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Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. DIAGNOSIS is often much simpler than treatment. The failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, America's housing-finance giants, are glaringly obvious. The two firms, which own or guarantee more than half of the country's $10.7 trillion of mortgages, are awash in red ink. The Congressional Budget Office reckoned in August 2009 that the twosome's cost to taxpayers could go as high as $400 billion. With housing showing renewed weakness, that number may rise. It is also easy to see why the firms got into such a mess. These “government-sponsored enterprises” (GSEs) occupied a grey area between state and private ownership, benefiting from an implicit government guarantee on their own debt at the same time as they sought to maximise profits for shareholders. That hybrid model granted the GSEs access to cheap funding and gave them the incentive to load their retained portfolios with subprime mortgages whilst maintaining capital levels scanty enough to make investment banks blush. Although everybody agrees on the need to overhaul Fannie and Freddie, nobody is rushing to do much about it. America's thumping financial-reform bill, which was signed into law by Barack Obama on July 21st, found room in its 2,319 pages to create “Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion” in various federal agencies, but did nothing on Fannie and Freddie. The two were taken into “conservatorship”, a form of government ownership, in 2008 and have been put to work ever since. Virtually the only mortgages investors will buy are those guaranteed by the GSEs and other federal agencies. More than nine in every ten new mortgages written in America during the first quarter of 2010 were government-backed. Policymakers are horrified by this level of intervention and terrified about withdrawing it. The Treasury says it will put out proposals on the future of Fannie and Freddie early next year but there are few signs that politicians are prepared to get rid of them altogether. They should. The GSEs' mission is to provide “liquidity, stability and affordability” to America's mortgage market. Set aside the fact that these aims tend to conflict: cheerleading for cheap mortgages is likely to produce instability, for example. The bigger question is why Fannie and Freddie are needed to achieve them. America's obsession with home ownership is itself questionable, especially now that the trap of negative equity has hampered workers' ability to move in search of jobs. Even if it were a valid goal, there are plenty of countries (Australia, Britain and Canada among them) that have similar or higher levels of home ownership with far less, and in some cases no, systemic government support (see article). As for liquidity, the argument that America needs Fannie and Freddie because private securitisation markets do not exist to take their place is circular. The GSEs have guidelines for the types of home loans they can guarantee: these let Fannie and Freddie colonise the safest, “conforming” bits of the mortgage market (before expanding into dodgier bits), leaving private lenders to swerve around them into ever-riskier areas. If the GSEs were not there to securitise and guarantee prime American mortgages, private firms would take their place. There is still the fear that investors would flee the market in times of stress if they did not have a federal guarantee, implicit or otherwise. But other changes can sharply reduce that risk. Tighter underwriting standards would ensure that originators of loans remain disciplined: Britain's plans for a more intrusive mortgage-lending regime provide one source of guidance. Better loan disclosure would help investors in mortgage-backed securities to do their own homework rather than just relying on guarantees. Funding instruments like covered bonds would give investors recourse to banks' balance-sheets as well as the mortgages themselves in times of crisis. None of this means it makes sense to get rid of Fannie and Freddie in one go. A gradual withdrawal is needed. The first step is to run off or sell their retained portfolios of mortgages. A second would be to squeeze the definitions of conforming mortgages over time, so that bit by bit Fannie and Freddie lose control of chunks of the prime market. American housing would, unfortunately, still have lots of props—agencies such as the Federal Housing Administration and subsidies like tax relief on mortgage interest. But the GSEs should go.
The Quebec government is set to introduce draft legislation this week it says will give police, social workers and the courts new tools to counter religious fundamentalism and terrorist recruitment. The government plans to give officials in law enforcement additional resources to monitor social media and other recruiting hotbeds, such as schools, for signs of terrorist activity, according to a highly placed government source who drew a broad outline of the coming legislation. The bill will also contain expanded powers for courts to grant injunctions when faced with a risk of forced marriages or honour crimes. A second bill this week will introduce the Liberal version of the "charter of values" to limit religious accommodations and religious expression in government services – measures likely to be less contentious than the recent Parti Québécois version, but still raise alarms among civil libertarians. Story continues below advertisement The legislative package comes amid recent news extremist groups have lured at least two dozen Quebec youth and young adults into joining their ranks, mostly in the Middle East. Police have arrested some of the youth, others were intercepted at Montreal's Trudeau airport while still others have flown to Turkey and disappeared. One used a vehicle to kill a soldier last fall in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and was shot by police. The province has for years also experienced a general atmosphere of suspicion around conservative Islam, and a leading legal expert warned much of the plan appears to amount to a symbolic crackdown targeting Muslims. The law already allows police to go undercover to crack down on terrorist recruitment, monitor the Internet or intervene if the well-being of a minor is at risk, said Nathalie Des Rosiers, a professor of constitutional law. The government official said a lot of the bill and the accompanying "action plan" to be unveiled by the Quebec Justice Minister will centre on training for front-line workers, particularly in the area of youth radicalization. The law's drafters found a dearth of expertise in Quebec on countering radicalization – a fact recently confirmed by a host of experts and the founders of Montreal's fledgling local anti-radicalization centre. "The phenomenon is so new, there's almost no one in Quebec trained to counter it," said the government source who was not authorized to give interviews but spoke on condition of anonymity. "A lot of this will be about training. We're really starting from scratch." Premier Philippe Couillard confirmed Monday introduction of the new measures "is imminent," but declined to comment on details. "There will be legislative and non-legislative measures. In no time you will hear all the details," he said after speaking at a conference in Montreal. A second bill to be introduced this week will be a lighter Liberal version of the "charter of values" that caused enormous controversy during the 18-month rule of the PQ that ended last year. A source says measures in the new charter will include a requirement government services be provided and received with uncovered faces – a rule that effectively bans the niqab or burka from government institutions. The bill is similar to one introduced and abandoned by a previous Liberal government five years ago and matches Liberal campaign promises last year. The new plan cherry-picks ideas that have widespread support in Quebec, such as the restriction on face-coverings, but it will leave aside the PQ's controversial ban on the hijab, kippa and other "conspicuous" displays of religion that do not cover the face. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement The rule against face-covering in public services may be a matter of agreement among Quebec's main political parties, but civil libertarians say they are discriminatory and target forms of religious and political expression. Prof. Des Rosiers, a former general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said the ban on face-covering targets a small group of Muslim women above all others and raises concerns on constitutional grounds. "Reasonable people can disagree on whether it's absolutely necessary, but it targets one group," said Prof. Des Rosiers, who is dean of the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa. "I think the symbolic impact remains dangerous. It continues to have a message of borderline Islamophobia." On other coming provisions, Prof. Des Rosiers said it's difficult to see how the province could add powers that could stop honour killings or forced marriages above what is already contained in the Criminal Code of Canada. "You can always go to the police. In fact, it's an obligation if child welfare is at stake. Again, it seems more symbolic than anything," she said. "It's wanting to look like you're doing something by using legal means as opposed to investing in social services to make sure people can leave abusive relationships."
Newswise — An international team of including the Lomonosov Moscow State University researchers discovered which enzyme enables Escherichia coli bacterium (E. coli) to breathe. The study is published in the Scientific Reports. Scientists discovered how the E. coli bacterium can survive in the human gut - earlier the question how they breathe was a mystery to experts. Vitaliy Borisov, Senior Researcher, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, A.N. Belozersky Research Institute physical and chemical biology employee, the Lomonosov Moscow State University and one of the authors, explains that breathing E. coli uses special enzymes, which are absent in the human body. This means that the discovery of the scientists can contribute to the creation of new drugs, which will be detrimental to the bacteria without harming a human. The energy for the vital activity of any organism comes from food, and is generated by the means of redox processes in the body. The food is converted into energy not directly but through intermediaries. First, the complex molecules are decomposed into simpler: proteins are decomposed into amino acids, fats - to fatty acids, carbohydrates - to monosaccharides. Oxidation of simpler molecules releases energy, which all is contained in the electrons. The electrons passes to the respiratory chain with the so-called reducing equivalents (electron-carrying compound). They are NADH (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) and ubiquinol, also known as coenzyme Q. These two basic reducing equivalents fully cope with the processing of food: NADH is a water-soluble compound and ubiquinol is fat-soluble. Membranous enzymes accept electrons from reducing equivalents and transfer them to molecular oxygen. The terminal cytochrome oxidase is the main membrane enzyme responsible for the human mitochondrial respiration and was thought to be used for the breath of E. coli as well. The scheme of oxidases action is simple: transferring electrons to molecular oxygen, reducing equivalents are oxidized again, and as a result "the energy currency" of the cell - the proton-moving force is generated. 'If you stop breathing, you die just because oxygen does not flow to the oxidase, and it does not produce energy,' says Vitaly Borisov. The Escherichia coli bacterium lives in the gastrointestinal tract, where a lot of hydrogen sulfide is produced, which attenuates mitochondrial respiration. Free hydrogen sulfide inhibits cytochrome oxidase work. Its concentration exceeds several hundred times the minimum concentration required for substantial blocking of this enzyme. Hence, it seems that the E. coli bacterium cannot "breathe", but despite that the bacteria somehow survive in the intestine. The researchers assumed that the breath in the presence of hydrogen sulfide is still possible, but due to other oxidase. The fact is that the breath in people and bacteria occur in different ways. Each cell in our body "breathes" due to the work of only the cytochrome-c oxidase, others we have not. However, the E. coli bacteria has two types of oxidase: bo-type cytochrome oxidase (analogue of "human" cytochrome-c oxidase) and completely different bd-type cytochromes. 'Our hypothesis was that the bd-type oxidase (bd-I and bd-II) are more resistant to the hydrogen sulfide inhibition than the bo-type cytochrome oxidase,' commented Vitaly Borisov. To test this hypothesis scientists needed to learn how the sulfide presence in the environment affects the growth of the E. coli bacteria cells, which have only one terminal oxidase (bd-I, bd-II or bo) in the respiratory chain. a variety of biochemical, biophysical and microbiological methods and approaches were applied, as well as the method of the intended mutagenesis. The hypothesis was fully confirmed. 'Bo-oxidase's activity is completely inhibited by the hydrogen sulfide, while the work of the bd-oxidases remains untouched by the H2S. Thus, in order to successfully produce the main types of "the energy currency" under a high concentration of hydrogen sulfide, the intestinal microflora inhabitants should use a unique type of terminal oxidases, which is missing in the cells of humans and animals,' says Vitaly Borisov. The discovery could be used in the future to develop medicines that regulate the intestinal microflora and relieving it from harmful bacteria. As human cells do not contain the bd-type oxidase, the question of the ability to combat disease-causing bacteria without causing harm to the human body becomes relevant. For example, the bacterium causing tuberculosis, which's primarily membrane enzyme is also a bd-type oxidase, quickly gaining resistance to classical antibiotics. Through this study there is a prospect of a new type of antibiotics "turning off" the oxygen only to the harmful bacteria cells, not to human cells. ### SEE ORIGINAL STUDY
Justin Gaethje isn’t going to make any bold claims about his upcoming Octagon run. The undefeated former World Series of Fighting lightweight champion became the sport’s latest marquee free agent signing last month when he inked an exclusive deal with the UFC. And although his résumé as one of the most talented and entertaining 155-pound fighters in the world is quite formidable, the only thing Gaethje is vowing is that he’ll continue to bring his own unique brand of violence into the UFC. “I’m not promising anything,” Gaethje said recently on The MMA Hour. “I’m not promising success. I’m not promising that. I’ll promise you that I will get knocked out here in the next, like, 10 fights, because it’s a game of freakin’ centimeters and fractions of seconds. Come on. I’ve watched every single one of my fights in slow motion, and I live. I beat you to the time. I beat you to the punch. I’m in your face, and you can’t breathe. Not for a second will you be able to breathe.” Gaethje’s no-nonsense style became a polarizing talking point over the course of his four-year WSOF run. The 28-year-old is unapologetic about his all-offense, always-walk-forward approach to professional fighting — an approach that has thus far worked out just fine. Gaethje, 28, is a perfect 17-0 in his career and was one of WSOF’s biggest stars before exiting the promotion last week, having ended nine of his 10 wins in WSOF via KO/TKO stoppage. “I love reading comments online,” Gaethje said. “I’m 17-0 with 14 knockouts. That ‘0’ says something. That means that I haven’t been hit hard enough. So, you’ve seen Michael Bisping get freakin’ flying H-bombed from Dan ‘Hendo’ and he comes back. The human body, it’s very fragile, but we can take some damage. “I’m not here to take damage. I don’t want to not be able to talk. Every single time I fight, I know that ... this could be the last time that you’re able to do this, the last time you’re able to talk. You never know what’s going to happen and I think about that every single time I’m in the cage, and I wrap my whole life around that one fight that I have coming up, that right now there is nothing that matters.” Gaethje has been listening to concern over his style for years, though it only truly picked up steam in 2015 following the conclusion of his rivalry with Luis Palomino. Gaethje and Palomino met twice that year, facing off in back-to-back slugfests, both of which emerged as instant ‘Fight of the Year’ candidates. But Gaethje has stated countless times that he lives for that kind of action, and he can only shrug when people express worry over how much he gets hit. “It’s two guys locked in a cage trying to punch each other in the face. Of course I get hit, it’s a fight,” Gaethje said. “I am a Division I All-American wrestler, but I wrestled college wrestling matches, seven minutes long. If I was to go in there and wrestle for seven minutes of a fight, a 25-minute fight, you’re not getting nothing out of me for the rest of the time. So, I’m in there, I’m in there to stay in good position. “I believe that in physics, when two objects have the same mass, it comes down to force. And whichever object has the most force, then that’s going to win the car crash. And I go into fight and I create car crashes, and I plan on being the object with the most force. My timing and my attitude is what this sport is, and that’s why I’ve been successful so far. I’m not going to change. I put people into deep waters. The first round, they’re talking sht. The second round, they’re talking sht. The third round, they can’t say sh*t. So, it’s over.” There’s a chance that Gaethje will learn the limitations of that style in the UFC. The 155-pound division is one of the deepest in the company and any fighter in the top-15 could ruin an undefeated record on any given night. But Gaethje is well aware of that fact, and he simply is excited to face the challenge of competing against the best fighters in the world, consequences be damned. “I didn’t know this was coming for sure, but you can always sense things, and I knew this was coming,” Gaethje said. “This is the path. This is road. When you tell me that I’m going to not be able to talk (in the future) or stuff, I know that, I picked the road to follow at the beginning. You see all the risks involved, and I took that road. Now I’m committed and it’s too far to turn back, so that’s what I’m going to do. And at the end of this ... I have a human services bachelors degree and I want to work social work, I want to work with at-risk youth. “So hopefully I’m still able to be cognizant enough to do that when I’m done and inspire kids. I’m inspiring so many kids back home where I’m from. I’m from a small town, so that alone right now is pushing me, and everyday I wake up so hungry and so happy to be fulfilling this dream for me and all the people ... who have been supporting me the whole time. That is what really makes it all worth it. So I’m just going to keep trucking along, man, one fight at a time and I’m giving it everything.” Gaethje will face his first UFC test against Michael Johnson on July 7 at The Ultimate Fighter 25 finale — and Gaethje cautioned his opponent not to overlook the level of competition he has trounced thus far. “You can say the competition isn’t stiff, but go look at the combined record of my opponents,” Gaethje said. “It’s somewhere like 180-50. So I fight people who can fight. I’ve fought warriors. I’ve fought people who should’ve went down when I hit them, and they didn’t. But I’m from a small town, a copper mining family. We work hard, and I’ve got nothing to lose here.”
MONTREAL—Stephen Hawking’s warnings of an alien invasion have prompted a vigorous defence of extraterrestrials by their most prominent Canadian fan. Former federal defence minister Paul Hellyer, 86, believes not only that aliens have visited Earth but also that they have contributed greatly to human technological advances. So he can’t quite understand why the world renowned astrophysicist views them with such trepidation; Hawking recently warned that malevolent aliens could lead to the destruction of humanity. The longtime cabinet minister accuses Hawking of spreading misinformation about extraterrestrials. “I think he’s indulging in some pretty scary talk there that I would have hoped would not come from someone with such an established stature,” Hellyer said in an interview. Article Continued Below “I think it’s really sad that a scientist of his repute would contribute to what I would consider more misinformation about a vast and very important subject.” Hawking speculates in a new documentary that most extraterrestrial life will be similar to microbes, or small animals — but he adds that advanced life forms may be “nomads, looking to conquer and colonize” new planets. Hellyer served in the Liberal cabinets of Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, later crossed the floor to the Conservative party, and eventually returned to the Liberals. Hellyer, who ran for the Liberal party leadership in 1968, has been speaking out publicly about “the star visitors” for years. His most recent speech was in Washington in April 2009. He dismisses a suggestion that some people might find his views a little hard to believe. “The reality is that they’ve (aliens) been visiting Earth for decades and probably millennia and have contributed considerably to our knowledge,” Hellyer said. He says earthlings owe a lot to their alien friends. Even that computer screen on your desk, he says, can trace its origins to spaceships. Article Continued Below “Microchips, for example, fiber-optics, they are just two of the many things that allegedly — and probably for real — came from crashed vehicles,” Hellyer said. Hellyer admits that when he was defence minister, he never got any briefings on UFOs from the military. He says he got reports of sightings, and that some of them could not be explained. His interest in aliens goes back at least as far as 1967, Canada’s centennial year. That’s the year Hellyer went to St. Paul, Alta., to officially inaugurate the world’s first flying saucer landing pad which was built by the locals to celebrate the centennial. The town continues to get about 5,000 visitors a year, with more than half making a pilgrimage to the landing pad. Liberal Senator Colin Kenny was approached by Hellyer in late 2005 and asked to hold public hearings on Canadian exopolitics. That’s the politics of how to deal with extraterrestrial contact. Kenny, who chaired the Senate defence committee, remembers the meeting well. “I liked Paul, I worked for him in the leadership race in 1968, and when he called me up to see me I was pleased to see him and we reminisced for a while,” Kenny recalls. “Then, wow! Out of the blue, he starts talking about extraterrestrials and how they’re everywhere and they have these immense powers.” Kenny says his opinion about aliens hasn’t changed since that meeting five years ago: “I think it’s for the birds.” “I’m certainly not going to waste any of my time on the extraterrestrial business,” Kenny said. A past president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada agrees there might be UFOs out there, but he’s a little more hesitant about aliens. He takes Hawking’s warning with a grain of salt. “I think it’s an opinion more than anything,” Randy Attwood said. “I think he may be throwing the ball out into the field, just to try to get people to actually start talking about this.” Attwood says data gathered during the exploration of Mars by unmanned spacecraft give some credence to Hawking, who is an honorary member of the astronomical society. “All things are pointing now to life on Mars in the past, possibly when its orbit was different,” he said. “It had an atmosphere, it was warmer, there was running water.” “So it’s quite possible that life was in fact there — not Martian wilder beasts or anything like that — but multiple-cell organisms.” Attwood says given that one of Earth’s closest neighbours potentially had life, it’s quite possible that life, in fact, exists elsewhere in the universe. “Whether it’s single-celled or multiple-cell, or beings that are actually travelling through space, we don’t know,” he said. Read more about:
By Julia Cabrera Rabat – The recently-announced auction of an aquatic dinosaur skeleton unearthed in Morocco has been canceled. The auction house at the Drouot Hotel in Paris stated that the fossils will not be sold, following a meeting between the Moroccan ambassador to France Chakib Benmoussa and the auction commissioner, Alexandre Giquello. The plesiosaur, a 9-meter-long marine reptile with a long neck and turtle-like flippers, was originally discovered in Khouribga, Morocco. According to Spanish news outlet La Republica, the fossils were illegally transported out of Morocco in 2011. The Moroccan Association for the Protection of Geological Heritage wants to repatriate the fossils of the 66-million-year-old plesiosaur. “We will not stay with our hands crossed,” stated the Director of Cultural Heritage in Morocco, Abdelá Alaui, on Wednsday, according to La Nación. “This is about our national heritage. There will be an investigation to find out how this fossil, of a species that only exists in Morocco, was able to leave the country.” In a statement to the French press on Wednesday, a Drouot representative announced their decision to cancel the sale of the skeleton, which had been priced starting at 350.000 euros, according to La Republica. Nezha Lazraq, an expert paleontologist at the University of Marrakesh, commented that, considering the size of the skeleton and the amount of bones it contains, it is suspicious that it was able to exit the country illegally, according to La Republica. Following four years of rehabilitation work, the plesiosaurus skeleton has been restored to 75 percent of its original state. It will be exhibited in its current state in the Drouot Hotel March 4 to 7.
p2p MP3 / Source / YM2149 + DMA Sound, Atari Falcon 030, maxYMiser → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? A song about/for the Internet. Iced Earth MP3 / Source / OPL3, Soundblaster 16, AdlibTracker II → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? With epic bass like a Demutspfeife. Procrastination Polka (live) MP3 / Source / 2 × Handspring Treo 180, Piezo Beeper, Midi Files + full band → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? Extra long version, performed live 2010-12-29 in Stoccarda with the Uwe Schenk Show Band. DEFINE (live) MP3 / Source / MOS6561, Commodore VIC 20, VIC Tracker + full band → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? Performed live 2010-12-29 in Stoccarda with the Uwe Schenk Show Band, rushing the 32th scales! Zombie and Mummy Theme (live) MP3 / Source / Microsoft GM Synthesizer, Windows 2000, MIDI file + full band → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? Extended Graveyard Arrangement, performed live 2010-12-29 in Stoccarda with the Uwe Schenk Show Band. p2p (live) MP3 / Source / YM2149 + DMA Sound, Atari Falcon 030, maxYMiser + full band → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? A song about/for the Internet, performed live 2010-12-29 in Stoccarda with the Uwe Schenk Show Band. Procrastination Polka MP3 / Source / 2 × Handspring Treo 180, Piezo Beeper, Midi Files → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? Composed tune instead of doing the taxes ... Оля Зимой MP3 / Source / YM2149, Atari ST, maxYMiser → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? First heard at Chaos Constructions 4 on the ZX Spectrum, 2010 became a slow Atari rework. Mein Leben für die Wissenschaft MP3 / Source / OPL3, Soundblaster 16, AdlibTracker II → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? Composed for Olia Lialina's unfinished radio play "Gas Station". Zombie and Mummy Theme MP3 / Source / Microsoft GM Synthesizer, Windows 2000, MIDI file → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? Original title music for the Zombie and Mummy online comic. DEFINE MP3 / Source / MOS6561, Commodore VIC 20, VIC Tracker → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? Hymn for the General Purpose Computer. hrvat MP3 / Source / YM2149, Atari ST, MusicMon2 → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? Originally released on ymrockerz' tymewarp. Beepbop MP3 / Source / YM2149, Atari ST, MusicMon2 → buy as high quality MP3/OGG/FLAC file ? Originally released on UPITUP RECORDS. Donations Donate BitCoins to 1123dv6K8Es1EgmDfQs1dvuzx6wfQnzhfV Download Options You can get the tunes as low quality (64kbps) MP3 files or go right for the source: a ZIP archive containing instructions and files needed to recreate the tune for yourself. You will be able to see in detail how each of these tunes was actually made. Buying Audio Files Additionally to the free 64kbps MP3 files you can purchase high quality versions by checking the corresponding boxes ( ) at the tunes you like and hitting "Buy with". Available methods are: - PayPal is the default. PayPal is one of the most popular and trusted online paying platforms. You can use most credit cards to pay if you do not have a Paypal account. - BitCoin is the new peer-to-peer currency. Check this fun website to get an easy introduction to this project. You will receive the tunes in the following formats: - 320 kbps constant bitrate MP3 MP3 can be played by all computers from Windows 98 on, by iPods, cheap MP3 players, phones, watches, alarm clocks and in general almost everything with a micro processor. The audio format for almost everybody! Most GNU/Linux distributions will need support for non-free codecs. - 500 kbps OGG vorbis OGG is a Free Software alternative to MP3 that offers much better quality with the same file size. Works great with GNU/Linux. iPods, Windows Media Player and Quicktime can not play it unless you install additional plugins. You could replace your iPod's firmware with something reasonable or buy a hardware player with OGG support. Nerd-rating: medium. - lossless FLAC FLAC is a Free Software lossless audio compression format: it sounds as crisp as a audio CD or WAV file but requires less disc space. Still the files are quite large compared to MP3 or OGG. It can be played back with most audio player software after installing some plugins. If you did fall for an iPod, you have to replace the firmware or buy another balladeur numérique. Only for hardcore HiFi nerds! After the checkout process is completed you will receive an Email with a link pointing you to your download page. This page will self-destruct 5 days after your purchase. All files are free from Digital Rights Management and can be played back with any device or software that supports these audio file formats. Why should anybody care about high quality audio files for lo-tech music? High Quality Square Wave Recording: +---------+ +---------+ +---------+ \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| \| -------+ +---------+ +---------+ +------- Compressed Square Wave Recording: ......--, ,........ .....----, \| J / \| F J F L \| \| J L J \| _\| \| _F \| ~.....--I J--~"""" +-~""""" """"""""' - Studio recording have been mastered by Simon V. - Live recordings have been mastered by Uwe Schenk.
Climate Change-Ready Rice Keeps Farmers' Fields Fertile Enlarge this image toggle caption Amy Yee for NPR Amy Yee for NPR In southern Bangladesh, bright green rice paddies stretch into the distance. But in the village of Gholgholia, rice in one paddy grows unevenly. The leaves are dry and brown. And there are bald patches between clumps, like the agricultural equivalent of a slightly mangy dog. This is the result of salty soil. Sometimes it's so hard to coax rice into growing in the soil that farmers leave fields fallow. Climate change is one reason farmland in Bangladesh is becoming increasingly saline. This is especially the case in the coastal south, which was traditionally the country's rice basket. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of acres of land lay fallow. Production of rice and other salt-sensitive crops, such as potato and mustard, has decreased. "A lot of land is fallow because of salinity," said Timothy Russell, head of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia, or CSISA, in Bangladesh. Russell says there's a potential fix for the problem: Plant a variety of rice that's naturally resistant to salty soil. "If you can bring in salt-tolerant rice or other salt-tolerant crops, like sunflower, you can utilize the land," Russell says. "That's the dream." And it's slowly becoming a reality. Since 2011, about 180,000 farmers have received saline-tolerant rice seeds and training on how to grow them. It's part of a program sponsored by three nonprofits: the International Rice Research Institute, the World Fish Center and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. Bangladesh is the world's sixth-largest rice producer. Rice accounts for 70 percent of calories consumed by its population of 160 million. Agriculture that can withstand climatic threats is especially important in Bangladesh. The country is a low-lying river delta and thus is vulnerable to floods and violent storms. It is also one of the world's most densely populated countries: Imagine more than half the U.S. population crammed into an area the size of Iowa. Scientists at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute created the new varieties by crossbreeding rice varieties that were already naturally resistant to salty soil. So they're not genetically modified plants. The seeds are free for farmers, but many are reluctant to try new plants. So, agricultural scientists from the CSISA grow the rice on test plots to show farmers techniques for growing the varieties — and how well they fare even in poor soil. "The first adopters of new varieties and crops will be the wealthier farmers who can afford to take risks," Russell says. "Less wealthy farmers will watch and wait. If the experiment works out well, they will follow." The education process is important. Salinity can vary in adjacent fields or even within fields due to elevation, rainfall and exposure to salt water from nearby rivers. Different varieties of salt-resistant rice can grow in varying degrees of salinity. Although climate change has likely contributed to the rise in salty soil in Bangladesh, shrimp farming is also to blame. Shrimp farmers use salty river-fed canals to fill ponds separated by dirt embankments. The business is lucrative and has become popular in Bangladesh over the past decades. But it's risky for farmers to rely just on shrimp farming, says Mohammed Harunur Rashid, a scientist with the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute. Disease can wipe out a whole farm. So the salt-resistant rice allows some farmers to alternate between cultivating shrimp and growing rice. A few miles down the road from Gholgholia, barefoot farmers paused from harvesting golden fields of salt-resistant rice in the village of Patrakhola. Din Mohammed, a 42-year-old farmer, estimated his rice yield dropped by a third because of increased salinity after Cyclone Aila in 2009. The storm broke near river embankments and flooded the village's precious farmland with salty water. But the new variety yields more rice, he says. Mohammed has also started planting sunflowers in the same field after he harvests rice. Sunflowers naturally tolerate salty conditions, and the crop is new and experimental in Bangladesh. Through a pilot program, about 800 farmers are growing sunflowers that can be turned into cooking oil. In a harvested section of a field in Patrakhola, the ground was covered with flattened husks after farmers harvested rice. Before, this land would have lain fallow for months until the next rice planting. But sunflower seedlings now poked up between matted husks and sprouted a few green leaves. Within months, sunflowers would stand 4 feet tall and create a new landscape of vibrant yellow instead of fallow brown soil. This story was supported by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network, an organization dedicated to reporting about responses to social problems.
It’s no secret that San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich decided that the pregame press conference prior to the NBA Western Conference Finals was the appropriate time to blather about his political gripes. I feel like there’s a cloud, a pall, over the whole country in a paranoid surreal sort of way. Right, and people turn to sports and entertainment to get away from it and because jerks like you can’t let it go, you make it worse for everyone. And you’re doing so with partisan lies like this. It’s got nothing to do with the Democrats losing the election. It doesn’t have EVERYTHING to do with the Democrats losing the election but to say that the Democrats losing has nothing to do with the cloud over this country is delusional. After 8 years of Obama there are people who simply can’t handle the thought of anyone but a far left progressive in the White House. This nationwide freakout would be happening even if another Republican had been elected. Granted, Trump makes it worse because he’s Trump, but to say Democrat sore-loserism isn’t a factor is a partisan lie Popovich is telling himself. It’s got to do with the way one individual conducts himself. And that’s embarrassing. It’s dangerous to our institutions and what we all stand for, what we expect the country to be. But for this individual, he’s in a game show. And everything that happens begins and ends with him, not our people or our country. Every time he talks about those things it’s just a ruse. That’s just disingenuous cynical and fake. I don’t recall whether Popovich regarded it as disingenuous, cynical, or fake when Barack Obama said, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” or when he said “I’m a big fan of the free market.” I’m guessing he probably never covered that in a press conference. I also question whether Popovich is entitled to speak about “what we all stand for.” Clearly we don’t all stand for the same things, evidenced by the widespread butthurt. I’ve got nothing against criticizing Trump because there’s a lot to criticize, but if you’re in front of a camera to talk about basketball, talk about basketball and just shut up about politics. If you think Trump is ruining America, that’s no justification for you to ruin sports with your political bitterness. That’s ESPN’s job anyway.
Those of a nervous disposition when it comes to flying will not have enjoyed the news that France's freshly inaugurated president was forced to return to Paris mid-flight on Tuesday when his jet was struck by lightning. It was probably not the omen François Hollande was seeking as he travelled to Berlin for his first meeting with Angela Merkel. But lightning strikes are not something passengers need necessarily concern themselves with, according to Professor Manu Haddad, who works at Cardiff University's recently opened "lightning lab" – or, to use its more formal name, the School of Engineering's Morgan Botti Laboratory. "On average, every commercial aircraft is hit by lightning once a year," says Haddad, whose lab specialises in testing how to protect aircraft from lightning. "It is routine for an aircraft to land as soon as possible after a strike, but this is a precautionary measure. Lightning is extremely hot – up to 30,000C. The typical damage is a scorch mark where the point of contact was, usually a wing-tip. The plane's electronics are well shielded these days." Haddad says strikes normally occur soon after take-off when the plane is still beneath the storm clouds, which are 2-5km in altitude. "I don't know of a modern-era example where a lightning strike alone has brought down a plane," he says. "It's the same principle as being protected in a car. A metal box such as a car or plane is known as a Faraday cage, which protects those inside from the current. Planes are now built to absorb 250,000 amps, whereas the average strike generates 32,000 amps. "It only gets really serious when the radome [nose cone] is struck, the only part of the plane's shell not made of metal, as this is where the radar is located. But nose cones have special lightning conductors for just this reason." And what of the passengers inside? "They usually won't notice a thing, or they might just see a bright flash."
Exploits. Sometimes, they break games in your favor, allowing you access to powers, abilities, and cheap ways to accomplish difficult tasks that a game's developers didn't intend for you to have (and a game's testers somehow overlooked). But these exploits can sometimes turn the tables against your peaceful adventures -- especially in massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft or EVE Online, where game-breaking bugs can give your peers untold advantage over your hapless, plays-by-the-rules self. And then there are the exploits that are just downright funny. One of the first rules one learns in journalism school is to never use the word, "interesting." It's just too vague a word to be of any use. But that's exactly how you'd otherwise describe the 15 exploits (and a few extra bonuses) that we're about to detail out below. Some are game-breaking, some are captivating, and some are just plain famous. Read and reminisce as much as you'd like: We promise you won't get banned. 1. World of Warcraft -- Rooftop Camping Long, long ago, it was considered right, fair, and fun to jump on top of the not-so-easily accessed rooftops in World of Warcraft and rain all sorts of pain down on your fellow (and likely lower-level) players. Darkshore rooftop camping, anyone? While not a technical exploit, in that any player could conceivably get on a rooftop and start shooing away, the act perturbed Blizzard's overlords enough that they dubbed it a ban-worthy exploit in 2006. 1a. World of Warcraft Bonus -- Baron Geddon Bomb This one takes the Delicious Chocolate Cake for funny. Here's the setup: Baron Geddon, the fifth boss of WoW's first major multi-boss instance, Molten Core, used to be able to target both players and pets with an ability called Living Bomb. The bomb would explode after 10 seconds, hit the target and all players in the nearby area with 3,200 damage, and blast the target straight up into the air. The exploit? When Baron Geddon casted this on a player's pet companion, the player could unsummon the pet -- which would keep the Living Bomb effect intact. The next time the player summoned the pet back to life, even if the player happened to be in friendly territory (like a large city), the countdown would begin... 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 -- Javelin Glitch An old glitch in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 allowed a player to "cook" an FGM-148 Javelin -- or, in layman's terms, prime a missile launcher to fire without actually firing the weapon. Although the player could then only run around and physically hit enemies in the face to keep the glitch alive, the trick turned the player into the digital equivalent of a suicide bomber. For as soon as an enemy shot the player dead, kerboom -- the "cooked" missile launcher would explode. If the kill was fairly close-quarters, the player's attacker would usually die as well. 3. Daggerfall / Oblivion / Skyrim Every major release in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series seems to come with some game-breaking exploit for creative players. Daggerfall? Park your player in a store and rest until the store closes. The shopkeeper disappears and you can loot as much expensive gear as you can carry -- don't forget to return to then return to the store during normal hours and sell the vendor his or her stuff back! Oblivion? Prior to Bethesda patching the glitch, players were able to kill and repeatedly loot the body of an NPC named Dorian over in the Imperial City. Each successive loot gave the player free gold, and a player could even boost up the amount of gold per loot by bribing Dorian repeatedly prior to killing him. Skyrim? This one's almost too easy: Use enchanting to create a weapon that boosts your alchemy, and then use your fortified alchemy to create a potion that boosts your enchanting. Rinse, wash, repeat -- you'll be able to enchant a weapon that can one-shot anything in the game before you can even say "Dovahkiin." 4. Diablo / Diablo II One of the unique joys of Blizzard's first game in the Diablo series was that its multiplayer sessions saved your characters on your computer, not Blizzard's servers. Not only could you hack the heck out of your character to make him or her practically godlike in a multiplayer session, but you could also save other players' characters down to your system and play as them in later sessions. Absolutely crazy. And where do we begin with Diablo II? How about the fact that bots actually work, and work well, within Blizzard's multiplayer service? Set up your AI bot to kill bosses all night long and reap the rewards with your "actual" character later. This method takes a bit more time than, say, loading the weapon blatantly into your character's inventory using a Diablo-style trainer program, but it achieves the same, unstoppable result. 5. Battlefield 3 -- Repairing for Massive XP This one was fun. Upon the game's release, players discovered that they could gain an absurd amount of experience in every multiplayer match by having friendly engineers shoot their own EOD bots. The player would then repair the bots; the engineers would keep shooting. Next match? Switch. End result? Massive leveling up for everyone. 6. FIFA 12 -- Goalie Defense Bad at a little footsie? An easy exploit for EA Sports' FIFA Soccer 12 allowed players to replace their meager soccer skills with AI awesomeness just by controlling their team's goalkeeper at all times. The computer would take over for everyone else on the pitch -- a trick that didn't fare very well against experience soccer veterans, but could certainly give amateur stars a bit of a match. Next: EVE Online, Quake, and More... 7. EVE Online -- Trifecta Which exploit is worse? The one that allowed enemy players to avoid appearing in local chat channels (which would alert nearby players of their presence), giving them a competitive advantage in sneak attack-style combat? The player-owned-stations exploit that allowed corporations to obtain high-end materials for free (and jack the game's economy full of trillions of ISK that shouldn't have been there?) Or how about the exploit that allowed ships to blast targets with short-range weaponry from an absurd distance away? 8. Ultima Online -- Killing The Invincible File this one under "F" for both "Funny" and "Fire Field." When Ultima Online was nearing the end of its official beta test in 1997, the game's creator -- Richard "Lord British" Garriott -- took his mighty, invulnerable avatar on a tour through the game's servers to thank beta testers for participating. Take special note of that "couldn't be killed" part, because someone did just that. It was later revealed that the assassination of Lord British wasn't so much the result of an exploit, rather, the result of Garriott forgetting to set an invulnerability flag on his character following a server crash. The killer, a player character named "Rainz," was nevertheless banned for allegedly violating the spirit of the game's beta test -- British wasn't his first kill, just his most famous. 9. Quake -- The Stanford Stoogebot While not an exploit per se, the famous Stanford Stoogebot was one of the first third-party "enhancements" for a first-person shooter that a player could use to become "godlike" before the term even existed in the genre. In other words, it's an aimbot -- an intermediary between your game and the server that controls your player's aiming and firing while you simultaneously control your player's movement and enemy-hunting. It's clobberin' time! 10. Civilization V -- War Chest It always feels like the computer is cheating in Civilization V, doesn't it? Give some back with this simple money-making exploit. If you're about to go to war with a fellow civilization -- either because it's on the horizon anyway, or you're just a pacifist-hating jerk -- set up a trade with the target and exchange all of your gold and resources (important: per turn) for a lump-sum payment of as much of your target's gold as you can barter for. Before the ink dries on your new agreement, declare war. 11. Mario Kart 64 -- Duh If the Rainbow Road shortcut isn't the biggest exploit to ever appear in a racing game, we don't know what is. 12. Team Fortress 2 -- Door Blocking and Invincibility Griefing? Exploit? Either way, using yourself to block the door (caution: language!) that other players need to use to leave their spawn points in a multiplayer match is just plain funny. Slightly more frustrating is the actual exploit that used to allowed TF2 Medics to ubercharge themselves indefinitely -- an invulnerable medic might not be as bad as an invulnerable scout or pyro, but it can still be quite detrimental to one's health. 13. Star Wars: The Old Republic -- Get Down Go Jedi; it's your birthday. Of all the tricks one could use to escape harm in a massively multiplayer online game, the exploit discovered within Star Wars: The Old Republic proves to be one of the genre's best and funniest. If an enemy was targeting you with any kind of power or ability, you used to be able to type "/getdown" in your chat window to set your character a-dancing. Be it The Force, your mad skills, or a broken game mechanic, your "/getdown" command would interrupt whatever your target was channeling or casting. 14. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess -- Seriously, an Exploit There are exploits, and then there are exploits. The glitch found in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, for the Wii, didn't give gamers a competitive advantage in their single-player romp through Hyrule. Rather, it allowed players to execute custom code placed on the root directory of their system's SD cards. In other words, glitching the game helped enthusiasts run homebrew software on their consoles instead of the Wii's default operating system. 15. Mortal Kombat No, not that Mortal Kombat. The newest Mortal Kombat -- conveniently titled "Mortal Kombat," which definitely differentiates it from the 35 other similarly named games in the series. Naming conventions aside, Mortal Kombat drinks from the same well that many fighting games turn to: Infinite combo exploits. Difficult to figure out, but fun when you do, an infinite combo exploit allows you to lock your opponent in a permanent world of pain. Successfully keep the combo going and there's going to be absolutely nothing standing between your foe and sweet, digital death.
In recent years, ITT Educational Services, Inc. (ITT) has increasingly been the subject of state and federal investigations and this year it has twice been found out of compliance with its accreditor’s standards. Over time, ITT’s decisions have put its students and millions of dollars in taxpayer funded federal student aid at risk. In response, over the last couple of years, we at the Department of Education have increased our financial oversight over ITT and required the school to boost its cash reserves to cover potential damages to taxpayers and students. These investigations are still ongoing and last week ITT still failed to address its accreditor’s concerns. In response, today we’re announcing further federal action: To protect prospective students and taxpayers, we’re no longer allowing ITT to enroll new students with federal aid. In addition, in case the school’s actions cause it to close, we’re increasing the amount of cash reserves it must send us and we’re ending its installment payment plan for the amount previously required. Finally, we’re slowing down when ITT receives student aid from the government to ensure that ITT is handling its finances properly. As a current ITT student with federal loans, you have some options: You can continue your courses at ITT with your federal student aid. There’s no immediate change to your program. You can transfer your credits to a new school (if that school accepts them) and complete your education. You can pause your education and wait to see how this matter resolves itself in the coming months. If ITT closes before you finish your program and you don’t transfer your credits, you will likely be eligible to discharge your federal loans. I imagine you have some questions. Let me try to answer a few of them for you. I’m close to graduating. Can I finish my degree? Yes, unless ITT chooses to close instead of continuing to teach students. If you’ve already started classes at ITT, you can continue using federal aid there as long as the school remains open. New students will not be able to use federal student aid for classes at ITT. If ITT eventually closes, will I still have to repay my federal student loans? If ITT closes you may be eligible for a closed school loan discharge. If we reach that point we’ll share information on that process as you consider your options through the Federal Student Aid’s announcement page. I just recently enrolled at ITT, but I haven’t started classes yet. Can I still use federal aid? No. If you are a new student who has never been enrolled at ITT in a previous semester, you cannot start classes at ITT in the fall semester of 2016 using federal student aid. I know this is probably a major disappointment and inconvenience, but it’s too risky. You should still pursue a higher education. You might want to use our College Scorecard to explore your options and find the program that’s right for you. Will this impact my GI Bill benefits? No. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will notify affected GI Bill students that, at this point, the Department’s actions do not directly affect their GI Bill benefits. These actions, however, do raise significant concerns about ITT’s financial viability. Current GI Bill students at ITT should carefully consider the potential impact that the Department’s actions may have on their educational goals. If you are a GI Bill student and have questions about your GI Bill benefits, please contact the VA’s Education Call Center at 1-888-442-4551 or visit the GI Bill website. If you are eligible for the GI Bill and want to explore your education options, you can use the GI Bill Comparison Tool to find the program that’s right for you. I already completed my degree at ITT. Is it worthless? No. You completed your degree at an operational and accredited institution. Nobody can take away your credentials or the skills you gained. I already completed my ITT program but I feel like I was defrauded. Can I get my money back? The actions we’re taking against ITT today are based on the operational and financial risk they pose to students and taxpayers, not on a finding that they defrauded students. There are, however, a number of open federal and state investigations into ITT campuses. If those investigations find evidence of fraud or other illegal behavior surrounding your specific program, you might be eligible for relief. You can also go to Federal Student Aid’s borrower defense page to learn more about how to file a claim if you believe the school misled you. I’m nervous that ITT may close and I don’t want to start over. Should I transfer my credits? That’s an option. It’s a choice that only you can make and one that you should consider carefully. Each student’s circumstances will be unique. Here are a few key things to consider: Whether your credits transfer will be up to the new school. It’s likely to vary based on the type of program and school you’re considering. If you transfer your credits, you may not be eligible to have some or all of your federal loans discharged if ITT ultimately closes. Before you transfer, ask yourself: Is the type of program I’ve started still the right one for me? Will finishing it open up the career opportunities I want? You may want to check out our College Scorecard as you think about the answers to those questions. Where can I go to get updates on what’s happening with my school? What’s the most reliable place for information? Your school should update you directly. We’ll also post updates if there are major changes on Federal Student Aid’s announcement page. Ted Mitchell is U.S. Under Secretary of Education.
Alina Lewis The successor to one of our favourite mid-range smartphones might go on shelves later this year, if recent leaks are to be believed. The rumoured Moto G successor was spotted after a leaked Brazilian FCC document showed an approval of three new devices from Motorola: the XT1063, XT1068 and XT1069. The Moto G's claim to fame was its perfect amalgamation of affordability and functionality. Coming from the house of Google (then, before the sale to Lenovo), for the first time people could buy a smartphone running on pure Android OS at a modest price. And the bloatware-free smartphone worked brilliantly for a mid-range smartphone. Close on the heels of Moto G's success, Motorola launched the Moto E and the Moto X in the entry-level and premium segments respectively, in India. Looks like we might soon see a second iteration of the Moto G, Moto E and Moto X smartphones, after reports of the same went online. AndroidPit was one of the first ones to report the upcoming variants of the Moto range. It said that the first will have a single SIM, the second dual-SIM, and the third dual-SIM and digital TV features. It also added that they could not be versions of the Moto X+1, as none of them support 4G networks. Soon after the FCC document was leaked, a Spanish website Mallandonoandroid confirmed the specs of the 1068 XT model along with its photos. The model resembles the original Moto G and features an improved 8 Mp rear camera instead of a 5Mp one. It might also run on a faster processor, though the display resolution remains the same at 1280 x 720 pixels. Since the Moto G has gone on sale, it has met strong competition such as the Sony Xperia M2 and the Asus Zenfone 4. Chinese manufacturers such as Gionee, ZTE and Xiaomi have also pooled the mid-range smartphone segment with powerful yet affordable devices. So it's not going to be easy for Motorola to carve a niche with the next Moto G this time. The successor will have to be strategically priced and strike a balance with features and functionality in order to be just as attractive a purchase as the original Moto G. Tech2 is now on WhatsApp. For all the buzz on the latest tech and science, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Tech2.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.
John Bercow has written to the party leaders to demand to see their policies for handling sexual harassment allegations, in a move that will force the Conservatives to make their process public. The Speaker sent a letter to Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and other party leaders asking them to formally publish their policies so that they can be displayed on parliament’s website. It follows more than a week of allegations about sexual misconduct in Westminster, which has led to the resignation of Michael Fallon as defence secretary, investigations into two senior ministers, Damian Green and Mark Garnier, and the suspension of the whip from Labour backbencher Jared O’Mara. Labour also suspended Kelvin Hopkins, the MP for Luton North, on Monday “on the basis of allegations received”, a spokesman said. The former frontbencher, who represents Luton North, has had the whip withdrawn while an investigation into the claims is carried out. May has called for the establishment of a support team in parliament to handle allegations of sexual harassment or abuse by MPs and the right of referral to an independent body that can examine unresolved complaints. However, Bercow made clear that he expected the parties themselves to have robust processes for dealing with sexual misconduct complaints internally after a meeting of the House of Commons commission. “As a result of that meeting, I am now asking you formally to publish the policies and processes your party currently operates, and to forward a copy to the commission’s staff. They can then be published on the parliamentary website,” he said. Bercow said the commission would look at widening the “respect policy” protecting House of Commons staff and consult with the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Kathryn Hudson, to see if her office might play an enhanced role in cases of sexual misconduct. His request for publication of the policies will force the Conservatives to make their processes public. The party did not respond to repeated requests for details of their sexual harassment policies on Thursday. It appears to have published an online policy covering complaints by volunteers and established a voluntary code of conduct for MPs and their employees in 2014, which said they should comply with an organisation called the Conservative pastoral care team in the event of a grievance procedure. The Evening Standard reported that the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers blocked an attempt by David Cameron bring in a mandatory code of conduct for MPs and their employees in 2016. But a source on the committee said the plan was rejected because it would have handed even more power over discipline to the party whips. In her letter to Bercow this week, May said the Conservatives were “determined to protect those staff who work for MPs” but she believed a House of Commons mediation service plus a contractually binding grievance procedure was the best way of doing so. Replying in the house, Bercow said he would look at the options but suggested the party should have its own processes for dealing with sexual misconduct complaints. “The prime minister’s letter to me, written as leader of the Conservative party, very candidly admits the difficulties the Conservative party has had in introducing the sort of mandatory grievance scheme that some other parties have introduced in recent years,” he said. “It does not require my intervention for the party to adopt an effective grievance scheme. “I hope that all parties will rapidly and thoroughly review the arrangements they have in place to ensure that those arrangements are credible, enforceable, accessible, transparent, and comprise an independent element. The latter notion, that any complaints system and grievance procedure must satisfy constituents as well as colleagues, strikes me as important.” Labour recently published its sexual harassment policy, giving contact details for its head of complaints and the process for hearings through a special sexual harassment panel of the national executive committee. However, some Labour women are pushing for more support to be available to complainants. Jess Phillips, the chair of the women’s parliamentary Labour party, said she and others were calling for an independent specialist sexual violence abuse adviser to be available so victims could come forward without fear. The Liberal Democrats have published guidelines for making a complaint which covers sexual misconduct as well as many other misdemeanours. The House of Commons itself set up a hotline in 2014 for people to report complaints of bullying, harassment or other abuse but it can only give advice and does not take any action against alleged perpetrators or offer redress. Bercow was forced to deny claims on Thursday by Rachael Maskell, a Labour MP, that he once dismissed her concerns about bullying behaviour by MPs in prime minister’s questions as “women’s issues”. Bercow had told the MP last year that he had written to the leaders of the three main political parties to appeal for better behaviour in the Commons but added: “You might also wish to raise your concerns with Dr Sarah Childs, who is currently undertaking a secondment from the University of Bristol looking at how parliament can become a more gender sensitive institution.” Writing to Maskell on Thursday, he said: “You told the leader that you had raised this with me and that I had dismissed this ‘terming it to be a women’s issue’. This is totally and utterly wrong. “I would never use, and have never used, that form of words. Indeed, for the whole of my speakership, I have been tireless in working to get more women elected to parliament and also for more women to be promoted to senior positions in the House Service.” Ray Johnson the father of Elliott Johnson, the Tory activist who killed himself and accused party members of bullying in a suicide note that led to an inquiry into the party’s anti-bullying and harassment policy, told the Guardian: “It comes as no surprise that there are no protections in place for young people, female or male, who work in or around parliament or, indeed, as activists and supporters of political parties outside of Westminster. “Those accused of rape, sexual abuse and threatening behaviour must be brought before the courts.”
The pilot of a small plane headed from Temecula to San Diego was arrested on suspicion of operating an aircraft while under the influence after he ran out of fuel and landed in a business parking lot in the Whittier area, authorities said. Darrell Roberts, 58, a resident of the Winchester area west of Hemet and north of Temecula, was taken into custody after the Piper airplane landed late Monday in the 3700 block of Workman Mill Road, said Lt. Alex Villanueva of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s Pico Rivera Station. Roberts was booked on suspicion of misdemeanor operating an aircraft while under the influence. Bail was set at $1,000. His next court appearance was scheduled for July 5 in Downey. Roberts was alone in the airplane and was not injured. The airplane was not damaged. He was en route from Temecula to San Diego when the airplane ran out of fuel, forcing him to land where he did, Villanueva said.
Even though the second season of Starz’s steamy time-traveling drama, Outlander, won’t premiere until 2016, we’re going to take a metaphorical trip through the standing stones of Craigh na Dun, to go back to the future and give you an exclusive first look at the new episodes! When last we saw Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) they were fleeing Scotland on a ship bound for France. What will they get up to in Paris? And how will this new setting affect the show you’ve come to love? We asked executive producer Ronald D. Moore, who kindly called in from set in Scotland, to give us all the details. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I understand you’ll be doing a bit of globe-trotting as the season progresses, Ron. What part of the Outlander world tour are you in right now? RONALD D. MOORE: We’re at the end of the beginning, as Churchill would say. We’re in the second block at this point. We shoot them in blocks of two. I think we’re on episodes 4 and 5 at this point. What locales are on your itinerary? Several cities are standing in for Paris, correct? Paris is sort of a combination of three basic places: Scotland, where we’re building interiors on our sound stages and going out to find houses or exteriors that might work for someone’s Parisian apartment or palace or garden. Then we’re going to go to Prague, and in Prague we’re going to shoot street scenes for Paris. Like, when you see our characters going through the streets of Paris it will be the streets of Prague, primarily. There will also be some locations in Prague that would serve as, like, the Palace of Versailles. Likewise, there are some locations in the south of England, some of the English palaces that have some French rooms. There’s some French architecture to them that we will also play as part of Versailles, some gardens, some other houses around Paris. So it’s really those three… How we’re going to build our Parisian story. Where do we pick up with Claire and Jamie in season 2? Are they fresh off the boat from Scotland? Well, how the opening episode literally opens I won’t get into, obviously, because that’s just how we tell the story, but the story of Jamie and Claire in the 18th century pretty much starts with their arrival in France. The big story point picks up from where we left season 1, which is Claire and Jamie deciding to attempt to change history by stopping the Jacobite rebellion and changing history so as to prevent the slaughter on Culloden Moor and the destruction of the Highland culture after it. That’s the major plot going into the season. And how much of Jamie’s assault at the hands of Black Jack in the season 1 finale will hang over into the upcoming season? It definitely colors his character throughout. It’s not at the forefront of the story, but it’s a pretty big character story for him, so the after-effects of that and the reverberations through their relationship does carry forward well into the season. In these First Looks from the new season, Claire and Jamie have noticeably stepped up their fashion game. What sort of discussions did you and Terry [costume designer and Ron’s wife] have about the wardrobe and the look you’re after? We talked about it very early, actually, midway through the first season because she had to get a jump on creating the costumes and buying fabrics to cut and all that, so those discussions go way back at this point. It’s just a completely different look. Everything about Paris is so completely different, especially the costumes because you’re dealing with a world—the aristocratic world is the circle Jamie and Claire basically operate in while they’re in that part of the story. It’s the most stylish city in the world during this time. A lot more money. A lot of finery. Scotland is featuring a lot of heavy wools and more organic colors. In Paris everyone wants to be a peacock. You’ve got a much wider palette of textiles and colors and styles than you did in Scotland. It’s a completely different world. And that kind of goes across the board for all the departments, frankly. The art department faces a similar challenge. There were really no sets or pieces of sets that we could use for Paris that we’d used for Scotland. We had to build an entire apartment for Jamie and Claire to live in. There are carriages, there are servants with livery, there are props and furniture. It’s completely different. It’s a whole new show. It will look completely different than season 1. Starz Important question: Does this mean Jamie won’t be wearing a kilt? He’ll do both. He will wear his kilt on occasion, and on others he won’t. Does the new setting also affect how you shoot the show? Visually it will look a lot different. Now we’re in an urban setting. The quality of light coming into the windows in Paris is different than the quality of light coming into the castle in Scotland. So it’s a little brighter; it has a little bit more luminescence to it. It’s a little bit more bling in terms of what people are wearing. The fabrics are kicking off more reflectivity; there’s more jewelry that’s giving you more sparkle in the frame itself. And everything is just richer in terms of color and texture, so visually you’ve moved from the heavy woods and stone of season 1 into the finery of the Parisian apartments. It’s just a richer, more dynamic kind of visual palette, as well. Are there any lessons you learned during producing the first season that you’ll take to heart for season 2? It’s just the scope and scale of the production. How complex it really is. It was a very hard show to produce. It’s tricky to realize because it’s a continually evolving story. You’re seldom in a location long enough to call it home before you’re moving on. And you’re constantly losing characters and introducing new characters, and now we’re moving from Scotland to Paris. The lesson on season 2 was just, don’t underestimate how complex this is and how each one of these two episode blocks is like starting over. On TV you get comfortable as you’re doing a show, and you get in your second season you’re like, “Okay, we know what this is. We’re back on the bridge; we’re back in the apartment building, and we’re going to do this again, and here’s our new twist for this season.” With this show it’s very much every single episode block is we’re doing a brand new movie. Here’s a whole new set of challenges. Don’t get comfortable and don’t feel like you learned anything last week that’s going to help you next week. [Laughs] It’s really that. For fans who’ve read the series’ second book, Dragonfly in Amber, how closely would you say this season hews? I think there’s more adaptation. I think there are changes. For fans who know the book, they know the book is a more complicated structure in terms of how Diana wrote it. The point of view changed a couple of times in the book. She played with more stuff with time going on in the second book. The interior storyline of the politics of the Jacobite rebellion and Paris is more complex. So it was not as easy an adaptation as the first season was. The first season was more of straightforward, “Okay, we have to sort of make changes that clean up this narrative line, that make it a through line for television and carve it into episodes.” But it was always kind of clear what the basic structure was: Claire’s trying to get home, then she meets this guy, now she’s falling in love, now she has a conflict, will she go home. You lay it out in a very linear fashion. Book 2 is just a more complex book. It’s laid out very differently, as a result it took more wrangling to try to figure out how to translate this particular story into our season. There were more complications, there were more characters, there were more shifting points of view. It was a bigger task. The thing that gives me the most comfort is that Diana likes it a lot. She had said, “Oh, I really liked the way you did it. it was a difficult plot, I know, but I think you really found the essence of it. You really found the through line that really defines what this part of the journey is.” So I feel good about it. It’s not going to be a literal adaptation because I don’t think that’s possible with the second book…. But I think it’s very much the same story, the major characters are all represented, the major scenes are all represented, and it still gets you to all the same places you want to go. Is there anything you can hint about the 1960s-set scenes from the book? There’s nothing to say about that so far. It is a key part of the book, and I think you can assume it will be part of our season. Are there any scenes you’re particularly excited for fans to see? There are several particular scenes, obviously from the book, that fans are probably going to look forward to. Overall, I’m just excited to see the streets of Paris and Versailles There’s an interesting “wow factor” I’m looking forward to see us realizing and putting them in a very different urban environment than last season.
Brilliant Report this review Verified buyer Pro Privacy ON (login to see reviewer names) on May 24th, 2017 A serious and honest professionist reveal everything he knows about metal bending. Don't miss it. 1 of 1 magicians found this helpful. Do you want to Did this review help you?Do you want to respond to this review? 1 of 1 magicians found this helpful. Incredible Report this review Verified buyer Pro Privacy ON (login to see reviewer names) on January 19th, 2016 I´ve been looking for this trick for lots of years and I finally found it.The video has a nice explanation and you understand everything,thats why I give this trick a five star. 1 of 1 magicians found this helpful. Do you want to Did this review help you?Do you want to respond to this review? 1 of 1 magicians found this helpful. Good primer in bending Report this review Verified buyer Pro Privacy ON (login to see reviewer names) on January 15th, 2016 A lot of good information here. Menny is very thorough in explaining things and gives plenty of examples. He is a decent teacher and goes over angles, misdirection and psychology that is useful for all magic not just bending. A lot of these techniques are very basic but Menny shows us how to use basic concepts to get good results. The only reason this isn't a 5 star review is the video has some weird mistakes like headings are mislabeled and in the .pdf that comes with it has some mistakes in the time markers. Over all it doesn't detract from the lessons though and with some common sense you can figure it out. 1 of 1 magicians found this helpful. Do you want to Did this review help you?Do you want to respond to this review? 1 of 1 magicians found this helpful. Great video Report this review Verified buyer Pro Privacy ON (login to see reviewer names) on January 31st, 2019 I've been interested in metal bending for awhile now and began with "liquid metal". This video goes into much greater depth and description of tons of subtitles that have improved my metal bending routine 10 fold. Covering spoons, forks, paperclips, etc, many great moves and excellent quality teaching. Do you want to Did this review help you?Do you want to respond to this review? Metal bending well taught Report this review Verified buyer Pro Privacy ON (login to see reviewer names) on November 26th, 2016 I have performed metal bending in my act for years that I learned from the best. Menny still was able to teach me several new methods and handlings I will use. I highly recommend this to beginners and experienced percormers alike. Do you want to Did this review help you?Do you want to respond to this review? Great Video for Metal Bending Report this review Verified buyer Pro Privacy ON (login to see reviewer names) on November 23rd, 2016 Menny has obviously spent a lot of time with metal bending. In this video, you will learn many metal bending techniques as well as how to present them convincingly to an audience. There are just over four hours on this download that will teach you the art of bending metal. Menny is a very good teacher and clearly explains the techniques and presentational tips and ideas. Well worth the investment of time and money. Do you want to Did this review help you?Do you want to respond to this review? Menny Lindenfeld's Art of Metal Bending Video Report this review Verified buyer Pro Privacy ON (login to see reviewer names) on November 21st, 2016 I enjoyed this video but only gave it a 4 because it was dark in in a few places. I am aware,however, that you have nothing to do with this. It may interest you that I bought the coupon for this video at a lecture presented by Menny Lindenfeld. I might also mention that because I don't always have Wi-Fi available I thought that when I got this video I would be able to watch it off-line but it seems that is not the case. If I am in error please let me know. Do you want to Did this review help you?Do you want to respond to this review? Art of Metal Bending-Lindenfeld Report this review Verified buyer Pro Privacy ON (login to see reviewer names) on January 24th, 2016 This is what I have been waiting for. I have wanted to do metal bending, and have invested in several books and DVD but was not able to see how to do the actual work. Menny is an excellent teacher, and his tips on tools and unique presentation ideas have me fired up to bend metal at last. Thanks Menny. If you wand to bend metal get this! Do you want to Did this review help you?Do you want to respond to this review?
A shortage of bears' traditional food near the Arctic Circle has forced the animals to eat human corpses, say locals From a distance it resembled a rather large man in a fur coat, leaning tenderly over the grave of a loved one. But when the two women in the Russian village of Vezhnya Tchova came closer they realised there was a bear in the cemetery eating a body. Russian bears have grown so desperate after a scorching summer they have started digging up and eating corpses in municipal cemetries, alarmed officials said today. Bears' traditional food – mushrooms, berries and the odd frog – has disappeared, they added. The Vezhnya Tchova incident took place on Saturday in the northern republic of Komi, near the Arctic Circle. The shocked women cried in panic, frightening the bear back into the woods, before they discovered a ghoulish scene with the clothes of the bear's already-dead victim chucked over adjacent tombstones, the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomelets reported. Local people said that bears had resorted to scavenging in towns and villages - rummaging through bins, stealing garden carrots and raiding tips. A young man had been mauled in the centre of Syktyvkar, Komi's capital. "They are really hungry this year. It's a big problem. Many of them are not going to survive," said Simion Razmislov, the vice-president of Komi's hunting and fishing society. World Wildlife Fund Russia said there had been a similar case two years ago in the town of Kandalaksha, in the northern Karelia republic. "You have to remember that bears are natural scavengers. In the US and Canada you can't leave any food in tents in national parks," said Masha Vorontsova, Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in Russia. "In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others," she added, suggesting: "They are pretty quick learners." The only way to get rid of the bears would be to frighten them with something noisy like a firework or shoot them, she said. According to Vorontsova, the omnivorous bears had "plenty to eat" this autumn, with foods such as fish and ants at normal levels. The bears raided graveyards because they offered a supply of easy food, she said, a bit like a giant refrigerator. "The story is horrible. Nobody wants to think about having a much loved member of their family eaten by a bear." The bear population in Russia is relatively stable with numbers between 120,000 and 140,000. The biggest threat isn't starvation but hunting - with VIP sportsmen and wealthy gun enthusiasts wiping out most of the large male bears in Kamchatka, in Russia's Far East. Chinese poachers have killed many black bears near the border, selling their claws and other parts in markets. The Russian government is drafting legislation to ban the killing of bears during the breeding season. • This article was amended on 27 and 29 October 2010. The original referred to Masha Vorontsova of WWF Russia. This has been corrected. A reference to winter breeding was deleted.
In Stage 1 of the FACEIT Oceania League, The Chiefs were a force to be reckoned with, taking second place narrowly behind Team Immunity. 2 years and countless roster changes later, zewsy, ofnu and ap0c of this lineup have found their way onto Winterfox, competing in North America, while Lightstep has been at the helm of some of the best teams in Australia. The missing link here, however, is Paris “nova” Larkins. A star in that Chiefs roster at just 16 years old and touted by James Bardolph as one of his “favourite OCE players”, nova had the potential to be a top level player in the scene but never flourished and eventually dropped out of competitive Counter-Strike at the end of 2016. I spoke to him about his short-lived career. Thanks for your time, nova. Could you give us a brief recount of your introduction to CS and the leadup to joining Qlimax Crew? I started my competitive CS career in 2014 with auXesis (Catalyst, Twinky, ReIgN, and Fras). We placed 3rd in CGa that season but decided to part ways. Soon after, I joined Dynasty (Kronos, tucks, zewsy, prophet). Prophet and Kronos stopped playing soon after, and were replaced by snakew0w (Lightstep) and m0nt. Soon after we started playing, Tucks got VAC banned and we picked up braKe in his place, which was the lineup that became Qlimax Crew. What was the transition like from amateur leagues to CyberGamer Premier? The transition from CGa to CGp was very abrupt for me, particularly as I had only played 1 season of competitive CS at that point. While it was quite a dramatic (and exciting) change, I was in a position in the team where most of what I had to do was just consistently rack up kills, so I didn’t have to change much. How did the replacement of braKe and m0nt for dizzy and ofnu come into fruition and how did it affect your team’s play? The replacement of braKe and m0nt came as a result of our unsatisfactory performances at the CGPL S2 and Azubu Australian Masters LANs. dizzy and ofnu were both brought in by snakewow, and their additions changed our team a lot. Ofnu brought a lot of experience to the team as a reliable player, with dizzy bringing adding a lot of raw firepower. You guys then went on to sign with Chiefs and, soon after, established yourselves as top 3 in the region. Did this new sponsorship change anything for your team? The signing with Chiefs was definitely an exciting time for all of us, and I think gave us a lot of energy and motivation with such backing behind us. We went on to have a number of good performances (2nd PeetyG’s Nationals, 2nd Faceit Oceania S1, 1st ESEA-AU S18), but struggled to solidify a spot in the top 2. dizzy would then leave the team and you brought in ap0c in his place, but it didn’t seem like your results and performances took a hit; if anything it could be argued that you improved. What do you think the reason for this is? The change from dizzy to ap0c, while they are completely different players, didn’t impact on the team too much. I think at the time, while it couldn’t be argued that Dizzy had exceptional raw skill, his experience and particularly restraint was lacking. What ap0c brought to the team was a wealth of experience and the ability to turn a round on its head all on his own. So I’d say while they were very different players, without a strong AWPer to create big impact, it kind of averaged out. ofnu and zewsy’s departure was a huge shock to the community at the time, and I remember it being one for you too. Looking back, can you give any insight into why the two left to join Exile 5 and why you remaining Chiefs members decided to go your separate ways? While the manner in which it happened was a shock, I think in a few ways I was prepared for it. I had been enjoying playing less and less (CS and year 11/12 don’t mix very well), and with ap0c not being a permanent addition, the rest of the team was keen to bring 2 new players in. I won’t go into too much detail as it was pretty messy, but there were a lot of different expectations and alliances that didn’t all pan out. As for the remaining players (snakew0w, ap0c, and I), as mentioned I wasn’t enjoying playing so I decided I didn’t want to try and pick up the pieces, and ap0c was only a temporary addition to the team. You would eventually link up with players like MoeycQ and teddyt in Streamline, essentially creating a reject squad, and sign with Vox Eminor. What were your expectations going into this lineup? My expectations for the lineup at the time would be best described as realistic. While I was optimistic we could do well, we were a bit of a ragtag bunch with an unusual mix of skillsets and experience, thrown together in a hurry so we could compete at ACL Sydney (I think the team was less than a week old at the time of ACL Sydney). After some pretty sub-par results and a lot of changes, you guys looked to have found the right mix by bringing Sico and rbz in. Unfortunately, this lineup was short-lived. What was going on in the team at the time that caused this? Yeah, we did seem to hit our stride quite well with Sico and rbz, including some decent results. I think the main problem was that for a number of reasons we didn’t practice hard enough, and the chilled out atmosphere meant we never really addressed our problems. We had a good time and did relatively well, but by the time we were getting into gear it was too late, Sico was already on his way to Immunity. You took a hiatus from CS shortly after this change, dropping back to a substitute role for Vox. Why was that? After the loss of 2 of our players to Immunity very close to the start of the CG season, and I was in my first year of uni, I decided it was a good time to take a break. I just didn’t feel like I wanted to struggle through another season of CG with a lineup pulled together within a few days, especially with so much going on for me outside of CS. You came back to the game for a bit, playing with SYF Gaming in the IeSF offline qualifier. What was playing in that event like, considering it was broadcasted on TV? Coming back to fill in for SYF and making it to the IeSF final was a bit of a fluke really. I hadn’t played for a while and saw the IeSF qualifiers looked like a good opportunity to get to another LAN or possibly go overseas. Since only Australian players could play, I spoke to a few teams with NZ players and offered to fill in if they wanted to play. Gratisfaction ended up leaving SYF and they took me up on the offer. Through a pretty messy qualifier (forfeits, delays, reschedules) we made it to the top 2, and headed to Sydney for the finals. It was an awesome experience being a part of the first free to air esports to broadcast, and the all Fox Sports people did an amazing job and were clearly passionate about it. All in all it was a bit of messy experience (the qualifiers, the rescheduling of the LAN leading to forge not being able to attend, squishy getting a kidney stone a few days before the event), but one that I enjoyed, although one that I’m sad I didn’t get to share with my Vox Eminor teammates. You’re back to not playing competitively. Did that brief stint with SYF not reinvigorate you? Playing with SYF definitely tempted me to get back into the scene, but for a few reasons I decided against it. I was at Uni full time, and wanted to spend more time with my girlfriend. On top of all my real life commitments, since about April last year I’ve been pretty sick and still haven’t gotten to the bottom of what it is or how to fix it, so I just didn’t have the time or energy to keep playing. Looking back on your time in the game, do you have any regrets? Do you feel like you could be at a higher level had things gone a different way? I think if I had a single regret it would have been taking myself too seriously. Oh, and not putting all my prize money into my savings! At the end of the day it’s just a game and could only be part of my life for a brief period. I think I sacrificed a lot of things that probably weren’t worth sacrificing. I absolutely had a lot of fun and had a lot of great opportunities, but I think I was at the point where to keep going the sacrifices would have been too large. I think I could have been a better player and achieved greater things if I had tried harder, and dedicated more to the game. But as I said, every hour I put into the game came at a price, and eventually it wasn’t sustainable anymore. Finally, do you have any final words or shout outs you’d like to give? I’d like to thank all my past teammates from the pre-CGa days all the way up to SYF, thanks for the fun times! Even though I’m not sure if I’ll ever play again, I’ll definitely always remember what I got out of this game. I’d also like to thank my parents and more recently my girlfriend Mim for supporting me to play and try my best (even if at times it was hard to), and to Alicia for believing in me and providing me and the rest of that Vox Eminor lineup an absolutely awesome 6+ months. And to Chris and Moe, thanks for the great fun, laughs, and memories, I had an awesome time as that core 3, and it still feels weird not playing with you.
Rafflesia arnoldii, commonly called the corpse lily, is a species of flowering plant in the parasitic genus Rafflesia. It is noted for producing the largest individual flower on Earth. It has a very strong and unpleasant odour of decaying flesh, earning it the nickname "corpse flower". It is endemic to the rainforests of Sumatra and possibly Borneo.[1] Although there are some plants with larger flowering organs like the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) and talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera), those are technically clusters of many flowers. Rafflesia arnoldii (Indonesian: padma raksasa), also called Kerubut (Devil's Betelnut Box), is one of the three national flowers in Indonesia, the other two being the white jasmine and moon orchid.[2] It was officially recognized as a national "rare flower" (Indonesian: puspa langka) in Presidential Decree No. 4 in 1993.[3] Discovery [ edit ] The first European botanist to find a specimen of a Rafflesia was the French explorer Louis Auguste Deschamps (1765–1842). He was a member of a French scientific expedition to Asia and the Pacific. During the expedition, he spent three years on Java, where, in 1797, he collected a specimen of what is now known as R. patma. During the return voyage in 1798, his ship was taken by the British, with whom France was at war, and all his papers and notes were confiscated. They did not see the light of day until 1954, when they were rediscovered in the Natural History Museum, London. The British botanist Joseph Arnold (1782-1818) and the statesman Sir Stamford Raffles (1781-1826, founder of modern Singapore) collected a specimen of another Rafflesia species found by a Malay servant in Sumatra (Bengkulu) in 1818. Arnold contracted a fever and died soon after the discovery. Lady Raffles, who had also been present when the specimen was collected, finished the colour drawing that Arnold had started of the plant, and it was sent to Joseph Banks, along with the preserved material. Banks passed all the materials on to Robert Brown (1773–1858) of the British Museum and Kew's resident botanical artist Franz Bauer (1758–1840). William Jack (1795–1822), who was Arnold's successor in Sumatra, being aware that Deschamps, despite his loss of notes, could formally publish a name for the newly discovered genus at any moment, rushed to draft a description to ensure the credit went to a British botanist. This draft description was held in readiness, in case there was word that the French were about to publish, whilst waiting for the British Museum to produce a better-prepared version. The generic name Rafflesia, given in honour of Raffles and proposed by Brown, who had originally wanted to call it Arnoldii after Arnold, was validated by S. F. Gray in his report of the June 1820 meeting of the Linnean Society of London, as published in the Annals of Philosophy in September that year. The species Rafflesia arnoldii was officially described for the first time in 1821 by Brown, so that Arnold was commemorated after all.[4] Description [ edit ] The flower of Rafflesia arnoldii grows to a diameter of around one meter (3 feet), but the greatest measurement from a reliable source is 105 centimeters (3.44 feet) for one at Palupah Nature Reserve near Bukittinggi, Sumatra measured by Prof. Syabuddin of Andalas University.[5] R. arnoldi weighs up to 11 kilograms (24 lb).[6] These flowers emerge from very large, cabbage-like, maroon or magenta buds typically about 30 cm (12 in) wide, but the largest (and the largest flower bud ever recorded) found at Mount Sago, Sumatra in May 1956 was 43 cm (17 in) in diameter.[7] It lives as a parasite on several vines of the genus Tetrastigma, which grow only in primary (undisturbed) rainforests. Rafflesia lacks any observable leaves, stems or even roots, yet is still considered a vascular plant. Similar to fungi, individuals grow as thread-like strands of tissue completely embedded within and in intimate contact with surrounding host cells from which nutrients and water are obtained. This plant produces no leaves, stems or roots and does not have chlorophyll. It can only be seen outside the host plant when it is ready to reproduce. Perhaps the only part of Rafflesia that is identifiable as distinctly plant-like are the flowers, though even these are unusual since they attain massive proportions, have a reddish-brown coloration, and stink of rotting flesh. This scent attracts insects such as flies which then pollinate the rare plant. It is not to be confused with the titan arum, Amorphophallus titanum, which is also commonly referred to as the "corpse flower" because of its repulsive odor.[citation needed] Reproduction [ edit ] Rafflesia arnoldii flower with buds Matureflower with buds Rafflesia arnoldii is rare and fairly hard to locate. It is especially difficult to locate the flower in forests, as the buds take many months to develop and the flower lasts for just a few days. The flowers are unisexual and thus proximity of male and female flowers is vital for successful pollination. These factors make successful pollination a rare event. Life cycle When Rafflesia is ready to reproduce, a tiny bud forms outside the root or stem of its host and develops over a period of a year. The cabbage-like head that develops eventually opens to reveal the flower. The stigma or stamen are attached to a spiked disk inside the flower. A foul smell of rotting meat attracts flies and beetles to pollinate. To pollinate successfully, the flies and/or beetles must visit both the male and female plants, in that order. The fruit produced are round lots filled with smooth flesh including many thousands of hard-coated seeds that are eaten and spread by treeshrews.[8] Threats [ edit ] Many areas where Rafflesia arnoldii grows have become popular tourist attractions. While such tourism has helped locals to conserve the species, the increased human activity has disturbed and reduced flower bud production at many locations.[4] Conservation status [ edit ] How many of these plants still survive is unknown, but as the remaining primary forests of Borneo and Sumatra disappear, it can be assumed that their numbers are dwindling. Many are known to be nearing extinction.[citation needed] Some environmentalists are developing ways to recreate the species' environment in an effort to stimulate their recovery. This has proved unsuccessful so far. Steps are also being taken to conserve the forests of Sumatra and Borneo. To help counter the over-collection of this rare plant, residents that have Rafflesia on their private property are encouraged to save the flowers and charge a small fee to see them. References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ]
James Fischer-Smith, a junior at Reed College and one of the activists on the ground, says that Remmers' pledge to plant new trees won't cut it, and that the age of the sequoias makes them irreplaceable. "Where are you going to find 150-year-old trees to put in the ground?" Fischer-Smith asked. Christopher Kuttruff, also of Portland, said that saving the trees is part of a larger effort to preserve Portland's natural resources. "The way we're expanding to make more room for people in Portland is not sustainable," he said. As for how long the activists will stay, they say that depends on what the developer chooses to do, and whether it involves the police. The aim so far, they say, is to stay overnight. "We're playing a few things by ear over here," Walters said. "My birthday's on the 20th, let me know if we get there."
Accidental deaths of American and Italian hostages overshadows president’s talk to intelligence chiefs as former adviser calls on officials to release further details Barack Obama has insisted the US was not “cavalier” in its assessment of the risks to civilians as the accidental deaths of two hostages in a drone strike against al-Qaida overshadowed a planned pep talk for intelligence chiefs. “Today, like all Americans, our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families of Dr Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto,” the president told a group of intelligence officers gathered to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the office of the director of national intelligence. “We are going to review what happened,” he added. “We are going to identify the lessons that can be learned and any improvement and changes that can be made and I know those of you who are hear continue to share our determination to continue to do everything we can to prevent the loss of innocent lives.” But the president appeared keen to reassure those who may blame themselves for the incident that he felt their pain too. “I was asked by somebody: ‘How do you absorb news like we received the other day?’ and I told the truth: it’s hard. “We all grieve when we lose an American life; we all grieve when any innocent life is taken. We don’t take this work lightly and I know that each and everyone of you understand the magnitude of we do and the stakes that are involved. These aren’t abstractions; we are not cavalier. And we understand the solemn responsibilities that are given to us.” Meanwhile one of the architects of Obama’s legal rationale for drone strikes called on the administration to release the full details behind the CIA’s decision to attack two sites in Pakistan resulting in the accidental deaths of the two hostages. “I left the administration in January 2013 and know nothing about how this recent case unfolded,” Harold Koh, a former legal adviser to the State Department, told the Guardian in an email, “but yes, plainly, the Obama administration should release the factual record regarding the January 2015 strikes that killed two hostages.” A controversial figure for his role in devising the US justification for the targeted killing of an American member of al-Qaida, Koh is now a law professor at New York University. Pakistan uses hostage killings to underline risk of US drone strikes Read more As Obama grapples with his role in the deaths revealed on Thursday of Weinstein and Lo Porto, both killed by drones in Pakistan this January, his administration faces renewed questions about “signature strikes” and what could be fundamental flaws in its legal justification for them. The “factual record” Koh refers to could be the difference between legal strikes and violations of the administration’s rules or worse, said Christopher Swift, a professor of national security studies at Georgetown University. Swift and many others agree the strikes appear legal. “This looks like it’s in the realm of a horrible mistake rather than the violations of the Geneva Conventions,” he said. “It’s not the platform; it’s whether it was unlawful killing. “If it’s completely accidental, as it appears, then it’s a horrible tragedy; it’s not necessarily an unconstitutional undertaking. There’s no clear law that’s going to tell you right or wrong here.” But he noted that it was exceedingly difficult to judge the legality of such strikes because of the secrecy surrounding operations. Obama has ordered the episode declassified, but Swift noted that “all the facts are subject to the CIA’s black highlighter”. “We have hundreds of hours of surveillance prior to the strike and we have continuous surveillance in the days afterward,” he said. “It doesn’t look like the administration knew the particular identities of the people they were hitting, so to the extent there was a failure it seems less a matter of the legal justification as it is on the intelligence side.” On Thursday, the White House conceded it did not specifically know whom it had targeted in the “al-Qaida compounds” where US drones killed Weinstein and Lo Porto, as well as American-born militants Adam Gadahn and Ahmed Farouq and two others. The admission suggests that “signature strikes” – lethal strikes launched without necessarily knowing who is in the crosshairs – have continued despite the president’s 2013 announcement that new rules would govern strikes. The order mandates that the CIA can authorize strikes only if it knows with “near certainty that the terrorist target” is present. “Before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set,” Obama said in a 2013 speech. A Guardian analysis of what drone strike data is available found that, although only 41 men were targeted between January 2006 and November 2014, an estimated 1,147 people had been killed by strikes. According to estimates by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 415 strikes have killed at minimum 2,500 people, 423 of whom were civilians, and at maximum nearly 4,000 people, including 962 civilians. Koh has defended the administration’s standards in the past, saying in 2010: “Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust.” The administration follows rules of distinguishing between civilians and combatants “rigorously” and “in accordance with all applicable law”, he said. In theory, the rule should have curbed signature strikes, which by definition cannot justify the killing of a “high-value target” since they do not necessarily target a specific person. Instead the administration deems some people “associated forces” of al-Qaida targets by dint of their behavior or other details gleaned through surveillance – where they congregate, who they meet, etc – and it is here that facts become key. “It’s the idea that anyone in al-Qaida is going to be caught up in the same circumstances [as its leaders],” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at Notre Dame. “That they might in some point in the future be part of an attempt to attack.” The CIA had “fallen back” to signature strikes, O’Connell said: “Not knowing who the people were they were killing doesn’t meet their own criteria of facts, and facts must be present to kill even under their own very loose set of rules.” Another argument made by the Department of Justice (DoJ) also raises lawyers’ hackles: that associated forces and high-value targets both constitute an “imminent threat” to the US. The administration laid out this argument in a 2013 white paper justifying the killing, without trial, of American al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki. “The DoJ memorandum’s approach to imminence makes a mockery of the concept,” Swift said. “If you don’t have imminence, you’d have to show that you’d have due process,” he continued, adding that while the administration could have a legitimate due process procedure, secrecy clouds the process from public view. A former chairwoman of the Use of Force Committee of the International Law Association, O’Connell takes issue with the entire scope of the drone program. “They cobbled together its own set of international law rules,” especially for the al-Awlaki case, she said. “They didn’t want to live in the real house of rules, so they built their own house of cards, and now they’ve started to knock it down.” The Weinstein family released a statement to Buzzfeed addressing the issue of whether a ransom was paid to his captors. “Over the three-and-a-half-year period of Warren’s captivity, the family made every effort to engage with those holding him or those with the power to find and rescue him,” they wrote. “This is an ordinary American family and they are not familiar with how one manages a kidnapping.” Obama’s talk to US intelligence chiefs also came after two years of public criticism following surveillance revelations to the Guardian by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, but Obama said he trusted them to do right thing and was committed to persuading the public of their value. “Our first job is to make sure that we protect the safety of the American people but there is not a person who I talk to who is involved in the intelligence community who doesn’t understand that we have to do so while upholding our values and our ideals, and our laws, and our commitment to democracy,” the president said. “This is hard stuff. Everyone here is committed to doing it the right way. I am absolutely committed to making sure the American people understand all that we do to make sure we do it right.”
Note: 2013 - Feb - I honestly have moved on a lot from all of this blog. I focus a lot of my perspective on life on agnosticism, and most of the time I don't want to talk about Mormonism anymore. Half of the things I've written here ... I just don't really think or agree with anymore or have evolved down the path further. - jdog 2012 - Use my fun words to skip around with to see related posts. I have changed how I reply to emails, so please email me back when I get back to you or if you don't hear from me in 2-4 days, I attempt to reply to every type of email I receive. So if you don't plan on actually talking to me or living up to anything you send in the first email (like asking where we meet) then don't email me in the first place. However, even if not wanting to meetup with me or any groups I am affiliated with still feel free to contact me. I'm much more cordial than my blog leads readers to believe :) Email me at - [email protected] PS: Some posts get SPAMMED if the language seems rough, so don't assume I DELETE them, just give me time to check the blog and read the comment before I post. I have only ever deleted one comment and have it saved in my spam folder.
• Hawk-eye and Goalref battle it out to get the green light • Systems to be turned off for Champions League games Goalline technology will be introduced in the Premier League in time for the 2013-14 season if, as expected, football's international rule-making body vote to introduce it on Thursday. The International Football Association Board (Ifab) meets in Zurich when, as well as the mooted introduction of what has become known as GLT, they will also debate the future use of additional assistant referees and whether women should be permitted to play wearing special headscarves or hijabs. Although Michel Platini, Uefa's president, remains opposed to GLT, his Fifa counterpart Sepp Blatter is now an enthusiastic champion of an idea which gained currency in 2010 when Frank Lampard's clear "goal" for England against Germany in the South Africa World Cup was not given despite having crossed the line. Shortly afterwards Fifa began trialling various GLT systems. Of the initial 12 companies applying to have their products adopted, two remain in contention: the Danish/German collaboration Goalref and England's Hawk-Eye. While Goalref relies on a ball with a special sensor in the middle which disturbs a magnetic field when the ball crosses the line, Hawk-Eye is camera-based. Twelve cameras, six directed at each goal, are placed at various vantage points and, together, they pinpoint exactly where the ball is. As with Goalref, the referee is informed instantly via a wristwatch when a goal is registered. With Hawk-Eye reliant on more than 25% of the ball being visible to its cameras, a messy goalmouth scramble could render it ineffective. Conversely, while Goalref can merely tell the referee and supporters that the ball has crossed the line, Hawk-Eye provides hard evidence courtesy of instant replays. Goalref, though, is easier and comparatively cheaper to install, which has immense appeal to cash-strapped lower-league clubs. Indeed, one possibility is that, rather than vote for one or the other, Ifab could approve both systems and leave assorted domestic leagues to choose which one to adopt. In practice this could mean that, in England for instance, Hawk-Eye might be used in the Premier League and Championship with Goalref used lower down the game's pyramid. Logistics – systems will need to be licensed, installed and tested – mean it would be impossible to get either product up and running in time for the coming season, but it should be ready this time next year. For the foreseeable future the technology is likely to be switched off on Champions League nights in deference to Platini's opposition. He prefers to have two additional linesmen, and even attempted to force Ifab into a postponement of Thursday's vote. "I am wholly against goalline technology," said Platini. "But it's not just goalline technology. I am against technology itself because it will invade every single area of football." Fifa disagrees but is likely to insist that referees retain the right to overrule the technological evidence, which will not be transmitted to the crowd via giant screens or other means.
(CBS News) DAMASCUS - In Syria's civil war, at least 34 people were killed Wednesday when two car bombs ripped through a suburb of Damascus. The Assad dictatorship has been trying to crush a rebellion that broke out more than a year-and-a half ago. Wednesday's bombing spilled the blood of neighbors and friends. Jaramana is a tight-knit community of Christians and Druze religious minority groups, who are traditional supporters of President Bashar al-Assad. After the huge explosions, people immediately pitched in to repair damage to shops and homes, and to comfort the families of the victims. Deadly car bombing in Syrian capital suburb A rare and dangerous look into battle-ravaged Syria One woman's 21-year-old son -- a medical student -- went to investigate when the first bomb blew up, and was killed minutes later by the second. Syrians stand near a burning truck that was destroyed by two car bombs in the Jaramana suburb of Damascus, Syria, Nov. 28, 2012, in this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA. AP Photo/SANA Outside, local businessman Walid helped carry the wounded to safety. "It's blood of all the people, it's blood," he said when pointed out what was on his jacket. But he can't -- or won't -- say who he thinks is responsible. "I don't know, I don't know," he replied when asked who did it. It's a loaded question in Syria, where people of many faiths -- Christian and Muslim -- have generally gotten along. But the war has put that at risk. Attacks like these bombings could ignite vicious rounds of revenge and reprisals. Ali Haydar -- whose own son was killed in May -- is Syria's minister for national reconciliation. There have been hundreds of incidents, he admitted, designed to spark religious conflict. But so far it's been limited. Most people want the violence to stop, so they can resume their normal lives. But that prospect looks increasingly remote.
When skeptics turn dickish (I'm gonna catch hell for this one) September 8, 2010 03:41 MST There’s been a lot of talk in the skeptical blogosphere about Phil Plait’s ‘don’t be a dick’ talk at TAM8. Since Phil didn’t quite get around to mentioning just who he was talking about or just what they said to illustrate his point (the sad story of the crying deist at the end doesn’t count), dickishness is not a real clear concept. However, I’m prepared to give an actual example that was (inadvertently, I hope!) provided by Phil himself in his recent appearance on The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe (scroll to episode 267) with Steve Novella, Bob Novella, Rebecca Watson, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein. Near the very end of the podcast, around 1:16:45, they finish the show with a regular feature, an interesting quote from someone. In this particular show the quotation was from Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, who is an interesting character in artificial intelligence and in the Singularity movement. (Full disclosure: I met Yudkowsky briefly after a talk on AI he gave some years ago.) At the end of Jay Novella’s reading of the quotation the Skeptics on the podcast first laugh and giggle and tee-hee about Yudkowsky’s name, and then Steve Novella (I think it was Steve from the voice) paraphrases the quotation, precisely reversing its meaning. There’s more laughing and giggling, and then Phil, joining in the laughter, identifies Yudkowsky as a solipsist: “He’s a solipsist,” and then wanders off into free associations to the Matrix. And what was the quotation from Yudkowsky that elicited all the skeptical hilarity? Here it is in its entirety: The correspondence between reality and my beliefs comes from reality controlling my beliefs, not the other way around. See? Yudkowsky’s obviously a solipsistic loon for thinking that reality should control … Oh. Um. Waitaminute. Reality controlling one’s beliefs? As in … well … allowing something like (dare I say it?) empirical evidence to influence our mental models of the world? As in, oh, let’s say using tests against reality to evaluate our beliefs so as to modify them in order to increase their correspondence with reality, thereby building a close personal relationship with that reality? WTF? That ain’t solipsism, boys and girls, that’s … wait for it … skepticism! Maybe even science! Whoa! Phil and the folks on SGU mocked Yudkowsky, laughing and giggling at him in public, for succinctly expressing what they themselves value, empirically based skepticism and science! Publicly mocking him after totally misconstruing what he said. Ain’t that a little on the dickish side? I have great respect for both Plait and Novella and read both their blogs regularly, but I’m afraid they both screwed the pooch on this one and I cannot resist needling them about it. Just think, if Yudkowsky were a sensitive young female deist and Phil’s comforting arms …. Nope. We’ll draw a discreet curtain across the rest of that touching scene.
Guillermo del Toro Wants Benedict Cumberbatch For His Frankenstein Adaptation By Eric Eisenberg Random Article Blend With The article doesn't seem to specify which role del Toro would have Cumberbatch play - either the monster or Victor Frankenstein -though the director has That's not all that the Telegraph got out of del Toro either, as the director also offered up details about his in-the-works big screen version of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. He's been developing the project for "Charlie [Kaufman] and I talked for about an hour-and-a-half and came up with a perfect way of doing the book. I love the idea of the Trafalmadorians [the aliens of 'Slaughterhouse-Five'] -- to be 'unstuck in time,' where everything is happening at the same time. And that's what I want to do. It's just a catch-22. The studio will make it when it''s my next movie, but how can I commit to it being my next movie until there's a screenplay? Charlie Kaufman is a very expensive writer!" It took five years between Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Pacific Rim to finally get del Toro back into the director's chair, but we won't have to wait that long for his next movie. Crimson Peak, which stars Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain and Charlie Hunnam in addition to Cumberbatch, is looking to start production at the start of next year, putting it on target for either a late 2014 or 2015 release date. Director Guillermo del Toro seems to be very excited by the prospect of working with Benedict Cumberbatch. As we reported back in April , the two men are set to collaborate on the gothic haunted house movie Crimson Peak, which will be the filmmaker's next project, but apparently that just isn't enough for del Toro. Not only does he want Cumberbatch for his ghost story, he wants him to play the lead in his version of Frankenstein.With Pacific Rim due out in theaters this week del Toro has been doing press rounds like a madman, and in an interview with The Daily Telegraph (via The Playlist ) he revealed that he wants the Sherlock star for his long-in-development Mary Shelley adaptation. While the paper doesn't have a direct quote from the director, the story reportedly says "he is hoping to direct Cumberbatch again in a new film version of Frankenstein."The article doesn't seem to specify which role del Toro would have Cumberbatch play - either the monster or Victor Frankenstein -though the director has previously said that he would like to have his longtime collaborator Doug Jones play the scientist's creation. Truthfully, the British star is covered either way as he actually has terrific experience in both parts. Last year director Danny Boyle produced his own version of Frankenstein for the stage and had stars Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller sharing the roles on opposite nights. You can see the former as the monster above and as the man below.That's not all that the Telegraph got out of del Toro either, as the director also offered up details about his in-the-works big screen version of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. He's been developing the project for just as long as he has been talking about Frankenstein, but now it's apparently moving forward with an idea from one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind scribe Charlie Kaufman. Said del Toro about the Oscar winner's work on the story,It took five years between Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Pacific Rim to finally get del Toro back into the director's chair, but we won't have to wait that long for his next movie. Crimson Peak, which stars Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain and Charlie Hunnam in addition to Cumberbatch, is looking to start production at the start of next year, putting it on target for either a late 2014 or 2015 release date. Blended From Around The Web Facebook Back to top
A congressman was seated in first class next to a little girl on an airplane. He turned to her and said, "Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger." The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total stranger, "What would you want to talk about?" "Oh, I don't know," said the congressman. "How about global warming, universal health care or stimulus packages?" as he smiled smugly. "OK," she said. "Those could be interesting topics but let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow and a deer all eat the same stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?" The legislator, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, "Hmmm, I have no idea." To which the little girl replies, "Do you really feel qualified to discuss global warming, universal health care or the economy when you don't know crap?" Then she went back to reading her book.
'I Thought It Was Wood': TX Woman Startled By Gators Swimming By Cajun Navy Volunteers Rescue Hundreds From Houston Floods Houston pastor Joel Osteen is pushing back against criticism that his Lakewood Church did not welcome victims of Hurricane Harvey. On Sunday, the 16,800-seat megachurch posted on Facebook that its doors would remain shut "due to severe flooding." That led to an outcry on social media: "Give to the one who asks you.. Unless they ask you for shelter in your fancy church. Then screw 'em" -Bible verse, according to #JoelOsteen — Erik Bransteen (@erikbransteen) August 29, 2017 Joel Osteen should keep his church closed... forever. #JoelOsteen @JoelOsteen — Brandi Gallard (@BrandiGallard) August 29, 2017 deeply disappointed @joelosteen. that House belongs to God + was built for people in need. you should have been the first to open your doors — TRAVIS GARLAND (@TravisGarland) August 29, 2017 Houston's Joel Osteen has a net worth over $50m and a church that holds 16,800 but this is all he's offering. pic.twitter.com/rmhdWK6ZAO — Mark Elliott (@markmobility) August 28, 2017 If Joel Osteen's church is flooded, perhaps he could open up his house...or at least his guest house or pool house. pic.twitter.com/a4Xa0TZYHo — Angela Lee Morabito (@Bear2theRight) August 29, 2017 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a flood victim to enter into Joel Osteen’s church. — Harold Itzkowitz (@HaroldItz) August 29, 2017 #JoelOsteen decides to open his church as shelter for Houston Flood victims! Hmmm! God didn't change his heart twitter did! #TeamDl — DL Hughley (@RealDLHughley) August 29, 2017 Joel Osteen won't open his church that holds 16,000 to hurricane victims because it only provides shelter from taxes. #HoustonStrong — Alan Spencer (@MrAlanSpencer) August 28, 2017 On "Fox & Friends" this morning, Osteen said his church's doors have always been open, and they are assisting evacuees with supplies such as baby formula, medical supplies and other shelter needs. Tucker Debates BLM Activist Who Compared Trump to Adolf Hitler 'The Best of the US in Action': Kellyanne Conway Praises Harvey Relief Efforts Mike Rowe Responds to Critic Who Accused Him of Tacitly Supporting White Nationalists "The church is always open. We took people in. When the big shelter filled up, people started coming here," Osteen said. "I think sometimes people try to make that narrative that we're not open to people, but we've been doing this for 60 years, and we'll continue to do it." As for his critics, Osteen said he hasn't paid much attention to them, as it's easy to pass judgment from afar. "Social media is powerful these days," Osteen said. "I think some of it is just people that don't like people like me or people of faith." He said he's focusing on what he's called to do, which is helping his fellow Houstonians and lifting people's spirits. Let us know what you think in the comments. Hannity: Trump 'Can Do Nothing Right in the Eyes of the Media' George W. Bush Visits SMU Football Practice, Offers Supportive Words to Houston Natives 'Texas Can Handle Anything': Trump Waves Flag After Addressing Crowd WATCH: Jet Ski Pulls Family on Boat to Safety in Houston Tucker Blasts Melania Critics: 'Hillary Taught Us When You Criticize 1 Woman, You Attack All'
What we’re doing with Bitcoin Unlimited, simply Peter R. Rizun Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 13, 2017 Bitcoin has no center. It has no Board of Directors. It has no CEO, no President, no Chieftain, Sheik or Shah. Bitcoin is a decentralized network made up of voluntary participants — only loosely connected — who come together for their mutual benefit. There are users who transact in bitcoin to take advantage of its privacy and convenience, and investors who hold bitcoin hoping to profit from its price appreciation. There are node operators whose computers validate and relay the transactions made by Bitcoin users, and there are miners — a special type of node operator — whose mining farms append blocks of new transactions to the permanent blockchain ledger, rewarding themselves for this service with 12.5 newly-minted bitcoins. The fact that Bitcoin has no center— that Bitcoin is decentralized — is the very essence of its nature. It is this lack of a center that helps to ensure the integrity of Bitcoin as money. If Bitcoin had a center, users would have to trust it not to reverse or censor payments for political reasons, or reward itself unfairly with newly-created bitcoins. If Bitcoin had a center, it would be much less useful as peer-to-peer electronic cash. And there is no doubt: Bitcoin is useful as electronic cash. One measure of its usefulness is the price of a bitcoin, which has increased from $1.08 six years ago, to $993 today. A second measure of Bitcoin’s usefulness is how often it is used. The total volume of transactions processed by the Bitcoin network has likewise climbed from 1 transaction per minute six years ago to an average just shy of 3 transactions per second today. A third measure of Bitcoin’s usefulness is the number of people using it. Due to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous nature, user-base estimates are often disputed, today ranging anywhere from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions. But one thing that is not disputed is that the growth of Bitcoin’s user base was a primary driver increasing both the total volume of transactions and the price of a bitcoin. Bitcoin’s lack of a center comes with a cost too: there is no conductor waving his baton, coordinating the network participants while they play from a curated score. Even changes that are widely perceived as positive are difficult to roll out, as doing so involves communication and cooperation between the loosely-connected participants who make up the Bitcoin network. The most pertinent example of a need for change is the “1 MB block size limit.” In 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto added a protocol rule that limited the volume of transactions committed to the blockchain to roughly 3 per second (3 transactions per second typically fills blocks up to the 1 MB limit). When the limit was added, it was 800 times greater than the natural transaction volume, and so the limit did not constrain the natural growth of the system (it served only as an anti-spam measure). But today, the network is “maxed out,” regularly hitting this limit, and no longer free to grow how it did during the first 7 years of its history. Fig. 1. Transaction volume on the Bitcoin network is now constrained by the 1 MB block size limit enforced by approximately 90% of network nodes. If the block size limit were raised, the transaction volume wouldn’t immediately fill it, but would rather continue to grow similar to how it grew before hitting the limit. How might we increase this limit, if Bitcoin has no center that can do it for us? To answer this question, we must first understand who it is that is enforcing the block size limit. So who is it? Why can’t Bitcoin users make more than the 3 transactions per second on average today? The reason is related to the fact that when a payment is sent between two users, it doesn’t actually go directly from User A to User B; instead it is relayed to, and approved by, every node on the network. There are approximately 6000 accessible nodes, or assuming bitcoin has 5 million users, about 1 node for every 800 users. When a miner finds a new block of transactions to add to the blockchain, each node checks the size of that block. If the block is larger than 1 MB (i.e., if it contains more than approximately 3 transactions per second worth of data), 9 out of 10 nodes today would reject that block as being invalid. No miner would risk intentionally producing a block larger than 1 MB because he knows that the network as a whole would reject it and his 12.5 BTC reward would be lost. And so even though miners may want to process more transactions per second, they don’t because effectively they can’t — the other nodes won’t let them. We see then that to increase the limit — to allow miners to process more than 3 transactions per second —it is the people operating these nodes who must take action. Node operators must convincingly communicate to the miners that they are ready and willing to accept larger blocks. This is especially true for economically-significant nodes such as those running Bitcoin exchanges, payment processors, and web wallets. What Bitcoin Unlimited is doing, is giving node operators a flexible set of tools to allow them to do this. Very simply: Bitcoin Unlimited allows a node operator to quickly and easily change his node’s block size limit. Bitcoin Unlimited allows a miner to quickly and easily change the maximum size of blocks his node will produce. Bitcoin Unlimited helps node operators and miners signal their block size preferences to the rest of the network. Today, approximately 1 in every 10 network nodes is running Bitcoin Unlimited, with a median block size limit of 16 MB. As more and more node operators take similar initiatives and raise their node’s block size limits, miners become more and more tempted to produce larger blocks that contain more transactions. At some point — when miners are comfortable that a sizeable majority of the network is ready and willing to accept larger blocks — a miner will produce one, it will be accepted into the permanent blockchain ledger, and Bitcoin will be free to continue growing. What we’re doing with Bitcoin Unlimited is that simple. Acknowledgement The author thanks Andrea Suisani, Peter Tschipper, Jerry Chan, and his mom for their reviews.
BEIRUT \| Back in Sri Lanka, “Nilu” had long hair. But she wanted a home and a little money. So she followed in her mother’s footsteps and took a job as a maid in Lebanon. Six months later, she escaped. Her back was broken after she fell from a third-story window while trying to run away. Aid workers said they found her in a hospital. She was covered in welts and bruises, and her hands were crushed by blows from her employer’s hammer. Nilu looked wistful as she tugged at her shoulder-length hair. It was chopped off at gunpoint after she accidentally left a kitchen appliance plugged in. She asked not to use her real name for fear of another attack. “I was expecting to work here to realize my dream of having a home,” she said in a shelter where she is now hidden. Lebanon hosts about 200,000 foreign maids. Like other migrant domestic workers around the world, the women frequently are subjected to conditions that local activists call “legal slavery.” Many foreign domestic workers in Lebanon say their hours are long and the work is hard, but it is worth it to be able to send money to their families in poorer countries such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and the Philippines. Other women, lured to Lebanon by the hope of a better life, are trapped into lives of isolation, unable to protect themselves from abuse. The International Organization for Migration reports that mistreatment of foreign domestic workers is a problem around the world, including in the U.S. Behind closed doors, foreign maids are unprotected by labor laws and are commonly abused. “No country in the world has a monitoring system,” said Jemini Pandya, a spokeswoman for the organization. In every country that employs foreign domestic workers, Ms. Pandya said, maids might be locked inside employers’ homes, refused time off and beaten. Foreign domestic workers are often without contracts or legal status in their host countries, and therefore are at the mercy of their employers. “There have been so many cases of particularly atrocious abuses,” Ms. Pandya said. Migrant workers, however, are also important to the global economy, particularly in the developing world. Last year, migrant workers sent $316 billion home to developing countries — more than three times the amount the countries received in formal foreign aid. Although abuses of foreign domestic workers have made recent headlines in the Middle East, a U.N. report said this kind of “modern-day slavery” affects millions of women and girls around the globe. In Lebanon, unlike many other countries, foreign domestic workers technically are protected against some abuses. The Lebanese government adopted a standard contract last year that all domestic workers and employers sign. It guarantees foreign maids basic rights such as time off and payment of wages. Nadim Houry, director of Beirut Human Rights Watch, said the contracts are “a step in the right direction” but are not effective. They are not translated into the workers’ languages. The women may have legal rights, but they don’t claim those rights because they haven’t read the contracts. No system is in place to force employers to honor the contracts. “These contracts, in a way, are not worth the ink that they’re signed on,” he said. Problems for many workers begin before they leave their home countries, Mr. Houry said. Poorly regulated agencies recruit desperately poor women and often make false promises. Once in Lebanon, 80 percent of domestic workers’ passports are confiscated by their employers, and more than half of the women are never allowed a day off outside the homes. Many employers also refuse to pay their maids or withhold their salaries for months. Mr. Houry said these common practices are partially a result of Lebanon’s restrictive sponsorship system. Employers pay about $3,000 to bring a domestic worker from overseas. If she abandons the household, the investment is lost. “Their fear is: ‘I’ve made all that payment. If that person comes and then two weeks later decides she wants to go work as a freelancer, I would have been robbed of that initial investment,’” Mr. Houry said. Less frequently, but also commonly, domestic workers are verbally, physically and sexually abused. Mr. Houry said it is usually women, known to domestic workers as “Madames,” who perpetrate the physical and verbal abuse. At the shelter where Nilu is hiding, she said she thought her Madame would kill her if she did not run away. Before her failed escape, she spent six months locked in her employers’ house working seven days a week and sleeping on the kitchen floor. Nilu said she was beaten for offenses such as failing to notice water on the bathroom floor or adding too many potatoes to the soup. “If I made any mistake, the Madame would hit me immediately,” she said. In 2008, Human Rights Watch reported that between January 2007 and August 2008 an average of one domestic worker died each week in Lebanon. Most were either suicides or failed attempts to escape their employers’ homes. Ethiopian Suicides, an activist website, has counted 30 deaths of foreign domestic workers reported in the past year. Most were suicides. On a bright recent Sunday, outside a church in Beirut, throngs of Ethiopian domestic workers wearing traditional white scarves sat on the sidewalk while eating sour Ethiopian bread. One woman said her friend was in jail because she ran away after an employer beat her. The story was cut short because another woman warned her sister not to speak publicly about abuses. The sister pointed to a scar on her forearm. “This is where she beat me,” she whispered. Maids who run away from employers break Lebanese law and are frequently arrested, said Nagla Chahda, director of the Migrant Center at Caritas, which provides migrant workers with legal and social support. In Lebanon, like in most other countries, migrant workers’ legal status depends on their employers. “In case they run away, immediately the employer puts a complaint against them accusing them of theft,” she said. “If they are arrested, they are immediately put in prison.” Once in prison, the women can file complaints against their employers, but the legal system is stacked against them. Those who do find attorneys face cases that drag on for years and a system that often doesn’t recognize abuse of domestic workers as crimes. The proceedings often are held in a language the workers do not understand. Even if the court does give a domestic worker a fair hearing, the alleged crimes usually have no witnesses. A judge often is left to decide a case based on the word of the employer against the word of a maid. Employers are rarely convicted of abuses. When they are, the sentences are always light, Human Rights Watch said in a recent report. In 2009, an employer was sentenced to 15 days in jail for repeatedly beating a Filipina maid. Last summer, a Lebanese court imposed its heaviest sentence for a crime of its kind. A woman was convicted of locking up and regularly beating a Sri Lankan maid. She was sentenced to one month in prison. Other Middle Eastern countries also have been criticized for tolerating widespread abuses of foreign domestic workers. On Thursday, Amnesty International released a statement calling for the Gulf states to protect foreign maids after an Indonesian woman was hospitalized. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called the abuse “extraordinary torture.” It took Nilu 2½ months before she could sit up again after aid workers found her in the hospital. Now she can walk and plans to return to Sri Lanka, while attorneys in Lebanon attempt to prosecute her former employer. Nilu said she hopes her former employers will be forced to pay her something to make up for the fact that she is not strong enough to work. But, she said, she does not know why she was attacked so brutally. “The Madame was always angry at home,” Nilu said. “When she argued with her husband, she would take it out on me.” Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
The group representing Canada's pediatricians is warning parents against using medical marijuana to treat their children's health conditions, saying there is not enough evidence that the drug is either safe or effective. The Canadian Paediatric Society said in a statement Monday that while cannabis is increasingly being used to treat certain kids' illnesses, "evidence is lacking about the overall effect on children." Some parents have been turning to cannabis oil and other forms of marijuana to treat conditions that have failed to respond to conventional medicine. Those conditions include epilepsy, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, chronic pain management and even autism. Dr. Michael Rieder, chair of the society’s Drug Therapies and Hazardous Substances Committee and author of the statement, said there appears to be some benefits from medicinal marijuana for certain cases of epilepsy, but it’s important to weigh those benefits with the risk. “Like any potent psychoactive drug, we think we have to balance risk versus benefit. And make sure that children who can benefit can get the benefit, but at the same time acknowledging the risk,” he said. Alex Repetski, for example, told CTV's Canada AM earlier this year that cannabis oil has been life-changing for his three-year-old daughter, Gwenevere, who has severe epilepsy. He said no medication had been effective and Gwenevere's seizures were so bad, she could hardly sit or function in any way. But cannabis oil brought an end to his daughter's seizures, he said, allowing her to learn to crawl, walk and feed herself. Several other parents have reported similar results. But in its statement, the CPS says there needs to be much more study on both the safety and efficacy of children using cannabis. Rieder said there is "little data to support either the efficacy or safety of cannabis use" for any health condition in kids. He added that there has also been an "increasing body of data" suggesting possible harm from marijuana use. In particular, research from the U.K. and from Harvard suggests that marijuana use during adolescence may change the way the brain develops. As well, some British research suggests that marijuana use may increase the risk for psychosis, Rieder told CTV’s Canada AM. In July, Health Canada gave growers the green light to begin producing cannabis extracts, which are expected to be approved for sale in the coming months. That followed a Supreme Court ruling that said medical marijuana users should be permitted to consume the drug in other forms, such as oils and edibles, rather than having to smoke dried buds. The CPS says in its statement that doctors who use cannabis to treat children's conditions should have specific expertise and training in the use of cannabis in kids, which the CPS calls a "potent psychoactive drug." Before any treatment, doctors should thoroughly discuss with the family -- and the patient if possible -- the goals and risks of the drug, it said. It added that since smoking marijuana is "unacceptable" in children, studies on medical marijuana in kids should explore other ways of delivering the drug. And it added that teens still need to be discouraged from using marijuana recreationally. "The selective use of cannabis for medical purposes in children must not be confused with condoning its recreational use by adolescents," the statement said. Rieder added that there is the need for more research looking into how doctors can use marijuana to treat patients, in order to determine the drug's safety. Future research should look into how to properly administer the drug, what dose levels to prescribe and potential side effects. “I think there’s a lot more work that needs to be done,” he said.
Get the biggest Manchester United FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Manchester United striker Javier Hernandez hopes to impress new boss Louis van Gaal – by knocking him out of the World Cup. The Mexico star will come up against his manager-to-be in the tie with the Netherlands in Fortaleza and he has a point to prove after a difficult season at Old Trafford. Chicharito started just six Premier League games in a frustrating campaign under David Moyes and his relief at finally scoring again spilled over into tears of joy when his header sealed Mexico’s progress from Group A against Croatia last week. “This whole year has been very tough,” said Hernandez. “Players need confidence, more than anything else and I’ve been very short of it. Very few people have shown faith in me over this past year.” But Hernandez remains determined to bounce back from his Moyes snub, and that begins with a win against the Dutch. “We have to stay very calm, very humble and not get carried away,” he said. “This is just one more step forward. If we want to make history we have to beat the Netherlands”
The official Starbucks app has made its debut on Windows 10 Mobile . The app is available in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., and allows you to pay for your orders directly from your phone. You can also locate stores near your location, track rewards, check your Starbucks card balance, and much more. Here's the breakdown of what's available: Pay: Use your phone to pay at 7,000 U.S. company-operated Starbucks stores and 2,500 Target and Safeway Starbucks locations in the U.S.; 1,000 Starbucks stores in Canada; and 700 Starbucks stores in the U.K. Use your phone to pay at 7,000 U.S. company-operated Starbucks stores and 2,500 Target and Safeway Starbucks locations in the U.S.; 1,000 Starbucks stores in Canada; and 700 Starbucks stores in the U.K. Card: Check your Starbucks Card balance, reload your Card, view your transaction history and transfer balances between Cards. Check your Starbucks Card balance, reload your Card, view your transaction history and transfer balances between Cards. Tipping: Leave a digital tip on purchases made with the app at company-operated Starbucks® stores in the U.S. and Canada. Leave a digital tip on purchases made with the app at company-operated Starbucks® stores in the U.S. and Canada. Rewards: Track your Stars and redeem your Rewards and custom offers with the My Starbucks Rewards® loyalty program. Track your Stars and redeem your Rewards and custom offers with the My Starbucks Rewards® loyalty program. Gift: Send Starbucks eGifts to friends. Send Starbucks eGifts to friends. Store Locator: Find the stores nearest you, directions, hours and amenities. The long-awaited app is certainly feature-rich. If you like getting your coffee from Starbucks, be sure to download the app from the link below, and let us know how you're liking the official client in the comments. Download Starbucks from the Windows Store Thanks for the tip Duane!
Where the children are all above average. (Christopher Ingraham/The Washington Post) Few things are more gratifying than brand-new data that validates your life choices. This week, the Annie E. Casey Foundation published its 26th annual Kids Count report, an investigation into trends in health, education and economic well-being among the nation's kids. For the headline-making part of their report, the foundation's researchers ranked the states on 16 indicators of child well-being: children in poverty, educational attainment, single-parent families, low-birth-weight babies, kids without health insurance, school test scores, etc. They then mashed all these rankings up into a composite score, using pretty standard statistical methods, to come up with an overall rank of the best states in the United States for child well-being — the best places to raise a kid, in other words. The state at the absolute top of the list, for the second year in a row, was (drum roll please ...) Minnesota. Want your kids to grow up healthy, wealthy and wise? Haul 'em off to the North Star State. [Small families are better for kids, new research says] You know that whole Garrison Keillor schtick about Minnesota? "Where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and the children are all above average?" Turns out there's something to it — at least as far as kids are concerned. It's important that you understand I'm telling you this not just as a data nerd sitting at a desk with my nose buried in a spreadsheet, but as someone who literally just moved his entire family to Minnesota in search of a better life. Granted, I've only been here for a couple months, so the natural experiment I'm running on my 2-year-old boys has yet to yield results. For full results, check back in 16 years or so. The Casey Foundation has been compiling these rankings for years now. Minnesota is one state that's been on an upward trajectory, from sixth overall in 2012 to first in 2014. Iowa is upwardly mobile, too, going from eighth to third over the same period. Other states are falling in the rankings. Maryland, my previous home state, has dropped from 10th to 16th in child well-being. But perhaps the most discouraging news in the report is what's happening at the absolute bottom of the rankings: nothing at all. The four worst states today are the same states that were dead-last in 2012. Mississippi has been the absolute worst place in America to raise a kid for five out of the last six years. Mississippi's crowning child-health achievement in the past six years is its brief jump from 50th to 49th place in 2013. [In Deep South, poor students are caught in a cycle of poverty] Now granted these are rankings. And if you're just looking at rankings, someone will always have to be in last place regardless of which direction the raw numbers are moving in. But the Casey Foundation's data show the very real challenges faced by children in the Southern part of the country. We've written about them here on Wonkblog before: Crushing poverty. Food insecurity. Impoverished schools and mind. Crumbling family structures. What's most striking about the Casey Foundation's data is its stark illustration of how geography is destiny. Take a look at the map of overall rankings this year, for instance. Not a single one of the top-ranked states is below the 36°30' parallel, the line that delineated the boundary between new slave and free states in the Missouri Compromise. Conversely only two of the bottom-ranked states — Nevada and West Virginia, are located above that line. You wouldn't think that an arbitrary geographic boundary drawn by politicians nearly 200 years ago could continue to reverberate through society today. But there it is, staring you right in the face. You see similar geographic divides when you map out the individual indicators in the report, as we did last year. More from Wonkblog: Our simple calculator lets you figure out how much having a child affects your salary Researchers have discovered a surprisingly simple way to get kids to eat their veggies One of America's most popular children's books has a secret political message
EXCLUSIVE: Nicolas Cage is set to star in Philly Fury, a thriller penned by Jason Mosberg that Steven C. Miller will direct, with production to begin in May. Randall Emmett and George Furla of Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films will produce, and the picture will be released in the U.S. through Lionsgate Premiere through its multi-picture distribution deal with Emmett/Furla. Highland Film Group will sell the picture internationally. This is the fourth film that Emmett/Furla and Cage have made together. The story revolves around a Philadelphia businessman whose deadbeat brother is kidnapped for a large ransom. When everyone involved believes the deadbeat is in on the kidnapping, the businessman must take action himself. Cage plays a Philadelphia mobster and alleged kidnapper. Cage next stars in the Mario Van Peebles-directed USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage and in the Oliver Stone-directed Snowden. Miller just directed Bruce Willis in Marauders, which Emmett/Furla/Oasis produce. Emmett/Furla is currently in post-production on the Martin Scorsese-directed Silence. The company also recently wrapped principal photography on the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Scoot McNairy starrer 478, from director Elliott Lester and producer Darren Aronofsky. CAA and LINK Entertainment rep Cage. Miller is repped by UTA, Aperture Entertainment’s Adam Goldworm and attorney Wayne Alexander.
JEVPALOVS SHOWING OFF VERSATILITY IN YEAR TWO Half way through his second professional campaign, Nikita Jevpalovs has emerged as a vital component to San Jose’s success. At the end of his rookie season last year, Jevpalovs was assigned to the Allen Americans, San Jose’s ECHL affiliate, and went on to win a Kelly Cup. During the championship run Jevpalovs totaled eight points (2+6=8) in 15 playoff games, 10 penalty minutes and a plus-three rating. “I learned a lot (in Allen) and being in a winning environment helped my game,” said Jevpalovs. That winning experience set the stage for Nikita's sophomore campaign. Through 40 games, the second-year pro has played all three forward positions, killed penalties and played on the power play. The 22-year-old was was signed by San Jose as a free agent in 2015 after three years in the QMJHL with the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada. Jevpalovs went into his first offseason as a pro hoping to work on his speed and learn the little details it takes to be a pro. “I just really wanted to get the system down and do what the coaches asked. I trained to become faster and focused my summer on learning the little details of the pro game.” The Riga, Latvia, native’s versatility wasn’t on full display until Ryan Carpenter was recalled to the San Jose Sharks on January 17. Head Coach Roy Sommer threw Jevpalovs in between John McCarthy and Barclay Goodrow with the departure of Carpenter, and his game has taken off. "I’ll tell you what, he’s been a huge part of our little run right now and the success we’ve had this season,” said Barracuda Head Coach Roy Sommer. “He’s come into his second year and filled a ton of roles for us.” Through 39 games, Jevpalovs has registered 13 points (7+6=13), 28 penalty minutes and a plus-eight rating. In 60 games in 2015-16, the 6-foot-1, 207-pound forward recorded 14 points (5+9=14), 12 penalty minutes and a minus-18 rating. Jevpalovs development has accelerated since being put between Goodrow and McCarthy, guys who have built their careers around playing the game the right way. “They’re such good players it’s really hard not to play well with them. I don’t care about what forward position I’m playing, but I’m really enjoying playing center,” said Jevpalovs. The Barracuda are riding a six-game winning streak and sit at first place in the Pacific Division for the first time in team history. During the stretch, Jevpalovs has three points (1+2=3), plus-one rating, and nine penalty minutes.
We made it to the big show. Though it wasn't without another unusual set of circumstances to get to UFC 216, both Tony Ferguson and Kevin Lee are ready to duke it out for the interim lightweight title on Saturday night in Las Vegas. What has almost become customary at this point played out again on Friday morning when Lee came in at 156 pounds during the weigh-in ceremony, but was given an extra hour to cut the final pound and reach the championship weight for the fight. With about five minute left, Lee stepped on the scale and nailed it, coming in at 154.5 pounds. With his fight against Ferguson official, plus Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson looking to set a UFC record, UFC 216 is shaping up to be quite the show. Here's how the full fight card -- including prelims and early prelims -- shakes out with the latest odds from Westgate. Favorite Challenger Weightclass Tony Ferguson -275 Kevin Lee +225 Interim lightweight title Demetrious Johnson (c) -1400 Ray Borg +800 Flyweight title Fabricio Werdum -270 Derrick Lewis +220 Heavyweight Kalindra Faria -220 Mara Romero Borella +180 Women's flyweight Beneil Dariush -220 Evan Dunham +180 Lightweight Tom Duquesnoy -160 Cody Stamann +140 Bantamweight Lando Vannata -200 Bobby Green +170 Lightweight Poliana Botelho -160 Pearl Gonzalez +140 Strawweight Brad Tavares -175 Thales Leites +155 Welterweight Magomed Bibulatov -650 John Moraga +450 Flyweight Matt Schnell -115 Marco Beltran -105 Flyweight Walt Harris -340 Mark Godbeer +270 Heavyweight The action kicks off at 6:30 p.m. ET with the early prelims, which you can watch exclusively on UFC Fight Pass. Then at 8 p.m. ET, the action heads to FX for the preliminary card, which you can stream online with Fox Sports Go. Finally, the PPV portion of the night starts at 10 p.m. ET and can be purchased for 59.99 through your local cable provider or through UFC.TV if you would like to stream the bouts.
A kettlebell is a smooth cast iron ball that can weigh anywhere from 5 to 175 pounds. The iron ball is fitted with a handle on the top. Just imagine a cannon ball with a handle. Kettlebells can be swung in a dynamic motion or lifted in a basic resistance movement. Kettlebell workout routines can be extremely effective in adding strength due to the versatility of the movement. Kettlebell History Kettlebells have recently become recognized in America, but they have been around for a long time. Kettlebells became popular in Russia around the start of the 18th century. At that time, Russian kettlebell training incorporated ballistic swings and other explosive movements. These workouts became well-liked by Russian athletes, who were looking to gain overall body strength and power. Kettlebells have since been adopted by the mainstream fitness community as an efficient alternative to dumbbell training. Benefits of Kettlebell Workout Kettlebell workout routines offer cardiovascular benefits, while also increasing strength and muscle endurance. Here are a few reasons why you may want to include kettlebell training into your workout program: The combination of cardio and muscle conditioning exercises will serve 2 purposes at the same time. A kettlebell routine can get you the quickest results in the shortest amount of time. Kettlebell exercises frequently involve quick swinging movements. Those types of actions recruit many muscles of the body. The movements assist in strengthening your core by training the often neglected stabilizing muscles. When you strengthen your core, your other muscles will have a strong foundation to build on. The anaerobic nature of this exercise will get the heart working hard. The natural effect of this is an increased metabolism along with quicker weight loss. The techniques that are used to lift kettlebells are moves known as the swing, clean, jerk, snatch and squat. These are full-body movements that will assist you in gaining total body strength. Kettlebell Training Tips and Techniques As with any form of resistance training, proper technique is important to reduce the chance of injury. Start with light weights, until you master the movement. Wear comfortable shoes with a low sole for stability. When using kettlebells, make sure you breathe correctly. For example, in a swing, inhale as the kettlebell swings towards you, and exhale as you swing the weight up. In the bench press movement, you should exhale as you push the weight away from your chest and inhale on the way down. As you gain confidence in your form and breathing, you will be able to add speed to the movements. Many of the kettlebell exercises require speed and momentum. Remember to start with a lighter weight, but don’t be afraid to use speed during the lifts. Kettlebell Workout Routine Kettlebell Bench Press Start this exercise on your back and grasp a pair of kettlebells. With palms facing towards your feet, press the kettlebells straight out above your chest. As you lower the kettlebells, simultaneously rotate your wrists inward, so your palms are facing each other. Perform 3 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions of this exercise. Kettlebell Military Press Hold two kettlebells level with your shoulders. Your wrists should be facing each other and just in front of your chin. Press the kettlebells straight up over your head. Remember to keep the kettlebells parallel as you press them upward. Lower the weight to your shoulders and repeat the movement. Perform 3 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions. Kettlebell Bent Over Row Place a pair of kettlebells between your feet. Bend your knees slightly and bend over to grasp the weights. Arch your back and keep your abdominal muscles tight. Pull both kettlebells up towards your chest and then lower them to the floor. Perform 3 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions. Kettlebell Squat Hold two kettlebells at your shoulders in the same manner that you did during the military press. With the kettlebells at shoulder level, squat down towards the floor. After your knees are parallel with the floor, stand back up and repeat the movement. Perform 3 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions. Kettlebell Swing Place one kettlebell between your feet. Bend over and grasp the kettlebell. In this position, swing the kettlebell between your legs, as if you were hiking a football to someone. After the kettlebell swings back between your legs, raise it up quickly to about chest level. Repeat this movement with the other arm. Perform 3 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions with each arm. Kettlebell Snatch Place the kettlebell between your feet. This exercise is essentially the same movement as the swing, but with one added step. As you perform the swing through your legs, instead of raising the weight to your chest, raise it all the way up over your head. Remember to push hard through your hips and explode on the way up. Perform 3 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions. This kettlebell workout routine will work just about every muscle in the body, including the heart. Prior to starting a kettlebell program, you may want to consult a kettlebell instructor to maximize these exercises and ensure safety.
United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely meet later this week on the sidelines of an economic summit in Vietnam, The Kremlin said Wednesday. Yuri Ushakov, a Putin foreign affairs advisor, said “there are things to discuss and we are ready for it.” He said the two leaders will meet between sessions at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that begins Friday in Danang, Vietnam. He also said Trump and Putin may hold a more “extensive” one-on-one meeting at some point, but no specific date has been set. Earlier this week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Russian news agency RIA if the two leaders do meet there is a “great probability” they would discuss the situation in North Korea. Peskov, though, said there is currently no cooperation between the U.S. and Russia on North Korea. Trump is currently in China, where he is making his first visit as U.S. president. Just prior to arriving in Beijing Wednesday, Trump gave a speech in front of South Korea's National Assembly, in which he called on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up all his nuclear weapons for a chance to step on to “a better path.” Trump warned the North, “Do not underestimate us and do not try us. We will defend our common security, our shared prosperity and our sacred liberty.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it has presented Alex Van Meeuwen, Belgium’s ambassador in Moscow, with evidence proving the involvement of Belgian Air Force jets in a recent airstrike on a Syrian village that killed four civilians. The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Van Meeuwen on Friday. “During the conversation with Van Meeuwen, First Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov said that Moscow was puzzled by Belgium’s ongoing denial of the fact that the Belgian Air Force carried out an airstrike that killed civilians on the outskirts of Aleppo on October 18 of this year,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “The Belgian diplomat [Van Meeuwen] was presented with evidence showing involvement of the Belgian Air Force in the airstrike on the village of Hassadjek. It was also mentioned that detailed info on the technical aspects of the flight of the two F-16 jets had been given to Belgium’s military attaché in Moscow by the Russian Ministry of Defense.” Read more "This [Friday] afternoon, the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense handed over to the Defense Attaché of the Belgian Embassy in Moscow the alleged evidence designed to show that F-16 jets of the Belgian Air Force are responsible for the airstrike near Aleppo in the early hours of October 18, which resulted in several deaths among civilians. This alleged evidence is a map with the route of the flight allegedly made by Belgian aircraft," a communique posted on the Belgian Ministry of Defense website said. "The numbers of the identification friend-or-foe system, which are marked on the map and which, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, are assigned to the Belgian aircraft, are incorrect and in no way are the numbers of the Belgian Air Force aircraft," the document says. Brussels is using “worthless excuses” in an attempt to divert public attention from the airstrike on the Syrian village, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said on Friday. "Attempts by the Belgian Defense Minister [Steven Vandeput] to divert public attention from the tragedy, using obviously worthless excuses, causes profound confusion. It speaks of either Mr Vandeput’s misunderstanding of the document provided by Russia, or the desire of the US Armed Forces Central Command, responsible for providing targeting data to aircraft of the international coalition in Syria, to evade responsibility for the death of six Syrian civilians, killed in the airstrike,” Konashenkov told journalists. Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Didier Vanderhasselt told Interfax on Friday the ministry is not yet aware of the content of its ambassador’s conversation with Russia’s deputy foreign minister, and is waiting for the results of the meeting. “We maintain dialogue with the Russian side, we need to know exactly what was said at this meeting,” he added. "We are also surprised by the fact that we have not been provided with the data before," Vanderhasselt is cited as saying by Interfax. "Our military gave all the explanations to the military attaché of the Russian Embassy in Belgium yesterday [Thursday] morning," he added. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov said on Thursday that Brussels’ obstinate denial of involvement shows that Belgian Defense Minister Steven Vandeput is either “deliberately deceiving people in Belgium and around the world, or his subordinates and the Americans are lying to the leadership of Belgium.” The airstrike on the village of Hassadjek in Syria’s Aleppo province reportedly killed six civilians on Tuesday. According to Konashenkov, the two Belgian F-16s were immediately identified by Russian and Syrian air defense radar and all of their movements were tracked. “Every aircraft type has a unique identifiable signature,” he noted. The warplanes, which had flown in from the Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan, delivered their night strike on the village at 00:35 GMT, about two hours after takeoff, leaving six civilians dead and four injured, the general said. Russia tracked the flight of the two planes from Jordan to Iraq and Syria, as well as their meeting with a US KC-135 tanker, which refueled them over the Deir ez-Zor area, Konashenkov said, adding that the US-led coalition hadn’t informed Russia about the Belgian flights. WATCH MORE:
STANFORD >> The NCAA basketball selection committee couldn’t resist a good storyline just as Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer suspected. The Hall of Fame coach was not surprised Monday when the fourth-seeded Cardinal was paired against No. 13 San Francisco in a rich Bay Area NCAA tournament matchup between coaching friends. VanDerveer, 62, will face her protege in USF’s Jennifer Azzi on Saturday in the first round of the Lexington Regional at Maples Pavilion. Fifth-seeded Miami and No. 12 South Dakota meet in the opening game at 3:30 p.m. The winners advance to the second round Monday at Maples. In 1990, Azzi helped VanDerveer turned Stanford into a national power, leading the Cardinal to its first of two NCAA titles when the point guard was the college player of the year. Now 47, Azzi has guided the Dons (21-11) to their first NCAA appearance since 1997 after enduring four losing seasons to start her Division 1 coaching career. “It’s a nice sidebar,” VanDerveer said. “It is a great story. I just don’t want it be the (ital the) story.” Stanford (24-7) enters its 30th NCAA tournament after losing to Washington in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 tournament two weeks ago. The Cardinal is trying to advance to its ninth consecutive Sweet 16 — and perhaps even farther as the team jells for the postseason. Meanwhile, USF stunned Brigham Young in the title game last week to earn the West Coast Conference’s automatic berth. “We have a bad taste in our mouth; they have a good taste in their mouth,” VanDerveer said of the schools who will meet for the first time since 2010 when Azzi took over the Dons’ program. “If they play the way she plays they’ll be running and shooting 3s — that was her game,” VanDerveer said. When Azzi suffered through growing pains with four consecutive losing seasons VanDerveer was there for support. “She just encouraged me to stay with it,” the 1996 Olympian said recently. The Bay Area schools landed in a tough regional with Notre Dame earning the top seeding, followed by No. 2 Maryland and No. 3 Kentucky. If Stanford advances past the weekend it faces a potential rematch against Notre Dame in the Sweet 16. The Fighting Irish soundly defeated the Cardinal 81-60 last year. Although it’s a new experience for San Francisco, senior guard Zhane Dikes doesn’t expect the Dons to get overwhelmed by college basketball’s showcase event. “I’ve never even gotten close to something like this before so … I’m just going to go in that thing attacking with a smile on my face,” she said. “Why stop now?” Junior guard Rachel Howard of Berkeley said participating in March Madness is sweeter because the players have helped build the program. “When you aren’t given everything on a platter it keeps you in check,” she said. “It means so much more to us than to schools that have chartered planes.” Azzi, who got a five-year contract extension in July, added that she had no idea how to coach an NCAA tournament game. “It’s going to be fun,” Azzi said. “I don’t think it’s any more complicated that.” Stanford, on the other hand, needs to recalibrate after losing to Washington. “The game helped us get ready for a tournament-like atmosphere,” star forward Erica McCall said. The Women’s Final Four is scheduled April 3-5 in Indianapolis. Top-ranked Connecticut (32-0) is the No. 1 overall seed. The Huskies are trying to win their fourth consecutive national championship with the same class. South Carolina and Baylor got the other regional top seedings. Five Pac-12 schools made the tournament, led by No. 2 seeded Oregon State and Arizona State. No. 3 UCLA and No. 7 Washington are the others.
Photo Credit: Sergei Belski/USA TODAY Sports Vancouver Canucks checking centre Brad Richardson, a pending unrestricted free agent, is undergoing surgery today to repair the ankle injury that cost him the second half of his season and probably several million dollars on the open market, according to News 1130 Sports. Richardson, 30, managed eight goals and 21 points in 45 games while playing thoroughly excellent hockey on the penalty kill and holding down a key defensive role for the club. He’s a useful depth piece, and has provided the club with tremendous value since signing a two-year deal with an annual average value of $1.15 million as an unrestricted free agent in the cap-crunch summer of 2013. It seems probable that Richardson is on his way out the door, but might his ill-timed and frustratingly persistent ankle injury make it more likely that he’s in a Canucks uniform again next season? Even had Richardson remained healthy throughout the season, he was likely to leave as a free agent this summer just based on the structural composition of Vancouver’s roster and prospect pipeline. With Bo Horvat’s emergence, there’s a natural replacement on a cheap entry-level contract. Horvat might be ready ready to supplant Richardson’s third-line role at even-strength and handle more minutes on the penalty kill even were Richardson to return. There’s also Linden Vey, a player the club invested a second-round draft pick to acquire last summer. Vey was a blackhole offensively in his first full season in the league, but the soon-to-be 24-year-old’s play away from the puck appeared to take something of a step forward as the year went along. As Jason Botchford pointed out recently, the club was actually less permissive at 5-on-5 with Vey on the ice, than they were with either Horvat or Richardson: Lacking the size or the flash of Horvat, Vey quietly stitched together this decent two-way season. There is actually something to build on. Opponents averaged 55.37 shot attempts for every 60 minutes he played. He ranked ahead of Brad Richardson, against whom opponents averaged 57.88 shot attempts, and Horvat, who was last on the team at 61.29. Vey’s goals-against-per-60-minutes played was 2.47, which was better than both Richardson (2.54) and Horvat (2.81). The problem with playing Vey at centre is that he’s prone to getting schooled on draws by bigger, veteran centreman. The impact that faceoffs have on actually winning games is debatable, but it’s certainly an issue if you’re forecasting Vey as the club’s third- or fourth-line pivot next season. Consider that 141 NHL forwards took at least 100 defensive zone faceoffs at 5-on-5 last season. Only two of those 141 NHL forwards had a worse faceoff winning percentage than Vey did in those situations, and those two players – Calgary Flames rookie Markus Granlund, and New Jersey Devils veteran Patrik Elias – aren’t actually centremen. If you prefer to look at the shot based impact of faceoff losses rather than raw winning percentage, the Canucks permitted .185 shots against per Linden Vey defensive zone draw (within 10 seconds of the faceoff occurring). That puts Vey in the 13th percentile, the 123rd best forward out of the 141 players that qualify, according to faceoffs.net. Richardson isn’t necessarily an ace in the faceoff circle, but he’s capable of credibly handling those tough assignments. Not that it matters all that much when the Canucks are coached by Willie Desjardins, who didn’t discernibly zone match in his first year on the job. Tactical concerns aren’t likely to determine whether or not Richardson is back in Vancouver though. Like most business decisions, market value and money will probably prove to be the decisive forces here. As mentioned previously, Horvat is on an affordable entry-level deal, while Vey is a restricted free agent with minimal leverage. If need be the Canucks can probably grind Vey’s salary figure down on a one-year deal that comes out pretty close to his qualifying offer (though that hasn’t really been Jim Benning’s style). With Vey and Horvat waiting in the wings at bargain basement prices, Richardson is likely to prove expensive relative to his teammates. The 30-year-old handled a bona fide third-line role at even-strength, is an ace penalty killer, and would’ve scored 10 goals if he’d stayed healthy. Throw in ‘Stanley Cup winner’ and ‘versatile enough to play either wing position’ and you’ve got the resume of a player worth close to $2 million on the open market. As valuable as Richardson has been, as crucial as it is to have depth down the middle, and as effective as the 30-year-old veteran has been in 4-on-5 situations, Richardson is very probably not worth $1 million more than either Horvat or Vey (at the bottom of a roster, he might not be worth $500,000 more). It would seem that unless Richardson’s injury has truly sapped his market value, parting ways this summer probably still makes the most sense for both sides.
By: Staff – The Taste of Chaos Tour returns this year with a line-up that includes headliner Dashboard Confessional, whose frontman Chris Carrabba is teaming with Saves the Day’s Chris Conley for an emo supergroup with Mike Kinsella (American Football, Cap’n Jazz, Owen, etc) and The Get Up Kids’ Jim Suptic, Taking Back Sunday, who are currently working on their seventh album, and The Early November, who released their newest album, Imbue, in May 2015. The tour will also include an array of special guests including Saves the Day (New Jersey only), and Motion City Soundtrack (Jones Beach only), who recently announced their breakup. Tickets (including VIP packages) go on-sale March 18th at 10am. Taste of Chaos 2016 Tour Dates JUNE 3 Chicago, IL FirstMerit Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island JUNE 4 Sterling Heights, MI Freedom Hill Amphitheatre JUNE 5 Indianapolis, IN Farm Bureau Insurance Lawn at White River State Park JUNE 7 Pittsburgh, PA Petersen Events Center JUNE 8 Lewiston, NY Artpark JUNE 9 Mt. Pocono, PA Sherman Theater Summer Stage JUNE 10 Columbus, OH Columbus Commons JUNE 11 Cincinnati, OH PNC Pavilion at Riverbend Music Center JUNE 12 Cleveland, OH Jacobs Pavilion At Nautica JUNE 14 Boston, MA Blue Hills Bank Pavilion JUNE 15 Portland, ME Maine State Pier JUNE 16 Wallingford, CT Toyota Presents the Oakdale Theatre JUNE 17 Holmdel, NJ PNC Bank Arts Center * JUNE 18 Wantagh, NY Nikon at Jones Beach Theater + JUNE 19 Philadelphia, PA Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing % JUNE 21 Charlotte, NC Uptown Amphitheatre at NC Music Factory JUNE 22 Alpharetta, GA Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park JUNE 24 Miami, FL Bayfront Park Amphitheater ^ JUNE 25 Tampa, FL MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre at the FL State Fairgrounds ^ JUNE 26 Tallahassee, FL VENUE TBD ^ JUNE 27 Bossier City, LA CenturyLink Center JUNE 29 Kansas City, MO The Crossroads JUNE 30 Oklahoma City, OK Criterion Theater JULY 1 Dallas, TX South Side Ballroom ^ JULY 2 Houston, TX Revention Music Center JULY 3 Cedar Park, TX Cedar Park Center JULY 5 Papillion, NE Sumtur Amphitheater JULY 6 Morrison, CO Red Rocks Amphitheatre JULY 7 Magna, UT The Great Salt Air JULY 8 Boise, ID Revolution Event Center JULY 9 Everett, WA XFINITY Arena at Everett JULY 10 Eugene, OR Cuthbert Amphitheater JULY 12 Concord, CA Concord Pavilion JULY 13 Fresno, CA Rotary Amphitheater at Woodward Park JULY 14 Phoenix, AZ Comerica Theatre JULY 15 Las Vegas, NV The Cosmopolitan Hotel ^ JULY 16 San Bernardino, CA San Manuel Amphitheater No Saosin w/Anthony Green ^ Saves The Day * Motion City Soundtrack + The Starting Line %
Open Letter to the Creative Community — Dear Family, Friends and Enemies: Recently, I responded to a Google-sponsored article in Slate. In my retort, I bitch-slapped Google and its half-bright shill for misrepresenting the truth about piracy and copyright laws. I won’t bore you by repeating myself, but in summary: Google is the establishment. They are a multibillion-dollar monopoly, and we creatives are just another revenue source. Our work drives their clicks. They don’t care if the click goes to a legitimate site or a pirate site with owners who dabble in human trafficking. The truth is, they don’t give a shit about free speech, and are the antithesis of their own mantra, “Don’t be evil.” Not to go all techno-biblical on you, but I’m just a lame, dial-up David, throwing paper pebbles at a 2-terabit army of Robo-Goliaths. So, that’s why I’m disrupting your morning read. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to donate to a fucking Kickstarter campaign. All I want is to make you aware of what’s happening in the streaming backrooms of the virtual boys club. Google is in the process of systematically destroying our artistic future, and more importantly, the future of our children and grandchildren. They’re spending tens of millions of dollars each year on eroding creative copyright laws. I believe that if the creative community doesn’t intervene now, and by now, I mean, fucking now — we will be bound to a multigenerational clusterfuck that will take 40 to 50 years to unravel. Related FTC Launches Task Force to Monitor Big Tech Apple Music Likely Heading to Google Speakers The last time this happened was in the 1950s, when the tobacco industry spent millions to hide the truth, and convince everyone that smoking cigarettes wasn’t really dangerous to your health. In other words, Google’s manipulation of public opinion (read: lies) and their proxy campaign for a free Internet and the dissolution of copyright protection (read: criminal tactics) will become so codified in law and will dominate the debate to such a degree that it will be mindlessly accepted on every level. Then, unfortunately, it will be the back half of this century by the time people realize what’s been done, how it was done and that they’ve been thoroughly fucked. The creative community as we know it will not exist. Gary Musgrave for Variety It amazes and terrifies me that essentially all of Google’s fundamental arguments fall into the same template as those used by the Tobacco lobby. And it took five decades to finally reveal the dirty tactics of Big Smoky. We are now just starting to comprehend how those years of lies, extortion and greed created such suffering and death. Yes, that’s a dramatic comparison (that’s kind of my job), but unfortunately, the relationship is fundamentally accurate. When you’re worth over $200 billion, a couple hundred mil to buy legislation and good PR is an easy check to write. That’s what is happening before our eyes. And the reason why this information may seem startling is that they’re doing it so well; it just looks like business as usual. Look, I know this sounds alarmist, but if we don’t start ringing some bells, it’s going to be too late. The truth is, I’m not worried about myself. I’m a fat cat with enough things on my plate to feed me till I crash and burn. I’m worried about our kids. I’ve got a 7-year-old daughter who’s destined to be a live performer (my money’s on bear-wrestling and fire-eating), an 18-year-old son who’s an amazing musician, and a 20-year-old daughter who shines as an actress. They will take on the burden of this. They will wonder how we didn’t see this coming. They will lament that we did nothing to protect their art. And their kids? Well, they will be told unbelievable tales of the magical days when creatives flourished, and artists were handsomely compensated for their work. If you’re still reading this and want specifics, try Googling (see, they’ve even managed to become part of our lexicon) a report from the Digital Citizens Alliance called Google & YouTube and Evil Doers: Too Close for Comfort. And if I’ve pressed your “maybe I do give a shit button,” I urge you to join CreativeFuture. It’s an organization all about advocating for the kind of creative economy we’d like to pass along to our kids. I’m a proud member. There are no dues, no secret handshakes, no cookie-selling requirements. And at some point there may even be free hats. I sincerely thank you for your valuable time. (Kurt Sutter is executive producer and showrunner of the FX drama series “Sons of Anarchy.”)
Next week is the annual Computex trade show and we have a substantial number of meetings booked, but as part of the regular pre-show ritual, companies are coming at us with the start of their press release mêlée. One of the first to officially release their embargo is ASRock, showing off some impressive equipment ready for media to gawk at when we hit the booth on the show floor. First up is a tantalising teaser of what is to come. Anyone interested in the PC space is talking about upcoming Broadwell and the iteration after that called Skylake. Skylake for desktops will require a new chipset and new motherboard, which we at least know that Z170 is part of it (H, B and Q series motherboards are likely in the scheme as well). A big part of Computex in recent years has been showing off these designs regardless of the launch window, and ASRock’s PR today mentions two such Z170 motherboards: the Z170 Gaming K6 and the Z170 Extreme7. The Z170 Gaming K6 throws up some interesting talking points. We have an ASRock gaming logo on the chipset, which is supposed to be akin to a praying mantis and will most likely supplant the Fatal1ty branding on the gaming range. The new socket looks similar to the one used for Z87 and Z97. The PCIe slots are split electrically x16/x8/x4 with an Ultra M.2 in the middle suggesting a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot. Killer networking returns on this platform, and it would seem that SATA Express is also along this line. In the top left, you’ll notice the DRAM slots are listed as DDR4_A1, DDR4_A2 and so on, with single sided latches supporting the DDR4 modules. The Z170 Extreme7 images are more exciting, showing off three M.2 slots between the PCIe slots. These are all listed as Ultra M.2, which means PCIe 3.0 x4 bandwidth each for 12 lanes. At this point details of the Z170 platform have not been released, but having access to three M.2 x4 slots either means that some can only be used when integrated graphics is in play, the CPU has more than 16 lanes, or some of these are running off the chipset, none of which can be confirmed. Both the Extreme7 and the Gaming K6 would seem to have Purity Sound 3, the next iteration of the upgraded motherboard audio. This should be the Realtek ALC1150 still, however that is not confirmed as of yet. Another surprising element to the press release was the announcement that ASRock’s Gaming brand is expanding beyond motherboards. Similar to other gaming brands from motherboard companies, ASRock will also provide mice and mousepads (no mention of keyboards or headsets), but in an interesting twist they will also provide a router. The G10 is meant to be a similarly themed (with the logo and the angled edges) device but offers 4T4R connectivity on 802.11ac. This means up to 1733 Mbps connectivity over a single WiFi application. The only critical point here is that no-one sells a 4T4R WiFi card for a PC – the most we’ve seen so far is 3T3R in commercial applications. It will be interesting to see if that leads down a certain path of better WiFi bandwidth opportunities. We have plans to meet with ASRock during Computex where we hope to get some hands-on time with this stuff. Release dates and pricing are not being announced as of yet.
After last week’s Snapchat photo hack, it’s cloud storage provider Dropbox’s turn in the unsavory insecurity spotlight. An anonymous Pastebin user has claimed to have compromised almost seven million Dropbox account credentials (emails and passwords), posting the first 400 direct to Pastebin with a call for Bitcoin donations to leak more. This leak has since been followed up with a couple more pastes (of around a hundred account credentials apiece). However these follow up pastes do not appear to be genuine. In an update to a blog post about the attack Dropbox notes: “A subsequent list of usernames and passwords has been posted online. We’ve checked and these are not associated with Dropbox accounts.” As with the Snapchat hack, Dropbox has pointed the finger of blame for the 400 compromised accounts elsewhere — at “unrelated” third party services — stressing that its own security has not been compromised. However unlike Snapchat it appears services using Dropbox’s API were not to blame here. Rather the culprit looks like password reuse across other web services. In a post on the company Blog — unequivocally entitled ‘Dropbox wasn’t hacked‘ — Dropbox’s writes: Recent news articles claiming that Dropbox was hacked aren’t true. Your stuff is safe. The usernames and passwords referenced in these articles were stolen from unrelated services, not Dropbox. Attackers then used these stolen credentials to try to log in to sites across the internet, including Dropbox. We have measures in place to detect suspicious login activity and we automatically reset passwords when it happens. Attacks like these are one of the reasons why we strongly encourage users not to reuse passwords across services. For an added layer of security, we always recommend enabling 2 step verification on your account. In an earlier statement given to The Next Web the company also noted that it had “previously detected these attacks”, adding that “the vast majority of the passwords posted have been expired for some time now”: Dropbox has not been hacked. These usernames and passwords were unfortunately stolen from other services and used in attempts to log in to Dropbox accounts. We’d previously detected these attacks and the vast majority of the passwords posted have been expired for some time now. All other remaining passwords have been expired as well. It’s unclear exactly which other website(s) or service(s) is the source of the security breach. But Dropbox’s statement confirms the initially posted credentials are — or rather were — genuine account logins for its service. Albeit now reset. It also says no actual accounts were compromised as a result of the leaked credentials. If it’s a case of simple password cross-pollination (i.e. web users reusing the same login credentials) across multiple services then Dropbox’s claim that its servers have not been hacked does technically stand up. However the end result — user accounts compromised — is the same. Requiring users to enable an additional step aimed at safeguarding their accounts from these types of attacks, such as enforcing two-step authentication, would result in more robust protection from this type of password hack. But obviously requiring that step would add an additional layer of complexity for users. Hence the ongoing tug of war between security and convenience. (And throw in hackers hoping to make a quick buck from Bitcoin donations and there’s yet another strand in play.) Dropbox was in the news earlier this week after coming under fire from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as “hostile to privacy” — referring to its ability to access your data itself, which is yet another security consideration when it comes to web services. Snowden warned web users that Dropbox does not safeguard their privacy because it holds encryption keys and can therefore be forced by governments to hand over the personal data they store on its servers. He suggested people get rid of Dropbox and use alternative cloud storage providers that do not hold any encryption keys (and therefore cannot read your data) — name-checking rival cloud storage provider SpiderOak.
Britons among the most enthusiastic about action to stop global warming, while Americans among least willing to put environment first, according to global public opinion poll A majority of peoples around the world want their governments to put action on climate change at the top of the political agenda, a new global public opinion poll suggests. Unfortunately for Barack Obama though, who has put energy reform at the top of his White House to-do list, Americans are not necessarily among them. Only 44% of Americans thought climate change should be a major preoccupation for the Obama administration, the survey co-ordinated by the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes said. The only other two countries unwilling to see their governments make climate change a top focus were Iraq and the Palestinian territories. In 15 other countries though there was strong support for governments to do more to deal with climate change. Britons were among the most enthusiastic supporters for greater government intervention, with 77% urging officials to do more. Germans, however, think their government has already done enough. Some 83% think their government has already adopted climate change action as a top priority; 27% would like the government to turn its attention elsewhere. "The public is pulling for more — a lot more, no, but a bit more, yes. There is definitely political capital there to move the ball forward and that is pretty much universal," said Steven Kull, the director of the survey which drew on data gathered by academic and marketing polling organisations in the respective countries. Overall about 73% of those polled believe governments should make climate change a top priority. The poll, which sampled the opinions of 18,578 people in 19 countries, found broad popular support for making climate change a top priority extended even to those countries whose governments have yet to commit to global action. In China there was overwhelming support — 94% — for the government to keep climate change on the front burner. And in India, which is also rapidly emerging as one of the world's leading producers of global warming pollution, 59% of the public wanted their government to make climate change a top priority. That defies the hard line taken by the country's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, earlier this month against putting any cap on its greenhouse gas emissions. Around the globe, the public was unconvinced their governments were assigning high enough priority to climate change. The disconnect suggests that there is greater public support for action on public change than elected officials realise, Kull said. "There is a tendency among policy makers to underestimate people's readiness for action." Only four countries — Germany, Britain, China, and Indonesia — considered that their governments were focused on climate change. But, that did not necessarily satisfy the demand for even greater action. Although the majority of Britons, 58%, credit the government with making climate change a major priority, even greater numbers, 89%, believe there is room for the government to do even more.
Congress returns from its July 4 recess Monday with Republicans hard-pressed to accomplish a number of legislative goals in short order — and their top-priority, a health care bill, in jeopardy of collapsing. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., sounded a dire note Sunday about the passage of any plan the GOP-controlled Senate has in the works to repeal and replace ObamaCare. “Clearly, the draft plan is dead,” Cassidy, whose own overhaul plan remains on the sidelines, told “Fox News Sunday. “Is the serious rewrite plan dead? I don’t know. I have not seen the serious rewrite plan. It is a heck of a way to do business.” Cassidy, a doctor, also expressed uncertainty about Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s plan that proposes bare-bone insurance policies, suggesting he’s uncertain about exactly how the Cruz plan works. CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS MUST WORK THE MARGINS TO PASS KEY LEGISLATION Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., suggested over the recess that he might need bipartisan help to fix parts of ObamaCare if he cannot craft an major overhaul bill that will get support from at least 50 of his 52 senators. In overhauling ObamaCare, the GOP-led Congress is trying to give President Trump his first clear legislative win nearly six months after Republicans took full control of Washington. Meanwhile, Congress has other pressing issues, including passing tax reform, spending bills and a budget before the September 30 deadline for the federal government to technically run out of money. And with lawmakers having just three weeks of work before an August recess, some Republicans are suggesting cancelling or at least shortening the break. The House in May passed its own plan to replace ObamaCare as the 2010 health care law continues to falter under rising premium costs while offering Americans few policy options. McConnell is struggling to find GOP votes for a similar package that would replace the Affordable Care Act — ObamaCare's official name — with one easing insurance coverage requirements, cutting Medicaid, erasing penalties on people not buying insurance and repealing tax increases on the well-off. He called off a pre-recess vote on the measure -- which he'd written privately -- as it became clear it would lose. Whether Democrats would help fix the law is unclear. They acknowledge changes are needed but say they won’t participate in a full repeal-and-replace effort. A vote is expected no earlier than the week of July 16. Still, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus expressed optimism Sunday morning about passage. “I don't think it's in half as much trouble as the media wanted to be in,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” If anyone can get it done, Mitch McConnell, President Trump working together with a Senate can. … Whether it'd be before August recess or during August recess, the president expects the Senate to fulfill the promises it made to the American people.” And Trump tweeted later in the day: "For years, even as a 'civilian,' I listened as Republicans pushed the Repeal and Replace of ObamaCare. Now they finally have their chance!" Meanwhile, none of the 12 annual spending bills financing federal agencies is finished, and disagreements have slowed work on a tax overhaul. And no one knows what bargains will be needed to assure autumn passage of a bill extending government borrowing authority and avoiding a crushing federal default. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters Friday that he'd "prefer" to pass the budget in July, suggesting it might linger until fall, adding to Congress' late-year mountain of work. Some conservatives, meanwhile, want to include measures to cut spending as part of any extension of the government's borrowing authority. But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reiterated Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that the administration prefers a straightforward extension, without including contentious agreements on spending cuts. Defense hawks have scoffed at Trump's proposed 2018 military budget as insufficient and are adding billions more. The House is slated to vote this week on a sweeping policy bill that takes issue with Trump's proposed trim to missile defense spending as North Korea pushes its development of weapons capable of striking the United States. The defense bill would provide $696 billion for the Pentagon. It has $28.5 billion more for core Pentagon operations than Trump requested, including an additional $2.5 billion for programs aimed at shielding the homeland from missiles. There's extra money for new jet fighters, ships and additional active duty troops. And a Senate panel this week holds a confirmation this hearing on Trump's choice to replace ousted FBI Director James Comey. Nominee Christopher Wray, a white-collar defense lawyer with a strong law enforcement background, was a high-ranking official in George W. Bush's Justice Department. He later represented New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the Bridgegate scandal. Trump fired Comey in May as the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election pressed on. Members of the Judiciary Committee are certain to press Wray on how independent he would be from Trump. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
International Dota 2 Competition at the MLG Championship in Columbus, Ohio, November 22-24 $50,000 Tournament Includes DK, The Alliance, Na’vi, Fnatic, Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, Speed Gaming, Team Dignitas and More VIP and General Admission Passes Available in the MLG Store From November 22-24, the world’s best Dota 2 teams will compete for $50,000 in an International competition at the MLG Championship at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. The three-day tournament will feature DK, The Alliance, Na’vi, Fnatic, Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, Speed Gaming, Team Dignitas and more competing in Round Robin Play followed by a Single Elimination Championship Bracket. General admission and VIP passes are available now in the MLG Store. The Competition: Tournament Details Dota 2 – $50,000 Prize Pool – 1st Place = $25,000 The world’s best teams will compete in Round Robin Play with the top four teams advancing to a single-elimination championship bracket for a chance at $50,000 in prizes. Teams include: The Alliance – first place team from The International 3 (EU) Na’vi (Natus Vincere) – second place team from The International 3 (EU) Fnatic (EU) DK (China) Evil Geniuses (NA) Team Liquid (NA) Speed Gaming (EU/NA) Team Dignitas – MLG Fall Invitational Winner (NA). Invite-Only Online Qualifier Winner (NA – TBD) – Teams can register now for the Dota 2 Open Online Qualifier taking place from September 28 – October 16. The top eight teams along with the teams finishing 2nd-8th in the NA Fall Dota 2 League will advance to compete in the invite-only qualifier from October 21 – November 6 for this spot at the Championship in Columbus. Watch it LIVE: In-Person and Online The event will take place at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, 400 North High Street – Hall D, Columbus, OH 43215. Spectate In Person: VIP and General Admission passes are available in the MLG Store. VIP Pass - Dota 2: $250 for the entire weekend VIP credential Priority check in line Reserved seating in the first few rows of the game’s main stage area Early admission to the show – Friday, November 22 at 12:30pm Friday venue tour – Friday, November 22 at 12:45pm Friday pre doors open reception with players – Friday, November 22 from 1-2pm Friday afternoon/evening cocktail and snack reception – Friday, November 22 Access to the VIP Lounge all weekend MLG hoodie Chance to win an iBUYPOWER gaming PC! General Admission Pass for the entire weekend – $35 in advance, $50 at the door 9/20/13 to 11/21/13 (11:59 pm ET): $35 Online 11/22/13 to 11/24/13: $50 Online and at the door during the event Watch Online: The competition will be streamed online at www.majorleaguegaming.com. Broadcast details, including information on the Dota 2 In-Game Ticket will be released in the coming weeks. Book a Hotel: Where to Stay in Columbus, Ohio Crowne Plaza Hotel- Columbus Downtown Reservations Phone: 800-338-4462 Hotel Rate: $169 + 16.75% tax s/d/t/q Reservation cutoff date: October 26, 2013 Distance to venue: Across the Street Parking: Parking is $12 overnight (special pricing) Concessions: Comp wifi only for MLG attendees Red Roof Columbus Downtown Reservations Phone: 800-733-7663 Hotel Rate: $115 + 16.75% tax s/d/t/q for 2 beds Reservation cutoff date: October 28, 2013 Distance to venue: 1 block Parking: $10 per night for overnight guests Concessions: Comp wifi only for MLG attendees Hampton Inn& Suites Columbus Downtown Reservations Phone: 614-559-2000 Hotel Rate: $119 + 16.75% tax s/d/t/q Reservation cutoff date: November 1, 2013 Distance to venue: Across the street Parking: $23 per day with in and out privileges Concessions: Comp wifi for MLG attendees Sheraton on Capitol Square Reservations Phone: 800-325-3535 Hotel Rate: $99 + 16.75% tax s/d/t/q for 2 beds Reservation cutoff date: October 30, 2013 Distance to venue: 8 blocks Parking: $14 for self parking Residence Inn Columbus Downtown Reservations Phone: 800-331-3131 Hotel Rate: $139 + 16.75% tax s/d/t/q Reservation cutoff date: November 1, 2013 Distance to venue: 5 blocks Parking: $20 per day with in and out privileges Concessions: Comp wifi for MLG attendees Doubletree Suites Columbus Downtown
- A Fox 9 Investigation has revealed that tracking warrants for a surveillance device called StingRay have routinely been kept sealed, despite a law requiring them to become public with 90 days. The StingRay device is used by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension about 60 times a year, said BCA Superintendent Drew Evans. Hennepin County Sheriff also had a StingRay, but a spokesperson said they discontinued it after using it only four times. "This technology has been absolutely critical in locating some of Minnesota's most violent criminals, more quickly than we ever were before," Evans said. Law enforcement used the technology last month when a disgruntled client allegedly gunned down a clerk at a St. Paul law firm and then went on the run. Police had the suspect's cell phone and tracked him down. Stingray was originally developed for the military, part of a whole class of devices known as "cellular exploitation technologies," that go by names like Kingfish, Gossamer, and Fish-Hawk. Due to a confidentiality agreement with the FBI and StingRay’s manufacturer, Harris Corp., law enforcement is not even allowed to refer to the device by name. Stingray works by essentially mimicking a cell phone tower. It can re-route up to 10,000 cell phone signals in a three mile radius, allowing law enforcement to track down a single cell phone, down to within a few feet. "Just this week we were able to locate a level 3 sexual offender that was non-compliant, a suspect in a series of serial rapes, and a homicide suspect, this week alone," he explained. TRACKING THE TRACKERS Independent journalist, Sam Richards believes he first spotted Stingray being used by small aircraft circling the Twin Cities and then discovering a similar pattern in other cities. He discovered 62 small aircraft registered to dummy corporations connected to the Justice Department. The Associated Press later confirmed his reporting. Recently, Richards believes someone in law enforcement used Stingray to spy on protesters occupying the fourth precinct in Minneapolis after the police killing of Jamar Clark. Using an app called "Snoop Snitch," he spotted cell phones automatically switching over to a more powerful cell tower. "I think they were honestly collecting names and locations of people," said Richards. According to the BCA, the equipment looks for a specific targeted phone. "We are not able to identify specific people like 'Drew Evans' on the network or someone else," said Evans. THE EFFORT TO MAKE TRACKING INFORMATION PUBLIC FAILS Two years ago, Privacy Rights Advocate, Rich Neumeister lobbied Minnesota lawmakers to require a court order for Stingray, one that would become public. "I have a distrust of law enforcement when it comes to this Stingray and Kingfish technology," said Neumeister. According to State Representative John Lesch, DFL-St. Paul, law enforcement didn't want to call it a search warrant, so they compromised on something they call a 'tracking warrant'. Like a search warrant, a tracking warrant still requires probable cause, and must still be signed by a judge. But a tracking warrant would automatically become public after 90 days. And the court would send a so-called target letter to the subject of the warrant, letting them know their phone was traced. Law enforcement could ask a judge to seal the tracking warrant for an additional time, but that was supposed to be the exception, not the rule. "The sweet spot we arrived on tracking warrant is 90 days. There's no reason we should be keeping this data longer," said Lesch. WARRANTS SEALED The Fox 9 Investigators made a troubling discovery when going to court houses, there were no tracking warrants. They were all apparently sealed, with no plan to unseal. In fact, the court clerks were under orders not even to acknowledge their existence and there was no plan to unseal them. That's not the way the law was supposed to work. For two months, the chief judges of Hennepin and Ramsey County declined to talk on camera. A spokesperson for the Minnesota judicial branch, Beau Berentson, said the request by the Fox 9 Investigators: "raised valid issues" “…when electronic tracking warrants should be unsealed." And the courts in Ramsey and Hennepin counties are now reviewing “any sealed electronic tracking warrants.” “…determine whether any should be unsealed." Fox 9 learned many judges didn't fully understand what they were signing: what statute applies to tracking warrants, or even what technology was being used. And target letters to those under surveillance have never been sent, in apparent violation of the law. Lesch tells the Fox 9 Investigators that he was not aware of all the tracking warrants being sealed. "It surprises me because of course you have the exception, swallow the rule." He said he doesn't know if he was misled by law enforcement on the issue. ONE WARRANT MADE PUBLIC Fox 9 could find only one tracking warrant was ever been made public. Ironically, it may go back to those pings Richards picked up at the fourth precinct. Among the documents released in the Clark case, prosecutors needed a special court order to release a tracking warrant. But it wasn't to collect the cell numbers of protesters, it was to find Jamar Clark's friend, Rayann Hayes. The BCA had been unable to locate her to get a statement, so agents used her cell number to track her down with Stingray.
Oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is on the road to recovery, with next year's projected level on pace to end a four-year slump. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said total crude oil production is expected to average 8.5 million barrels per day this year, a 14 percent increase from the previous year. Much of the success story for U.S. oil has come from inland shale basins in Texas and North Dakota. For February, the last full month for which data are available from the EIA, Texas produced 81.8 million barrels of oil, a 24 percent increase year-on-year. North Dakota's 26.6 million barrels produced in February was 22 percent higher than in February 2013. By next year, oil from shale-rich states like Texas and North Dakota is expected to push total U.S. production to 9.2 million barrels per day (bpd), just shy of the high-water mark of 9.6 million bpd in 1970. A 2013 report from the International Energy Agency said the United States is on pace to pass Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the premier oil-producing nation by the end of the decade. Both the IEA, and OPEC, however, have said the pace is unsustainable and predicted that the U.S. boom cycle will go bust by the 2030s. Now the EIA says it has revised its forecast for production from the Gulf of Mexico because new wells from the Mars field began producing in February, ahead of schedule. (Related Article: BP Return to Gulf of Mexico Marks U.S. Energy Sea Change) Shell announced it started production at the Mars B development using its Olympus floating deepwater platform, the first project of its kind in the region. The Dutch supermajor said the new infrastructure should extend the life of the Mars field through 2050 and the entire basin should deliver an estimated 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The EIA said Mars B, owned by Shell and British energy company BP, should reach a production level of 100,000 bpd next year. As a result, the administration said it was raising its expectations for performance in the Gulf of Mexico. "U.S. federal Gulf of Mexico production, which has fallen for four consecutive years, is projected to increase by 150,000 bpd in 2014 and by an additional 240,000 bpd in 2015," the EIA said in its monthly market report. Crude oil production from the Gulf of Mexico was 18 million bpd in 2010, the year of the BP oil spill. The federal government placed a brief moratorium on deepwater activity in response to the tragedy and production in 2011 plummeted as a result. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy A capping system meant to prevent another catastrophe in the Gulf is ready for deployment, Marty Massey, the chief executive at the Marine Well Containment Co. said at a Houston energy conference. Once in place, the Gulf’s comeback should be complete. Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/EIA-Gulf-Oil-Production-Set-For-Rebound.html
Nominated musicals and musical revivals traditionally get a spot to promote their shows with a song or two on each year's Tony Award telecast. But it's not free. Producers must pay for the expense of promoting their productions to a nationwide television audience. So even though Los Angeles' Deaf West Theatre's limited run Broadway revival of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's SPRING AWAKENING was nominated as one of this season's best, $200,000 is needed to pay the costs of having the now-closed production featured on the June 12th telecast. To that end, Deaf West, which is a non-profit theatre company, has set up a Kickstarter campaign to raise the money needed to fly the cast back to New York, get the costumes and instruments and props out of storage, pay for rehearsal space and pay for the television time. Click here for more information and to donate. Deaf West Theatre, Inc. (DWT) was founded in 1991 to directly improve and enrich the cultural lives of over 1.2 million deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals who live in the Los Angeles area. To date, DWT has produced over 40 plays and 4 musicals, won more than 80 theater awards, performed on Broadway, and has been nominated for one Tony Award. For its unique vision and artistic excellence throughout its eighteen-year history, DWT is recognized as the premier sign language theater in the United States. DWT has consistently strived for the highest artistic quality by bringing together some of the most exciting theater professionals from the hearing world to work with deaf and hard of hearing actors of the highest caliber in ambitious American Sign Language adaptations that range from contemporary masterpieces and original works to the classics. DWT has helped launch and nurture the careers of many of today's most recognizable deaf actors. DWT's productions and internationally acclaimed educational programs have contributed significantly to the vibrancy of deaf culture and American theater. Visit deafwest.org. Related Articles
Samsung, Exynos and AOSP Explained: A Story of Betrayal Remember, remember, the first of the Note, the ICS release and plot I know of no reason why the Superbrick treason should ever be forgot Older forum members and Android users of early Samsung devices may faintly recall the Superbrick fiasco. The events that lead up to Superbrick are long and complex. For the sake of brevity, a tl;dr explanation is that a leaked ICS update for a few carrier variants of the Galaxy S2 i9100 and of the Galaxy Note N7000 caused a permanent brick. This was no ordinary hard brick, as an affected device could not be resurrected via a JTAG and was completely dead and unresponsive. The superbrick affected the eMMC of the device, and hence, repairs could only done with a complete motherboard change. The disclaimer that generally goes with “leaks” was valid on this case too, that leaks are essentially “unreleased” software that may or may not be fit for public consumption. However, to complicate matters, this superbricking ICS kernel actually made its way to the Galaxy Note N7000 as an official release available via Kies and OTA updates. The Superbrick fiasco, and the accompanying drama that ensued courtesy of Samsung’s attitude towards developers was highlighted in a 13-post series by Andrew Dodd aka XDA Senior Recognized Developer Entropy512 on his Google+. You can find the beginning of this post series here. We highly recommend that readers take some time off and read the full series of posts to gather complete contextual awareness and understand the full gravity of the situation that happened back in 2012-13. To highlight a few important points, here are a few snippets (with added emphasis) from the posts: “…Obviously, nearly anyone following me is aware of the recent social media storm resulting from the frustration the third-party Android firmware community (especially CyanogenMod users and developers) has been experiencing with Samsung. The “Superbrick” fiasco, the lack of documentation of Samsung’s Exynos4 SoC compared to Qualcomm and TI’s SoCs, and a laundry list of other issues – it has all recently come to a head with the decision of all currently active Exynos4 device maintainers to not take on any new devices…” – Parent post. “…In November, Samsung released XWKK5 for I9100 and UCKK6 for I777. Bluetooth HID on these builds would not function with any source-built kernels – only with binaries associated with those builds. Samsung never released another Gingerbread source update for the I9100, even though their binaries showed clear evidence of a functional change to the source. Similarly, I777 UCKK6 source wasn’t released until some unknown time in mid-2012 – I’m fairly certain not until after I9100 ICS was released at best. That’s right – Samsung was violating the GPL with I777 UCKK6 and every I9100 Gingerbread build from XWKK5 (November 2011) until they officially released I9100 ICS (March 2012) – Actually, technically they still are, as Gingerbread source corresponding to those kernels was never released, but it just doesn’t really matter any more…” “…Around the same time, Samsung launched the Tab 7.0 Plus and Tab 7.7, both based on the same Exynos 4210 SoC found in the GS2….These devices used an Atheros AR6000-series wifi chip. Interestingly, Atheros provides source for these devices under a dual-license, GPL and BSD. (As Atheros holds full copyright to all components of their reference driver, this is legal.) Samsung chose the BSD license for this driver. The end result is, when asked for wifi driver source (which was not present in the source drops for these devices), Samsung replied with “code is dual license GPL or BSD. We choose BSD [over GPL]”…“ – Parent Post “…If there was any obvious conclusion to be made from ICS on the GT-I9100, it was that manufacturer skins do not last. After getting I9100 ICS firmware running on the I777 (primarily by reverse-engineering the swapped mic channels on this device, which took most of a weekend of work…), it was obvious that Touchwizz reverted many of the benefits of ICS. Parts of the firmware were “new”, parts were “legacy Gingerbread”, and the constant discontinuities was jarring…. – Parent Post Even worse… Official ICS launched for the N7000 with XXLPY. We thought Samsung would never let a horrible bug like this get into a released kernel, but we were wrong… – Parent Post “…A contact at Samsung had finally acknowledged that they were aware of the situation and “working diligently” on it… Eventually, Samsung’s “solution” was presented to us. Chainfire was NOT happy with the proposed “solution”, neither was I… It involved no kernel-level protection, and was inferior to what we already had in place with BOARD_SUPPRESS_EMMC_WIPE in CM. In addition they asked us not to distribute the solution and to redirect kernel developers looking for a solution to them!…“ “…Samsung also pretty much refused to discuss any solutions involving bootloaders… The reasoning, which made no sense, was that nearly all of their warranty claims due to custom firmware prior to this eMMC defect were due to bootloader corruption… Of course, this makes no sense, since we wanted to discuss methods of recovering from bootloader corruption, which would eliminate the majority of these warranty costs for Samsung. We were even offering to do the majority of the engineering and solution deployment ourselves, as long as Samsung just gave us some specific small components Dominik and Adam needed!…“ “…Samsung, after “working diligently” for a month, throws a grenade in our faces In early July, XXLQ5 leaked for the I9100. Within a day, numerous reports of bricks had piled up. Not too long afterwards, XWLPM went live on Kies, and people were bricking left and right with this build too. Despite claiming to be working diligently on this problem, instead, Samsung took a previously safe device and endangered it!…” – Parent Post “…So, at this point – It is mid-November 2012, and not a single device affected by Samsung’s defective eMMC has received a kernel fix. While the efforts of the community have damage rates WAY down, as long as Samsung’s official kernels are vulnerable, I’m still going to get a PM every few days from a Superbricked user that needs help whom I cannot help…” – Parent Post “…In mid-August, I decided to go against better judgement and purchase a Note 10.1 (WiFi variant – GT-N8013). I figured that as it shared an SoC with the I9300, it would be a fairly safe bet… Now that I had confirmed, both through the nonfunctionality of the wifi driver, and various string comparisons with the backed up stock kernel, that the released sources for any N80xx variant did NOT match the stock kernels (all of them had the same broken wifi driver, and other people who were working with the sources complained about similar issues.), I raised the issue with my contact at Samsung…. They tracked someone down, and that person’s response was: Samsung was under no obligation to provide source that matched the UEALGB build for GT-N8013, as that was not an official build. Yes, that’s right – someone actually dared to claim that the firmware preinstalled on every GT-N8013 unit sold in the United States was a LEAK. This marked the third time someone within Samsung Mobile had blatantly lied to my contact’s face…” – Parent Post “…So between that, other things (see earlier installments of this saga for many examples), and Superbrick, pretty much all of the Exynos4 maintainers were at the limits of exhaustion with Samsung and especially with Exynos4. I indicated that the Note 10.1 was going to be my last device, and I was not sure how long I’d be staying with the I777 and N7000, as I was exhausted at this point too. I was tired of being months behind the rest of the Cyanogenmod team because I worked with devices that had more blobs and more interface breaks in the blobs than any other device (Except for Tegra3 devices, but people already knew to avoid these unless they were in a Nexus.)…” – Parent Post “…Near the end [of BABBQ 2012] was Samsung’s developer relations presentation. This was where they promised to improve the quality of reference source code and documentation for Exynos4, in theory alleviating the community’s concerns. The actual presentation content promised little – nearly everything they announced was stuff that already existed technically but was of little to no use due to it being outdated or simply nonfunctional…” – Parent Post All of this has just been yet another case of Samsung talking and making promises and failing to deliver, just like they’ve been talking and making promises for over a year. Development boards are supposed to be AHEAD of handsets – they don’t need to deal with carrier testing, wireless certifications, or any of the things that are usually notorious for holding back handset updates. Plus their intended target is DEVELOPERS, so they should be the “bleeding edge”. This is what Qualcomm and TI reference source is – It’s the absolute latest, ahead of anything seen on handsets. What we’re getting from Samsung is more than 6 months out of date – ICS for an SoC that was in a handset which launched with ICS in Spring 2012, and which received an official Jellybean update (carrier approvals/wireless certs and all) in early October 2012… But they’re still working on ICS for their reference source??? – Parent Post The series was concluded with a summary post which can be found here. We recommend that all users read it before proceeding. The starting point of this article was to try and explain why Exynos devices usually lack in terms of AOSP based development when compared to Qualcomm devices. The above mentioned and quoted G+ post series highlighted the difficulties faced by a maintainer of an Exynos device. The post is dated for the time period 2011-2013, so we reached out to a few of the mentioned developers to figure out how the situation currently stands. Afterall, a lot can change in 3 years in the mobile world. Not for Samsung and its support for AOSP, it seems. Q: Why do AOSP ROM’s take so long to come for Exynos devices, as compared to say, Qualcomm devices? A: XDA Senior Recognized Developer codeworkx: Qualcomm releases always up to date source code which is needed to get all components of their platform working on aosp. See here. Samsung does nothing. XDA Senior Recognized Developer Entropy512: “Qualcomm CAF is vastly superior in terms of traceability to/from OEM releases (I have never seen an OEM device other than a Nexus that wasn’t easily traceable back to a CAF tag at CodeAurora), quality of code, and frequency of updates to Insignal (which has no KitKat for the “Arndale Octa” and nothing newer than ICS for the Exynos4.) In addition to being outdated, there’s absolutely zero traceability between Samsung Mobile’s OEM releases and the Exynos reference source, while all OEMs have a fairly decent amount of traceability back to CAF (HTC and Samsung somewhat less so than others, but still far better than anything Exynos) Wait, they eventually released JB for the Origen Quad? Not until KitKat was nearly out… And what they called JB was probably close to the useless disaster that was their Gingerbready “ICS” Exynos3 aka Hummingbird was a completely different story thanks to the Nexus S, but Samsung has made a point of never sharing a chipset between Nexus devices and any of their other devices since then. (Galaxy Nexus was OMAP4 while everything else of that era with a few exceptions was Exynos4, Nexus 10 and the Samsung Chromebook were two of the only Exynos 5250 devices ever to ship, Exynos 54xx switched from Mali GPU to PowerVR along with a whole bunch of other changes so manta was useless for I9500, etc.)” Q: What is the future of Exynos Development? What steps could Samsung undertake to make themselves more dev-friendly? A: Codeworkx: There’s no future. All devs you’ve written to have stopped working on exynos devices a long time ago. Most of them even stopped to work on samsung devices in general. We’ve asked more than once for source code and nothing happened. They simply don’t care about the community. All they care about is $$$ It is clear that the situation is almost identical to what it was more than 3 years ago. Samsung devices, specifically Exynos based, remain poor examples of showcasing the work of the development community outside of Touchwiz based examples. All development for the device remains largely restricted to modifications to Touchwiz, with the scene of custom ROMs revolving around adding or removing features from Samsung’s closed source OS “skin” through reverse engineering. This is not to say that Exynos devices get absolutely no support at all for AOSP ROMs. AOSP Roms, like CM and the likes, do eventually land on these devices, but these come after a lot of low level hackery and extreme efforts by maintainers brave enough to devote all their free time fixing what Samsung broke. Even then, the end result is not an AOSP experience the likes of which you’d expect normally, and for this, you can safely blame Samsung. The wounds of Superbrick are still fresh on those who put together their heart and soul in working towards a broken cause that calls itself Samsung. If you are looking to get a device with the first criterion being custom ROM development and 3rd party ROM developer support, follow along the words of wisdom shared by Codeworkx:
“And more recently the girl told her that ‘Christmas and Easter are stupid’ and that ‘European women are stupid and alcoholic’…the child was ‘very distressed’ and claimed the foster carer had removed her Christian cross and encouraged her to learn Arabic.” Imagine what the outcry would be if a Muslim child were placed in a Christian family that denigrated her Muslim beliefs. And that would never happen in Britain or anywhere else in the West. But this incident is all in a day’s work in shattered, staggering, dhimmi Britain, in which the May government is so bent on appeasing Islamic supremacists and jihadis that it is willingly sacrificing non-Muslim children to the chimera of a harmonious multicultural future, a vision that will dissolve in blood. “Christian girl, 5, is forced into foster care with Burka-wearing Muslim carers who ‘took away her crucifix and stopped her eating bacon,'” by Fiona Parker and Martin Robinson, Mailonline, August 28, 2017 (thanks to Blah):
If you dread getting in a cab with a chatty driver, this is the service for you. A Japanese taxi company, Miyako Taxi, is now trialing a "silent taxi" service where drivers don't talk to you at all, according to RocketNews24. The taxis look like any other — except for a notice pasted in the car, informing customers it's a silent one: 動画サイレントタクシー車内 A post shared by 都タクシー株式会社 (@miyakotaxi) on Apr 5, 2017 at 2:17am PDT Image: Miyako Taxi Image: MIYAKO TAXI The drivers won't say anything, except to greet you, confirm your route, and if an emergency arises. Ten of these silent taxis now ply the roads of Kyoto, out of Miyako's fleet of 354 taxis. Through limiting small talk, the company aims to provide a more comfortable ride to passengers, according to Miyako Taxi's statement. The company recognises that some passengers might not like small talk, and would just want to enjoy their rides in silence, rather than holding people verbally hostage, according to RocketNews24. But if you still like small talk, you can chat up the taxi drivers, who aren't banned from talking to you. The company has been running the service for about two weeks now, and may expand the silent fleet to more taxis. Here's hoping.
Tens of Iranian pilgrims are reportedly still missing following a deadly crush during Hajj rituals near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Press TV reports. The incident occurred on Thursday in Mina, near Mecca, after huge pilgrim processions were joined in their course, leading to the catastrophic entanglement. It has been reported that the convoy of Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, the son of Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, had arrived at the site, forcing the pilgrims to change their original directions. Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization says the tragic incident claimed the lives of more than 1,300 people, including 131 Iranians. Saudi officials, however, put the death toll at 717. Saeed Ohadi, the head of Iran's Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization, released the Iranian death toll on Thursday night, adding that the number of the fatalities could rise. Witness accounts Meanwhile, eyewitnesses have said that injured pilgrims are not receiving adequate medical care in Saudi hospitals and medical centers. An Iranian survivor, meanwhile, told Press TV that Saudi officials had been slow in responding to the emergency situation. “It took the rescue workers two hours or more to arrive at the scene,” he said, adding, “The rescue workers, who were just a few, started collecting dead bodies instead of taking care of the injured.” A handout picture provided by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) on September 12, 2015 and taken late the day before shows the base of a crane that collapsed at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia. (Photo by AFP) Saudi competence questioned The crush and a number of other recent deadly incidents have reignited the debate about Riyadh’s competence to manage the annual Islamic pilgrimage. On September 11, a crane collapsed at the Grand Mosque of Mecca, killing over 100 people. Hundreds of people were also injured. According to the figures released by Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization, 11 Iranian pilgrims were among the deceased and 32 of the injured were also Iranian nationals. Separately, a fire at a 15-story hotel in Mecca forced some 1,500 people to leave the place on Monday. A fire at another hotel in the city had likewise forced mass evacuations last Thursday.
by In my role with the Stateless Man, name-calling against me seems to be par for the course. Recently, for example, someone emailed and called me a “Capital Communist.” “Cultural Marxist” is also a regular favorite with my detractors. As you can gauge, given that I advocate against collectivism, any connection with reality is beside the point when it comes to these character attacks. All I can say is good luck to those people, since any fruitful engagement appears out of the question. Yes, I’ve lived in a “cave” in five countries @SpiritSplice and traveled alone through many more. #Sheltered in #Colombia — The Stateless Man (@TheStatelessMan) June 12, 2013 There is one criticism, however, that is more widespread and merits a response. It is that I and other people who do not give allegiance to nationality are “unpatriotic” (or selfish). We do not appreciate the support that people in government in our native countries have given to us and are disloyal. Going by that use of the term, I am guilty as charged. I do not appreciate what government officials have done to me, and I’m not loyal to them. Far from having provided support, they have stolen from me and have sought to control my life in countless ways. Now they have the audacity to claim they have done me a favor and expect my allegiance. Please, pull the other one. As Harry Browne said: “Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, ‘See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.'” A particularly sore point is the many wasted and unpleasant years in government schooling, which only got in the way of my education. As noted in my article, “Books That Have Changed My Life,” not a single book from my elementary and high school years was of sufficient interest to make my top ten list. In fact, after fourteen years of schooling in New Zealand, including one year at university, my writing was so poor that assessors at Boston University thought I must have been a non-native speaker. “Uh, we speak English in New Zealand,” I told them. Not only do the social contract and fair play arguments for political obedience and allegiance not hold water, acceptance of them has led to immensely destructive outcomes. A recent article from Jacob Hornberger, “Who Were the Patriots and Traitors in Nazi Germany?” tells the sad tale. The German people had the same warped and distorted concept of patriotism that American statists have today… The overwhelming majority of German citizens believed that it was their moral duty to come to the unconditional support of their government… The good citizen didn’t question whether his government was right or wrong… [He placed] his trust in the judgment and decisions of his government officials, especially during crisis and war… The good citizen — the one who deferred to authority — was considered the patriot. There is, however, a completely different understanding of patriotism. It is one that I subscribe to and promoted in my Fiscal Insight newsletter, “What You, The Patriot, Can Do.” In that newsletter, I drew from Lawrence Reed and his pamphlet, “The True Meaning of Patriotism.” Reed asserts that patriotism is not a feeling or a blind trust in government officials, and it is not necessarily a love of country. Rather, it is “Freedom — understanding it, living it, and teaching it. That… is what patriotism should mean to each of us today.” In the case of the United States, the founding document, the Declaration of Independence, does coincide with this idea. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In so far as patriotism means support for and a life consistent with this ideal, then I will gladly endorse it. Let us not forget, however, that this American ideal is not the sole property of a geographical region, which has changed markedly since then anyway. Additionally, its existence on paper does not guarantee existence in reality, and freedom is in a sorry state in the United States.
By: Dr. David Rabiner — Most children with ADHD receive their care from community-based pediatricians. Given the large number of school-age children who require evaluation and treatment services for ADHD, and the adverse impact that poor quality care can have on children’s development, it is important for children to routinely receive care in the community that is consistent with best-practice guidelines. The American Academy of Pediatrics has clearly recognized this and published guidelines for the evaluation of ADHD back in 2000; this was followed by a set of treatment guidelines in 2001. Based on data collected since then, these guidelines were modified in 2011. Below is a brief summary of the key elements from these guidelines. Evaluation Recommendations for school-age children Youth ages 4 through 18 years who present to their primary care clinician with academic or behavioral problems and symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, or impulsivity should be evaluated for ADHD. Diagnosing ADHD requires determining that DSM criteria for the disorder have been met. Making this determination requires information to be obtained from parents or guardians, teachers, and others. Clinicians should rule out any alternative cause of the child’s ADHD symptoms. You can find here a review of DSM diagnostic criteria — these recently changed with the publication of DSM-V. ADHD evaluations should include assessment for other conditions that may co-occur with ADHD, including emotional or behavioral (eg, anxiety, depressive, oppositional defiant, and conduct disorders), developmental (eg, learning and language disorders or other neurodevelopmental disorders), and physical (eg, tics, sleep apnea) conditions. Treatment recommendations for school-age children Treatment and management of ADHD should reflect that it is a chronic condition and may impact children’s development and functioning over many years. Parents need to be supported in consistently implementing treatments for their child over an extended period. Specific treatment recommendations vary by the age of the child. For children ages 4–5, evidence-based parent- and/or teacher-administered behavior therapy should be the first line of treatment. Stimulant medication may be prescribed if improvement is not significant and there remain moderate-to-severe disturbances in the child’s function. For 6–11 year old children, FDA-approved medications for ADHD and/or evidence-based parent- and/or teacher-administered behavior therapy are the front line treatments for ADHD; ideally, these treatments would be combined. The school setting is an essential context for any treatment plan. For adolescents, FDA-approved medications should be prescribed with the adolescent’s assent. Behavior therapy may also be prescribed and will ideally be combined with medication. Note that for all ages, family preference is an essential element in determining the treatment plan. For older children and adolescents, their preference should also be taken into account. When prescribing medication, clinicians should titrate doses of ADHD medication to achieve the maximum benefit with minimum side effects. Clinicians should inform parents and children that changing medication dose and/or medication may be necessary to determine the optimal medication/dose and that this can require several months. - It is important for medication efficacy to be systematically monitored at regular intervals so that adjustments can be made when indicated. How well are these recommendations being followed? The best data on this question comes from a study published online recently in Pediatrics [Epstein, et al. (2014). Variability in ADHD care in community-based pediatric practices. Pediatrics] The authors recruited 184 pediatricians across 50 pediatric practices in Central and Northern Ohio for a study focused on improving community-based care for children with ADHD. For each pediatrician, 10 charts for patients with an ADHD diagnosis code were randomly selected so that the assessment and treatment procedures received by those patients could be reviewed. For each chart reviewed, the researchers documented the following: Presence of parent and teacher ratings of ADHD symptoms during the assessment. Documentation that the child met DSM criteria for ADHD. Documentation of whether ADHD medication was prescribed. Documentation that behavior therapy was suggested. Date of initial ADHD medication prescription. Dates of ADHD-related treatment visits or other contacts, e.g., phone, email. Dates of collection for parent and teacher ADHD rating scales. Results Evidence that DSM criteria for ADHD were met was documented in approximately 70% of patients’ charts. Thus, for nearly one-third of children diagnosed with ADHD, evidence that DSM criteria were met was missing. ADHD rating scales were collected from parents and teachers for roughly 56% of youth with an ADHD diagnosis. Presumably, pediatricians would have obtained information about ADHD symptoms from parents via other means, i.e., clinical interview. For teachers, however, the absence of rating scales in over 40% of the cases suggests obtaining information directly from teachers is frequently not done , as speaking with teachers on the phone is unlikely to have occurred. , as speaking with teachers on the phone is unlikely to have occurred. Pediatricians prescribed ADHD medication to roughly 93% of youth diagnosed with ADHD. Documentation that behavioral treatment was recommended, however, was present in only 13% of the charts. Follow-up contact (visit, phone call, or email) within 30 days of prescribing medication was documented in fewer than 50% of charts. Thus, for over half of youth prescribed medication, there is no indication that any information on the child’s response to medication was obtained during the 1st month. For youth on medication for at least one year, an average of 5.7 contacts occurred during the year; the majority of these were office visits, some were phone calls, and email was virtually never used. Contacts declined during the 2nd and 3rd year of treatment. With respect to monitoring treatment response with standardized ratings, this rarely occurred. Only 11% of charts had any evidence of parent ratings to monitor treatment response and less than 8% had teacher ratings within the 1st year of treatment. In addition, the average time between initiating medication treatment and collecting parent or teacher ratings was quite long — 396 days for parents and 362 days for teachers. Summary and Implications Results from this study are unfortunately clear and discouraging in that guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics on the evaluation and treatment of ADHD are frequently not followed. The data indicate that many children are diagnosed with ADHD in the absence of clearly meeting DSM diagnostic criteria and that behavioral treatment is rarely recommended. Although pediatricians are frequently initiating medication treatment — which has a strong evidence base — gathering data early in treatment to determine the child’s response is often neglected and systematically monitoring treatment response over time hardly ever occurs. As a result, many children are likely to be deriving significantly less benefit from such treatment than they would if the guidelines were routinely followed. This is because careful monitoring often reveals the need to adjust a child’s dose, and sometimes medication, to maintain optimal benefits. Although I don’t like to be pessimistic, it is worth noting that these findings may underestimate the degree to which AAP evaluation and treatment guidelines are failing to be followed. Thus, this study provided no data on whether pediatricians’ evaluations included the assessment of other conditions that often co-occur with ADHD so that a comprehensive treatment plan could be developed. Given that such co-occurring problems are unlikely to be addressed by ADHD medication alone, and that behavioral or other psychosocial treatments were so infrequently recommended, it seems likely that co-occurring problems were often not addressed. In the relatively small percentage of children for whom referrals for such treatment was made, no information on the quality of such treatment was available. I think it is important not to interpret these findings as an opportunity to blame pediatricians for providing poor quality care to many children with ADHD. Certainly, the data indicate that there is ample room for improvement in terms of pediatricians following the AAP guidelines more consistently. However, pediatricians often have dozens (or in some cases, hundreds) of youth with ADHD in their practice and providing systematic follow up care and treatment monitoring in the context of a busy community-based practice can be extraordinarily difficult. Even when rating scales are provided to parents and teachers so that a child’s treatment can be monitored, they are often not returned in a timely manner. Thus, the behavior of parents and teachers can undermine a physician’s efforts to provide care consistent with AAP guidelines despite his or her best efforts. There are limits, of course, in what can be concluded from this study. In particular, all pediatricians were recruited from a specific geographic area, and generalizations to the care provided in other regions can’t be made with certainty. The authors conclude by noting that “Although guidelines are an important first step, additional efforts, likely initiated or incentivized outside the practice, are required to improve the quality of care delivered in pediatric settings. Such efforts may take the form of quality improvement, clinical decision support tools, using pay-for-performance incentives,and/or partnering with mental health professionals.” – Dr. David Rabiner is a child clinical psychologist and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He publishes Attention Research Update, an online newsletter that helps parents, professionals, and educators keep up with the latest research on ADHD, and teaches the online course How to Navigate Conventional and Complementary ADHD Treatments for Healthy Brain Development. To learn more:
Story highlights Sheriff's spokeswoman: Ebony Dickens is out of jail after posting $10,000 bond Police: Authorities found a firearm, three computers in her East Point residence Dickens is accused of posting her Facebook rant under the name Tiffany Milan Atlanta (CNN) A fake name on a Facebook post can still get you in real trouble, especially when you're threatening to shoot every white cop you see. Ebony Dickens of East Point, Georgia, posted her Facebook rant under the name Tiffany Milan, police said. "All Black ppl should rise up and shoot at every white cop in the nation starting NOW," said the post made on Monday. "I condone black on white killings. Hell they condone crimes against us." Police say Ebony Dickens made this Facebook post under the name Tiffany Milan The post was removed a day later, just before Dickens was arrested, CNN affiliate WSB reported "I thought about shooting every white cop I see in the head until I'm either caught by the police or killed by them. Ha!!!! I think I can pull it off. Might kill at least 15 tomorrow, I'm plotting now." Read More
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union will step up checks on its citizens traveling abroad, tighten gun control and collect more data on airline passengers, ministers agreed on Friday in response to the Paris attacks a week ago. Migrants hold banners as they wait to cross the border from Greece to Gevgelija, Macedonia November 20, 2015. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski Interior and justice ministers, who met in Brussels at the request of France following the Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people, also agreed to share more intelligence, especially on suspects like the Belgians and Frenchmen believed to have come back from Syria to strike at Parisians last Friday. And they will put in place new controls on bitcoin, cash and other ways of moving money around Europe outside monitored banking systems. “We need to act firmly, we need to act swiftly and with force,” French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told a news conference as he hailed the level of support France had secured. With indications that some of the Paris attackers, who were on counter-terrorism watchlists, reached Europe among crowds of refugees or on fake passports, all travelers, including EU citizens, going to or from the 26-nation open-borders Schengen zone will systematically be checked against police databases. At present, most EU citizens are merely subject to a visual check of their documents. Pressed by France, ministers also agreed to revise the Schengen border code in due course to make such systematic checks of EU citizens compulsory and also introduce biometric data checks for those crossing the borders. The arrival of some million migrants, including many Syrian refugees, this year and their subsequent mass movements across Europe’s borders has shaken the Schengen system. Security fears after the Paris attacks have also seen states reintroduce checks at once-untended frontiers. The ministers repeated a will to implement measures agreed this year to check better who enters. INTELLIGENCE SHARING “Everyone agreed that while it was France that was attacked, it was the whole of Europe that was the target,” the Luxembourg minister who chaired the meeting told a news conference. “A national approach is not enough. We need more Europe,” added Etienne Schneider. But echoing concerns at the table that national security remain the domain of member states he stressed that new EU legislation would be limited: “The instruments are there for the most part, so it’s now a question of using them.” A proposal by the European commissioner for internal affairs for a European Intelligence Agency found little support from national governments and Dimitris Avramopoulos himself played it down as an “ideal idea” that was “not on the table right now”. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said: “We are here to show our French colleagues, and the French people, that we stand by them.” That solidarity would partly be in the form of more sharing of information on potential security threats. That would focus on exchanging intelligence on fighters in Syria — currently, officials say, fewer than half the 5,000 or so Europeans fighting for Islamist rebels are documented in the database held by EU police coordination agency Europol. France has accused Belgium of being lax in its surveillance of radicals and more generally there has been concern that known criminals and suspects have been able to enter the EU in one country, where data is not held, and then travel around easily. The suspected planner of the Paris attacks, 28-year-old Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud, killed in a police raid on a safe house on Wednesday, boasted on Islamic State websites of traveling to Europe from Syria despite his face being on wanted posters. About half of the data comes from just five of the 28 member states, officials said — without revealing those failing to help: “Some of them are. Not all of them are,” Europol Director Rob Wainwright told Reuters. “Frankly, they need to do more.” Slideshow (3 Images) A new counter-terrorism center at Europol, starting in January, would help, he said: “The key to respond to such a complex and now clearly an international threat of the dimension that we’ve seen is information sharing — the ability to collect and connect the right intelligence at the right time.” Ministers also agreed to press for a deal by the end of the year on sharing airline travelers’ data, the so-called Passenger Name Record (PNR) program, which has long been stalled in the European Parliament over concerns for privacy.
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard says it has brought down an Israeli stealth drone above the Natanz uranium enrichment site in the centre of the country. The Guards issued a statement saying the drone was trying to penetrate the site, state news agency ISNA said on Sunday. "The downed aircraft was of the stealth, radar-evasive type and it intended to penetrate the off-limit nuclear area in Natanz... but was targeted by a ground-to-air missile before it managed to enter the area," ISNA said, citing a statement by the Revolutionary Guards. "This act demonstrates a new adventurism by the Zionist regime... The Revolutionary Guard and the other armed forces reserve the right to respond to this act," the statement added. The Israeli military said it did not comment on foreign reports. Natanz is Iran's main uranium enrichment site, housing more than 16,000 centrifuges. Around 3,000 more are at the Fordo plant, buried inside a mountain and hard to destroy. Espionage and sabotage Iran's nuclear programme has been the target of espionage and sabotage efforts in the past. In 2010, the so-called Stuxnet virus temporarily disrupted operation of thousands of centrifuges, key components in nuclear fuel production at Natanz. Iran says it and other computer virus attacks are part of a concerted effort by Israel, the US and their allies to undermine its nuclear programme through covert operations. Israel has never commented on the allegations but is widely believed to have been involved in the Stuxnet attack. Since then, Iran has also said that it discovered tiny timed explosives planted on centrifuges but disabled them before they could go off. Tehran has said it captured several US drones that violated the country's airspace in the past. In 2011, Iran said it captured an advanced CIA spy RQ-170 Sentinel drone and later reverse-engineered it. Final nuclear deal Iran and the P5+1 powers - Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany - reached a six-month interim agreement under which Iran suspended part of its nuclear activities in return for a partial lifting of international sanctions. In July that deal was extended by four months until November 24 to give the two sides more time to negotiate a final accord aimed at ending 10 years of tensions over Iran's nuclear programme. The sides remain split on how much uranium enrichment Iran should be allowed to carry out. Washington wants Tehran to slash its programme by three-quarters, but Iran wants to expand enrichment ten-fold by 2021, chiefly to produce fuel for its Bushehr nuclear power plant. Israel, a sworn enemy of Iran, opposes any agreement allowing Tehran to keep part of its uranium enrichment programme, saying Iran could use the material to make an atomic bomb. Iran has consistently denied wanting to make nuclear weapons.
Image caption Sir Lenny Henry received a knighthood for services to drama and charity in 2015. Actor and comedian Sir Lenny Henry is to present a 10-part radio documentary on the history of black British theatre and screen. Raising the Bar will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November. The series is part of the BBC's On Stage season, celebrating theatre in the UK. Sir Lenny said it will highlight the "history and struggle of black British creativity" over the last century. Trinidadian playwright Mustapha Matura, actor and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah and theatre director Paulette Randall are among interviewees. "This Radio 4 series covers a huge span of black British theatre, TV and film - from Ira Aldridge to Steve McQueen and Nina Baden-Semper to Bola Agbaje - it's a great sweep of history that excites and stimulates the imagination," Sir Lenny said. "It is easy to forget that there were precedents to our current age of BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) breakthroughs and by talking to the likes of Roy Williams and Mustapha Matura, we acknowledge that the young reach their current heights by standing on the shoulders of those that went before." Image caption Lenny Henry was guest editor of the Radio 4 Today programme for a day, last year. Sir Lenny has been a prominent campaigner for greater ethnic diversity in the arts. He is part of BBC director general Tony Hall's working group - which includes broadcaster Floella Benjamin and DJ Nihal - to improve diversity at the corporation. In December last year, he guest edited the Today programme on Radio 4. It featured interviews with people who helped to break down racial barriers a generation ago, and asked what progress was still needed in fields such as broadcasting, sport and business. Last year, delivering a lecture to Bafta, the comedian said funds should be set aside to boost the presence of BAME people in the broadcasting industry. He put the presence of those from BAME backgrounds in the creative industry at 5.4%, a figure he described as "appalling". BBC On Stage will be broadcast across radio, television and online in November as a push to get people involved in the creative arts. The season will also include the previously announced adaptation of The Dresser starring Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Anthony Hopkins.
Promising Indian racer Arjun Maini took his first win of the 2015 Toyota Racing Series in the first race of the weekend at Teretonga, to close on the championship lead and keep up the M2 Competition team’s 100 per cent winning record from the first four races. The race was red-flagged after pole-sitter Matteo Ferrer and fourth-place starter Santino Ferrucci both crashed out on the opening lap. At the restart, Maini nicked the lead from his team-mate Brandon Maisano and quickly built an advantage out front. The safety car was back on track though when Sam MacLeod suffered his second retirement of the campaign on lap four after running seventh. Maini was able to keep Maisano at arm’s length over the remainder of the race, winning by a second. Championship leader Lance Stroll – a double winner in the opening round last weekend at Ruapuna – made it a 1-2-3 finish for M2 with two late passes on Charlie Eastwood and then James Munro, posting the fastest lap and new track record in the process. Ferrari Driver Academy member Stroll therefore maintains a ten-point lead over Maini, having started the day 25 ahead. With fourth, home favourite Munro clinched his best result of the season so far after a disappointing opening weekend, and recovered well from ending qualifying upside down. Eastwood took his third top-five finish, ahead of the Victory Motor Racing duo of Stefan Riener and race three pole-man Brendon Leitch. GP2’s Artem Markelov was eighth, followed by Jamie Conroy and Ferdinand Habsburg. Alfonso Celis was unable to take part due to chassis damage sustained in his qualifying crash, and Giles team-mate John Simonyan also failed to make the start. UPDATE: Post-race penalties to Maini and Maisano have handed Stroll the victory, with Munro and Riener completing the podium.
The UN is enabling the spread of hatred, the encouragement of terrorism and the promotion of the elimination of the Jewish state, according to a new report, obtained by The Algemeiner, on the “use and abuse” of the international body by NGOs to “broadcast and support antisemitism.” The report, to be released officially on September 1, was prepared by the NGO Human Rights Voices and the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, based in New York. The comprehensive document — titled “UN Non-Governmental Organizations: Inciting Hatred, Antisemitism and Violence From the World Stage” — provides a detailed list of numerous UN-accredited groups that openly express hatred for Jews and engage in virulent anti-Israel activity, including calls for and the justification of Palestinian violence. Its authors — Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of HRV, and Sarah Willig, research fellow at HRV — present dozens of chilling examples of false and hostile claims made by UN-accredited NGOs. All of the examples in the 78-page report were publicly accessible online in 2016. A few choice excerpts below illustrate the level of anti-Jewish and antisemitic sentiment published in journals and posted on websites and social media of UN-accredited NGOs and often distributed or made available by UN bodies and websites directly: Zionism’s ‘final solution’ to Israel’s much-touted and racist ‘demographic threat’ allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide, whether slow-motion or in bloodthirsty spurts of violence. Indeed, the very essence of Zionism requires ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide against the Palestinians… — From “The Palestinian Genocide by Israel,” Islamic Human Rights Commission, accredited with Special Consultative Status by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and accredited by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), last accessed on August 25, 2016. It feels sometimes like the occupation will never end, like the American public will never wake up, like the Israeli government, army, and lobby are all-powerful. This feeling is especially… in Washington, where defying the Israel lobby can still cost you a promotion or even your job — From “Farewell, Figleaf,” Americans For Middle East Understanding, accredited by CEIRPP, last accessed on August 25, 2016. …[O]ur world is now faced with the emergence of a new type of Nazism…Zionism, with its inhumane ethnic, racist principles, with its devilish schemes which generate chaos all over the world, with its dangerous plans to dominate,…with its beastly octopus which has almost a decisive role in directing the policies of the greatest countries in the world, cannot be viewed as a threat to this region alone, but to the whole world… — From “Zionism & Racism,” International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD), accredited with Special Consultative Status by ECOSOC, last accessed on August 25, 2016. The Association opposes Zionism because of its exclusionist, aggressive and racist nature. — From “Basis of Unity,” Canada Palestine Association, Vancouver, accredited by CEIRPP, last accessed on August 25, 2016. According to the Old Testament, when the ancient Israelites attacked Canaan, God held back the sun to enable them to finish the job. It would appear that the US, which often plays the role of God in modern times, has been performing the same service for Israel in the Jewish state’s latest war in the Middle East… — From “A US/Israeli debacle in the Middle East,” Third World Network, accredited with Roster Status by ECOSOC and accredited by CEIRPP, last accessed on August 22, 2016. This year uncovered, for the first time, the practice of extracting human organs from killed Palestinians whose bodies were in the hands of Israeli forces and the sale of these organs. — From “2011 — Palestine: Hopes, Frustrations and Hypocrisy,” International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD), accredited with Special Consultative Status by ECOSOC, last accessed August 25, 2016. Bayefsky and Willig explained that the process of UN accreditation for NGOs is generally done either through ECOSOC or the Department of Public Information and is conditional on a commitment to act in conformity with the UN Charter and its promise of equality and security for individuals and states alike. In the case of Israel-related matters, they wrote, “It can also be acquired through the CEIRPP,” similarly on condition that the “aims and purposes of the organization” seeking accreditation conform to “the spirit, purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” What accreditation grants these NGOs, according to the report, is: — The ability to secure meeting space within UN buildings to sponsor speakers, mount exhibits and screen films, (within immediate proximity to the world’s press, which have offices in the UN buildings in New York City and Geneva). — The permission to speak at important UN meetings and have their words translated and broadcast globally via UN webcasts (archived for the public, researchers and students from elementary schools to college campuses. — The permission to submit written statements to UN bodies that are assigned official UN symbol numbers, posted on UN websites and archived in searchable formats. — Invitations to attend negotiating sessions and decision-making forums (thereby gaining access to the world’s diplomatic corps, with the attendant opportunities for influence). — Increased traffic to their websites, with UN sites linking directly to a number of them, thereby promulgating their messages. In an interview with The Algemeiner when he assumed his post last October, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon vowed to introduce a policy of “zero tolerance for the bias and lies” faced by the Jewish state at the international body. Some eight months later, he was elected to chair the UN’s prestigious Legal Committee, marking the first time in history that an Israeli representative headed a permanent committee since the country joined the world body in 1949.
The re-branded Coin Congress is gathering European and American decentralisation inspirers for an Amsterdam event 17-18 February. Dozens of blockchain experts and hundreds of guests are expected to attend. The initiative which describes itself as an “international event experience focused on celebrating decentralization in FinTech, disruptive tech and culture, the sharing economy, and the future of work” has already held two massive scale events in San Francisco and Singapore, and is now heading to Europe. Amsterdam was chosen as a venue due to its reputation as an environment highly adaptive to emerging technologies and having top competitiveness ranking. “It is a growing hotbed of disruptive technology and companies within Europe rivaling Berlin and London. This is important as decentralization as theme in society will only continue to grow as these types of technologies and communities mature. We look to take advantage of these trends and build a global community around them,” says Matt McKibbin, Partnership Consultant at D10e. The event will provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs, investors, “…makers, and dreamers obsessed with everything from bitcoin and blockchains to 3D printing and drones” to meet together, talk over new initiatives, attend presentations and panels, and build a long-time friendship. As stated on their official web-site, the D10e team focuses most on “engagement, knowledge-sharing, community, and conversation.” Joining the event as a sponsor is also described as highly beneficial, as the companies will be “uniquely positioned to showcase their product, connect meaningfully with a sophisticated audience, and shape the attendee experience.” The sponsors are proposed a marketing strategy for before, during, and after the event, its implementation based on each company’s “marketing needs.” As of today, listed sponsors include Airbitz, ChangeTip, Netki, Blockchain Capital, CoinTelegraph and over a dozen more. During the event, the finalists of the Blockchain Startup Competition will have an opportunity to present their projects, while the D10e participants will get a chance to game, earning points for every new person they meet, every session they attend and more. D10e is a remote team based mostly in the US and distributed from the East to West Coast. The project sprang from Coin Congress which laid the foundations for bringing the disruptors together globally. Maria Rudina
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it had launched a criminal investigation into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes showing the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects. The logo of the Central Intelligence Agency is swept clean in the lobby of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia March 3, 2005. The Justice Department will launch a criminal investigation of the CIA's destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. REUTERS/Jason Reed “There is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation,” said Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The Central Intelligence Agency last month disclosed that in 2005 it destroyed hundreds of hours of tapes from the interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects, prompting an outcry from Democrats, human rights activists and some legal experts. The interrogations, which took place in 2002, were believed to have included a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding, condemned internationally as torture. President George W. Bush has said the United States does not torture but has declined to be specific about interrogation methods. The Justice Department and the CIA’s inspector general last month launched an initial inquiry into the destruction of the tapes. The CIA says it acted lawfully in destroying the tapes, but critics say the agency flouted court orders and investigators’ requests that it hand over evidence in various terrorism cases. A Justice Department official declined to specify what laws may have been violated. “Those tapes may have been evidence of a crime, and their destruction may have been a crime in itself,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee’s chairman, said the investigation’s launch “shows that many of us were right to be concerned with possible obstruction of justice and obstruction of Congress.” Congressional intelligence committees, which are seeking testimony from senior CIA officials believed involved in the destruction, signaled they would continue their investigations despite the federal probe. The Justice Department had initially balked at the congressional investigations, saying they could undermine its own efforts, and lawmakers accused the Bush administration of trying to cover up the controversy. “Our negotiations with the CIA and (Justice Department) over the scope of our investigation are ongoing. I fully expect their continued cooperation, including relevant testimony and documents,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat. The CIA said it would “cooperate fully with this (federal) investigation, as it has with others into this matter.” The agency’s inspector general, John Helgerson, said he would step aside from the Justice Department’s investigation despite taking part in the initial probe. Helgerson said the inspector general’s office had reviewed the tapes “some years ago” as part of a study of agency interrogations and that he had helped prepare a report on the issue, so it would be inappropriate to be involved in the probe. Mukasey said he had directed the FBI to conduct the investigation under the supervision of a federal prosecutor from Connecticut, John Durham.
House Republicans unveiled a proposal Thursday to create a federal paid leave policy that would be covered by employers. GOP Reps. Mimi Walters (Calif.), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers Cathy McMorris RodgersHillicon Valley: Republicans demand answers from mobile carriers on data practices \| Top carriers to stop selling location data \| DOJ probing Huawei \| T-Mobile execs stayed at Trump hotel as merger awaited approval House Republicans question mobile carriers on data practices Washington governor announces killer whale recovery plan MORE (Wash.) introduced the Workflex in the 21st Century Act. ADVERTISEMENT The bill, drafted with the help of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), would exempt businesses from having to comply with state paid leave laws if they offer a minimum level of paid time off and at least one flexible working arrangement like a compressed work schedule, biweekly work program, telecommuting program, job-sharing program, or a flexible or predictable schedule. To be eligible for a workflex arrangement, SHRM said an employee would have to have been with the company at least a year and worked at least 1,000 hours in the past 12 months. As for the paid leave, the trade group for human resource professionals said that will depend on an employee’s tenure and size of the company they work for. Employers with 250 to 999 employees would be required to provide employees who have been at the company less than five years with 14 paid days off, while those with five or more years of service would receive 18 days. According to SHRM, employees could accrue the leave over the course of a plan year or employers can offer it in a lump sum. New employees, however, would have to wait until they’ve worked at least 90 days to use the time. “As our personal and professional responsibilities continue to grow, hard-working Americans should have access to scheduling options that will provide better options to help them meet their work and family needs,” Walters said. “Workflex will allow employees the opportunity to spend more time with their families and in their communities, without increasing taxes or creating new mandates," she continued. "This innovative legislation will provide the flexibility employees need.” A copy of the bill was not immediately available.
A new French law that came into force on Sunday July 1 demands all motorists in France, including tourists, to carry a breathalyser kit in their vehicle. Opponents of the ruling say it is more about lining pockets than saving lives. ADVERTISING Read more A new French law came into force Sunday forcing drivers to carry a breathalyser kit in the car at all times. But just days before the new ruling became active, a road safety group was accused of trying to profit from the law. It has emerged that the chief of the road safety group that persuaded Nicolas Sarkozy’s government to adopt the ruling is also a senior executive with the leading manufacturer of the blow-in-the-bag test kits. French daily Sud Ouest revealed on Wednesday that Daniel Orgeval, the president of the anti-drink driving lobby group I-Test, also works for Contralco, the leading manufacturer of the equipment. I-Test was formed just eight months before Sarkozy’s government adopted the new law in March last year. Contralco, one of only two companies who produce a test-kit of the required standard, was reportedly in financial difficulties until the law was approved. But since then it has taken on over 100 staff, thanks in no small part to a demand for five million test kits a month. Sud Ouest’s exposure of Orgeval’s double role has led to an angry response from other motorist groups. “Everyone is a winner except the road user,” said Chantal Perrichon of the French League against Road Violence. Perrichon told Europe 1 radio station the breathalyser only serves to “make the manufacturers rich”. “They used their address book and they achieved their goal and you can only congratulate them,” Perrichon said sarcastically. “But the 37 million drivers who are forced to buy the chemical breath tests can only lament the government’s inability to make the right choice.” €11 fine Former President Sarkozy had vowed to cut the number of deaths on France’s roads, nearly a third of which are due to drink-driving, according to France’s road safety authority. In the UK the number stands at 17 percent and in Germany at 12 percent. Orgeval hit back at his critics on Wednesday, claiming he had acted completely within the law. “We play a proactive role,” Orgeval told Europe 1. “If this is lobbying then I say yes, because we lobbied for road safety and for road users. And if it helps create jobs for a French company then so much the better.” The law is aimed at encouraging drivers to test themselves before driving. The drink-driving limit in France is set at 50mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood, which is lower than the legal limit in Britain (80mg/100ml). Critics of the scheme say the test kits do not give accurate readings and are worthless because most drivers who pose a risk will know they are over the limit without blowing into a bag. Anyone caught without a breathalyser kit in their car will be liable for an €11 on-the-spot fine, although a period of grace means those motorists who flout the law will not be forced to pay the penalty until November. Tourists visiting France from Britain have been warned to purchase the kits before they arrive in France as police have threatened to crack down on the major routes leading to and from France’s ports.
? Schools, parents and the public will not receive any data this year about how students performed on the 2014 state reading and math tests, meaning there will be no way to judge whether students are measuring up to the new “college and career ready standards” for those subjects. The Kansas State Board of Education agreed Tuesday not to gather any results from those tests, largely because cyber attacks against the online testing system developed by Kansas University made the results of those tests unreliable. But Marianne Perie, director of KU’s Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation, which developed both the test and the online system students use to take the tests, admitted that the cyber attacks were not the only problem, and she assured the board that the 2015 tests will go smoother. “We recognize at CETE that KITE (the Kansas Interactive Testing Engine) was not where it needed to be when we started testing this year,” Perie said. “We had mistakes that are totally on us. We take responsibility for them. We are making improvements and we intend to be ready to go next spring, hopefully with no issues.” But the main problem, she said, was the KITE system being hit by two “distributed denial of service,” or DDoS attacks early during the testing window. Those are attacks that flood web servers with massive amounts of data, as if several million people were trying to log in at once. The attacks effectively crippled the servers that contain the test information, resulting in students either being kicked off the system after they had begun the tests or not being able to download all of the testing items. Perie said about two-thirds of the English language arts tests and about one third of the math tests were taken before CETE was able to install software that shielded the servers from those attacks. Even today, she said, technicians can tell the system is still being targeted, although the attacks are unable to penetrate the shields. The board voted 9-0, with member Ken Willard of Hutchinson absent, to accept a staff recommendation not to gather any results this year at either the individual, building, district or statewide level. Officials noted that 2014 was being considered a “transitional” year anyway because the state was shifting to the new curriculum standards as well as new tests aligned to those standards. As a result, the scores would not have been used for identifying schools or districts that were failing to meet state expectations. Still, some board members expressed frustration at how the tests were handled this year. Board member John Bacon, R-Olathe, said that if CETE could not produce valid and reliable scores from this year’s tests, then the board should consider revisiting its contract, which officials said called for paying CETE about $4.6 million this year. “It’s too expensive. We just cannot be funding a research project for CETE,” Bacon said. “You need to produce what you said that you would in the contract that we’re paying you for. … This is big stakes. I have expectations, and I think the taxpayers do as well.” The state board voted in December to contract with CETE to write and administer the new tests. Before that, Kansas had been part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, a multistate group that had received a federal grant to develop tests aligned to the new Common Core standards. But some board members said at the time that Smarter Balanced had become politically toxic amid a push-back by some conservative legislators against the Common Core standards. Other board members were more forgiving about the problems, including chairwoman Jana Shaver, R-Independence, who said she doubted that any private testing company would publish scores from what was essentially a field test of a new assessment.
VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria will re-run a presidential election run-off on Oct. 2, giving far-right eurosceptic candidate Norbert Hofer the chance to reverse a wafer-thin defeat, this time in the shadow of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. Presidential candidate Norbert Hofer arrives at the party headquarter of the Austrian Freedom party (FPOe) in Vienna, Austria, April 24, 2016. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader/Files Hofer and his FPO (Freedom Party) have already raised the prospect of Austria holding a similar referendum, yet political analysts say the tactic risks foundering on a deep bedrock of support for European integration. Hofer, 45, lost out in May by just 31,000 votes to pro-European former Green Party leader Alexander Van der Bellen, 72, narrowly failing to become the EU’s first far-right head of state. But Austria’s highest court annulled the vote, finding that sloppiness in the count, while not intended to manipulate any votes, had potentially been serious enough to change the outcome, and required a re-run. Social-Democrat Chancellor Christian Kern said the vote would be re-run on Oct.2. “The EU will be a central topic. Both candidates are clearly positioned and Brexit made this issue even more timely,” said political science professor Anton Pelinka. “Who will benefit from this? Probably Van der Bellen, because a majority of Austrians are for Austria staying within the EU, despite all the euroscepticism.” Britain’s vote has been welcomed by eurosceptic far-right parties including the FPO’s ally, France’s National Front. But Hofer has set specific conditions for calling an EU referendum in Austria that seem unlikely to be met in the short term: Turkey joining the EU, or the bloc turning into “a centralised government that deprives its member states of their power and drops the principle of unanimity on major issues”. Political analyst Peter Filzmaier saw the FPO’s failed campaign against joining the EU in 1994, when Austrians voted 2-to-1 for membership, as a deterrent to a full-blown exit campaign. “OEXIT” TACTICS? “Hofer will try to play tactically with this, he will repeatedly criticise the EU sharply, but stop short of demanding an immediate exit,” Filzmaier said. FPO head Heinz-Christian Strache said an Austrian exit - or “Oexit” - could be an option “if the EU continues to run itself into the ground and is not capable of learning that people want an economic union that involves its citizens”. But the pro-EU Van der Bellen said he expected to benefit from Britain’s vote, which the International Monetary Fund has said could shrink the British economy by up to 4.5 percent by 2019: “The (British) economy will slump enormously, jobs will be lost ... I think a large majority of Austrians don’t want Oexit or Brexit. Anyone who plays with this is playing with fire.” In a survey conducted by the EU last November, only 26 percent of Austrians said they trusted the EU, but 60 percent or more said they wanted more integration, not less - in the form of a European economic and currency union or joint European security, defence and foreign policies. “If the FPO go with an ‘Oexit’ strategy inspired by Brexit, they might shoot themselves in the foot,” said a Vienna-based diplomat. “The Austrians are not like the British, they are more European, they’re not an island,” Austria’s president has only limited powers, which do not run to independently calling a referendum. But Hofer’s strong showing and the failure of the main coalition parties - the Social Democrats and the conservative People’s Party - have already underlined how successfully the FPO is channelling fears about mass immigration and falling living standards. Recent opinion polls put the FPO at over 30 percent, around 10 points ahead of both the ruling parties, although the next parliamentary election is not due until 2018.
Fusiform face area Human brain, bottom view. Fusiform face area shown in bright blue. Computer-enhanced fMRI scan of a person who has been asked to look at faces. The image shows increased blood flow in cerebral cortex that recognizes faces (FFA). Anatomical terminology [edit on Wikidata] The fusiform face area - FFA (meaning: spindular/spindle-shaped face area) is a part of the human visual system that is specialized for facial recognition.[1] It is located in the Inferior temporal cortex (IT), in the fusiform gyrus (Brodmann area 37). Structure [ edit ] The FFA is located in the ventral stream on the ventral surface of the temporal lobe on the lateral side of the fusiform gyrus. It is lateral to the parahippocampal place area. It displays some lateralization, usually being larger in the right hemisphere. The FFA was discovered and continues to be investigated in humans using positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. Usually, a participant views images of faces, objects, places, bodies, scrambled faces, scrambled objects, scrambled places, and scrambled bodies. This is called a functional localizer. Comparing the neural response between faces and scrambled faces will reveal areas that are face-responsive, while comparing cortical activation between faces and objects will reveal areas that are face-selective. Function [ edit ] The human FFA was first described by Justine Sergent in 1992[2] and later named by Nancy Kanwisher in 1997[1] who proposed that the existence of the FFA is evidence for domain specificity in the visual system. Studies have recently shown that the FFA is composed of functional clusters that are at a finer spatial scale than prior investigations have measured.[3] Electrical stimulation of these functional clusters selectively distorts face perception, which is causal support for the role of these functional clusters in perceiving the facial image.[4] While it is generally agreed that the FFA responds more to faces than to most other categories, there is debate about whether the FFA is uniquely dedicated to face processing, as proposed by Nancy Kanwisher and others, or whether it participates in the processing of other objects. The expertise hypothesis, as championed by Isabel Gauthier and others, offers an explanation for how the FFA becomes selective for faces in most people. The expertise hypothesis suggests that the FFA is a critical part of a network that is important for individuating objects that are visually similar because they share a common configuration of parts. Gauthier et al., in an adversarial collaboration with Kanwisher,[5] tested both car and bird experts, and found some activation in the FFA when car experts were identifying cars and when bird experts were identifying birds.[6] This finding has been replicated,[7][8] and expertise effects in the FFA have been found for other categories such as chess displays[9] and x-rays.[10] Recently, it was found that the thickness of the cortex in the FFA predicts the ability to recognize faces as well as vehicles.[11] A 2009 magnetoencephalography study found that objects incidentally perceived as faces, an example of pareidolia, evoke an early (165-millisecond) activation in the FFA, at a time and location similar to that evoked by faces, whereas other common objects do not evoke such activation. This activation is similar to a face-specific ERP component N170. The authors suggest that face perception evoked by face-like objects is a relatively early process, and not a late cognitive reinterpretation phenomenon.[12] One case study of agnosia provided evidence that faces are processed in a special way. A patient known as C. K., who suffered brain damage as a result of a car accident, later developed object agnosia. He experienced great difficulty with basic-level object recognition, also extending to body parts, but performed very well at recognizing faces.[13] A later study showed that C. K. was unable to recognize faces that were inverted or otherwise distorted, even in cases where they could easily be identified by normal subjects.[14] This is taken as evidence that the fusiform face area is specialized for processing faces in a normal orientation. Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging and electrocorticography have demonstrated that activity in the FFA codes for individual faces[15][16][17][18] and the FFA is tuned for behaviorally relevant facial features.[15] An electrocorticography study found that the FFA is involved in multiple stages of face processing, continuously from when people see a face until they respond to it, demonstrating the dynamic and important role the FFA plays as part of the face perception network.[15] Another study found that there is stronger activity in the FFA when a person sees a familiar face as opposed to an unfamiliar one. Participants were shown different pictures of faces that either had the same identity, familiar, or faces with separate identities, or unfamiliar. It found that participants were more accurate at matching familiar faces than unfamiliar ones. Using an fMRI, they also found that the participants that were more accurate in identifying familiar faces had more activity in their right fusiform face area and participants that were poor at matching had less activity in their right fusiform area.[19] History [ edit ] Function and controversy [ edit ] The fusiform face area (FFA) is a part of the brain located in the fusiform gyrus with a debated purpose. Some researchers believe that the FFA is evolutionary purposed for face perception. Others believe that the FFA discriminates between any familiar stimuli. Psychologists debate whether the FFA is activated by faces for an evolutionary or expertise reason. The conflicting hypotheses stem from the ambiguity in FFA activation, as the FFA is activated by both familiar objects and faces. A study regarding novel objects called greebles determined this phenomenon.[20] When first exposed to greebles, a person's FFA was activated more strongly by faces than by greebles. After familiarising themselves with individual greebles or becoming a greeble expert, a person's FFA was activated equally by faces and greebles. Likewise, children with autism have been shown to develop object recognition at a similarly impaired pace as face recognition.[21] Studies of late patients of autism have discovered that autistic people have lower neuron densities in the FFA[22] This raises an interesting question, however: Is the poor face perception due to a reduced number of cells or is there a reduced number of cells because autistic people seldom perceive faces?[23] Asked simply: Are faces simply objects with which every person has expertise? Chinese characters similar to those used in Fu et al., which elicit a response in the FFA. There is evidence supporting the FFA's evolutionary face-perception. Case studies into other dedicated areas of the brain may suggest that the FFA is intrinsically designed to recognize faces. Other studies have recognized areas of the brain essential to recognizing environments and bodies.[24][25] Without these dedicated areas, people are incapable of recognizing places and bodies. Similar research regarding prosopagnosia has determined that the FFA is essential to the recognition of unique faces.[26][27] However, these patients are capable of recognizing the same people normally by other means, such as voice. Studies involving language characters have also been conducted in order to ascertain the role of the FFA in face recognition. These studies have found that objects, such as Chinese characters, elicit a high response in different areas of the FFA than those areas that elicit a high response from faces.[28] This data implies that certain areas of the FFA have evolutionary face-perception purposes. Evidence from infants [ edit ] The FFA is underdeveloped in children and does not fully develop until adolescence. This calls into question the evolutionary purpose of the FFA, as children show the ability to differentiate faces. Two-year-old babies have been shown to prefer the face of their mother.[29] Although the FFA is underdeveloped in two-year-old babies, they have the ability to recognize their mother. Babies as early as three months old have shown the ability to distinguish between faces.[30] During this time, babies exhibit the ability to differentiate between genders, showing a clear preference for female faces.[31] It is theorized that, in terms of evolution, babies focus on women for food, although the preference could simply reflect a bias for the caregivers they experience. Infants do not appear to use this area for the perception of faces. Recent fMRI work has found no face selective area in the brain of infants 4 to 6 months old.[32] However, given that the adult human brain has been studied far more extensively than the infant brain, and that infants are still undergoing major neurodevelopmental processes, it may simply be that the FFA is not located in anatomically familiar area. It may also be that activation for many different percepts and cognitive tasks in infants is diffuse in terms of neural circuitry, as infants are still undergoing periods of neurogenesis and neural pruning; this may make it more difficult to distinguish the signal, or what we would imagine as visual and complex familiar objects (like faces), from the noise, including static firing rates of neurons, and activity that is dedicated to a different task entirely than the activity of face processing. Infant vision involves only light and dark recognition, recognizing only major features of the face, activating the amygdala. These findings question the evolutionary purpose of the FFA. Evidence from emotions [ edit ] Studies into what else may trigger the FFA validates arguments about its evolutionary purpose. There are countless facial expressions humans use that disturb the structure of the face. These disruptions and emotions are first processed in the amygdala and later transmitted to the FFA for facial recognition. This data is then used by the FFA to determine more static information about the face.[33] The fact that the FFA is so far downstream in the processing of emotion suggests that it has little to do with emotion perception and instead deals in face perception. Recent evidence, however, shows that the FFA has other functions regarding emotion. The FFA is differentially activated by faces exhibiting different emotions. A study has determined that the FFA is activated more strongly by fearful faces than neutral faces.[34] This implies that the FFA has functions in processing emotion despite its downstream processing and questions its evolutionary purpose to identify faces. Additional images [ edit ] Fusiform face area shown in red. See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ]
by John Jackson Miller RETURNABLE TITLE ISSUE PRICE PUBLISHER FIRST MONTH FINAL CHANGE Jan-14 Serenity Leaves On The Wind 1* $3.50 Dark Horse 47,285 69,894 48% Feb-14 Serenity Leaves On The Wind 2* $3.50 Dark Horse 38,630 54,574 41% Mar-14 Serenity Leaves On The Wind 3* $3.50 Dark Horse 37,516 51,007 36% May-14 Trees 1* $2.99 Image 31,926 42,133 32% Jun-14 Outcast by Kirkman & Azaceta 1* $2.99 Image 71,788 93,819 31% Mar-15 Jem & The Holograms 1* $3.99 IDW 29,015 37,310 29% Dec-14 Autumnlands Tooth & Claw 2* $2.99 Image 33,272 41,482 25% Nov-15 Monstress 1* $4.99 Image 30,041 36,876 23% Jun-14 Wicked & Divine 1* $3.50 Image 42,948 52,250 22% Nov-15 Back To The Future 2* $3.99 IDW 25,751 31,079 21% Oct-14 Wytches 1* $2.99 Image 67,996 82,005 21% Oct-15 Back to the Future 1* $3.99 IDW 67,015 80,507 20% Aug-14 Fade Out 1* $3.50 Image 34,447 41,122 19% Jul-14 Wicked & Divine 2* $3.50 Image 27,962 33,082 18% Apr-14 Batman Eternal 3* $2.99 DC 72,457 84,818 17% Apr-14 Batman Eternal 1* $2.99 DC 96,140 112,388 17% Jan-14 Deadly Class 1* $3.50 Image 34,572 40,264 16% Apr-14 Batman Eternal 4* $2.99 DC 70,917 82,498 16% Sep-15 Sandman Overture 6* $3.99 DC 48,553 56,307 16% Apr-14 Batman Eternal 2* $2.99 DC 76,878 89,118 16% Jun-14 Trees 2* $2.99 Image 25,515 29,266 15% May-14 Batman Eternal 7* $2.99 DC 62,046 71,032 14% May-14 Southern Bastards 2* $3.50 Image 25,811 29,448 14% Jun-15 Starfire 1* $2.99 DC 46,298 52,638 14% Jul-14 Outcast By Kirkman & Azaceta 2* $2.99 Image 55,126 62,552 13% Jul-14 Low 1* $3.99 Image 43,340 49,071 13% May-14 Batman Eternal 8* $2.99 DC 62,294 70,413 13% May-14 Batman Eternal 5* $2.99 DC 66,795 75,435 13% May-14 Batman Eternal 6* $2.99 DC 64,530 72,765 13% Nov-14 Wytches 2* $2.99 Image 58,345 65,653 13% Nov-14 Earth 2 Worlds End 8* $2.99 DC 26,942 30,292 12% Oct-14 Earth 2 Worlds End 3* $2.99 DC 34,996 39,340 12% Nov-14 Earth 2 Worlds End 7* $2.99 DC 27,616 31,042 12% Oct-14 Earth 2 Worlds End 4* $2.99 DC 34,431 38,685 12% Oct-14 Earth 2 Worlds End 2* $2.99 DC 36,536 41,050 12% May-14 New 52 Futures End 3* $2.99 DC 53,771 60,334 12% Oct-14 Earth 2 Worlds End 1* $2.99 DC 43,863 49,115 12% Nov-14 Earth 2 Worlds End 6* $2.99 DC 28,407 31,803 12% Aug-14 Low 2* $3.50 Image 28,426 31,703 12% May-14 New 52 Futures End 2* $2.99 DC 57,147 63,592 11% A number of publishers carried by Diamond Comic Distributors have dabbled with accepting returns from comics shops over the years;, in particular, has embraced it more aggressively. With the returnable "Rebirth" titles sending the number of comics ordered per month skyward this summer, some have asked what the real, final impact is of comics offered with limited or full returnability. Diamond reduces orders of these comics in its monthly charts reportedly by 10% out of fairness.looked back on all the comics from 2014 and 2015 which were marked with an asterisk in the monthly charts and compared each with their final order numbers from the end of the years. Fully 98 returnable comic books from 2014-2015 also made the end-of-year charts; 60 in 2014 and 38 in 2015. Almost two thirds were from DC, with most of the rest fromandaccounted for the rest.It turns out that the median returnable comic book in 2014-15 wound up eventually selling 10% more copies than Diamond initially reported. Either retailers didn't return any books, the excess came from reorders, or (most likely) some combination of the two — but for half the returnable books in Diamond's charts from 2014-15, the reduction wound up being erased by sales.In fact, only 20 comics out of the 98 wound up selling fewer copies than Diamond's initially reduced monthly figures showed. Most were either issues ofor titles from the spate oflaunches that followed from#0 only wound up selling 121,733 copies of what was likely an initial shipment of closer to 159,000. But that was an outlier — and that summer stretch last year seems to have been unusually weak for returnable books. Almost every such release in 2014 did better, along with most by the other publishers in 2015.The list, presented below, shows the 40 comic books that we believe sold completely through, ranked by the amount sales wound up increasing over the initially reduced first-month report.Note that not every one of these titles were intended to be returnable; in some cases, titles were late, forcing the distinction. So in those cases, returnability wasn't part of the initial marketing to retailers.We find, overall, that the 10% putative reduction by Diamond in its reports is a safe figure to reduce by; three in four books wound up doing better in 2014-15, and in aggregate the returnable comics wound up with 7% more in final orders, total, than Diamond initially reported for them.Does this mean Diamond's 10% reduction — presuming that's what it is — is ultimately unnecessary? It depends on where the book ranks on the charts. At the top of the charts, a preemptive decrease of 10% usually isn't going to change a book's position much, because the titles are more widely spaced out. If the full number of copies ofthat Diamond shipped in April 2015 had been reported that month, its second-place rank would not have changed. Down near 100th place, a 10% change in reported orders is more likely to move a title 10 slots. (On the other hand, in the end,#0 only got a two-slot bump from where it would have ultimately landed after all returns were in; it was really the market's fourth-place book in April 2015 once all returns were accounted for.)So as you approach the numbers already reported this summer and anticipate the data to come — and the release mix suggests we may see somemoves to the upside in this week's August data — beware any claims that because returns are in the picture, that the real story must necessarily be worse than the monthly numbers suggest. Recent history suggests it's better.
A new study claims to leave little room for doubt that the world can run 100 percent on renewable energy, and it even maps how individual countries should best make this transition—by mid-century. The main barriers to overhauling the global energy system "are social and political," said Mark Z. Jacobson, lead study author. "They aren't technical or economic," added Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Jacobson and his Stanford colleagues published the analysis in a draft paper online to coincide with the start of global climate talks in Paris on Nov. 30. In those vastly complicated negotiations, most of the world's nations have agreed on at least one thing: keeping the earth's warming to within 2-degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels—a target that scientists agree is relatively safe for the planet––will require a wholesale transformation of the world's energy economy. The paper, which will likely be submitted to scientific journals for publication next year, offers detailed roadmaps showing how most countries can make the switch to run entirely on clean energy across all sectors, from electricity to transportation to agriculture, as early as 2050. Focusing on the 139 countries with available 2015 energy data, researchers first used computer models to calculate how each nation's energy demand and mix would change by 2050. This so-called "business-as-usual" scenario was based on the assumption that the countries would continue to rely on conventional fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. Next, the researchers determined how each country could meet its future energy demands using only renewable sources. Under this "wind, water and solar" scenario, every country's ideal renewable energy mix was calculated based on its existing energy infrastructure and available clean energy resources, such as sunlight and wind. The researchers concluded that making this switch would lower a country's total energy demands because clean energy sources are more efficient than fossil fuels. They also concluded the transition would curb global warming, create jobs, and reduce air pollution, which, in turn, would boost public health. Take the United States, for example. By pursuing business as usual, the U.S. would require a total power load of 2,310 gigawatts by 2050. Under a clean energy scenario, however, the country would need only 1,296 gigawatts of power, the study said. Most of the energy would come from onshore and offshore wind (48 percent), utility-scale and rooftop solar (40 percent), and a mix of other sources, including hydropower, geothermal and wave energy. The estimated total electricity, health and climate cost savings of this transition would amount to about $8,000 per American per year (in 2013 dollars). Jacobson's team has also conducted a parallel study, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That study dives deeper into the United States' clean energy transition, offering energy roadmaps for all 50 states, using the same modeling approach applied in the global study. If all the 139 countries succeed in getting 80 percent of their energy from renewables by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050, the Stanford researchers said, the world's warming would stay below the 2-degrees Celsius warming threshold. They also predict about 22 million net jobs would be created. Getting there won't be easy or cheap, Jacobson explained. The price tag of greening the world's energy system is $100 trillion, or $2 million per megawatt, over the next 35 years. Even without overhauling the energy system, the International Energy Association expects about $60 trillion should be invested during that same period to maintain electric grids and power plants and improve energy efficiency. The analysis doesn't say where the trillions should come from—or prescribe policies—but it shows "the burden of proof is now on the people who want to grow fossil fuels in any shape or form to explain to [the public] why they are doing something that we know is worse for the planet," Jacobson said. As of 2014, only 3.8 percent of the power capacity needed for 100 percent clean energy worldwide had been installed. Norway, Paraguay and Iceland lead the transition because they have successfully tapped their vast hydropower or geothermal resources. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there's a mix of developing nations such as Trinidad and Tobago and oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The United States is in the middle, ranking 56th out of 139 countries in terms of its progress toward 100 percent renewables by 2050. Jacobson's study is not the only recent report drumming up support for renewables. Earlier this month, the International Energy Agency released its World Energy Outlook 2015 report, which demonstrated renewable energy is increasing. Despite that trend, the agency expects growth in coal and other fossil fuels unless other countries––notably India––change their policies. In addition, the International Renewable Energy Agency released a recent study suggesting renewables could make up 36 percent of the world's energy mix by 2030. Both reports said furthering the growth of clean energy is an essential piece in addressing climate change. "With the climate challenge in front of us, this can easily lead people to worry about our ability to meet that challenge," said Rachel Cleetus, lead economist and a climate policy specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The bottom line from all these studies is the challenge here is political will." "Mark's findings are not extreme," said Karl Rabago, executive director of the Pace Energy and Climate Center at Pace Law School, in White Plains, N.Y. "They are well established," said Rabago, reflecting the latest science and experience in the lab and on the ground with how efficient and productive different clean energy sources can be. According to Rabago, "The real question now is: are we finally ready to get started?"
ARMYANSK, Crimea (Reuters) - More than two years after Russia annexed Crimea and promised its 2 million people a better life, residents say prices have soared, wages and pensions have stagnated and tourists have fled. People stand next to an electronic screen showing nationwide call-in attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin on a street of the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, Crimea, April 16, 2015. Picture taken April 16, 2015. REUTERS/Pavel Rebrov The sunny and mountainous Black Sea peninsula is back in the news, with Russian President Vladimir Putin accusing Kiev of sending infiltrators across the border to wreck its industry. But locals say the damage has already been done by Moscow’s neglect. “We joined Russia and they stopped giving a damn about us,” Yevgeny, a worker at a titanium plant in the town of Armyansk told Reuters. “People are naive. They thought that if we were part of Russia, everything would be Russian. Prices have now jumped to the Russian level, but wages have stayed the same. That’s the main problem.” Fearing reprisals from his boss, Yevgeny declined to give his surname, as did other workers who spoke to Reuters. Armyansk, a sleepy Crimean town near the newly-established border with Ukraine, is not far from where Russia says it fought armed clashes with Ukrainian infiltrators last week. Kiev says the clashes never took place and Moscow fabricated the incident as a possible pretext for new military action against Ukraine. The alleged plot has dominated headlines in Crimea, distracting attention away from the region’s own problems. But according to some residents of Armyansk, a long way from Crimea’s Tsarist-era palaces and its picturesque mountainous sea coast, those problems urgently need addressing. CHEMICAL PLANT Armyansk has never been prosperous. A quarter of the town’s 20,000 people work at the Crimea Titanium chemical plant, riding in dozens of identical green passenger buses to the factory from the town each morning, and back again in the afternoon. When Crimea was controlled by Ukraine, goods and services were affordable, and the plant’s workers were able to treat themselves now and then, they say. But after Kiev blocked freight supplies last year prices soared. “I can only buy food and it’s hard to buy clothes,” said Pavel, a technician, who said he was paid 17,000 rubles ($265) a month. That is only around half the average monthly income in Russia. “It would be enough in Ukraine because prices were lower. I’m shocked. My wage is stuck and everything grows in price.” Three other workers who spoke to Reuters described monthly salaries ranging from just 10,000 rubles for a laboratory assistant to 21,000 for a man who runs an engineering department. The Crimea Titanium plant is controlled by Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtash. His spokesman and the plant’s management did not reply to for requests for comment. Russia is building a bridge to link Crimea to southern Russia it hopes will establish a new supply route and reduce consumer prices. However the first trucks are not expected to be able to use it until 2018 at the earliest. ‘WE HAVE NO MONEY’ Moscow is aware of Armyansk’s woes. It put it on a list of more than 300 Russian towns identified as needing state-backed investment to diversify their economies. When contacted by Reuters, Crimea’s economy ministry said no projects in the town had yet been developed. Russia announced plans to invest 680 billion rubles (around $10 bln) in Crimea between now and 2020. That is on top of the billions of rubles it spends each month on pensions and payments to teachers, doctors and government employees. Pensioners, state employees and people working in the tourist industry were expected to enjoy a significant financial uplift after annexation. Instead, the ruble has lost about half of its value against the dollar since 2014 due to lower oil prices and Western sanctions. In May, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was filmed during a visit to Crimea being confronted by a woman who complained about low living standards for Crimea’s half million pensioners. “It’s impossible to get by on a pension in Crimea,” she said. “Prices are crazy ... What is 8,000 (rubles)? It’s a paltry sum.” Medvedev’s reply went viral online: “We simply have no money ... Bear up.” EMPTY RESTAURANTS With its spas and Black Sea coast, Crimea has been a popular tourist resort since the Tsarist era, when Anton Chekhov wrote about illicit liaisons among the fashionable gentry vacationing on the Yalta promenade. Putin said last year that tourism in Crimea should be profitable and Moscow would consider measures to attract foreign visitors. But annexation has cut the peninsula off from Ukrainian holidaymakers who mainly arrived by train, and their numbers have not been made up by Russian tourists, who must travel by air to get there. When Crimea was controlled by Ukraine, 6 million tourists a year visited, according to official data. Post-annexation, the number of tourists dropped sharply and has yet not recovered. Slideshow (4 Images) “When we were in Ukraine, there were more people. You could hardly make your way through the crowd,” said a bored-looking waiter on the smart terrace of a nearly empty restaurant called Europe, close to the sea in Yevpatoriya, a popular resort. Natalya, a waitress at Dulber, another restaurant in the town, said the customers that do come spend much less money than they used to when the peninsula was part of Ukraine. “People now are reluctant to spend money, they make minimal orders and we are tipped less,” she said. “We have a ruble crisis now, prices are high. People come from Russia and they are shocked by the high prices in Crimea. We’re shocked by them ourselves.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An appeals court on Tuesday threw out a judge’s ruling that said licensing requirements in the U.S. capital for people who want to carry concealed handguns outside the home likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s protection of the right to bear arms. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on a technicality, meaning it did not decide the merits of whether the regulations in Washington violate the Constitution’s Second Amendment. The lawsuit will now be re-assigned to another judge. The court found that New York-based U.S. District Court Judge Frederick Scullin, who had issued a ruling in May saying the city’s restriction was likely unconstitutional, did not have authority to decide the case. The District of Columbia regulation allows for “concealed-carry” licenses to be issued only if the applicant has “good reason” to fear injury or has another “proper reason for carrying a pistol.” The regulation was passed in September 2014 and went into effect in June after the appeals court issued an order preventing Scullin’s injunction from going into effect. The regulation was enacted after Washington’s ban on carrying weapons outside the home was struck down by Scullin in 2014. The regulation was challenged in court by the pro-gun rights Second Amendment Foundation and three individuals who said they wished to carry guns but would not be able to because of the regulation. Washington long had some of the tightest gun regulations in the United States. But in 2008, the Supreme Court struck down a broad ban on keeping guns, saying that the Second Amendment allows individuals to use guns for lawful purposes, including self-defense in the home. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on whether the Second Amendment allows a broad right to carry guns outside the home. The case is Wrenn v. District of Columbia, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, No. 15-7057.
The White House rebuffed President-elect Trump's criticism of the administration's decision to not veto a U.N. resolution critical of Israel's settlements. In a briefing on the move Friday, Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, said, "On the president-elect, the first thing I'd just say is that there's one president at a time. President Obama is the president of the United States until Jan. 20, and we are taking this action, of course, as U.S. policy." Trump had tweeted his concern about the move at the United Nations that the U.S. did not disavow. "As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th," Trump tweeted. Rhodes also said of Israel, "I believe that despite what has at times been very strident Israeli government criticism of U.S. policies that President Obama has always made Israel and its security sacrosanct in his approach to these issues." Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
(Adds background throughout, U.S. Mint data) NEW YORK, Aug 31 (Reuters) - U.S. Mint sales of American Eagle gold coins fell 40 percent in August from July's highest level in more than two years as concern about a slowing Chinese economy lifted bullion prices above a 5-1/2-year low, government data showed on Monday. American Eagle gold coin sales fell to 101,500 ounces, but that was still four times the sales in August 2014. Sales of American Eagle silver coins also fell in August, after prices dropped to a six-year low that fueled demand in July, forcing the Mint to halt sales for nearly two weeks after running out of stock. Sales resumed at the end of July but have been under weekly allocations of roughly 1 million ounces as the Mint ramped up supplies. American Eagle silver coin sales in August fell 10.7 percent from July to 4.93 million ounces, but this was more than double the 2.1 million sold in August 2014, Mint data showed. In ounces Gold Silver Platinum 2015 2014 2015 2014 2015 January 81,000 91,500 5,530,000 4,775,000 n/a February 18,500 31,000 3,022,000 3,750,000 n/a March 46,500 21,000 3,519,000 5,354,000 n/a April 29,500 38,500 2,851,500 3,569,000 n/a May 21,500 35,500 2,023,500 3,988,500 n/a June 76,000 48,500 4,840,000 2,692,000 n/a July 170,000 30,000 5,529,000 1,975,000 n/a August 101,500 25,000 4,935,000 2,087,500 n/a YTD Total 544,500 321,000 32,250,000 28,191,000 n/a (Reporting by Marcy Nicholson; Editing by Tom Brown)
Today, I'm wearing a cotton t-shirt, a ruffled black sweater that is 72 percent viscose and 28 percent nylon, and dark blue denim jeans. From a fashion perspective, I look okay. But by environmental standards, my outfit is a disaster. The garment industry is a dirty business from start to finish - meaning my t-shirt and jeans' journey from cotton growing in field in Burkina Faso to my favorite local high street store, have had a major environmental impact. Pesticides and chemicals aside, making the jeans and tee alone required around 13,000 liters of water. Nylon is a petrochemical, and viscose - made from wood-pulp - leads to deforestation. That's bad news, considering it's become a near weekly ritual to scroll through all the fashion bloggers in my Instagram feed and then hit the shops to pick up a top or two to add to my already bursting-at-the-seams wardrobe. I know, I know, I need to get a better hobby. Enter the #HowGreenAmI challenge. Journey of discovery Giving up sales: Torture for a fashion junkie I vowed to give up shopping for cough a month and do some research on fashion's environmental impact to see if more knowledge would help me change my ways. I know a month of not shopping is actually not a big deal for normal people - as my friends have helpfully pointed out. But to be clear, this isn't really about challenging myself to not shop: It's about using the time to understand the problems this resource-intensive industry has. How has it changed? In the spirit of full disclosure, two days before the challenge started I went to my local shopping center in Dublin and bought new jeans, cheap earrings and two of the same dress from Penneys (the name for Primark in Ireland, which has the dubious honor of being the birthplace of the retail giant). I didn't feel like trying them on in the store, and vowed I would return the one that didn't fit. Both are still sitting, unworn, in a bag at my mother's house. This is what my fashion addiction looks like But apparently, I'm not alone in my behavior. The rise of cheap, disposable "fast fashion" - led by retailers like Primark and Zara - has completely transformed the industry over the past 20 years. "Fast fashion has fueled so much demand," says Amanda Ratcliffe, a lecturer in Marketing and International Retailing at Dublin Institute of Technology. "The fashion cycle has become much shorter. Where before fashion retailers used to present maybe two collections a year on average, these days most of the fast-fashion retailers will have up to 20 collections a year. "Zara, for example, manages to design, produce and supply in under 18 days," Ratcliffe told me. What's the scale? Some 80 billion pieces of clothing are purchased worldwide each year, up 400 percent from two decades ago. This according to "The True Cost," a devastating 2015 documentary that delves into the perils of the fashion industry for people and the planet. In North America alone, 10.5 million tons of clothes end up in the landfill each year. The majority of those garments are made from petroleum-based textiles like polyester - which has long since overtaken cotton as the main material in clothing - so they don't biodegrade. Of the clothes that are donated to charity and thrift stores, just 10 percent gets sold, while the rest ends up in landfills or floods markets in developing countries where it can destroy local clothing industries. In fact, garment manufacturing is the second-most-polluting industry in the world - after oil. It accounts for 10 percent of global emissions. A quarter of the world's chemicals are used for textiles, which ends up in rivers and lakes. Who pays the price? T-shirts for a fiver and jeans for 15 euros ($16). If it seems too good to be true, it is, says Ratcliffe. Someone is paying the true price somewhere along the (product) line. And it is developing countries - also the source of many of our garments - that bear the brunt of garment industry pollution and exploitative work practices. In short, fashion companies get around strict labor and environmental standards in industrialized countries by setting up shop in the developing world instead. In a 2013 report, Greenpeace exposed how garment manufacturing businesses in Indonesia treated the Citarum River as their own "private sewer, pumping out a cocktail of hazardous substances into the local waterways." "The printing and dyeing processes are particularly chemical-intensive, and have contributed to the Citarum developing a reputation as one of the dirtiest rivers on earth," wrote Greenpeace. This, in turn, threatens the wildlife and 5 million people all along the river basin. What's the alternative? Yet it seems anything we choose to wear is going to have some kind of impact on the environment. What can you do apart from weaving your own clothes, or donning some leaves (not recommended if you're in Europe in winter)? Before we fall into a black pit of despair, I'd like to point out what some companies and individuals are trying to do to turn the tide. Companies like Adidas have committed to "detoxing" their supply chain - that is, reducing or eliminating release of hazardous chemicals in production processes. One step in this is transparency - H&M and Zara are among companies to have published wastewater data and supplier's lists. Still others have signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative and the Ethical Fashion Forum, which push for better workers' rights and sustainability. But with so many subcontractors and such globalized supply chains, it's hard to know whether you can be guaranteed the shirt on your back is ethical. Small and ethical Some smaller fashion brands are opting for home-grown textiles made from local sources - however, these garments are out of most people's price range. There are some small brands, like Fresh Cuts Clothing, doing casual items like t-shirts and hoodies, which are ethical and eco-friendly - and that won't break the bank. But the question is whether these can be scaled up, and whether people are willing - or able - to pay more. Steven Murphy, owner of Fresh Cuts Clothing - which is tucked away in a basement just off Dublin's main shopping street - says it's "hard to come back" from the fast fashion mentality. "People just want their t-shirts for the weekend, or to buy their whole outfit for 40 euros in Penneys - wear it a couple of times and bin it," he says. Steven Murphy is trying to make a change with Fresh Cuts Change in mentality Murphy is quick to say he's no eco-warrior, and doesn't want to preach to people. With no background in fashion or environmentalism, he started Fresh Cuts two years ago when he couldn't find the casual t-shirts and sweaters he'd worn when living in Australia. He hadn't intended to start an eco-brand - but when he started to source t-shirts to screen print, he was shocked by how cheap they were. Now, he gets his garments through the Fair Wear Foundation, which insures that garment workers are paid fairly, and supplies organic and upcycled textiles. Eco-friendly hats in Fresh Cuts Clothing "I'm just a little shop in poor old Dublin," says Murphy. "I'm not changing the world, and I'm certainly not at the forefront of eco-fashion or anything like," he says. "But I just try to uphold a certain standard, I suppose." And in the end, I realize that's probably the best most of us can do: be aware, buy less and more consciously where we can, put pressure on companies to do better by voting with our wallets, and join campaigns. In the meantime, I'll quietly unfollow all the fashion bloggers on Instagram and continue my fashion detox.
Author: “No Bugs” Hare Follow: Job Title: Sarcastic Architect Hobbies: Thinking Aloud, Arguing with Managers, Annoying HRs, Calling a Spade a Spade, Keeping Tongue in Cheek Pages: 1 2 3 4 [rabbit_ddmog vol=”3″ chap=”Chapter 9(a) from “beta” Volume III”] After drawing all that nice client-side QnFSM-based diagrams, we need to describe our server architecture. The very first thing we need to do is to start thinking in terms of “how we’re going to deploy our servers, when our game is ready?” Yes, I really mean it – architecture starts not in terms of classes, and for the server-side – not even in terms of processes or FSMs, it starts with the highest-level meaningful diagram we can draw, and for the server-side this is a deployment diagram with servers being its main building blocks. If deploying to cloud, these may be virtual servers, but a concept of “server” which is a “more or less self-contained box running our server-side software”, still remains very central to the server-side software. If not thinking about clear separation between the pieces of your software, you can easily end up with a server-side architecture that looks nicely while you program it, but falls apart on the third day after deployment, exactly when you’re starting to think that your game is a big success. Deployment Architectures, Take 1 In this Chapter we’ll discuss only “basic” deployment architectures. These architectures are “basic” in a sense that they’re usually sufficient to deploy your game and run it for several months, but as your game grows, further improvements may become necessary. Fortunately, these improvements can be done later, when/if the problems with basic deployment architecture arise; these improvements will be discussed in Chapter [[TODO]]. Also note that for your very first deployment, you may have much less physical/virtual boxes than shown on the diagram, by combining quite a few of them together. On the other hand, you should be able to increase the number of your servers quickly, so you need to have the software able to work in basic deployment architecture from the very beginning. This is important, as demand for increase in number of servers can develop very soon if you’re successful. We’ll discuss your very first deployment in Chapter [[TODO]]. First, let’s start with an architecture you shouldn’t do. Don’t Do It: Naïve Game Deployment Architectures Quite often, when faced with development their very first multi-player game, developers start with something like the following Fig VI.1: It is dead simple: there is a server, and there is a database to store persistent state. And later on, as one single Game World server proves to be insufficient, it naturally evolves into something like the diagram on Fig VI.2: with each of Game World servers having its own database. My word of advice about such naïve deployment architectures: DON’T DO THIS! Such a naïve approach won’t work well for a vast majority of games. The problem here (usually ranging from near-fatal to absolutely-fatal depending on specifics of your game) is that this architecture doesn’t allow for interaction between players coming from different servers. In particular, such an architecture becomes absolutely deadly if your game allows some way for a player to choose who he’s playing with (or if you have some kind of merit-based tournament system), in other words – if you’re not allowed to arbitrary separate your players (and in most cases you will need some kind of interaction at least because of the social network integration, see Chapter II for further discussion in this regard). CSR Customer service representatives interact with customers to provide answers to inquiries involving a company's product or services.— Wikipedia —For the naïve architecture shown on Fig VI.2, any interaction between separate players coming from separate databases, leads to huge mortgage-crisis-size problems. Inter-DB interaction, while possible (and we’ll discuss it in Chapter [[TODO]]) won’t work well around these lines and between completely independent databases. You’re going to have lots and lots of problems, ranging from delays due to improperly implemented inter-DB transactions (apparently this is not that easy), to your CSRs going crazy because of two different users having the same ID in different databases. Moreover, if you start like this, you will even have trouble merging the databases later (the very first problem you will face will be about collisions in user names between different DBs, with much more to follow). To summarize relevant discussion from Chapter II and from present Chapter: A. You WILL need inter-player interaction between arbitrary players. If not now, then later. B. Hence, you SHOULD NOT use “naïve” architecture shown above. Fortunately, there are relatively simple and practical architectures which allow to avoid problems typical for naïve approaches shown above. Web-Based Game Deployment Architecture If your game satisfies two conditions: first, it is reeeeallyyyy sloooow-paaaaaced (in other words, it is not an MMOFPS and even not a poker game) and/or “asynchronous” (as defined in Chapter I, i.e. it doesn’t need players to be present simultaneously), and second, it has little interaction between players (think farming-like games with only occasional inter-player interaction), then you might be able to get away with Web-Based server-side architecture, shown on Fig VI.3: Web-Based Deployment Architecture: How It Works The whole thing looks alongside the lines of a heavily-loaded web app – with lots of caching, both at front-end (to cache pages), and at a back-end. However, there are also significant differences (special thanks to Robert Zubek for sharing his experiences in this regard, [Zubek2016]). The question “which web server to use” is not that important here. On the other hand, there exists an interesting and not-so-well-known web server, which took an extra mile to improve communications in game-like environments. I’m speaking about [Lightstreamer]. I didn’t try it myself, so I cannot vouch for it, but what they’re doing with regards to improving interactivity over TCP, is really interesting. We’ll discuss some of their tricks in Chapter [{TODO]]. Peculiarities in Web-Based Game architectures are mostly about the way caching is built. First, on Fig VI.3 both front-end caching and back-end caching is used. Front-end caching is your usual page caching (like nginx in reverse-proxy mode, or even a CDN), though there is a caveat. As your current-game-data changes very frequently, you normally don’t want to cache it, so you need to take an effort and clearly separate your static assets (.SWFs, CSS, JS, etc. etc.) which can (and should) be cached, and dynamic pages (or AJAX) with current game state data which changes too frequently to bother about caching it (and which will likely go directly from your web servers) [Zubek2010]. CAS Compare-And-Swap is an atomic instruction used in multithreading to achieve synchronization. It compares the contents of a memory location to a given value and, only if they are the same, modifies the contents of that memory location to a given new value.— Wikipedia —At the back-end, the situation is significantly more complicated. According to [Zubek2016], for games you will often want not only to use your back-end cache as a cache to reduce number of DB reads, but also will want to make it a write-back cache (!), to reduce the number of DB writes. Such a write-back cache can be implemented either manually over memcached (with web servers writing to memcached only, and a separate daemon writing ‘dirty’ pages from memcached to DB), or a product such as Redis or Couchbase (formerly Membase) can be used [Zubek2016]. Taming DB Load: Write-Back Caches and In-Memory States “One Big Advantage of having write-back cache (and of the in-memory state of Classical deployment architecture described below) is related to the huge reduction in number of DB updates.One Big Advantage of having write-back cache (and of the in-memory state of Classical deployment architecture described below) is related to the huge reduction in number of DB updates. For example, if we’d need to save each and every click on the simulated farm with 25M daily users (each coming twice a day and doing 50 modifying-farm-state clicks each time in a 5-minute session), we could easily end up with 2.5 billion DB transactions/day (which is infeasible, or at least non-affordable). On the other hand, if we’re keeping write-back cache, we can write the cache into DB only once per 10 minutes, we’d reduce the number of DB transactions 50-fold, bringing it to much more manageable 50 million/day. For faster-paced games (usually implemented as a Classical Architecture described below, but facing the same challenge of DB being overloaded), the problem surfaces even earlier. For example, to write each and every movement of every character in an MMORPG, we’d have a flow of updates of the order of 10 DB-transactions/sec/player (i.e. for 10’000 simultaneous players we’d have 100’000 DB transactions/second, or around 10 billion DB transactions/day, once again making it infeasible, or at the very least non-affordable). On the other hand, with in-memory states stored in-memory-only (and saving to DB only major events such as changing zones, or obtaining level) – we can reduce the number of DB transactions by 3-4 orders of magnitude, bringing it down to much more manageable 1M-10M transactions/day. As an additional benefit, such write-back caches (as long as you control write times yourself) and in-memory states also tend to play well with handling server failures. In short: for multi-player games, if you disrupt a multi-player “game event” (such as match, hand, or fight) for more than a few seconds, you won’t be able to continue it anyway because you won’t be able to get all of your players back; therefore, you’ll need to roll your “game event” back, and in-memory states provide a very natural way of doing it. See “Failure Modes & Effects” section below for detailed discussion of failure modes under Classical Game Architecture. A word of caution for stock exchanges. If your game is a stock exchange, you generally do need to save everything in DB (to ensure strict correctness even in case of Game Server loss), so in-memory-only states are not an option, and DB savings do not apply. However, even for stock exchanges at least Classical Game architecture described below has been observed to work very well despite DB transaction numbers being rather large; on the other hand, for stock exchanges transaction numbers are usually not that high as for MMORPG, and price of the hardware is generally less of a problem than for other types of games. Write-Back Caches: Locking As always, having a write-back cache has some very serious implications, and will cause lots of problems whenever two of your players try to interact with the same cached object. To deal with it, there are three main approaches: “optimistic locking”, “pessimistic locking”, and transactions. Let’s consider them one by one. Optimistic Locking. This one is directly based on memcached’s CAS operation.1 The idea of using CAS for optimistic locking goes along the following lines. To process some incoming request, Web Server does the following: reads whole “game world” state as a single blob from memcached, alongside with “cas token”. “cas token” is a thing which is actually a “version number” for this object. we’re optimists! 🙂 so Web Server is processing incoming request ignoring possibility that some other Web Server also got the same “game world” and is working on it Web Server is NOT allowed to send any kind of reply back to user (yet) Web Server issues cas operation with both new-value-of-“game-world”-blob, and the same “cas token” which it has received if “cas token” is still valid (i.e. nobody has written to the blob before current Web Server has read it), memcached writes new value, and returns ok. Then our Web Server may send reply back to whoever-requested-it if, however, there was a second Web Server which has managed to write after we’ve read our blob – memcached will return a special error in this case, our Web Server MUST discard all the prepared replies in addition, it MAY read new value of “game world” state (with new “cas token”), and try to re-apply incoming request to it this is perfectly valid: it is just “as if” incoming request has came a little bit later (which can always happen) Optimistic locking is simple, is lock-less (which is important, see below why), and has only one significant drawback for our purposes. That is, while it works fine as long as collision probability (i.e. two Web Servers working on the same “game world” at the same time) is low, but as soon as probability grows (beyond, say 10%) – you will start getting a significant performance hit (for processing the same message twice, three times, and so on and so forth). For slow-paced asynchronous games it is very unlikely to become a problem, and therefore by default I’d recommend optimistic locking for web-based games, but you still need to understand limitations of the technology before using it. Pessimistic Locking. This is pretty much a classical multi-threaded mutex-based locking, applied to our “how to handle two concurrent actions from two different Web Servers over the same “game world” problem. In this case, game state (usually stored as a whole in a blob) is protected by a sorta-mutex (so that two web servers cannot access it concurrently). Such a mutex can be implemented, for example, over something like memcached’s CAS operation [Zubek2010]. For pessimistic locking, Web Server acts as follows: obtains lock on mutex, associated with our “game world” (we’re pessimists 🙁 , so we need to be 100% sure before processing, that we’re not processing in vain). if mutex cannot be obtained – Web Server MAY try again after waiting a bit reads “game world” state blob processes it writes “game world” state blob releases lock on mutex This is a classical mutex-based schema and it is very robust when applied to classical multi-thread synchronization. However, when applying it to web servers and memcached, there is a pretty bad caveat 🙁 . The problem here is related to “how to detect hanged/crashed web server – or process – which didn’t remove the lock” question, as such a lock will effectively prevent all future legitimate interactions with the locked game world (which reminds me of the nasty problems from the early-90ish pre-SQL FoxPro-like file-lock-based databases). For practical purposes, such a problem can be resolved via timeouts, effectively breaking the lock on mutex (so that if original mutex owner of the broken mutex comes later, he just gets an error). However, allowing to break mutex locks on timeouts, in turn, has significant further implications, which are not typical for usual mutex-based inter-thread synchronizations: first, if we’re breaking mutex on timeout – there is a problem of choosing the timeout. Have it too low, and we can end up with fake timeouts, and having it too high will cause frustrated users second, it implies that we’re working EXACTLY according to the pattern above. In particular: having more than one memcached object per “game world” is not allowed “partially correct” writes of “game state” are not allowed either, even if they’re intended to be replaced “very soon” under the same lock In practice, these issues are rarely causing too much problems when using memcached for mutex-based pessimistic locking. On the other hand, as for memcached we’d need to simulate mutex over CAS, I still suggest optimistic locking (just because it is simpler and causes less memcached interactions). Transactions. Classical DB transactions are useful, but dealing with concurrent transactions is really messy. All those transaction isolation levels (with interpretations subtly different across different databases), locks, and deadlocks are not a thing which you really want to think about. Fortunately, Redis transactions are completely unlike classical DB transactions and are coming without all this burden. In fact, Redis transaction is merely a sequence of operations which are executed atomically. It means no locking, and an ability to split your “game world” state into several parts to deal with traffic. On the other hand, I’d rather suggest to stay away from this additional complexity as long as possible, using Redis transactions only as means of optimistic locking as described in [Redis.CAS]. Another way of utilizing capabilities of Redis transactions is briefly mentioned in “Web-Based Deployment Architecture: FSMs” section below. Web-Based Deployment Architecture: FSMs You may ask: how finite state machines (FSMs) can possibly be related to the web-based stuff? They seem to be different as night and day, don’t they? Actually, they’re not. Let’s take a look at both optimistic and pessimistic locking above. Both are taking the whole state, generating new state out of it, and storing this new state. But this is exactly what our FSM::process_event() function from Chapter V does! In other words, even for web-based architecture, we can (and IMHO SHOULD) write processing in an event-driven manner, taking state and processing inputs, producing state and issuing replies as a result. As soon as we’ve done it this way, the question “Should we use optimistic locking or pessimistic one”, becomes a deployment implementation detail In other words, if we have an FSM-based (a.k.a. event-driven) game code, we can change the wrapping infrastructure code around it, and switch it from optimistic locking to pessimistic one (or vice versa). All this without changing a single line within any of FSMs! Moreover, if using FSMs, we can even change from Web-Based Architecture to Classical one and vice versa without changing FSM code If by any chance reading the whole “game world” state from cache becomes a problem (which it shouldn’t, but you never know), it MIGHT still be solved via FSMs together with Redis-style transactions mentioned above. Infrastructure code (the one outside of FSM) may, for example, load only a part of the “game world” state depending on type of input request (while locking all the other parts of the state to avoid synchronization problems), and also MAY implement some kind on-demand exception-based state loading along the lines of on-demand input loading discussed in [[TODO]] section below. Web-Based Deployment Architecture: Merits Unlike the naïve approach above, Web-Based systems may work. Their obvious advantage (especially if you have a bunch of experienced web developers on your team) is that it uses familiar and readily-available technologies. Other benefits are also available, such as: easy-to-find developers simplicity and being relatively obvious (that is, until you need to deal with locks, see above) web servers are stateless (except for caching, see below), so failure analysis is trivial: if one of your web servers goes down, it can be simply replaced can be easily used both for the games with downloadable client and for browser-based ones Web-Based Architecture (as well as any other one), of course, also has downsides, though they may or may not matter depending on your game: there is no way out of web-based architecture; once you’re in – switching to any other one will be impossible. Might be not that important for you, but keep it in mind. it is pretty much HTTP-only (with an option to use Websockets); migration to plain TCP/UDP is generally not feasible. as everything will work via operations on the whole game state, different parts of your game will tend to be tightly coupled. Not a big problem if your game is trivial, but may start to bite as complexity grows. as the number of interactions between players and game world grows, Web-Based Architecture becomes less and less efficient (as distributed-mutex-locked accesses to retrieve whole game state from the back-end cache and write it back as a whole, don’t scale well). Even medium-paced “synchronous” games such as casino multi-players, are usually not good candidates for Web-Based Architecture. you need to remember to keep all the accesses to game objects synchronized; if you miss one – it will work for a while, but will cause very strange-looking bugs under heavier load. you’ll need to spend A LOT of time meditating over your caching strategy. As the number of player grows, you’re very likely to need a LOT of caching, so start designing your caching strategies ASAP. See above about peculiarities of caching when applied to games (especially on write-back part and mutexes), and make your own research. as the load grows, you will be forced to spend time on finding a good and really-working-for-you solution for that nasty web-server-never-releases-mutex problem mentioned above. While not that hopeless as ensuring consistency within pre-SQL DBF-like file-lock-based databases, expect quite a chunk of trouble until you get it right. Still, if your game is rather slow/asynchronous and inter-player interactions are simple and rather far between, Web-Based Architecture may be the way to go While Classical Architecture described below (especially with Front-End Servers added, see [[TODO]] section) can also be used for slow-paced games, implementing it yourself just for this purpose is a Really Big Headache and might be easily not worth the trouble if you can get away with Web-Based one. On the other hand, even for medium-paced synchronous multi-player games (such as casino-like multi-player games) Web-Based Architecture is usually not a good candidate (see above).
In the November, 2016 election, voters in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts approved the sale of recreational marijuana in the state. The understanding was that retail stores would begin to sell marijuana at the beginning of 2018. But, nothing is ever that easy. On Friday, December 30, 2016, Governor Charlie Baker, without so much as a public hearing or legislative debate, signed a bill postponing the opening of retail stores until at least mid-2018. The delay intends to “give lawmakers more time to consider issues that were not addressed in the ballot question.” Some 53% of Massachusetts voters approved the legislation that would permit growing and using marijuana. The legislation required licensing, taxation, and regulations to the farming, harvesting, and sale. And, it laid out penalties to violations of the regulations. Gov. Baker is saying they do not have time to implement the infrastructure necessary. With the help of Massachusetts Law, you can consider what is and is not legal regarding marijuana. Just what is legal? Any adult over 21 can possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana outside the home. Adults over 21 may possess up to 10 ounces inside the home. Any one individual may grow up to six marijuana plants for personal use or up to 12 plants per household if more than one adult live on the premises. Any adult may give up to one ounce of marijuana to another adult – but not for money. What isn't legal? Citizens cannot possess, purchase, grow, or use marijuana unless they are 21 or older unless they possess a valid medical marijuana permit. No one can give marijuana away to anyone under 21. Recreational marijuana cannot be sold in any form without a retail license issued by the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. Citizens may grow marijuana at home if discrete and secure. That is, plants cannot be visible from the street or any public area, and they must be cultivated where there is a security device. Landlords may prohibit tenants from growing, smoking, or vaping marijuana in their residence or on their premises. Landlords may not prohibit consumption of marijuana by means other than smoking. The law prohibits using marijuana in any public space and in any place where tobacco is banned. Possession of marijuana is illegal on school grounds. Citizens cannot keep open containers or partially consumed packages of marijuana in a motor vehicle unless it is in a locked glove compartment or vehicle trunk. This legislation does not change the laws against operating cars or other vehicles under the influence. Deferring to federal law, citizens may not move marijuana across state lines, send it through the U.S. mail, or use it on federal property. Regarding gifts: The Massachusetts law does permit unlicensed people to give or gift an ounce (or less) of marijuana to another person. They may not sell it. They also may not delay payment or disguise the payment. They may not exchange the marijuana “gift” for another gift or something of equivalent value. Such fake transactions will be handled as criminal. Regarding Medical Marijuana Massachusetts continues to permit the use of medical marijuana for specific medical conditions: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS – Lou Gehrig’s Disease) Cancer Crohn’s Disease Glaucoma HIV and AIDS Hepatitis C Multiple Sclerosis Parkinson’s Disease Other conditions on written request by qualifying physician. Patients may purchase up to 10 ounces every two months at one of 35 registered and licensed dispensaries state-wide. The amount is understood to be reasonable for their needs. Regulations allow individual patients to designate a "personal caregiver" at least 21 years old to cultivate marijuana for them if they are unable to access a state-authorized dispensary or if they can verify "financial hardship." Regarding the future According to the Insurance Journal, “[Massachusetts] Legislative leaders have made clear they are not through with making changes to the voter-approved recreational marijuana initiative, but it remains to be seen whether future action amounts to an overhaul of or a mere tinkering with the new law.”. Cannabis advocates feel threatened by the move, worried that it will allow time to take the legislation apart. But, the Governor insists the delay intends only to allow the state to build the necessary administrative infrastructure. The delay also allows for changes in the current federal policy and practice towards state legalization. In a 2013, Deputy Attorney James Cole issued a memo acknowledging that state and local officials enforce most drug laws. It continued to say that, if local enforcement did not threaten federal priorities like the opiate plague, Washington would leave it to the local authorities. There is concern that President Trump’s polices, in a rush to unwind President’s Obama practices, would reverse this prosecutorial discretion. However, Christopher Ingraham writes in The Washington Post, "some congressional observers are skeptical that there will be any appetite in a new Trump admininstration for quashing marijuana reform. 'Go against millions of supporters, against states' rights, against where the public is?' said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D. -Ore.) in an interview. 'It would be the beginning of tremendous problems for the Trump administration that they don't need." So, Massachusetts citizens have the right to possess, consume, and grow marijuana. But, they are temporarily denied the ability to purchase the product from licensed retail cannabis shops. For the law abiding, that effectively puts a freeze on the November, 2016 initiative.
Meet the horse mascot giving the Brisbane Broncos rugby league team their 'Buck' Updated He is the four-legged secret weapon leading the Brisbane Broncos' stampede towards this year's NRL premiership. Buck has been a regular feature at home games in Brisbane for the past five years, along with his trainer and rider Natalie Siiankoski. Despite the noise, action and crowds, the dynamic duo support the players and encourage the fans along the sidelines. We have certainly had to stop for the ball boys a few times, both me and Buck. Buck's rider Natalie Siiankoski Ms Siiankoski sourced the calm stockhorse from Australian Outback Spectacular — a live action dinner show on the Gold Coast — to ensure he had experience with a crowd. "He [Buck] had a background with performance and he was used to a crowd, not as many as 30,000 to 50,000 screaming fans but he had experience with crowds," she said. "Buck knows that everyone is looking at him and he knows when it's his time to shine ... he loves it, he loves his job." Ms Siiankoski is a Brisbane-born Australian equestrian champion. She became involved with training and riding Buck after promotions work at the Wynnum Football Club. "We applied when the former Buck was retired and the Wynnum Club CEO knew my horse background and he put an application in for me and the rest is history," Ms Siiankoski said. Training for game day On game day Ms Siiankoski rides Buck at home on a 10-acre block at Tamborine, in the hinterland area between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, before he is bathed and brushed. "I make sure he is smelling and looking his best," she said. "We then pack the truck and make sure we have everything, including feed, and get on the road with enough time to battle the crowds on the way in. "It is not just about rocking up to the game." Buck is trained four times a week, which includes a schedule of dressage and jumping. "Buck's very versatile, some days we will also practise his bows as he likes to keep things interesting," she said. During the off season, radios are set up in Buck's stable to keep him exposed to noise. For the love of the fans When trotting down the tunnel at Lang Park before a game, Ms Siiankoski said Buck knows he is about to go on show. "Once he hears the Broncos song at the start he knows it's time to go; he knows once that music starts we head out and off we go," she said. "You can tell he loves it... he's in his element. "It's much better when the Broncos are scoring lots of tries, he loves it a lot more when he's out and about." The duo's job includes encouraging the crowd to get involved in the game. "You can have the tinniest kid, to an adult, to a grandpa and they all just love him ... everyone's face has a smile on it when I walk up to them with Buck," Ms Siianoski said. "At the end of the day it's about getting everyone involved and getting behind the boys. "The fans always give him a good cheer when he goes around." The excitement of game day Not only does Buck have to look out for touch line referees, he also has to avoid pyrotechnics. "We have only had a couple of hiccups over the five years; a couple of pigroots down the side and he did buck a couple of times," Ms Siianoski said. "Flames he had not seen before startled him too. "They went off one more time than we thought they would and it was close to where he was ... he thought the devil was coming after him. "We have certainly had to stop for the ball boys a few times, both me and Buck." Buck is one of a kind Ms Siianoski held Australian titles in equestrian long before Buck came along and continues to train today. "From 2004 to 2008 I was part of the Australian A squad leading up to the Beijing Olympics," she said. "I did not quite get there, but it was an experience along the way. "I returned to the squad in 2012-2013 and then we have welcomed a little lady into our lives with our first born, so the past 12 months has not been quite as exciting on the competition scene." Juggling a newborn and heading to every Broncos home game is just a part of life now for Ms Siianoski. "You have to be super organised on game day, but everything gets done that needs to be done," she said. "I'm pretty over the moon the boys have made the final, and Buck is always excited once we get to the game. "For me it is a fun job ... it helps too that Buck is one of a kind." Topics: animals, human-interest, rural, sport, rugby-league, tamborine-4270 First posted
With the NBA Draft Combine underway, many teams get to evaluate prospects up close, it can be a good place for players to improve their draft standing through interviews or measurements, like Kentavious Caldwell Pope did two years ago. Per Keith Langlois at Pistons.com: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was told by the advisory committee that advises college underclassmen considering a jump to the NBA on their likely draft status that he was probably looking at the back half of the first round with no guarantee he wouldn't fall to the second. After an eye-opening performance at the Chicago draft combine and impressive individual workouts for teams, he pushed himself into the lottery where the Pistons grabbed him at No. 8, one spot before Minnesota was poised to take him. Could there be a standout at this year's NBA Draft Combine that could steal the show? Wisconsin's Sam Dekker has risen in many draft boards, with many outlets suggesting that the Pistons could select him with the eighth overall pick. However, Detroit has reportedly been in contact with six other potential draft picks: North Carolina shooting guard Jean Pierre Tokoto, UNLV's Rashad Vaughn, Lousiville point guard Terry Rozier, Texas center Myles Turner, Arizona small forward Stanley Johnson and Wisconsin center Frank Kaminsky. Swingman J.P. Tokoto has entered the NBA draft after three years with the Tar Heels, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Charles F Gardner reports that he has talked with the Pistons during the combine. Tokoto is projected to go midway through the second round. Listed as the 46th best prospect by Draft Express, Tokoto averaged 8.3 points 5.6 rebounds and 4.3 assists (2.2 turnovers) on .428/.375/.615 shooting. After a strong start to the combine where he showed his potential as a 3&D man, J.P. might see his stock rise if he continues his current form (13 points, 6/6 FG, 5 rebounds and 2 steals during the scrimmage). UNLV's Rashad Vaughn has sat down with the Pistons according to Vincent Ellis of The Detroit Free Press. The 18 year-old shooting guard shot 38.4% from three during his lone season at UNLV, and averaged 18.3 points to go along with 4.8 rebounds. Currently ranked 41st overall by Draft Express, Vaughn would definitely fill a need for the Pistons, and they could do worse than select the 6'5" guard with their second round pick. Vaughn could log major time with the Grand Rapids Drive to develop his game, and play spot minutes behind Jodie Meeks and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope if needed. Rozier, ranked 37th overall by Draft Express, has also met with the Mavericks, Suns, Spurs and Knicks according to Basketball Insiders' Steve Kyler. The Louisville product is expect to be drafted early to midway through the second round, although his athleticism, speed and defensive ability might see him rise after the combine. In one year with the Cardinals, Terry averaged 17.1 points, 5.6 rebounds, 3.0 assists (2.2 turnovers) and 2.0 steals on a shooting slash of .411/.306/.790. Drafting Rozier with the 38th pick makes little sense for the Pistons, with Reggie Jackson, Brandon Jennings and Spencer Dinwiddie all expected to compete for minutes at the point next season, chalk this one down as the Pistons doing their due diligence or Rozier's agent trying to boost his client's stock. Projected lottery pick Myles Turner also met with the Pistons according to Vincent Ellis. Turner, who CBSSports.com's Gary Parrish had being drafted by the Pistons in his latest mock draft, has envisioned himself playing alongside Andre Drummond (video per MLive's David Mayo). Detroit's biggest needs are on the wings, but Pistons General Manager Jeff Bower didn't rule out drafting a center in the first round. The big man averaged 10.1 points 6.5 rebounds and 2.6 blocks for Texas this year. At 6'11" and with a 7'4" wingspan, Turner certainly makes for an intriguing prospect, with most scouts predicting his defensive ability to translate well to the NBA. Frank Kaminsky was another notable name to be linked to Motown, as Pistons.com Keith Langlois reported, the Wisconsin forward measured 7'0" in shoes at the combine, which, combined with his 41.6% three point percentage make him a legit candidate to be selected with the Pistons' first round pick. In his last season with Wisconsin, Kaminsky averaged 18.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.5 blocks on .547/.416/.780 shooting. Detroit is looking to add depth to the wings, but if indications point towards the Pistons losing Greg Monroe in free agency, it may be worth selecting Kaminsky to pair with Andre Drummond down low... or could Stan Van Gundy potentially get away with a Drummond-Monroe-Kaminsky rotation? Arizona's Stanley Johnson sat down with Jeff Bower and the Pistons at the NBA Draft Combine according to Vincent Ellis. Despite some underwhelming measurements, coming in at 6'6" in shoes, Johnson's tantalizing skillset still has many teams salivating over his potential. The forward told MLive's David Mayo that he has considered playing for the Pistons, and has some Motown connections that could make a potential transition to the NBA a lot easier: The Arizona small forward said Thursday at the NBA Draft Combine that he knows Pistons point guard Reggie Jackson through a mutual friend, and has played through the years with center Andre Drummond going back to their high school days. Johnson was effusive about how he might fit. "I think the position I play, it's wide open for me to go in there and do something special," Johnson said. "I know Reggie and I know Andre really well. So they told me if they drafted me, obviously, that's where the team needs help at, and I'm a really good player and I'd be able to help out in that way." The NBA Draft Combine continues through Friday, and the Pistons seem to be covering all their bases, who are you most excited about? Tweet of the Week
About 200 passengers on the Dawn Princess cruise ship have been struck by an outbreak of norovirus, according to New Zealand health authorities. The ship and the 1,500 passengers aboard were scheduled to leave for Australia on Monday, returning to Melbourne to complete a 13-day trip. The Dawn Princess is operated by Princess Cruises, a division of Miami-based Carnival Corp. The last time there was an outbreak of norovirus on the ship was in September 2012. Dr. Alistair Humphrey, the medical officer of health for Canterbury, said health officials conducted tests which confirmed the illness is norovirus. He said the outbreak now appears to be waning. "Some passengers on Dawn Princess current cruise to New Zealand destinations reported gastrointestinal symptoms confirmed as norovirus, commonly referred to in the community as a 'stomach bug'," a Princess spokesperson said. "It takes relatively few cases to be reported on-board for even more stringent sanitation levels to be implemented." All affected passengers were isolated in their cabins until they were considered no longer contagious, according to the cruise company. Additionally, crew members disinfected common area surfaces, including railing, door handles and elevator buttons. Norovirus is a gastrointestinal illness that lasts one to three days. Symptoms include stomach pain, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. Although cruise ships are known for norovirus outbreaks, the disease is actually rarer on ships than on land. Citing stat that .007% of passengers fall ill, @CarnivalCruise CEO says “if you DON’T want Norovirus, you should really go on a cruise.” — Jessica Plautz (@jessicaplautz) November 17, 2014 Carnival Corporation's CEO Arnold Donald said in a November press call the reason for the reputation is that cruise companies are required to report all incidents of the illness to the CDC. Additional reporting by the Associated Press
We spend so much time playing with our LEGO collection, that when I had to make a LEGO party favor for my son, I thought LEGO printed socks would be a hit! Making LEGO Printed Socks Supplies: Fabric paint (We chose orange and green, my son’s favorite colors) Sponge brushes to apply the paint 4 LEGO bricks (2 to make the pattern + 2 smaller bricks to help hold) Socks (or shirt or bag or whatever your want to print) Something to cover your work area Tips: Put a slightly smaller brick on top of the bricks you want to use to create your print. I found that grip worked better than 2 same sized bricks. Experiment to make sure the pressure and amount of paint is right. Use a sponge brush. Although you could simply dip the bricks in the paint, coating the bricks with the sponge brush worked best. Also, I tried coating both the tops and the bottoms of the bricks with fabric paint. I couldn’t make a very clear print of the top of the bricks, so I used only the bottom. (But – I am certain that people craftier than I could make lovely prints using the top of the bricks!) Come up with a system. Because I waited until right before the party, I needed to print these socks quickly. The fastest way to do it was to lay out all the socks, stamp them with one color and size, and then do the second color and size. After that side dried, I flipped them over and printed the other side. My son does not want to take off his LEGO printed socks. They were simple to make, and they’ve held up through many washes. Thank you for stopping by! For more play times full of laughter and learning, please subscribe, or join us on Facebook or follow along on Pinterest.
10000 Graphics Pack Volume 2 From Media Graphics International (May 1997) 11036 669894 10,000 Sounds and Songs Volume 0 of the Digital Data Archives (1993) 9766 447550 1000 Games 1000 Games for Windows (1998) 909 673894 100 Games and More (May 1995) 3016 95706 100 Great Games/Arcade Games for Windows Two Mini-CDs of Windows Games (1998-1999) 1218 456332 101: Only the Best Games #3 101 DOS Games (August 1995) 6121 371214 101: Only the Best Games #7 101 DOS Games (December 1996) 9038 581812 101 Games (October 1994) 7309 287212 10 Tons of Games Mega Collection 1 From International Software Values (June 1997) 1145 656472 17 Bit - The Fifth Dimension Amiga Demos (1995) 777 471606 1st Canadian Shareware From BetaCorp Technologies, Inc. (August 1991) 6110 105624 File Section of 20 Miles North of Nowhere Sysop: Chris Todd/TCP (August 1996) 1571 125604 Generic Emulation Disk In German (February 1998) 12578 580858 3D Action and Adventure 20+ Titles (September 1994) 783 52016 3D Animania Over 200 Wonderful 3D Graphic Files (April 1992) 219 233876 3D Super CD Gaming An Incredible Collection of the Best 3D Virtual Reality (May 1995) 619 64508 40 Best Windows 95 Games From SoftKey (March 1998) 1364 117644 49er Window Games From Powersource, Inc. (March 1992) 214 8866 Fifth Dimension CD ROM Volume 1 Over 65 Action Games! From Data Express, Inc. (November 1995) 2966 147362 The 640 Meg Shareware Studio CD-ROM From Data Express, Inc. (November 1992) 7454 641126 806 Atari Disks 805 Atari Compatible Floppies (1999) 25023 476076 80 Mega Hits Shareware Titanium Seal (June 1994) 1496 68932 ACES: The Critical Mission A Collection of Action Games (1994) 2421 101474 Adventures in Heaven 2 Power Games for DOS and Windows (1994) 5264 174706 Adventure Shareware Games Volume 4 From Aztech New Media Corp (1994) 947 62786 Amiga Golden Games - Volume 1 German Amiga Shareware CD (1996) 18404 490732 Aircraft Imagery Full-Color Hi-Res Images of Military Aircraft (March 1996) 492 139692 ALL Games from Affiliated Software Distributors (1995) 1130 22906 Amiga ACS Coverdiscs 11 CDs (1996-1998) 173620 6817214 Amiga Tools CD Collection of Amiga-Based Programs (July 1994) 13577 568940 Amiga Format CD Collection Cover CDs from issues of Amiga Format Magazine (1996-1998) 461581 12027178 Amiga Games CD-ROMs (1995 and 1996) 28634 744464 Amiga MA Magazine Coverdiscs (Polish) 4 CDs (1997-1998) 78055 2589270 Various CD-ROMs from AmigaPlus Leser-CD and Sonderheft (2000-2002) 66373 2665444 Aminet Archive CD-ROM The AMINET Amiga Archive (February 1994) 9176 642400 AMINET CD 10 From Urban Miller (January 1996) 6775 669282 AMINET CD 18 From Urban Miller (March 1997) 7264 669594 AMOS Public Domain Disk () 34601 582240 Animation Festival Full Motion Video and Stereo (February 1994) 1217 615204 AOL Trial Disk 5.0 (August 1999) 40 84866 7th Level All Product Sampler CD From 7th Level, Inc. (November 1995) 93 140034 The Arcade BBS File section from The Arcade BBS (1996) 3451 348750 The ASP Advantage CD-ROM From Association of Shareware Professionals (July 1993) 4955 161576 ASP Advantage CD-ROM 2nd Quarter 1994 (April 1994) 20157 502912 Association of Software Professionals (February 1995) 1490 371710 The ASP Collection May 1996 Edition (May 1996) 1649 651180 The ASP Collection June 1996 Edition (June 1996) 1650 666548 Assassins Compact Disc The Ultimate Games Compact Disc (1994) 18708 402806 Astra Blaster CD-ROM #1 A Colossal Collection of Software (September 1992) 8852 718186 The Atari Compendium CD-ROM The original book plus utilities and software (January 1996) 5322 686978 Atari CD Collection Bought at auction, random homebrew CDs (Various) 133030 4325462 11,000 Audio Files From Knowledge Media, Inc. (April 1994) 11797 532246 Adventures in Heaven 2 Power Games for DOS and Windows (May 1994) 8138 289442 The Aztech Hall of Fame Game Cube Collection 7 CDs (October 1996) 10138 768282 Aztek Masterblend Windows 3.11 Games and Programs (July 1993) 2548 137824 Aztech's Super Games From Aztech New Media Corp (September 1994) 419 72776 Brutal Battles The most awesome brutal collection of action packed computer gaming (April 1995) 1373 104584 Black Box Volume 4 From Micro Haus (May 1992) 6234 601004 Collection of Images from Various Amiga BBSes Spanning 1990s (1990s) 288 37658 Bluelight.Com Internet Service From Spinway (January 2000) 101 82576 1000 Games for Windows and DOS Beachware (November 1995) 9795 574982 Bearware CD Millenium Gamepack (December 1998) 942 75614 Best of Buzzness From Best of Productions (January 1994) 8818 483380 Blackhawk CD-ROM Software for Windows 95 (November 1997) 1099 626594 Blackhawk for Windows 95 2 CDs (June 1997) 3372 1283560 Bitfellas Bitjam CD Articles, Music and Programs (August 2007) 1091 583520 Black Crawling Systems Archives 1.0 From L0pht Industries (July 1997) 5065 189194 Black Philes I (Previously the X-Philes) The Synchron Data Collection (1996) 22440 675036 Black Philes II The Synchron Data Collection (1996) 14742 641062 Blender Magazine 3 CDs (1994-1996) 962 540248 Business Library Complete collection of business shareware (December 1993) 445 22850 Blood Shareware From Monolith Productions (1997) 28 232776 Best of Board Games Shareware From Explore the World of Software (1994) 907 10382 Best of Windows Board Games From HRS Software (1997) 986 53996 Between Heaven and Hell Version II From the Bureau Development Team (September 1990) 10435 157282 The Best of TUCOWS Volume 2 Windows, Mac Software (October 1997) 1345 653022 The California Collection From Alpha and Omega (January 1992) 9675 558432 Carat Clipart Collections Collections of Movies, Graphics, Art (1997) 7559 3327430 Shareware Carousel A Selection of Files for TBBS Systems (1990) 16369 557006 Carousel From ALDE Publishing (April 1990) 15270 514024 The Cave BBS File Section Files from the Cave BBS (1998) 1706 426796 CyberNet ShareWare Game Pack I Windows Games CD-ROM (April 1996) 1504 161216 Current Shareware Volume 1 From Chicago Computer Broker (January 1994) 5168 688356 Current Shareware Volume 2 From Chicago Computer Broker (June 1994) 4811 692042 Games 1994 From the Chicago Computer Broker (April 1994) 7297 689226 Windows 1993 From Chicago Computer Broker (January 1993) 7358 695846 Windows 1994 From Chicago Computer Broker (March 1994) 4433 672092 Colossal Cookbook From Chestnut Software (August 1992) 2040 66122 CD Action Magazine 53 CDs (1996-2001) 79559 29873390 Shareware Breakthrough Desktop Publishing (1993) 2301 123746 CD-ROM of CD-ROMs A Consumer's Guide to CD-ROM (1993) 660 80348 CD Review 3 CDs (1996-1997) 10254 1373114 CD-ROM Games 2 CDs (1995) 3701 715504 CD-Rom Games Game Demo Collection Volume 1 (November 1994) 6035 649942 CD-ROM Magazine 4 CDs (1994-1995) 3979 1341358 CD-ROM User 3 CDs (1994-1995) 4617 1243022 CD Zone 2 CDs (1996) 4505 1099594 Computer Gaming World 3 CDs () 2503 1799334 The CICA CD Collection 16 CDs (1992-1998) 67062 19920700 Collection of Hack-Phreak Scene Programs Text-files, PPCs, and other Bits (1990s) 2179 330624 Shareware Unlimited Clipart 1996 (September 1996) 12088 164892 Club Software From Micro Star Software (1996) 1951 52546 The Collection for Windows The Shareware Collection (April 1994) 2049 280766 The Companion for Windows From Tropical Publishing (1993) 4414 634022 The Computist Archive Scans of Hardcore Computist and related Publications (October 2006) 4606 2651678 The Crawly Crypt Collection CD 1 Atari ST Shareware (October, 1994) 14445 457912 The Crawly Crypt Collection CD 2 Atari ST Shareware (October, 1994) 13809 441860 The Cream of the Crop Collection 18 CDs (1993-1997) 46131 13083870 Cubase CD-ROM Music, Loops, MIDI (October 1995) 4385 624244 Current Shareware Volume 2 From Chicago Computer Broker (July 1994) 4811 692034 The Cuteskunk BBS Textfile Collection Complete Home-Grown collection of BBS Textfiles and Related Binaries (1999) 17116 634864 Dark Domain The ACiD Artpacks Archive (2003) 12575 4479470 Data Becker In German (September 1994) 474 40864 Daytime Express Night Owl Clone (November 1992) 6522 587838 Defcon 14 Companion CD-ROM Presentation Materials, Robot Wars, Music (August 2006) 134 459686 Various Demonstration CDs 11 CDs (1996-1999) 15410 5448060 Desktop Works 1995-1996 () 1833 103688 Digital Freedom Enterprizes CD From Dreadwolf Enterprises (1995) 2027 487514 Dictionaries and Language From Chestnut Software (August 1992) 2286 59158 Disc-IT Report (DER) Issue Cover Floppy Discs (1989-1994) 2351 41568 Doom II Mania DOOM 2 New Levels, Utilities, etc. (1995) 613 61330 The Complete Doom Accessory Pack Volume II (September 1994) 1949 118138 The DOOM Companion Edition From Laser Magic (1995) 620 24404 Doom: Knee Deep in the Dead Straight Rip of Original from Gold Medallian Software (March 1994) 18 5018 Dr. Shareware Gold From Dr. CD-ROM (1993) 4800 659978 Desktop Publishing CD-ROM From FM Waves (August 1991) 677 27338 Eagle Eye CD-ROM BBS Network CAP Enterprises (May 1993) 5775 614092 Education Platinum for Windows By Limelight Media, Inc. (1994) 3174 185156 The EMS Professional CD Collection 4 CDs (1994-1996) 67153 6464512 Assembly '95 eRAVE #1 Demos Music Graphics (1995) 1387 389416 PC-SIG Essential Home and Business From PC-SIG Shareware (September 1991) 4368 119254 Euroscene 2 by Almathera Amiga Demos and Music (1995) 3698 656506 Expanding Your BBS From the book by David Wolfe (March 1995) 2118 247424 Explore the World of Software Version 2.1 from Rocelco (January 1994) 1068 16270 Fonts For You From Fantazia Concepts (Septmber 1994) 18874 484082 Fantazia Concepts Sampler Disc From Fantazia Concepts (May 1994) 1584 267438 Generic Fidonet Collection Unknown Source, All Fidonet (1999) 47 7582 Fish & More: Public Domain Library Volume II (March 1991) 14836 261448 Flying Body Parts The Most Incredibly Gruesome, Disgusting, Dismembering Games (May 1995) 820 77250 Fractal Ecstacy From Deep River (July 1993) 2657 672206 Fred Fish Collection On-Line Versions 1.2, 1.5, 1.6 (1991-1993) 126253 1860044 Freedom The MC3 DemoParty Compilation CD (1995) 2791 549140 Forbidden Subjects 3 From Forbidden Productions, Inc. (1993) 6333 346350 Mirror of FTP.WWIV.COM Not a CD, but Priceless for WWIV (December 2006) 11411 2007400 Fujitsu Free Software Collection (Japanese) Volumes 4, 8, 10, 11 (1991-1995) 37351 1775218 Game Empire Over 250 Games! (May 1995) 7775 377108 Games Encyclopedia (July 1995) 5978 424712 Game Fest 1993 (?) From STG Computers Limited (July 1993) 5365 138470 Gamefest By STG Computer Limited (August 1994) 2533 85246 Garbo Collection From Walnut Creek CDROM (May 1992) 4676 380190 GEMini CDROM 1st Edition (November 1993) 30516 660804 Gif Galaxy GIF Images, Shareware and Utilities (1993) 3387 683886 GIFs Galore From Walnut Creek (October 1992) 6735 623790 GIFs Galore CD-ROM From Walnut Creek CD-ROM (August 1992) 6891 641326 Gigabyte Shareware World's Largest Collection of Recent Shareware (October 1992) 11112 660202 Giga Games 3 From Walnut Creek CDROM (August 1995) 2155 582514 Giga Games 5 From Walnut Creek (April 1997) 3628 596602 Giga Games (August 1993) 15820 462842 The Global Amiga Experience (July 1995) 12959 556156 Golden Melody Multimedia Software (September 1997) 4134 364562 Shareware Gold Volume II From Sherburne Knowledge Systems (August 1991) 4002 161042 Gold Medal Software 5 CDs: Evaluation Software on CD-ROM (1994) 12777 2345098 Games Pack Disc 2 DOS Games from Aztech (1997) 4418 239470 16000 Graphics Images By Knowledge Media, Inc. (February 1994) 11378 658142 The Gravix Xperience CD From Advanced Gravis Computer Technology (October 1998) 3073 158118 Group 42 Sells Out The Information Archive (1996) 6223 261044 Project Gutenberg CD-ROM The E-Text Collection (March 1994) 440 99612 Gateway 2000 System CD Version 4.2 (October 1994) 1873 554992 The Hacker Chronicles Volume 1 (1994) 6342 146080 The Hacker Chronicles II A Tour of the Computer Underground (Unknown) 13151 432298 The Hacker's Encyclopedia '98 By the THC BBS (1998) 13308 653248 HAM Radio From Chestnut Software () 13987 290824 Ham Radio ver 3.0 Packet Radio, Frequency Lists, Exams, plus more! (November 1992) 9780 203880 Hand Held Organizer Toolkit From Walnut Creek (March 1998) 5866 200010 Hacker's Matrix Your Ultimate Guide to Computer Hacking (2003) 2258 566122 Hobbes OS/2 Collection Capture of the Hobbes OS/2 Archive (1994) 3461 671800 Hobbes OS/2 Ready to Run From Walnut Creek CD-ROM (September 1994) 16979 600958 Hobbes OS/2 (March 1995) 8489 653978 Hobbes OS/2 2 CDs (September 1997) 5340 1319986 Hobbes OS/2 Collection 2 CDs (April 1998) 4476 1299858 Hall of Fame CD-ROM Years of DOS/Windows 3.1 Shareware (1991) 9965 490252 Home and Business Platinum for Windows Applications for Home and Work (1994) 3336 165094 Hornet MODS Volume 2 The Walnut Creek Collection (1997) 2264 663994 Hornet Underground The Walnut Creek Collection (1996) 2535 444508 Hot Games for Windows (January 1999) 12373 674256 Hottest 4 Many Public Domain Amiga Programs (October 1994) 1365 646142 Hacker Toolbox: Professional Edition A Professional and Complete Collection from the Underground (2003) 324 649624 IBM Shareware Gopher Site Combination of Various CD-ROMs (2000) 875 563638 Interactive Entertainment Magazine 7 CDs (1994-1995) 12679 3722910 The Infomagic Shareware CD Collection 9 CDs (1999-2000) 7598 12373418 Insane Impersonations Whacky Impressions of Celebrities (May 1994) 1634 415446 Instant Doom Levels Create Your Own Carnage for DOOM/DOOM2/HERETIC (1996) 2519 493912 Internet Program Archive Generic Windows Internet Programs (1995) 2842 547758 The InterNet Connection From S&S Enterprises, Inc. (December 1992) 8185 691998 Internet Games Directory From MacMillan Publishing (October 1996) 332 35816 The Internet Info CDROM From Walnut Creek (July 1994) 18684 653616 IONOS Demonstration Disc Various demonstration of IONOS works (August 1997) 356 111762 ITcontinues The Computer Games Quarterly (February 1996) 5788 607288 InfoMagic Internet Tools CD-ROM DOS and UNIX Internet Information (1994) 1596 479566 The JCS CD Collection 8 CDs (1993-1997) 20941 4919366 Kirk's Comm Disc Communication Programs and Files (July 1994) 7555 633226 Kirk's Comm Disk Version 2 Everything You Need to Access or Run a BBS (January 1996) 3140 406950 Knowledge Media Collection of Shareware (February 1993) 10376 336624 Kosmic Archives Volume 2 From the Kosmic Music Archives (1998) 1750 3134844 Linux Developer's Resource From InfoMagic (October 1994) 23848 1382622 Libris Britannia CDROM Version 3 Shareware from Libris Britannia (January 1994) 3296 652250 Libris Britannia PD & Shareware from the UK (March 1993) 2589 661224 Movie Directory Database and Software Potpourri From Nimbus Information Systems (1990) 4516 178490 MAX CD Fonts In Italian (October 1995) 5221 233744 MAX CD Games (July 1995) 5534 595738 MAX CD Photos (November 1995) 2618 656474 MAX CD Sounds (December 1995) 6669 660994 The Maxx Collection 5 CDs (1993-1994) 16596 2760064 Media Depot Volume 5 (October 1997) 3009 667966 MegaDEMO CD-ROM Collection of Other MegaDisks (October 1993) 3069 365548 Mega Media 1 (August 1993) 1603 545518 Megamedia 2 (December 1993) 2021 421590 MegaMODMadness Volume 1 of the Digital Data Archives (1993) 3906 519818 The MegaROM CD Collection 5 CDs (1992-1994) 27250 3406432 MegaWin #2 (September 1993) 4392 661942 MegaWin #3 (April 1994) 4151 653048 MegaWin #4 (November 1994) 4145 673542 Megabyte Monster From Tropical Publishing Corp. (1993) 5660 670402 The Microforum Collection Windows Shareware (2 Disks) (May 1996) 17294 962404 The Micro Haus CD Collection 6 CDs (Unknown) 47277 3408820 Microstar Software Club CD #1 (July 1994) 69 10928 MIDI File Collection Over 6,000 MIDI Files (2003) 6307 111416 MIDI and Wave Workshop From Powersource, Inc. (September 1993) 1396 172336 Multi-Media CD Exploring the Boundaries of Sound & Vision (November 1996) 4152 244146 Multimedia Platinum From Limelight Media (March 1994) 4072 686146 MultiMedia Plus From Knowledge Media, Inc. (November 1994) 4542 650124 Monster Media '93 Various BBS Files (1993) 5032 695558 Moonshine 7 From Moonshine Software (1996) 361 106628 More SimCities (1997) 1979 137518 Multi-Media Mania The Multimedia PC Collection (1993) 5349 264102 NAIDorabilia Memories from the North American Demoparty (September 1998) 1989 657290 NASA Voyagers to the Outer Planets 7 CDs (1988-1989) 30861 4104132 Nautilus The Information Service (1992) 501 111334 Netware Super Library A Collection of Netware Utilities (1996) 10081 370646 National Federation for the Blind Files Collection of Blind-Related Shareware (October 2002) 5613 956900 The Night Owl BBS Collection 22 CDs (1992-1996) 57690 11729592 NT Sources Volume 1 Software Programs for Windows NT (2 CDs) (September 1998) 798 1191594 Only the Best Win95 Games #4 All New 32-Bits Win95 Games (October 1998) 1000 619202 Original Shareware 1992 Appears taken from other CDs (May 1992) 8435 550626 Palm Pilot Collection From HRS Software (1998) 880 131226 The PC-Blue Collection Collection of early 1980's Disks for IBM Compatibles 1983-1985 (1985) 225 35360 PC Blue II Compilation of Floppies (October 1989) 641 144310 PC Gamer Coverdiscs 3 CDs (1995-2005) 5992 1386980 PC Games EXE Cover Discs 9 CDs (1997-1999) 16365 5635324 Ziff-Davis PC Benchmarks CD-ROM WinBench 96 and Winstone 96 Benchmarks (October 1995) 21365 1619228 PC-Medic The Doctor for your PC (1992) 4071 128836 PC-Medic (1993 Edition) Diagnostic Utilities and Information for Repair (October 1993) 4071 128836 PC-SIG Library Eighth Edition From PC-SIG (April 1990) 28600 480158 PC-Sig Library 12th Edition (March 1993) 5008 598744 PC-Sig Library 13th Edition (February 1994) 3288 689202 PC-Sig Games Collection of Games from PC-Sig (1994) 6291 158270 The PC-Sig World of Utilities Collection of Utilities from PC-Sig (1986-1994) (1994) 1103 235830 PDA Software Library For CE, Pilot, Psion, Zaurus (February 1998) 6616 161628 PowerDOS CD-ROM Powerful Software for DOS (June 1996) 2913 444002 PDSL Audio and Music Library CD-ROM Programs and Files Related to Music and Audio (1999) 944 365462 Phoenix CD Version 2.0 From PHOENIX-CD (December 1991) 10462 633166 Phoenix CD Version 4.0 From Phoenix Publishing (1993) 6801 650202 Phoenix CD-ROM 5.0 From The Pier Exchange BBS (April 1994) 4724 603890 Phoenix Rising BBS Collection Canonical List of Hacker Files (June 1995) 5039 246318 The Pier Shareware Collection 10 CDs (1992-1996) 40282 6731028 Phone Losers of America Media Pictures, Programs and Sound from the PLA (March 2002) 396 398734 PLA Media DVD 2008 15 Years of PLA (July 2008) 1023 3068568 Phone Losers of America: PLA Radio Shows and Pranks and More (2006) 871 688934 Polish Programs 2 Polish-Language Shareware (May 1998) 4901 625186 PowerPak Gold (May 1993) 6981 640814 Power Programming (May 1994) 1682 70936 Carsten's PPE Collection A Collection of PPEs for BBSes (November 2007) 3775 167158 Pretty Women 100 Royalty Free Images (1994) 161 450548 Project Gutenberg Texts from 1991-1996 (1996) 1999 434018 Psion Programs Collection 3 CD-ROMs (July 2001) 12225 838458 The PSL Monthly Collection 57 CDs (1995-1999) 60105 22979562 Publisher's Paradise (October 1992) 4427 199398 Quantum Access - Best of Apogee and Epic From Quantum Access (September 1994) 440 43614 Quantum Access Sports Games Just Sports (December 1994) 480 25694 Quick-Shot Arcade Mania 2 Arcade Games and Such (July 1995) 5814 544316 RBBS In a Box Volume 3 Number 1 (1993) 15107 670122 Roadside Resources Macintosh Compilation from BMUG (July 1995) 4685 119414 Shareware Breakthrough Education and Entertainment (1993) 1574 80938 Shareware Breakthrough: Multi-Media Collection For Windows (December 1993) 794 199808 Shareware Breakthrough Soundworks From BeachWare (December 1993) 2227 112838 Shareware Breakthrough for Windows Utilities and Productivity Collection (1994) 3662 135318 Scene96 International Edition CD #1 (1997) 5978 672798 Scene96 International Edition CD #2 (1997) 9012 686340 Scene Pixel Graphics Pixel Graphics from the Scene 95-97 (1998) 4161 472832 Secret Subjects PS Multimedia, Inc. USA (1998) 3517 58872 The Significant Series: Windows From PC-SIG (October 1993) 12341 380296 The Silver Collection 4 CDs from Precision Software Applications (1993) 13437 1877310 The Simtel CD Collection 13 CDs (1994-2001) 11690 1137048 Simtel MS-DOS Archive From Coast to Coast Software (March 1994) 10349 1004278 Softkey Entertainment Pack Audio Collections, Games, Destinies (July 1996) 14652 520410 Software Du Jour From Disk GO Tech (April 1988) 427 14408 The So Much CD Collection 8 CDs (1993-1996) 33160 4343684 SoundMOD Volume 1 Over 3700 Songs for Your PC (December 1994) 3830 680506 SoundMOD Volume 2 Hours and Hours of music for your PC (August 1995) 3025 683328 Sound Sensations From Chestnut Shareware (1992) 17904 369780 Source Code CDROM From Walnut Creek CDROM (March 1992) 13402 600494 Space and Astronomy Collection of Space Stuff from Usenet (August 1993) 12227 543436 Sprint Gamers Companion 5 From Super OZ (February 1995) 5868 635140 Spring Games and Entertainment 6 From Super Oz Software (February 1995) 1487 560624 The Successful Sysops Handbook CD Companion to the Book (August 1994) 134 29880 Zodiac Super OZ CD November (1997) 3009 667966 Suzy B Software Disk #1 Atari Public Domain Software Collection (1994) 27712 616942 Suzy B Software Disk #2 Atari Public Domain Software Collection (1994) 26091 633780 The Software Vault Collection 10 CDs (1993-1995) 35180 5059542 Shareware Breakthrough! For Windows 3.1 or Greater (1993) 3662 135318 Shareware Explorer 26,000 IBM PC Files (August 1993) 26855 1987228 Shareware Extravaganza 1993 (February 1993) 25524 2118364 Shareware Extravagana 4 (4 Discs) The Best of PC-Ohio BBS (1994) 16701 2363640 Shareware Extravaganza 8 (Disk 8) 17,000 Files from PC-Ohio (1997) 18243 5043012 Shareware Heaven #1 The Ultimate Shareware Collection (March 1993) 3366 401326 ShareWare Heaven #2 The Ultimate Shareware Collection (1993) 3586 652126 Shareware Heaven 3 Top 4000+ Programs (1994) 4312 659406 Shareware Innundation Contains shareware from several collections (1992) 23809 2115832 Shareware Overload Trio Over 1.5 Gigabytes of Shareware (1993) 8922 1055118 Teacher 2000 A convenient collection of educational tools for all ages (February 1995) 2994 482624 Telecom 34,728 files of Telecommunications Documents (April 1996) 964 154764 The THEBBS.ORG Archives Artwork, Programs, Fonts, Files (October 2009) 4442 331848 The Unsorted Collection Unsorted Historical BBS Files (2001) 24857 850998 Shareware Tiger From PC Info Systems (July 1992) 8244 711452 Too Much Shareware By Scandanavian CD-ROM Publishers (Unknown) 4511 569818 Top 10 Great Card Games Craptastico Collection (November 2000) 231 73516 Trans-Ameritech Supplement 2 For UNIX users...LINUX plus BSD (1994) 4836 632062 Tremor Over 1000 Quake Levels, Maps and Patches (February 1997) 3310 625698 Trixter's Scene Collection This and That from the Scene (2004) 1583 676904 The UFO Collection Pictures, Videos and Textfiles (October 1992) 295 173782 Ultimate Gameware CD-ROM From CMS Distributing (October 1994) 2503 384842 Ultimate MOD Collection From Sunset Productions (1992) 5696 405570 The Ultimate Shareware Collection From Save-On Software (May 1992) 2629 589798 The Ultimate Windows Shareware Collection v1.0 From Digital Expressions, Inc. (January 1994) 3438 474686 The Ultimate Windows Set (February 1995) 4741 204912 Various Unprotection Examples Collected text and programs (December 1991) 589 3040 United Public Domain Gold From Weird Science (4 CDs) (June 1995) 9877 2414134 Useless From Big Earth Publishing (1996) 1848 430232 Venus VGA Series Version 2.02 (February 1998) 1669 91796 Phoenix CD Version 4.0 Collection of OS/2 and Windows Shareware (February 1993) 6801 650180 VGA Spectrum From S&S Enterprises (August 1991) 7211 404748 VGA Spectrum II From S&S Publishing (December 1992) 3285 677970 Warbirds The Art and Science of Military Aviation (September 1994) 2770 575156 Morecraft for Warcraft II Over 200 Custom-Made Levels (March 1997) 1848 157978 Wargames CD-ROM From Future Thinking (December 1994) 119 53302 Quantum Axcess Way Cool Games Windows Games (February 1994) 2477 125394 Waycool Games Two! From Quantum Access (August 1994) 2143 131462 Wildcat! Gold: The Optical BBS From Mustang Software (June 1992) 4799 442600 Infomagic Windows 6-Pak 32-Bit Windows Shareware Collection (February 1999) 6922 3992400 The WINFILES.COM CD Collection 4 CDs (1998-1999) 25553 4412380 Wingames Volume 2 Over 125 Games for Windows 3.1 (June 1994) 1164 48320 Windows Shareware GOLD From the Golden Rom Series (January 1991) 6687 135930 The PC Fest CD-Sampler From WizardWare (September 1994) 946 168290 World Library: Electronic Home Library Complete Text of over 250 Titles (1991) 39 148350 Windows 3-Pack From Chicago Computer Broker (3 CDs) (April 1995) 13170 2053712 The Official X Consortium X11R6 From Walnut Creek (1995) 38933 1264024 Zoom Release 2 The Latest Amiga PD Software (1996) 45734 654166
On 1 June Georginio Wijnaldum gave Holland a 2-1 win over Poland, driving his 13th goal of the season into the top corner of Wojciech Szczesny’s net; he packed his bags in Gdansk and did not watch another competitive match until 10 July. It might have been longer had his friend not started the European Championship final that night. “I was done with football for a few weeks,” he explains, somewhat conservatively given he switched off for 39 days before switching on to Portugal’s mind-numbing victory over France. Failures with club and country had cut deep but they seem far away now. “These are better days,” he says with the broadest of grins. Far from done. If results dictate the 26-year‑old’s mood then it is no surprise the Liverpool midfielder was in engaging form in the buildup to Sunderland’s visit on Saturday. “What a nice guy,” texts the photographer having asked Wijnaldum to pose for a series of snaps after the interview and encountered a patient, amiable Premier League subject. Liverpool’s commanding form, league position and a meeting with Jürgen Klopp must take some of the credit. The Rotterdam-born midfielder chose Anfield over White Hart Lane in the summer, although strictly speaking there was no choice as Tottenham Hotspur did not meet Newcastle United’s £25m asking price, and has settled seamlessly into a team of increasing substance. What next for Steven Gerrard? Charlton and Guardiola offer lessons from history \| Paul Wilson Read more “I had great conversations with [Mauricio] Pochettino and Klopp,” says the Dutch international. “But in the meeting with Jürgen we had a laugh and did not speak only about football. He was interested in my personal life and that was good for me. He was not only interested in Wijnaldum the footballer but Wijnaldum the person. When you’re not out on the football field you have to communicate as people and it is good if you know something about how the other person is. It makes things easier.” Wijnaldum’s debut season in English football was anything but simple when, despite scoring 11 Premier League goals and thriving upon Rafael Benítez’s belated arrival, he endured relegation with Newcastle. Holland’s failure to qualify for the Euros compounded a season to forget. He reflects: “It was a really difficult time. The first thing was that it was hard to accept we didn’t qualify for the Euros. When you finish third at a World Cup you have confidence you might be able to win the Euros and we didn’t go. “I didn’t watch the Euros, I only watched the final. I wanted to spend time with my family and friends instead but, to be honest, I was done with football for a few weeks because everything had gone wrong. Personally it was a great year but when you don’t achieve things with your team, and especially if you get relegated, it is hard. I was a little bit done with football but Moussa [Sissoko, of France] is a good friend of mine so I thought I should watch him in the final. “The Euros was a really big disappointment but relegation with Newcastle was for me even bigger. Before I went to Newcastle I spoke with the manager and the people there and they had big plans to bring good players in and play for titles. I was really disappointed because I wanted to achieve something with Newcastle. Even if it was not a title I wanted to help the club get back to fifth-to-10th place to start with, and maybe get the club back into Europe again. Unfortunately it didn’t go that way. It went totally wrong. That was the biggest disappointment for me last season.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wijnaldum at Liverpool’s Melwood training ground. Photograph: Jon Super for The Guardian Four months into his Liverpool career and Wijnaldum has rediscovered the feeling he had during his final season at PSV Eindhoven when, as captain, he led Phillip Cocu’s team to their first league title since 2008. He will not say whether Liverpool can end a much longer wait for a league title this season. To do so would run contrary to everything Klopp demands of his players, indeed the entire club, in his quest for constant improvement, although the midfielder admits Liverpool have confidence they can win every game at present. “There is no chance of us getting carried away,” he says. “That comes from the manager. Even if we have played a good game he still wants to work on the things that didn’t go so well. Every time you have to give 100%. It’s the same every week and in every training session. Every exercise we do he asks us to do it at 100% and never less.” Wijnaldum adds: “I feel like I did at PSV. The most important thing is to enjoy football because you don’t know how long your career is going to last, but it is difficult when things don’t go well. It was difficult to enjoy last season. You are losing games, everything is going bad, you don’t play well and in the end you get relegated. That was hard. “This season I started to enjoy it as soon as I knew Liverpool really wanted to sign me, especially after the meeting with Jürgen. I came away from that with a really great feeling that I could train with a good manager, a really good team and make myself a better player. I’m probably enjoying it now more than I did before because I have seen the other side of football where I was losing a lot of games and got relegated with Newcastle and didn’t go to the Euros. These are better days. “Every training session we do is to improve you as a player. That’s different to what I’ve experienced before and I’m really happy with it. The manager gives you confidence. He’s not a manager who yells at you or gets angry with you whenever you make a mistake. He will only get mad if you don’t do the things you are good at so, for example, [Sadio] Mané is a good player who can dribble, [Philippe] Coutinho is a good player who can dribble and if they stop doing that there’s a chance he might get mad and upset because you are not using your quality. Against Southampton last week he wanted me to make a run. I did it but it was too late and he said something about it. “But sometimes, if I lose the ball easily, I expect him to be angry and he’s not. You can hear his voice easily enough – he’s quite loud. He is really passionate and not only in the game. People might see him during a game and think that’s an act. It’s not an act. He’s like that in training. For me that’s a good thing because it keeps you sharp and, from his side, he is doing everything he can to make the team ready to win games. That’s a good thing.” The Holland international has a more defensive role at Liverpool than at Newcastle, where he operated out wide or as a No10, but Klopp did not outline a specific role when they met in the summer. “He explained his way of playing and said that I would fit in. From that moment I was very excited,” says Wijnaldum who, for his part, neglected to mention inspiring Newcastle’s 2-0 defeat of Liverpool at St James’ Park in December. “At the time he still had to make me an offer so I thought it is probably best to say nothing about that game, although it was a good one for me. Maybe I will remind him.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Georginio Wijnaldum inspired Newcastle United to 2-0 win over Liverpool at St James’ Park last season. Photograph: Rex Shutterstock Wijnaldum admits that “in different circumstances” he would have “loved to have worked longer” with Benítez. “But I had my plans in my head and we both went our own way. He said he wanted to keep me to get promoted and that the right offer had to be made before I could leave. Once everything was done he said Liverpool was a wonderful club and that he hoped I’d enjoy it here.” Jürgen Klopp warns Liverpool players will be dropped for any complacency Read more A more formative influence currently resides across Stanley Park. Erwin Koeman, assistant to his brother, Ronald, at Everton, was the Feyenoord coach who gave Wijnaldum his debut in April 2007; the midfielder became the club’s youngest debutant, in a team featuring Pierre van Hooijdonk and Angelos Charisteas, Greece’s European Championship-winning striker, against a Groningen side featuring one Luis Suárez. “The game was on the Sunday and he told me on the Wednesday that I would be playing,” he recalls of the elder Koeman. “That was a really special moment. I realised that not every trainer has the balls to let a 16-year-old play in the first team and things were not going so well for the team at that time so they didn’t want to take the risk with young players. I was 16 years and 148 days old. “That is why I always respect him as a trainer, because he made a decision that other trainers would have been scared to make. He told me I could tell my grandma, who I was living with at the time, but asked me not to tell anyone in school. I was still at school and he wanted to keep it a secret. You know how it is with reporters. It was very difficult to concentrate on class.” While Wijnaldum is effusive in his praise of past and present coaches, it is his grandmother Francina to whom he owes the greatest gratitude. As he explains: “I wanted to be a gymnast when I was young, I used to do backflips and all those things in the street and at home, but my grandma said it was dangerous and made me stop. Now my daughter is doing gymnastics and I’m a little bit jealous of her because she is doing all the things I wanted to do when I was young. I had to stop and concentrate on football but I’m happy about that now.”
Home \| Schedule \| Development and Support \| Locations \| Register \| Find a Team \| Rules Welcome to the inaugural launch of the X University program at Georgia Tech. This site is available to provide you with all of the information that you will need to participate in the hack. This is a free event and you will own all intellectual property of what you build, we just supply the food, venue and prizes for you to hack away. What to Expect An X University hackathon is a development event where participants have the opportunity to build out hack projects over a 24 hour, all night development event. X.commerce staff will be on hand during the event to help you with any blockers or to answer your questions throughout the day and night. The event will start out on Friday evening from 5-8pm with an overview of the program, what to expect, and a series of technical talks to help get you started. On Saturday at 11am the doors will open for registration and at noon we will begin the hack. Keeping Up to Date and Social Accounts During the event we will be reaching out to everyone via our Twitter account. This is the place to find up-to-date information on the program and reach out to us before the event. During the event we will be posting prize giveaway questions and notifications of food arrival through the Twitter account. Twitter On Twitter, here is the information that you will need to reach out: Twitter Account: @xuniversity Event Hashtag: #xuniversity Facebook We have a discussion group available on Facebook - if you have general questions or are looking to find a team or team members, you can reach out to everyone there. Photos If you take photos of the event, the tag that we are using is #xuniversity for the program and #XUGATech2012 for the Georgia Tech event itself. What We're Looking for in a Hack We are looking for hacks that are innovative, fun or solve a real problem. Hacks may include web applications, mobile apps, hardware projects, food hacks or anything else that you may be interested in working on. Hacks should use at least one of the products or services with eBay, PayPal, X.commerce, Magento, or any of the other eBay owned products and companies. To get you started with an idea, the best hacks are those that: Solve a real world problem. Fix an issue that you have with the way your school runs. Build upon an existing product, but in an innovative way. Do something new an innovative that has never been done before. We do not take ownership of your projects, they are your intellectual property to do with as you see fit. From the product many developers in the past have built startups around their great ideas. Before Attending Even though hacking on your project needs to start when the hackathon begins, there is still a lot that you can do before the event begins:
Birtherism's Sudden Respectability The MSM has embraced it's inner kook and decided that birtherism is actually kind of cool after all. Amazingly, all it took was for a Republican to emerge who they could pin it on and then suddenly...serious questions need to be asked! Of course I'm sure it's all a big coincidence that so many MSM outlets are suddenly interested in the question of eligibility to be President. A Washington Post writer went so far as to say Cruz is a Canadian but we shouldn't hold that against him. Funny how all these outlets just started asking these same questions around the same time, huh? I mean, of all the things going on in politics these days...ObamaCare collapsing, Egypt on fire, and of course amnesty in the offing, why the most important question on no one's mind, other than hyper-partisan reporter's, is, "Hey, is Ted Cruz eligible to be President?" Now because like me you're a wingnut you're thinking, "This seems like a pretty clear case of the media going after a conservative in a way they never would Barack Obama". Silly wingnut! You only think that because you're an idiot. Immediately, parallels were drawn to President Obamas 2011 release of his own birth certificate, which also was meant to end lingering questions about his eligibility to be president. And for the few in the birther community, they see hypocrisy. Why are the media not denouncing those who question Cruzs eligibility in the same way they have denounced the so-called birthers who continue to question Obamas? The reason? Because about the only thing these two situations have in common is that they involve a birth certificate and a presidential candidate. [Lots of liberal nonsense cutout to save time and space] Its just not an apples-to-apples comparison. Except it is and apples-to-apples comparison. There were plenty of people (some of whom will no doubt show up in the comments) who insisted that Obama was not a "natural born citizen" because only one of his parents was an American citizen, which is the case being made against Cruz. After spending years trying to tar the whole GOP with this birther nonsense, the MSM is now going to use it to attack Cruz and not so subtlety imply to voters that while the media is only asking questions, those conservatives are kind of crazy, right? What's next media? A series of stories explaining how inappropriate and wrong it would be for someone with no executive experience and only part way through their first Senate term to run for President? Oh btw, Ted Cruz is absolutely eligible to be President.
October 12, 2003 Desktop Line Following Robot Recently many kind of robot contests have being opened and some interesting reports of the challenge are found on the web. The Line Following is a kind of the robot contests to vie running speed on the line. I build a tiny line following robot which can run on the desk, moving the key board aside will do. It is for only a personal toy reduced its size less than one fifth compared to typical line following robots, not in formura. But I believe that it is suitable for home use in the small Japanese houses said that rabbit burrow...(^_^;. Of course I have also no time to take part in the robot contests :-( About Line Follower The line follower is one of the self operating robot that follows a line that drawn on the floor. The basic operations of the line following are as follows: Capture line position with optical sensors mounted at front end of the robot. Most are using several number of photo-reflectors, and some leading contestants are using an image sensor for image processing. The line sensing procss requires high resolution and high robustness. Steear robot to track the line with any steearing mechanism. This is just a servo operation, any phase compensation will be required to stabilize tracking motion by applying digital PID filter or any other servo argolithm. Control speed according to the lane condition. Running speed is limited during passing a curve due to friction of the tire and the floor. There are two line styles, white line on the black floor and black line on the white floor. Most contest are adopting the first one in line width of between 15 and 25 millimeters. Hardware Mechanics Right image shows bottom view and side view of the built line following robot. All mechanical and electrical parts are mounted on a proto board, and it also constitutes the chasis. The line following robot is upheld in three points of two driving wheels and a free wheel. The driving wheels are made with a 7 mm dia ball bearing and a rubber tire. The free wheel is a 5 mm dia ball bearing attached loosely. To drive driving wheels, two tiny vibration motors that used for cellular phone, pager or any mobile equipment are used. Its shaft is pressed onto the tire with a spring plate, the output torque is transferred to the wheels. The steearing mechanism is realized in differential drive that steear the robot by difference in rotation speed between the left wheel and the right wheel. It does not require any additional actuator, only controling the wheel speed will do. Electronics Controller ATmega8 (Atmel) Line sensor Six photo-reflectors Power supply Two CR2032 lithium cells (One is for controller, the other is for motors) Motor Two micromotors for left wheel and right wheel Dimensions 45(L), 33(W), 12.5(H) [mm] Weight 15 grams (Body:8g, Cells:7g) Performance 53 centimeter per second at oval course An Atmel ATmega8 is used for the controller and it is powered by a lithium coin cell. The other lithium coin cell is for only motors. Separating the power supply into two cells is to avoid accidental reset of the microcontroller due to voltage dip by motor start current. Six photo-reflectors are mounted at front end of the chasis. They sense reflection rate of the floor under them. Motors are driven in PWM to control rotation speed lineary. Software Using photo-reflectors To detect a line to be followed, most contestants are using two or more number of poto-reflectors. Its output current that proportional to reflection rate of the floor is converted to voltage with a resister and tested it if the line is detected or not. However the threshold voltage cannot be fixed to any level because optical current by ambent light is added to the output current like the image shown right. Most photo-detecting modules for industrial use are using modurated light to avoid interference by the ambient light. The detected signal is filtered with a band pass filter and disused signals are filtered out. Therefore only the modurated signal from the light emitter can be detected. Of course the detector must not be saturated by ambient light, this is effective when the detector is working in linear region. In this project, pulsed light is used to cancel ambient light. This is suitable for arraied sensors that scanned in sequence to avoid interference from next sensor. The microcontroller starts to scan the sensor status, sample an output voltage, turn on LED and sample again the output voltage. The difference between the two samples is the optical current by LED, output voltage by the ambient light is canceled. The other sensors are also scanned the same avobe in sequence. Signal processing of line detection Right image shows the actual line posisiton vs detected line position in center value of 640. The microcontroller scans six sensors and calcurates the line position by output ratio of two sensors near the line. Thus the line position can be detected lineary with only six sensors. All the sensor outputs are captured as analog value that proportioning to reflection ratio, and the sensitivity have variety between each one of them. In this system, to remove the variations from the outputs, calibration parameters for each sensor can be held into non-volatile memory. This can be done with online mode. The microcontroler enters the online mode when an ISP cable is attached, and it can be controlled with a terminal program in serial format of N81 38.4kbps. S1 command monitors sensor values, and S2 command calibrates variation of sensor gain on the reference surface (white paper). The ATmega8 must be set to 8MHz internal osc.
SOCIAL media, talkback radio and newspaper blogs and letters pages have lit up with angry sentiments in the wake of the ugly scenes in Sydney on the weekend. Search for yourself or just start a conversation at the bar of the local pub if you don't believe me. For Christ's sake - or Mohammed's or Buddha's, for that matter - is that really the sort of light in which you galahs who decided to run amok on the weekend want your particular faith viewed? What on Earth did you think you were going to achieve by confronting a few hundred police about a gripe that has nothing to do with most of us here? What is to be achieved by appalling 22 million fellow Australians who believe, regardless of your case, the best solution is not throwing blunt objects at people in uniform who are just trying to keep the peace rather than hurt you? For those of you who may have fled foreign climes, we're trying to befriend you, not persecute you here, which is why I suspect you came in the first place. So don't bugger it up for everyone else by being stupid. At the risk of being inflammatory, Saturday's scenes of surging violence and religious extremism - not the least being that enduring image of a young child holding aloft a poster exhorting people to "behead" anyone insulting the prophet Mohammed - is the public relations equivalent of a suicide bomb. Yes. That image alone, which went viral within minutes of being taken, is that strong. And not in a positive way. You bloody idiots. Here you are, ostensibly protesting about an amateurish hate video funded (and reportedly heavily re-edited) by some fringe group of nutbags in the US, and thinking that you'll help restore or avenge Islam's good name and honour by trying to stage a mini-riot on the other side of the planet? All you have achieved is setting back the cause of assimilation and multiculturalism in this country a good few years; possibly half a generation. And you have trashed years of hard work when it comes to building goodwill, community understanding and acceptance. And for what? There has been no slight against your names or that of your God or prophet from Australia. There has been no repression of your religion here. All you did was demonstrate yourselves to be as dimwitted and bigoted as the (allegedly Christian) extremists who put together that amateurish and offensive video in the first place. <a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=f5db0201ae" >Riots in the name of religion are not on. Join Paul Syvret to discuss</a> Deep breath. In fact, to all of those who decided it was a terrific idea to go to war on the streets of Sydney over the weekend, may I just say you have achieved one thing for me and that is to reinforce the thinking that organised religion is poison to civilised society. We saw it in the Crusades. We've seen it more recently in the IRA's brutal campaign. We see it now everywhere from Kashmir to Kabul to Cairo as sectarian extremists of all brands of God-botheringness decide to kill each other in an effort to prove whose god or prophet or imaginary friend is more all-loving and omniscient. Get a grip, people. Any power-mad cleric can twist words of whatever holy book they have at their hands to suit them. And the Bible is just as full of smiting, retribution and intolerance as sections of the Koran depending, of course, on who is channelling divine interpretation of the messages. Conversely, both books are also full of messages of love, tolerance and peace. media_camera Angry protesters clash with police in Sydney on Saturday, in response to a film that attacks Islam. So to the people who - let's face it - went feral in Sydney on Saturday: cool it. If there is one sure-fire way to attract persecution in this country, it is by acting like nongs and importing foreign squabbles to our shores. You are doing the vast majority of people who make our country richer through their cultural and theological contributions a grave disservice. And my apologies go out in advance to the thousands of Muslims in this great land who will likely suffer, even indirectly, as the result of the actions of a hot-headed and extreme few, and indeed for those of us who would lump the beautiful majority in with the bloody-minded few. May your God bless you, preferably peacefully. Email Paul Syvret Originally published as PR suicide bomb from idiot rioters
Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Series four of Peaky Blinders will begin filming in Liverpool again next March, Cillian Murphy has revealed. The last series of the BBC period gangster drama took four months to film and three months to edit, so if the fourth follows the same timescale the gangster drama could be back on our screens by next Autumn. Irish star Cillian, who plays Birmingham gang leader Thomas Shelby, revealed shooting details at the premiere of his new film Free Fire. He said: “We start shooting the next series next March, I think. “The success of it is down to really great writing. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now "People in America love it, people in Australia love it, people in Poland love it – it’s mad.” Whilst the action of the show is set on the lawless streets of Birmingham, most of it is filmed in Liverpool. Series one to three featured locations including Seacombe Ferry Terminal, Croxteth Hall and Stanley Dock. The gang thriller follows the lives of the Shelby family of Birmingham as they expand their empire across the country during the volatile 1920s.
Paul Ryan's Plan to Change Medicare Looks A Lot Like Obamacare Enlarge this image toggle caption Mark Wilson/Getty Images Mark Wilson/Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan agree that repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with some other health insurance system is a top priority. But they disagree on whether overhauling Medicare should be part of that plan. Medicare is the government-run health system for people age 65 and older and the disabled. Trump said little about Medicare during his campaign, other than to promise that he wouldn't cut it. Ryan, on the other hand, has Medicare in his sights. "Because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke," Ryan said in an interview on Fox News on Nov. 10. "So you have to deal with those issues if you're going to repeal and replace Obamacare." In fact, the opposite appears to be true — Obamacare may actually have extended the life of Medicare. This year's Medicare trustees report says the program would now be able to pay all its bills through 2028, a full 11 years longer than a 2009 forecast — an improvement Medicare's trustees attribute, in part, to changes in Medicare called for in the Affordable Care Act and other economic factors. And the irony of the Ryan Medicare plan, say some health policy analysts, is that it would turn the government program into something that looks very much like the structure created for insurance plans sold under the ACA. "The way it works is comparable to Obamacare," says physician and conservative policy analyst Avik Roy, founder of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. Ryan's plan would set up "Medicare exchanges" where private insurance companies would compete with traditional government-run Medicare for customers. Obamacare exchanges sell only private insurance plans. People would get "premium support" from the government to pay for their insurance under the Ryan Medicare plan. The subsidy would be tied to the price of a specific plan offered by an insurer on the exchange, much like the Affordable Care Act subsidy is tied to the second-cheapest "silver" plans. And the payment would be linked to a recipient's income, so lower-income people would get a bigger subsidy. The subsidy would rise as beneficiaries get sicker, to ensure access to insurance. As with Obamacare, people who choose plans that cost more than the government subsidy would have to pay the balance. Insurers would have to agree to issue policies to any Medicare beneficiary, to "avoid cherry-picking," and to ensure that "Medicare's sickest and highest-cost beneficiaries receive coverage." The changes would start in 2024, when people who are now about 57 become Medicare eligible. Roy agrees with Ryan that Medicare is going broke and that a program structured in this way would save money through "the magic of competition." "If you have 10 insurers competing for that business, you're going to negotiate a better deal," he said. Medicare is already a dual public-private program. Most seniors today are enrolled in what's known as traditional Medicare, where the government pays for medical appointments, tests and hospital stays on a fee-for-service basis. Alongside that program is Medicare Advantage, an insurance plan provided by a private insurer that may offer seniors additional services like dental care at the same price. The government pays a fixed monthly fee to the insurer for each Medicare Advantage patient, rather than paying for every service separately, as it does in traditional Medicare. About half of Medicare's new enrollees choose Medicare Advantage plans, says Henry Aaron, a health care economist at the Brookings Institution. Aaron says Ryan's proposal aims to move almost all seniors into Medicare Advantage-style insurance by making traditional Medicare too expensive for the consumer. But, he says, there are risks to that approach. "The real question here is whether the requisite safeguards are in place to ensure that the elderly and people with disabilities would be able to maneuver in such a system," he says. That's because the health care and health insurance systems are very complex. Doctors move in and out of networks, copayments can vary and plans can change. Millions of people on Medicare are also eligible for Medicaid, meaning they are poor and vulnerable, Aaron says. And at least 8 million Social Security beneficiaries have been declared financially incompetent and are assigned a representative to manage their money. "What you've got here is a group of people who are very sick, poor, and often cognitively impaired one way or the other," Aaron says. "Tossing people like that into a health care marketplace and saying, 'Here, go buy some insurance,' is a recipe for problems." Seniors may feel the same way. Researchers at Brown University last year found that as people get older and sicker, they tend to drop Medicare Advantage and opt for traditional Medicare. Ryan has been working on his plan to change Medicare for many years. A version of his "premium support" plan was included in several budget proposals he put forth when he was chairman of the House Budget Committee. The Congressional Budget Office says the proposals would reduce federal spending on Medicare. At this point it's unclear whether Trump shares Ryan's ambitions to upend the current Medicare system. Trump didn't include Medicare reform on his campaign website. But since his election, "modernize Medicare" has been included on the list of health care priorities on his transition site.
I often think about Friday dinners with my family. Every Friday, no matter what, my wife and I took our two children out to eat; it was a ritual we looked forward to all week. We would sometimes try new restaurants, but my children’s favorite was the Olive Garden. My daughter loved to order Shirley Temples and my son always wanted whatever I was having, so I’d order two of the same meal for us. Those memories feel a world away from where I’m living now, in Trelawny, on Jamaica’s north coast. I’m trying to get a start as a pig farmer, but it’s much harder than I expected. It costs about $200 a week to feed the pigs, and there’s a water shortage so I have to walk about a mile each way to get river water for them. My family in the United States sent me $1,500 to get the business started but now I fear I may lose it all. Just a few years ago, I had a great life in the Tidewater area of Virginia. I had a wonderful wife who is a glass artist, and our two children were thriving. My trucking business was starting to take off. We were hauling goods from Norfolk’s port to distribution centers for Target and Wal-Mart. My wife and I bought our first house and had money in the bank. I applied to become a U.S. citizen in 2005 and answered all the questions on the application honestly, even admitting to a stupid mistake I’d made years earlier. I passed the written and oral tests and completed the Citizenship and Immigration Services biometrics exam. I waited and waited, and when I called to ask whether there was a problem no one had answers. (Sign up for Politico Magazine's Friday Cover email) Then at 6 a.m. on June 10, 2010, I answered loud knocks on our front door in my pajamas. Eleven armed immigration officers supported by state troopers were there with their weapons drawn, some wearing bulletproof vests. They stormed into my living room and put me in handcuffs while my wife came down the stairs, screaming, and my daughter, who was 12 years old, watched in horror. A few minutes later I was in their custody, just partially dressed, heading to the Hampton Regional Jail. * Who would have expected things to turn out this way? I was 17 when I came to New York to join my mother, who had left my siblings, my father and me behind near Kingston while she worked to build a better life for us in the United States. She was a legal permanent resident and worked two jobs as a home health aide, saving money so we could join her. My mom left for the United States in 1985 and came back four years later to get me and my brothers. She’d saved enough money and finished all the paperwork so our family could be reunited. Each of us was able to come to the United States legally with a green card. I entered Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn. It was a hard adjustment—math and science were so easy for me, but I struggled with history and economics. There were some other Jamaicans at my school, but it was the first time I encountered people from so many different backgrounds. Most of the students were immigrants—from Guatemala, Mexico, St. Kitts, different parts of the Caribbean and Central America. I graduated in the middle of my class, but in math and science I was at the top. We were chained together like slaves and kept handcuffed and shackled for seven hours before boarding an ICE chartered plane. Deportation By the Numbers 11.1 million Number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S 2 million Estimated number of deportations during the Obama administration 34,000 The number of immigrants ICE is supposed to detain at any time 478,000 Total number of immigrants detained in 2012 150,000 Estimated number of U.S. children who had a parent deported in 2012 $2 billion Annual cost to the U.S. of immigration detention Navy recruiters came to my high school, and I quickly decided I wanted to enlist. It was a way to make my family proud and serve the country I now called home. So I signed up for a pre-entry program while I was still in high school and I worked on an aircraft carrier during the weekends. I graduated in May, and by August I was at boot camp in Chicago. It was hard and even scary at times—to wake us up in the morning, drill sergeants would come into the dorms with large metal trash cans and throw them across the floor. The first time I heard that sound, I was certain my heart would leap out of my chest. One of my dorm mates jumped out of his bunk in shock and broke his arm. Some guys washed out, but I stuck with it and when I finished and came home, I was proud to show off the uniform I had worked so hard to earn. I was assigned to the big naval base in Norfolk. Our ship was in dry dock when I got there, but before long I was loading food supplies and bombs on board and we were in the water headed to the Middle East to serve in Operation Desert Storm. We spent six months at sea, and then came home for a month before shipping out again for three more months. We were a supply ship—carrying everything from underwear to bombs—backing up destroyers and carriers and other combat ships. We weren’t on the front lines, but we were always in the danger zones. I loved the Navy, but I wanted to go to school, so when my four years were up I decided not to re-enlist. I was honorably discharged and signed up for community college and started working in clubs as a DJ, playing the Caribbean music I love. I was “Dutch B” on a local radio station, and for three consecutive weeks a girl called the station and asked me to play the same song. Her name was Judith, and she was an art student at Norfolk State. I was deejaying at a restaurant when Judith came to meet me for the first time. We were finally able to put faces to the voices we had been hearing on the radio, and I asked her out on our first date. She met me at the radio station and we drove to IHOP, where we laughed and talked all night. I loved everything about her, but especially her smile. I knew at that point that I didn’t want any other woman; she was it for me. We dated for a while and then I moved in with her. We did everything together. When I was on the air, she was my silent co-host, always by my side. We got married in 2001. After I moved in with Judith, I met another Jamaican guy on the base and we became friendly. We shared a love for the music and the culture of our home country. One day I bumped into him and he asked for a favor. A friend was sending him a couple of packages from New York, he said, and he didn’t have an address other than the base. Could they come to my house? I gave it no thought. Sure, I said. When the boxes arrived one morning, each about the size of a case of beer, I was a little annoyed because I needed to get out the door to school. I called the guy to ask what he wanted me to do with them and he asked me to drop them off. I jotted down the address and tossed the packages in the car, running late already. I was driving toward the city limits when the police pulled me over. I never saw that “friend” again. The boxes came from California, not New York, and were filled with marijuana. The cops had been tracking the packages. I had never smoked marijuana—still haven’t to this day. I don’t do drugs and rarely drink. But Virginia has always been tough on drug crimes, and the lawyer I hired suggested I take a plea deal: admit to felony possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, and do 15 months in a state work camp rather than go to trial and risk much more. As best I can tell, the other guy was never arrested or charged with anything. The judge was compassionate but said he had no flexibility under the strict mandatory sentencing laws. I spent a few weeks in the city jail and then was transferred to a prison near Richmond, where I worked in the kitchen. Judith was pregnant with our second child but made the 90-minute drive to see me every weekend, even in the heat of summer, with no air conditioning in the car. She gave birth to our daughter, Jada, without me, but brought her to see me as soon as she could. She was so strong, and we were so in love. When the time came, she and my mom came to pick me up and I promised Judith nothing like this would ever happen again. Bailey with his wife and their daughter Jada. I was anxious to get back to work and be a good husband and father. I took over a restaurant that was going out of business, renamed it the Caribbean Hut and started serving Jamaican and American food—everything from mac and cheese to jerk chicken. Money was tight, and I had to work night and day, but I was thankful to be able to provide for my family. A customer who liked my food told me about his work as a truck driver. He took me out on some back roads one weekend and taught me how to drive a big rig. I decided to go back to school and get a commercial license. I then had to make the difficult decision to close the restaurant, but trucking promised to allow me to spend more time with my family. I started out hauling ice to convenience and liquor stores, but before long I got a better job hauling containers from the port of Norfolk. I bought my first truck in 2003, an old Volvo in good shape for just $10,900, and I signed on with a big trucking company. Working within a 75-mile radius meant I was home every night and I was earning enough to buy a house. The kids were doing well in school. Jada was on a little league team, and was doing some acting and modeling—she even appeared in a few TV commercials. My son, Demique, who is two years older than Jada, excelled at basketball and football, and he constantly talked about his dream of playing football in college. Like me, he loved to cook; he wanted to be a chef, and we would often work together in the kitchen. We took family vacations each year, and I remember our first trip to Disney World and how excited the kids were because it was their first time on an airplane. These were our best days. * When the immigration officers and state police banged on my door that morning, I thought perhaps one of my drivers had done something wrong or had been in an accident. By that time I had three tractor-trailers on the road most of the time. But when I opened the door the officers had guns drawn and pushed their way into my living room. “We’re here to take you away,” one of them said. They wouldn’t even let me go upstairs to get dressed. Judith was screaming and crying. They let her bring me my pants but because I was cuffed she had to help put them on me. They took me back to the same immigration building where I had applied for citizenship. It turned out they had a detention cell there. Why did they come for me? While waiting to hear about my application for citizenship, I had hired a lawyer to find out why it was taking so long. Years had passed since I had finished the process. My attorney had set up a meeting with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services officials, who told me the delay was due to a problem with my application. I had admitted to my old conviction, but they had been unable to document it—the Virginia courts had not provided them the papers they wanted as backup. There was nothing in the system. Had I not admitted to the conviction, they probably never would have known about it, but they told me it disqualified me from citizenship. I know a lot more about American immigration law now. No one—not the judge, nor the lawyer I’d hired—told me when I pleaded guilty to the drug charge that I was giving up my right to be a legal permanent resident of the United States. I’ve since learned that what happened to me happens to thousands of people every month. Congress actually passed a law that requires ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, to keep a minimum of 33,400 immigrants locked up, awaiting deportation, at any given time. I tried to get back in front of a judge to plead my case, but I was again told that the judge’s hands were tied. This time, he said federal immigration law prevented him from considering the circumstances of my case because of the old drug conviction. He couldn’t take into account the fact that my conviction was for a nonviolent crime many years earlier, that I had never had another brush with the law or that I was a father to two U.S. citizens, a veteran, and a husband who owned a home and a business. We tried to reopen my old Virginia case. My lawyer even agreed to my claim that he hadn’t competently represented me. But too much time had passed and my request was turned down without even a hearing. * I spent two years in immigration detention, a much harsher environment than the prison where I’d done time for the marijuana conviction. The first stop, beginning in June 2010, was the Hampton Regional Jail, where I shared a cell with one other guy and didn’t see daylight or get a chance to exercise for weeks at a time. I spent one year and 20 days inside that cell. Then I was shackled in chains with a group of other men and flown 2,000 miles to the Otero immigration processing center, a private facility run under contract with ICE in the high desert outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but there were hundreds of people, mostly Mexicans, there—separated from their families, not able to see a lawyer or have a judge consider anything about their lives in the United States and often without the money to make a phone call. I had no idea what would happen next. There were lots of rumors but no clear information. Bailey's two children Jada and Demique. From New Mexico I was moved first to Arizona and then to Louisiana. Each time, we were chained together like slaves and kept handcuffed and shackled for seven hours before boarding an ICE chartered plane. The flight itself lasted about three and a half hours. I needed to use the bathroom, but was told no one was allowed to, even when I begged the officers and threatened to relieve myself in my seat. They only let me go to the restroom once I actually began to urinate on myself. We all sat in silence, terrified of what lay ahead. None of us knew what we would encounter upon landing. While in detention, I spoke to my family when I could. The calls were expensive and the time difference was a problem, but when we were able to talk we all did our best to stay positive. My children often asked why I was there. They knew that I worked every day to provide for them, and couldn’t understand why I was taken away. Jada often said “it’s just not fair” and Demique told me to be strong and that he was holding things down until I could come home. I promised my children that I would do my best to get back to them. I asked them to pray for me as I was praying for them. * On May 30, 2012, at 10 PM I was awakened and told to dress. Seventy-two of us were chained and shackled again and put onto another plane. When we landed, we were told we were near Kingston, Jamaica, and the officers gave each of us a phone card. Most of the men were able to arrange to have family members pick them up. Six of us were stranded. I knew no one in Jamaica—I hadn’t been there in more than 20 years, and my whole family now lived in the United States. I didn’t have any money or even a change of clothes. I’d lost 40 pounds while in detention, and the jeans and thermal shirt I was wearing when I was taken from my house were practically falling off me. I called my mother back in Virginia and stood outside for about 12 hours while she called distant cousins I didn’t even know. Eventually a friend of a cousin came to pick me up, bought me a soda and a chicken sandwich and took me to his house a couple hours outside the city. That’s how I came to find myself back in rural Jamaica at age 41, having never visited since leaving as a boy of 17. It’s a very tough place—there are no jobs, and crime and poverty are rampant. There are murders every day. People who are deported back here are stigmatized—seen as criminals who must have committed some heinous crime in order to be sent back—and often become the targets of violence. We’re seen as disposable and worthless, not entitled to anything, not even a job. So I have to keep quiet about my circumstances as I scramble to make a living, desperate to find a way home. Meanwhile, my family is falling apart. Judith couldn’t run the trucking business, and so it has died. We lost our house through foreclosure, and she has lost hope. We’re no longer in touch and she’s made it clear she has to move on with her life without me. She’s told me how lonely she is and that she needs help that I can no longer provide. My son and daughter, who were good and enthusiastic students when we were a family together, are now struggling in school. Demique was caught stealing a cell phone; he’d asked me for one and I couldn’t afford it, but I can see how it would be hard for a teenager not to have a cell phone in this day and age. When Jada, who’s 16 now, and I talk on the phone, she tells me how hard her life has become—she wants to go on school trips and be in the cheerleading squad, but we just don’t have the money. My best memories of my family are the road trips we would take together. Jada says she cries when she hears songs that we’d listen to on the road; I do, too. Before I was detained, I’d started teaching Demique to drive in a vacant parking lot near our house. He was eager and attentive, and I was excited too, because my son was growing into a wonderful young man. “You’re the one who will be driving me around soon,” I’d tell him. I promised to give him his first car once he finished high school, and now I’ve broken that promise. I can do nothing to help them. And that makes me want to die. It’s still so hard for me to understand how I wound up here. I served in the United States Navy with pride and honor; I am a husband and father; I was a business owner and a homeowner. I made a mistake, but that was 19 years ago and I never made another. In a country where marijuana laws are changing every day, where marijuana is now legal in two states, how could my one accidental encounter with someone else’s drug deal have destroyed my family? I don’t know if any politicians will read this. I hear them talk about America’s duty to our veterans and about the need for a “humane” immigration system and about family values. Then I see them pass laws that tear families like mine apart and force people to lose their humanity. I’ve met judges and immigration officials who said that they wanted to help. I believe they felt compassion for me. But all of them said their hands were tied by Congress’s mandatory detention and deportation laws and the Obama administration’s enforcement “priorities.” President Obama has said that the U.S. is prioritizing deportations of “criminals, gang bangers, people who are hurting the community” and not going after “folks who are here just because they’re trying to figure out how to feed their families.” But I’ve never been a danger to my community, and I’ve never wanted anything more than to be a good father and provider. And by prioritizing so-called criminals the government is failing to consider anything else about our lives before automatically banishing us from our homes. My story is one of at least 2 million under this presidency alone. I think we deserve at least a chance to ask a judge to let us stay with our families in the country we call home.
China, of course, will likely continue to free-ride on the international system in the short term, manipulating currency flows as it depends on consumers in developed, free market democracies to buy its goods. And why shouldn't it? Its incentives are to maximize its benefit from the ever-freer global trade regimes (essential to the success of its incredible manufacturing output) while minimizing its costs to that system, getting around foreign trade safeguards as best it can. But the more successful that China becomes within the liberal international system of trade and cooperation, the greater stake it has in the continued freedom and cooperation of that system. Holding European debt might give China more leverage to cheat within the international system, but also reduces China's incentive to do so. Imagine your friend, an avowed communist who runs her worker's commune to the letter of Marxist teaching, decides to start investing in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, explaining she needs the money to expand her commune and to buy more pamphlets to spread the Marxist gospel. Is her business plan doing more in the service of communism or capitalism? It's an imperfect and incomplete analogy -- did I mention your friend's commune has over 1.3 billion residents? and that her investments make up nine percent of the entire Merc exchange? -- but the point is that her participation in the free market economy reinforces and strengthens it, even if she turns around uses her profit to support a smaller communist system within the larger capitalist one. The process of coming to understand global economic cooperation as within a country's self-interest doesn't happen overnight. The world's developed economies didn't introduce the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade -- the first real step toward a liberal system of international trade that promoted cooperation over protectionism -- until 1947. Before then, the world viewed trade much the same way that China does today: competitive, with each state best served by protecting their own industries and seeking to undermine one another's. It took centuries for the leading governments to decide that everyone was better off if they dropped the inefficient protections. Even the GATT, as revolutionary as it was in shifting the global economic system to one of cooperation, was only a partial step; the World Trade Organization wouldn't come until 1995, and its latest round of tariff-cutting agreements has been stalled for a decade. It's not a coincidence that the greatest proponents of the liberal international system are also its richest: the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, and the UK, all of which benefit tremendously from a world of free trade and cooperation. China's increased buy-in to this system, and perhaps even its partial leadership of it, is likely to more closely align its interests with the rest of the world's, which is precisely the point of such a system. That buy-in may make it more difficult for the European Union to challenge China's notorious and illiberal protectionism, but it may also bring China closer to accepting the idea that made the European Union (which China so loves) possible in the first place: that the global economy can be built on cooperation and mutually held rules, rather than on zero-sum competition. For example, it could lead China to the conclusion that, rather than simply bailing out Europe, what might really further Chinese interests would be increasing European imports and leveling out the trade imbalance that is so weakening Europe's economies.
Sky Television will let people watch Super Rugby games online from next week without requiring they sign up to its broadcast pay-television service but the charges are the catch. A "season pass" to Super Rugby games will cost $299, or viewers can get a monthly online pass for $69 or a weekly one for $29. NRL and Formula 1 will also be offered online and some other sports will follow, spokeswoman Kirsty Way said. Season passes for NRL games and F1 races are also priced at $299, with monthly passes costing $59 and $49 respectively and weekly ones $19.90 and $24.90. The passes are being sold through a website separate to Sky's main site, fanpass.co.nz. The move follows through on a tentative proposal made by chief executive John Fellet in September, when he said "standalone" sports services could appeal to people on a limited budget or who didn't have much time to watch many sports. He said then that he expected most customers would find its bundled offerings more attractive in the long term. Subscribers will be able to watch matches and races live in HD, and later at a time of their choosing "on demand". Word that Sky might split off sports, regarded as the crown jewels in its television offering, from its television entertainment packages and offer them for online viewing was met with surprise in some quarters last year. But Forsyth Barr analyst Blair Galpin had forecast Sky would price the services "carefully" so as not to undermine its broadcast business. A pay-TV subscription with Sky Sports, My Sky HDI decoder and an "HD ticket" costs $99.74 a month. Way defended Fan Pass' prices saying they were for "premium sports rights". "We are running a business. Sky Sports is the main place to get sports but the public have said they are keen for other options. "The whole business model falls over if you start undercutting your prime service. This is a sustainable way we can offer these very premium sports rights so customers can get those alone. It won't suit everybody." Sky has faced competition from the likes of online television company Coliseum which bought the rights to English Premier League games and PGA golf. Fellet said it was better for Sky to "cannibalise" its own business than to let someone else do it.
WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. (CBSNewYork) — Air Force One aborted its first attempt at landing Wednesday at Bradley Field, but landed safely minutes later. The plane was flying in heavy cloud cover, and the pilots apparently didn’t like what they saw, CBS 2’s Kristine Johnson reports. The mishap even caught the attention of people on the ground. Barely visible in the thick clouds, President Barack Obama’s plane seemed to come in low before pulling up. The White House said the pilots aborted their first landing attempt because of poor visibility. They circled the runway and tried again. They landed safely, just two minutes behind schedule. The White House said the president was not in any danger. Aviation experts say a missed approach is standard procedure when there’s poor visibility. President Obama was in Connecticut to deliver the commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy. Please offer your thoughts in the comments section below.
Brooklyn, NY – The Brooklyn Nets announced today the following basketball operations staff additions and promotions: Natalie Jay has been named as cap and contract specialist. Jay comes to Brooklyn after most recently serving as a judicial law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, Mo. Previously, she held sports law clinic externships with the Memphis Grizzlies and Fluminense FC of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A native of Oxnard, Calif., Jay received her Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Princeton and her Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. Ryan Gisriel has been named as director of basketball administration. Gisriel, who started with the Nets as an intern in 2013, has since served as special projects coordinator and as assistant to the general manager. The Baltimore native received a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from Notre Dame in 2013. Andrew Baker has been named strategic planning coordinator. Baker comes to Brooklyn after spending the past year as a quality assurance assistant in the basketball operations department of the San Antonio Spurs. A native of Vero Beach, Fla., Baker received his Bachelor of Science degree in sports management from NYU and his Juris Doctor from Tulane University Law School, where he also received a certificate of specialization in sports law. Charles Payne has been named as pro and college scout. Payne spent the past eight seasons at Stanford University, including the last five as an assistant coach. Prior to his time at Stanford, the Washington D.C. native served as an assistant coach for three years each at California and Florida International, as well as spending three seasons as a scout for the Charlotte Bobcats. Shelden Williams has been named as a pro scout. A veteran of six NBA seasons, Williams played for seven different teams, including the New Jersey Nets in 2011-12, following a four-year collegiate career at Duke. Williams went on to play three international seasons in France and China at the conclusion of his NBA career.
ATLANTA, March 19 (Reuters) - Smoking will be banned on all campuses of Georgia’s public colleges and universities, beginning next fall, including barring tobacco use at outdoor football games. Officials of the state’s public universities voted for the ban on smoking and all tobacco products on Wednesday. The ban will include e-cigarettes. “Our aim with this policy is to preserve and improve the health, comfort and environment of employees and any persons occupying (campus) facilities,” said Marion Fedrick, the University System of Georgia’s vice chancellor for human resources. Adopted by the university system’s Board of Regents, the ban would affect 31 public university campuses in Georgia. Nationally, there are more than 1,100 colleges and universities with smoke-free campuses and 811 of those ban all tobacco products, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. “We have been noticing over the last five years an enormous growth in the number of campuses that are passing smoke-free and completely tobacco-free campus policies,” said the nonprofit group’s chief executive, Cynthia Hallett. Half of Georgia’s college and universities have already adopted smoke-free policies, according to the state. Smoking contributes to 480,000 deaths each year in the United States, including 42,000 deaths from secondhand smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. David Sutton, a spokesman for Altria Group which owns three U.S. tobacco companies including Philip Morris USA, declined to comment on Georgia’s new campus ban. (Reporting by David Beasley; Editing by Kevin Gray)
Close Here are some interesting things you may not have known about the chart-topping, Grammy winning singer, wife and mother - Beyoncé. 1. Her full name is Beyoncé Giselle Carter-Knowles. 2. She was born September 4, 1981 in Houston, Texas. 3. Ever wondered how she got her name? She was named after her mother's maiden name. 4. She has Native American, African, Irish and French heritage and is descended from Joseph Broussard, the Acadian leader through her mother. 5. Beyoncé's singing talent was discovered at the age of 8 in a dance class, when her teacher was singing a song and she finished it hitting all the high notes. 6. At 8 she also met her future Destiny's child band mates Kelly Rowland and LaTavia Robertson in an audition, they were placed with three other girls as part of the all-girl group Girl's Tyme 7. As a young girl, she won a school singing competition with John Lennon's "Imagine" 8. Beyoncé suffered from depression for two years, but kept it hidden as it was around the time that Destiny's Child won their Grammy. 9. She is a generous person. Beyoncé joined former Destiny's Child bandmate, Kelly Rowland, to create the Survivor Foundation, which provides relief to victims of natural disasters. Also built the Knowles Temenos Place Apartments in the greater Houston area. 10. She has worked with several other charities including Chime for Change, Girl Up, Elevate Network, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Girls Inc. of Greater Houston, and I Was Here. 11. Her debut album Dangerously in Love, earned her five Grammys. 12. Her mother is a hairstylist and a costume designer named as Tina Beyonce. Her father is a record manager named as Mathew Knowles 13. Her mother, Tina, has been involved with Beyoncé's career for years, beginning with designing the wardrobe for Destiny's Child. 15. "A Star is Born" was her favorite movie of all time. 16. Her ultimate style icon is British supermodel Kate Moss. 17. She married rapper, Jay-Z, on April 4, 2008. 18. Some of her favorite things to do include staying home and watching TV and sitting courtside with husband Jay-Z at Brooklyn Nets games. 19. In 2010, Guinness World Records named them the Highest Earning Power Couple, after earning $122 million that year. 20. Jay Z once rapped that he and Beyoncé had a miscarriage before Blue Ivy and she even talked about it in her documentary. 21. Beyoncé's pregnancy announcement earned the Guinness World Book of Records title for most tweets per second 22. The couple's first daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, was born on Jan. 7, 2012. 23. Two days later Blue became the youngest person to land on the Billboard charts, as her cries were recorded on the Jay-Z track "Glory." 24. Beyoncé served as ambassador for the 2012 World Humanitarian Day. 25. Beyoncé's voice is categorized as a mezzo-soprano 26. She established the Beyoncé Cosmetology Center at the nonprofit Phoenix House in Brooklyn, N.Y. 27. Sasha Fierce was Beyoncé's alter ego, and was created in 2003 to help her get over shyness on stage. She told Allure Magazine in 2010 that she no longer feels the need for a stage persona. 28. Beyoncé has several side businesses. She founded the House of Deréon clothing line with her mother and the name comes from her grandmother's name - Agnes Dereon. She has also launched several fragrance lines including: Heat and Pulse. 29. She's also signed multi-million dollar endorsement deals with Pepsi, American Express, and L'Oreal. 30. Some of her nicknames include Bey, B, Queen B and Princess of Pop. 31. Following the success of the Spanish version of her hit song Irreplaceable, Beyoncé decided to release a Spanish version of her album "B'Day," even collaborating with Shakira on her song Beautiful Liar. 33. Her first solo tour was in 2004. 34. In September 2010 she was named The World's Most Beautiful Woman by People magazine. 35. Her sister, Solange, is also a successful singer. 36. Beyonce released her new self-titled "visual" album in December which created a social media frenzy as well as impressive instantaneous sales. 37. Beyonce Beyonce rejected traditional promotional tactics for new album, such as early singles and media appearances. Instead, he tweeted "Surprise!" to millions of her followers along with the news of the new album and a link to the iTunes store. 38. The visual album became the year's top-selling female debut only 27 hours after its surprise launch, and without any pre-release promotion. 39. Beyonce says she sees music. "I see music. It's more than just what I hear (...) When I'm connected to something, I immediately see a visual or a series of images that are tied to a feeling or an emotion-a memory from my childhood, thoughts about life, my dreams or my fantasies. And they're all connected to the music." 40. She plays the voice of Queen Tara in the new animated film Epic. 41. She starred in MTV's Carmen: A Hip Hopera - based on the French opera Carmen. 42. Beyonce played Foxxy Cleopatra, a 70s bombshell, in Austin Powers in Goldmember. 43. She became the first non-supermodel or non-athlete to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue in 2007. 44. She is 5 ft 6 in tall. 45. She made Grammy history in January 2010 when she became the first female artist to win six Grammy's in one evening. 46. Beyonce's favorite number is 4. Her mother was born on January 4th. She was married on April 4th. Her birthday is September 4th and her husband's is December 4th. 47. In 2007, she became the first female artist to be awarded the International Artist Award at the American Music Awards. 48. She owns a condominium in Miami, and a house in London, England 49. Beyonce's favorite makeup to wear is mascara. 50. Her net worth is around $300 million and Jay Z is worth $500 million. 1) (click photo to check price) 4 (Click Link to Check Price on Amazon) Editor's Rating : 9 out of 10 BEYONCE 4 (NUEVA EDICION) Editor's Rating : 9 out of 10BEYONCE 4 (NUEVA EDICION) 2) (click photo to check price) Dangerously In Love (Click Link to Check Price on Amazon) Editor's Rating : 9 out of 10 Editor's Rating : 9 out of 10 3) (click photo to check price) Lemonade [Explicit] (Click Link to Check Price on Amazon) Editor's Rating : 8.5 out of 10 Editor's Rating : 8.5 out of 10 4)

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