James A. Wolfe, a Senate panel's longtime director of security, is charged with making false statements to FBI agents investigating leaks to reporters.
Senate intelligence staffer linked to 'New York Times' reporter pleads not guilty in leak probe James A. Wolfe, a Senate panel's longtime director of security, is charged with making false statements to FBI agents investigating leaks to reporters. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://usat.ly/2t6PT0T
A former employee of the Senate intelligence committee, James A. Wolfe, has been arrested on charges of lying to the FBI about contacts with multiple reporters and appeared in federal court Friday in Baltimore. (June 8) AP
The Times reported it is reviewing Watkins' work history. It said Watkins told the paper her relationship with Wolfe had ended last year. She joined the Times in December.
Lebanon chooses a president supported by Iran and Hezbollah Lebanon has been without a head of state since May 2014. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: http://usat.ly/2f5PqVX
Supporters of Lebanon's Free Patriotic Movement celebrate the election of their leader MP Michel Aoun (portrait) and carry the flag of Shiite movement Hezbollah in the town of Jdeideh north of Beirut on Oct. 31, 2016.(Photo: MARWAN TAHTAH, AFP/Getty Images)
Lebanon's lawmakers elected Michel Aoun, an lran-backed politician and former general, as president Monday, ending more than two years the country has gone without a leader.
Aoun’s “victory now is a victory for Hezbollah and that alliance, and certainly a kind of black eye for Saudi Arabia,” said Paul Salem, vice president for policy and research at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.
Lebanon's former prime minister and MP Saad Hariri leaves the parliament after a session to elect a new president on Oct. 31, 2016 in downtown Beirut. (Photo: JOSEPH EID, AFP/Getty Images)
Saad Hariri, a pro-Western and Saudi-oriented politician, formally endorsed Aoun last week after failing to garner enough support for the presidency. In return, Aoun is expected to appoint Hariri prime minister.
“This is a moment of opportunity, as Lebanon emerges from years of political impasse, to restore government functions and build a more stable and prosperous future for all Lebanese citizens,” he said in a statement.
Asked later about Aoun's support from Hezbollah, which the State Department has designated a terrorist organization, Kirby said, "Let's see what decisions he makes, what kind of leadership he exudes as president."
The U.S. routinely assesses its foreign assistance programs "and we will do that with Lebanon going forward," Kirby said at a news briefing.
A handout picture provided by the Lebanese Parliament press office on Oct. 31, 2016, shows newly-elected Lebanese President Michel Aoun delivering a speech after his election at the parliament in downtown Beirut. (Photo: HO, AFP/Getty Images)
The adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, described the choice as a victory for Iran and its allies in Lebanon, because the Lebanese president is “a very significant ring in the chain of the Islamic resistance,” according to Iran’s government-owned Tasnim News Agency.
Aoun, in his first speech after becoming president, pledged to fight corruption and protect Lebanon from the fires raging around it, referring to the Syrian civil war, according to the Associated Press. He also promised to liberate contested territory under “Israeli occupation,” according to Hezbollah’s Al Manar-TV, apparently referring to territory Israel considers part of the Golan Heights, which it conquered from Syria during the 1967 war.
Lebanon has been without a head of state since May 2014, when then-president Michel Suleiman’s six-year term expired. Since then, 45 sessions to elect a new leader have failed because of political infighting, the AP reported.
Aoun, a French- and American-trained former military officer, is known affectionately in Lebanon as “The General.”
He led the Lebanese Army during a years-long civil war against Syrian troops and Iranian-backed Hezbollah in the late 1980s. Aoun and his supporters lost, and he was forced into exile in 1991.
A constant critic of Hezbollah and Syria’s then-president Hafez Assad, Aoun returned to Lebanon in 2005 after the assassination of then-prime minister Rafiq Hariri. U.N. investigators blamed the murder on Hezbollah and its ally Syria, which occupied Lebanon at the time.
Syria was subsequently forced by international pressure to withdraw its forces from the country. But Aoun later reconciled with Hezbollah and visited the Iranian capital, Tehran.
While Saudi Arabia has largely “written off” Lebanon, canceling this year its $4 billion-a-year support for the Lebanese military and security forces, the U.S. remains a key supporter of the Lebanese military, Salem said.
The Lebanese military has largely succeeded in keeping al-Qaeda extremist violence from crossing over from Syria, but it has done nothing about Hezbollah, “which is a completely independent organization,” Salem said.
With new leadership, Lebanon will be expected to launch parliamentary elections, which are more than three years overdue, Salem said.
The Bureau of Reclamation began in response to the need for stable water supplies in the semi-arid American West. Water was often not available when needed for crops, livestock, and people. At first, settlers simply diverted water from streams, but in many areas demand outstripped supply as rivers diminished following high spring flows.
As demand for water increased, settlers wanted to store "wasted" runoff from rains and snow for later use to make more water available in drier seasons. The stored runoff would also limit damage from flooding that occurred along rivers and streams where the most successful irrigation was practiced. Private and state-sponsored water projects were pursued but often failed because of limited financial resources or engineering skill.
Irrigation water was delivered to some farms even before the Belle Fourche project was completed. This 1915 photo shows a typical harvest scene for small grains.
It is important to remember that agriculture was the dominant industry in the West. The continued settlement of the West depended upon stable farm economies. Following the example of Native American irrigation and their own experience, the western public often strongly supported large-scale development of water projects. Congress at the time was also composed largely of farmers and others aware of the needs of agriculture. Pressure mounted for the Federal Government to undertake storage and irrigation projects.
Congress relied upon numerous reports about conditions in the West. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 sparked interest in settlement. By 1818 riverboat travel was common on the larger tributaries of the Missouri River. Federal investment followed as the Army Corps of Engineers undertook projects to improve navigation by improving river channels for safer and more reliable navigation. Even before the Homestead Act passed in 1862 organized irrigation was begun by settlers on the banks of Clear Creek in Colorado (1859). After passage of the act, free land was available for settlers that moved west in ever increasing numbers by wagon, steamboat, and the newly completed transcontinental railroad. The harsh realities of farming soon became apparent. As settlement moved further west the use of rainfall for raising crops became less reliable. Irrigation as was the answer.
In 1867 John Wesley Powell began a series of expeditions to further explore the West. He is often considered the father of reclamation because he not only detailed the land, natives, and conditions he encountered but also advocated water development and mapped locations for future dams and irrigation. Vocal supporters followed with local demands for federal involvement in irrigation projects. One such supporter was Buffalo Bill Cody (of Wild West Show fame) who realized that greater resources were required for the larger scale developments that were needed to insure stable water supplies through dry seasons. These requests increased during the 1890's when drought struck settlers prompting many to give up their dreams of hearth and home.
Congress passed the Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902. The Act required that water users repay construction costs from which they received benefits. The United States Reclamation Service began within the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The name Reclamation stuck because the purpose was to reclaim arid lands (by irrigation) to make them suitable for settlement. The new Reclamation Service studied potential water development projects in western states and began development using revenue from sale of Federal lands as the initial source of the funding.
From 1902 to 1907, Reclamation began about 30 projects in Western states with many of them in the Missouri River Basin. Among them was Buffalo Bill's project on the Shoshone River in Wyoming. The Belle Fourche Project in South Dakota, Huntley in Montana, North Platte in Wyoming and Nebraska, and others began in the early years of Reclamation in the Great Plains.
In 1907, the Secretary of the Interior separated the Reclamation Service from the USGS and created an independent bureau within the Department of the Interior. In the Bureau of Reclamation's early years, many projects continued to encounter problems because of the lack of funding, the unprecedented engineering challenges faced by builders, lack of knowledge about soils under irrigation, land speculation, and the uncertainty of repayment of project costs by irrigators.
Early Reclamation works began as single-purpose projects that were designed to store and deliver irrigation water. Other benefits such as flood control, municipal water, hydropower, and fish & wildlife habitat were secondary to irrigation or were not planned during the construction of these projects. The construction of single purpose projects was assumed by the federal government. Interest-free repayment of the construction cost was considered a loan to farmers that received water and a repayment agreement was a requirement for beginning a project.
Irrigation that could be developed by diversion from streams and simple canal systems were rapidly developed by private and state sponsorship. This left the more costly and complex works for Reclamation. As irrigation development continued, the cost of facilities to store large quantities of water and deliver it through miles of canals to land distant from natural streams increased. The cost began to exceed what farmers could expect to pay when on-farm improvements necessary for irrigation were included. A part of the solution was to reconsider how the benefits of a project were computed and to redistribute repayment among them. Flood control was computed as a federal benefit since limiting damage was seen as in the national interest. Electric power generation shared in repayment by an assessment on the electricity that was passed on to customers. Others that received economic benefits from Reclamation projects, such as municipal water, also shared in repaying the cost.
By combining all the benefits larger and more costly projects were possible. Single-purpose projects serving mere thousands to tens of thousands of acres gave way to those that served hundreds of thousands of acres of irrigation along with municipal water, hydropower, and flood control for many communities. Among these are the Colorado Big Thompson (1950s) and the Fryingpan-Arkansas (1970s) projects that use miles of tunnels and a complex water collection system on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains to divert water for storage in reservoirs and use on the east slope of the mountains in Colorado. These transcontinental diversion projects are among Reclamation's most complex. Municipal water supplies, hydropower generation, flood control, and irrigation were developed to meet the needs of eastern Colorado.
Image of the construction of Boysen Dam, Wyoming taken July, 1949. This is one of the earliest color images taken in the Great Plains Region.
By the time these later projects were developed it was recognized that there were increased and often conflicting use of water that placed new demands upon Reclamation facilities. One example of how a project evolved over time is the Shoshone Project in northwest Wyoming. Originally Shoshone Dam (later renamed Buffalo Bill Dam) and a series of diversion dams and canal systems were constructed beginning in 1904 for irrigation. The available head or supply of water at a suitable pressure for hydropower was available from the dam. Water could be used to generate power as it was released from the dam for irrigation. The Shoshone Power Plant was put into service in 1922. Additional lands were irrigated and another larger power plant added in 1948. Soon after communities began to look for better municipal water supplies and the reservoir was seen as the solution. Then in 1987 the Buffalo Bill Dam modification was completed to add more power generation, increase the volume of water in storage for municipalities, improve safety and reliability of the dam, provide for more extensive recreation facilities, and to address some environmental concerns caused by the original reservoir. The modification of the project was so beneficial that the State of Wyoming shared in funding the construction. The irrigation project changed over time into a multipurpose project to meet additional demands placed upon it by a changing society but still meets the original need of providing water to irrigate some of Wyoming's most productive farms.
Great Plains Region programs have constantly changed to meet the needs of a changing society. Facilities once created and operated solely for irrigation now need to meet other demands placed on the finite water resource. Managers recognize the need to constantly evaluate more efficient ways of working with others to solve water resource problems.
One example of a complex program that was created and has evolved to meet the needs of the west is the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program. This program was created in 1944 by Congress as a compromise between the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation that had competing missions and plans for comprehensive water development in the Missouri River Basin. The program was a national response to severe drought and the severe flooding cycles that marked the basin. The development of facilities to tame the Missouri River and its tributaries were divided between the two federal organizations. As the Corps of Engineers developed mainstem reservoirs primarily for flood control and hydroelectric generation, Reclamation was developing features on tributaries as multipurpose projects with and emphasis on irrigation. The Pick-Sloan program gradually became increasingly complex and now encompasses a host of services not originally envisioned such as small (in population served) rural municipal water supply systems.
Similarly, the Great Plains Region organization has repeatedly adapted to meet the changing needs of the American West. Initially Reclamation projects were administered by local offices managing their construction and settlement. The 17 Reclamation states were then divided into regions for administrative support. The nine state Great Plains area was served by three Reclamation regions: the Southwest, Lower Missouri, and the Upper Missouri regions. The last two regions were merged in 1985 to form the Missouri Basin Region. This allowed for better planning and administration of projects (especially the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program). In 1988 declining Reclamation budgets and fewer demands for construction activities led to much of the Southwest and the Missouri Basin regions merging to create the Great Plains Region. Further organizational refinements included the creation of area offices (Montana, Wyoming, Oklahoma-Texas, Nebraska-Kansas, Dakotas and Eastern Colorado) to effectively administer Reclamation Activities.
Sasikiran started playing chess at the age of 10 and became an IM in 1999 and GM in 2000. He was the second Indian after Ex-World Champion Vishy Anand to cross 2700. Sasikiran was honoured by Government of India with "Arjuna Award" (civilian honour) in 2002 for his exceptional performance. He has also been the Indian National champion for 4 times (1999, 2002, 2003 and 2012), Asian Individual (Classical) Champion in 2003 and holds the record for playing the highest number of chess games (more than 100) for India in the Olympiads. Sasikiran was instrumental in India winning the first ever Bronze Medal at 41st Olympiad at Tromso, Norway in 2014 and won the Individual Silver Medal on Board 3 for his performance in the same event. His other chess achievements include winning the European Club Cup in 2013 (for Novy Bor), becoming the first Indian to win the 52nd edition of the Prestigious "Capablanca Memorial" in 2017, and many other open tournaments around the world including the Rilton Cup and Benasque Open. Sasikiran joined the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) a Government of India undertaking and playing for them since 1999.
Alexander Motylev is a Russian chess grandmaster, former European champion, and former Russian champion. He is also Sergey's Karyakin trainer and one of the coaches of the Russian Men’s national team. In 1995, he won Russian Junior Championship under 16 and, in 1997, for the under 18 level. Motylev was the runner-up in the 1998 European Junior Chess Championship, which was won by Levon Aronian. Then, in 2001, he won the Russian Chess Championship in Elista and played for the national team in the World Team Chess Championship, where he contributed to the team silver medal scoring 2/3. In 2006, he was the joint winner (first on tie-break) of the Corus B Tournament in Wijk aan Zee with Magnus Carlsen and, in June 2009, he won the 10th Karpov tournament (category 18, 2694) in Poikovsky, Russia. Other achievements for Motylev include sharing 2-3 places (2nd on tiebreak) with Lazaro Bruzon, behind Pentala Harikrishna, in the Corus B Tournament in Wijk aan Zee in 2012 and finishing second in the 14th edition of Poikovsky Karpov tournament (category 18, 2685) in 2013. Motylev also won the 2014 European Individual Championship in Yerevan, Armenia with 9/11 and a rating performance of 2872, the best performance in the event's history. Following this event in 2014, he took clear second place, behind Pavel Eljanov, in the B tournament of the Vugar Gashimov Memorial in Shamkir, Azerbaijan. He also placed equal first (second on tiebreak) in the 2015 Russian Championship Higher League with 6.5/9 in Kaliningrad. Recently, in 2017, Motylev won the Russian Rapid Chess Championship in Sochi.
Hrant is a 29 year-old Armenia chess player who earned his Grandmaster title in 2008. He has won many prestigious tournaments including taking 2nd at the World Youth Championship under 18 in Batumi in 2006 and at the European Rapid Championship in 2015. Hrant has also won the European Blitz Championship in 2011, the London Chess Classic in 2013 and 2017, and other Open tournaments. He has also played on the Armenian national team, taking the European silver (1st result on board 4) and world Team bronze medal in 2015.
Jeffery Xiong of Coppell, Texas, is the highest ranked player in the US under the age of 18. He won the World Junior Chess Championship in 2016 at the age of 15, which was the first time an American chess player has won in 2 decades. He was also the youngest winner of the Chicago Open Chess Championship in history, when he won it in 2015 at the age of 14. He was awarded the prestigious Samford Chess Fellowship in 2017. He has represented the USA in the 2017 World Team Championship and FIDE World Cup.
Dariusz Swiercz is 24-year old Grandmaster from Poland. He became GM at the age of 14 years. In 2011 he became World Champion U20 and in 2012 World Champion U18. He represented Poland on Olympiads in Istanbul (2012) and Baku (2016). In 2016, he won 3rd Millionaire Chess. Now, he resides in Saint Louis and attends Saint Louis University, majoring in Economics.
Sam Sevian is an American chess prodigy. He holds the record for the youngest ever United States Grandmaster at the age of 13 years, 10 months, and 27 days. He also holds the record for the youngest ever United States International Master at 12 years and 10 months; and the youngest National Master in USCF history at 9 years, 11 months, and 23 days. In 2012, he became World Champion in the U12 category. He achieved a 2500 FIDE rating during the Saint Louis GM Norm Invitational tournament with an impressive outcome of 7.5/9.
Sevian made his first appearance at the U.S. Chess Championships in Saint Louis, Missouri in 2013 as the youngest ever participant. There, Sevian placed in a shared 14th position out of 24 total players with a score of 4/9, beating out several grandmasters. He returned for another U.S. Chess Championships in 2015 and shared fifth place ahead of several well-known names in the chess world including Wesley So, a world top ten ranked player. His overall performance in the championship earned him a spot in the 2015 Chess World Cup.
Aleksandr Shimanov became an International Master in 2007. Two years later, he received his grandmaster title when he was just 17 years old. In 2013, he tied for 1st-3rd at the Nakhchivan Open with Gadir Guseinov and Igor Kurnosov. GM Shimanov typically favors the Queen’s Pawn Game and Salv openings for white, and Caro-Kann and King’s Indian openings for black.
Yuniesky Quezada Pérez is a Cuban chess grandmaster. He was the fourth Cuban chess player to surpass the Elo 2600 rating mark in July 2010. His chess achievements include winning the Cuban Chess Championship in 2008 and 2011 and, in April 2015, winning the Philadelphia Open, defeating runner up Ioan-Cristian Chirila.
Grandmaster Evgenij Miroshnichenko, often referred to as Miro, was born in Donetsk, Ukraine. He was introduced to the game of chess at 5 and started to attend his local chess club at 6. At the age of 19, Miro was awarded the International Master title and the Grandmaster title in 2002. He is a two time Ukrainian champion (2003 and 2008) and reached his highest world rank, 37, in 2007. Miro has also worked as a coach and second to Sergey Karjakin, both Muzychuk sisters, and Anton Smirnov, to name a few. Miro has extensive experience doing commentary, which includes two chess olympiads (2012, 2016) and now as the Russian commentator for the 2018 Grand Chess Tour.
Zaven is an Armenian Grandmaster, earning the title in 2006. He won the 2005 European Youth Chess Championship for under-16, followed by the 2006 World Junior Chess Championship. His other chess achievements include winning the Russian Cup Final after defeating Artyom Timofeev in the second game of the final in 2010, earning second in the Armenian Chess960 Championship in 2012, and sharing first with Alexander Kovchan and Sipke Ernst in the Groningen Chess Festival, also in 2012. In 2016, Zaven won the Armenian Chess Championship for the first time.
BASE: Front bi-fold door with 3 interior drawers, Center pass-through center/front-to-back with CPU vent, Side bi-fold door with 3 swing-out shelves
Blogger is a popular Google’s service which allow users to create blogs for free. There are many popular blogs and websites still using blogger as blog publishing platform. There are many partime bloggers who still prefer Blogger over WordPress.
Although, Blogger is simple and easy to use, there are few limitation of this service. It lacks customization. So users have to search and use third party widgets. In this post, i am sharing a nice Share bar for bloggers.
In this age, when social media is ruling the web, we every blogger must add social media sharing buttons to the blog. In blogger, it is hard to find a perfect sharing widget. But this lazy Loading Floating Share Bar is really nice. It is available for free to use.
The widget uses Socialite to asynchronously load all the scripts and styles related to the buttons as and when the user hovers over the widget. The widget comes in mainly two versions , one with small buttons and the other with large buttons.
Sponsored by the USITT Architecture Commission, the Architecture Awards Program honors excellence in the design and recognize architects of theatre projects for 25 years.
Honor Awards (the highest designation) and Merit Awards are evaluated by a panel of distinguished jurors for
Past award winners have come from England, Germany, Japan, California, New York, and all points between.