text
stringlengths 5
144k
| label
int64 0
9
| id
int64 0
100k
| label_text
stringclasses 10
values |
|---|---|---|---|
Despite recent reports about mutual funds and other late-stage investors writing down the value of their start-up investments as well as warnings of a tech bubble deflating the valuation of the companies on CNBC's Disruptor 50 list is surging. It's been nearly seven months since CNBC launched its third annual Disruptor 50 list , highlighting companies that are shaking up a wide range of industries. And while the public markets have been rocky, these private companies have been on fire. Excluding the two companies that went public Square (SQ) and Pure Storage (PSTG) the value of the companies on the list has risen 26 percent since May to $201 billion, according to PitchBook. The Disruptor list today includes 27 unicorns private companies worth more than $1 billion three more than in May. There are still 10 companies worth more than $10 billion, and some of those have also grown in value. Some notable increases: The value of LISNR has more than tripled since May. The start-up, which uses sound waves to send data, raised $10 million in a November funding round led by Intel Capital, bringing it into unicorn territory. The value of Intarcia Therapeutics, which makes a diabetes drug delivery system , has surged from $1.6 billion when named to the list in May, to $5.5 billion today. And even DraftKings , with its recent regulatory battles, has nearly quintupled in value, now a unicorn at $1.2 billion. Many of the other CNBC Disruptor 50 companies have also been on a fundraising tear. The 48 companies that remained private have raised $10 billion in the past seven months, bringing the total raised to $32 billion, according to PitchBook. Airbnb raised $1.5 billion, which it will use to fuel its international expansion, in Asia in particular. Uber raised another billion, as it continues its global expansion, waging regulatory battles in regions around the world, as did SoFi, which takes a new approach to student loans. Palantir, which crunches big data for the government and Wall Street, raised more than $550 million. Snapchat raised $538 million in a sale of common stock, from Alibaba Group () , as well as Fidelity and York Capital. As for the two companies that braved the public markets Pure Storage and Square they're seen by many as a litmus test for other companies weighing whether or not to go public. Pure Storage struggled out of the gate, falling more than 5 percent in its first day of trading . But just last week the company did a total about-face and rebounded on better-than-expected quarterly results as well as stronger guidance for the next quarter. "We feel like the business is kicking on all cylinders," said Scott Dietzen, Pure Storage's CEO. "I think the reason is we've got these disruptors right: Flash memory and cloud are fundamentally changing the storage industry and the decisions we made six years ago to optimize our solution for those disruptors are paying off." In contrast, Square surged in its first day of trading on Nov. 19, but since then has not fared so well, down nearly 8 percent, drawing interest from short-sellers. So will other companies follow in their stead and go public? Uber has been going on what's described as a private roadshow, working to raise billions more at a valuation north of $60 billion, as it opts to stay private. So who's next? Airbnb could go public in the next year, as could Snapchat, which is working on different revenue streams. All eyes are watching Dropbox, which is facing concerns about its ability to go public at its $10 billion-plus valuation, after Fidelity marked down its value. | 3 | 97,800 | finance |
As world leaders meet in Paris to agree a legal framework aimed at limiting use of fossil fuels and the resulting rises in global temperatures, a UK company says it could be as little as five years from making "reactor relevant" fusion, a potential game changer in energy production. Jim Drury reports. | 8 | 97,801 | video |
Santa Claus is showing up in places the world over! Let's take a look at some of the places he's been and how other countries see this holiday icon. It's time for Santa to come out and bring cheer to people! Here's a look at some the places he has been to and how other countries see this holiday icon. Cologne, Germany Germans call Santa 'Weihnachtsmann,' and here they are attending a Santa Claus workshop on Nov. 21, 2015. Dortmund, Germany Santa (Weihnachtsmann) in front of Germany's biggest Christmas tree, illuminated by 48,000 lights, on Nov. 23, 2015. Copenhagen, Denmark Denmark, with its own traditional version of Santa called 'Julemanden,' witnesses participants at the World Santa Claus Congress on July 22, 2015. Verbier, Switzerland The Swiss call Santa 'Christkind,' who here takes a curve with his telemark during a promotional event on the opening weekend in the alpine ski resort of Verbier, on Dec. 6, 2015. New York City, New York, US Santa and Mrs. Claus attend the 89th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Nov. 26, 2015. West Point, New York, US Cadet Jordan Komm, dressed as Santa Claus, parachutes into Michie Stadium, home of the Army Black Knights, on Nov. 2, 2015. Portland, Maine, US Santa greets passengers on the Polar Express holiday train ride to the North Pole on Dec. 19, 2014. Reading, Pennsylvania, US Artist Ed Terrell, dressed as a giant Santa, walks home with his son on Dec. 7, 2014. Nice, France Santa's (Père Noël) ride a jet ski on the Mediterranean sea at Villeneuve Loubet on Dec. 20, 2009. Nice, France Santa (Père Noël) paddles his canoe decorated with a papier-mache reindeer during the Christmas bath on Dec. 21, 2014. Nice, France Santa Claus (Père Noël) at the 64th pre-Christmas swim on Dec. 21, 2008. Paris, France Santa Claus (Père Noël) skates near the Eiffel Tower on Dec. 12, 2013. Antibes, France A man dressed as Santa (Père Noël) poses at the Marineland animal exhibition park on Dec. 19, 2014. Genoa, Italy Italians know Santa Claus as Babbo Natale. Here, he rides a wave as bad weather conditions create good waves, on Nov. 18, 2014. Venice, Italy People dressed as Santa Claus (Babbo Natale) ride their gondolas in the Venice lagoon on Dec. 20, 2014. Venice, Italy A woman dressed as Santa (Babbo Natale) poses in front of the Bridge of Sighs. Seoul, South Korea Three Santa Claus divers, called Santa Harabeoji, swim with sardines at the Coex Aquarium on Dec. 6, 2014. Seoul, South Korea Volunteers clad in Santa Claus (Santa Harabeoji) costumes gather to deliver gifts to people on Dec. 24, 2014. Madrid, Spain People dressed up as Papá Noel, or Santa, take part in the Santa Claus run near the Bernabeu Stadium, home of Real Madrid CF, on Dec. 13, 2014. Barcelona, Spain Santa (Papa Noel) at the 105th edition of the Copa Nadal (Christmas Cup), on Dec. 25, 2014. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Brazilians refer to Santa as 'Papai Noel'. Here, he takes a lift on a bicycle to go and distribute gifts to children on Dec. 20, 2014. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Santa Claus (Papai Noel) zip lines away from Sugar Loaf mountain after riding on top of a cable car on Dec. 18, 2014. Tokyo, Japan Japan knows Santa as 'Santa Kurohsu.' This trainer and her dolphin perform at the Aqua Stadium aquarium on Dec. 22, 2014. Tokyo, Japan Santa Claus (Santa Kurohsu) feeds the fish at Sunshine Aquarium on Dec. 9, 2014. Tokyo, Japan Santa Claus's (Santa Kurohsu) from the Harley Santa Club ride their bikes down the street on Dec. 23, 2014. Tokyo, Japan Window-cleaners dressed as Santa Claus (Santa Kurohsu) and his reindeer pose for pictures at a shopping mall on Dec. 24, 2014. Tokyo, Japan Rickshaw drivers in Santa Claus (Santa Kurohsu) costumes transport their customers on Dec. 3, 2009. Hunan, China Known as 'Shengdan Laoren' by the Chinese, this man delivers Christmas gifts to visitors in a gondola on Dec. 21, 2014. Yunan, China Santa (Shengdan Laoren) feeds monkeys at the Yunnan Wild Animal Park on Dec. 22, 2014. Hebei, China Santa's (Shengdan Laoren) give free haircuts to children at a welfare house on Dec. 24, 2014. Uttar Pradesh, India A man in a Santa costume cleans up the river bank along the Ganga on Dec. 23, 2014. Oslo, Norway People dressed up as Santa walk down the main city street in a procession on Jan.10, 2014. Minsk, Russia Called Ded Moroz in Russia, this man dressed as Santa takes part in the 'Yolka Fest,' along with a woman dressed as Snow Maiden, on Dec. 12, 2014. Moscow, Russia A band of Santas (Ded Moroz) play bass instruments on Christmas Day in 2014. Moscow, Russia Santa's (Ded Moroz) at a New Year and Christmas Parade on Jan. 4, 2012. Guatemala City, Guatemala A firefighter in Santa's outfit rappels down the Belize bridge to give toys to children living under the bridge on Dec. 21, 2014. Lahore, Pakistan Members of Voice of Christian International, dressed as Santa, cycles on Dec. 23, 2014. Jakarta, Indonesia Hotel security men dressed as Santa, or as Indonedians call him, 'Sinterklaas,' search a car on Dec. 23, 2005. Jakarta, Indonesia People in the guise of Santa (Sinterklaas) give gifts to children before Christmas at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Dec. 24, 2014. Lima, Peru Peru's traffic officers, dressed like Papá Noel (as Peruvians call Santa) and his helpers, go to a Christmas show on Dec. 22, 2006. Valletta, Malta Santa feeds fish inside a tank at the Malta National Aquarium on Dec. 22, 2014. Laghman, Afghanistan A U.S. soldier from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment dressed as Santa Claus, or Papa Noël, greets fellow soldiers eating a Christmas day lunch on forward operating base Gamberi on Dec. 25, 2014. Manila, Philippines Traffic controller Ramiro Hinojas, dressed as Santa, entertains motorists by performing Michael Jackson dance moves of along an intersection in Pasay City on Dec. 4, 2011. Valparaiso city, Chile In the traditional costume of Viejito Pascuero (as Chileans call Santa), Rigoberto Martinez casts his vote during municipal elections on Oct. 28, 2012. | 4 | 97,802 | lifestyle |
NEW YORK Apple Maps quickly became the butt of jokes when it debuted in 2012. It overlooked many towns and businesses and misplaced famous landmarks. It marked New York's Madison Square Garden arena as park space because of the word "Garden." The service was a rare blunder for a company known for simple, easy-to-use products. It's a different story three years later. Apple fixed errors as users submitted them. It quietly bought several mapping companies, mostly for their engineers and other talent. This fall, it added transit directions for several major cities, narrowing a major gap with Google. Apple Maps is now used more widely than Google Maps on iPhones. "They really did a great job in a short amount of time," said Alex Mackenzie-Torres, a former Google Maps manager who's now with competing transit app Moovit. "Apple has something that few companies have simplicity in design mixed with high doses of pragmatism and practicality." Apple's significant investment in fixing Maps underscores how important maps and related services are to tech companies. Location is key to helping phone users find restaurants and shops, discover things to do and just get around. It's also big business, as app makers tap into the core mapping functions of phones to direct people in helpful ways and sometimes offer them bargains based on where they're standing. The quick turnaround also demonstrates how easily companies like Apple can steer people to their own services. Google Maps and various third-party apps offer many features that Apple Maps lacks, yet Apple cleverly turned user inertia to its advantage. Many people use Apple Maps just because it comes with the phone. Even if you've taken the trouble to download a competing app, other iPhone services such as Siri and Mail will invariably take you to Apple Maps. Without the ability to steer users this way, Apple "would not be in the position they are in," IDC analyst John Jackson said. "Not that they aren't improving the experience, but this helps the cause." Apple says its mapping service is now used more than three times as often as its next leading competitor on iPhones and iPads, with more than 5 billion map-related requests each week. Research firm comScore says Apple has a modest lead over Google on iPhones in the U.S., though comScore measures how many people use a service in a given month rather than how often. Google still dominates among all U.S. smartphones, though, in part because Apple Maps isn't available on Google's Android system, which is more prevalent than iPhones. In October, Google Maps had more than twice as many smartphone users as Apple Maps. Much like Apple, Google benefits as the default on Android. For years, Google provided the default mapping service on iPhones. That changed as more people relied on turn-by-turn voice navigation with automatic rerouting, a feature Google offered only on Android. Apple built its own service from scratch and knocked Google Maps off the iPhone's home screen. Google's initial forays into voice navigation in 2009 had problems, too, including directing motorists to left turns at no-turn intersections. But by 2012, Google Maps had improved significantly. By then, more people knew how a mapping service ought to work and Apple's new offering fell short. "I heard so many different horror stories that I was almost hesitant to try it," said Rick Ostopowicz, an iPhone owner in Catonsville, Maryland. "I remember once, it was taking me on a road that no longer existed." CEO Tim Cook apologized and promised that Apple would "keep working non-stop" to deliver the best experience possible. Without much fanfare, the service gradually improved. "We are fast learners and we are fast at fixing things," said Greg "Joz" Joswiak, an Apple vice president who oversees product marketing for iPhones and related services. "We learned the maps business incredibly fast." Apple now gets data from more than 3,000 sources for business listings, traffic and other information. In adding transit, Apple sent teams to map out subway entrances and signs. That results in more precise walking directions, as stations can stretch for blocks and the center point used by some services isn't necessarily the closest. Apple also started sending out vehicles with sensors to map roads, similar to Google's longstanding practice. By making Maps a core iPhone feature, Apple made it easier for outside developers to include mapping features in their apps. When you go to Yelp, you can find directions to a business with one tap. When you go to the Starbucks app, you can see all the nearby stores. On the flip side, the iPhone's Siri voice assistant leads direction requests straight to Apple Maps, as does tapping on an address in Mail and other apps. With that integration, users like Ostopowicz no longer hesitate. The default behavior isn't just a competitive advantage for Apple; it's a convenience for many users. But default settings mean nothing if the experience isn't good as it most definitely wasn't three years ago. Kristi Denton, an iPhone user in Austin, Texas, said that after getting bad directions with Apple Maps long ago, she has gone as far as to copy addresses and paste them into Google to avoid the default Apple service. Lots of users, though, have returned. And many new iPhone users never experienced Maps at its worst. Google Maps, of course, has also been improving. Last month, Google started letting motorists store mapping data on their phones so they can look up businesses and directions even when cellular service is spotty. It's available on Android now and coming to iPhones soon. Google also has mapped such indoor venues as shopping malls and faraway lands as the Galapagos Islands. Google has better search tools for landmarks and business listings and offers transit maps for more regions than Apple. Google also provides biking directions and options to exclude highways and toll roads from driving directions. Third-party apps, meanwhile, have their own innovations. Waze now owned by Google is a popular app for motorists to share traffic information and avoid jams. Moovit is better than both Google and Apple at factoring in temporary service changes in mass transit, while Citymapper offers suggestions on whether to board the front, middle or back of a train. Apple says it's not done improving Maps. But ultimately, Apple Maps doesn't need to be the best. It just needs to be good enough that its users won't look for something else. | 5 | 97,803 | news |
According to sources, Dropbox is closing down two of its high-profile consumer services, Mailbox and the Carousel photo storing offering. While the file-sharing company seems to be making the move to double down on focusing on its core experience of collaboration, suffice it to say that both features did not catch on as was expected, due to intense competition. To break it down more simply, not enough people were using either. "Growth has not been as significant as expected," said one source. Yes, that . Well, kudos to Dropbox for biting the bullet here, as most weak products in Silicon Valley limp along until they are zombies. (And not the entertaining kind either!) In any case, as any user would notice (I most certainly had an ever increasing glitchy experience at Mailbox!), Dropbox had already clearly pulled away resources from both units and functionality had most definitely suffered from that neglect. Carousel, which launched to much fanfare in 2014, will close down on March 31 and Dropbox will be helping users migrate back to its core photo storing service. Mailbox which was acquired in 2013 departs February 26 and its customers will be given help in migrating to other email clients. Data for both services will still remain in Dropbox regardless. It's a tough call by Dropbox, which has had larger aspirations of growing beyond its file-sharing roots. But buffeted by intense competition by Google and others that has made consumer file-sharing more of a commodity offering, the company has shifted its focus to the enterprise of late. That said, Mailbox was an innovative offering with a number of cool functionalities, such as sweeping emails effortlessly. Dropbox bought the company in 2013. As part of the shuttering, Mailbox co-founders Scott Cannon and Gentry Underwood, but Cannon will remain an adviser. Underwood was head of Dropbox design for a time. Product at Dropbox is now run by former Twitter exec Todd Jackson , who arrived in July. | 3 | 97,804 | finance |
Click through for some simple tips to keep your house warm and cozy. Did you know you should make sure your ceiling fan is rotating clockwise this winter season? Find out why, plus many more simple handy tips, to keep your abode cozy while it's freezing outside. Close unused rooms If you have extra rooms in your house that are not being used, shut them off. Closed doors keep cold air from circulating into the rest of the house and help hold the heat generated from a fireplace or a radiator in the used rooms. DIY tin foil trick To avoid heat loss from radiators that are attached to external walls use aluminum foil behind the radiator. According to Sophie Neuberg, campaigner for charity "Friends of the Earth," the tin foil stops heat from escaping through the wall by reflecting it back into the room. The foil available in your kitchen works perfectly for this trick, or use the insulating aluminum foil tape pictured here. Invest in chimney balloons A considerable amount of heat is lost through open chimneys. You can prevent cold air from entering your house by investing in chimney balloons according to interior designer Claire Potter. The balloon, which is placed inside the chimney hole, is inflated to prevent heat loss by stopping the incoming cold air. Let's welcome morning sunlight Try capturing all the heat that's available from the morning sunlight. On those winter days that are bright and sunny, open the curtains in your house and let the light shine in. Bring in more rugs Apart from adding glamour to your house, rugs can prevent cold air from seeping up into the room. If your floors are not insulated, they can cause as much as 10 percent heat loss according to National Energy Foundation (NEF). Rugs and carpets act as great insulators and they'll help keep your feet stay warm. Thicker the better To prevent heat loss through windows, use curtains with a thermal lining or PVC shower curtains, as they are relatively cheaper options says Carl Brennand, assistant manager of website Moneymagpie. Also, layers of curtains in front of doors can help keep your house warm. Dealing with burst pipes Make sure all pipes are properly insulated to avoid burst pipes. If a pipe does burst, you can use a sleeve clamp over the part that's leaking. Covering walls Heat loss can be prevented by covering walls with mirrors and pictures. Even a thick poster can add an extra layer of padding by raising the surface temperature inside the house by a degree or two and cutting heat loss. Old school techniques Hot water bottles or bags of warmed up beans may seem obsolete, but they are quite effective. For a more modern approach, running a blow dryer over your bed sheets works well too. Unblocking vents If you've accidentally placed your furniture in front of the vents, it's time to move them away. Make sure the vents aren't blocked, which disturbs the movement of heat in every room during winter. Reset ceiling fans The direction in which the ceiling fan rotates needs to be changed every season. If you set them to turn clockwise at a lower speed when the temperature drops, you can drive warm air down in your direction Insulate your pet flaps and keyholes Cat or dog flaps and keyholes allow more cold air into your house than you may thinnk. You can insulate these areas by filling them with some sheep's wool or bits of blanket. "It's amazing how even a small draft can make a room a lot colder, so if you can cut that bit of air out, it immediately makes a difference," says interior designer Claire Potter. Turn off the exhaust fan The fan in your kitchen and bathroom drives the hot air that rises to the ceiling out of your house. Use these fans cautiously, and make sure you turn them off if you are not cooking or taking a shower. Insulating the entire house This is no simple task, but you can insulate your house by yourself. According to NEF (National Energy Foundation), the products that are usable for insulating are mineral wool such as Rockwool or Rocksil, glass fiberand recycled paper. But NEF warns saying that wearing protective clothing and eye gear is necessary if you do it yourself, and leave adequate air space around eaves to avoid condensation. It's you before your house Winter-proofing your home is a good idea, but before doing that, you need to fill your wardrobe with the best winter clothes. If you focus on heating yourself first you could reduce the heating bills to a great extent. | 4 | 97,805 | lifestyle |
Coming off their worst season in more than 30 years, the Cincinnati Reds are apparently open to completely blowing up their roster . Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com reports that the Reds have made everyone on their team available via trade , and that includes third baseman Todd Frazier. Frazier, who has been named an All-Star the past two seasons, is Cincinnati's best player. He could probably bring the most value in a trade, especially considering he is just 29 and has played 150 or more games in each of the last three seasons. Heyman also noted that the Reds and Diamondbacks discussed a possible Brandon Phillips trade at one point, but it appears those talks have cooled. Jay Bruce has also garnered some interest, though he has a no-trade clause that can block a move to eight teams. The Reds are obviously rebuilding, and you can understand why. Bryan Price has been fortunate to keep his job after some of the rumors that surfaced late last season. He likely won't make it through 2016 if the Reds look like a disaster again. | 1 | 97,806 | sports |
Malawi is suffering its most severe food crisis in a decade, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF | 8 | 97,807 | video |
Dropbox is doing away with Mailbox, the email app it acquired in March 2013, and Carousel, the company's attempt at a standalone photo management app. The company says that it's making this decision now to focus more directly on the primary Dropbox app and the collaborative features it's known for. "The Carousel and Mailbox teams have built products that are loved by many people and their work will continue to have an impact," wrote Dropbox's founder/CEO Drew Houston and CTO Arash Ferdowsi in the blog post. "We'll be taking keyfeatures from Carousel back to the place where your photos live in the Dropbox app. We'll also be using what we've learned from Mailbox to build new ways to communicate and collaborate on Dropbox." Mailbox will shut down on February 26th, with Carousel following the next month on March 31st. Dropbox says it's giving Carousel extra time so that users can download their photos and move them elsewhere if they so choose. Both apps have seen little development in recent months, while competition from bigger rivals has moved ahead of Dropbox's software. Mailbox was effectively abandoned on both iOS and Android months ago, and even the Twitter account has gone silent. Other third-party email apps like Microsoft's Outlook and Google Inbox have built upon the unique features that Mailbox introduced. The company acknowledges as much, saying "many of its innovations are now ubiquitous across the industry." Similarly, Google Photos and Apple Photos have made Dropbox's Carousel app relatively useless by comparison. But at least Dropbox is finally bringing closure to the issue; it just would've been nice to see this happen a few months sooner. | 5 | 97,808 | news |
Our guys take a closer look at the top running back performances in fantasy football from Week 13 of the season. | 1 | 97,809 | sports |
The San Diego Padres on Monday announced details surrounding upgrades at Petco Park for 2016. The centerpiece of the updates is a new two-level social space in right-center field inspired by San Diego's beach lifestyle. Locally based Sun Diego Boardshops has expanded its existing relationship with the Padres to become the presenting partner of the space, which will be constructed in the location currently occupied by The Beachers seating area and The Beach play area. As part of the design, the children's sand play area will be preserved and relocated to a space along K Street, further removed from the playing field and safe from balls in play. Construction is set to begin this week. "Sun Diego epitomizes what is unique and desirable about all of Southern California, and we are excited to expand our partnership with such an iconic local company that is emblematic of that lifestyle," said Padres President & CEO Mike Dee. "This project will transform the space in right-center field, while preserving the view from the grass seating area in the Park at the Park. Together with Sun Diego, we will create an improved and unique experience for fans in what has previously been an underutilized area." The new space, with a design aesthetic modeled after Southern California's iconic piers, will feature pilings and decking constructed from environmentally friendly recycled composite wood. Drink rails will line the front row of each level, with approximately 60 fixed seats between the two. In total, the space will accommodate nearly 600 people in a standing room only capacity. Ideal for mingling and social interaction, it will be sold as a group space for the majority of games. The upgrade includes the installation of a new LED ribbon board manufactured by Daktronics along the fascia of the top level (3.5-feet tall by 70-feet wide). Partners on this project include San Diego-based architecture firm Larimer Design and Clark Construction. Home Plate Club Seating Also this offseason, the Lexus Home Plate Club will be refreshed with the installation of 222 new seats manufactured by American Seating. The premium area immediately behind home plate on the field level will also receive a new floor surface application as well as new paint on guardrails and handrails. Backstop Netting New backstop netting will be installed separating spectators behind home plate from the field of play. The netting, manufactured by Promats® Athletics, features the latest technology to minimize the appearance of the net and provide an optimal viewing experience, while maintaining high safety standards. The netting will be expanded in width based on new recommendations to be determined by Major League Baseball. LED Lighting As was previously announced, Petco Park will take another major step toward energy sustainability this offseason, with the installation of Musco's SportsCluster® LED¢ system. In partnership with Cisterra Development, installation will begin at the end of December and is scheduled to be completed in early January. With specially designed optics, the new system will cut glare both inside and outside the ballpark, and the improved visibility it offers will enhance television broadcasts and provide a stage-like atmosphere for spectators. San Diego Gas & Electric acted as the Padres' consultant in connection with the project. Padres Hall of Fame Also this offseason and continuing into the 2016 season, various ballpark projects are underway to showcase the organization's history throughout the ballpark. Those efforts will come to life next year, highlighted by the new Padres Hall of Fame, which will open on K Street behind the left field seating area before the 2016 All-Star Game at Petco Park. Additional details on the Padres Hall of Fame project will be announced at a later date. Other Recent Upgrades This offseason's changes are part of a multi-year project and investment by Padres ownership to upgrade and improve the fan experience. Last year's renovation was highlighted by the installation of a state-of-the-art video board measuring 61.2-feet tall by 123.6-feet wide, covering 7,564.32 square feet, the third-largest in Major League Baseball, and the largest in the National League. In addition last year, new LED ribbon boards spanning nearly 750 feet along the first and third base lines on the Toyota Terrace level (3.6-feet tall), as well as on the left field grandstand fascia (7.5-feet tall by 130-feet wide). Last year's left field renovation project included the debut of several new social spaces and seating areas, including The Landing, a private 300-person group space immediately below the video board and the Down the Line Suite presented by AMR on the ground floor of the Western Metal Supply Co. Building. Also introduced in 2015 was the Hideaway presented by Deep Eddy Vodka down the left field line on the Toyota Terrace level. Prior to the 2014 season, in addition to an overhaul of the ballpark's audio system, the Padres installed a new high-definition video board at Park at the Park. New seating options introduced in 2014 included Rimel's Rooftop Grill on the roof of the Western Metal Supply Co. Building, The Foul Pole Suite and The Rail one level below, and the On-Deck Suite next to the visitors' dugout. New right field lower and upper LED ribbon boards were installed prior to the 2013 season. | 1 | 97,810 | sports |
No more drab designs or tired motifs. No more drab designs or tired motifs. Ink + Ivy Alpine Cotton Shower Curtain $58 BUY NOW The light, airy bath gets a dash of drama with this chevron-patterned curtain. Ideal for night showers, there's just something about the dark color and softened design that's extra-calming. More: 12 Stylish Bath Mats to Keep Your Floors Drip-Free West Elm Anchor Shower Curtain $39 BUY NOW A nautical anchor print with an understated, modern sensibility. This crisp cotton shower curtain keeps the WC looking classic, not kitschy. bluebellgray Skye Shower Curtain $38 BUY NOW If you usually unwind with a stroll through the local art gallery, try bringing some of that museum-quality style into the bath. Displaying bluish-purple delphinium flowers in a serene watercolor pattern, this curtain strikes just the right balance between abstraction and elegance. Urban Outfitters Wonky Grid Shower Curtain $39 BUY NOW For the madcap minimalist, opt for this neutral-colored curtain that takes a straightlaced grid design and makes it do the wave. Garnet Hill Watercolor Floral Sateen Shower Curtain $68 BUY NOW A shower curtain that rivals your average cotton sheet set in quality. This 310-thread-count sateen pick looks and feels luxe, adorned with a bouquet of watercolor blooms. Apothecary 72-by-72 Shower Curtain $45 BUY NOW Shout out to those old-school tools that keep dudes looking dapper this shower curtain pays homage to the golden days of grooming. Anthropologie Emmelot Shower Curtain $88 BUY NOW Your bathroom should be as relaxed and inviting as the rest of your house. Keep that vibe going with this machine-washable simple cotton shower curtain with a faded damask pattern. Charlotte Winter Mila Shower Curtain $68 BUY NOW A watercolor print with a cool aqua pop. In a flat space, you have permission to add color outside the lines. Kohl's Saratoga Fabric Shower Curtain $80 BUY NOW A decadent series of damask diamonds that don't overwhelm your visual space. The light sage color keeps it compatible with a variety of bathroom tile layouts. CB2 Triangle Shower Curtain $40 BUY NOW If you want a bit of everything a neutral, a pattern, something dynamic but not too loud check all of those boxes with this geo-print shower curtain from CB2. Gold, slate, and black shapes arranged diagonally on a white space make the right kind of statement. Khristian A. Howell Bryant Park Shower Curtain $89 BUY NOW Florals are an easy and timeless go-to motif, but can turn overly saccharine in an instant. This pick downplays the sweet and turns up the zest for a more energizing look. UncommonGoods Galaxy Shower Curtain $60 BUY NOW Celestial decor fits right into the down-to-earth home with this constellation curtain. A cheery, bright style keeps this pick from looking too esoteric for everyday display. Deb Haugen Pineapple Shower Curtain $89 BUY NOW Witty design walks a fine line, but we think this pop-art pineapple works in the modern bathroom by using plenty of white space with just enough of a tropical touch . Elisa Cachero Odyssey Shower Curtain $69 BUY NOW An old-world theme meets modern, clean-line execution. This illustration is picture-perfect, with its whimsical waves giving an updated take on nautical decor. Sharp Shirter Pride and Prejudice Shower Curtain $71 BUY NOW If you hold fast to the idea that the classics never go out of style, opt for this Jane Austen title as your shower curtain, since it has the chic, antique look a true lit lover would appreciate. | 4 | 97,811 | lifestyle |
Volkswagen has a long road ahead trying to rectify its diesel emissions-related woes. The automaker just secured a credit line of more than $21 billion to prepare for recalls, lawsuits, and regulatory fines related to its ongoing diesel cheating scandal. And according to Reuters , in order to get that one-year loan, Volkswagen Group had to confirm to banks that it is prepared to sell off some of its most notable assets. VW secured the 20 billion euro loan from a total of 13 different financial institutions throughout Europe, planning to refinance the loan by issuing bonds in the next several months, Reuters reports. "Under the terms, VW assured the lenders it would sell or list assets worth up to significantly more than 20 billion euros if it fails to find other sources of money," sources told Reuters . According to the sources who spoke with Reuters , if Volkswagen is unable to cover its debts, it could be forced to spin off certain holdings-like MAN, whose division supplying ship engines, electric generators, and other heavy industry components is worth up to 5 billion euro. But there's another possibility. "Volkswagen may also consider divesting luxury car brands Bentley and Lamborghini or motor bike brand Ducati," an unnamed source tells Reuters . It's worth pointing out that, among the nine different brands that make up Volkswagen Group, Bentley, Lamborghini and Ducati are some of the smallest and least valuable-due to their niche products and tiny annual production numbers. Previously, we've heard assurances that Volkswagen would not abandon its top-tier projects, including a new Bugatti hypercar. But with early estimates putting the cost of Volkswagen's cheating scandal at more than $80 billion, it's not surprising that the automaker might have to part with some of its holdings to stay afloat. Follow MSN Autos on Facebook | 9 | 97,812 | autos |
WASHINGTON On a recent Saturday afternoon, Paul D. Ryan texted Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma. Mr. Ryan, the new House speaker, was attending a University of Oklahoma football game and wondered where the Sooner-adoring Mr. Cole might be sitting. "I told him, 'I am in sitting here in Washington working on my bill,'" said Mr. Cole, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee who was plowing through his section of a massive spending bill to fund the government that has a must-pass deadline this Friday. "He said, 'Oh, sorry about that, but good job!'" "I have a $160 billion bill here, and that was the extent of input from leadership," said Mr. Cole, who had been accustomed to fielding micromanaging requests from Republican leaders. Sign Up For NYT Now's Morning Briefing Newsletter The short exchange had many signets of Mr. Ryan's nascent leadership style, which contrasts sharply with that of his predecessor, John A. Boehner. Mr. Ryan has for the most part pushed the privilege of crafting legislation and with it, the inherent responsibilities out of the leadership offices and back into the hands of members, replacing Mr. Boehner's smoke-filled rooms, at least for now, with energy bar-lined committee conference rooms. When he wants to chat, he texts. In a grooming contrast to Mr. Boehner that seems almost willful, Mr. Ryan now also shuns shaving. Republicans are hoping that Mr. Ryan, pressed into service against his will and still struggling to make sense of his fractured Republican conference, can leverage his inclusive style to minimize the drama in the latest fiscal showdown with Democrats, which takes on added urgency this week. He has been having weekly dinners in a historic reception room in the Capitol with a vast array of Republican colleagues, unlike Mr. Boehner, who preferred to mingle with a small group of insiders at an Italian eatery nearby. He makes regular rounds on television to make the case for a conservative agenda, unlike Mr. Boehner, who largely eschewed the small screen. And Mr. Ryan meets weekly with a newly assembled group of members from the most conservative and most moderate ends of his conference, unlike Mr. Boehner, who tended to surround himself with an inner circle of his peers. "I was pleased and delighted that he is bringing together people who usually don't associate with each other," said Representative Tim Murphy, Republican of Pennsylvania, who recently attended a dinner with Mr. Ryan and other House Republicans whom he barely knew. "You can see that Speaker Ryan's goal is to get people to understand each other's common goals." The name placard above Mr. Ryan's office door still seems gleaming, and tourists making their way through the Capitol Rotunda stop and stare at it, occasionally taking photos with their smartphones. For Mr. Ryan, who had been pleased to immerse himself in the arcana of the tax code as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the duties of administration, Christmas tree lightings and endless meetings remain new. Managing his schedule alone still has him off-kilter, he said. "I'm really weird about time management and punctuality," Mr. Ryan told reporters in a recent round-table interview. "I'm still working on getting a routine established." One of the first major issues to come before the House on his watch was in an area where Mr. Ryan has spent little of his career: national security. For colleagues judging his response, the way Mr. Ryan brought a bill aiming to curb the Obama administration's Syrian refugee program to the floor was almost as important as what was in it. Shortly after the attacks, Mr. Ryan empowered a task force of committee chairmen to draft legislation that could come to the floor on its own rather than as an amendment to an upcoming spending bill crafted by leaders. That gave members responsibility for the outcome. The bill passed easily, with significant support from Democrats. On a spending bill that must be passed this week to avert a government shutdown, Republicans again are seeking to take on Planned Parenthood a similar effort failed earlier this year and block or reverse Obama administration policies. But unlike Mr. Boehner, whose tendency was to promise conservative members that he would fight for even their most unrealistic policy priorities, only to eventually concede to Democrats in the 11th hour, Mr. Ryan has been forthcoming from the beginning with members about their limits, Republicans said. He has read them into any meetings he has with Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, and others, another departure from Mr. Boehner's practice of keeping information closely held. "That is a sea change from previous spending fights, where, regardless of whatever talking points were coming out of the speaker's office, we all knew we were just going to surrender eventually and give the president whatever he wanted," said Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Carolina, who helped lead the fight to unseat Mr. Boehner. Referring to Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, he said, "We know we aren't going to get everything we want out of McConnell and Obama, but there is confidence that we are going to get some things that are really important to people back home." Mr. Cole, an Appropriations subcommittee chairman, contrasted Mr. Ryan's technique with one employed three years ago when congressional leaders secretly negotiated a short-term measure to keep the government open, known as a continuing resolution, behind the backs of chairmen. Moves like that infuriated conservatives and committee chairmen, who complained of being left out of the legislative process. "We were all enormously upset," said Mr. Cole, who added that committee leaders went in to meet with the leadership and said, " 'You just threw away a year of work!' They just stared with a blank look on their faces." Whether Mr. Ryan's inclusiveness results in more votes for a spending measure this week remains to be seen. Scores of Republican House members, ever mindful of a potential primary fight waiting for them back home, seem compelled to vote against almost any spending bill. Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and the majority whip, has used unusually blunt language about Republicans who vote against budget measures to save their skin even as they hope for others to carry the House over the line and avoid a politically toxic government shutdown, aligning himself with Mr. Ryan. "The vote that hurts our conference is the no vote from a member who hopes the bill passes, but relies on others to carry that load," he wrote in a recent letter to his whip team. The spending bill presents Mr. Ryan with his most important test so far as speaker and will be a measure of how long members will remain enchanted with him. He can only hope their newfound ardor will match that for his new beard: So far, the latter has over 11,200 likes on Facebook. Follow the New York Times's politics and Washington coverage on Facebook and Twitter , and sign up for the First Draft politics newsletter . | 5 | 97,813 | news |
A man makes a nativity scene out of zombies and the town isn't happy. He'll be fined $500 a day until he takes it down. Keleigh Nealon (@keleighnealon) has the story! | 8 | 97,814 | video |
After much anticipation, Chrysler will finally reveal its next-generation Town & Country minivan at the 2016 Detroit auto show in January. We had figured on a debut either in L.A. this fall or Detroit, but when the L.A. auto show came and went with no sign of the new van, we homed in on the Detroit venue. Now, a report from the Detroit Free Press would seem to confirm our suspicions: The Town & Country is a go, and the sheets will come off under Cobo Hall's hot lights. Besides narrowing down the Town & Country's reveal timing, the Free Press also breaks out how the new minivan will be rolled out to customers. There will be regular and plug-in hybrid Town & Country variants, but the two will go on sale months apart, with the PHEV trailing the regular gasoline model. We've long reported that the 2017 Town & Country would spell the end for the Dodge Caravan a minivan that, in the past, was the T&C's clone as Chrysler moves to a single-van strategy. However, according to the Free Press , the Dodge won't disappear immediately upon the T&C's arrival. The Dodge Caravan will continue to be produced in Windsor, Canada, to cover the lower-cost end of the van spectrum while the new Chrysler will pepper the upper side of the minivan market. When reached for comment, Chrysler confirmed to us that the Town & Country will be at the Detroit show and that the more-affordable Dodge Caravan will continue to be built and sold for a time following the Chrysler van's debut. Follow MSN Autos on Facebook | 9 | 97,815 | autos |
The BBC reports Sepp Blatter is being investigated by the FBI for his alleged involvement in receiving $100 million from sports marketing company ISL. | 1 | 97,816 | sports |
COLUMBIA, S.C. New South Carolina coach Will Muschamp is ready for his second chance in the Southeastern Conference. The former Florida coach was introduced to the Gamecock community Monday, after university trustees approved his 5-year, $16 million contract earlier Monday morning. Muschamp is hoping to turn around a Gamecocks program that has slipped the last two seasons under longtime leader Steve Spurrier. Muschamp said Spurrier, another ex-Gator coach, had raised the level of expectations for the Gamecocks to compete for championships. "That's going to happen," Muschamp said of competing for titles and winning championships, adding that he's not going to try and do it the way Spurrier did it. "There's only one coach Spurrier," he said. "I need to be Will Muschamp." The coach said he's better prepared for his second coaching opportunity in the competitive league. "It's kind of like marriage," Muschamp said. "That first year, there's a little adjustment. By that fifth year, you're doing a little better." Muschamp spent four seasons at Florida before he was fired after last season. He worked as Auburn's defensive coordinator this past fall. South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner expects Muschamp to remain with the Gamecocks "for a long, long time." "We look forward to a quick restoration of being in the top 10 and Will is the man who can do it," said trustee Chuck Allen, a former South Carolina football player. Muschamp has a rare second try to make that happen. He was 28-21 in four seasons at Florida. He looked like he had the Gators heading in the right direction when he won 11 games in his second season in 2012. But Muschamp went 12-13 the next two seasons, including 7-9 in the SEC. Muschamp was dismissed after losing to South Carolina last year, his offensively challenged Gators giving up a late lead and losing at The Swamp in overtime. "It didn't end the way we wanted it, but we left it better than when we started," Muschamp said of his tenure at Florida, which won the SEC East this year. The fiery Muschamp led the Auburn defense this past fall. His most memorable moment may have come in the Iron Bowl last month as he yelled at officials loud enough to draw a 15-yard penalty. Auburn personnel had to hold Muschamp back during the tirade. The Gamecocks maybe could use a little fire. The team looked lackluster early in the season, leading to Spurrier's resignation in mid-October. Interim coach Shawn Elliott imbued some energy into the program. Still, the Gamecocks lost their final five games including a 23-22 loss to FCS opponent Citadel. Muschamp's contract pays him $3 million in the first year, increases each year after by $100,000 and contains a variety of incentives. The deal also includes a buyout on a sliding scale. If Muschamp leaves in the first of the contract, he would have to pay the school $7 million; if he left in the final year of the deal, he would owe South Carolina $3 million. | 1 | 97,817 | sports |
A new book explores the holiday traditions of America's landmark houses. While some homes now have lights controlled by iPhones and presents may be delivered by drone in the not so distant future, there are still places where Christmas is an old-fashioned affair . In the new book Christmas at America's Landmark Houses (Schiffer Publishing, $45), designer Patricia Hart McMillan and architect David Strahan explore how historic homes across the country celebrate the holidays. Here, the dining room of Filoli, a country estate in Woodside, California, is decorated in green and white. A grand staircase at Filoli is transformed into a snowy scene. The dining room at Filoli is set with a festive buffet of holiday treats. The 12-foot-tall Christmas tree in Bayou Bend's Philadelphia Hall takes ten hours and 28 docents to decorate. Bayou Bend's Belter Parlor is decorated for a Victorian Christmas. The tree features homemade ornaments and gifts from the era. Greenery enhances the mantel in the drawing room of the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C. The exterior of Cairnwood Estate, a Carre?re & Hastings designed mansion in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. Christmas at America's Landmark Houses, $45; amazon.com | 4 | 97,818 | lifestyle |
THE 7-SERIES WAS ONCE THE HEADWATERS from which BMW's technology flowed, before the "i" cars came along. You can thank the big Seven for introducing iDrive, electronic engine management, active body control, and ABS to BMW. The most crowed-about tech in the 2016 7-series is its Carbon Core body, which supplements the steel and aluminum structure with carbon-fiber bracing. The roof supports have a carbon tube sandwiched between the steel pressings, saving weight and lowering the center of gravity. Innovative, but it pales in comparison with the carbon-tub structure of the upstart i3. Research the BMW 7-Series on MSN Autos Inside, the Learjetesque back seats offer a footrest, massage, and an armrest-mounted Touch Command tablet, depending on which package you opt for. Don't forget the 10-inch screens on the back of the front seats. BMW couldn't have been more obvious about which market it designed this car for if LCDs displayed "To China, with love" on start-up. And if you'd rather drive? The 750i xDrive features a revised 4.4-liter twin-turbocharged V-8 good for 445 hp and 480 lb-ft of torque. Minor tweaks-an integrated intake manifold, higher compression, and revised exhaust manifolds-increase efficiency, not overall power. That's fine. BMW claims a 4.3-second 0 60-mph time, and I don't doubt it. The 740i gets a turbo 3.0-liter inline-six making 320 hp and, as low as 1380 rpm, 330 lb-ft of torque. The ZF eight-speed automatic largely avoids low-speed lurchiness. To increase efficiency, the gearing is fractionally taller, and in Eco Pro mode, the drivetrain can decouple itself while coasting between 31 and 100 mph. Rear-wheel steering isn't new, but this is the first BMW 7-series that combines it with all-wheel drive. The anti-roll bars now adjust electromechanically, and the massive Seven can even hustle around in Comfort Plus-a floaty Zeppelin experience, but the grip's there. With Active Comfort Drive, if the car's GPS identifies upcoming curves and aggressive driver inputs, it will shift from Comfort mode to Sport mode automatically. Don't bother with Active Comfort Mode: Sport is supple yet firm enough that linking a few turns together makes most of the sedan's weight seemingly slough off. That's more confidence-inspiring than fumbling through the first turn and a half in Active mode before the computers catch on. The big BMW is surprisingly entertaining to drive, considering it packs more gadgets than an Apple store. There are plenty of megasedans trying to strike a balance between East and West. The new 7-series just happens to be better at it than most. BMW 750i xDrive Price: $98,395 Powertrain: 4.4-liter twin-turbo V-8, 445 hp, 480 lb-ft; awd, 8-speed automatic Weight: 4600 lb 0 60 mph: 4.3 sec Top speed: 155 mph On sale: Now Follow MSN Autos on Facebook | 9 | 97,819 | autos |
Vincent the cat was born without back legs, but now he can finally walk. | 8 | 97,820 | video |
WASHINGTON John Kerry has broken Hillary Clinton's marks for miles traveled and total flight time as secretary of state, the State Department indicated on its website Monday. With a year to go, he looks set to smash almost every travel record in U.S. diplomacy. Kerry reached 957,744 miles on his last voyage, a weeklong tour of Europe that ended Dec. 4. Clinton covered 956,733 miles in her four years on the job. Kerry came home Friday and left Sunday night for another week overseas, beginning in Paris. The latest trip also took Kerry's log of flight time to more than 2,088 hours, or 87 days. Clinton amassed 2,084 hours, or 86.8 days, of travel. Kerry, who was hobbled this year by a broken leg, still has a way to go to catch Clinton's mark for countries visited. Having shuttled regularly between several favorite destinations Paris, London, Geneva, Jerusalem, Amman he has only been to 77. Clinton went to 112. But barring unforeseen circumstances, Kerry almost surely will pass Condoleezza Rice's record of 1.06 million miles in the air. His current travel rate has him doing so early next year. The State Department updates its travel data for the secretary after each trip's conclusion. _ Online: State Department: http://www.state.gov/secretary/travel/ | 5 | 97,821 | news |
DETROIT Second-degree murder and other charges have been filed against the owner of four dogs that killed a 4-year-old Detroit boy. Separately, a civil lawsuit has been filed by the parents of Xavier Strickland, who was snatched from his mother and killed by pit bulls while they walked in their neighborhood last Wednesday. The Wayne County prosecutor's office says 41-year-old Geneke Lyons has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and possessing dangerous dogs causing death. Lyons is due in court Monday. He's in custody and unavailable for comment. No lawyer has been assigned who can speak on Lyons' behalf. Three dogs in the attack were killed by police and a fourth was seized and euthanized. | 5 | 97,822 | news |
It seems like diet sabotage is everywhere you look this season. But it's not just about sugary office treats and endless holiday party spreads; some of the most common winter foods actually help, not hurt, your waistline. 6 Fat-Burning Foods for Winter It seems like diet sabotage is everywhere you look this season. But it's not just about sugary office treats and endless holiday party spreads; some of the most common winter foods actually help, not hurt, your waistline. Want to know which ones? Read on for six fat-burning foods you should be eating this holiday season! Dark Chocolate Your favorite indulgence actually includes two ingredients that are known to boost metabolism: caffeine and the antioxidant catechin. Just make sure you stick to a small square a day so the sugar and calories don't outweigh dark chocolate's fat-burning potential. Try this flourless chocolate cake to enjoy the benefits of this wintry food - one serving is only 96 calories. Sweet Potatoes Sweet potatoes may just be your cold-weather fat-burning secret. Sweet potatoes are a great source of fiber, which helps keep you feeling full while burning calories by putting your digestive system to work. And they also contain a hormone that helps regulate your blood sugar . Stick with simply seasoned boiled or steamed sweet potatoes - not a sugary dessert - if you are eating for weight loss. We heartily recommend this sweet potato salad - it's spicy, Paleo, and gluten-free. Cinnamon This is the time of year when cinnamon is often the star, and that's a good thing: the warming Fall spice has been shown to slow digestion and regulate blood sugar to boost your metabolism. Be sure to snack on some cinnamon roasted chickpeas to reap the benefits of this spice. Pears You can find various types of pears throughout the Fall and Winter, and there's reason to stock up: pears, like apples, contain high levels of pectin, which binds to water and limits the amount of fat your body absorbs. And pears make great additions to smoothies. Here's one of our favorites: pear and berry smoothie . Turkey Rest assured, your post-Thanksgiving leftover turkey habit is helping you burn fat. Lean protein, like turkey, keeps you full and takes energy to digest - both of which mean increased metabolism. Go for skinless breast meat to keep the calories down. Or whip up a batch of turkey chili , adding the fat-burning power of cayene pepper to your meal. Grapefruit This citrus is prime for picking in Autumn and Winter, so stock up. Grapefruit is an excellent source of soluble fiber, which can help you stay fuller, longer, while eating less. Try tossing grapefruit segments in a hearty salad for lunch (along with a grapefruit vinaigrette ) or try this spiced honey broild grapefruit - it's perfect for breakfast or dessert. | 7 | 97,823 | health |
Former USC coach Steve Sarkisian is suing the university and seeking more than $30 million, TMZ Sports first reported Monday. According to the TMZ report, Sarkisian is claiming he was unfairly fired and says USC broke the law by firing someone with a disability. His attornery told TMZ Sports that alcoholism is identified as a disability under California state law. MORE: 2015 coaching carousel | Season's most disappointing teams "So firing somebody because of that disability is against the law," he said. The Los Angeles Times reported that the 31-page filing also stated that Sarkisian is sober after completing treatment and wants to return to coaching. Alcoholism is viewed as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. Here's what the ADA says about alcoholism as a disability on its website : While a current illegal user of drugs is not protected by the ADA if an employer acts on the basis of such use, a person who currently uses alcohol is not automatically denied protection. An alcoholic is a person with a disability and is protected by the ADA if s/he is qualified to perform the essential functions of the job. An employer may be required to provide an accommodation to an alcoholic. However, an employer can discipline, discharge or deny employment to an alcoholic whose use of alcohol adversely affects job performance or conduct. An employer also may prohibit the use of alcohol in the workplace and can require that employees not be under the influence of alcohol. Sarkisian reportedly showed up drunk to a team meeting earlier this year. He was also pulled off stage during a speech at the "Salute to Troy" booster event at the beginning of the season. Another report said he wasn't sober during a game against Arizona State earlier this season. When Sarkisian was fired Oct. 13 , USC athletic director Pat Haden said in a statement everyone was "concerned for Steve and hope [being fired] will give him the opportunity to focus on his personal well being." Offensive coordinator Clay Helton stepped in as interim coach when Sarkisian was fired and recently was named head coach something the players strongly approved . Suing the program that fired him won't bode well for any future coaching opportunities Sarkisian might have had. Data curated by PointAfter | 1 | 97,824 | sports |
Barcelona coach Luis Enrique has decided to rest Gerard Pique and Andres Iniesta for Wednesday's Champions League trip to Bayer Leverkusen. The reigning champion has already clinched top spot in Group E with one game to spare, allowing Luis Enrique to juggle his options with a tough test against high-flying Deportivo La Coruna to come in the league this weekend before the club jets out to Japan to contest the Club World Cup. The Barcelona coach will also have to make do without the services of Dani Alves at the BayArena due to suspension, with the Brazilian picking up his third yellow card in the 6-1 win over Roma last time out. Furthermore, Jeremy Mathieu, Sergi Roberto, Douglas and Rafinha all remain unavailable due to injury. Youngsters Sergi Samper, Juan Camara, Gerard Gumbau and Wilfrid Kaptoum have made the cut for Wednesday's encounter. Barcelona recorded a 2-1 win over Leverkusen at Camp Nou earlier this season, with Sergi Roberto and Luis Suarez cancelling out Kyriakos Papadopoulos' opener. | 1 | 97,825 | sports |
Summer doesn't have a lock on fruits. This winter, sample some of the delicious fruits the season has to offer. Glistening snow, cozy blankets, hot chocolate ... winter generally tends to pull you toward hot beverages and meat. Get creative this winter and add fresh fruit to your daily diet. They are loaded with nutrients and flavor. So which ones to go for? Click through to know more. Asian Pear The fruit has a sweet flavor and crunchy texture, making it an ideal choice for salads. They can also be sautéed to serve alongside meat entrées. Rich in fiber, Asian pears can be stored for a week at room temperature and far longer if kept in the fridge. Grapes Select firm, plump grapes in a variety of colors and store them after washing properly. The taste of grapes range from sour to sweet depending upon the variety. Pop them in for easy snacking or toss them in salads. You can even serve them along with cheese and nuts as an after-dinner course. Pummelos One of the largest citrus fruits, pummelos come in two shapes: pear-shaped and round. Juice them or add them to green salads. They go well with white fish. Blood Oranges As the name suggests, these oranges are red in color due to high concentration of the pigment anthocyanin, which has several health benefits. When shopping, select blood oranges that are plump and feel heavy. These can be stored at room temperature for several days. Quinces They appear like relatives of the pear but have higher levels of Vitamin C. As quinces taste best when cooked, add them to stews and roasts. You can also use them as a compote or stewed fruit sauce. Persimmons The flavor and texture of this fruit is similar to plum or apricot, with spicy undertones. It's rich in dietary fiber, minerals and phenolic compounds. Perfect for holiday puddings, ice creams, breads and cakes. Kumqauts These olive-sized citrus fruits are sweet yet tangy. The skin is actually the sweetest part. They can be eaten whole, or sliced and tossed in a salad. You can even use them to enhance the flavor of salsa. Kiwi Although the green flesh of this fruit has an invigorating taste reminiscent of strawberries, melons and bananas, kiwi has a distinctive sweetness. Californian kiwifruit is available November through May. While purchasing, select a kiwi that is yielding but not soft. Rambutans This fruit is a relative of the lychee. Rambut means hair in Malay-Indonesian language, referring to the numerous hairy protuberances on the fruit. The fruit is sweet with mildly acidic flavor, and needs peeling before you eat it. Longans This fruit is another relative of the lychee and is native to China. However, they are grown in Hawaii and Puerto Rico too. Peel off the skin and eat the translucent white flesh inside, which tastes like a chewy grape. Passion Fruit The pulp of a passion fruit is highly aromatic and has a tropical sweet flavor. The best way to savor it is to cut the fruit in half and spoon out the flesh. The purple, wrinkled skin of passion fruit is an indication of its ripened state. The unripe ones have a smooth skin. Cranberries Cranberries taste tart when raw, so they're better cooked. While shopping for this fruit, choose the ones that have shiny skin and have deep red/ brown color. Star fruit or carambola The fruit is rich in vitamin C and potassium, but low in calories. "Aim for a deep yellow skin with browning on the edges," says Scott Varanko, produce manager at Stew Leonard's Farm Fresh Grocer in Norwalk, CT. "This is when they are the sweetest." The unripened green ones are tart and can be used as a substitute for lime in drinks. Pomegranate The seeds of the pomegranate are sweet, juicy and bursting with flavor. Eat them as they are, or add them to a dessert for a tantalizing flavor. Some people find it messy to deal with the little seeds, so juicing is the best way to gain the benefits of this fruit. | 0 | 97,826 | foodanddrink |
VIDEO: Elon Musk isn't a fan, though. | 9 | 97,827 | autos |
For months, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has been aggressively wooing Iowa voters while positioning himself to pick up some of Donald Trump's support if the billionaire businessman began to falter. The brash Texas Republican has practically camped out in Iowa recently, crisscrossing all 99 of the state's counties while building a campaign infrastructure there, according to The New York Times. Related: Republican Ted Cruz vaults into first place in new Iowa poll His strategy appears to be paying off. Cruz, a favorite of evangelical Christians and far right conservatives, garnered 24 percent of the support of likely Republican caucus goers in Iowa, according a new Monmouth University survey released on Monday. Trump claimed second place with 19 percent, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida with 17 percent and Ben Carson with 13 percent. Trump can't be happy with his showing in the poll, although it is essentially unchanged from his standing in October. Nonetheless, Trump may be able to count heavily on independent voters who say they are likely to caucus with the Republicans on Feb. 1. The biggest losers appear to be Carson, who has been in a political free fall for the past month amid questions about the veracity of his life story and his understanding of foreign policy, and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Cruz's chief rival for younger, more conservative and Hispanic voters. Related: Trump Takes His Biggest Lead Yet in the Polls Cruz has been on the upswing for weeks with his searing attacks on President Obama and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, his tough talk about "carpet-bombing" ISIS in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., and his defense of gun owners. At the same time, Carson has been crippled by his foreign policy blunders, including his insistence that Chinese forces were fighting in Syria and recently referring to the Palestinian Islamic terrorist organization Hamas as "Hummus." In late October, Carson held an impressive lead in the Monmouth survey of Iowa Republican voters, with 32 percent support over Trump, who at the time was a distant second place with only 18 percent support. Since then, Carson has fallen 19 points, while Cruz has picked up 14 points and Rubio has gained seven points. Significantly, there has been a major shift in the evangelical Christian vote, which constitutes a powerful majority of Iowa caucus-goers. According to the new survey, evangelicals have moved behind Cruz, who currently enjoys a two-to-one lead over Carson. Related: Donald Trump's 8 (Most Recent) Blatant Lies "As Ben Carson's stock has fallen, Cruz has been able to corral most of those voters," said Monmouth pollster Patrick Murray in a statement. Murray added that Cruz was helped considerably by gaining the recent endorsement of Rep. Steve King (R-IA), a leading foe of immigration reform who rivals Trump in his disdain for illegal immigrants. About two in ten likely Iowa caucus-goers said King's endorsement makes them more likely to support Cruz for president, while only seven percent said it would make them less likely to support the Texas Republican. According to the New York Times report, Rubio for months has sought to campaign "above the fray," offering high-minded rhetoric about the need for a new generation of political leadership and touting his credentials in foreign policy, defense, economics and immigration issues. But in light of Cruz's steady move towards the top of the GOP field and his strong showings in the Republican presidential debates, Rubio has begun to lash out at Cruz in interviews and speeches, according to the Times . Both men are freshmen senators, both are 44 years old and part of a new generation of GOP leadership, and both have compelling life stories to tell about growing up as the sons of Cuban immigrants. Rubio has sought to question Cruz's toughness on national security and terrorism while Cruz has sought to link Rubio to Democratic views on amnesty for illegal immigrants. Related: Welcome to the Weird World of Ted Cruz Fan Art Although his showing in the latest Monmouth University poll was middling, Rubio managed to overtake Carson as the most positive candidate in the field, scoring a favorable rating of 70 percent, with only 16 percent expressing a negative view. Cruz and Carson are roughly in the same ball park, with both polling 67 percent favorable ratings and 19 unfavorable. That constitutes a huge drop for the soft-spoken Carson from October, when 84 percent said they had a positive view of him. The combative, bombastic Trump scores a 54 percent positive and 36 percent negative rating. Moreover importantly, however, 60 percent said they would be pleased with Trump heading the GOP ticket next year. The Monmouth University poll was conducted by telephone from Dec. 3 to 6, with 425 Iowa voters likely to attend the Republican presidential caucuses in February 2016. This sample has a margin of error of 4.8 percent. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Trump Takes His Biggest Lead Yet in the Polls The 11 States with the Hottest Housing Markets 9 Counterfeit Products You May Be Buying | 5 | 97,828 | news |
Whether they were great or not, these cars have some cool names. Whether they were great or not, these cars have some cool names Follow MSN Autos on Facebook Alfa Romeo Disco Volante Everyone loves disco, it's Italian for "flying saucer," and it's fun to say. That's a hard combination to beat. 12 of the Most Beautiful, Fascinating Cars Zagato Ever Built AMC Javelin The Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro may have lasted longer, but the AMC Javelin definitely had the more aggressive name. These Are the 10 Most Affordable Classic Muscle Cars Buick Roadmaster It probably deserved the title more in the 1940s than it did in the 1990s, but claiming a car is the master of the road takes guts. The 10 greatest American cars ever made Chevrolet Corvette In the navy, corvettes are small warships. On land, the Corvette may as well be a warship. Its interior might not have always been the most luxurious, but (barring a few unfortunate years) Corvettes have always delivered cheap speed. This Crazy Collection of Rare Corvettes Will Blow Your Mind De Tomaso Mangusta Italian for "mongoose," the Mangusta was reportedly given its name because it was built to be a Shelby Cobra killer. You Should Buy One of These Five Cars You Had on Your Bedroom Wall Dodge Magnum Magnum P.I.? Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum revolver? No matter what you associate it with, the word "magnum" is automatically cool. Is a Dodge Challenger Hellcat Quicker Than a Porsche 911 Turbo S? Dodge Rampage Utes are awesome, but names like Ranchero and El Camino aren't. Dodge took a different approach and named its ute the much-more-aggressive-sounding Rampage. Almost-Trucks: 10 Non-Traditional Pickups Dodge Viper Whether you're talking about the car or the animal, you have to be careful, or it will jump out and kill you. The evolution of the Viper ACR Eagle Talon The Eagle Talon wasn't much different than the Mitsubishi Eclipse. Then again, which would you rather say you drive? Something called an Eclipse or something called a Talon? Yes, this is a video of a Lamborghini towing some goats Ferrari Testarossa Italian names automatically sound cool in English, but this one was named in honor of the famous Ferrari 500 TR. It also translates to "red head." The 7 Most Ludicrous Sports Cars for Sale Online This Week Hudson Hornet If you've ever been stung by a wasp, you know it's an animal that packs way more sting than its size would suggest. For a car that competed in the early years of NASCAR, it's perfect. We Talk To The Owner of a Massive Car Hoard About Why Things Aren t For Sale Jensen Interceptor You won't be protecting a valuable target or shooting down enemy bombers in the Jensen, but it's still an awesome name for a car. Silverstone Classic Auction preview Lamborghini Countach The word "countach" roughly translates to "oh my!", which is what most people will say when they see one drive by. 1989 Lamborghini Countach: Impressive but Impractical Lamborghini Diablo It takes a lot of confidence to name your car after the devil, but Lamborghini went for it. Lamborghini Diablo specs and features Land Rover Defender "The Defender" evokes images of someone strong, honorable, and trustworthy, which is exactly what you would want in a bare-bones, go-anywhere SUV. In pictures: history of the Land Rover Defender Mercury Marauder You can never go wrong naming a blacked-out factory hotrod after pirates. Pirates will always be cool. This 1934 Ford Vicky was Saved From Destruction Mitsubishi Raider It's almost unfortunate that the name "Raider" has already been taken because it deserves to be on something like a muscle car, not a badge-engineered truck that barely sold. Mitsubishi Raider specs and features Oldsmobile Cutlass Again, you can never go wrong naming something after pirates. Here, Oldsmobile went with a sword famous for being used by pirates. Largest Annual Gathering of Oldsmobiles Anywhere! Oldsmobile Toronado The name may be meaningless, but it manages to evoke the idea of a tornado while sounding even cooler than if Oldsmobile had simply named it the Tornado. Loud, Proud & Outrageous: Muscle Car Badges Panoz Esperante Even if it's dangerously close to the made-up language, "Esperante" still sounds classy and elegant almost like it isn't built in the mountains of northern Georgia. Panoz Esperante Spyder Gets 25th Anniversary Edition Plymouth Prowler Are you out on the hunt, stealthily waiting to attack your prey? Not in this car you aren't, but it's still an awesome name. 50 of the meanest looking cars ever created Pontiac Firebird "Phoenix" probably isn't the best name for a car, especially if it's an Italian car, but "Firebird" is perfect for something muscular and cool. Burt Reynolds' Trans Am from 'Smokey' back up for auction Porsche Carrera GT "Carrera" means "race" in Spanish, which is perfect for a street-legal race car, but it also just sounds cool. Revel in the Evolution of Porsche s Iconic Turbo Rolls-Royce Phantom Rolls-Royce has had some great names over the years, but Phantom is probably the best. It may as well mean "ghost," but taking the more creative route when it comes to names is always a plus. Rolls-Royce Phantom news and reviews Shelby AC Cobra A talented snake charmer can safely handle a cobra, but in the wrong hands, its venomous bite can kill a human. That sounds perfect for the name of a sports car. Follow MSN Autos on Facebook | 9 | 97,829 | autos |
Simple strategies to make every day better. Last year, Business Insider published a list of easy ways to simplify your life, featuring comments posted on the Quora thread, "How can I make my life simpler?"Since then, the thread has ballooned to nearly 700 answers, with users from all over the world weighing in on how to eliminate physical and mental clutter, increase productivity, and ultimately be a happier person. We picked out 13 recent responses that offer creative strategies for streamlining. Read on to find out what you can do to make your daily life a little bit easier. 1. Make time for "meta-work." Advance planning is key to simplicity because it helps prevent the panicky feeling that you're not focusing on what's most important."Organizing your to-do list or clearing out your desk don't seem like productive things to do," writes Haider Al-Mosawi. "I call them 'meta-work.' They don't substitute for actual work (you want to do the tasks on your to-do list), but they do help cultivate mental clarity and allow you to become more productive when you are working." 2. Learn to prioritize. Now that you've crafted that to-do list, it s time to pare it down, says Nistha Tripathi, by eliminating any nonessential tasks. Tripathi quotes Stephen Covey, author of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People": "You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say 'no' to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger 'yes' burning inside." 3. Abandon the idea of a "bucket list. "Don't see your life as a race to accomplish goals that other people have set for you.Writes Jim Stone: "If you read an article titled '100 movies you must see before you die,' don't buy into it. If you do, you'll either wind up watching 70 boring movies to get to 30 good ones, or you'll feel guilty about not finishing the list. Either way, it adds to your mental burden." 4. Be early for appointments. "This will help you to make your time of travel a time of rest and relaxation instead of stressful," says Olivia Skumps. And simplifying your life is all about eliminating unnecessary stress.If you're having a hard time being punctual, let alone early, you can try some simple but effective tricks like overestimating how long it will take to get ready and planning for worst-case scenarios. 5. Use the 10-year test. The fact that you turned in your project proposal 30 seconds late might seem devastating right when it happens. But a decade later, you're unlikely to even remember it.Here's Nelson Wang s tip: "Ask yourself, will this matter in one year, five years, or 10 years? If it won't, you need to stop stressing out about it. Move forward." 6. Don't leave unfinished business. "When I look around my house," says Tanya Zyabkina, "most of the 'junk' is simply a material representation of a decision that has not been made or a project that has not been finished. That parcel box on the floor? Still thinking whether to return it. Stack of pictures on the desk? Need to finally frame them. "Make that decision now. Take the action right away. Don't let unfinished business accumulate."Zyabkina s suggestion sounds similar to David Allen's "two-minute rule": If you get an email that can be dealt with in two minutes or less, deal with it now instead of letting it linger in your inbox.The basic idea behind both strategies is to make decisions whenever possible instead of putting them off. 7. Automate most of your day. "If you want to make your life more simple," writes Mike LaVere, "automate as much of your day and routine as possible. "LaVere cites a phenomenon known as decision fatigue, explaining that willpower is a finite resource and the more you use it, the less you have left.That's why you should eliminate as many choices as you can, from what you eat for breakfast to what you wear to work.In fact, Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg say they wear the same outfit every day because they have to focus their energy on making other, more important decisions. 8. Learn to say "no.""If you don't want to do something, just say no," writes Amrisha Vohra. "You don't need to keep everyone happy."We know: It's not that easy. Remember that you can still be polite by saying something like, "I'm sorry I can't right now but will let you know when and if I can."You can also turn the question around to the person asking. For example, if your supervisor asks you to take on more than you can manage, you can respond, "I'm happy to do X, Y, and Z; however, I would need three weeks, rather than two, to do a good job. How would you like me to prioritize them?" 9. Focus on what you can control. So you're running late for work because of a traffic jam ahead. Getting angry is natural but not especially productive. You'd be better off taking a breath and using that time to mentally prep for a meeting later that day.Writes Gary Wu:"Your days are filled with random events that are out of your control. Getting emotionally and mentally worked up over them is a waste of energy. … You may not be able to control what happens to you, but you can control how you react. That itself can often be the deciding factor between outcomes." 10. Craft a personal mission statement. Rohan Sinha recommends having a "vision" for your life that you update regularly.Think of it as an abbreviated version of the personal statement you'd submit to a grad program: What do you hope to accomplish and why is it important?In fact, The New York Times reports, a mission statement can be a better predictor of change than a New Year's resolution. That's because, with a mission statement, you identify the motivation behind the changes you're hoping to make. 11. Spend time alone. "Start spending time with yourself," says Abhinav Shahi. "This is the most important thing, as you and only you know what is best for you and what do you want in your life."Make sure you leave your phone behind so that you truly experience solitude and engage in deep introspection. 12. Do one thing you love for five minutes every day. "When you are happy you will bother less about the complexities," writes Mohd Arshad. This idea is backed by scientific research, which suggests that trying deliberately to feel happy backfires but that organizing your day to include activities you like improves well-being. 13. Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness "teaches you to live in the present, to do whatever you are doing with utmost passion and devotion," says Rhishita Jha. The main idea is to unclutter your mind by zeroing in on what you're thinking, feeling, and doing right now, as opposed to the anxieties of yesterday or tomorrow.You can start a mindfulness practice simply by paying close attention to your breathing and noticing what you re sensing in any given moment. | 4 | 97,830 | lifestyle |
These snacks are so tasty, your guests might fill up before dinner even starts. Holiday parties just got a little bit more fun. Serve up these hor d'oeuvres, dips and platters for major flavor in bite-sized portions. Sweet Pea Spread You can follow this veggie-packed recipe for pretty canapés, but try swirling it with sour cream for a quick dip too. Get the recipe for Sweet Pea Spread » Sweet Potato Croquettes The secret to these fried mashed potato bites? Coat them with panko instead of Italian breadcrumbs for a lighter and crispier crunch. Get the recipe at Good Housekeeping » Caprese Bites Save space in the oven for the roast and go with no-cook skewers instead. Make the glaze ahead of time and you can pass off assembly to other helping hands. Get the recipe at Delish » Pretzel Bites With only three ingredients, you'll want to whip up these salty snacks on a regular basis. The key is stocking up on store-bought pizza dough. Get the recipe at Good Housekeeping » Comfort Food When the cocktails are a-flowing, even the adults will want some kid favorites. Keep people of all ages happy by serving up taco tartlets (with crushed Doritos!) alongside orzo mac and cheese. Get the recipes » Christmas Queso Chips and dip get a lot more lively in a festive color scheme. The key is a red jalapeño and cilantro garnish. Get the recipe at Delish » Mini Cheese Popovers They're cheesy, fluffy and adorably tiny. What more could you possibly want? Get the recipe at Woman's Day » Blue Cheese, Pear and Honey Crostini A plate of mini toasts can curb appetites until the cooking's done. This version mixes salty and sweet flavors for a true crowd-pleaser. Get the recipe at Delish » Baked Brie With Honey And Rosemary A 15-minute, three-ingredient appetizer is a hostess's dream come true. Serve it with crackers, pita chips or even sliced apples for scooping all of that melty goodness. Get the recipe at Delish » Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus Get ahead of the game. Roll asparagus in prosciutto (or thinly-sliced bacon) a few hours before, and then pop the spears in a frying pan just before dinner time. Get the recipe at Eat Drink Paleo » Sunchoke Chips with Warm Blue Cheese Dip Sunchokes, also called Jerusalem artichokes, actually come from sunflowers. The tubers taste like a sweeter, nuttier version of your typical potatoes. Get the recipe at Country Living » Cranberry and Brie Bites Only two layers of puff pastry can stand up to melted cheese and sticky sauce. Although extra napkins wouldn't be a bad idea either. Get the recipe at Kitchen Sanctuary » Hot Crab Dip Sometimes the canned stuff just won't cut it. This recipe recommends using two whole Dungeness crabs, but king crab will also work in a pinch. Get the recipe at Serena Bakes Simply From Scratch » Smoked Mozzarella Dip You can never have too many recipes for melted cheese. Olive Garden's Smoked Mozzarella Fonduta actually inspired this copycat version. Get the recipe at Love Grows Wild » Crostini Platter Whip up a variety of these tasty bites with a unique set of adornments, including blueberry and jalapeño. Get the recipe at Country Living » Cheddar Crab Puffs Crab puffs are already delicious, but adding cheddar cheese takes them to the next level. Get the recipe at Good Housekeeping » Prosciutto-Wrapped Breadsticks Anything wrapped in prosciutto automatically gets a thumbs-up in our book, so breadsticks are clearly no exception. Get the recipe at Good Housekeeping » Spiced Yogurt Cheese Balls As tasty as they are colorful, these spiced cheese balls have a yogurt base and can easily be made ahead of time. Get the recipe at Country Living » Cocktail Meatballs with Creamy Cranberry Sauce Nutmeg and cranberry preserves make this dish especially appropriate for the holiday season. Get the recipe at Good Housekeeping » Prosciutto and Fig Crostata Pie crust is an unexpected star in this recipe, which has a unique taste thanks to dried figs. Get the recipe at Country Living » Crispy Loaded Hasselback Potato Bites These are not your average potatoes. They're loaded with cheese, sour cream and bacon. Get the recipe at The Comfort of Cooking » Christmas Pull-Apart Tree A starter that's easy to make (and eat), this pull-apart tree is something even the pickiest of eaters won't mind nibbling on. Get the recipe at Eclectic Recipes » Cranberry Pecan Brie Crostinis With Maple Sugar Glaze These crostinis have a dollop of brie, plus cranberries, pecans and maple sugar glaze. Get the recipe at Chef in Training » Brie Bites With Sugared Cranberries Sugared cranberries make add unexpected flavor (and a really pretty topping) to these bites. Get the recipe at Daisy's World » Baked Goat Cheese Dress up this crowd-pleasing cheese with roasted cranberries. Get the recipe at Honey & Birch » Mini Bean and Cheese Molletes This mini twist on molletes is made complete with some colorful veggies. Get the recipe at So Munch Love » Christmas Palmiers Red pesto and spinach give this vegan dish a seasonal look. Get the recipe at Demuths » Caprese Meatballs These crispy meatballs are filled with mozzarella, creating a killer texture-and-taste combination. Get the recipe at The Cozy Apron » Kale and Lentil Salad Spoons Kale and lentil salad tastes even more delicious when piled into a crispy pita shell. Get the recipe at I Sugar Coat It! » Cranberry and Brie Puff Pastry Swirls Let your guests indulge in a little bit of sweetness at the beginning of the meal. Get the recipe at Half Baked Harvest » Stuffing Muffins These are a few of our favorite things - cranberries, celery and sage - baked with bread cubes into a bite-sized muffin shape. Get the recipe at Magda's Cauldron » Christmas Tree Cheese Platter Get a little creative with your spread and turn into the shape of a tree. Weave in some grapes for extra color and sweetness. Get the recipe at The Cozy Cook » Hot Artichoke Dip Hot dips are perfect for the chilliest of days. These bloggers serve theirs up in red and green bakeware to celebrate the season. Get the recipe at The Food Gays » Pastrami-Pretzel Bites A salty, crisp pretzel bun is a perfect savory companion to pastrami. Get the recipe at Pillsbury » Broccoli Christmas Tree Salad Veggies never looked so yummy! Use broccoli as the body of your tree, and cherry tomatoes as the ornaments. Get the recipe at Mari Jasmine » | 0 | 97,831 | foodanddrink |
Two Texas parents are giving Santa a run for his money this year after surprising their three young daughters with a brand new baby brother. The girls thought their mom, Courtney Solstad, and dad were tackling some Christmas shopping -- a likely story. Instead, the couple had just pulled off the ultimate holiday hoodwink. They had just picked up their newly adopted son, Nathan, who the girls knew nothing about, and tucked him away under the Christmas tree for his sisters to find. Along with quite literally jumping for joy and shedding tears at the sight of their early Christmas present (not that we can blame them), the girls were eager to meet and cuddle their little brother. It's a moment that will have you feeling all of the fa-la-la-la sentiment. | 5 | 97,832 | news |
An advanced Russian military satellite was doomed by a setback during launch Saturday (Dec. 5) and could come crashing back to Earth in the next day or so, according to media reports. The Kanopus-ST remote-sensing spacecraft failed to separate from the upper stage of its uncrewed Soyuz-2-1v rocket as planned during Saturday's liftoff from Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwestern Russia, Russia's TASS news agency reported today (Dec. 7). "One of the four locks holding onto the satellite malfunctioned," TASS reported , citing an unnamed source in the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces. [ Top 10 Soviet and Russian Space Missions ] Kanopus-ST is an experimental spacecraft likely designed to test the ability to track enemy submarines, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com , a site run by historian and journalist Anatoly Zak, a leading expert on Russia's space program. "Although the previously quoted resolution of instruments onboard Kanopus-ST seems to be too low to discern submarines or their wake, the satellite could be a precursor for more advanced high-resolution systems," Zak wrote. "The alleged anti-submarine capability apparently led to the classification of the Kanopus-ST as a military payload," he added. "Further public information on the status of the project and its instruments was largely restricted." Tracking data gathered by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a joint effort of the United States and Canada, have revealed that the Soyuz's Volga upper stage (with Kanopus-ST still attached) had maneuvered to an orbit whose closet point to Earth lies at an altitude of just 65 miles (104 kilometers), Zak wrote. "The lower portion of this elliptical path would take the satellite into a much denser upper atmosphere, causing very quick decay of the orbit and a fiery demise of the spacecraft," he wrote. "The maneuver could've been programmed into the flight assignment of the Volga upper stage before launch in order to reduce space junk after the delivery of the satellite." NORAD data suggest that Kanopus-ST could fall back to Earth as early as Tuesday (Dec. 8), probably in the Southern Hemisphere, Zak wrote. The Soyuz that blasted off Saturday also carried another military spacecraft, which Zak identified as "the KYuA-1 radar calibration sphere, which was to be used for radar tests by the Almaz-Antey company, the developer of anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems." This second satellite is apparently performing normally in its intended orbit, according to Russian media reports. The crewed variant of the Soyuz rocket family is the only booster that currently launches people toward the International Space Station. (These spaceflyers travel aboard a Russian craft that's also called Soyuz.) With NASA encouragement and funding, the American spaceflight companies SpaceX and Boeing have been developing their own crew transporation systems to low Earth orbit. NASA hopes that these homegrown systems will be up and running by 2017. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+ . Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook or Google+ . Originally published on Space.com . Failed Russian Spy Satellite Will Fall Back To Earth | Video Roscosmos: Russia's Space Agency 50 Great Russian Rocket Launch Photos What It's Like to Ride Russia's Soyuz Spaceship | Video | 5 | 97,833 | news |
A Florida man has been indicted for scheming to make illicit payments to an official at a credit union that prosecutors say facilitated an illegal bitcoin exchange owned by an Israeli linked to cyber attacks on companies including JPMorgan Chase & Co. Yuri Lebedev, 37, pleaded not guilty on Friday to a one-count indictment filed last week in Manhattan federal court, a spokeswoman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said on Monday. Lebedev was arrested in July along with a Florida man, Anthony Murgio, for engaging in a conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. Murgio was indicted on Nov. 10 when prosecutors unveiled related charges against three men accused of running a sprawling computer hacking and fraud scheme. Prosecutors said two Israelis, Gery Shalon and Ziv Orenstein, and an American, Joshua Samuel Aaron, ran a criminal enterprise that hacked into a dozen companies' networks, stealing personal information of over 100 million people. The companies included JPMorgan, which prosecutors said had records stolen belonging to more than 83 million customers. Lebedev, a resident of Jacksonville, Florida, was not accused of engaging in the hacking offenses or many of the related alleged crimes they helped facilitate, including a series of stock manipulation frauds. But prosecutors previously said he supervised the computer programming functions of an unlicensed bitcoin exchange operated by Murgio and owned by Shalon called Coin.mx that exchanged millions of dollars of the virtual currency for customers. Prosecutors said Murgio as part of the scheme obtained beneficial control of a New Jersey-based federal credit union and installed individuals on the board including Lebedev. The indictment against Lebedev, made public Dec. 2, said he participated in a conspiracy to make corrupt payments to a senior executive at the credit union in order to gain control over it. The credit union was Helping Other People Excel Federal Credit Union of Jackson, New Jersey, which federal regulators liquidated last month. A lawyer for Lebedev did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. The case is U.S. v. Lebedev, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 15-cr-00769. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Tom Brown) | 5 | 97,834 | news |
A day at the spa should leave you feeling healthy, relaxed, and rejuvenated. But some beauty or (so-called) wellness treatments probably aren't worth your money and some could even be harmful. Medi-spas made headlines in October for an extreme case after a Nevada woman died in a cryotherapy chamber , but the reality is there are other potential dangers lurking in this largely unregulated industry. "There are a lot of mistruths and strange beliefs out there about what's good for you when you go to a spa," says Leena Nathan, MD, a physician in the UCLA Health system. "It's important to remember that just because a service is offered, that doesn't mean it's safe or effective." Before you pamper yourself this holiday season, read up on these treatments you may be better off without. 1. Skip it: Cryotherapy The act of exposing parts of the body to freezing temperatures can actually be safe and beneficial, Dr. Nathan says; it's used to remove warts and destroy cancer cells , and some athletes even say it improves muscle recovery . But recently, whole-body cryotherapy chambers have been touted as a beauty and anti-aging treatment that can supposedly reduce cellulite, even skin tone, and treat skin conditions like psoriasis and acne. For these claims, there's no real evidence, Dr. Nathan says. On top of that, these machines usually aren't regulated or operated by medical professionals. "Going into a chamber is not recommended from a medical perspective," Dr. Nathan says. "As a physician, I wouldn't be comfortable telling a patient that this is safe." In Las Vegas, a spa employee was killed after she entered a cryotherapy chamber by herself, after hours; it was later determined that she died from lack of oxygen. Nevada has since issued guidelines about how and by whom cryotherapy should be used, but other states have fewer if any regulations. RELATED: The 20 Biggest Lessons We Learned About Our Health in 2015 2. Proceed with caution: Laser hair removal As the popularity of laser hair removal has grown, so have the number of treatments gone terribly wrong. When used improperly, the powerful light pulses used to destroy hair follicles can also cause serious skin burns, scarring, and pain. "Laser hair therapy is safe in the right hands," Dr. Nathan says, "when it's done by a reputable dermatologist, as opposed to a random medi-spa employee." And in fact, 78% of lawsuits filed in 2011 for injury from laser surgeries (including hair removal) were directed at practitioners other than doctors up from just 36% in 2008, according to a UCLA study published in JAMA Dermatology in 2013 . The study also found that 80% of lawsuits filed between 2008 and 2012 were for treatments that took place outside of a traditional physician's office. Every state regulates laser use differently, with some requiring doctors to be on-site and others with no rules at all. To be safe, Dr. Nathan says, only consider laser therapy performed by or under the direct supervision of a medical professional. 3. S kip it: Colon cleanses Think twice about visiting spas that offer colon cleansing also known as colonic irrigation or colonic hydrotherapy and definitely stay away from this procedure, Dr. Nathan says. According to a 2011 Georgetown University review of previous studies, the act of flushing water and chemicals through the colon and rectum doesn't have any proven health benefits . And worse: in some people it can cause serious, even life-threatening side effects, from vomiting and cramping to kidney failure. "The colon really works well all by itself," Dr. Nathan says. "And by pushing water all the way through, you're eliminating a lot of the good flora that your digestive tract needs." RELATED: 14 Best and Worst Foods for Digestion 4. Proceed with caution: Body wraps Being wrapped up in seaweed, plastic, or another constricting material may not sound too appealing, but many spas tout this practice as a way to purify skin, open pores, and speed weight loss. When done in a reputable spa, these treatments are generally safe, Dr. Nathan says. But it's possible that wraps that are too tight or left on for too long can cause dehydration and overheating. "There is the potential to lose electrolytes and fluid, so you want to make sure you feel safe the whole time," she adds. Check with the spa staff that you won't be left alone while you're wrapped, and that you can stop the treatment at any time. If you're looking to shed fat, a body wrap may not be your best investment anyway. Doctors say that any weight lost as a result of a wrap is pure water weight a temporary change, at best. RELATED: What's the Deal with Waist Training? 5. Research before you relax No matter what therapy you're considering, the most important thing you can do is to check out a spa before booking. Even something as simple as a manicure or waxing can have health consequences if a technician isn't well-trained or a facility follows unsafe or unsanitary practices. "The rules vary by state and by procedure, but spas should display certificates showing that they're qualified to perform whatever it is they're offering," Dr. Nathan says. And if that includes medical procedures like laser therapy, a doctor should be overseeing treatments, if not performing them him or herself. You can also read online reviews, get recommendations from your own doctor, and ask questions about the staff's education and experience. The extra legwork may raise a red flag or, at the very least, will reassure you that everything is as it should be. And if that helps you enjoy your spa day without worry, that alone can be worth the effort. RELATED: 20 Ways to Get Healthier for Free More on MSN: The 5 Worst Things You Can Do in the Morning (before You Leave Your House) | 7 | 97,835 | health |
The travel industry's 800-pound gorillas have been bulking up, and consumers are getting nervous. A series of mergers in recent months from Expedia's acquisitions of rival online booking companies to Marriott International's recent takeover of Starwood Hotels and Resorts have only quickened the pace of consolidation in the industry. "I believe it'll reduce competition," Steve Ledewitz, an independent meeting planner, said of the Starwood-Marriott merger. He said he used to be able to drive bargains for clients by making Marriott and Starwood hotels vie for his business. "Once my client picks the city they want to go to, Starwood and Marriott would compete against each other, and many of their brands do match up against each other, so there was a lot of head-to-head," he said. Others are taking a wait-and-see approach. Sign up for The New York Times' weekly travel newsletter "It's definitely got some positives and negatives to it," Alex Borodkin, an SPG, or Starwood Preferred Guest, member who spends most of his time on the road as an accounting consultant, said of the acquisition. "It'll open up more options for me to earn points, but I am worried about the value of my points going down." Part of the reason for the mergers is the rise of home rental sites, industry observers say. They call the Marriott-Starwood deal a prudent, perhaps necessary move in the wake of consolidation among online travel agencies, which hotels rely on for nearly 20 percent of their bookings, according to the research firm Phocuswright. "The calculation here is really pretty simple," said Douglas Quinby, vice president for research at Phocuswright. "When you control more supply and you have a distributor that brings you demand but needs your supply, you have a little bit more negotiating leverage." Marriott's announcement came less than two weeks after the online travel agency Expedia said it would buy HomeAway , the home-rental platform and a chief rival to Airbnb, for $3.9 billion. And that deal followed two other acquisitions by Expedia this year, of its rivals Orbitz and Travelocity. "I think Marriott recognized that bigger is better in dealing with some of the emerging threats to the industry, things like greater consolidation among the online travel agencies," said David Loeb, a senior research analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. "This is one way to fight back." The hotel companies bitterly, though unsuccessfully, opposed Expedia's $1.3 billion purchase of Orbitz , which gives the combined company control of roughly 75 percent of the domestic market for third-party online booking, according to Phocuswright. Expedia, which also owns sites including Hotwire and Hotels.com, now primarily competes against the Priceline Group, which owns Booking.com and has made several acquisitions of its own over the past couple of years, including OpenTable, the restaurant reservations platform, and Kayak. Buying HomeAway, the biggest company in the home-rental industry, helps Expedia catch up, said Chekitan Dev, a marketing and branding professor at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. "It sort of levels the playing field with them a little bit," he said, predicting that home rental eventually would be integrated in a way that makes it as easy for travelers to book as a hotel room. "I think, over time, it's going to be just another option on Expedia." Dara Khosrowshahi, Expedia's president and chief executive, said that consolidation had helped consumers. For instance, Mr. Khosrowshahi, who is on The New York Times board, said the company had lowered or eliminated airfare booking fees on many itineraries. "Consolidation on the Internet has to be a force for price reductions," he said. Corporate travel professionals expressed concern, though, that the Marriott-Starwood deal could kick off a domino effect of additional acquisitions. "The perception might be there's another consolidation similar to what we've seen on the airline side," said Greeley Koch, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. "We've seen this happen in the past." Phocuswright's Mr. Quinby agreed that additional mergers or acquisitions are more likely than not. "I'm quite sure we've not seen the end of consolidation on the supply side," he said. "I think you're going to see other hotel chains look at consolidation as a way to compete with the combined Marriott-Starwood behemoth." Some of the objections from travelers stem from the way consolidation in the airline industry, which has left four carriers responsible for roughly 80 percent of United States air traffic, led to the erosion of mileage values and statuses. Marriott is keenly aware that the new guests it is bringing into the fold are skeptical of its intentions. In a video provided by a spokesman, Marriott's chief executive, Arne Sorenson, sought to reassure guests, especially SPG members, that they would not be lost in the shuffle. "The SPG program was one of the most attractive aspects of our acquisition of Starwood," Mr. Sorenson said in the two-minute message, saying the company wanted to preserve the best aspects of both SPG and Marriott Rewards. "Devaluing points or member benefits is not the way to preserve and strengthen these programs." Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean of the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University, said hotel mergers are unlikely to create the loyalty program depreciation that elicited gripes from frequent fliers because of the way hotel loyalty programs are financed. In frequent-flier programs, airlines foot the bill for traveler benefits, giving them a financial incentive to pare down perks after consolidation. Hotels are financed and managed differently, in that Marriott and Starwood do not actually own the majority of hotels that bear their brand names. Franchisees like real estate investment trusts own the buildings and pay into a pool of funds that finances the guest loyalty program. "It's much different in the hotel industry," than when two airlines merge, said Dan Wasiolek, senior equity analyst for Morningstar. Loyalty program members might even be happily surprised, Mr. Hanson suggested. "There's a better than 50 percent chance that the programs will be merged with the most favorable of both available to travelers," he said. | 2 | 97,836 | travel |
The position of portfolio manager is highly coveted in the financial industry. You can make a lot of money and carry a lot of prestige when you work your way up to this role. As a portfolio manager , your job is to make high-level investing decisions for a fund or a large institution, such as a bank or insurance company. Oftentimes, a portfolio manager has the final say on where millions of dollars are invested, which is why companies pay big salaries to attract top talent to this role. Even landing an interview for a portfolio manager job typically requires a lot of high-level education and years of experience. Once you get to the interview stage, the competition is brutal, making it important to ace your interview. Anticipate the questions that are coming your way and have winning answers prepared. "Tell Me About Your Investing Strategy" First and foremost, the interviewer wants to ensure your investing strategy meshes with the company's goals. After all, as a portfolio manager, you are the final decision-maker on huge investments. If your strategy is antithetical to that of the company, a tense situation is going to arise very quickly. You want to strike a balance with your response. On one hand, study the company thoroughly before your interview and try to discern its core philosophies. Work these into your response so the interviewer knows you have the company's best interests in mind. At the same time, by this point in your career, you have invariably developed some pretty firm beliefs about investing. Be forthright about them, even if you think it is not what the interviewer wants to hear. It is best to get everything on the table during the interview stage to ensure a mutually good fit. "What Professional Designations Do You Carry?" A portfolio manager candidate almost invariably has years of investing experience and has racked up numerous professional designations. The most common is the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, which tests a candidate's knowledge in finance, accounting, statistics and quantitative analysis. Much of the job involves taking mountains of data, extracting hard-to-find trends, and using them to make forecasts and predictions; a CFA designation demonstrates proficiency in this type of analysis. Securities licenses, such as a Series 7, Series 63 and Series 66 , are common as well since many portfolio managers have active backgrounds in selling securities. However, it is important for a portfolio manager to not just be a good salesperson but also to have a deep understanding of the market and preternatural skills in analyzing data and making forecasts. "How Would You Analyze the Risk of (Investment Method)?" At some point, your interviewer is going to test your technical knowledge. Usually, this means offering a somewhat esoteric investing strategy, such as currency arbitrage, and asking you to complete a risk analysis on it. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis , managing risk is more important than ever for financial institutions. Your interviewer wants to be confident your methods for assessing risk and making decisions based on your findings are sound. Given the current economic climate, it is usually better to err on the conservative side when preparing a mock risk analysis in a job interview. These institutions want to make a lot of money, and they are hoping the candidate they hire helps them with that goal. First and foremost, however, they do not want to lose their shirt like a lot of banks did in 2008. If you can prove an ability to make smart investing decisions that protect the company's portfolio in good economic times and bad, you stand a high chance of being selected for the job. | 3 | 97,837 | finance |
When " Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon " was released in 2000, it became the most successful foreign film in American history. The highly stylized action sequences , Ang Lee's dynamic direction and the inimitable performances from Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-fat captivated American critics and audiences alike, forever changing the relationship between US and China's film industries. The trailer for the the next installment in the epic saga, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny" was released today and it delivers all the action goodness you've been hoping for. Directed by famed martial arts choreographer, Yuen Woo-Ping , the sequel brings underrated badass Yeoh back to the forefront, along with newcomers Harry Shum Jr. and Donnie Yen. Based on the final book in Wang Dulu's Crane-Iron pentalogy , Iron Knight, Silver Vase , the sequel is centered around an all-powerful sword -- The Green Destiny -- and Yeoh's character's efforts to protect it from an evil warlord. Insane, high-flying action ensues. Watch the trailer . (Side note: Why is everybody speaking English?) "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny" hits select IMAX theaters and Netflix on Feb. 26. Also on HuffPost: | 6 | 97,838 | entertainment |
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo knew this team was special before the season even began. "There's much more talent," he said in July, comparing the 2015-16 roster to last season's surprise Final Four team . The only question was whether that talent would mesh and equate to wins early on. After all, the Spartans didn't hit their stride until March last season. And they lost mainstays Branden Dawson and Travis Trice. "It could take some time for us to come together," he said then. After nine games, the picture is becoming clearer. Undefeated Michigan State looks the part of a Final Four team and, even if it's December, like a national title contender. After losses by Kentucky and Maryland last week, the Spartans have taken over the No. 1 spot in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll and the AP poll . "Michigan State was a Final Four team last year and certainly a Final Four type of team this year," Arizona coach Sean Miller said in the Wooden Legacy Classic. Though Izzo is quick to bat down early season rankings and projections , there's a strong chance his team enters Big Ten play unbeaten: The toughest remaining non-conference test is a home game against Florida on Saturday. "I told my guys we'll see how we handle that early success right now," Izzo said after a dominant win against Boston College."Now we're going from hunting to being hunted. Teams are going to be giving us their best game." Boston College coach Jim Christian said after his team lost by 31 points, "they are the best team in the country." Boise State coach Leon Rice made a similar proclamation following his team's 77-67 loss, tabbing Michigan State one of the "best defensive teams in the country." And Providence coach Ed Cooley was in full agreement after the Spartans pulled away from the Friars, 77-64, to win the Wooden Legacy. "I think their experience really showed down the stretch," Cooley said. It's difficult to argue. Here are seven reasons Michigan State will be in Houston come April with a legitimate chance to cut down the nets. The Hall of Famer earned his 500th win on Thanksgiving, and his résumé seven Final Four appearances and 18 NCAA tournament bids speaks for itself. Izzo knows how to get his players to buy in and he's one of the best Xs and Os coaches in the game. John Calipari and Mike Krzyzewski win titles with top-rated recruiting classes. Izzo optimizes lesser talent (MSU's classes are consistently outside the top 10) to keep Michigan State in the title-contending mix. The early favorite to be national player of the year because of these numbers: 19.7 points, 8.8 rebounds and 7.9 assists a game including 29 points, 12 rebounds and 12 assists against a talented Kansas team Nov. 17. He was named Most Outstanding Player of the Wooden Legacy, starting with another triple double 29 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists against Boston College. He followed that up with 32 points against Boise State. And he scored 11 of his 25 points in the final 5:06 to help lift MSU past Louisville on Dec. 2. "He's phenomenal," Christian said. "When your best player plays that way, it's contagious." Complementing Valentine in the backcourt are three other elite guards. Bryn Forbes 51% from from three-point range is "one of the best shooters in the country" according to Izzo. And Lourawls "Tum Tum" Nairn Jr. is a feisty point guard who vastly improved his jump shot in the offseason and provides a strong floor presence. Still-settling Eron Harris, who averaged 17.4 points a game at West Virginia two seasons ago, is starting to catch on as a key reserve hitting clutch shots in crucial moments against Providence (finishing with 12 points) and helping to drive a 43-point blowout of Binghamton (11 points) on Dec. 5. The Spartans average 23.0 assists a game to lead the nation. Christian summed it up perfectly: "The beautiful thing about the way they play is that they have no bad possessions. They understand what they are trying to get and they're very unselfish and patient enough to get a great shot. When their post players play well, they are a lot to handle." Valentine and forward Matt Costello (7.7 ppg, 6.4 rpg) are seniors reached the Sweet 16, the Elite Eight and the Final Four in their three seasons. Forbes, a transfer from Cleveland Stare in 2014, also is a senior. Starters Javon Best and Nairn are showing solid freshman-to-sophomore improvement. The least experienced player is five-star recruit Deyonta Davis (9.9 ppg, 6.1 rpg), who's bound to keep improvin and provides major muscle on the glass. As a team, Michigan State ranks third nationally in rebounding margin (17.6). The Big Ten is one of the nation's best conferences top to bottom, evidenced by a 6-4 decision in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. Maryland will be one of the favorites to win the league with perhaps the most complete starting lineup in the country. And though Indiana and Wisconsin have struggled in the non-conference slate, they'll be much stronger by January. Purdue, Michigan and Iowa are the other likely NCAA tournament teams, but others should emerge. By March, there's no question MSU will be competition-tested. Izzo, himself, sees serious potential. "What impresses me, is that I believe we still have a higher ceiling that we can reach,: he said. "It's great to be around guys who like each other. I bet if you ask each guy on this team, they will tell you something great about one of their teammates. It's not the norm, and this is a special group of players." | 1 | 97,839 | sports |
D.C. United's longest serving player is on the move. United traded midfielder-forward Chris Pontius to the Philadelphia Union for allocation money Monday, ending the 28-year-old's seven-year association with the club. Drafted seventh overall in the 2009 SuperDraft out of UC Santa Barbara, Pontius racked up 31 goals and 17 assists in 152 regular-season matches for United. He enjoyed a career year in 2012, recording 12 goals and four assists to earn MLS Best XI honors. He also was the MVP of the 2012 MLS All-Star Game in Chester, Pennsylvania. "We believe Chris is an excellent addition to our first team and organization," Union technical director Chris Albright said on the club's official site. "His ability, experience and winning mentality will help lead our club in the right direction in 2016." But Pontius has been plagued by injury since, scoring six goals and making 39 starts over the past three MLS seasons. He made 23 appearances (17 starts) in 2015, scoring three goals. He bagged his final strike for United in a 2-1 knockout round win over New England before missing both legs of the conference semifinal defeat to the New York Red Bulls because of hamstring tightness. | 1 | 97,840 | sports |
The former president of the Peruvian Football Federation, indicted in the FIFA corruption scandal, was arrested late Friday on an international arrest warrant, and protested his innocence as he was taken away. | 1 | 97,841 | sports |
This past September 11 was the first one I'd ever considered talking to my 7-year-old daughter about the significance of the date. But when evening approached and she didn't seem to have caught on that the day contained more emotional weight than the one before and after it, I decided to spare her the story it and mine a little longer. While I recognize you can't keep children in a bubble forever, the 9/11 narrative is so chock full of the kind of tragedy that pours cement on your heart, rendering it at least partly ineffective forever thereafter, that I'd like to try to protect the inevitable erosion of her sense of security and innocence for as least a little longer. What I'll have a harder time keeping from her are the more recent, and seemingly nonstop, tragic events. Her elementary school has regular lockdown drills in the events of a shooting, although they tell the kids it's in case a bear breaks into a classroom (we live in the mountains of Colorado, so it's not an entirely implausible situation). If she's in the room, my husband and I will turn the channel when watching a news story about war, a terrorist attack or another unspeakable tragedy. But she can read, and she also knows when a conversation stops just because she's tuned in to what's being said. It won't be long before she starts asking questions. What do I tell her when I don't know what to think myself? Of course no one has the answers, and if anything, lately there's been wave of intelligent, articulate adults saying they're at a total loss for words and solutions. There are plenty of prayers, pithy memes and an onslaught of finger-pointing and name-calling. But mostly there has just been endless amounts of hopelessness, including my own. I'm dreading the moment when she asks me about what's going on at home, abroad or even in her school. Terrorism, mass murderers, lack of adequate gun control laws, the attacks on Planned Parenthood, and even the absurd ascent of Donald Trump it's not as simple as one piece of bad news after the next; each new story seems to be the worst. What do I tell her when I don't know what to think myself? When I close my eyes to try and escape but feel as if there's still no where to go? How do I honestly tell her it's OK to close her eyes? The only thing I can do, and plan to do, is tell her honestly that to alleviate some of my own anxiety, I try not to worry about what I can't control. We can't change what many other people will do, but what we can change is how we react to them. We can prepare for the worst (like how to plan for what we would do in an " active shooter situation "). We can contact our elected officials . We can be kind. We can share and re-tweet the words of others on social media. We can pray. We can click "like" on front-page editorials . We can campaign and vote for those whose values and beliefs are most closely aligned with our own. We can volunteer. We can be the change we want to see in the world. We can live lives chock full of purpose. But whether it's the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, or one where people celebrating Christmas in their office are ambushed by a co-worker, we should try not to worry about what we can't control. When there's little that can be done to change someone else's course, choosing our own hopefulness instead of hopelessness will go a long way toward getting through each day without a prevailing sense of doom. | 4 | 97,842 | lifestyle |
Racial tension in the United States is at a high point not seen in decades. 10. Ohio > Pct. residents black: 12.1% (17th highest) > Black homeownership rate: 35.3% (22nd lowest) > Black incarceration rate: 2,336 per 100,000 (23rd lowest) > Black unemployment rate: 11.6% (18th highest) Ohio is one of the worst states for black Americans. Nearly 35% of African Americans in the state live in poverty, the third highest proportion of all states and well more than double the poverty rate of Ohio's white residents of 12.2%. Financial constraints often contribute in poor health, education and other social outcomes. The poverty in Ohio's black communities partially explains other poor social and health outcomes among black Ohioans. The infant mortality rate in Ohio, for example, while not especially low for residents of any race, is especially high for black women in Ohio. For every 1,000 live births among black mothers in Ohio, an estimated 14 infants die -- the highest such rate nationwide. By contrast, the infant mortality rate among white women in Ohio is 6.4 per 1,000 live births. 9. Louisiana > Pct. residents black: 32.1% (2nd highest) > Black homeownership rate: 46.9% (7th highest) > Black incarceration rate: 2,749 per 100,000 (18th highest) > Black unemployment rate: 10.3% (22nd lowest) Black Louisiana residents make up 32.1% of the state's population, more than twice the national proportion and the second highest of all states after only Mississippi. Despite the relatively large black population, Louisiana is one of the worst states for African Americans. As is the case nationwide, black Louisiana residents are far more likely to go to prison than their white peers. The incarceration rate among white state residents, at 675 per 100,000 white Louisianans, is the fourth highest among whites nationwide. It is still much lower than the incarceration rate among black residents of 2,749 per 100,000 African American residents, which is just the 18th highest compared to other states' black populations. Black families in Louisiana are among the most likely to own their home, with 46.9% of homes with black heads of household owned by their occupants, the second highest such rate in the nation. However, the rate is still in stark contrast with the white homeownership rate of 74.4%. Similarly, a typical black household earns just over 50% of the white median household income of $52,940, itself not particularly high compared to white households nationwide. 8. Pennsylvania > Pct. residents black: 10.6% (20th highest) > Black homeownership rate: 42.1% (16th highest) > Black incarceration rate: 3,269 per 100,000 (10th highest) > Black unemployment rate: 10.9% (22nd highest) The poverty rate among whites in Pennsylvania is lower than the national white poverty rate, while the poverty rate among the black population is higher than the national black poverty rate. Only four other states in the country have such disproportionate poverty rates. The 29.5% poverty rate among blacks in the Keystone State is roughly three times the poverty rate among the state's white population. In Pennsylvania, high poverty accompanies lower educational attainment. While 30.5% of white adults in Pennsylvania have a bachelor's degree, only 16.4% of black adults have similar educational attainment. High poverty and poor education in Pennsylvania's black communities likely contributes to worst social outcomes. The incarceration rate among the state's white population is 375 incarcerations for every 100,000 whites, below the national rate of 450 incarcerations per 100,000 white Americans. Meanwhile, the incarceration rate among the state's black population of 3,269 for every 100,000 black residents is significantly higher than the national rate of about 2,306 incarcerations for every 100,000 black Americans. 7. New Jersey > Pct. residents black: 12.8% (16th highest) > Black homeownership rate: 37.8% (22nd highest) > Black incarceration rate: 1,992 per 100,000 (13th lowest) > Black unemployment rate: 11.5% (19th highest) The poverty rate among white residents in New Jersey of 6.4% is well below the national poverty rate of 15.5%. Black residents, however, are more than three times as likely to live in poverty as their white counterparts, with nearly 20% of New Jersey's African American residents living in poverty. Homeownership rates are usually divided along racial lines, and New Jersey is no exception. Three out of every four homes with white heads of households are owned by their occupants, compared to a black homeownership rate of just 37.8%. As is the case nationwide, incarceration rates in New Jersey are substantially higher for the African American population than for white residents. Out of every 100,000 black state residents, nearly 1,000 are incarcerated, roughly five times the incarceration rate among white New Jersey residents. 6. Michigan > Pct. residents black: 13.8% (15th highest) > Black homeownership rate: 40.7% (18th highest) > Black incarceration rate: 2,169 per 100,000 (18th lowest) > Black unemployment rate: 15.9% (2nd highest) Like the rest of the country, unemployment among black Michigan workers is much higher than among white workers and is but one piece of a much larger entrenched cycle of inequality. Michigan has the second highest black unemployment rate in the country after only Wisconsin. The unemployment rate among the black workforce of 15.9% is far higher than the rate among the state's white workforce of 5.8%. Relatively high unemployment rates are partially the result of lower educational attainment. While educational attainment levels are lower than average for both whites and blacks in Michigan, black residents are much less likely to complete high school or earn a bachelor's degree than their white neighbors. About 92% of white adults in the state have completed at least high school, a significantly larger share than the black high school attainment rate of about 84%. Additionally, while 28.4% of white Michigan adults have a bachelor's degree, only 16.9% of black residents have similar educational attainment. 5. Florida > Pct. residents black: 15.5% (12th highest) > Black homeownership rate: 43.7% (14th highest) > Black incarceration rate: 2,555 per 100,000 (22nd highest) > Black unemployment rate: 10.8% (23rd highest) Driven in part by a relatively high incarceration rate, black Americans in Florida are the most likely to be disenfranchised. Nearly one in four black Florida residents have had their right to vote revoked in some way, the highest proportion in the country. In absolute terms, 520,521 black individuals living in Florida are disenfranchised, also the highest number in the nation. The infant mortality rate within the black population in Florida, at 11.8 deaths per 1,000 live births, is slightly higher than the nationwide rate of 11.0 deaths per 1,000 births among black American mothers. At the same time, however, the infant mortality rate among the white population in Florida, at 5.0 deaths per 1,000 live births, is lower than the comparable national figure. 4. Virginia > Pct. residents black: 18.9% (9th highest) > Black homeownership rate: 46.2% (8th highest) > Black incarceration rate: 2,418 per 100,000 (25th highest) > Black unemployment rate: 8.2% (12th lowest) Across the country, median annual income of black households is about $24,000 lower than the median income of white households. The income disparity in Virginian is even greater. Even though black households tend to earn more in Virginia than they do across the country, the typical black household in the state earns about $27,000 less than the typical white household. Subject to some of the strictest disenfranchisement laws in the country, the black community in Virginia is among the most politically debilitated in the country. Nearly a quarter of a million blacks in the state -- roughly a fifth of the black population -- are ineligible to exercise their democratic right to vote. Only Florida and Kentucky have a higher share of disenfranchised black residents. 3. Illinois > Pct. residents black: 14.1% (14th highest) > Black homeownership rate: 38.5% (21st highest) > Black incarceration rate: 2,128 per 100,000 (17th lowest) > Black unemployment rate: 14.4% (5th highest) By many measures, whites do better in Illinois than they do nationally, while the opposite is true for black state residents. The annual income of a typical white household in Illinois exceeds the corresponding national figure by about $5,000. Conversely, the typical black household in Illinois earns about $2,000 less than the typical American black household, and barely half of what the typical white household makes. Poverty rates along racial lines echo the income discrepancy in Illinois. While 10.8% of whites nationwide live in poverty, only 9.3% of whites in Illinois do. In contrast, the national black poverty rates of 27.0% is significantly lower than the corresponding state rate of 30.6%. Lower incomes in the state accompany lower homeownership rates. While nearly three quarters of whites in Illinois own the home they live in, the homeownership rate among black residents is just under 39%. The black homeownership rate nationally is slightly higher, at 41.2%. 2. Minnesota > Pct. residents black: 5.6% (22nd lowest) > Black homeownership rate: 23.8% (8th lowest) > Black incarceration rate: 2,321 per 100,000 (22nd lowest) > Black unemployment rate: 11.4% (21st highest) The disproportionate incarceration of black Americans has been well-documented -- and Minnesota is one of the worst cases. Just 216 out of every 100,000 of the state's caucasian population is in prison, the second lowest incarceration rate among whites in the country. Meanwhile, 2,321 of every 100,000 black Minnesota residents are imprisoned, which is the 22nd lowest rate among blacks. Black families tend to earn less money than white families, and that disparity is pronounced in Minnesota. A typical black household in Minnesota brings in just $27,026 a year, less than half of the typical white household's income. 1. Wisconsin > Pct. residents black: 6.2% (24th lowest) > Black homeownership rate: 25.8% (10th lowest) > Black incarceration rate: 4,042 per 100,000 (3rd highest) > Black unemployment rate: 20.8% (the highest) Wisconsin is the worst state in the country for black Americans. The median annual income of black households in the state is just $26,053, much lower than the median for black families nationwide and equal to just 46.5% the median income of white Wisconsin households of $56,083. Similarly, while 29.9% of white adults in Wisconsin have at least a bachelor's degree, 12.8% of black adults in the state have completed college. This is also much lower than the bachelor degree attainment rate among black adults nationwide of 19.7%. Of all the racial disparities found in Wisconsin, the unemployment gap between black and white state residents is perhaps the most troubling. With a white jobless rate of 4.4%, the state's job market is relatively strong for the white population. For black Wisconsin residents, however, the unemployment rate is more than five times higher times higher, at 20.8% -- the highest among black populations in every other state. | 3 | 97,843 | finance |
Christmas lights around the world It's that magical time of year again. To get into the mood, click through for some stunning images of twinkling Christmas lights around the world from years past. Triumphal arch of Moscow (2014) Tivoli Garden, Copenhagen, Denmark (2013) Place Sainte Catherine, Brussels, Belgium (2012) A private home, Melbourne, Australia (2011) Shah Alam Stadium, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2010) Christmas Market, Vienna (2009) Syntagma Square, Athens, Greece (2008) Tokyo (2007) Regent Street, London (2006) Galeries Lafayette, Paris (2005) Mexico City Center (2004) Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany (2003) Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, Rio de Janeiro (2002) Rockefeller Center, New York City (2001) | 2 | 97,844 | travel |
Researchers in Antarctica have found ice with traces of arsenic that originated at copper mines in northern Chile, said a study released Monday. Arsenic, a poisonous substance, is used in smelting copper and is often released into the air during processing. Scientists from Brazil's Polar and Climate Center found it was then traveling more than 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) south to Antarctica, in a study due to be published in the journal Atmospheric Environment. The lead author of the study, geologist Franciele Schwanck, said the finding was less alarming for Antarctica than for Chile. The trace levels of the substance are not enough to affect the Antarctic ecosystem, but "part of the contaminant is also being deposited along the way," she told Chilean newspaper La Tercera. Prolonged exposure to arsenic can cause various cancers and chronic diseases, and the discovery of low concentrations in Antarctica probably means there are higher concentrations in Chile, said Schwanck. Chile is the world's largest copper producer, accounting for nearly one-third of global supply. Researchers have in the past also found lead and uranium pollution in Antarctica. | 5 | 97,845 | news |
Flavorwire Growing up in Compton, Kendrick Lamar, 28, saw the effects of gangs and experienced unfair treatment from police. He knew what it felt like to lose his home and move to a hotel with his family. The 28-year-old rapper drew on his experiences and the experiences of those around him for musical inspiration.He quit drinking and smoking weed when he was around 16 or 17 and focused on his rap career, something he'd been interested in since watching Dr. Dre and Tupac Shakur film the music video for "California Love."He has since released a number of mixtapes and albums, but it was "good kid, m.A.A.d city" that placed him on the map and got him seven Grammy nominations in 2014. He was snubbed that night, losing all seven categories he was nominated in, but the following year, he did end up winning two for his single "i."This year, he has 11 nominations, and based on the response to his album "To Pimp a Butterfly," released in March, he's primed to take more awards home. Get to know the rapper below: kendrick lamar Growing up in Compton, Kendrick Lamar, 28, saw the effects of gangs and experienced unfair treatment from police. He knew what it felt like to lose his home and move to a hotel with his family. The 28-year-old rapper drew on his experiences and the experiences of those around him for musical inspiration. He quit drinking and smoking weed when he was around 16 or 17 and focused on his rap career, something he'd been interested in since watching Dr. Dre and Tupac Shakur film the music video for "California Love." He has since released a number of mixtapes and albums, but it was "good kid, m.A.A.d city" that placed him on the map and got him seven Grammy nominations in 2014. He was snubbed that night, losing all seven categories he was nominated in, but the following year, he did end up winning two for his single "i." This year, he has 11 nominations , and based on the response to his album "To Pimp a Butterfly," released in March, he's primed to take more awards home. Get to know the rapper below: Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born June 17, 1987, in Compton, California. He's the oldest of four children. (Source: Rolling Stone ) He started rapping when he was 13 and released his first mixtape when he was 16 under the moniker K. Dot. Under this name, he became the second artist to join Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) and released a number of mixtapes. (Source: Billboard , Billboard ) Lamar is also part of Black Hippy, a group of TDE artists consisting of Lamar, Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul. They haven't released a full-length album together, but they frequently collaborate with each other on various projects. (Source: Billboard ) A month after releasing "Section.80," Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and some other hip-hop artists "passed the torch" of West Coast hip-hop to Lamar during a show at the Music Box. (Source: LA Times ) Lamar was featured on Drake's second album, 2011's "Take Care." He performed the two-and-a-half-minute "Buried Alive Interlude." TDE closed a deal with Interscope Records and Aftermath Entertainment in 2012 and jointly released Lamar's second album, "good kid, m.A.A.d city," his proper debut. (Source: Billboard ) In August 2013, Big Sean's "Control" leaked. It featured Lamar calling out a number of rappers including Drake, A$AP Rocky, and Tyler, the Creator and proclaiming himself "the king of New York." His verses caused some controversy in the music world. (Source: GQ ) Lamar was named GQ's 2013 Rapper of the Year as part of the Men of the Year issue, but TDE CEO Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith accused the story of having "racial overtones" and pulled Lamar from performing at the event. (Source: Complex ) Lamar earned seven Grammy nominations at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards for "good kid, m.A.A.d city," including Best Rap Album and Album of the Year. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard chart, but Lamar didn't take any awards home that year. Macklemore texted his apology to Lamar after winning Best Rap Album for "The Heist." "You got robbed. I wanted you to win," he said. (Source: Billboard ) He earned Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance nominations at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards held earlier this year for his single "i" and won both. Lamar showed his appreciation for the artist during an appearance at the ONE Musicfest in Atlanta in 2014. He told the Associated Press backstage, "I appreciate Taylor Swift for supporting not only my music but just the hip-hop culture. There's really no gap. It's music and it feels good." Later that year, he broke into a freestyle performance of Swift's "1989" during an interview with The Fader. (Source: Billboard and The Fader ) In October, he embarked on the "1st Annual Kunta's Groove Sessions" tour on which he played eight intimate shows. He just scored 11 Grammy nominations for the 58th Grammy Awards, the most of anyone, including Best Rap Song, Album of the Year, and Song of the Year. The Grammy Awards will take place February 15, 2016. (Source: Billboard ) | 6 | 97,846 | entertainment |
TAMPA, Fla., Dec 7 (Reuters) - Daytona State College alerted students that it had received a "specific bomb threat" on Monday and officials evacuated several buildings at the campus in Daytona Beach, Florida, for about three hours before the all-clear was given, officials said. A representative for the campus safety unit said authorities had evacuated four classroom buildings after a note was left on a blackboard in one of the buildings warning of a bomb. Classes were canceled Monday evening in at least three buildings, according to social media posts by officials at the public college on the state's central east coast, about 55 miles (89 km) northeast of Orlando. The all-clear, a signal that no danger was found at the campus, was given about three hours after the evacuation, according to social media posts by the school. All classes are scheduled to resume on Tuesday. The school has recently received other bomb threats, local media reported. According to news radio WNDB in Daytona Beach, a janitor discovered a bomb threat on a bathroom wall late last Thursday. Police gave the all-clear an hour later, the station website said. (Reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida; Karen Books in Austin, Texas; and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Bernard Orr and Lisa Shumaker) | 5 | 97,847 | news |
Ever since he entered the league in 2003, Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James has worn Nike basketball shoes. In fact, it's an easy shorthand for keeping track of how many seasons James has been an NBA player. The "LeBron 13" came out this year; James is in his 13th season. That trend will reportedly continue for the rest of James' career. According to ESPN's Darren Rovell , Nike signed James to a lifetime deal, the largest guarantee to a single athlete in the company's history: James' business partner, Maverick Carter, told ESPN that he and LeBron have been "in love and obsessed with Nike" since they were kids: BREAKING: Nike has signed LeBron James to a lifetime deal. Largest single athlete guarantee in company's 44-year history. Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) December 7, 2015 The deal is reportedly the first of its kind, at least officially; as Rovell pointed out, it is assumed that Michael Jordan had a de facto lifetime deal with Nike. | 1 | 97,848 | sports |
Count Southampton FC in as fans of the name of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West gave their newborn son. The lovely couple revealed the name of their son to the world Monday and it is (drumroll please) Saint West. Saint joins North as the luckiest kids ever, while Southampton, colloquially known as Saints, now hopes to have a new celebrity fan. Good choice, @KimKardashian ? #saintsfc https://t.co/HgMPZPOXPs Southampton FC (@SouthamptonFC) December 7, 2015 As of this post, it's unclear if the New Orleans Saints will also get in on the action. | 1 | 97,849 | sports |
An Houston police officer comforted his patrol horse as she lay dying in the street after being hit by a truck. Mara Montalbano (@maramontalbano) has the story. | 8 | 97,850 | video |
The Ravens announced Monday that Nick Boyle has been suspended for the remainder of the season, leaving the team without a tight end for next weekend's game against the Seahawks. Boyle was hit with a four-game suspension for violating the NFL's policy on performance-enhancing substances. The Ravens were already thin at the position with rookie Maxx Williams dealing with concussion suffered during a 33-27 win over the Browns on Nov. 30. Crockett Gillmore, a second-year player from Colorado State, injured his back during Sunday's 15-13 loss to the Dolphins. MORE: Notable NFLers out for season | Which QB goes first in our 2016 mock draft? Boyle, a fifth-round pick from Delaware, had 18 receptions for 153 yards this season, but the 6-4, 260-pound rookie excelled as a blocker. Williams, a second-round pick from Minnesota, has 19 receptions for 168 yards and a touchdown. Ravens coach John Harbaugh said Monday that Williams and Gillmore, who has 33 catches for 412 yards and four touchdowns, "have a really good chance" to play in next Sunday's home game against the surging Seahawks. | 1 | 97,851 | sports |
This story has a chance of ending happily. But it begins last fall in a mangy downtown apartment as Katy Yeager, seven months pregnant, stares at a syringe and the crumpled foil that holds $40 worth of heroin. Yeager, 24, had been clean since leaving jail eight months earlier. Initially, she was elated to be pregnant. But then the baby's father, a former coal miner she'd met in rehab, was sent back to prison. She faced raising the baby alone. Her final trimester was filled with insomnia, nausea and anxiety. She hated the job required by her probation - eight hours a day on her feet as a waitress at a Shoney's restaurant. And she was desperate for money to buy a crib and diapers. "I just wanted to escape from myself," Yeager recalled, "basically the loneliness, the anger and uncertainty of everything." Getting high is easy in Charleston, a city at the center of Appalachia's epidemic of opioid addiction. On that fall day last year, two months before her baby was due, Yeager poured powdered heroin into a spoon, added water and held a lighter beneath it until the drug liquefied. She filled the syringe and found a vein on the palm of her hand. In seconds, all her worries vanished. After about a week, Yeager decided to stop using. But this "slip up," as she describes it, presented a dilemma: Two friends who quit cold turkey had gone into premature labor. With heroin still in their bodies, the state seized their babies. Fearing this, she obtained a legal prescription for Subutex, a drug used to treat opiate addiction. In mid-December 2014, Yeager went into premature labor anyway. Her baby, Kennedy Jade Yeager, faced a harrowing first few months. Born hooked on the drugs her mother had been taking, Kennedy began an agonized withdrawal. Federal law requires states to have plans to identify and protect babies like Kennedy, not just during their hospital stays but after they are sent home with their mothers. Most states fail to comply, Reuters found, leaving at risk thousands of children born drug-dependent each year. West Virginia is an exception. Along with the District of Columbia, it's one of no more than nine states that insist doctors report every case to child protection workers - not necessarily to remove babies, officials say, but to keep them safe while helping their mothers. A memo issued early last year by the state's Department of Health and Human Services explains why each case must be monitored. It refers to a "rash" of child fatalities involving babies whose mothers had been using drugs that were legally prescribed to them. The memo tells social service and child welfare workers that "it is often impossible to know" whether a mother is "actively involved in a treatment program or if the parent is abusing the prescribed drugs and unable to properly care for a newborn." That's why the state says it wants to assess all cases in which a child tests positive for drugs. "All newborns are extremely vulnerable," the memo says, "as 100% of their livelihood is dependent upon their caregivers." It's that reality that inspired a charity in nearby Huntington to create a program designed to do more than simply wean newborns off drugs. Health care and social workers also train mothers fighting their own addictions to care for the difficult babies. Experts say only a handful of similar programs exist nationwide. At the hospital, Yeager was among the first to be offered entry into West Virginia's pilot program, which began in October 2014. To enroll, she had to sign Kennedy over to state custody. If both baby and mother successfully completed the program, the social worker promised, Yeager would get Kennedy back. "A CRISIS RIGHT HERE" Nationally, nearly 7 out of every 1,000 babies born in 2013 were diagnosed with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, a consequence of drug dependence among newborns, according to a Reuters analysis of federal data. In West Virginia, the rate is about five times higher - 37 of every 1,000 babies. At Cabell Huntington Hospital, where Kennedy was born, 108 of every 1,000 babies born in 2013 were diagnosed with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome. Last year, the rate at Cabell Huntington increased to 139 out of 1,000. The pace hasn't slowed this year, nurses said. In one 24-hour period last month, six babies were born in drug withdrawal. On average, the hospital handles eight births a day, which includes both healthy and sick infants. "Even in your darkest, deepest imagination, you can't imagine their agony," said neonatal nurse Sara Murray. "You think you might know what one of these tremoring and screaming babies sounds and looks like, but it's nothing like a colicky baby. We have some who scream as if their limbs are being ripped off." The problem first became acute at Cabell Huntington in 2011, doctors said. By then, newborns withdrawing from drugs occupied two-thirds of the neonatal intensive care unit, which has 36 beds. That left little room for newborns with life-threatening conditions unrelated to a mother's drug use. "We are the large regional hospital in a three-hour radius, and we were turning down sick and needy babies from other hospitals," said Sean Loudin, the neonatologist who treated Kennedy. In 2012, the hospital created a second neonatal unit just for babies going through withdrawal. Those 16 spots soon filled, too. The kernel of a solution came when two veteran neonatal nurses, Murray and Rhonda Edmunds, explained to a hospital volunteer that the babies would heal faster if they lived off-site, somewhere far from buzzing machines and bright lights, and where mothers could learn parenting skills. The volunteer, local activist Mary Calhoun Brown, got to work. "Lots of friends at church go on overseas missions, and no disrespect to them, but we have a crisis right here at home," Brown said. Her first call was to Evan Jenkins, then a state senator and now a U.S. Congressman. The nurses developed a medical plan. Jenkins devised ways to navigate state, Medicaid and insurance bureaucracies. Brown founded a charity to manage the facility and raised startup funds from coal industry foundations. A podiatrist's widow donated her husband's vacant office building. Lily's Place opened last fall with a mission to treat newborns and mothers in a nonjudgmental fashion. Soon, babies began arriving. DIFFICULT TIMES, HARD CHOICES Yeager knew the dangers opiates pose. At least five high school friends had overdosed and died. Two women she knew had been jailed shortly after giving birth, one for accidentally smothering and killing her child while in a drugged stupor. Yeager also understood how difficult motherhood can be. Seven years earlier, while in high school, she'd given birth to a girl. Yeager said she did not get high during that pregnancy, but when her child was a toddler, she began abusing prescription painkillers. Yeager became homeless and transferred guardianship of the child to the father's parents. She didn't want to lose another baby. She was already on probation for a crime: Stoned on Xanax and methamphetamine in March 2012, Yeager had helped two men rob an elderly man of $200. Police caught the three hapless addicts hours later. Yeager pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years' probation in spring 2013. Within months she tested positive for morphine and marijuana, skipped probation meetings and fled to Ohio. She was arrested in late 2013 and jailed until early 2014, when she began rehab and went to live in the apartment for female addicts in Charleston. During recovery sessions nearby, she met Donnie Gooding, a former coal miner who had just served a short jail term for manufacturing meth. He was nine years older and cocksure. She loved his tattoos - he had the word LUNATIC stenciled across his neck - and the passion with which he pursued her. Soon, she became pregnant. For a while the couple dreamed of a sober future with a healthy baby. But by late summer 2014, Gooding violated probation and was sent back to prison. That's when Yeager relapsed and then started on Subutex. A short while later, during her eighth month of pregnancy, Yeager decided to visit her grandparents in Barboursville, about an hour away. Their house happened to be a few miles from Cabell Huntington Hospital and Lily's Place. FOUR POUNDS, SIX OUNCES Yeager went into labor during the visit, and her grandfather rushed her to Cabell Huntington. Kennedy was born there on Dec. 19, 2014, four weeks premature. She weighed just 4 pounds, 6 ounces. On a chart, a nurse rated Kennedy generally healthy but noted that she seemed hyperactive and jittery, the first hints of withdrawal. About half of the babies born to mothers who take opiates during pregnancy begin life the way Kennedy did. While she was in the womb, Kennedy's brain had been stimulated by drugs for months. But at birth, when the umbilical cord was cut, the opiate supply suddenly stopped, creating a chemical imbalance and abnormal behavior. Babies like Kennedy arrive in the world irritable and hyperactive, making them far more difficult to keep calm than typical newborns. The tiniest noises can trigger inconsolable wailing. They are frightened easily, often by their own movements, even extending a leg. They can suffer involuntarily spasms and fits of yawning and sneezing. Feeding can be a struggle. Unable to focus, the babies often choke or cough after a few sips of formula or breast milk. The sensation can panic them. Kennedy, typical of newborns in withdrawal, suffered from explosive diarrhea. Painful rashes followed. Two days after birth, Kennedy was transferred to Cabell Huntington's special neonatal unit for babies in withdrawal. Yeager was discharged. "It didn't really hit me until I got home and she wasn't with me," Yeager recalled. "Then I had all the guilt and regret. I'm a terrible mother. Why would I do this?" Kennedy began a withdrawal protocol - decreasing micro-doses of methadone, a heroin-replacement drug - that lasted five weeks. When Yeager visited the hospital, she found it hard to keep Kennedy calm, in part because the infant shared a room with two other wailing, drug-dependent babies. A few days later, Yeager was approached by Angela Davis, a Lily's Place social worker. Davis invited her to put the baby in the new facility. "She explained that it was just like a hospital but Kennedy would get her own room," Yeager recalled. The offer included requirements for mother as well: Yeager would have to visit Kennedy six times a week, help the nurses care for her baby, take parenting classes, meet regularly with the social worker, and attend her own addiction recovery sessions. Most important, she needed to learn her newborn's "stress cues" and how to address them. Yeager promised to do everything. "DO NOT ABUSE YOUR BABY" Kennedy's condition was charted with a widely used medical scale to tally the frequency, length and severity of symptoms - high-pitched cries, tremors, sweating, poor sleep. A score of 8 or higher means a baby's condition is considered severe. After two weeks at the hospital, Kennedy was transferred to Lily's Place. On her first day there, her average score was 7. Within days, her score climbed to 10. At times it hit 17. Kennedy continued to sweat and cry excessively. Every few days, she shook with tremors. Kennedy's average score did not drop below 8 until her third week at Lily's Place. Although doctors took the baby off methadone, they warned Yeager that Kennedy's withdrawal would continue for months. On Kennedy's final day at Lily's Place - she was 5 weeks old - Yeager was shown a video prepared by Loudin, the neonatologist. "You are not taking home a completely normal newborn infant," the doctor said in the video. "You have to recognize your baby is going to have bad days. At these times it is vital for you to keep yourself calm and not do anything that can harm the baby. Please, if you find yourself frustrated, the safest thing you can do is put your baby in a car seat, put it on the floor and walk away for a few minutes and collect yourself. Do not shake your baby. Do not abuse your baby." A FRESH START For Yeager, her grandparents' home in Barboursville, a village near Huntington, had long been a refuge. She spent years growing up there and was welcomed back in her early 20s, even after she repeatedly stole from them and a boyfriend once assaulted her grandfather. The grandparents agreed to drive Yeager to recovery meetings and pediatrician appointments. But they insisted that Yeager would have to care for Kennedy 99 percent of the time. During the first few weeks at their home, Kennedy's tremors continued. Often, she was cranky. Yeager said she did her best to calm Kennedy, applying tips from Lily's Place, such as swaddling the baby snugly and darkening the room. "It was stressful I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about getting high," she said. "But then I realized how far I had come and where I wanted to go, and that if I did that, Kennedy could be sent to a foster home, and anything could happen to her there." Yeager's own recovery appeared to accelerate late this summer, after Gooding was released from prison. They married, and she began taking college courses online. Gooding got a steady construction job and helped Yeager pay off fines so she could get a learner's permit to drive. Recently, the couple rented a tiny apartment near Yeager's grandparents. She takes a prescription drug to help her resist her heroin cravings. Both say they are off illegal drugs. In September, Yeager took Gooding's last name. In October, their baby did, too. Since Lily's Place opened late last year, 66 babies have been weaned off drugs there. The fates of their mothers vary. Social worker Davis estimated that 80 percent were doing well on the day their baby was discharged; they were either off drugs completely or in recovery as part of a doctor-ordered prescription protocol. Two have overdosed and died. But all 66 babies are alive. This fall, Kennedy hit milestones for normal infants of her age: By 8 months, she could sit up, crawl and hold things in her hands. Her weight climbed to 19 pounds. She started pulling herself upright while balancing on the side of a couch or chair, a precursor to her first steps. And she began to smile in elevators and restaurants, no longer frightened by noise and bright light. (Edited by Blake Morrison.) | 5 | 97,852 | news |
ScottDW's latest video has Stormtrooper's risking their necks as they longboard through the city. Make sure to find more from Scott at YouTube.com/ScottDW | 6 | 97,853 | entertainment |
Eagles of Death Metal, the American rock band who survived a jihadist attack on their concert in Paris last month, made an emotional return to the stage in the French capital on Monday night alongside U2. "They were robbed of their stage three weeks ago, and we would like to offer them ours tonight," U2 frontman Bono said, embracing the band's lead singer Jesse Hughes before breaking into a rousing rendition of Patti Smith's "People Have The Power". In a highly emotional concert at the 16,000-capacity AccorHotels Arena, charged with references to the November 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people died, Bono said: "We must also think of the terrorists' families... I know it is hard right now." The singer said the attackers' families had also been robbed of their loved ones, by "an ideology that is a perversion of the beautiful religion of Islam." In the worst of the Paris atrocities, 90 people, many of them young, were killed by gunmen at the Bataclan music venue just as the Eagles of Death Metal were starting their set. Fans had been left guessing over whether the group would perform alongside U2, with expectation mounting after the Irish band gave strong hints last week about "special guests" joining them at their two rescheduled Paris gigs. U2 had been due to play on November 14 and 15, but the gigs were cancelled after the coordinated shootings and suicide bombings in the capital. Ahead of Monday night's show, fan Adolfo Younes said he had never been to a concert that carried such emotional weight. "I went to the Bataclan today and it was one of the saddest sights I have ever seen," said the 44-year-old, who travelled from Dusseldorf in Germany for the gig. "People were crying and it brought back my own memories of people I knew who died in the civil war in Croatia, where my mother comes from." He added: "There is nothing you can say, all you can do is be there. I had tickets for one of the cancelled shows -- it was my birthday, actually -- and there was never any question of me not coming back, no matter what." Parisian Vera Golloch said she had never seen U2 before, but in the circumstances everybody wanted to be "here tonight especially because of who they are with". "It's historic and important, it really is," she said. | 6 | 97,854 | entertainment |
He also furnishes their apartment. | 8 | 97,855 | video |
For all of its shortcomings, the NFC East has been one of the NFL's most volatile and entertaining divisions this season. All four teams are still in the playoff picture. But with high expectations across the board, the offseason might bring plenty of big changes for multiple teams. So we asked our NFL staff: The NFC East is obviously a hot mess. What do you think will be the biggest shake-up in the division during the offseason? NANCY ARMOUR I think this is it for Tom Coughlin in New York. I feel as if we say that every other season, but I don't see him surviving unless the Giants somehow catch fire and make a run to the Super Bowl. Yes, the Giants have had injuries who hasn't? but they've been in all but one game this year and blew late leads in all but one of their losses. That's an indictment of the coaching staff, not the personnel. The Giants have already tried new offensive and defensive coordinators and that hasn't worked, so Coughlin would seem to be the next man up. CHRIS D'AMICO Hot mess indeed. And every coach - with maybe the exception of Jason Garrett - is going to have a hard time explaining to their owner how they couldn't win a division that required only 8 or 9 wins to do so. Yes, Chip Kelly will continue to juggle the roster. The Giants might look for a new coach. And the Redskins need to decide whether Kirk Cousins is the future. But I think the most intriguing situation is in Dallas and it revolves around Tony Romo. Yes, he will be back. But for how long? He will be 36 entering next season and has suffered two major injuries recently - the back and the shoulder. Counting on him making it through a full season is a roll of the dice. The Cowboys see how that turned out this season. Did they learn from it? Do they spend a high draft pick on his successor? Do they go the trade or free-agent route? How they deal with it will go a long way in determining whether this nucleus actually has a Super Bowl run in it, as Jones believes it does. LINDSAY H. JONES Despite a big win on Sunday against the New England Patriots and Chip Kelly's "commitment" to the Eagles as he told MMQB.com on Sunday night the Eagles seem to be the biggest wild card heading into the offseason. Does anyone fully buy that Kelly wouldn't bolt if the perfect college job offer come open? And even if Kelly remains in Philadelphia, it's easy to picture the Eagles as the team undergoing the biggest roster shakeup. Sam Bradford has had some nice moments this season maybe none better than he had when he threw a touchdown and didn't commit a turnover in the win against the Patriots but he still doesn't look like the quarterback Kelly would truly want running his offense. Could Kelly pull off another move to get a new quarterback who might be fit his system? With San Francisco's Colin Kaepernick likely available for the right trade offer (or maybe even a chance to acquire Robert Griffin III and rejuvenate his career with an NFC East rival), things could get very interesting this spring for the Eagles. MICHAEL MIDDLEHURST-SCHWARTZ Given his penchant for shaking things up, imagine what Chip Kelly will do to the Eagles' roster if he stays on another year in Philadelphia. Kelly has a spotty record of personnel moves, and his standing within the organization is unclear right now. What is evident: The Eagles can't go into next year without making some major changes. A quarterback change once again could be coming up, with Sam Bradford underwhelming in his contract year. The offensive line and secondary both have disappointed and could be sources of significant change. But the most exciting aspect is knowing that Kelly might be motivated to make the big moves other teams are reluctant to pursue. TOM PELISSERO It really depends on how things play out. Every team could still win the division title or finish (at least) six games below .500. The Cowboys may be best insulated because of the way the organization is structured and the fact it's hard to win without Tony Romo for the bulk of the season. I also don't see change coming in Washington, given the team's progress, the time and money left on coach Jay Gruden's deal and the fact GM Scot McCloughan is in his first year. The situation is Philadelphia is complicated Chip Kelly is still a damn good coach, albeit an unproven GM and there's no question a fourth straight non-playoff season wouldn't sit well with Giants ownership. We'll see. ERIC PRISBELL A new head coach is likely in New York. A more credible backup quarterback is expected in Dallas. And Robert Griffin III should finally be on the move out of Washington. But the personnel move that would most shakeup the messy NFC East would be if the Philadelphia Eagles made an upgrade at quarterback by adding the maligned Colin Kaepernick. The 28-year-old has been a diminished product the past two seasons, for sure. But if you believe he's better than his performance this season six touchdowns, five interceptions and a 59% completion percentage Philadelphia would be an ideal spot for his second act. And if he is even close to his former self, that could be enough to lift the Eagles over the top in that weak division. | 1 | 97,856 | sports |
When facing journalists for the film's press junket, the cast of 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' keep silent on plot details and explain the need for secrecy. Rollo Ross reports. | 8 | 97,857 | video |
A councilwoman in New Jersey quits (and then doesn't) when the word "Christmas" is used to name a tree lighting ceremony. Keleigh Nealon (@keleighnealon) has the story! | 8 | 97,858 | video |
Holly Woodlawn, a transgender actress of the 1970s who was Andy Warhol's muse and inspired Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," died on Sunday in Los Angeles following a battle with cancer. She was 69. US media said Woodland, who recently appeared in two episodes of Amazon's dark transgender comedy "Transparent," had suffered from alcohol and substance abuse for years. Born Haroldo Danhakl in Puerto Rico, she changed her name to Holly Woodlawn after meeting Warhol and appeared in two of the artist's films -- "Trash" and "Women in Revolt." Joe Dallesandro, who starred alongside Woodlawn in "Trash," said he was with her when she died. "At 3:06 pm LA time, she passed away," he tweeted Sunday. "I know Holly knew I was with her today because she always loved the fragrance I wear Chanel Antaeus." Woodlawn will be remembered for inspiring the lyrics to Reed's 1972 track "Walk on the Wild Side," written after she left her home in Miami at age 16 and hitchhiked to New York. "Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.; hitchhiked her way across the USA; plucked her eyebrows on the way; shaved her legs and then he was a she. She says, 'Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side'," the song goes. | 6 | 97,859 | entertainment |
At least two people have died and hundreds made homeless by some of the worst flooding to hit northern England and Scotland in decades. Prime Minister David Cameron says the government is doing all it can to help ease the crisis. Mana Rabiee has more. | 8 | 97,860 | video |
WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) admitted on Monday that Congress may not meet the December 11 deadline to fund the government. In an interview with 1380 AM radio in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan indicated that Congress could pass a short continuing resolution to keep the government open for a few more days while lawmakers work out differences over the larger omnibus spending package. "It might take us more than just this week to get these issues put together correctly," Ryan said of the omnibus and expiring tax provisions. Republicans' first offer to Democrats on the omnibus was met with a firm rejection . Democrats wouldn't accept Republicans' anti-environment riders, or pitch to attach legislation it passed last month that would tighten the screening process for Syrian refugees. Without at least a short-term funding patch passed by the end of this week, the government will shut down. The House has yet to release any details on a final deal. Former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) may have secured a budget agreement with the White House on his way out -- which sets spending levels and raises the debt ceiling into 2017 -- but it doesn't guard against policy riders when it comes to the minutiae of what will be funded. As discussions continued over riders, a Republican aide told The Huffington Post not to expect any final omnibus package Monday -- meaning Congress is cutting it close to deadline. | 5 | 97,861 | news |
You can most definitely make stunningly beautiful cookies. Bon Appétit senior associate editor Claire Saffitz will show you the way. | 0 | 97,862 | foodanddrink |
It seems like there's always an argument starter when it comes to discussing historical facts about a specific vintage vehicle. It was Ford's recent announcement the company had just introduced its own line of Ford licensed trailers, toy haulers and campers that refreshed the memory I have of a particular 1954 Ford F-100. I remembered its Petaluma, California owner claimed it to be a 1954 F-100 Camper Special, so that got me curious when Ford first introduced the Camper Special nameplate. A search on Wikipedia claims the first Ford Camper Special was introduced in 1961 on F-150 and larger pickups, but I'm going to stick with the unmolested '54 F-100 Camper Special in Petaluma. The '54 was sold new at WC Sanderson Ford in Healdsburg, California, in late1954. Of interest was it had a 1955 model grille, and 12-volt electrics, which weren't standard on Ford vehicles until 1956. Its not surprising Ford is the first original equipment manufacturer to offer an extended line of licensed travel trailers, toy haulers and truck campers since camping and seeing the great outdoors was a regular pastime of Henry Ford. Ford is working with Indiana-based RV manufacturer Livin Lite, a subsidiary of recreational vehicle industry leader Thor Industries to manufacture the line. In designer speak Ford and Livin Lite design teams worked together to incorporate unique and inspired Ford design language in the products. The new Ford-branded truck campers and travel trailers are licensed and built by Indiana-based Livin Lite, a subsidiary of industry leader Thor Industries. Known for using strong, lightweight aluminum alloy in its products, Livin Lite's Ford offerings will also be made out of the advanced material to save weight and offer resistance to rust and rot. Ford slide-in truck campers will be offered for 6- and 8-foot truck beds, while the first travel trailers and toy haulers will be offered in 22- and 24-foot lengths. Additional products, including longer fifth-wheel trailers and shorter pop-up campers, are also planned. All products feature Livin Lite's advanced materials and a two-year limited warranty. "Licensing our name and design language to Livin Lite was an easy decision," said Bentley. "Their use of advanced materials and innovation mindset makes them an excellent fit with the Ford brand. We are confident customers will be impressed with the unique, bold designs and comfortable features offered in the Ford RV line." The RVs were designed by Livin Lite in conjunction with Ford Truck Design. The two teams worked together over the past 15 months to create several attractive recreational vehicles that are unique to Ford. Styled to match a striking front nose with an F-Series-inspired front window, F-Series-style wheels and unique Ford Blue Oval side graphics are among the key exterior features distinguishing the Ford offerings from competitors. Interior styling cues from the F-Series Lariat, including unique leathers and stitched Ford Blue Ovals in seat cushions, ensure a stylish and tough impression. Ford Truck campers will be available through certified Livin Lite dealers starting in early 2016, while the travel trailers and toy haulers will be available by the second quarter of 2016. Follow MSN Autos on Facebook | 9 | 97,863 | autos |
There is no evidence to prove that Taliban supremo Mullah Akhtar Mansour is dead, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said Monday, after days of fevered speculation about his fate following reports of an internal firefight. Ghani's comment comes after multiple insurgent sources cast doubt on the authenticity of a Taliban audio message over the weekend purporting that Mansour was alive and well. "There is no evidence that Mullah Mansour has been killed," Ghani told a press conference. "The incident that occurred should be carefully analysed," he said. Ghani was seemingly referring to a reported gunfight at an insurgent gathering near the Pakistani town of Quetta last Tuesday which is said to have left Mansour critically wounded. Vehement denials by the Islamist group of any clash have fallen on sceptical ears, especially after they kept the death of longtime chief Mullah Omar secret for two years. Ghani's remarks are at odds with those of a government spokesman, who sparked a flurry of reactions when he tweeted on Friday that Mansour was dead. Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah said there was a "bigger likelihood" of Mansour being injured in a firefight, which highlighted the conflict within the Taliban. Mansour was declared Taliban leader on July 31, but splits immediately emerged in the group, with some top leaders refusing to pledge their allegiance to the new leader saying the process to select him was rushed and biased. A breakaway faction of the Taliban led by Mullah Mohamed Rasool was formed last month, in the first formal division in the once-unified group. Speculation about Mansour's death has threatened to derail a renewed regional push to jumpstart Taliban peace talks, which stalled in July after Omar's death was confirmed. Ghani on Monday confirmed he would travel to Pakistan this week for a regional conference, signalling new efforts to reduce tensions between the countries and revive peace talks. | 5 | 97,864 | news |
Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced on Dec. 7 the Justice Department will investigate the Chicago Police Department for possible "patterns and practices" violations. The Post's Wesley Lowery explains what that actually means. | 8 | 97,865 | video |
US Vice President Joe Biden says Washington remains committed to demands for Russia to adhere to a shaky Ukrainian peace agreement and hand back Crimea to Kiev. | 8 | 97,866 | video |
Salary potential isn't the only factor to consider when college searching but it's nice to know which schools are paying off in the long run, particularly since tuition continues to soar. The 50 colleges where students earn the highest salaries Salary potential isn't the only factor to consider when college searching but it's nice to know which schools are paying off in the long run, particularly since tuition continues to soar . In a new report , the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce looked at the four-year colleges whose students go on to earn the highest salaries 10 years after starting their studies. MIT topped the rankings, with a median annual earnings of $91,600. Read on to see if your alma mater, or current school, cracked the top 50: 50. College of the Holy Cross Worcester, Massachusetts Median earnings: $63,700 Graduation rate: 92% 49. Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois Median earnings: $64,100 Graduation rate: 94% 48. George Washington University Washington, DC Median earnings: $64,500 Graduation rate: 80% 47. New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, New Jersey Median earnings: $65,300 Graduation rate: 58% 46. Missouri University of Science and Technology Rolla, Missouri Median earnings: $65,500 Graduation rate: 63% 45. Milwaukee School of Engineering Milwaukee, Wisconsin Median earnings: $65,700 Graduation rate: 56% 44. Yale University New Haven, Connecticut Median earnings: $66,000 Graduation rate: 96% 43. University of Southern California Los Angeles, California Median earnings: $66,100 Graduation rate: 91% 42. University of the Pacific Stockton, California Median earnings: $66,400 Graduation rate: 6 7% 41. Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio Median earnings: $67,000 Graduation rate: 81% 40. Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Median earnings: $67,000 Graduation rate: 92% 39. Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire Median earnings: $67,100 Graduation rate: 95% 38. Santa Clara University Santa Clara, California Median earnings: $67,700 Graduation rate: 85% 37. Tufts University Medford, Massachusetts Median earnings: $67,800 Graduation rate: 92% 36. Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, Illinois Median earnings: $68,200 Graduation rate: 65% 35. Clarkson University Potsdam, New York Median earnings: $68,400 Graduation rate: 73% 34. Bucknell University Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Median earnings: $68,800 Graduation rate: 89% 33. Fairfield University Fairfield, Connecticut Median earnings: $69,000 Graduation rate: 81% 32. Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland Median earnings: $69,200 Graduation rate: 94% 31. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana Median earnings: $69,400 Graduation rate: 96% 30. Lafayette College Easton, Pennsylvania Median earnings: $69,800 Graduation rate: 90% 29. Cornell University Ithaca, New York Median earnings: $70,900 Graduation rate: 93% 28. Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Median earnings: $72,000 Graduation rate: 87% 27. Columbia University New York, New York Median earnings: $72,900 Graduation rate: 96% 26. Polytechnic Institute of New York University Brooklyn, New York Median earnings: $73,500 Graduation rate: 57% 25. Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania Median earnings: $73,700 Graduation rate: 89% 24. University of Colorado Denver Denver, Colorado Median earnings: $73,800 Graduation rate: 41% 23. California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California Median earnings: $74,000 Graduation rate: 92% 22. Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia Median earnings: $74,000 Graduation rate: 82% 21. Maine Maritime Academy Castine, Maine Median earnings: $74,700 Graduation rate: 75% 20. Colorado School of Mines Golden, Colorado Median earnings: $74,700 Graduation rate: 68% 19. Kettering University Flint, Michigan Median earnings: $74,900 Graduation rate: 59% 18. Bentley University Waltham, Massachusetts Median earnings: $74,900 Graduation rate: 86% 17. Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey Median earnings: $75,100 Graduation rate: 96% 16. Duke University Durham, North Carolina Median earnings: $76,700 Graduation rate: 94% 15. Lehigh University Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Median earnings: $76,800 Graduation rate: 87% 14. SUNY Maritime College Bronx, New York Median earnings: $77,300 Graduation rate: 48% 13. Washington and Lee University Lexington, Virginia Median earnings: $77,600 Graduation rate: 90% 12. Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, Massachusetts Median earnings: $77,600 Graduation rate: 82% 11. University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Median earnings: $78,200 Graduation rate: 96% 10. Harvey Mudd College Claremont, California Median earnings: $78,600 Graduation rate: 90% 9. Massachusetts Maritime Academy Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts Median earnings: $79,500 Graduation rate: 64% 8. Stanford University Stanford, California Median earnings: $80,900 Graduation rate: 95% 7. California Maritime Academy Vallejo, California Median earnings: $81,100 Graduation rate: 58% 6. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, New York Median earnings: $81,700 Graduation rate: 85% 5. Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, New Jersey Median earnings: $82,800 Graduation rate: 78% 4. Georgetown University Washington, DC Median earnings: $83,300 Graduation rate: 93% 3. Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts Median earnings: $87,200 Graduation rate: 97% 2. United States Merchant Marine Academy Great Neck, New York Median earnings: $89,000 Graduation rate: 75% 1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts Median earnings: $91,600 Graduation rate: 93% | 3 | 97,867 | finance |
Connie Shingledecker, a major with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office here, was investigating the deaths of children in Florida when she noticed a disturbing pattern. During a six-month period in 2012, four babies had died in the care of mothers with histories of drug abuse. In each case, their babies had been born dependent on drugs. And in each case, the new mothers were trying to kick their opioid addictions by taking methadone, dispensed by a clinic in a local strip mall. At the time, only about 50 new mothers were visiting the methadone clinic. Shingledecker, a member of a statewide panel that reviews deaths related to child abuse, knew that four infants dying in such a short period represented an extraordinarily high rate. Shingledecker called the director of the local methadone clinic. It is run by Operation PAR, a non-profit agency serving recovering addicts in five counties. Although the clinic drug-tested mothers to ensure they hadn't relapsed, Shingledecker learned that the facility wasn't telling authorities about any illegal drug use those tests showed, even though she said state law required that those results be reported. "We were assuming they were going to call us, but we were wrong," Shingledecker said. Nancy Hamilton, chief executive officer of Operation PAR, said she agreed to meet with Shingledecker, but with some trepidation. Methadone clinics have typically been regarded as safe havens for people trying to control their addictions. And doctors say they are sometimes reluctant to refer drug-dependent mothers and newborns to authorities. They don't want to report women who seem to be doing their best to overcome addictions to heroin or painkillers. "It's a little tough to report the moms when they're following doctors' orders," said Matthew Grossman, a doctor at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital. The Florida cases Shingledecker spotted were somewhat different. Although the women were part of a methadone program, their drug tests also showed they were using illicit drugs. Shingledecker insisted that Operation PAR follow the state law on mandatory reporting. It requires everybody - particularly health professionals and social workers - to call child protection services if they have reason to suspect a child may be neglected or abused. Parental drug abuse may be considered a form of neglect. "I told them, 'Listen, how could you not want to be on the side of saving babies' lives?'" Shingledecker said. "'We want to prevent future deaths. We're not trying to catch your clients using additional drugs so we can prosecute.'" Operation PAR's Hamilton said she agreed. "We came up with something good," Hamilton said. The plan, she said, was "to focus on at-risk pregnant women." That meant women who tested positive for illicit substances in their third trimester of pregnancy or who had open cases with child protection services. The at-risk women would be drug-tested two extra times per week. Positive results would be reported to the sheriff immediately. Since 2013, all 48 new mothers who fit the criteria and use the Operation PAR facility have agreed to the conditions. All 48 of their babies are alive. (Edited by Blake Morrison.) | 5 | 97,868 | news |
The terrorist group has been more deadly than ISIS this year. | 8 | 97,869 | video |
The Doctors discuss the recent tragic passing of an employee who accidentally froze to death inside a cryotherapy chamber. | 7 | 97,870 | health |
Shopping for jewelry has been essentially the same since people started wearing jewelry: either you bought what was in a store, or worked with a jeweler to make a custom piece. The latter is usually way more personal, but also more expensive. A new startup company called Trove (not affiliated with the news aggregation site of the same name) wants things to be different. By leveraging 3D printing, every piece of jewelry the company produces is custom and user-created. "Every single thing is made to order," Andrew Hong, co-founder of Trove said. "Every one of these [pieces] is individual." The way Trove works for users is simple: you log onto the website, select what base model of jewelry you want to customize, like ring or necklace, and then use sliders to shape your piece. This is what separates them from other sites, like Shapeways , that sell 3D printed jewelry. With Trove, you customize it yourself. Once the order is put through, a 3D model is created of the custom ring or necklace or bracelet. It's then printed in plastic and shipped to the user, to try it on, make sure it's what they wanted. If so, that same 3D model is then used to print a wax mold, which is filled with the desired metal, a similar process to traditionally designed jewelry. Trove makes rings in most common metals, like bronze (which is the cheapest), silver, and varying karats of gold. The automation of the process also allows Trove to cut costs their cheapest custom jewelry runs at just under $40 for a bronze ring, and can pass $1200 based on how much metal is used in the design. The use of 3D printing allows Trove to iterate new products quickly and test them in plastic forms easily before posting designs on the site. One upcoming ring design is a collaboration with a biochemist-turned-3D-printing-jeweler Kimberly Falk , who uses digital noise to create unique textures. Random numbers (the noise) are made to represent different heights of the material. When applied the ring, it a looks a bit like the surface of the moon, with craters, bumps, and ridges. "This one takes a lot of work to do because it's so math-intensive," Hong said. When I visited the lab, which is a tiny room in a shared workspace in downtown Manhattan, Hong was printing a new design based on a classic: a masculine ring with three inscribed initials. Also in the tray of prototypes was a giant plastic cube mounted onto a ring. Hong explained that this is what happens when one of the designs, a bar mounted on a ring, was maxed out in height, width, and depth. "We might re-introduce that if someone wants a giant block of gold," Hong said. "We had to take it down because it would end up being like $13,000 in gold." The initial designs on the site are still limited, but Hong says Trove will soon be able to inscribe images and even use gemstones in designs. Once that happens, it'll be much easier to facilitate things like wedding rings, although the startup does take custom orders. Shipping is also limited to the continental United States. And actually, for Trove, jewelry is just the starting point. Hong says that eventually, they want to custom-print any kind of home good, from pencil holders to room-dividing screens. They envision a world where everything in your home can be custom, and designed in just a few clicks. "The technology is all there," Hong says. "We just need to find a way to tailor it to something users can use." | 5 | 97,871 | news |
Some of the world's biggest music stars -- from Sam Smith to Celine Dion -- paid tribute to Frank Sinatra by performing in "Sinatra 100" on Sunday, a few days before Dec. 12, which would have been the crooner's 100th birthday. But Lady Gaga, who performed last, stole the show . The "Bad Romance" singer, who's currently starring on FX's "American Horror Story: Hotel," donned a Sinatra-esque black tux, hat and bow tie before belting out a stellar rendition of "New York, New York" -- it was almost uncanny how perfectly she got into character. At one point in the rollicking performance, Gaga tossed her hat into the air, revealing a tight, short hairdo not so far from Sinatra's own hairstyle. CBS broadcast the concert , which was held in Las Vegas, at 9 p.m. Sunday night. Stream #Sinatra100 tonight at 9/8c w/ #CBSAllAccess see to @LadyGaga 's full ode to Frank! https://t.co/I8uiXS970A?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618 https://t.co/smR10V0Zpy?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618 CBS Television (@CBS) December 7, 2015 Other highlights from the show included Carrie Underwood and Seth McFarlane performing a medley of Sinatra hits as a duet and Zac Brown doing a classic rendition of "The Way You Look Tonight." Also on HuffPost: | 6 | 97,872 | entertainment |
Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc (CMG.N) fell 4.7 percent in extended trading on Monday, after Boston College said students, including members of the men's basketball team, fell ill after dining at the popular burrito chain. The students complained of gastrointestinal symptoms and the common factor among the students is that they had all eaten at the Chipotle restaurant in Boston's Cleveland Circle over the weekend, Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health received more than 20 reports of illness from Boston College students and is working to determine if they are tied to a Chipotle-linked outbreak of E. coli, spokesman Scott Zoback said. The time between ingesting E. coli bacteria and feeling sick is usually 3 to 4 days, but may be as short as 1 day or as long as 10 days, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Symptoms often begin slowly with mild belly pain or non-bloody diarrhea that worsens over several days. Chipotle said it has temporarily closed its Cleveland Circle restaurant while it works with local health officials to investigate the student illnesses. "We do not have any evidence to suggest that this incident is related the previous E. coli incident," Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold said in an email. "There are no confirmed cases of E. coli connected to Chipotle in Massachusetts." Federal health investigators on Friday said the E. coli outbreak linked to Chipotle had expanded to nine states, with 47 of the 52 people sickened having reported eating at the chain. The states with reported cases are Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Washington. Chipotle shares were down $25.75 at $526. (Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles and Peter Henderson in San Francisco; Editing by Bernard Orr and Andrew Hay) | 3 | 97,873 | finance |
This holiday season, turn bitter tears into delicious bitters. London culinary design studio Bompas and Parr (they specialize in fancy jelly ) is hosting an upcoming workshop where participants will create alcoholic bitters out of their own pasteurized tears. At the December 15 workshop, there will be several available tear-inducers, from the menthol sticks used by actors to a special corner where you can go and think your saddest thoughts. The aim is to collect all three of the types of tears: psych (emotional tears), basal (the kind that keep your eye wet on a daily basis), and reflexive (like from chopping onions). Then, participants will add spirits, spices, and herbs to create a tear-infused tincture. The workshop also includes a lesson on how to make memento mori jewelry from your hair, in case one kind of bodily souvenir was not enough. Tear bottles have an ancient history, one that dates back to Biblical times . In ancient Greece and Rome, bodies were buried with lachrymatories , small terra cotta vessels whose name derives from the Latin word for tear. Whether these tear vials were actually filled with tears shed in mourning is debated , however. They might have contained medicine or oils. Nevertheless, the idea of bottling up your emotions and then drowning them in a delicious cocktail is a tempting proposition. Next week's event is sold out, but check back here for additional sessions. [h/t: Vice ] | 5 | 97,874 | news |
Adele racked up another 1 million U.S. sales of her new album "25," adding another record to her name and easily topping the Billboard 200 album charts on Monday. After making history by becoming the fastest-selling album in a single week with 3.48 million copies, "25" sold another 1.16 million units in the United States in its second week on sale, according to figures from Nielsen Music. British boy band One Direction slipped to No. 4 with "Made in the A.M. | 8 | 97,875 | video |
The sneaker giant has signed the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar to a lifetime deal that's been described as the largest single-athlete guarantee in the company's 44-year history. While a spokesperson for the Oregon-based company declined to reveal the dollar value of the deal, a source told ESPN that it easily surpasses the 10-year, $300m contract Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant signed with Nike last year. Maverick Carter, longtime friend and business manger of Jame's commented, "For LeBron, he's thrilled to know he's a Nike guy for life." | 1 | 97,876 | sports |
The reported Dodgers acquisition of closer Aroldis Chapman appears to have hit a snag. The guys discuss the situation. | 1 | 97,877 | sports |
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) A Minnesota man who joined al-Shabab in Somalia more than seven years ago and more recently went online to urge others to carry out violence on behalf of the Islamic State group has turned himself in to authorities in Africa, the U.S. State Department said Monday. Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan surrendered to Somalia's federal government on Nov. 6, the State Department said in an email to The Associated Press. It's not immediately clear why his arrest wasn't announced earlier. State Department spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala said Hassan was in the custody of the Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency in Mogadishu. She said the U.S. Mission to Somalia is discussing the case with the Somali Federal Government, but the U.S. does not have an extradition agreement with Somalia. "We do not have any further details on the discussions at this time," Jhunjhunwala said. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota, which charged Hassan with multiple terrorism-related counts, had no comment. The FBI office in Minneapolis also declined to comment. Hassan, who went by the nickname Miski when he was in Minneapolis, was just 17 and a high school senior when he left the U.S. to join al-Shabab in August 2008. Some in Minneapolis remember him as a quiet, soft-spoken kid. But in recent years, Hassan had become a vocal supporter of the Islamic State group, posting jihadist rhetoric online. Tweeting under the name "Mujahid Miski," Hassan urged his Twitter followers to carry out acts of violence in the U.S. including beheadings. He also commended attacks elsewhere and used protests of police activity in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore to try to recruit others to the jihadist cause. Most notably, Hassan was among those urging an attack on a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, last May. Before the attacks, Hassan tweeted: "The brothers from the Charlie hebdo attack did their part. It's time for brothers in the #US to do their part." Hassan was also directly tied to some Islamic State group recruits. According to court documents, Hassan became Facebook friends with another Minnesota man roughly two months before that man went to Syria to join the Islamic State group. In one of their private message exchanges, Hassan gave that man some advice, telling him to connect with others who made the trip to Syria. Hassan is among roughly 22 young men who left Minnesota since 2007 to join al-Shabab in Somalia; about a dozen Minnesota residents have traveled to Syria to join jihadist groups there since late 2013. Hassan, who was born in Somalia, is legal resident of the U.S. but is not an American citizen. | 5 | 97,878 | news |
Ronda Rousey broke her silence after the loss to Holly Holm. Check out her comments. How long do you expect Rousey to be out of action? | 1 | 97,879 | sports |
Santa Clause waves goodbye to his sleigh to go surfing on a stand up paddleboard in northern Italy. | 8 | 97,880 | video |
When President Barack Obama was pledging to lower US greenhouse gas emissions in Paris last week, Republicans in Congress were passing measures to ease controls on carbon pollution from power plants. These moves in Washington won't actually hamper the president's goals that much though, says Robert Stavins at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The president will veto the measures and Stavins says the US will be able to reduce its emissions through a combination of ways. "There's going to be reliance on state-level actions, importantly California , as well as in the northeast states (through) the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative ." Then there are the fuel economy standards enacted by President George W. Bush with bipartisan support in Congress, then made tougher under President Obama. Those rules have been in place for several years now and are unlikely to be undone. A major goal in Paris is to devise a path to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels. In the past few days, there's been a growing chorus of voices from the world's most vulnerable counties, and some less vulenrable ones, calling for a more aggressive target limiting any temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That will be a challenge, considering that greenhouse gases continue to rise quickly, and global temperatures have already risen 1 degree. The US signed and ratified the treaty that underlies this whole process in 1992: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change drafted in Rio de Janeiro. So, any agreements reached in Paris this week would fall under existing international law and would not have to be ratified by Congress. The 1992 agreement didn't set mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, however; it set voluntary non-binding aims that the world's leaders are hoping to advance in Paris. President Obama has pledged to lower US greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels within 10 years. If you listen to many of the Republican presidential candidates , though, they are committed to stopping agreements made this week. Carly Fiorina called Obama "delusional" on the matter. Mike Huckabee labelled the president as "clueless." Donald Trump said China is "laughing at us." If one of these candidates took over the White House, Stavins says he or she could undo mechanisms to lower greenhouse gases, in theory. But Stavins doesn't think that's likely for economic reasons. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has already introduced new mandates to curb greenhouse gases public utilities and electricity generators are busy forming plans to comply. "If the government then comes in two, three, four years from now and says, 'Sorry, we've changed our mind, you're no longer going to be rewarded for low-carbon energy investments,' the government would be creating stranded assets for those companies," says Stavins. "So I think that the companies are actually going to be on board and will be quite resistant to it being rolled back years from now." Oren Cass with the conservative, or free market, think-tank the Manhattan Institute disagrees. He thinks President Obama's Clean Power Plan curbing carbon from power plants would be doomed with a Republican in the White House. President Obama only announced the details of the plan in August. "That is the centerpiece of his agenda and will not survive a Republican administration. And that could be reversed before the market and power companies have taken significant action in pursuit of it," says Cass. At least 24 lawsuit s nationwide have also been filed to derail , or at least slow down the Clean Power Plan after the plan was published in the federal registry in October. Conservatives have other ways to try and thwart what the Obama Administration agrees to this week. One of the things delegates are discussing in Paris is transferring money hundreds of billions of dollars from wealthy nations to poorer ones to help them adapt to a low-carbon future. Cass calls this a "ransom," one that's dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Congress. "There are all sorts of disputes about what a president can and cannot do by himself, but everybody agrees that the president can't appropriate the money," says Cass. " I think Paris is a big waste of time . I think it's worse than a big waste of time." Bottom-line: Cass, and many conservatives say the Obama Administration is committing to too much this week in Paris. I asked Kelly Sims Gallagher , director of the Center for International Environment & Resource Policy at Tuft University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, what a Republican president one who opposes action on climate change could mean for any progress reached in Paris this week. "It does jeopardize the international momentum that we have. If the United States fails to meet its targets, it will lose the moral authority to encourage and cajole other countries to honor their commitments as well," says Gallagher, who also served in the Obama Administration as a senior policy advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Gallagher says international law is soft and it's difficult to enforce commitments the best path forward is to lead is by example. She adds that if the Republicans don't like the president's approach to curbing greenhouse gases, it would be helpful for them to devise some of their own. | 5 | 97,881 | news |
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) Donald Trump called Monday for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," an idea swiftly condemned by his rival GOP candidates for president and other Republicans. The proposed ban would apply to immigrants and visitors alike, a sweeping prohibition affecting all adherents of Islam who want to come to the U.S. The idea faced an immediate challenge to its legality and feasibility from experts who could point to no formal exclusion of immigrants based on religion in America's history. Trump's campaign said in a statement such a ban should stand "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." It said the proposal comes in response to a level of hatred among "large segments of the Muslim population" toward Americans. "Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life," Trump said in the statement. At an evening rally in South Carolina, Trump supporters cheered and shouted in support as he read his statement. Trump warned during his speech that without drastic action, the threat of attacks is "going to get worse and worse." "As he says, we have to find out who they are and why they are here," Rod Weader, a 68-year-old real estate agent from North Charleston who attended the rally and said he agreed with Trump's plan "150 percent." ''Like he said, they are going to kill us and we've got to stop it." Since the Paris attacks, a number of Republican presidential contenders have proposed restrictions on Syrian refugees with several suggesting preference for Christians seeking asylum and tighter surveillance in the U.S. But Trump's proposed ban goes much further than those ideas, and his Republican rivals were quick to reject the latest provocation from a candidate who has delivered no shortage of them. "Donald Trump is unhinged," Jeb Bush said via Twitter. "His 'policy' proposals are not serious." John Kasich slammed Trump's "outrageous divisiveness," while a more measured Ted Cruz, who has always been cautious about upsetting Trump's supporters, said, "Well, that is not my policy." Trump's plan also drew criticism from the heads of the Republican Party in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the first three states to vote in next year's presidential primaries. New Hampshire GOP's chairwoman Jennifer Horn said the idea is "un-Republican. It is unconstitutional. And it is un-American," while South Carolina chairman Matt Moore said on Twitter, "As a conservative who truly cares about religious liberty, Donald Trump's bad idea and rhetoric send a shiver down my spine." Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Trump's proposed ban would apply to "everybody," including Muslims seeking immigration visas as well as tourists seeking to enter the country. His campaign did not immediately respond to questions about whether it would also include Muslims who are U.S. citizens and travel outside of the country, including members of the military, or how a determination of someone's religion might be made by customs and border officials. Instead, Trump said via a campaign spokeswoman: "Because I am so politically correct, I would never be the one to say. You figure it out!" There are more than 5,800 servicemen and women on active U.S. military duty and in the reserves who self-identify as Muslim and could be assigned to serve overseas. Trump said in an interview Monday night on Fox News, "They'll come home." He added, "This does not apply to people living in the country, except that we have to vigilant." It was also unclear whether Trump's ban would apply to Muslim allies in the fight against Islamic State militants. Ari Fleischer, a former aide to Republican President George W. Bush, tweeted, "Under Trump, the King Abdullah of Jordan, who is fighting ISIS, won't be allowed in the US to talk about how to fight ISIS." But at Trump's rally in South Carolina, the proposed ban struck supporter Shelley Choquette as reasonable, because "it's not going to be forever. I think everybody needs to be checked." Religion can factor into immigration decisions, but that typically happens when people are fleeing religious persecution. People of a particular religion may get favorable treatment by the United States, as when Russian Jews sought to leave the Soviet Union. In the late 1800s, Congress passed legislation broadly aimed at halting Chinese immigration. But said Leti Volpp, a University of California expert on immigration law, "there is no precedent for a religious litmus test for admitting immigrants into the United States." "Excluding almost a quarter of the world's population from setting foot in the United States based solely upon their religious identity would never pass constitutional muster," Volpp said. Trump's proposal comes a day after President Barack Obama spoke to the nation from the Oval Office about the shootings in San Bernardino, California, which Obama said was "an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people." The FBI said Monday the Muslim couple who carried out the massacre had been radicalized and had taken target practice at area gun ranges, in one case within days of the attack last week that killed 14 people. Trump's campaign has been marked by a pattern of inflammatory statements, dating back to his harsh rhetoric about Mexican immigrants. He has taken a particularly hard line against Muslims in the days since the Paris attacks, advocating enhanced surveillance of mosques due to fears over radicalization. "Donald Trump sounds more like a leader of a lynch mob than a great nation like ours," said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "He and others are playing into the hands of ISIS. This is exactly what ISIS wants from Americans: to turn against each other." White House spokesman Josh Earnest accused Trump of playing on people's fears and trying to tap into "a darker side, a darker element" of American society. From the Democratic presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders said "Trump and others want us to hate all Muslims" and Hillary Clinton called the proposal "reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive." On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said, "It's just foolish." But will it hurt Trump in the campaign? "I have no idea," McCain said. "I thought long ago that things he said would hurt his prospects, and he continues to go up." ___ Associated Press writers Mark Sherman, Laurie Kellman, Josh Lederman and Alan Fram in Washington and Bruce Smith and Bill Barrow in South Carolina contributed to this report. | 5 | 97,882 | news |
Carrie Fisher DGAF. | 8 | 97,883 | video |
Anti-free speech demonstrators at one of America's most vaunted universities have claimed a pair of scalps a husband-wife duo who say teaching is too much trouble in a campus climate "not conducive to civil dialogue." Yale University professors Nicholas and Erika Christakis, who both have always gotten overwhelmingly positive reviews from students, said they have had enough, after an email she sent sparked a campus-wide controversy that soon pulled him in. "I have great respect and affection for my students, but I worry that the current climate at Yale is not, in my view, conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry required to solve our urgent societal problems," she said in an email to The Washington Post . The affair began in October, when Erika Christakis, a psychology professor and associate master at the school's Silliman College, one of a dozen residential communities, sent out an email defending the right of students to wear costumes which may be "culturally appropriating." That spurred outrage and led to one student confronting Nicholas Christakis on the campus quad and berating him in a shocking episode that was caught on video that soon went viral. The video showed Nicholas Christakis, a physician and professor of social and natural science, calmly trying to reason with a student who was screaming at him for not keeping students "safe," as others snapped their fingers in a trendy sign of approval. Erika Christakis said she will quit teaching indefinitely and cited a campus atmosphere not "conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry required to solve our urgent societal problems." Her husband said he would not teach scheduled classes in the spring, and would take a sabbatical. Neither Yale officials nor the Christakises responded to requests for comment. "I don't have much to add to her decision," Yale Dean Jonathan Holloway told The Washington Post, adding that as a lecturer, Christakis is paid per course and can decide whether to teach each semester. The school is ultimately responsible for the chill on free speech, according to Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. "While Yale did eventually get around to issuing a statement in favor of free expression, it's hard to imagine that Erika or Nicholas Christakis would have decided to quit teaching at Yale and take a sabbatical, respectively, had Dean Holloway or President [Peter] Salovey consistently shown their support for free expression through their words and actions on campus," said FIRE's Robert Shibley. The issue of free expression on campus has come into sharp relief on several campuses, with students calling for "safe zones" and speech codes where words and deeds deemed offensive are barred. Erika Christakis provoked outrage when she sent an email to Silliman residents questioning the desire to find offense in Halloween costumes. "Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?" Christakis wrote. "American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition." He husband later apologized for his role in the controversy in a heartfelt mea culpa delivered in his own home. "I have disappointed you and I'm really sorry," he told about 100 students gathered in his living room last month, as Holloway and other university administrators stood by. "I've spent my life taking care of these issues of injustice, of poverty, of racism," he said. "I have the same beliefs that you do … I'm genuinely sorry, and to have disappointed you. I've disappointed myself." In a related matter, Yale announced it could soon follow Harvard and Princeton and change the administrative title both Nicholas and Erika Christakis hold, as "master" evokes imagery associated with slavery. "The word 'master' can evoke thoughts of slavery and other forms of subjugation, and it has made me at times quite uncomfortable to be referred to as 'master,'" Nicholas Christakis said in a letter to students at the beginning of the year. | 5 | 97,884 | news |
The R&A has invited great amateurs Judy Bell and Marlene Streit to become members at St. Andrews. | 1 | 97,885 | sports |
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Monday called for a "total and complete" block on Muslims entering the United States, in the wake of last week's mass shooting in California by a Muslim couple believed to have been radicalized. A statement from Trump's campaign team said the halt on Muslims entering the country should remain in place "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." The statement does not specify if the proposal would affect both tourists and immigrants, and also does not say if it would target American Muslims currently abroad. Trump's campaign cites poll data allegedly showing "hatred toward Americans by large segments of the Muslim population." "Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine," the billionaire real estate mogul, who is leading in opinion polls among likely Republican voters, said in the statement. "Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life." Trump has been increasingly virulent in his remarks targeting Muslim Americans since the deadly Paris attacks, and again in the wake of last week's shooting rampage in California, which left 14 dead and 21 wounded. "Just put out a very important policy statement on the extraordinary influx of hatred & danger coming into our country. We must be vigilant!" Trump tweeted after the statement was released. His announcement unleashed quick condemnation on Twitter. "@realdonaldtrump removes all doubt: he is running for President as a fascist demagogue," Democratic presidential contender Martin O'Malley said. | 5 | 97,886 | news |
The two people behind the San Bernardino attack that killed 14 people had target practice days before, the FBI has said. Tashfeen Malik and husband Syed Farook visited ranges in the Los Angeles area, said David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office. He said both were radicalised and had been "for some time". The US is investigating last week's attack, which happened at a health care centre, as an act of terrorism. But Mr Bowdich said there is no evidence yet that last week's tragedy, the most deadly terror attack in the US since 9/11, was plotted from overseas. The FBI did not have an investigation open on restaurant inspector Farook before he and his wife opened fire on his colleagues at a work event at the Inland Regional Center. They were both killed hours later in a shoot-out with police. Investigators said they found 19 pipes that could have been turned into bombs at the couple's apartment, rather than the 12 previously reported. A photo obtained by ABC News shows the couple arriving at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport from Saudi Arabia in July 2014. US officials have said that Farook travelled to Saudi Arabia and returned about two weeks later with Malik, who was able to come to the country on a fiance visa. Farook's father told Italian newspaper La Stampa his son sympathised with IS and was fixated with Israel. The family's lawyer said he had recently told them co-workers had mocked his beard, and that the family knew he had two handguns and two rifles. But they did not know about the arsenal of weapons the couple had amassed. Malik reportedly praised the so-called Islamic State on Facebook on the day of the attacks. The US Justice Department said on Monday it is monitoring any anti-Muslim sentiments or attacks that may emerge in the wake of the mass shooting. | 5 | 97,887 | news |
The Seattle Mariners have acquired left-hander Wade Miley from the Boston Red Sox in exchange for reliever Carson Smith and left-hander Roenis Elias. Miley, 29, went 11-11 with a 4.46 ERA in 32 starts in 2015 -- his first season in Boston after spending his first four major-league seasons with the Arizona Diamondbacks. In his five-season major-league career, Miley is 49-46 with a 3.95 ERA and a 7.0 K/9 ratio. The Red Sox have a surplus of starters after signing free-agent left-hander David Price and with right-hander Clay Buchholz returning from an elbow injury. Smith, 26, was 2-5 with a 2.31 ERA in 70 relief appearances this past season, striking out 92 batters in 70 innings. Elias, 27, was 5-8 with a 4.14 ERA in 22 games (20 starts) this past season. | 1 | 97,888 | sports |
The very shape of future American warships is in the hands of none other than Captain James Kirk. In development for years, the USS Zumwalt looks as much like a spaceship as an ocean-going vessel, with sharp angular sides and a body that looks upside down. The commanding officer does indeed share a name with fictional Star Trek captain James Kirk. No naval vessel is really complete without first proving that it can survive on the open seas, and now it's headed out for sea trials. "We are absolutely fired up to see Zumwalt get underway," said Kirk, according to the Tampa Bay Times , "For the crew and all those involved in designing, building, and readying this fantastic ship, this is a huge milestone." The Zumwalt is a strange ship. Classified as a destroyer, it's built to escort larger ships and protect them from small, deadly threats. The U.S. Navy currently has 62 Arleigh Burke class destroyers, with thirteen more in the works . The Zumwalt is the first of a three-ship trial program to see if the next generation of destroyers can improve on the original series. To get there, the Zumwalt is taking a radical approach: With enough automation to cut the crew size down from the Burke's crew of over 250 to just 154 sailors and officers on board. Additionally, the Zumwalt will generate so much power on board it can easily fire laser weapons or rail guns , once the Navy develops them . If it works, the Navy will have a new class of ship, deadly enough to bombard inland targets or other enemies with powerful guns, small and stealth enough to avoid counter attacks, and crewed lightly enough to keep labor costs down (not everything about future warship design is exciting). But there's a chance it won't work at all. The Zumwalt's weird body is what's known as a "tumblehome" design, and while it's great for stealth, it could pose some problems on the high seas. Writing in 2007, Defense News reporter Christopher Cavas noted the troubled shape, saying: Nothing like the Zumwalt has ever been built. The 14,500-ton ship's flat, inward-sloping sides and superstructure rise in pyramidal fashion in a form called tumblehome. Its long, angular "wave-piercing" bow lacks the rising, flared profile of most ships, and is intended to slice through waves as much as ride over them. The ship's topsides are streamlined and free of clutter, and even the two 155mm guns disappear into their own angular housings. The shape was popular among French naval designers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and a number of French and Russian battleships short and fat, without any wave-piercing characteristics were put into service. But several Russian battleships sank after being damaged by gunfire from Japanese ships in 1904 at the Battle of Tsushima, and a French battleship sank in 90 seconds after hitting a mine in World War I. All sank with serious loss of life. Both the French and Russians eventually dropped the hull form. With the problems known, hopefully the Navy and the shipbuilders have solved the problem of tumblehome ships surviving on the open water. If not, the ship may sadly go where countless boats have gone before. This post originally misstated the name of the Arleigh Burke class destroyers. It has since been corrected. | 5 | 97,889 | news |
David Beckham has a knack for diplomacy, but he didn't mince words on the subjects of FIFA and crime. Beckham expressed his profound disappointment with FIFA officials, who have been implicated in the ongoing scandal in the Christmas issue of Radio Times, The Press Association reported Sunday. Thirty FIFA officials and sports marketing executives have been arrested and charged with committing acts corruption and bribery, and Beckham, one of the most famous former players in the world, expects more to follow. "No they are just hitting the bend," Beckham said. "There's a lot still to be done. It's such a mess that it's going to take a while to sort out. "For me to see the game, the way it's been treated and looked after, is devastating. It's disgusting." FIFA awarded Russia and Qatar the rights to host the World Cups in 2018 and 2022, respectively. Although many believe corruption tainted those bidding processes, Beckham is against running them again or moving the tournaments elsewhere. "Whether it's corrupt or not, those countries have been chosen," Beckham said. "People need to get behind that. It's all about bringing football to new countries. I think they should stick with it." Beckham seems to not be taking England's failed 2018 World Cup bid personally, but he doesn't reserve the same forgiveness for those entrusted with administering the sport at the highest level. | 1 | 97,890 | sports |
I recently found photos of myself as a child sitting on Santa's lap, each showing a different level of comfort or, in some cases, discomfort. I look uncertain in many of the photos. I don't remember if, as a child, I wanted to sit on Santa's lap or if I did it because I thought it was expected of me. My daughter's photos with Santa Claus tell a very different story. Other than a photo of her as 16-month-old sitting on Mrs. Claus' lap (Santa was there, too), she is standing next to Santa in most of the photos but is never on his lap. Most parents seem to insist their child take a photo on Santa's lap with no regard for whether their terrified child is willing to pose with Santa or not. I've seen my share of screaming children being cajoled to sit on Santa's lap, even just for a minute, all in the name of capturing a holiday photo. When she was younger I would take my now 13-year-old daughter to see Santa each year, but I never felt compelled to make her climb up on his lap like the other kids. If she had told me she didn't want to go see him or if she had cried once we got there, it would have been fine with skipping the visit that year. I admit I never forced my daughter to sit on Santa's lap because when I was a 20-something newspaper reporter one of my assignments was to observe the local Santa Claus and write a feature article about his exchanges with the children. For some reason, what I observed just didn't sit right with me. During one of Santa's odd exchanges with a 5-year-old girl, Santa suggested to the toddler that perhaps he should bring her makeup and high heel shoes. I remember looking at the girl's mother for signs of discomfort but her mother was probably too busy snapping photos to hear the conversation. There were other exchanges that day that set off alarm bells in my head but since none of the parents seemed to notice, and I wasn't a parent myself at the time, I wasn't sure what to do about it. Back at the newspaper office, my editor asked me about my visit with Santa. I told him I thought Santa was a creep, explained why and asked if I should do some digging to see if I could find anything odd in the guy's background. My editor told me to stick with the feature story I was supposed to write and reminded me that I had only an hour to file the story. Fast-forward about three months from that day. The cops reporter, who had overhead my conversation with the editor about Santa, stops by my desk to tell me that the same guy who played Santa was arrested for child molestation. That incident taught me two things: Always trust your gut. Never force your child to sit on Santa's lap Now I'm not saying that every Santa is a creep. I am sure 99.9 percent of all men who portray Santa Claus are upstanding citizens. After all, shopping malls and other venues that offer visits with Santa have pretty rigorous background checks for Mr. Claus and his helpers. But even with a well-regarded Santa, we need to be mindful of our kids and how they might feel about sitting on Santa's lap, or even visiting Santa. And we need to accept that standing next to Santa or kneeling in front of him is perfectly acceptable. Isn't a child who looks comfortable standing next to Santa going to take a better photo than child who looks uncertain or downright miserable on Santa's lap? One of my most cherished memories of my daughter visiting Santa was at our local nature center. Each family was given five minutes to visit with Mr. Claus and his helpers in a log cabin. Chairs were set up next the fireplace and family members were invited to sit on a chair and visit with Santa. The photo I have from this visit is adorable. It shows my daughter and Santa sitting next to each other fully engaged in conversation. I can't think of anything more enchanting than my daughter sitting around the fire with Santa and his helpers and talking about the North Pole. I'm glad I never forced my daughter to sit on Santa's lap. All her memories of visiting Santa are pleasant and she is genuinely happy in all our photos with Santa. If your kid is screaming, "No Santa, No Santa!" or just seems unhappy about having to sit on Santa's lap, give yourself and them a break. Suggest they stand next to, or in front of, Santa. And, if that doesn't cheer them up, then maybe you should skip a visit to Santa this year. After all, who wants to share or display a photo of their kid looking incredibly uncomfortable with Santa just to have that holiday moment? | 4 | 97,891 | lifestyle |
The Subaru Impreza sedan and 5-door concepts shown at the 2015 Los Angeles and Tokyo auto shows preview the Japanese automaker's new styling direction for its next-generation models, including the WRX and STI variants. Now we hear the next Subaru WRX STI could feature a hybrid powertrain, according to motoroing.com.au. Based on the automaker's new Subaru Global Platform (SGP), the next WRX STI will use a 2.0-liter FA20 boxer flat-four engine mated to an electric motor. The new powertrain is expected to make around 326 hp or about 21 hp more than the current U.S. model's turbocharged 2.5-liter EJ257 engine. A new all-wheel-drive system will feature a "motor-drive" on the rear axle, according to the report. The automaker's first six-speed automated dual-clutch manual transmission is said to back the hybrid powertrain. Subaru hopes to add power and improve fuel economy with the new powertrain. Additionally, the rumor suggests a plug-in hybrid version of the WRX STI is also in the works. Subaru's SGP architecture is designed to incorporate battery packs and electric motors. While the next WRX STI is expected to share a platform with Impreza models, the high-performance model could feature larger fender flares, carbon fiber air ducts, rear diffuser, and the requisite larger rear wing. The report suggests the next Subaru WRX STI hybrid will go on sale for the 2017 model year while the plug-in concept model will be shown at the 2018 Tokyo auto show. Follow MSN Autos on Facebook | 9 | 97,892 | autos |
Right-Sized: Every Mid-Size Crossover and SUV Ranked from Worst to Best Like heavy-metal music and the Vitamix food processor, the mid-size crossover-SUV segment has for decades courted an unwavering legion of devotees. Often offering rugged personalities and some promise of off-road capability, these vehicles can provide most of the features that active families want without breaking the household budget. Once almost entirely composed of truck-based entries, this segment is now largely made up of vehicles based on fully modern chassis and powertrains that offer ride quality and efficiency unthinkable just a few years ago. Still, two traditional body-on-frame mid-sizers remain, faithfully offering the same honest and familiar values as when the segment was born last century. Whether it's a true off-road beast or something roomy in which to schlep around the family, the current crop of mid-size crossover SUVs can fill the bill. Read on to see how they stack up. Follow MSN Autos on Facebook and Twitter 22. Dodge Journey We ve never quite loved the Journey, but that hasn t stopped its propagation. Despite aging design and mediocre dynamics, Dodge s mid-size crossover has endured only minor updates since it debuted. The familiar 173-hp inline-four with a four-speed automatic is still the entry-level powertrain. A 283-hp V-6 with a six-speed auto rounds out the lineup and comes with all-wheel drive. Storage space abounds and a third row is now standard, making the Journey an affordable, if stale, pack animal. Research the Dodge Journey | Find a Dodge Journey near you 21. Toyota 4Runner In a world built for crossovers, the 4Runner is one of the last mid-size SUVs to share DNA with a pickup truck. That s great for drivers who need a 5000-pound tow rating or who spend weekends off-roading; for those accustomed to the smooth ride and swanky interiors of car-based crossovers, however, the 4Runner may fall short. Available with just one powertrain a 4.0-liter V-6 with 270 horsepower and 278 lb-ft of torque mated to a five-speed automatic transmission this beast is outdated and somewhat sluggish. Research the Toyota 4Runner | Look for a Toyota 4Runner near you 20. Ford Explorer The Explorer is the SUV that started the craze and it s still a contender, with a premium interior that seats seven, high-tech features, and robust mechanicals. It s standard with front-wheel drive and a 290-hp V-6; all-wheel drive is optional. Other powertrains include a 280-hp turbo inline-four and a 365-hp twin-turbo V-6. The V-6 also offers a Sport model with all-wheel drive and a sport-tuned chassis. While the Explorer offers a quiet cabin and a solid ride, it somehow feels larger than it is. Research the Ford Explorer | Find an Explorer in your area 19. Ford Flex The funky Flex is Ford s answer to those seeking a modern version of the old-school station wagon. Its three rows are standard and can accommodate seven passengers with room to spare. Two V-6s are offered, both displacing 3.5 liters and mated to a six-speed automatic. The base engine makes 287 horsepower with front- or all-wheel drive; the EcoBoost twin-turbo mill makes 365 horsepower with standard all-wheel drive. Adaptive cruise control, forward-collision warning, and a 12-speaker Sony audio system are optional. Research the Ford Flex | Look for a Ford Flex in your region 18. Nissan Pathfinder Once an off-road-ready ruffian, the Pathfinder has matured and has happily found itself in a family way. There s seating for seven with easy access to the third row, even with a child seat installed on the second-row bench. The 3.5-liter V-6 makes 284 horsepower and drives the front or all four wheels through a continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT). The Pathfinder feels as at home performing local weekend errands as it does on long-distance highway trips; just don t expect any behind-the-wheel fun from this minivan alternative. Research the Nissan Pathfinder | Seek out a Nissan Pathfinder near you 17. Toyota Highlander Inconspicuous and sensible, the Highlander can haul up to eight in quiet comfort. The base 185-hp 2.7-liter inline-four teams with a six-speed automatic and front-wheel drive; the optional 295-hp 3.5-liter V-6 gets an eight-speed automatic. All-wheel drive is optional for V-6 models and standard for the hybrid, which pairs the V-6 with two electric motors; we saw 24 mpg in our test. The Highlander provides an adequate driving experience, but it s more focused on interior niceties and storage. Research the Toyota Highlander | Find a Toyota Highlander near you 16. Jeep Wrangler The tough-as-nails Jeep Wrangler is one of the most capable SUVs; the all-new JL promises to improve on the legend. You'll have to squint to see that the new body is different in every way. High-strength steel makes it stronger and lighter. The old 285-hp V-6 lives on with either a six-speed manual or an eight-speed automatic. Steering and brakes are improved; a full-time all-wheel-drive system is optional, and the JL still shines off-road. For 2018, the third-generation (JK) Wrangler lives on alongside the new JL. Research the Jeep Wrangler | Find a Jeep Wrangler near you 15. Nissan Murano Unique styling sets the Murano apart from its rivals in the often repetitive crossover landscape. With nicely weighted steering and confident brakes, its driving dynamics are satisfying as well. A 260-hp 3.5-liter V-6, a CVT, and front-wheel drive are standard; all-wheel drive is optional. A hybrid, available in limited numbers, returns up to an EPA-rated 31 mpg on the highway. The interior is nicely appointed with handsome leather, and the ride is quiet and composed. Research the Nissan Murano | Look for a Nissan Murano near you 14. Hyundai Santa Fe On the inside of this big Hyundai, there are three rows of seats and room for six or seven; on the outside is handsome styling that stands out from the SUV herd. With a 290-hp 3.3-liter V-6 and a six-speed automatic, acceleration is adequate and shifts are smooth and unobtrusive. Front-wheel drive is standard, and all-wheel drive is optional. A 12-speaker audio system is offered, as is a hands-free liftgate. Available tech includes Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, and Blue Link connectivity. Research the Hyundai Santa Fe | Look for a Hyundai Santa Fe near you 13. Hyundai Santa Fe Sport The Santa Fe Sport is the smaller, five-passenger crossover in the Santa Fe lineup, with handsomely rugged styling. Engines are a 185-hp 2.4-liter inline-four and a 240-hp 2.0-liter turbo four, both mated to a six-speed automatic. Front-wheel drive is standard; all-wheel drive is optional. Also optional is a power liftgate that opens when you stand behind it with the fob. Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, and Blue Link connectivity are available. Handling is acceptable, if not sports-car sharp. Research the Hyundai Santa Fe Sport 12. Kia Sorento The Sorento is a value-oriented ride for those seeking to avoid the minivan stigma. A 185-hp inline-four is standard; a 240-hp turbo four and a 290-hp V-6 are optional; a diesel engine is confirmed for 2019. Five- or seven-passenger versions are available. Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and navigation are optional, and premium cabin fittings have the Sorento fighting above its weight. A six-speed automatic and front-wheel drive are standard; all-wheel-drive models can tow up to 5000 pounds. Research the Kia Sorento | Find a Kia Sorento near you 11. GMC Acadia The jack-of-all-trades Acadia is ready to tackle the trails and carpool lanes with plenty of storage and room for up to seven. Touchscreen infotainment with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, 4G LTE connectivity, and mobile Wi-Fi is available. A 193-hp 2.5-liter inline-four or a 310-hp 3.6-liter V-6 drive the front wheels through a six-speed automatic transmission; all-wheel drive is optional. Extras like automated emergency braking and a novel rear-seat reminder boost the Acadia s safety street cred. Research the GMC Acadia | Look for an Acadia in your area 10. Honda Pilot If a stylish, useful, and trouble-free ride is what you re after, well ladies and gentlemen, this is your Pilot speaking. The 280-hp 3.5-liter V-6 powers the front or all four wheels through a six-speed automatic; top-level Touring and Elite trims get a nine-speed. The all-wheel-drive system offers torque vectoring for better handling and modes for snow, sand, and mud. The Pilot s three rows provide plenty of room for all, and a host of active-safety tech is available to help keep everyone safe. Research the Honda Pilot | Seek out a Honda Pilot in your region 9. Ford Edge The Edge is a crossover worth considering, with angled styling, a relaxed ride, and an ample cargo bay. A 245-hp turbo inline-four or a 280-hp V-6 mate to a six-speed automatic and front- or all-wheel drive. The top Sport trim has standard all-wheel drive and a 315-hp twin-turbo V-6. Available options include Sync 3 infotainment, self-parking, adaptive cruise control, and lane-keeping assist. For 2019, the facelifted Edge swaps Sport for ST models; this adds 20 horsepower and notable performance upgrades. Research the Ford Edge | Find a Ford Edge in your area 8. Dodge Durango The Durango remains big, brawny, and masculine in an era of soft, curvaceous crossovers and it s also not as trucklike as other large SUVs. Powertrains include a 293-hp 3.6-liter V-6 and a 360-hp 5.7-liter Hemi V-8, both offered in rear- or all-wheel-drive guises; an eight-speed automatic is standard. The V-6 can tow up to 6200 pounds; the V-8 can tow 7400 pounds. The optional third row makes room for seven. Uconnect infotainment with an 8.4-inch touchscreen and satellite radio is optional. Research the Dodge Durango | Find a Dodge Durango near you 7. Dodge Durango SRT The masterminds at SRT are at it again, this time applying the go-fast treatment to the three-row Durango. Under its ventilated hood sits a growling 475-hp 6.4-liter V-8, driving all four wheels through an eight-speed automatic. A gaping front air intake, 20-inch wheels, and dual 4.0-inch tailpipes give the Durango SRT a menacing aesthetic, while adaptive suspension dampers and a number of adjustable driving modes provide track-ready dynamics. READ MORE ›› 6. Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk The name is Trackhawk, and it s ready to challenge physics in a new and thrilling way. This hot-rod version of the Grand Cherokee is designed to tackle the track, with a 6.2-liter V-8 making 707 horsepower and 645 lb-ft. All-wheel drive, an eight-speed automatic, and yellow brake calipers are standard. It may not have the composure of some competitors, but the Trackhawk is fast as stink, can tow 7200 pounds, and comfortably seats a family of four. Plus, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are standard. Research the Jeep Grand Cherokee | Find a Grand Cherokee in your area 5. Jeep Grand Cherokee Thanks to its famous off-road grit, the Grand Cherokee's expertise doesn't begin and end in the concrete jungle like many of its rivals. A 295-hp 3.6-liter V-6, an eight-speed automatic, and rear-drive are standard; a 240-hp turbo-diesel V-6 and a 360-hp 5.7-liter V-8 are optional, as are three four-wheel-drive setups, each with varying capabilities. A tidy cabin with touchscreen infotainment and optional Wi-Fi make the Grand Cherokee a pleasant place to be whether fording rivers or running errands. READ MORE ›› 4. Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT The Grand Cherokee SRT is an exercise in overkill, but its sports-car-rivaling grip and roaring Hemi make it a performance powerhouse. A 475-hp 6.4-liter V-8 pairs with an eight-speed automatic and all-wheel drive, and launch control optimizes all relevant systems for maximum acceleration. The steering is quick, but given this Jeep's sporting intentions, it feels more disconnected from the road than it should. The way the Grand Cherokee SRT can hustle around a racetrack, it's easy to forget that it's an SUV. READ MORE ›› 3. Chevrolet Traverse Its masculine image may be more appealing than that of a minivan, but the Traverse s interior is almost as spacious. A nine-speed automatic and front-wheel drive mate with either a 2.0-liter inline-four or a 3.6-liter V-6; the V-6 has optional all-wheel drive. A 7.0-inch infotainment display is standard, and an 8.0-inch unit is optional; both come with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Automated emergency braking is available, as are conveniences such as adaptive cruise control and automatic high-beams. Research the Chevrolet Traverse | Find a Chevrolet Traverse near you 2. Volkswagen Atlas VW's all-new three-row crossover with room for seven is here and it was worth the wait. Two adults fit comfortably in the third row, even with luggage stowed behind them. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard; 12-speaker Fender audio is optional. The base model has a 235-hp turbo inline-four with front-wheel drive and an eight-speed automatic. All-wheel drive is available if you choose the 276-hp V-6. Safety tech includes forward-collision alert and lane-departure warning with steering assist. Research the Volksagen Atlas on MSN Autos 1. Mazda CX-9 Putting zoom-zoom charisma into a three-row crossover is no easy feat, but Mazda does it with the CX-9 earning it a 2018 10Best award. A well-tuned suspension offers great handling; steering is light but precise. A 250-hp 2.5-liter turbo four mates with a six-speed automatic and either front- or all-wheel drive. The EPA estimates 22 mpg city and 28 mpg highway for front-drive models; adaptive cruise control and automated emergency braking are standard on all but the base Sport trim. Research the Mazda CX-9 | Find a CX-9 in your region | 9 | 97,893 | autos |
Donald Trump is now calling for an end to all Muslim immigration into the United States. In a written statement late Monday afternoon, the Trump campaign said the Republican frontrunner wanted a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." As backing, Trump cited a controversial six-month-old survey from the right-wing Center for Security Policy finding that one-quarter of U.S. Muslim respondents believed that violence against Americans was justified as part of global jihad and that a slim majority "agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah." Trump has built his campaign juggernaut on the premise that he is willing to flout all standards of political correctness, drawing the support of Americans fearful of immigrants and favoring a muscular response to Islamic terrorism. In the aftermath of the Islamic State attack that killed 130 people in Paris, he's claimed without evidence of truth that "thousands" of Muslims were cheering the 9/11 attacks on rooftops in New Jersey, and he's seemed to suggest that he would support a registry of all Muslims in the U.S. And just days after the attack by two apparently-radicalized terrorists in San Bernadino, Trump has tried to outflank his Republican rivals, most of whom have called for rejecting refugees fleeing Syria because of security concerns. Yet Trump's constitutionally-questionable call to place an explicit religious test on immigration and travel goes far beyond his previous statements. For one, this was not an off-the-cuff remark, a response to a vague question, or even an idle retweet. Trump detailed his new position in a written statement sent to hundreds if not thousands of reporters covering the campaign. And it apparently extends beyond immigrants to Muslim-American citizens living overseas. It includes "everyone," Hope Hicks, a campaign spokeswoman, told The Hill . "Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine," Trump said in his initial statement. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. The statement amounts to a sharp rebuke of President Obama's plea, delivered in an Oval Office address on Sunday night, that the nation "reject discrimination" against Muslims. "It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country," Obama said. "It's our responsibility to reject proposals that Muslim Americans should somehow be treated differently. Because when we travel down that road, we lose." Trump's call for a ban on Muslim immigration and travel drew swift and angry responses from candidates in both parties, as well as the White House. . @realdonaldtrump removes all doubt: he is running for President as a fascist demagogue. Martin O'Malley (@MartinOMalley) December 7, 2015 Condemnations from Republicans quickly followed. Jeb Bush tweeted that Trump had become "unhinged." John Kasich said Trump's "outrageous divisiveness" was more reason why he was "entirely unsuited" to be president. Senator Lindsey Graham, a long-shot Republican rival, tweeted that Trump had "gone from making absurd comments to being downright dangerous with his bombastic rhetoric." He's putting at risk the lives of interpreters, American supporters, diplomats, & the troops in the region by making these bigoted comments Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 7, 2015 Another Senate Republican, Jeff Flake of Arizona, wrote that "just when you think [Trump] can stoop no lower, he does." The White House responded on Twitter by posting a quote, in all-caps, of Obama's call to rejected religious tests. Of the immediate Republican candidate reactions, it was Trump's closest competitor in Iowa, Ted Cruz, who had the mildest response. "That is not my policy," he reportedly said in South Carolina, before repeating his preference for a three-year moratorium on refugees coming from countries with an ISIS or al Qaeda presence. The survey that Trump cited, by a D.C. think tank started by a former adviser to Ronald Reagan, was repudiated by a group at Georgetown University that tracks Islamophobia. "This survey should not be taken seriously," the organization wrote in June after the survey was cited by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. It comes from an organization with a history of producing dubious claims and "studies" about the threat of shariah, and was administered using an unreliable methodology. Its proponents seize upon its shoddy findings, exaggerating and misrepresenting them to American audiences, and falsely claim that the survey data represents the views of Muslims nationwide. Trump's call for banning all Muslim immigrants came hours after a Monmouth University survey found that the GOP frontrunner is now trailing Ted Cruz in the important early-voting state of Iowa. The poll-obsessed Trump ignored that survey and instead tweeted a different Iowa poll showing him in the lead. | 5 | 97,894 | news |
NEW YORK -- T-Mobile, the nation's fastest growing wireless carrier, is coming under scrutiny for its popular ad campaign promising to rip up service contracts and do away with hidden fees. The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating complaints that the ads are misleading. And a letter alleging "deceptive marketing and abusive debt collection practices" is making its way to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , which is responsible for consumer financial products, USA Today has learned. T-Mobile's colorful CEO, John Legere, has shaken up the telecom industry with his "un-carrier" campaign, which vows to free consumers of burdensome service contracts and other pesky fees. The campaign has been so effective that it helped T-Mobile push past Sprint to become the nation's third largest carrier this year a feat that seemed far-fetched when Legere took over in 2012. The carrier scored yet another victory Monday when it was named the nation's best wireless carrier by Consumer Reports readers, who ranked it above Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. But critics, led by labor and consumer organization Change to Win, are blasting T-Mobile's advertising saying the vast majority, or 91%, of its customers are locked into two-year loans for new phones and other equipment, known as an equipment installment plan. The phone loans, which must be paid off over 24 months and require a lump sum to exit, contradict T-Mobile's splashy ads promising consumers they can switch carriers at any time, said the letter to the CFPB, which was also signed by numerous civil rights and consumer advocacy groups, including the Consumer Federation of California. Customers who end their financing agreements before 24 months may also end up owing more than if they were to break than a traditional service contract or be placed in debt collection "with little or no notice," according to the CFPB complaint, a copy of which was reviewed by USA Today. "We ask T-Mobile to reform its own practices by no longer using the misleading language around no contracts," said Nell Geiser, a research director with Change to Win. "We ask that it stop claiming that it pays customers' early termination fees," she said. The group also plans to bring a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission, which investigates potentially misleading advertising. T-Mobile spokeswoman Annie Garrigan received, but did not return, a request for comment. Eric Soufer, a spokesman for the New York Attorney General, declined to comment on the investigation, which he called "ongoing." T-Mobile customers sign installment agreements, which outline the terms of the phone loans. Other company documentation, including its website, provide the terms of the equipment contracts . Still, critics say it's not enough and argue that T-Mobile's practices tend to hurt low-income customers and minority communities. "Our main concern is the bait-and-switch," said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, online advocacy group with 1.3 million members. "They tell customers one thing and they give them something completely different," said Robinson, who said the practice unfairly targets people of color, including black people and people of Latin American descent. The group, which also signed the CFPB letter, plans to circulate a petition Tuesday to encourage the public to demand the CFPB investigate T-Mobile's sales practices. Follow USA TODAY reporter Kaja Whitehouse on Twitter: @kajawhitehouse | 3 | 97,895 | finance |
We asked people on the street if the "D" word is too sensitive to speak about openly. What do you think? | 8 | 97,896 | video |
Can Jerry Colangelo help Philly turn the corner? Bob Donnan USA TODAY Sports The mantra for the Philadelphia 76ers, mired in their third year of outright tanking and off to a 1-20 start in 2015-16, is, "Trust the process." But on Monday, the process of rebuilding a once proud franchise received a little bit of a kick in the pants. The 76ers announced the hiring of Jerry Colangelo, former Phoenix Suns general manager and current chairman of the board of directors for USA Basketball, as chairman of basketball operations in Philadelphia. The 76-year-old Basketball Hall of Fame member told reporters that he is "excited and energized" by the opportunity to work with the Sixers' ownership group. Josh Harris, principal owner of the 76ers, acknowledged that there is frustration with Philly's start this season, but cautioned that the team is still committed to its plan: Jerry Colangelo: "I'm very happy to be here...Through experiences I have, I think there's something I can offer that will be very helpful." Brian Seltzer (@brianseltzer) December 7, 2015 General manager Sam Hinkie remains in his role with the team. Despite the addition to the front office, Harris reiterated that Hinkie will still have final basketball say. Furthermore, the 76ers owner told reporters that the team is in deep conversations with coach Brett Brown about his contract. Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski reports that a contract extension for Brown is "very likely." #Sixers Harris: 'I want it to faster. Sure. I'm impatient.' Tom Moore (@tmoore76ers) December 7, 2015 #Sixers Harris: 'We're still committed to the process. We're committed to Sam. Don't expect radical changes to the process.' #NBA Tom Moore (@tmoore76ers) December 7, 2015 #Sixers Harris: 'Are we off to a slow start this year? Yes. That's obvious. Are we frustrated? Yes.' #NBA Tom Moore (@tmoore76ers) December 7, 2015 Colangelo succinctly summed up his role with Philadelphia, which has reportedly had issues with agents at times due to the team's approach to player acquisition and roster turnover: "I went through four-and-a-half decades of basketball on handshakes with agents and players. My job is to be here to help." | 1 | 97,897 | sports |
UVA's Bronco Mendenhall held his introductory press conference where he said the three things he's going to focus on at Virginia are accountability, discipline and effort.. Mendenhall joins Virginia after an 11-year stint at BYU. | 1 | 97,898 | sports |
With the fantasy football playoffs here, hopefully you've locked in your kicker for the rest of the season. If not, take a look at our Week 14 rankings below to make sure you've got the best option to take you to the championship. Going by FanDuel scoring, the Raiders and Ravens are the top two teams in fantasy points allowed to kickers, meaning the Broncos' Brandon McManus (vs. Oakland) and the Seahawks' Steven Hauschka (at Baltimore) have the top two matchups, if you buy into that for kickers. Point is, they're strong options as usual. With that in mind, let's take a look at the kicker rankings for Week 14 to help you with those tough lineup decisions. MORE: Week 14 fantasy football rankings: Quarterbacks | Running backs | Wide receivers | Tight ends | Defenses Week 14 fantasy football rankings, Kickers 1. Stephen Gostkowski, Patriots at Texans 2. Brandon McManus, Broncos vs. Raiders 3. Steven Hauschka, Seahawks at Ravens 4. Josh Brown, Giants at Dolphins 5. Graham Gano, Panthers vs. Falcons 6. Cairo Santos, Chiefs vs. Chargers 7. Connor Barth, Buccaneers vs. Saints 8. Chris Boswell, Steelers at Bengals 9. Chandler Catanzaro, Cardinals vs. Vikings 10. Mason Crosby, Packers vs. Cowboys 11. Robbie Gould, Bears vs. Redskins 12. Justin Tucker, Ravens vs. Seahawks MORE: FanDuel tourney lineup | Cash-game lineup | Best DFS values Best of the rest 13. Mike Nugent, Bengals vs. Steelers 14. Dan Bailey, Cowboys at Packers 15. Blair Walsh, Vikings at Cardinals 16. Caleb Sturgis, Eagles vs. Bills 17. Dustin Hopkins, Redskins at Bears 18. Sebastian Janikowski, Raiders at Broncos 19. Josh Lambo, Chargers at Chiefs 20. Jason Myers, Jaguars vs. Colts 21. Dan Carpenter, Bills at Eagles 22. Shayne Graham, Falcons at Panthers 23. Zach Hocker, Rams vs. Lions 24. Adam Vinatieri, Colts at Jaguars 25. Kai Forbath, Saints at Buccaneers 26. Travis Coons, Browns vs. 49ers 27. Matt Prater, Lions at Rams 28. Phil Dawson, 49ers at Browns 29. Ryan Succop, Titans at Jets 30. Randy Bullock, Jets vs. Titans 31. Nick Novak, Texans vs. Patriots 32. Andrew Franks, Dolphins vs. Giants | 1 | 97,899 | sports |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.