will) get. Plus 20. * Klaus calling Caroline seemed like a call out to fans rather than an actual thing Klaus would do. Minus 10. The truth is, we kind of like that it didn’t work. It just shows how able this show is to stand on its own. * Elijah and Rebekah’s talk was great. It basically went like this: Elijah: The cure is stupid. Rebekah: Help me pack in, like, three weeks. Plus 9 * Elijah forehead-kissed Katherine. You know it’s the end of an era, because who forehead-kisses Katherine? Dude who has better things to do in New Orleans, that’s who. Plus 10. We’re moving on. Verdict: +192. We want to party here every Thursday. CW, if you’re listening, this one is gold. I guess our lives are just all vampires all the time now. Things could be worse. And next week, they definitely will be for Elena. But let’s not get into that right now. I want to talk more about Elijah. Like do you guys think he will ever wear jeans? And how would you feel about him wearing jeans? Please discuss. Meet you back in Mystic Falls next week. Until then, I’m here: @RebeccaASerle

Iraq PM ousts bank chief in power grab Baghdad - The targeting of Iraq's well-respected central bank chief appears to be a move by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to consolidate power and sends a bad message to international investors, experts and diplomats say. Sinan al-Shabibi was last week replaced as governor of the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) while he was overseas, and arrest warrants have since been issued for him and other bank officials over allegations of currency manipulation. The moves are the latest that appear to undermine CBI independence, after a Supreme Court ruling early last year put the bank under the supervision of Iraq's cabinet rather than parliament. "It [is] another step down the road [to] an extremely centralised level of control," said Crispin Hawes, the London-based director of the Middle East and North Africa group at the Eurasia Group think tank. Control "Via a proxy, he [Maliki] has direct control of the CBI, the ministry of defence and the ministry of interior - these are the signature institutions of a Middle Eastern state," Hawes said by telephone, referring to the fact that the top ministers at the two security ministries are seen as Maliki allies. "It's not a complicated story," he added. Shabibi, a 70-year-old economist who worked for two decades at the UN trade and investment body UNCTAD and had been CBI governor since 2003, has been described by analysts and diplomats as a capable technocrat who fought to maintain the independence of the central bank. Iraq's cabinet nevertheless decided on Tuesday to replace him with Abdelbassit Turki, the head of the Board of Supreme Audit, after a parliamentary report blamed Shabibi and other CBI officials for currency manipulation, according to Maliki's spokesperson Ali Mussawi. "I do not think the accusations are true because Mr Shabibi is a well-known economist, and he has a good reputation," said Abdulrahman Mashhadani, head of the economics department at Mustansariyah University in Baghdad. "There may be corruption at the central bank, but it is at a low level. In fact, we economists see Mudher Saleh as a kind of professor for us," Mashhadani said, referring to the CBI's deputy governor. Battle for control The decision to effectively sack Shabibi comes after Maliki sought to fire the former election commission chief, and pushed for reforms to the commission that were widely seen as likely to give his Dawa party greater clout. He was unsuccessful on both counts. "The Maliki government will claim it [the move against Shabibi] is part of long-standing efforts to root out corruption," said Joost Hiltermann, deputy chief of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "It looks more like a long-standing effort to gain control over independent institutions." "The problem is that even if certain allegations - in this case or others such as VP Hashemi's - could contain an element of truth, there is no way of finding out, because the judicial process in Iraq remains deeply flawed," he said, referring to the death sentence handed down to Tareq al-Hashemi. The Sunni vice president was accused of running death squads, charges he has dismissed as politically motivated. Last month, he was sentenced to death in absentia. Increasingly authoritarian Of the ousting of Shabibi, Hiltermann added that it was "not a positive move as the country heads into a series of important elections", namely provincial elections in 2013 and national polls the following year. Maliki's opponents, many of whom are members of the national unity government he heads, accuse him of consolidating power and displaying increasingly authoritarian behaviour. He has dismissed those charges, insisting he is grappling with an unwieldy coalition. But many remain sceptical, pointing to a spat with communications minister Mohammed Allawi this summer which prompted Allawi to resign from the government, claiming Maliki was interfering in his ministry. "This is similar to the issues he had with the former communications minister," said one Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Maliki wants to govern alone. He has a personal problem with Shabibi - this is not about the law."

Arsenal legend Patrick Vieira turns 40 on Thursday, 23 June 2016 - and to celebrate we've picked out 40 stats and facts about his career. The iconic midfielder is regarded as one of the best players of the Premier League era and enjoyed immense success with the France national team, too. Vieira will be celebrating his 40th in the USA, where he is manager of New York City FC in the MLS. Here's a look back at his life and career so far... 1. Vieira was born in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and his family moved to France when he was eight 2. Vieira is a Portuguese name - his Cape Verde-born mother's maiden name 3. The Frenchman won three Premier League titles - including two doubles and one unbeaten season 4. Vieira lifted the FA Cup five times - on four occasions with Arsenal and once with Man City Vieira won the FA Cup five times 5. Vieira was included in the PFA Team of the Year six times between 1998-2004 6. The Arsenal captain was named Premier League Player of the Season in 2000/01 7. Vieira was sent off eight times in the Premier League - tied with Duncan Ferguson and Richard Dunne with the most red cards in the competition 8. In total, Vieira was sent off 10 times while with Arsenal 9. Vieira's first red card came against Coventry in January 1998 - and his second was just a month later in a League Cup semi-final with Chelsea Arsenal celebrate their 'Invincible' season 10. Vieira joined Arsenal from AC Milan in August 1996 for £3.5m, shortly before Arsene Wenger arrived as manager 11. Vieira made just five appearances for AC Milan, after joining the Italian side from French club Cannes in 1995 12. In October 1999, Vieira was fined a record £45,000 by the FA and banned for six games after spitting at Neil Ruddock following his sending off against West Ham 13. Vieira scored 33 goals for Arsenal 14. The midfielder's first goal for Arsenal came against Derby County on 8 December 1996 15. Vieira took over the Arsenal captaincy from Tony Adams in 2002 16. Vieira was on the scoresheet as Arsenal clinched the 2003/04 title at Tottenham Vieira scored as Arsenal clinched the title at Tottenham in 2004 17. Vieira also scored the winner against Leicester City in the final fixture of that season to complete an "Invincible", undefeated Premier League campaign for Arsenal in 2003/04 18. The midfielder scored the winning penalty in Arsenal's 2005 FA Cup final shootout victory over Manchester United - his final game for the club 19. In February 2005, Vieira was involved in an infamous bust-up with long-term rival Roy Keane in the tunnel ahead of Arsenal's clash with Manchester United The Frenchman had a number of high-profile run-ins with Manchester United's Roy Keane 20. Vieira made 407 appearances for Arsenal 21. The Frenchman's nine-year association with Arsenal ended with a £13.75m move to Juventus in 2005 22. His France debut came in February 1997 against the Netherlands 23. Vieira was brought on as a sub in France's World Cup final win over Brazil and set up Emmanuel Petit to make it 3-0 Vieira and Thierry Henry celebrate France's 1998 World Cup win 24. Vieira won the World Cup with France in 1998 and the Euros in 2000. He was also part of the France team which finished runners-up at the 2006 World Cup 25. Vieira scored six goals in 107 appearances for France 26. He was awarded the Legion of Honour, along with the rest of France's 1998 World Cup-winning squad 27. Vieira never advanced further than the quarter-finals in the Champions League (with Arsenal in 2000/01 and 2003/04 and Inter Milan 2005/06 - when Juve were knocked out by eventual finalists Arsenal) 28. In fact, Vieira never won a European club trophy, missing a penalty in Arsenal's shootout defeat to Galatasaray in the final of the UEFA Cup in 2000 29. Vieira was signed for AC Milan by Fabio Capello - and the Italian signed Vieira for Juventus in 2005, too Vieira had a successful - if injury-hit - four seasons at Inter Milan 30. In his first season in Italy, Vieira helped Juventus win the 2005/06 Serie A title - but that honour was stripped from the club following a match-fixing scandal 31. Despite a brief stint with AC Milan, Vieira made 133 appearances for city rivals Inter later in his career 32. While with Inter Milan, Vieira won three Serie A titles, despite injury problems restricting his game time 33. Vieira twice won the Italian Super Cup with Inter Milan 34. Vieira retired from football at the age of 35 - his final appearance was as a late substitute in Man City's 2011 FA Cup final win over Stoke City 35. Vieira made 46 appearances for Man City Vieira worked with Manchester City's youth teams after his playing career 36. After finishing playing, Vieira moved into Manchester City's coaching set-up, eventually progressing to Elite Development squad manager 37. Vieira took charge of New York City FC in 2016, becoming the first black head coach in MLS history 38. Vieira won his first game as a manager: New York City FC's 4-3 away victory at Chicago Vieira took charge of New York City FC at the start of 2016 39. As New York City FC manager, Vieira lost his first derby with New York Red Bulls 7-0 at home in May 2016 40. Vieira was named in the FIFA 100 - Pele's list of the "greatest living footballers" in March 2004

Maurice Edu was the first player to report to US national team camp in California on Wednesday, but that didn’t necessarily sit well with Philadelphia fans wondering why he won’t be in Union colors for the team’s midweek game against Sporting Kansas City. After all, Sporting KC’s two World Cup hopefuls – defender Matt Besler and Graham Zusi – will suit up for the match on Wednesday (8:30 pm ET, MLS Live) before joining US camp at Stanford University later this week. A Philadelphia Union spokesperson told MLSsoccer.com on Wednesday, however, that the club intended to hold Edu out of the match as a precautionary measure due to a non-serious concussion issue. After it was decided by the club’s coaching staff that Edu would not play against Kansas City, he was allowed to depart for US camp in California. Edu, 28, has appeared in 11 games for the Union this season, including a full 90-minute shift in the team’s 1-0 loss to D.C. United on Saturday. He is trying to make this second consecutive World Cup roster after he was named to Jurgen Klinsmann’s 30-man preliminary roster earlier this week.

HUD structures most income-based programs for people whose income is 50 percent or less of the median income in the area, but this figure is adjusted based on family size. For example, the median income in San Francisco is $115,300. Eligibility for very low-income housing starts at $46,100 for a single person. This number increases to $52,650 for two people and to $65,800 for a family of four. There are also extremely low-income programs that prioritize the needs of those with a median income of $27,650 for an individual and up to $39,500 for a family of four. Because of the high cost of living in the area, San Francisco also offers subsidies for those meeting the low-income standard of $73,750 for an individual and $105,350 for a family of four, which is 80 percent of the median income.

Francesco Totti has spent his entire 23-year career at Roma, playing more matches and scoring more goals for the club than anyone in their history. But he will be 39 years old in September and they need to prepare for the future “I think people all over the world know that Gerrard has been a Liverpool legend. He’s spent many years playing for one team and has always fought for that club. He should be respected and thanked for everything he’s achieved.” These words were bestowed upon departing Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard by none other than Francesco Totti, though, if their names and clubs were switched, the Italian could well have been referring to himself. The year 2015 has proven to be definitive for teams whose successes have long been interwoven with individual icons. Totti’s elaborate sashays embodied Roma for a generation, just as Gerrard’s combative vigour did for Liverpool and Xavi’s intricate passing did for Barcelona. Refusing to leave the clubs they adored as boys and grew to represent, these three players – while completely different in style on and off the pitch – were inevitably bound to pose their respective clubs the exact same question: what would they do without them? Barcelona were proactive in finding a solution to Xavi’s eventual departure at the end of this season, gradually phasing out their legendary midfield metronome in favour of Ivan Rakitic and altering their style of play to suit. Liverpool were more clumsy in dealing with Gerrard as his time with the club petered out in a series of disappointing instances, though, if anything, those moments made the process of moving on easier. Roma, however, are still Totti-reliant. Fans have been born, learned or been taught to love Roma, grown up experiencing the highs and lows of following the club and started to buy alcohol (legally) in the time since Totti made his debut. The emotional connection between the man and the club is still strong, though Giallorossi coach Rudi García must now loosen the hold that bond has over his team selection if Roma are to move forward positively. Totti is a world-class veteran at 38 and although his continued appearance within the starting line-up is in itself a testament to his longevity, it is also an indicator of the sentimentality Roma have seemingly been trapped by in failing to usher their ageing genius into a less active role sooner. With another year to run on his contract, the ageing Roman superhero still finds himself called upon to rescue his team despite his dulled reflexes. Every now and then he will do something to once again justify why he has been so worshipped for so long, such as his two-goal salvo against Lazio back in January. Single-handedly, he hauled Roma back into the match and earned them a point that, with the added benefit of hindsight, was crucial. Such game-changing performances are dwindling, though. They are now an exception as opposed to the norm. Francesco Totti has the final say after Roma leave rivals Lazio on edge | Paolo Bandini Read more Roma beat their city rivals 2-1 in the second Derby della Capitale of the campaign on Monday, a victory that secured their status in the Champions League group stages next season. Totti started but on 61 minutes there was a familiar yet unbecoming sight: he was substituted. The game was goalless at the time, Roma had failed to assert themselves and Totti was left to slunk off the pitch after a frustrating afternoon in which he had received the first booking for a foul he committed after being caught in possession. That was the story of his match; he was off the pace. Furthermore, it is perhaps the overarching theme of a Roma season in which attacking impotence has been their greatest bane. With just 53 goals from 37 league games, Roma’s is the worst offensive record in Serie A’s top six. Only three teams in the entire league have drawn more games and their lack of killer instinct in the final third is clearly the predominant factor behind those dropped points. Since being humiliated 7-1 at home by Bayern Munich, Roma have put together successive wins on just four occasions, and none of those runs have gone beyond two matches. Their hopes of winning the title were paralysed by their inconsistency; the abundance of draws putting paid to their chances of keeping in touch with Juventus. Midway through the season Roma took the decision to sign cunning Ivorian goal-poacher Seydou Doumbia for a fee of just under £13m to replace the outgoing Mattia Destro. The investment suggested the club had begun a much-needed re-examination and wanted to keep alive the idea of playing with an out-and-out centre-forward, an option that would likely require the relegation of Totti to the bench. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Roma v Lazio. Design: Blair Newman Garcia’s 4-3-3 has until now been predicated on Totti’s use as a false nine flanked by two wingers. It’s a role Totti has embraced throughout his Roma career, often with great success. Although naturally a trequartista, Totti became the faux-spearhead of Roma’s attack under Luciano Spalletti’s management. In Spalletti’s renowned 4-6-0 system, he was given the freedom to operate between the opposition’s midfield and defence. It caused difficulty for opposing centre-backs, who were unsure as to where they should be and who they should mark. However, these days Totti is far easier to get to grips with, and Roma’s resultant lack of penetration may leave them searching for another system in the summer. On Monday Roma played with emphasis on the counterattack, which came as a surprise given that they have been a possession-oriented team for a considerable amount of time. They sat deep defensively and looked to spring into attack at speed down the flanks. Plainly this did not suit Totti, who cut an isolated figure unable to keep up with the quick transitions from defence to attack. When the wingers, Juan Iturbe and Alessandro Florenzi, burst forward and looked for options, their captain was rarely in sight. Nonetheless, Roma had just 37% of possession and still won. The way they played in this match may have been a one-off, or it could hint towards a longer-term change of style. If so, Roma would not be the only team to renounce the ball in favour of greater efficacy this season, as one look at Arsenal can confirm. A switch to a more orthodox version of the 4-3-3 – with a centre-forward instead of Totti as a false nine – could provide extra cutting edge to their counterattacks. Perhaps that is where García must go next if his side are to challenge Juventus in future. If anything can sell the idea to him, a vital derby win should. • This is an article from Tactical Calcio • Follow Blair Newman on Twitter

Credit: 247Sports Mike Krzyzewski has added his third recruit of the 2015 class. He's not another 5-star talent like Chase Jeter or Luke Kennard, but he is the son of one of the best to ever play the game. According to 247Sports' Adam Rowe, Justin Robinson—the son of former San Antonio Spurs great David Robinson—will join the Duke basketball team next season as a walk-on: Robinson talked about his decision, via Rowe. "I'm happy to get early decision from Duke since it is so amazing academically," he said. "It's been a long time dream for me. The opportunity to be a preferred walk-on is exciting and I'm looking forward to being a part of the Duke Basketball tradition." There is, of course, a connection between Krzyzewski and the elder Robinson, beyond both having military backgrounds. They met in the 1986 Elite Eight, when Duke defeated Navy by 21. Six years later, they teamed up on the 1992 Dream Team. ”Coach K relentlessly pursues perfection every day,” David Robinson said several years back, via DukeBluePlanet.com's Dave Bradley. ”Perfection is impossible but the result is excellence. That is how Duke Basketball became great.” Justin Robinson, who is listed at 6'7", 185 pounds, and described by Rowe as a stretch 4 (he doesn't have a star rating, per 247Sports), won't have it easy finding playing time in Durham. The Blue Devils currently have nine McDonald's All-Americans and could easily add a couple more to the roster next season. But it never hurts to have a player with such a rich and successful basketball background on the bench. And if the apple didn't fall far from the tree, Robinson will find a way to contribute—whether it's in front of thousands at Cameron Indoor Stadium or by pushing his teammates in practice—soon enough.

Comedian Jessie Kahnweiler recently decided to explore how white women like herself are treated by police in contrast to visible minorities by filming herself attempting to get arrested in Los Angeles. "Jessie sets out to see if white privilege really exists and can she get arrested or will her whiteness prevent it?" reads the caption of a YouTube video she published late last week. Unlike most contemporary work on the subject of white privilege, the tone of Kahnweiler's video is quite humorous. But it sends a powerful message about racial inequality through interviews with police, stories from citizens and footage of LAPD officers reacting to the 30-year-old white comic's wild actions. "We can all agree that what's going on with the police and black people right now is totally insane," says Kahnweiler at the top of her video. "My one black friend told me that because I'm white, I have all of these privileges, and I get treated totally different by the cops than black people get treated." The video immediately cuts to footage of her high-fiving police officers in a parade while she shouts "I'm single!" Her subsequent stunts include drinking alcohol in public and behaving as though she were intoxicated, trespassing in a public pond, cartwheeling naked in front of a restaurant and hugging some on-duty police officers (including police Chief Charlie Beck.) The most provocative clip in the video begins about 75 per cent of the way through when Kahnweiler offers to sell two police officers prescription drugs. "I'm selling my antidepressants, do you guys want to buy any?" she asks the officers, whose faces are blurred in the video. "You know that's illegal, right?" says one officer, after which the smile fades from Kahnweiler's face and she asks, "What?" "Those are prescribed drugs, and you are becoming a drug dealer by selling them," the officer explains. "Oh, sorry," says the comedian as she walks away without even a slap on the wrist. As shocking and funny as many have found Kahnweiler's arrest attempts to be, her interviews with both black and white citizens, as well as with authorities, make perhaps an even more powerful statement. "What do you feel about white privilege?" she asks an older black man. "As a white woman, do you think I can get away with more stuff?" "Yes, you can," he laughs. "And you know it." Later, after being asked if he's been messed with by the police, the same man tells Kahnweiler that he was once "beat up by the police." "What did you do to get beat up?" she asks, to which he responds "Run." A white police officer had this to say when asked if he believes that white privilege exists: "I don't understand your question." Kahnweiler's video has been receiving a lot of attention this week from media outlets, people online and celebrity supporters like Judd Apatow. "I felt the conversation was not productive enough, and I wanted to do something from my perspective," she said when asked by the Times of Israel what inspired her project. "Unfortunately, there's new shit about this every day. I can't believe this is America." As the Times points out, Kahnweiler is no stranger to tackling sensitive issues through comedy. She's also the creator of several other widely shared videos and short films about such topics as rape, bulimia and Jewish identity. "As Jews, we walk a fine line because we are 'other,' but we do enjoy white privilege," she said in relation to her most recent video, noting that her boyfriend, who is black, has lived a very different experience on account of his race. "Basically, I understand that I'll never ever understand what it is like to be a black person in America," she said. "My boyfriend has a scar on his head from having been bashed up by some cops when he was 12. He would have been arrested several times over for jumping the police chief like I did."

0 Produced by The Paley Center for Media, the annual pop culture event PaleyFest is a series of panel sessions that connect the worldwide community of television fans with the casts and creators of their favorite TV shows. This year, one of the most in-demand presentations was the panel for Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow, with cast members and producers for each. Prior to the panel, Collider got some scoop on what’s to come from Stephen Amell (Oliver Queen/Green Arrow), including how much Prometheus will damage Oliver, whether Oliver and Felicity will be drawn closer together, and whether Team Arrow might be able to save the day. Be aware that there are some spoilers discussed. Prometheus has turned out to be a really exciting and powerful villain. STEPHEN: AMELL: I think so, too. Is this one of those villains that’s really going to leave Oliver changed? AMELL: Yeah. What Prometheus does to Oliver is really unlike anything that we’ve ever seen happen to him. It’s almost like Prometheus is his therapist, in this weird way. He’s a sociopath and he’s doing horrible things to him, but in his mind, he’s doing it in the pursuit of a greater good, which is really scary. It’s really scary when there’s a villain whose end goal might not be killing you. Can he even understand where Prometheus is coming from, or has he given up trying to figure him out? AMELL: No, Oliver doesn’t understand! It really takes the next couple of episodes for him to really, really understand what this person is trying to accomplish. At the same time, Felicity is going down her own rabbit hole with this hacker group. How far is she going to go, and can Oliver help her? AMELL: The fact that both of them get into the shit is one of the ways that they gravitate back towards one another. They have a common malady, so to speak. She, above anyone else, is the person that he’s going to go to, if he has something to confide or work through. Diggle is very much the soothsayer and the person who can give him a good piece of advice. But in terms of a heart to heart and a dynamic conversation, Felicity is the one for him. The fact that she’s going through something like that, maybe that’s going to cause him to open up. Where do Diggle and the team fit into all of this? AMELL: The interesting thing is that what Prometheus has done is base his plan off of Oliver’s pattern of behavior. Oliver’s pattern of behavior has been, “I’m going solo.” When the chips are really down, he retreats and it’s just him. So, the fact that Oliver now has a team might be the one thing that Chase can’t plan for. Arrow airs Wednesday nights on The CW.

Update: A league source tells Brian Costello of the New York Post that the Jets are “not being very aggressive” when it comes to possibly re-signing free agent CB Antonio Cromartie. “Don’t count on them getting Cromartie,” Costello’s source said. After missing out on Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, many have assumed that the Jets would turn their attention to possibly bringing back Antonio Cromartie next year, but it appears as though the team has no plans to rush into things. Cromartie, soon to be 30, is coming off of a very poor season by normal standards. He appeared in 16 games for the Jets and totaled 38 tackles, three interceptions and a forced fumble. Pro Football Focus had him rated as the No. 100 cornerback out of 103 qualifying players last year. We have him listed as the No. 5 best available player in our Top 50 Free Agents list. —————– Kent Somers reports that the Cardinals continue to discuss a contract with free agent CB Antonio Cromartie, who’s visit with the team will now carry over into Friday. Somers adds that he’s isn’t sure if a deal ultimately gets done, but the two sides were negotiating. Manish Mehta first reported that Cromartie was visiting with the Cardinals on Thursday. Cormartie hasn’t found a lot of interest since the Jets cut him loose, but that could have something to do with the depth of this year’s cornerback class. Cromartie, soon to be 30, is coming off of a very poor season by normal standards. He appeared in 16 games for the Jets and totaled 38 tackles, three interceptions and forced fumble. Pro Football Focus had him rated as the No. 100 cornerback out of 103 qualifying players last year. ———- Chris Russell of ESPN Radio 980 reports that a league source has informed him that the veteran CB Antonio Cromartie would be “open” to playing for the Redskins. However, Russell adds that Washington has yet to reach out to Cromartie. Many expected the Redskins to major players for defensive backs, but that hasn’t proved to be the case. They have been linked to free agents like S Ryan Clark, CB Carlos Rogers and CB Captain Munnerlyn, so they could other guys to watch in case nothing develop with Cromartie. ————— Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News previously reported that the Jets could still bring Cromartie back at some point, but it’s likely to be at lower price.

About This Game Third Person Shooter Action Sequences: Use Future Foundation's Hacking Gun to have a fighting chance against the hordes of Monokumasas you traverse Towa City. Use Future Foundation's Hacking Gun to have a fighting chance against the hordes of Monokumasas you traverse Towa City. Riddles and Puzzles: The MonokumaKids will challenge more than just your trigger finger; you'll need your smarts to survive as well. There's a lot to discover in the city, with a number of familiar faces and mysteries to unravel! The MonokumaKids will challenge more than just your trigger finger; you'll need your smarts to survive as well. There's a lot to discover in the city, with a number of familiar faces and mysteries to unravel! Tons of Different Types of Ammo: Tackle challenges with multiple kinds of Truth Bullets, such as Paralyze and Link. Upgrade your firepower with special Bling Bullet modifiers. Tackle challenges with multiple kinds of Truth Bullets, such as Paralyze and Link. Upgrade your firepower with special Bling Bullet modifiers. Steam Features: Supports Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud and Steam Trading Cards Komaru Naegi, little sister to Makoto Naegi, has been imprisoned inside a mysterious apartment for over a year. One day, she is rescued by Byakuya Togami of Future Foundation, but the rescue is derailed by a sudden attack of hundreds of Monokumas. Komaru soon discovers that the city has been taken over by a group of children calling themselves the Warriors of Hope. Their leader, Monaca, declares that the city will be the site of a “children's paradise,” and to accomplish this, all the adults will be exterminated. Komaru teams up with Toko Fukawa to try to survive the rampaging Monokumas, escape the crafty Monokuma Kids, and uncover the secrets of the city.

Escribe Nicolás Lucca Escribe Por Adam Dubove (*) Quienes circulan en moto con un acompañante por la Provincia de Buenos Aires acaban de convertirse en ciudadanos de segunda categoría. La nueva medida del gobierno de Daniel Scioli obliga a los que viajen como acompañantes a llevar casco y un chaleco reflectante con la inscripción de los números de la patente del vehículo. Es una clara demostración de la improvisación y demagogia que caracteriza a los políticos cuando se encuentran acorralados por la opinión pública. La resolución 221/14 que entró en vigencia el lunes pasado confirma una vez más la noción de que somos parte de una “granja de humanos” que los gobiernos se dedican a pastorear y esquilmar a su gusto. Es así, que ante la emergencia de seguridad que se vive en la Provincia, el primer impulso es marcar a una categoría determinada de individuos obligándolos a llevar números identificatorios en su espalda y casco. El argumento oficial es que bajo este nuevo régimen se pretende resolver dos problemas: el de la seguridad vial y el de la seguridad ciudadana. En cuanto a la seguridad vial poco se puede decir, la relación entre llevar el número de patente pegado en la espalda y evitar accidentes es inexistente. En cuanto a seguridad ciudadana, la relación ronda lo ilógico. La primera objeción a esta disposición de neto carácter demagógico y que no hará nada por resolver el flagelo de la inseguridad es simple: los ladrones no respetan la ley. ¿Por qué alguien que está dispuesto a robar – es decir, cometer una infracción más grave – respetaría la nueva norma? De la misma manera que a la hora de restringir el uso de armas son los ciudadanos respetuosos de la ley los que se pliegan a la restricción, esta regulación servirá para identificar aquellos que no pretenden delinquir y quieren evitar ser sancionados con una multa de hasta $5.000 y la retención de la licencia de conducir. Por otra parte, el uso de chaleco y casco con la inscripción requerido por la ley estimulará la creatividad para delinquir y saltear controles. Los eventuales delincuentes que utilicen la moto como forma de escape, podrían sacarse el casco y el chaleco a la hora de cometer el delito, y una vez que escaparon de la zona del atraco simular que se trata de ciudadanos obedientes de la ley con su respectivo chaleco y casco con las inscripciones que ordena la ley. Todo esto podrían hacerlo si tuviesen que evitar los controles, pero los controles verdaderamente efectivos son una rareza entre la policía bonaerense – aunque no exclusiva de esa jurisdicción. Paradójicamente, son habitualmente los efectivos policiales los que esconden su identidad, ocultando sus placas identificatorias, al momento de participar en manifestaciones u otros operativos. La moto es uno de los medios de transporte por excelencia en la provincia de Buenos Aires, especialmente entre los sectores socioeconómicos más bajos. Durante el año 2013, según informa la Asociación Argentina de Motovehículos, se patentaron casi 200.000 unidades solamente en esa provincia, un 28% de los patentamientos del año pasado en todo el país. La gran mayoría de los motociclistas son personas que utilizan la moto para dirigirse a su lugar de trabajo. En este sentido, los fabricantes de motos ya se expresaron contra la medida. En un comunicado difundido la última semana la Cámara de Fabricantes de Motovehículos, que nuclea a las principales fábricas del país, manifestaron que con esta iniciativa se pretende “demonizar a los motociclistas por el simple hecho de usar ese vehículo para su traslado” y destacaron que “la seguridad pública debe cuidarse con medidas que no afecten los derechos básicos de circulación o movilidad”. Tras la devaluación de comienzos de año, la venta de motos se desplomó en un 38% durante el mes de febrero en comparación con el mismo mes del año pasado, y acumuló un retroceso del 7% durante el primer trimestre de 2014. Una situación que se suma al fuerte impacto que recibió el sector tras la creación del nuevo impuesto a los autos de alta gama que también afecta a las motos. Los problemas, por supuesto, no son únicamente para los fabricantes. Una reglamentación absurda genera casos absurdos, por ejemplo, el de Joaquín. Supongamos que Joaquín, un chico en edad escolar, va con su padre en la moto todas las mañanas al colegio, y por la tarde es retirado por su madre, con su propia moto, que lo lleva a hacer alguna actividad deportiva y a la que finalmente su primo – también en moto – acude a retirarlo. En este caso, Joaquín necesitará tener tres cascos y chalecos distintos, teniendo que incurrir su familia en mayores gastos, para cumplir con la ley y evitar que la policía lo multe por no identificarse. Al contrario del efecto buscado, esta medida incrementa el peligro para los que utilizan las motos en caso de robo del vehículo. En un robo, el delincuente no solo se querrá quedar con la moto, sino también con su casco y chaleco identificatorio, aumentando así la duración del robo, generando mayor tensión y elevando las posibilidades de que la propia inercia que genera el nerviosismo de la situación para ambas partes convierta al robo en un homicidio. Pero por sobre todas las cosas, se estigmatiza a todos aquellos que utilicen la moto como medio de locomoción, desconociendo la presunción de inocencia, una de las garantías fundamentales consagradas en la Constitución Nacional. Siguiendo el razonamiento utilizado por Scioli, de forma análoga, se podría implementar que aquellas personas con un determinado nivel de poder adquisitivo deban llevar en un colgante su nombre y apellido, DNI, y CUIT para disminuir los niveles de evasión fiscal, o aquellas personas que vivan en “zonas peligrosas” tengan que vestir un brazalete con sus datos identificatorios. La falta de racionalidad, es decir la desproporción entre los medios elegidos y los fines buscados, es alevosa. La negación de las garantías básicas y hostigamiento a un grupo de personas que eligió utilizar el medio de transporte que el gobierno considera la raíz de sus problemas, es el resultado de la desesperación, pero no la desesperación por la “seguridad ciudadana” o la “seguridad vial”. La imposición de chalecos y cascos con identificación, es un acto desesperado para seguir emparchando, ocultando y manipulando la deteriorada situación que el partido que gobernó la provincia durante los últimos 28 años le ha dejado como legado a todos los bonaerenses. (*) Especial para FortunaWeb

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts lawmakers are weighing regulations aimed at the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, by police and other governmental authorities. The bill would prohibit the use of drones to “track, collect or maintain information about the political, religious or social views, associations or activities of any individual, group, association, organization, corporation,” or other entity unless the information relates to a criminal investigation. The proposal would also ban drones from being equipped with weapons or using facial recognition and other biometric matching technology except to identify the subject of a warrant. The bill would allow the use of drones to serve a warrant, aide in an investigation or assist in an emergency. Advertisement The Judiciary Committee plans to hear testimony on the bill at a public hearing Monday at the Statehouse.

Tron Skatecycle: Your Lightcycle Is Now A Skateboard The Freerider Skatecycle is an awesome product all on its own. Combine that with what's likely to be one of the biggest movies of the year and you get something epic: the Tron Skatecycle. Created by Alon Karpman of Brooklyn Workshop, the custom-built skateboard is actually a Freerider, modded to sport the colors and lights of the movie's signature Lightcycles. The results are impressive, to say the least -- enough to give modding-incapable Tron nerds some serious geek-envy. If Alon was looking for a way to drum up interest in the Freerider (which is slated to ship end of January), this Tron-inspired mod definitely does it good. The Tron Skatecycle is actually built in much the same way as his usual hubless two-wheeled self-propelling board -- it has a solid aluminum frame and composite body parts, with 32 x 6.5 x 8.5-inch dimensions. Of course, it sets itself apart by sporting a darker finish (to hide itself in the dark) and circles of light to get a similar look to the futuristic crotch rockets they ride in the movie. With costumes, toys and full-sized motorcycles bearing the likeness of both the characters and the vehicles in the movie having come out already, we imagine the first-day screening of Tron Legacy to be downright nuts, with people likely donning their best merchandise on display. That's why I'm staying home on the 17th and waiting till next week to see it. Yeah, I'm that guy who doesn't enjoy your shameless geekery. Does that actually make a jealous closet geek? Watch the video below to see the Tron Skatecycle in action. [Brooklyn Workshop via Core77]

Image caption The NHS has to make £20bn of savings by 2015 Hospitals in England must do much better at improving productivity if patient care is not going to suffer in the coming years, experts say. The NHS has been told to make £20bn of savings by 2015 - a saving of about 4% a year. The report by the Nuffield Trust think tank highlighted a host of areas where productivity gains could be made. These included cutting lengths of stay, doing more day case surgery and improving the way goods are bought. Savings could also be made in back-office functions, such as HR and finance, while staffing - which accounts for about 70% of costs - also needs to be looked at. The report said it was important to get the skill mixes right and to limit the use of agency staff and overtime, while trying to tackle sickness rates. It said only by tackling these issues could the NHS "reduce the need for cutbacks in services for patients". 'Very difficult' The NHS budget is being increased over the next four years - but only by an average of 0.1% a year. Improving hospital productivity Length of stay - Latest data shows that patients spend 7.2 days in hospital on average - higher than the international average and twice the figure in Denmark. Improving discharge arrangements, particularly at weekends, would make a big difference - Latest data shows that patients spend 7.2 days in hospital on average - higher than the international average and twice the figure in Denmark. Improving discharge arrangements, particularly at weekends, would make a big difference Day case surgery - Everything from hernia repairs and cataract operations to ear, nose and throat surgery can be done as a day case. But again the NHS is lagging behind international best practice - Everything from hernia repairs and cataract operations to ear, nose and throat surgery can be done as a day case. But again the NHS is lagging behind international best practice Back-office functions - By standardising and simplifying practices in areas such as HR, finance and IT, £600m could be saved from the £2.8m annual bill - By standardising and simplifying practices in areas such as HR, finance and IT, £600m could be saved from the £2.8m annual bill Staffing - Money could be saved through reducing reliance on agency staff and overtime as well as tackling sickness rates through better occupational health - Money could be saved through reducing reliance on agency staff and overtime as well as tackling sickness rates through better occupational health Procurement - The fragmented way basic goods, from gloves to paper, are bought means many places are over paying. About £500m a year - 10% of the consumables bill - could be saved if all trusts bought at the lowest available price And because costs are rising at a higher rate than this, due to factors such as the ageing population and cost of new drugs, the health service is having to make the £20bn of savings. The Nuffield Trust said this was presenting a major challenge because productivity had been getting worse over the past decade. It focused on hospitals because they are the most expensive part of the NHS system, accounting for about £45bn a year - nearly half the entire budget. The think-tank compared hospital performance against international data as well as taking an in-depth look at how six trusts had turnaround performance. Judith Smith, head of policy at the Nuffield Trust, said: "It is very difficult to justify cuts if inefficiencies in areas such as rates of day case surgery, length of stay and the purchasing of hospital supplies remain untackled. "The financial challenge facing the NHS will concentrate minds, but much more needs to be done. "Why, when so much is known about what drives and can improve efficiency, has hospital productivity deteriorated?" David Stout, of the NHS Confederation, which represents managers, said the Nuffield Trust was "absolutely right" to flag up the need to improve productivity. "The NHS has a lot to do if it is going to meet the financial challenge it faces and time is running out." Health minister Simon Burns added: "We agree the NHS should and can be more efficient and improve the quality of its services at the same time."

Bismillah [Written by Amatullah] In many ayaat of the Qur’an, Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala calls the Qur’an a “huda”, a guidance, for the believers. We may think this guidance refers to guidance in religion, but the Qur’an is a guidance for all aspects of our life, however it’s up to us to extract these lessons and implement them. Many Muslims read the Qur’an with the intention of reward, yet we forget that the main purpose of the Qur’an is to guide us, to be our huda. From the richness of the Arabic language, we learn that huda or hidaayah has three meanings: To show one the path To help them ‘walk’ on that path To guide them until they reach their destination. So this guidance, this Qur’an, contains innumerable lessons for the believers.One that I would like to share is from an incident that happened with the Companions, that we can extract many benefits from for our communities today. Allah ta’ala says, يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ إِذَا ضَرَبْتُمْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللّهِ فَتَبَيَّنُواْ وَلاَ تَقُولُواْ لِمَنْ أَلْقَى إِلَيْكُمُ السَّلاَمَ لَسْتَ مُؤْمِنًا تَبْتَغُونَ عَرَضَ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا فَعِندَ اللّهِ مَغَانِمُ كَثِيرَةٌ كَذَلِكَ كُنتُم مِّن قَبْلُ فَمَنَّ اللّهُ عَلَيْكُمْ فَتَبَيَّنُواْ إِنَّ اللّهَ كَانَ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ خَبِيرًا O you who have believed, when you went forth in the cause of Allah, investigate; and do not say to one who gives you [a greeting of] peace, “you are not a believer,” aspiring for the goods of worldly life; for with Allah are many acquisitions. You [yourselves] were like that before, then Allah conferred His favor upon you, so investigate. Indeed Allah is ever, with what you do, Acquainted. (Suratul Nisaa: 94) Like this? Get more of our great articles. Get more of our great articles. Allah is addressing the believers who accepted Islam at the time of the Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam but did not declare their faith openly so they mixed with the people. Since one could not tell who was a Muslim or not, the way to recognize a believer was by the greetings of Salaam. There are many Asbaab (reasons for revelation) for this ayah related by the Companions and scholars of tafseer. One of the main reasons that this verse was revealed after Rasul Allah sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam sent a delegation led by Al-Miqdad ibn Al-Aswad radi Allahu anhu. Imam Ibn Katheer narrates in his famous work of tafseer: “Ibn `Abbas said, “The Messenger of Allah sent a military expedition under the authority of Al-Miqdad bin Al-Aswad and when they reached the designated area, they found the people had dispersed. However, a man with a lot of wealth did not leave and said, `I bear witness that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah.’ Yet, Al-Miqdad killed him, and a man said to him, `You killed a man after he proclaimed: “There is no deity worthy of worship except Allah. By Allah I will mention what you did to the Prophet .’ When they went back to the Messenger of Allah, they said, `O Messenger of Allah! Al-Miqdad killed a man who testified that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah.’ He said, Summon Al-Miqdad before me. O Miqdad! Did you kill a man who proclaimed, “There is no deity worthy of worship except Allah” What would you do when you face, “There is no deity worthy of worship except Allah tomorrow” Allah then revealed [this verse]. The Messenger of Allah said to Al-Miqdad, He was a believing man who hid his faith among disbelieving people, and he announced his faith to you, but you killed him, although you used to hide your faith before, in Makkah.” (Narrated in Bukhari, Al-Bazzaar) Allah ta’ala says in the ayah, do not seek the ” ‘arada عَرَضَ” of this dunya, which literally means: everything that doesn’t have stability and anything that is transient. Allah is reminding us that anything from this dunya will leave us and nothing of it will be everlasting. But when it comes to the hereafter, Allah says with Him are ” many magaanim مَغَانِمُ” which literally means: to obtain good without any difficulty. Notice that this word is plural, while ‘arada is singular.The reason that the sahaabi killed the man was for his riches but Allah is telling the believers that He will provide them with riches. Allah reminds the believers, that before when they were in Makkah, they were also hiding their faith and they should, فَتَبَيَّنُواْ , (notice this word is a command) investigate before they take action. Now, fast forward to our times…what do we learn from this ayah? Remember your Makkan period. Many of us, back in our “jaahiliyyah” days, had a time in our life where we might not have prayed, or wore hijaab/niqaab or had a beard. Yet, how come we act snooty to a brother or sister who is struggling with their faith, and we look down upon them, as if we were born saints? How come we treat others who may not wear niqaab, or who may not wear a thobe with disdain, like we are better than them? Many of us had a point in our lives where we were embarrassed to say that we were Muslim, and we hid our faith, just as the Companions did in Makkah. Allah azza wa jal is reminding us in this verse, YOU were like that before and that He is Khabeer (All-Aware) of what we are thinking and that He is Khabeer (All-Aware) of what we are doing. If you treat your fellow Muslim differently because of their appearance, Allah Knows. If you snicker behind their back, Allah Knows. We were like that before brothers and sisters, until Allah “manna, conferred His favor” upon us–the favor of guidance, of baseerah (insight), of learning, of love for the Qur’an, of taqwa–we were in that same situation. He is the One who favored us, we did not will guidance for ourselves, so do not claim purity. Remember that. We cannot base our actions on opinions or appearances. Remind yourself of the prostitute who entered Jannah because of the small deed of giving water to the thirsty dog, and the story of the pious monk Barseesah who ended his life in prostration to Shaytan. Looks can be deceiving, so know that only Allah is All-Aware of what is in the chests of mankind, and we do not have the right to say who is a good Muslim or a bad one. The Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam said, “I have not been ordered (by Allah) to search the hearts of the people or cut open their bellies.” (Reported by Al-Bukhari and Muslim) In another incident when Usama ibn Zayd radi Allahu anhuma killed a man though he had confessed that there is no deity worthy of being worshiped but Allah, claiming that the man had said so out of fear of weapon, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him observed: “Did you tear his heart in order to find out whether it had professed that or not?” (Reported by Muslim) We should not act without confirming and investigating. Allah commands us to do “bayyan” (to verify, clarify, investigate) in this ayah–we must find out both sides of the story, and confirm it before we act. Think through the times where we held a negative opinion about someone based on a little of what we saw of them. Did we go further and confirm with them or were we quick in judging them? Taqwa is not in the length of your beard, or in the layers of cloth you wear. The prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam said, “Taqwa is here,” and he pointed to his chest. (Reported by Muslim) Remember that the best in the sight of Allah is the one who fears Allah and is conscious of Him. Allah is The Judge, so know your role. Verily, your Lord knows better, who (among men) has gone astray from His Path, and He knows better those who are guided. (Surah Qalam:7) If we as an Ummah followed the simple command in this ayah, and surely Allah knows best, our situation may have been different. If we, ourselves, now implement this ayah into our lives, inshaAllah our community will be different. Be the change you want to be! The Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam said that ALL of the children of Aadam make mistakes! Who are we to take them to account? Who are you to judge? And Allah ta’ala knows best, O Turner of Hearts, make our hearts firm upon your deen, unite our hearts, beautify our hearts with taqwa and emaan and bless us with husn ath-thann (good thoughts) about our brothers and sisters. Ameen

Image caption The vast majority of the 10,000 cheetahs left in the world are in Africa The cheetah, eradicated in India by hunting nearly a century ago, will run again in the country, as three sites are earmarked for its reintroduction. The government has approved wildlife groups' recommendations of two sanctuaries in Madhya Pradesh and an area in Rajasthan as potential homes. The government will spend 30m rupees ($0.6m; £0.4m) to restore these sites before the animals are imported. The plan is to import the cats from Africa, Iran and the Middle East. Kuno Palpur and Nauradehi wildlife sanctuaries in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and Shahgarh area in Jaisalmer, in the northern state of Rajasthan, have been selected as the sites to house the animals. Trophy hunters Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh said the reintroduction of the world's fastest land animal would "restore the grasslands" of India. Wildlife experts say the two sanctuaries in Madhya Pradesh had the capacity to accommodate nearly 80 cheetahs, although 23 human settlements will have to be moved from the one in Nauradehi. Scores of nomadic human settlements would also have to be cleared at the site in Rajasthan on the international border with Pakistan. "The return of the cheetah would make India the only country in the world to host six of the world's eight large cats and the only one to have all the large cats of Asia," MK Ranjitsinh of Wildlife Trust of India told the Press Trust of India news agency. Pursued by trophy hunters and herdsmen to the brink of extinction during the Raj, the Asiatic cheetah vanished from India many decades ago. Conservationists say less than 100 of the critically endangered subspecies remain in Iran, roaming the central deserts. The vast majority of the 10,000 cheetahs left in the world are in Africa. Critics of the reintroduction scheme in India say that without restoring habitat and prey base, and reducing the scope for man-animal conflict, viable cheetah populations will not flourish.

LONDON (Reuters) - It was meant to be the speech that rescued Theresa May’s premiership, but her public humiliation before the assembled Conservative Party has thrust her own future into doubt. And, just as she tries to revive Brexit talks. May’s authority was already shattered by her botched bet on a June snap election that lost her party its majority in parliament just days before the opening of formal Brexit talks with the European Union. But her survival has been dependent on the absence of an obvious successor who could unite the split party around Brexit and fear of an election that many Conservatives think would let opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn into power. "I don't think anybody wants May to stay because they particularly want her as PM: I think lots of people want her to stay because the time is not yet right for what they want to happen next," said Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King's College London, who attended the party conference. (Graphics on 'Tracking the Brexit effect' - here) “All they are talking about behind the scenes is whether she stays or goes, and that is a massive distraction as the UK faces this unprecedented challenge of Brexit.” Even after the speech, there is no obvious successor because of rivalries and divisions. Those most often mentioned are foreign minister Boris Johnson, finance minister Philip Hammond, interior minister Amber Rudd, and Brexit minister David Davis. But as Conservative lawmakers decide whether to proceed with May, Britain has just over one year to negotiate the terms of the EU divorce and the outlines of the future relationship. It is due to leave in late March 2019. If May stays, Brexit talks will be guided by one of the weakest leaders in recent British history. But if May goes, Britain would be thrust into another political crisis while the clock ticks down to Brexit. Many business leaders — in Britain and the EU — now fear a disorderly exit that would imperil Britain’s $2.5 trillion economy, shock global financial markets and undermine London’s position as the only financial center to rival New York. “Yesterday was humiliating for May,” said one EU diplomat. “The whole country, the public mood in Britain is completely from a different planet. The whole island took off and is orbiting in their own galaxy. How can you turn this around?” Sterling fell to a fresh three-week low on Thursday. It was down 0.8 percent at $1.3144 against the dollar. On the day of the Brexit vote, the pound it traded at about $1.50. Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond hands a cough sweet to Prime Minister Theresa May after she suffered a coughing fit whilst addressing the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble FAWLTY TOWERS? In one of the most bizarre British political speeches in a generation, May’s address to her annual conference was ruined by a comedian handing her a bogus employment termination letter “signed” rival Johnson, by repeated coughing fits and even by letters falling off the slogans on the set behind her. May battled on to finish the speech and was greeted by applause in the hall and a hug from her own husband, Philip, who bounded onto the stage to embrace her. Immediately after the speech, her spokesman said she was happy with the way it had gone. But the British media were less enthusiastic. “May on final warning after speech shambles,” The Times front page headline said. The Guardian said: “Coughing and spluttering - May’s British dream turns into nightmare”, while the i said: “Last gasp”. The Sun, Britain’s most popular newspaper, compared the party to the 1970s television classic “Fawlty Towers” in which Monty Python star John Cleese plays Basil who runs a shambolic hotel while complaining about foreigners. “Like the sign outside Fawlty Towers, the missing letters behind Theresa May are an emblem of a tragicomic farce. Who needs Basil’s hotel? We now have the Tory Party,” The Sun said in an editorial. “This entire party has come unstuck.” PM MAY Business minister Greg Clark said the Conservatives should stay cool-headed and praised May for showing guts and grace by coping with the interruptions to her speech. Spokesmen for both Downing Street and the Conservative Party declined to comment. Many Conservative activists fear another leadership contest will exacerbate the divide in the party over Europe, an issue which helped sink the last three Conservative prime ministers - David Cameron, John Major and Margaret Thatcher. And many worry that a leadership contest would pave the way for an election victory by Labour’s Corbyn, who they cast as a Marxist seeking to impose a socialist fantasy on Britain. While Johnson is popular with some activists, the leader of the leave campaign in the 2016 referendum would not get the support of many Brexit opponents in the parliamentary party. Some lawmakers want a younger generation to take over but feel that no single candidate from their group is yet ready. One Conservative activist said there was a one in three chance of a leadership challenge by the end of the year. For a challenge, 48 Conservative lawmakers need to write to the chairman of the 1922 Committee asking for a confidence vote. Slideshow (4 Images) The problem for May, the activist said on the condition of anonymity, was that the media will now focus on every slight mishap to cast her as a flawed leader. “I’m finding it increasingly difficult to see a way forward at the moment and it worries me,” Conservative lawmaker Ed Vaizey told the BBC.

It's a very special episode of Court of Nerds! But really...aren't they all special? This one though, has DC Comics and Image writer Steve Orlando! Steve is currently writing "Midnighter", one of the best books on DC's roster right now along with "Undertow" over at Image . Grant's #DadTech talks about Poop Planes , passwordless logins that aren't really passwordless and Uber for phone repair . Gregg took on the Suicide Squad's publicity baiting, the new all-female Ghostbusters costumes , the newest DBZ trailer and the potentials for more movie/TV Marvel crossovers. Jess was sad she didn't have tech, but she was excited to pimp Boke Expressway, Kaptara and the mostly awful leaked Marvel covers . Seriously, they're mostly pretty terrible with a few hidden gems and WHY IS SPIDER WOMAN PREGGO?!?!? WHY IS SPIDER WOMAN PREGGO?!?!? Natendo talked about (what else?) NINTENDO this week. And a bunch of other stuff probably. But mostly Nintendo.

When racism is legalized and institutionalized, things like this happen: “France has first burka rage incident:” A 26-year-old Muslim convert was walking through the store in Trignac, near Nantes, in the western Loire-Atlantique region, when she overhead the woman lawyer making “snide remarks about her black burka”. A police officer close to the case said: “The lawyer said she was not happy seeing a fellow shopper wearing a veil and wanted the ban introduced as soon as possible.” At one point the lawyer, who was out with her daughter, is said to have likened the Muslim woman to Belphegor, a horror demon character well known to French TV viewers. Belphegor is said to haunt the Louvre museum in Paris and frequently covers up his hideous features using a mask. An argument started before the older woman is said to have ripped the other woman’s veil off. As they came to blows, the lawyer’s daughter joined in.

The leaked information indicates the spying on the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as well as criminal spying on 156 judges; 'incidental collection' of Trump administration communications has also been confirmed. WASHINGTON DC – The March 20 Open House Intelligence Committee hearing had FBI director James Comey and NSA director Admiral Michael Rogers called to comment on security related issues pertaining to surveillance. Discussed were Trump’s wiretapping claims and the illegal eavesdropping on US citizens’ communications. Although the committee established during the hearing that eavesdropping on US citizens is illegal without a court order, Comey and Rodgers admit to “incidental collection” occurring. The initial Committee Hearing on March 20 went back and forth over extensive questioning. Suffering no fools, US Congressman Trey Gowdy demanded answers to the “incidental surveillance” of American citizens; journalists’ rights under the First Amendment; and if the FBI and NSA were responsible for the General Flynn phone call leaks occurring. Giving a statement to the press, House Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes confirmed recently that the US intelligence community did incidentally collect information on Trump’s transition team and possibly Trump himself; stating he was “alarmed” with what he has learned. The second part of the hearing with Comey and Rogers was scheduled for March 28, but was cancelled at the last minute by Nunes in favor of hearing Comey and Rogers testify in private to questions they both previously answered with “no comment.” It is believed that leaked information containing 47 hard drives and 600 million pages of information was made available to US officials, with Nunes receiving a personal letter from the whistleblower’s representation; and that Nunes also wanted to save “further embarrassment” to the Trump administration. The leaked information indicates the spying on the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as well as criminal spying on 156 judges. The leaked information came from whistleblower and former NSA and CIA contractor, Dennis Montgomery. Initially leaked 2 years ago, but quickly covered up, Montgomery chose to leak his information through Larry Klayman, a former federal prosecutor and FreedomWatch founder, who said “holds the keys to disproving the false claims […] that there is no evidence that the president and his men were wiretapped.” In the letter written by Klayman to Chairman Devin Nunes: “Montgomery left the NSA and CIA with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information, much of which is classified, and sought to come forward legally as a whistleblower to appropriate government entities, including congressional intelligence committees, to expose that the spy agencies were engaged for years in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen such as Donald Trump, and even yours truly. Working side by side with Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence (DIA), James Clapper, and Obama’s former Director of the CIA, John Brennan, Montgomery witnessed “up close and personal” this “Orwellian Big Brother” intrusion on privacy, likely for potential coercion, blackmail or other nefarious purposes.” The demand now is for Nunes to hold Comey accountable. Klayman wrote an open letter in Newsmax , just prior to the Hearing Committee commencement: “My expressed purpose: to have Chairman Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee ask Comey, under oath, why he and his FBI have seemingly not moved forward with the Montgomery investigation.” . Unfortunately, due to the cancelling of the March 28 Committee hearing, this is yet to eventuate. However Nunes’ comments pertaining to the shocking revelations of officials communications being ‘incidentally collected’ leaves us wondering the depth of the intelligence agencies abilities to listen to every citizen. This article (600 Million Pages and 47 Hard Drives of Intel Leaked to US Officials) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author AnonWatcher and AnonHQ.com .

As expected, I’ve already received a lot of feedback on my justifying-piracy post from this morning. I’d like to expand on this part: You’re not making any kind of statement or participating in a movement [by pirating] — you’re just being cheap and/or impatient. Actually, piracy does make a statement — it’s just the wrong statement. If you truly want to pressure content providers to adapt new distribution channels, and you’re not just trying to justify getting everything for free, piracy is hurting your cause. Most geeks try to justify piracy because the content isn’t available on our terms. We can’t get it in our country, we can’t get it as quickly as we want, it costs more than we want to pay, we can’t get it on the device we want, or we can’t get it in the format we want. Publishers have a distribution problem. But when publishers see widespread piracy of their content, they don’t see the distribution problem. They think they have a piracy problem. Publishers believe (with mixed success) that piracy problems can be solved by force: existing laws are being mostly ignored and violated en masse, so the publishers lobby Congress for stronger laws and pressure ISPs for stricter enforcement. The more they fight on this front, the more likely that their anti-technology, anti-internet efforts will actually pass and hurt legitimate online activity and businesses. Pirating adds to that problem and encourages publishers that they need to fight harder in that direction. But distribution is completely their fault. They can’t blame anyone else. Insufficient distribution or unappealing terms are problems that they need to solve, not legislators, lawsuits, ISPs, or law enforcement. Adding to their distribution problem without contributing to their piracy problem is the most effective way to encourage them to make the kind of progress we want.

CALGARY – An Ontario-based company selling furnaces, hot water tanks and air conditioners door-to-door around Alberta is being accused of using high-pressure sales tactics. Frank Dillon owns an older home in northeast Calgary with the home’s original furnace, and recently learned it has a gas leak and needs to be replaced. Within days of the leak, two salesmen with Secure Home Services came to his door selling new furnace packages. “Usually we don’t talk to people coming door-to-door, but in this case we did, because the need for another furnace,” said Dillon. The salesmen offered a furnace rental program for $92 per month with free installation. Dillon signed a rental agreement and gave them a void cheque, but after getting a second opinion from a friend, decided to cancel the next day. “I had no idea about contracts or anything else. It seemed like a good deal at the time, but you should have someone with knowledge.” Dillon later learned he wasn’t given the information necessary to make a purchasing decision: there was no sales contract with the total cost of the furnace or information on the length of the contract. He also wasn’t told he had 10 days to cancel the deal, as required under the Alberta Fair Trading Act. The province said Service Alberta has two open investigations into Secure Home Services, which was licensed for direct sales in November 2014. The investigations come after complainants alleged high-pressure sales tactics, such as refusing to take no for an answer, rushing consumers to make a decision, and trying to get consumers to sign contracts before explaining all the details of the product. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) suggests consumers avoid making snap decisions at the door. “Consumers have every right to take the information that they are given at that point in time and say to the door-to-door salesman: ‘let me review this, let me check into it and I’ll call you back when I’m ready to explore this further,’ when you’re more comfortable of making a decision,” said Leah Brownridge, with the BBB. Dillon hopes his story alerts others; he has since found another company to replace his furnace. For consumer tips on dealing with door-to-door sales, click here

It all started a year ago as the company was coming to market with the Illum. "We started hearing from all these virtual reality filmmakers and content creators," says Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal. "All these people were coming up to us and saying light field is basically the only way we'll be able to accomplish what we want to do." Currently in the VR space, there aren't that many great professional tools for creating content -- most are stuck with trying to force 2D cameras to capture 3D video, he says. The Immerge, however, is different. Instead of having to capture several different shots and stitch them together, the Immerge uses a super dense light field array to capture the entire 360-degree image. "Most of the work we've done in light field today is in a planar light field. But imagine if you took that plane and basically bent it into a full sphere, so that it would capture the light rays from every single direction in a geometric volume. It would be something like this," explains Rosenthal. Basically, think of this giant sphere as a large VR sensor. There are five different layers, and each layer is packed with a ring of 360-degree cameras and sensors. "One of the layers represents somewhere between three and four times the data and resolution of any VR camera that exists today," says Rosenthal. "And we're doing that times five. It's a massive leap forward in terms of the way we capture and sample the real world." This, he says, allows for accurate horizontal and vertical parallax, which is needed to realistically incorporate CGI elements in the video and have them appear as part of the natural environment. It also enables six degrees of freedom, so the viewer can look all around them to see the entire scene. Aside from that, Lytro is also bundling in a server array for storage and processing, plus a light field editor plugin that can be used in any modern video editing program like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro. And, of course, there'll be a light field video playback engine that can be used in any leading VR headset like the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive. Lytro has already been in talks with several VR startups like Vrse and WeVR to help create the Immerge, and they'll likely be one of a few of the Immerge's early customers. The company has also been in talks with traditional Hollywood studios like Disney and Warner Bros. "They're running a bunch of experiments in VR and AR content, developing them side-by-side their movie shoots." As you might have guessed, the Immerge is a professional-grade tool, and is not meant for consumers. It'll be publicly available in Q1 next year for rental and sale. To buy it will likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Rosenthal says, while renting it would probably be for a few thousand a day. He wouldn't comment on how much it'll actually cost just yet. So where does this leave Lytro's existing camera business? Does that mean it's shifting focus? Well, not quite. Lytro is planning on rolling out an Illum software update later this year, after all, Rosenthal says. "This is very consistent with where we've been and where we've always wanted to go," he says. "The world moved from being film-based to digital. We were in early phases of moving from 2D digital to 3D computational light field. Our focus has always been how do we make that happen, and how do we build a platform around it." "Now with the exciting evolution of new areas of imaging like AR and VR, we've had a big evolution of the company in the last year," he says. "Because of our expertise in light field, we like to pretend we're visionaries."

People participate in a New York rally in June to protest the separation of families under the Trump administration’s travel ban. (Alba Vigaray/European Pressphoto Agency) A federal judge in Hawaii has ruled that grandparents and other relatives should be exempt from the enforcement of President Trump’s travel ban, which bars people from six Muslim-majority countries. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson ruled Thursday night that the federal government’s list of family relatives eligible to bypass the travel ban should be expanded to include grandparents, grandchildren, uncles, aunts and other relatives. Watson also ordered exemptions for refugees who have been given formal assurance from agencies placing them in the United States. In Watson’s ruling, he said the government’s definition of what constitutes close family “represents the antithesis of common sense.” “Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents,” Watson wrote. “Indeed, grandparents are the epitome of close family members. The Government’s definition excludes them. That simply cannot be.” The order delivered another legal hit to the president’s travel ban and a “sweeping victory” for those against it, as Neal Katyal, a lawyer for those challenging the measure, wrote. The ruling from Watson, a judge who has frequently been criticized by Trump and his administration for his unfavorable orders, marked yet another successful attempt by Hawaii to challenge the administration’s executive order. [Judge rejects Hawaii bid to exempt grandparents from Trump’s travel ban] The Supreme Court ruled late last month that the government could begin enforcing the travel restrictions, but not on people with “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship” with a person or entity in the United States. The Supreme Court on June 26 decided to allow a limited version of President Trump's travel ban to be implemented. The court will also hold a hearing on the case in the fall. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) The Trump administration then decided to make exceptions for spouses, parents, parents-in-law, children, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, fiances and siblings of those already in the country. However, they barred grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. The government rolled out the measure on June 29, affecting travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. As part of the measure, officials could also block refugees with a formal assurance from a resettlement agency. Hawaii had asked Watson to rule on the federal government’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Trump’s executive order, arguing that the list of exemptions to the travel ban was too narrow. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu in 2015. (Star-Advertiser via AP) In his ruling, Watson wrote that modifying the scope of the ban is “necessary to preserve the status quo” in regard to the government’s definition of “close familial relationship.” The government’s use of specific, family-based visa restrictions “constitutes cherry-picking,” and contradicts the Supreme Court’s decision late last month, Watson wrote. [Analysis | Jeff Sessions doesn’t think a judge in Hawaii — a.k.a. ‘an island in the Pacific’ — should overrule Trump] Watson also ordered exemptions for refugees who are members of the Lautenberg program, which allows certain nationals of the former Soviet Union and other countries with “close family in the United States” to apply for refugee status. Refugees through this program were previously not exempt from the ban because the program includes grandparents and grandchildren as “close family,” according to Watson’s ruling. He also argued a refugee’s assurance from an agency satisfies the Supreme Court’s “bona fide” relationship requirement because of the formal, binding nature of the contract. “Bona fide does not get any more bona fide than that,” Watson wrote. As part of his executive order, Trump set a 50,000-person cap on refugee admissions, which the United States already surpassed on Wednesday. Earlier this month, Watson denied a similar request to curtail enforcement and clarify who is exempt from the ban, saying that he would not “usurp the prerogative of the Supreme Court.” But late Thursday night, he ruled that this time around, the plaintiffs had met their burden of establishing why legal relief was necessary. Read the judge’s ruling More from Morning Mix: Elite St. Paul’s School under criminal investigation after sexual misconduct revelations ‘Junkie hunters’ lured addicts in $58 million Fla. sober home fraud, prosecutors say Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz to critic: ‘Watch your back … I already know where you live.’

Beer: The Midwife of Civilization Every work dealing with the history of beer, it seems, starts out talking blithely about the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia as the first brewers, the inventors of beer, some eight to ten thousand years ago. However, what is usually lacking from of the published histories of beer is a meaningful treatise of the most obvious question: Why in Mesopotamia? Why at that point in time? And what, if anything, does it mean for us today? Indeed, the Sumerians were probably the first beer-makers. At the very least, they were the very first beer-makers of consequence. But "knowing" and "understanding" events, historical or present-day, are often two different things...and there is (in my view) much, much more to the story of the invention of beer than the bare facts! "Cogito, ergo sum," (I think, therefore I am) famously wrote the French philosopher, mathematician and natural scientist René Descartes (1596-1650). From the perspective of a beer historian, however, old Descartes just may have missed the trick with his famous homily. Historically it actually might have been more accurate had Descartes said instead: "Bibo cerevisiam, ergo sum" (I drink beer, therefore I am). The following is a speculative essay to explain why. It is an attempt to give beer--next to Descartes' thought--its proper place in our anthropology. Thus we will look not only at the facts about the origins of beer--as best as they have been developed by archaeologists--but also at the surprising and usually overlooked linkages that have emerged between beer and human nature, that is, between our favorite beverage and who we are! In the Beginning There Was What? To get to the heart of the matter of civilization and the place of beer in it, perhaps it helps to consider briefly who we were--most likely--before civilization: Paleo-anthropologists tell us that Homo sapiens, that is, humans like you and me, have been on this earth for at least 200,000--maybe even 400,000--years, at least biologically, somewhere in Africa. But as cultural beings we have not been around for more than perhaps the last 10,000 years...and, incredibly, beer-making has been around just as long, but apparently not longer! The place where civilization--Stone Age civilization--and beer-making began, anthropologists believe, was in a place accessible on foot from Africa--perhaps via an unlikely detour through India--in the Middle East, somewhere in the moist mountains of Persia (present-day Iran) and Anatolia (part of present-day Turkey). Life must have been uncertain for these early Mid-Eastern bands of humans who are known to have wandered through their habitat at a time when Europe was still recovering from the last Ice Age. Daily survival was a roving game of chance and food was probably the only thing on their minds. For these mountain hunters and gatherers, food came with swift and nimble feet, wings, and fins designed for a quick getaway, or it grew somewhat haphazardly as wild fruits, grains, and vegetables in scattered places. It was never just for the taking. Instead, man always had to go to the food and, if necessary, subdue it. These prehistoric nomads, therefore, had neither the opportunity nor the interest in leaving behind elaborate or lasting traces of their existence for posterity to study--other than their bones and simple hunting tools. Worrying about what their descendents might think of them was not a likely preoccupation for creatures whose "sapient" gray matter, when not sporadically preoccupied with procreation, was solely focused on clubbing that stag behind the next bush so that the tribe may live another day. The Seminal Escape from the Fog of Prehistory Some in the wandering tribe must have left the mountains of Persia and Anatolia, perhaps by accident, and strayed into the plains below. When they returned, they must have told others of the arid steppes they had seen where the hunting was good and the living seemed easy. So one day, the tribe might have assembled for a momentous journey--a journey not just out of the mist of the mountains, as it were, but also out of the fog of prehistory. The tribe descended into the flood plains between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in what is now Iraq, into a region that the Greeks would one day call Mesopotamia, which means "land between the rivers." There, the mountain people found plenty of food, and survival appeared less tenuous, with opportunities they could not have imagined before. Because the hunt for meat and the search for grains no longer consumed all their time, they could now congregate at regular meeting places, swap stories, and share their food and their company at leisure. Such meeting places, we imagine, might have evolved into the first settlements. These early Mesopotamians we now recognize as the Sumerians, a Stone Age people who were the first to have taken the giant step into what we now call history. In the "land between the rivers," they evolved into a sedentary culture that lasted at least five thousand years. The First Farmer-Brewers BarleyBefore the Sumerians became settled in the Mesopotamian plains, beer-making, which requires a reliable and ample supply of cereal grain as well as steadiness and patience, was probably not even possible. Today, there is evidence of the beginnings of human cereal cultivation, mostly of wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum) with six rows of kernels, which dates from right after the Sumerians had given up their hunting and gathering ways. The Sumerians probably had already been familiar with barley from their previous mountain habitat. By today's standard, this barley must have tasted somewhat astringent, because of its small kernel size, which gave the grain a relatively large proportion of tannin-rich husks. The Sumerians must have figured out rather quickly, however, how to improve their staple grain, because we know from archaeological finds in Jarmo in the Taurus Mountains of modern Iraq that, as early as 7000 BC, the Sumerians were cultivating an advanced type of barley, Hordeum distichium, with two rows of big, instead of six rows of small, kernels. This Sumerian-bred crop is the forerunner of most modern brewing barley and one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world. Another cereal, which was first cultivated in Mesopotamia about nine thousand years ago, and which in its wild stage takes its origin from the steppes of Eurasia, is wheat (Triticum aestivum). The Sumerians--just like the modern brewers of Hefeweizen in Bavaria--used it for beer-making. In addition, they grew a now rarely planted sub-variety of wheat, called emmer or spelt (Triticum dicoccum), for both beer- and bread-making. The oldest evidence of emmer cultivation dates to about seven thousand years ago. With fewer than 10 inches of rain per year, Mesopotamia was too arid for purely rain-fed agriculture. So the Sumerians built complex irrigation systems that diverted the waters of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, and turned the dry plains into verdant fields of wheat, emmer, and barley. Soon oceans of golden stalks, swaying in the wind, stretched from the riverbanks to the horizon, and the once-unyielding land became a bountiful grain basket for both bread- and beer-making. And still today, this land is part of what we call the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. The oldest depiction of beer-making in Sumeria (and thus in the world!) is more than four thousand years old, and it shows the de-husking of emmer for a sacrificial beer brewed specifically in honor of the goddess Ninkasi, whom the Sumerians worshipped as the great mother of creation. Ninkasi is also known by the names of Ningiirsu, Ninurta, Nidaba, Astarte, or Ishtar. She was revered as the goddess of fertility. Her emblem was an ear of emmer or barley. In the spring she caused the grain to ripen. Grain was the center of Sumerian culture and Ninkasi, its goddess, the center of Sumerian ritual. Ninkasi was born of sparkling-fresh water. In the world above, her job was to brew all the beer for all the gods. On earth, she was in charge of the harvest, beer and brewing, drunkenness, seduction, the passionate art of carnal love, and the cruel art of war. Her name meant "the lady who fills the mouth." The First Society--Based on Grain for Bread and Beer Eventually the Sumerians produced more grain than they could consume themselves, either in solid or in liquid form. So they began to trade the fruits of the earth with neighboring people, mostly Semitic tribes to the north. To organize their massive collective efforts, they developed humanity's first large-scale cities, at least 7,000 years ago. The earliest carbon-dated remnants of such civilized habitations go back to between 4000 and 5000 BC, but they probably thrived long before then. They were substantial and permanent enough to have private and public buildings made from brick and stone. One of the major Sumerian cities was Babylon, on the banks of the Euphrates, some 50 miles south of present-day Baghdad. Also within the borders of modern Iraq are such valuable ancient sites as the ruins of Ur, where Abraham was borne, and of Uruk not far from the banks of the Euphratis, which in Sumerian times was a cultural center and the royal residence. Then there was the Assyrian city of Nineveh farther north on the banks of the Tigris. Large settlements such as these, of course, needed administration. The temples needed to be maintained and cared for, irrigation of the surrounding fields needed to be scheduled and coordinated, trade and commerce needed to be regulated, and diseases needed to be cured. The anarchic societies that had emerged tacitly from the twilight of prehistory gradually structured themselves into hierarchical communities, ruled by dynasties in prosperous city-states and spread out amidst endless lush fields along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. With settlement came human organization and with organization came all the attributes of sophistication and culture. Sumeria had irreversibly entered the bright light of civilization. To keep everything working in smooth order, however, records needed to be kept. So the Sumerians created the first-ever written language, consisting of roughly 2,000 pictographs...and one of the topics they wrote about was their beer. Once the Sumerians had learned to write about themselves and their beer-making, they became not only the world's first documented people to have given up the hunting and gathering lifestyle of prehistoric man, they also became the world's first documented brewers. We know from Sumerian records that, by the fourth millennium BC, this industrious society of scribes, farmers, and brewers used as much as half its annual grain harvest for beer. Because we consider the dawn of Sumerian culture also the dawn of man's recorded history, there is sound reason to think that beer and human civilization began at roughly the same time...and humanity hasn't stopped brewing since. If for no other reason than that beer is intimately connected with the transition of mankind from primitive to civilized society, beer has a very special place in anthropology. As is clear from the archeological evidence, man and beer have had a close and unique relationship ever since the very beginning of society, and the link has been powerful and influential. The First Beer Recipe The very first Sumerian brew was probably made by sheer accident and must have been a rather primitive beverage by today's standards. A forgetful Sumerian baker--probably the lady of the house or her maid--might have left her dough out during one of Sumeria's infrequent rainstorms. When the rays of the returning sun warmed the earthenware mixing bowl, in which the dough was now immersed in water, it became a combination of mash tun and open fermenter (as we would say today), in which the grain's enzymes converted the dough's starches into sugars. Or, perhaps, a Sumerian family sat down for a bowl of bread dunked in water, perhaps flavored with honey, dates, or date syrup. For some reason, however, the meal was not finished. When the household re-assembled, perhaps a few days later, the bowls of gruel were still on the table. In either scenario, airborne yeasts might have converted the sugars in the gruel to alcohol. Perhaps out of innate curiosity, the careless baker or the returning family might have tasted the ale that was so inadvertently concocted and appreciated the sour, refreshing taste--and, perhaps, the heady after-effect as well. This is all speculation, perhaps an apocryphal legend, but it offers a fair generic description of how beer is made, and, because of the records we have found and because of the bio-chemistry involved in beer-making, which we now understand, these scenarios are quite plausible. The Sumerians called bread "bappir." Bappir was perhaps similar to a mariner's hardtack during the age of sail. Sumerian bread could be stored for long periods without spoiling. Thus it was also a way to keep a reserve of food for hard times...and an ideal intermediate product for maintaining a reservoir of grain as a raw material for making beer throughout the year. There must have been deliberate attempts to replicate the probably inadvertent dough brew from bappir, because eventually all Sumerian brewers would coarsely grind wheat or barley, or both, then moisten the grain and shape it into flat loaves. After gently baking these loaves in mud-brick ovens into bappir, they would it crumble it into crocks of water. Left to their own devices, the containers of thin bread gruel would eventually be visited by yeast spores swept into the crocks on a breeze and the content would ferment into beer. Our Sumerian Stone Age forbears would then take a straw or a ladle and imbibe. We know so, because the Sumerians left us not only the oldest description of beer-making, but also the oldest graphic depiction of beer drinking. It comes from a seal found at Ur. It dates from around 3100 BC and shows two gentlemen using straws to drink beer out of a common crock. Upper-class Sumerians used straws made of gold and lapis-lazuli. One such straw was found in the third millennium B.C. tomb of Pu-abi, a dignified lady of the city of Ur. To Drink Beer Is to Be Human Even the oldest work of literature known to man already talks of beer. This is the Sumerian epic of King Gilgamesh. It was written and rewritten by priests over centuries, and stored in temple vaults for scholarly reference. But only one rendition of about half the work, copied about 3,200 years ago on twelve tablets, has been found in the library of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh on the banks of the river Tigris. It is now in the Louvre in Paris. On the ninth tablet, incidentally, this epic tells about a deluge, which is probably the earliest historical reference to the great flood of the Old Testament. The Gilgamesh epic talks about the origin of man--as a descendent of a mythical beast called Enkidu--and about the role that beer and its transformative powers have played in that genesis. The epic tells us that mighty Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu wandered the plains of Mesopotamia like prehistoric nomads--not in search of food, though, but in search of the key to immortality. Enkidu was an unkempt and unruly creature, half man, and half bull--a metaphor it seems of our own dual nature. He ate grass with the gazelles and shared their watering holes. When he found a hunter's trap, he would destroy it, thus acting as protector of his animal friends. But when Enkidu drank beer, he became man--one of us. Even if Descartes turns in his grave: Bibo cerevisiam, ergo sum! Here is how the epic tells the story: The king of a cultured city called Uruk decided to befriend the wild creature and civilize him. Uruk is the biblical Erech and is now called Warka. It was the center of worship to the goddess Ninkasi. So he sent one of Ninkasi's temple maidens out to the plains with the mission to seduce Enkidu. When she found him, she initiated him into the deepest secrets of erotic ecstasy, after which she offered him a meal of bread and beer. "Enkidu knows not how to eat bread," she said, "nor how to drink beer." She then entreated him: "Eat bread, Enkidu, as it is part of life! Drink beer as it is the custom of the land." Then the epic continuous: "The wild beast Enkidu ate bread until he was sated. He then drank beer, seven crocks full. His spirit relaxed and became free. He started to talk in a loud voice. Well-being filled his body and his face turned bright. He washed his matted fleece with water and rubbed his body with oil, and Enkidu became human." In short, it's beer that makes us animated, it's beer that propels us to civilization, and it's beer that makes us human. By gentling Enkidu's animal nature, beer helped to define who we are! Now go tell that to abstemious teetotalers and neo-temperance zealots! Beer, Bread, Community, and Peace The Sumerian farmers apparently were a mostly peaceful people, and beer consumption among them was high. Clearly, bread and beer had equal status in Sumerian society. Communal beer drinking accompanied all great social occasions, especially funerals. Sumerian tombstones depict servants offering beer to the gods to coddle favor for the afterlife of the departed. The priests and priestesses, who helped the souls make that transition to the beyond, in accordance with established ritual, were paid in bread and beer for their ceremonial services. According to a hieroglyphic find dating from 2900 BC, a funeral cost seven urns of beer, a price that the ruler, King Urukagina, had to reduce to three urns as a result of popular discontent. It appears that the spiritual guardians of society, from the priests of Mesopotamia, to the bacchantes of Rome, to the monastics of medieval Europe, have always had a great predilection for the fermented beverage. Brewing, practiced by both women and men in old Mesopotamia, became a respectable profession, but it was women who usually ran Sumerian public drinking establishments. These Stone Age forerunners of medieval alewives, were ladies of high standing and public influence, as we know from one beautiful Sumerian brewster and innkeeper by the name Kubaba. She founded an entire city called Kish around her pub, just a dozen miles northwest of Babylon. As Queen of Kish (as she was called) she organized periodic public feasts centered on ritual binge drinking, and she used her feminine charms to rule her city and her people in happiness, peace, and prosperity. The Sumerians of old Mesopotamia turned golden fields of grain into golden rivers of beer, they imbibed, and they prospered. As time went on, they formed a checkerboard of organized communities, which we now call city-states. The Sumerians found that collective organization was an effective means for pooling their resources for civic projects, such as irrigation, and for staging rituals that would ensure divine benefaction for the continuation of their agrarian-based wealth. While the Sumerians' accomplishments and "firsts" in agriculture, pottery, smelting, and arithmetic, have made tremendous contributions to the social, intellectual and economic evolution of mankind, their beer, perhaps more than any other of their creations, has had the greatest lasting impact on humanity's culture. Beer helped the Sumerians as mortal creatures to forge a union with their gods, with their past, and with their future. It thus defined to them what it was to be human in the present, a lesson that mankind has never forgotten. Beer, Eros, and Salvation As Sumeria blossomed, so did the rituals reserved for the great mother goddess Ninkasi, the source of all joy and pleasure. Her worshippers tried to emulate ever more passionately the nefarious traits over which she presided in the beyond. They gladly sacrificed before her shrines and in her temples, offering up to her a daily abundance of grain and beer, and the occasional goat. The goddess herself, of course, would partake only of the beer's soul. Then the worshippers and the temple's priestesses had to step up to the plate and consume the donated beer's material manifestation, often until intoxication transported them into a new state of awareness. In many temples, therefore, beer usually ran out well before everybody had reached the proper state of licentious comportment required for the ritual occasion. So the temples started to set up their own breweries, usually run by the sorority of priestess-brewsters--a custom emulated, in subsequent periods, by the other great cultures of mid-eastern antiquity, that of the Babylonians/Assyrians and the Egyptians. The hymn of Ninkasi (here from a translation by Miguel Civil), the goddes is described as the model Sumerian brewster: "Ninkasi, you are the one who handles...the bappir with date-honey...who bakes the bappir in the big oven...who soaks the malt in a jar. The waves rise, the waves fall...When you pour out the beer...it is like the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates." On feast days, the populace would convene at the temples of Ninkasi to join in eating bread and drinking beer. They knew that the gods would be convened above do the same in their realm. Such communal carousing often culminated in ecstasy, when all inhibitions faded and the revelers reached a state of being that was held to be beneficial for both spiritual well being of both the immortal gods and their mortal followers. The faithful would throw themselves with abandon into their intoxicated joy, while the gods would lose their fear and thus fight ever more courageously against all the adversities that might afflict their people below. As the alcohol spread its glow among the worshippers, the priestesses would carry forth with erotic songs and dances designed to arouse themselves, the great mother goddess Ninkasi, and the gathered crowd before them. The priestesses would then turn into maidens of easy virtue, and a Sumerian chap could consider himself lucky, if he was chosen at such an occasion to consummate with one of them the ultimate act of fertility--and to do so before the assembled multitude for the greater pleasure of the divine goddess of lust. Ninkasi herself had set the example for such public orgies. According to Sumerian myth, she is reputed to have declared: "When I sit at the city gate, in front of a tavern, I am a loving whore, who knows all men." So, with their goddess' blessing the priestesses turned their temple taverns onto brothels, dispensing both libatious and libidinous pleasures for the satisfaction of the spirit and the flesh alike. The king himself was not exempt from paying carnal homage to the mighty deity. At the feast of the New Year, which commenced with the clarion call of trumpets from the temple steps, the priestesses, dressed in veils, assembled before the high priestess, who at that moment was presumed to embody Ninkasi, the goddess of love herself. The steamy fertility ritual that was about to unite the secular with the spiritual leader of Sumeria started out seductively with the ceremonial drinking of a special sweet beer fortified with dates, herbs, honey, sesame, ginger, hemp, and nightshade--a psychedelic potion, which the Sumerians regarded as an aphrodisiac. Then the priestess-brewsters bathed the high priestess to prepare her divine womb for the visit by the earthly king. Next she was laid upon a bed scented with essence of cedar. There she received the royal favor in vicarious hierogamy--a sacred marriage between spirit and flesh, from which the Sumerians believed, would spring forth a new vernal crop and an ample autumn harvest. In Sumeria, beer was the magical medium for the people's communion with the divine, a potion that ensured public harmony and kept society at a seemingly low level of overt conflict. The objectives of early-civilized man were few, as we can glean from the works of Sumerian penmanship that have come down to us through the eons of time. The purpose of Sumerian life was--perhaps surprising and incongruous by modern standards--a mixture of both industry and hedonism, all for a transcendent cause. For the Sumerians, who had just stepped out of the twilight of prehistory into the collective awareness of what we call civilization, it was beer that allowed them to maintain a link to their misty past and to make sense of the world around them in their ordered present. Their beers flourished with their culture. It was the sacred drink, the gift from the gods, which the Sumerians, in turn, offered back to the gods in ritualistic sacrifice during ceremonies of communal intoxication and erotic arousal. There was bread and beer, and joy and worship, lust and devotion...and peace. This does not mean that Sumerians did not have their wars and conflicts; they did, mostly between their various city-states. But martial ways were never at the center of their social organization. Yet over the millennia of Sumerian evolution, there were other tribes that had followed the Sumerian's path from hunter-gatherers to settled civilizations...civilizations, whose emphasis was more on the martial than the brewing arts. As Mesopotemia began to be drawn into the larger, Mediterranean context of antiquity, with Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, and later Greek and Roman power on the rise, not surprisingly--even predictably--the Sumerians were being conquered and gradually assimilated. By the beginning of the second millennium BC, they had essentially vanished from history, but their contributions to civilization, including their beer, though orphaned, survived them, to be carried forth in new directions by their successors, the new writers of history...but that tale of beer's meandering, post-Sumerian fate is a yarn for another day. By Horst Dornbusch www.beeradvocate.com Horst Dornbusch is a world-renowned author, beer industry guru, host of GermanBeerInstitute.com, and author of Horst Dornbusch on Beer and Civilization - an exclusive column featured on BeerAdvocate.com

SANTA ANA (CBSLA.com) — Police Tuesday were searching for a man who attempted to steal a cellphone from a teenager who died from injuries she received while trying to recover it, authorities said. KCAL9’s Stacey Butler reports that the man confronted Rubi Rubio, 15, who was walking July 3 with her 7-year-old sister near 1000 W. Warner Ave. in Santa Ana. After taking her iPhone, he fled to a light gray or silver Pontiac vehicle nearby that was being driven by an unknown person, Santa Ana police said. As the vehicle started driving away, the girl jumped on the trunk and held on briefly before falling off. She was in critical condition and died of her injuries July 5, according to authorities. Rubi’s mother said it was unlike her daughter to respond in such an aggressive manner, but because she’d broken two phones in the past, she might have acted because she was afraid would be in trouble for losing or damaging a third. The iPhone was recovered, but police are seeking witnesses of the incident. The man was described as Hispanic in his late 20s to early 30s, 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10 with a medium build. He was last seen wearing a black baseball cap, white tank top and light-colored jeans. Anyone with information about the identity of the man suspected in the theft attempt or the incident was asked to contact the Homicide Unit at 714-245-8390 or OC Crime Stoppers 1-855-TIP-OCCS.

— An insect invasion is terrorizing New York City homeowners, making life miserable, even dangerous, for many families. Parents have been forced to take extreme measures to protect their children and their homes. CBS 2’s Dave Carlin investigates the growing Upper West Side mosquito mystery. These rare mosquitoes are extra blood-thirsty and active year-round. Carlin saw some of them in a lab after they were collected in the unlikeliest of places, Bernard Lagan’s home on West 84th Street. “They trapped 150 mosquitoes in the basement in a 24-hour period coming from underground and into the basement and up in to the house through the air vents and it’s the same story as the other brownstones on this block,” Lagan told Carlin. UPDATE: Rare Breed Only Feeds In Darkness It’s an invasion that has almost every resident of 84th Street between Riverside and West End Avenue slapping, scratching and suffering. “They’re hungry. They’re hungry,” said resident Susan Nicholson. “Three on this ear; one on his cheek; one on his neck,” another woman said, illustrating the bites on one of her children. “And there are some on his arms going up his arm.” Frustrated neighbors said after numerous complaints to the city and no concrete action, they feel abandoned. So like busy bees, they’re taking matters in to their own hands: covering cracks, vents and drains, both inside and out. “Every vent is covered with mesh. It helps. It cuts it by 50 percent,” resident Pauline Galiana said. In bedrooms on the block you see mosquito netting over the beds. Residents told Carlin it is the only way to get an uninterrupted pain-free night of sleep. “This mosquito is well known for being in sewers in New York,” said Dina Fonseca, a professor at the Rutgers Center for Vector Biology. Fonseca said the blood suckers’ scientific name is Culex Pipiens Molestus and that they thrive year-round in sewers and feast on humans at night. “The best way to address that is to close all connections to the sewer and do aggressive mosquito control in the sewers, but that’s a tall order in these old cities like New York,” Fonseca said. “Eliminating them, we are told by the Health Department, is going to require ripping up the road, treating it and putting the road back down,” Lagan said. But Lagan said he is tired of waiting, and so are his kids, 7-year-old Rosie and 9-year-old Gracie. “All on the walls there are mosquitoes and blood,” Gracie said. “I just get bitten really all over me,” Rosie added. Carlin contacted the Health Department to ask when something will be done. He has not heard back. “It really is unacceptable for a city to ignore this kind of plague,” Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal said. Rosenthal said the Department of Transportation must provide some relief. “I just saw coming up from these holes a whole bevy of mosquitoes. If the city were to patch up the holes in the street it would take care of at least some of the mosquitoes,” Rosenthal said. Residents vow to bug every city agency they can think of to make all these pests buzz off for good. Residents said the problem started last summer and got progressively worse. They said, initially, they were told because getting rid of the mosquitoes was not a top priority because they tested negative for West Nile Virus. Please offer your thoughts in the comments section below.

The Commonwealth Bank Bushrangers have dropped a bombshell on the eve of their crucial Matador BBQs One-Day Cup clash against Tasmania with Glenn Maxwell handed a one-match team suspension. Victoria need to defeat the Tigers at North Sydney Oval tomorrow to guarantee their place in Friday’s elimination final at Drummoyne Oval, but coach David Saker has come down hard on the superstar allrounder after he missed a team recovery session early on Monday. Quick Single: Hastings backs Vic batsmen to fire It’s a huge blow for the Bushrangers as they look to cement a finals berth, and comes just a day after an impressive victory over the previously undefeated NSW Blues. “We’re disappointed that Glenn let down his teammates and missed a recovery session this morning,” Saker said. “We have high expectations of all our players and as a senior player, Glenn should be taking a leadership role. “As a result he will not be playing in tomorrow’s match against Tasmania.” In a statement released tonight, Maxwell said he was disappointed to miss tomorrow’s match after thinking he had a free morning before joining the members of the national team for a day of media commitments. “I understand that I broke team rules by missing recovery and I have accepted the consequences,” Maxwell said. “It was an oversight on my behalf where I thought I had a free morning before some Australia team commitments. “I'm extremely disappointed to be missing a game, but I will continue to do everything possible to help the Bushrangers win the Matador Cup.” WATCH: Maxwell makes important fifty During the domestic competition, Maxwell has shown glimpses of the form that saw him named in the official Team of the World Cup earlier this year, but also received his share of criticism as he looks to push for a Test recall after the missing out on an opportunity in the postponed Qantas Tour of Bangladesh. Australia’s Bupa Support Team Head Coach Darren Lehmann criticised Maxwell’s dismissal in Victoria’s loss to Queensland at Blacktown International Sportspark in the opening week of the tournament. "He's exciting, but we have to see him be really hungry to make big runs," Lehmann told 6PR radio. "Take the example of his (Matador Cup) performance on Friday. He was out caught at deep third man, where the wicket was low and slow. Quick Single: Hastings sparks Bushrangers upset "He really could have played a technical innings, which we know he can do. "He's been brilliant for us over the last 12 months in the one-day format. "But again, it's a case of him taking his game to the next level in the longer format." Maxwell responded with a man-of-the-match performance against Western Australia, but was then brought undone for five against the Blues and didn’t feature with the ball on the small venue at North Sydney. Allrounder Marcus Stoinis looks set to replace Maxwell in the Bushrangers XI for tomorrow’s crunch match after he made way for experienced opener Rob Quiney yesterday. Cricket Victoria confirmed that Maxwell would be available for selection in Friday’s elimination final, should they qualify.