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The head of a Russian prostitution ring was jailed for life for killing 14 young women and burying them in a mass grave. Eduard Chudinov's gang was accused of luring young girls to an apartment in the Urals region of eastern Russia between 2002 and 2005 where they were raped and told they would work as prostitutes, Russian media reported. If they refused, they were killed, the reports said. The gang was arrested when bodies of girls between 13 and 25 years old were discovered in a shallow grave in a forest outside the town of Levikha in February 2007, NTV television channel reported. Seven other members of the gang, four of whom were relatives, were also found guilty and given terms of between 10 and 22 years, Interfax said.
Lancelot D'Cunha, CEO of Sharyans Wealth Management, believes that the IT stocks have already factored in negatives and there won't be any significant earnings downgrade. He says the IT stocks are looking attractive at current levels. Sanjeev Bhasin, an independent market analyst, says the IT stocks may bear the brunt of slowdown in US economy.
The creation of a new rail authority for the South East would improve train services for passengers, according to a report published on Tuesday. A study showed a third of journeys to and from the capital in the south east extend further than Greater London. A Greater South East Rail Authority would set timetables, regulate peak fares and set train operator contracts. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said the authority should work alongside Network Rail. The institute, which commissioned the study, said that with the planned abolition of the Strategic Rail Authority, announced by the government last July, Transport for London had argued for greater influence over passenger services within Greater London. "Given the strong passenger rail links between London and the greater south east it is questionable whether the responsibility for franchising services should go exclusively to the Mayor," said spokeswoman Julie Foley. "We think responsibility for passenger services should be given to a new Greater South East Rail Authority." The report makes three other recommendations to improve transport in the South East. Introduction of national congestion charging in the next 10 to 15 years on condition that there is significant investment in public transport. Measures to reduce car trips and encourage use of public transport, walking and cycling, including travel plans for businesses and schools. Prioritising the interests of cyclists and pedestrians through better urban planning and speed management. It also calls for a single regional board to advise the government on housing, planning and transport.
Todd speaks with RNC spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany about her temporary ban from Instagram and the "Green New Deal." Todd speaks with Prestonwood Baptist Church Pastor Dr. Jack Graham about the National Prayer Breakfast. Todd speaks with attorney for Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann Todd McMurty about his client's possible lawsuits against members of the media.
Within five minutes of Aldershot Town being drawn against Manchester United in the fourth round of the Carling Cup, the League Two club's website crashed and did not recover for days. Graham Brookland, lifelong supporter and the club's communications and website manager, had to sort out the problem, but not before noticing the expression on 13-year-old son Oliver's face. "The look of pure joy on his face took me back to when I was a kid," said Brookland. "Oliver goes to school and gets ribbed for supporting the Shots but now he can saying that his team is playing Man United." On Thursday, Football League clubs voted in favour of proposals that could result in the Premier League picking up their best young talent for a fraction of what they currently pay. There were 46 votes in favour, 22 against, three no-shows and one abstention. I'm told it was a reluctant "yes" from many of the clubs, who felt they had no choice. If they voted "no", the Premier League threatened to withdraw over £5m of funding that they give to lower league clubs each year for youth development. It is all tied in with the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), which will radically modernise youth development in England, introducing a four-tier academy system. The new deal will see every club receive an increase in their funding for a guaranteed four-year period, with the amount determined by their academy status. Against a background of a reduced tv deal and an uncertain economic climate, most Football League clubs are understood to have welcomed the funding increase - but Peterborough director of football Barry Fry told me the Premier League's threat felt like blackmail. Birmingham and Leicester both radically overhauled their squads in the summer - and on the evidence at St Andrew's on Sunday it is the club which acted out of financial necessity that is starting to look in better shape. Blues defeated the Foxes 2-0 to win their third straight fixture in all competitions and deserved their three points after a second-half performance during which they rattled opponents who had not conceded in 412 minutes of Championship action coming into the contest. It was a second-half display that added to a growing feeling around the club that, within the playing squad at least, an unsettling and uncertain summer belongs firmly in the past.
We have a very strong new contender for Worst Restaurant Customer of 2015. My experience with this table was cruel and unnecessary but sadly it’s not uncommon. With that said: Please be good to your waiters. I know it’s annoying when things aren’t right. I know how aggravating it is to receive a hefty bill when all night you’ve been wondering why the table that came in after you was served before you. But waiters are mere messengers most of the time, and it’s wrong to shoot them, however bad the news. Lead image via Jess Jones/Asbury Park Press. Other image via pingu2004/Shutterstock.
Local designer launches "Have Links, Will Travel" Who has time for shopping, especially if you’re a dude? That was Chicago jewelry designer Tracey Mayer’s thought after months of listening to men tell her they didn’t have time to put together a good look for themselves. So instead of letting Midwestern men succumb to fashion faux pas, Mayer decided to create ‘Have Links, will travel,’ a personalized service that allows men with very busy lifestyles to purchase Mayer’s prestigious cufflinks from the comfort of their office, with no additional fee. Instead of dragging yourself to the store, Mayer is bringing the store to you. Actually, she brings her collection of more than 70 cufflinks, to be exact. The men simply make their selections from the samples, and Tracey Mayer ships the product directly to them. Mayer shows up herself for many of the appointments to help choose the perfect pair. The designer also has a line of necklaces, bracelets and rings. For more information, visit www.traceymayer.com or call to set up an appointment; 847.217.6647.
Growing up with Ernie Els as his uncle, Jovan Rebula was bound to catch the golf bug. And if his showing at the first major of the year – the prestigious Masters, currently being played at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, US – is anything to go by, the bug got him good. Although he failed to make the cut, the 21-year-old showed in the first round that he could well be the future of South African golf. His round of one-over 73 included four birdies and allowed him to leave experienced players – including former champions Danny Willett (2016) and Jordan Spieth (2015), as well as world number one Justin Rose – behind him. Rebula will remain an amateur until he finishes his studies at the Raymond J Harbert College of Business, located at Auburn University in Alabama in the US. The youngster, whose mother, Carina, is Els’ sister, grew up in George. He started playing at an early age and soon showed that the talent that obviously ran in the Els family had not passed him by. He earned his ticket to the Masters by winning the British Amateur Championship in June, becoming the first South African to do so since 1966, when Bobby Cole won. As British amateur champion, he was also invited to participate at the British Open at Carnoustie the following month, but he was in double figures on the wrong side of par after two rounds and failed to make the cut. However, he did gain experience – experience that helped him do much better on the difficult Augusta National. He was probably as prepared as he could be going to the first tee on Thursday. “I have been speaking a good bit to my uncle these past couple of days, and the thing I took away was that he told me I am a good golfer and I am there for a reason. That gave me a little bit of belief. Rebula also got advice from the many experienced South Africans – such as Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace – who were competing at the Masters. Of course, this helped prepare him for the first round, but he still had to go out and play on his own. Fellow golfers such as Els, Grace and Schwartzel were not the only ones who helped Rebula along the way. Rebula is so family-orientated that he even turned down the opportunity to stay at the Crow’s Nest – the accommodation at the Augusta National Golf Club clubhouse for amateur players competing at the Masters. The rooms in which the players sleep are steeped in history and are adorned with photos of past amateurs who have stayed there, including Jack Nicklaus, Tommy Aaron, Tom Watson, Ben Crenshaw, Craig Stadler, Mark O’Meara, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods – all of whom went on to win the Masters as professionals. It is not the first time that Rebula did something for his family. As a 14-year-old, he won the Serbian International Amateur Championship, coming back from eight shots behind in the final round to beat long-hitter Ilija Djurdjevic in a play-off. “My father is Serbian and I did it for him,” he said at the time.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in two consolidated cases that, depending on the outcome, could have a profound impact on how race is used to draw voting district lines in the future. Ashley Westerman has more from Washington, D.C. 1. When Alabama legislators redrew the state’s voting district lines in 2012, did they abide by the Voting Rights Act? 2. Did they use race in the right way when drawing those new district lines? Plaintiffs accuse Alabama of using unconstitutional racial gerrymandering tactics to redraw their voting districts. In the courtroom during oral arguments, the justices seemed split. For example, Justice Elena Kagan said “the numbers speak for themselves” in that it sounded like race was a key factor in the voting lines being drawn. However, Chief Justice John Roberts seemed almost sympathetic to states who were trying to find that “sweet spot” between using race as a factor, but not too much. Supreme Court is likely to rule in one of two ways. Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola University in Los Angeles, says the most narrow ruling would be for the high court to simply use this case to construe Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. He adds that since Section 5 was ruled unconstitutional last year and Alabama would not have predicted that, the state will probably just have to redraw their district lines. According to Levitt, this could have a huge impact on the Voting Rights Act, redistricting and voting in general moving forward. It would also affect many states who have drawn districts the same as Alabama. But it’s difficult to predict how this Supreme Court will rule, as this court has been conflicted about racial gerrymandering issues in the past. A ruling is expected in June of next year.
WOOSTER — Veteran marathon runner Patrice Smith, of Wooster, didn’t let anything slow her down on Monday when she crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon to place 15th out of about 850 other runners in her 55- to 59-year-old age class with a time of 3:26.11. Prior to the race, Smith said that she didn’t have such a lofty expectation of her performance. “I just wanted to try and qualify for next year’s race,” she said on Tuesday. “And, oh my gosh, I did that by about 40 minutes.” Smith needed to finish the race in 4 hours and 5 minutes in order to earn her way back to the starting stripe. Smith didn’t learn, officially, what place she finished until later. She started in the fourth wave of the day and had to wait until times from the three previous waves were released. She credits her high placement to her practice routine, saying that she plotted practice courses that mimicked the Boston Marathon — with hills toward the end — while preparing for the trek.
Read the full address by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence at the Knesset in Jerusalem on Monday. During his speech, he was interrupted by Israeli Arab lawmakers in protest of the address. In the story of the Jews, we've always seen the story of America. It is the story of an exodus, a journey from persecution to freedom, a story that shows the power of faith and the promise of hope. My country’s very first settlers also saw themselves as pilgrims, sent by Providence, to build a new Promised Land. The songs and stories of the people of Israel were their anthems, and they faithfully taught them to their children, and do to this day. And our founders, as others have said, turned to the wisdom of the Hebrew Bible for direction, guidance and inspiration. And your story inspired my forebears to create what our 16th president called a “new birth of freedom.” And down through the generations, the American people became fierce advocates of the Jewish people’s aspiration to return to the land of your forefathers – (applause) – to claim your own new birth of freedom in your beloved homeland. The Jewish people held fast to a promise through all the ages, written so long ago, that “even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens," from there He would gather and bring you back to the land which your fathers possessed. Through a 2,000-year exile, the longest of any people, anywhere, through conquests and expulsions, inquisitions and pogroms, the Jewish people held on to this promise, and they held onto it through the longest and darkest of nights. A night that Elie Wiesel proclaimed “seven times sealed.” A night that transformed the small faces of children into smoke under a silent sky. A night that consumed the faith of so many and that challenges the faith of so many still. The Jewish people’s unbreakable bond to this sacred city reaches back more than 3,000 years. It was here, in Jerusalem, on Mount Moriah that Abraham offered his son, Isaac, and was credited with righteousness for his faith in God. In announcing his decision on Jerusalem, the president also called, in his words, “on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites, including at the Temple Mount, also known as the Haram al-Sharif.” And he made it clear that we're not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders. And you, who know the price of war, know best what the blessings of peace can bring – to you, to your children and future generations. Now, there are those who believe that the world can't change; that we're destined to engage in endless violence; that age-old conflicts can’t be solved; and that hope itself is an illusion. But, my friends, President Trump doesn’t believe it. I don’t believe it. And neither do you. Over the past two days, I’ve traveled to Egypt and Jordan, two nations with whom Israel has long enjoyed the fruits of peace. I spoke with America’s great friends, President Al-Sissi of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, about the courage of their predecessors who forged an end to conflict with Israel in their time. The winds of change can already be witnessed across the Middle East. Long-standing enemies are becoming partners. Old foes are finding new ground for cooperation. And the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael are coming together in common cause as never before. Radical Islamic terrorism knows no borders – targeting America, Israel, nations across the Middle East and the wider world. It respects no creed – stealing the lives of Jews, Christians and especially Muslims. And radical Islamic terrorism understands no reality other than brute force. That dangerous regime sows chaos across the region. Last year alone, even as its citizens cried out for help with basic necessities, Iran devoted more than $4 billion to malign activities in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere across the region. It has supported terrorist groups that even now sit on Israel’s doorstep. And worst of all, the Iranian regime has pursued a clandestine nuclear program, and at this very hour is developing advanced ballistic missiles. At President Trump's direction, we're working to enact effective and lasting restraints on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Earlier this month, the president waived sanctions on Iran to give the Congress and our European allies time to pass stronger measures. But as President Trump made clear, this is the last time. Whatever the outcome of those negotiations, today I have a solemn promise to Israel, to all the Middle East and to the world: The United States of America will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. (Applause.) Beyond the nuclear deal, we will also no longer tolerate Iran’s support of terrorism or its brutal attempts to suppress its own people. While at times it may seem hard to see, those who call the Middle East their home have more that unites them than divides them – not only in common threats, but in the common hope for a future of security and prosperity and peace, and in the common ancestry of faith that runs throughout these very lands. Today, Jews, Christians, and Muslims – more than half the population of the Earth, and nearly all the people of the Middle East – claim Abraham as their forefather in faith. Only steps from here, in the Old City of Jerusalem, we see the followers of these three great religions in constant contact with one another. And we see each faith come to life in new and renewed ways every day. At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we see a Christian child receiving the gift of grace, in baptism. At the Western Wall, we see a young Jewish boy being bar-mitzvahed. And at the Haram al-Sharif, we see young Muslims, heads bowed in prayer.
Newswise — “Toxicological Sciences would like to assure our readers that the scientific paper is not dead. It is very much alive and will continue to drive scientific communication for many years to come, modernizing to meet the changing research landscape,” writes Toxicological Sciences Editor-in-Chief Gary W. Miller in the July 2018 issue. The high-quality research papers which appear in the July 2018 issue include Contemporary Reviews and a Historical Perspective on air pollution; a Contemporary Review on the role of the immune system in thorax toxicology; and Editor’s Highlights on PBPK modeling of antibiotics in dairy cattle; PCBs and steatohepatitis; uranium mine particles and cardiopulmonary toxicity; green plasticizers and reproductive health; and antiandrogenic mixtures and male reproduction. Toxicological Sciences is the official journal of the Society of Toxicology (SOT), a professional and scholarly organization of more than 8,000 scientists from academic institutions, government, and industry representing the great variety of individuals who practice toxicology in the United States and abroad.
“Why does the government of this country (Israel) think that the world will be impervious to this macabre genocide that is being committed today against the Palestinian people?” Castro wrote. Castro, 87, ruled Cuba from 1959 until 2006, when he handed over power to his brother Raul. Cuba broke diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973 after the Yom Kippur War. In a more conciliatory moment, in 2010, Castro told Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg that Israel “without a doubt” has a right to exist.
After his archives provided us with a rare and exciting peek into different chapters of World War II and the State of Israel's history, we now reach the sixth and last part of the series of articles dedicated to Aryeh Yaakobi's photos. This time we present the people and sights of the Israel Air Force. See all talkbacks "Last peek at Aryeh Yaakobi albums "
New 36.6 CEO Jere Calmes puts skills learned as a competitive skier to work in the business world. Nesting dolls have gone from enshrining Russia's political leaders to predicting them. In many ways, Cafe Shokolad is a typical fashionable downtown cafe. Every so often in life we come up against situations where we have to do something unpleasant and boring but necessary. It was an exhilarating experience for a 19-year-old. None of my friends in Moscow dreamed of earning a living and having a place of their own. It is true that the presidential election has been somewhat boring.
Environmental activists in South Africa have won a landmark legal victory after the high court ordered the government to get prior community consent before granting mining rights. The judgment represents a major victory for campaigners in Xolobeni, a community in Pondoland, who have been involved in a protracted and sometimes violent struggle against a proposed titanium mine. Their lawyers told the court that the department of mineral resources offered a mining concession to the Australian company Transworld Energy and Mineral Resources without the prior informed consent of local residents. The proposed project aimed to generate annual revenues of £140m for the 25-year life of the opencast pit, which would have produced zircon, rutile and titanium for laptop computers, bicycles, golf clubs, watches and drill bits. But local residents said the clearance of the dunes would destroy their homes, their culture and the ecology of the Wild Coast region. They formed the Amadiba Crisis Committee, which staged protests and launched a legal challenge that led to Thursday’s victory. Until now the informal rights of customary communities were not protected by law, but Judge Annali Basson ruled they now have the right to decide how their territory is used. “As such they may not be deprived of their land without their consent,” Basson was quoted as saying in local reports. Several members of the Amadiba Crisis Committee have been killed or threatened, which made the victory more significant. “I’m so happy. This shows that our country has hope because the courts of law provide real justice for citizens despite politicians who are looting South Africa in the name of development,” said Nonhle Mbuthuma whose story was featured earlier this year in the Guardian’s Defenders series. Worldwide, the struggle for land and resources is taking a growing toll on lives and the environment. Last year, 207 activists were murdered while defending their land and environment, according to the watchdog NGO Global Witness.
Whether it was the sound of the blues coming from such bands as The Bobby Flurie Band and Deanna Bogart or the taste of the funnel cakes and German frankfurters, both local and out-of-town attendees were more than pleased with the Western Maryland Blues Fest. Fans attending the festival swayed with the music as they watched the performers play continuous music on alternating stages. Several out-of-town attendees said the set-up was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the Blues Fest. "I think this is a really nice set-up; having dual stages and alternating between them is good," said Chris Paczkowski, 29, of Washington. Norine Dagliano, 48, of Hagerstown said she has been to several other blues festivals, including the D.C. Blues Fest and the Chesapeake Blues Fest, and she especially liked the set-up of the Western Maryland Blues Fest. "I think it's wonderful, and it has been improving every year," Dagliano said, "They're selling the blues fest shirts and hats, and the staggered stages was a great idea." Several out-of-towners commented favorably on the size of the crowd and the variety of the acts. "I have waited two years to go to this, and now that I am finally here I am very impressed with the atmosphere of the crowd, the excellent performers, and the very easy access to get here," said 49-year-old Robert Whye of Westminster, Md. "This is my third time being here; it's not as large as other concerts I have been to, but it is very nice," said Gloria Hollerbrush, 52, of York, Pa. Husband and wife Dennis Gober and Barbara Barone, both 53, who traveled from Huntsville, Ala., for the event, said there were many pluses to attending this Blues Fest compared to others they have seen in their area. "The Big Spring Jam, where we live, is in a park and is very spread-out; this Blues Fest is more contained, and I think it is nice that they set out chairs," Barone said. "One thing is it's not as hot here; it's more together and has a better atmosphere," Gober said, "I really enjoyed Clarence Spady and Duffy Kane, and I just bought the Nighthawks CD. They play really good music." Rich Jamiolkowski, 53, of Selinsgrove, Pa., said he is a fan of blues festivals and he enjoyed Saturday's festivities. "I have been to the Poconos Blues Fest and the Billstown Blues Fest, and I would say this one falls in between of those two, but it has grown for the better," Jamiolkowski said. In addition to members of the crowd enjoying the blues festivities, performers and some law enforcement officials enjoyed the roles they played in the Blues Fest. "I chose to do this for overtime, and I like it," said Officer Brian Barnhart, 33, of the Hagerstown City Police Department. Kathleen McLaughlin, of The Bobby Flurie Band said she had a great time performing in the festival. "I love playing here; the sound set-up is great and they treat you like gold," McLaughlin said. For Kim Nehring, 27, of Hagerstown, the Blues Fest was an opportunity to hear music she would not normally listen to. "It is so much fun and I have come every year," Nehring said, "I'm not a big fan of the blues except for these two days out of the year."
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As an economic system for a nation, socialism is a miserable failure. Especially real socialism (government ownership of the means of productions, government-dictated prices, etc). But that doesn’t stop some people from defending socialism. They claim the theory is noble since it is based on sharing and equality. And they even say that many things we like in society – such as the family, neighborhoods, community groups – are based on socialist principles. I think it would be more accurate to say those institutions are based on non-market principles rather than socialist principles, but that raises an interesting question. Would socialism be okay if it was voluntary? In a column for FEE, Tim Worstall explains that we shouldn’t object to socialism – so long as it isn’t coercive. …voluntary socialism does work sometimes, and it’s habitual now to mention Mondragon as an example of industrial companies that succeed as worker-owned organizations. But the two important words there are voluntary and sometimes.…worker ownership works better sometimes and that more capitalist organizational forms work better elsewhere. What we need is a method of sorting through what works best when—and that’s where the market comes in. …an interesting observation to make about that claimed superiority, of performance at least, of the socialist form. If it were truly more productive always and everywhere, then it would have taken over the economy already. In the real world, though, it’s hard to find examples of successful socialist entities. Consider what just happened to Panera Cares. If it was “a test of humanity,” then we failed. Interesting confession by Shaich. I wonder if we’ll ever see Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admit socialism doesn’t make sense. The Kibbutz in Israel were perhaps the most famous example of voluntary socialism. The late Gary Becker explained their collectivist structure. But this system has basically disappeared. By abolishing capitalistic organization, the founders expected members to live in contentment and harmony and to work for the common good. From what I was told and could observe during my brief visit, there was little harmony. Jealousy abounded, directed at those who were only a little better off… Kibbutzniks were also angry at slackers who appeared to be living off the labor of others. …the socialist zeal that propelled the kibbutz movement in its early days has now largely disappeared. …Many were forced into bankruptcy… Self-interest and family orientation are products not of capitalism but of a human nature developed under evolutionary pressure over eons. They will outlive any utopian experiment. …Utopian socialistic experiments like the kibbutz movement, and countries that tried to create large-scale efficient socialism, all failed for the same reasons. Indeed, not only have the Kibbutz faded away, but the entire nation of Israel has moved significantly in the direction of free markets. Some stories do have happy endings. I’ll close with this cartoon, which perfectly illustrates why socialism doesn’t work, regardless of the level of coercion. P.S. I can’t resist sharing an unrelated excerpt from Tim Worstall’s column. One of the primary objections to capitalism is the boilerplate insistence that in a capitalist system, the worker doesn’t gain the full value of her labor. This is exploitation, and something must be done about it. The argument has a major logical fault: It is a two-way street, for the capitalist doesn’t gain the full product of the use of their capital, either, meaning the capitalist is equally exploited. Labor and capital are complementary factors of production. Labor helps capital generate a return, and capital helps labor generate income. Which is why it is in the best interest of workers to get rid of capital gains taxes, lower the corporate tax rate, eliminate the death tax. The more investment we have, the more productivity goes up, and the more wages increase.
A federal judge ruled for the clerk of court who encouraged an employee to resign after he posted on his Facebook page that a state attorney “should be tarred and feathered if not hung from a tree” for failing to seek the death penalty against an accused double murderer; the post disrupted the office for days. The European Commission gave the green light Tuesday to a citizen’s petition seeking a minimum wage for gig economy workers, allowing petition organizers to begin collecting signatures of support. Requiring applicants seeking work at EU government institutions to be proficient in either English, French or German as a second language is discriminatory, the European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday, but left the door open for review if the institutions can prove a legitimate justification for the requirement. A woman who says she reported a colleague’s sexual harassment allegations against the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard can advance claims that she was fired as former director of D.C. Government Operations in retaliation, a federal judge ruled. Noting its departure from an employer’s usual reliance on arbitration clauses, the Ninth Circuit on Thursday rejected Oracle’s bid to duck arbitration in a $150 million spat with its sales staff over commission. Marywood University didn’t hold back in its response to parody videos that portrayed its president, a nun, as Adolf Hitler. The professor responsible for the roast was swiftly fired. Seeing no evidence that dating the lawyer had placed her in a protected class, the First Circuit affirmed dismissal of discrimination claims from a woman fired by Avon because she dated an attorney who had previously sued the company. University of California research and technical employees got a boost from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Wednesday when he joined them at a rally in Los Angeles over stalled contract negotiations as union members call for better wages and a reduction in outsourcing. Fired by the MLB Network in 2014 over his alleged conduct at a youth baseball tournament, former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Mitch Williams can keep a $1.5 million jury award, a New Jersey appeals court ruled Thursday. A federal judge approved a $7.5 million settlement against Bank of America for failing to reimburse mortgage loan officers for expenses. A federal judge found that a black police officer who was found not guilty of domestic violence charges sufficiently alleged that the District of Columbia Police Department discriminated against him by firing him, while a white colleague who was convicted of similar charges was not fired. A federal judge refused to dismiss a former police chief’s racial discrimination and wrongful termination lawsuit against Alexander City, Ala.; the city does not qualify for immunity as the allegations presented are a violation of federal law. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been hit with a lawsuit from a suspended sheriff who claims the governor’s decision to oust him was nothing more than a “political power play” designed to scapegoat him for last year’s Parkland high school massacre.
Our nationally recognized team of adolescent health professionals comprehensively assesses young people at Golisano Children’s Hospital and develops and implements effective, individualized treatment plans. For over a quarter century, our interdisciplinary team has been treating young people with eating disorders and their families using the biopsychosocial approach, with excellent outcomes. Greater than 80% of patients admitted for treatment of anorexia nervosa are still in recovery 4 or more years after treatment. Susan “Shellie” Yussman, M.D., M.P.H. An interdisciplinary team of professionals collaborate to provide individualized programs developed for each person’s specific needs. Learn more about interdisciplinary professionals who may be involved.
If you've always wanted to customize the lid of your MacBook but hate the idea of putting stickers on it, a new Kickstarter is attempting to raise funds to produce a laptop case that can be decorated, adorned, or upgraded with most building toys, including Lego. The Brik Case is designed to snap onto the lid of MacBooks and MacBook Pros manufactured after 2013, and it not only provides a little extra protection, it can also be adorned with plastic building bricks like Mega Bloks, PixelBlocks, KRE-O, or K'NEX Bricks. But let's not beat around the bush here, most people pre-ordering one for $35 will be getting it for its Lego compatibility, even though it's not an officially-licensed Lego product.
Tyler York recently celebrated his commitment to play baseball at Washington & Jefferson. Newark Catholic senior Tyler York recently celebrated his commitment to play baseball at Washington & Jefferson. York, an infielder, has been one of the Green Wave’s top hitters the past two seasons.
A 77-year-old man was in stable condition Wednesday after he was struck by a motorist in a crosswalk on San Fernando Road, police said. The man was walking across San Fernando Road at 6:57 p.m., when a motorist turning from Grover Avenue, hit him in the crosswalk, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. Paramedics took the man to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where doctors said he was in stable condition, he added.
One day he mentioned to his sister-in-law that if they ever wanted a night out we would be happy to babysit. She said no, because male family members were the most likely to molest their child. The sister-in-law is a licensed family therapist with a degree from a good school. I no longer feel comfortable even being around them (or my nephew), because I am worried that at any moment I could be accused of something. I don’t trust them. I don’t know what to do. My husband really wants to be a part of his nephew’s life. Part of me wants to be vindictive and “out” her for her personal beliefs to her gay clients, but I realize that would be pointless. I guess it’s possible that this woman is a good therapist, but she’s a pretty poor family member, and she obviously doesn’t give a hoot about insulting both of you. Given their attitude toward you two, you are correct to be extremely cautious and self-protective regarding the baby. Neither of you should be alone with the child, to avoid accusations. Because your sister-in-law has been so honest with you regarding her monstrous assumption, you should be honest with her about how this affects you, your relationship with them and with the child. Be prepared, however – they may not care. It is a very tall order for you to remain in this child’s life, but I do think you should try. Walk this road with your husband – don’t abandon him to deal with this mess alone. Dear Amy: I recently became separated after almost 20 years of marriage. I became active on Facebook, started to communicate with a beautiful lady and we liked each other. We started a relationship and as we learned about each other, we discovered that we are related. Her mother was my grandfather’s sister, so my friend is my father’s cousin. What are the rules when dating someone you are related to? I’m not sure if I should keep seeing her. Dear Wondering: The rules for dating cousins are the same as the rules for dating others: Be kind, respectful and don’t scare the horses. Perhaps your mother has some sort of grudge against your father’s kin. Maybe she objects to you dating before your divorce is final. But she can’t explain her objections if she isn’t speaking to you. You are an adult. Your job is to listen, weigh your options and the impact on your (other) relationships and then make your choice and accept the consequences. Dear Amy: I got shivers down my spine when I read the letter from “Two Decades of Guilt,” who was wondering if she should report the men who sexually assaulted her 20 years ago. Thank you for encouraging her to go to the police. Dear Been There: I have received dozens of responses from others who say they have “Been There,” and all are cheering her on.
HANOI, Vietnam – Vietnamese fishermen have rescued an American man who had been drifting at sea for eight days on a disabled yacht. Coastguard official Vo Hoang Liet from southern Soc Trang province said Monday that Kenneth Putney of Melbourne, Florida, was in good condition after being rescued Thursday. Liet says Putney, 54, told Vietnamese authorities that he and three others were towing a yacht from the Philippines to Thailand when the towing rope broke on Dec. 15. He says Putney jumped onto the yacht because he feared it would be lost. Liet says Putney drifted on the yacht for eight days before being rescued by the fishermen 15 miles off the coast. Putney will be handed over to U.S. embassy. Liet did not say what happened to the other vessel.
Actually not only the Qur’anic message keeps attracting people all over the world, its words also move people who may not know a word of Arabic language. Famous Egyptian reciter Qari Abdul Basit reportedly once accompanied President Gamal Abdul Nasser to a meeting with the Soviet leaders. During a break in the meeting, Nasir asked him to recite the Qur’an before the top Soviet leaders. When he finished the recitation, Qari Abdul Basit saw four of them shedding tears. “We don’t know what it was,” they later explained. But there was something touching in those Words! Ironically, at that time Qur’an was the forbidden tree for the Muslims in the Soviet Union. Reading, teaching, or even possessing a copy of the Qur’an resulted in the most severe punishments. The KGB was always on the lookout. Its agents could enter any house, any time, if they suspected anyone inside of reading Qur’an or offering prayers. Religious leaders were drafted for compulsory labour. Mosques and Islamic schools were closed down and turned into cinema houses, factories and offices. One could not find a copy of the Qur’an anywhere. The ruthless state machinery did everything within its power to extinguish the flame of Qur’an from the empire. Yet during those seventy dark years Muslims kept the flame burning. They developed elaborate camouflage mechanisms, at tremendous risks, to teach Qur’an to their children. Little children had to stay away from their parents for months at a time as they retired to secret hujras (rooms) where they memorised Qur’an and received religious instructions without ever having looked at a printed page. Their stories remain a neglected but extremely bright part of our recent history. “This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear Allah.” (Al- Baqarah 2:2). “The Most Gracious! It is He Who has taught the Qur’an.” (Al- Rahman 55:1-2). It challenges: “Say, If the whole of mankind and Jinn were to gather together to produce the like of this Qur’an, they could not produce the like thereof, even if they backed up each other with help and support.” (Banu Israel 17:88). It claims: “Verily it is We Who revealed the Remembrance and verily We are its guardians.” (Al-Hijr, 15:9). Qur’an is the first document in the Arabic language. There is no other language of the world that has withstood the passage of over fourteen centuries. Over the centuries, rivers change courses, civilisations rise and fall, and languages become extinct and new ones develop. Consider the expression “faeder ure on heofonum” from Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 from a Bible of 900 CE. We are told it means: “Our father in heaven.” It also means that any writing from that time cannot be read by an English speaker today. But any Arabic speaker can open the Qur’an today and understand its message, as did all the people in the intervening centuries! Prominent scholar Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah tells of an effort in Germany by Christian scholars to gather all the Greek manuscripts of Bible as the original Bible in Aramaic is extinct. They gathered all manuscripts in the world and after examining them reported: “Some two hundred thousand contradictory narrations have been found... of these one-eighth are of an important nature.” When the report was published, some people established an Institute for Qur’anic Research in Munich with the goal of examining Qur’an the same way. A gigantic research project was started that continued for three generations. By 1933, 43,000 photocopies of Qur’anic manuscripts had been collected. A report published shortly before World War II showed the results of the examination of these manuscripts. While some minor mistakes of calligraphy were found, not a single discrepancy in the text had been discovered! Camels were the most valuable commodity of the time, she-camels even more so. Its equivalent today may be a brand new automobile. As they showed their interest, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) explained: “To teach or recite two verses of the Qur’an is better than getting two she-camels. And three verses are better than three she-camels” (Muslim). And so, for centuries this Ummah displayed an unprecedented love and devotion for the Book of Allah Ta’ala. It began the education of its children by teaching them how to read Qur’an. It began its day by reciting from the Qur’an. Qur’an was divided into seven parts, each called a manzil, so it could be read completely every week. It was divided into thirty parts, each called a juz’, so it could be read completely every month. Qur’an is the most read and memorised book in the world! Today, though, we see a change. Thanks to the twin scourges of a colonial education system and the television, today we find millions of Muslim children for whom learning to read the Qur’an is not part of their education. We find millions of Muslim homes where Qur’an is read only on special occasions — when someone dies, for example. This despite the fact that in most parts of the world today, unlike the Soviet Union of yesterday, reading the Qur’an is no longer a high risk proposition. How unfortunate is the person who should die of thirst while holding the refreshing glass of water in his hands! How unfortunate the person who should die of disease while holding the perfect medicine in his hands! Of course, we must read it, understand it, and put it into practice. But we must also remember that reading with full deference and proper etiquettes is a pre-requisite for understanding the Qur’an, just as understanding its message is a pre-requisite for practicing it. Our goal must be to live by the Qur’an. For only then we truly live. Otherwise we only pretend to live.
The conversation between the elevator in Kone’s Mascot headquarters and the company’s cloud is polite but banal. The regular communications in themselves say little, but aggregated and analysed over time can unearth trends and anomalies the Finnish company says can reduce the number of customer-initiated maintenance call-outs by 60 per cent. Kone is one of a number of leading elevator manufacturers that have been loading their lifts and escalators with cloud-connected IoT devices and applying machine learning to the readings. The effort is allowing them to predict when faults will occur, and fix them before any disruption occurs. “Normally what happens is the elevator breaks down, we identify the fault and we fix it. Now we’re able to get information prior to the breakdown, maybe detecting a contact slightly failing or aging, where we wouldn’t have seen that before; or a door system wearing and making more reopenings than it would have done,” explains Jim Hastings, Kone ANZ maintenance director. “So instead of going there when people are getting inconvenienced and potentially trapped in the elevator, we’re actually fixing that item ahead of time,” he adds. Worldwide, there are an estimated 12 million elevators – according to manufacturer ThyssenKrupp – which make 7 billion trips and carry more than 1 billion people every day. With multiple points of failure, the machines inevitably breakdown on occasion. At best this means a long wait or taking the stairs, and at worst a terrifying 41-hour ordeal. And when they do fail, maintenance work render elevators unavailable for a combined total of 190 million hours each year. The end game for elevator manufacturers – most of which provide maintenance packages covering their own and rivals’ elevators – is to reduce unscheduled breakdowns to zero and minimise the time they are out of service during maintenance. Machine learning techniques, using data drawn from sensor rich elevators, they believe will get them there. ThyssenKrupp launched what it called “the elevator industry’s first real-time, cloud-based predictive maintenance solution” based in the Microsoft Azure cloud in late 2015. The company says it has 120,000 connected elevators in the US, Germany, Spain and South Korea. Rival Otis launched its connected elevator offering in May. “The platform turns customer equipment data into predictive insights so Otis teams stay ahead of potential issues – keeping equipment running and passengers safely and reliably on the move,” Otis president Judy Marks said at the time. Schindler launched its IoT platform – Schindler Ahead – in partnership with GE Digital and Huawei last year. Kone began piloting its ‘24/7 Connected Service’ in Australia in July this year. The pilot is being run across four Dexus-owned commercial buildings in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. The offering is already available in 20 countries, following flagship pilots at Nanjing Children’s Hospital and Kunming Changshui Airport in China and luxury office complex Humlegården Fastigheter in Sweden. Building managers can view critical faults that required a technician’s visit and maintenance history via an app. “There are sensors on the doors, information from processors on door operation, a control system which dispatches calls and gets information from the drive system, push button functionality, stopping and acceleration behaviour, position and movement in shaft, how long it takes to get somewhere, the volume of usage. All of that information is available to send back to the cloud to make sure the whole of the operating system is functioning as it should,” Hastings says. In some cases sensors to monitor humidity, temperature and vibrations are also fitted – work that takes about an hour and a half for a standard elevator, Hastings says: “we’re working on new items on a weekly basis about what we can look at measuring to add on”. In Kone’s case the data from connected elevators is fed back to IBM Watson in the cloud, and various machine learning algorithms applied. “One of the important things that an online connection to the cloud gives you is the ability to spot trends in advance before they start creating problems,” says John Macleod, IBM Watson IoT technical specialist. “Take the time it takes a door to close; normally five seconds, but it may be gradually extend to 5.1, then 5.2. Nobody’s really noticing it as you get in and out of the lift but the gradual change in time might well indicate something’s becoming sticky and needs lubrication,” he adds. A building manager might not spot a gradual lengthening of door opening times, but with analytics the trend would be spotted. “And then you can act in advance to deal with them rather than waiting for the doors to stick shut and catch people inside the lift,” Macleod explains. “Obviously we’re not there to witness these things. Now the system records it and says this is beginning to fail, so we go back and identify and fix before the unit is physically shutdown because its stopped or a part is broken,” Hastings adds. The machine learning working across different sensor data – and the datasets of multiple lifts of the same type – can also detect if one issue is related to another. “It may be a particular combination of circumstances. The doors are taking longer to close but it only happens on humid days and it’s associated with vibration in another part of the lift. Nobody’s going to be able to spot that correlation in a dashboard, but machine learning can,” Macleod says. The techniques can also help engineers detect the root cause of persistent issues, Macleod said. That will help increase the ‘first time fix rate’ of issues, Hastings adds. “We get a lot more precise information that enables a much quicker resolution. We’re likely to see an increase in our first time fix rate of about 25 per cent due to the new technology,” he says. Hastings says initially the number of call outs for engineers could increase “in some respects, because we’ll be doing more preemptive work” but will reduce over time as visits are made more effective. Ultimately the technology will give people “a more predictable, reliable journey to work” Hastings says. “The system can almost tell the future and get you in there before anybody is inconvenienced. It gives a lot of peace of mind,” he says.
Lonely Boys’ EP The Hunter. The band from the a small Aboriginal community of Ngukurr is the support act for Queens of the Stone Age in Darwin on Sunday. “I never knew that band but my cousin told me, Ambrose the singer,” Lonely Boys guitarist Winston Joshua says. “He told me he heard a story we’re gonna go up to Darwin and play with a big band from America. It’s not often the local support act for an international headliner generates so much attention. But when a band from remote Arnhem Land not only lands a Queens of the Stone Age gig, but doesn’t even know who they are, it’s almost inevitable. Lonely Boys are a hard rock band from Ngukurr, a small Aboriginal community on the banks of the Roper river, in the remote Northern Territory. On Thursday they will leave Ngukurr on a nine-hour drive to Darwin before bumping in to the city convention centre for the sold-out Sunday gig. The show is one of only three Queens of the Stone Age are doing in Australia outside the festival. How Darwin got on the list is something of a mystery to the headline-starved city but no one is willing to look that gift horse in the mouth. The concert is such a big deal the local newspaper, the NT News, dedicated its Saturday editorial to pleading that people buy tickets to “prove your thirst” for big acts to tour there. Joshua says the Ngukurr community is excited. “Some want to come, you know, but they’ve got no car,” he says. “They can get the bus but they’ll all go and get stuck in Darwin. All talented multi-instrumentalists, the members of Lonely Boys have been playing together for 17 years, rehearsing only sporadically and playing just a couple of gigs a year. They have also been doing it without their own instruments after their entire kit – bought by the local Aboriginal corporation – was stolen from a community building and never recovered. “Music is really important here,” Joshua says. “It used to just be music music music, live bands every weekend, not much disco. It’s huge for a bunch of guys from Ngukurr to stand up on stage with one of the biggest bands in the world. A couple of members also work with at-risk youth in the community. Bush bands develop large, loyal followings across the NT’s Indigenous communities, with Lonely Boys one of the biggest, but there are few opportunities to play regional gigs beyond the odd NT festival. Their hard rock incorporates traditional singing and didgeridoo, and has been inspired by local acts some of their family members played in, such as Broken English and Tribal Vision, as well as a few 80s metal albums lying around. Since the Queens of the Stone Age gig was announced, Lonely Boys have attracted national attention. An online video report by ABC News Darwin went viral and was brought to the attention of the US band by the Australian hip hop artist Briggs. “Love this band. @qotsa are about to get the best support act they ever had,” he wrote on Twitter. “Can’t wait to share a stage… Incredible!!!!!” the band replied. While much of the focus has been on the funny side of Sunday’s show – that Lonely Boys had no idea who Queens of the Stone Age were – what the band will bring is something special. “It’s huge for a bunch of guys from Ngukurr to stand up on stage with one of the biggest bands in the world and tell their story,” says James Mangohig, a Darwin-based producer, musician, label director and one half of the musical act Sietta. “I think this is one of the first times they would have been on a big stage in front of a fully mainstream audience. “Their lives are hectic, their lives in the bush are different, the rhythm of it, the way things work in the bush. Anything goes. Mangohig, who now acts as a producer and project manager for Lonely Boys, came across them at the Barunga festival a few years ago. “I just loved their energy and their rawness, and I had this idea it would be fun to take a band like them to a really amazing rock producer,” he says. So Mangohig bailed up the Aria-nominated producer Forrester Savell at the engagement party of a mutual friend and told him about “a project that’ll blow your mind”. Savell agreed to produce the Lonely Boys’ EP, The Hunter, at a Gold Coast studio. In June last year Lonely Boys won the NT rock song of the year with Murray Island. This June they won again with Drop It Down Girl. They released The Hunter last month and will showcase its songs on Sunday. • Queens of the Stone Age are playing Darwin on 16 July, Sydney on 19 July and Melbourne on 20 July.
Nine's interim results, released this week, show a media company definitively outperforming its peers across all fronts. Laurie Oakes has called it a day, leaving a trail of explosive political scoops in his formidable wake. Channel Nine will no longer produce Darwin's 6pm bulletin locally, leaving the ABC's bulletin as the only locally produced TV news in the Top End capital.
Smash, The Amazing Race and How to Survive a Plague were among the award recipients at GLAAD's 24th Annual Media Awards but the night's biggest winner was Anderson Cooper. GLAAD not only bestowed their Vito Russo Award to the newsman, but tapped the nearly reclusive (when it comes to public appearances) Madonna to present it to Cooper! The room erupted in applause for the iconic singer, who skipped the red carpet (most likely in an attempt to keep her sly Boy Scouts Uniform a secret until she hit the stage). "I wanted to be a Boy Scout but they wouldn't let me join," she said of the organization's controversial position on banning gay scout masters. "I think that's f*cked up. I can build a fire. I know how to pitch a tent. I have a very good sense of direction. I can rescue kittens from trees. Listen, I want to do good for the community. Most importantly, I know how to scout for boys. So I think I should be allowed to be a boy scout. And I think they should change their stupid rules." Madonna concluded a second sublime statement skewering the state of intolerance in the world today by talking about one of her lyrics: "It's so hard to find someone to admire," but, according to Madonna, Anderson Cooper is one of the rare people she admires. Madonna called Cooper "brave" and said he's "made a difference in the world by promoting equality and giving a voice to the LGBT community." She went on to slather Cooper with compliments before welcoming him to the stage with a big, wet kiss. "I just kissed Madonna," Anderson laughed. After acknowledging how difficult it is to be the follow-up act to Madonna, Anderson did an amazingly heartfelt job of accepting The Vito Russo Award before saying "I've had many blessings in my life, and being gay is certainly one of the greatest blessings. It has allowed me to love and to be loved. It's helped open my head and my heart in ways I could have never predicted."
No matter what happens in any relationship, you should always be allowed to enjoy your hobbies. But not all relationships are created equal. A man from Wilmington, Delaware, known only from his Craigslist post as "Tim K.," posted a depressing classified ad earlier this week in which he tries to sell his golf clubs. The only problem is that Tim doesn't want to sell his clubs. In fact, he said in his ad, "I absolutely love them." Unfortunately for Tim, his wife doesn't feel the same way. "I'm only selling them because I got married a year ago, and my wife no longer lets me play golf," he wrote. "Actually, she doesn't let me do anything fun." But Tim doesn't want to sell his clubs to just anyone. He wants to sell them to a single guy who never plans on getting married, though he realizes that's a little ridiculous. As for his asking price, Tim wants a cool $500, but admits defeat once again when he reminds potential buyers that everything earned from this sale "will go towards buying my wife more useless sh*t." Of course, no one has ever lied about anything on Craigslist, so we're sure Tim's story checks out completely.
The outfits are protesting the CPI(M)-led LDF government's decision to implement the SC verdict permitting women of all age groups to enter the hill shrine. THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala government on Wednesday tightened security across the state by deploying more police personnel following escalating protests by a section of Lord Ayyappa devotees and a hartal called by Hindu fringe outfits against the decision to allow entry of women in Sabarimala temple. Right wing outfit, 'Antharashtriya Hindu Parishad' led by Pravin Togadia and the 'Sabarimala Samrakshana Samithi', an outfit of devotees, have called a 24-hour-long hartal starting midnight. The outfits are protesting the CPI(M)-led LDF government's decision to implement the Supreme Court verdict permitting women of all age groups to enter the hill shrine. Special security arrangements and patrolling have been put in place in various locations including Pamba, Nilackal, Erumeli, Vandiperiyar en route to the Sabarimala temple, located in the central district of Pathanamthitta. DGP Lonknath Behera said 700 additional police personnel had already been deployed in Pamba and Nilackal, the base camps of Sabarimala pilgrimage, to maintain law and order and ensure the safety of devotees proceeding to the temple. "At least 700 armed police personnel, 100 of them women, are already placed in various locations. A team of commandos will also be deployed soon," he said. Behera also said anyone who blocks vehicles in the name of hartal would be severely dealt with.
Applications from three Estonian cities — Tartu, Narva and Kuressaare — were submitted to the competition for the status of European Capital of Culture 2024 by the 1 October deadline. "We would like to thank all the cities who expressed interest in the candidacy over the year," Heili Jõe, director of the Foreign Relations Department of the Ministry of Culture, said in a press release. "The international committee will be faced with a thorough analysis and discussion." The cities to be allowed to compete in the final round will be determined at the end of the month. The choices will be made by an independent international committee comprised of 12 members. The committee will be in Tallinn on 22-23 October, when the cities allowed to the final round will be disclosed at a press conference. The European Capital of Culture to be chosen from Estonia will be determined by the end of 2019. Gaining the status of European Capital of Culture will mean additional funding for the chosen city which can be used for realising its vision. The Estonian state will also support the programme of the European Capital of Culture with local government funding and other financial sources in the amount of up to €10 million, and the European Commission will award the European Capital of Culture the Melina Mercouri Prize, the size of which is €1.5 million. Altogether three cities will bear the title of European Capital of Culture in 2024: one Estonian city, one Austrian city, and one city from the European Free Trade Association states of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, EU candidate countries Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey, or a city of possible candidate states Bosnia and Kosovo.
Flash Alerts Plus, if urgent market news breaks, Louis will email you right away to explain exactly what's happening and what it means for your Breakthrough Stocks stocks. Weekly Updates At the end of each week, Louis will recap the economic, market and stocks news you need to know to stay ahead of Wall Street. Diversified Buy List The Breakthrough Stocks Buy List consists of today's best small- to mid-cap stocks–from a variety of sectors. The Buy List is always sorted into three categories of portfolio risk–Conservative, Moderately Aggressive or Aggressive–so you can buy according to your personal risk tolerance. Precise Buy Below Prices Louis Navellier's formula calculates specific Buy Below prices for each and every stock on the Breakthrough Stocks Buy List. These prices are calculated to help you decrease your risk, and maximize your return.
If you're looking for a new mobile phone contract with loads of minutes and an iPad 2 tablet but baulk at the idea of forking out £399 initially, there might be a rather elegant solution at hand. Buymobilephones is offering four versions of the iPad 2 (including the 32GB 3G model) for as little as £30.64 a month on a two year contract with a free phone (albeit a very basic one), £20 automatic cashback, 900 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited data. The total cost of ownership of the bundle is £715.36 over the length of the contract; T-Mobile gives you a similar bundle on a 12-month contract for £20.62 per month SIM only and given that the phone itself costs a mere £10, it means that the actual cost of the iPad 2 comes down to around £210. Prospective iPad 2 buyers can therefore look forward to getting an interest-free two year loan for an iPad 2 that will end up costing them around half the price. The iPad 2 will go on sale tomorrow as from 5pm in a number of stores nationwide. We have compiled an exhaustive list of the stores here (ed : Comet needs to be added to the list as well). The new tablet is more powerful than its predecessor, it is also slimmer, lighter, has two cameras and more importantly is cheaper.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, Alex Beam's column on Tuesday in the "g" section mischaracterized the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster involving Liverpool soccer fans as a "riot." The official investigation into the disaster, which cost 96 lives, placed the blame primarily on poor crowd control and inadequate stadium design. Two months ago, Red Sox owner John Henry and his partners in New England Sports Ventures purchased Liverpool FC, historically one of Europe’s greatest soccer teams. Obviously, Henry, who admits he knows nothing about English soccer, is hoping to turn a few quid in the globalized sports marketplace. The few sane people I have talked to about Liverpool understand that these are early days for New England Sports Ventures and that meaningful changes probably won’t come until Liverpool’s season ends in May. None of those sane people are in Liverpool, however. Even by the deranged standards of European soccer, Red fans are totally bonkers. Their excitable Internet fan sites are still agonizing over a 21-year-old soccer stadium disaster that killed 96 people. (The original version of this story mischaracterized the event as a riot.) One website, Thisisanfield.com, is publishing yet another exhaustive history of the incident, and still actively promotes a boycott of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun, two decades after the paper accused Liverpool fans of pickpocketing the corpses, and other outrages. In a lengthy interview with one of the fan sites, Redandwhitekop.com (kop refers to a part of Anfield stadium), Henry confined himself to boilerplate Belispeak: “This club needs everyone on the same page every day. Every day. We need everyone focused on what needs to be done in the next match facing us and during that match,’’ blah blah blah. He comes across as bloodless and dispassionate, talking about soccer in the same breath as his auto racing interests and baseball — one management template for all. That kind of talk won’t sit well by the Mersey, believe me. “Aesop is credited with literally hundreds of fables, most of which are equally enjoyable — and enlightening. Your classics faculty would gladly tell you about them, if only you had a Classics department, which now, of course, you don’t . . .
Book — 16, 254 pages : illustrations, portraits, facsimiles ; 25 cm. $a 本书共分为综述文章; 人物传记两部分, 其主要内容包括: 西北联大对中国现代医学事业的贡献; 爱国重教功德永垂-纪念爱国教育家、病理学家徐诵明先生; 陕西儿科学的砥柱栋梁-隋式棠教授生平的几件事等. Di 1 ban. 第1版. - Beijing Shi : Gao deng jiao yu chu ban she, 2016. 北京市 : 高等教育出版社, 2016. Di 1 ban. 第 1 版. - Beijing : Zhong yi gu ji chu ban she, 2016. 北京 : 中医古籍出版社, 2016. $a 本书以民国时期医讼的凸显为切入点, 希冀在医学史, 社会史, 法制史的框架下, 借助对医生, 病人, 社会, 国家间互动关系的探讨与呈现, 进而揭示国人生命, 法制与权利观念在现代国家形成过程中逐渐转型的历史轨迹, 及其与相应制度架构之间的关联性. Unschuld, Paul U. (Paul Ulrich), 1943- author. "The Ling Shu, also known as the Ling Shu Jing, is part of a unique and seminal trilogy of ancient Chinese medicine, together with the Su Wen and Nan Jing. It constitutes the foundation of a two-thousand-year healing tradition that remains active to this day. Its therapeutic approach is based on a purely secular science of nature, with natural laws serving as guidelines for human behavior and medical treatment. No other text offers such broad insights into the thinking and manifest action of the authors of the time. Following an introduction, this volume contains the full original Chinese text of the Ling Shu, an English translation of all eighty-one chapters, and notes on difficult-to-grasp passages and possible changes in the text over time on the basis of Chinese primary and secondary literature of the past two thousand years and translator Paul Unschuld's own work. The Ling Shu reveals itself as a completely rational work, and, in many of its statements, a surprisingly modern one. It will provide the foundation for comparisons with the nearly contemporaneous Corpus Hippocraticum of ancient Europe and today's iterations of traditional Chinese Medicine as well."-- Provided by publisher. Zhou, Haiping (Chinese Physician), author. Di 1 ban. 第1版. - Beijing : Zhong yi gu ji chu ban she, 2016. 北京 : 中医古籍出版社, 2016. "Huangdi nei jing" shu ming yu cheng shu nian dai kao zheng. Di 1 ban. 第1版 - Shanghai : Shang hai shu dian chu ban she, 2016. 上海 : 上海书店出版社, 2016. $a 本书以文献考据为基础, 梳理了宋代伤寒学术的发展脉络, 历史地还原与展现了"伤寒论"传播与经典化的整个过程, 考察了促成这一过程的各种因素, 发掘具有士人身份的医者在其中扮演的角色, 探究他们的士人身份怎样促进了伤寒学术的发展, 由此揭示出士人习医与经典阅读对于中医发展的意义. Book — 7, 6, 8, 6, 2, 576 pages ; 22 cm. Di 1 ban. 第1版. - Shanghai : Shanghai ke xue ji shu chu ban she, 2016. 上海 : 上海科学技术出版社, 2016. Book — 18, 212 pages ; 21 cm. Treatment and methods of preparing herbal medicine according to Tibetan medicine. Book — 35, 332 pages ; 21 cm. 3. Zhar byung sngon byon mkhas dbang ʼgaʼi bcud len skor gyi gdams pa sna tshogs. Selected works on essence extraction according to Tibetan medical system.
Taye Diggs (the Private Practice season finale airs on ABC Tuesday at 10 p.m.), shares the 25 things you don't know about him with Us Weekly. 1. I love scaring people. 2. I can't see a movie without getting peanut M&Ms. 3. When my wife [actress Idina Menzel, 40] and I first met, we didn't like each other. 4. Growing up, I was a nerd. With actual taped eyeglasses. 5. When I was a child, my family danced to Michael Jackson. Now we do the same with my son [Walker, 2]. 7. I almost failed algebra. 8. I got straight A's in dance, voice and theater. Go figure. 9. I was conceived in L.A., so that was my nickname as a baby. 10. I didn't learn to drive till I was in my thirties. It shows. 11. One of my favorite films is Pretty Woman. 12. Sometimes I confuse my left with my right. 13. I hate the smell of beets! 14. I worked as a performer at Tokyo Disneyland for almost a year. 15. I want my son to grow up happy, healthy and strong. 16. And be a professional basketball player. 17. I can't wait for him to be older so we can prank his mother. 18. I'm 41 but feel like I'm 15 — and probably act like it, too. 19. I used to glance in the mirror while I was crying to see what it looked like. 20. I also used to think schedule was pronounced "shedool." 21. I still get stage fright. 22. I love apple juice. 23. I get equally excited about courtside seats at a basketball game and great seats on Broadway. 24. One of the most gratifying things I've done is read my kids' book, Chocolate Me!, to my little boy. 25. I have more tattoos than you think.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz gives a speech on international security and expanding the U.S. military on board of the USS Yorktown on February 16, 2016, in Mt Pleasant, South Carolina. The debate over whether Canadian-born Ted Cruz is eligible to be president is moving from the campaign trail to the courtroom. Lawsuits challenging the Texas Republican's eligibility for the ballot have been filed in recent weeks by residents in states including Illinois, New York and Alabama who argue Cruz can't be president because he's not a natural-born citizen. Fellow GOP candidate Donald Trump also has threatened to sue over the issue. Cruz and some legal experts say he's eligible because his mother was a U.S. citizen when he was born. Lawrence Joyce, a pharmacist and lawyer from Poplar Grove, Illinois, said Friday he filed suit in Chicago because he wants to avoid what he called a potential "nightmare scenario." He said he fears if Cruz becomes the GOP nominee, Democrats will get him kicked off the ballot in some states or Cruz will be forced to drop out, and establishment Republicans will replace him with a more moderate candidate, such as Jeb Bush or Chris Christie. Joyce said he's backing Ben Carson but is acting "strictly on my own." Cook County Judge Maureen Ward Kirby set a hearing on a motion to dismiss the suit filed by Cruz's lawyer for March 1 — the first day Joyce said he'd be able to get off work to return to court. By then, ballots for Illinois' March 15 primary will be printed and early voting underway. Asked about his eligibility during a CNN town hall this week, Cruz said by law he's been a U.S. citizen since the day he was born. "There will still be some that try to work political mischief on it, but as a legal matter, this is clear and straightforward," Cruz said. The Indiana Election Commission on Friday rejected a challenge to whether Cruz may remain on the state's May 3 primary ballot. Cruz won a similar ballot challenge in New Hampshire in November. Associated Press writer Tom Davies in Indianapolis contributed.
A policy I highly recommend for all departments is simply this: All long guns must be equipped with a sling. I’ve increasingly seen events in which officers respond with a shotgun or rifle with no sling. This creates a dangerous situation. Once contact is made with a suspect, what is the officer supposed to do with the long gun? Typically, the officer experiences a moment of confusion, and then lays the weapon down on the ground prior to physically contacting and attempting to control the suspect. I was involved in a case in which several officers, all armed with long weapons without slings, rapidly approached a suspect. Not surprisingly, bad things can happen in this situation. Here are some scenarios that cause unnecessary risks, all of which can be prevented by using a sling. The officer who takes responsibility to handcuff the suspect lays his/her weapon on the ground within reach of the officer, but also near the suspect. The officer has now created the possibility the suspect will attempt to lunge for the weapon. The officer lays his/her weapon on the ground far enough away from the suspect that the suspect can’t easily reach the weapon, but there is still an unsecured weapon. Now, the officer has to deal with the suspect and also keep an eye on the weapon to ensure no one else approaches and grabs the weapon. The officer attempts to control and handcuff the suspect while simultaneously trying to maintain control of the long gun. I’ve seen this happen and it’s scary. The officer will attempt to handcuff with one hand or place the long gun in the crook of his or her elbow while handcuffing. The officer is vulnerable to a weapon disarming technique and the likelihood of a negligent discharge is increased. The officer uses the long gun as an impact weapon. I recognize that a handgun or long gun can be used to strike an assailant when necessary, but it is rarely a good idea. The officer risks the possibility of damaging his or her weapon, taking it out of battery so it can’t be fired, negligent discharge and, as in Scenario One above, the deadly weapon is now within reach of a suspect. The officer uses the long gun to prod or push the suspect. In the event I mentioned, an officer used the muzzle of a shotgun to push the suspect to the ground and attempted to roll the suspect over onto his stomach. Again, there is a risk of negligent discharge and the deadly weapon is now within reach of the suspect. It is also human nature to grab at anything that pokes us. Poke people with a finger, stick or any other object, and they will instinctively reach out to move it off their body. To avoid all of these unnecessary risks, the answer is simple: Make sure all long guns have a sling. Recognize there is still a training component in practicing slinging the weapon behind you as you approach or kneel to handcuff a suspect. If you’ve never done it, it does take some practice to smoothly transition the weapon from your front to a secure position on your back. A long gun without a sling makes as much sense as a handgun without a holster.
The Olympics isn't just about competition. It's also about stories. Here are some who know their Author. It's as dependable as the Olympic Flame. Every two years the world's best athletes convene in a single city to compete for the honor of their countries, their families, and, for some, their God. The games stay the same—give or take your Ski Halfpipe, Women's Ski Jumping, or Team Figure Skating, all making their debuts in Sochi—but every Olympic season we welcome a new set of athletes into our homes via Bob Costas and his personality pieces engineered to invest us more deeply in their pursuit of gold. For two weeks these athletes become household names, securing a few more weeks if they win gold, and their stories become the backdrop of our lives until the last lights go out in the Olympic Village. It's nice to find fellow Christians among the 230 men and women who make up the 2014 Team USA delegation to Sochi, Russia. We don't root for them because they're on "Team Jesus," but all the same it's nice to see people at the peak of their field, on the world's biggest athletic stage, turn the credit back to the One who gave us bodies to run and jump and spin on ice and imaginations to push the limits of those bodies to run faster, jump higher, and spin faster than we ever thought possible. Here are a few Christians to watch as they compete for Team USA in Sochi. Many of them are medal contenders; all of them know that no matter what happens over the next two weeks, God will still be good. What former NFL pro Bill Glass has learned after 36 years of prison ministry.
How many days? How many people hurt? America is being held hostage by a dictator who portrays himself as a deal maker. Trump cannot make a deal, because he’s lived his life “my way or the highway.” He could get away with that behavior running his mom-and-pop branding business after all his bankruptcies left him few alternatives beyond reality TV. Then he could only hurt his family and business associates. Now he has power to hurt us all, and that must be taken away. We have lived in the Sloan’s neighborhood since 2007. We’ve been trotting around the lake weeks after months after years. We got back from Thanksgiving and went out for a trot. And lo and behold work has begun to give the runners of Sloan’s Lake a clay fine path to trot on. Wow. I said this is what I wanted for Christmas. This is fantastic. Thank you City and County of Denver. All children are our children. The hearts and actions of Jimmy and Linda Yip illustrate the difference each of us (in small ways and large) can make in children’s lives. If financial contributions aren’t possible, consider contributing your time. There are 168 hours in each week. If you donate just one percent of those hours, that’s 90 minutes a week or six hours a month. You can change a life, a little at a time. Thanks to The Denver Post’s Editorial Board for a clear and urgent call for action. The cost of solar has dropped 90 percent in the twelve years I’ve worked in the industry. It’s affordable and can save you a lot of money. On Wednesday, in his letter to the editor, Neal Donaldson gave me a good laugh with his sarcasm. But he missed what’s practical and economical right now. My wife and I have two electric cars, solar electric and solar thermal systems. Our house and cars run on free solar power and will for the next 50 years. Our home heating is almost completely covered by the thermal system and we have virtually unlimited free hot water. Our cars have 300 and 400 mile ranges. Our gas and electric bills are typically just the meter fees, $22 per month. In winter they total $40. We are nearly carbon free. We kept the ‘96 Ford Ranger. Sometimes it’s useful to have a truck. But I forget what a gallon of gas costs nowadays. Your article contained more than a dozen instances of “experiencing homelessness” or a variation thereof. This highly cumbersome phrase has been foisted on the public by politically correct social workers who actually believe using the word “experiencing” before the word “homelessness” will reduce negative perceptions of those who have no roof over their heads. If that is true, we should say that addicts experience addiction, the poor experience poverty and the illiterate experience illiteracy. I suggest replacing this awkward phrase with “unsheltered,” which is more concrete than the amorphous word “homeless.” After all, home is where the heart is. Let’s experience finding real solutions for the unsheltered among us instead of engaging in semantics.
Shamos Hamel (Black) def. by Jashun Thomas (Blue). Home favourite Jermal Woolridge outskilled hulking kick-boxing opponent Joey Brozovich to end Teachers Fight Night XVI: Relentless in style on Saturday night. In front of a sellout crowd at the Berkeley Institute, ‘Goofy’, as he is affectionately known, worked out his larger opponent in the first round before putting him down twice in the second. The first came courtesy of a sharp right, while the second saw Bermuda Sanshou Association's (BSA) Woolridge unbalance Brozovich in the clinch before driving him to the canvas. By this stage it was clear that Woolridge, a world silver medallist in wushu, was the quicker exponent. Brozovich, from the MAS Academy of Martial Arts Training (MAS) in Canada, kept attacking but Woolridge's work was cleaner and more punishing and the overseas fighter soon needed his corner to wipe away blood from his nose. In the third and final round, Woolridge, who won by judges' decision, expanded his repertoire of moves and, in particular, one vicious left side kick drew appreciative gasps from the crowd. He followed that up with another left kick and a right upper cut before the game Brozovich required more attention to his bleeding nose. Meanwhile, arguably the highlight of the evening was Corey Boyce’s bone-shuddering straight right, which ended the sixth fight of the 11-bout card. The Bermuda Karate Institute (BKI) fighter took on BSA's Shannon Ford at heavyweight in one of the more brutal boxing match-ups of the night. Boyce went on the attack in the first and a sweet right-left combination saw Ford get a standing eight-count, which he survived. Far from deterred, though, Ford gave his all in the second and landed a big right. But Boyce’s strength and stamina came to the fore in the final round when, with Ford backed into the ropes, he connected with a fearsome right to leave his opponent sparked out on the canvas and requiring the attention of the ringside doctor. In the preceding bout, two more imposing heavyweights took to the ring as Justin Tucker, of Controversy Boxing Gym (CBG), and Coleman Mills of Forty’s Rego’s Gym, went head to head. Mills caught the eye early on as he looked to take control, lining up his opposite number with his left before connecting with his right. Tucker was soon under pressure in the corner and was floored by a crisp shot. Much to the delight of the increasingly-raucous crowd, after surviving the eight-count, back came Tucker with a flurry of punches that in turn forced Mills to take a count. It was a thrilling second round but there was a sense it had taken more out of Tucker than Mills and so it proved as a crunching right by the latter ended an entertaining contest. There was disappointment for Rego’s Andre Lambe as he came up against a force of nature in Nick Hoover, from the Fifth Round Academy in Canada, in their light-heavyweight boxing contest. Lambe, looking to out-box his opponent, whose background lies in Muay Thai, simply found the streetwise Hoover too much. In possibly the most impressive performance of the night, the braided Hoover swarmed the home fighter and refused to let him settle during his unanimous points win. It was a breathless and intimidating bully-boy tactic, which saw the overseas man put Lambe in real trouble in the final round when he was forced to survive the referee’s count. That fight was followed by three kick-boxing contests, with BSA’s Khalid Pitcher (MAS) beating Drew Geoghegan at welterweight and Rego’s Jashun Thomas seeing off Shamos Hamel (MAS) at lightweight. In a women’s featherweight kick-boxing bout, BSA’s Talia Iris was outsmarted by Shelby Marchand, of Fifth Round. The Bermudian put her opponent down a number of times but Marchand was more efficient with her work — particularly with her knee blows in the clinch — and was awarded the decision. Elsewhere, there was a win for youngster Kaelin Cox (BSA) over Anthony Williams in the first bout of the night. Controversy’s plucky Neil Templeman showed plenty of heart in his super heavyweight clash against Jason Low (BSA) but had no answer to Lowe’s speed and superior mobility and the fight was stopped at the end of the first. Adam Chevis (BAS) defeated Zubair Hasan (CBG) at heavyweight after Hasan was retired before coming out for the second round, much to the fighter’s apparent displeasure (he did press-ups in the ring to try to prove to his corner he was okay to fight on). Callon Burns (CBG) took on Matthew Tannock (FRG) in an exhibition fight after both fighters’ scheduled opponents withdrew. Tannock impressed, finishing the fight with a stinging right in the second.
Parks and Jewel Ritchie have been married for 64 years, and they've been singing together just as long, in sickness and in health. GREENSBORO, N.C. — If you want to see an example of true love and devotion, take a look at this Triad couple. Parks and Jewel Ritchie have been married for 64 years, and they've been singing together just as long. Pastor Danny Janes shared a video with WFMY News 2 of the couple singing the gospel hymn "He Lifted Me Out" together by Jewel's hospital bedside. Jewel recently had a seizure, following an earlier stroke. She was admitted to Moses Cone Hospital, and Parks has remained by her side. Pastor Janes says although Jewel has some difficulty speaking, she still loves making beautiful music with her husband. In the video, Parks asks his wife, "Do you remember that first song that we sang at Mebane Wesleyan Church? 'He Lifted Me Out' - Will you sing it with me?" The couple then begins to harmonize, "He lifted me out of the deep miry clay; He settled my feet in the straight, narrow way; He lifted me up to a heavenly place, and floodeth my soul each day with His grace." "And two nights later, I asked you to marry me," Parks said to Jewel. "And you said yes. And we've been singing together ever since." The couple's family says Jewel has been moved to Guilford Care Center, where she is doing rehab and continues to get better.
Mary O’Connor, founder of FACES (Family Assessment, Counseling & Education Services Inc.) in Fullerton, counsels parents who are separated or divorced to make peace and do what is best for their children. It is the holidays. The marriage is over and kids are standing on the torn fabric of a marriage relationship. As a single parent, you are faced with extra stressors. Less time, less money, less support. The stress of Christmas divided is played out in the movie “Four Christmases,” with the two adult children of divorce trying to avoid their divided families. What single parent doesn’t stress during the holidays? Single parents tell me they wonder if they are doing the right thing for their child. The fabric is only torn on the surface, though, as the parenting fabric remains woven into your children’s lives. The warmth they feel from each of their parents is there for them all year round, and this season can help us to give up the final threads of self pity, depression, feelings of worthlessness, and get into the true meaning of the season: love, peace and tolerance. One family thinks they can drop their anger for a morning and watch their kids open their presents together. They have been doing this for several years. Ever wonder what your kids are thinking of this change in their lives? After talking to hundreds of kids over the years, I find that they want peace. They fear explosions between parents and are always hopeful of reconciliation or at least peaceful communication. Divorce realigns living conditions for children. It is a fact of life. The divided family lives in two homes and some kids don’t even see one of their parents who may be gone or incarcerated. Adult emotions, leaked onto kids who don’t know what to do, make them feel pretty helpless. The most loving activity single parents may do is to find out from your children what they want. We sometimes fool ourselves into thinking we know what is best for our children. Aunts and uncles, grandparents and great grandparents deserve your love and attention during the holidays, but your kids are only kids for a short while, and this is your golden opportunity to find out how you can create a happy memory of this season of their life. One parent asked her son what he wanted. He wanted to keep going to his Dad’s parents’ home Christmas Eve, and he wanted to stay home with mom and open his presents on Christmas morning. One parent asked her daughter and son if they would like to go to breakfast on Christmas morning with both parents. They said no, because their memories of having their parents together were miserable. They couldn’t visualize a breakfast that would turn out pleasant. As pre-teens, they preferred separate visits with their parents. Another parent suggested that the family share Christmas Day with their mom and dad at different times. The children jumped at that idea. Unfortunately one of the parents wasn’t open to the same day sharing and the kids were disappointed. So the key may be to check out your great ideas with the other parent before opening up the plan to the kids. Single parent families everywhere are making mind-ful choices this season to start new family traditions. Twenty five years ago, when my children were pre-teens and teens, and we were new at the single parenting world, we started going to the movies on Christmas day. We still do that to this day, with grandchildren joining in on the tradition. Some families play board games; others watch “Miracle on 34th Street” every year. Others always attend church together and then have a late dinner. One parent is joining with other single parents to do something together on their “non custodial” Christmas. This is not a good time to worry about yourself and your loss. Yes, it is a change, and yes, you can have your moments of regret and sadness. Just remember, your kids are the focus of this season. Your goal can be to find love in their family, and if you are their family, your focus on their needs can help you fend off the negative, stressful feelings that may crop up. You and your children can go shopping for a toy for a child whose parents can’t afford Christmas this year. You can get together with another family and sing carols at home or at a nursing home. Baking cookies together, putting on the Christmas music, trimming a tree together – you have time to look inside your child and see these holidays through his or her eyes. Just listening, studies have shown, lowers your blood pressure. So listen to them, find out what makes them happy and pick something that the kids like to do. It is about the kids. Contact the writer: Mary O’Connor is the founder of FACES (Family Assessment, Counseling &Education Services Inc.), based in Fullerton. Visit their Web site at www.facescal.org. O’Connor will answer readers’ questions on dealing with divorce or separation and single parenting. E-mail [email protected] and write “OCONNOR” in the subject line.
Tonight is the second of four games between the Devils and Capitals in 2016-17 and is this home-and-home series' finale. The Devils won the first match-up on Thursday at Verizon Center, 2-1 SO. The clubs will face-off again Jan. 26 at Prudential Center. The Devils are 4-3-2 against Metropolitan Division opponents and are 8-8-5 against Eastern Conference opponents. New Jersey is 9-3-2 at home this season. The Devils are 2-2-2 at Prudential Center and are 5-6-3 overall vs. Washington since the 2013-14 season. Thursday's win was the Devils first victory vs. Washington since Nov. 14, 2014 (1-0). Michael Cammalleri has five points (2g-3a + 1 GDG) in six games vs. the Capitals as a Devil. He also has 15 points in 17 games in his career against Washington. Travis Zajac and Washington forwards Taylor Chorney and T.J. Oshie were teammates at the University of North Dakota in 2005-06…P.A. Parenteau and Caps' forward Lars Eller were teammates on Montreal in 2014-15…Capitals' defenseman John Carlson played for the NJ Rockets (ATJHL) for two seasons from 2005-07…New Jersey's Assistant General Manager Tom Fitzgerald played under Caps Head Coach Barry Trotz from 1998-2002; Fitzgerald served the Predators as team captain during each of those four seasons…Washington's Associate Coach Todd Reirden was New Jersey's 14th choice (12th round) and the 242nd overall pick in the 1990 Entry Draft…Head Coach John Hynes served as an assistant under Reirden with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in 2009-10 and succeeded him as Head Coach of the Penguins the following season.
When it comes to voting, there are basically two arguments: a civic one, which states that voting is the moral duty of every able citizen in a democracy, and an economic one, which states that voting is a fruitless endeavor in a game with terrible odds. Perhaps the economists had the right of it. A massive database with 191 million voter records has made its way online, and the strangest part is, no one can quite figure out who put it there or when it will be taken down. Chris Vickery, an independent security researcher, discovered the database and reported it to DataBreaches.net, which keeps track of huge online security gaffes, just as the name suggests. From there, Vickery and DataBreaches worked together with Steve Ragan of security news blog Salted Hash to investigate where the information comes from, how it got online and how to get rid of it. First, the bad news: The data breach is massive, and contains tons of information that you'd probably rather keep private. Every state compiles voting records after each election, and while the information is not usually public, it's not impossible to obtain legally, either. In order to vote, citizens disclose their names, addresses, birth dates, genders, ethnicities, dates of voter registration, party affiliation, e-mail addresses (optional) and party affiliations. It gets worse: The database contains records of the candidates for whom people voted since 2000. From there, the government adds a voter ID number, information about absentee voter status and whether or not a person is on the Do Not Call list. It gets worse, however: The database also contains records of the candidates for whom people voted since 2000. It's not all doom and gloom, however. The voting records do not include driver's license numbers, social security numbers, financial records or any kind of familial information. There's no password associated with an online account, either, even if a voter gave his or her e-mail address. This means that the potential for fraud is more limited than, for example, a well-executed phishing attack. On the other hand, it's an ideal way to look up full addresses and phone numbers for private citizens who'd probably rather not be found, like police officers and stalking victims. Vickery, Ragan and DataBreaches have a fascinating detective yarn underway right now to discover who put together and leaked the database, but the bottom line is that no one knows. Whether the database is online due to malfeasance or carelessness is also not clear. Some of the information gathered so far points toward Nation Builder, a political data collection group, but the company denies any wrongdoing. As far as what individual citizens can do to protect their identities, the answer is "not much." The good news is that there's no immediate danger for most people, since there's no compromising financial or online data. Most of this information, a reasonably tech-savvy person could track down through a series of Google searches. For others, who need to keep their addresses and phone numbers private for safety reasons, contacting your local law enforcement as a precautionary measure might not be a bad idea.
Seventy-five bogus universities have been closed in the past four years, amid warnings that the business in fake degrees is undermining the reputation of the UK higher education system around the world. The university watchdog the Higher Education Degree Datacheck (Hedd), which monitors fake degrees, has built up a register of 243 bogus institutions. There is growing concern about students being mis-sold fraudulent degrees, with more than 200 potential cases of degree fraud under investigation since 2015. Among the fake universities that came to Hedd’s attention was Manchester Open University, which was advertising degrees for fees of up to £35,000 on its website. It claimed to have a campus on Oxford Road in the city, with 2,000 students from 90 different countries studying degrees in history, English and medicine, but officials called in to investigate were unable to find a trace of the institution. In another case, Oxbridge University of Kilmurry, which offered masters, doctorates and professional qualifications on its website, was found to be registered in Gambia. Jayne Rowley, the chief executive of Hedd, said: “Among the suspicious employers and fake certificates, we hear from genuine universities who spot fakes using their branding to attract students, collect personal information and course fees. As well as reducing the number of fake institutions through investigation and awareness-raising, Hedd also hopes to combat degree fraud by getting employers and universities to make more verification checks when recruiting students and graduates.
Before you settle for waiting for the rumored iPad Pro 2018 release date, be sure to check out the models that are out on shelves right now. Apple's current iPad Pro comes in three different sizes. The company currently sells a 10.5-inch iPad Pro brand new, but you can snag the larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro refurbished or new from a third-party retailer. You can also buy a smaller refurbished 9.7-inch iPad Pro directly from Apple. These iPad Pro models come in several different storage options and an array of colors including silver, gold, rose gold, and gray. You can also buy an iPad Pro with LTE built-in if you need connectivity on-the-go. The company's iPad Pro models are among the best tablets on the market right now and there's a chance they'll deliver enough horsepower to suit you and your needs. Make sure you read reviews and go hands-on with both of these before you decide to wait for a newer model that'll almost certainly come with steeper price point.
As we enter Week 3 of the high school football season, all four Las Cruces Public Schools teams have matchups with Albuquerque teams this week. LAS CRUCES - As we enter Week 3 of the high school football season, all four Las Cruces Public Schools teams have matchups with Albuquerque metro area teams this week. Mayfield has shown improvement from last season in the first weeks of the season and the Trojans play their first game at home on Friday against West Mesa. After routing Atrisco Heritage in Week 1, the Trojans fell to Del Valle 28-10 last week. The Conquistadores are the No. 1 ranked team in El Paso and will be one of the better teams Mayfield sees all season. The Trojans still have some work to do, but they hung with Del Valle in the first half, trailing 14-10 at halftime. However, Mayfield had four turnovers that hurt it last week. The Trojans should be the favorite against the Mustangs Friday night. West Mesa has been blown out in its first two games, losing to Eldorado 43-3 and to Centennial last week 49-13. The Eagles and Hawks are two top-five ranked teams in the state. Mayfield could use a win on Friday before a huge matchup with No. 1 Cleveland on Sept. 15 at the Field of Dreams and would guarantee the Trojans go into District 3-6A play at least .500. No. 1 Cleveland vs. No. 2 Eldorado on Thursday night was the state's best matchup this week, but No. 5 Las Cruces vs. No. 3 La Cueva in Albuquerque Friday night is another good matchup. After giving up 70 points to Eldorado last week, the Bulldawgs look to bounce back against a solid Bears team. It's Las Cruces' first road game of the year and its first of two straight visits to the Albuquerque metro area as the Bulldawgs are at Rio Rancho next week. La Cueva, who finished runner-up in Class 6A last season, also has a solid offense led by senior quarterback Dylan Summer (349 yards, four touchdowns, one interception, 49 percent completion percentage) and senior running back D'andre Williams (367 yards, three touchdowns). The Bears are coming off a 45-0 rout of Valley last weekend and have scored at least 38 points in their first two games, beating Volcano Vista 38-26 in Week 1. Las Cruces' offense has been solid in first two games, scoring at least 42 points. No. 4 Centennial makes its second straight trip to Albuquerque as it faces defending Class 6A state champion Manzano, who's ranked No. 10 in Class 6A this week's coaches poll. The Hawks have been solid in the first two weeks of the season and going into the season have been a dark horse state title contender for a lot of people. Centennial's defense has been good to start the year and senior quarterback Lance Frost has been very good. The Hawks also got running back Adrian Gomez back last week, to give Centennial good one-two punch at running back with Gabe Acosta. Keep an eye on the Hawks this season. Oñate takes its first road trip of the year and its only trip to Albuquerque this season as the Knights face a solid Volcano Vista team on Saturday. OHS showed some improvement last week in a 35-21 loss to Cibola, especially on offense. However, the Knights couldn't get the big stop on defense they needed in the second half and couldn't finish off some drives. Volcano Vista - ranked No. 7 in Class 6A - gave La Cueva all it could handle in Week 1 before falling 38-26. The Hawks routed Del Norte 56-6 last week. The Battle for the Helmet is on the line in Anthony Friday night as Gadsden hosts Santa Teresa in a rivalry matchup between the two Gadsden Independent District Schools. The two schools renew their rivalry as its the first time since 2015 with Gadsden taking that matchup 31-20. The Desert Warriors are the favorite here and broke into the top 10 in the Class 5A coaches poll and are ranked No. 10 as they have started the season 2-0. Santa Teresa routed Anthony (Texas) 45-8 last week. Shae Vierra continues to build the STHS program as the Desert Warriors are looking for a District 3-5A title and a playoff appearance this season. Gadsden is 0-2 to start the season - falling to Clint Mountain View (Texas) 31-0 last week - as first-year head coach Dino Facio Jr. builds that program. The Panthers could use a couple wins against their rivals in Santa Teresa and Chaparral next week before beginning District 3-6A play at Las Cruces on Sept. 20. Gadsden has won the last four meetings with Santa Teresa as the Desert Warriors look for their first win in the series since 2011. Santa Teresa (2-0) at Gadsden (0-2), 7 p.m. Eunice (2-0) at Hatch Valley (1-1), 7 p.m. Mesilla Valley Christian (1-0) at Mountainair (1-1), 7 p.m. Cobre (0-2) at Chaparral (0-2), 7 p.m. Oñate (0-2) at Volcano Vista (1-1) (Community Stadium), 1 p.m.
The person Lachenmann, Helmut represents an individual (alive, dead, undead, or fictional) associated with resources found in Boston University Libraries. III. Streichquartett : "Grido" = String quartet no. III : "Grido"
September 15, 2018 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir on Saturday evening swore in the new cabinet after a 24 hours delay amid confusion over some key appointments. The official cabinet decrees issued by al-Bashir confirmed previous reports that the designated finance minister Abdallah Hamdok has turned down the position. It was not immediately clear if this was a last minute change of heart or if he never accepted in the first place. Hamdok formally declined the appointment in a letter sent to al-Bashir but expressed his readiness to offer his expertise in tackling the economic crisis when needed. Bashir decided to delegate the finance ministry to the newly appointed premier Moataz Moussa. It is not known if this is a temporary or permanent assignment. The ministry of Social Security also witnessed a similar situation after Sumaya Abu Kashawa declined the role also for unknown reasons. She was replaced by businesswoman Widad Yacoub. The ministry of Animal Wealth was also excluded from the appointments after reports that the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) refused to have its member Ahmed Fadul in this role. A last-minute change was made to the state ministry of finance with Moslem Ahmed al-Amir Ahmed taking on the role after Nagi Sherif also turned it down. The 20 new ministers and 27 state ministers were sworn in by al-Bashir in the presence of chief justice Haider Ahmed Dafallah and First Vice President Bakri Hassan. During the ceremony, the president stressed that the Sudanese people have their hopes up after the formation of the new government which adds urgency to dealing with economic issues. He expressed his confidence in the new cabinet and their ability to do their part and overcome the economic problems through the optimal exploitation of Sudan’s resources to achieve the aspirations of the Sudanese people. Al-Bashir described the work in the government as a collective effort and emphasized the readiness of the presidency to cooperate and coordinate with the cabinet to provide the necessary support so that they can do their part in the required manner. "Sudan’s cabinet shuffle marred by awkwardness, confusion"
The Way of the Revolution Front will stage a demonstration in downtown Cairo on Saturday at 5pm in Talaat Harb Square under the slogan "The Street Is Ours" to protest a controversial draft law restricting public demonstrations. The Front said in a statement that the draft law aims in practice to "ban public demonstrations," which the group sees as "part of an anti-revolution policy [by the current government] and an attempt to reproduce the [pre-January 25] repressive state." "People came out in the 25 January 2011 revolution to bring down the repressive state and its laws, claiming the right to protest with sacrifices and the blood of its martyrs," the statement said. "We will not allow any assault on this right." The draft law, which was proposed by the cabinet in mid-February, has ignited public debate, with critics arguing that it infringes on Egyptian citizens' basic rights and freedoms. Among the law's most controversial measures is the proposed right given to the interior minister or senior police officials to cancel, postpone or change the location of a protest. The law also entitles governors to designate "protest-free" areas near state buildings. Responding to growing criticism, Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi said last week that the draft law could be amended after dialogue with political forces and parties. The Way of the Revolution Front was launched on 24 September, aiming to provide an alternative to the current "polarisation" between the military and Muslim Brotherhood. The Front coalition includes leading members of the April 6 Youth Movement, the Strong Egypt Party, the Revolutionary Socialists and the Justice and Freedom Youth.
If you’re worried about the prospect of having to find six weeks’ worth of activities to keep your brood occupied, let Virgin TV help take the load off. Read on to find out more about just some of the channels that are available to you with Full House TV. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg – there’s also loads of kids’ TV to enjoy On Demand! Fans of Peppa Pig and PAW Patrol, Nick Jr. (715) has you covered. Tune into Nick Jr. Too (CH 716) every day from 1pm for a brand new show about cute animals called Zoofari. Over on Disney Junior (CH 727), follow all the adventures of everyone’s favourite Disney characters – look out for Mickey And The Roadster Racers and The Lion Guard. Plus you’ve got CBeebies/HD (CH 702/711), which is packed full of fun and educational shows for the really wee ones, like Twirlywoos and Peter Rabbit. Check out Cartoon Network/HD (CH 704/732) for brilliant cartoons including Teen Titans Go! and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. If you want movies like Tom And Jerry: The Fast And The Furry and Scooby-Doo! And The Monster Of Mexico then Boomerang (CH 730) is the place to be. In need of an adventure? Check out the obstacle-course chaos of Paradise Run on Nick HD (CH 714), weekdays at 4pm. CBBC/HD (CH 701/710) has all the classics, like Blue Peter, Newsround and Danger Mouse, plus music from The Playlist, spooky stories from Creeped Out and heaps more. The Disney Channel (CH 724) has loads of early teen series to keep the slightly older kids entertained. Andi Mack explores the life of 13-year-old Andi as she comes to terms with the fact that her older sister is in fact her mother. Bunk’d follows the exploits of a group of teens at Camp Kikiwaka, while Jessie explores the life of a small-town girl who ran away from home to experience life in New York. Over on Disney XD (CH 707), catch up with action-packed animation like Guardians Of The Galaxy and Star Wars Rebels. Virgin TV Kids app: Available only to customers with Fun TV pack and above. On Demand TV content only. Content depends on your TV package. Compatible device required. Streaming and downloading only available in the UK (or while temporarily in the EU). Watch TV on a maximum of 4 registered devices per account. Max. 2 registered devices can stream content at the same time. Separate app terms and conditions apply.
Nate Robinson seems intent on pursuing his dream of making the NFL. He’s still playing basketball, for the time being over in Israel. He dropped 25 points in his debut with Hapoel Tel Aviv. Suddenly an in-demand television guest, Robinson sat for an interview in a park — only to have it derailed by a confident shirtless man challenging him to a game of one-on-one. The speculation on Reddit is that the trash-talking passerby is Raz Nissim Cohen, who has had a few cups of coffee with pro clubs in Israel. It’s difficult for me to confirm that because I’ve never seen Cohen with his shirt off. Really impressive restraint by Robinson here to not drop everything and turn in a 11-1 beatdown on live television. Had to have been tempting.
LONDON (AP) — Cambridge University has put Stephen Hawking’s doctoral thesis online, triggering such interest that it crashed the university’s website. Completed in 1966 when Hawking was 24, “Properties of Expanding Universes” explores ideas about the origins of the universe that have resonated through the scientist’s career. The university says the thesis was already the most-requested item in its online repository. It was free to download Monday to mark Open Access Week. The website was intermittently inaccessible during the day as it struggled to handle to the interest.
One of the largest domain registrars on the Web warns that the island hosting .tv is sinking. Thanks, global warming. April 30, 2009, 11 p.m. GoDaddy is recommending against purchasing .tv domain names because "The Island of Tuvalu is sinking". Maybe the world will wake up to the dangers of global warming when they're unable to buy sockpuppettheater.tv. Tuvalu is a small island located midway between Hawaii and Australia in the Pacific Ocean. A little less than 12,000 people live on the low lying 10 square mile island. It's highest point is only 14 feet, and most of the land would be swamped with a 6-12 inch rise in sea level. Someone at GoDaddy has a strange sense of humor. I dig it. And yes, Tuvalu is sinking.
Cars packed the Lake Balboa Complex earlier this month for a series of pop-up drive-in screenings. The sun's still out as cars file into a dirt field off Woodley Avenue in Lake Balboa, creating uniform rows in front of an inflatable screen. Even though the evening's open-air movie — Valley-set classic The Karate Kid — won't start for another hour or so, people have come early to snag a good spot, sure, but also to chat with neighbors, buy concessions from the handful of local food trucks and dance as a DJ spins "The Cupid Shuffle." Some kids have come wearing karate gis to celebrate a movie that came out when their parents could've seen it at an actual drive-in theater in the Valley, well before the last one was demolished in 1996. Over the course of two weekends in August, a group called My Valley Pass hosted a series of four pop-up drive-in events, screening films specific to the setting — Karate Kid, E.T., Back to the Future and La Bamba — and reviving a cinema subculture that apparently never really died but, rather, rested dormant in the San Fernando Valley's soil. "The public was very excited to experience a drive-in again in the San Fernando Valley over 20 years later," event producer and Valley Relics Museum vice president Oscar Urritia says via email. "Parents wanted their children to relive their childhood, and this was the perfect setting of nostalgia and spending time with friends and family." In the mid and late '80s, as home video technology became ubiquitous, drive-in theaters fell out of fashion and most, besides a precious few holdouts, were demolished or abandoned by the turn of the century. "The upgrade in technology and the cost of land are the main two reasons [drive-ins disappeared]," says Urritia, who'd originally planned to host the event on the very property where the Valley's last drive-in, the Winnetka 6, once stood. "It became very costly for drive-in operators to keep up with the changes to the movie experience such as projectors and sound. Also finding open land [had become] expensive with so much development over the decades." Lots of people showed off their drive-in ready rides. In recent years, America's remaining drive-ins have experienced a resurgence in popularity — it seems outdoor movies have, in general — but My Valley Pass' pop-up did them one better by wrangling talent associated with the films. Jared Cowan, who's known for the incredibly detailed film locations slideshows and articles he does for L.A. Weekly, enlisted child actor Andre Gower to attend the screening of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; Gower, who starred in 1987's The Monster Squad, wasn't in E.T. but he grew up in the Valley, auditioned for the film and was in the commercial for Atari's E.T. game. For Back to the Future, organizers showed a prerecorded video interview with movie co-creator Bob Gale, and Joe Walser attended in person to talk about being on the team that restored Doc Brown's DeLorean. Locations manager Richard Davis, who worked on both La Bamba and The Karate Kid, attended both those screenings, and for the latter, Cowan enlisted Marty Kove, who played sinister Cobra Kai sensei (and potentially scarred Vietnam vet) John Kreese. Each screening featured a new prerecorded greeting from Mayor Garcetti. It really is a bummer that there isn't a year-round drive-in theater in the Valley, since people are obviously craving the experience. But Urritia says the pop-up will absolutely return next summer. "With the overwhelming demand from the audience, we will now make this a summer tradition," says, adding that they'll continue to program films that complement the Valley setting. In the meantime, I guess the Vineland Drive-In isn't that far away.
A storage tier between the standard Amazon Simple Storage Service offering and Amazon Glacier has been made available in all AWS regions from today. Amazon Web Services has unveiled a new storage class within its Simple Storage Service (S3) for infrequently accessed data, providing a middle ground between standard storage and long-term storage in Amazon Glacier. Dubbed S3 Standard: Infrequent Access (Standard IA), the new storage option has a lower per gigabyte storage cost compared to standard storage, but a higher cost for data retrieval. In the US, the storage cost is $0.0125 per GB, whereas in Singapore, data storage is priced at $0.02 per GB. In Sydney and Tokyo, storage costs are pinned at $0.019 per GB. The pricing for requesting data is consistent worldwide: Data retrieval is priced at $0.01 per GB; $0.01 per 1,000 PUT, COPY, or POST requests; and $0.01 per 10,000 GET requests or 10,000 requests to move data into the Standard IA class. "For billing purposes, objects that are smaller than 128 kilobytes are charged for 128 kilobytes of storage," AWS chief evangelist, Jeff Barr, said in a blog post. "We believe that this pricing model will make this new storage class very economical for long-term storage, backups, and disaster recovery, while still allowing you to quickly retrieve older data if necessary. "This new storage class inherits all of the existing S3 features that you know (and hopefully love), including security and access management, data life-cycle policies, cross-region replication, and event notifications." Barr said that Standard IA has an availability service level of 99 percent. In tandem with the Standard IA announcement, Amazon has reduced the cost of using its Glacier long-term storage offering by almost one-third. "Effective September 1, 2015, we are reducing the price for data stored in Amazon Glacier from $0.01/gigabyte/month to $0.007/gigabyte/month," Barr wrote. "This price is for the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) regions." In the Frankfurt and Sydney zones, Glacier pricing is set at $0.0120 per GB, and costs $0.0114 per GB in AWS' Tokyo region. In July, Amazon announced that AWS had contributed $1.824 billion in revenue, an increase on the $1.005 billion made the same time last year. Amazon expects to open an AWS infrastructure region in India next year.
Prostate cancer can sometimes spread from the prostate to the bones, which is known as bone metastasis. Although there is no cure for bone metastases, treatment can help relieve symptoms and extend life. Metastasis is the term for cancer spreading to other parts of the body. Although prostate cancer can spread to any part of the body, it most commonly goes to the bones. Even when cancer has spread from the prostate to the bones, doctors still refer to it as prostate cancer rather than bone cancer. When treating bone metastases, doctors aim to minimize any further spreading of cancer and relieve pain and other symptoms. In this article, we discuss the symptoms of advanced prostate cancer and bone metastases. We also cover treatment options for bone metastases, side effects of treatment, and survival rates. Frequent urination can be a symptom of advanced prostate cancer. Early prostate cancer often has no symptoms. Once cancer has spread beyond the prostate, doctors refer to it as advanced prostate cancer. Although many of these symptoms can occur due to conditions other than prostate cancer, anyone who experiences them should see a doctor for an evaluation. People who experience any of these symptoms should see a doctor immediately. Treating bone metastases early on can help prevent further complications. Treatment for bone metastasis can help relieve pain and prevent complications. A doctor will work with the individual to develop a suitable treatment plan. Bisphosphonates can also reduce the side effects of hormone therapy, which some people may receive to treat their prostate cancer. Zoledronic acid (Zometa) is the bisphosphonate that doctors most commonly prescribe for people with prostate cancer. They usually administer this drug by intravenous injection every 3 to 4 weeks. Doctors inject the denosumab under the person's skin every 4 weeks. Learn more about the symptoms and treatment of the different stages of prostate cancer here. Doctors can also inject medications called radiopharmaceuticals to treat people with bone metastases. Once inside the body, these drugs move to the bones and release radiation that can kill cancer cells. Radiopharmaceuticals treat all the affected bones at the same time rather than just targeting one area. All of these drugs can help relieve bone pain. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), if prostate cancer has only spread to the bones and not to other organs, radium-223 can also help people live longer. Some treatments for bone metastasis can cause fatigue. People taking bisphosphonates or denosumab may need to take calcium and vitamin D supplements to prevent their calcium levels from becoming too low. Bisphosphonates can also cause kidney problems, so doctors may not recommend these drugs for people with reduced kidney function. Before taking bisphosphonates or denosumab, it is essential to make the doctor aware of any dental problems. Doctors often advise people to see a dentist to address any dental issues before starting these medications. Practicing good oral hygiene, such as brushing correctly and flossing daily, may help prevent ONJ. Bowel problems, such as diarrhea, bloody stools, and rectal leakage. Some people may need to follow a special diet to help reduce these side effects. Fatigue, which may continue for a time after treatment stops. Lymphedema, which can cause fluid to build up in certain parts of the body, such as the legs and groin. Physical therapy can help reduce pain and swelling. Erectile dysfunction. Doctors can prescribe medications to help with erection problems. Urination difficulties, such as pain while urinating, accidental leakage, and loss of control. Many treatments are available for urination problems, including catheters, medications, exercises, and surgery. Radiopharmaceutical treatment can lead to a decrease in blood cells. A low blood cell count can increase a person's risk of infection and bleeding. People who are taking radiopharmaceuticals should speak to their doctor about the symptoms that may indicate a low blood cell count and the precautions they can take to prevent this. Pain medication can be very effective in relieving the pain of prostate cancer and bone metastases. A person should talk to a doctor about any pain that they are experiencing. The doctor can prescribe appropriate pain relief and work with the individual to develop a pain control plan. Pain relievers are most effective when people take them at regular intervals and not just when pain is severe. Doctors can also offer advice and treatment for any other symptoms or side effects that a person may have. A person's doctor can prescribe pain relief and help them establish a pain control plan. There is currently no cure for advanced prostate cancer, but advances in treatments are extending life expectancy and improving quality of life. The ACS state that the 5-year relative survival rate for individuals with prostate cancer that has spread to distant lymph nodes, organs, or the bones is 29 percent. Accordingly, people with this stage of prostate cancer are about 29 percent as likely as people without the condition to live for at least 5 years after diagnosis. Ongoing research on cancer is also facilitating the development of more effective treatments and leading to improvements in survival rates. Prostate cancer can spread to other organs in the body. When cancer spreads to the bones, this is known as bone metastasis. Although there is currently no cure for prostate cancer that has spread to the bones, treatment can help relieve pain, improve quality of life, and extend life expectancy. A doctor will work closely with a person to develop a treatment plan. Many people also find it beneficial to join a support group and connect with others who understand how they may be feeling. The Prostate Cancer Foundation provide information to help people find a local support group. Sissons, Beth. "What are bone metastases in prostate cancer?." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 20 Nov. 2018. Web.
I took a dim view of the letters from readers published Aug. 26 in regard to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church [“Anger over role of church leaders”]. No one disputes that many priests committed heinous acts while the hierarchy ignored them. Our current bishops, however, are doing far more and have learned to protect the young and innocent. Let’s tell it as it is today. Bishops are openly compassionate toward the victims of abuse. We have heard this from Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre many times before the most recent scandals. Aside from reconciliatory and monetary programs they helped to create, the bishops have asked victims to reach out to police and the authorities. That hardly sounds like an organization looking to sweep charges under a rug! Nationally, our bishops are being asked to provide a concerned response to charges that are decades old. Many of the credible accusations occurred before these bishops were even ordained. They are following up to protect the young and support the victims. I hope and pray that sexual abuse allegations in recent years have dropped precipitously. I believe our diocese has been exceptional in addressing a scandal that came to light almost two decades ago. After reading the Pennsylvania grand jury report and the response from Bishop Barres, I find no fault with him. In fact, I applaud him. He truly wants to help those who have been abused to be freed from torment and heal. He is a wonderful shepherd! The letter writers expressed righteous outrage over developments in the Catholic Church regarding the handling of sexual abuse by priests and bishops. I’m sure their thoughts are shared by many clergy who have lived up to the vows they have taken. There are in these letters, however, several comments that need addressing. One writer objected to the pope’s call for “Catholics to help end the cover-up.” The cover-up, the reader said, “was solely the work of the church,” by which, I assume, he means the hierarchy. But the church is more than those in rightful positions of service and authority. As the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 reiterated, all the faithful are part of the church. When one part suffers, all are called upon to heal the wounds. Two other writers said that if celibacy were abolished, child abuse would no longer be a problem in the church. Yet the church teaches that all are called to chastity in whatever life they choose. The fact that some do not live up to this call does not lessen its beauty and value. Many instances of child abuse occur in family situations. While many may disagree, the Holy Spirit is still guiding and assisting the church and its followers in these times of soul-searching. How often have we heard the word “reconciliation” used in matters of serious wrong throughout the world? This might be a good time for all of us to work and pray for that day of reconciliation. Prosecutors in New York, Missouri and Illinois, among others, have said they might investigate Catholic dioceses in their jurisdictions because of the cover-up of sexual assaults by Catholic priests. This scandal has resulted in more than $3.8 billion in payouts to victims, according to Bishop Accountability, a nonprofit group. In New York, State Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan should drop his opposition to the Child Victims Act, which would give victims more time to bring civil or criminal cases. Bishops in the United States are reportedly considering calling for a Vatican investigation conducted with expert laypeople into how Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, now resigned, was able to reach the highest ranks of the church despite rumors that he had abused young people. As a Catholic, I am embarrassed. I suggest that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and forensic accountants of the Justice Department check into every diocese. It’s time to leave no child behind, stop sugarcoating these crimes and enforce the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Rabbi Marc Gellman’s column “No time to lose faith in the Catholic Church” [LI Life, Aug. 26] provides the best orientation needed by all Catholics and the public. I’d like to add that each one of us is a product of the society in which we live. The problem of sexual abuse is being confronted not only in the church, but also in all of society. Temptation is not a sin, and our society’s tendency to this infidelity at all levels needs prayer to help us avoid acting on our temptations. Regardless of religious creed, we need God’s help to deal with potential sin. If you lift your heart to God in whatever way you talk to him, you have to be heard. Editor’s note: The writer is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph, a Catholic religious order.
Set in the fictional, futuristic Japanese city of Megasaki, Wes Anderson’s new movie Isle of Dogs tells the story of Atari, a 12-year-old boy on a quest to find his dog Spots after the canine is exiled to an apocalyptic looking Trash Island by Atari’s corrupt, cat-favoring uncle, Mayor Kobayashi. It features the voices of several of Anderson’s regulars, including Bill Murray, Edward Norton and Jeff Goldblum. The movie, which opened in March and expands nationwide April 13, has received largely positive reviews, with many critics praising its captivating aesthetics. Others, meanwhile, have accused it of cultural appropriation, saying its depiction of Japan and Japanese people crosses over from homage into racial stereotyping and marginalization. It is writer and director Anderson’s ninth feature film, and his second made using stop-motion animation following 2009’s Oscar-nominated Fantastic Mr Fox. The painstakingly slow stop-motion technique, popularized by Aardman, the British design studio behind Wallace and Gromit and Early Man, requires the physical creation of every set, prop and character, and the shooting of their micro-movements frame-by-frame — a hugely ambitious undertaking for a feature-length film. Above, TIME is debuting a featurette on the behind-the-scenes process of bringing all the moving parts, quite literally, together. Below, TIME spoke with the movie’s lead graphic designer Erica Dorn and producer Jeremy Dawson about how Isle of Dogs was made, specific visual influences and the discussion around cultural appropriation. Bill Murray as 'Boss,' Jeff Goldblum as 'Duke,' Edward Norton as 'Rex,' Bob Balaban as 'King,' Liev Shreiber as 'Spots,' Harvey Keitel as 'Gondo,' Koyu Rankin as 'Atari Kobayashi' and Bryan Cranston as 'Chief' in Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. TIME: How long did the whole process take, from creating the characters and scenes to shooting the movie? Jeremy Dawson: The stage of building sets and puppets and shooting them lasted from around September 2015 until November 2017. It was almost two and a half years of making and filming stuff. At the time, we had a crew of several hundred people, with roughly 60 people solely focusing on making puppets. Erica Dorn: I worked on the movie for 26 months in total, which is the longest I’ve ever worked on a single project. Dawson: That’s probably the same for me. Why did Isle of Dogs take such a long time to make? Dorn: Everything is miniature, so you can’t pop to the prop store — you have to make everything yourself. But even if it we were working on life-size sets, Wes is the kind of director that wants everything to be created and custom-made for that specific, visual world that he’s creating. Dawson: It’s not like you can purchase a lamp or a vase or a fork; everything has to be designed. In a regular movie, if you need some table settings you can bring them in, but with this movie we need to design everything from scratch. That means thought has gone into everything — even the decorative pattern on a plate. Bill Murray as 'Boss' in a ramen bar in Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. How much experience did you have of Japan and Japanese culture before working on the movie? Dorn: I grew up in Japan — I was actually in Japan when Jeremy [Dawson] sent me the initial email asking me to be involved in the project. So visually I have an understanding of the country. Although Megasaki City is a fictional place, all the details come from real Japanese references. It’s like a nostalgic version of Japan, even though it’s set in the future. It’s Japan on planet Anderson. Dawson: We didn’t make Japan in this movie, we made a Wes Anderson movie that is inspired by his love of Japanese cinema. It’s this fictional, fully immersive, 360-degree world with a basis in reality, like Eastern Europe in The Grand Budapest Hotel, New York in the The Royal Tenenbaums or even a summer camp in Moonrise Kingdom. Where did the inspiration come from for the ‘look’ of Megasaki city and the movie in general? Dawson: It’s mainly influenced by the world of Japanese cinema that Wes and the other writers [Kunichi Nomura, Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman] are into — they’re all huge movie buffs. The idea was for the movie to be a sort of portal into this Japanese cinema world, inspired by the work of Japanese filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa. We did a bunch of investigation early on into Ukiyo-e style woodblock prints [used in 18th century Japan to disseminate texts]. The Metropolitan Museum in New York has a huge collection of them and the curator there kindly arranged for us to go in person and look through it. There were 15 or 20 different versions of some of the prints, which was a big inspiration for the look of the skies in the movie. Bill Murray as 'Boss,' Jeff Goldblum as 'Duke,' Liev Shreiber as 'Spots,' Koyu Rankin as 'Atari Kobayashi,' Edward Norton as 'Rex,' Bryan Cranston as 'Chief' and Bob Balaban as 'King' in Isle of Dogs. What was the process the designers went through when creating the props? Dorn: For each prop, we looked at real Japanese objects in photos, cinema and the real world. Wes would then cherry pick the references or the elements from the references that he liked — for example, he might like a lettering from one reference and a stamp detail from another. That would then become a visual brief for us to start working on the original props for the film. We’d then go through several iterations of each prop until Wes settled on something. However, that didn’t mean the process was finished. Wes sometimes said “yes” to something, but then when he saw it on camera he felt like it needed to change. It was a constant process of tweaking and revising. Was there one set that was a particular challenge to create? Dorn: Yes, the bedroom of Tracey [Greta Gerwig’s character]. It had four walls covered in graphics on different types of paper, as well as newspaper clippings, photos, official documents, receipts and a general collection of evidence that she had collected to write her article against the Mayor of Megasaki. We spent a long time on that set as every little thing had to be designed. We wrote all the newspaper articles and all the official documents, and we had to make and age them all several times because we kept moving them around and touching them. That was the most visually-complex and also labor-intensive set in the whole movie. And the irony is, you only see each wall for about two seconds. Dawson: If you freeze-frame on those walls and zoom in on the little newspaper clippings taped to them, those articles contain real text that is actually relevant to the movie. Greta Gerwig's character 'Tracy Walker' in Isle of Dogs. What do you make of accusations of cultural appropriation the movie has received? Dorn: I think cultural appropriation isn’t really a concept in Japan. Japan is becoming an inspiration for artists, filmmakers and fashion outside the country, and Japanese culture generally is all about assimilating and mixing with other cultures. Wes chose Japan [as a setting for this movie] and I think people in Japan will be really excited to see that. People are ready to criticize on behalf of Japanese people. After working so hard on a project for such a long time, what does it feel like to finally sit down and watch it? Dorn: I think when you understand the number of hours and amount of manpower that went into it, it’s even more rewarding. Dawson: We were so embedded in the movie for so long — we were all down the hall from each other, sharing lunches. We were like a family. We’re all super proud of it.
WATCH: A sold out show at BC Place turned into a night of frustration, confusion and anger. Catherine Urquhart reports. If you were stuck in line outside BC Place for tonight’s U2 concert, you might have worried the show would start with or without you. Thousands of people were stuck outside the arena Friday evening, trying to get into the stadium before U2 hit the stage for the kickoff of their 2017 Joshua Tree tour. Some commented on a new credit card system the stadium and Ticketmaster has implemented in which customers who bought credit card entry tickets had to present their card at the gates in order to gain entry. It is a new system designed to prevent scalping. Guests with general admission tickets had only one gate to enter the stadium while guests with seated tickets had only four gates. With opening act Mumford & Sons set to walk on the stage at 7:30 p.m., thousands outside were quickly realizing they’d miss the first performance. Other fans were already calling for refunds on social media. Global News reporter Samantha Falk was still outside BC Place waiting to get inside just five minutes before Mumford & Sons began playing. According to Falk, the entire area surrounding the stadium was flooded with people and lines that had barely inched in over 30 minutes. Other people say construction at the stadium is causing confusion on how to access certain gates. We are sorry for the delays getting in tonight. Don't worry, we are going to get you in before U2 goes on. It's going to be a great night! According to social media reports, many people had finally made it inside by that point. Some even went so far as to say the stadium just let people in and didn’t even bother to check tickets in the end. @bcplace after 2 hrs wait, no one even checked my ticket!! Great system!
Since Google announced its business-focused flavor of Google Drive, Google Drive for Work, adoption has been swift, according to figures the company released today. “Today, more than 1,800 businesses sign up for Drive for Work each week,” Scott Johnston, director of product management for Google Drive, wrote in a blog post. Customers of the service, which costs $10 per employee per month, include WeddingWire, Johnston wrote. Meanwhile Google is also touting its reliability. “Last year, Google Drive achieved 99.985 percent availability, which averages to less than 90 minutes of disruption per year (our SLA guarantees 99.9 percent),” Johnson wrote. Such performance equates to a taunt to competitors that have had outages, including Dropbox. The market continues to heat up as prices fall and storage limits go up, and Google is one of the few companies that can push hard on price and scale because of how big it is and how much infrastructure it can buy in one shot. Meanwhile Amazon recently entered the market, and Box has lowered prices. Microsoft represents an increasing threat in cloud storage, too, having recently bumped up OneDrive’s free storage limit to 15 GB and offered 1 TB to OneDrive for Business customers, not just 25 GB. Even if Google might lack the buzz that IPO-bound Box and Dropbox have these days, Google is gunning hard for business credibility, not only in the file-sync-and-share business but also in the cloud infrastructure market. Consider yourselves warned, competitors.
One month after social TV app Zeebox finally arrived on Android, the second-screen platform has announced a slew of new features designed to better engage audiences. Today’s announcement means that celebrities can use the app to draw fans into their shows, whilst letting viewers set up group chat rooms based around their favourite programmes. We’ve written about Zeebox on a number of occasions before, and we recently interviewed the UK company’s founder Anthony Rose about the rise of social TV. Just to recap, Zeebox turns your mobile device or laptop into an interactive companion that enhances whatever you watch on your main TV screen – it knows what you and your friends are watching, and it lets you all share, chat and tweet about whatever’s on. Constituting Part of Zeebox’s drive to innovate the second-screen experience, the new Shout Out and Group Chat features are designed to create a viral, social space around TV programmes. The Shout Out button enables viewers to react to what they’re seeing on-screen by instantly messaging their emotions to friends and followers via Zeebox, Twitter or Facebook. The button is designed to promote shared live TV viewing among friends, and the company says it will serve as a way for celebrities to drive audience figures upwards. Group Chat, on the other hand, enables anyone in Zeebox to share or tweet a link that instantly launches the Zeebox app and a chat window where buddies can engage around their favourite show. Group chats of thousands of users will be possible, and this feature will be used by broadcasters and their presenters/pundits to create celebrity-driven chat rooms around the most social TV shows. 2012 is gearing up for a big year in the social TV space, with Zeebox announcing a partnership with BSkyB to co-launch a second-screen experience under the Sky+ banner, expected to launch this summer. And Orange rolled out its very own second-screen app in the UK earlier this month, after TVcheck saw significant uptake in France. Other features in the new Zeebox release include: Twitter tribes, which let you see tweet streams for different teams during a big match or follow the stars on your favourite show; the ability to ‘book’ programme reminders directly from the programme guide; and, by popular demand we’re told, the TV remote control function now has Auto and Manual modes. The new release is available in the UK iTunes store now, with updates for the Android and Web versions due out later this week.
The best-selling author reveals why he puts on weight when he sits down to pen a book. Early mornings and music play an important role in the author's daily routine. NEW DELHI: Ernest Hemingway, it is said, would always write standing, while Dan Brown is known to hang himself upside down to get over his writers' block. For Amish Tripathi, munching on cream biscuits does the trick. This, perhaps, is why he would put on weight every time he sits down to pen a new book. In an interview with PTI, the bestselling author of the Shiva Trilogy revealed his writing rituals and how early mornings and music play an important role in his daily routine. "I eat a lot of cream biscuits when I am writing. I don't know why but I am always munching on one while writing. Especially, the ones I used to eat when I was a kid...bourbon and pineapple flavours. So, yes I tend to put on a lot of weight when I am writing," the author said. The banker-turned author, who begins his day as early as 5:30, says once he gets down to writing, he cannot do without music. "I am an early riser. I wake up at 5:30...I exercise, do my pooja, read four newspapers and sit down to write by 9:30. I need music to write. I listen to all kinds except rap. The only thing is that the mood of music should match the mood of my writing," he adds. Having dealt with his own share of writers' block, Tripathi says it is only natural that not every day is equally rewarding and there are several occasions "when it simply doesn't flow". But, the key, he says, is not to get frustrated. "Somedays I might write for 7-8 hours on the trot. But then there are days it simply doesn't flow. On such occasions, I tell myself that Lord Shiva is busy with someone else, and without getting frustrated...shut my laptop, pick a book to read or simply watch a movie. There is always another day," he says. Tripathi recently unveiled the title of his new book, the second in the Ramachandra series, 'Sita: Warrior of Mithila' which is expected to hit the stands by June this year. Tripathi says he is confident of himself as a writer, but it is the marketing phase that gives him the jitters. "While writing I am not thinking about anything else. I am in a parallel universe busy recording what I see there. And I just love that. It is almost spiritual. "But during the marketing phase, I start thinking about my publisher...that he has put his money on my book and I have to make sure that the book sells to recover the amount. This is where the nerves come into play," he said. Tripathi is credited with penning the fastest selling book series (Shiva Trilogy) in Indian publishing history as well as the fastest selling book ('Scion of Ikshvaku').
Places like Beaver Creek are increasingly home to semi-retirees and lone eagles continuing to work out of their technologically sophisticated resort retreats. January 9, 2008 — For Brian and Wendi Kushner of Austin, Texas, the search for the perfect mountain retreat capable of accommodating both work and play started with the rapidly growing trend of vacation club ownership. The Kushners bought a single share of a 3-bedroom, 3.5-bath unit at the Ritz-Carlton Club when it first opened in Bachelor Gulch near Beaver Creek several years ago. They then bought a share a year later to afford them more time in the mountains, especially during the hot summer months in Texas. The Kushners are part of a growing trend away from vacation or second home ownership and toward multi-purpose primary homes – or at least more heavily utilized second or third homes in resort areas. A home like this one in Vail provides great access to the slopes but also a comfortable work and play environment for families spending more and more time in their mountain homes. A managing partner in CXO, LLC, a company that, among other things, provides interim and turnaround management services to private equity and hedge fund portfolio companies, Brian Kushner travels a great deal and needs good air access but also relies heavily on telecommunications to work closely with companies around the country. The Kushners searched the Mountain West for the perfect locale for their multi-use home, even spending some time in the Deer Valley-Park City area of Utah, but their experience with the Ritz-Carlton convinced them Vail – with its regional airport just 30 miles away between Eagle and Gypsum – was the ideal spot. Their Ritz membership effectively limited them to a maximum of about six weeks a year in the Vail Valley, but in 2007, with their new condo, they had already spent nearly 10 weeks in the mountains by early September and they expected to increase that to more than 12 weeks in 2008. Given Brian’s frenetic weekly travel schedule, air access is at a premium. Transportation and technology are dramatically transforming resort real estate markets, says Jim Flaum of Slifer Smith and Frampton Real Estate in the Vail Valley. “We’ve seen a big change in the market in the last 10 years, and even more so in the last five years, with captains of industry who can keep operating their companies or doing their job from anywhere in the world because of technology, and therefore they’ve been willing to spend more time here and invest in a bigger home,” Flaum says. And it’s a trend that’s occurring throughout the resort areas of the Rocky Mountain West – not just the high-end ski areas of Colorado. Mike Lee and his wife Kathy disassembled a circa-1650 wooden barn from the English countryside and had it shipped to the United States in the 1970s with the distant notion of one day reassembling it in a mountainous resort area as a gathering place for their large, extended family. After looking in parts of Oregon and the Mammoth and Tahoe lake regions of California, the Lees – living in the Bay Area at the time – settled on Utah, where they’d both graduated from the University of Utah years earlier. Park City specifically – a place with unlimited recreational opportunities, proximity to their church, great outdoor beauty and fast access to a major international airport. The impending 2002 Winter Olympics forced the Lees to build a bit ahead of their original timeframe, erecting the oldest structure in Park City in 1996-97 in order to get out ahead of the pre-Olympic land rush. But when they were done, their 17th-century home between the ski resorts of Park City and Deer Valley predated by at least two centuries anything still standing from Park City’s mining heyday of the late 1800’s. Their new-old second home immediately became exactly what they had hoped for: a place of permanence and familial refuge from their city life in San Francisco and the ideal point of convergence for the Lees, their five children, friends and other family. The Lees no longer even own a place in San Francisco, and through the wonders of the web and wireless technology, Mike is able to conduct business as usual from his Park City home. Besides the technological revolution of the last few years, Lee says the dual factors of the changing face of retirement (with people working much later in life) and the relative ease of transportation after the initial post 9-11 security ramp-up eased off have combined to turn places like Park City and Vail, Colo., into virtual suburbs of major metropolitan commercial hubs around the nation. Lee, 64, says companies are increasingly recognizing the value – from both an expertise and an experience standpoint – of employees in their late 60s or even early 70s. The traditional 65 retirement age is a thing of the past. But part of remaining so active means finding a multi-use home in area rich with cultural and recreational opportunities and the necessary transportation and communications infrastructure for conducting business in such places. A version of this story originally appeared in East West Partners’ new Elevate magazine in the fall of 2007. 1 Comment on "Multi-home trend supplanting second home ownership" Love this story. My wife and I started like the Kushners-- bought a share at the Austria Haus, then a full unit at the Cascades and last year bought a lot in Cordillera to build on in the future. Our hope is to move to Cordillera fulltime in the next 5-6 years. Till then we have our Cascades condo that we use as often as possible.
To the local voting scribes who nominate and lobby for players from the Cowboys to get into the Ring of Honor — lookin’ at you, Charean Williams and Goose Gosselin — get Woodson into the Pro HOF. Cliff Harris, too. Then Jerry. Then Woody. There has been no search any more frustrating and fruitless than the one this organization has endured to find a safety in the same league as Darren Woodson. Guys such as Roy Williams and even Ken Hamlin had a good season or two at safety, but nobody has come close to what this man could do on a field, or in a locker room. He didn’t have the panache or mouth of Deion Sanders or Charles Haley, both of whom are Hall of Famers, but Woodson was the spirit and professionalism of that dynasty Cowboys defense. Listening to him talk on Tuesday was a reminder of how good that defense was, and how often that unit was overlooked because the offense was so dominant and intimidating. As frightening as that Triplets offense was, the defense was the best kind of bad. Woody was the quietest bad man out there. He knew he was good, yet he was a consummate pro. He didn’t suffer fools, or layabouts. It would be nice if somebody in this current crew of defensive backs could take a shot at being Darren Woodson. Woodson was the one guy who former Cowboys coach Bill Parcells inherited when he came here in 2003 that he did not want to retire. There were even brief discussions about Woodson coming out of retirement after he was done after the ’03 season. The current crop of Cowboys safeties, Barry Church and J.J. Wilcox, are coming off good to decent seasons, but this defense still needs that edge that a man like Woodson provided. The closest “edge” we have seen so far from this secondary is from Tyler Patmon’s catfight with Dez Bryant on Sunday in practice. The only player in the secondary who plays with an edge is Orlando Scandrick. The rest are nice guys. Granted, Darren Woodsons generally don’t come out of football ATM machines, but every season since he retired illustrated how special he was. The way NFL offenses throw the ball, and with the rules that favor the receivers, the Cowboys need another Woodson. He could play near the line, and help on coverage. Church is a good tackler, and a solid player. He embodied last season’s defense. “They were tough,” defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli said. They were tough, and they made the most out of what they had, which was not enough talent. Wilcox is entering his third year and would a fight a starving bear if asked, but his coverage skills don’t seem to be there yet. The unknown is first-round pick Byron Jones. The Cowboys are looking at him at safety, provided former first-round pick Morris Claiborne is something more than a complete and total bust. There are several moving parts to this secondary, which no doubt needs help from a pass rush that was nonexistent to erratic last season. If the pass rush remains as bad as it was last season, it doesn’t matter who is in the secondary. Learning of Woodson’s Ring of Honor invite and watching the Cowboys trying to again improve their secondary, and his old safety spot, was a reminder how good he was and hard it has been to find his replacement. Shan & RJ from 5:30-10 a.m.
Ashton Takes Charlie's Spot At The Mic! It's curtains for Charlie Sheen! In a new promotional photo for the upcoming ninth season of "Two and A Half Men," Ashton Kutcher has taken Charlie's spot at the mic -- and in front of the show's signature red curtain -- cementing the newbie's place in this revamped trio. Exactly how Ashton will be worked into "Two and A Half Men" is still a mystery, but that curiosity pretty much guarantees boffo ratings for the September 19th premiere since everyone is dying to know who he will play. And how the show plans to explain away Charlie!
The President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev is very optimistic of the results of his visit to Minsk. The industrial and economical potential of Belarus creates a good base for effective future co-operation between the two countries, Aliyev stated on his departure from Minsk. Aliyev voiced his confidence that due to the meeting held with the Belarusian Leader, the mutually beneficial co-operation will develop more actively. In conclusion, the President considered the meeting as been very successful. The President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev made an official visit to Minsk from 17-18 October.
Hennessey’s new HPE750 Supercharged Mustang was tested to 207.9 MPH. My personal transportation needs require at least 208 MPH, so while this car is not for me, for under $70,000, it’s still a hell of a deal for those who need to go really, really fast. This speed makes the HPE750 the first 2015 Mustang variant to break the 200 MPH barrier, long known to be one of the average Mustang owner’s primary requirements for their cars. The high-speed run happened on Continental Tire’s 8.5 mile high-speed oval track, and the event was witnessed by Jay Leno, who was both shooting an episode of Leno’s Garage and a pilot for a possible new television show, Jay Leno Witnesses Events That Occurred. “If at first you don’t succeed, just add more horsepower and rpm and try again. It’s pretty cool to be able to offer an American muscle car that delivers supercar performance for under $70,000. In the context of a supercar, it is pretty amazing that 200+ MPH speeds are now available for cars well under $100,000. It’s a fascinating feat of modern engineering, and, sure, maybe a little useless, but just knowing that a car can go a given absurdly high speed seems to be the key criteria for sales. Please note that the “Hennessey Premium Floormats” are the only Mustang floormats tested to over 200 MPH.
1. A Wrinkle in Time is a total groaner, a movie that wants to soar into the heavens but is weighed down by all the lead in its boots. This is one of those movies in which every character is constantly giving speeches, from the very beginning, about love, and the nature of love, and how powerful love is, and what it means to love, but it never seems particularly invested in love as anything other than something for everyone to look off into the distance and drone portentously about. Everyone involved appears appropriately earnest, but in a self-serving and completely airless way: It is less a movie for and about children than it is a movie by adults trying to show other adults that they are making a movie for and about children, which is something different entirely. There are movies that fail because they are misguided, or because their heart isn’t in the right place. This movie wants to be special, which makes the fact it is such a lumpy, clumsy mess all the more frustrating. You root for this movie, and the movie tries to go a long way on that good will. It doesn’t make it far. 2. The movie starts promisingly enough, with a father (Chris Pine) and his daughter Meg (Storm Reid) in his lab, enjoying each other’s company, clearly connected and adoring of each other. I know it would veer far from the book’s vision, but I find myself, typing this now, wishing we could have just stuck with those two, in that room. Alas: The father is a renowned physicist—along with his equally renowned physicist wife (Gugu Mbatha-Raw)—who believes the universe can be found in one’s mind and then proves it by disappearing from his family for four years. (We are told this information, in typically clunky fashion, by a television news item, as if there is a channel dedicated solely to this individual family that is only turned on when we need something explained.) Then, suddenly, very suddenly, Meg’s little brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) is visited by three otherworldly figures called the Missus, Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), who cart the family, along with Meg’s generic love interest, across the universe to find Dad. 3. It is possible the plot of the book (which I have not read) is as simplistic as the plot of the movie, but I’ll confess I doubt it. The Missus dart around the universe with the kids, dispensing all sort of thick advice delivered in empty, blinking would-be whimsy. Everything about the Missus is pitched at a level too high; director Ava DuVernay clearly finds them more charming than you likely will. (Witherspoon, in particular, looks fully aware how stranded she is.) A Wrinkle in Time turns into a road movie for its middle third, as we hop from one spot to another until landing on The It, which is poorly defined but still serves as the de facto villain for the last third. Eventually the Missus leave, and the kids must find Dad and battle The It, though I’m still not entirely certain what The It is or what It wants. It struck me mostly like the negative slime in Ghostbusters 2. It’s mostly just bad vibes. 4. The movie’s villain might not have any motivation or make much sense, but the movie still desperately needs a villain: Otherwise it would just be a series of scenes of the Missus delivering exposition in front of some CGI. DuVernay is a skilled director—the best, most surprising part of her Selma was how detailed and grounded it was—but I might humbly submit that a big-budget effects-heavy children’s movie is not necessarily in her strike zone. The movie keeps trying to convince us of the magic of its world, but few of the visuals really pop; it mostly looks like second-tier Avatar. And while DuVernay has a striking lead actress in Reid, she shows no particularly proficiency with, or patience for, child actors. The kids always seem like movie kids, being cute at the right moments, perpetually performing, and in one case in the film’s third act, the demands of the material seem to outpace the ability of one of the film’s younger cast members. Heck, I’m not even sure DuVernay gets Oprah right. Winfrey has proven herself to have legitimate acting chops in the past—all the more impressive that she can disappear into roles considering, well, she’s Oprah—but DuVernay makes her far too regal and distant here: She’s a little too Oprah. The movie just doesn’t seem thought through all that well: It wants you to like it, but it also maybe expects you to a little too much. 5. The movie’s strength is in the family’s home life, this family of physicists and geniuses, and every time it gets its head into the clouds and the cosmos, it loses its footing. The people you care about in this movie are Pine and Reid, but Pine disappears for most of the movie and the movie never quite recovers. There is power in their scenes together that the rest of the film does not have. It’s a tricky maneuver, trying to find the right tone in an earnest kid’s fantasy film like this, and DuVernay and her writers lose the thread repeatedly. When in doubt, they try to lean on Spielbergian wonder, but it’s the wrong kind of Spielberg; imagine Spielberg’s most cloying instincts on childhood but none of the action chops to carry you between them. This is not a fun movie to dislike. DuVernay is an important filmmaker, both on screen and off, and a model in many ways to be emulated; this as inclusive and diverse a cast as you will find in a would-be blockbuster. But they are all equally left adrift here. This is a lead balloon of a movie.
A 10-game winning streak might suggest the Bulls have established a certain swagger when it comes to the Toronto Raptors. But saddled with injuries and in the midst of a three-game losing streak that capped a 2-4 road trip, extending their string of victories over Toronto that dates back to 2014 seems to have just the opposite effect. Especially for the Bulls, who despite likely getting leading scorer Jimmy Butler back Tuesday night, will look to extend the run of success while being anything but at full strength. Being short-handed won’t help the Bulls, who dropped to three games under .500 with Sunday’s 117-89 loss to the Timberwolves. Guard Dwyane Wade and forwards Nikola Mirotic and Paul Zipser will not play Tuesday, coach Fred Hoiberg announced Tuesday morning. Wade will miss his second straight game with an injury to his right wrist. Hoiberg said that a Monday MRI exam didn’t indicate any long-term damage, but said the veteran guard isn’t ready to play yet. Mirotic (back spasms) and Zipser (left ankle tendinitis) have also been ruled out. Zipser is in a walking boot, Hoiberg said, and likely won’t play again until after the All-Star break. Mirotic has shown progress and may be able to return on Thursday against the Boston Celtics. Butler, one of four players to miss Sunday’s blowout loss in Minneapolis, is likely to play Tuesday after missing four of the Bulls last five games. Butler worked out Monday and participated in Tuesday morning’s shoot around. Although Hoiberg won’t put Butler on a minutes restriction Tuesday night, the injury is one that will continue to be monitored. The Bulls will attempt snap the three-game skid in a week filled with tough tests starting Tuesday against the Raptors and continuing Thursday against the Celtics. The Raptors acquired Serge Ibaka on Tuesday from the Orlando Magic on Tuesday morning as they attempt to make a surge up the Eastern Conference standings. Although Ibaka won’t play Tuesday night, Gibson said focus will be vital over the next few days before the Bulls head into the All-Star break after Thursday’s game against Boston.
Abu Wahib has been waging jihad in Iraq for more than a decade. He fought for al Qaeda in Iraq, was imprisoned and escaped during an al Qaeda assault on a prison in 2014, and is responsible for the Islamic State’s successes in Anbar province. While the AQAP commander’s statement may be technically true, it ignores the fact that jihadist groups’ local and foreign operations support each other, and both pose a threat to the West.
A firm that has pledged to invest more than $220 million into Clark County has started hiring and will host a job fair next month. Silfex, based in Eaton, will host a job fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 21, at the OhioMeansJobs-Clark County office at 1345 Lagonda Ave. in Springfield. The company has pledged to create more than 400 jobs over the next several years. Silfex was founded in Preble County and builds silicon components for everything from computer processors to cell phones to cars. The firm also grows silicon crystals at its existing plant in Eaton and will perform similar functions in Springfield. Last month, the company hosted an open house at the vacant plant it bought on Titus Road. The company is converting the 350,000-square-foot warehouse near the Prime Ohio Industrial Park into a high-tech manufacturing plant that makes silicon products for a variety of markets. The warehouse previously housed the Thirty-One Gifts distribution center. Company officials previously told the Springfield News-Sun that the majority of the company’s operations will be up and running by Jan. 1, 2019. Jobs available will include CNC machinists and operators, crystal growing technicians, engineers, and administrative and support staff. Silfex is already hiring for some position, said Amy Donahoe, director of hiring and employer services for the Chamber of Greater Springfield. Employees hired before the Springfield plant opens will likely meet in Springfield, then be taken by bus to the company’s Eaton facility for training each day. Employees would also be compensated for their time and receive training during the bus ride each day. Company officials have said Clark County’s workforce was a good fit for the company because of the region’s extensive background in manufacturing. Another major Clark and Champaign County employer, Mercy Health, is looking to fill several positions and will hold its third job fair in recent weeks. Mercy Health-Springfield will host open interviews for about 80 full- and part-time positions at a hiring event from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 20, at the Kroc Center, 1000 North Keowee St. in Dayton. Mercy wants to fill about 40 registered nurse positions in units that include surgical, intensive care, Emergency Department and behavioral health. Mercy Health also needs to fill 40 non-nursing positions, with roles available for respiratory therapists, speech language pathologists, physical therapists, certified occupational therapy assistants, medical technologists, scrub technicians, radiology technicians, telemetry technicians, phlebotomists, case managers, licensed social workers, nursing assistants, behavioral health technicians and dietary and environmental services staff. Those unable to attend are encouraged to email a resume to Lora Risner at [email protected] or apply online at mercy.com. Company benefits include sign-on bonuses for qualifying positions, medical, dental and vision benefits and tuition reimbursement. Where: OhioMeansJobs-Clark County, 1345 Lagonda Ave. The Springfield News-Sun digs into important stories about jobs and the economy in Clark and Champaign counties, including recent coverage of local jobless rates and profits at Navistar.
NEW CONSTRUCTION! Gorgeous 1 level Ranch plan includes 3 bedroom/2.5 bathroom + Bonus Room on second level. Attached side entry 2-car garage. Open floorplan. Granite Countertops, covered deck and lots of luxuries to enjoy. 1/2 acre homesite. No HOA. No City Taxes. Move in Ready for April closing.Beautiful & quick move in homes! Bartlett Plan by Century Communities. This gorgeous all brick home includes 3 BD/2.5BA + bonus room & 1/2 acre of land. The home features shaker cabinets, granite kitchen, stainless steel appliances, wood in dining, living, foyer and kitchen. Large covered deck! NO HOA. NO City Taxes.
The state attorney general’s office on Tuesday charged a dentist from Clarks Summit who practices in Wayne County with fraudulently billing the medical assistance program for more than $75,000. James Fruehan, 52, 51 Marshwood Bend, Clarks Summit, would submit claims to the program for procedures that were never performed as well as procedures that were performed by employees who were not certified to do so, according to a criminal complaint. Over the past six years, dental assistants at Fruehan Family Dentistry in Hamlin would perform teeth cleanings, a procedure they were not certified to perform. In that time, Fruehan’s practice billed medical assistance for more than $31,000 in teeth cleanings provided by dental assistants. Fruehan also claimed a combined $43,000 from medical assistance for sealants that were either performed by employees who did not have the proper certification or added the procedure to patients’ charts without ever performing them, according to the state attorney general’s office. Fruehan was arraigned Tuesday on one count of Medicaid fraud and one count of theft by deception and then waived his preliminary hearing. He was released on $20,000 unsecured bail.
“I really believe this camp allows girls to explore how their passions can manifest themselves in the world of STEM,” Justice said in a release. A few chapters of any career often compose a bildungsroman: The prodigal student leaves only to return wiser and more worldly. The trope crystallized for CBICC Connect, which announced the beginning of a mentorship program designed to bridge professionals from all backgrounds and ages. Connect is seeking mentors and mentees for the program, which provides networking and educational opportunities for both parties. Connect is the young professionals branch of the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County. Interested mentors and mentees can learn more about the program at cbiccconnect.com. The Pennsylvania Downtown Center recently recognized Bellefonte and Philipsburg Revitalization Corp., along with 33 others, as nationally accredited programs by the National Main Street Center. The pair earned the honor by meeting Main Street principles, which include meeting standards for planning methods, community involvement and training. Both programs have made revitalization efforts in their community.
Homeowners must do lots of homework when deciding to build the home of their dreams. The decision to build a home from the ground up is not one that many homeowners make without careful consideration. The road to a dream home can be paved with joys and rewards, but also obstacles and challenges. When Jason and Casey Lynn Lawrence pooled their talents and built their first home in Raymond, Wis., the result was a distinct and functional residence they both love. But for this couple, it’s more than just their first home. It’s their “forever home,” as it was built on a 5-acre parcel of land given to them by Casey’s parents, who live down the road near the family farm where she grew up. “We built on a property that has been in my family since before Wisconsin was even a state, so moving is not an option,” she says. Casey, whose parents own a greenhouse nursery, is a blogger and vlogger (caseylynnlawrence.com) who covers garden and home design. Jason is the head of sales for Joseph Scott Homes, a custom home builder in Racine, Wis., and co-owner of Joseph Scott Real Estate in Mount Pleasant. Like his wife, he grew up in a family business. The couple, who have two young daughters, knew they wanted plenty of windows, skylights, vaulted ceilings and natural materials. They started the building process in 2013 with Jason acting as general contractor, and moved into the U-shaped home in 2014. island and a wet bar that includes a window for passing food and drinks to the patio. A large sunroom with window-filled walls and an overall design meant to give the home a barnlike look reflects the couple’s love of nature and their casual lifestyle. The master suite also has personal touches. The 3,600-square-foot home also includes a family room with a 26-foot vaulted ceiling, a loft, a large foyer, a bedroom for each of their girls and a large backyard deck. The couple’s custom design choices led to their home being featured in the local Parade of Homes tour in 2014. Kelly and Michael Bohning moved from Olathe, Kan., to Lee’s Summit, Mo., to shorten Michael’s commute, but every house they looked at in the area was either over budget or needed too much work. “When you’re spending close to a million dollars for your home, you want it to be exactly what you want — not, ‘mmm, we can live with it,’” Kelly says. So they decided to build their own, and eventually found the perfect lot overlooking protected parkland that was already owned by an independent builder. They used one of the builder’s floor plans, but modified it considerably. “We were involved with every step of the process, from adding square feet, changing the roofline, reconfiguring the kitchen layout, elevation of the home, etc.,” Kelly says of the resulting 4,200-square-foot house. The couple also chose every design detail, reveling in the opportunity to truly customize their living space. For instance, 4 feet were added to the east side to accommodate a beloved dining room table Kelly bought from Spain, and nooks were added to showcase her 10 Christmas trees. Other personal touches include a stone fireplace with an extended hearth where the grandchildren can sit; ceramic tiles throughout much of the home that can withstand the wear and tear from their large dogs; and a back deck that features a fireplace, a TV and screens that go up and down with the touch of a button. Although the Lawrences spent much time and effort in the designing and building of their home, green spaces were also a priority. It has eight large raised flowerbeds surrounding the house, large pots and window boxes, a half-acre pumpkin patch and a 70-by-40-foot flower garden where the couple plan to build a greenhouse in the fall. Of course, anyone who has built a home knows there are often pitfalls. In the Bohnings’ case, the project stalled when their builder had a heart attack. A month of rain also contributed to delays, and a completion date of May 2017 was pushed to August — with the couple concerned that they wouldn’t be able to move in before their teen daughter started school. Rule No. 1: Be organized. Take notes, get a binder, start a Pinterest page. Rule No. 2: Stick to your guns when builders or designers head in a direction you don’t love. And even though they are thrilled with the results, the Bohnings are fairly certain it’s the first and last time they’ll ever build a home from the ground up.
Hope Solo has alleged former Dancing with the Stars professional partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy "manhandled" her during rehearsals and the show was rigged to provide the most drama possible for entertainment purposes. The Olympic soccer star has released a memoir entitled Solo: A Memoir of Hope in which she makes alarming allegations regarding her professional partnership with Chmerkovskiy during her Dancing with the Stars experience last year -- including getting slapped in the face and brutally hit in the stomach, USA Today reported. "He wanted my head in a specific position. To achieve that, he slapped me across the face. Hard," Solo reportedly wrote, adding that Chmerkovskiy was "extremely apologetic" following the blow to her face. "He manhandled me in rehearsals from the start, pushing me, whacking my stomach, bending my arms roughly. I thought that was just how it went -- how dancers worked with each other. I was tough. I could take it. But it kept getting worse. One day, Maks was trying to put me in a certain position and hit my stomach so hard with his open palm that I had a red handprint there for the rest of the day." Solo reportedly wrote that Chmerkovskiy was "often nasty" because he'd swear at her and be "harshly critical" during rehearsals, further explaining that "Maks was rough and mean with me, flinging me and pushing me around. I could see the shocked looks on the faces of the other dancers." One rehearsal got so rough that Dancing with the Stars professional partner Derek Hough stepped in and took Chmerkovskiy's place for the remainder of the day, according to USA Today. While much of the behavior was allegedly caught on camera, especially the face slap, the majority of it never appeared on Dancing with the Stars' broadcasts. Another incident that forced Solo to be skeptical of the show's credibility was when Chmerkovskiy allegedly told her a "secret memo" had circulated backstage one week revealing their upcoming elimination. Solo also reportedly claims the memo was why Chmerkovskiy caused a scene and memorably mocked judge Len Goodman during one of Dancing with the Stars' live broadcasts, allegedly persuading producers to keep them in the competition longer. It "supposedly saved us for another week," Solo wrote, according to USA Today. However, Solo reportedly insisted she kept the issues with her partner under wraps because she "didn't want to end Maks' career" and also feared she'd come across looking like a "prima donna" to viewers. While Chmerkovskiy has not publicly responded to Solo's accusations yet, he has seemingly alluded to them on Twitter. "Always hated hypocrites and liars...but when someone is both AND an opportunist, I just feel bad for them. Can't win at someone's expense..." Chmerkovskiy tweeted yesterday. Upcoming Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars participant Kirstie Alley -- who was partnered with Chmerkovskiy for the show's twelfth season and will be paired up with him again for the all-stars edition which premieres next month-- also took to Twitter in apparent support of the pro dancer. "I shall bite thine tongue, lest I get into a girl fight that I would surely lose without a hammer in my hand...;)... ouch! bloody tongue," Alley subsequently tweeted. Solo and Chmerkovskiy competed in the thirteenth season of Dancing with the Stars and finished in fourth place. ABC has reportedly declined official comment on the matter.
With Hugh Jackman hanging up his claws after Logan's theatrical release this March, it looks like that big team-up with Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool is never going to happen. At least, it's never going to happen officially, as an intrepid YouTuber has stepped into their own dimension jumper and brought us proof that not only did Reynolds and Jackman indeed team up in another universe, it happened in the 80's. Check out the fan-made trailer to Deadpool and Wolverine, courtesy of the magic window below. You can thank the folks at We Got This Covered for sharing this look at what could have been the biggest blockbuster of 1988, were any of the participants at the right age to make it happen. Still, as far as fan-made wish fulfillment is concerned, Deadpool and Wolverine does it perfectly! Right from the beginning, with the old school Marvel logo used with the TV projects of the era and the 20th Century Fox logo being equally dated, we're taken into a fuzzy dream of VHS glory. We learn the X-Men need Wolverine and Deadpool to stop who might be their deadliest common foe: Mister Sinister. That's right: while the real life Marvel / Fox collaboration has been wondering how to use Mister Sinister in its cinematic canon, Deadpool and Wolverine has decided to use him as a villain so powerful, the two smartasses need to work together. Even better is the fact that this fan-created film has done us all a solid and casted a damned fine candidate in the role of lead baddie. Say hello to Mads Mikkelsen as the hypothetical Mister Sinister. Perhaps the greatest indicator of just how well Deadpool and Wolverine would fare in the 80's is the fact that this trailer is heavily influenced by the Lethal Weapon franchise. Both the theme song to the famed buddy cop franchise, as well as its writer, Shane Black, are both factors that play into the video we've just watched. While the theme is more explicit in its presence, if you look at the faux credit block at the end, Black is in fact directing. So to recap: Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman battle Mads Mikkelsen, in an 80's buddy mutant film directed by Shane Black? That's heaven, folks. Pure heaven. While this heaven doesn't exist in our world, we do at the very least get to see Logan after it opens on March 3rd. Still, if there was any reason we'd try to convince Hugh Jackman to pop the claws one last "last" time, it'd be Deadpool and Wolverine.
When Ontario’s Attorney General proposed new policing legislation earlier this week, the message was clear: officers are “everyday heroes” who have the government’s unwavering support. “Our police deserve our respect,” said Caroline Mulroney at an announcement at Halton Regional Police Service headquarters, unveiling the Doug Ford government’s proposed plans to “fix” policing laws brought in under the previous government less than a year ago. But hours later once the hefty 363-page legislation landed at Queen’s Park, it became evident the proposed legislation isn’t a complete rewrite of the previous government’s laws, which when passed in March were hailed as “historic” for strengthening police oversight. Some key parts are, in fact, identical. Below, a look at five major policing issues, what changes in the PC’s proposed legislation, dubbed the Comprehensive Ontario Police Services (COPS) Act, and why it matters. What it is: Right now, police are expected to notify the SIU whenever it’s reasonable the watchdog’s mandate could be invoked: namely, when someone has died, been injured, or alleges they were sexually assaulted during any encounter with police. If there’s doubt, police are expected to err on the side of caution and let the SIU decide whether the threshold for an investigation has been met. Has it changed from the Liberals’ bill? Yes, though more in the spirit of the legislation’s interpretation. Mulroney specified that police services will no longer be expected to call the SIU for certain kinds of deaths — like when officers are present for a suicide, or when someone dies of a heart attack in their presence — provided its reasonably clear police conduct was not a contributing factor. The intent, Mulroney said, is to spare officers a lengthy and stressful investigation into how they tried to save a life, and free up the SIU’s time and resources to focus on cases core to its mandate. In cases such as deaths and injuries caused by use of force, or allegations of sexual assault, notification of the SIU will still be mandatory. Why it matters: The issue has been a thorny one between police and the watchdog, most recently over to the growing number of officers carrying naloxone, an antidote to opioid overdoses — yet another instance where an officer may fail at saving a life, then become the subject of an SIU probe. But the debate dates back more than two decades, and in 1998 the disputes prompted a review of by former Ontario Superior Court judge George Adams. “The issue of notification must be treated more like that of calling an ambulance — when in doubt, call,” he concluded. Adams acknowledged the approach would result in unnecessary calls to the SIU, but he said the public would have more confidence in a decision not to investigate if it was made by an independent body. And while the SIU has the reputation amongst many police services for unfathomably long investigations, it does have the ability to examine an incident and decide not to pursue a full-fledged probe — a process called “closed by memo”. This allows the watchdog to at first scrutinize a death, injury or allegation, then decide no probe is needed. This has occurred, for example, in deaths involving an officer administering naloxone. On average, those investigations have been terminated in less than one month. The SIU can also quickly decide not to investigate — as recently happened in the case of Roopesh Rajkumar, the father alleged to have killed his 11-year-old daughter, Riya, after it was discovered he had suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound before OPP officers arrested him (he later died). Under the proposed legislation, it’s likely the watchdog will no longer be called. Though welcomed by police associations this week, the change presents a slippery slope, says Kingsley Gilliam, a founding member of the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC), whose advocacy in the 1980s was a catalyst for the creation of the SIU. The group protested in the streets precisely because they did not want police making the determination on when an investigation was warranted. “Which police officer is going to squeal on his partner to say that he committed a criminal act?” he asked. What it is: Determining when Ontario’s police chiefs can suspend an officer without pay when he or she is facing criminal charges or serious misconduct allegations. Ontario is the only province in Canada that requires, by law, that an officer must be paid while suspended unless they are sentenced to jail time. Has it changed from the Liberals’ bill? No. Similar to Bill 175, the proposed COPS Act would allow for a few more circumstances in which an officer might be suspended without pay, including for convictions for an offence, even if it’s under appeal, or when an officer is charged with certain serious offences, to be determined in future regulations. Why it matters: The ability for chiefs to suspend more officers without pay has been called upon for years, foremost by the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP). The province’s strict stance is widely perceived as both a waste of tax money and, too often, an embarrassment. A few high-profile cases have exposed how officers facing serious allegations have continued to collect a large salary for years. In 2015, a Waterloo Regional Police officer made headlines with a mocking email in which he thanked his service for the perks of his three-year paid suspension — a “dream come true” which included golf, travel and the ability to take a firefighter course. In another case, former Toronto Police Const. Ioan Floria was paid while suspended for 11 years before he was fired last year. Jeff McGuire, executive director of the OACP, said earlier this week that police chiefs did not see what they wanted in the proposed legislation. What it is: Requiring that the SIU provide greater details about its decisions to not lay any charges against the police. This would ideally come in the form of a publicly available report, complete with relevant photos, videos, a narrative of the incident and detailed account of how the SIU came to its decision. Has this changed from the Liberals’ bill? No. This is was a central tenet of the Liberals’ Safer Ontario Act, and its virtually ‘copy-pasted’ into the COPS legislation, though the PC bill does add that “any delays” in the investigation be noted in the required timeline. Why it matters: Up until the high-profile death of Andrew Loku, a Black mentally ill man killed by Toronto police in 2015, the SIU provided limited explanation of its decisions, via a press release announcing whether an officer would be charged. The SIU has since adopted a practice of providing far more extensive reports on some cases where no charge is laid, including fatal police use of force. The COPS Act, however, will make this reporting required by law, as the Liberals’ bill would have accomplished. “I’m pleased they kept it in — I’m surprised they kept it in,” said Sandy Hudson, one of the founding members of Black Lives Matter Toronto, which demanded the release of far more information about Loku’s shooting death and all other SIU investigations. “We fought a lot for transparency. It’s something that we need in order to actually understand what is happening in our communities,” she said. She added, however, that the provision of requiring more information is undercut by giving police “far more discretion on when they call the SIU” due to the changes to notification requirements. What it is: Revamping Ontario’s independent police complaints agency. Currently, complaints about the police in Ontario can be filed with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD). Established in 2008, the office accepts and screens complaints about police across Ontario, determining whether further investigation is required. If so, the agency either assigns one of its own investigators to the case, or refers it back to the police service in question. The OIPRD also conducts systemic reviews to tackle larger issues within policing in the province. Late last year, the agency wrapped a major probe into the Thunder Bay Police Service’s handling of cases involving deaths or disappearances of Indigenous people. Has this changed from the Liberals’ bill? Yes. The PC legislation acts on a Tulloch recommendation to rename the organization, whose unwieldy title and acronym confuse citizens and police alike. Under COPS, the OIPRD would become the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency (LECA), its mandate would include some special constables and peace officers, and it would retain the ability to launch systemic investigations. Similar to how the complaints body works now, the proposed LECA would receive complaints then either investigate in house, or assign a probe to a police service, including the service where the complaint originated. That’s a departure from Bill 175’s proposed “Ontario Policing Complaints Agency” — the Liberals had demanded that, within a five-year period the agency be fully independent, no longer referring complaints out. Gilliam, from BADC, had lauded recent efforts to make the complaints system fully independent. “This is a setback,” he said. What it is: Determining whether the SIU should be allowed to investigate and charge non-police officers. Currently, the SIU can investigate and charge a civilian, even though its core mandate is to probe the actions of police officers. They can do so if the civilian is involved in alleged criminal activity alongside a police officer. The situation is exceedingly rare, but the watchdog did charge a civilian in 2017: Christian Theriault, who alongside his Toronto police officer brother Michael Theriault, is alleged to have assaulted Dafonte Miller in a high-profile incident in late 2016. Has this changed from the Liberals’ bill? Yes. Bill 175 had provided for the watchdog to continue to be able to investigate a civilian under certain circumstances. The PC bill removes that power. “Police would still be able to investigate in such situations, allowing the SIU to concentrate on its core mandate,” according to Ontario government backgrounder. Why it matters: In the case of the Theriault brothers — who are set to go to trial later this year — the incident was the subject of widespread public outrage, with members of the public and Miller’s lawyer Julian Falconer alleging there had been the “deliberate concealment” of a crime. That’s because the SIU had not been called in to investigate the circumstances surrounding Miller’s severe injuries, including damage to his eye, following an encounter with the Theriault brothers in Whitby; neither Toronto police, who employ Michael Theriault, nor the Durham Regional Police Service, where the incident occurred, notified the watchdog. As pointed out by Falconer and others, the Theriault brothers’ father was employed at the time in the Toronto police professional standards unit. Under the proposed PC system, the investigation into Christian Theriault would have instead been taken over by police, which Toronto lawyer Daniel Brown says would not inspire confidence, given the perception of bias in the case. He says though they are uncommon, there may be other instances where the SIU should be allowed to investigate and charge a civilian in order to ensure public confidence in the probe.
Jimi and Janis were singing the theme music for our revolution. No one had ever seen anything like what we were experiencing, but we knew it was magic and that the world would never be the same.Back home in Columbus, Ohio, people wanted to break out of the box and become part of the counterculture. In 1969, we opened up shop from behind the sofa in our one-bedroom apartment selling “stuff,” wholesale to other businesses. We had dreams to supply the entire country with pipes, posters, necklaces, incense and everything else people would need to chase their dreams. In 1972, we bought our largest customer, a waterbed shop, and Waterbeds ‘n’ Stuff was born.Now, more than 4 decades later, we have entered the digital age. Waterbedsnstuff.com is the premier online smokeshop specializing in smoking pipes, vaporizers, novelties and adult products. Waterbeds ‘n’ Stuff online smoke shop sells glass pipes, vaporizers, vape pens, waterpipes, bubblers, dab rigs, percolators, recyclers, helix, silicone pipes, papers, chillums, grinders, smell-proof containers, scales, lighters, adult products and many other novelties and fun stuff.As Stuff 4 U, we are one of the largest national wholesale distributors of smoke, vape, novelties, and adult products. We strive to provide our customers with great products at reasonable prices and have them shipped safely and discreetly.Waterbeds ’n’ Stuff is an institution of smokeshop culture in America. Waterbeds ’n’ Stuff has proudly served its customers since 1972. Over the last 46 years, we have built a reputation for trust and worked hard to satisfy our customers. We are proud to have been an integral part of developing and fostering the counterculture. Thank you for visiting waterbedsnstuff.com.
New technology is making it easier than ever to capture stunning underwater images. From smartphone dry bags to professional diving lights, we've rounded up the best gear for taking photos and videos of the underwater world. With a price tag of only $6.99, the Joto cellphone dry bag provides the cheapest and easiest way to take underwater photos. It fits nearly every size of phone and is waterproof down to 100 feet. Your touch screen will keep working through the plastic (while above water). Plan on using your phone's side buttons to take pictures underwater. Most underwater cameras will sink like a stone if dropped. The Nordic Flash waterproof camera float doubles as a wrist strap and a floatation device, so you never have to worry about a wave knocking your camera out of your hands. The float is powerful enough to buoy lighter devices like GoPros, point-and-shoot cameras and smartphones. It also comes in bright colors that are easy to spot in the water. This DiCAPac waterproof case is an affordable option for DSLR shooters who don't want to drop thousands of dollars on professional underwater housing. The bag is a bit cumbersome and makes it difficult to change settings, so plan on using auto mode or prepping your ISO, shutter speed and f-stop in advance. We also recommend doing a test in your bathtub before trusting the bag to protect your DSLR. With a 12-megapixel sensor, 4K video mode and the ability to shoot in RAW, the Olympus Tough TG-5 is one of the best underwater point-and-shoots on the market. Its rugged build can withstand depths of up to 50 feet and drops from up to 7 feet. The camera also has underwater settings for HDR and macro (close-up) photography. If you need a camera for deeper dives, consider the Nikon Coolpix W300 or the Canon PowerShot D30, which can operate at 100 feet and 150 feet, respectively. The GoPro Hero 5 Black has similar features to those of the Olympus Tough TG-5 and costs about the same as that device. But it outperforms its competitors when it comes to underwater accessories like lights, filters, mounts and custom housing (read on to see our top picks). Unlike previous GoPro models, the Hero 5 is waterproof down to 33 feet without any housing and can reach depths of nearly 200 feet with a Super Suit case. The camera can shoot 4K video and 12-megapixel photos in RAW. The deeper under water you go, the less light there is for photography. To prevent murky, washed-out images, most professionals attach artificial lights to their cameras when diving or snorkeling. If you're using a GoPro, the Shoot diving light is an affordable way to make your underwater photography pop for only $22.99. Take beautiful "over-under" shots with your GoPro Hero 5 using the Vicdozia Telesin 6-inch dome port. By moving the waterline away from the lens, dome ports allow you to capture split images of the view above and below the surface. This model comes with a floating handle and trigger, making it easy to fire the camera.
MARIO MANDZUKIC is not on his way to Juventus as a replacement for Carlos Tevez, according to Massimo Allegri. Juve have agreed a fee for Mandzukic - who was linked with Arsenal and Manchester United - but is now expected to have a medical in Turin on Monday. Tevez has been linked with Liverpool and Atletico Madrid, although a return to Boca Juniors now looks the most likely outcome. But Allegri insists that Mandzukic hasn't been bought as a direct replacement for Tevez. It's not that we have to replace Tevez, but rather sign players and evaluate the playing style. Juve has already landed the likes of Sami Khedira and Paulo Dybala this summer and have a host of other players returning from loan deals elsewhere. But Allegri isn't worried about a logjam. He told Sky Sports Italia: "All of them can play, as during the season there will be room for everybody. We went all the way in every competition because of the strength in depth. "It's not that we have to replace Tevez, but rather sign players and evaluate the playing style. Mandzukic has arrived, we have Simone Zaza, Kingsley Coman, Alvaro Morata and Dybala - all young players of great quality. "By the end of the transfer window I could have 10 players in the squad born after 1990. "Mandzukic scored goals in every League, has strong character, is of an international level and will do well. "We signed Mandzukic because we specifically wanted him. He's a great player and I am very happy."
FOLLOWING REVELATIONS ABOUT the alleged misuse of Facebook users’ personal data by communications firm Cambridge Analytica, there are questions now about whether Ireland’s data protection regime is robust enough to prevent this kind of activity. Companies like Cambridge Analytica are open about the fact that they collect data through social media, but they maintain this is information the user has given them consent to access. This is why the users themselves need to be vigilant about what they agree to, data protection experts have said. Solicitor Simon McGarr has been highlighting issues with Facebook’s handing of data since as far back as 2008. He told TheJournal.ie that this news is “hardly surprising”. Applications on Facebook – games, quizzes, websites you sign into using Facebook etc - can ask your permission to access information on your profile, including your date of birth, your friends list, your posts, the pages you like and more. For years, these apps could also ask your permission to access information on your friends’ profiles without their knowledge. Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner raised concerns about this in 2012 and in 2014 Facebook did make a change. However McGarr pointed out that Facebook settings tend to change regularly and move around, so users need to pay attention if they want to maintain control of their data. There is no need now, he said, for people to worry about information companies already have – there is very little that can be done about that. What users can do now is be more aware of the data they are agreeing to share and to be more questioning of websites and apps that ask their permission. “I have Facebook, but I don’t really install apps. If I do, I use it for as long as I want it and then I delete it. I don’t do any quiz apps etc.,” McGarr said. “You don’t know the real purpose the developers have. It all seems like a bit of fun, you install an app that makes you look like an elf or something like that and these are all just machines for getting you to agree to share data. Everything else is just the bait in the trap. “When people install Facebook apps and Android apps on their phones they should look and see what the app wants to access and whether that’s proportionate. If you’re using a selfie app, it may ask to access your photos library and camera, that’s reasonable because it can’t work otherwise. If it wants to look at your history of texts and other things on your phone, you should really pause before you agree. He said smartphones are “a goldmine of data” and people need to recognise that what they may see as harmless data “might be used in a quite powerful way to profile you”. These profiles can then be used in an attempt to influence consumers and voters in a very targeted manner. Click the downward pointing arrow in top right-hand corner. Tap ‘Logged in with Facebook’ to see all of the services accessing your account. Here, you can see any app you’ve logged into with Facebook, and the information you’ve given them permission to take. You can also remove any of these applications if you feel you are providing it with more information than you would like. What is the State doing to protect your data? In a statement, the office of the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) said the issues reported in recent days in relation to the profiling of Facebook users “affected substantially US Facebook users”. The issue of ‘friends’ data being harvested when a Facebook user engaged with an app on Facebook was resolved by Facebook in May 2014 when access to friends data was restricted by a platform upgrade. This followed a 2012 recommendation by DPC Ireland on foot of its re-audit of Facebook Ireland in relation to access to friends data. It said the purported misuse of data by strategic communications companies is incorporated in the UK Information Commissioner’s Office’s investigation into political influencing. On Saturday, the UK’s Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said her office was investigating the circumstances in which Facebook data may have been illegaly acquired and used. “It’s part of our ongoing investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes which was launched to consider how political parties and campaigns, data analytics companies and social media platforms in the UK are using and analysing people’s personal information to micro target voters,” she said. It is important that the public are fully aware of how information is used and shared in modern political campaigns and the potential impact on their privacy. Her office is now seeking a warrant to obtain information and access to Cambridge Analytica systems and evidence related to its investigation. The Irish DPC said it is following up with Facebook Ireland in relation to what forms of active oversight of app developers and third parties that utilise their platform is in place with a view to ensuring it is effective. The micro-targeting of social media users with political advertisements and sponsored stories remains an ongoing issue today. In the absence of laws specifically regulating such political targeting online, the Irish DPC intends to issue guidance to users in terms of how they can trace why they are receiving certain advertisements and stories on social media, how they can mute or turn off receiving advertisements from those sources and how they can amend their ad preferences to control the types of ads they are served. The government is also moving to introduce new data protection legislation. However, one particular loophole in the new bill is raising questions. Simon McGarr explained that Section 43 of the new bill allows for the collection of and use of personal data for people who are candidates in elections, office holders or State entities of any sort. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force across the EU this May, only contains ten exemptions for the processing of personal data. McGarr said Section 43 of the Irish bill does not fall under these exemptions and therefore the new legislation is “attempting to make legal something that is illegal under European law”. Fianna Fáil TD James Lawless said it is for this reason that he will be proposing amendments to the bill when it comes before the Dáil. Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland yesterday said the recent revelations should be a “wake-up call” to government. He said the government needs to take steps to protect our own democracy and ensure our data protection regime is properly resourced and managed. Last year he proposed a social media transparency bill in the Dail, which passed to committee stage with the support of other opposition parties – but not the government. He said there is no reason why this cannot be enacted before the referendum and he called on the government to aid its passage. TheJournal.ie contacted the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation for a comment from Minister of State Pat Breen, who has responsibility for Data Protection. A spokesperson said data protection legislation does not come under the remit of the minister with responsibility for data protection and referred us to the Department of An Taoiseach and the Department of Justice. Neither of these departments responded to queries. Email “'Your phone is a data goldmine': What you can do to protect yourself against data mining ”. Feedback on “'Your phone is a data goldmine': What you can do to protect yourself against data mining ”.
(FPRI) — Today, Islamic State foreign fighters bleeding out of Iraq and Syria power an unprecedented wave of directed attacks on three continents inspiring cascading waves of inspired violence from distant supporters scattered around the world. With that having been said, the good times for the Islamic State ended in 2016. Their decline has come as fast as their rise and points to yet another shift in global jihad. The jihadi landscape, in only three years, has transformed from the unipolar world of al Qaeda to a bipolar competition between the al Qaeda and Islamic State networks to a multipolar jihadi ecosystem with dozens of groups holding varying degrees of allegiance and affinity for their extremist forefathers. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State now represent two big players in a sea of militancy filled with many competing currents. As seen in Figure 10 below, the world of jihad has never been so vast, dispersed, and diluted. As always, there are a few notes on the al Qaeda versus Islamic State chart as of September 2016 (see Figure 10). I generally don’t like organizational charts for describing jihadi terrorist groups. I’ve been to too many military briefings where organizational charts have been pushed as command and control diagrams. Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and their affiliates largely represent swarming collaborative relationships rather than a directed, top-down hierarchy synonymous of Western military constructs. In the chart, circle size represents an imperfect estimate of a group’s relative size compared to other groups. Larger circles equal bigger groups, smaller circles denote lesser-sized groups and I can only make circles down to a certain size before the writing becomes illegible. More overlap between circles represents my estimate of greater communication and coordination between the groups. Sometimes I couldn’t overlap groups as much as I’d like due to space limitations and this being a two- rather than a preferred three-dimensional rendering. I’ve inserted dashed circles for what I anticipate to be emerging Islamic State affiliates or new jihadi groups of no particular leaning. I could probably list a dozen other names in the chart but to prevent excessive cluttering I’ve stopped with these names. (Many thanks go to Will McCants for insights on ISIS affiliates, J.M Berger as always for his social media prowess and Aaron Zelin, particularly this year, for further refining my perspective on the emergence of fractures.) For past estimates of al Qaeda versus the Islamic State, see depictions from February 2014, March 2014, and April 2015. What’s changed in two-and-a-half years? What should we think of jihad’s winding path? Remarkable Speed Of Change. The most remarkable aspect of jihad’s last five years has been the speed with which things have changed. The end of the Afghan Mujahideen to al Qaeda’s zenith on September 11, 2001 took a decade. Al Qaeda’s downward spiral in Iraq began in 2008 and the Islamic State’s rise began in 2013 –i.e., half the time of the previous generation. ISIS broke from al Qaeda and overtook them in roughly eighteen months and has now receded dramatically in nearly the same amount of time–a rise and fall occurring in a little over three years. Each foreign fighter mobilization and outflow over the last thirty years has been larger and faster than the one before it. Advances in communication and transportation have made each generation’s radicalization, recruitment and mobilization easier and subsequently faster. This trend, should it continue, points to a new wave of jihad arising fairly quickly. Volume Of Fighters And Groups. The Syrian conflict generated the largest foreign fighter wave in history. Despite the Islamic State’s reckless consumption of its foreign manpower, today and through the near-term, there will be more jihadi foreign fighters scattered around the world than at any point in history. Compared to previous generations of jihadis, survivors of Syria and Iraq’s battlefields will be better trained, more experienced, better connected physically and virtually, and have greater opportunities amongst numerous weak and failing states. The world should prepare for, and expect, years of jihadi violence emanating from this most recent foreign fighter mobilization. Don’t mistake dispersion for strength. Scary maps showing the spread of jihad have been a favorite scare tactic of governments and the counterterrorism punditry for a decade. Similar to al Qaeda’s transition to affiliates beginning around 2004, the Islamic State’s members, supporters and re-branded followers have now spread from Morocco to the Philippines. Unmet jihadi dispersion can equate to resilience, but should not be confused with strength. With the exception of a declining emirate in Libya and challenged affiliates in Yemen and Afghanistan, the Islamic State’s affiliates operate largely as small terrorist groups working to establish their base of operations and local popular support. Likewise, al Qaeda’s affiliates have yet to regain their previous heights–e.g., al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) of 2011, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) of 2012, and al Shabaab of 2013. Affiliates of either stripe, as of yet, lack the projection power and global appeal of their headquarters. Don’t make what are mostly molehills into mountains just yet; this is particularly the case when there remain sufficient unconventional warfare methods to encourage their destructive competition. Scale of jihad matters more than it’s spread. Dispersion should bring concern when one or more affiliates begin to scale in size. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) during al Qaeda Central’s decline (2009 – 2012) and the Islamic State since taking Mosul demonstrate what Clauset and Gleditsch revealed in their study “The Developmental Dynamics of Terrorist Organizations” that the larger a terrorist group grows the greater number, pace and size of terrorist attacks they can execute. Al Qaeda’s growth from 1993 to 2001 allowed them to increase the pace, complexity, and lethality of their plots. The swelling of the Islamic State’s ranks and the grabbing of turf in Syria and Iraq enabled the creation of operational space for developing external operations branches and the manpower to reach Western targets. Their growth brought the recent unprecedented violence of their Ramadan offensive–i.e., directed and networked attacks every day in a new country creating a wave of cascading terrorism perpetrated by inspired followers. The lesson for the West: ignoring jihadi group growth will lead to a terrorism cancer nearly impossible to rein in. Fracturing and Competition. Despite recent fear mongering over the Islamic State’s rise or al Qaeda’s comeback, the global jihad as a whole has more fracturing and infighting than any time in its history. The Islamic State versus al Qaeda rivalry remains but is likely secondary to the generational and resource competition occurring across many affiliates. Splinters have erupted in Jabhat al-Nusra/Fateh al-Sham (Syria), Boko Haram (Nigeria), al Shabaab (Somalia), and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU – AFPAK) in just the past few months. Characterizations of global jihad as unipolar or even bipolar should be met with skepticism–the sands have never shifted so much or so quickly. Remember, jihadis are violent young men, routinely narcissistic, highly egotistical, often jealous of each other, and particularly rash. Analysts should beware imprinting order on what is largely chaos. What might we think of today’s jihadi terrorism landscape moving forward? The al Qaeda versus Islamic State debate is nothing more than a silly DC Beltway sideshow. Three years ago, pundits and analysts widely refuted the notion of an al Qaeda break up. Two years ago, I participated in a debate regarding “al Qaeda’s grand strategy” while the Islamic State was overtaking their terrorist forefathers by seizing Mosul and declaring a caliphate. Despite these analytical surprises, similar prophesying about jihad’s future direction has returned. Some analysts again trumpet a resurgent al Qaeda, a claim made by an analyst every year since the 9/11 attacks, or they have begun parallel theorizing about the Islamic State’s grand strategy. Luckily for pundits, no one keeps score in the counterterrorism fear factory where production is rewarded over performance. The “al Qaeda versus Islamic State” dichotomy is a hollow paradigm, reflective of analytical status quo bias from those unable or unwilling to envision a future of jihadism different from what has been seen in the past. While “al Qaeda” or “ISIS” may be convenient for communicating media narratives, today’s vast jihadi landscape cannot be accurately characterized by the names of two groups who are past their primes and that have, at best, limited ability to control their adherents. However, this paradigm will continue in the near term because…. Right now, we know less, proportionally, about what’s going on in jihad than anytime since September 11, 2001. Never have counterterrorism analysts and pundits had so much to cover and so little time and ability to do so. Today, jihadi ranks have expanded widely across three continents and they communicate in dozens of languages. With the exception of a couple of open source outlets and academic think tanks, no one can track the endless string of al Qaeda and Islamic State “Number 2’s” killed by airstrikes. The rapid, successive deaths of leaders in nearly all jihadi groups worldwide has created a chaotic jihadi stew where younger, more violent emerging leaders strike out seeking to raise both their own stature and that of their group locally. Successfully anticipating jihad’s divergence will require tens or even hundreds of analysts equipped with advanced degrees, language skills, and field experience tapped into a blend of human and technical sources. Luckily, we have that! It’s called the U.S. intelligence community. Moving forward, Western intelligence services will be positioned to put together the global picture. Jihadis have gone local and academics and analysts should as well. To understand jihad’s local flavor moving forward, look to journalists (like here and here) and academics (here’s one) doing true field research, in-person interviews and reporting rather than those relying heavily on social media personas of dubious access and reliability. Connections Mean Less, Intentions Mean More. A decade ago, and even in recent years, al Qaeda connections were used to characterize perpetrators or groups. But terrorist connections mean little in the wake of the Islamic State’s rise and the unending battle in Syria. Tens of thousands of foreign fighters from Africa through Asia have fought with al Qaeda last decade or the Islamic State this decade. Every Arab male between 18 and 26 years of age is now more likely than not to have a connection in some form to a person that fought with either or both terrorist group. Even recent inspired terrorist plots lacking any physical connection to al Qaeda or the Islamic State have surfaced links to both groups (here and here). Moving forward, analyses must wade past connections to examine the intentions of jihadis and their groups. Do they seek to target the West? If not, then add them to the long list of those needing monitoring but too numerous to thoroughly vet simply because “they are connected to a guy on Twitter who is connected to a guy who might be in the Islamic State”. The next five years of jihad will look more like the 1990s than the 2000s. Figure 10 demonstrates the diffusion of jihad. I can’t properly account for all of the groups rising and falling, shifting between networks while paving their own local agendas. With the Islamic State’s decline, and al Qaeda’s limited reach, emerging groups powered by returning foreign fighters will converge and diverge largely based on regional and local forces. Instead of the al Qaeda versus Islamic State paradigm currently being put forth, the multipolar jihadi landscape of the 1990s leading to al Qaeda’s rise provides a more appropriate historical framework for anticipating future jihadi manifestations. Prior to the September 11 attacks, many different Sunni terrorist groups with or without connections to al Qaeda pursued their own agendas competing for recruits, resources and influence amongst many different countries. This setting appears more reflective of the diffuse set of jihadis pursuing a range of ideological positions and local agendas in the near-term. Those groups that scale the largest and the quickest amongst this chaotic stew will be of the greatest concern moving forward. Unless something changes, Figure 10, will be my last al Qaeda versus Islamic State bubble chart. Surely my comments above have pointed to my own hypocrisy and underlying belief–there are too many actors, locations and competing interests to characterize jihad in a simple bipolar chart. Last decades’ theorizing should remind us how unlikely anyone will be to accurately estimate where, when, and how jihad’s next wave will emerge. Rather than focus on groups and fighters, it will be long-run forces that forge where jihad will revive and thrive next. Rest assured, after the Islamic State’s foreign fighter mobilization their surviving legions will unleash violence again somewhere soon. Watch this short movie to see how the al Qaeda versus Islamic State estimates have changed in the past two-and-a-half years. Clint Watts is a Robert A. Fox Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Program on the Middle East as well as a Senior Fellow with its Program on National Security. He serves the President of Miburo Solutions, Inc. Watts’ research focuses on analyzing transnational threat groups operating in local environments on a global scale. Before starting Miburo Solutions, he served as a U.S. Army infantry officer, a FBI Special Agent on a Joint Terrorism Task Force, and as the Executive Officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC).
The Olympic opening ceremony is in rehearsal. But until it is unveiled in the evening of August 8, the extravaganza will remain a State secret, known to only those involved. What will the performance be like? Will it be the mother of all stadium shows? Without any inside information – even if we had, we couldn’t tell you, or we’d have to kill you afterwards – we’ll mount the mother of all educated conjectures, just to intrigue you and make Zhang Yimou’s job of creating surprises more difficult. Now, we know Zhang, artistic director of the Beijing Olympic ceremonies, is an artist of versatility. He is equally comfortable with art-house flicks and blockbuster epics; he has helmed three tourism-oriented open-air shows and three productions of Western operas. Unless he reinvents himself from the ground up, a Zhang Yimou aesthetic is not difficult to discern. Our guess is based on his existing oeuvre, which we believe reflects and encompasses his artistic upbringing and convictions.
Lindsay Whalen and the rest of the second unit again sparked the United States to victory. Whalen scored 16 points and Angel McCoughtry added 11 to lead the U.S. to an 87-46 rout of Canada on Monday night in the second round of the women’s basketball world championship. The Americans will face Belarus on Tuesday. For the second straight game the U.S. got off to a slow start. Canada jumped to an 11-5 lead, and coach Geno Auriemma turned to his bench. The second unit got four straight turnovers on the way to a 12-0 run. The U.S. forced 32 turnovers for the game. The San Antonio Silver Stars have fired coach Sandy Brondello after debuting with a losing record and quick playoff exit in her first season. The Silver Stars made the announcement Monday. The team went 14-20 under Brondello before being swept by Phoenix in the first round of the playoffs. Assistant coach Olaf Lange, who is also Brondello’s husband, was also let go. It was the second straight losing season for the Silver Stars after reaching the WNBA Finals in 2008. George Blanda, who played longer than anyone in pro football history and racked up the most points in a career that spanned four decades, mostly with the Chicago Bears and Oakland Raiders, died Monday. He was 83. “We are deeply saddened by the passing of the great George Blanda,” the Raiders said Monday in confirming his death. “George was a brave Raider and a close personal friend of Raiders owner Al Davis.” The Pro Football Hall of Fame said on its website that Blanda died Monday after a brief illness. Blanda retired a month shy of his 49th birthday before the 1976 season. He spent 10 seasons with the Bears, part of one with the Baltimore Colts, seven with the Houston Oilers and his final nine with the Raiders. First three words INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Colts president Bill Polian believes the debate over an 18-game NFL season is over, and an expanded schedule will soon become a reality. The competition committee member and former league executive twice said he expects the NFL to stretch its regular season by two games. He twice called the decision a “fait accompli” during his weekly radio show Monday night. “I think that the owners, and principally the commissioner, have decided that it’s the way to go, and so the debate, such as it was, is over,” Polian said. A jury convicted a construction worker of murder Monday for a drunken-driving crash that killed promising Los Angeles Angels rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart and two of his friends. It was the second DUI conviction for Andrew Gallo, 23, who held white rosary beads and occasionally looked up at jurors as they returned their verdicts. Denver Broncos wide receiver Kenny McKinley was remembered Monday as a model teammate with a body-shaking laugh that could provide much-needed breaks from locker room tension. Family, teammates and coaches were among several hundred people who gathered at a suburban Atlanta church for the 23-year-old’s funeral. McKinley died last week at his home near Broncos headquarters in Denver. Authorities believe he shot himself in the head because he was depressed after his second straight season-ending knee surgery.
When people who know go to Tokyo, they buy one souvenir. Make that, the best souvenir. They buy Tokyo Banana. And that snack just got better because it’s getting a Kit Kat version. Or maybe Japanese Kit Kats just got better because they’re getting a Tokyo Banana flavor. The point is, Tokyo Banana are excellent. They are soft and fluffy on the outside, and on the inside, they have a banana filling that isn’t too sweet or two sugary. And Japanese Kit Kats are the best in the world. They’re crunchy, covered in delicious chocolate and come in interesting flavors. Who doesn’t like them? They’re wonderful. So combining them will automatically make them better, right? Right? You don’t have to decided which one to get. According to Fodors, the Tokyo Banana debuted in 1991 and is exclusive to, well, Tokyo. In recent years, there have been other Tokyo Banana flavors and varieties, like Tokyo Banana with a caramel, a maple banana (pictured, below) or even a pudding filling. Yes, Japanese Kit Kats are neat. And Tokyo Banana flavored Kit Kats are even neater, but regular old Tokyo Banana is good, perhaps the best thing you can eat in Tokyo, and I like it. According to Foomi, the Tokyo Banana Kit Kats go on sale November 15 at the Tokyo Okashiland shop in Tokyo Station. Starting January 10, 2018, they will be available at more locations in the Kanto area.
After managing to win over most of the critics and gaining a lot of positive feedback from gamers, Bayonetta 2 could have opened the doors for Bayonetta 3... well, that's according to the design director from the second game. As usual, the developers are definitely open for more stories involving the spicy combat witch. Nintendo Everything picked up the story from an interview director Yusuke Hashimoto had with GameMasters, where the topic of a threequal for Bayonetta popped into the conversation. The Nintendo Everything article also points out that Platinum Games' Hideki Kamiya had shown interest in branching off the Bayonetta franchise into the Nintendo 3DS territory. Of course, whether or not these things come to fruition depends on whether or not a publisher is willing to back them on the project. Bayonetta 2 only came into existence because Nintendo stepped in to publish the title. Sega, the publisher of the original game, had no interest in the sequel. Given Sega's recent financial plight following questionable publishing decisions with the Sonic franchise, it's not surprising to that they would rather back out of the console scene and focus on mobile and online titles. Gamers, however, had a hard time coming to terms with Nintendo publishing Platinum Games' third-person shooter because a lot of people didn't want to settle into the idea that they would have to buy a Wii U to get the game. Eventually people came to understand that without Nintendo Bayonetta 2 would have never existed since no other publisher was stepping in to finance the game. Just before the game launched a group of gamers started up a campaign called #OperationBayonetta in order to get gamers to be made aware of the title and to buy it for the Wii U. The idea was to help Bayonetta 2 sell a million copies to show that gamers do stand behind quality franchises and that hopefully such a move would show publishers that gamers not only support Nintendo and fringe hardware like the Wii U, but that they also support quality-made games from worthwhile developers like Platinum Games. Nintendo Life had reported that the game suffered “underwhelming” sales and VG Chartz gives a rough estimate of around 630,000 SKUs sold for the Wii U. Of course, without actually knowing what the peak budget was for Bayonetta 2 it's kind of hard to tell exactly how many units they would have had to sell exclusively on the Wii U in order for it to be considered a success. Sega was kind of hoping for around 600,000 for Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for the Wii U, so maybe 600,000 is the sort of break-even point? Anyway, it's nice to know that if Platinum Games can secure funding once again and if demand for the game from fans is high enough, we could be seeing another Bayonetta title somewhere down the line.
CHELSEA will have to take a good, hard look at their squad before the January transfer window opens, according to Eidur Gudjohnsen. The Blues have suffered a number of injuries in the first half of the season which have hampered Antonio Conte. And Gudjohnsen - who played at Stamford Bridge between 2000 and 2006 - thinks the Italian should buy to cope with the fixture congestion that will inevitably come in the New Year. Chelsea could still be in four competitions when the transfer window shuts. Gudjohnsen exclusively told Starsport: “Maybe just look at the squad and look at the situation when the time comes. “Injuries are always part of football and you might have to anticipate the amount of games that will come up after the New Year so I’m sure they’re well equipped to handle that situation. Chelsea added six players to their squad in the summer with Alvaro Morata, Danny Drinkwater, Davide Zappacosta, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Antonio Rudiger and Willy Caballero all making the switch. The Blues return to Premier League action tomorrow when they welcome Manchester United to Stamford Bridge. Conte will be desperate for three points to close the gap on Manchester City at the top of the table. Chelsea are currently in fourth as they look to defend their crown. But having suffered three losses so far this season the Blues are already up against it.
It's amazing how quickly we shift from longing for justice to expecting mercy. If God's people are "to do justice and love mercy," as Micah puts it, neither of those things is hard to understand. But it's challenging to practice both of them at the same time. It helps to understand what biblical justice is. As Paul Louis Metzger says, "As those justified by faith in the God of all justice, we are to experience the wholeness that he brings and extend it as citizens of his kingdom." Bringing wholeness, making things right, is at the heart of God's justice. The articles in this Common Challenge show us how to do both justice and mercy, rightness and compassion. After all, God's goodness is seen in both his amazing justice and his amazing grace. Making things "right" inevitably strikes many people wrong. What's with that? Everyone is for "justice," but as soon as anyone tries to make things more just, trouble follows. I came to this lab to hear from a panel of innovative activists who are working for justice. Charles Lee is a pastor (New Hope in Torrance, CA) and an innovator. He's a guiding force beind the Freeze Project, where up to 2,000 people will gather in a public place and then freeze in place for 5 minutes, and then as people observe this form of performance art, the participants will then disperse after handing out a paper that highlights the problem of human trafficking. He also developed LaundryLove.com–an initiative in which Christians offer free quarters and detergent in laundromats in under-resourced areas, along with a willingness to listen to the stories of those who stop by. Leroy Barber pastors Community Fellowship Church in south Atlanta. He has initiated (1) Mission Year, a yearlong community service opportunity for 18-29-year-olds and (2) Green My Hood, an effort to improve the living conditions in urban neighborhoods. Lisa Sharon Harper is cofounder and executive director of New York Faith and Justice. She offered a great definition of "justice": "making things right" and this includes withing the self, with God, with others, with systems. Systemic change is necessary, she said, to make things work so that "people are blessed and not cursed by the systems." The panel told stories and probed the motivations of those who work for justice in housing, education, immigration, transportation, and other elements of community life. As Leroy Barber put it, "What are practical ways to love neighbor? Jesus to said to love others as yourself. In other words, do for others what you're doing/expecting for your own family. Whatever you expect regarding your own family's transportation, housing, education, assumptions, can you work to make those apply to others?" Lisa took it a step further: "Jesus taught us to pray 'your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.' But so many people today can't imagine what the kingdom looks like at all—they think it's a worship service. Justice is a way of showing the world what heaven looks like." This lab did a terrific job of elevating the vision of doing justice. It also left lingering questions about why justice efforts, especially those that seek to change "systems," inevitably lead to conflict. I walked away convinced we need to do some more work on the relationship between justice and evangelism. How can the "announcement of good news" of God's kingdom be both proclaimed and lived out in our local communities. We've got a long way to go on this . . .
On Thursday (March 16), Hey Arnold! creator Craig Bartlett shared the perfect #TBT: a cast pic of the real faces behind P.S. 118's finest. Reposting the photo from Anndi McAfee, a.k.a. brainiac Phoebe, Bartlett graciously clued us in on who voiced who — and it's super surreal to match faces to their animated alter egos. But where is Justin Shenkarow (Harold)?! I love that Arnold and Helga are standing next to each other because you know you totally rooted for them to get together — and they finally did (kinda) in Hey Arnold! The Movie. Klein was the last Arnold, voicing the character from 1999 until the series finale in 2004 and also voicing the football-head in the 2002 movie. Some, though not all, of the original cast are returning for the upcoming Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie currently in production, so get ready to hear Helga, Phoebe, Harold, and Rhonda over 10 years later. Plus, Lane Toran — the OG Arnold — is voicing bully Wolfgang (like he did on the show), while Smith is lending his voice to an unknown character. It's all happening, guys.
Ek was asked if the features that made Spotify so great at music delivery wouldn't also work in its favor with video? He agreed, but it was a case of not yet - music would keep Spotify busy for the next couple of years. Of course with video it's up against the muscle of Google, which as Telco 2.0 described here recently (see Google's real YouTube strategy), is building its own Content Delivery Network. Now you can understand why Google threw its weight behind the "net neutrality" scare - it tips the playing field firmly in its direction. Ek was asked if Spotify was really designed to be bought - a theme pursued by follow-up questions from the floor. "We've invested more than €8m of our own money... we're not interested in any short-term gains. We want to make this into an independent company, we might put it on the stock exchange at some point, but we're not in it for the short-term gain." Charles Cosh, founder of label Moksha, asked two good questions: what percentage of users go out to buy product? And "when Spotify sell out, what percentage of that money will be returned to publishers and record companies to make up for the fact that you've got cheap rates at the moment?" Ek complimented the Shamen manager on the first, and dodged the second. "We only have a very limited amount of data about purchasing habits. Two months ago we had the first download integration. The download integration we have now is not very good, I can tell you that. It demands a right click, and then after about 14 clicks you can actually buy a product," he replied. "Despite that, there's a lot of people that were impressed by the numbers we had. We're working on a one-click download solution with 7Digital, press buy, press OK and you buy a recording. My hope is to get it out in the next couple of months." Ek said the buying habits of 80 per cent of Spotify users were unchanged, 10 per cent were buying more music, and 20 per cent were buying fewer sound recordings. No, this doesn't add up to 100: we asked him afterwards and he said it was a multiple choice question. Color us confused, still. What about returning some of the proceeds of a big bucks acquisition, or an IPO, back to the creators, then? Ek replied: "We as an industry have to realize [online music] is a very nascent thing. In ten years the transactional model has worked, but the truth is 95 per cent of downloads are illegal, and you guys aren't being compensated at all from them. What if we can take all of those into a legal environment - isn't that worth something? But it takes time." Catching up with Ek afterwards, we asked him about one intriguing option for Spotify that no one has really noticed yet. Spotify maintains a huge cache of your music. You can limit it to a modest 10GB. If you think about it, Spotify is building up a nice music library for you. Yes, said Ek. Spotify had made the decision to encrypt the cache using a home-grown DRM. But yes, it was a music library. Now consider that Spotify already does P2P. Songs can pulled from users on the same network, and that's the company's sales pitch to ISPs: partner with us, and save bandwidth. So couldn't Spotify at some point just flip the switch and become your iTunes replacement? Ek said when you have an access model there's no real difference between a stream and a download, and while it's been a traditional distinction - from the days of radio and wax cylinders - the music business shouldn't get hung up on it. The important thing was the access model. Spotify needs time for your music collection and playlists to accumulate - then it's ready to flip the switch.
The case filed against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte before the International Criminal Court in The Hague is a “very good step” toward stopping drug-related killings, a Catholic bishop said. “It is our hope that this move will inject fear into the hearts and minds of the accused officials so that they will eventually and sincerely put a stop to these merciless killings,” said Bishop Arturo Bastes of Sorsogon. “Filing a complaint at the ICC is a good move for the whole world to know that crimes against humanity, seemingly sanctioned by the government, are being committed in this Christian country,” said Bishop Bastes. A complaint of “mass murder” was filed against Duterte and 11 other Philippine officials for alleged crimes against humanity in connection with the drug-related killings, according to reports. Human Rights Watch reported in March that more than 7,000 people had been killed in either police anti-drug operations or in unexplained killings since Duterte took office in June 2016. In early March, Duterte’s allies in the Philippine House helped pass a measure reinstating the death penalty, with the primary goal of executing drug offenders. The 77-page court complaint, “The Situation of Mass Murder in the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte: The Mass Murderer,” alleges that Duterte masterminded the killings of suspected drug users and dealers. The presidential palace dismissed the complaint as “black propaganda.” In the Philippine Senate, Senator Panfilo Lacson, a Duterte supporter, said the case against the president is “dustbin bound” for lack of solid evidence. Senator Risa Hontiveros said she was “saddened” that some members of the Senate were included among those charged before in the international court. Two sitting senators were also charged with violating various provisions of the Rome Statute, a treaty that established the International Criminal Court. The court is responsible for trying perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression. The Philippines ratified the statute in August 2011. Religious leaders, including the Catholic bishops, have criticised the killings, although the bishops have stated they oppose Duterte’s policies, not Duterte as a person.
Cans of Pepsi are displayed at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris, France, May 28, 2016. BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. companies that have expressed the most fervent public support for President Barack Obama's environmental agenda are also funding its biggest enemies - the scores of U.S. lawmakers who are climate change skeptics and oppose regulation to combat it, according to a Reuters review of public records. Ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential and congressional elections, the donations from companies including PepsiCo, Dupont, and Google reveal a disconnect between how these companies present themselves to the public on environmental issues, and how they manage their political contributions to support business-friendly policy. Many companies active in U.S. politics spread their political donations broadly on both sides of the aisle and consider multiple issues when deciding whom to support. But inconsistency between a company's environmental positions and its political giving may point up a need for better oversight, according to Jon Lukomnik, head of the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute. "There really needs to be a process that looks at these issues ... at C-suite and board levels on a periodic basis," Lukomnik said. The Reuters review covered donations made during the 2016 election cycle by the political action committees (PACs) of 30 of the biggest publicly traded U.S. companies that signed Obama's "American Business Act on Climate Change Pledge" in 2015, a public promise to enact climate-friendly corporate policies and support strong climate change oversight like the global climate accord signed in Paris. The review found that 25 of the 30 companies are funding the campaigns of lawmakers featured on a "climate deniers" list that was put together by Organizing For Action, a non-profit created by former Obama campaign aides to advocate his agenda. The list includes more than 130 members of Congress, nearly all Republicans, and is a who's who of the biggest opponents of Obama's plan to combat climate change. Some of those on the list dispute the label "denier" and describe themselves as climate change "skeptics". The list includes Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, an energy advisor to presidential candidate Donald Trump who once argued the Earth was cooling not warming, and Republican U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, who last year held up a snowball on the Senate floor as evidence global warming does not exist. The review found PepsiCo and DuPont's political action committees gave about half or more of the money from their top donations in support of senators and congressmen on the list. That amounted to $56,500 from the Pepsi PAC's 29 donations of $2,500 and above, and $40,000 from the DuPont PAC's 19 donations of $2,000 and above. Other signatories to the American Business Act on Climate Change Pledge that gave more than a third of their top political contributions to lawmakers on the list include Google, AT&T, GE, Verizon, and Mondelez, according to the review. The new Google logo is seen at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California November 13, 2015. Those levels of donations given to climate skeptics are relatively high given that the list covers about a quarter of U.S. Congress members. Officials from PepsiCo, Google, AT&T, and Verizon did not respond to requests for comment. DuPont declined to comment, and Mondelez referred Reuters to the press release announcing its participation in the climate pledge. A GE spokeswoman said the company supports "elected officials based on a wide range of issues, but we have consistently been outspoken about the need to address climate change and have invested over $17 billion in cleaner technology R&D over the last 11 years." PepsiCo has also been working to become more energy efficient, and now operates the country's largest fleet of electric delivery trucks. But it still has a sizeable carbon footprint: It produced some 4.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2013, down 2 percent from 2012, according to its website. A more recent figure was not available. DuPont, also working to increase its energy efficiency, emitted 16.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2013. U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) speaks before Republican nominee Donald Trump arrives at "Joni's Roast and Ride" in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., August 27, 2016. Congressman Cramer, a self-described climate skeptic who opposes Obama's climate agenda but has taken donations from companies that signed the climate pledge, said companies tend to consider issues like tax policy, national security, and regulatory policy when picking who to support - as opposed to a single issue like the environment. He, like other lawmakers featured on the Organizing For Action "climate deniers" list, said the debate over climate change was not as clear cut as Obama's allies depict it. "It is not a black and white issue, like if you agree with Obama you're enlightened, and if you don't you're in the dark," he said. "It is more of a spectrum." A spokeswoman for Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, another lawmaker featured on the list, said he had "done more than almost any other member of Congress to increase the use of clean energy" sources like wind and biofuels. But she added he was opposed to Obama's climate change initiatives, like the Clean Power Plan to curb carbon output, because he felt that it could hurt the competitiveness of U.S. businesses globally. Senator Inhofe, who said he doesn't mind the label "climate denier", suggested that some companies had signed the American Business Act on Climate Change pledge for superficial reasons. "These are competitive companies, and the board might have said 'Look, right now it might be a popular thing to join this, and there's no downside since we're not really committing to anything.' That absolutely goes on," he said. The five companies reviewed by Reuters that did not fund opponents to Obama's climate change agenda either had no political action committee, like Apple, or made only a small number of contributions, like Coca Cola. Lauren Compere, managing director at sustainable investment manager Boston Common Asset Management, said consistency between policy and political giving was becoming increasingly important to environmentally-minded investors. "No company should want to be perceived as espousing progressive climate policies on the one hand, while funding climate deniers on the other," she said.
FORTALEZA, Brazil, Aug 24 2011 (IPS) - The port of Pecém in Brazil’s impoverished Northeast region received a large order to unload and store cement factory equipment imported from China. The port authorities were unable to accept the original order, as the cargo would have occupied 40,000 square metres of storage space, nearly half the total available. The order, which arrived a month ago, is still under consideration, and the director of deployment and expansion for the Pecém terminal, Hernani de Carvalho Junior, has devised a practical solution. He recommends the equipment be delivered in two lots, with the second being unloaded after the first has left the port storage space. The large order is highly unusual, but it is a sign of the industrialisation taking place in the semiarid Northeast, Brazil’s poorest region. Many industrial investments have been attracted by new ports designed also as manufacturing and energy production hubs. Pecém is being developed as an industrial and energy hub on an area of 330 square km adjacent to the port on the Atlantic coast, created in 2002 some 60 km from Fortaleza, the capital of the state of Ceará. The concept was that it would attract other industries with its two large initial projects, a steel plant and an oil refinery. As it turned out, things “did not happen in that order, but the port was built anyway,” after restructuring it for handling “general cargo and container traffic,” Carvalho Junior said. And in fact, companies are flocking to set up factories here. A score of service, energy, and cement industries, including manufacturers of wind turbines, have already made their bases at the Industrial and Port Complex of Pecém (CIPP), which is administered by the Ceará state government. BRAZIL: Biofuel Production – Local Development or Social Breakdown? The steel plant is under construction. It is expected to open in 2015, and to produce up to three million steel plates a year. Meanwhile, state oil giant Petrobras plans to open a refinery in 2017 that will be capable of processing 300,000 barrels of crude per day. Two thermoelectric power plants are also under construction and are expected to contribute 1,080 megawatts to local electricity generation, nearly doubling the current power output of the state of Ceará. The plants will burn coal imported from Colombia, so their location adjacent to the port is crucial. When the port had just opened, a Chinese ship was unable to dock because of the force of the winds, Melo pointed out, describing the incident as “embarrassing”. An L-shaped breakwater was hastily erected. Melo added that completion of the port terminal had been followed by erosion of the beaches to the west of Pecém, a phenomenon similar to what was seen in Fortaleza, after the port there was built 60 years ago. He also criticised the social effects produced by the sudden, drastic job losses experienced by people employed in construction of factories and other buildings on the industrial estate, when the work was completed and their labour was no longer needed. “Unless production chains” are in place – like a metallurgical hub alongside the steel industry – the companies in Pecém will only create a limited number of jobs, he said. Carvalho Junior’s response to such concerns is that after the steel mills are in operation, the metal laminates industry will follow, and perhaps an automobile plant, while the oil refinery will attract petrochemical industries. And he denied that the port is harming the environment. Pecém is “seven days from the Spanish ports and six days from the U.S. state of New Jersey,” Carvalho Junior noted. Moreover, the newly inaugurated multi-purpose terminal has a draft of 18 metres, which allows even the largest vessels to dock “without any need for dredging,” all of which contributes to the low costs that attract shipping companies, he said. Underwater measurements show there has been no change in the depth of the local marine shelf between 1997 and 2009, indicating no sediment is accumulating and, therefore, no dredging – a major expense in the maintenance of other ports – is required, Carvalho Junior told IPS. And the port of Pecém has all the latest generation equipment, he said. That is why cargo handling at this port has “grown exponentially” in recent years, confirming its future role as a transport hub, at the centre of countless shipping routes, Carvalho Junior said. The deepwater offshore port terminal of Pecém is protected by the 1,768-metre long breakwater, and is connected to land-based storage warehouses by a road and railway bridge and by pipelines, a cableway, chutes and ducts. The facilities are currently being expanded, with the aim of handling 5.6 million tons of cargo in 2012, nearly twice the amount handled in 2010. Its main logistical advantage is its geographical position, as it is 3,000 km closer to Europe and the eastern seaboard of the United States than Santos, Brazil’s leading port, in the southeast of the country. But the main goal for the integrated industrial-port complex is to foment development in Ceará and have a multiplier effect throughout the Northeast region. The industrial zone is six kilometres inland from the port. The coastal dunes, vegetation and wildlife in the area between form an environmentally protected conservation area. The projected roads, railway and cableways and ducts, as well as tax breaks for export companies, are very attractive to investors. Other factors in favour of the industrialisation of the Northeast include an expanding market in the absence of local production to supply many items like steel and oil derivatives, and lower wages for labour than in the more developed centre and south of the country, although the downside is that workers in Ceará are relatively unskilled. Ceará state’s GDP grew 7.9 percent in 2010, placing it third among the states of the Northeast region, behind Pernambuco and Bahia. The Northeast as a whole has enjoyed higher economic growth than the national average in recent years. Pernambuco was the fastest growing state in Brazil last year, with GDP expanding by 9.3 percent, largely due to the contribution of the port and industrial complex of Suape, in the metropolitan area of Recife, the state capital. This is the model Pecém wishes to emulate. Designed in the 1970s, Suape is a pioneering “superport” which has only reached full maturity in the last decade. Now more than 100 companies are based there, and another 130 construction projects are under way, representing estimated investments of 25 billion dollars. Nearly 50,000 people are employed in construction jobs. Petrobras is building a refinery in Suape that is expected to be completed by 2014, as well as a huge petrochemical plant. A shipyard that is a joint venture between Brazilian contractors and South Korea’s Samsung has employed 7,400 workers since 2008, and many beverage, ceramics and food industries have been set up. Within a few years, Pecém and Suape will be linked by the Transnordestina railway which is being laid across the semi-arid interior of the Northeast. The railway, in conjunction with the road network that is being extended and upgraded, will provide a transport system to support industrialisation in the Northeast, which is a half century behind southeastern Brazil.
Snowboarder Jenny Jones made history in Sochi on Sunday by winning slopestyle bronze - Great Britain's first medal on snow in the history of the Winter Olympics. By way of contrast, 22 medals over 90 years had been won on ice by Britons before the 33-year-old former chalet maid from Bristol leapt into the nation's living rooms with a spectacular performance at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park. Lying fifth after her first run, Jones was awarded 87.25 for her second - enough to take her into first place and bring an agonising wait as 10 rivals took on the challenging course. With Jones barely able to watch, excitement gripping the BBC Sport commentary box and the likes of Andy Murray and Jessica Ennis-Hill following on social media, only American Jamie Anderson and Finland's Enni Rukajarvi managed to outdo the Briton. When Austrian medal prospect Anna Gasser fell on the final run of the day, Jones's place on the podium - and in British sporting history - was confirmed. "I can't believe it," said Jones, a three-time X Games champion and the oldest competitor in the final by six years. "I was just waiting because I knew I was going to drop down and down [the leaderboard] but I didn't know how far. I'm just so happy right now. I feel so proud to get on the podium. A few said, 'Is she past it?' but I did what I could and, thankfully, it got me on there. "I absolutely did not think I would ever be in this position back then, when I was a chalet maid. I was cooking breakfasts, cleaning toilets. I was having a great time, I was snowboarding every day and that was amazing. "It's still sinking in, the history part. Hopefully I'll be in a few pub quizzes now." Aimee Fuller, Jones's team-mate, failed to make the final and watched her friend of five years from the BBC commentary box, where she ended the morning in tears. "Jenny has been such a pioneer," said Fuller. "She's been a big role model of mine and one of my best mates, so to see what she's done today for British snowboarding is insane. I'm overwhelmed by everything and I could not be happier for her. "We are rooming together at the Olympics and we hang out a lot together off the hill and enjoy the same things, like cycling and surfing. She's one of the most humble people I've ever met and also one of the most fun to be around. "It's the craziest feeling standing at the top and knowing so many people are watching you. This is the biggest stage that our sport has ever been on; it really is history in the making right here. "I really just hope that everyone back home has had a taste of what we do. It seriously is the craziest sport. We travel around the world, we're like one giant family - especially us on the British team - and it's just so unique what we do. "It is dangerous, it's fast, it's exciting, and that's what makes it so special. We're such a tight-knit crew and it's an honour to have been a part of this and just see what Jenny has done today. For British snowboarding it's unreal. "It was an honour to be commentating on Jones - as I call her - I'll remember it forever." Describing the action alongside Fuller were Ed Leigh and Tim Warwood, who did their best to contain their excitement while introducing the nation to new terms such as "squirrely". "Jenny was second to drop and although it was a decent score, I wasn't sure it was high enough for a medal," said Warwood. "But, as we saw in the men's, anything can happen. "As people kept falling over, I was getting happier and happier, which is really bad to say and, with it being my first Winter Olympics commentating for the BBC, I wanted to stay as professional as I could. "I've known Jenny for 15 years - she's awesome, always happy and always fun and smiling. If the Olympics were four years ago, she would have been the gold medal favourite, but injuries and the fact the others have caught up to her standard meant a medal was not a given. "Today was all about experience. Her runs weren't groundbreaking but she did it clean and big. I couldn't hold the tears in on air - I'd just watched my friend win a bronze medal. "Nobody deserves the medal more. She deserves all the recognition she's going to get." Leigh added: "I felt like I should do the professional thing, but I've lived through 20 years of her career now and to top it with an Olympic medal is the fairytale finish. "She made a decision on the strength of what the judges said to go big and go safe, and the second was one of the best runs I've ever seen Jenny do." Four-time Olympic rowing gold medallist Matthew Pinsent was waiting, microphone in hand, to speak to Britain's newest medallist, and he had a surprise in store for her. "I think it was just so emotional for us all," said Pinsent. "When she got the big score and went into the gold medal position, the British team we could see nearby erupted, and it was great to see all of the excitement they and Jenny had - but then very quickly she was trying to stay calm because there were still so many athletes to go. "We knew that Jenny didn't like having her parents there - it makes her anxious. She knew they were in Russia but didn't know where, as she doesn't like seeing them in competition. "Once it was clear she had won a medal we got them down from the stands and hid them away. We hid them behind the camera and reflector panel, so when Jenny came over for the interview she had no idea. "After a few straightforward questions I asked her what she would say if she saw her parents, and she looked up to the stands and said: 'Oh, I have to find them.' Well, I just stood to one side and out they came. "It was an incredible moment as they all hugged one another and we didn't have a plan for it. "Her dad collided with the camera and her mum wouldn't stop saying, 'We shouldn't be here [in the media area].' But the normally hard-nosed security staff were loving it and everyone around seemed to be celebrating. "It was emotional for me as well - first the adrenaline rush of the medal and then to see the parents and her together." Helen Jones: "It's absolutely unbelievable, she has never disappointed us. We have always been proud of her but, blimey, this is the icing on the cake." Peter Jones: "We saw her win the first X Games gold medal, which was good because we thought we may put the kiss of death on her. This, we just wanted her to get to the final. That was the target." Helen Jones: "It's incredible - not a lot of mountains in Bristol where we come from but... wow! It's well-deserved and the Great Britain team have supported Jen with everything she has done, and I can't thank them enough for everything. If it hadn't been for them and that support, she wouldn't be here today." Peter Jones: "I need a whisky." Helen Jones: "I think we both need a drink and a long sleep. It's been great coming out here. From dry ski slopes in Gloucester to this - it's amazing." On a wet and windy Sunday morning in the UK, Jenny Jones dominated the social media chatter. On Saturday, @jennyjonessnow had 8,453 followers. As of 18:30 GMT on Sunday, she had more than 45,000 followers. In 24 hours there were more than 8,000 tweets using #jennyjones and over 56,000 mentions of @jennyjonessnow on Twitter. From 09:00-10:00 on Sunday there were more than 34,000 mentions of @jennyjonessnow or uses of the #jennyjones hashtag. Jessica Ennis-Hill on Twitter: "Amazing. I was gripped!!" Andy Murray on Twitter after Jones's final run: "Jenny Jones! Is it wrong to hope everyone left falls?" followed soon after by "Yesssssssssssssssss!" Skeleton World Cup winner Lizzy Yarnold: "I'm in awe of Jenny and the fact she won the first medal for Team GB was so exciting. It brought tears to my eyes - it was a beautiful moment." Olympic skeleton silver medallist Shelley Rudman: "There was a really great vibe in Team GB House with all the athletes watching Jenny, and she was incredible. I think it's really lifted the whole team and we're all really proud." Liz Nicholl, UK Sport chief executive: "It's wonderful to see all the hard work and dedication of Jenny, her coaches and support staff, realised when it mattered the most. Jenny winning a historic first British Olympic medal on snow will create a huge sense of excitement and momentum within the team." Sarah Lewis, general secretary of the International Ski Federation [FIS]: "For Britain to get their first ever snow medal is very exciting for FIS. The media attention for snowsports in general [in Britain] will be higher and hopefully also the interest and enthusiasm, not just in the media but from youngsters when it comes to participating," Moments after receiving her medal: "I could see my parents in the crowd with quite a few other British fans. It was a special moment." An embrace from BBC commentator Tim Warwood: "It was really emotional to see Tim. We've known each other a long time." A glass of champagne: "I'd not had any alcohol for six months in preparation for the Olympics. This tastes good."

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