Datasets:

yyu

/

news_corpus

like 1

An inter-college quiz competition, organised by Defence Authority SKBZ College at its auditorium in Defence, at 9.30am. A Lecture on `How Pakistan can promote scientific research for human development`, under the distinguished lecture series of the faculty of social sciences, University of Karachi, at its arts auditorium, at 11.15am. Launching of a book, Tazkirah Shakhsiyaat-iBhopal, by Shagufta Farhat, organised by the Federal Urdu University and Mohibban-i-Bhopal Forum in the university`s Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan auditorium, University Road, Gulshan-i-lqbal, at 4pm. A group show of works by four artists opens at the Clifton art gallery at 6pm. Arif, A.S. Rind, Khusro Subzwari and Mashkoor Raza. The show titled `The Echoes of a Distant Tide` will remain open till Oct 24, daily from 11am to 9pm. A group show of works by nine artists opens at the Grandeur gallery at 6pm. The participants are: Hamid Alavi, Furrukh Naseem, Abdul Hameed, Naushad Alam, Naish Rafi, Shiraz Ashraf, Yousaf Shaikh, Azra Wahab and Sarwat Syed. The show will remain open till Oc 17, daily from 11am to 8pm. A candle-lit vigil and awareness walk to mark National Disaster Awareness Day, organised by the Provincial Disaster Management Authority Sindh, at the Cantonment Board Clifton Beach View Park, Seaview, at 6.30pm.

Wigan manager Roberto Martinez has confirmed his interest in Argentinian striker Mauro Boselli but would not be drawn on whether an offer has been made. The 25-year-old Estudiantes frontman has also been linked with Sunderland and Birmingham, but reports in South America suggested the Latics had agreed a club-record fee. But Martinez told the Wigan Evening Post: "At the moment, everything is still up in the air with that one." He added: "It is true he is a player we have been following for a long time, but I can't confirm anything regarding an offer. "Over the next few weeks we hope to finalise a few things with the players we have been trying to get. Mauro is one of a number of names that will come out because we have been following a lot of players."

S.C. Judge Says 1944 Execution Of 14-Year-Old Boy Was Wrong : The Two-Way In her ruling, Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen wrote that she found that "fundamental, Constitutional violations of due process exist in the 1944 prosecution of George Stinney, Jr." George Stinney Jr. appears in an undated police booking photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. A South Carolina judge vacated the conviction of the 14-year-old, who was executed in 1944, saying he didn't receive a fair trial. An African-American boy, George Stinney Jr., who was executed at age 14 in the killing of two young white girls has been exonerated in South Carolina, 70 years after he became the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 1900s. A judge ruled he was denied due process. "I think it's long overdue," Stinney's sister, Katherine Stinney Robinson, 80, tells local newspaper The Manning Times. "I'm just thrilled because it's overdue." In her ruling, Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen wrote that she found that "fundamental, Constitutional violations of due process exist in the 1944 prosecution of George Stinney, Jr., and hereby vacates the judgment." The case was brought by Stinney Robinson and two of her surviving siblings. "It took less than a day for a jury to convict George Stinney Jr. and send him to the electric chair," NPR'S Hansi Lo Wang reports. "He was convicted of the deaths of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 7-year-old Mary Emma Thames in deeply segregated Alcolu, S.C." Matt Burgess, an attorney for the Stinney family, tells Hansi, "There were no African-American people in that courthouse. It was a jury of 12 white men. Everyone in that courthouse was white." Stinney's family has maintained he was innocent, insisting that he was too small to carry out such a crime and too naive to handle the pressure put on him by law enforcement officials. Bolstered by a key ally in local historian and school board member George Frierson, family members have insisted that they didn't want Stinney to be pardoned for a crime they believed he didn't commit. "There's a difference: A pardon is forgiving someone for something they did," Norma Robinson, George Stinney's niece, tells the Manning Times. "That wasn't an option for my mother, my aunt or my uncle. We weren't asking forgiveness." George Stinney Jr. was executed less than three months after the two girls were murdered. His trial lasted just one day. After the jury needed less than 10 minutes to declare him guilty, no appeals were filed on his behalf. "His executioners noted the electric chair straps didn't fit him, and an electrode was too big for his leg," The State newspaper reports. The paper adds, "It took Mullen nearly four times as long to issue her ruling as it took in 1944 to go from arrest to execution." The Manning Times notes that in her decision, Mullen granted a "writ of coram nobis, a rare legal doctrine held over from English law that 'corrects errors of fact' when no other remedy is available to the applicant." Back in 2004, NPR marked the 60th anniversary of Stinney's death with a Sound Portrait featuring interviews with his sister, Katherine Stinney Robinson, and Lorraine Bailey, the sister of Betty June Binnicker. The two women's recollections are strikingly different — except in some aspects. For instance, both of them recalled how fond they were of the siblings they lost. And they both think it's possible their mothers "never got over it," as Stinney Robinson said.

Warning: This post contains major spoilers from The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Season 2 finale. For her latest TV gig, erstwhile astronaut’s wife Yvonne Strahovski will try her luck as a commander’s spouse. A new 24 without Jack Bauer? That we can kind of understand — Kiefer Sutherland after all has run and gunned through many a very bad day. Yvonne Strahovski has played the killer before, but she’ll soon be on the other side of a murder investigation.

Since then, Evans and Burnett have taught an open enrollment class at Stanford together, which has become one of the most popular electives at the university. The method has been the subject of two PhD theses and had demonstrated significant results in helping people design the life they want. The method is centered on the principles taught in the Product Design Program and the d.school at Stanford called “design thinking.” As the ideas grew in popularity, Evans and Burnett elected to memorialize many of the key insights and exercises in a book, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, which has been a bestseller since its release in September of last year. They discuss many of the key themes herein. Peter High: Bill, as the Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford, the Co-Director of the Stanford Life Design Lab, and the co-author of the book we are discussing, please provide an overview of the Design Program at Stanford, which is foundational to the work that the two of you have been doing. Bill Burnett: Most people, when they hear the word design, think of graphic design or industrial design. That is commonly the way design is taught, but Stanford took a different tact. We have been teaching design as a human-centered practice, since 1957. A couple of big thinkers, John Arnold and Bob McKim put together what we call human-centered design, which is Engineering, plus Psychology and a little Anthropology to try to understand people well; and then leaning hard into the concepts of creativity and ideation. This is what we now call “design thinking,” which is an innovation methodology that relies on multiple sets of tools and focuses on human needs. It is a way of innovating in anything: a product, a service, or experiences. What we primarily do at Stanford is teach undergraduates and graduates how to be design thinkers. Then they go out into the world and work at all the big companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and IBM. Most of my work is around teaching our Engineering students how to be innovators, the Designing Your Life class popped up as a little side project. It has kind of gotten out of control. High: Dave, I understand the genesis of the Designing Your Life class was about eight years ago and began with you taking Bill to lunch. That then led to the recently released book, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived Joyful Life. What was the problem you hoped to solve or the opportunity that you recognized that led you to collaborate with Bill? Dave Evans: This is an idea that suddenly popped into my head slowly - over 43 years. It goes all the way back to when I was a sophomore at Stanford and was wrapped around the axle of the question, what do I want to do with my life? I was struggling, and most of the help that I got was not useful. People wanted to help me get what I wanted once I knew what it was, but people were not good at helping me figure out what it was I wanted. That seemed criminal and upsetting. At the time, I could not solve that question, so like everybody else, I figured it out the hard way. Fast forwarding many years, I began to realize that people in the workplace asked the same question I had always asked: “What does this work mean to us?” Everyone also asked the question, “What will I do with the rest of my wild and precious life?” I started teaching small seminars on the side about what I had discovered, and began teaching a class at the University of California at Berkeley called, Finding Your Vocation. In 2007, Bill, who was in old colleague, became the head of the Design Program at Stanford and I thought, maybe he thinks these questions are interesting. We went to lunch and I said, "This question has been plaguing me my entire life, it plagues everybody, the university still stinks at it. I have been teaching a class at Berkeley that has gone surprisingly well, but we ought to use design thinking to do this. What do you think?” Bill said, “Absolutely. Let's go.” We prototyped it that summer and had the first class that fall. Then, the university asked if we could do this for everybody. We did that, and the thing kind of blew up. Your degree determines your career. If you are successful you will be happy. I should know where I am going. Know it is a process. Is it a fair, albeit simplified, synopsis to say that the program is about un-constraining yourself from dysfunctional beliefs and designing a set of activities around the kinds of things that make you happy? Burnett: Yes, I liked your description of multiple ladders. When you design a product, you do not have only one idea; that would be terrible. You generate lots of ideas. The book is research based, and there is tons of research that says if you start with three ideas, and you generate ideas from there, you will have a better set of ideas, and in turn will have a better chance of selecting something that is successful. It is the same thing with your life. There is not one ladder. Through our workshops on the book, we have talked to people all-around the country, and found that often people feel trapped. Successful people climbed that ladder and got to be a partner at a law firm or an executive at their company, but are unhappy and feel stuck because they thought it was a singular one size fits all road to meaning. First, people grow and change. Second, there is not one solution to your life, there are many solutions. Life is an adventure. This notion that if you do not immediately find the right thing, or do not launch exactly into the right career out of school, then you are behind or screwed is not true. In fact, there is loads of evidence for the opposite that says you will have multiple careers and multiple expressions of your life. That is what will make it fun. We always tell students, “Do you want your 22 year old self telling your 45 year old self what he is going to be doing for a living?” That would be crazy, you do not know anything at 22. We want people to imagine life as an exploration, we call it “The Odyssey.” We do three Odyssey Plans, not one, but three ideations for your life. That tends to break things open for people and allows them to discover all sorts of stuff that is available for them to try. It is a more interesting approach than a singular ladder and the idea that if I only get to the next thing, then I will be happy. People often find they are not happy, interested, or fulfilled, but they keep climbing. We get trapped by that perceived sense of accomplishment in climbing the ladder. Evans: Let me piggyback on that. Peter, your first question was about design thinking and the way we apply that to life design. We claim few things. We do not promise an epiphany, or that your life will be solved, or that you will be able to organize the universe entirely around your happiness. We do not have any of those tools. We believe that you have all of the resources you need, you need better tools to get at them. We only give you two things: ideas and tools. The ideas are alternate ways to think and the tools are things you can do. You build your way forward, you do not analyze your way forward. You do not think your way out of this problem, you act your way out of this problem. That is it. If you scan through all of our ideas and tools, pick those you think have merit, and use them, you are going to be a little better off. That is the only promise we make. The first thing you zeroed in on is what we call reframes. Almost all the ideas are a reframe. Did you notice you were thinking this? Hey, college student, did you notice that everybody told you that these are the best four years of your life. Which of course means after 22 it is all downhill for the next 65 years. Telling college students that is a terrible idea because all these shibboleths, as you called them, have a point of view and a belief system. In design thinking, we start with empathy, which is deeply understanding the situation we are in. The first thing to do is notice what you are believing about the way things are. We also have to careful about the questions we decide to organize our lives with. If you reframe them, you can change the game. That is why the number one thing we hear from people is relief and freedom when they read the book. We say things that they suspected and are now giving themselves permission to think about more freely. Consider your question about different ladders. If I were going to looking at that empathetically, I would say, "I noticed Peter that you think life is organized around ladders and it is about going up. How about instead of ladders you think about which dance floor am I on? Or, which canvas am I currently painting on? We must be careful about the way we frame our questions. We try to give people freedom and perspective on that. It frees up the territory. High: The ideas and tools were originally designed for people in their early 20s. I imagine that you have many readers and workshop attendees that are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond; and in the book, you make the point that it is never too late to apply the concepts. How do the conversations change with people that are in later stages of their lives? Burnett: We have presented the ideas in 16 cities at workshops conducted through the Stanford Alumni Association, and have met people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. I noticed you interviewed the Chief Enterprise Strategy and Innovation Officer at AARP [Terry Bradwell], we have met with AARP thought leaders about this. We have found that the ideas and tools work across life stages, even though people generally have different issues at the different stages. If we consider the stages in life when people make big life or career decisions, certainly the high school to college transition and college to the world transition are big ones, and young adults often question what to do with their lives. When you are in your 30s, you might form a family so your concerns are children, work-life balance, and how your primary relationship fits in. In their 40s, people are sometimes pivoting out of their first career. Maybe it was unsatisfying or they are bored and want to try something else. People we meet in their 50s and 60s are moving from the money making side of their life to the meaning making side. They have some money and they might retire, but they are not going to sit around and do nothing, they want to accomplish things. In each case, these tools are power tools to help you figure out what is next. Evans: The ideas were originally applied to college students. The course, however, emanated out of the 30 plus years of attempts at self-awareness that both Bill and I have been laboring at. We both worked in consulting fields; I did a lot of management consulting and Bill did a lot of design consulting. We sat down with people who were trying to figure something out. Alot of the insights we got from these conversations were from experiencing how human beings struggle with the question of becoming their better selves. The long empathetic strolls we took through adult life - we are both on our fifth careers now - are what formed these ideas and what landed us together in 2007 saying, “Let’s do this thing for college kids.” We have found that it does not matter what stage you are at, the fundamental human challenge of, “What do I do with the rest of my life?” requires an open-minded experimentalism, as opposed to a pre-concluded analytic orientation. The first time we fully implemented the design thinking model was, opportunistically, at Stanford that happened to have a whole bunch of people, 20 hours a day, asking the question, “What am I going to do with my life?” It was a great place to start, but the essence of this is a human problem, not a 20-something problem. We get asked all the time, “Aren’t you guys focusing on the younger cult?” We like to reframe that question, “Gosh, Bill and Dave, you talk to people of lots of ages, at what age have you noticed that people do not care about this question anymore and they are just waiting to die?” We have not found that age yet. In fact, at the first one of the 16 events for Stanford, we had an audience of 400 people, front and center was a young woman from the class of 1953. She was 87 years old, and she could not wait to get started. The older you are, the clearer you are. You can see there are lots of right answers and the more you value the years you have. The question only gets more intense. High: There is a section specifically for women on the Designing Your Life website. What are some of the nuances or thoughts you have on how these ideas and tools apply to women? Evans: First, I should point out that neither Bill nor I happen to be a woman, and consequently, we have sympathy not empathy. We do not claim expertise, we claim interest. After we taught the class at Stanford for a while, we got many requests for people to take the class. That is why we wrote the book, but it made the “Can I take the course?” question worse. Since we knew that working people do not have 20 hours over 10 weeks to take a course, we put together a workshop format. We started experimenting with one-day intensive experiences to try to pull this thing off in a meaningful way. In one of our first summer prototypes, which was a four or five hour workshop, a friends and family type of deal, we inadvertently ended up with one session being all women. We realized that something special was occurring in the room. One of the women in that group happened to be this incredibly talented chief learning officer named Susan Burnett, who by happenstance is Bill's older sister. But it is not about nepotism, it is about smart genes doing smart things. Susan is one of the leading organizational learning experts in the country. She has been collaborating with us for some time, but it was this moment that made us say we need to go somewhere with this. Burnett: The head of our Design Your Life Lab, Kathy Davies, and Susan put this together. It is essentially the same one-day workshop that we have run a number of times, but takes place over a two-day period. One of the things we noticed was that women want to spend more time talking about these ideas. The two days give us a bit more time for conversation. I have been in a men's group for many years and there is a conversation that men can have when there are no women in the room, it is a different sensibility, the same is true for women. Certainly, when it is all women in the room, the conversation centers more around the work-life balance issue, and the issue of, can I be a successful executive and raise the kids and have it all? Kathy and Susan have designed special exercises, that are designed thinking based, that allow women to ideate and prototype into those questions. It is not that men do not have the same work-life balance questions, but we have found that women fall into a generative and supportive conversation quickly, and want to talk about and work on these things longer; and they are emotionally available to have these conversations. Cathy and Susan are fantastic facilitators. The first prototype of the two-day workshop was extraordinary; 97 percent of the women said they would absolutely insist their best friend take the workshop. We are doing a lot of things with the Design Your Life ideas and tools. We are transferring the Stanford class to 14 universities. Harvard, Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, and a bunch of other schools are coming to learn how to teach the class at their universities. This is part of us trying to figure out how to have impact, hopefully we will take it to other schools. The workshops, where you can learn all the techniques and embed them in your life, will increase the impact. The book is the other way to access the information. Our editor tells us we are in our tenth printing, so it is going pretty well. Dave and I want to make sure that the ideas are available to anyone who wants them. High: Dave, you mentioned that you are both on the fifth iterations of your careers, and what led to this work was your own seeking, over 43 years. Can you each share how the ideas that you have taught, written about, and are now facilitating in these sessions, have impacted your own lives? Evans: Again, I did it the hard way. Taking the class we now teach would have been vastly beneficial to me. What I have been helped most by are the ideas of deferring judgment and learning through experimentation, rather than analysis. I have two engineering degrees and I started in the hard sciences, left to my own devices, I tend to think my way into a problem. What I have learned is to say, “Shut up, understand you have a bunch of assumptions you have not even identified yet, defer judgment, do not have a conclusion. Instead, go try some stuff; and try some stuff without your answer already in mind.” For instance, do not say, “I am pretty sure I want to be a marine biologist, let me talk to this guy to confirm that I am right.” Instead, you should say, “Jacques Cousteau, what is it like being a marine biologist?” And listen when he says, “ I do not sleep much. I spend a lot of time doing incredibly mind-numbing data gathering that mostly points to nothing whatsoever." This openness helped me when I first started talking with Apple Computer. When they called me, I had promised myself that I would not work in the computing industry because it was so boring. Then I thought, maybe I do not know what I am talking about, I should hear what these guys have to say. Fourteen conversations later, when they offered me a job, to my great astonishment, I took it. That involved a complete reframe of what I thought computing was about, what I thought marketing was about, what I thought the workplace was about, and what I thought the mission of my life was about. I had to do four significant re-orientations, and I had to give myself permission to do that. I would not have taken the job if I did not deeply listen to 14 people tell 14 stories, without me already knowing the answer. These ideas can have a huge impact. If I had stuck with what I was doing I would probably be a completely frustrated, totally ineffectual, and reasonably poor guy instead of a guy that got to do some interesting work in technology. Burnett: I am not a self-help guy. In fact, I asked our editor if we could make it a design book. She said, "No, no one buys design books, it is going to be a self-help book." When Dave and I sat down to discuss teaching a class about helping people figure out their lives, we realized that we had to do this stuff too or we would be the biggest hypocrites on the campus. I practice almost everything at one level or another that we have in the book. Design thinking is the way I live. I have been a designer my entire career so that is an embedded mindset. I do an affirmation practice in the morning. I do not keep a gratefulness journal, but I do a gratefulness practice. I use the tool of prototyping life experiences. I use the positive psychology idea of what you pay attention to is how you experience the world, so pay attention to gratefulness and pay attention to flow states. The more I work on the psychology of flow, the more I discover myself in fabulous flow states. I am different from Dave personality wise, or genetically, in that I am a shyer and more of a worrier. When I apply the design thinking principles I find that worrying is not my dominant mode any more, instead I am pretty optimistic. I am a big user of all the tools in the book. I am not saying that makes it any more or less authentic, but it convinces me that these things work outside of what we know from research. We get a lot of calls from students who are two years, four years, a few that are seven years out that took the first class, they tell us they are still using their Odyssey Plans and they are still prototyping ideas for their lives. Before the book, we used to get contacted by students saying, “Hey, my friends are confused, so I am teaching them the stuff from the class. Can you send me the slides?” It is gratifying and humbling that people find these ideas and tools useful. I know they work because I use them all of the time.

A man has been arrested in connection to a shooting that injured a juvenile Friday night, according to police. On Friday just before midnight, officers responded to a gunshot disturbance call in the 2500 block of Leo Street. When officers arrived, they found several people who were inside a home that had been hit by gunfire. Shortly after, a juvenile who was in the area of the shooting walked into CHKD with a gunshot wound to the hand. Marvin Williams, 25, was arrested and charged with malicious wounding, two counts of attempted malicious wounding, shooting into an occupied dwelling, three counts of use of a firearm in commission of a crime and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Williams is being held in the Norfolk City Jail on no bond.

Theresa Shouse considers herself a Duke Run/Walk cheerleader. Registration is open to join the free Duke Run/Walk Club, which begins Aug. 13 and meets at several locations. Shouse will be walking and cheering on Duke Run/Walk Club participants when the program returns March 11 to May 29. The club is a low-pressure workout group that meets on Mondays and Wednesdays at East Campus and the Al Buehler Trail on West Campus. Staff and faculty at all fitness levels can participate in the free club, which is organized by LIVE FOR LIFE, Duke’s employee wellness program. The program also includes free events, including body composition analysis and strength classes. Christian Kennicott, LIVE FOR LIFE fitness specialist, said the club is a helpful way to develop your own walking or running pace. For help with her pace, Theresa Curington sets a personal goal to match the pace of the fastest person in her intermediate walking group on East Campus. Duke community members can also participate remotely by tracking progress online. All members of the Run/Walk Club receive weekly emails with tips, motivation, information about races in the area and local discounts. Got a story about your health and fitness efforts? Share it with Working@Duke.

To mark the occasion of the Mawlid, Muslims worldwide celebrate the birth of Prophet Muhammad, PBUH. People come together to not only sing his praises, but to know his character, learn from his wisdom, and pray for blessings upon him and his community. As the last Messenger of God, he is a mercy to humanity. In this time of unease, uncertainty and oppression, studying the character of our Prophet – how he interacted with his loved ones, his students, his allies, and even his enemies – gives contemporary Muslims an ethical roadmap of how to uphold good and prevent evil. Hind Makki is a long-time Patheos Muslim blogger and an interfaith educator who holds a degree in International Relations from Brown University. She develops and delivers trainings on civic integration through interfaith action, anti-racism education and youth empowerment and is the creator of Side Entrance. You can read more about the author here.

Cool cars await. I just realized looking at the picture that the sign is a "T". For the full story behind the tour, check out Take a tour of the Toyota Automobile Museum. The tour begins with some seriously old vehicles. The one in front is a Benz Velo from 1894. It had a blazing 1.5 horsepower. A mix of Fords and Chevrolets from the Teens. Model T on the right, Series 490 on the left. On the right is a Cadillac Model Thirty, the first car with an electric starter. On the left is a Chevrolet Superior Series K. A Morgan Aero in the middle -- a British brand notable for still using wood in most of its vehicles. Behind is a Jaguar 100. Moving into the 1930s, you can start seeing the first moves towards aerodynamics. Typical French oddness, with headlights so close together on this Peugeot 402. Cars of this era sure were gorgeous. Pictures don't do the Porsche 356 justice. It looks bulbous in photos, but in person it flows very nicely. Hiding behind is not a Beetle. It's a Toyopet Model SA. It was Toyota's first small passenger car. The name "Toyopet" was picked in a public contest. What else is there to be said about one of the best looking cars of all time? I want a plaid interior in my next car. No, seriously. Don't you? The 1955 Toyopet Crown Model RS, a very important car for Toyota. Suicide doors and a 1.5-liter engine. Two early kei cars, A Suzulight SL by Suzuki on the right, and a Mistubishi 500 on the left. Post-war Japanese vehicles, including the legendary Land Cruiser on the left. Aiming for low cost and small size, many post-war designs look a little...odd to the modern eye. On the left, a 1955 Flying Feather, followed by a Fuji Cabin 5A then Subaru's first production car, the 360 Model K111. In this early era of Japanese domestic auto production, it's pretty obvious style wasn't high on the design checklist. Then again, this was true of most automakers in the '50s (US domestic not included). The Nissan Austin A50 was built under license. Great paint job. As Japan's economy started to bloom, the cars started to reflect this. Most notably they got larger and more stylish. Up front, the Toyota Publica UP10 from 1961. Behind, the 1964 Prince Gloria Super 6 by Nissan. After rows and rows of boxes, this one's got some style. Could be the gold paint that really draws the eye. The Datsun Fairlady SP310, Japan's first mass-produced sports car. A classic, simple interior with some lovely big gauges. At the bottom you can notice the top of the third seat, which faced sideways. It's a simple interior, but looks great. Masterful work the museum has done to maintain it -- it looks brand new. This one was new to me: the Toyota Sports 800, Toyota's first production sports car. It borrowed many pieces from other Toyota models to keep costs low. Great looking in person. On the right is another competitor to the S500 and Fairlady, the Daihatsu Compagno. Next to that are two of the popular mini-cars of the '60s, the Suzuki Fronte 360 and Honda N360. On the right, the Datsun Sunny B10. On the right, the Toyota Corolla, which did pretty well for Toyota over the years. The olive-green coupe is the Nissan Silvia, which was popular over many generations. The Mazda Cosmo is even cooler looking, and was the world's second car to use the rotary engine. The big 1967 Toyota Century. This is a fascinating car. It's Toyota's flagship car in Japan. It's only been redesigned once in its nearly 50 years in production. It basically doesn't export it. It even comes with a V-12, made by Toyota, and not used in any other vehicle. It may not look like much, but this is the granddaddy of the modern Skyline GT-Rs. It's a Prince Skyline 2000GT-B. Nissan did what has often created legends in the auto world: took the engine from a bigger car and squeezed it onto a smaller one. The '70s certainly saw Japanese auto manufacturing come into it's own. That's a Honda Civic on the left, with a Toyota Corona behind. On the right, the green monster is a Subaru. I also did a short 360-degree video of this room, if you're interested. The Honda Civic was available with the CVCC engine, which was able to pass emissions regulations without catalytic converters -- no small feat. I hadn't heard of the Mitsubishi Galant GTO or this era Toyota Celica. They looked familiar, though. Probably from Gran Turismo. There are a plenty of these still rattling around Los Angeles (my home base), but none are as spotless as this. The Nissan Fairlady Z, or Datsun 240Z as we got it. Probably the first Japanese car that could easily be called "beautiful." Only a handful were made and they're exceptionally expensive now. I've come so close to buying one of these so many times. Supercharged, of course. This one is from 1984, a few years before that was an option. The MR2 was Japan's first domestically produced midengine car. As boring as it looks, this is a pretty important car. The Toyota Celsior, or Lexus LS400 as it became known in the States. This one is from 1991, two years after Lexus' US launch. The magnificent LFA looks over all. Jeremy Clarkson said the LFA was the best car he'd ever driven. "After the lightweight sports car in Europe had become extinct because of their failure to adapt to the times, Mazda developed..." I think it meant to say "...failure to not rust to the ground in a month and occasionally start." A short walk on a skybridge brings you to the Annex, where there's an exhibition on how the car influenced Japanese culture through the decades. Each section covers a different decade, with period electronics, cars and other notables. Pretty big difference between this 1960 Datsun 211 and the 1953 Mazda three-wheel truck behind it. My favorite part about this diorama is that the CRT TVs were fake, just plastic gels of images. The TV showing old footage was an LCD. The Toyota Automobile Museum is a great way to spend an afternoon.

Before the Gadsden City Titans upset Clay-Chalkville at home Oct. 4, two Gadsden men were honored for their contributions to Gadsden City Schools. Wayne Rowe and Robert Echols Jr. were honored as the first Pillars of Education by Superintendent Ed Miller. Echols and Rowe also were named honorary captains for the 2013 season. Rowe was honored for bringing health-care programs to the students of Gadsden City Schools. He is the chief executive officer of Quality of Life Health Services and helped establish a permanent school-based health center at Litchfield Middle School and Oscar Adams Elementary School, as well as a mobile medical, dental and vision unit. Echols, who represents District 4 on the Gadsden City Council and serves as council president, was honored for helping lead the charge to raise $250,000 to help upgrade the school system's technology. He also helped the district acquire 30 cellos and three violins for the fine arts program. Rowe graduated from Carver High School and Echols graduated from Gadsden High School.

It is great to be in Labour Manchester. And you know Manchester has special memories for me because two years ago I was elected the leader of this party. I’m older. I feel a lot older actually. I hope I’m a bit wiser. But I am prouder than ever to be the Leader of the Labour Party. You may have noticed that doing this job you get called some names, some of the nice, some of them not so nice. Let me tell you my favourite; it was when Mitt Romney came to Britain and called me ‘Mr Leader.’ I don’t know about you but I think it has a certain ring to it myself, it’s sort of half-way to North Korea. Mitt, thanks a lot for that. OK, look only one problem, where’s my speech? I want to do something different today. I want to tell you my story. I want to tell you who I am. What I believe. And why I have a deep conviction that together we can change this country. My conviction is rooted in my family’s story, a story that starts 1,000 miles from here, because the Miliband’s haven’t sat under the same oak tree for the last five hundred years. Both of my parents’ came to Britain as immigrants, Jewish refugees from the Nazis. I know I would not be standing on this stage today without the compassion and tolerance of our great country. Great Britain. And you know my parents saw Britain rebuilt after the Second World War. I was born in my local NHS hospital, the same hospital my two sons would later be born in. As you saw in the film I went to my local school. I went to my local comprehensive with people from all backgrounds. I still remember the amazing and inspiring teaching I got at that school, and one of my teachers, my English teacher, Chris Dunne, is here with us today. Thank you Chris and to all the teachers at Haverstock. It was a really tough school, but order was kept by one of the scariest headmistress you could possibly imagine, Mrs Jenkins. And you know what? I learned at my school about a lot more than how to pass exams. I learned how to get on with people from all backgrounds, whoever they were. I wouldn’t be standing on this stage today without my comprehensive school education. So, Britain gave me, gave my family, a great gift that my parents never had. A safe and secure childhood. And you know my parents didn’t talk much about their early lives, it was too painful, it hurt too much. The pain of those they lost. The guilt of survivors. But I believe that their experience meant they brought up both David and myself differently as a result. Because having struggled for life itself, they instilled in us a sense of duty to ease the struggles of others. And this came not just from my parents’ wartime experience it came from the daily fabric of our childhood. You know there were toys and games, rows about homework. I was actually a Dallas fan, believe it or not, which didn’t go down well with my dad as you can imagine. So of course there were the normal things, but every upbringing is special, and mine was special because of the place of politics within it. When I was twelve years old, I met a South African friend of my parents, her name was Ruth First. The image I remember is of somebody vivacious, full of life, full of laughter. And then I remember a few months later coming down to breakfast and seeing my mum in tears because Ruth First had been murdered by a letter bomb from the South African secret police. Murdered for being part of the anti-apartheid movement. Now I didn’t understand the ins and outs of it, but I was shocked. I was angry I knew that wasn’t the way the world was meant to be. I knew I had a duty to do something about it. It is this upbringing that has made me who I am. A person of faith, not a religious faith but a faith nonetheless. A faith, I believe, many religious people would recognise. So here is my faith. I believe we have a duty to leave the world a better pl ace than we found it. I believe we cannot shrug our shoulders at injustice, and just say that’s the way the world is. And I believe that we can overcome any odds if we come together as people. That’s how my Mum survived the war. The kindness of strangers. Nuns in a convent who took her in and sheltered her from the Nazis, took in a Jewish girl at risk to themselves. It’s what my dad found when he came to these shores and joined the Royal Navy and was part of Britain winning the war. Now of course my parents didn’t tell me what career to go into. My late father, as some of you know, wouldn’t agree with many of the things I stand for. He would’ve loved the idea of “Red Ed.” But he would have been a little bit disappointed that it isn’t true. My mum probably doesn’t agree with me either, but like most mums is too kind to say so. And look when I was younger I wasn’t certain I wanted to be a politician. But I do believe the best way me for to give back to Britain, the best way to be true to my faith, is through politics. Now that is not a fashionable view today. Because millions of people have given up on politics, they think we’re all the same. Well I guess you could say I am out to prove them wrong. That is who I am. That is what I believe. That is my faith. And I know who I need to serve in Britain with my faith. It’s the people I’ve met on my journey as Leader of the Opposition. The people who come up to me on trains, in the street, in shops who ask me about what the Labour Party is going to do for them and tell me the stories of their lives. It’s for them, the people I have met on my journey as Leader of the Opposition that today’s speech is for. You know I think of the young woman I met at a youth centre in London earlier this year. She was brimming with hopes and ambitions for the future. She was full of life. She was full of desire to get on and do the best for herself. And then she told me her story. She’d sent off her CV to 137 employers and she’d not had a reply from any of them. Many of you in this audience will know people in the same position. Just think how that crushes the hopes of a generation. I want to talk to her, to a whole generation of young people who feel that Britain under this Government is no t offering them a future. I think back to the small businessman I met in July. A proud man called Alan Henderson, a small businessman. Let me tell you Alan Henderson’s story: He’d spent 40 years building up his sign making business, 40 years. He told me his story, he went to see his bank manager in 1972 at his local high street bank, he got a loan and he started his business. But something terrible happened to Alan Henderson and his family a few years back. He was ripped off by the bank he had been with all that time and Alan Henderson and his family have been living through a nightmare ever since. I want to talk to him, and all the people of Britain who feel they’re at the mercy of forces beyond their control. I want to talk to all of the people of this country who always thought of themselves as comfortably off, but who now find themselves struggling to make ends meet. They ask: Why is it that when oil prices go up, the petrol price goes up. But when the oil price comes down, the petrol price just stays the same? They ask: Why is it that the gas and electricity bills just go up and up and up? And they ask: Why is it that the privatised train companies can make hundreds of millions of pounds in profit at the same time as train fares are going up by 10% a year? They think the system just doesn’t work for them. And you know what? They’re right. It doesn’t. It doesn’t work for them but for the cosy cartels and powerful interests that government hasn’t cut down to size. I want to talk to them and all the millions of people across our country who don’t think they get a fair crack of the whip. And I want to say to them, yes our problems are deep. But they can be overcome. Deep problems about who Britain is run for and who prospers within it. One rule for those at the top, another rule for everybody else. Two nations, not one. I want to say to them today it’s not the Britain you believe in. It’s not the Britain I believe in. It’s not the Britain this party will ever be satisfied with. So friends we’re going to change it. And here’s how. My faith that we can, starts with the inner strength of us as a country. You see the problem isn’t the British people, just think about the Olympics and Paralympic games. It was a triumph for Britain. And why did we succeed? We succeeded because of our outstanding athletes from, Zara Phillips the grand-daughter of a parachuting Queen, to a boy born in Somalia, called Mo Farah. Mo Farah. A true Brit. And a true hero for our country. We succeeded because of the outstanding volunteers, the Games Makers who are here with us today, all 70,000 Games makers. They put a mirror up to Britain and showed us the best of ourselves. We succeeded because of our outstanding troops, our outstanding troops, many of whom were drafted in at the last minute. And let us today pay tribute to their bravery, their courage, their sacrifice in Afghanistan and all round the world. And let’s say to them, and let’s say to them, just as you do our duty by us in the most courageous way possible so we will always do our duty by you, both in military and in civilian life. We succeeded because of our outstanding police and let us in this city of Manchester show our appreciation for what the extraordinary police men and women of our country do for our country. And we succeeded and this is a real lesson, we succeeded because of a group of individuals, a group of individuals who saw the odds against London’s bid and thought, never mind the odds, we are going to fight for the bid for London, we are going to win the bid for London, from Seb Coe to our very own Dame Tessa Jowell. And you know what friends, we succeeded, because of one reason more than any other, we succeeded because of us. We succeeded because of us, us the British people, us the British people who welcomed the athletes from abroad, who cheered them on. Who found ourselves talking to each other each morning about what had happened at the Olympics the night before, in a way that we hadn’t talked to each other before. We succeeded because we came together as a country we worked together as a country. We joined together as a country. That’s why we achieved more than we imagined possible. You know, I’ll just tell you this. I can’t remember a time like it in the whole history of my lifetime. I can’t remember a time like it, that sense of a country united, that sense of a country that felt it was together. That is the spirit this Labour Party believes in. But I may not remember that spirit, but that spirit has echoed through British history. You know one hundred and forty years ago, one hundred and forty years ago to the year. Another Leader of the Opposition gave a speech. It was in the Free Trade Hall that used to stand opposite this building. It’s the Radisson now by the way. His name was Benjamin Disraeli. He was a Tory. But don’t let that but you off, just for a minute. His speech took over three hours to deliver, don’t’ worry, don’t worry, and he drank two whole bottles of brandy while delivering it. That is absolutely true. Now look, I just want to say, I know a speech that long would probably kill you. And the brandy would definitely kill me. But let us remember what Disraeli was celebrated for. It was a vision of Britain. A vision of a Britain where patriotism, loyalty, dedication to the common cause courses through the veins of all and nobody feels left out. It was a vision of Britain coming together to overcome the challenges we faced. Disraeli called it “One Nation”. “One Nation”. We heard the phrase again as the country came together to defeat fascism. And we heard it again as Clement Attlee’s Labour government rebuilt Britain after the war. Friends, I didn’t become leader of the Labour Party to reinvent the world of Disraeli or Attlee. But I do believe in that spirit. That spirit of One Nation. One Nation: a country where everyone has a stake. One Nation: a country where prosperity is fairly shared. One Nation: where we have a shared destiny, a sense of shared endeavour and a common life that we lead together. That is my vision of One Nation. That is my vision of Britain. That is the Britain we must become. And here is the genius of One Nation. It doesn’t just tell us the country we can be. It tells us how we must rebuild. We won the war because we were One Nation. We built the peace because Labour government’s and Conservative, governments understood we needed to be One Nation. Every time Britain has faced its gravest challenge, we have only come through the storm because we were One Nation. But too often governments have forgotten that lesson. With one million young people out of work, we just can’t succeed as a country. With the gap between rich and poor growing wider and wider, we just can’t succeed as a country. With millions of people feeling that hard work and effort are not rewarded, we just can’t succeed as a country. And with so many people having been told for so long that the only way to get on is to be on your own, in it for yourself, we just can’t succeed as a country. Yes friends, to come through the storm, to overcome the challenges we face, we must rediscover that spirit. That spirit the British people never forgot. That spirit of One Nation. One Nation. A country where everyone plays their part. A country we rebuild together. So here is the big question of today. Who can make us One Nation? Who can bring Britain together? What about the Tories? What about the Tories? I didn’t hear you, what about the Tories? Let me explain why, let me explain why. I want to talk very directly to those who voted for David Cameron at the last general election. I understand why you voted for him. I understand why you turned away from the last Labour government. This Government took power in difficult economic times. It was a country still coming to terms with the financial crisis. A financial crisis that has afflicted every country round the world. I understand why you were willing to give David Cameron the benefit of the doubt. But I think we’ve had long enough to make a judgement. Long enough to make a judgement because they turned a recovery into the longest double dip recession since the war. Because there are more people looking for work for longer than at any time since the last time there was a Conservative government. And here is the other thing, what about borrowing? Borrowing. The thing they said was their number one priority. This year borrowing is rising not falling. Let me just say that again. Borrowing the thing they said was the most important priority, the reason they were elected. It is rising not falling. Not because there hasn’t been pain and tax rises and cuts affecting every family in this country. Not because they didn’t want to cut it borrowing. They did. Not because your services aren’t getting worse. They are. But because if you stop an economy growing, then it leaves more people out of work claiming benefits, not paying taxes. Businesses struggle so they’re not paying taxes. And as a result borrowing goes up. Borrowing not to invest in schools, in hospitals, transport and education. But borrowing to keep people idle. So the next time you hear a Conservative say to you Labour would increase borrowing, just remember it is this government that is increasing borrowing this year. So what have we seen? We’ve seen recession, higher unemployment, higher borrowing. I don’t think that’s what people were promised. Now look there will be some people who say, and this is an important argument, they’ll be some people who say: ‘Well there is short-term pain but it is worth it for the long-term gain.’ But I’m afraid the opposite is true. You see that the longer you have low growth in our country the bigger the debt hole becomes for the future and the bigger our problems will be in the future. The longer a young person is out of work that is not just bad for their prospects now; it is bad for their prospects for the whole of the rest of their lives. And if a small business goes under during the recession, it can’t just get back up and running again during the recovery. So when David Cameron says to you: ‘Well let’s just carry on as we are and wait for something to turn up.’ Don’t believe him. Don’t believe him. If the medicine’s not working you change the medicine. And friends, I’ll tell you what else you change. You change the doctor too. And that is what this country needs to do. Now look around you, you know the problem is the British people are paying the price of this government’s failure. You’re going to the petrol station and not filling up your tank because you can’t afford it. Your tax credits are being cut because the Government says it can’t afford it. Your frail mum and dad are not getting the care they need because the Government says it can’t afford it. But there are some things this Government can afford. The wrong things. What do they think at this most difficult economic time is going to get us out of our difficulties? What do they choose as their priority? A tax cut for millionaires. A tax cut for millionaires. Next April, David Cameron will be writing a cheque for £40,000 to each and every millionaire in Britain. Not just for one year. But each and every year. That is more than the average person earns in a whole year. At the same time as they’re imposing a tax on pensioners next April. Friends, we, the Labour Party, the country knows it is wrong. It is wrong what they’re doing. It shows their priorities. And here’s the worse part. David Cameron isn’t just writing the cheques. He is receiving one. He’s going to be getting the millionaire’s tax cut. So next week maybe Mr Cameron can tell us how much is he awarding himself in a tax cut? How much is that tax cut he is awarding himself? For a job I guess he thinks is a job well done. How many of his other Cabinet colleagues have cheques in the post from the millionaire’s tax cut? And how can he justify this unfairness in Britain 2012. And of course let’s not forget this tax cut wouldn’t be happening without Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. Isn’t it shameful that the party that supported, that implemented the People’s Budget of 1909, Lloyd George’s budget, is supporting the millionaire’s budget of 2012. So that’s the reality in Britain today. It is a rebate for the top. It’s rip-off for everybody else. It’s a recovery for the top. It’s a recession for everybody else. This Prime Minister said: ‘We are all in it together.’ Don’t let him ever tell us again we are all in this together. And friends I say this. You can’t be a One Nation Prime Minister if you raise taxes on ordinary families and cut taxes for millionaires. You can’t be a One Nation Prime Minister if all you do is seek to divide the country. Divide the country between north and south. Public and private. Those who can work and those who can’t work. And you can’t be a One Nation Prime Minister if your Chief Whip insults the great police officers of our country by calling them plebs. But there is one thing that this Government might have claimed to be good at, and that is competence. Because after all, they think they’re born to rule. So maybe they’d be good at it. Have you ever seen a more incompetent, hopeless, out of touch, u-turning, pledge-breaking, make it up as you go along, back of the envelope, miserable shower than this Prime Minister and this Government? There’s more there’s more, not quite Disraeli but there is more. What have we had. We’ve had the caravan tax, we’ve had the churches tax, we’ve had the pasty tax, we’ve had the granny tax, we’ve had panic at the pumps, we’ve had dinners for donors, we’ve had country supers with Rebekah Brooks. He even rode the horse. He sent the texts, he sent the texts. Remember LOL. And now what do we have. We have the Minister for Murdoch becoming the Minister for the National Health Service. We have an International Development Secretary; she says she doesn’t believe in international development. And get this, we’ve got a Party Chairman who writes books about how to beat the recession, under a false name. Really, I’m not making this up; I’m really not making this up. I mean I have to say if I was Chairman of the Conservative Party, I’d have a false name too. But here is my favourite one of all. There’s one more, here’s my favourite one of all. There is even a bloke, and I think they call him Lord Hill who went to see the Prime Minister. He made an appointment during the last reshuffle in order to resign. But David Cameron was too incompetent to notice that he wanted to resign. So Lord Hill is still in the Government. This lot are so useless they can’t even resign properly. So they’re not going to build One Nation, so it is up to us. And let me say to you, One Nation is not a way of avoiding the difficult decisions, it is a way of making the difficult decisions. And I’ve just got to be very clear about this and about what we face as the next Labour government. You see I think it is incredibly important that to be One Nation we must show compassion and support for all those who cannot work. Particularly the disabled men and women of our country. But in order to do so, those who can work have a responsibility to do so. We can’t leave people languishing out of work, for one year, two years, three years. We’ve got a responsibility to help them and they’ve got a responsibility to take the work that is on offer. To be One Nation, we have got to give much greater dignity to our elderly population because you know, we’re going to have to tackle the care crisis that faces so many families up and down this country. And look, living longer should be one of the great virtues of the 21st century. But friends, in order to be able to afford to do that, we are going to have to work longer; have a later retirement age than we do now. To be One Nation, we have got to live within our means. And because borrowing is getting worse not better, it means there will be many cuts that this Government made that we won’t be able to reverse even though we would like to. And that’s why we’ve said in this Parliament that we’d put jobs before pay in the public sector. And in the next Parliament we will have tough settlements for the public services and that will make life harder for those who use them and harder for those who work in them. But here is the big difference between a One Nation government led by me, and this Government. Those with the broadest shoulders will always bear the greatest burden. I would never cut taxes for millionaires and raise them on ordinary families. That is wrong, that is not being One Nation. And here is the other thing, I will never accept an economy where the gap between rich and poor just grows wider and wider. In One Nation, in my faith, inequality matters. It matters to our country. Now what does it mean to the Labour Party to be One Nation? It means we can’t go back to Old Labour. We must be the party of the private sector just as much as the party of the public sector. As much the party of the small business struggling against the odds, as the home help struggling against the cuts. We must be the party of south just as much as the party of the north. And we must be the party as much of the squeezed middle as those in poverty. There is no future for this party as the party of one sectional interest of our country. But so too it is right to move on from New Labour because New Labour, despite its great achievements, was too silent about the responsibilities of those at the top, and too timid about the accountability of those with power. In One Nation responsibility goes all the way to the top of society. The richest in society have the biggest responsibility to show responsibility to the rest of our country. And I’ve got news for the powerful interests in our country, in One Nation no interest, from Rupert Murdoch to the banks, is too powerful to be held to account. So we must be a One Nation party to become a One Nation government, to build a One Nation Britain. And here’s how we are going to take these steps to do that. We need a One Nation economy and the first big mission of the next Labour government is to sort out our banks. Sort them out once and for all. Not just to prevent another crisis but to do what hasn’t been done in decades. Necessary to enable us to pay our way in the world. We need banks that serve the country not a country that serves its banks. Think about Alan Henderson, the small businessman I talked about earlier on. He wanted to be able to go into his bank, look his high street manager in the eye and know that he was working for him. Instead he found a bank more interested in playing the international money markets. That’s why he was ripped off. Of course, this government promised change, but things aren’t really changing. So I have got a message for the banks, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either you fix it yourselves between now and the election or the next Labour government will once and for all ensure that the high street bank is no longer the arm of a casino operation and we will break you up by law. Now look friends, there will be some people who say this is all too radical, let’s just carry in as we are. I say we can’t carry on as we are. We can’t carry on as we are, two nations not one. The banks and the rest of Britain. We must have a One Nation banking system as part of a One Nation economy. Next, we need an education system that works for all young people. You see, to be a One Nation economy you have got to use all the talents of all of our young people. It’s not just that it’s socially right, it is absolutely essential for our economy for the future. I remember when Chris and I were at Haverstock. I remember at Haverstock school, my comprehensive, the kids who were good at passing exams, who were academic, they could go to university and the world would just open up for them like it did for me. But think about all those kids who had talent and ability, great talent and ability. School just didn’t offer them enough. It was true twenty five years ago, and it is even more true today. Just think in your minds eye about the 14 year old today. Today is a school day. Think about that 14 year old, not academic, already bored at school, maybe already starting that process of truanting, of not going to school. Now of course they need to get back to school and their parents need to get them back to school. They can’t afford to drift through life with no qualifications and Britain can’t afford for them to do it either. But we can’t just say to that 14 year old just put in the work, because we have been failing them too. You see for a long time our party has been focused on getting 50% of young people into university. I believe that was right. But now it’s time to put our focus on the forgotten 50% who do not go to university. Here’s the choice that I want to offer to that 14 year old who is not academic. English and maths to 18 because rigour in the curriculum matters. But courses that engage them and are relevant to them. Work experience with employers. And then culminating at the age of 18 with a new gold standard qualification so they know when they are taking that exam they have a gold standard vocational qualification, a new Technical Baccalaureate. A qualification to be proud of. You know, we’ve got to change the culture of this country friends. We can’t be a country where vocational qualifications are seen as second class. They are a real route to apprenticeships and jobs. They can be as valuable to our young people as a university degree. We need to make it so. So we’ve got to change the culture in this country and there needs to be that real route to apprenticeships but let me tell you though, there is another problem. Only one in three large employers in Britain actually offers apprenticeships. And if anything, in the public sector the situation is far far worse. That is about a culture of a country. That’s about a culture of a country which hasn’t been dealt with for decades. It is the task of the next Labour government to do that. So the public sector is going to have to step up to the plate and understand we can’t be two nations. We can’t be two nations. And when the public sector offers contracts to the private sector the next Labour government will ensure that every private sector contract will only be awarded to a large company that trains the next generation with apprenticeships. Because when the public sector is having a contract with a private sector company, it is not just buying goods and services, it must be about building One Nation together. Public and private sectors joining together to do it. And we need a new deal with British business. You get the money, you get control of the money for training, as you have long asked for, you set the standards, as you have long asked for. But you have a responsibility to make sure the training happens. In One Nation there is no place for free riding. Free riding where firms that don’t train poach workers from firms that do. Now think about this vision of education. Education to the age of 18 with proper vocational qualifications, and then think about the vision on offer from the Conservatives. Michael Gove. Michael Gove, who wanted to bring back two-tier academic exams. I remember what that was like. O-levels and CSEs one whole group of young people written off. We are not going back to those days. Michael Gove who has contempt for vocational qualifications and has abolished some of the best vocational qualifications our country has. And Michael Gove who has nothing to say about education to 18. So in education there really is a choice of two futures. Education for a narrower and narrower elite, with the Conservatives. Or a One Nation skills system as part of a One Nation economy with the next Labour government. To be a One Nation economy we have to make life just that bit easier for the producers, and that bit harder for the predators. “Predators and producers”, I think one year on people know what I was talking about. You see businesses tell me that the pressure for the fast buck from City investors means they just can’t take the long view. They want to plan one year, two years, ten years ahead but they have to publish their accounts in Britain every 3 months. In line with the wishes of the best of British business, we will end that rule so companies in Britain can take the long term productive view for our country. Companies in Britain are far more easily bought and sold than in many other countries. Do you know that when a takeover is launched the hedge funds and the speculators can swoop in for a quick profit. They are not acting in the interests of firms or the nation. They are just in it for the fast buck. It is wrong and we will change it. And here is the thing, ladies and gentlemen, I invite British businesses - work with us in advance of the next Labour government. Let’s refound the rules of the game so we have a One Nation business model as part of a One Nation economy for our country. So friends, in banks, in education in the rules of the game for companies –One Nation gives us an urgent call of change. But One Nation is not just about the things we need to change, it is about the things we need to conserve as well. Saying that doesn’t make me a Conservative. Our common way of life matters. My vision of One Nation is an outward looking country. A country which engages with Europe and the rest of the world. I am incredibly proud to be the son of immigrant parents. I am incredibly proud of the multi-ethnic diverse Britain which won us the Olympic bid. The Olympics saw that kind of country here in Britain. But to make that Britain work. To make that vision work for our country, immigration must work for all and not just some. And friends, too often in the past we have overlooked those concerns, dismissed them too easily. Here is how my approach is going to be different both from the last Labour government and this Conservative government. You see we need secure management of out borders, we need competent management of the system. But here is the big change, it is about the way our economy works. You see, immigration has really significant economic benefits but not when it is used to undercut workers already here and exploit people coming here. The last Labour government didn’t do enough to address these concerns and the Tories never will. So the next Labour government will crack down on employers who don’t pay the minimum wage. We will stop recruitment agencies just saying they are only going to hire people from overseas. And we will end the shady practices, in the construction industry and elsewhere, of gang-masters. So we need a system of immigration that works for the whole country and not just for some. You know there is no more important area of our common life than the United Kingdom itself. Now one of the four countries, Scotland, will be deciding in the next two years whether to stay or to go. I want to be quite clear about this, Scotland could leave the United Kingdom. But I believe we would be far worse off as a result. Not just in pounds and pence but in the soul of our nation. You see I don’t believe that solidarity stops at the border. I care as much about a young person unemployed in Motherwell as I do about a young person unemployed here in Manchester. We have common bonds, we have deep bonds with each other. The people of Scotland and the people of the rest of the United Kingdom. And by the way, if you think about the people of Scotland and the Olympic games, they weren’t cheering on just the Scottish athletes of Team GB, they were cheering on all the athletes of Team GB. That’s what the SNP don’t understand. And why would a party that claims to be left o f centre turn its back on the redistribution, the solidarity, the common bonds of the United Kingdom? Friends it is up to us. It is up to us, we the Labour Party must be the people who fight, defend and win the battle for the United Kingdom. And after the United Kingdom itself there is no more important area of our common life than the NHS. The magic of the NHS for me is that you don’t leave your credit card at the door. The NHS, it’s based on a whole different set of values, a whole different set of values that the people of Britain love. Not values of markets, money and exchange but values of compassion, care and co-operation. That is the magic of the NHS; that is why the British people love the NHS and I’m afraid the Tories have shown in government it’s something they just don’t understand. Remember before the last election, remember those airbrushed posters? ‘I’ll protect the NHS’ with that picture of David Cameron. Remember those speeches? The three most important letters to me, he said, were N-H-S. It was a solemn contract with the British people. And then what did he do? He came along after the election and proposed a top-down reorganisation that nobody voted for, that nobody knew about and nobody wanted. And here’s the worst part. When it became unpopular he paused. Remember the pause? He said he wanted to listen, and what happened? The GPs said no. The nurses said no. The paediatricians said no. The radiologists said no. The patients said no. And the British people said no. And what did he do? He ploughed on regardless. He broke his solemn contract with the British people, a contract that can never be repaired. Let me tell what I hate about this reorganisation; let me tell you what I hate. I hate the waste, I hate the waste of billions of pounds at a time the NHS has its worst settlement, its most difficult settlement for a generation. I hate the fact that there are 5,500 fewer nurses than when David Cameron came to power. Think of what he could have done if he hadn’t spent billions of pounds on that top-down reorganisation and had used the money to employ nurses, rather than sacking them. But here’s what I hate most of all. It’s that the whole way they designed this NHS reorganisation was based on the model of competition that there was in the privatised utility industry, gas, energy and water. What does that tell you about these Tories? What does that tell you about the way they don’t understand the values of the NHS? The NHS isn’t like the gas, electricity and water industries. The NHS is the pride of Britain. The NHS is based on a whole different set of values for our country. Friends, it just shows that the old adage is truer now than it ever was: You just can’t trust the Tories on the NHS. So let me be clear, let me be clear, the next Labour government will end the free market experiment, it will put the right principles back at the heart of the NHS and it will repeal the NHS Bill. So friends, this is where I stand. This is who I am. This is what I believe. This is my faith. You know, I was talking to my mum this morning, as you do before a big speech, and she reminded me her mother was born in a small Polish village in 1909. I went back to that village with my mum about a decade ago. About 2,000 people live there and it’s quite an event having people from England coming over. It feels a long way from that village, and what my parents experienced, to this stage today. You see Britain has given my family everything. Britain has given my family everything. Britain and the spirit, the determination, the courage of the people who rebuilt Britain after the Second World War. And now the question is asked again: who in this generation will rebuild Britain for the future? Who can come up to the task of rebuilding Britain? Friends, it falls to us, it falls to us, the Labour Party. As it has fallen to previous generations of Labour Party pioneers to leave our country a better place than we found it. Never to shrug our shoulders at injustice and say that is the way the world is. To come together, to join together, to work together as a country. It’s not some impossible dream. We’ve heard it, we’ve seen it, we’ve felt it. That is my faith. One nation: a country for all, with everyone playing their part. A Britain we rebuild together. Miliband: Hated by his brother and the unions. Loved by... Nadine Dorries?

Plenty of Country Charm! There is so much you will love about this one - the split floor plan, the expansive great room, all the light that shines into the kitchen from the breakfast nook windows, an abundance of counter space, the additional storage space in the basement, and, of course, the finished outbuilding! Plenty of room inside and out to entertain family and friends in the open kitchen and out on the over-sized deck. Enjoy country life but still be conveniently close to all the amenities in town and the interstate!

Cassidy McFadzean will have a memorable 27th birthday on Saturday: She’s a nominee for the 2016 Saskatchewan Book Awards. McFadzean’s first book — a collection of poetry entitled Hacker Packer — is up for the First Book Award and the City of Regina Book Award. McFadzean has been writing all her life, but discovered poetry eight years ago at the Sage Hill Writing Experience. A master’s in creative writing from the University of Regina furthered her interest. Q: Why do you focus on poetry versus other styles of writing? A: It really allows you to just explore language and words themselves, as well as the musicality of language. I’m kind of a nerd in a couple of ways, so I really love looking at where words come from, Old English forms and these type of things in my poetry. A: It kind of came together on its own. The book is very much a collection of individual poems, so there’s no kind of overarching theme or idea. I was fortunate after my MA to be able to travel, so I went to Europe and I travelled in Greece and Rome. That’s where the poetry really grabbed me. … A lot of the poems in the collection are about the disjunction between the ancient world and the contemporary world of iPhones and Instagram. I think a lot of my poetry comes out of a desire to express the strangeness of just being alive and being in this world, because when you really think about it, it’s pretty strange at times. Q: Where does the title come from? A: I used to have this terrifying dream about this imaginary friend (my brothers) had and they would kind of taunt me with “that’s Hacker Packer.” But I also think in regards to my poems as kind of hacking and packing together different aspects of language and lines in some way. It’s a strange title. Cassidy McFadzean is a poet whose first book, Hacker Packer, is nominated for two Saskatchewan Book Awards. Q: Do you write about Saskatchewan? A: (One) thread running through the collection is poems about growing up in North Central Regina. I live here still and I grew up here, so a lot of the poems are talking about childhood experiences in this community and just what a profound community it is. … Some of these poems go into the political realm as well. I go by the phrase “the personal is political,” so when you write about your own experiences — whether it’s as a woman or as a settler in indigenous territory, Treaty 4 — you can’t help but be political in some way. The Saskatchewan Book Awards ceremony is Saturday evening at the Conexus Arts Centre. Other writers nominated in the 10 writer-specific awards categories are: Raymond Blake, Rita Bouvier, David Carpenter, Ken Coates, Carol Daniels, Leah Marie Dorion, Connie Gault, Tara Gereaux, Beth Gobeil, Lisa Guenther, Gerald Hill, Harold Johnson, Ray Lavallee, Jeanette Lynes, R.P. MacIntyre, Sylvia McAdam, Joseph Auguste Merasty, Mareike Neuhaus, Yvette Nolan, Elizabeth Philips, Greg Poelzer, Alexandra Popoff, Lloyd Ratzlaff, Judith Silverthorne, Guy Vanderhaeghe, and Dianne Warren. Publishers nominated are: Coteau Books, MacKenzie Art Gallery and Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Purich Publishing, University of Regina Press, and Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing.

This illustration show's NASA's Juno mission approaching Jupiter. Juno used distant stars to chart its course across the void. Key members of the Juno team held a press conference after the successful insertion of the spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter. After five years and a nearly 2-billion-mile journey through the solar system, NASA's Juno probe has reached its target: Jupiter. Everything went pretty much as planned on the evening of July 4th as Juno fired its rockets to start a 35-minute burn that helped it enter orbit around the gas giant. Things were tense at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as scientists, engineers and space fans waited for a signal from the spacecraft letting them know the probe had arrived. When that signal finally came, at 8:53 pm PTD, the mission control room broke out with clapping and cheers. "Welcome to Jupiter," said Michael M. Watkins, the new director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on NASA TV shortly after Juno's arrival. The duration of the engine burn was only one second off what was planned, quite a feat given how much could have gone wrong on this mission. Shortly after that burn, Juno swung back around to face the sun with its 18,698 individual solar cells that will power its journey. The Juno spacecraft is solar-powered. An engineering model shows one wing during a media preview at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena on Thursday morning, June 9, 2016. The actual array is made up of panels about the size of a city bus. "It's almost like a dream coming true right here," remarked Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton at a press conference after the orbital insertion. As part of that event, Bolton introduced a film taken by Juno as it approached Jupiter showing the planet's moons orbiting around the gas giant. "For the first time, all of us together, will see the true harmony in nature," he said before playing the video. It shows a short animation before the footage of Jupiter and its moons. The motion in the video was shot over 17 days and condensed to about three minutes, Bolton noted, "which I think it more enjoyable." The Juno spacecraft will give us earthlings new information about the largest planet in our celestial neighborhood. In fact, we still know relatively little about how Jupiter formed or how it rotates inside. Sure, it's covered in dynamic bands of colorful storms, but are those relatively shallow with a different structure underneath or do these storms penetrate to the heart of the gas giant? Another question Juno hopes to answer is whether or not there's a rocky core at the center of the planet or if it is all gas. Understanding how Jupiter developed could provide valuable clues about the formation of our early solar system, since scientists believe Jupiter was the first planet born after our sun coalesced and ignited. A diagram showing the scientific instruments on the Juno spacecraft. Because of its size, Jupiter likely helped clear much of the solar system of debris, leaving space for planets like Earth to form and possibly shielding them from larger impacts. Of course, studying Jupiter is not without risk. “Jupiter is the biggest, baddest planet in the solar system,” said Steve Levin, Juno project scientist. That includes having the most intense radiation field in the solar system. That radiation comes from variety of places -- including particles stemming from solar wind and even eruptions on Jupiter’s moon Io. They get trapped by Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field and become highly charged, some end up moving near the speed of light. Even though these particles are tiny, they can cause huge problems if they strike sensitive electronics like the kind on Juno. That's why Monday's maneuver was so risky. Stray particles could have struck certain circuits, causing systems to reboot just as the craft was about to fire rockets for orbital insertion. Fortunately, that didn't happen and the spacecraft carried out its flight as planned. However, it's still subject to that extreme radiation, which overtime can damage and eventually ruin important gear. That's why NASA took precautions by encasing most of the electronics in a titanium box that's roughly the size of a college dorm fridge. "That was a new idea for Juno," Levin commented. In the past, NASA would just shield specific parts rather than group everything into one area and wall it off. The lessons learned from Juno could be applied to future missions, including one to Jupiter's moon Europa, according to Mr. Geoffrey Yoder, the acting Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "Europa has a really, really tough radiation environment," Yoder added. The camera on Juno however doesn't really work if it's stuck in a titanium box, so when the company Malin Space Science Systems designed it, they just shielded the key electronics. A model of a two-megapixel camera on the Juno spacecraft shows thick casing protecting the lens and sensor from Jupiter's intense radiation field. Elsa Jensen with Malin said once Juno's camera is up and running, the public will be invited to suggest places on Jupiter for it to photograph. The targets with the most votes will win and in this way anyone can participate in the mission, she explained. Still, it will be awhile before we'll see those pictures or any other scientific investigations of Jupiter. Juno's scientific instruments were turned off for the orbital insertion and won't go back online for several more days. It'll be longer still before NASA starts receiving observational data from the craft, Levin noted. "What I am really looking forward to is getting up close and personal with Jupiter in about 53 days," he said. Sure, that feels like a long wait right now, but that's nothing compared to the years spent waiting to get to this point.

NILES 3, COLOMA 2 At Niles Coloma 000 101 0 -- 2 4 2 Niles 001 101 x -- 3 4 4 Josh Beers (W) and Dan Holland; Joe Tucker (L) and A. Garrod. 2B: Brownsfield (C). KNOX 10, NORTH JUDSON 0 At North Judson Knox 302 041 -- 10 15 1 North Judson 000 000 -- 0 5 1 Tom Trusty (W); Troy Glass (L), Erik Doland (5). 2B: Tyler Marsh (K) 2. HR: Dustin Manns (K). Highlights: Devin Edwards went 4-4 for Knox and Dustin Manns hit a grand slam in the fifth inning. Records: Knox 7-12. BRANDYWINE 9, HARTFORD 1 At Brandywine Hartford 000 000 1 -- 1 3 2 Brandywine 212 004 x -- 9 7 0 Kelli Zache (W, 19-5), Kendra Zache (4) and Brooke Coshow; K. Werberg (L) and K. Wright. 3B: Angela Newman (B) Records: Brandywine 22-6, Hartford 15-8, Hudson 13-13. Highlights: Kelli and Kendra Zache combined for 14 strikeouts in the win over Hartford for Brandywine. GRAND RAPIDS NORTH POINT CHRISTIAN 19, BUCHANAN 9, EDWARDSBURG 8, SAGINAW NOUVEL 7, NORTH MUSKEGON 5, BUCHANAN B 3, LAKE MICHIGAN CATHOLIC 1, BRANDYWINE 1. At Buchanan (Buck Classic Tournament) Area champions DOUBLES: 1. Andrew Gordon-Mario Bonardi (Buchanan) Second place SINGLES: 2. Nate Harness (Edwardsburg) DOUBLES 2. Dillon Bailey-Eric Lentz (B). BOONE GROVE 326, CULVER 326, CALUMET 335, SOUTH CENTRAL 341, OREGON-DAVIS 344, TRITON 346, WESTVILLE 374, MORGAN TWP. 381, RIVER FOREST 389, WASHINGTON TWP. 417 AT WESTVILLE INVITATIONAL Hamlet Golf Club, par 70 Medalist: Jacob Bailey (South Central) 72. CULVER (326): Jake Hinds 74, Drew Norwich 80, Lucas Hanselman 84, Chris Montgomery 89, Michael Grover 88. MARIAN 48, INDIANAPOLIS LAWRENCE 0: Marian tries were scored by Mike Lizzi, Richie Rectenwal, Nate Milligan, Brian Henry, Steve MacNamara, Paul Rarhig, Jamil Fati, and Chris Vandevier. Henry connected on four conversion kick. Marian improved to 7-2 on the year.

A drunk Tajik salesman allegedly assaulted and molested a woman in a hotel lift, causing her sever injuries which took more than 20 days to heal, the Dubai Criminal Court heard. The salesman ZA, 36, used to pick and drop 39-year-old Kazakhstani visitor as and when required to different locations in the city. On March 14, she asked him to drop her to a hotel on Sheikh Zayed Road to meet friends. “He took me to the hotel and accompanied me to meet my friends in a hotel room where he consumed alcohol. While heading back to the lift at 5am, he started flattering me and asked me to accompany him. I refused and ignored him,” she told the court. The man then started molesting her. “I pushed him away and went into the lift. I made it clear to him that I would not go with him and drop me back home. At that moment, he got upset and started beating me,” she testified. The woman grabbed the opportunity when the lift’s door opened and rushed out. But he followed her and beat her up. MR, 26, a Bangladeshi worker in the hotel, asked him to stop. “I told him that the woman could die because he was kicking her with full force,” testified the worker. But the accused scolded the Bangladeshi worker asked him to go away. The court will reconvene on June 2.

A popular knock on voters who support Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders because they have been “left behind” by free trade, globalization and technological progress is that they want a handout from Uncle Sam. But the truth is the opposite: These voters want to work. They want jobs. And that’s the key to understanding their support for Trump or Sanders. I know these people personally. In the 1970s and 1980s, I grew up in a vibrant working-class community in upstate New York. But by the early 1990s, thousands of people in their 50s in my community, including my parents, had lost their jobs as a result of a massive IBM downsizing. They “accepted” buyouts, but they were cast aside and not retrained for anything else. In this political season, I’ve been asking some of them and their friends, and their now-adult kids, which presidential candidates they find appealing. Only two find support: Sanders, the Vermont socialist, and Trump, the New York billionaire. Both candidates appeal to a working class that is frustrated, fed up and downright angry. To understand the simmering discontent of working-class folks who are attracted to one (or both) of these candidates, you need to imagine you’ve either lost a job or cannot break into the work force. Viewed from these perspectives, an academic debate about whether free trade results in net job losses or gains is mostly meaningless. These people want a good job, or at least a job no worse than the job they lost. Their economic futures seem to be on life support. We can’t ignore the centrality of work in people’s lives. Most people want to work. Most people want to contribute to society and take care of their families. When the government adopts free-trade policies that pick winners (the better educated who gain new jobs) and losers (manufacturing workers), the government also needs to cushion the blow for the losers. Since this hasn’t happened for the last couple of decades, anger has been building and is now finding a political outlet. Many Americans start to wonder: Our government helps rich Wall Street bankers but not Main Street homeowners? Supports elite universities but not vocational schools? Lowers taxes on the wealthiest Americans? Our government has an obligation to help people adjust to seismic policy changes, like free trade. In the last couple of decades, trade agreements have resulted in, for example, the technology industry gaining ground, and the steel industry losing ground. Besides picking winners and losers, free-trade policies introduce major economic anxiety into many previously stable families. Obvious policy tools have long existed to cushion the life-altering blows inflicted when government policies shift: job retraining, wage insurance, free community college and infrastructure investment. But these tools have been only sparingly deployed. We need to address the needs of displaced older workers, as well as undereducated younger workers. And no, raising the minimum wage won’t do it. For many working-class families, access to credit is limited. They can’t keep refinancing their homes as a result of the mortgage meltdown. Both parents already work (if they’re fortunate enough to have jobs), so there isn’t another parent to send into the work force. There are kids to raise and support. People need to feel that their lives are on an upward trajectory, or at least that there is a realistic chance they can advance. And far too many people don’t feel that way. Sanders and Trump tap into this disillusionment. They’re paying attention to the working class. They appear to actually understand, on a visceral level, the challenges faced by these Americans — and at least they seem to understand these voters aren’t moochers. In different ways, they’re offering seething working-class Americans pathways to reclaiming what they’ve lost. Until we admit that we have come precariously close to ending true social mobility in America, we’ll continue to see angry working-class voters approaching their boiling point. Most of these people aren’t “takers.” Rather, what they had, or what they hoped to have, has been “taken” away from them. Jim McDermott is the author of “Bitter Is the Wind,” a novel of working-class aspirations set in the Hudson Valley, and the chairman of a Portland, Ore., law firm.

Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland in 1835. He was the son of a hand loom weaver, William Carnegie. Although his family was impoverished, he grew up in a cultured, political home. He was a smart and ambitious young man who quickly surpassed his father as the breadwinner of the family, leading to mixed feelings about success. From the "Biography: Andrew Carnegie - Youth, Love & Loss" video.

Get away from it all and enjoy the comforts The Hershey Motel has to offer! We are the largest motel in Seaside Heights. With over 54 years of experience, we cater to the vacation needs of families and couples with our clean, modern rooms that are fully air-conditioned and heated! Start your day with a complimentary Continental Breakfast, served July 1st through Labor Day! Relax around the pool on lounge chairs or up on our spacious sun deck! Also enjoy the Hershey Restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner! Get away from it all and enjoy the comforts The Hershey Motel has to offer! We are the largest motel in Seaside Heights, nestled on two acres, block to block, just one block back from the beach and boardwalk! Did not have hardly any ementities. Posted by Dennis on October 03, 2015. Brought to you by priceline. We loved how close the beach was to the property and the room was big and very clean!\n\nIt would have been nice for the restaurant/bar to be open. Our kids wanted to play games in the little arcade but that was closed. Pool wasn't very clean either. Posted by Verified Hotel Guest on September 22, 2015. Brought to you by priceline. Enjoy your visit to Seaside Heights with a stay at Hershey Motel. The restaurant is the perfect spot for a bite to eat, and after having fun at the seasonal outdoor pool, you can unwind with a drink at the bar/lounge. Bonuses like refrigerators and microwaves are offered in all rooms, along with flat-screen TVs and free WiFi. Posted on March 13, 2017. Brought to you by kayak. Since 1996 the company has been providing Motels.

A high-ranking Toyota executive says the auto company's North American sales spiked around 50 percent the first eight days of March as incentives helped lure customers after a series of embarrassing safety recalls. Don Esmond, senior vice president of automotive operations for Toyota Motor Sales, said in an interview Tuesday that the early numbers surpassed the company's expectations. Esmond, who was speaking at a conference for Toyota suppliers, didn't give detailed figures. Last week, Toyota, which is usually stingy with incentives, announced new deals designed to bring shoppers back into its showrooms. Existing Toyota owners who buy another vehicle from the company will receive two years of free maintenance, Toyota said. The automaker also is offering zero-percent financing and low-priced leases to customers who buy or lease several of the recalled vehicles, including Corollas, Camrys and Avalons. Esmond also said there is pent-up demand from buyers who didn't shop for cars during last year's economic downturn. U.S. sales plummeted to their lowest level in nearly 30 years in 2009. Dealers say the incentives are helping, especially after Toyota's sales fell 9 percent in February, the first full month after it stopped sales of some models because of safety issues. Overall industry sales rose 13 percent over February 2009, which was an especially weak month in the U.S. Since the fall, Toyota has recalled some 8.5 million vehicles worldwide — more than 6 million in the United States — because of acceleration problems and braking flaws. Regulators have linked 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by accelerator problems. The recalls were the subject of three recent congressional hearings. Earl Stewart, who owns a dealership in North Palm Beach, Fla., said the Camry sedan and hybrid Prius are selling well despite being the subject of recalls. "These are the best incentives we've seen in a long time," he said. "We are basically telling customers, Toyota sales will be coming back and they're going to pull these incentives. So people see a sense of urgency." Esmond said many loyal Toyota buyers seem to be sticking with the brand. He defended the increase in incentives, which has forced General Motors Corp., Chrysler Group LLC, Ford Motor Co. and others to match Toyota's deals. "Now that the congressional hearings are behind us, it's time to move on," Esmond said. "We said we're sorry. I think we've taken responsibility in terms of the recalls."

The antidepressant drug citalopram, sold under the brand names Celexa and Cipramil and also available as a generic medication, significantly relieved agitation in a group of patients with Alzheimer's disease, according to research led by a Johns Hopkins team and reported in the February 19th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. However, side effects including sings of abnormal heart function and a slight increase in cognitive decline. A release from the university notes that the team hopes that in lower doses than those tested, the drug might be safer than antipsychotic drugs that are currently used to treat the condition and that also pose a heart risk. Along with Johns Hopkins, he study was done by researchers at Columbia University, the Medical University of South Carolina, Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Rochester, the University of Southern California, and the University of Toronto. Constantine Lyketsos, M.D., M.H.S., and his colleagues recruited 186 patients with Alzheimer's who showed a collection of symptoms including emotional distress, excessive movement, aggression, disruptive irritability, and lack of appropriate inhibition. None of the participants experienced adequate symptom relief with non-medical therapies, and treatment with antipsychotic drugs failed for some of the patients. Though antipsychotics are often used as first-line medications for Alzheimer's-related agitation, they significantly increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks, and death, Lyketsos says. The release explain that at the start of the study, patients also underwent tests to define the extent of their agitation, memory and other cognitive skills, and their caregivers' stress levels, a factor strongly linked to the well-being of those with Alzheimer's. The patients were then separated into two groups. For the next nine weeks, about half took increasing doses of citalopram that peaked at 30 milligrams per day, and the rest took an identical-looking placebo. At the end of the study period, the same set of tests was given, along with electrocardiograms. The study drug is linked to adverse effects on heart function, including irregular heartbeat, a harbinger of a heart attack. Results showed that patients on the drug had significant relief from their agitation symptoms, Lyketsos says. In one measure of agitation, about 40 percent of patients who took citalopram had "considerable relief," compared to 26 percent of patients who took the placebo. The caregivers for the patients who took the actual reported less stress. However, as noted above, patients on the drug were also more likely to have slightly decreased cognitive function. "It was not huge, but measureable," says Lyketsos, director of the Johns Hopkins Memory and Alzheimer's Treatment Center and director of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. "That introduces a tradeoff." More concerning, he adds, is that patients on citalopram had longer QTc intervals, a measure of abnormal heart function that increases the risk of heart attacks. However, Lyketsos says, antipsychotic medications increase heart attack risk as well, perhaps even more substantially. Lyketsos and his colleagues hope to test whether or not a lower dose of citalopram might be just as effective in treating Alzheimer's-related agitation with less risk for problems with cognition and heart function. In the meantime, he says, the drug offers an alternative to antipsychotics. "If the agitation is not responding to non-medication treatments and your patient's agitation isn't improving, there are no great options," Lyketsos says. "But here's another medication choice that might be safer than other medications and seems to be just as effective."

The British television production sector grew its total revenues a new high of £2.7 billion ($US3.47 billion) in 2017, a bump of nearly a third over the past decade, according to a new report from UK independent producers’ association Pact. The 13th annual census report, published Tuesday (Sept. 4), found that despite a slight fall in reported revenues last year, the revenue totals increase has returned the sector to the trend of steady growth of total revenues, roughly 2% (£50m/$US64.21m) per year, since 2012. According to Pact, sector growth has primarily been driven by international revenues which have ballooned over the past eight years to £802 million (about $US1.029 billion) in 2017, an 11% year-on-year increase. International commissions have bolstered that growth, aided by additional spending from SVOD services. As a result, both international commissions revenue and total international income have more than doubled since 2010. Commissioning revenues from international streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime has also increased by 19% year-on-year to £150 million ($US192.62m), accounting for nearly one-third of overseas commissioning revenue with series such as The Grand Tour. The growth, however, was not as dramatic as in last year’s census, where the SVOD spend doubled from 2015 to 2016. The report also states that over the past eight years, a greater number of smaller companies then ever before have scaled up into the £25-70 million ($US32.10-89.88m) turnover bracket – up 13% – and the share of the total market for this band has doubled over the same period. Spending on British factual entertainment commissions, meanwhile, has nearly doubled since 2012, from 12% to 23%, due to the popularity of such fact-ent programming as ITV’s dating reality program Love Island (pictured), and C4′s Gogglebox and First Dates. The Pact Census is an annual report that examines the characteristics and evolution of the television production space within the UK. It is conducted by surveying Pact members, with the data then aggregated to estimate the overall size of the market.

A video recording from Xinhua showing Arabella Kushner, US President Donald Trump's granddaughter, singing Chinese songs and reciting Chinese literary classics caused another internet sensation in China Wednesday night. In the video clip, Arabella, wearing a traditional embroidered Chinese dress, greets President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan. The six-year-old sings two songs Our Fields, Beautiful Fields, and My Good Mom. The former, written in 1953 and adored by Chinese teenagers for decades, expresses one's love and affection for the motherland and nature. The latter is a popular nursery rhyme widespread in China. She also displayed knowledge about Chinese literature by reciting Three Character Classic, a Confucianist volume to educate young children, and two ancient poems of Li Bai, Watching the Fall of Lushan Mountain, and Departing from White King City in the Morning. Xi spoke highly of the child's Mandarin abilities and said her performance deserved an "A Plus". He said Arabella was already a star in China and hoped she would visit China one day. Numerous media websites and netizens reposted the video. It has received 2.3 million clicks on Sina Weibo, China's popular social media platform, as of press time. "What a talented and smart girl she is!" Weibo user Yumeiren said. "I hope she can make more contributions to fostering China-US friendship in the future." "Bravo, kiddo!" Alvin Valeriano said on Youtube. "Good ambassador of goodwill, you are Arabella. JIA YOU!" Earlier this year, during President Xi's visit to the United States, Arabella has already performed for the president and his wife at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6. Standing alongside her parents, Arabella sang Jasmine, a Chinese folk song with her brother Joseph. US President Donald Trump chats with Russia's President Vladimir Putin as they attend the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, part of the APEC leaders' summit in the central Vietnamese city of Danang on November 11, 2017. President Donald Trump speaking with Russian President, Vladimir Putin as host country's Vietnamese President, Tran Dai Quang walks alongside as they make their way to the area designated for the APEC Family photo at the Intercontinental Da Nang Resort. US President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) as they pose for a group photo ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit leaders gala dinner. Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (R) taking a selfie with Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang (L), US President Donald Trump (2nd L) and China's President Xi Jinping as they attend the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting. President Donald Trump walks away with Indonesia's President, Joko Widodo as Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe walks behind them while they leave the designated area for the APEC Family photo at the Intercontinental Da Nang Resort. (Bottom L-R) South Korea's President Moon Jae-in, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak, Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto, (top L-R) Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. (Front L to R) China's President Xi Jinping, Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, (back L to R) Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump and Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha. US President Donald Trump (2nd L) chatting with Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang (R) and Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto (2nd R). Trump arrived in Hanoi after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit leaders meetings earlier in the day in Danang. U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump depart after a state dinner in their honour. First Lady Melania Trump, US President Donald Trump, China's President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan at the Forbidden City in Beijing on November 8, 2017. The US president is on a three-day visit to China as part of his Asian tour. U.S. President Donald Trump takes part in a welcoming ceremony with China's President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China, November 9, 2017. The leaders shake hands after making joint statements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday. US first lady Melania Trump and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan, hold up Chinese calligraphy of the character for "Fortune" written by students during a visit to the Banchang Primary School in Beijing. US President Donald Trump's attempt to make an unannounced visit to the heavily fortified border separating North and South Korea was aborted on Wednesday after dense fog prevented his helicopter from landing, officials said. However, Trump and his entourage had to turn back when the weather made it impossible for his helicopter to land in the border area, the White House said. Trump was disappointed he was unable to visit the DMZ, which was planned secretly to show the strength of the US-South Korean alliance, said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks to reporters after presidential helicopters returned US President Donald Trump to US Army Garrison Yongsan in Seoul, South Korea on Nov 8. U.S. President Donald Trump sits in his car after being grounded from an attempt to visit the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the truce village of Panmunjom dividing North Korea and South Korea. US President Donald Trump was served traditional Korean dishes at a state dinner Tuesday, attended by some 120 other guests representing the two countries' close relationship in the areas of diplomacy, business, culture and security. US President Donald Trump was served traditional Korean dishes at a state dinner Tuesday, attended by some 120 other guests. A selection of appetisers is set at each guest's place. The main dish was Korean beef ribs marinated in a special soy sauce with the Korean traditional dish Japchae, or stir-fried glass noodles, with prawns from the country's easternmost islets of Dokdo. Grilled sole, said to be one of President Trump's favorites, was also on the dinner table, which was decorated with the concept of an imperial court in Korea with fabric flowers made of silk and ramie cloths. For dessert, a rich chocolate cake garnished with raspberry vanilla sauce and Sujeonggwa, or cinnamon punch, a traditional Korean drink, were served. Melania Trump meets Minho of pop group Shinee, but it's a stunned schoolgirl who steals the show. Her shocked reaction prompted bemused smiles from the pop singer and US First Lady. US President Donald Trump arrived in Seoul on Tuesday (Nov 7). He was welcomed by South Korea's President Moon Jae-in at the presidential Blue House. A special sauce more than a century older than the United States will be on the menu for Donald Trump at his state banquet in Seoul on Tuesday. Trump also visited the US Eighth Army Operation Command Center at US military installation Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. Supporters of Trump display US and South Korea flags while waiting for Trump's motorcade to pass in central Seoul. The guest book signed by Trump and first lady Melania is pictured at South Korea’s presidential Blue House in Seoul. Trump's stay in Seoul will last approximately 24 hours, the shortest in his five-nation tour. Due to time constraints, the US leader has decided to skip a trip to the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). The two previous visits in June 1998 and May 1999 were arranged by the now-defunct Daewoo Group here, which General Motors acquired in 2002. First Lady Melania Trump will accompany her husband to South Korea, although little is known about her planned schedule there. During his visit in the summer of 1998, Trump toured a shipyard and car factory under Daewoo Group. Handshake between US President Donald Trump and S Korean President Moon Jae-in. US President Donald Trump said he would "certainly be open" to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. "I would sit down with anybody," he said. "I don't think it's strength or weakness, I think sitting down with people is not a bad thing. US President Donald Trump kisses First Lady Melania Trump upon arriviing in Osan, South Korea. US First Lady Melania walks beside a US secret service agent upon arriving with her husband US President Donald Trump (not pictured) in Osan, outside of Seoul. Melania Trump signs a guestbook at the Blue House in Seoul. US First Lady Melania Trump (L) and Kim Jung-sook, wife of South Korea's President Moon Jae-In. Anti-Trump protesters hold placards and shout slogans as they wait for the convoy of US President Donald Trump to make its way past, in Gwanghwamun square in central in Seoul. US president Donald Trump met Japanese Internet sensation Pikotaro, known for his "pen-pineapple-apple-pen" tune that went viral last year, on Monday (Nov 6) night. "President Trump and Prime Minister Abe ," he wrote. "It is an honour!" Trump's grandchildren are reportedly fans of the star. Photo caption: Pikotaro at the official dinner thrown by Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in honor of U.S. President Donald Trump at November 6, 2017. White House Communications Director Hope Hicks made her own high fashion statement during a Japanese state dinner in Tokyo Monday night. US President Donald Trump sparked a feeding frenzy on social media on Monday (Nov 6) when he was photographed dumping a box of fish food into a pond of koi carp during his trip to Japan. US President Donald Trump touched down in Japan Sunday, kicking off the first leg of a high-stakes Asia tour set to be dominated by soaring tensions with nuclear-armed North Korea. U.S. President Donald Trump walks with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he arrives at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, Japan, November 6, 2017. Trump and his “friend” Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, enjoy a close personal relationship and the three-day Japan leg of the trip is noticeably relaxed, with the two leaders teeing off for a round of golf before being serenaded by wacky internet sensation Pikotaro. US President Donald Trump (R) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) review the honour guard during a welcoming ceremony in Tokyo on November 6, 2017. U.S. President Donald Trump greeted Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko on Monday with a genteel handshake and nod, but no bow, avoiding the pitfall of U.S. President Barack Obama who was criticised at home for his deep bow to the monarch. US President Donald Trump (R) talks with Japan's Emperor Akihito (L) during their meeting at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on November 6, 2017. US first lady Melania Trump (L) talks with Japan's Empress Michiko (R) at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on November 6, 2017. Japan's Emperor Akihito sees off US President Donald Trump after their meeting at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on November 6, 2017. US President Donald Trump (C-L) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (C-R) feed koi fish during a welcoming ceremony in Tokyo on November 6, 2017. US First Lady Melania Trump writes calligraphy while attending a calligraphy class of 4th graders with Akie Abe (R), wife of the Japanese prime minister, at the Kyobashi Tsukiji elementary school in Tokyo on November 6, 2017.

The twice-weekly service, which launched January 2018, was discontinued this month for a lack of interest and being too expensive. ST. LUCIE COUNTY — The commuter airline Fly the Whale will no longer offer scheduled service to Tallahassee from Treasure Coast International Airport, ending the return of commercial air service to the county. The twice-weekly service, which launched January 2018, was discontinued this month for a lack of interest and being too costly, said Operations Director Kurt Holden. A round-trip ticket costs $650. The flight mostly was used by state legislators who wanted a quick commute to the state's capital without having to fly from South Florida to Atlanta and then to Tallahassee. “There just wasn’t enough demand to justify the cost,” Holden said. The airline will continue to offer charter flights, but if the public shows interest in the service again, Holden said he is open to resuming flights to Tallahassee and other cities in the state. Fly the Whale also announced it will later this year open a base in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where it provides charter flights to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. In the meantime, the airline will continue to use Treasure Coast International Airport as its maintenance hub while still offering charter flights, Holden said. Since launching last year, the airline has increased its fleet from three to seven and its pilots from three to six full-time pilots and three part-time pilots, Holden said. About 30 percent of its charter customers are Treasure Coast residents who fly in small groups to the Florida Keys, Bahamas or other island chains for fishing or diving. “St. Lucie County has been a good strategic location for us,” Holden said. Fly the Whale is subleasing a 10,000-square-foot hangar at the airport. The county is providing the airline free space in the terminal building. St. Lucie County does not charge landing fees. Fly the Whale’s decision to use the airport as a maintenance operation follows the county’s goal of turning the the 3,800-acre general-aviation airport into an aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul center. The county will start construction next month on a $7.4 million, 45,000-square-foot hangar at the airport to attract an aviation-maintenance company. The hangar will be built with money from a $3.9 million grant from the Florida Department of Transportation, a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration and about $2 million from the county. Fly the Whale is a 10-year-old company known in the New York area for providing charter service to the Hamptons on Long Island as well as Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and Cape Cod in Massachusetts. In Florida, the company already provides charter service from West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami to the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

UPDATE: Police said the 14-year-old girl reported missing from west Columbus has returned on her own. COLUMBUS, Ohio – Columbus police are asking for the public’s help in finding a missing 14-year-old girl. Police said Grace Rensi is an endangered runaway and was last seen in the area of Aldengate Drive and Manshire Court in west Columbus on Thursday around 4:30 p.m.. Rensi, who has blonde hair and hazel eyes, was last seen wearing a white Ohio State jersey, black leggings, and white Converse shoes. She is 5' tall and weighs 95 pounds.

Hospitalman Murphy Edson checks 9-month-old Nora Walsh’s heart at Naval Branch Health Clinic Mayport’s Pediatrics Clinic. Edson, a native of Austin, Texas, says, “Working in pediatrics has truly been a rewarding experience to me as a hospital corpsman. I love the environment and the ability to care for our fellow service members’ children, often being able to make them smile and feel comfortable in difficult situations. The providers have challenged and influenced me to continue and pursue a future in pediatric medicine.” (U.S. Navy photo by Jacob Sippel, Naval Hospital Jacksonville/Released).

Soccer Republic, a new series focusing on all aspects of soccer, will begin on Monday 10 March at 11.05pm on RTÉ Two. The series will cover all the action from the SSE Airtricity League, as well as the latest Republic of Ireland and Champions League fare. Interviews with Ireland’s Premier League stars will also be a regular feature of the show. Presented by Peter Collins, the show will feature top pundits, special guests and goals every Monday night. Paul McGrath, Ray Houghton, Ronnie Whelan, Kenny Cunningham and Keith Gillespie will be among a host of special guests joining the regular panellists Richie Sadlier, Pat Fenlon, Brian Kerr and Tony McDonnell. The first show on Monday week will hear from both Martin O'Neill and Roy Keane ahead of Ireland’s friendly with Serbia on 5 March.

The Maker Lab hosted their second annual Make-a-thon event on Dec. 1, building accommodations on toys for children with certain disabilities. The Make-a-thon was held from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. as a “come-and-go” event. Lory Chrane, instructor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, originally came up with the idea for the workshop. In the field of speech and language pathology, Chrane said she often works with individuals with disabilities that require assistive technology or alternative communication. Volunteers came in to adapt 28 mechanical toys, donated by the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association, with certain switches to better suit the kids and their disabilities. 10 of the Maker Lab’s student workers were present at the event to assist and guide the volunteers to tools and material inside the lab, but this year the Maker Lab created a website for volunteers to use from their phone and walk them through the step-by-step process. Mobile access to the website gave volunteers pictures and descriptions of the rebuilding process. After each volunteer chose from the four different types of toys (a train, barking dog, bubble blower, and constellation light projector lamp), they could visit the website and access the instructions for that toy. Wilson said that after inviting all of ACU students and faculty, as well as the outside Abilene community, well over 100 people showed up to help. The Maker Lab’s 2018 Make-a-thon successfully built 40 switches and adapted 28 toys to donate. The Make-a-thon partners with Region 14 Education Service Center to locate families and classrooms with kids that can benefit from the adapted items.

The highlight of the game must be the ref. Pretty good game for him imo. I dig my Kriel! Love that boy! Willie made that try with that catch&pass. Yeah, agreed. He has been good. Kriel is beginning to peeve me with the way he chucks the dead ball away. Prima donna behaviour. Stands there, let's them blow off a bit of testosterone steam, tells them enough is enough and moved on. No unnecessary cards and other bs. Don't think Wales have touched the ball in last 20 mins. How many replacements are you allowed to make? Did Toks just say we must be a bit more lenient on Sita because his black? Van Zyl is barely a super rugby scrum half. No ways he's an international half. I see dark clouds...hate to be negative but it's all old SA rugby again. 70% possession, 3 points in 30 mins. No creativity whatsoever. It illudes them. Dumbest rugby players in the world. Without a shadow of doubt. Hate to admit it., but s'truth. Almost feel like Pollard has ran at the line a bit too much. Usually flyhalves do too little, but he should have distributed a bit more.

If there is anything we’ve learned this June throughout pride month, it is how our LGBTQ community comes together to celebrate, mourn, and rise up as a collective, especially when we, broadly speaking, are once again being preyed upon by the system of inequity. Strength in solidarity was demonstrated with record attendance at pride celebrations throughout the region this year, not only by spectators, but also through non-profit and for-profit participation in the events themselves. At The Rainbow Times, we know we have our most difficult work ahead of us. As responsible LGBTQ media, we continue to tackle the injustices that infiltrate our lives as we are reminded that none of our community rights are truly safe. Almost no one is safe, especially as we witness what is happening in Washington, especially in the White House. However, we must never forget to celebrate our lives and the lives of those that have gone before us, in order to brave the good fight that lies ahead. To do just that, as a part The Rainbow Times’ 10th year anniversary celebration, we launched our first pride cruise series out of Salem, MA during North Shore Pride weekend. The first cruise on June 23 sold out so quickly that we decided to launch a second one just to accommodate ongoing requests we received. The second cruise departed on June 25, closing out the weekend’s festivities. Though The Rainbow Times has always given philanthropically from the start, it became our vision and goal to do so at an even a larger scale this year and also looking to the years that lie ahead. Because of the hundreds of cruise-goers, our generous sponsors, raffle donors, and community partners, we were able to raise thousands of dollars for charity (Fenway Health’s The Borum and North Shore Pride). This would not have been possible without the generosity of those who believed in this cause. We thank our sponsors—Eastern Bank, our cruise partner Mahi Mahi, and local LGBTQ hotspot Mercy Tavern for making this series a possibility, and Northey Bed and Breakfast for hosting Pulse Orlando survivor Christopher Hansen who was our guest of honor at both events. Special gratitude goes to DJ Andrea Stamas, who didn’t let our energy dip at any point during these cruises as she spun her killer beats for both nights. Likewise, we’d like to thank all of our community partners—Salem State University, the PEM, New England Dog Biscuit Company, Gentle Aesthetics Med Spa, Eye Center of the North Shore, Beverly Bank, the Independent Living Center of the North Shore and Cape Ann, Erik Rodenhiser and Melt Ice Cream. Last, but certainly not least, we are so grateful to all of our local raffle donors who gave without hesitation. Those businesses include Opus, The Cheese Shop, Jolie Tea, Koto, the Highland’s Inn Lesbian Resort, Athena Spa Baskets by Heidi Z, the Salem Wax Museum, House of the Seven Gables, Cultura Latina, the Flatbread Company, and Tito’s Handmade Vodka. Keep an eye out and ear to the ground for our next upcoming event on September 30 on the Salem Sound! It should be a ghoulish time. In the meantime, continue to live, love and celebrate. Be the first to comment on "Thank you: The Rainbow Times’ Pride Cruise Series, a success"

Ralph Orlowski/ReutersGeorge Soros, the billionaire hedge fund investor. J. C. Penney doesn’t have many fans on Wall Street. But a big one emerged on Thursday: George Soros. Mr. Soros, the hedge fund billionaire, on Thursday disclosed a 7.9 percent stake in Penney, with 17.4 million shares, according to a securities filing. The stake is passive, meaning Mr. Soros will not try to exert influence on the embattled retailer. Penney’s shares rose nearly 7 percent in after-hours trading. The stock, which has taken a beating this year, ended regular trading up 5 cents at $15.24, before the stake was disclosed. Mr. Soros, 82, is at least the second prominent hedge fund manager to take a shine to Penney, whose chief executive, Ron Johnson, was pushed out two weeks ago after 17 months on the job. William A. Ackman, the head of Pershing Square Capital Management, also has a sizable stake. Penney’s shares fell more than 50 percent during the tenure of Mr. Johnson, a former Apple executive Mr. Ackman supported. Mr. Johnson brought fresh ideas to Penney, trying to attract a new type of shopper. But those failed to improve the company’s sales. In February, Mr. Johnson admitted he made “big mistakes” in his turnaround effort after the company reported a $552 million quarterly loss. Penney’s stock price has climbed since Mr. Johnson was replaced by the executive who had preceded him, Myron E. Ullman III, an appointment that was seen as a stopgap as the company tried to get back on its feet. Mr. Ackman, whose firm owns a 17.8 percent stake in Penney, continues to express confidence in the company, though he seemed to lose faith in Mr. Johnson in the days before the management change was announced. “I don’t see a scenario in which we don’t work this thing out,” Mr. Ackman said at a luncheon this month, according to a report at the time. The move by Mr. Soros, a legend on Wall Street who stopped managing outside money several years ago, will most likely cause some investors to give Penney a second look. It was not immediately clear what had prompted Mr. Soros’s interest in the retailer. But if Mr. Ullman wanted to visit two of his largest shareholders, he won’t have far to travel. Mr. Soros and Mr. Ackman share an office building in New York.

Cambridge saw their lead at the top of the Conference Premier cut to one point as they suffered only a second league defeat of the season at Hereford. Michael Rankine scored the only goal, capitalising on a mistake in the U's defence to fire left-footed past keeper Chris Maxwell and in off the post. Cambridge had chances to level but Josh Gillies curled a shot wide and Adam Cunnington fired into the side netting. Second-placed Luton cut the U's lead at the top with a 4-2 win over Gateshead. Match ends, Hereford United 1, Cambridge United 0. Second Half ends, Hereford United 1, Cambridge United 0. Attempt blocked. Dan Walker (Hereford United) right footed shot from outside the box is blocked. Foul by Dan Walker (Hereford United). Harrison Dunk (Cambridge United) wins a free kick. Attempt missed. Delano Sam-Yorke (Cambridge United) right footed shot from the left side of the box misses to the right. Hand ball by Michael Rankine (Hereford United). Offside, Hereford United. Dan Walker tries a through ball, but Dan Walker is caught offside. Attempt missed. Josh Gillies (Cambridge United) left footed shot from outside the box misses to the left. Chris Maxwell (Cambridge United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul. Josh Coulson (Cambridge United) wins a free kick. Attempt missed. Adam Cunnington (Cambridge United) right footed shot from the right side of the box misses to the right. Attempt missed. Richard Tait (Cambridge United) left footed shot from outside the box misses to the left. Adam Cunnington (Cambridge United) wins a free kick. Substitution, Cambridge United. Michael Spillane replaces Ian Miller. Dan Walker (Hereford United) wins a free kick. Dominic Collins (Hereford United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul. Substitution, Hereford United. Dan Walker replaces Micah Evans because of an injury. Foul by Delano Sam-Yorke (Cambridge United). Attempt saved. Micah Evans (Hereford United) right footed shot from the left side of the box is saved. Attempt missed. Delano Sam-Yorke (Cambridge United) right footed shot from the right side of the box is too high. Attempt missed. Micah Evans (Hereford United) right footed shot from outside the box is too high. Substitution, Cambridge United. Richard Tait replaces Kevin Roberts. Foul by Josh Coulson (Cambridge United). Michael Rankine (Hereford United) wins a free kick. Substitution, Cambridge United. Delano Sam-Yorke replaces Nathan Arnold. Second Half begins Hereford United 1, Cambridge United 0.

RUNNING a bar in this town, in this hospitality economy, is no joke. Where other venues come and go in months, Picabar, in the Northbridge Cultural Centre, is still going strong after nearly seven years. Its owners are doing something right. It’s clear their customers love them. Witness the outpouring of public support when it was revealed last week their future might be under threat. Almost 9000 people signed a petition in a few days. Punters called talkback and flooded the email inboxes of ministers and MPs. But that’s jumping ahead. This is a story of a family business trying not to get steamrolled by bureaucracy. It might also be about carpetbagging an opportunity created through the entrepreneurship and hard work of others. Picabar — the family business of Brian Buckley, his wife Melissa Bowen and brother Conor — occupies part of the Old Perth Boys School building. Outdoor tables line the sun-dappled courtyard and it opens out on to the grey bricks of the cultural centre’s plaza. It’s beloved by Perth’s artistic community and attracts patrons of all ages. It brings some culture to the cultural centre during the day and after dark. When it opened in January 2012, the building had been boarded up for years. Success was no sure thing. The owners took a risk, signing a sublease with their namesake landlord, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. PICA, in turn, has the head lease with the State Government. The sublease gave Picabar a 10-year option, but it required PICA to get its own long-term lease from government, which never happened for reasons that are opaque. Picabar has been operating on a month-to-month lease ever since, an unsatisfactory arrangement that has prevented long-term investment in the bar or the heritage building. Things took an alarming turn two Thursdays ago, when the owners received a letter from PICA telling them to surrender their keys and remove their fixtures by November 13. That was quickly walked back by the State Government — but what was clear is that the Government wants to put the business built by the Buckleys out to tender. LISTEN: Northbridge small bar Picabar is facing closure due to a State Government lease wrangle. Source: 6PR Breakfast. Arts and Culture Minister David Templeman would not guarantee its future beyond March; an expressions of interest (EOI) process has already been announced. In Parliament, Templeman hinted of a fractured relationship between PICA and its sub-lessee, but there are rumours that cultural institutions and deep-pocketed hospitality operators are sniffing around the opportunity. “I’ve been to the Picabar. It’s a great spot and they’ve done a great job,” Templeman said on radio. “We want to activate the cultural centre. Camera IconPicabar’s Conor Buckley, Melissa Bowen & Brian Buckley.Picture: Ross Swanborough / The Sunday Times, Ross Swanborough. Those minded to see a conspiracy would read closely the details of any EOI document, looking to whom it might favour. The fair-minded would recognise an open EOI allows anyone to piggyback on the risks, hard work and goodwill built up by Picabar’s owners. There is no dispute taxpayers’ interests must be protected. The owners acknowledge they should pay market rent. An independent commercial valuation, with negotiations to start from there, is their preferred way forward. After the outcry, Templeman met the owners for more than an hour. They feel like they got a fair hearing and now the minister is weighing up the way forward. Labor has campaigned hard on jobs and growth, and its own proud record of liquor licensing reform. Picabar employs 15 people and puts a roof over the head of Brian and Melissa’s three young children. It’s said you can’t fight City Hall, but people are now watching this one closely.

Netflix may have decided to ditch all of its Marvel superheroes series, but the streaming service is doubling down on the surreal superheroes of The Umbrella Academy! The Hargreeves siblings will officially be back for more moon-shattering shenanigans, as Netflix announced the series has officially been renewed for Season 2. The news comes over a month after the first season dropped on Friday, Feb. 15. The show's first season was a smash success that ended with Five (Aidan Gallagher) deciding to jump back in time with the rest of his siblings in a last-ditch effort to save their sister, Vanya (Ellen Page), from her dark powers. If they manage to turn back the clock and restore Vanya's sanity, they may even save the world from her apocalyptic recital that ended up blowing up the moon and destroying the Earth in the final seconds of the Season 1 finale. There's no telling what direction Season 2 will take or which mysteries it will answers (though we have our theories, of course), but at least it's safe to say we're probably in for another kickass soundtrack and hopefully another epic dance number!

The PMO, replying to an RTI application filed by whistleblower bureaucrat Sanjiv Chaturvedi, said a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has already been formed and its investigation is underway. In its response to a Central Information Commission (CIC) order asking the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to provide details of black money brought back from abroad within 15 days, the PMO Sunday refused to share the details citing a provision of the RTI Act that bars disclosure of information that may impede investigation and prosecution of offenders, PTI reported on Sunday. The CIC had on October 16 asked the office to provide details of black money within 15 days. The PMO, replying to an RTI application filed by whistleblower bureaucrat Sanjiv Chaturvedi, said a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has already been formed and its investigation is underway. “As such, disclosure of all the action/efforts undertaken by the government at this juncture may impede the whole process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders and hence would attract the provision of exemption under Section 8 (1) (h) of the RTI Act,” it said. Narendra Modi’s Office also said that such investigations come under the purview of different government intelligence and security organisations which have been excluded from the ambit of the RTI Act. Chaturvedi, an Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer, had sought information on the quantum of black money brought from abroad since June 1, 2014. Chaturvedi had moved the CIC after the PMO in its initial reply to the RTI inquiry in October last year said the query was not covered under Section 2(f) of the transparency law that defines information. But last month, the CIC ordered the PMO to provide information within 15 days. Responding to another query mentioned in the Chaturvedi’s application, the PMO refused to share details of corruption complaints received against Union ministers, saying providing such information “may be a subjective as well as a cumbersome exercise”. There is, at present, no official assessment of the quantum of black money in India and abroad. According to a study by US-based think-tank Global Financial Integrity (GFI), an estimated $770 billion in black money entered India during 2005-2014. Nearly $165 billion in illicit money exited the country during the same period, PTI quoted a report by the global financial watchdog.

THE emergence of Right to Information (RTI) Act 2009 that came into effect on the 6th of April 2009 is undoubtedly a landmark in the legal arena of the country. This law supersedes several inconsistent provisions in other laws like the Official Secrets Act 1923, the Evidence Act 1872, the Rules of Business 1996 and the Government Servants (Conduct) Rules 1979 among others. The law also provides an independent Information Commission with broad powers to provide remedies to the failures to implement the law. Under the Article 15(1) of the Act the government appointed a three-member Information Commission which has already done the necessary works to prepare the rules of business for the proper functioning of the commission as well as implementation of the Act. Enactment of the RTI Act is an important march towards ensuring peoples' access to information, and establishing their rights of the public information. Espousal of this Act in Bangladesh is the outcome of the multi-faceted efforts of campaign and advocacy by stakeholders in public, private and non-government sectors. Freedom of information laws have created new power relations between the government sectors and people where RTI laws are being implemented, such as in India, South Africa and Mexico. Enactment of RTI Act in Bangladesh has placed before us the challenge of executing the Act and ensuring the delivery of public information to the people. This law would contribute to the growing demand of the citizens' access to the information as a catalyst for spiraling democracy, establishing good governance and combating corruption if implemented properly. Despite certain limitations and concerns of different civil society and citizen rights groups over the effectiveness of the Act due to the provisions of non disclosure and exemptions on some grounds, the Act need to be carried forward towards its implementations at different levels, and at local level in particular where both the media and civil societies have crucial roles to play. Raising awareness at local level is crucial to the implementation of the law. Thus, in the process of implementation most functional aspects of the law will be recognized and lapses will be identified and remedied. Under the Act, organizations that run with public money and the NGOs using foreign funds will have to disclose information as categorized. People will be able to get information they have asked for in 20 days, and in emergency cases within 24 hours. The Act suggests that in case of issues concerning a person's life and death, arrest and release from jail, the officials will have to provide primary information within 24 hours. The Act would not however covers eight security and intelligence agencies, which includes National Security Intelligence (NSI), Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Defence Intelligence Units, Special Security Forces (SSF), Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Bangladesh Police and Central Intelligence Cell of the National Board of Revenue. However if the information sought is related to corruption or violation of human rights in these agencies, they will have to provide the information within 30 days. In order for the media and civil society stakeholders to facilitate the implementation of the act they should remain vigilant of other provisions of the Act. To ensure the best out of the RTI act, Mass-line Media Centre (MMC) organized a daylong workshop with the support of PROGATI (USAID) on Right to Information Act and Peoples' Right to Know on October 14, 2009 at Engineer Abdul Khaleque Hall of Press Club, Chittagong. The Chief Guest of the event was Professor Dr Abu Yusuf, Vice-Chancellor, University of Chittagong (CU) while the keynote paper titled “Raising Awareness at Local Level on the Implementation of Right to Information Act: Role of Media and Civil Society” was presented by Communication and Information Policy Specialist SM Shameem Reza, Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, University of Dhaka (DU). Among others, Chittagong Press Club Chair Abu Sufiyan, General Secretary Rashed Rauf, MMC Executive Director Kamrul Hasan Manju, City Editor of the Daily Suprobhat Bangladesh M Nasirul Haque, Dean of Faculty of Law of CU Professor Zakir Hossain were also present. The major participants included journalists, students, social activists, representatives from civil society and local government. Among other relevant issues, this paper discussed the potential roles of media and civil society as two key stakeholders to the implementation of the law and also to ensure effective delivery of the benefits of the Act. The keynote paper mentioned that journalists are one of the primary stakeholders who will be the most frequent users of the law. They are in central position in the public discourse on RTI Act. News media will help build trust between supply and demand sides, which is between the government (and public-funded organizations) and the people. They can also elucidate and construe the benefits of using the information law and contribute greatly to the promotion of the culture of ingenuousness. Among other issues, media can explain the law in terms of its strength, limitations and possible areas of applications. Mass media's surveillance and monitoring role will be crucial in establishing governance, skirmishing corruption, and ensuring disclosures of essential public information. Informing key policy makers what concerns the public and what they want and need to know, the news media can play a central role in creating efficient demand for information and thus putting pressure on the supply side for developing effectual information dissemination system. The paper also included that one of the primary roles of Civil Society Organisations and NGOs in implementing the RTI law should be to demystify the concept and use of 'information'. Demystification is a prerequisite to creating demands for information at the grass root level; and thus, in future, the ordinary and poor people would be conscious enough to make freedom of information and access as socio-political agenda. The workshop also included panel discussions, group works and question answer session where the panelist discussed about different facades of the law and participants showed several problems through their group presentations in implementing the RTI Act in different spheres of life and also tried to come up with possible solutions. Freedom of information and admittance is a continuing process. An RTI Act alone cannot ensure peoples' freedom of expression and right to have the control over the production of information. However, stakeholders in the civil society and media should look forward to finding effective ways to contribute to ensuring transparency and accountability in bureaucracy, help take ahead the government's anti-corruption actions and NGO mandates for pro-poor progress and social boost up. The writer is a student of LLM, Department of Law, University of Chittagong.

DUMMERSTON Osher Institute presents Archer Mayor: Archer Mayor is the author of some 30 published works of history and fiction, the majority of which consist of the Vermont-based police procedural Joe Gunther series. Additionally, Mayor is or has been a police officer, a death investigator for the Vermont medical examiner's office, a firefighter, EMT, and National Ski patrolman. He will discuss, in a lively back-and-forth format, the value and impact of bringing such a diverse and varied experience to bear in one's writing, along with some of the tricks of doing so to the reader’s best advantage and enjoyment. 1 p.m. - 3 p.m. $6 (or by membership). Vermont Learning Collaborative, 471 US Rte. 5. Information: 802-365-7278, julielavorgna@gmail.com. DUMMERSTON Osher Institute Lectures: "The Japanese Aesthetic: Japanese History and Culture": This 6-part series introduces Japan's distinctive ways of seeing, writing, painting, building, cooking, and pursuing other activities have inspired and delighted the world for centuries. These talks will examine the nature and origins of Japanese taste, with emphasis on five disciplines. This lecture provides a brief survey of Japanese history from the Jomon period (beginning c. 14,000 BCE to the present) and explores the principal geographic features of Japan as well as the nation's relationship to the Asian mainland and the wider world. Presented by Seth Harter from Marlboro College. 10 a.m. - noon on Mondays. Through Monday, November 6. $6 (or by membership). Vermont Learning Collaborative, 471 US Rte. 5. Julie Lavorgna: 802-365-7278, julielavorgna@gmail.com. LONDONDERRY Return of the Cougar to the East: Lecture by photographer Sue Morse. Illustrated introduction to cougar biology and ecology in the broad diversity of habitats where Sue has studied them. We will also hear about the latest confirmations of cougars in the East. 7 p.m. Free. Flood Brook School, 91 Vermont 11. Information: 802-824-6811. BRATTLEBORO Angel Card Readings: Linda Manning is a certified angel card reader and receives messages through a client's spirit guides. The client should leave the session with positive information and sometimes a sense of reassurance of what one already knows. (This event may go till 1:30 depending on participant numbers.). noon - 1 p.m. Free. River Garden - Brown Bag Series, 157 Main St. Information: 802-246-0982; Click for more info on Web in new window.

The L.A. Mart, a 12-story complex in downtown Los Angeles, has been purchased for about $55 million by Glendale investors. The 784,000-square-foot property at 1933 S. Broadway is a combination design center, office and showroom, real estate brokerage Madison Partners said. It serves the interior design, gift and home furnishing industries. Los Angeles County also leases more than 140,000 square feet of office space at the L.A. Mart.

The militants fired on being challenged by the army troops and triggered a gunfight. At least one militant was killed and two others injured on Monday after troops foiled an infiltration bid along the line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara district. The operation is underway. The Army noticed suspicious movement in Safawali Gali and challenged the infiltrators. As per IANS sources, the militants fired on being challenged by the army troops and triggered a gunfight killing one militant. On Friday, at least two Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans were killed and one injured after “vehicle-borne militants” attacked the forces’ camp at Achabal town in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district. One civilian was also injured in the attack. Militants had opened fire at a CRPF party deployed on law and order duty at Achabal Chowk in Anantnag district. The two jawans killed were assistant sub-inspector Meena and constable Sandeep, according to PTI.

Mods are a great way to keep a game alive, no matter how long they've been out. Even a game as old as id Software’s classic Doom is able to continue having great support and tons of replayability with the help of talented fans. In digging around interesting ways to refresh the game experience we stumbled upon one mod that has been released which allows fans to utilise their favorite Overwatch weaponry against throngs of demons within the iconic title. Even without being able to use special abilities or Ultimates, players in Overwatch are able to dole out a lot of damage over short periods of time. Doom heavily relies on being able to do a lot of damage very quickly to an enemy which makes for a perfect fit for a combo of the two. Enter OverDoom, created by a modder by the name of MyNameIs which provides fans with a wide array of Overwatch weapons to use. Players can use weapons ranging anywhere from Widowmaker’s sniper rifle/auto rifle called the Widow’s Kiss, Lucio’s Sonic Amplifier, Sombra’s SMG, and more for a devastating effect. The video below is fairly short and heavily features D.Va’s mech with all the best featutes like its maneuverability and primary weapon fire. Widow’s sniper rifle assault rifle combo also appears to melt enemies from range and up close as well. Regardless of the weapon players choose to use, they’re sure to bring the hurt to any demon that stands in OverDoom Guy’s way. Seeing the weapons of Overwatch come to classic Doom is an unexpected but interesting combination. Now imagine being able to use ultimate’s from Overwatch in classic Doom or even the insane reboot from 2016. To download the mod for yourself, you can check out the files right here over on moddb as well as frequently asked questions about how to install. Need even more Overwatch in your life? We get it! You can check out our game hub right here for the beloved shooter from Blizzard, including what fans can expect from BlizzCon this year!

China Gets It Wrong in MidEast. Again. JAMES M. DORSEY: China’s veto of the U.N’s resolution condemning Syria is a watershed moment for its involvement in the Middle East. JEHAN ALFARRA, MONDOWEISS: Anger and hopelessness are the predominant emotions in Gaza. We need a means to release the emotions and I have a plan. RAMZY BAROUD: There has been much criticism of the paltry response by the Muslim world to the famine in Somalia. Gazans show the way forward. MAI ABDUL RAHMAN: Whenever I finish my fast I cannot help thinking of the plight of Somali mothers, fellow Muslims, who have no food for their children. MICHAEL J. TOTTEN: It’s my first trip back to the ‘Capital of the Arab World’ for a while and though much remains as ever there have been striking changes since the revolution.

A year ago the Coyotes completed passes to nine different wide receivers during the season with eight catching 10 or more passes. Two years ago, it was a novelty to have so many pass catchers getting into games. Now it’s pretty clear: A Bob Nielson program is going to have a lot of receivers and a lot of them are going to see footballs coming their way. Last year the distribution ratio was largely the same as it was in 2016, though the yardage was piled higher. Brandt Van Roekel led the team with 806 yards receiving and he’s gone. So is Alonge Brooks, who caught 26 passes for 327 yards as a senior. DEPTH: Kody Case (5-10, 165, so.), Trystn Ducker (5-10, 165, jr.), Reggie Crawford (6-2, 205, R-Fr), Randy Baker (5-10, 160, jr.), Levi Falck (6-2, 195, so.), Caleb Vander Esch (6-1, 190, so.), Jack Peery (6-4, 200, so.). Everyone else returns, though, led by Shamar Jackson, a 5-9, 160-pound native of Pahokee, Fla., who emerged as a vital part of the Coyote offense last year with a team-leading 53 receptions for 766 yards. Kody Case caught 25 passes as a true freshman, averaging 17.2 yards per catch. Dakarai Allen, whose one-handed catch in the spring game was ESPN’s top highlight that night, had 22 catches for 267 yards and four touchdowns. Randy Baker caught 19 passes for 267 yards and Levi Falck, who started three games, caught 16 passes for 197 yards. Trystn Ducker, now a junior, caught 12 passes with one of them a 75-yard touchdown in a playoff win over Nicholls State. To that group, the Coyotes will add Reggie Crawford Jr., this fall. Crawford, a 6-2, 205-pound freshman coming off a redshirt year, entered the program as a heralded recruit attracting offers from Illinois and Wyoming before choosing USD. He caught five passes in the spring game and could move up the depth chart quickly this fall. Sophomore Caleb Van Der Esch, whose father Doug starred at USD, and Jack Peery, a former O’Gorman standout, are also part of a deep group on a team where depth is a necessity given USD’s style of play.

Here's where and when to watch Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Southern Miss and Jackson State football this week. College football is finally here. Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Jackson State and Southern Miss all kick off their seasons this weekend. But when and where can you watch the game? Read on to find out. The Rebels kick off Matt Luke's first season as the permanent head coach with a road tilt against the Red Raiders of Texas Tech. Read more on the game here. Tony Hughes and the Tigers make the short trip south to Hattiesburg to take on Jay Hopson and the Golden Eagles. Read more about the game here. The Joe Moorhead era at Mississippi State begins when the Bulldogs host the Lumberjacks. Read more about the season opener here. When to watch: 6:30 p.m. ►What is the future of the SWAC?

Businesses need to pay closer attention to what employees, customers, and visitors are doing with camera phones and other intrusive technologies inside their facilities and on their property, analyst Carl Zetie says. The world around you is being flooded with intrusive technologies, with camera phones as the tip of the iceberg, and the very concept of privacy, especially in public spaces, is going to be radically overhauled as a result. Of course, the death of privacy has been predicted many times before, most notably with the growth of private and government databases that cross-reference vast amounts of data about individuals. What's different now is a wave of technologies, including Webcams, RFID tags, and location-based services in phones, that add the potential for "front-end" privacy intrusions that are immediate and personal, to add to the "back-end" intrusions (ranging from large databases of your spending habits to rogue employee abuses of driver records) that are largely offline and aggregated and that we have grown used to. These new technologies also empower individuals to violate each other's privacy, something we had to rely on governments and unscrupulous companies to do for us in the past. This isn't just a question of individuals taking unwanted pictures of celebrities in public or of retailers actually being able to answer the question, "Nice pants--where have they been?" Many businesses will need to pay closer attention to what employees, customers, and visitors alike are doing with intrusive technologies such as camera phones inside their facilities and on their property. This issue isn't limited to companies that are actively deploying such technologies themselves, but creates risks that all companies are exposed to through other people's use of personal technologies. The latest company to restrict camera phones in its facilities for fear of industrial espionage is Samsung, which is itself a major manufacturer of the offending technology. If companies don't take the confidentiality issue more seriously, they could get hurt in more than one way: legal action by people who feel that their rights have been violated (and of course any consequent negative publicity and brand damage that's likely to ensue) or increased risk of fraud or burglary, to mention just two examples. Companies must address both the reality and perception of confidentiality risks, in equal measure. There's already evidence from a number of countries that a reaction is setting in, and the list of organizations banning the use of cell phones in all or part of their premises is getting longer. Fitness clubs in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong are banning the use of cell phones in locker rooms (or even altogether) in order to prevent camera phones from being used to take inappropriate pictures. Similarly, the YMCA swimming pools in Australia have banned cell phones from their changing rooms. Some U.K. nightclubs have also started taking action, banning the use of camera phones. In Japan, retailers are concerned about teenagers snapping the most interesting images from fashion magazines, then leaving without buying the magazine. Casinos are also waking up to the potential threat posed by camera phones used to obtain pictures of premises. The great fear in many of these cases is the challenge of distinguishing between somebody harmlessly making a phone call and somebody surreptitiously pointing a camera at you. In some countries, legislators are getting involved: There's talk of passing a law against the use of camera phones in all Irish leisure centers and swimming pools, following a voluntary ban already imposed by some industry operators. Italy appears to have gone one step further, with the information commissioner, who oversees adherence to data-protection legislation, publishing regulations on the appropriate use of camera phones. A particular Italian concern, reported by the BBC, is that camera phones may become the next tool whereby organized crime can influence election results: Voters would be instructed to send pictures from inside the voting booth to prove that they had voted for the candidate they'd been coerced (or paid) to choose. • Is confidential information, such as announcements on notice boards, project plans on office/cubicle white boards, and notes from previous meetings habitually left in meeting rooms on white boards and flip charts, routinely on display? • Are visitors routinely allowed into or through those areas where such information is exposed, or do you have separate cloistered meeting facilities? • Do you consider the "leaking" of such information a risk compared to other information that's directly provided to those visitors? Some companies have already started to ban visitors from bringing phones and other wireless devices onto their premises because of these fears. In response, other employers had better start developing policies about how--or even whether--their own employees should comply with such requests. If you hand over your wireless PDA to a stranger while you visit their offices, are you risking the confidentiality of the data on your PDA? At the same time, an appropriate awareness of privacy and confidentiality shouldn't spill over into an attempt to legitimize pointless restrictions that create real annoyance and a false sense of security. One recent example, reported by movie critic Joe Baltake, concerns an emerging practice of movie distributors insisting that critics surrender their phones when attending previews (as well as other so-called security measures). The idea that a professional movie critic would risk his or her career and livelihood by transmitting a jumpy, low-resolution image of a film a few days ahead of its theatrical release is an example of taking confidentiality concerns too far. Unfortunately, we're likely to see many more examples both of privacy violations and of inappropriate overreactions before society and legislation catch up with the technologies that are already here. Carl Zetie is an analyst with Forrester Research. His colleague Martha Bennett contributed to this column. To discuss this column with other readers, please visit the Talk Shop.

Ryan Fitzpatrick played for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2007 and 2008. Fitzmagic is staying in Florida but heading south. The Miami Dolphins agreed to a two-year, $11 million deal with veteran quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, and he's expected - for now, at least - to be their starter. Fitzpatrick played for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2007 and 2008, starting 12 games during the 2008 season. He impressed as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' starter last season with Jameis Winston suspended. Fitzpatrick has played in 133 games - for the Rams, Bengals, Bills, Titans, Texans, Jets and Bucs - since he was a 7th-round pick (250th overall) of St. Louis in the 2005 NFL Draft.

Now, Diggy to play role of ?Ustad? FORMER CHIEF Minister and All-India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Digvijay Singh today said he has had enough of electoral politics and he would prefer to work for the Congress organisation. Addressing a press conference at the State Assembly Press Room here today, Digvijay Singh said he would not contest elections any more. “When a wrestler gets old, he gives up wrestling and becomes a Ustad (master) and devotes himself to nurturing budding wrestlers. I intend to do the same,” he quipped. Otherwise also, there should be leaders to work for the party organisation, he added. Referring to his correspondence with the Chief Minister over non-inclusion of Anuppur and Burhanpur districts in National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), he said the Chief Minister wrote back to him enclosing his correspondence with the Union Government over the issue but the letters concerned the Food for Work scheme and not the Employment Guarantee Scheme. “He remains too busy in abhinandan samaroh et al and possibly he could not see the contents of letters being enclosed,” Singh taunted. Describing the nuclear deal between India and USA as a ‘diplomatic coup’ brought off by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government, Singh congratulated the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi for the same.

On Saturday's Weekends with Alex Witt on MSNBC, NBC contributor Kurt Bardella flipped out when he was faced with something rarely seen on MSNBC -- a right-leaning guest who actually made a conservative argument counter to the network's left-leaning guests, as opposed to the typical MSNBC Republicans who often agree with liberals. Frequent MSNBC guest Bardella began ranting about crimes committed by whites after RNC spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany brought up the illegal immigrant who recently murdered California police officer Ronil Singh. It's being concerned about the citizens of our country -- all of them, federal employees included -- but when you have Officer Ronil Singh who lost his life in California the day after Christmas to an individual with known gang ties who shouldn't have been in this country if not for sanctuary laws, we have a problem. We have to care about those Americans,too, that have been victims whose names are rarely mentioned on the airwaves. What about all the people who have been shot and murdered by white Americans in this country? Where is the concerned for homeland security and for law enforcement? When people are being killed in this country by guns every day, and there's mass gun violence in this country, I don't see Republicans doing anything about that. As McEnany injected, "You're completely deflecting the conversation -- you're completely deflecting," Bardella continued: "I don't see Trump talking about a national emergency when so many people are being murdered by American citizens with guns." As McEnany jumped back in to comment, "You're deflecting the conversation. You're proving my point -- you don't want to talk about the Americans who have lost their lives," Bardella continued his rant: "That is a huge problem. It is a bigger problem than what's going on at the border." Every time that a crime is committed by an illegal immigrant or somebody that's not white, Republicans cannot wait to talk about it. But when a crime is committed by somebody with a gun -- a white guy with a gun, it's crickets from Republicans. It's shameful -- it is disgusting. McEnany then called out Bardella as having been "triggered" by her discussing the death of Officer Singh as the RNC spokesperson responded: "It's incredible -- I mention the name of an officer who lost his life -- it triggers you. You clearly did not want to address the situation that happened in California." Bardella then jumped back in and the two talked over one another. Bardella exclaimed: "How about all of the people who got killed in Vegas? How about the people at Parkland? How about the students in the schools who are being shot up every day? I don't see you talking about those people." As Bardella tried to talk over her, McEnany continued: "What about Dominic Durden? What about Kate Steinle? Do you know their names? Do you know their stories?" After Bardella brought up school shootings, McEnany responded: "Yeah, and we addressed that. We addressed that. Governor Scott changed the law." Bardella interrupted again: "Oh, you addressed that? What did you do?" As fellow liberal guest and former Obama administration official Peter Emerson could be heard injecting, "Trump didn't do anything," McEnany repeated: "Governor Scott changed the laws in Florida."

Charter School Profits and Romney - Is Everything Now a For-Profit Enterprise? The "reform" of the public schools is one of those issues that seems to attract the very well-intentioned, and the overwhelmingly venal and evil, in almost equal measure. And both sides come into collision most obviously in the discussion of "charter schools." The former have an altruistic devotion to charter schools as a vehicle for excellence. The latter sees them as a way to make a buck, a means to smuggle religion into education, a method of reasserting retrograde policies long abandoned by sensible educators, and, of course, a way to make a buck. Both of these particular groups were on display in Michigan this week. If you're searching for the conservative in the woodpile there, check out the quote from Rep. Patrick Colbert there at the end: "I don't necessarily agree with the philosophy that profits are evil." One of the great ongoing mysteries in this country is how, with the grotesque example of what happened on Wall Street in 2008 and 2009, and the endless aftershocks that continue to this hour, citizens still fall for the notion that "business leaders" are brilliant or honest enough to tie their shoes, let alone be handed things like public education or, god help us, the prison system. Or that the "private sector" is any less free of greed and incompetence than The Government is. Yet, that attitude is the entire raison d'etre behind, among other things, the Romney campaign. Just yesterday, in response to a question from a young lady buried under student loans, Mitt Romney cited as part of his solution a for-profit university in Florida. Of course, for-profit universities in Florida have become something of a problem.

Al Rajhi Bank, Saudi Arabia’s second-largest lender by assets, said it is in talks for a potential merger of its fully owned subsidiary in Malaysia with a state-backed financial institution in the Asian country. The possibility of combining the balance sheets of Al Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation Malaysia and Malaysian Industrial Development Finance (MIDF) are at early stages, the Saudi lender said in a statement on Sunday to the Saudi stock exchange, where its shares are traded. Al Rajhi has received preliminary approvals from the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority and Malaysian regulator Bank Negara, it said. If an agreement is achieved, it will still be subject to various conditions. “The merger is not expected to have a material impact on the bank’s financial statements,” Al Rajhi said. “There are no related parties involved in the proposed merger,” it said, without giving the further details about the possible timeline of the deal or how it will be structured. The potential tie-up will expand the scope of business for MIDF, which is controlled by state-owned asset manager Permodalan Nasional. The merger would allow the Malaysian financial institution to start taking deposits. A deal could create an entity with combined net assets of about 1.5 billion ringgits (Dh1.34bn) to 2.5bn ringgits depending on the structure of the transaction, Bloomberg reported in December. Al Rajhi, along with Sharia-compliant lender Kuwait Finance House and another Islamic lender from the GCC, were granted licenses by Bank Negara in 2004, as part of Malaysia’s efforts to have 40 per cent of its banking assets comply with Sharia laws by 2020. The Saudi lender's plans to look for consolidation of its assets abroad come amid a wave of mergers and acquisitions in the Arabian Gulf, particularly in the bank’s home turf, as lenders look to gain scale in a bid to better compete with larger financial institutions. There are 12 banks in Saudi Arabia for a country with a population of about 30 million people. However, common government shareholding in some banks through the Public Investment Fund allows for easier deals. Currently, there are two ongoing M&A deals in the kingdom, the biggest banking market in the six-member economic bloc of GCC. National Commercial Bank, the top lender in the kingdom by assets, in December said it is in preliminary talks to consolidate with Riyad Bank, a move that could create a financial institution worth $182bn (Dh668bn) in assets. NCB and Riyad Bank’s proposed tie-up follows Saudi British Bank and Alawwal bank’s merger announced in early 2018. Boards of the two lenders in October approved a merger agreement that will create a financial entity with $73bn in combined assets.

Many managers struggle to embrace telecommuting, but it makes happier workers and has many benefits for the company as well. As technology evolves, many of the barriers that have traditionally limited telecommuting continue to disappear. The tedious standard of spending 40 hours a week sitting in a cubicle is fading as employers and workers both embrace the benefits associated with telecommuting. When you pay workers for their time, they're willing to give you as much of it as you are willing to pay for. But, that doesn't necessarily mean they're maximizing productivity during that time. If you told workers that they can have the rest of the week off as soon as they complete their assigned tasks and meet their deadlines for the week, you would find that five days of effort can probably be compressed to two and have a very empty office after Tuesday while everyone is out golfing. Workers know, though, that they have to be present in the office from 8am to 5pm, Monday through Friday regardless of how quickly or effectively work gets completed, so instead the work gets dragged out. Finishing quickly is likely to result in additional assignments to fill the time, so there is no incentive to maximize performance. Instead, the work week is filled with unproductive time--chatting with co-workers, reading personal e-mail, surfing the Web, smoking breaks, long lunches, etc. A research study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and published by the National Communication Association found, "Employees who telecommute the majority of the work week are more satisfied with their jobs compared to those working mostly in the office because working remotely alleviates more stress than it creates." Kathryn Fonner, lead researcher for the study, explains, "Results of the study pointed to multiple reasons why telework is linked to high job satisfaction, namely that employees working remotely are, on average, shielded from much of the distracting and stressful aspects of the workplace, such as office politics, interruptions, constant meetings and information overload." Think about it for a minute. Even if the amount of non-productive time is the same to the employer, working from home enables workers to put the "wasted" time to better use. Instead of just chatting or surfing, the worker can take care of household chores and tasks that have to be done but normally fill up "personal" time--laundry, dishes, prepping dinner. That also means that when the work day is done, the worker is free to actually use the personal time for more enriching activities than simple mundane chores. There are a variety of other benefits for both the worker and the employer. No commuting enables the worker to avoid the stress and dangers of rush hour traffic and reclaim many hours of time that weren't even being compensated anyway. Not sharing a work environment reduces the chances that a cold or flu virus can spread throughout a department and cripple productivity, and not having to get up and drive to work enables even marginally sick workers to continue being productive from the comfort of home. Businesses can also reduce costs associated with the office itself--the size of the office, the furniture, the electricity used, the cost of heating and cooling the office space, etc. Organizations should take a serious look at the advantages and benefits of allowing workers to telecommute where possible, and invest in remote access, mobile platforms, and VPN technologies that enable users to work from virtually anywhere. Small and medium businesses in particular should embrace cloud-based productivity and collaboration platforms such as Google Docs or Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Services (soon to be rebranded as Office 365). Services like Box.net, Dropbox, and Syncplicity also provide a means of sharing information between remote co-workers, and even online tools like Skype and Facebook enable communication and collaboration. Bottom line--the tools are out there and they are free, or at least very affordable.

Bike commuting in Minneapolis is continuing to rise, according to the latest Census data released this week. The latest info from the American Community Survey shows that about 5 percent of city workers now bike commutes, a slight increase over the year before. The uptick comes as the city has boosted its investment in bike lanes, particularly those that are protected from cars. The city has the densest bike lane network in the nation, according to a national advocacy group, with 226 miles of them as of earlier this year. Minneapolis’ share of bike commuters ranks third in the nation among cities of more than 100,000 people who are employed. It falls just behind Madison, and about 2 percentage points behind Portland. Among all cities, Davis, Calif. has the highest share of bike commuters – a whopping 19 percent. Minneapolis has a goal of reaching 15 percent by 2025. St. Paul, meanwhile, is playing catchup. Two-point-one percent of St. Paul workers bike commuted there in 2015, which was a record for the city. That's about double the share in 2006. Steve Brandt contributed to this story.

Hosted by the Parkinson\'s Disease Society on 7 July, this year\'s Mervyn Peake Awards honoured the outstanding talent of people with Parkinson\'s in art, poetry and photography, with a presentation ceremony in London. Pamela Evans, from Twickenham in Middlesex, received the art category award with her painting Nasturtiums. Pamela, 81, has not let the fact that she is living with Parkinson\'s disease inhibit her creative streak, and has entered her wonderful paintings in previous years, achieving runner up status at the 2004 awards. With her image Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Elaine Stevenson, from Loughborough in Leicestershire, scooped the award for photography. After being diagnosed with Parkinson\'s in 2005, Elaine, 64, took early retirement from her dressmaking business, but has continued to create wedding dresses and theatrical costumes, as the gown in her photograph depicts. Finally, Donald Aldridge, 70, from Droitwich in Worcestershire, triumphed in the poetry category with his poignant verse about Hadrian\'s Wall, Wall Thoughts. This year\'s competition received a record 117 entries, and such was the quality of photography, poetry and art submitted, that in addition to the three category winners, a further 13 entries were singled out for commendation. The awards are held in memory of the late illustrator, writer and poet Mervyn Peake (1911-1968), whose works included Gormenghast and the Alice in Wonderland illustrations, and who developed Parkinson\'s in later life. The awards are supported by the Peake family and were established in 2002. A selection of this year\'s entries are being used to create the Parkinson\'s Disease Society Calendar 2007, which will be available to purchase through the Christmas Catalogue 2006. To receive a copy of the catalogue, email mervynpeake@parkinsons.org.uk with subject line CALENDAR, and include your postal address. To see the winning enteries, visit our Mervyn Peake Awards 2006 page. To register your interest in entering next year\'s Awards, email your name and contact details to mervynpeake@parkinsons.org.uk with subject line AWARDS 2007. Nordqvist, Christian. "Mervyn Peake Awards Celebrate Creativity Of People With Parkinson's, UK." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 18 Jul. 2006. Web.

IT departments are excited for the Internet of Things in 2016, but worry the sheer amount of data will overwhelm their networks, leading to security concerns. These are the results of a fresh research commissioned by Neustar. The report, compiled by independent analysis firm Quocirca, found that the scaling out to many thousands of devices per organization clearly represents a wealth of new opportunities but highlighted the importance that the same security rigor and vigilance applied to traditional IT devices needs to be extended to all connected things. All this activity adds up to a huge number of devices with the overall average per individual UK organization expected to run into the thousands over the next 12 months. All these devices will be attached to a variety of networks resulting in increased stress on both existing and new networks. Relevance: a small number (3 per cent) think the IoT is overhyped, but the overwhelming majority say the IoT is already impacting their organization (37 per cent) or will soon (45 per cent). Personal to Global: respondents believe the IoT is expected to scale up through vehicles, buildings, cities to the national and global level. Management and security capabilities put in place to support IoT must operate at these scales. Security: Security starts with identity. 47 per cent or respondents are already scanning IoT devices for vulnerabilities, another 29 per cent are planning to do so. When asked about the capabilities they feel are most important for authenticating the identity of devices, nearly all see DNS services as playing an important role. More experienced users supplement these third party registry and IoT database services. Many IoT security issues such as data protection, botnet recruitment and DDoS-style attacks on IoT enabled processes are addressable through adapting and scaling measures that are already in place for existing IT infrastructure. For instance, 39 per cent of respondents were found to have DDoS protection in place, with another 31 per cent planning a deployment. However, the report found that there is not much difference between major IoT users and sceptics as DDoS attacks have been an issue for many years. More could be done to address the problem. The adoption of a decentralized security and management model where a gateway needing a unique IP address controls communications with the outside world (for example, network routers, set top boxes, smartphones etc) which in turn communicates onwards with remote devices which do not need unique IP addresses, avoids the need for each device to have a unique IP address. This approach can work at scale, making the selective, effective and cost efficient deployment of IoT security more straightforward as scanning can be carried out using the same processes in place for existing IT endpoints. 35 per cent of experienced IoT users already recognize the value of such an approach.

Cincy Carris, president of the Rose Hill Mission, stands inside the Florence soup kitchen's kitchen on Main Street. The Mission is planning to build a hotel down the street that will charge greatly discounted rates for overnight stays. Stymied in its initial effort to provide shelter for the needy in Florence, Ky., the nonprofit Mary Rose Mission is trying a different tack: opening a hotel that would charge greatly discounted rates for overnight guests. The Mission has an option to buy the former Computer Mania store at 6608 Dixie Highway, contingent on getting the proper zoning approval for the project, Mary Rose president and executive director Cincy Carris said. She declined to disclose the option price. The Boone County Planning Commission has approved the project under regulations that govern where hotels and inns may be built. But Jerry Miniard, whose law office adjoins the Computer Mania property, has appealed that decision to the Florence Board of Adjustment and Zoning Appeals. In his appeal, Miniard says that the project shouldn’t be considered a hotel but transient housing, which belongs on property zoned for public facilities. Attempts to reach Miniard for comment on this story were not successful. The Board will hear the appeal at 7:30 p.m. June 8 at the Florence Government Center. Carris believes the Dixie Highway property does have the appropriate zoning for the project, and she’s excited that it could become a reality. The Mary Rose Inn, which Carris would like to open before winter, would have six rooms, each with its own shower/bathroom, that could house a total of 39 people. Guests would be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis, Carris said, and would have to check out every morning. They could check back in again that day if there were room, she said. She would like to run it with volunteers, she said, as is the case with the soup kitchen, with the exception of one part-time worker. The money to buy the property has already been pledged, she said, and she hopes construction materials will be donated, as they were for the soup kitchen. Anyone would be able to stay there; the staff won’t be asking potential guests if they are homeless. The Mission deserves credit for creativity, resourcefulness and commitment in its efforts to provide shelter, said Josh Spring, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless. He didn’t know of any similar hotels in the Tri-State. Neighbors usually oppose such projects, or even affordable housing projects, because they think they will lower their property values, he said, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. It takes on average about five years to get such projects built, he said, and they often involve lawsuits from neighbors. In the fall of last year, the Mission tried a similar hotel project at 6603 Dixie Highway. But Boone County Zoning Administrator Kevin Wall found several problems with that proposal, including that first preference would have given to families with women and children and that it had dormitory housing rather than separate rooms. Mary Rose Mission plans to build the Mary Rose Inn, which would charge greatly discounted rates for overnight stays, in this empty building at 6608 Dixie Highway, the former Computer Mania store. Next door is the law office of Jerry Miniard, who has appealed the Boone County Planning Commission's decision to allow construction of the inn. That project looked more like a homeless shelter than a hotel, Wall wrote to Carris, something the Mission had talked with the city about building for more than a year. But the city’s zoning regulations don’t have a specific designation for homeless shelters, he wrote. The Mission had tried to change that in December 2014, when it wanted to create a cold weather shelter in an unoccupied floor of HealthPoint, 7607 Dixie Highway, which provides medical care to the needy. The Mission asked the city of Florence to amend the zoning law to allow for homeless shelters on commercial property zoned similarly to the HealthPoint property, City Coordinator Rick Lunnemann said. But the city council’s planning and zoning committee, which heard the proposal, was concerned because this would allow homeless shelters on commercial property zoned as such anywhere in the city, Lunnemann said. The committee voted against the change, which effectively killed the project. The Mission is no stranger to opposition. The Kentucky Enquirer reported that before it opened its soup kitchen, Boone County’s first, in a vacant building at 272 Main St., neighbors complained that Main Street had become a haven for social services agencies. After the soup kitchen opened, at least one neighboring business moved out of town. When the soup kitchen opened in March 2013, it served a free meal on Saturdays and Sundays. Now, it’s five days a week, Carris said, and she hopes to offer a sixth day soon. It’s not lack of funding that limits the hours, she said, but lack of volunteers. Thirteen workers are needed to serve the meals in the evening, with one cook and three prep cooks needed in the morning to prepare the meals. Aside from food, the needy also get companionship. Cutlines (Photos by Kevin Eigelbach) Cincy Carris, president of the Rose Hill Mission, stands inside the Florence soup kitchen’s kitchen on Main Street. The Mission is planning to build a hotel down the street that will charge greatly discounted rates for overnight stays. Mary Rose Mission plans to build the Mary Rose Inn, which would charge greatly discounted rates for overnight stays, in this empty building at 6608 Dixie Highway, the former Computer Mania store. Next door is the law office of Jerry Miniard, who has appealed the Boone County Planning Commission’s decision to allow construction of the inn.

There is a soul-searching national scrutiny going on right now about fatal shootings of civilians by police officers. The key and central question is : What’s reasonable force? This is significant in what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African-American – the incident that has heightened an awareness across the country into police-civilian issues. First, was the horror at the level and types of military hardware and equipment displayed by the Ferguson police. This caused a revulsion that swept the country and was even felt here in San Diego when the local school district returned their military-tank-truck, donated to them by the Pentagon. Those questions are in play in Missouri right now, as a grand jury weighs whether to indict police Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old. … The hurdles for indicting or convicting a uniformed officer are high, for many reasons. As with Ferguson, critics sometimes see law enforcement agencies as reluctant to go after their own members. To add to all this, police killings of suspected felons are the highest they’ve been in 2 decades. This needed soul-searching reminds us of the two fatal shootings of OBceans by police over the years. First in 1991 there was Tony Tumminia, a 21-year-old OB native who was gunned down by police on West Pt Loma Avenue. And in 2003, the well-known homeless man, Danny “the Walker” was fatally shot in front of dozens of witnesses – also on West Pt Loma. As a young kid in OB, Tony lived at the beach – as he and his slightly older brother Dominique – had the run of the War Zone, living on Brighton and then on West Pt Loma, right off the San Diego River. Their navy father had abandoned them years before and they lived with their mom, Diana. Diana was very active during the early, mid 1970s as an activist in Ocean Beach, so both Tony and Dom were very well known in the local social circles of the progressive crowd. Tony went to all the local schools, and subsequently, became involved in local youth circles that flirted with fringe lifestyles. By time he was 21, he lived in a small cottage in the 4900 block of West Pt Loma. One morning, police detectives came knocking on his door. They had issues to discuss. It’s unclear just exactly what happened, but at some point Tony took the detectives to his parked truck, resting in the parking lot of what’s now the restaurant the Third Corner. They got into a tussle over nun-chucks, and the cops shot him, dead. He died right there on the sidewalk. Shocked, the community had a memorial protest a few days later. Diana Tummania was so shaken that after she moved from OB not too long after, she has never set foot in the community since. She sued the police and city and obtained some small amount of change. On February 4, 2003, a well-known homeless man who OBceans also saw walking around the community, Danny “the Walker” Woodyard was fatally shot by cops on West Point Loma Avenue near the intersection with Voltaire Street, a few yards from the entrance to north beach parking lot. That morning he had been dumpster diving with his only tool, an old knife. Thinking he was a drug dealer they were looking for, Danny was confronted by police officers, who ordered him to drop his knife. What happened next was viewed by dozens of OB residents who called out – even yelled – to the police from their porches, front doors and windows not to shoot the man. Here we are, years later, and the nation is having this discussion. The nation isn’t “having a discussion”: the media is yet again trying to tell us what to think. However it starts, as a nation, we need to have this discussion. 1) He was wielding a knife. 2) He refused to drop it when confronted by police. Make no doubt- he was in control of the situation the entire time. Christo – were you there? Did you witness the incident? He was a homeless man, well-known, with a slight mental problem. Are you now saying those 2 things did not occur? I knew Danny as most Obecians did. He was digging in my trash on a regular basis. When I told him to get out of my trash and he growled at me. More than once. When he got himself shot- I was not suprised. He did not think the rules of society applied to him and ultimately paid the price for that. Virtually every police shooting involves a citizen refusing to comply with a request by a police officer. You know, things like “Drop the knife”, “Get out of the street”, “Put you hands behind your back”. Things escalate and someone ends up dead. The simple solution is to follow the law. Don’t refuse a request that does not place you in immanent danger. If the officer does not follow the law, get legal council. I understand that Danny had mental issues- but it is not okay to walk around brandishing a knife on a police officer. At least 981 people have been killed by U.S. police since January 1, 2014. At least 1735 have been killed since May 1, 2013. They died responding to your phone call asking for help. Does every police shooting have dozens of witnesses yelling at the police not to shoot? Does every police shooting shock and disgust the public enough to result in hundreds or more people marching to draw attention to it? You have no idea what Danny was thinking. According to witnesses he was holding the knife at his side, was walking away, and was shot in the back from a distance – enough of a distance that some of the shots fired missed. I was close enough that morning to hear the shots. Seeing people soon after this tragedy it was very clear they were traumatized by witnessing this – and it wasn’t by Danny growling at them or rifling through their trash. The taking of a life is tragic and traumatic. I am not trying to deny that. The facts remain that he was holding a weapon and refused to drop it. You are right about that. I do not know what he was thinking. His actions said it all- he had a responsibility to comply with the police request to put down a weapon and he did not. Was a better option to let him run off with a knife? Your question is misleading, he was not running according to witnesses. Also this is the same knife people noted he carried regularly and used for trash picking. So to “let him run off with a knife” would be letting him go back to what he had long been doing. But a short answer to your question is yes. Your question is also a false choice, really there were more than two options. They could have used non-lethal force like a taser. But there is also context to this specific shooting that your question ignores. He was not the person the police were looking for in the first place, and if the police were local to OB they would have known who Danny was and could have recognized his behavior. This shooting also has the context of occuring around the same time as other deaths of homless men from SDPD bullets. The man who was shot and killed in Midway holding a tree branch, the man who was shot and killed on the SD River bike path with no weapon. My guess is if you asked the neighbors who witnessed this shooting they would say it was a better option to let him walk away then to start firing, putting bullets in their buildings and cars. Kind of a shame that Cops today never saw any old Cowboy Movies. Remember when the guy in the White Hat shot the gun out of the hand of the Guy in the Black Hat. Shots in the legs usually slow people down, but of course when Cops KILL they don’t have to ever hear from the victim that he didn’t do anything wrong.

The outdoor food festival known as Taste of Chicago debuted July 4, 1980, on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The following year, it moved to Grant Park, which has remained its home ever since. In its current format, the Taste spans five days, attracts about 3 million visitors and serves more than 200 menu items. Entrance is free, restaurants set up stands to sell food through a ticket system, and concerts and family activities add to the fun. Taste of Chicago is the world’s largest food festival. Opening day of Taste of Chicago in 2010. Opening day of the Taste of Chicago food festival in Chicago on Friday, June 25, 2010.

CBSSports.com Shop - Everything Sports! Rams fans, score your new officially licensed Colorado State Rams Blankets from the Official Store of CBS Sports. Find your Colorado State University Bedding and CSU Rams Bath Towels and Bedroom Décor. Buy your Colorado State Rams Blankets from the Official CBS Sports Store and have your order shipped quick for a low flat rate.

Tonge: The treatment of the Palestinians by Israel is a major cause of the rise of extreme Islamism and Daesh. A British lawmaker who said Israel would eventually disappear accused the Jewish state of being a major cause in the rise of jihadism worldwide. Following the statement Thursday by Jenny Tonge, a House of Lords member from the Liberal Democrat party, the Board of Deputies of British Jews called on the party’s head to fire her. Tonge said “the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel is a major cause of the rise of extreme Islamism and Daesh,” using the Arab-language acronym of the Islamic State terrorist organization. She said Israel was provoking a generation of violent extremists who would have “a justified grudge” against Israel and Britain. Board of Deputies Vice President Marie van der Zyl in a statement said it was “another outrageous speech” by Tonge on the Middle East. “It is time for Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron to expel her once and for all from the party,” the statement said. Tonge resigned in 2012 from the position of party whip, a task equivalent in the United States to speaker, after she spoke about Israel’s demise at an event promoting the boycott of the Jewish state. The United States in reality gives Israel $3 billion annually in defense assistance.

Dear sir, I shifted my flat last month, I need to cancel the electricity contract in my name, can we go directly? I was staying in Abbassiya. Is Haris is required to cancel the electricity. Thank you. Answer: Since the electricity contract is in your name, you can go directly to the MEW office in your area to cancel the contract. You don’t need to be accompanied by the Haris (caretaker).

The 34th Annual Savannah Jazz Festival presented by the Coastal Jazz Association and the City of Savannah began last Sunday and will continue through Saturday, September 26, 2015. The remaining lineup continues on Wednesday, September 23 at Rancho Alegre, Doc Handy will perform at 7:30pm. Terry “Doc” Handy soulfully operates musical greatness on the conga drums in a majestic harmonious manner, permeating hearts all over the world. Born and raised in Jacksonville, FL, Doc has played percussion for over 30 years over a diverse array of genres including Rhythm & Blues, Jazz, and Latin Jazz. Bandleader Eric Culberson has been playing music virtually all his life. Growing up in a family of musicians, he was drawn to his father’s acoustic guitar at the age of six and has never looked back. Before too long, this Southeast GA native had been turned on to the common denominator between many legendary rock acts: the blues. with contemporary and traditional blues. The Parris Island Marine Band, The Doug Carn Trio, and the Steve Watson Trio will perform. At 7:00pm The Coastal Jazz Association Hall of Fame ceremony will be held. Benjamin Glasgow Brown, Richard C. E. “Skip” Jennings and Robert “Bob” Masteller. At 8:15pm Tony Monaco, Harvey Mason & Howard Paul will perform Tony Monaco may be the best organ player you have yet to hear of flying stealth while playing arguably some of the hottest B-3 around. Mentored by the legendary Jimmy Smith in what is considered the more classic style, Monaco does not swing, smolder or smoke. Beginning at 9:30pm Fred Wesley & Savannah Jazz Orchestra will take the stage. Most people know Fred Wesley as James Brown’s funky trombonist from the 1970s. But Fred was and is much more than that. Fred is one of the greatest writers and arrangers of funk music on planet earth. Follow the Savannah Jazz Festival on the Coastal Jazz Association’s facebook page.

Bespectacled, mild, polite: the new face of white supremacy? The burly white man strolled into court, flanked by nearly a dozen black police officers carrying rifles. The prisoner, polite and mild mannered, wore a checked shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. But authorities say Thomas Vorster is one of South Africa's most wanted criminals - one of 18 Afrikaner extremists accused of plotting to overthrow the government. Vorster, who was charged with treason this week, is believed to be a leader of a shadowy racist group called the Boeremag, or Boer Force. Police say that he and his co-conspirators - including three white army officers - hoped to restore white rule in South Africa by seizing military bases, freeing jailed apartheid-era killers and chasing blacks out of the country. His arrest on Monday came six days after a black woman was killed in a bombing in Soweto that officials say was the first co-ordinated attack by white separatists since apartheid ended in 1994. The police have not yet linked the Soweto bombings to the Boeremag, but they say the two plots clearly reflect a resurgence of white extremism. Some white conservatives are hailing Vorster and the bombers as heroes who are simply trying to restore dignity and power to an Afrikaner community demoralised by affirmative action, crime and its own dwindling political clout, and still nurturing dreams of an independent Afrikaner state. "They're freedom fighters," said Fred Rundle, of the Afrikaner Volksfront, a white separatist alliance. "We don't want the whole of South Africa. We only want some piece of ground." The political parties that represent most of the whites - the Democratic Alliance, the New National Party and the Freedom Front - condemn the bombings. The Defence Minister, Mosiuoa Lekota, has emphasised that most white South Africans are loyal citizens. In the 1994 attack, white separatists set off bombs in the hopes of stopping the country's first democratic elections. In the end, though, many white politicians accepted the election of Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first black president. Hundreds of white farmers have been killed by blacks in recent years. The police say the killings are random, but many Afrikaners view them as part of a conspiracy to wipe out their community.

Sarah Nader - snader@shawmedia.com Crystal Lake South baseball players celebrate after winning Monday's Class 4A Super Sectional sectional championship game against Mundelein June 5, 2017 at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg . South won, 6-2. Sarah Nader - snader@shawmedia.com Crystal Lake South's Nick Wolski celebrates a run during the first inning of Monday's Class 4A Super Sectional sectional championship game against Mundelein June 5, 2017 at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg . South won, 6-2. Sarah Nader - snader@shawmedia.com Crystal Lake South's Andrew Engelking pitches during Monday's Class 4A Super Sectional sectional championship game against Mundelein June 5, 2017 at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg . South won, 6-2. Sarah Nader - snader@shawmedia.com Crystal Lake South's Griffin Bright runs home during the first inning of Monday's Class 4A Super Sectional sectional championship game against Mundelein June 5, 2017 at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg . South won, 6-2. Sarah Nader - snader@shawmedia.com Crystal Lake South's Brent Chubb is tagged out by Mundelein's Ryan Patel while he slides to second during the sixth inning of Monday's Class 4A Super Sectional sectional championship game June 5, 2017 at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg . South won, 6-2. Sarah Nader - snader@shawmedia.com Crystal Lake South's Michael Swiatly throws home during the first inning of Monday's Class 4A Super Sectional sectional championship game against Mundelein June 5, 2017 at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg . South won, 6-2. Sarah Nader - snader@shawmedia.com Mundelein's Mason Schaller (left) tags out Crystal Lake South's Ryan Parquette while he slides home during the first inning of Monday's Class 4A Super Sectional sectional championship game June 5, 2017 at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg . South won, 6-2. Sarah Nader - snader@shawmedia.com Crystal Lake South's Michael Swiatly is out by Mundelein's Ryan Patel while he slides back to second during the fourth inning of Monday's Class 4A Super Sectional sectional championship game June 5, 2017 at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg . South won, 6-2. Crystal Lake South's Brent Chubb is tagged out by Mundelein's Ryan Patel while he slides to second during the sixth inning of Monday's Class 4A Super Sectional sectional championship game June 5, 2017 at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg . South won, 6-2.

Councillors might have put Cornwall’s privatisation on probation. But the council had already begun acting as a joint venture partner with BT. They voted unanimously Tuesday to suspend a proposal to put up to £800m of public services into a company in which BT would own a majority stake. BT planned to transform it into a hub from which it would manage the privatisation of other council services around the country, and to operate a telehealth business. Councillors withheld their approval and said they wanted to scrutinise the deal properly before approving it. But a “confidential” BT brochure mailed to councillors by Cornwall’s own executive last Friday said Cornwall was already working with BT on bids for business from other public authorities. “We are already in three competitive bid situations for Telehealth/care with Australia Telehealth, Northumbria Telehealth and Hampshire Telecare; where we have named Cornwall as our partner,” it said. BT had been one of two companies competing to acquire Cornish public services. The other, Computer Sciences Corporation, pulled out last Wednesday – just two days before BT’s admission that it had already been operating as Cornwall’s partner. Councillor Steve Double, who had led the process for the Cabinet till his resignation last week, told Cornwall Council chamber Tuesday that competition law had forbidden councillors from having proper scrutiny of the procurement. This had apparently suited Kevin Lavery, Cornwall Council CEO. He had written, in his books on local government privatisation, that councillors should be engineered out of the council executive’s decision making process. That’s what Councillor Jan Powell told the chamber on Tuesday. Lavery’s attempts at local government privatisation had last run into trouble when he was CEO of Newcastle City Council in 2001. He tried to form what was then a pioneering strategic partnership, with BT. Councillors opposed him. He resigned and they tore up BT’s bid. Lavery spent the the best part of the next decade doing outsourcing on the supply side, including a stint as head of local government at BT. Now a council worker again at Cornwall, he has had no specific meetings with BT. History is repeating itself all the same. Yet things will be different from now on, Councillor Double told his colleagues before Tuesday’s vote. Councillors would be permitted to scrutinise the BT deal, where before the details had been withheld. While CSC and BT where in competition, procurement law forbade councillors from seeing the details of their bids, Double told Councillors. Now the council was simply giving the business to BT, they could see the details. Competition law didn’t apply when there was no competition. This is what it would take for public representatives to be permitted to see a bid to privatise their services before they were called upon to approve it. They would get all the facts to settle the public/private debate. Lavery would meanwhile be vindicated if BT’s plans passed muster. The first signs were however that the new transparency was not actually very enlightening. Not in the way it was supposed to be. Things started moving as soon as CSC dropped out last week. The council executive joined BT in wooing councillors ahead of Tuesday’s big vote. It pulled half of them into a meeting on Wednesday where four BT sales managers inundated them with promises and forecasts of greatness and prosperity. The only minuted, critical voice came from Unison the union. Then Friday, the council executive sequestered the services of Cornwall’s scrutiny office, which was meant to have taken an independent position on the outsource, to email a BT promotional pack to councillors.The scrutiny office also helped BT and Cornwall executives organise a promotional roadshow they did last Thursday. The email included a sales letter from Neil Rogers, president of Global Government for BT Global Services, and the “confidential” BT brochure. The brochure, styled as a “business plan”, set out an incredible vision for “BT Cornwall”. BT wanted to build a “Global Centre of Excellence” for telehealth and telecare in Cornwall. It would do this by assimilating assets acquired from Cornwall’s NHS Trusts. It would turn Cornwall into one node in a network of “business hubs and Centres of Excellence” it was building from its outsource deals across the public sector. Telehealth would become Cornwall’s specialism in the national and global economy. BT also wanted to acquire Cornwall’s procurement expertise. Yet its sales patter may have misled Cornwall councillors. “BT is currently seeking a UK base for a Procurement Centre of Excellence, from which to support other UK public sector opportunities,” said the brochure. “Cornwall Council has an established procurement service that is rated as upper quartile by government audits,” it sa id. Thus it implied it might also put its national procurement hub in Cornwall as well, if it could only nab Cornwall’s procurement office. This is what councillors who supported the bid where saying. But BT is already building a “Procurement Centre of Excellence” out of an outsource it did with Lancashire County Council last year. Now called One Connect Limited, BT Lancashire’s backoffice aims, like Cornwall, to grow by assimilating the backoffices of other public authorities. BT’s “business plan” did not say how Cornwall would fit into its grand plan of global and regional “Centres of Excellence”. Might it have a mid-term plan to discard staff superfluous to the needs of a Centre’s specialism? If BT had already set up procurement elsewhere, might it want to acquire Cornwall’s procurement office only to strip its knowledge assets and kill it off? It might be too soon to call it a carve-up. As well as procurement, BT acquired various Lancashire services outside its alloted specialism. It picked up payroll, HR, and IT as well. Their superfluity might not become apparent for some years yet. Lancashire’s distinct district authorities are disparate from a corporate point of view. Not all of them went in on BT’s deal from the off. It might take BT the full term of its 10 year contract to acquire all their assets. Only then might it decide it doesn’t need human resources in Lancashire because it has an HR Centre of Excellence in, say, Derbyshire. For now, BT just needs to get the sale. It has 400 field sales agents leaning on chief executives in every public authority and NHS Trust in the UK. That’s what it told Cornwall councillors. And that a team of 27 people supported its sales force by firing concentrated campaigns at targeted authorities. In Cornwall this involved producing a brochure that looked like a business plan but left out the downside risks a sensible business manager would demand to see. The document is stuffed full of pastel-coloured promises. It has all the allure of the full-moon at a rave party, rendered as a tea-shop oil painting by a pony-tailed retiree who once took acid. Some councillors went goggle-eyed over it. “There’s very little information on the finance,” he said. The choice, however, was clear. It was the difference between the soothing noises made by BT’s army-sized sales and marketing department and the infamous Barnet Graph of Doom that claims to show how council budgets will be squeezed so severely by 2030 that they will need to flog off their services. The logic is peccable. BT’s marketing conjured a vision of Cornwall as a high-tech hub, networked not just across the Country but the Commonwealth. What it actually means is Cornwall will be the site of a medical call-centre. The attraction for BT is Cornwall’s unusually large population of dependants. Cornwall has fewer youngsters than the UK average, and more retirees, who’s incomes are less then average, and half of whom are dependant on care. This is a unique asset in the world of telehealth and telecare, where services are automated, commoditized and delivered over BT phone and network cables. The idea is that BT Cornwall becomes to the infirm what the City of London is to the rich: an international hub for the incapable and insensible. In years to come, it will employ a small army of joy-stick operators to direct drone mechanoids in the wiping of back-sides half way across the world. BT’s brochure proposed that Cornwall’s uniquely dependent population would be a valuable testbed for its telehealth technologies. It proposed setting up an “R&D centre” in Cornwall to “develop new ways of delivering telehealth services”. This would employ five people primarily concerned with identifying innovative local firms who could be subsumed into BT Health, to give it a competitive edge with rival telehealth centres one presumes will be springing up in Bangladesh and Bolivia. They would report to BT’s real R&D centre in Martlesham, Suffolk, which employs not five but three and a half thousand people. BT recently opened a Telehealth showroom there. For BT, the race is on for Telehealth in the UK. NHS and Social Services are abuzz with the idea. Housing Associations have a head start. BT lost a bid to run telecare in Northern Ireland last year to a consortium led by Tunstall Health Care, the market leader, that operates a Centre of Incontinence or whatever you call it in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. It makes about £200m-a-year from 2.5m dependants in over 30 countries. It is a leader in the supply of alarm pendants for old people who take a fall. BT is counting on Cornwall to help it win tenders in a national government programme called 3millionlives, which aims to get 3m patients and dependants tended remotely across the NHS by 2018. The Department of Health reckons £70bn of the UK health budget goes on care of people with long term conditions, the target market for telehealth and telecare. That’s 15m people. 3millionlives will therefore turn the tap on a £23bn market, or whatever part of it can be administered remotely. Things start moving next month. Formal tenders start in “early 2013”. This may explain why BT gave Cornwall councillors an ultimatum this week: it would keep its offer on the table only until March. Fiona Ferguson, a member of the Cornwall Council Cabinet that backed the plan, passed the ultimatum on to councillors on Tuesday. She neglected to mention BT’s own spring deadline. But she did insist the council acted urgently. And she painted a desperate picture of the Cornish health system: “There are very serious challenges in adult social care and health,” she said. Tragically, at that very moment Carolyn Rule, Ferguson’s Cabinet colleague responsible for Health and Wellbeing, was lying, collapsed outside the council chamber door. Council leader Jim Currie interrupted proceedings to report that Rule had apparently fainted, but it was feared her situation might be much worse. They just didn’t know. Twenty minutes had passed since she left the chamber and collapsed outside its door. She was a very unhealthy colour and could still not sit up. It would be another five minutes before an ambulance arrived. Thankfully, Rule got a clean bill of health at the hospital. She had a check-up and was released later that day. But it was a worrying reminder of the sort of pressures felt by the health service in a rural county like Cornwall, where people were often far from help. The dilemma was stark. Councillor Julian German had spelt it out earlier. If Cornwall didn’t do a deal with BT, “there won’t be a world-wide Centre of Excellence for telehealth and telecare in Bodmin,” he said. Neither would there be a “procurement Centre of Excellence in Cornwall”, said German. Neither would BT deliver the promised cuts in those services it acquired from the council. Neither would it create 1,043 jobs that would be “committed in contract”. BT’s proposal had actually only guaranteed 350 new jobs. It had estimated that business might also grow quickly enough to create another 512 jobs. The other 181 jobs in BT’s 1,043 forecast were people it already employed at a “Truro retail facility”. BT had promised not to make them redundant for the life of the telehealth contract. It was like a number from a dodgy dossier. But you got the idea. The choice for Cornwall was whether or not to invest its resources in BT’s telehealth gambit. The original reason why Cornwall had started down the path that led it into talks with BT in the first place was now forgotten. Was it to pass the buck for a backoffice cull? Whatever it was, it was now second place. Cornwall’s priorities and all other alternatives would now be held up for comparison against against BT’s business plan, that pastel vision that had infected the collective mind of Cornwall’s Council Chamber on Tuesday like a mall shopper’s retail lobotomy. Councillors had stopped to recover their bearings. But BT had become the default setting. The Department of Health, incidentally, refuses to talk of its telehealth initiative in terms of market-size and supply-side opportunities. It likens telehealth to the introduction of the stethoscope: an inconspicuous tool that will slip into the complex arrangement of systems and people that make the National Health Service work. The department insists it will leave local trusts to incorporate the technology in the way they see fit. It has not insisted Trusts can only do telehealth if they sell off their assets and go into business flogging the services themselves. It betrays no sign of embarking on a frenetic pursuit of a corporation’s marketing dream; nor that it has adopted the false dilemma that has echoed hypnotically around the corridors of Cornwall Council: that do-nothing is not an option, unless you want to miss out on the prize. Don’t miss out on the prize. Other befoolery put to the council chamber this week included the suggestion that the outsource is not ideological or political. And that battery-level councillors cannot understand the complex contractual matters that have been occupying the Cabinet’s superior minds. Or perhaps even that Cornwall is in crisis. Lavery himself wrote in the Guardian last week that that at 8 per cent growth, Cornwall’s economic success is second only to the City of London. Perhaps councillors will gather their wits by considering whether Cornwall needs BT as much as BT needs Cornwall, or whether BT needs Cornwall as much as Cornwall needs BT.

PARIS -- Still considered young brands, South Korean carmakers Hyundai and Kia are expected to sell more than 1 million vehicles in Europe this year, 41 years after they entered the continent home to car manufacturers aged more than 100 years old. In the January-August period, the two carmakers under Hyundai Motor Group sold a total of 715,050 passenger vehicles in Europe, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. Hyundai saw a steep growth in sales in the same period, selling 378,834 vehicles, a 9.8 percent on-year increase. Kia sold 336,216 vehicles, a 5.9 percent on-year increase. By the end of the year, Europe will become the third regional market for Hyundai and Kia, reaching the 1 million-unit mark in sales, the company said. Since entering Greece in 1977 with 300 units of the Pony, dubbed Korea’s first-ever car, Hyundai has gone through tough times in Europe in light of competition with a number of auto giants including Volkswagen, BMW and Renault. It took 30 years for the carmaker to attain half a million units in European sales in 2008. “And we will never stop growing,” Emilio Herrera, chief operating officer of Kia Motors Europe, said in an interview with Korean reporters covering the Paris Motor Show. Armed with a diverse lineup ranging from the practical Ceed family to the dynamic sporty vehicle Stinger, Kia is present in almost all segments, based on the foundation of quality and design, according to the official. But now is the time to focus on enhancing Kia’s reputation as an “electrified brand” in order to meet growing demand for green cars and to survive amid intense competition with European brands and Chinese carmakers, he added. Seeking market debuts in Europe, Chinese auto manufacturers participated in the French motor show that began Tuesday, highlighting their low price range and strength in electric vehicles. Meanwhile, traditional players in Europe like Volkswagen and BMW are making huge investments for green car development. Nevertheless, the window of opportunity is still open for Kia to consolidate its presence as an electrified brand and that is the way to sustain its growth, Herrera said, adding that Kia expects to see sales growth of 4 to 5 percent this year. Chinese carmakers making inroads into Europe will face challenges, as Europe is overregulated in terms of safety and has complicated tax systems. Most importantly, the appearance of these carmakers will not affect Hyundai’s sales in the region, according to officials. “Hyundai motor is very well-developed in technology and distribution. It is particularly sophisticated and efficient in manufacturing. I don’t see dangers for our brand in the short term,” said Thomas A. Schmid, COO of Hyundai Motor Europe, in a separate interview. The key driver of Hyundai’s growth is its sport utility vehicle segment, but the carmaker’s capabilities in the areas of technology and high performance will further improve the brand. “The market’s understanding towards Hyundai is changing. We are now innovative, high tech. We are no longer just recognized as ‘value for money’ cars,” he said. Two important factors that have improved Hyundai’s brand image and value are its progress in the electric car market and fuel cell technology, he added. Besides investing in all segments, including HEV, PHEV and pure EVE, Hyundai sells the electric version of its Kona SUV in Europe. The company also has an upper hand in fuel cell technology which is in high demand in such Northern European countries as Denmark and Norway. The compact car brand i30 was another success in which the carmaker added both technology and high performance aspects. At the Paris Motor Show, the company unveiled the i30 Fastback N, the third one under its high-performance brand N, a year after it launched the i30 N. The company is still reviewing the possibility of adding an eco-friendly lineup to the popular i30N, as the compact vehicle segment is declining in contrast to SUVs. Hyundai and Kia are more recognized as SUV makers than producers of compact cars. The Tucson was the best-selling Hyundai car in Europe, with 47,244 units sold as of April this year. The company sold 154,056 units last year. A facelifted Tucson will likely hit the market in the second half of the year, according to reports. Despite making progress in Europe, the economic crisis in Turkey poses a challenge to Hyundai Motor Europe, which is responsible for a manufacturing plant in Czech Republic and both manufacturing and distribution in Turkey. “The currency value is dropping dramatically. The interest rate is increasing. Due to the rising interest rate, the domestic demand is dropping. In parallel to the currency loss of 6 percent in one year, that means that for all vehicles we sell there, it is heavily harming the profitability,” Schmid said. To stay profitable, Hyundai might have to include other markets such as Russia and the Middle East. “The process of becoming a regional headquarters is not finished because more countries should come. We have to secure the flow of money,” Schmid said. Schmid has been responsible for Hyundai’s operation in Europe since 2015, while Herrera was promoted to the COO position in April.

Brown began that process with a Camp David visit this summer in which he adroitly avoided headlines back home and the warm embrace that Bush customarily fastened on Blair. The Bush administration, with friends abroad in short supply, desperately pretended not to notice Brown's studied aloofness. But Brown's announcement last week of new troop withdrawals from Iraq — with a goal of shrinking the British force to 2,500 by next summer — again underlined that he is not Bush's creature, even though the reductions are portrayed by the government here as routine and nonpolitical. Brown, a close friend of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and other politically active Americans, has routinely vacationed on Cape Cod in recent years. But after taking over from Blair a little over 100 days ago, Brown stayed home this summer and watched his popularity soar while he calmly put out a series of national brush fires. He had managed Britain's economic boom as Blair's chancellor of the exchequer. His very dourness and nervous intensity were hailed as welcome contrasts to the supremely self-confident Blair, a political rock star who was deemed to have used up all his magic in the service of Bush. Brown and some of his advisers could not resist an opportunity to toy with — and hopefully destabilize for another decade — the opposition Conservative Party. So they set in motion machinery for a surprise autumn election, then abruptly pulled back in disarray when the Conservatives launched their own surge operation that turned the polls against Labor. Instead of the image of the decisive and caring manager that he wanted to project, Brown suddenly appeared to be as manipulative and opportunistic as Blair — only not as deft. Brown's effort to convince Britons that he represented progressive change after 10 years of Blair was left in shambles by bruising exchanges with the media, Labor Party dissidents and the Conservatives in Parliament. Washington must now cope with Paris being the new London. The rock-star, high-energy politics and charisma that were once Blair trademarks have migrated across the English Channel to France. Nicolas Sarkozy in his first 150 days has tried to narrow, not widen, France's strategic distance from the United States. Sarkozy is now the European leader who incarnates change, ambition and an almost hubristic optimism. Because of changing personalities at the top and changing global circumstances, Britain enters a period of new caution in economic and political affairs while France looks for opportunities to be daring. Sarkozy's activism has already shaken up other European governments that fear he goes too far too fast, and the Frenchman's determination to change things will reach across the Atlantic in unpredictable ways as well. Throughout the Blair years, London was always a sunny place for this American visitor, even when it was actually raining or when the political weather turned stormy, as it finally did for Blair. Even then, Blair pitted his endless enthusiasm against the listless, embittered worldview of Jacques Chirac and other European leaders to provide a rallying point for the belief that things could be made better. With economic growth starting to flag and voters projecting their own fickleness onto their new prime minister, Brown may well be wondering if Blair has used up all the sunshine that was available in British politics. Hoagland's e-mail address is jimhoagland@washpost.com.

The Atlantic City Boardwalk was built in 1870 as a way to keep sand out of hotels when this town was first developed as a summer resort. Although the best way to access the wooden walkway is by biking or walking its four-mile length from Absecon Inlet to Ventnor City, you can opt for a human-powered rolling chair, first introduced to the boardwalk in the 1880s, when riding one was considered the height of luxury. Back then, sun worshippers flocked to Atlantic City and the wide, clean beaches, while top bands and acts played on the 1,000-foot-long Steel Pier — now a popular amusement park, enhanced in 2017 by a towering 227-foot Ferris wheel. The wide beaches are still here, as are the headliners (this summer: Ringo Starr, Dave Chappelle and Carrie Underwood), along with the rolling chairs, and a growing number of family-friendly activities. Where to stay: Bally’s Atlantic City and Resorts Casino are right on the boardwalk and have recently been renovated. Summer 2018 highlights: Tropicana’s free fireworks series on the boardwalk every Saturday at 10 p.m. through Sept. 8. Bike rentals (including cruisers, tandems and children’s bikes) available at Iowa Avenue and the Boardwalk at Tropicana (7:30 a.m.-noon daily). Midsummer opening of Ocean Resort Casino in the former Revel Casino space. Since Victorian times, Rehoboth Beach has attracted families of all kinds — including, increasingly, LGBT families — from Philly and the D.C. area. But New Yorkers and New Englanders have discovered this foodie destination as a quiet alternative to the wilder Jersey Shore. Things haven’t changed much in 100 years. Dogfish Head’s original brewery is in Rehoboth, and seasonal visitors make a beeline to Dolle’s Candyland, which has been selling saltwater taffy since 1927. Reader’s Digest proclaimed Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk the “Best of America” in 2006, and it remains the quintessential beach town experience today. Where to stay: Both the “Victorian-chic” Boardwalk Plaza Hotel and recently renovated Sands Hotel are directly on the boardwalk. Summer 2018 highlights: Funland, in operation on the boardwalk for nearly 60 years, just rebuilt the Jungle of Fun ride to accommodate kids ranging from toddlers to teens. Defining features: Plenty of benches, vividly colored Victorian homes. Where to stay: Both the Montreal Beach Hotel and Ocean Club Hotel are located just across the street from the Promenade and beach. Summer 2018 highlights: Take a guided weekly walk at Cape May Bird Observatory. See the most flamboyant Victorians on a MAC Trolley Tour, join a Cape May food tour or visit the free Cape May Zoo (several miles away). The three-mile-long Virginia Beach Oceanfront Boardwalk, running from Second to 40th streets, is lined with high-rise hotels and apartments, making it the most urban of the beach towns on our list. The boardwalk’s most prominent feature can be found at 31st Street — the 24-foot-tall statue of Neptune that is, naturally, an Instagram darling. Though the boardwalk features the requisite kiddie rides and greasy spoon eateries, you’ll also find two compact but fascinating museums. The Old Coast Guard Station Museum traces the history of the U.S. Life-Saving Service back to 1871 with dramatic photos and stories. The Atlantic Wildfowl Heritage Museum has as much to do with the wealthy DeWitt family, who purchased this Victorian beachfront home in 1909, as it does about the evolution of local duck decoys from crude carvings to folk art. “Why did only this cottage out of the many that lined the boardwalk from Fourth to 12th Street survive the great hotel building boom? Because of the stubbornness of three DeWitt sisters who refused to sell,” says a docent. Where to stay: The Virginia Beach Boardwalk is replete with hotels of every brand from Comfort Inn to Hilton, Sheraton, Marriott, Best Western, La Quinta, Ramada and more. The 1920 Cavalier Hotel (Marriott Autograph), has relaunched after a multiyear, multimillion-dollar renovation. Summer 2018 highlights: Bicycle tours (through beachbiketours.com), the opening of Virginia Beach’s first all-outdoor dining establishment, The Yard at Ocean 27. Defining features: Wildwood sightseer tram cars, “Doo Wop” style architecture. The 2.5-mile Wildwood Boardwalk is sensory overload at all hours, but particularly at night, when multitudes consume pizza and frozen custard, and the lights and sounds from Morey’s Amusement Park fill the air. The “Watch the tram car, please” recorded message that emanates from eight eco-friendly Wildwood Sightseer Trams (originally built for the 1939 New York World’s Fair) is the essence of the boardwalk’s identity — the phrase is even stamped on T-shirts and souvenirs. There are abundant amusement park rides and water park features on three Morey’s piers: Surfside Pier, Mariner’s Pier and Adventure Pier. Wildwood, North Wildwood and Wildwood Crest, collectively known at “the Wildwoods,” embrace the zeitgeist of the 1950s, when doo-wop music commandeered the airwaves and space-race Jetsonian architecture heralded a promising future. Tony Bennett called Wildwood the “real birthplace of rock and roll,” because Bill Haley and the Comets premiered “Rock Around the Clock” here. More than 3,000 teens at a time boogied to a new show called “American Bandstand,” Buddy Holly debuted “That’ll Be the Day,” and Chubby Checker (who still comes every year) spent his 19th birthday demonstrating his brand-new dance, The Twist. Where to stay: Both the Starlux Hotel and Caribbean Motel are near the boardwalk and offer a renovated “Doo Wop” lodging experience with plenty of luxe kitsch. Summer 2018 highlights: The new Seaport Pier is scheduled to be unveiled for the summer 2018. The re-imagined Pirates of Wildwood 3D Cartoon Journey and Wild Whizzer coaster are new on Morey’s Mariner Pier. Charming NY villages perfect for weekend tripsLong Islanders in pursuit of quirky, artsy, sophisticated weekends will find plenty of opportunities in these distinct Hudson River Valley villages, just a couple of hours’ drive from home. 5 vacation hot spots to visit in the off-seasonHere are five destinations where the fun flows on long after high season.

CER Education is seeking to appoint Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Teachers to join our successful supply teaching team and to work in local primary schools in Liverpool. If you are a qualified Teacher who can enthuse, motivate and engage students and would like the challenge of working in a demanding and rewarding environment then we want to hear from you. There's no better time to be joining CER Education. Get in touch today and broaden your opportunities of securing advanced work and possible long-term positions.

Photographs by Kurt Edward Fishback and Martin Christian will grace the walls of Archival Gallery, 3223 Folsom Blvd., Sacramento. (916) 923-6204. Gifted artist Ray Franklin, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age 20, used his photographic memory of people and places in Sacramento to create the work showcased in his retrospective show at Gallery 21Ten, 2110 K St. Sacramento. (916) 476-5500.

Edward Schoppenhorst, was the youngest son of Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Schoppenhorst, a German immigrant from Ladbergen, Westfalen. Edward was interested in the "undertaking" business and branched out to establish his own funeral home, which became Schoppenhorst Bros. Funeral Home. The other brothers remained in the laundry business.

Since the rise of Trump to the Oval Office, UNRWA’s financial crisis reached its highest level of shortage and inability, after years of cumulative retreatment in service and aid providing for Palestinian refugees, due to the huge encumbrances versus the lack of appropriate funding. In spite of UNRWA’s fundraising struggle, many countries & donors gave priority to other issues around the globe than the matter of Palestinian Refugees who’ve been suffering from the denial of rights in diaspora for the 70th year, in parallel with severe U.S. policy against the UNRWA in the context of financial blackmail and pressures on Palestinians, to submit political concessions in the unfair settlement with the Israeli Occupation. The United States has been the largest donor to UNRWA since its creation in 1949, don’t just aim to use the reduction of financial aid to UNRWA as a leverage on Palestinian Authority, but as a start to end the cause of Palestinian refugees by shutting down the international organization responsible for them, & dissolve their formal attendance as a single united group internationally. With more than 3 million patients benefits from UNRWA’s healthcare services, and nearly 500 thousand student go to 703 UNRWA schools, along with employments, aids, & more of its services, a massive humanitarian crisis is threatened to occur especially in the besieged Gaza Strip for the 11th year with majority of refugee’s population. And while around a million besieged Palestinian refugees are demonstrating for their deprived priceless dignity, in Gaza Strip the biggest prison ever in human history, Several U.S. republican congressmen in D.C. are limiting the count of 5.3 million Palestinian refugees to 40 thousand, by issuing a new bill for UNRWA’s annual funding which only fits the number of current refugees who lived Nakba in 1948, “refugee status is not something that can be handed down from generation to generation” congressman Doug Lamborn said, who initiated the bill with other republicans. What didn’t come to the mind of Israeli Occupation & Trump administration that neither deprivation of some Palestinian Refugees from their monthly aid of flour bags and sardine cans or the conversion of Palestinian Refugees cause from a major political matter to a temporal humanitarian issue may close a 70 years old file of misery unfairly, it’s just reminds Palestinians that they have a home to return to, where a generous Jaffa orange tree sparing its fruits for them.

A decades-old American Legion baseball tradition will be re-established this season when Opelousas is represented by two teams. That was made official Wednesday night when the coaches from prospective District 7 teams met at the Opelousas American Legion Post 45 to finalize plans for the four-week season, which starts May 29. District commander Ken Thibodeaux said Opelousas will be represented by two teams — the Warriors and the Indians — this year. The St. Landry Bank Indians coached for a third season by Westminster Christian Academy assistant Matt Standiford, will be sponsored by Post 45, Thibodeaux said. Thibodeaux said the Warriors, coached by Opelousas High baseball coach David Tuttle and John Guilbeau, will play as an independent team that will receive registration funding from Opelousas General Health Systems. “It’s not unusual to have a team that plays as an independent without a legion post as the sponsor,” Thibodeaux said. "The Warriors will play games at Opelousas High’s baseball field starting at 5 p.m. The Indians will use Westminster again and those games will start at seven." Opelousas did not play American Legion baseball in 2015. Before that Opelousas used the two-team system for a number of years, the last time in 2014. Standiford said he sees no problem having a two-team legion format. “I think it’s great and good for baseball in Opelousas. Both teams — us and the Warriors will be Opelousas High-based and we will both be able to include players from other schools in the parish,” Standiford said. For the past two seasons, the Indians have included players from Opelousas Catholic, Westminster Christian Academy, Port Barre, St. Edmund and Northwest High. Standiford said he feels sure potential players for each team will be able to attend tryouts for either squad. “I don’t see where that would be a problem,” he said. Thibodeaux said other teams in the district this season are Abbeville, Crowley and DeRidder. There also could be a chance of accepting another team — perhaps one from Lafayette — said Thibodeaux. “If we could get a team from Lafayette, it would help us fill the schedule so one of the teams we already have wouldn’t have a bye as we do now,” Thibodeaux said. LEGION NOTE:Standiford said tryouts for the Indians will be held May 27 at 2 p.m. Afterward, Standiford said, the Indians’ roster will be picked.

Hall-of-Fame coach Pat Summitt says she plans to lead the Tennessee women’s basketball team this year for the 38th time—despite having been recently diagnosed with early onset dementia. Summitt released a statement through the University of Tennessee Tuesday revealing her condition, saying she was diagnosed over the summer after visiting Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. During her career, Summitt has led the UT Lady Vols to 1,037 career victories and eight national championships. She has the full support of her coaching staff, players, university administration and family as she begins the 2011-2012 season. Read more about Pat Summitt here.

DIG Kaushal Nalaka de Silva who was in charge of the Terrorism Investigations Department( TID) has been summoned to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) today obtain a statement regarding an alleged assassination plot on President Maithripala Sirisena and former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, CID sources said. He has been informed to appear before CID Homicide Investigation Unit OIC Chief Inspector Ranjith Munasinghe at 9.00 am today. According to CID sources, the statements has to be taken regarding the bringing of two L.M.G. type guns out of the Police central Weapon Store room for two days as well as regarding the voice recording given by Namal Kumara about the alleged assassination plot. The sources also said that a statement has to be taken from him regarding the disappearance of the sniper gun. It is said that statements had been taken from the complainant, Anti-corruption Front Executive director Namal Kumara on six occasions so far by the CID. Like Gota, he will also come and go. Come and go. If he is arrested, he will be bailed in about an hour. He will again, come and go. Come and go. Sri Lankan law. find out a corrupt judge or pay well to make the judge corrupt,then can do.

SIMFEROPOL, Crimea/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Products for sale in the Crimean stores of two European retailers are being shipped there from Russia via a ferry and port that are subject to EU sanctions, people involved in the transportation said, suggesting companies are finding ways around the punitive economic regime facing Moscow since 2014. Products carrying the brands of Germany’s Metro AG and Auchan [AUCH.UL] of France are visibly for sale on the shelves of the retailers’ Crimean subsidiaries. People involved in transporting the goods say they arrived via a ferry that serves the Crimean port of Kerch. European companies are banned from doing business with the ferry and the port under EU sanctions imposed on Russia after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Both retailers said they were not violating the sanctions because the stores are operated by their Russian subsidiaries, which are not subject to the EU sanctions. A representative of the Kerch port referred questions about Metro and Auchan to the ferry operator, saying the port only controls shipping, not cargo. A representative of the ferry operator said it does not have contracts with Metro or Auchan and does not know if they use the ferry. Legal experts said the transfer of goods to Crimea may fall in a gray area of the sanctions regime because the relationship between parent companies and sub-contractors is often hard to define. In emailed comments in response to questions, Metro and Auchan did not contest that their goods were being shipped via the Kerch ferry and port to their subsidiaries’ stores in Crimea. A spokesman for Metro said Metro stores in Crimea are operated by independent Russian entities and staff that are not subject to EU sanctions. A spokesman for Auchan, which operates one store in Crimea, said the company always operates within the rules that are in force, including European Union decisions. A European Commission spokeswoman, Maja Kocijancic, asked if Brussels was worried about whether the sanctions were being respected, said implementing sanctions was the responsibility of EU member states. The French government had no immediate comment. Germany’s Economy Ministry said it could not comment on specifics, but that violators of EU sanctions face penalties. It said in cases involving a German firm, it was up to the German Customs Investigation bureau to asses if sanctions have been breached. The bureau declined to comment. The EU sanctions on Russia do not bar European firms and citizens from doing business in Crimea. They do restrict some new investments and dealings with certain designated people and entities such as the Kerch ferry company - the main transport link between Russia and Crimea - and the port of Kerch. According to several transport companies providing services to Auchan and Metro, as well as sources in the two retailers’ Russian units, and a western food company, trucking firms load up at the retailers’ distribution centers in Russia. The goods then cross to Crimea on the ferry, then trucks disembark at Kerch, then deliver the goods to the Metro and Auchan stores in Crimea. Reuters has no evidence of any payment from Metro or Auchan to the sanctioned entities. The goods are transported by sub-contractors, and the stores in Crimea are operated by Russian-registered units of Metro and Auchan, not by the parent companies. The Russian units are not subject to EU sanctions. “In general, EU-based parent companies can be held liable if they have instructed their local unit to act in violation of the sanctions,” said Artem Zhavoronkov, partner at law firm Dentons. The two Metro stores in Crimea are operated by Metro Group entities incorporated under Russian law - Retail Property 5 (RP5) and Retail Property 6 (RP6). Metro Group is not involved in “local operational details” concerning the stores, according to the spokesman for the group. Metro said most products in its Crimean stores, including Metro branded goods, were sourced from Russian suppliers. But when a Reuters reporter visited the Metro store in Simferopol, Crimea, in August, she saw on the shelves Italian rice, EU-origin chocolate, pastry, and packaged groceries, all imported into Russia by Metro’s Russian unit registered in Moscow, according to their labels. A source at Metro Group Logistic, the retailer’s Russian logistics unit, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said Metro contracts third-party transport companies to truck goods from its distribution centers in southern Russia via the ferry to Crimea. This arrangement was confirmed by sources at a Metro supplier and at one of the transport companies involved, Transcargo. He did not reply to an emailed question on how the unit ensures the sub-contractors comply with that instruction. Auchan has similar arrangements for supplying some of the goods to its Crimea store, according to transportation companies and a source in Auchan Russia. On the shelves at Auchan’s store in Simferopol when a Reuters reporter visited were fruit and vegetable conserve, chocolate, coffee, ketchup, olive oil, crackers and frozen pizza - all carrying the in-house Auchan-BIO brand. The Auchan spokesman said the store is operated by Auchan Retail Russia, the firm’s Russian unit. The company did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters about the store’s supply logistics.

Finance Minister K.N. Choksy said yesterday that prices of rice, flour, infant milk,, pharmaceuticals, bread, spices, kerosene, coconut and coconut oil will get reduced with the Value Added Tax (VAT) coming into effect from August 1. Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. has secured a contract for US$ 100 million from Sri Lanka’s state-owned company Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (Ceypetco) for shipment of 30,000 tonnes of diesel and 10,000 tonnes of aviation turbine fuel from September 2002. Kuala Lumpur - Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) has been asked to help develop the oil and gas resources of Sri Lanka, Bernama news agency reported, citing visiting Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando. Siriraj hospital yesterday revealed dramatic success in reducing the HIV transmission rate from mother to child - to less than 3 per cent. India is taking preparatory action to renew the ban on the LTTE for a further two years. Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Tribunal, New Delhi has issued notice on the LTTE calling upon it to show cause in writing within 30 days from July 6 as to why it should not be declared an unlawful association and why order be not made confirming the declaration already made. Around 800 civilians are reportedly being held prisoner by the LTTE in the Mullaitivu district alone. Informed sources told the Daily Mirror last night that around 600 Tamil civilians alone were being held prisoners in one of the detention camps. President Chandrika Kumaratunga yesterday launched her strongest attack on Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe saying she was 'completely and utterly shocked' by what she saw as the Premier's volte face in the controversy over Minister Ravi Karunanayake's behaviour. ISLAMABAD Monday (AFP) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf left today on a five-day trip to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka that will include discussions on Pakistan's stand off with India. Malaysia's national petroleum company to help develop its oil and gas resources, the national news agency Bernama reported. Mannar - July 29: The pathetic tale of how two Jaffna families that tried to return to their homes in Sri Lanka were duped and dumped on a sand dune in the mid sea, was related by the victims on Sunday morning, to the District Judge of Mannar.

A decade ago, Boro Rangers Under-9s had a prolific striker in their ranks whose form and qualities had caught the eye of local scouts. The kid, who towered over his teammates and opponents, was monitored by Boro for a few years and trained at the Academy but had to bide his time until he got his break, eventually signing for Hartlepool in his final year at secondary school. Pools would later sell him to Preston for £50,000 and the lad from Guisborough made his North End debut off the bench away to Aston Villa in February of last year. From leading the line for Boro Rangers to coming up against John Terry. Connor Simpson measures in at 6ft 6" now but is still a kid in football terms, he's 19 and still learning the game he loves. After breaking through and impressing at Pools, Simpson was a wanted man, with Celtic among the clubs said to have been lurking, before Preston eventually won the battle. He's only made the one appearance for North End so far - that substitute appearance against Villa - but has been given the chance to play regularly on loan spells at Lancaster City, Hyde United and Carlisle United, where he's currently playing his football. Long-term, Simpson wants to break through at Deepdale and is aiming to follow in the footsteps of another Teesside striker who made his name at North End. "I look at Jordan Hugill as an example of what you can achieve by working hard and using the most of what you have," Simpson told TEAMtalk. "I hope I can have a career similar to his and follow in his footsteps. I'm only 19 and I have a lot to learn. I'm almost 6ft6" and I'm still growing and I know I need to use my physicality more." Simpson added: "I'm lucky in that I've got Alex Neil at Preston who has told me what I need to improve on and now Steven Pressley at Carlisle. I've asked to do extra training here and the manager is working with me on a one-to-one basis, which I really appreciate. I'm confident that if I get minutes I will score goals for Carlisle." Simpson isn't the only alone in making the Hugill comparison. When he signed the striker from Hartlepool, Preston boss Alex Neil said: “He's certainly one for the future, I think he's got outstanding qualities with his size and his stature and the fact that he's played men's football at such a young age. "I don't think there's too many of those types about and I think the last time we went and got somebody in a similar situation it was probably Jordan Hugill when we took him from Port Vale and look what happened there."

UNIONDALE, N.Y. (AP) -Trent Hunter signed a one-year deal with the New York Islanders on Friday after an arbitrator awarded the forward a salary of $1.55 million for next season. The 27-year-old right winger, who was a restricted free agent, had 20 goals and 15 assists last season in 77 games with the Islanders. "Letting Trent go was never a consideration for us," general manager Garth Snow said in a statement. "He's an important piece to our team. That was never up for debate. We're glad he'll be in an Islanders uniform in September." Last season, Hunter's fourth in the NHL - all with New York - ranked fifth in the league with 246 hits while picking up only 20 penalty minutes. In 244 career games, Hunter scored 61 goals and helped set up 64 others. He was a finalist for the rookie of the year trophy during the 2003-04 season when he posted 25 goals and 26 assists.

If the tale of Palm’s WebOS is going to have a happy ending, we’re probably looking at the start of its last chapter today. LG and HP have entered into an agreement that will end in moving the mobile OS, once hailed as the iOS killer, to smart televisions. The series of unfortunate events that led to the downfall of WebOS never really had anything to do with the software. WebOS was, and still is, a powerful representation of what a multitask-oriented mobile OS should look like. Unfortunately, the Palm hardware that originally ran the OS was never really powerful enough to keep up with the users who were excited enough to hop on board as early adopters. When Palm sold WebOS to HP, the company tried to resurrect the platform twice. After both the HP Touchpad and the push to open source licensing yielded no significant returns, HP spun WebOS off into Gram and laid off a significant portion of the staff involved in the project. Now that HP has moved on to Android, it seems like they would be happy to sell WebOS off to anyone even remotely interested, and LG just so happens to be looking for a way to make their SmartTV line stand out in a crowd. LG’s focus on televisions right now is one of deep integration with their own products. As much as they want to offer all of the same features as the competition, such as streaming video and social media, the company also has a serious interest in making the TV a focal point for the smarter home. Their future plans outlined at CES all included the ability to check on the status of your washing machine, locate your robot vacuum, or check on your grocery list from anything with a screen. Despite the rumors that LG was already working with WebOS, there was no mention of this collaboration at all during CES. The SmartTV needed an elegant way to multitask between these items without taking focus from the content that was actually playing on the television at the time. This level of visual appeal is something that WebOS is already uniquely suited for. It’s unclear when we will see LG show off their full plans for WebOS, or how they plan to augment the OS in the mean time. It has been made pretty clear that this is exclusively for the television, so we’re not expecting a shiny new WebOS smartphone or tablet in the future. There’s a lot of questions surrounding the community as well, like what will happen with OpenWebOS as a result of this move? It’s unlikely that LG will be working with that community, or making it easy for their modifications to be used in any tangible way. It’s entirely possible that this marks the last days for WebOS on anything but televisions, especially if there’s no one around to continue working with the open source community.

any kind of punishment. Is that true or not? Pence: George, look….You’ve been to Indiana a bunch of times. You know it. There are no kinder, more generous, more welcoming, more hospitable people in America than in the 92 counties of Indiana. Yet, because we stepped forward for the purpose of recognizing the religious liberty rights of all the people of Indiana, of every faith, we suffer under this avalanche for the last several days of condemnation and it’s completely baseless. ….Stephanopoulos: So when you say tolerance is a two-way street, does that mean that Christians who want to refuse service, or people of any other faith who want to refuse service to gays and lesbians, that’s legal in the state of Indiana? That’s a simple yes or no question. Pence: George, the question here is, is if there is a government action or law that a individual believes impinges on their freedom of religion, they have the opportunity to go to court….This is not about disputes between individuals. It’s about government overreach. And I’m proud that Indiana stepped forward. And I’m working hard to clarify this. The Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA—and most state RFRAs—do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.”….What these words mean is, first, that the Indiana statute explicitly recognizes that a for-profit corporation has “free exercise” rights matching those of individuals or churches. A lot of legal thinkers thought that idea was outlandish until last year’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, in which the Court’s five conservatives interpreted the federal RFRA to give some corporate employers a religious veto over their employees’ statutory right to contraceptive coverage. Remarkably enough, soon after, language found its way into the Indiana statute to make sure that no Indiana court could ever make a similar decision. Democrats also offered the Republican legislative majority a chance to amend the new act to say that it did not permit businesses to discriminate; they voted that amendment down. Hoosiers may indeed be the kindest and most welcoming folks in the country, but that cuts no ice in court. In court, any business can claim that it’s being discriminated against if it’s forced to sell its services to a gay couple, and thanks to specific language in the Indiana statute, no court can throw out the claim on the grounds that a business is a public accommodation. That’s different from other RFRAs, and it’s neither especially kind nor welcoming. Indiana has taken anti-gay hostility to a new and higher level, and Pence and his legislature deserve all the flack they’re getting for it. They should be ashamed of themselves. On the other hand, if you’re thinking of running for president, I guess it’s a great entry in the base-pandering, more-conservative-than-thou sweepstakes. So at least Pence now has that going for him.

In an already tight rental market, dozens of Kelowna residents are hoping for a break on renting a new place. More than 130 people that either lost everything to the Trusswell Road condo blaze or had condos that were heavily damaged July 8 are forced to find new places to live. Emergency Social Services support has run out. They were introduced to potential landlords Monday night when the creators of a new website that just launched in Kelowna put away the technology and added a human touch to their search. Happipad.com brought landlords and rental managers together in person to help expedite new homes for those who experienced loss. “I’ve had a lot of inquiries from property owners in the Okanagan that are eager to rent out their homes to these people,” Happipad CEO Cailan Libby said. Walnut Grove Motel resident Mike Sieux brought his personal items with him to the meeting. Everything he owns in the world now fits into a plastic shopping bag. Now that all the 68-year-old’s possession are gone, he said it leaves him mobile to move anywhere in B.C. Even with that option, he’s yet to find a new place to live. “There are a few places that might be affordable but by the time I got there they were already gone,” Sieux said. The Walnut Grove Motel was one of the few places low-income renters had to live in Kelowna. Sieux said he remains emotionally numb a week after failing to find a new home following the fire. The condo fire was sparked by a roofer’s torch at a building under construction at the Water’s Edge complex. The flames spread to an occupied building, destroying six units and leaving the rest of the units heavily damaged by smoke and water. At the Walnut Grove Motel, nine of units were destroyed when the six-storey condo building collapsed on it.

Facebook didn’t roll out a Google Reader replacement at its press event last Thursday, but the company may still be hard at work on a newsreading app. The world’s largest social network is reportedly developing an application called Reader that lets you view news in a highly visual format. Reader will be targeted at mobile devices and the latest iterations of the app look similar to Flipboard, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Journal said Facebook has been working on Reader for more than a year, but it wasn’t clear when the new app would get released or if it ever would. With the clock ticking down to July 1 when Google will shutter its dwindling yet beloved RSS feed catcher, Google Reader, it would make sense for Facebook to get its Reader out the door this week. But Facebook may not be jostling for a seat at the post-Google Reader table along with Digg, Feedly, AOL, and many others. For news consumption, many people turn to the Web, download branded apps from their favorite news source such as the New York Times or USA Today, or find links on social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. For anyone who wants an aggregator, there are visual apps such as Flipboard and Pulse that pull links from Twitter and Facebook feeds. Facebook’s reported push into newsreading appears to fall into this latter category of aggregation apps, especially since other social networks are already playing this game. LinkedIn recently purchased Pulse, and the professional social network has been focused on newsreading for some time. The popular LinkedIn Today feature offers users personalized news feeds based on topic preferences, and LinkedIn’s main news feed is often filled with people sharing news links. Not content to let other social networks offer something that Facebook doesn’t (see Instagram vs. Vine), Zuckerberg and co. may be hoping to keep a top LinkedIn attraction at bay. Monday morning headlines in Washington Post Social Reader. Facebook’s attempt to jump into newsreading could be problematic. The company already tried to become a place to read news with its social reader push in 2011. Back then, major news sources such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal offered social reading apps that let you read and share news articles inside Facebook. But things started turning sour for social readers last year. Now they have all but disappeared. Currently, the only social reader left standing is the Post. There’s also the question of whether news sources would be willing to play along with Facebook’s rumored Reader effort. Facebook would no doubt want to insert ads into Reader as the company searches for new ways to make money and satisfy investors. News sources, meanwhile, would be reluctant to let Facebook and its massive audience make money off their content without some kind of agreement. That could be solved if Facebook simply drives traffic to those news sites as it does now with links inside of a user’s news feed. But news organizations tend to be fickle about how their content is presented inside third-party apps. The New York Times, for example, only allowed Flipboard to start carrying its content last June. Regardless, there’s little doubt that Facebook is an ideal platform for newsreading. “It does make sense that Facebook try new products because so much information is shared on the social network,” Blau says. Anyone can follow their favorite news sources on Facebook to get links to the day’s popular and important stories. Facebook also offers interest lists for people who want to follow a large number of news sources at once. The only question is whether users will use Reader if (or when) it debuts. If Reader is built into the primary Facebook app, that seems more likely; however, adding yet another feature into an already bloated app would not be ideal. Then again, a secondary app that users need to download separately may not see that much traction. Facebook certainly has the audience and links to news content already inside its social network. We’ll have to wait and see if Facebook can execute and turn that potential into a feature that draws readers in every day. This story, "Facebook might jump into news with rumored Reader " was originally published by TechHive.

Imagine having a robot in your kitchen which is capable of cooking you dinner. Well, for some it will soon be a reality. Now imagine what happens if your cooking robot is hijacked? Dr Nicholas Patterson, a cyber security lecturer at Deakin University, has to take more than just the average laptop or smartphone into account nowadays; he also has to plan for if or when a robo chef is hacked. "Think about if someone does hack that, how powerful it could be — it's wielding knives and God knows what else," he said. "Cyber security for robots is still a really new area, but I've spotted the holes quite early so I can see it's going to be a big problem. "Someone in a certain country overseas can hack a robot in Australia and take control of that, spy on you, or attack you. "You don't have to be in the next street or next house; you can be in another country." Dr Patterson said robotic hacking had the potential to put a halt on the robotics industry. With things such as robotic vacuum cleaners and drones becoming more common household items, he said other consumer robotics would be introduced a lot sooner than people thought. By 2019, Dr Patterson said we could see up to 1.4 million new industrial robots installed in factories globally, and more would begin entering our homes as technology advanced at an alarming rate. According to Dr Patterson, smaller robots might not pose much of a physical threat, however their speakers and microphones could be used to listen in to people's conversations. "The larger ones are probably more the physical threat, like your robotic chef or the industrial type of robots," he said. "The industrial ones are upwards of 200 pounds and they have things like lasers, welding devices and the clamping devices." An SUV was hacked in the United States just last year. "They could take over control of the car while it was mid-driving," Dr Patterson said. He said in the past a person had also been able to hack into an airplane mid-flight. "I think we're too much focused on laptops and phones, but there's these new avenues which are not looked at as much in terms of robots and passenger planes." To prevent robotic hacking, Dr Patterson suggests updating anti-malware software and turning off Bluetooth and the wi-fi on robotic devices when not required. He also recommends regularly changing the password you use to access the robot. "Any remote doorways into the robot you want to switch off as best you can. "Do we really need internet on a fridge or a TV? Probably not. "Do we need it in a car? Yes, it helps download the GPS maps much more easily, but do we need that really?" He said not only did it have the potential to cause problems surrounding privacy, but it could risk people's lives as well.

Lil Gnar has it all figured out. He's only been taking music seriously for around a year, but he's already slated to perform at this year's Rolling Loud festival. So how did he come up so quick? We brought him in for the latest episode of Trending Topics to find out. We discussed his skate brand, Gnarcotic, his collaborations with Lil Skies, and why making smart, calculated moves on the internet can pay off big time. Check out the full interview above, and let us know who we need on Trending Topics next in the comments. Watch Trending Topics with Maxo Kream below.

Enter this coupon code at checkout to get 40% discount on regular priced items. Includes free shipping on orders over $80. Restrictions may apply. Whether you’re trying to suit up for the winter, dress down for the summer, or just revamp your wardrobe for year-round usage, you’ll need to look into getting shirts and sweaters. From T-shirts to blouses and turtlenecks to sweatshirts, you can get the wardrobe upgrade you need at a price you can afford. Don’t skimp on fashion when it comes to your shirts and sweaters. Plenty of designs are available at every price point. Shop smart and use Savings.com to ensure your purchase is as affordable as it gets. Shirts are a year-round affair. After all, unless you’re wearing dresses or suits, you’ll need to pair one with every outfit. It’s important that you get the best fashion options for your shirts, whether you like to dress up or you’re more of a casual dresser. Casual shirts don’t have to be bland or boring. You can get a great design on your everyday shirt without having to pay designer prices. The easiest way to do that is to shop at family retailers such as Old Navy, and then add Savings.com coupons and promo codes when you check out. It’s the best way to make the most of your wardrobe budget. Of course, some people prefer designer clothing. If it’s important that you’re always getting the most cutting-edge fashion, you can look at designer stores such as Aeropostale for your next clothing purchase. However, even designer-style shirts can have an affordable price tag. Don’t settle for full price, even if you’re buying styles that are hot off the runway. Just use a promo code when you check out to save money on purchases you’d already be making. It only takes a few extra seconds to make a big impact on your wallet. Sweaters are a great addition to your winter wardrobe, even if you live in a temperate climate. Coastal cities and southern areas may have warm weather year-round, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add a sweater to spice up your outfit. If you live further north, you may be looking for a heavy-duty coat that can survive the cold of winter while still making you look stylish. No matter what kind of sweaters you’re trying to find, you can surf retailers such as noVae to get the perfect look. Throw on a light sweater or cover up with a heavy coat; either way, you’ll be saving when you buy with Savings.com. The best way to get a full wardrobe is to buy with Savings.com. However, behind every full wardrobe are a number of basic shirts and sweaters, and you have to find those items yourself. Just make sure you’re matching everything to your original style to get a cohesive look. Fill up your wardrobe using promo codes and coupons to get the best deal. Every time you have to add something new to your closet, make sure you check Savings.com before you go through the checkout process, so you don’t miss the newest discounts.

Lupin has acquired a Russian pharma company Biocom that operates in the cardio-vascular therapy drug segment. Kotak Bank is in news as FIPB will consider its proposal of hiking FII limit from 49% to 55%. The management of Bajaj Auto, meanwhile, is very bullish on the June quarter after its auto sales numbers came out.

The “Building for the Future” fundraising campaign’s “Drive for 35” phone blitz headed into its final day today with only $9,000 to go after seeing pledges totalling $7,000 yesterday. Campaign chair Mark Kowalchuk said this morning they’ve now reached $741,000—moving ever closer to the campaign goal of $750,000. Economic development officer Geoff Gillon encouraged anyone with an interest in a new condo development in Fort Frances to fill out a survey during a meeting at the Civic Centre last night. The “Building for the Future” fundraising campaign’s “Drive for 35” phone blitz carried on yesterday, seeing pledges totalling another $3,000. Construction work on the Noden Causeway continues to move according to schedule, and it’s currently expected to be fully open to traffic (and the speed reduction of 50 km/h removed) by mid-October. MTO regional director Larry Lambert said Friday the first phase of the five year project—work on the 138-metre east low level portion—is 60 percent complete but moving along quickly.

Photo by Steve Fisch: Dr. Michelle Monje. For the first time, scientists have identified an existing drug that slows the growth of the deadliest childhood brain tumor. The drug restricted the tumor’s growth in a lab dish and improved the survival time of mice that had the tumor implanted into their brains, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, in collaboration with colleagues at other institutions. The work is noteworthy because the disease, a brain stem cancer called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, is nearly always fatal and lacks an effective treatment. A paper describing the findings were published online May 4 in Nature Medicine. While the preclinical data in the new study are encouraging, Monje cautioned that the drug, panobionstat, needs further testing in a closely monitored human clinical trial. The research team is now planning such a trial in children with DIPG. Panobinostat was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of a form of blood cancer. The drug repairs a portion of the cellular machinery now known to be defective in DIPG tumor cells, the new research showed. “A key thing that is wrong with DIPG cancer cells gets corrected by panobinostat,” said Monje, who also treats DIPG patients in her role as a pediatric neuro-oncologist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. However, the new data also showed that some DIPG cells develop resistance to the drug, which means it will likely need to be combined with other drugs to achieve the best results in humans. “I don’t think this is a cure, but I do think it will help,” she said. DIPG affects 200-400 school-aged children in the United States each year and has a five-year survival rate of less than 1 percent; half of patients die within nine months of diagnosis. Radiation gives only a temporary reprieve from the tumor’s growth. In addition, it is inoperable: It grows through the brain stem, where breathing and heartbeat are controlled, “with the healthy and diseased cells tangled like two colors of wool knitted together,” Monje said. The tumor has also been difficult to study. Because it is not surgically removed nor is it typically biopsied, for decades researchers lacked DIPG tissue to examine in a lab. That changed about six years ago, when Monje and other scientists began asking patients’ families to consider donating tumors for research after patients’ deaths. As a result, in 2009, a study led by Monje was the first in the world to report establishment of a line of DIPG cells that could be studied in a dish. Recently, researchers have determined that 80 percent of DIPG tumors have a mutation in histone 3, one of the proteins that packages DNA. The mutation damages the regulation of DNA in cells involved in the cancer — a form of epigenetic change. In the new study, the research team screened 16 DIPG cell lines derived from patients’ tumors against 83 possible chemotherapy drugs, exposing cells to small samples of each drug. The drugs were chosen because they were thought to have possible effects against brain tumors and were already used in humans or were being developed for human use. Of the 83 drugs, only a small number showed promise in slowing tumor cells’ growth. The team tracked six of the drugs’ dose-response relationship on DIPG cells and selected panobinostat for further study. They then confirmed the potency and mechanism of panobinostat against DIPG and showed that it normalized some of the detrimental epigenetic changes in the cells and also decreased the expression of genes associated with cancer cell growth. The team further demonstrated that, in mice that had DIPG tumors implanted in their brain stems, infusing panobinostat directly into the brain stem slowed tumor growth. They also gave the drug systemically by injecting it into mice with DIPG tumors, and showed that enough panobinostat reached the brain stem to prolong the animals’ survival. In a dish, DIPG cells that survived initial doses of panobinostat developed some resistance to the drug, the study found. However, the team also found that a chemical called GSKJ4, which had previously been shown to inhibit DIPG cells, worked synergistically with panobinostat, with the two agents counteracting known mechanisms of epigenetic dysfunction in the DIPG cells. Although GSKJ4 is not approved as a drug, the finding raises the possibility of developing combinations of drugs to treat DIPG. “Clearly, the next step is to find out what we can safely combine with panobinostat to increase its efficacy,” Monje said. In addition to the planned clinical trial, which will test whether panobinostat alone improves survival time in children with DIPG, her team will also screen other drugs in combination with panobinostat. “The goal is multimodal treatment to improve outcomes for children with DIPG,” she said. The paper’s lead authors are Yujie Tang, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford; Catherine Grasso, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Oregon Health & Science University; and Nathalene Truffaux, PhD, a graduate student at University of Paris-Sud. Other Stanford co-authors are postdoctoral scholars Lining Liu, PhD, and Wenchao Sun, PhD; life science research associates Pamelyn Woo, Anitha Ponnuswami and Spenser Chen; and Tessa Johung, a medical student. Other senior authors are Charles Keller, MD, who was at Oregon Health & Science University when the research was conducted and is now scientific director and interim executive director of the Children’s Cancer Therapy Development Institute in Fort Collins, Colorado; Jacques Grill, MD, PhD, at University of Paris-Sud; and Ranadip Pal, PhD, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Texas Tech University. They collaborated with scientists at Université d’Evry-Val d’Essone in France; Texas Children’s Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine; Johns Hopkins University; the National Cancer Institute; VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam; Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto in Canada; Children’s National Health Systems in Washington, DC; and University Hospital of Navarra in Spain. Funding for the research was provided by The Lydia Nsouli Foundation, the Children’s Oncology Group, the DIPG Collaborative (The Cure Starts Now Foundation, Reflections of Grace Foundation, Smiles for Sophie Foundation, Cancer-Free Kids Foundation, Carly’s Crusade Foundation, Jeffrey Thomas Hayden Foundation, Soar with Grace Foundation), Accelerate Brain Cancer Cures Foundation, CureSearch for Childhood Cancer, and the Team Julian Foundation. Additional funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health (grant K08NS070926), Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, McKenna Claire Foundation, Connor Johnson Memorial Fund, Dylan Jewett Memorial Fund, Elizabeth Stein Memorial Fund, Dylan Frick Memorial Fund, Abigail Jensen Memorial Fund, Zoey Ganesh Memorial Fund, Wayland Villars DIPG Foundation, Jennifer Kranz Memorial Fund, Unravel Pediatric Cancer, Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research, Price Family Charitable Fund, Matthew Larson Foundation, Godfrey Family Fund in Memory of Fiona Penelope, Child Health Research Institute at Stanford, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Endowed Faculty Scholarship in Pediatric Cancer and Blood Diseases, Etoile de Martin, Foundation LEMOS and Le Defi de Fortunee, Scott Carter Foundation, Semmy Foundation, Department of Defense, Marie Curie (a foundation in the United Kingdom), Spanish Ministry of Health, St. Baldrick’s Foundation and Iron Matt Foundation. Information about Stanford’s Department of Neurology & Neurological Sciences, which also supported the work, is available at http://neurology.stanford.edu.

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 -- Amid a growing perception that the UN under Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has snubbed sub Saharan Africa, the African Group's call for the appointment of a full time Special Adviser on Africa was repeatedly rebuffed by Ban. Assisting Ban in this, numerous African Group sources complain, was Egypt's Permanent Representative Maged Abdelaziz. Now, the complaint continues, Maged Abdelaziz has ironically been rewarded by being handed the Special Adviser on Africa post. "He help Ban not fill the post," one Permanent Representative told Inner City Press on Thursday, "then he got it for himself." Inner City Pres: What’s the Secretary-General’s response to criticism from the African Group that they no longer have the Deputy Secretary-General and that the Special Adviser on Africa post is going to a North African not sub-Saharan? Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: Africa is a continent and Mr. Abdelaziz is from the continent of Africa. I was asked earlier about the posts of Special Adviser on Africa and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States. I can confirm that these will be two separate positions. Cheick Sidi Diarra is still the High Representative and, as you know, the Secretary-General appointed Maged Abdelaziz as Special Adviser on Africa on 8 March. Cheick Sidi Diarra is said to be headed for the UN Economic Commission for Africa in Ethiopia, whose incursion into Eritrea went uncommented on by Ban's spokesman Nesirky on Thursday despite a question, and Maged is said to not be too long for the Special Adviser job. Many are saying that sub Saharan Africa "at least" has to be given the Department of Field Support, which Atul Khare, Catherine Polland and maybe Tony Banbury are vying, or another of the remaining open Under Secretary General spots. But with Ban, you never know. Watch this site. Footnote: Meanwhile ASG Jomo Kwame Sundaram is said to be vying for the top job in the International Labor Organization, just as Ban's adviser Jeffrey Sachs is openly campaigning for the presidency of the World Bank. Inner City Press has asked if this is a conflict of interest; Nesirky has so far not answered. Only in Ban's UN.

Some of the achievements to date under the Team Unity administration. BASSETERRE, St. Kitts –- The latest national poll conducted by Jamaican pollster, Don Anderson and his Market Research Services Limited team, indicate the majority of people in St. Kitts and Nevis favour the Team Unity administration and its policies and programmes, according to Prime Minister Dr. the Honourable Timothy Harris. The national poll was conducted last year, between Nov. 15 and Dec. 10, and covered all 11 constituencies in St. Kitts and Nevis. Anderson questioned 869 persons aged 18-years and over, who are eligible to vote in national elections. An article posted in the Jamaica Observer stated that Anderson reported 57 per cent of the persons interviewed thought that things have got better in the country over the last three years. “This is a very strong, positive assessment of the current situation in the country. This far outweighs the 23 per cent who feel that things have got worse over this time. This positive view of the way things are going in the country was echoed across most of the constituencies, including some held by the Opposition,” Anderson was quoted in the article as saying. On the performance of the government, Anderson said more persons rated the Team Unity administration positively than those who rated it negatively. When asked how they would rate the performance of the Dr. Timothy Harris-led Unity Government, 38 percent viewed this positively, rating it very good or good, compared to the 30 per cent who rated the performance as being poor or very poor. “At the same time, another 32 percent considered the performance as being acceptable, if not in the strongly positive category. In the final analysis, close to 70 percent of all persons interviewed regard the performance of the government as being average to excellent,” Anderson further stated in his report. Speaking at the Feb. 18 town hall meeting at the St. Paul’s Anglican Church Hall, Prime Minister Harris made reference to an “interesting finding” of the poll, which stated where persons were asked to indicate what factors conditioned a negative rating of the government, the largest single mention was ‘I don’t know,’ represented by 14 percent. The survey also found that a significant number of individuals acknowledged, “The government is making coordinated efforts to tackle crime and violence” in the country. The majority of people interviewed welcomed the deployment of the Regional Security System (RSS), as well as efforts already in place to review the strategic programmes of the National Security Strategy Commission. The poll also showed that the majority of residents questioned were in favour of the government’s decision to implement its Poverty Alleviation Programme and its move to put mechanisms in place to monitor how recipients use these funds. When asked about the real accomplishments of the Team Unity Government that helped to shape their positive views, 43 percent felt the government improved the infrastructure, 23 percent said the Government had provided roofing assistance; 14 per cent cited the move to provide affordable housing; and 10 percent pointed to the introduction of the Poverty Alleviation Programme.

The thighs are a common problem area, particularly among women, who tend to accumulate fat on the thighs and hips. There's no guarantee that you'll get the thighs of your dreams in 30 days, but you can shed some fat and build muscle. According to MayoClinic.com, healthy weight loss usually means a pound or two a week. You can't lose weight in only one single area of your body, but you can lose between 4 and 8 pounds in 30 days, which can make a difference in your thighs. Cardiovascular exercise helps you burn fat throughout your body, including in your thighs. If you're hoping to slim down, cardio should be a key part of your regular routine. Try workouts such as swimming, jumping rope, hula hooping, jogging or walking your dog, and aim for at least 30 minutes of cardio each day. You can increase the effectiveness of cardio by picking up the pace for two- to three-minute intervals -- a process known as interval training. If you want to maximize the amount of weight you lose, you'll need to cut calories out of your diet, and the best strategy for long-term weight loss is a combination of diet and exercise. Ensure that the diet you choose is something you can live with. Focus on eliminating empty calories and eating small meals throughout the day rather than trying to deprive yourself of every high-calorie food. If you want to tone your thighs, you don't have to get an expensive gym membership or even purchase any special equipment. Body-weight exercises use your body's weight as resistance and include workouts such as squats, lunges and box jumps. These routines are highly customizable, and you can increase their intensity by holding a weight as you do them. Aim for five to 10 reps in one to two sets, then gradually increase both your number of reps and sets as you gain strength. Daily body-weight exercise can help you tone your thighs in 30 days, depending upon your muscle strength. Weights add difficulty to your exercise routine, and if you love gadgets, gym-based exercise machines may be the way to go. A leg press works both your upper and lower legs, while a rowing machine can give you a strong cardiovascular workout while working your legs. Step-ups with a dumbbell are relatively easy, even for beginners, but give you a strong workout while providing some cardio training. Start with five to 10 reps of each exercise, then gradually increase your number of reps and sets. When you work with weights, take a break at least every other day to give your muscles time to recover.

The Ministry of Defence has been criticised over its failure to dispose of 20 obsolete nuclear submarines. Nine of the vessels still contain nuclear fuel, according to the government spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO). Failing to get rid of them risked the UK's reputation as a responsible nuclear power, the chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee said. The MoD said it would dispose of them "as soon as practically possible". According to the NAO, the department has not dismantled any of the submarines it has decommissioned since 1980. In that time, the government has spent an estimated £500m storing the retired vessels in Rosyth, Fife, and Devonport, Devon. The estimated cost of fully disposing of a submarine is £96m, the NAO said. Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), said the MoD must "get a grip" of the "spiralling" costs to the taxpayer. "For more than 20 years the MoD has been promising to dismantle its out-of-service nuclear submarines and told my committee last year that it would now address this dismal lack of progress," she said. "The disposal programmes have been beset by lengthy delays and spiralling costs, with taxpayers footing the bill." This report is a sober reminder of the expensive legacy costs of operating nuclear powered submarines, and not just building them. The MoD currently plans to spend about £40bn on four new nuclear powered submarines - the new Dreadnought class - to carry Britain's Trident nuclear weapons. But it still hasn't safely disposed of the four Resolution class submarines that were designed in the 1960s and that once carried the old Polaris nuclear missiles. The National Audit Office report is also a reminder of the added costs of delaying difficult decisions. Since 1980 the MoD has spent £500m just to store and maintain its obsolete submarines while it works out how to safely dismantle them. The MoD's future liability for maintaining and disposing of the 20 decommissioned submarines, along with the 10 now in service submarines is £7.5bn. And that is likely to rise, only adding to the pressures on a department that's already struggling to live within its means. The report is the latest in a string of warnings to the MoD over its finances, with the PAC in February calling the MoD a "repeat offender" when it came to "poor financial planning". The nuclear vessels being stored include the first submarines used to carry the UK's nuclear deterrent: the HMS Revenge, HMS Renown, HMS Repulse and HMS Resolution. Attack submarine HMS Conqueror, which sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands War, is also in storage. No submarines have been defueled since 2004, when regulators said waste-disposal facilities did not meet the required standard. The process is not set to begin again for another four years. Communities living near the UK's nuclear submarine storage sites have been critical of the MoD for years. Although defence chiefs insist the subs are safe, some experts have warned of potential radiation leaks. Christelle Gilbert, who lived on a housing estate near the Devonport dockyard, told the BBC in 2014 it was "disgusting" that it was taking so long to get rid of the vessels. "It's just too long for the submarines to be sitting there as a potential threat to the city. It's a lack of responsibility on the government's part not to get them moved," she said. "I have a son and I don't want his future jeopardised by it." The MoD said in a statement: "The disposal of nuclear submarines is a complex and challenging undertaking. "We remain committed to the safe, secure and cost-effective defueling and dismantling of all decommissioned nuclear submarines as soon as practically possible."

Robert “Bob” Jerome Watkins, 84, of Chattanooga, died on Monday, January 21, 2019. Born in Allentown, Pa., to the late Thomas and Maude Welling Watkins, Bob was an avid golfer and a great friend to those who knew him. He was also a member of the Elks Lodge #91 for over 27 years. Bob’s career spanned over four decades and around the globe, working his way up from IBEW Local 596 apprentice wireman to vice president of Tennessee Coal Company, and included service to his country in the U.S. Army. Bob will be missed by many. Survivors include his loving and devoted wife of 54 years, Susie Watkins; granddaughters, Lena Gott of Wake Forest, N.C. and Cecilia Williams of Youngsville, N.C.; grandson, Charles E. Presley, Jr. of Bluefield, Va. and six great-grandchildren. A Celebration of Bob’s life will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 26, at the Chattanooga Elk’s Lodge #91, 1067 Graysville Road, Chattanooga, Tn. 37421. Arrangements are by Heritage Funeral Home, East Brainerd Road.

MapQuest announced today that it’s released a completely overhauled version of its app for iPhone with a total redesign that hosts a much improved user interface that should make your next trip a little easier to figure out. The most notable improvement to the app, at least in my nowhere-near-comprehensive first impression, is the directions feature. In virtually every map service, whether its Google Maps, Bing Maps, MapQuest, or whatever, the directions always contain way too much information for certain junctions in your trip. Really, nobody needs to know the state route number and the multiple names of a street – one will suffice. It’s less to juggle around in the head while you’re trying to, y’know, drive an car safely. The new MapQuest app for iPhone remedies that vexing amount of information by giving you one name for your turns/exits and also presents it in a large, easily readable font. Below is a before-and-after comparison of MapQuest 3.0 and the previous version, both of which display the same step in the same directions. In the new version, which is on the right, it is clearly apparent what street I should be on the lookout for during this trek without muddling my already-divided attention with superfluous transit details. Another improvement in Mapquest 3.0 is the layout of the menus. As you can see in comparison above, or maybe you just know from using the app yourself, the main menu (where you type in your search or directions) has been consolidated from a full space-consuming menu bar at the bottom of the screen to a single “Menu” button in the lower left-hand corner. Now that the menu has been liberated from the bottom of the screen, you’ll find a few more options in the Menu with 3.0, like live traffic conditions and options to easily clear the map or edit your location/directions. Where the menu had previously been you will now find a collapsable menu of options to conduct quick searches for places like gas stations, hotels, rest stops, drug stores, theatres, banks and, yes, even ice cream vendors. You can view more than one of these categories at once, so if you really want to find a hotel that is within walking distance to bar, you can choose both of those options to satisfy your every need. The menu bar at the bottom is also collapsable now so you can see a great area of the map. Oh yeah, and if you didn’t notice in that last example, there’s now a landscape view for MapQuest, too. Other fun inclusions in this update easy searches for gas prices at nearby stations and an overall better, faster search function when trying to figure out just where the hell you wanna be going.

Patty Jenkins has opened up about what it was like leaving as the director on Marvel's Thor: The Dark World. The comments came during the filmmaker's recent participation in the press tour for Wonder Woman - her latest directorial effort that gives Gal Gadot's Diana Prince the chance to shine in her first ever standalone film. Despite the lackluster responses to both Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad last year as well, early reactions to Wonder Woman have been overwhelmingly positive up until this point, with many going out of their way to praise Jenkins for her work at the helm of it all. However, if everything had worked out between the filmmaker and Marvel Studios back in 2011, Wonder Woman would have technically been Jenkins' second official superhero film. Jenkins was, after all, originally set to direct 2013's Thor: The Dark World, which would have made her the first female director to make a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But the director eventually left the project near the end of 2011 over "creative differences," and was later replaced by Game of Thrones veteran, Alan Taylor. "No. I don’t think I could have made a good movie out of Thor 2 because I wasn’t the right director. And I don’t think I would have been in the running for Wonder Woman as a result. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m glad I didn’t do it. Because I could have made a great Thor if I could have done the story that I was wanting to do. But I don’t think I was the right person to make a great Thor out of the story they wanted to do... I was heartbroken. I was like, oh, what a bummer. But in retrospect it all makes sense." All in all, it's easy to see why Jenkins might look back on what happened, and be glad she didn't end up directing Thor: The Dark World. Without her at the helm, the film wound up being directed by Taylor, and while it was met with mildly positive reviews upon its initial release (the film has a 66% on Rotten Tomatoes), has since gone down in history as one of Marvel's most lackluster outings to date. Meanwhile, Jenkins is already racking up a fair amount of positive buzz and acclaim for herself with her work on Wonder Woman, with many already asking her if she'll be involved in the Wonder Woman sequels and what her ideas for them might be. That's not too bad considering Wonder Woman is the first feature film that Jenkins has made since 2003's Monster. So while things might not have been looking up for Jenkins back in 2011, they couldn't be any more positive right now, and all it took was her getting the chance to make the Wonder Woman movie that many fans have been waiting their entire lives to see.

Love In Bombay brought deep financial troubles for Joy Mukherjee but late director-actor's wife Neelam says that despite losing everything, the film remained very close to him. Love In Bombay brought deep financial troubles for Joy Mukherjee but late director-actor's wife Neelam, who is releasing the movie 40 years later, says that despite losing everything, the film remained very close to him. "This film was my husband's Waterloo. He lost everything he had in this film. He sunk in lot of his own money, major properties. There were 37 cases of insolvency against him. But he cleared everything and had a clean slate and started afresh. This film was very dear to him despite it bringing so much problems to him," Mrs Mukherjee said. The 1973 film, now being released by PVR on August 2, was the third part of the Love in series which started with Joy debuting with the blockbuster hit Love in Simla in 1960 and the golden jubilee hit Love in Tokyo in 1966. The film starred Joy and Waheeda Rehman in the lead. The supporting cast included names like Ashok Kumar, Kishore Kumar and Rehman. Music was composed by Shankar-Jaikishan and lyrics were penned by Majrooh Sultanpuri. Waheeda Rehman was reported saying that she was embarassed by the release of the film now. Asked about her response to Rehman's comments, Neelam was reluctant to be drawn into a debate. "Honestly, I am surprised because Waheedaji is a very gracious person. I don't believe a lady of her stature and maturity would talk like that. I am sure her best wishes are with the film. I can't believe Waheedaji would say something like this," she said. Mrs Mukherjee said her son personally approached Rehman for the premiere of the film on August 1. "My son Monjoy has personally gone with flowers and the invite. In fact, Waheedaji was invited for the audio release of the film too." Rehman is also reported to have said that Joy was not a big star but Neelam counters that saying, "Joy was one of the highest paid actors of his time. He worked with all the top actresses of that time and gave eight silver jubilee hits and one golden jubilee." Joy was launched by his producer father Sashadhar Mukherjee in "Love in Simla" opposite Sadhana. He starred in musical hits like Ek Musafir Ek Haseena, Ziddi, Shagird and Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon. The actor died on March 9, 2012 at the age of 73. Neelam Mukherjee recalled how her husband refused to seek help from his producer father when the film ran into trouble. "I am very emotional about my husband. I had a 46-year long happy marriage with him. He was one of the most wonderful human beings, very humble, very gentle. "He was the son of Shashadhar Mukherjee. There was wealth all around him but even in his worst of financial situations, he did not seek his father's help. When my father-in-law said 'let me bail you out' my husband said 'No these are my battles. This is the age where I should be giving to you not taking from you'. These were his values." Asked why the release now, Mrs Mukherjee said it was an emotional decision for her and her three children -- Sujoy Mukherjee, Monjoy Mukherjee and Simran Halwasiyar. "While going through his personal papers, my son found his will and the negative lying in Fazal Bhoy cold storage in Worli. There, he met one of the old workers who told him that 'Mr Mukherjee used to come every year and manually clean the negative'. We did not know about this. "That hit my son badly. We realised that though he never spoke about it, the film was very dear to him. This is how we decided that come what may we will release it. We are grateful to PVR for helping us. Joy had cleared all the payments but if any artiste was left out we are ready to pay them provided they show relevant documents." Neelam Mukherjee is hoping to find a closure through the release of Love in Bombay. "Of course, we went through very difficult times because of this film but there is a deep satisfaction within me at the moment because justice has been done to all the people who worked on the film. "We don't gain anything from this release. There is no money to be made. In fact, we have put in our own money into it. This film is a tribute to everyone who was a part of this movie. I look at the credits and feel bad that so many of them are no longer here."

TORONTO — Friday night’s $39.5 million dollar Lotto Max jackpot was claimed by a single ticket that was sold somewhere in British Columbia. Two tickets sold in Ontario matched six of the seven numbers plus the bonus to claim $203,242 each. A lucky ticket hold in Calgary matched the last six digits in the Extra to take home $100,000. The jackpot for the next Lotto Max draw on Jan. 4 will be approximately $10 million.

Dwayne Carter rejuvenates rap with one of the genres most anticipated releases ever. There are few sounds more invigorating and rejuvenating in rap music than the lighter flick by Dwayne Carter. After the 2011 release of Tha Carter IV fans were already anticipating a future project from New Orleans’ very own. Unfortunately, cash rules everything around us, including people and their creative rights. Signed under rapper and mentor Birdman, Lil Wayne found his all of his music owned by his corrupt, greed-driven mentor and his label, Cash Money Records. Wayne’s own label, Young Money Entertainment, and all of the artists signed at the time — such as Austin Mahone, Curren$y, DJ Khaled, Drake, Omarion and Tyga — and those still on the label today like Christina Milian and Nicki Minaj, were also under Cash Money during the legal battle of Young Money and Wayne’s music rights. While artists under Wayne’s label broke free, Wayne himself was stuck in the middle of an industry dispute he and all fans of rap music felt should never have taken place. All Wayne could do was go on tour and drop mixtape after mixtape, using titles like ‘Sorry 4 The Wait’ to give fans something to hold on to. The legendary albums wouldn’t be coming any time soon. On June 7 of this year, Wayne settled for an undisclosed amount with Cash Money to own his creative works. The legal battle was over, Tunechi was free. Fast forward to Sept. 27, Tha Carter V is no longer a meme, a myth or make believe. His 12th studio album becomes the first from Wayne not to be released under Cash Money Records in his entire career. The album starts with a recording of an interview with Wayne’s mother, detailing how proud she is of her son and the new record. The emotional build of “I love You Dwayne” appeals to long-time fans who grew up listening to the rapper before they even hit middle school. Once the famous lighter flick is heard, the dream becomes reality. Wayne connects with the best of the west, Kendrick Lamar, for “Mona Lisa” a track that may be the first in recent memory where an artist outshines Lamar. At one point, Lamar’s verse breaks off and a woman can be heard asking him to let her take a call. You can’t help but burst out laughing when you hear Wayne’s classic “Lollipop” as her ringtone. The second half of the album is arguably the best. “Took His Time” and “Demon” are meaningful songs with purposeful choruses over soulful and sometimes acoustic beats. “Momma said God took his time when he made me/I put my pride to the side/Off safety,” Wayne boasts religiously on the latter. The romantic side of Wayne appears on “Mess” and “Perfect Strangers.” The two tracks are perfect for the album, yet ironically seem to be out of place when compared with the rest of the 23-song record. Thank goodness Lil Wayne is still with us, because some can’t remember when he wasn’t.

The energy secretary, Ed Davey, has warned that energy firms could face swingeing fines and be forced to pay customers back through lower energy prices as the gas-trading scandal escalated with more whistleblowers coming forward and claims that the electricity market could have been rigged too. Davey pledged the government would "support the regulators taking whatever steps necessary to ensure the full force of the law is applied" if it is found that prices have been deliberately distorted. The row could spread to Europe on Wednesday as the whistleblower and gas price reporter at the centre of the row, Seth Freedman, meets senior EU officials to explain his concerns. The Guardian revealed on Monday that Freedman had taken a dossier of data and documents allegedly showing price manipulation in the wholesale gas market to the Financial Services Authority. Both the FSA and the energy regulator, Ofgem, which was separately approached by Freedman's employer ICIS Heren, at his request, have now launched investigations. On Tuesday more industry insiders came forward to express their concerns. Tim Fettis, who had acted as an electricity market price setter at ICIS Heren, said he had left the company after a couple of months because he felt uncomfortable about taking on such a responsible job with little training. "The current energy system is open for manipulation, there's no doubt – not just in gas, but in electricity, also because the market is so illiquid [low trading volumes]," he added. Meanwhile, a former energy trader has made similar allegations about the electricity and gas markets to ITV News. Omar Rahim said: "Most traders know that this is going on. A simple example would be electricity is trading at £50 all day and at five to five before the market closes it suddenly trades at £52. Now it immediately looks odd. It's not traded at £52 all day and right before the market's closed you see a spike up in the market." Nick Grealy, an energy consultant who publishes the No Hot Air website but formerly worked for EDF Energy, said unexplained gas price movements were a "continual source of amusement and cynicism" among those working in the wholesale markets. "They [traders from non-EDF companies] would also openly manipulate the market via the price reporting agencies," added Grealy, who also used to buy power for the National Health Service. Jason Torquato, who also worked at ICIS Heren as a gas-price setter, said he was certain any manipulation of indices created by the price-reporting agencies could "influence retail gas prices". Davey, who was broadly aware of the allegations since Friday, has been determined to be seen to act, and given the scale of voter anger at energy prices, to avoid any whiff of complacency. During his statement there were widespread calls from all parties for action to protect energy consumers, as well as concern that other areas, including food prices, might also be open to abuse. Tory MPs called for the book to be thrown at whoever was responsible. Davey insisted he did not want to prejudge the inquiries launched in the wake of the allegations, adding that the investigations were at an early stage, but he said they could involve either civil or criminal offences. If certain offences, including cartel offences, are proved to be committed there are very serious potential penalties. Fines can be up to 10% of a company's worldwide turnover. He called on other whistleblowers to come forward, saying the government had powers to protect their anonymity. Davey said he was willing to hand the regulators further powers, adding that the UK had taken the lead in developing the EU's regulation wholesale energy market integrity, legislation that will come into force in the UK shortly. The directive strengthens regulators' powers to tackle market abuse. The minister said it was not clear if the Guardian's allegations related to physical or financial markets, with the energy regulator Ofgem responsible for the former and the FSA the lead body for the latter. He added that the Office of Fair Trading also stood ready to intervene if necessary. The shadow energy secretary, Caroline Flint, responded by claiming there were deep structural problems in the energy market and its regulation. She said: "Energy companies have been able to run their businesses in such a complicated way it is not possible to know the true cost of energy. Most energy is bought and sold through secret back-room deals and energy companies are allowed to generate power, buy it for themselves and sell it on to the public." She said it was time to force companies to sell the electricity they generated into an open pool so that anyone could purchase to retail to the public, so increasing transparency and competition. She also again called for a new regulator to replace Ofgem, but Davey rejected the proposal, saying a massive reorganisation would not speed up the investigation. An open pool would not tackle the problem of liquidity, he added. Pat McFadden, a former business minister, said it would reflect badly if it was possible to tackle the Libor scandal but not possible to do the same for other markets, including food, due to a lack of international powers. Frank Dobson, a former energy minister, said the electricity market had become a speculators' racket designed to manipulate the market. The concern about market manipulation was equally strongly expressed on both sides of the Commons, as MPs said voters were increasingly angry at the way in which they were being ripped off by the energy companies. Patrick Heren, who established the price-reporting agency now known as ICIS Heren and ran the business for 15 years before selling it, said it was inevitable that traders tried to "game" the system. Rather than criticise price reporters, he said, they should be defended for getting close to a near approximation of the real price. "The market price [as given by ICIS and others] reflects the market fundamentals, although you can get little tweaks," he explained. It was the job of a good price reporter to take all gyrations into account. "Obviously the thing about reporting the market is that you regard the whole lot as a pack of liars, well not liars, but everyone is defending a position. Most tell the truth, but not the whole truth." Last night the parent company of British Gas, Centrica, said: "Traders are prohibited from providing price information to price reporting agencies. It's important to stress that the wholesale gas market has more than 50 participants, not just energy supply companies, handling hundreds of trades every day. It is in everyone's interests that there is a well-functioning and orderly wholesale energy market."

Deloitte is a global provider of audit and assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax and related services with a network of member firms in more than 150 countries and territories. Ten simple underrated onboarding strategies to keep the new generation of top talent loyal, engaged and productive. Christmas is a time for giving, but if you're also looking for ways to give back, here are three places to shop in London where you can buy presents that are ethical, sustainable and support charities. Who Will Win The 2018 Holiday Season? With so much opportunity for the taking during holiday 2018, how can retailers and brands ensure they are getting a piece of the pie?

America’s means-tested welfare spending has reached $1 trillion per year. Welfare spending has hit a stunning all-time high. A new Congressional Research Service report confirms what research here at the Heritage Foundation has shown: Means-tested welfare programs now cost taxpayers roughly $1 trillion a year. Unlike general government programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, means-tested welfare programs provide assistance exclusively to poor and low-income individuals. The federal government runs over 80 means-tested programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to around 100 million Americans. That’s a third of the U.S. population. Combined federal and state expenditures on these programs come to roughly $9,000 per recipient per year. The size and cost of these programs are largely hidden from public view, because government decision-makers and the mainstream media invariably discuss welfare one program at a time. By analyzing each of the 80-plus programs in isolation, they conceal the overall size of the welfare state, because most welfare recipients receive aid from several programs at once. Converted into cash, total welfare spending would equal five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S. #ad#Although liberals constantly lament the level of defense spending, annual spending on means-tested-welfare has exceeded defense spending for nearly two decades — and on President Obama’s watch, means-tested-welfare spending has increased by more than a third. This isn’t a temporary increase because of the recession: Under Obama’s budget plans, welfare spending would continue to grow in the next decade, reaching $1.56 trillion by 2022. Under the same budget plan, during that decade the U.S. would spend well over $2 on welfare for every $1 it spent on national defense. Over the summer, the administration announced that it would waive work requirements in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. This illegal move puts at risk the successes of the 1996 welfare reform — which created TANF and resulted in major declines in the welfare rolls and higher rates of employment among low-income Americans. Gutting TANF’s work requirements also means that only two of the nation’s 80-plus welfare programs will require able-bodied recipients to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid. For liberals, a bigger welfare state and greater dependence on government seems to equate with helping the poor. This view is contrary to President Lyndon Johnson’s original aim in launching the War on Poverty. Johnson sought to make the poor self-sufficient, not dependent on government. But after $19 trillion in means-tested-welfare spending, our nation is farther than ever from that original goal. Putting ever-greater numbers of Americans on welfare is not a mark of success. Although government spending may artificially prop up living standards, it utterly fails in the real task of building self-sufficiency. The growth of welfare is unsustainable, and is no way to promote the authentic well-being of Americans. Promisingly, we can take steps to bring this spending under control while helping those in need. Once the unemployment rate declines, total welfare spending should be returned to pre-recession levels and then be allowed to grow no faster than the rate of inflation. This would save taxpayers over $2.5 trillion in the next decade. In addition, rather than weakening work requirements, policymakers should expand this crucial element of welfare to other means-tested programs such as food stamps and public housing, building on the success of the 1996 reforms. Contrary to liberal ideology, promoting self-reliance, rather than government dependence, is the way to help the poor and encourage a thriving society.