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Frank Malenfant, l’ancien «cerveau» derrière l’implication politique de Bernard «Rambo» Gauthier, a fait le saut chez Québec solidaire.
À LIRE AUSSI: Le «cerveau» derrière Rambo démissionne
L’homme de Rivière-du-Loup agira à titre de président d’investiture désigné, lors de la campagne à l’investiture de Québec solidaire dans la circonscription de Rivière-du-Loup–Témiscouata, un poste bénévole.
La campagne, qui aura lieu du 30 mars au 28 avril prochain, déterminera le candidat qui représentera le parti aux élections générales du 1er octobre 2018.
Frank Malenfant est l’ex-chef du Parti des sans-parti devenu Citoyens au pouvoir. Il a claqué la porte du parti dans lequel s’est impliqué Bernard «Rambo» Gauthier, en janvier dernier, puisqu’il disait de plus vouloir être associé à des propos «irrespectueux».
«Ma confiance en la capacité qu’avait notre extraordinaire équipe de développer une culture d’ouverture d’esprit et de délibération démocratique, jusqu’à la mise sur pied d’une Assemblée constituante citoyenne tirée au sort, n’est plus, et je ne peux pas tolérer d’être le co-porte-parole d’un nouveau message irrespectueux qui m’oblige à trahir le message central sur lequel j’ai bâti la confiance des citoyens depuis plus de trois ans», avait-il écrit à l’époque sur son compte Facebook.
Il s'est par la suite joint à Option nationale, qui a fusionné avec Québec solidaire en décembre dernier.
La semaine dernière, Frank Malenfant signait un texte sur le magazine citoyen La Rumeur du loup, dans lequel il parle de cette fusion comme d’une «greffe de cœur pour l’indépendance».
«Il faut désormais espérer que les concessions de Québec solidaire et son affirmation indépendantiste sans équivoque permettent enfin aux indépendantistes de toutes formations de revenir à la feuille de route sur laquelle ils s’étaient entendus afin de faire enfin primer l’intérêt de la patrie avant celle du parti. Mais bon, assez de souhaits, assez de paroles, il est désormais venu le temps d’agir. Parce qu’on peut bien souhaiter, l’histoire ne se fait pas toute seule. Et nous devons aujourd’hui, à la suite de la fusion de deux partis indépendantistes, profiter de la lancée pour faire avancer le Québec vers son projet de pays démocratique, libre, et solidaire», a-t-il souhaité. | {
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Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warn US president-elect against deal with Putin that would cede Crimea
Two former Nato chiefs have called for an extraordinary summit soon after Donald Trump’s inauguration to reassure traditional allies that the US will still come to their defence.
Former Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen and his predecessor Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also warned the US president-elect against making a hasty deal with Vladimir Putin that would cede Crimea and eastern Ukraine as a Russian sphere of influence.
Putin stresses cooperation in first phone call with president-elect Trump Read more
They argue it would set a precedent for further expansionism in Russia’s “near-abroad”.
“If we accept the annexation of Crimea we will have given up on the rule-based order and it would have consequences elsewhere in the world,” Rasmussen told reporters in a call organised by the Atlantic Council thinktank.
During the election campaign, Trump said the people of Crimea appeared to want to live under Russian rule and said he would look at whether the US would recognise Moscow’s 2014 annexation of the peninsular. He also told the New York Times that allies would have to reimburse Washington for their protection or be told: “Congratulations, you will be defending yourself.”
Scheffer raised fears that Trump would turn campaign rhetoric into administration policy in a grand bargain with Putin, ceding Crimea and eastern Ukraine to Moscow, in return for non-interference in the Baltic states.
“In accepting the annexation of Crimea, it would be the first time since the second world war that borders have been changed by sheer force,” Scheffer said. “Such a deal would be considered by Russia and President Putin as a political alibi to expand his sphere of influence in what he qualifies as his ‘near abroad’. I think it would set a very bad precedent and might create in the Kremlin the wrong impression that if you wait long enough, Nato and the European Union and the Americans are finally giving in.”
On his farewell tour of Europe, Barack Obama has offered reassurance to nervous allies that Trump is committed to Nato despite disparaging remarks about the pact.
President Obama, who is meeting foreign allies in Berlin on Thursday, said “one of the most important functions I can serve at this stage, during this trip, is to let them know that there is no weakening of resolve when it comes to America’s commitment to maintaining a strong and robust Nato relationship, and a recognition that those alliances aren’t just good for Europe, they’re good for the United States, and they’re vital for the world.”
However, the former Nato chiefs said that such reassurances would be more effective if they came from Trump himself.
“I think it’s important to organise a Nato summit very soon after Mr Trump’s inauguration as the new American president,” Rasmussen said. He added that at such a summit the new president would reaffirm US commitment to defend all Nato allies, and those allies would promise to do more to honour existing pledges to spend 2% of their national income on defence. The alliance should also commit itself once more to supporting Ukraine independence and sovereignty.
Scheffer said Trump appeared from his campaign to be a man “who does not like alliances”, adding that he should act fast to reverse that impression.
“It is very important to come out for Nato as strongly as possible in the form of a summit,” Scheffer said, though both he and Rasmussen said such a meeting should be left until Trump appointees for top cabinet posts had been confirmed by the Senate.
A lack of clarity, Rasmussen said, “could lead to miscalculation by potential aggressors”.
“I’m concerned that President Putin might be emboldened already,” he added. | {
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Fremont police say vandals attacked an inflatable dam on Alameda Creek that resulted in the loss of nearly 50 million gallons of water. Police believe that those responsible entered a restricted area sometime on Thursday morning and intentionally damaged the dam.
“The dam, which is instrumental to the Alameda County Water District’s water supply operations, suffered irreversible damage,” police said. According to police, more than 150 acre-feet of water – or 49 million gallons – washed past the destroyed dam and into the San Francisco Bay. The water was to have been percolated into the Niles Cone Groundwater Basin for use by residents and businesses in Fremont, Newark, and Union City as a critical water supply. | {
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The parents of Jennifer Catcheway insist they will not be silenced.
Bernice and Wilfred Catcheway's testimony in Winnipeg was postponed Monday night, after they received a phone call from a lawyer for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
"The reason they didn't want us to testify is that they didn't want us to jeopardize the case," said Bernice.
The family was supposed to testify Tuesday, a time slot arranged by inquiry staff. They said they have been waiting nine years for the chance to put Jennifer's story on the public record. Bernice said the couple have been vocal since their daughter disappeared, and she can't understand why they can't speak now.
"They said you could speak, but privately; I said no," she said.
emailed statement, commission lawyer Christa Big Canoe said she couldn't release information on specific conversations with families or survivors because of confidentiality. Jennifer Catcheway has been missing for nine years. Her body has not been found. (CBC) In anstatement, commission lawyerBig Canoe said she couldn't release information on specific conversations with families or survivors because of confidentiality.
"The family was explained that there are different options and opportunities on how to share their stories as part of the truth gathering process, but that in some circumstances they're not able to share in the public," she wrote. "The legal team needs to take the opportunity to assess each case."
The Catcheways said they're now scheduled to participate on Friday, but it will be in a sharing circle with eight to 10 families — not one-on-one with a commissioner.
Bernice and Wilfred Catcheway testimony was postponed Monday night after receiving a phone call from one of the MMIWG national inquiry's lawyers. 2:12
Bernice said they will now have 20 minutes to share, not the two hours they would have originally had on Tuesday.
"They're cutting our time short, you can't limit what we've been waiting for for nine years," she said. "It's very poorly, poorly run."
Testimony critical of format, salaries
Alaya McIvor did not hold back in her testimony at the national inquiry.
McIvor spoke for her cousin, Roberta McIvor, who was decapitated on the Sandy Bay First Nation in 2011.
"I don't believe in this [inquiry]. I am sitting here because of my auntie," said McIvor. "When my auntie died, she believed in a national inquiry."
McIvor's aunt, Cindy Rubio, Roberta's mother, died from cancer in 2016.
The inquiry heard Roberta hired a designated driver the night she was killed. Two teen girls pleaded guilty to manslaughter after the 32-year-old was pushed from the back seat with her neck tangled in the seatbelt and dragged until she died.
Roberta McIvor was decapitated on the Sandy Bay First Nation in 2011. (Facebook)
McIvor said she once believed in a national inquiry and walked across Canada in 2013 calling for one. What she and other families envisioned isn't what she sees now, she said.
"You guys really failed us. You really failed drastically," she told commissioner Michelle Audette in the public hearing.
"Family needs a strong voice," Audette said about McIvor's criticism. "That's what she is. That is her right and so I have to respect her position."
McIvor, who is also a human trafficking survivor, presented Audette with 36 recommendations.
She was also critical of the inquiry's spending and questioned why all of the commissioners weren't present in Winnipeg.
Alaya McIvor says she does not believe in the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. (Tyson Koschik/CBC)
"Where are those other three commissioners … that head commissioner who is making $270,000 off the back of our loved ones," she said.
Chief commissioner Marion Buller's salary range is $230,800 to $271,500, according to an order-in-council.
You guys really failed us. You really failed drastically. - Alaya McIvor to MMIWG inquiry commissioner
Buller will be in Winnipeg on Wednesday. She was previously scheduled to speak at a conference in Alberta.
Audette said that from here on, hearings will only have one or two commissioners present.
"If we were the four of us all together, it would be the ideal, but because of the time we have we don't have much time. We have a huge country to travel across, so we have to share," she said. | {
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GT Advanced Technologies Inc. said it sought bankruptcy protection last month because Apple Inc., a key customer, engaged in a “classic bait and switch” strategy that left the company stuck in “an onerous and massively one-sided deal.”
GT Advanced’s Oct. 6 bankruptcy filing stunned investors and creditors because it came less than a year after the company announced a major deal to supply Apple with sapphire screens for its devices.
... | {
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Sign up for our COVID-19 newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest coronavirus news throughout New York City
It’s hard to believe “Equity” is not only Anna Gunn’s first starring role since “Breaking Bad” ended, but her first starring role ever.
The actress spent five seasons playing Skyler White, wife of high school chemistry teacher-turned-drug lord Walter, on the monster hit AMC show. She bided her time looking for her major follow-up, until “Equity” offered a character of equal complexity: Naomi Bishop, an investment banker on Wall Street who tries to protect her latest client from a complicated scheme to undo their hard work.
The film was conceived, written and directed by women, which was another reason she took on the project.
Were you particularly picky about what you did after “Breaking Bad”?
Absolutely. I felt I had been on such an extraordinary journey with extraordinary material. It opened a lot of doors; I wanted to make sure I walked through the right ones. I’d never come across a role this rich and complex, and where the character was at the forefront of the story. And the creators and conceivers were these two women. The director was a woman, the writer was a woman. It’s obviously a very unusual situation, and long past due.
RELATED: Review: “Equity” is not just “Wall Street” with a feminist twist
The film says a lot about what it’s like to be a woman in power today. For one thing, Naomi has had a disaster in her past, and people are constantly reminding her about it, even after all her successes. She has a bigger hill to climb than a man would in her situation.
I agree. In the research process — which I always say is one of my favorite parts about acting — I got to talk to Barbara Bryne, who is on Wall Street and is one of the film’s investors. She gave me a wealth of information. One of the things she said is when you’re a known commodity on Wall Street, you feel your gender more. Any time there’s been something on the news [about her], she walks into the office and there’s a sea of men. She thinks, “Are they talking about me? Is this going to put me in a bad position?” But she’s a confident woman.
There’s a parallel there with Hillary Clinton. There’s so much negativity and criticism of her, but then you watch the Democratic National Convention and you see how much she’s done. People focus more on the negative side than the positive.
They certainly do. That’s something women experience across the board in every profession. We’re seeing [Clinton’s] qualifications, her intellect, her policies, her track record. But everyone thinks, ‘Let’s not focus on that, let’s focus on the way she dresses or wears her hair.’ That’s something Barbara said women have to think about a lot more than men. She picks out the color of her suit depending on the client she’s dealing with. Maybe they’re dealing with someone who prefers a pink suit. On another day you might need to wear that red power dress. That’s something that doesn’t come into play with men. People aren’t tweeting and blogging about men’s choice of suits the next day. [Laughs]
Men have a uniform. They just put on a suit.
It has to do with the likeability factor as well, which women have to deal with a lot more. I love that “grit and grace” speech Meryl Streep gave [at the DNC]. It’s so true. For women it’s a real tightrope walk as they rise into more powerful positions and positions of leadership. They have to balance how they are perceived. If you’re confident and openly ambitious and assured, sometimes that can rub people the wrong way. It’s humiliating.
There’s still a lot of pushback from certain types, who are hopefully the last bastions of a dying culture.
I certainly have seen that, from playing Skyler. [Laughs] That’s why I wrote that [New York Times] op-ed, because I’d been asked about it a million times and I had tried to be diplomatic about it. Eventually I wanted to say what I wanted to say. I felt it was important, because I have two daughters and I want them to know that when they grow up and go on their way that if they have something to say they should say it. Don’t let anyone push you back. Keep moving forward with your goals.
You’re not still getting angry messages from people watching “Breaking Bad,” I hope.
No. I learned my lesson, which is you don’t read that stuff. And by the way, no one ever came up to me and said the things they said on the Internet. [Laughs]
RELATED:Sarah Gadon and Logan Lerman on the odd way they met on “Indignation”
Naomi’s another complex character, and even more capable of being unlikeable. The speech she makes early on, where she says, “I like money,” almost seems like a paraphrase of Gordon Gekko’s “Wall Street” speech: “Greed is good.”
I was aware of that, I want to say. [Laughs]
I figured it was intentional.
It was something Amy said a female investment banker had said. But I wanted that in there because why is it a problem for women to be as open about their ambition and that particular issue? To me, and to us, it was never intended to be a greedy statement.
This was [a career] that [Naomi] found and she really loved it. It’s not just about the numbers. It’s about turning a no into a yes. She loves the deal-making process. She loves the game of it. She certainly does love to win. It’s a very intricate dance to bring an IPO into the public sector. You have to know your client and what they need, and what your investors need. The intricacy of putting all that together was something I didn’t quite realize myself until talking to people like Barbara.
Follow Matt Prigge on Twitter @mattprigge | {
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Deletes user account which featured BBC WTC 7 videos that had over 1 million views
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, January 23, 2009
You Tube has permanently suspended another major 9/11 truth account in a continuation of the purge that began following efforts by the establishment to smear the 9/11 truth movement as terrorist propaganda.
You Tube has previously been caught blocking 9/11 truth videos from entering into top ranking charts for both views and comments despite their enduring popularity.
It also has a record of wanton censorship in deleting videos that are artistically crafted compilations and the furthest possible thing from copyright violation, such as the “Question Your Reality” video.
You Tube has now completely deleted the “OneDeadDJ” user account, which was used to display videos on Prison Planet.com, and in particular video clips relating to the BBC reporting the collapse of Building 7 over 20 minutes in advance.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Upon attempting to login to the account, one is met with the message, “Your account has been permanently disabled”. No explanation as to why is given.
One of the videos deleted by You Tube, which features in the article “BBC Reported Building 7 Collapse 20 Minutes Before It Fell,” had over 1 million views and nearly 45,000 comments before it was pulled this week.
The same clip can still be found on You Tube by using the search function, but the deletion of the original means that the video will now be dead on thousands of websites and blogs that picked it up when the story first broke.
When one attempts to play the clip, the message “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation” is displayed. No doubt that the BBC has demanded You Tube remove the video in an attempt to hide its embarrasment at the WTC 7 fiasco, which it clumsily attempted to resolve by producing two seperate hit piece documentaries against 9/11 truth.
The fact that the video is brief, is implicitly newsworthy, and has been used for the purposes of an article which is inherantly in the wider public interest, precludes any notion of copyright violation. This is blatantly an example of “fair use”.
You Tube users started noticing an increase in account suspensions and videos being removed following a demand from Senator Joe Lieberman that You Tube remove all content deemed “terrorist propaganda”.
As we saw at a House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing on “Terrorism and the Internet” in November 2007, questioning the official 9/11 story behind 9/11 is now being classified as aiding terrorist propaganda by some sectors of the establishment.
During the hearing, representatives formerly of the RAND Corporation and the Simon Wiesenthal Center showed images of WTC 7 and a screenshot from the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth site in an attempt to link 9/11 truth with violent jihadists.
Please take a moment to complain to You Tube about the deletion of the “OneDeadDJ” user account and demand it be reinstated. To make a complaint call +1 650-253-0000 (please be polite).
Watch a clip about previous examples of You Tube censorship below.
This article was posted: Friday, January 23, 2009 at 9:13 am
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A recanvass is not a recount, but a check of the vote count against paper records to ensure the counts were reported accurately. Iowa Democratic Party volunteers have already undertaken this process with most of the precincts, and the party has told Iowa Democratic activists it will not correct any faulty math recorded by volunteers in each precinct because changing the paper documentation would amount to criminally tampering with a legal document. | {
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Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Video showed the women and men singing and dancing at a wedding, as Orla Guerin reported in 2012
Three men have been given life sentences in connection with one of Pakistan's most notorious "honour killing" cases.
Named as Omar Khan, Sabeer and Saheer, they are related to three women killed after being filmed singing and clapping at a wedding in 2011.
Their bodies were never found. Two men they were with are still in hiding. The fates of another two women are unknown.
The killings sparked a blood feud which left another four dead.
Five other men were acquitted by the court in Besham, in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Why were they killed?
The exact details of what took place are not entirely clear.
A video emerged in 2011 which appeared to show a group of women - named as Bazeegha, Sereen Jan, Begum Jan and Amina - at a wedding, singing and clapping. A fifth woman - Shaheen, who was under 18 - is also thought to have been present.
It also showed a man dancing - although they were never in the same shot together. A second man is said to have been filming.
It was enough, in the remote northern Kohistan district where matters of family honour are settled in blood, to warrant at least three of the women's deaths.
According to local custom, male family members of a woman suspected of an out-of-wedlock liaison - even of a seemingly innocuous nature - should first kill the woman, and then go after the man. The family of the man would not oppose this action, correspondents say.
It meant everyone in the video - which was seen as "breaching the honour" of the women's family - was in danger.
How did it come to light?
The wider world learned of the video in 2012 when Afzal Kohistani - brother of the two men involved - broke the code of silence to allege the women had been murdered, in order to save his siblings' lives.
His campaign for justice prompted the Supreme Court to order an investigation into the killings. Investigators trekked for two days to the remote village and were initially presented with three women the locals claimed were those missing. The claims were later dismissed as false.
Image caption Afzal Kohistani had warned his life was in danger
It took until 2018 for a judge to finally order a court case into three deaths. Bazigha's father Sabeer, Seren Jan's father Saheer and Begum Jan's brother Omar Khan have now been given life sentences.
However, it is unclear what charges they were found guilty of and further details are still awaited.
But Afzal Kohistani did not live to see the sentencing. His decision to speak out led to three of his other brothers being killed in 2013, while his house was firebombed and destroyed.
Six men were convicted of those killings but later acquitted.
Then, in March 2019, Afzal Kohistani was shot dead in the north-western city of Abbottabad.
His death led activists to question why he hadn't been given adequate protection when he was a known target.
His brothers remain in hiding.
What is an 'honour killing'?
It is the killing of a member of a family who is perceived to have brought dishonour upon relatives.
Pressure group Human Rights Watch says the most common reasons are that the victim:
refused to enter into an arranged marriage
was the victim of a sexual assault or rape
had sexual relations outside marriage, even if only alleged
But killings can be carried out for more trivial reasons, like dressing in a way deemed inappropriate or displaying behaviour seen as disobedient. | {
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Altruism has posed a puzzle for psychologists and evolutionary biologists for centuries. Why is it that humans will help others even to their own detriment? A new study sheds light on the answer to that question by studying the brains of extreme altruists – people on the extreme end of the caring continuum. In this case researchers chose to study people who donated a kidney to a complete stranger. They found that not only are extreme altruists’ brains different from a normal person’s, they’re basically the opposite of a psychopath’s in one key way – indicating that a specific brain region may play an important role in people's ability to care for one another.
Mapping a Generous Mindset
Researchers tracked down 19 healthy adults that had given a kidney to a stranger, and 20 other adults who were recruited from the local community as a control. They presented these participants with images of people making a fearful, angry and neutral facial expressions while measuring their brain activity using fMRI. Of all the expressions, researchers were most interested in participants’ responses to fearful faces. Past studies have shown that fearful expressions elicit feelings of compassion in altruistic people. And indeed, extreme altruists showed a much higher sensitivity to fearful expressions, evidenced by higher activity in their amygdalas (the walnut-shaped part of the brain that processes emotions). What's more, the right side of the amygdala was 8 percent larger in altruists than in people who hadn’t donated an organ, based on structural MRI data. Researchers published their findings last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A Brain Dichotomy
These findings offered a stunning contrast to the team's previous research on the brains of psychopaths. In their 2013 study
, researchers showed images of pain-inducing injuries to 14 teens with psychopathic traits and to a control group. They discovered that the right amygdala in psychopaths was smaller and less active than that of a normal person. Psychopaths were also far less sensitive to other people's pain, indicating a lower ability to feel compassion. Therefore, researchers believe that our neurological architecture, specifically the amygdala, helps shape our altruistic tendencies. The amygdala may act as the brain's moral compass — active in compassionate people and muted in psychopaths. Moving forward, researchers plan to expand their findings to examine how altruists' brains respond to other cues, such as pain or sadness expressions, body postures, or voices. In the meantime, researchers investigating the roots of human altruism have an intriguing new lead toward understanding our deeply-wired desire to help one another.
Photo credit: hikrcn/Shutterstock | {
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BRASÍLIA - O governo repetiu na semana passada uma manobra que está na mira do Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) no julgamento das contas da presidente Dilma Rousseff em 2014. Ao anunciar a redução da meta fiscal deste ano, na quarta-feira, a equipe econômica aplicou, baseada nessa nova previsão, um corte de R$ 8,6 bilhões nos gastos públicos. Esse bloqueio no orçamento foi embasado na nova meta, que, no entanto, ainda precisa ser aprovada pelo Congresso.
No processo de análise das contas de 2014, o TCU aponta como uma das distorções, ao lado das “pedaladas fiscais”, operação semelhante, feita sem aval do Legislativo. Em novembro do ano passado, em vez de cortar R$ 28,5 bilhões em gastos, o governo liberou R$ 10 bilhões com base na provável aprovação, pelo Congresso, do projeto que alterava a meta fiscal.
Os ministros do TCU sustentam, com base em acórdão aprovado no mês passado, que a operação foi irregular. A justificativa é que o governo “utilizou” a gestão orçamentária de 2014 “para influir na apreciação legislativa do projeto de lei 36/2014”, em referência à proposta que alterava a meta fiscal do ano passado. Essa é uma das distorções que podem levar a corte a uma inédita rejeição das contas federais. A oposição conta com essa reprovação para reforçar a tese de impeachment de Dilma.
A semelhança entre as operações preocupa o Planalto. Numa reunião sobre o quadro fiscal do governo na semana passada, a presidente e ministros da área econômica discutiram o assunto. Avaliaram, no entanto, que a defesa para a manobra do ano passado, recém-apresentada ao TCU, serviria para justificar também o que foi feito agora.
O TCU decidiu conceder 30 dias para a presidente esclarecer os problemas nas contas do ano passado. A defesa formal, com mais de mil páginas, foi entregue na quarta-feira ao tribunal. No documento, o governo argumenta que um corte de gastos públicos de R$ 28,5 bilhões em novembro de 2014 “levaria inevitavelmente ao agravamento da situação econômica já desfavorável”.
Defesa. O governo argumenta que, tradicionalmente, a equipe econômica administra o Orçamento entre janeiro e dezembro baseada em projetos e medidas provisórias que elevam a arrecadação (pela alta de impostos, por exemplo) ou diminuem despesas (como mudanças de regras de programas públicos), que estão em tramitação no Congresso.
Além disso, o governo também observa na defesa que essa prática ocorre há muitos anos, sem nunca ter chamado a atenção do TCU. “A prática de usar cenários prospectivos não é uma coisa nova. Isso aconteceu em 2009, quando o governo alterou a meta fiscal, e também em 2002”, disse o ministro do Planejamento, Nelson Barbosa, na Comissão de Assuntos Econômicos (CAE) do Senado, há duas semanas.
O caso de 2002, quando o presidente era Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB), é repetido na defesa. Em abril daquele ano, o governo deixou de alterar o Orçamento baseado em projetos que estavam em tramitação no Congresso e, também, em “estudos internos” para a elevação do Imposto sobre Operações Financeiras (IOF), o que aumentaria a arrecadação.
Meta. Oficialmente, a meta fiscal deste ano continua a ser de R$ 66,3 bilhões, o equivalente a 1,1% do Produto Interno Bruto (PIB). O projeto de lei enviado ao Congresso propõe a redução da meta para 0,15% do PIB. Esse dinheiro será usado pela União, Estados e municípios para o pagamento dos juros da dívida pública. O governo sofre com os efeitos da recessão na economia, que reduziu fortemente a arrecadação e dificultou o cumprimento de uma meta mais elevada. Com isso, a equipe econômica também admite que a dívida pública aumentará neste ano, uma vez que menos recursos fiscais serão usados para seu abatimento.
O corte de gastos anunciado no mesmo dia foi feito sob a premissa de que a nova meta entrará em vigor após aprovação do Congresso. Mas, se fosse preciso contingenciar gastos para chegar à meta de 1,1% do PIB, o volume dos cortes deveria ser muito superior. | {
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. AP Photo/Wong Maye-E Kim Jong Un is a "smart cookie," President Donald Trump said recently of North Korea’s leader.
"He’s 27 years old," Trump mused. "His father dies, [he] took over a regime. So say what you want but that is not easy."
Kim, who has assassinated his internal rivals using anti-aircraft guns and chemical weapons, seeks to develop a nuclear missile that can reach the United States. These actions may provoke a "major, major conflict" with the US, Trump has said: "I hope he’s rational."
In my research on political leaders, I’ve found that different people have different definitions of rationality. The core question – "What is my best move?" – is often answered by a leader’s idiosyncratic beliefs, rather than by an immediately obvious logic of the situation as seen by external observers.
The history of dealing with inscrutable foreign leaders is instructive: From Hitler to Saddam to Khrushchev, understanding the other is the most urgent challenge of national security decision-making for the US
To influence Kim’s behavior, we must ask: What is his particular vantage point?
South Korean soldiers wear North Korea's military uniforms and hold North Korea's flags, acting as North Korean soldiers, as they take part in a re-enactment the battle of the Korean war during a commemorative war victory event to mark the 66th anniversary of the the Korean war on September 22, 2016 in Waegwan, South Korea. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
Lessons of the past
In the spring of 1943, the director of the first centralized US intelligence agency, Colonel William "Wild Bill" Donovan, sought help in understanding Hitler. Donovan wanted to give President Franklin D. Roosevelt a sense of "the things that make him tick."
Donovan called Walter C. Langer, a psychoanalyst helping with the war effort, in for a meeting: "What do you make of Hitler? If Hitler is running the show, what kind of a person is he? What are his ambitions?"
Langer combined the scant intelligence on Hitler with insights from Freudian psychoanalysis into a study on Hitler. He accurately predicted that Hitler would commit suicide rather than be captured by Allied forces. But his insight was largely irrelevant to the military strategy for defeating Germany. The report took so long to produce that the war was nearly over by the time it was delivered to Donovan.
More recently, the former top UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer and I studied what made former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein tick. For several years, Duelfer was the senior point of contact between Iraq and the US After the regime fell, he produced the definitive report on its weapons programs.
Looking for logic in Saddam’s decisions, we found instead a morass of idiosyncratic thinking. Most astonishing was his misreading of President George W. Bush’s June 2002 speech to the West Point Military Academy. Intending to warn Saddam that he must comply with UN demands or face war, Bush struck a stern tone. The "gravest danger to freedom," he said, was "unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction." Later in the speech, Bush praised President Ronald Reagan for standing up to "the brutality of tyrants."
What Bush said and what Saddam heard were two very different things.
via Wikimedia
Saddam did not see himself as unbalanced, and he knew that he did not have weapons of mass destruction. And US-Iraq relations had been excellent under President Reagan, Saddam recalled. The United States had tilted toward his side during the Iran-Iraq war. Things started to deteriorate only under the Bushes, in his view.
Our analysis showed that Saddam believed Bush could not have been talking about him. Instead, Saddam concluded he must have been threatening North Korea, not Iraq. Kim Jong Il, father of Kim Jong Un, possessed the nuclear weapons that the Iraqi president desired but did not have.
Bush was dumbfounded by the lack of Saddam’s response to his threats. Later he asked, "How much clearer could I have been?"
Duelfer and I had the academic luxury of malleable deadlines in studying Saddam. Langer spent many months on his Hitler study. Scholarship on Kim Jong Un may be too slow for the current crisis. Major decision-makers may instead need to rely on their intuition.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara with former President John F. Kennedy. wikicommons / JFK Library, Cecil Stoughton
Empathize with your enemy
Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara spoke about intuition in a 2003 documentary about his role in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. McNamara revealed crucial new details about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had smuggled nuclear missiles into Cuba, threatening 90 million Americans. President John F. Kennedy’s first reaction was that he must destroy them with a massive air strike. This would have courted war with the USSR. | {
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Hey SirFirriplin, thanks for letting me knowAnd no I didn't upload it on that app. It's been ages since I used this site so I have no idea what's new here but I'm glad you guys like the 7 year old wallpaper rofl | {
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The small pallet wooden pieces and blocks are very easily to find which can be present in home scrap and home surroundings. One can arrange them and organize them in a shape of furniture that could be beneficial and exquisite. Like other useful pallet projects, DIY lovers can make a DIY Pallet Cell Phone Holder. A pallet cell phone holder could be small in length, however, it is not hard to make and it is not going to be time-taking at all. Pallet Mobile Phone Holder can be created or shaped in different designs and styles, which you like first-rate. DIY pallet mobile phone holder may be located at everywhere in your own home. The awesome designs will get the appeal of your visitors. Cut pallet woods in equal lengths keeping in thoughts size and join them together. You can make as protective that it could store cell phone to be fallen.
Pallet cell phone holder is an exquisite concept, which can not only suffices your requirements in a home however also offers excellent appearance as the decoration piece in your own home. This little cell phone holder will inform you who’s calling you through just one side opening of your eye whilst sleeping. Enormous uses may be provided from this rustic holder. You could use it in your own home, office and it’ll additionally rock for college kids. You could paint pallet wooden mobile phone holders with the color of your preference otherwise could simply leave it in its natural rustic brown shade. Reclaimed Pallet cell phone holder is a great and innovative shifting of pallet wooden scrap which can also be placed as a centerpiece in room charms too. Craft it with DIY techniques and place it in any direction you think it will be appropriate for you and charming as well. You must sand the pallet mobile phone holders so that it will not be harmful. | {
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In an effort to further protect its users online, privacy search engine Startpage.com has launched a new “Anonymous View” feature.
The new feature protects users against tracking by serving as an anonymous buffer between websites and end users.
Read more: Offcloud
Most users are aware of Google Chrome and other browsers' 'incognito mode' which prevents your browsing history as well as cookies from being stored. However, incognito mode gives users a false sense of privacy since it does not actually protect users from websites that track, save and sell their web behaviour.
Anonymous View on the other hand, actually does. When a user clicks on an Anonymous View link, Startpage.com goes to the website, loads the page and displays it for them. Though instead of seeing the user, the webpage sees Startpage as the visitor while the user remains invisible.
Protecting users' privacy
A free Anonymous View link is available to the right of every search result on Startpage.com which makes it incredibly easy for users to visit websites while protecting their privacy.
The company's CEO Robert Beens provided further insight on this new feature in a statement, saying:
"With this innovation, we make it easier for consumers to keep personal data more private than ever before. Anonymous View is easy to use and unique for any search engine," said Startpage.com CEO Robert Beens. “Unlike the incognito mode in your browser, Anonymous View really protects you. It combines searching in privacy with viewing in privacy.
“We will continue to offer the world's best search results without the tracking and profiling,” Beens promised. “We are proud of our new features together with our new design and faster results. We will continue to develop new online tools that help people take back their privacy.” | {
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While sifting through the bacterial genome of salmonella, Cornell food scientists discovered mcr-9, a new, stealthy jumping gene so diabolical and robust that it resists one of the world’s few last-resort antibiotics.
Doctors deploy the antibiotic colistin when all other infection-fighting options are exhausted. But resistance to colistin has emerged around the globe, threatening its efficacy.
“This last-resort antibiotic has been designated a highest-priority antibiotic by the United Nations’ World Health Organization, and the mcr-9 gene causes bacteria to resist it,” said Martin Wiedmann, Cornell’s Gellert Family Professor in Food Safety and senior author on the study published May 7 in the journal Mbio. “In treatments, if colistin does not work, it literally could mean death for patients. If colistin resistance spreads, a lot of people will die.”
Co-lead author Laura Carroll, a computational biologist and Cornell doctoral candidate, found mcr-9 in the genome of a strain of foodborne pathogen salmonella.
Because the DNA sequence of the mcr-9 gene was similar to other genes that could cause bacteria to resist colistin, she suspected that the salmonella strain which carried mcr-9 was colistin-resistant. To her surprise, the salmonella strain failed to show colistin resistance.
Knowing that the mcr-9 gene could jump to other bacteria or organisms, her colleague, senior research associate Ahmed Gaballa, a microbiologist and co-lead author, inserted the gene into a nonpathogenic strain of the bacterium E. coli. Gaballa was able to “turn on” mcr-9, making the E. coli strain resistant to colistin. That showed Carroll was initially correct.
“When we originally tested the salmonella isolate and found that it wasn’t resistant to colistin, we were perplexed,” Carroll said. “But when Ahmed cloned it into an E. coli host, he was able to find that the gene could confer resistance to colistin.”
Mcr-9 is the latest in this new series of “mobilized colistin-resistance” genes – originally discovered in 2015. The National Center for Biotechnology Information, part of the National Institutes of Health, has added details about this new gene to its database. Medical professionals and others can now use this information to identify mcr-9 in bacteria isolated from food products and people.
Details about mcr-9 in national and international databases enable scientists to develop better prevention and treatment, explained Wiedmann. “This improves our ability to get an early warning,” he said.
Bacteria isolated from food products can now be tested for mcr-9, and patients can be screened for colistin-resistant bacteria which possess mcr-9. “If you go to a hospital and this gene is floating around, that can be trouble. The gene is moveable. It jumps,” Wiedmann said.
“In a hospital setting, being able to screen a patient for resistance allows doctors and nurses to isolate the patient and maintain biosecurity.”
Wiedmann pointed out that while his lab is dedicated to food safety, the collaboration of scientists from different fields made the discovery possible. “In this age of complicated problems, we need the computational bioinformatics approach to find solutions,” he said. “Standard biological research and standard tests would not necessarily have found this gene.”
Carroll added: “It takes a village of a computational biologist, a microbiologist and a molecular biologist to make this sort of scientific discovery happen.”
In addition to Carroll, Gaballa and Wiedmann, co-authors were postdoctoral researcher Claudia Guldimann and graduate students Lory Henderson and Genevieve Sullivan.
This work was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program, with additional funding by the NSF Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide, through a partnership with the Swiss National Science Foundation. | {
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Among his opponents were Elmer Carter, a Republican member of the state’s new Commission Against Discrimination, and Andronicus Jacobs, a longshoreman who’d fought to secure equal pay and benefits for black dock workers and ran on the American Labor Party ticket.
Born in St. Lucia, Mr. Jack immigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1923. He started out sweeping floors in a box factory while taking night classes before going on to N.Y.U. Along the way, he took an interest in politics, and began canvassing for the Democrats in Harlem.
As a dutiful Catholic and longtime party organizer, Mr. Jack was an apt choice as Tammany’s candidate by 1953. He also had a distinguished record as one of the first black lawmakers from Harlem elected to the State Assembly, starting in 1940. He voted along the Tammany line. But he also emerged as a consistent and cleareyed advocate for bills aimed at dismantling segregation and discrimination in housing, education and policing. In 1945, he helped pass a bill that made New York the first state to bar race and religious discrimination in employment.
Mr. Jack’s daily and long-term work in the borough office — whether turning vacant lots into playgrounds or supporting selective slum clearance instead of wholesale demolition — often focused on issues affecting working-class residents. He ultimately opposed Robert Moses’ ill-fated expressway across Lower Manhattan, which many now agree would have irretrievably altered the city. But he also helped facilitate Mr. Moses’ grand plan for Lincoln Center, insisting on a fairer timeline for relocating residents of the neighborhood.
He also kept a high profile amid national and international personalities: In photos from those years, he can be seen shoulder to shoulder with people like Mr. Moses, John F. Kennedy and Mayor Robert Wagner, and while in office he met with African leaders including the prime minister of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie. He became a symbol to the rest of the world that a black man could rise to such a station. | {
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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At first, no one in the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil would drink the bitter coffee at Syrian refugee Abdussamad Abdulqadir's cafe. But now it's a hit, part of a growing cultural exchange.
Since conflict broke out in Syria in 2011, many ethnic Kurds living in the country's northeast fled across the border to Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
Despite their similar ethnic origins, the two communities speak distinct dialects and have different cultural habits, but in recent years they have traded customs.
When Abdulqadir fled his northeast Syrian hometown of Qamishli six years ago, he settled in Erbil and opened a cafe in its bustling market.
During his opening week, he sent free cups of coffee to neighbouring shopkeepers to win new customers, but they complained it was undrinkably bitter.
"Business was bad," the 45-year-old told AFP, saying Iraqi Kurds typically prefer instant coffee or tea so sugary it resembles syrup.
With persistence and charm, Abdulqadir first converted his neighbours to drinking coffee with sugar -- then, eventually, to the original bitter drink.
He now has so much business that he opened a second quaint cafe in the market.
"Now I sell between 200 and 300 cups of coffee every day and 90 percent of my customers are Iraqi Kurds who drink the coffee without sugar," he said proudly.
- More vibrant -
The changes go beyond caffeine, with restaurants adopting Syrian food, architects fusing Iraqi and Syrian styles and even musical and linguistic exchanges.
Jumana Turki, who has lived with her Syrian Kurdish husband in Erbil since 2014, said it used to surprise her how few women she would see in public in Erbil after dark.
But now women -- Syrian and Iraqi Kurds -- are shopping and even working in markets and shopping malls until late.
"This was the impact of Syrian refugees because in Syria, it was normal for women to work in markets and be out at night," said Turki, who holds a master degree in sociology.
Around the world, communities faced with an influx of newcomers often react with xenophobia, because of an instinctive fear that change would mar the host culture.
Kurds in northern Iraq have carved out an autonomous enclave where they speak the Sorani Kurdish dialect, have their own television channels and government bodies.
They, too, initially rejected Syrian Kurdish customs, but the slow integration in recent years "has deconstructed that historical rejection," said Hawzhen Ahmed, an Erbil-based academic who holds a doctorate in cultural studies.
Around 300,000 Syrian refugees -- most of them Kurds -- now live in Iraqi Kurdistan, with the threat of a Turkish offensive last year pushing thousands into displacement camps in the north.
"Syrian refugees have proved the historical argument that host cultures become more vibrant and enjoyable when mixed with different traditions and norms," Ahmed told AFP.
- 'Strong empathy' -
Integration is a two-way street, said Hussein Dewani, a Syrian musician and schoolteacher in Erbil since 2012.
"Iraqi Kurds helped us revive our Kurdish language since they speak a more pure Kurdish than Syrian Kurds, whose dialect was banned in Syria," Dewani said.
Syria's government had long prohibited Kurds from speaking their language or celebrating their festivals and had even refused Syrian nationality for the community, worried they would threaten the state with calls for independence.
But in Iraqi Kurdistan, radio channels, government statements and street signs are mostly in Kurdish.
Dewani said he has picked up the Sorani dialect of the region but also taught his colleagues some of the Kurmanji dialect used in Syria.
"When I arrived, I heard some Kurdish words which I used to hear from my grandmother and they were all lost generation after generation," he recalled.
Dewani, also from Qamishli, has decorated his Erbil apartment with musical instruments including guitars and the daf, a frame drum.
He learned to play the daf in his new hometown, which he said hosts some of the best drum musicians and instructors.
The 33-year-old said the well-developed Iraqi Kurdish music culture had also seeped into Syrian Kurdish music, and that Syrian Kurds were now wearing more traditional attire that resembled their counterparts in Erbil.
Empathy and shared norms have blossomed in recent years, said Rodi Hassan, a Syrian physician working in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Hassan arrived in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2008, three years before Syria's uprising began, to study medicine.
"When I arrived, we had very little information about each other, and it was all stereotypes," he told AFP.
"But now it is completely different. There is a strong empathy, friendship and intermarriage between us," he said. | {
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SEOUL, Nov. 26 (Yonhap) -- South Korea is one of the most democratic countries in the Asia-Pacific region, while North Korea is one of the world's most non-democratic nations, an intergovernmental organization said in a recent democracy index report. | {
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A coalition of attorneys general representing 50 US states and territories today announced a long-awaited joint probe into antitrust complaints against one of the biggest tech companies in the world, Google.
The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is spearheading the bipartisan investigation, which is beginning with the search and digital advertising markets. Google "dominates all aspects of advertising on the Internet and searching on the Internet," Paxton told reporters during a press conference.
The group includes attorneys general from 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. (Alabama and California are the two states not participating.) The states' action is independent of several different federal actions, participating attorneys general stressed.
"I'm very confident that this bipartisan group is going to be led by the facts and not be swayed by any conclusion that may fall short, if you will, if it’s inconsistent with our facts, on the federal side," DC Attorney General Karl Racine said. "So we're going to do what we think is right based on our investigation."
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes added, "there's nothing wrong with being a dominant player when it's done fairly," but the "pervasiveness" of complaints about Google indicates the company may not be behaving fairly.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody echoed the sentiment. "When there is no longer a free market or competition, this increases prices, even when something is marketed as free, and harms consumers," Moody said. "Is something really free if we are increasingly giving over our privacy information?"
Here we go again
Google's attorneys are extremely familiar with handling antitrust probes by now.
The Justice Department publicly confirmed in July its antitrust division was digging into widespread "concerns that consumers, businesses, and entrepreneurs have expressed" about "market-leading online platforms." The agency, which rarely comments publicly on pending probes, didn't name names, but several media reports have suggested that the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission agreed to split the big antitrust work this year, with the DOJ taking on Apple and Google while the FTC looks at Amazon and Facebook.
"We have answered many questions on these issues over many years, in the United States as well as overseas, across many aspects of our business, so this is not new for us," Google exec Kent Walker wrote last week in a blog post confirming that the company is the target of a DOJ probe.
The FTC has been contemplating antitrust action against Google for the better part of a decade. In 2012, a memo circulated to all five commissioners strongly recommended launching an antitrust suit against Google for abusing its dominance. In 2013, the commission voted against bringing charges, leading to several years of criticism.
The European Commission's competition bureau, which handles antitrust matters for the European Union, has fined Google billions of dollars across three years for antitrust violations. First came a then-record-breaking €2.42 billion fine in 2017 for steering shoppers toward Google's platform in search results. That record was then broken in 2018 with a €4.34 billion fine for unfairly pushing its own apps ahead of competitors', and those two fines were joined by another €1.5 billion this year for abusing its dominant position in the ad sales market.
Misery loves company?
Google is accustomed to antitrust probes, after the several past and present investigations and actions against it. But the Internet giant is far from the only major business facing serious complaints this year.
Facebook also confirmed in July that it is under antitrust investigation by the FTC, and last week a coalition of attorneys general representing eight states and the District of Columbia also launched a probe, led by Attorney General Letitia James of New York.
Amazon, too, is at the heart of a boatload of investigations. Retailers have all but begged for US regulators to take strong action, joining Germany, Austria, Italy, and the European Union, which all have their own antitrust probes going on right now.
Congress in June launched a bipartisan investigation looking at "competition in digital markets." The investigation—which has probed Facebook, Google, and Amazon so far—went quiet during the traditional August recess, but several hearings on the topic are slated for later this month.
Apple is also reportedly the target of investigations. Music-streaming service Spotify lodged a complaint with the EU about Apple's app-store behavior. The Congressional probe also started asking about Apple's position on consumers' right to repair their own devices as part of its work. | {
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Musically Oblivious 8th Grader
money by pink floyd comes on the radio
"ew i hate jazz" | {
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NCSOFT will release Blade & Soul in Europe on Tuesday 19th January 2016.
Blade & Soul is a MMORPG fully localized into English, French and German that allow players to experience a fantastical martial-arts inspired world. Featuring 7 classes – from the menacing Destroyer, to the quick-footed Blade Dancer – players will explore settings deeply rooted in ancient mythologies, and be able to master the martial arts as they seek revenge in a gripping and breathtaking story.
At launch, Blade & Soul will have a max level of 45, with access to the 1v1 Arena, and two dungeons not available in the game’s Closed Beta tests. Furthermore NCSOFT is planning a regular cadence of content updates and patches post-launch, including a new class, level cap increase and much more.
The game already offers Founder’s Packs with a number of benefits and bonuses; these will continue to be sold until Head Start begins on Friday 15th January (an early-access period for Founder’s Pack owners only). Those who purchase a Disciple or Master Founder’s Pack will also be able to reserve names for their character ahead of time – with name reservations beginning on 11th January.
More detail about Blade & Soul and its Founder’s Packs can be found on www.bladeandsoul.com.
Checkout more about the game with our indepth preview here: https://invisioncommunity.co.uk/2015/12/08/blade-soul-preview/
We have a shed loads of BETA Codes for the final Beta of Blade & Soul, coming on the 18th through to the 21st December, for Europe and America
just click the button and collect your key, enjoy the game
[keys id=111125]
Closed beta access will be from 18 th December 19:00 CET (18:00 UK) until Monday 21 st December
December 19:00 CET (18:00 UK) until Monday 21 December keys are not region locked and provides access to above weekend/dates only
KEY REDEEMING INSTRUCTIONS
Instructions for downloading the game and redeeming your Closed Beta test code are as follows:
Download the game client here:
http://cbt.patcher.bladeandsoul.com/BnS_CBT/installer/BnS_CBT Lite Installer.exe.
http://cbt.patcher.bladeandsoul.com/BnS_CBT/installer/BnS_CBT Lite Installer.exe. You will need an NC Account in order to redeem your code. Navigate to the login page here: https://login.ncsoft.com/login Once you have logged into your existing NC Account or created a new NC Account, you will need to go to your Account Management page and enter the code via the “Apply a Code” section. Once the code has been entered, and you’ve clicked the “Activate” button, you will need to navigate to the “Blade & Soul” tab in the Unused Serial Codes section. From there, click “Apply” on the Closed Beta coupon code. You will receive a confirmation email when your code has been applied. To check on the status of your Closed Beta code redemption, go to the “Transaction History” section of your Account Management page, and check the tab “Blade & Soul” in the subsection “Serial Codes.”
Further Instructions on how to redeem your code can be found here:
https://support.bladeandsoul.com/hc/en-us/articles/205652005-How-do-I-use-my-serial-code | {
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In April, the Trump administration launched a zero-tolerance immigration policy that subjects everyone who crosses the border without prior authorization to possible criminal prosecution. This policy applies even to people who have a legal right to enter in pursuit of asylum. So far, the policy has separated more than 2,500 children from their parents, who are either waiting for a criminal hearing or have already been deported. This punishment is a disproportionately cruel response to mostly misdemeanor charges and largely meted out to people exercising their legal right to seek asylum.
In response to public outrage over his policy, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on June 20 stating that it is the policy of this administration “to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together.” Imprisoning entire families is not an appropriate or a viable solution; it is inhumane, ineffective, and unnecessary. Yet the administration has proposed giving billions of federal taxpayer dollars to for-profit companies to implement this immoral policy.
Trump administration proposes an unprecedented expansion of resources for jailing families
Prior to the enforcement of this administration’s zero-tolerance policy, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) submitted a fiscal year 2019 budget request to Congress for 2,500 beds to detain families at three facilities. Private prison companies run the two largest facilities: The GEO Group Inc. runs the Karnes County Residential Center; and CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, runs the South Texas Family Residential Center. DHS’ contracts with private prison companies include fixed prices, meaning that the companies are paid regardless of whether the beds are used. This creates an incentive for DHS to fill available bed space regardless of its actual need.
Two days after the president issued his executive order, DHS posted a request for information on the cost and provision of adding up to 15,000 beds to detain families—whether that means by renting existing beds or constructing new facilities. At a cost of $318.79 per bed per day, this sixfold expansion of current capacity would mean the government would pay $5.6 million per day to jail families seeking asylum—an annual cost of more than $2 billion. This is nearly the entire cost of the president’s FY 2019 detention bed budget.
Because the administration is not proposing to shift resources from general detention to family detention, this represents a near doubling of detention resources. And the entire amount would likely go to private prison companies—which currently run 71 percent of immigration detention beds—including the two largest and newest of the three existing family detention centers.
Private prison companies do not operate in immigrants’ best interests
In addition to spending enormous sums of taxpayer dollars to detain immigrants, private prison companies have been associated with providing substandard care to those in their custody. A recent Human Rights Watch report found that inadequate medical care was a contributing factor in half of the deaths that occurred in these detention centers. A report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that, at higher rates than at other, public facilities, private prisons failed to adhere to detention standards around health care; protect LGBT people from abuse; provide nutritious food in sufficient quantities; and enable access to legal services. Many also did not comply with standards to prevent and respond to sexual assault.
The return on investment for private prison companies is even more significant when it is compared with the amount of money these companies contributed to the Trump campaign. GEO Group Inc. has contributed large amounts of money to President Trump since the 2016 election. During the election, GEO Corrections Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of GEO Group Inc., gave $225,000 to the pro-Trump political action committee Rebuilding America Now. As a result, the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, arguing that it is illegal for an entity receiving a federal government contract to contribute to a political campaign. In response to the lawsuit, GEO Group Inc. claimed that “although GEO Corrections Holdings Inc., the company that made the donation, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the GEO Group, it is a non-contracting legal entity and has no contracts with any governmental agency.” The complaint has not yet been resolved. Furthermore, GEO Group Inc. and CoreCivic contributed $250,000 each to the president’s inauguration. In addition to these contributions, GEO Group Inc. even relocated its annual conference to a Trump-owned resort in Boca Raton, Florida.
The power of private prison lobbying The Trump administration needs Congress to fund any expansion of detention beds, so unsurprisingly, GEO Group Inc. and CoreCivic have contributed heavily to the campaigns of some members of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. Given the massive expansion of private prison companies’ lobbying efforts, as well as the number of requested and allocated detention beds for both individuals and families, this lobbying is paying off. One step to ensure that private prison companies are not unduly influencing the appropriations process is to bar members of Congress from accepting contributions from special interests with business in front of the legislative committees on which they sit. This means that private prison companies such as GEO Group Inc. would be prohibited from donating campaign cash to members of the committees that fund and oversee them.
Conclusion
There is no legitimate reason for the Trump administration to separate children from their parents or jail families together. For comparison, the Obama administration’s Family Case Management Program cost taxpayers just $36 dollars per day and ensured that all immigrant families checked in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and reported for court dates. The program also allowed families to stay together—and did not subject them to the traumatic experience of being jailed. Yet despite its 99 percent effectiveness rate, the Trump administration terminated it barely a year after it was launched.
Rather than wasting taxpayer dollars to reward private prison companies, the Trump administration should protect children from the trauma of family separation and family incarceration. The Trump administration created these expensive and inhumane policies—and it can easily end them in order to pursue humane and effective alternatives.
Sharita Gruberg is the associate director of the LGBT Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress. | {
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What's it take to have a well-run city?
Just look around, Louisvillians.
Derby City is scoring high with WalletHub in a new survey that ranks Louisville as the 10th Best-Run City in America.
The survey results were determined by the city's operating efficiency and how well officials manage and spend public funds. WalletHub compared the quality of services residents receive against the city's total budget, according to a press release.
Here's how Louisville stacked up:
34 th – Financial Stability
89 th – Education
108 th – Health
91 st – Safety
53 rd – Economy
121 st – Infrastructure & Pollution
6th – Total Budget per Capita
And here's the full report.
The No. 1 best-run city? Nampa, Idaho. We're not sure where that is, but we bet it's great.
Lexington friends, you're ranked No. 5 on this list. Way to go!
The worst-run city is, drumroll, please ... our nation's capital. Sorry, Washington, D.C., residents but, according to this survey, you're not getting your money's worth.
Taylor Riley is a producer at the Courier-Journal. You can reach her at [email protected].
You may like:Here's how much you need to live comfortably in Louisville
More:New riverboat, the Mary M. Miller, set to launch on July 20
More:Master magician Lance Burton reappears in Louisville as a movie star | {
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Walter Chang is no ordinary man. He did what most people can only dream of. He quit his job and traveled across the globe for three years and he has made something beautiful out of it. He saved up for two and half years and went on an epic trip trip that spanned 60 countries.
From Chile to Zimbabwe to South Korea to Namibia, Chang traveled and created the most amazing video. 100% inspirational stuff, this. | {
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The audience started sniffling well before the end of the first video, a Thai life-insurance commercial titled “Silence of Love,” which revolves around a teenage girl and her deaf father. By the ad’s conclusion, the sniffling had given way to open weeping. Over the next 40 minutes, as a series of ever sadder selections played—animated shorts, movie clips, YouTube memorials for pet cats—the sobs only grew louder.
It was a Saturday night in February, and the people crammed into a small conference room at a mental-health center in northern Tokyo had come for an evening of communal rui-katsu, or “tear seeking.” Hidefumi Yoshida, who was leading the free event, explained that crying clears the mind and reduces stress. “Whether you’ve had a tough time at work, or trouble with a diet, or relationship problems, crying can help you reset,” he told the 20 men and women around me, who ranged from college students to middle-aged office workers.
The first such crying event in Tokyo was organized in 2013 by Hiroki Terai, a former salesman who had previously launched a successful business conducting cathartic (though unofficial) divorce ceremonies. After watching his clients shed tears and then leave on better terms, he got the idea to start hosting rui-katsu events. “I realized that people cannot cry unless they make a conscious effort,” he told the newspaper The Asahi Shimbun. | {
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Year-old animation test, the models have since been redone
The whole roster so far...
I have the ambition to create a short trailer for my mockup of Super Mario Huddle.
Celebrating E3, I'll let you have a peek at my current progress on the roster.
This is a follow up to my years old post: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/N2D4N | {
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Actually, how to think about buying a house.
You don't see a lot of ads trying to sell you on spending too much money on a house. It's more subtle than that. The marketing is all around us, and has been for years. The enormous social pressure and the expectations that come with it lead to misunderstandings and confusion. Here's my advice to someone in the market:
In an era where house prices rise reliably (which was 1963 to 2007), it was almost impossible to overpay for a house. It was an efficient market, and rising prices cover many mistakes. Investing in houses in the USA was a no-brainer. More leverage and more at stake just paid off more in the end. This consistent, multi-generational rise taught us more than an ad every could: buy a lot of house with as little downpayment as you could. A house is not just an investment, it's a place to live. This is the only significant financial investment that has two functions. Things like cars and boats always go down in value, so most of the time, if you're investing, you're doing it in something that you don't have to fix, water, fuel or live in. You shouldn't fall in love with a bond or a stock or a piece of gold, because if you do, you won't be a smart investor. The problem (as people who sell and fix and build houses understand) is that you just might fall in love with a house. What a dumb reason to make the largest financial investment of your life. The psychology of down markets is irrational. Rising house prices might be efficient (many bidders for a single item lead to higher prices), but when there aren't so many bidders, irrational sellers (see #2) don't lower their prices accordingly. So, inventories get longer and it's easy for the prospective buyer to think that a certain price is the 'right' price because so many people are offering houses at that price. Just because someone offers a price, though, doesn't mean it's fair in a given market. Along the same lines, anchoring has a huge impact on housing prices. If someone offers a house for $800,000 and you think it's worth half that, you don't offer half that. No, of course not. The price is a mental and emotional anchor, and you're likely to offer far more. The social power of a house is huge. When you buy a big house or an expensive house, you are making a statement to your in-laws, your family, your neighbors and yourself. Nothing wrong with that, but the question you must ask yourself is, "how big a statement can I afford?" How much are you willing to spend on personal marketing and temporary self-esteem? Debt is an evil plot to keep you poor. If buying a bigger house (or even a house with a living room or a garage) is going to keep you in credit card debt, you've made a huge financial error, one that could cost you millions. By the time you buy a house, you probably have a family. Which means that this is a joint decision, a group decision, a decision made under stress by at least two people, probably people that don't have a lot of practice talking rationally about significant financial decisions that also have emotional and social underpinnings. Ooph. You've been warned. Perhaps you could add some artificial rigor to the conversation so that it doesn't become a referendum on your marriage or careers and is instead about the house. If you have a steady job, matching your mortgage to your income isn't dumb. But if you are a freelancer, an entrepreneur or a big thinker, a mortgage can wipe you out. That's because the pressure to make your monthly nut is so big you won't take the risks and do the important work you need to do to actually get ahead. When you have a choice between creating a sure-thing average piece of work or a riskier breakthrough, the mortgage might be just enough to persuade you to hold back. Real estate brokers, by law, work for the seller (unless otherwise noted). And yet buyers often try to please the broker. You'll never see her again, don't worry about it. [Let me be really clear about what I wrote here, just in case you'd like to misinterpret it: When a prospect sees an ad or goes to an open house, she is about to interact with a broker. That broker, in almost every case, is hired by the seller and has a fiduciary responsibility to the seller to get the very best price for the house. There are exceptions, like buyer's brokers, but those brokers, as I said, note that they are representing the buyer–how can you represent someone without telling them? Many brokers like to pretend to themselves that they are representing both sides, and while that's a nice concept, that's not the law.] You're probably not going to be able to flip your house in nine months for a big profit. Maybe not even nine years. So revisit #2 and imagine that there is no financial investment, just a house you love. And spend accordingly.
I'm optimistic about the power of a house to change your finances, to provide a foundation for a family and our communities. I'm just not sure you should buy more house than you can afford merely because houses have such good marketing. | {
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With the weather finally warming up, investors were feeling some spring in their step.
The Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 closed at record highs Monday. The Dow jumped over 112 points to close at 16,695.47, and the S&P 500 ended the day about a percent higher at 1,896.65. Even the Nasdaq, which has been volatile amidst a pullback in tech stocks, got a nice bounce of roughly 1.8%.
Investors poured money into the perceived safety of blue chip companies and seem to believe the economy is improving, albeit slowly. There's still concern about tech stocks though as investors fret about sky-high valuations and, in the case of some tech companies, unproven business models.
CNNMoney's Fear and Greed Index has been languishing in fear mode for the last month, mainly dragged down by tech stocks, but the index finally moved into neutral mode on Monday.
There was also a bit of that merger Monday feeling in the air, after Hillshire Brands (HSH) announced plans to acquire rival Pinnacle Foods (PF) for $6.6 billion. Shares of Pinnacle surged 13% on the news, while shares of Hillshire dropped 3%.
But stocktwits trader CrosbyVenture thinks Hillshire made out nicely.
"On $PF, it looks like $HSH is getting a sweet deal, " he said.
Related: Hillshire Brands to buy Pinnacle Foods for $6.6 billion
Investors are also on the lookout for another mega health care deal, of which there have been aplenty so far this year.
Pfizer (PFE)shares rose slightly after the company published a letter to a parliamentary committee in the United Kingdom arguing its case for its proposed $106 billion acquisition of AstraZeneca (AZN).
The chief executives of both companies will be grilled by British lawmakers Tuesday and Wednesday, reflecting high levels of public anxiety over the impact a takeover could have on jobs and scientific research in the U.K.
Gogo (GOGO) soared 6% after the company beat earnings estimates. The inflight internet provider reported a narrower loss compared to a year earlier and said that its revenue climbed 35%.
One StockTwits trader was bullish about the stock based on firsthand experience.
"$GOGO I've used GOGO a number of times in flight and thought their service was great/ easy to use / seamless," said TheDragonfly.
But another StockTwits user isn't convinced that Gogo can continue to fly until it actually starts making money.
"$GOGO Dead money until it proves it has a clue on how to turn a profit," said ricster3.
Shares of J.C.Penney (JCP) popped 4% after Goldman Sachs analysts maintained their "neutral" rating on the stock, but said they expect to see continuing progress from the struggling retailer's turnaround efforts.
With Monday's gains, J.C. Penney shares are now flat for 2014. They've made an impressive 60% run in the last three months, but are still down nearly 50% over the last year.
Investors will have more insight into the company's progress, or lack thereof, on Thursday when it reports earnings.
StockTwits trader operaghost88 isn't buying into the J.C.Penney hype.
"$JCP This is a bump right before earnings. Very typical. Then it will go to where it should be," he said.
Ralph Lauren (RL) suffered after the iconic clothing company's stock was hit with an analyst downgrade. The stock has been sliding and is down more than 17% this year as it struggles to keep up with the competition.
CNN's Tech 30 Index still negative for 2014
Twitter (TWTR) crawled back Monday with an almost 6% bump after an analyst at SunTrust upgraded the stock. Shares plunged last week after insiders were allowed to sell Twitter following the expiration of a lockup period tied to the company's initial public offering in November.
A number of tech stocks had a great day with Netflix (NFLX), Facebook (FB) and Amazon (AMZN) some of the biggest gainers among companies in the S&P 500.
Investors also kept a close eye on geopolitical developments, but they seemed to shrug off Sunday's vote in a region of eastern Ukraine that showed an overwhelming majority in favor of independence. Ukraine and several Western countries have condemned the referendum, organized by pro-Russian separatists.
European Union foreign ministers met to discuss the situation in Ukraine today. They modestly expanded sanctions on Russia by placing travel bans and freezing assets of additional Russian power players who are close to Vladimir Putin.
Related: Boko Haram threatens Nigeria's economic future
European markets closed higher. Most major Asian markets ended firmer. The Shanghai Composite index surged by just over 2%. | {
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8065 炎夏出门，让你撩倒众生！钛钢材质！高贵但不贵！驴家男士时尚Monogram链式手镯！ | {
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So two days ago (I work overnights, so it might have been a day or three... it's hard to keep track sometimes) I got a package from ThinkGeek.com.
My first thought was "I didn't order anything from... oh... OH COOL!!"
I tore open the package in my car (I was on my way to work) and out tumbled The Hungry Scientist Cookbook and a Firefly Ltd Sticker that I'm going to apply to my car as soon as I can figure out a way to weatherproof it.
I couldn't have been happier and spent my lunch hour browsing through the book.
I admit it; I'm a geek. Things like that amuse the hell out of me, so thank you, secret santa! | {
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During a new interview in support of his new film Truth, Spider-Man 3 villain Topher Grace challenged detractors of the film to put themselves in the director's position and run a gargantuan production with a huge budget and huge expectations.
"I know the movie did well for Sony, but I also know a lot of people weren't happy with it," Grace told The Hollywood Reporter. "I think Sam [Raimi] is so talented. I remember one time I was on ninth unit. (Laughs.) Ninth unit? It's like he's running a small country. This summer, there was a movie like that where people are just slamming a big studio movie. I would love to see anyone who's slamming one of those movies try to fit in Sam Raimi's position. He was like the president of a small country — by the way, it had the gross national income of a small country, too. I have huge respect for him. I think, on a whole, he did such a fantastic job [on that trilogy]."
According to ComicBook.com contributors and fans, though, the film doesn't even crack the top 50 best comic book movies ever made:
The idea that a film making money is a valid justification for its existence is curious coming from Grace, who in 2012 screened a fan edit he made of the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy for friends and a small number of reporters in Hollywood. Titled Star Wars Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back, Grace trimmed the 700-minute runtime of the three films down to one 85-minute feature which, according to those in attendance, actually worked pretty well.
And excised Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace almost completely. | {
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What is Whole Health?
Whole Health is VA’s cutting-edge approach to care that supports your health and well-being. Whole Health centers around what matters to you, not what is the matter with you. This means your health team will get to know you as a person, before working with you to develop a personalized health plan based on your values, needs, and goals.
Find out how you can #LiveWholeHealth from home through VA’s ongoing self-care blog series. This series highlights Whole Health resources—such as video sessions for yoga or meditation—that you can follow along at home to live healthier and happier.
How to Get Started
Start a conversation with your health team about your needs and priorities, or learn about Whole Health practices from other Veterans through the Introduction to Whole Health and Taking Charge of My Life and Health courses.
VA staff and Veteran peers will support and guide you through the Personal Health Inventory self-assessment and help you create your Personal Health Plan. What matters to you will shape your plan and drive your choice of Well-being Programs and clinical treatments.
The road to better health and well-being starts here, with you.
Start Living Whole Health
Veteran Resources Whole Health Basics These resources will help you as you start your Whole Health journey and develop your Personal Health Plan.
Whole Health Success Stories
Acupuncture on the Mountainside Practices such as acupuncture, yoga, massage, tai chi, clinical hypnosis, biofeedback, and others, are quickly growing treatment options for Veterans receiving VA care. Medical Journal Features Whole Health JACM takes a closer look at VA’s Whole Health approach and the challenges and successes that come with this transformation.
Video Resources Whole Health: What Matters to You? This brief video explains VA’s Whole Health approach and how it puts you at the center of your care. | {
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Image copyright Reuters Image caption DUP leader Arlene Foster met EU negotiator Michel Barnier on Tuesday
The Democratic Unionist Party's 10 Westminster MPs are planning to vote down the Budget later this month if they are unhappy about the government's Brexit plans, the BBC understands.
Theresa May relies on DUP support in key votes because she does not have a majority in the House of Commons.
But the DUP could abandon this deal if Brexit means new barriers between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, Newsnight's Nick Watt said.
The Budget takes place on 29 October.
If the DUP voted against it the government would face possible defeat, which could lead to a no-confidence vote.
Earlier it abstained - rather than backing the government - in a vote on the Agriculture Bill in what a DUP source said was a "warning shot".
The UK and the EU have yet to strike a deal on how Brexit will work, with less than six months to go before the UK leaves on 29 March.
One of the key things they have not yet agreed is how to prevent there being new border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which is a member of the EU.
There have been warnings that a new "hard border" will damage businesses and undermine peace in Northern Ireland.
The DUP has dismissed the warnings about the peace process. It says it will not tolerate the EU's suggestion of Northern Ireland staying in line with EU customs rules to enable trade to flow freely across the border.
Mrs May has also rejected this proposal, saying it would undermine the integrity of the UK.
Visiting the European Parliament, DUP leader Arlene Foster refused to say whether her MPs would vote against the Budget after being asked several times by reporters.
She reiterated that she would not accept any new barriers to trade going in either direction between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Barnier sets out EU's plan
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier, meanwhile, said there would have to be new checks on goods travelling between the EU and the UK because of the UK's decision to leave the EU's single market and customs union.
The EU and UK have agreed that these checks "cannot be performed at the border" and the EU proposes to carry them out "in the least intrusive way possible", he said.
"Both the EU and UK exclude having a physical border on the island of Ireland," he said.
"Therefore, what will arrive into Northern Ireland will also be arriving in our single market.
"There will be administrative procedures that do not exist today for goods travelling to Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. Our challenge is to make sure those procedures are as easy as possible and not too burdensome, in particular for smaller businesses.
"I understand why such procedures are politically sensitive but... Brexit was not our choice, it is the choice of the UK. Our proposal tries to help the UK in managing the negative fallout of Brexit in Northern Ireland in a way that respects the territorial integrity of the UK."
He said that under the EU's proposed "backstop" to prevent a hard border, companies in the rest of the UK sending goods to Northern Ireland would fill out customs declarations online in advance.
"The only visible systematic checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK would involve scanning the bar codes on lorries and containers, which could be done on ferries and at transit ports," he said.
While regulatory checks on industrial goods could be done at company premises, checks on live animals and animal products had to happen at the border, he said, which would mean a "significant increase in terms of scale" to existing checks.
DUP 'won't be bounced'
Newsnight political editor Nick Watt
Losing a budget vote has traditionally been seen as a withdrawal of confidence in the government. One former Tory cabinet minister told Newsnight: "The DUP should be putting the fear of God into Downing St."
The DUP is growing alarmed because it fears Downing St is edging towards a deal with the EU that may lead to additional regulatory checks on goods travelling between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, has called for such checks to avoid creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. This would be achieved by aligning Northern Ireland with the rules of the single market.
The prime minister has strongly rejected the Barnier plan. But senior DUP sources fear that Downing Street may agree to some form of regulatory checks.
One DUP source told Newsnight: "If we are not happy with what happens next week [in Brussels] we won't be bounced into anything. If she doesn't take our concerns on board, we will take the view that Theresa May is not the leader to take us through to a safe Brexit."
Read Nick's blog
On Twitter former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, one of the leading critics of Theresa May's Brexit strategy, responded to reports of a new "backstop" arrangement being negotiated between the UK and the EU.
It would make the UK "a permanent EU colony" with "no right to escape" from the EU's single market and customs union, he claimed.
But Mel Stride, the financial secretary to the Treasury, told the BBC the government had a "very strong position" that there would be "no border down the Irish Sea".
He predicted the UK was heading for a deal with the EU and would be keeping the DUP "on board".
"There is no difference between our position on the substantive issue," he added. | {
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The 2016 Blast The latest POLITICO scoops and coverage of the 2016 elections. Email Sign Up
Tweets from https://twitter.com/politico/lists/team-politico
The stage before the CNN Republican presidential debate in Miami, Fla. on March 10. | AP Photo Who talked most at the GOP debate?
Marco Rubio and John Kasich were debating for their campaign lives. Donald Trump debuted a whole new style. Ted Cruz tried to figure out how to turn all of it into a bonus for his campaign.
And yet, all in all, it was a mellow evening — void of the personal attacks, shouting matches and endless interruptions of debates past. Perhaps fittingly, the candidates shared the spotlight more evenly than in debates past.
Last time, Trump carried the day, talking for a full 27 minutes when his closest follower (Cruz) spoke for 19. Tonight, the speaking times of each candidate were much tighter with Cruz and Rubio swapping for second throughout the night, and while Trump remained on top, it was by a far lower margin.
After a slow start, the GOP front-runner perked up and firmly defended his relationship with Israel and Russia (specifically Putin). And, of course, nothing is more Trump-esque than Trump flexing his lead in the polls:
"The other thing is I beat Hillary and I will give you the list, I beat Hillary in many of the polls that have been taken and each week I get better and better," he said.
Trump concluded the night again talking about the new voters he says he's bringing to the Republican Party.
All and all, the candidates remained in their campaign comfort zones. Kasich continued to lean on his positive campaign and his legislative experience on the Hill and in Ohio. Cruz kept his jabs to the Obama administration’s lack of political will and Trump’s flip-flops.
And as it happens, the candidates' ranking in talking times matched their ranking in terms of pledged delegates. Here are their final speaking times for tonight:
| {
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A 1.5-m new species of giant jellyfish that washed up on a beach near Hobart in Tasmania, pictured on February 6, 2014 Josie Lim/AFP SYDNEY (Reuters) - Residents of a sleepy hamlet in Tasmania found a previously unknown kind of giant jellyfish washed up on a beach, prompting excitement among scientists in Australia as they work to formally name and classify the creature.
About 1.5 meters (five feet) across, the white jellyfish with a pink spot in the middle is believed to be a relative of the lion's mane species popularly known as a "snotty" as it resembles mucus.
"There's the excitement, that it's a new species and then there's the 'Oh my God factor' that it happens to be the size of a Smart car," Lisa-ann Gershwin, a scientist at the government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, told Reuters. "It's like Disneyland for marine biologists."
A family walking along the beach found the giant jellyfish in late January and sent a photo to the research organisation in Hobart, Australia's southernmost city. Scientists believe the jellyfish was later washed out to sea.
Gershwin and other scientists are also trying to discover why there has been an enormous rise in jellyfish populations in the waters around Tasmania this year.
"There's something going on that's causing a whole lot of species to bloom in staggering numbers and we don't know why yet," she said. "It's so thick with jellyfish that it's like swimming in bubble tea."
(Reporting by Pauline Askin; Editing by John O'Callaghan and Ron Popeski) | {
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Sometimes, the best thing for your business is to fire someone. Sometimes the worst thing for your business is to fire someone.
I got an email from Kelli, who worked for a small startup. The boss was somewhat volatile and erratic. His business partners had even hired a counselor to try to smooth the relationships over between this guy and the other employees. Kelli often felt undermined and under appreciated by this guy, but stuck it out because the money was good and she enjoyed the work, which she was good at.
Until, one day, her boss threw a temper tantrum directed at her. Kelli gave her two weeks notice on the spot, with full plans to transition all her work. The boss? Continued his temper tantrum into the next day and said she couldn't quit, because he was firing her. Right now. As in, hand me your badge and your keys and get out of the office immediately.
Kelli did, and went and found an awesome new job. The business? Well, they email her constantly. "Can you make these changes to the website?" or "What's the password to this system?" and "Could you give me some advice on this project?" After doing a few of these things, I advised Kelli to stop it, and if they had any more questions that she wanted to answer, she should do it for a high consulting fee.
Her (former) boss, on the other hand, wins a Bad Boss of the Week honorable mention, but his partners win the actual award. Why? Because while the direct supervisor was a horrible person, and an even worse manager, his bad behavior was predictable. Everyone knew he was awful. For goodness' sake, they hired a counselor to come in and help him learn to deal with people.
Here's the thing. When you start a company with friends, or even with random people that you met on Craigslist, you, obviously, can feel a loyalty to them. Loyalty is a great thing, but when your friend, who may even have awesome technical or creative or whatever skills, is so bad with people that he throws temper tantrums and then fires someone who had already resigned, just so he could "win," you're destroying your own business.
After all, Kelli would have been happy to work out the two weeks and give all the passwords to the proper people, and fix whatever small problems they still had, and anything else that was needed. Instead, Mr. Ego kicked her out the door before she could transition anything.
He isn't the only boss that pulls stunts like this. Yes, sometimes when a key employee is headed to a competitor, you don't want that person to stick around for your next strategy meeting. However, in most cases, you should not fire someone who has just resigned. You can be hurt, you can be offended, you can even go home and cry into your pillow, but if you fire that person, you may end up crawling back when you realize that that employee actually needed to transition some knowledge.
If you are a C Level person, it's your responsibility to ensure that your colleagues at the C level (and really, all levels) are not horrible jerks. Kelli's boss should have been fired years earlier, but for whatever reason, his business partners kept him on. Even if you, yourself, are a nice person, you are a very, very, very bad boss if you allow other people in your company to behave like this.
And if I can't appeal to your sense of decency, let me appeal to your bottom line. Turnover costs a fortune. Lost passwords, dropped clients, and unfinished projects also cost a fortune. And this is what you get with a mean, volatile manager. Yes, I know Steve Jobs was supposedly a jerk and look at Apple! You are not Apple and Kelli's boss was not Steve Jobs. So, stop allowing this behavior to continue at your company. | {
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Milos Raonic wanted a dominating win Sunday after what he felt was a lax effort two days earlier.
He did exactly that and in dominant fashion, beating Izak van der Merwe 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 to clinch the Davis Cup best-of-five series over South Africa.
The victory secures Canada's spot in the elite World Group, while South Africa is relegated to zone play.
Raonic was happy he won his opening singles match but wasn't pleased with his performance. With the World Group spot in sight, the 21-year-old from Thornhill, Ont., took to the court hungry to finish on top.
"I came out with more of an accomplished goal, other than winning. I came out, did a lot of things well, played on my terms and did what I wanted to do," he said. "The other day I waited for him to lose to me. Today, I played."
Vasek Pospisil won the other singles matches in straight sets Friday, but the Canadians missed a chance to clinch Saturday at Uniprix Stadium when Toronto's Daniel Nestor and Vancouver's Pospisil lost to van der Merwe and Raven Klaasen in doubles.
South Africa entered the tie matches down two of its top players. Kevin Anderson didn't travel to Montreal and Rik de Voest was forced to withdraw on the eve of the tournament with a wrist injury.
"We came here wanting to win but unfortunately things didn't work out the way we planned. Obviously Rik getting injured didn't help our cause," South Africa captain John Laffnie de Jager said. "Two of our top guys didn't play. The team that was here did their best. . .We've just got to keep fighting."
Raonic got off to a quick start Sunday against van der Merwe, breaking the South African in the opening game. His renowned serve was once again his strength, as the 21-year-old held serve in each game of the first set.
"It doesn't inspire confidence when you lose your serve in the very first game. He hit a great shot to break me," said van der Merwe. "He really stepped up his game today, played well and deserved to win."
Raonic's return game helped him stake out a 3-0 lead in the second set, breaking van der Merwe twice in the middle frame. That, combined with ability to hold serve made the World No. 15 tough to take down.
"It's the variety on his serve that makes it very difficult to return against him. There are other people that can serve with force on the tour but he's got the variety. . . and it's very difficult to read," van der Merwe said.
Raonic trailed just once in overall games, van der Merwe picking up the first one of the third set.
As each side held serve in the clinching set, van der Merwe nearly broke the streak in the final game, climbing back from a 40-15 deficit to force a deuce. But Raonic stayed strong for the advantage for the match point.
The Canadian finished the match, which lasted just one hour 45 minutes, with 13 aces and 24 service winners.
It marked a second straight year that Canada won its Davis Cup tie to advance to the World Group, going overseas and defeating Israel. A loss to France put the team back a step in February, leading to the rubber matches against South Africa. But with a good showing under its belt in Montreal, Canadian captain Martin Laurendeau is confident in his team's future.
"Doing it two years in a row shows we belong at this level. We started off great and finished great," he said. "(Winning 4-1) sends a message to other teams that we have a lot of depth.
"When all of our players are healthy and competitive, I think we can take on a lot of teams in the World Group level."
Frank Dancevic of Niagara Falls, Ont., defeated Nikala Scholtz 6-2, 6-2 in the final singles match with the World Group spot already locked up.
Canada will find out its next opponent when the draw is held on Wednesday. | {
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The 26-year-old Argentine woman who cut off her lover's genitals with a pair of garden shears had kept a notepad where she had written down ideas on ways to mutilate sex organs.
Architect Brenda Barattini allegedly attacked Sergio Fernandez, a 40-year-old reggae singer, with a pair of pruning shears as he was sleeping in her apartment in the central Argentinian city of Cordoba.
The entries in the book, found by investigators in her flat, include words and expressions like 'scalpel', 'cut him', 'tape' and 'his mobile' and end with the message 'Ask for help'.
Shocking attack: Brenda Barattini, 26, an architect from Argentina, cut off her 40-year-old lover's penis and testicles using a pair of garden shears
Barattini, who had just graduated from university, is being held in prison on suspicion of wounding, and is due to be questioned over the incident at her home in an upmarket neighbourhood of city.
Her lawyer Carlos Nayi has claimed the 26-year-old blonde was defending herself from a sex attack after being fooled into letting Sergio into her apartment.
The claims have been rubbished by the musician's lawyer Eduardo Perez who says his client was attacked after being blindfolded as part of a sex game and Sergio and Brenda had been in a relationship for several months.
He has also hinted his client may have been attacked after telling Barattini he wanted to end their relationship.
The alleged discovery of the notepad - and Mr Perez's comments about the relationship reaching its finale - has given rise to speculation the architect may have acted out of revenge.
Shear pain: Sergio Fernandez is pictured covered in blood after the attack, which took place in Barattini's flat, allegedly during a sex game
Barattini claims Fernandez was subjecting her to sexual assault, but his lawyer said the pair had been sleeping together for some time
There have also been unconfirmed reports the alleged attacker may have discovered messages on Sergio's phone that pointed to him being unfaithful.
There is no evidence at this stage confirming Brenda was sexually attacked - and state prosecutor Bettina Croppi has gone on record to say the authorities are 'very far' from that hypothesis.
Prosecutors have yet to comment on the reported discovery of the notepad.
Barattini's lawyer said yesterday: 'There's justification for what happened. The information I've received is that she was the victim of a sex attack.
'She let him into her apartment because he's someone who's in a rock band and is an acquaintance of her brother but once inside, instead of removing a musical instrument as he was supposed to, he attacked her sexually and she assumed a defensive attitude. Whether or not she acted excessively is for the courts to decide.'
The claims were rubbished by Mr Fernandez's lawyer.
Mr Perez said: 'I don't understand what's happened. This was a peaceful encounter.'
Insisting the pair had been seeing each other for several months, he added: 'They were in the middle of things. He wasn't asleep. They began with a sexual game in which he was blindfolded.
'There is evidence that was at the crime scene.'
The horror incident happened on Saturday night in a neighbourhood called Nueva Cordoba, one of the most fashionable and sought-after areas of Cordoba.
State prosecutor Bettina Croppi said the only thing she knew for sure at the moment was that the injuries that Sergio had suffered were 'very serious.'
She admitted: 'It's very possible he's lost the ability to be able to father children' and said it had been confirmed the couple knew each other but it was not clear yet if they were in a relationship.
Mr Fernandez was taken to hospital after losing a large amount of blood and is now in a stable condition
Brenda has yet to give a statement and will not be formally questioned until later this week after her psychiatric evaluation. Tests are also understood to have taken place to determine if she was raped or sexually attacked.
Mr Fernandez is still in intensive care in hospital and is not well enough to be quizzed.
Mrs Croppi said: 'What I can say is that the man wasn't tied up when police arrived. He was helped by neighbours first and then by paramedics who arrived after the police.'
This morning it emerged Sergio may still make a full recovery.
The initial reports were gloomy, with experts predicting his chances of fathering any children after his experience were fairly remote.
But Maximiliano Tittarelli, deputy director of the hospital Sergio was taken to for emergency treatment, said the fact a urologist was on duty had helped him after the unnamed medical student at the apartment block where he was injured assisted initially in stemming the flow of blood.
Mr Tittarelli told a local TV station: 'His development is good. He's awake. We have to see how his recovery goes but for now it's very good.
'When he was admitted a duty urologist was in A&E and that meant the operation took place in the best possible circumstances.' | {
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ComiXology, Amazon's online comic book service, unveiled a new unlimited content subscription option on Tuesday. The $6 per month ComiXology Unlimited plan gives subscribers unfettered access to the service's archive, which includes titles from Image, Dark Horse, IDW and a bunch more -- basically every notable publisher outside of Marvel and DC. ComiXology will continue to sell individual issues from the Big Two, it just won't offer them on the unlimited plan. | {
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Eric D. Lawrence
Detroit Free Press
Need to travel from Detroit to Chicago with your teacup poodle? Starting next month, the train will now be an option.
Amtrak plans to allow small dogs and cats in carriers to ride with their owners on trains in Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin for $25. It's an expansion of a program begun in Illinois in 2014. Since then, more than 6,300 pets have traveled on Amtrak trains as the program has been expanded, according to an Amtrak news release today.
Pet reservations will be accepted for Blue Water, Wolverine Service, Pere Marquette, Missouri River Runner Service and Hiawatha Service trains for trips beginning Monday. Pets will have to remain in a carrier under the seat of the passenger with whom they are traveling.
Here are Amtrak's requirements for traveling pets:
Maximum weight, including carrier, is 20 pounds.
Only one pet per passenger.
There is a limit of five pet reservations per train, which are allotted on a first-come-first-served basis.
Pets must remain in carriers and under the passenger's seat.
Service animals continue to be allowed on trains free of charge.
For information, go to https://www.amtrak.com/carry-on-pets
Contact Eric D. Lawrence: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence. | {
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GREG COTE'S RANDOM EVIDENCE BLOG: MIAMI. SPORTS. AND BEYOND.
1) It is THURSDAY, AUGUST 6. In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Hot Button Top 10, Miami's greatest sports streaks, Walter the Lion Killer & more. 2) Follow us on Twitter @gregcote. Also on Facebook, Instagram, Vine and now Periscope, too.
DOLPHINS GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL: NAME THE TOP 10 PLAYERS IN FRANCHISE HISTORY: As 2015 training camp is underway and the club's 50th anniversary season nears, we have poured 49 seasons of Dolphins players into a giant funnel and
let through only the best of the best -- who we think of as the 30 greatest players in Fins history. That's why the (alphabetical) poll below is uncommonly long. We are giving you 30 prime contenders and inviting you to select the top 10. Make it "greatest," "most important," "favorite" -- whatever criteria you choose. Think it'll be easy? It won't bet. For me, about half of the list, 15 or 16 guys, may be Top 10-worthy. Chances are you'll be leaving out Hall of Famers or others you hate to omit. Hey, nobody said life was fair! (Or easy). From a consensus of all readers' ballots we'll eventually get to an overall Top 10. I'll be largely away from the blog on holiday for a few days so we leave you this to chew on. We'll be back here Wednesday night or Thursday morning to make official the final Top 10. Ready? Vote!
Remember, you may vote for up to 10 players and are encouraged to do so!
Deciphering a 10-vote: A 10-vote poll means 10 percent would be the maximum voting percentage if everyone cast the maximum 10 votes. Any total over 10% means some voters are voting only for that person. A percentage over 5 means that person is being included on at least half of all ballots.
Check back often to monitor continually evolving results... | {
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BlazingWashington.com is looking for a part-time marketing and field representative in the Seattle area.
This is an independent contractor position with flexible working hours.
5 -10 hours a week @ $20 an hour + equity in a multimedia startup with Southern California roots in the cannabis, travel and publishing industries.
More hours will be available as the summer goes along.
Requirements:
21+
Cannabis activist
Facebook and Instagram experience
Have an interest in marketing and branding
Ability to communicate swiftly and clearly
Have a creative mindset and an intensity of purpose
Own transportation
Own a camera (smartphone is okay)
Must be able to attend a special event on the Lyon Pride Cannabus from Seattle to Tacoma on May 26th from 7 p.m. – 4 a.m. (will be paid for nine hours)(article of the event can be found on the front page)
Must be able to start by the week of 5/21
Duties:
Assist with Facebook and Instagram pages and campaigns
Visit cannabis stores to communicate with budtenders, managers, and upkeep of promo material
Help plan and execute events
Cover events, including festivals and concerts and document in blog posts
Contribute to the creative direction of the project
Salary will be paid weekly, events/festivals/concerts and transportation costs will be covered in a stipend.
Please send a resume with a picture and direct all questions to:
[email protected] | {
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One of the ideas we had for intermittent episode formats after the rebrand was song drafts. We went over and over how to categorize the songs and we thought it would be fun as hell to draft them by year for our ultimate mixtapes.
We started at the year 2000, which in hindsight may have been the biggest mistake we ever made, missing Blink-182’s Enema of the State by 7 months. (Don’t worry, we found a loophole for that one.)
After Tom embarrasses himself yet again with a failed sports reference, Pat suggests the guys do a snake draft, and Tom rolls his D&D dice to see who goes first. | {
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A 44-year-old Pennsylvania high school teacher was charged on Friday by state police with having sexual intercourse with a male student.
Nikki Varney, 44, has been charged with institutional sexual assault, statutory sexual assault, corruption of minors and unlawful contact with minors, reports PennLive.com.
The investigation began after the school reported to the police that Varney was allegedly in a sexual relationship with a male student, police said.
The Willamsburg Community School District's spokesperson told local media that Varney has been placed on administrative leave.
According to the district's website, Varney has been at the school since 1997 and she currently teaches science, chemistry and physics. | {
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- Get daily screen shots and dev news
- Gain access to Peace Island Alpha, upon Kickstarter completion
- Your name appears in the game credits
- Early access to Peace Island beta demo
- 10 Peace Island postcards
- A certificate guaranteeing you a free copy of the full version of Peace Island, when released
- Signed & Numbered "Cats of Peace Island" print.
- Have your name added to "Founder's Rock'" and woven into the story of the game!
- A memorial in honor of one of your departed pets will be added to graveyard at the heart of the island
Less | {
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Банки Нидерландов заявили о принятии «превентивных мер» после сообщений о кредитных картах, похищенных после крушения Boeing 777 на востоке Украины, сообщает Agence France-Presse.
«Международные СМИ сообщают, что банковские карты потерпевших были похищены», — заявили в голландский банковской ассоциации.
Банки примут превентивные меры в случае необходимости, при этом любые потери, понесенные родственниками погибших, будут возвращены.
Самолет с 298 пассажирами, принадлежавший компании Malaysian Airlines, был сбит 17 июля. Позднее было установлено гражданство всех пассажиров авиалайнера. | {
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A chicken stall owner was beaten up by a gang at Hoode village coming under Malpe police station here on Saturday. The police have arrested one person in connection with the assault.
The victim has been identified as Mohammed Ais, who has been running a chicken stall in Hoode, for the last 18 years. However, the victim, who has been admitted to the District Government Hospital here, and the police have different versions of the assault.
M.B. Boralingaiah, Superintendent of Police, said that a group of three to four persons came to Mr. Ais’s shop near the fish market and began speaking about the results of the Lok Sabha elections with him. This led to an altercation between the two.
Finally the members of the group began beating Mr. Ais. The police personnel, who were stationed on duty at a nearby ground, came to Mr. Ais’s rescue and nabbed one of the assaulters, while the rest escaped. A case had been registered at the Malpe police station and investigations were on.
But Mr. Ais told The Hindu that he was cooking food, for nearly 400 students at a nearby school, when seven persons came on four motorcycles asked for him with his daughter Ayesha at around 4.30 p.m. They later pushed her and came to him and asked if he was present when a victory procession [of the Bharatiya Janata Party] was taken out on May 16, to which he replied in the negative. They then beat him up.
He caught one of the assaulters named Ganesh and handed him over to the police, while the rest escaped on their motorcycles. Then he got admitted to the hospital here, he said.
Woman run over
A woman was killed after being hit by a police vehicle on national Highway 75 (Bangalore-Mangalore) near Thumbe here on Saturday night. Around 3.30 p.m., a jeep attached to the District Armed Reserve was travelling towards B.C. Road when it hit Philomena (34), who was crossing the road, said the Bantwal Rural Police. The police have booked the driver of the vehicle, Poovanappa, who was arrested later.
Commits suicide
A 63-year-old woman died after setting herself ablaze in Kapikad in Mulky police station limits on Friday. The police said Jalajakshi Shettigar (63) was staying in the house of her daughter.
Jalajakshi was not found in the house when daughter got up around 2 a.m. As she started searching for her mother, she reportedly saw flames around 100 metres away from the house.
She rushed to the spot with her neighbour and put off the fire. Jalajakshi was moved to a nearby hospital, where she died in the evening. | {
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Export/Download Printable Text (.txt) CSV Multiverse id (.txt) Markdown/Reddit MTGO (.dek) MTG Salvation
MTG Arena
Copy to clipboard
2 Distress (M12) 2 Go for the Throat (C17) 114 3 Hand of the Praetors (SOM) 2 Inkmoth Nexus (MBS) 45 4 Lashwrithe (C14) 4 Mutagenic Growth (MM2) 149 4 Phyrexian Crusader (MBS) 50 2 Plague Stinger (SOM) 59 2 Signal Pest (MBS) 131 2 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon (2XM) 107 2 Surgical Extraction (MM2) 99 20 Swamp (ZNR) 272 3 Undying Evil (DKA) 4 Virulent Wound (MBS) 4 Whispering Specter (NPH) 2 Doom Blade (EO2) 18 2 Grafdigger's Cage (M20) 227 2 Gut Shot (MM2) 117 4 Ratchet Bomb (2XM) 284 2 Relic Putrescence (SOM) 1 Sword of Feast and Famine (2XM) 296 2 Tragic Slip (MYS1) 109
Copied to clipboard. You can now import it in the MTG Arena client.
In TappedOut's comments/forums
In TappedOut's comments/forums with pie-chart
On your blog
This will require TappedOut.js included in your blog. | {
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Two militants blew themselves up on Thursday following an exchange of fire with Tunisian security forces in the city of Jilma, 250 km (156 miles) south of the capital Tunis, the interior ministry said.The militants killed themselves after being encircled by security forces who stormed their hideout in the city, the ministry said in a statement.After an uprising against autocratic leader Zine Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, Tunisia has been battlling militant groups operating in remote areas near the border with Algeria.Authorities estimate about 3,000 Tunisians have joined Islamic State and other jihadist groups in Iraq, Syria and neighbouring Libya, while high unemployment has stoked unrest in recent years in southern and central areasThe North African country saw three major attacks in 2015, including two against tourists, one at a museum in Tunis and the second on a beach in Sousse. The third targeted presidential guards in the capital, killing 12. All three attacks were claimed by Islamic State | {
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The Zhuang Zi has been my close friend for more than two decades, since we first met when I was an undergraduate, then all through my dissertation on it, and right up to the moment of this writing. Though the Zhuang Zi is, technically, a book – a proto-Daoist Chinese classic authored c300 BCE – my relationship with it differs from my relationship with any other book. I imagine that members of religious faiths feel like this about their revealed holy scriptures, which would be inexcusably diminished if understood simply as books.
But ‘holy scripture’ is no better when it comes to the Zhuang Zi. I do not venerate it. I consider it a partner, an adversary and a companion, one that learns from me and is changed by me, just as I learn from it and am changed by it every time we interact. Trust me: I know this book and, like any good friend, I’m pretty sure it would be unhappy at the thought of being venerated. (I understand that might sound strange but, then again, strange claims abound in the arena of sacred texts.)
Here too I’m running into problems, however. In speaking for the Zhuang Zi, I’m somewhat uncomfortable, just as I would be uncomfortable speaking for a friend. I’m not alone in my discomfort. Scholarly introductions to the Zhuang Zi frequently include disclaimers. Like Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard, Master Zhuang – the supposed author of this eponymous mystery – appears to have engineered his work to resist definitive interpretation. The late translator and sinologist Burton Watson captured how it feels to attempt straightforward exegesis: ‘Whenever I sit down and try to write seriously about Zhuang Zi,’ he explained, ‘I seem, somewhere in the back of my head, to hear Zhuang Zi cackling away at the presumption and futility of such an endeavour.’
I embrace the cackling that Watson describes, relishing the discomfort that inevitably accompanies attempts to pin it down. Even calling it a friend is starting to seem inadequate, inaccurate. Once again, the book is changing as I try to write seriously about it. That’s fine. It’s not a friend anymore. This bizarre combination of masterful fables, poems, dialogues, myths and philosophical musings – it’s a funhouse mirror for your soul, taking a crack at your most deeply held beliefs, destabilising you, forcing you to work just to take yourself seriously.
But just because it’s a funhouse mirror doesn’t make it frivolous. On the contrary: the Zhuang Zi is a jester, whose job description is to improve its readers – or, better, to benefit them. Jesters, despite their apparent frivolity, were essential to the courts that employed them. In addition to providing entertainment, they had licence to violate norms, providing a unique check on tyranny of all kinds: political, moral, linguistic. They spoke truth to power, just as the Zhuang Zi speaks truth to the easy dogmas that fix themselves inside me like bumper stickers on my soul. Its therapeutic cackling softens ossified beliefs that for too long have gone unquestioned and unmocked.
The Five Elders. From Album of 18 Daoist Paintings by Zhang Lu (1464-1538). Ink and eight colours on gold-flecked paper. Courtesy the Shanghai Museum/Wikipedia
If Confucians, Mohists and other members of classical Chinese schools of thought contemporaneous with the first appearance of the Zhuang Zi saw themselves as producing exemplary gentlemen (junzi, 君子), then the Zhuang Zi acts as jester to those gentlemen, and all role models since. Gentlemen – and the texts they live by – are straightforward guides. They educate through cataphasis: positive statements about the Good and the True. Jesters, by contrast, educate through apophasis, literally un-saying. Instead of statements, riddles; instead of commandments, questions. The gentleman supplies positive content, exemplary behaviour, a stable landing place for the student’s understanding, whereas the jester actively undermines the student’s ability to stabilise herself, providing content that is framed by an explicit or implicit negation: a raised eyebrow, a snicker, a punchline. If the preferred rhetorical form of the gentleman is the example, the preferred rhetorical form of the jester is the mystery, or perhaps the practical joke.
The Trappist monk Thomas Merton loved the Zhuang Zi and produced a book in 1965 that collected his translations of favourite passages. His ‘Note to the Reader’ concludes by remarking on the Zhuang Zi’s inscrutability:
The ‘way’ of Chuang Tzu [Master Zhuang] is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a ‘way out’. Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost.
Martin Buber, the Jewish theologian and author of I and Thou (1923), also produced a translation and commentary on passages from the Zhuang Zi. I would tell you more about what he thought, but now I’m afraid that leading with these great thinkers’ beliefs about the Zhuang Zi could be a mistake. What if you end up believing that Merton or Buber had figured out the Zhuang Zi? I would have turned the funhouse mirror into a portrait; explained the jester’s jokes before he got to tell them. The Zhuang Zi played a big role in the development of Chan (Zen) Buddhism. Can you imagine if your koans were prefaced with a book of answers?
Safer, instead, to stick with facts. Bracketing the problem of its meaning, the Zhuang Zi also presents problems of authorship. It’s generally agreed that of the book’s 33 chapters, only the first seven – known as the Inner Chapters – are from the hand of a man named Zhuang Zhou (aka Zhuang Zi, or Master Zhuang), and the remainder were added at a later date. However, some experts claim that the Inner Chapters are themselves the product of different authors, leaving us with little certainty about how the work was composed.
This uncertainty contributes to the Zhuang Zi’s destabilising force. Does the entire book express a coherent philosophical vision, attributable, perhaps, to Guo Xiang (252-312 CE), the editor who compiled and reduced an original 52 chapters to the 33 that we have today? If not, can we at least read the Inner Chapters as if they were written by a single individual? Or is it our job to trawl through every chapter looking for the genuine insights of Zhuang Zhou, to be separated out from the surrounding chaff?
Even assuming unified authorship of the Inner Chapters, the biography of their author is sparse and poorly sourced. Scholarly disclaimers abound: ‘Little is known about Zhuang Zi…,’ write Philip Ivanhoe and Bryan Van Norden in their collection of readings from classical Chinese philosophy. ‘Not much is known about Zhuang Zi…,’ says Brook Ziporyn in the introduction to his translation. ‘All we know about the identity of Zhuang Zi…,’ begins Watson’s introduction.
What follows these disclaimers is inevitably a brief and tentative history of Zhuang Zhou, culled from the book itself (not exactly a reliable source) and a short biography written by the great Chinese historian Sima Qian, nearly 200 years after Master Zhuang’s death. Apparently, he lived in the city of Meng, in the state of Song, during a time of great political turmoil called the Warring States Period. Sima Qian says he was employed as a minor official in ‘the lacquer garden’ – though no one knows whether that was an actual garden, a library, or something else entirely.
But does any of that even matter?
In annotating the first chapter of the Zhuang Zi, I’ve tried to capture my relationship with my friend – a friend with whom one can disagree about the most important things in life and come out better for doing so. In other words, I focus primarily on how the text speaks to and with me, not just what it might have meant to the author, or to other audiences in other times. This approach has precedents in Kuang Ming-Wu’s The Butterfly as Companion, the inimitable spirit of Master Yingning (攖寧子), and, further back, in the work of the 17th-century polymath and Buddhist monk Fang Yizhi (方以智), author of The Monk of Yaodi Roasts Zhuang Zi.
(Selections from the latter, along with many other traditional commentaries, can be found in Ziporyn’s translation of the Zhuang Zi, whose version of the first chapter I have borrowed with slight modifications.)
Alan Jay Levinovitz is an associate professor of philosophy and religion at James Madison University in Virginia. He is the author of The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat (2015), The Limits of Religious Tolerance (2016) and the editor, with Daniel Boscaljon, of Teaching Religion and Literature (2018). | {
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ZJCBOE01 (1).JPG
A new measure will require the Jersey City Public Schools to take a student's gender identity into account in a number of instances.
(Journal file photo)
The school board adopted a new policy Thursday night that proponents hope will make the public schools more accommodating to transgender students.
The board voted 8-0-1 to approve the measure, which will require the 28,000-student school district to take a student's gender identity into account in a number of instances. Board member Lorenzo Richardson abstained from voting.
The move comes amid a nationwide effort to expand civil rights to include the transgender community, a movement that has resulted in some backlash. North Carolina in March passed a law quashing local LGBT rights ordinances and restricting transgender people's access to restrooms. Target's decision to implement a transgender-friendly restroom policy led to boycotts.
District spokeswoman Maryann Dickar told The Jersey Journal this week that the policy had been planned for last year but the district waited until the federal government issued specific guidelines. President Obama in May said schools must provide transgender students equal access to educational programs and activities.
"The proposed policy is in line with the district's commitment to equality," Dickar said.
Richardson said he abstained from voting not because he opposes the policy -- he said he doesn't think it goes far enough -- but because he believes the board acted too quickly. The matter could have waited until the board's August meeting to give school officials the chance to talk to parents of transgender students, he said.
"Due diligence wasn't done," Richardson said.
The new policy requires the district to issue student ID cards in the name that reflects the student's gender identity; requires school staff to address students by the names and pronouns corresponding to their gender identity, even if the students have not obtained court-approved name changes; and allows students to dress in accordance with their gender identity.
The policy also bans the district from forcing students to use restrooms or locker rooms that conflict with their gender identity.
About two dozen school districts in New Jersey, including in Pequannock, Jackson and Ocean Township, have adopted similar policies. | {
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While Ryan, James, and Mark have been pursing a minimalist design from a presentation perspective, I’ve been quietly pursuing a minimalist design from a markup perspective. I’m not sure when it changed, but Firefox 3.0, Safari 3.1.1, and Opera 9.5 now all support units of em in SVG dimensions.
This means that my front page (under development) can be valid HTML5 and yet have absolutely no div or span elements, no inline style or class attributes, and no table or img elements used purely for layout purposes.
I have more work to do on individual post pages and on the archives. The archives will continue to employ a table for the calendar. | {
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President Trump Donald John TrumpObama calls on Senate not to fill Ginsburg's vacancy until after election Planned Parenthood: 'The fate of our rights' depends on Ginsburg replacement Progressive group to spend M in ad campaign on Supreme Court vacancy MORE on Wednesday nominated a new director for the federal government's ethics office, several months after the previous director resigned over frustration with the administration.
Trump nominated Emory Rounds, a current associate counsel at the Office of Government Ethics, to head the independent agency, the White House announced in a statement.
The nomination follows the July 2017 resignation of Walter Shaub Walter Michael ShaubTrump breaks with precedent on second night of convention Democratic senators call for ethics review into Ivanka Trump's Goya tweet Chris Cuomo blasts Trump over photo with Goya products: 'In the middle of a pandemic, they're selling beans' MORE, who left over concerns of possible conflicts of interest for Trump and has since become a vocal critic of the president.
Shaub became director under former President Obama but also served under former President George W. Bush.
ADVERTISEMENT
"I know that the effect is that there's an appearance that the [Trump] businesses are profiting from his occupying the presidency," Shaub said in a CBS News interview following his resignation.
Rounds, who was a lawyer for 22 years with the Navy, previously served as an ethics counsel for the White House for six years during the George W. Bush administration and as an ethics counselor for the Commerce Department, according to the White House.
The Senate is required to confirm his appointment as director. | {
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Poll Shows What The Public Does And Does Not Know About Obamacare
NPR and the polling firm IPSOS have a new poll out that suggests the public might not be as enthusiastic about repealing Obamacare as their representatives are.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to hone in on health care for a few more minutes. As we said, Republicans in Congress have taken some initial steps toward repealing the Affordable Care Act. But NPR and the polling firm Ipsos have a new poll out that suggests that the public might not be as enthusiastic as many lawmakers are about an all-out repeal, at least not without something to take its place. The poll also offers interesting insights about what the public does and does not know about the Affordable Healthcare Act.
NPR's health correspondent, Alison Kodjak, is here to tell us more about all of this. Alison, thanks so much for joining us.
ALISON KODJAK, BYLINE: Thanks for having me, Michel.
MARTIN: First, Alison, tell us some of the significant findings of this poll.
KODJAK: So the poll showed what I think a lot of people know, which is that the public is largely split on Obamacare. They're - about 45 percent of people hate it and 44 percent say they like it. But within that split there are some interesting results, which is those people who say they want the law repealed, more than half of them want to see it replaced. They don't just want it to go away. So in terms of people who want some sort of health care structures to remain in place, that's the vast majority of people in the country now.
MARTIN: There were some surprising findings, too, at least surprising given the public debate that's taken place over the last year and over the course of this election. Tell us a little bit more about that.
KODJAK: In the context of this sort of everybody seeming to want to repeal this law, more than half of the people in the poll say that the Affordable Care Act has done more good than harm. So people have a positive, you know, view of what this law has done. And - this was interesting to me - 55 percent of the people we polled said they would prefer to see a single-payer health system in this country. You know, that - it did break down on party lines. Seventy percent of those were Democrats. But among independents, 55 percent wanted to see single-payer.
MARTIN: Tell us about what people did and did not know, given how important this policy has been to the Obama administration. One thing that stood out for me is that a majority of those surveyed did know that the Affordable Care Act protects people with pre-existing conditions from being refused coverage and that it requires insurance companies to pay for preventive care, but there was something that they didn't know.
KODJAK: What they don't know is that the Affordable Care Act has extended insurance to millions of millions of people, that the uninsured rate has dropped dramatically since the law passed. And that just seems like the one fact the Obama administration should be getting out there. And people aren't really hearing it.
MARTIN: So as we said, the Republicans in Congress are setting in motion a framework for repealing the Affordable Care Act. Are we seeing any signs that lawmakers are responding to this new information?
KODJAK: It seems they are. And, you know, here's what I have seen. Immediately after the election, when Republicans realized they were going to have the ability to repeal the Affordable Care Act, their plan was to repeal the law immediately when they come back to Washington and replace it some time down the line.
And what we're hearing now since Congress came into session in January - and we're hearing it from President-elect Donald Trump - is we're going to repeal it and replace it simultaneously. So even though they're on their way to repealing it, there's a sense that they're going to potentially slow that down while they come up with this replacement plan that they haven't actually showed the public up till now.
MARTIN: That's NPR health correspondent Alison Kodjak. Alison, thanks so much.
KODJAK: Thanks for having me.
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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | {
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By Jaroslaw Adamowski
August 15 – In a bid to boost attendance of football matches in Poland, the parliament’s Physical Culture and Sports commission has unveiled a legislative proposal to scrap supporters’ cards which are currently a prerequisite for attending Polish league matches. Under the plan, the cards will be cancelled in the 2015/2016 season.
Log In Register This content is for Archive Access (1 year), Archive Access (6 months) and Archive Access (student) members only. | {
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Po kontrowersyjnych słowach Iwony Hartwich o "uspołecznianiu" jej syna, pojawiły się spekulacje dotyczących działalności "Fundacji z Widokiem", w której pracuje Kuba. Jak się dowiedziała Wirtualna Polska, PFRON planuje tam kontrolę.
Protestująca w Sejmie mama Kuby przekonywała, że jej syn nie może znaleźć pracy, a do fundacji przychodzi się jedynie uspołeczniać. - Ja bym bardzo chciała, żeby Kuba pracował - mówiła. Twierdziła ponadto, że jej syn "za każdym razem słyszał, że nie ma dla niego pracy i w najbliższym czasie nie będzie".
Wypowiedź Iwony Hartwich wywołała szerokie dyskusje. Pojawiły się nawet zarzuty, że jej syn Kuba został zatrudniony fikcyjnie w fundacji. Prawda okazała się inna, choć pani Hartwich zdania nie zmieniła. Sprawą postanowił zająć się Państwowy Fundusz Rehabilitacji Osób Niepełnosprawnych.
Dotychczas w fundacji nie było żadnych kontroli i czynności sprawdzających, jednak w obecnej sytuacji "Fundusz niezwłocznie podejmie działania mające na celu objęcie jej analizą".
Oświadczenie PFRON-u
"W związku z pojawiającymi się nieprawdziwymi informacjami w zakresie funkcjonowania Państwowego Funduszu Rehabilitacji Osób Niepełnosprawnych w kontekście protestu osób niepełnosprawnych w Sejmie RP, oświadczamy że środki finansowe będące w dyspozycji Funduszu, zgodnie z ustawą z dnia 27 sierpnia 1997 r. o rehabilitacji zawodowej i społecznej oraz zatrudnianiu osób niepełnosprawnych (Dz.U. z 2018 poz.511 ze zm.) są wypłacane m.in. pracodawcom (w formie dofinansowania do wynagrodzeń) zatrudniającym osoby niepełnosprawne" - brzmi oświadczenie PFRON-u.
Kwota miesięcznego dofinansowania uzależniona jest od stopnia niepełnosprawności pracownika i wynosi:
1800 zł – w związku z zatrudnieniem pracownika o znacznym stopniu niepełnosprawności;
1125 zł – w związku z zatrudnieniem pracownika o umiarkowanym stopniu niepełnosprawności;
450 zł – w związku z zatrudnieniem pracownika z lekkim stopniem niepełnosprawności.
Powyższe kwoty dofinansowania zwiększa się o 600 zł w przypadku osób niepełnosprawnych w odniesieniu do których orzeczono: chorobę psychiczną, upośledzenie umysłowe, całościowe zaburzenia rozwojowe, epilepsję oraz niewidomych w stopniu znacznym i umiarkowanym.
W chwili obecnej z wnioskami o wypłatę dofinansowania do wynagrodzeń pracowników niepełnosprawnych do PFRON występuje miesięcznie ok 30 000 pracodawców, którzy zgłaszają średnio 262 000 pracowników niepełnosprawnych.
"Nie przemyślała swoich słów"
Według osoby, która jest blisko związana z "Fundacją z Widokiem", pani Hartwich nie przemyślała konsekwencji swoich słów. - Po co ukrywać coś, co jest przecież jawne, a informacje zawsze były na stronie fundacji i Facebooku i wiele osób widziało codziennie Kubę w pracy. Nic w tym złego, że Kuba pracuje. Osoby niepełnosprawne powinny pracować. Uspołecznianie? Jasne. Każdy w pracy się uspołecznia, pełnosprawni także - mówi Wirtualnej Polsce.
Dodaje, że zarząd fundacji pracuje bez żadnego wynagrodzenia, tylko z dobroci serca, i przykro słyszeć słowa nieprawdy, zwłaszcza że takie słowa mogą narazić zarówno fundację, jak i jej syna na podejrzenie, że niezgodnie z prawem otrzymuje dofinansowanie z Państwowego Funduszu Rehabilitacji Osób Niepełnosprawnych.
Fundacja wydała oświadczenie ws. pracy Kuby
"Wobec pojawiających się spekulacji dotyczących działalności Fundacji z Widokiem, której fundatorem jest matka niepełnosprawnej dziewczynki, a które to spekulacje godzą w jej dobre imię i jej pracowników oraz utrudniają swobodne działania ukierunkowane na poprawę jakości życia dzieci i osób niepełnosprawnych, fundacja oświadcza, że Pan Jakub Hartwich od listopada 2016r. jest zatrudniony w fundacji. Zatrudnienie jest dofinansowane przez PFRON. Obecnie Pan Jakub Hartwich przebywa na urlopie" - oświadczył Zarząd Fundacji na swoim profilu na Facebooku.
Protest zawieszony. Iwona Hartwich: my jeszcze wrócimy! | {
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Founded by industry veterans. A division of Plasticase®, NANUK is a complete line of IP67 waterproof and impact resistant protective hard cases rated for military, law enforcement and professional users. HardCaseHQ.com is an authorized reseller of NANUK products. | {
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Rede Globo / Reprodução
Eleições 2018 Apuração
Apuração Raio-x
Raio-x Pesquisas
Pesquisas Candidatos
O ministro Og Fernandes, do TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral), determinou neste domingo (16), em decisão liminar, a suspensão da inelegibilidade do ex-governador Anthony Garotinho (PRP), que se candidata a reassumir o governo do estado do Rio de Janeiro. O Ministério Público Eleitoral pode recorrer da decisão.
O TRE-RJ (Tribunal Regional Eleitoral do Rio de Janeiro) havia barrado a candidatura de Garotinho no último dia 6 porque ele foi condenado em julho por improbidade administrativa pela 15ª Câmara Civil do Tribunal de Justiça do Rio de Janeiro. Pela Lei da Ficha Limpa, políticos condenados por órgãos judiciais colegiados (como a 15ª Câmara) ficam inelegíveis por seis anos.
A Justiça entendeu que Garotinho desviou R$ 234 milhões da Secretaria de Saúde do Rio entre os anos de 2005 e 2006, quando sua mulher Rosinha Matheus era a governadora. A condenação diz que ele cometeu ato de improbidade administrativa com lesão ao patrimônio público e enriquecimento ilícito de terceiros.
Garotinho nega ter praticado irregularidades e diz que não enriqueceu.
A liminar concedida pelo ministro Og Fernandes determina que a inelegibilidade de Garotinho permaneça suspensa até que o mérito do caso seja julgado pelo TSE.
"Está evidenciado o perigo na demora, tendo em vista o prejuízo irreparável que o autor sofrerá, caso tenha seu nome excluído da urna eletrônica a menos de um mês para a realização do pleito. Saliento que, nos termos do art. 16-A da Lei nº 9.504/97, o candidato cujo registro esteja sub judice poderá prosseguir na campanha eleitoral – inclusive com o nome e foto na urna eletrônica – até o julgamento pelo Tribunal Superior Eleitoral em única ou última instância", afirmou o ministro Fernandes na decisão de hoje.
Em nota divulgada à imprensa, Garotinho disse que já "previa" a decisão do TSE e que a "confusão criada" pelo TRE favoreceu seus principais adversários, Eduardo Paes (DEM) e Romário (Podemos).
Pesquisa aponta alta rejeição
Pesquisa Ibope divulgada na última segunda-feira (10) mostra que Garotinho tem 12% das intenções de votos e aparece em terceiro lugar na disputa pelo cargo de governador do Rio. O ex-prefeito Eduardo Paes (DEM) lidera com 23%, seguido pelo senador Romário (Podemos), com 20%. O levantamento também apontou que Garotinho tem o maior índice de rejeição: 50% dos eleitores dizem que não votam nele de jeito nenhum. | {
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In the spring of last year, we here at Civic Skunk Works spent a lot of time debunking stories about raising the minimum wage. At times it seemed like every reporter left in America last year was publishing a scary piece about business closures. I’m not complaining—it’s fun to debunk those pieces! But it’s interesting to look around and see that except for a pair of very loud holdouts—the Abbott and Costello of trickle down economics, you might say—most of those complaints have fallen away.
Today, Jed Graham at Investor’s Business Daily has published the latest story about minimum wage increases around the country. And Graham goes out of his way to point out that the doom and gloom that was predicted has not come to pass: in fact, the story is headlined “Has Minimum Wage Knifed Seattle Restaurant Jobs? New Data Say No.” Here’s the section on Seattle:
Data through the end of 2015 released in February suggested that Seattle restaurants had trouble adapting as employment at area food and drinking places grew at the slowest pace since 2009. The newly revised data show that restaurant employment actually has accelerated since the wage hike, rising 5.4% from a year ago in January. The Seattle-area data cover the entire Seattle-Bellevue-Everett metro, of which Seattle is just one-fourth of the population.
You really ought to go read the rest of the story, which travels around the country dismantling negative claims about the minimum wage. Honestly, I’m most happy about that last quoted sentence about the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett metro data, which clarifies a point that minimum-wage opponents often use to obfuscate the data. Such clear-headedness!
It’s not just reporters who have gotten the message about the minimum wage: regular folks on the internet aren’t suffering any fools, either. Three days ago, the Redditors at r/Seattle debunked a post from someone who wanted Seattleites to acknowledge the (nonexistent) “negative trend” in business since the wage went up. The user, appropriately named “folderol,” wrote:
So what is the excuse now Seattle? Who’s fault is it other than your own? And just for fun let’s not have the answer be “Republicans” this time.
Redditors immediately started picking apart folderol’s post, decrying it as “cherry picking with an ideological axe to grind,” and getting to the bottom of the issue as quickly as possible. Here’s user SovietJugernaut:
While unemployment did tick up to 5.3% in January, there are two things you should remember: 5.3% is still well within the range that most economists consider “full employment.”
Paying too much attention to monthly ups and downs with things like the unemployment rate is a mistake that will often cause people to miss the longer term trends. Even in the very best of economies, some months will be better than others. Take the averages over several months to get a better idea of how the economy is doing overall. Seattle’s economy is just fine.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
It’s amazing to see how the narrative has changed in just one short year. Reporters and Redditors all agree: Seattle’s minimum wage increase is working. Raising the minimum wage doesn’t kill jobs. It doesn’t kill business. In fact, it’s great for business.
Comments
comments | {
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AMSTERDAM - Skype illegally distributed a user's personal information to a private company during a police investigation into Anonymous-sanctioned cyberattacks on PayPal.
Dit artikel is oorspronkelijk verschenen in het Nederlands.
It and several other payment companies were attacked out of retribution for blocking donations to Wikileaks in 2011.
Skype handed over the personal information of a 16-year-old to an IT firm, which later informed Dutch authorities.
The police file for 'Operation Talang', which has been seen by NU.nl, focussed on two persons. They are alleged to have played a role in attacks on websites belonging to Mastercard, VISA and Paypal by hacker collective Anonymous. They dubbed the attacks 'Operation Payback'.
PayPal
Joep Gommers, senior director of global research at the Dutch IT security firm iSIGHT Partners, was hired by PayPal to investigate the attacks. Through an instant messaging channel, he found out that Dutch citizens were involved in the attacks and unearthed the pseudonym of a 16-year-old boy.
Gommers contacted Skype, another of his firm's clients, and asked them for the suspect's account data. Meanwhile, he wrote an e-mail to several Dutch authorities, saying: "Hey, I will have login information soon - but not yet."
Police file
The police file notes that Skype handed over the suspect's personal information, such as his user name, real name, e-mail adresses and the home address used for payment. That address could be matched and verified with municipal records.
Skype distributed the information voluntary, without a court order, as would usually be required.
In an emailed response, Gommers says his firm does not take orders from law enforcement. "On occasion, we share our research findings with relevant law enforcement parties as a public service, just as you would report what appeared to be a crime that you witnessed in your neighbourhood."
Court order
Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, a professor of Law and Information Society in Leiden and a lawyer at Bird & Bird in The Hague, says the sequence of events surprised him.
"You would imagine that subscriber data aren't simply handed over. They have to be provided when the police has a valid demand or court order, but not in any other case."
He says he is unsure whether Dutch telecom and privacy laws allow a company like Skype to provide a company with user details without a court order. "You can also wonder whether police can use that information if it was acquired this way," he said.
Privacy
A spokesman for Skype, which was recently acquired by Microsoft, says the company takes its customers' privacy very seriously. "It is our policy not to provide customer data unless we are served with valid request from legal authorities, or when legally required to do so, or in the event of a threat to physical safety," the spokesperson said.
The company says it is reviewing how personal information came into the hands of a private firm. | {
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Feeling my unborn child as I ponder the death of an economic system
Now is the time to hold strong to our humanity. The world is changing quickly and much is at stake. It is even possible that our entire global civilization will collapse in our lifetime. This is a very difficult concept to sit with — yet sit with it we must, for now is a time of great consequences.
A four hundred year old economic system is dying. We can feel the pain all around us. It shivers in the outstretched hands of the homeless. Gets expressed as death rattles in the species going extinct on a daily basis. Entire societies have tattered the social fabric of trust as inequality skyrocketed in the last few decades. It is experienced as fear, anger, sadness, humiliation, shame, and despair.
Every person alive today has a responsibility to bear witness, provide hospice care to the dying, and participate in midwifing new ways to structure social life. This is our burden to be alive in the early part of the 21st Century. Yet so many among us are still behaving like children. They call each other names. Pick fights between parochial tribal groups. Bitch and moan when things don’t go their way. And hoard precious wealth in a time of increasing global scarcity.
Now is the time to behave like grownups. Because the threats now upon us are very serious.
I say this as a man who is about to become a father. My wife and I chose — with eyes wide open — to bring a child into this world in the midst of great upheaval. We believe deeply and firmly in humanity and are investing our blood in the future. This is not something we do lightly. It is a great responsibility to continue the human race even as billions starve and there now lurks a very real possibility that our child will live through the collapse of the Earth’s first globalized civilization.
This unborn child has prospects to live into the 22nd Century. What will be seen through their eyes? Will there be a saga of unraveling the biosphere for our precious home planet? Might the death throes of capitalism take down the safety nets of a stable climate? Will our child bear witness to the final days of humanity? We cannot say even how long his or her survival will be secure.
Yet we carry forth knowing what must be done. Humanity is in the crucible of change now. It is an all-hands-on-deck transition — away from life destroying economic practices based on wealth hoarding and extraction and toward life affirming practices of regeneration and renewal.
Let me state this seriously and succinctly. According to the Stockholm Resilience Institute, there are nine “planetary boundaries” that represent thresholds for a viable global civilization. Cross even one and the entire edifice will fall into ruin. While there remains uncertainty about where these thresholds are, the best scientific evidence available today tells us that we have probably already crossed four of them.
We are currently in overshoot and collapse.
There are time lags in the system so the unraveling may not happen until the middle of this century. Instead of thinking about putting our child through college in 20 years, we must grapple with scenarios of tremendous upheaval and disruption. They will need to be a survivalist and servant to others in need. Notions of stable careers and long-term planning may never be a possibility in this child’s life.
I write these words not out of despair, but as an affirmation of the most rugged hopefulness I can muster. I was trained in climate science and I know what is coming. I have studied the rise and fall of empires so I am aware that fascist dictators and resource wars are likely to arise in the turmoil of the coming decades. Yet still I gently touch the swollen belly of my wife and feel our baby kicking and turning in her womb. I have felt the heartbeat of a new life and will do all I can to ensure that humanity makes it through to the other side.
This is what it feels like to live through the death of capitalism. Eyes wide open even if tears may well up in them. I look to the horizon where shimmers of beautiful alternatives await. It doesn’t have to be like this. We can do better. We must do better. In truth, there are already hundreds of millions of people actively struggling against the wealth extracting juggernaut that is Western development — expressed as colonialism in early years, then later in the various forms of trade agreements, structural debt repayment programs, illicit resource wars fueled by propaganda, and the full apparatus of wealth extraction that is in place today.
We needn’t wonder why a mere 60 people have the same aggregate wealth as 4 billion. This is an outcome designed into the core logic of extraction that arises when private owners extract rents (what is commonly called profits) from the valuable labor of other people. It only took four hundred years for this system to run itself out.
What no one could have predicted then was that the human population would explode and our fingerprints on the Earth would grow from tiny scratches here and there to deep scars that can be viewed from space. This is our legacy as a species right now. It is the bed we have prepared for our own children and grandchildren to lie down in. And it is our responsibility to carry through the dark times we are now in so that future generations can thrive in whatever ways make sense to them.
I am with you, fellow humans. I believe in us. Let us not fall into despair or acquiesce as extremism rears its ugly head around the world — as it did recently in the United States. For it will be the beacons of light we carry that will show others the way forward. For my part, I am working with social movements to connect the dots of wealth extraction and training change makers in the art and science of intentional social change. I have seen with my own eyes that millions of peasant farmers are organizing across Latin America and India; students are protesting outrageous debt in Mexico, Greece, and Spain; indigenous peoples are coming together across the North American continent to protect their sacred lands.
We are gathering our strength for the collective transition. Of the 7.4 billion humans alive today, several hundred million are already organizing to drive the system to change. There is much to be hopeful about in this struggle. We each have a role to play. And time is of the essence.
Onward, fellow humans. | {
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Yes, the headline is right. Republicans are actually blocking a Democratic effort to repeal a portion of the health care law, the so-called 1099 provision which will raise tax revenue by $19 billion by requiring business to file paperwork for every payment over $600 to a vendor. Politico:
Another day, another failed attempt at 1099 repeal. Republicans rebuffed a Democratic effort to repeal health reform’s universally panned 1099 IRS reporting requirements as a piggyback in the tax cut deal, congressional aides on both sides of the aisle confirm to POLITICO.
GOPers claim they can't support a repeal of the 1099 provision unless spending cuts offset the $19 billion in tax revenue that would be lost if the provision were repealed. But that's more than a little bit absurd given that they aren't insisting on any offsets for any other element of the tax cut deal's nearly $1 trillion price tag.
The reality is that Republicans don't want to repeal the 1099 provision because they know it's unpopular -- and they want Democrats to pay a political price for having passed it. Given that Democrats have now acknowledged the provision was a mistake and want to repeal it, the GOP position is the height of cynicism: thrusting bad policy on the country for no other reason than inflict political damage on their opponents. And as a result we witness the strange spectacle of Republicans blocking a Democratic effort to repeal part of the health care law. | {
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Just moments before Attorney General Eric Holder was voted in contempt of Congress by Republicans and Democrats in June 2012 , President Obama asserted executive privilege over thousands of documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. Holder was held in contempt for stonewalling and failing to turn over the documents to the House Oversight Committee. Obama granted the executive privilege request despite claiming to have no knowledge about Operation Fast and Furious when it was active from 2009-2010.
Now after years of court battles and a federal judge striking down the executive privilege assertion, Obama has finally agreed turned them over. From POLITICO:
Four years after asserting executive privilege to block Congress from obtaining documents relating to a controversial federal gun trafficking investigation, President Barack Obama relented Friday, turning over to lawmakers thousands of pages of records that led to unusual House votes holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt in 2012. Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush confirmed that the administration does not plan to appeal. He argued that Jackson's ruling validated Obama's initial claim of privilege.
“The Department of Justice is pleased that the district court ... continued to recognize that the deliberative process component of the executive privilege exists and was a valid basis for the Department to withhold certain documents when requested by the House in 2011. Although the Department disagrees with the district court's conclusion that the privilege was overcome in this particular case by disclosures and statements made in other contexts, the Department has decided not to appeal the court’s judgment and has provided a production of documents to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform," Rodenbush said in a statement.
“As we've long asserted, the Committee requires and is entitled to these documents. They are critical to the Committee’s efforts to complete meaningful oversight. The Committee has a duty to understand and shine light on what was happening inside DOJ during the time of this irresponsible operation. Yet DOJ has obstructed our investigative work for years," House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz issued in a statement. "Today, under court order, DOJ turned over some of the subpoenaed documents. The Committee, however, is entitled to the full range of documents for which it brought this lawsuit. Accordingly, we have appealed the District Court’s ruling in order to secure those additional documents.”
Operation Fast and Furious was an ATF and Department of Justice program that purposely allowed the sale and trafficking of thousands of weapons to violent Mexican drug cartels. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed by Mexican bandits in December 2010 and guns from the operation were found at the murder scene. When Sinaloa cartel leader El Chapo Guzman was captured last year, guns from the operation, including a .50 caliber rifle that was used to shoot at a police helicopter, were found in his hideout. Hundreds of Mexican citizens have been killed as a result of the program and thousands of guns are still missing and being used to carry out violent crimes in Mexico and potentially in the United States.
This post has been updated with additional information. | {
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WELCOME
Harmonic Herbs is pleased to offer our Norseed brand of seeds. What started long ago as a hobby turned into our main focus, and a microSeedery was born. We produce and procure seed on a very small scale and share the best vegetables and exotic botanicals that we love to grow. And we select hard for regional adaptability to short season (Zone 3) conditions, such as we enjoy in Central Alberta. Our full line up is available here online (see Product selection on left menu), with a flat $5 shipping fee. Our most popular choices are also found in retail stores across Alberta during seed season (February to June - see Ordering page for locations).
Seed is a vital resource - it should be shared and celebrated, not patented and monopolized. All our seeds are open pollinated, non GMO, untreated, and seed saver friendly. We encourage seed saving - it's the foundation of food security. And it is a satisfying endeavour - just don't forget to wear your dust mask!
There is a recent development in the evolution of seed sharing: the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI). Inspired by Open Source Software, the goal is to secure unrestricted public access to seeds, a human tradition that is now under threat from extreme capitalism. Really, should anyone be allowed to patent the trait of redness in lettuce - ?!? I mean, come on.... See below for the OSSI Pledge, and check out their website at: http://osseeds.org/
2019 was a difficult year in terms of seed production. While it was nice to get a break from the forest fire smoke of 2017 and '18, it was colder and wetter than normal. Fortunately, a long fall, with frost in late September, almost made up for the lack of hot sun. Some day I'll get caught up and post a few photos with stories.... We don’t know what Nature has in store for us this year, but we firmly believe that open pollinated regionally adapted seed will always yield the best results possible under any circumstances.
Covid-19 Update: April 4th, 2020: there has been an unusually high volume of orders recently, so sorry to be working on around a one week lag time on shipping. PayPal will confirm any order, then you will get an email when it has been sent. Feel free to email about changing or cancelling if need be. Thanks for your patience, and wishing everyone stay healthy in this challenging time. Take care of yourself, and others - we're in this together!
Update: April 23rd: There will be no more website orders for now, due to the backlog of existing orders, which are now taking 2 weeks or more to ship - sorry for the delay. All existing orders will be filled as soon as possible, in the order in which they were received. Seeds continue to be available through our retail partners.
Cheers to great gardens in 2020, and may your weeds be medicinal,
Gord
Safe Seed Pledge
"Agriculture and seeds provide the basis upon which our lives depend. We must protect this foundation as a safe and genetically stable source for future generations. For the benefit of all farmers, gardeners and consumers who want an alternative, we pledge that we do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants.
The mechanical transfer of genetic material outside of natural reproductive methods and between genera, families or kingdoms poses great biological risks, as well as economic, political and cultural threats. We feel that genetically engineered varieties have been insufficiently tested prior to public release.
More research and testing is necessary to further assess the potential risks of genetically engineered seeds. Further, we wish to support agricultural progress that leads to healthier soils, genetically diverse agricultural ecosystems and ultimately healthy people and communities."
OSSI Pledge: "You have the freedom to use these OSSI-Pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others' use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives." | {
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Over the past few weeks, FiveThirtyEight has explored who led in early primary polls of presidential cycles from 1972 to 2016 and who went on to win the nomination. And what we’ve seen is that national surveys conducted in the year before a presidential primary are relatively good indicators of which candidates will advance to the general election, especially when polling averages are adjusted to reflect how well known each candidate was. Now, in the third and final part of our series, we are going to analyze 40-plus years of polls to better understand their predictive power.
There are a number of ways to tackle this question, but one relatively easy way to see how predictive early polls are is to compare a candidate’s polling average to their eventual share of the national primary vote. And we found that as a candidate’s polling average increased, their vote share in the primaries also tended to increase. In the chart below, for the calendar year before the primaries began, we averaged each candidate’s polls in the first half of the year (January through June) and in the second half of the year (July through December), and then plotted those two averages against the share of votes each person won in the next year’s primaries, for every competitive nomination process from 1972 to 2016. The correlation is pretty strong for both halves of the year, though polls from the second half of the year matched the outcomes a little better, which is not surprising — after all, those polls were conducted closer to the start of primary season.
But it’s easier to see trends if we group some candidates together rather than looking at them all individually, so let’s sort candidates into six big buckets based on their polling average. That clearly shows us that candidates with higher polling averages were also more likely to win higher shares of the primary vote and, therefore, the nomination. Those polling at 35 percent or higher rarely lost the nomination, regardless of whether they attained those heights in the first or second half of the year. They also, on average, won more than half the national primary vote. But those polling below 20 percent in either the first half or second half of the year had at best a 1-in-10 chance of clinching the nomination, and they rarely won a sizable chunk of the popular vote.
High polling averages foreshadowed lots of primary votes Candidates’ share of the national primary vote by average polling level in the first half of the year before the presidential primaries and polling average in the second half of that year, 1972-2016 First half Second half Poll Avg. Share who became nominee Avg. Primary Vote share Share who became nominee Avg. Primary Vote share 35%+ 75% 57% 83% 57% 20%-35% 36 27 25 25 10%-20% 9 8 9 12 5%-10% 3 7 10 10 2%-5% 5 5 0 4 Under 2% 1 2 1 1 We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run. If a candidate didn’t run or dropped out before voting began, they were counted as winning zero percent of the primary vote. Sources: POLLS, CQ Roll call, DAVE LEIP’s atlas of u.s. presidential elections
We can also take these polling averages and estimate the probability of a candidate winning a party’s nomination using a logistic regression. And as you can see, candidates polling above 20 percent — whether it’s in the first half of the year (the orange line) or the second half (purple line) — have a higher probability of winning the nomination. In fact, the results for the first and second half of the year are nearly identical — in the second half of the year, candidates with the same polling average had a slightly lower win probability, but we’re talking about a maximum difference of less than 4 percentage points. There are certainly more sophisticated ways one could look at this data, but even these simple methods can show that polls conducted this far out in the primary season still have a reasonable amount of predictive power.
We can go a step further and improve our analysis by accounting for a candidate’s level of name recognition. In previous installments of this series, we rated candidates’ fame on a five-tier scale, and this time we’re using those previous rankings to split up our polling data into two roughly equal groups — candidates with high name recognition and those with low name recognition. This gives us a broader understanding of whether being well known influenced a candidate’s chances of winning the nomination. (We also limited this part of our analysis to just the first half of the year to see what role name recognition played very early in the cycle.)
And as you can see, well-known candidates who polled in the double digits tended to win a higher share of the primary vote. But candidates who had high name recognition while only polling in the single digits were generally in trouble. Of the 84 highly recognized candidates who polled below 10 percent in surveys from the first half of the year before the primaries, only President Trump went on to win his party’s nomination. And Trump was an unusual case — Republicans started out with strongly negative views of him but quickly changed their tune even though they were already familiar with him. Meanwhile, candidates with lower name recognition in the first half of the year only occasionally advanced to the general election, and in each case, it was on the Democratic side — George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992.
Name recognition makes a big difference Candidates’ share of the national primary vote by average polling level in the first half of the year before the presidential primaries and whether they had high or low name recognition, 1972-2016 High name recognition Low name recognition Poll Avg. Share who became nominee Avg. Primary Vote share Share who became nominee Avg. Primary Vote share 35%+ 75% 57% — — 20%-35% 36 27 — — 10%-20% 9 8 — — 5%-10% 0 4 14% 19% 2%-5% 5 3 5 6 Under 2% 0 0 2 2 We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run. If a candidate didn’t run or dropped out before voting began, they were counted as winning zero percent of the primary vote. Sources: POLLS, CQ Roll call, DAVE LEIP’s atlas of u.s. presidential elections
In fact, we can use a logistic regression to estimate a high- and low-name-recognition candidate’s chance of winning the nomination based on their polling average (much like we did above, but last time we didn’t sort candidates into categories based on name recognition). And as you can see in the chart below, a low-name-recognition candidate didn’t stand much of a chance of winning unless they were able to climb past 10 percent in the polls in the first half of the year before the primaries. If they were able to hit that mark, then their odds of winning were slightly less than 1 in 4, which put them ahead of a high-name-recognition candidate polling at the same level.
Intuitively, this makes sense — relatively few unknown candidates could poll as high as 10 percent this far out in the election cycle. But for those who could get that much support even though only a small share of people knew about them, their polling numbers signaled a great deal of potential. Take Dukakis in the 1988 cycle: His polling average was about 8 percent in the first half of 1987, and we estimated that his average name recognition was somewhere around 20 percent. Not a bad polling average when you consider that most respondents didn’t know who he was.
In other words, a candidate’s adjusted polling average — polling average divided by name recognition, which we delved into at length in the first two parts of this series — is a decent proxy for teasing out the strength of a candidate, especially early in the election cycle. By accounting for how well known a candidate is, we can get a better read on the field in front of us, including here in the 2020 election cycle. As primary season draws nearer, we’ll be keeping an eye on any candidates with low name recognition who still manage to win a significant chunk of support in the polls.
FiveThirtyEight’s 2020 draft: Episode 2 | {
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In late March 2018, according to Bloomberg, Facebook went on a hiring spree. The social media platform was looking to hire at least 11 Washington lobbyists. According to European transparency filings published this week, Facebook is doing the same in Europe. In fact, amid the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Zuckeberg spent a record amount of money on lobbying European governments.
Facebook doubled its lobbying spend to as much as $3 million in 2017, up from $1 million in 2016, Business Insider noted. They have also increased the number of lobbyists to 15 from 10 staffers. The Cambridge Analytica scandal — which has, according to the Guardian, affected around 87 million people — may have cast a shadow over everything that has been going on in Europe in 2017.
In July of last year, in an exclusive report by Reuters, it was revealed that Russia used Facebook to spy on Emanuel Macron’s campaign officials. Russian intelligence agents created fake Facebook personas in order to conduct surveillance on Macron’s team. At the time, the centrist former financier was seeking to defeat defeat far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen. These accounts were also caught spreading fake news about the French election. The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed these accusations, but Facebook confirmed that it had detected, and deactivated, spying accounts in France.
Featured image credit: Richard Drew AP Images
In Britain, the chair of the Home Affairs Committee warned representatives from Facebook and other social media companies, accusing them of “grooming and radicalizing” their users through algorithms which promote hate speech, drawing users into a “bubble of hate.” According to the Independent, Committee chair and Labour MP Yvette Cooper said the following.
“Your algorithms are doing that grooming and that radicalization because once people go on one slightly dodgy thing, you are linking them to an awful lot of other similar things. Whether that is racist extremism or Islamist extremism, your technology is doing that job and you’re not stopping it from doing so.”
In February 2018, Germany introduced a new law meant to compel social media sites to remove illegal content and hate speech from their platforms. As Euronews noted, the law was criticized and German lawmakers were accused of turning social media platforms into “overzealous censors.”
In a blog post published in January 2018, Erin Egan, Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook, announced that the social media giant would be publishing its privacy principles for the first time ever. This was done in response to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which predicts drastic fines. The GDPR is, as the Inquisitr noted, considered the biggest overhaul of personal data privacy rules since the birth of the internet.
European officials have repeatedly called on Mark Zuckeberg to appear before the European Parliament to explain the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but he has refused. | {
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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – New York City has kicked off a $40 million U.S. Census initiative the likes of which we haven’t seen before – aimed at improving on the city’s dismal 2010 response rate and ensuring that each borough gets its fair share of federal funding.
“We’re in a nationwide competition,’’ said Julie Menin, the recently-named director of the census for New York City. “There’s a finite amount of federal dollars for roads, tunnels, bridges, education, public housing, emergency preparedness . . . Hundreds of programs depend on this.”
The U.S. Census, conducted every 10 years, determines how more than $650 billion in federal funds for public education, public housing, roads and bridges, and more, will be distributed annually throughout the country. It also defines the number of seats each state is allocated in the House of Representatives (and thus, the Electoral College).
Earlier this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and The City University of New York (CUNY) Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez announced more than 150 awardees of the $19 million NYC Complete Count Fund, the city’s first-ever community awards program focused on census-related education and organizing.
That money is the lion’s share of the $40 million going towards census-related mobilization. It’s the largest investment by any city nationwide, according to the City Hall.
Ten years ago, the city’s self-response rate in the U.S. Census was 61.9%, Menin said. On Staten Island, that rate was 62.2 percent, she said.
“The self-response rate was, quite frankly, abysmal,’’ she said. “Our goal is to reach every New Yorker and explain to them why this is so important.
CONGRESSIONAL SEATS
Another undercount could cost the state of New York up to two congressional seats, census officials have said.
Nationally, a huge jump in population is expected, said Jeff Behler, the regional director for the U.S. Census Bureau’s New York region, which comprises New York, New Jersey, all the New England states and Puerto Rico. The 2010 count was 308,745,538, he said, and in 2020, the projected count is more than 333,000,0000.
Filling out the census questionnaire has never been easier, he said.
Residents will receive packets by mail during the week of March 12, according to Behler. The packets will include the resident’s census ID and an invitation to go online and answer the questionnaire.
Every resident will have the opportunity in early April to use a paper form if preferred, Behler said, adding that there is no risk, financial or otherwise, to filling out the questionnaire.
“We never ask for a bank account or credit card number,’’ he said. “We never ask for a Social Security number and we never ask for money."
5 MAILINGS
In all, five mailings will take place in March through April, including reminders and the eventual paper questionnaire. In mid-May, U.S. Census workers will begin knocking on doors of those who haven’t yet participated, explaining the process to residents and garnering completed questionnaires. In communities near college campuses, the door knocking begins in April, Behler said.
Currently, the bureau is recruiting thousands of managers, clerical workers and door-to-door counters for the 2020 campaign. To apply for a paid position -- on Staten Island, the pay rate is $25 per hour -- visit the website of the U.S. Census bureau.
The U.S. Census Bureau is recruiting nationally for the 2020 Census. (Courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau.)
Residents will be asked the following questions on the 2020 Census form:
Name
Age
Date of birth
Race and ethnicity
Gender
Do you own or rent your home
Number of people living in the home on April 1, 2020
Your relationship in comparison to the first person listed on the form
“We have a fraud line that will be available,’’ in the case of people being asked for sensitive information, Behler said. “We don’t want people sending money and thinking they are responding to the census.’’
Participants can answer the online survey from their phones or computers, or over the phone he said. "We’re not calling households. They’re calling us.''
The nation’s last census, taken in 2010, was paper only.
Menin said past initiatives didn’t stress to residents the high cost of non-participation.
“No one said, ’if you don’t take two minutes to fill this out, you’ll lose funding at your local school',’’ she explained. “The message was that it’s your civic duty. It’s embedded in the Constitution. That message, quite frankly, didn’t resonate with New Yorkers.”
Behler said the U.S. bureau will reach out to “trusted voices,’’ including church pastors, business owners and community leaders, in order to reach everyone, including illegal immigrants who fear deportation and thus may be unnecessarily hesitant to fill out the questionnaire.
“By law, we cannot release any information that could potentially identify any individual or household,’’ Behler said. “Local, state, federal law enforcement can never access our data at any time for any reason. Your data cannot be used against you.’’
Twenty-eight community organizations serving Staten Island; four of which are located on the Island, are recipients of the city’s Complete Count funding. These groups are charged with educating residents about the census.
The Complete Count awardees on Staten Island are La Colmena, Project Hospitality, The New York Center for Interpersonal Development and United Activites Unlimited.
Both the U.S. Census Bureau and the city will initiate expansive media campaigns in 2020 to encourage participation.
"There is tremendous misinformation out there about what’s on the census and what isn’t,'' Menin said. "The goal of the media campaign is to clear that up.''
Self-reporting is the most accurate and cost-effective way to collect data, both Behler and Menin said, so encouraging others to participate will go a long way in ensuring that communities get the funds and services they deserve.
“It’s just not enough to pledge that you will fill out your census form,’’ Behler said. “We’re asking you to encourage your friends, your neighbors, the members of your schools and churches. What we do in the 2020 census will really shape the future of Staten Island. If we get an accurate count, they’ll get the funds they need.’’
Volunteers are needed to join neighborhood committees, Menin said, to help spread the word and clear up misunderstandings about the census. To join a committee, visit nyc.gov/census and click on your neighborhood on the map.
“If we don’t get our fair share of the pie, it goes to other states,’’ Menin said. “Other states will benefit. I can’t over-stress the importance of this. We need every New Yorker to fill the census out.” | {
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れいわ新選組・山本太郎代表、参院選後初の街頭演説で「韓国への紳士的対応」を訴える
山本太郎代表が街頭演説で安倍政権を一刀両断
韓国への感情よりも、輸出額6兆円のほうが大事
日本政府は8月2日、韓国に対して輸出管理上の優遇措置を受けられる「ホワイト国」除外を閣議決定すると、韓国側も「我々も日本をホワイト国から除外し、WTOへの提訴準備を進める」と表明。さらなる日韓関係悪化で日本製品不買運動や訪日韓国人観光客減少などに拍車がかかることが確実な情勢だ。 閣議決定前日の1日、参院選で2議席獲得をした「れいわ新撰組」の山本太郎代表が新宿駅西口で街頭演説を行った。気温は30℃近く、非常に蒸し暑い夜だったが、駅前を埋め尽くした聴衆たちは熱心に耳を傾けた。 山本代表は次の衆院選での政権交代を呼びかけた後、聴衆との質疑応答（記者会見）に臨み、日韓関係悪化を招いている安倍政権（首相）の強行姿勢について「小学校高学年くらいの考え方はやめましょう」と批判。「日本にとって韓国は、年間6兆円も儲ける貿易黒字国」と指摘しながら「冷静に行こう」「もっとうまいことやろう」と、成熟した国としての紳士的対応を求めた。 野党第一党・第二党の、枝野幸男・立憲民主党代表と玉木雄一郎・国民民主党代表が、日韓関係悪化問題ではストレートな安倍政権批判を控える中、山本代表は踏み込んだ発言で安倍政権（首相）を一刀両断した。山本代表は、ナショナリズムを煽る政治手法が日本の国益を損ねていることを、データを示しながら次のように訴えかけた。日韓関係、「これが悪化して喜ぶのは誰だ」ということですよ。申し訳ないのですが、アジア諸国に対してあまりいい感情を持っていない人たちがいるというのは知っています。いろいろな思いがあるのがあるのは分かります。 けれども「国の場所は動かせない」ということです。同じ町内に自分の苦手とする人がいて、「我慢がならない」と引っ越しをすることは可能だけれども、国の位置は動かせないのでしょう。だとしたら、うまくやっていくしかないのです。 それでね、「舐められてたまるか！」「ぶっ潰してやれ！」というような小学校高学年くらいの考え方は止めましょうということなのです。誰も得をしない。 いろいろなことを鑑みて、「これはうまくつき合った方が絶対に得なのだ」ということが言えるものをこれからご覧に入れます。（モニターの画面にデータを提示） 日本から韓国への輸出総額は6兆円（2.8兆円の黒字）ですよ。この6兆円がなくなってもいいと思うなら、好きなことを言ってください。でも私は、そのような感情よりも6兆円という利益を大事にしたい。皆さん、どうですか。 ナショナリズムを煽りながら「あの国がどうだ、こうだ」とどんどん煽りながら、自分たちがやっている政治のマズさにベールをかける。内政の行き詰まりを、ナショナリズムを使って隠そうとする政治。まさに、今じゃないですか。うまくやるしかないじゃないですか。その利益（輸出額）が6兆円もあるんですよ。 | {
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US and Canadian state and provincial securities regulators have opened probes into potentially fraudulent crypto investment programs in what has been dubbed “Operation Cryptosweep”, according to a press release May 21. The latest crackdown on suspicious crypto investment products is reportedly the largest such coordinated investigation by state and provincial officials.
Regulators from across 40 jurisdictions coordinated by the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) have initiated up to 70 investigations, with more to come in the following weeks. Securities regulators have reportedly warned as many as 35 companies about violations of state securities laws with some cases resulting in cease-and-desist actions.
NASAA, which released a warning for Main Street investors regarding the risks associated with crypto and ICOs early this year, said the probe is focusing on suspicious cases of initial coin offerings (ICOs).
According to the Washington Post, investigators discovered about 30,000 crypto-related domain names in recent weeks, most of which were registered last year when the Bitcoin (BTC) price reached its all-time-high of around $20,000.
Alleged scams have reportedly used fake addresses, flashy marketing materials, and guarantees of up to a 4 percent daily interest rate, while failing to report the potential risks of crypto-investments. Some fraudulent ICOs even used fake celebrity photos to endorse their product.
The president of NASAA Joseph Borg stated that regulators do their best to stay one step ahead of potential security violations, noting that not every ICO or cryptocurrency investment is fraudulent.
"We’re putting ourselves in the shoes of investors. We’re seeing what’s being promoted to investors. And then we’re taking the next step and then we’re finding out whether they’re complying with securities laws."
Founded in 1919, the NASAA is an association of state and provincial-level securities regulators in the US, Mexico, and Canada. Through the association, state securities regulators can coordinate and take part in “multi-state enforcement actions,” as well as share information.
Earlier in May, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched a fake initial coin offering website to increase awareness of the typical warning signs of scam ICOs and to promote investor education. | {
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Asura project wants to create a community on the platform for gamers loving eSports, in which anyone can bet, compete, learn, discuss and monetize its passion.
As all already known, eSports are a potential income source. Indeed, every year there take place specific Olympiads and best “athletes” are hired by the great game factory to test its products or to spread the quality of them. Asura inserts its business in the favorable framework, offering a platform on blockchain technology that guarantees rules settled and trustless on a smart contract, and working on a selection of NEO nodes.
The absence of intermediaries through NEO blockchain, allows direct the relationship between users, keeps the security of payments, stores data and secures transfers.
Every gamer can stream his session, see tournament gaming live of others, voting and bet on them. On each winning bet, Asura platform keeps a percentage that creates monthly prizes amount. Every gamer gains ASA tokens once gain a match. Matches can be 1v1 or 5v5 and can climb on the general leaderboards, acquiring rights to win monthly rewards.
Asura is not only a gaming platform but also a community platform on which each contributor is rewarded for his review, analysis, strategy solution sharing. The project pushes on community creation even assuring possibility to create tournaments and customize them.
The platform is almost ready. Reading roadmap, the testing is going to be completed on 4th quarter 2018 and on 2nd-4th quarter 2019 Asura World will full launched with the followings features: Asura World First Global Dota 2 Tournament for Pro Teams, Asura World First Global League of Legends Tournament for Pro Teams, Asura World First Global CS:GO Tournament for Pro Teams and Asura World First Global King of Glory Tournament for Pro Teams.
In cryptocurrency market, there is a similar project, with limited features than Asura project, called Unikoin Gold (UKG). The capitalization of this last project is of 47 million of $. Asura would collect 12 million of $ in ICO that is very low cap than UKG, therefore I see an evident investment opportunity.
Disclaimer: this is my personal article within my personal opinions so please don’t consider it as a financial advice.
For further information: | {
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How the mighty have fallen!
Just last year Michael Avenatti was the toast of the liberal media and a possible candidate for president.
Avenatti promised that Donald Trump Jr. would be jailed in the Mueller witch hunt.
Now Michael Avenatti is facing 335 years in prison if he is convicted for the numerous crimes he’s charged with in a new 61-page federal indictment (pdf) by a California grand jury.
TRENDING: BREAKING: Black Lives Matter Rioters in Hollywood Chase Down and Attack Driver.. UPDATE... DRIVER DETAINED BY POLICE (SHOCKING VIDEO)
On Saturday Michael Avenatti held a press conference… And he was the only one in the room.
https://twitter.com/FookFeminists/status/1152426911483617281
Later today Donald Trump Jr. unloaded on the creepy porn lawyer.
Hey Creepy Porn Lawyer, appreciate you flagging this. By the way, really enjoyed meeting your ex wife at my speech last night. It was a packed house unlike your presser. | {
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El tamaulipeco se llevó la victoria ponchando a tres de los cinco bateadores que enfrentó
SAN DIEGO.- Dos victorias en sus primeras tres apariciones en Grandes Ligas, es algo que pocos pueden presumir y el lanzador mexicano Gerardo Reyes es uno de ellos.
Después de tener un desempeño regular en el fin de semana del 12 al 14 de abril en Arizona, donde Reyes ganó en su debut sacando dos tercios, pero fue “macaneado” al siguiente día obteniendo un solo out, su aventura en ‘Las Mayores’ entró en receso.
El lanzador, quien cumplirá 26 años el próximo 13 de mayo, regresó al roster principal de los Padres de San Diego y en su primera aparición en el Petco Park tuvo una presentación soñada.
Inició ponchando a los dos bateadores que enfrentó en la apertura del séptimo capítulo, haciendo que abanicaran en cada uno sus seis lanzamientos. Su bola rápida anduvo entre las 96 y 98 millas por hora.
“Estoy feliz por la oportunidad, entrar en estos juegos tan apretados que creo que es lo más divertido de esto”, expresó Reyes tras el juego. Me sentía cómodo con la recta, atacando al bateador sobre todo empezando con strikes y de ahí adelante”, agregó.
Tras su actuación en esa entrada, Gerardo tuvo el voto de confianza de Andy Green, ya que le dio la oportunidad de batear en la parte baja de ese episodio, apenas minutos después de que Hunter Renfroe disparara un cuadrangular que puso la decisión en favor del tamaulipeco.
En lo que fue la apertura de octava entrada, Reyes la sacó en orden con un ponche y contando los dos tercios del episodio anterior, 14 de sus 18 lanzamientos fueron de strike.
“Excelente, nunca había sentido algo así después de ponchar a alguien y salir de una entrada tan difícil. El turno al bate no me lo esperaba, pero fue divertido aunque un poco tarde. Hace siete u ocho años que no bateaba, entonces es la primera vez”, concluyó entre risas. | {
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At our zoo wedding in Baton Rouge, we had a blue and purple color scheme with some Star Wars touches here and there, including a Han and Leia cake topper.
We also had a selection of animal ambassadors during the reception, for a touch of the wild side.
Read More | {
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During Democratic primaries on Tuesday, voters sent a strong message to the prosecutors responsible in the cases of Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice. Both the Cook County State’s Attorney in Illinois, Anita Alvarez and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty in Ohio were defeated by opponents in the democratic party.
The downfall of both prosecutors are a win for Black Lives Matter and other activists groups who became involved because of high-profile cases where prosecutors did not seek indictments for police officers who killed unarmed black youth, despite holding enough evidence to charge them with murder.
Young organizers can take pride in Anita Alvarez's loss tonight. They said #ByeAnita all the way to the ballot box. https://t.co/opARnOEnjl — Black Youth Project (@BlackYouthProj) March 16, 2016
In Illinois, Kim Foxx defeated Anita Alvarez, the two-term state’s attorney who held onto evidence of police brutality in the police shooting death of Laquan McDonald for over a year before publicly revealed dash cam video forced the arrest of the Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who fired 16 shots into the 17-year-old.
According to the latest reports, Foxx is leading by 58% of the vote, while Alvarez managed to obtain 28%. A third contender, Donna More received 13%.
In the city, Foxx won in predominantly black and Hispanic wards on the city’s West and South Sides, and the ethnically diverse North Side lakefront wards. Alvarez scored well in wards with a white voter base on the Northwest Side, South and Southwest Sides where large numbers of police, firefighters and city workers reside, according to a breakdown of primary results by Chicago Magazine.
“Our struggles here are very real,” Foxx, an African American woman from Cabrini-Green in her victory speech Tuesday. “The need to rebuild a broken criminal justice here in Cook County is not work that should be taken lightly.”
Kim Foxx says her election isn't just about saying #ByeAnita, but turning the page.https://t.co/HSiArqYpuH pic.twitter.com/CavXemkVEX — Chicago Reader (@Chicago_Reader) March 16, 2016
Behind Kim Foxx’s winning campaign to become the democratic nominee were two notable strengths, a powerful back story and the financial and political resources of her former boss, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. Foxx impressed upon many voters that she was in a unique position of understand injustice after growing up in one of Chicago’s toughest housing projects. She was a victim of sexual abuse and was homeless at one time herself. In the general election, Foxx will face the Republican pick for the state’s attorney’s office, Christopher Pfannkuche.
“Alvarez was cast by activists as an unprincipled cop-coddler who prioritized her working relationship with the Chicago Police Department over truth and justice,” Leon Neyfakh wrote for Slate. “Foxx undoubtedly got a significant lift from the efforts to unseat her opponent.”
Many critics of Alvarez did not directly endorse either Foxx or More, but carried the simple hashtag message #ByeAnita in highly-visible grassroots displays. The group Assata’s Daughters literally took to the sky with airplanes carrying banners associating her with another controversial politician, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Assata’s Daughters celebrated by singing “Bye, Anita” Tuesday night and released a statement asserting their own victory. “Chicago Black youth kicked Anita Alvarez out of office,” the group said in a statement. “We did this for Rekia. We did this for Laquan. We won’t stop until we’re free and Kim Foxx should know that as well.”
I'm am over joyed with tonight results #BlmCle we did it @Pros_TimMcGinty is out of office pic.twitter.com/p1SIBcJHm3 — #Justice4Tamir (@msgoldsby74) March 16, 2016
Just after midnight on Wednesday, single-term Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty conceded to his opponent Mike O’Malley. O’Malley, a relative newcomer to the race who did not officially kick off his campaign until January 21, received 55.4% of the vote at last report. He does not face a challenger from an Indecent or Republican, so O’Malley has likely secured the position.
As one writer at CleveScene put it, the results of this race were a referendum on McGinty’s handling of the death of Tamir Race. McGinty was scorned for advocating against criminal charges for the two police officers who shot and killed the black 12-year-old in 2014.
“They need an individual who is willing to go out and meet with individuals and restore some type of confidence in that office and I’m that individual and I will be doing that,” O’Malley told Fox8. “I will be meeting with people I will be talking with people on the streets. It’s going to take a large effort to bring this system back, but I am willing to work with the common pleas judges, the public defenders, all the people who thought they were perhaps bullied in the past will have a partner, and that partner will be me and my team.”
As Leon Neyfakh wrote for Slate:
It’s rare for incumbent prosecutors to be voted out of office. According to one study, they win re-election 95 percent of the time, and typically they run unopposed. This is in part because most voters just don’t pay attention to prosecutor races, and usually don’t have a vivid sense of the office’s powers. As one local district attorney told me last year after completing a successful campaign, “Most people don’t know what the district attorney does.”
According to Neyfakh, the races in Cleveland and Chicago could not have been more different. While Kim Foxx slammed Anita Alvarez for her role in covering up the murder of Laquan McDonald, Mike O’Malley took a hands-off approach when it came to Tamir Rice.
In a sense, both Alvarez and McGinty ultimately were shamed by scandal. And without the efforts of the families of the slain victims of police brutality and their hard-working supporters, high-profile cases such as Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice could have remained obscure. The results of these primaries indeed frame the efforts of Black Lives Matter and grassroots youth movements as a political success. | {
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Former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said he “believes” a victory for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania is “a possibility” since both President Obama and Romney have not actively campaigned in the state.
What is the Romney campaign thinking? Rendell speculated.
“Maybe they’re saying, ‘With two weeks to go, we probably don’t have enough time to influence voter choice by 5 percent, but maybe if we just stay quiet — and the Obama folks stay quiet — maybe the Democratic turnout basically collapses,” Rendell suggested at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce forum with former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum on Wednesday.
“Our voters are not nearly as reliable as Republican voters, regardless of the enthusiasm gap,” Rendell added. (RELATED: Santorum: Republicans ‘can pull off a surprise’ in Pennsylvania)
“Maybe they figure our turnout collapses, Republicans still turnout well, and they sneak across the finish line and do a startling upset. And I believe that that’s a possibility enough that I was on the horn to Chicago, and … I said, ‘Number one, I want [a] Bill Clinton robo-call to every home in Philadelphia and every home in Pittsburgh. I want the president one more time, even for an hour, in Philadelphia.'”
Rendell concluded that he still does not believe Pennsylvania’s twenty electoral votes are “in play” because “you haven’t seen the Rommey campaign or [American] Crossroads put a dime on TV [ads] in Philadelphia.”
But “on the other hand,” he added, “you never know.”
Follow Nicholas on Twitter | {
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On Tuesday, April 6, the California Senate Judiciary Committee approved Senate Bill 129 (SB 129), which would protect medical marijuana patients from being fired by their employers for consuming their medicine during off hours.
As State Senator Mark Leno, who introduced the bill, put it: "When Californians approved the compassionate use of cannabis, they never intended for it to apply only to unemployed people." Indeed, SB 129 will ensure responsible medical cannabis users keep their jobs, while also containing specific language against on the job impairment and exempting from the law safety-sensitive positions such as health care providers, school bus drivers, and operators of heavy equipment.
Now, SB 129 moves to a vote in front of the full Senate. We've got to ensure our senators understand the broad support for this common sense legislation.
Fill out the information below to email your senator -- tell them to support this crucial legislation! | {
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One of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302's pilots told the other "pitch up, pitch-up" moments before the doomed Boeing 737 Max jetliner crashed three weeks ago, a new report revealed.
That instruction and other information about the plane's final moments paint a picture of a flight crew that was quickly overwhelmed, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
A faulty anti-stalling system on the Max is suspected in the disaster, which occurred shortly after takeoff. All 157 people on board were killed.
The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) flight-control feature is also suspected in the crash of a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max in Indonesia last October, according to the BBC. The Lion Air flight went down soon after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board.
The Ethiopian Airlines jet took off from Addis Ababa on March 10 and ran into trouble almost immediately, the Journal reported.
LION AIR BOEING 737 MAX 8 WAS REPORTEDLY SAVED BY OFF-DUTY PILOT DAY BEFORE DEADLY CRASH IN INDONESIA
First Officer Ahmed Nur Mohammed contacted the control tower and in a crackling transmission reported a “flight control problem,” according to the newspaper, which cited people close to the ongoing investigation.
The tower asked for details as Captain Yared Getachew tried to climb and correct the glide path, the paper reported. Two minutes into the flight oscillation became a wild bounce, then a dive. The flight lasted fewer than six minutes.
The pilot who urged the other to pitch up was not identified.
BOEING, FAA QUESTIONED ABOUT SAFETY OF 737 MAX SAFETY SYSTEM DAYS BEFORE ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES CRASH
The newspaper's report came as Boeing faces mounting pressure to roll out a software update for its 737 Max, its best-selling jet. Arlines grounded 737 Max jets in their fleets after the Ethiopian Airlines crash. It is hoped there will be a fix in time for the peak summer travel season, the Associated Press reported.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The Max remains grounded worldwide and airlines are losing money because of canceled flights. | {
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Bitcoin ESMT Berlin Becomes First German University to Accept Bitcoin
ESMT University in Berlin has become the first German university to accept bitcoin as payment for tuition and more.
Also read: VIETNAM PLANS TO REGULATE BITCOIN AS CURRENT LAWS ‘FALL SHORT’
ESMT Berlin: First German University to Accept Bitcoin
The European School of Management and Technology in Berlin has become the first German university to accept virtual currency Bitcoin as a means of payment for tuition, particularly its degree and executive education programs.
“Bitcoins can now be used for all payments to the ESMT,” the press release states. “The digital cash makes it possible, as it were, to send SMS without the involvement of a bank worldwide within a few minutes.”
The university describes Bitcoin as “a decentralized virtual peer-to-peer currency.” Georg Garlichs, CFO of ESMT states:
ESMT is an innovative and future-oriented business school. Integrating bitcoin as a routine method of payment is a logical consequence of digitalization.
Garlichs also notes that this new means of payment will be especially useful for students who are from countries without a reliable banking system. Using bitcoin will offer them an “immediate, practically free-of-charge transfer,” he adds.
“In addition to reducing transaction costs and providing P2P marketplaces, blockchain also facilitates individual marketing of personal data,” explains Christoph Burger, blockchain expert at ESMT. “This is a feature that offers the data owner an improved position when negotiating with the users of data, especially in the age of big data.”
ESMT Berlin was founded by 25 leading global companies and institutions including Siemens and Big Four auditor KPMG. The international business school offers a full-time MBA, an executive MBA, a master’s in management, as well as open enrollment and customized executive education programs.
Growing List of Bitcoin-Friendly Universities
The announcement adds to the list of Bitcoin-friendly universities worldwide. An increasing number of institutions have either launched cryptocurrency-related courses or accept bitcoin for tuition and other payments.
The trend was spearheaded by Cyprus-based University of Nicosia in 2013, which not only accepts the virtual currency, but also offers a Masters Degree in Digital Currencies.
Some other universities accepting bitcoin include:
SFU bookstore – Simon Fraser University, Canada
Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico
The King’s College New York, US
The University of Cumbria, UK
Faculty of Informatics and Management Paulista (FIAP), Brazil
Meanwhile, some top-tier institutions have been providing cryptocurrency and blockchain-related courses in the US since 2014. New York University, Duke University, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford are just some of the big names offering in-class and online cryptocurrency courses.
The overall trend is no surprise, however, as the world’s leading colleges are gearing up to prep their students for the “future of money.” Back in June, the University of Cambridge acknowledged the need for blockchain education amid growing interest.
“For more than two years, I have seen ‘tremendous’ interest from companies wanting to learn more about the blockchain. I have been called in to teach executives informally about Bitcoin and other virtual currencies […],” Cambridge University’s Garrick Hileman stated. “At the same time, many people are still trying to understand the basics of this disruptive technology.”
Will all universities eventually accept bitcoin as payment? Let us know your prediction in the comments below!
Images courtesy of finance-magazin.de, ifm.biz, digitaljournal.com | {
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Two months ago, a single mother’s ordeal was grabbing headlines. Shanesha Taylor, homeless and desperate for a job, landed an interview at a Scottsdale insurance office. But the 35-year-old mother of two faced a difficult dilemma when she went to her interview on March 21. She couldn’t find child care, but she also couldn’t afford to cancel.
Short on options, Taylor let her two boys, ages 6 months and 2 years, wait alone in her car for 45 minutes while she tried to secure a source of income for her family. Taylor was subsequently arrested for child abuse for leaving her sons unattended in a hot car. Her children were examined at an area hospital and released as uninjured, but Taylor nevertheless faced two felony counts.
The best gift to mothers would be the ability to choose motherhood without suffering tremendous financial blows.
Taylor endangered her children, but she did it because she faced a tough dilemma — a choice between what was best for them in the short term and what was best for them in the long term. She faced this dilemma in the richest nation in the world — a nation that is nonetheless the worst among rich nations in terms of family-friendly policies. Taylor’s unemployment didn’t help matters, but even for the employed, social programs are lacking. As Stephanie Coontz summarized in her interview with us last year, “We are the only rich, industrial country in the world that doesn’t have subsidized parental leave, limits on the work week, some form of national health insurance, and/or strong investments in child care and preschool.”
Consequently, parenting is an almost insurmountable expense for many. In the last 20 years, the cost of maternity care and delivery has swelled in the United States — in fact, tripling in the case of delivery. Pregnancy, delivery, and newborn care now come to $30,000 on average. Add another $20,000 if the delivery is by C-section. It’s far more than what people in other developed nations pay. Americans pay more than twice what people in Switzerland pay for childbirth, and more than three time what people in Britain pay.
While we are now in the midst of what many are calling a student debt crisis — with student loan debt now exceeding credit card debt (and increasing at a rate of $2,853.88 per second) — it should also give us pause to learn that child care costs now exceed the cost of college in a majority of states. This is according to a report released late last year by Child Care Aware America, an organization founded to promote the quality and affordability of child care.
It should therefore be no surprise that, as unique as it was, Shanesha Taylor’s story highlighted difficulties that are familiar to many parents, and the outpouring of support she received made it clear how easily people related to her troubles. Taylor’s story spread rapidly on the Internet, and she soon became the beneficiary of a crowd-funding campaign that was raising thousands of dollars per day to help her out out of her situation. Additionally, within days of her arrest, an online petition to have her charges dropped garnered 12,000 signatures. Many of her online donors left messages that expressed sympathy with the hard times she had fallen on and the lack of support as she struggled through them. “I can’t imagine the desperation you must have felt leaving your kids in the car,” wrote one donor, “but I understand that desperate times call for desperate actions.”
Desperate times are a common theme as more than three-fourths of Americans lack the savings they would need to pay their bills if they were unemployed for six months. Unemployment benefits pay only a fraction of a normal paycheck, often too little to pay for utilities, a cell phone, and other expenses that are necessary for living — or job-seeking.
Even as parenting has become beyond the reach of many, we are in the midst of a nationwide backlash against reproductive rights — against some of the very necessities of people who are not financially prepared for dependents. Since the 2010 congressional elections, reproductive health has been on the chopping block, under attack by a wide range of initiatives targeting everything from employer insurance coverage for contraceptives to funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood. Following 2010, the Guttmacher Institute reported record numbers of state-level anti-abortion measures: 92 in 2011, 42 in 2012, and 70 in 2013. Arizona enacted some of the most notorious of those measures, restricting what types of providers can perform abortions and adding requirements for ultrasounds, waiting periods, and state-directed counseling.
Stories like Taylor’s underscore the hypocrisy of abortion restrictions — assuming they’re driven by a concern for lives — when the options for parents can be so few that the outcome is child endangerment. Graver outcomes are possible as well. A 2012 study by the University of California San Francisco found that women who sought abortions but were turned away from services were three times more likely to fall into poverty than those who successfully obtained services. And those living in poverty have a mortality rate about twice that of the rest of the population.
Last month, when news of Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy went public, abortion opponents wrote in several op-eds that there was an irreconcilable contradiction between the Clinton family’s support of reproductive rights and Chelsea’s decision to have a child. Writing in the Christian Post, Robin Schumacher expressed confusion over the fact that the Clintons could celebrate a pregnancy after so often championing reproductive rights. Schumacher asked how they could look forward to this birth but not others, as if supporting reproductive rights means being anti-pregnancy or anti-child.
If there are two things that can’t be reconciled, they are Schumacher’s simplistic views on abortion and the actual facts about the many women (one in three in the United States) who have had abortions. Sixty-one percent of them have already had a child, and the reasons commonly cited for seeking abortions have nothing to do with being anti-child or anti-family. One study in BMC Women’s Health gave financial reasons as the leading response at 40 percent, followed by timing at 36 percent, partner-related reasons at 31 percent, and the need to focus on other children at 29 percent.
Chelsea Clinton and her husband Marc Mezvinsky can look forward to parenthood because they are one of the least likely couples to fall on hard times. But situations like theirs are far from universal. That’s exactly why we need medically accurate sex education in our schools and affordable birth control for people of reproductive age — and when those fail, access to safe, legal abortion. Just as important, for those who choose parenthood, we need family-friendly social programs and work policies.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and on that day, like every day, we should celebrate motherhood. But we should celebrate it for the right reasons. Motherhood should be by choice and within the mother’s means. The best gift to mothers — and their children — would be a society that aligns with that ideal. | {
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SCP-4259
NOTICE SCP-4259 possesses an infohazardous effect which inhibits attempts to document it by Foundation personnel. The following report has been transcribed from a paper document written by Susie J██████, 10-year-old daughter of former Site-52 head researcher Dr. J██████, and leader of Internal Task Force 259. Between 07/25/1█ and 09/2/1█, Internal Task Force 259 handled all direct testing and containment procedures involving SCP-4259. Site Director Richard K██ acted in an advisory role, and has annotated this document with clarifying footnotes where necessary. As of 09/2/1█ Internal Task Force 259 has been disbanded, and a new team is being assembled to take over containment. Until then, this report is to be the only Foundation document produced concerning SCP-4259. Susie J██████'s original paper document is to be kept in Site-52 longterm perishable storage, and, in the event that this page disappears from all Foundation databases, used to re-transcribe this report within 48 hours.
Item #: SCP 4259
Object Class: Youklid
SCP-4259 Artist's Rendition
Special Contaignment Proceedures: SCP 4259 is realy cool andSCP 4259 lives in the big blue room in the Site where my Dad works worked. There needs to be a big ring of salt around the hole room all the time and William needs to be careful not to step on the circle with his big feet again. Whenever you go in the big blue room, you have to say the password or else [UNTRANSCRIBABLE] and she wont talk to you for two days. Emma writes the new passwords down in her notebook every friday . SCP 4259 gets to have one (1) bar of chocolate per day. Since incedent 4259-B, SCP 4259 gets to use the 3DS first, but only if she says please and only if Emma got to use it yesterday.
The Awsome Squad ("Internal Task Force 259") is in charge of all the testing with SCP 4259, and Grownups don't get to go in the big blue room while we're testing. The Awsome Squad shouldn't go near the body in the back corner of the big blue room. Since insudent 4259-A, Dennis has to stop pulling my hair during testing.
Discripshion: SCP 4259 is definitely a girl and Dennis doesn't know anything about SCPs or science. She has grey hair and long black eyes. Even tho she looks old she is kid shaped and doesn't act like an old person at all. She likes chocolate and video games, and gets realy sad if no one plays with her for more than two days. The Awsome Squad tried not-playing for two days by it made us all sad so we stopped.
My Dad says that SCP 4259 has a cognishokogniinfohazerdous effect, which means that she's dangerous to think about. When grownups talk about her or try to write stuff down they get all weird after a while and forget what their doing. I tried to get Mr. K██ to help me with my report but he kept forgetting all the stuff I told him when he went to type it and eventualy he just walked outa the room and didn't even look at me. I think about her alot tho and I don't forget stuff I think, so maybe it doesn't work on kids. I don't know tho, cause sometimes when I write stuff down about her it gets all weird and squiggly when I don't look at it. We tried to tell William's big brother about SCP 4259 when he came to visit and he also kept forgetting, so it might work on teens aswell.
When SCP 4259 is happy everyone else is happy and hole room feels warmer. Everyone likes it when SCP 4259 is happy. The salt circle makes SCP 4259 realy unhappy. She keeps asking if we can break the circle so she can [UNTRANSCRIBABLE], but Dad said to never ever do that. I wanna ask Dad if its ok to let her out now cause she's nice and stuff but Mr K██ says he can't come back for another 2 3 5 weeks. I hope he can comes back soon cause I wanna show him my notebook and all the science I did.
To make sure that the Awsome Squad doesn't accedentely break the circle, we put a improvised Bridging Device ("Door Mat") across the circle at the front of the big blue room.
Experements have shown that most cute animals also like being around SCP 4259. Cute animals tested include:
Emma's pet cat
Emma's pet hamster
That weird snake that Mr K██ gave us.
Emma's pet mouse.
Non-cute animals include:
All 10 9 of Dennis's pet lizards.
9 of Dennis's pet lizards. The cricket I found.
All of the insects Mr K██ gave us.
[UNTRANSCRIBABLE]
SCP 4259 didn't like the non-cute animals so we stopped doing the experuments. The non-cute animals also got scared of SCP 4259 for some reason. We didn't find this out until insedent 4259-C when [UNTRANSCRIBABLE] got realy scared and was accidentally terminated. Since the insudent, [UNTRANSCRIBABLE] is now a non-cute animal and we don't talk about him anymore. The Awsome Squad shouldn't go near the body in the back corner of the big blue room.
I keep telling them an d they [Scribbled over]
Insedent Report 4259-A: Yesterday SCP 4259 said that she wanted to play a board game so we got apples to apples from the common room. The password was "Egg Custard". SCP 4259 was gonna go first and we were trying to pick which way the turns were gonna go. I said that I should go next cause I was her best friend but Dennis got mad and said he was her best friend even tho I was. Emma thought that we could all be best friends but Dennis thought that was dumb. Then he started pulling my hair and I tried to punch him, but SCP 4259 got sad and started crying so we stopped. Emma said to let Dennis go first cause he didn't get any of the chocolate last time and I said yeah, even tho he's still wrong. Then Will complained that he didn't get any chocolate the time before that, but Dennis said it was cause he was fat. Then Will punched him but he laughed about so it was ok. SCP 4259 laughed about it too, and we all laughed and forgot about it.
Insedent Report 4259-B: The password was "It speaks in the twilight", but Will forgot and thought it was "It talks in the twilight". SCP 4259 said it was wrong, but Will said no, "talk" and "speak" were the same thing. Emma said that "speak" was more "awspicious", but no one knew what that meant so she said it was like fancy and important. Even Will agreed that it sounded more important-sounding, so he said sorry, but SCP 4259 was still upset so she [UNTRANSCRIBABLE]. We all tried to get her to give him back but she kept saying "Wrong Password!" and [UNTRANSCRIBABLE]. Emma told her that she could have the 3DS first from now on if she gave Will back, and that she would go last instead. SCP 4259 agreed, but I said that Emma could get it first if she had to leave before the end the last time. Dennis thought this was dumb cause what if someone else didn't get a turn last time, but I told him shut up, and anyway SCP 4259 liked the idea. Then she [UNTRANSCRIBABLE] again and Will said he felt all squished. We played Animal Crossing and SCP 4259 got to go first. I tried to get Mr K██ to help me change the Contaignment Proceedures after that, but he acted all weird so I did it my self.
Insedent Report 4259-C: Emma said that she wanted to show SCP 4259 her cat, and when she liked her we started trying other pets. Emma has alot of pets so we tried all of those first. Eventually I said we should all go and find some animals to try out. Dennis found some lizards in the woods and I found a cricket the night before. I also asked Mr K██ for some animals to test, and he gave us A box full of insects and a big weird snake thing. The password was "Water-Logged". When we got there, Dennis brought a big dog that noone had seen before. He said he was [UNTRANSCRIBABLE] and had it for years and years. We all thought it was weird cause he never talked about him, but he got all quiet and didn't say anything else. SCP 4259 really liked the snake thing. She let it curl around her and pet its head. Dennis was really excited to show his dog to her. Once she stopped playing with the snake he tried to pull the him into the room. [UNTRANSCRIBABLE] didn't wanna go tho, and he kept whimpering and keeping outside circle. Dennis tried to calm him down but he was was real scared, so he picked him up and took him over to SCP 4259. SCP 4259 hissed in a realy scary way I'd never seen and [UNTRANSCRIBABLE]. Then [UNTRANSCRIBABLE] but he [UNTRANSCRIBABLE] and he howled and ran up to SCP 4259 and almost [UNTRANSCRIBABLE]
but I [UNTRANSCRIBABLE]
[UNTRANSCRIBABLE]
[UNTRANSCRIBABLE]
I
I
Dennis I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I [UNTRANSCRIBABLE]
[UNTRANSCRIBABLE]
He didn't wanna talk to me. I tried to tell him but he kept crying and crying and crying and Emma told me I'd "done enough". He kept saying
[Scribbled over]
I talked to SCP 4259 last night. She said I was her best friend in the hole world.
The Awsome Squad shouldn't go near the body in the back corner of the big blue room. | {
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After watching his beloved team lose a closely fought Game 6 to the Boston Bruins, a Toronto Maple Leafs Fan opened his phone to find an unexpected photo of the action: one obscured by the back of own head.
"I looked on Instagram and I was at the top of my feed," said Scott, whose last name is being protected due to perceived online threats — online, some have said: "off with his head."
"I sent the photo to my girlfriend and I said, 'it kind of looks like it might be my head,'" he said during an interview on CBC News Network on Tuesday.
It was.
Just ask the thousands of U.S. television viewers who missed some of the final dramatic moments of Sunday's game because of it, or, those who have had some fun by using Scott's head to block out famous moments from history (see the video below.)
A Toronto Maple Leafs fan whose head obscured key moments Sunday's Game 6 against the Boston Bruins says he didn't know he was blocking the action for thousands of U.S. viewers. 5:33
Angry Bruins fans (most Canadian viewers had a clear view thanks to the Sportsnet/CBC feed) and even the actor Rob Lowe were among those who took to Twitter to complain about the obstructed view.
NBC doing a fantastic job showing the back of some leafs fan’s head in our defensive zone —@Mostrovs7 Hey Leaf fan with the abnormally large head,sit down <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LetsGoBruins?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LetsGoBruins</a> —@M_Haus84 Watching the Boston Toronto hockey game and literally all I can see is the back of somebody’s head. NBC: needs to get their act together right now. —@RobLowe
NBC blames technical difficulties, not Scott
Scott was sitting just two rows in front of the cameras at Scotiabank Arena during Sunday's game, he said.
When he stood to take in the action during the frantic third period, his head blocked a fairly large portion of the ice near the Boston goal — although he had no idea what was happening.
"I didn't know that my head was in the middle of the TV," Scott said. "The guy next to me is standing too but he's a full foot shorter than me and you'd have no idea."
Scott also adds that despite what many online have claimed, his head is not abnormally large.
NBC, which broadcast the game in the U.S., explained the glitch to the Boston Globe, saying that technical difficulties forced the network to switch to a replacement camera during the third period.
"The replacement camera had a slightly different perspective," an NBC spokesperson said.
Hockey writer Greg Wyshynski suggested the name "head-o-vision" for the unusual perspective.
Filmed in HEAD-O-VISION! <a href="https://t.co/n1vrxkCef4">pic.twitter.com/n1vrxkCef4</a> —@wyshynski
Scott said most of the online reaction has been lighthearted, though some of the comments verge on cyber-bullying. And while most angry viewers would only recognize him from behind, Scott said he's not interested in going to Boston for Game 7 after he and his head were bombarded with online vitriol.
"I would be scared, doing that," he said.
Instead, he said he'll watch the game at home or maybe at a downtown bar.
Scott confirmed to CBC News that he would be sitting during the action. | {
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Ahead of the country’s maiden experimental launch of latest generation vehicle GSLV Mk III, which would carry out the ‘Crew module Atmospheric Re- entry Experiment (CARE) on a suborbital mission on December 18, ISRO successfully carried out a rehearsal on Monday.
“The nine hour 30 minutes launch rehearsal of ISRO LVM3 has just been successfully completed,” ISRO said in its social networking site.
Confirming the success, a senior ISRO official said the countdown for the launch of GSLV Mk III/X CARE Mission (also known as LMV 3) would commence around 8.30 a.m., on December 17 at Sriharikota.
Asked about the reason behind the lesser duration of countdown, he said it was a 24-hour countdown before the December 18 launch since the mission would carry only a dummy cryogenic stage.
“The countdown would be for around 24 hours and would commence around 8.30 a.m., on December 17. The lift off of the launch has been scheduled at 9 a.m., on December 18,” he told PTI.
The 630-tonne GSLV-Mk III would carry the 3.65 tonne crew module even as the national space agency is equipping itself for its ambition of sending astronauts into space eventually.
However, the Indian government has not approved any human mission to space presently.
Realisation of 42.4 metre tall GSLV Mk-III would help ISRO place heavier satellites into orbit.
GSLV Mk III is conceived and designed to make ISRO fully self reliant in launching heavier communication satellites of INSAT-4 class, which weigh 4,500 to 5,000 kg.
It would also enhance India’s capability to be a competitive player in the multi-million dollar commercial launch market. | {
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Rugam cititorii HotNews.ro care cunosc si alte situatii similare sa ne trimita informatii si fotografii
"La Muenchen deja se asteapta deschiderea sectiei de votare... oamenii astia or venit cu periuta de dinti la ei si stau la coada sa voteze cum stateau parintii lor in comunism la carne, lapte si paine. FELICITARI OAMENI BUNI !!!", este mesajul ce insoteste fotografia distribuita pe Facebook Romani la coada la vot inca de sambata la ICR Londra:
La Ambasada din Paris Foto: Facebook
La Paris, in fata Ambasadei Romaniei au fost depuse flori si lumanari, cu mesajul "Constitutia, odihneasca-se in pace".
Reamintim ca la primul tur al alegerilor prezidentiale mii de romani nu si-au putut exercita dreptul de vot din cauza organizarii defectuoase. Astfel, din cauza numarului mic de sectii de votare, precum si a personalului redus din comisiile electorale, pe 2 noiembrie s-au format cozi imense in fata sectiilor gazduite de reprezentantele diplomatice ale Romaniei.
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The Third Station discontinued the B-Model False Men very shortly after their failed response to the surprise attack on the southern border. They were slow and nearly as fragile as real men; the ones that had tiptoed into the last strongholds found themselves torn apart and jumbleheaped in abandoned lawns and on living room floors. The idea that the false men were unsuited for war was considered for a slogan by more than one marginally witty soldier but never saw fruition because it drew attention to the Third Station's extravagant failure.
The False Men were innovative because they were able to recognize live soldiers of the Third Station; consequently they could look to the nearest friendly face for direction in the event of mission drift. During tests they had attached themselves to their live compatriots obsessively, mirroring their every move while watching them with an empty robot stare. A number of enlisted men developed symptoms of battlefield panic. Of course this fervor was scaled back a bit in the model that was eventually green lighted for honest-to-goodness fighting, but an unforseen consequence was a sudden delicacy in the friend-recognition software. After good shake-up a False Man was at a loss to differentiate between friend and foe, or even human and non-human.
The Third Station's embarrassment tapered to a point one morning when the last surviving False Man found its way to a military installation.
Normally the Third Station made every effort to keep operations a safe distance from civilian areas.
When enemy forces started to move up over the bluffs near the southern border of the Second Country they left no room for conscience. By the time they started to trickle down over the green toward the homesteads the aviators were there to shred them with fire before ground forces charged in to neutralize the stragglers. Because the enemy had caught the Third Station by surprise, a few of the fast ones were able to sprint the three hundred yards North into the suburbs and take refuge in whatever structures they could force open.
The Third Station was very cautious to avoid making the situation even more of a diplomatic nightmare. To the enemy's delight they waited for demands to come from the commandeered buildings. And things were still for several days. The Third Station was unable to find anything out. No word about hostages or anything else; there was only waiting.
When the waiting became too much they sent the new False Men in.
The world returned slowly, preceded by the hiss of spinning disks.
False Man Michael remembered nothing for a few minutes. Gradually he became aware of dancing shadows and cool air moving through leaves, and stillness. After the initial memory tests finished he was able to register an oak tree before him with a homemade swing hanging from the longest branch with one side ripped out. He winced when his pain sensors fired off, a heavy throb pushing up along the entire left side of his head. Then his memory came back completely and that was even more painful.
He was in the city near the border. The Third Station had sent him in to absolve the situation with the enemies in the buildings. He had walked quietly the way he had been ordered, listening and watching for strange things. He'd heard noises inside one of the houses and had knocked on the door; after knocking he heard things rustle like someone inside was in a hurry. He'd kicked the door in and had gone in to investigate. Inside the house he found only eerie silence until a hammer had struck his temple. Then someone had dragged him outside while everything gradually turned black.
It was quiet but Michael did not feel unsafe. He stood and looked around. There was no one. He was next to the house exactly where he had lost consciousness. Through the homemade flowered curtains in the window he could see a dark living room. The hammerblow had caused a crash inside his head and some things had reset themselves while he had been asleep; now he felt an overwhelming desire to find a friend who would guide him. He wondered if there was anyone inside.
The front door hung awkward from the bottom hinge. The curtains were drawn but there was still not much light, and there was the feeling of waking up safe in the morning. There was a smell of cookies and vague burning. In the kitchen Michael saw a fresh batch lined up on a tin sheet on the counter; the oven was still on and the door was open. The sunlight played in the turning hazes of smoke, broken by the leaves dancing on the big oak outside. There was a woman on the floor with her head caved in.
Michael knocked over the coffee table while he ran into the hallway to check the bedroom. It was silent there as well. There was a bed canopied with a mosquito net because it was summer, and on the wicker nightstand there was a book with a flower on the cover and a bookmark about 50 pages in. The window was open and there was a man sprawled over the sill, his limbs outstretched like boards in the sunlight. He was wearing only socks.
They had died so suddenly that they had not even had time to pull together the echoes that made them human: the woman's cookies were becoming stale on the counter. Michael returned to the kitchen and turned off the oven.
When Michael walked back outside he saw a gray thing move quickly across the grass, glancing along the oak and disappearing with a hiss beneath a row of low hedges about twenty feet away. It was the first moving thing he had seen since awakening and he hurried after it. While the programming drove his limbs he became aware that the hours laying against the house had taken their toll: it hurt to move. He fell to his knees in front of the hedges and inertia pushed him onto his belly. He reached inside and followed the moving and hissing until his fingertips encountered something soft, and once he could wrap his hand around it he drew it out.
The thing made a weak sound and struggled for a second. Its eyes were blue.
"Hello, friend," Michael said. "I have lost my way."
The animal said nothing.
Michael waited a moment. "I was part of the mission to draw the enemies out of the houses," he continued. "I came from the battallion dispatched on Tuesday to point six. We went south. The top of the bluffs. I have been separated from my group and need orders. I have damage also. Give me orders."
The animal would not answer him. Michael knew that there was a reason for this and saw only one conclusion.
"Are you unable to speak? You have sustained damage also, likely to your vocals or perhaps the part of your brains responsible for speech. It is no surprise because you are small to be fighting here; it was right of you to be frightened of me. I will take us to the base where we will be repaired. Is that alright?"
The animal looked at him. "It is no matter," Michael replied. "I will carry you because you are small."
Michael saw very quickly that the neighborhood was empty: the area had been evacuated prior to his deployment and the fighting had long since finished, but no one had moved back in. He passed several False Men like himself, all dead, some slumped against buildings, some in pieces, one who had died spasming and whose eyes were open so wide his eyelids were bunched into the sockets like uneven rugs. It was some hours before he encountered civilization again and more hours still before he found his way to the first outpost. The animal was calm the entire time and because Michael had a guide he felt safe.
"Hello, friend," Michael said to the young Sergeant behind the reception desk. "I am from the failed mission on the bluffs. I have an injured comrade with me and we need to be returned to the East Base. Arrange transportation please."
Sergeant Faria eyed the False Man incredulously. The kitten under his arm mewed.
"Are you injured also?" Michael asked loudly. "It is unfortunate that the enemy reached this far. We will walk together if you can move."
Michael was turned over to the engineers for further study. | {
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On Thursday, the European Commission launched the pilot phase of a new EU-wide framework for sustainable buildings called ‘Level(s), an assessment framework aiming to transform the building sector.
On Thursday, the European Commission launched the pilot phase of a new EU-wide framework for sustainable buildings called ‘Level(s), an assessment framework aiming to transform the building sector.
Level(s) constitutes a voluntary reporting framework using existing standards in order to assess the environmental performance in the built environment, where all building projects are invited to participate.
It is an open source assessment framework that has been developed for two years now, in consultation with key industry players like Skanska, Saint-Gobain, Sustainable Building Alliance and Green Building Councils and the public sector.
The pilot tool focuses on performance indicators across areas such as greenhouse gas emissions, resource and water efficiency, health and comfort.
More specifically, the indicators will focus on GHG emissions throughout the building’s life cycle, material life cycles which are resource efficient and circular, efficient use of water resources, healthy and comfortable spaces, adaptation and resilience to climate change and whole building life cost and value.
Each of the indicators is designed to link the building’s impact with the EU priorities for circular economy, and to broadly link sustainability in buildings with the delivery of UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
The building sector is a key target in the EC’s policy to promote a circular economy, as it is one of the most resource consuming sectors accounting for approximately half of all extracted materials and energy consumption, and one third of water consumption and waste generation.
One of the main aims is to establish a ‘common language’ on what sustainability in buildings is in practice, shedding light in areas beyond exclusively energy performance.
Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Karmenu Vella said: “Level(s) can help us develop an environment built sustainably across Europe and support our transition to the circular economy”.
“We are releasing this framework for the sector during World Green Building Week demonstrating Europe’s global leadership. It marks an important step towards a more resource-efficient and competitive construction sector in Europe.”
James Drinkwater, Director of the World Green Building Council's Europe Regional Network said: “This is a clear signal to the market that sustainable building practice is shifting from niche to norm”.
“Having a common goal to deliver nearly zero-energy buildings across Europe galvanised industry-wide action, and now having a common language around ‘sustainable’ building helps us begin to really transform mainstream practice”.
The pilot phase of Level(s) will last until 2019.
For an extensive introduction to Level(s) and how it works click here.
For a detailed guidance on how to make performance assessments using Level(s) click here.
To register your interest in participating to the testing period of Level(s) click here. | {
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GETTY German detectives believe they have a new suspect, known only as Silvio S, in the search for Maddy
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Detectives in Germany also want to know if the 32-year-old double killer, known only as Silvio S, took five-year-old Inga Gehricke. Since she vanished on May 2 this year after walking into woods during a family barbecue in the Saxony-Anhalt state, some 50 miles from Berlin, Inga has been known as the German Madeleine. Scotland Yard detectives seeking Madeleine, who disappeared in Portugal aged three on May 3, 2007, are following developments closely. It is expected they will ask their German counterparts to check the killer’s passport to see if he was ever in Portugal.
GETTY Kate and Gerry McCann have never given up hope in the search for their daughter
He would have been 24 at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance during a family holiday. Silvio was arrested on Thursday and has since admitted two child killings after his mother gave information to police. Four-year-old Bosnian refugee Mohammed Januzi was snatched as his parents visited a government welfare office in Berlin on October 1. Last Tuesday police released CCTV footage of the child being led away from the building by a bearded man. Later Silvio’s mother called police because she was suspicious about the behaviour of her son.
GOOGLE Madeleine McCann disappeared whilst the family holidayed in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz
When officers searched his car last Thursday they found the decomposing body of the Bosnian boy in the boot among cat litter. Silvio admitted he took the child to his home, sexually abused him and strangled him the following day because he would not stop crying. While being interviewed by police Silvio also admitted abducting, abusing and killing a six-year-old boy called Elias, who had vanished from the town of Potsdam, near Berlin, in July. The child, who was enticed into his car, was found buried in the garden of Silvio’s home in the village of Niedergörsdorf, near Berlin. Police spokesman Stefan Redlich said: “The man confessed overnight that he had also killed Elias.”
GETTY Scotland Yard has announced a drastic reduction in resources available in the search for Maddy
It is thought that the boy was also strangled. Winfrid Wenzel, head of the investigation into Mohammed’s disappearance, said officers were “in close contact” with counterparts investigating Inga’s case.
The man confessed overnight that he had also killed Elias Stefan Redlich, Police spokesman | {
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PARIS — Every morning, in a part of the 11th Arrondissement of Paris that has not yet gentrified, Mireille Knoll would sit at home watching television as she waited for her personal care aide.
The aide, Leila Dessante, would clean the small second-floor apartment, cook lunch and keep company with Ms. Knoll, a 85-year-old grandmother and Holocaust survivor. “She would take my face in between her hands and always ask, ‘How are you doing today, sweetheart?’” Ms. Dessante recalled on Wednesday.
Ms. Knoll’s gentle routine was brutally interrupted last week when she was killed in her apartment. The attack shocked her neighbors, France’s Jewish community and the country as a whole. Two suspects, men in their 20s, have been placed under formal investigation on charges of murder with an anti-Semitic motive.
The killing has raised questions about a persistent strain of anti-Semitism in France, “an anti-Semitism that remains, that transforms, that reappears, that mutates,” according to Édouard Philippe, the prime minister. | {
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Three of the 11 demands of protesting farmers from Sikar district, Rajasthan, who virtually brought the entire state to a grinding halt between September 1 and 13, concerned their right to trade in cattle: the withdrawal of restrictions on sales of bovines in animal markets, reduction in the age of sales of calves and cows, and total protection for everyone involved in the trade and transportation of animals. The farmers were protesting the fallout of a series of legal restrictions on trade and transportation of animals, culminating in the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rule, 2017 (Gazette 396), banning the trade of animals for slaughter in animal markets.
The stray cattle problem
The new rules announced in May 2017, coupled with the growing climate of violence unleashed by emboldened bands of cow vigilante groups, has resulted in a chakka jam of animal markets, fairs, jatras and animal transportation across the state, and as forewarned, has forced farmers to abandon their non-productive cattle, resulting in burgeoning numbers of ‘stray cattle’ in every village. The farmers’ leaders of Sikar speak of 300-400 stray cattle in every village. These stray cattle have been grazing on farmers’ fields, destroying standing crops and attacking farmers. Farmers, in desperation, are spending huge quantities of money to keep the cows at bay: fields fenced with barbed wire spiked with nails, electric fences, night-long vigils to chase away starving cows, herding stray cows into village schools and much more. The story of stray cows and angry farmers repeats itself in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh – in fact pretty much every state where cow slaughter or the transportation of animals intended for slaughter is already banned, and has been intensified by these most recent rules.
Rajasthan and states with similar stringent cow slaughter and inter-state transportation bans topped the list in stray cattle populations even in 2012, five years prior to the current crises. States like Kerala on the other hand, with no cattle slaughter bans, have a minuscule numbers of strays. This data undeniably reaffirms the centrality of slaughter to balance the cycle of production, disposal and replacement of domestic farm animals in farmer livelihoods – which otherwise translates into rising populations of disowned uncared for stray animals.
What has markedly changed between the current and pre-2014 political context has been the vicious clamping down on citizens engaged in the transportation of animals, as they are immediately being suspected of ‘smuggling’ animals out of the state to states with no slaughter bans. Inter-state transportation of in-milch and draught animals has always been accompanied by inter-state trade of non-productive animals, which in the case of states that have banned inter-state transportation of animals intended for slaughter, is termed ‘illegal trafficking’ or ‘smuggling of animals’. While there is scant substantive evidence of ‘smuggling’, farmers in states with stringent slaughter bans desire and benefit from such ‘illegal’ transportation of their ‘non-producing animals’, as this enables them to recover between 30-40% of their original investment, which is utilised to purchase replacement stock, and facilitates a disposal mechanism for their old and non-producing animals, and thus precludes them from having to turn loose their cattle, or simply hand them over to gaushalas, in many instances having to pay the gaushala a fee.
The recent uproar by farmers across North India clearly brings focus to the swelling numbers of cast-off cattle in wake of the clamping down on slaughter, trade and transportation and the growing climate of violence and impunity of cow vigilante groups, who enjoy the protection too of state laws – be it in Rajasthan or Maharashtra.
Where are the cows going?
Whilst stray cattle population data and gaushala cattle populations for which there is no data, save reports of gaushalas bursting at their seams with rapidly mounting numbers of stray cattle, partially account for the non-productive animals, the illegality of cow slaughter across vast stretches of the country has obviously pushed an entire economy underground and created successive generations of hypocrites in positions of policy planning and power. Reports clearly point to the desperation with which farmers trade and traders risk their lives, to help farmers sell their unproductive cows. It may also have contributed to other coping mechanisms such as in Punjab, where farmers’ production is largely based on breeding and selling first lactation cross-bred Holstein Friesan cows, or selling cows in their fourth lactation, making it easier (until 2014) for traders to transport cows out of the state, as these females are clearly ‘lactating’ and not non-productive, and continue to be purchased by farmers in other states. The ‘missing numbers’ of male cattle to female when we analyse overall cattle populations also clearly point to male cattle having been slaughtered. How else does one account for a sex ratio of adult (>2.5 years) indigenous cattle female: male being 1:0.6, and for cross-bred cattle being 1:0.08? The tragedy of banning cattle slaughter and its transportation has been the heightened cruelty, pain and discomfort cattle have been forced to undergo, as compared to their sister buffaloes. Ill-treated as strays, living in badly maintained cow-shelters, transported in overcrowded vehicles over long distances and probably slaughtered under more painful conditions – all because of a false notion of cow worship, insisted upon by law makers, who continue to be in complete denial of the centrality of slaughter in sustaining the production cycle of cattle (and other domestic farm animals), in farmer livelihoods.
As has been discussed at length: domestic (farm) bovines which include cattle (cows, bulls and bullocks) and buffaloes are reared by farmers until they are productive and economical, and then sold. These non-milking, non-reproducing, non-draught worthy cattle, will not be purchased by another farmer, but would be bought for slaughter alone. The animal continues to have a resale value, due to the post slaughter products: beef, leather, offals. The National Dairy Development Board described the economic value of an animal in its seventh lactation as being a mere 30% of an animal in its first lactation. It talks of the youngest animals produced in the herd replacing the oldest animal, and assumes that animals other than in their first, second or third lactations are sold to maintain constant herd size. They estimate how 40% of a dairy farms income is derived from the sale of unproductive cows.
Indian farmers do not rear cows and buffaloes for beef (in contrast to the industrialised beef producing countries such as Brazil, Australia, the US et al). However, Indian farmers rely on the beef-leather by-product market, to dispose of their unproductive animals, sustain their livelihoods and the dairy-draught-insurance-manure-role of animal in Indian agriculture, for which slaughter is a prerequisite. In turn slaughter exists because of the economic values of beef and leather, or else people would not be economically invested in these enterprises, supporting million livelihoods.
Deadlines set by the UP government to herd stray cattle into sheds, court orders in Himachal Pradesh to keep roads stray cattle free, fining farmers who let their cattle out onto roads in Haryana and proposals in Haryana and Punjab for cow taxes to finance stray cattle care in gaushalas constitute economic and ecological harakiri. Bottom line, they are not going to address the ‘problem’ of stray cattle, nor the unaddressed issue of disposal of mounting carcasses of dead cattle once they die (which they will at some point in their lives). There also appears to be an unspoken underlying assumption amongst those who govern us that the hoary traditions of India’s unconstitutional caste system will take care of those dead cattle in gaushalas. There is only one solution: legalise cow slaughter.
Talking about cow slaughter
The centrality of slaughter to sustainably operationalise Article 48 of the Directive Principles of State Policy – “The State shall endeavour to organize agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular take steps for preserving and improving the breeds” – has either been consciously ignored or perhaps not wholeheartedly comprehended. The constitutional debates on slaughter largely became a religious Hindu vs Muslim debate, rather than one grounded within cattle livelihoods and animal science, wherein would have unambiguously emerged an assertion of the fundamental role of slaughter to balance domestic cattle populations and preserve the species. Erroneously, slaughter was implicated for driving down cattle populations and thus, Article 48 concludes with an inherent contradiction on how the preservation of stock would be achieved through “prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle”. A catch 22 that continues to haunt us to date and be manipulated to serve dreadful ends.
Fortunately, having placed decisions pertaining to slaughter laws under the jurisdiction of states, nine states (West Bengal, Kerala and the seven states of the northeast) chose to have no cattle slaughter bans or require animals to be certified ‘fit for slaughter’. Nine states (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Goa) have bans on cow slaughter, but slaughter permissions for aged bullocks and bulls certified ‘fit for slaughter’; the vast 11-state cow belt heartland of India have slaughter bans on all cattle. At the same time, the upper-caste Brahminical cultures of the cow laid bare their caste driven decisions, manifesting in a different set of rules for buffaloes, which was largely excluded from slaughter bans across the country. Thus the buffalo species thrived and buffalo-rearing farmers and buffalo beef eaters mercifully spared scrutiny, until the recent government ban, which defined cattle to include buffaloes and camels. Historically legislations on slaughter bans emerged gradually across the country, with the degree of punishment too steadily increasing over the years. The last 25 years, coinciding with India’s tryst with economic reforms and liberalisation, has ironically witnessed a tightening of state laws on slaughter bans, inter-state transportation of cattle, clampdowns on slaughter houses and enhanced punishments which today extend to life sentence, as in the state of Gujarat. This intensified in the last three years, culminating in criminalising the sales and purchase of animals intended for slaughter within the space of animal markets.
Also read: Laws Prohibiting Cow Slaughter Are Creating Both Vigilantes and Victims
No sooner had protests against these rules erupted, than there were reports of the Ministry Of Environment and Forests considering removing buffaloes from the purview of the rules. Meanwhile, based on a petition in the Tamil Nadu high court challenging the new rules as contradicting the parent act, the Tamil Nadu high court ordered the suspension of the rules. In July 2017, the Supreme Court responding to a series of PILs on these rules, extended the Tamil Nadu high court’s order to the entire country until the Centre reverted with a fresh set of rules, which was supposed to happen end August. Nearly three months on, it is apparent how most states have failed to inform animal market officials about the not-applicability of the Centre’s rules, and have de facto encouraged a continued climate of fear and violence.
Whilst the Centre has yet to announce new rules, a narrative justifying the earlier rules that featured in media reports cannot be ignored and needs to be interrogated.
Why banning slaughter isn’t good for cattle
Animal rights and animal welfare activists, who played a key role in formulating Gazette 396, have justified the rules, not (as one would have expected) from a cruelty to animal position, but because it will facilitate “traceability of food from farm to fork, minimise animal health hazards and ensure food safety”. Procuring animals directly from farmers’ homes, they argue, will ensure such traceability. Apart from it being profoundly dubious as to why a traceability and food safety issue should be addressed via cruelty laws in India, more disturbingly it raises the question as to whether the traceability arguments (which really concern international trade where importing countries require exporting countries to comply with traceability and other food safety standards) is really about setting the stage for a big corporate take over of profitable sections of the buffalo beef market? Whilst currently in India some 150 export companies control the front end of the buffalo beef export industry, the destruction of local animal markets under the garb of animal cruelty could actually be a larger story of capture and monopoly of the entire animal supply value chain (from farm to slaughterhouse), currently handled by a galaxy of small traders, by a clutch of perhaps large logistics corporations, as indeed is the norm in the livestock and meat industries of the other big players: Brazil, the US, Australia.
This, of course, will successfully ensure the economic extermination of millions of lives and livelihoods that make up the complex animal market web, a majority of whom are very poor Muslims, Dalits and other backwards-caste communities. It will also make it a buyers’ market and not a sellers’ market. Farmers will be forced to forgo their power to negotiate with buyers (which they currently enjoy in the space of animal markets) and will become completely dependent on a handful of procurement/logistics corporations, who will dictate the price at which an animal shall be bought and sold. The argument already being made is how a farmer, who thus far is being exploited by a chain of small traders, will now have ‘fair choice’ with reliable and ‘regulated’ procurement agencies. This was the narrative, remember, before they liberalised the dairy sector to allow the entry of multiple private dairy companies to purchase milk from farmers. Farmers were promised choice, and certain profit. The reality of dairy markets today are a far-cry from this utopia, with farmers at the mercy of company cartels, busy consolidating and monopolising the dairy markets, where milk pricing is always set to protect the dairy processors (companies) profits, who care little about smallholder farmers.
Plausible certainly for buffaloes, this makes little sense for cattle in a context of persistent demands for a nationwide ban on cow slaughter, except for literally enabling an easy surveillance system to ‘trace’, track and punish those who trade in cattle for slaughter. With cows contributing 47% of the total volume of milk produced in India (21% from indigenous cows and 26% from cross-breds), a stubborn perseverance with such cow slaughter ban politics, as has been analysed earlier, will only serve to push farmers away from rearing cows, an aspect anticipated too by India’s largest dairy player, ironically located in the holy cow belt of India: a formal death of the cattle species and cattle livelihoods of farmers, along with perhaps near-extinct indigenous cow breeds in gaushala cow shelters minting money from the holy cow worshipper, gaumutra products and a citizens cow-rakshak tax .
On September 6, the Supreme Court directed all states to appoint a senior police official in every district as a nodal officer to take action against cow vigilantism. However, having witnessed the deliberate inertia with which states have acted on the issue of the Supreme Court suspension of Gazette 396, one is deeply sceptical on whether states will operationalise these new directives.
There can be nothing more cruel and gruesome than a nation which drives its farmers to nearly ‘lynch’ their now non-producing stray cows, which cannot be legally slaughtered or traded for slaughter, due to anti-cow slaughter laws and a climate of terror created by self-appointed cow vigilante groups, who are busy lynching citizens, including farmers, who they suspect are trading cows for slaughter. And it’s just not any citizen. According to IndiaSpend’s compilation of cow lynching reports from the English media: Muslims were targeted in 51% of all bovine violence events, and comprised 86% (24 of 28) killed since 2010, where 98%, or 68 of the 70 cases of lynching in the name of cow protection, occurred after 2014, when the current political dispensation came to power.
This is certainly not about cow protection, or animal cruelty, or bovine preservation, or farmers – but a devious convergence of the interests of the state, religion and big business, all rolled into one.
Sagari R. Ramdas is a trained veterinarian and works with the Food Sovereignty Alliance, India. | {
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The liquid in the trough below looks remarkably like iced tea. But trust me, you don't want to drink it.
Not yet.
"This is the first step of our treatment process," says Denis Bilodeau, vice-president of the Orange County Water District, on a metal catwalk next to a canal of municipal sewage.
Water is precious in the drought-plagued region, and this massive water recycling plant in Fountain Valley, an hour south of Los Angeles, was built to convert raw sewage into drinkable H20.
The brown liquid begins to bubble. Then it will be drawn into straw-like filters 1/300th the size of a human hair.
This Fountain Valley, Calif., recycling plant can generate more than 100,000 gallons of pure water a day. (Kim Brunhuber) "That will keep all of the bacteria and viruses out," Bilodeau says.
The sewage will go through reverse osmosis and then be treated with intense UV light from bulbs manufactured by Ontario company Trojan UV.
" It's actually clean down to the atomic level, where all we have left is the H20 molecules," Bilodeau says. "And now this plant produces enough water to serve 800,000 people."
Got any more sewage?
According to the Orange County Water District, the facility is the largest of its kind in the world. Built in 2008, it has already gone through one expansion, and now Bilodeau says they're preparing for a second.
"Our only limiting factor now is that we need more sewage water to process," Bilodeau says. "Here in Orange County we actually have less sewage than we did 20 years ago because of all of the water conservation that takes place with low-flow toilets and low-flow shower heads."
Pure water derived from sewage. The reporter verifies it tastes like bottled water but a little more flat due to the lack of minerals. (Kim Brunhuber) Urban Californians are using a third less water than they were two years ago. But letting lawns go brown and fountains go dry isn't enough. Many here realize that at home they have to not just use less, but re-use more.
That's why Laura Allen decided to modified some of her appliances. Half of California's urban water is used on landscaping. But the garden at her apartment building gets most of its water from its sinks and washing machines.
As she washes her hands, the dirty water is piped from the sink into small underground reservoirs covered with small round covers. Water trickles out of the pipe and into the reservoir through a layer of wood shavings.
"The greywater flows through, it soaks through the wood chips. And they are actually the filter, so they catch all the lint or debris in the water, and the greywater soaks down into the soil," Allen says.
Greywater Action co-founder Laura Allen demonstrates a washing machine equipped with a valve that redirects waste water to the apartment's garden. (Kim Brunhuber) The washing machine, too, has been retrofitted with a simple valve.
"One side of the valve sends the water back to the sewer or the septic, the other side goes into our irrigation system," Allen says. "You have to make sure you're using plant-friendly products… if you use that, the water's great quality for irrigation."
As founder of the group Greywater Action, she now teaches people how to install their own water recycling systems, which are becoming more popular as Californians become more aware of the drought and receive generous incentives from water utilities.
"Generally speaking, you can save 16 to 40 per cent of your water consumption," Allen says.
That's about 56,780 litres a year for an average household. Which is helpful, but some cities are starting to think a lot bigger.
This week, the the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California presented a plan to develop a water recycling plant in the Los Angeles area that could provide enough water for 300,000 people for a year. It would be even bigger than the mega-plant in Orange County, which generates enough to cover a quarter of the needs of the district's more than two million residents.
Orange County Water District vice-president Denis Bilodeau gives a tour of the massive sewage recycling plant in Fountain Valley, Calif. (Kim Brunhuber) "Once we explain to people that the water we create here is actually cleaner than bottled water or what's in their tap," Bilodeau says, "then they understand that this water is very safe to drink."
Except no-one will actually drink this water — at least not right away.
Regardless of how much the water is filtered, health officials here still don't allow it to go directly from toilet-to-tap.
"We're very mindful that perhaps the public isn't quite ready for that step yet," Bilodeau says.
Instead, it'll be piped underground to replenish California's dwindling groundwater, which may eventually get drawn back into the municipal water supply.
But he's certain that soon Californians will have no choice.
"The future is here," Bilodeau says. | {
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Key Highlights
ETH price corrected lower recently and tested the $147-148 support against the US Dollar.
There is a crucial bullish trend line formed with support at $148 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
The pair is placed nicely in a bullish zone above $145 and it may continue to rise in the near term.
Ethereum price is consolidating recent gains against the US Dollar and bitcoin. ETH/USD may soon break the $160 resistance and continue to move higher.
Ethereum Price Analysis
Recently, there were bullish moves in ETH price above the $145 support against the US Dollar. The ETH/USD pair traded above the $150 and $154 resistance levels to move into a bullish zone. It even spiked above the $160 level and traded as high as $160.12. Later, it started a downside correction and traded below the $157 support. It also moved below the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $147 low to $160 high.
However, there are many supports on the downside near $154 and $150. Moreover, there is a crucial bullish trend line formed with support at $148 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. The 50% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $147 low to $160 high is an intermediate support at $154. Lastly, the 100 hourly simple moving average is also placed near the $151 level. Therefore, there are many supports, starting with $154 and ending with $145. The price is likely to move higher if buyers gain traction above $157 and $160. The next major resistance for buyers is near $165, which is the last major swing low.
Looking at the chart, ETH price is may consolidate in the short term above $145. However, once there is a break and close above $160, there could be heavy gains.
Hourly MACD – The MACD is slightly placed in the bullish zone.
Hourly RSI – The RSI is currently placed above the 50 level.
Major Support Level – $148
Major Resistance Level – $160 | {
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With the release of the new Xiaomi Mi Note, suddenly the Chinese company is setting its sights on a market dominated by just a few phones: the premium phablet. This market is home to a select few devices which manage to balance a large screen with plenty of practical features to separate it from smaller-screened flagships. How does the new Mi Note fare in this elite club? And just for the sake of it, let’s throw in the Mi Note Pro as well.
Xiaomi’s launch of the Mi Note series had only one aim in mind: to be the best phablet in the business. It set itself a target of matching and exceeding what the company considered to be the finest phablet around – the Apple iPhone 6 Plus. We felt the current phablet king is the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, which is Samsung’s best smartphone to date.
And let’s also not forget the recently-announced LG G Flex 2, the only other smartphone that features Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 810. Let’s take a look at how Xiaomi’s latest phablets fare in terms of hardware:
Click to enlarge
Even in the presence of highly-regarded phablets, the Xiaomi Mi Note does not look out of place. In fact, the Mi Note Pro looks like the true king of phablets with its 4GB of RAM and LTE Cat 9 support. However, with its official availability hanging on the hopes that Qualcomm fixes its issues with the Snapdragon 810 chipset, let’s focus on the Mi Note, which will be available for pre-orders in China at the end of this month.
Blow for blow, the Mi Note matches and exceeds the iPhone 6 Plus’ hardware specifications. Against the Galaxy Note 4, the Mi Note is both smaller and lighter than our favourite Android phablet – though admittedly the Note 4 packs plenty more firepower such as an Exynos Octa processor and a 2K display.
The Mi Note will also mark the first flagship dual-SIM, dual-LTE flagship smartphone from Xiaomi for international markets. Its unique nano- and micro-SIM tray will be a very attractive proposition to those who travel often as well as those who have two numbers. There are few truly great flagship phablets in the market, but there are even fewer flagship smartphones with dual-SIM, dual-LTE around.
Ultimately, the kingmaker will be in the details. With so little to differentiate between the five models, it will go down to things like design, software and even camera performance that will sway a consumer’s mind and money. The Mi Note’s dual curved glass design may not look as unique as the G Flex 2, but it is an exceptionally comfortable device to hold despite its size. On the other hand, MIUI 6 is still based on Android 4.4 KitKat; while development works are already underway to upgrade to Android 5.0, it may take some time before it rolls out.
Then, there’s the camera. The iPhone camera is almost peerless, while the Galaxy Note 4 proved one of the best among 2014’s smartphones. Will the 13MP Sony sensor be just as capable? The IMX 214 Sony sensor on the Mi 4 was good, but the Note 4’s IMX 240 Sony sensor is even better; the iPhone 6 Plus uses an 8MP sensor from Sony too, but the smallest sensor among the three still produces arguably the best pictures taken on any smartphone today.
It is an uphill path for Xiaomi’s new pretender to snatch the throne from Apple or Samsung. But if there’s one company who can do it, you can be pretty sure it is the world’s most valuable tech startup.
MORE: Hands On: Xiaomi Mi Note | {
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Vedomosti, Russia’s most prominent independent daily newspaper, sits for sale at a street vendor's stall in Moscow. The publication aspires to Western standards of journalism. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News)
In a move that will significantly constrict Russia’s fast-shrinking space for independent reporting, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed into law a measure that will curtail foreign ownership of media outlets in his country.
The decision extends the Kremlin’s control over some of Russia’s most prominent independent publications, a few of which have broken news critical of Putin and his allies at a time when tensions between Russia and the West are at their highest level since the Cold War.
The move comes as Russia’s powerful state-run media has labored round-the-clock to glorify Putin and denigrate groups perceived to be the nation’s enemies. Leaders of those outlets — the sources of news for the vast majority of Russians — are unapologetic and open about their efforts as propagandists, a term they use to describe themselves.
Even though Putin long ago consolidated his control over television and many print news outlets, there had been independent options for the smaller set of Russians who sought alternative voices for news, and the Internet was a particularly unregulated space. But over the past year, one news source after another has been blocked, closed or editorially redirected.
The bill quietly signed into law on Wednesday will limit foreign ownership of media assets to 20 percent by the beginning of 2017.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the forum of the Russian pro-government movement "Popular Front" in Penza on Wednesday. (Aleksey Druzhynin/AFP/Getty Images)
“We understand very well that those who own information own the world,” lawmaker Vadim Dengin, the author of the bill, said during a parliamentary debate before the law was approved. “When foreigners come here to make money and then actively influence the media market and use it for their own benefit, at this moment, I want to say that I am ready to close down Russia and ensure its security.”
Dengin, a member of the nationalist LDPR party, said a “cold information war” was being waged against Russia.
The law deals the sharpest blow to Russia’s most prominent independent daily newspaper, Vedomosti, which aspires to Western standards of journalism.
Vedomosti is co-owned by a tri-national consortium — Dow Jones, the Financial Times Group and Sanoma, a Finnish media company — and focuses on business reporting, a sensitive topic given Russia’s tanking economy and dim prospects for the future. The newspaper has chronicled the troubles of Russia’s most powerful companies as the economy has slowed and Western sanctions have taken hold.
“Our politicians have developed a mania of control,” said Tatiana Lysova, Vedomosti’s editor in chief. “We do not report to the Russian authorities, so that is why we are a potential danger in their mind, a potential enemy.”
“If Vedomosti gets a Russian owner, there will definitely be pressure on him,” Lysova said.
International ownership had guaranteed Vedomosti’s objectivity, experts say, and helped the paper withstand Kremlin pressure.
“I cannot imagine how a Russian owner would say, ‘We have to speak the whole truth and nothing but the truth, despite the political risk,’ ” said Fyodor Kravchenko, a managing partner at the Moscow-based Media Lawyers Collegium. “We are much more ready to find compromises in this sphere than international investors.”
Representatives of all three of Vedomosti’s owners declined to comment.
Forbes Russia, a magazine that is owned by Germany’s Axel Springer publishing house, also reports on politically sensitive topics and is considered one of the main targets of the new restrictions.
For the Kremlin, “in general it’s easier to have controlled media than non-controlled media,” said Elizaveta Osetinskaya, a former editor of Forbes Russia who is now the editor in chief at the RBC Group, a business-focused media consortium owned by Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov. It also seeks to report independent news and was the first national news outlet to report in August about the funerals of Russian soldiers who died fighting in eastern Ukraine.
“Right now society doesn’t think it needs free media,” Osetinskaya said.
Representatives from Axel Springer did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest crackdown on the media started in December, when the editorially independent but state-run news agency RIA Novosti was liquidated and replaced by a new agency called Rossiya Segodnya, or Russia Today, run by Dmitry Kiselyov , an ardent Kremlin supporter. In January, Russia’s only independent television channel, Dozhd, was cut from the airwaves; now, it is confined to the Internet. In March, Internet regulators charged several opposition news Web sites with extremism and blocked them within Russia.
Also in March, the hard-hitting editor of Lenta.ru, another prominent independent news Web site, was replaced. Most of the staff resigned, and the site’s independence has quickly eroded. The editor, Galina Timchenko, moved to Latvia, saying she wanted to be free of the Kremlin’s control. This month, she launched a new site, Meduza.io.
Even many glossy media outlets in Russia are owned either by foreigners or by Russians through foreign holding companies. The new regulations will affect a slew of these outlets, from the Disney Channel to Russia’s version of Cosmopolitan.
The law prompted some bitter humor. Russian Maxim posted a mock-up of a 2017 issue of “Comsomolitan,” a play on the name of the Soviet youth organization.
In it, the headlines tweaked the state-backed social conservatism currently popular here. “Kisses before marriage? Experiments for risk-takers,” one read.
State television — the well-funded and primary news source for most Russians — broadcasts slickly produced programs that focus on news that is either at sharp variance with that available in the West or is cherry-picked to bolster the Kremlin’s image.
At a time when the government is cutting social spending and freezing state pensions, funding for state media is going up. The international arm of Russia’s state-run news network, RT, once known as Russia Today, is getting a 30 percent funding bump in the proposed 2015 budget, and other state news outlets also are receiving injections of cash.
One news show over the weekend on Russia’s flagship First Channel set about proving the Ukrainian government’s guilt in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine in July. It also said that Russia’s Bank Rossiya, a target of Western sanctions, has not been affected by the measures; that Italian farmers are facing problems from Russian bans on European food imports; and that Ebola may be the result of “biological weapons.” | {
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Paradigm Presents Halloween 2014.
I am very excited to announce to our readers a special treat Paradigm Presents has in store for music fans this Halloween. If you are a regular reader of EDM Chicago, and familiar with my Chicago: Deeper than a Drop series, then you are already aware of my appreciation for Paradigm Underground events. If you have not had a chance to read my review of the night they hosted Seth Troxler and Martinez Brothers at Lacuna Lofts, then I suggest giving it a quick read as a primer for what a night they have planned for us: Chicago DTAD 2: Paradigm brings Tuskegee to Chicago.
Since I covered the Tuskegee party, Paradigm Underground has been regularly hosting some of the biggest names in the underground electronic music scene, including Guy Gerber, Moodymanm, Delano Smith, Livio and Roby, Fur Coat, Robag Wruhme, and more. Not only is the talent on point, but so are the venues and attendees. With venues such as the Lacuna Artist Lofts and Navy Pier and the refreshingly fun crowd the shows seem to attract, there has never been a night of disappointment in any of their hosted events.
On October 31st, Paradigm Underground returns with another talent packed night with a haunted twist. Headlining the night will be Apollonia and a special Tiga v. Audion set, with support from Max Jacobson and Mantas Steles. As if that line up wasn’t enough to demonstrate the night’s potential, Paradigm will also be presenting some first-time surprises. In addition to the usual high end production the 15,000 square feet of haunted loft space will also host the artist alley and a costume party judged by Apollonia packed full of prizes.
Feature Set – Apollonia
Exploding out of the Paris Underground scene, Apollonia is an artist collaboration featuring the back to back to back talent of Shonky, Dan Ghenacia, and Dyed Soundroom. Now residing in Berlin, Apollonia’s marathon sets have allowed them to perform at some of the most exclusive clubs and festivals, including DC 10 in Ibiza, Panorama Bar in Berlin, BPM Festival in Mexico, Fabric in London, and recently Riverwest Music Festival in Chicago. Their talented has been most concentrated to Ibiza where they feature their ‘All Night Long’ showcases at DC10, regular appearances at Circoloco, and in 2014 gave a debut performance for Richie Hawtin’s award winning party, Enter. The trio has also released DJ mixes for both Resident Advisor and Fabric. With quite the impressive resume already established, Apollonia shows no signs of slowing down.
On October 20th, just 11 days prior to their set at Lacuna Lofts, Apollonia will release Tour à Tour, their highly anticipated first full length album. I had the opportunity to review the album prior to release and can without a doubt assure fans eager to hear it that they will not be disappointed. It features numerous tracks which are guaranteed to dominate afterhour parties for quite some time, an assessment that has me wildly anticipating this event.
If you would like to familiarize yourself with Apollonia, I recommend the following links:
Their upcoming album, Tour à Tour, streaming on Resident Advisor.
Their Purple Rave Mix from Mix Mag\’s August issue on Soundcloud or YouTube.
Replay of their performance at Enter Week 12 on YouTube.
Feature Set – Tiga Vs. Audion
Tiga’s influential career in music could fill an entire article in its own right. Alongside founding record label Turbo Recordings, Tiga has established his own successful career as a producer and DJ while also releasing records from an assortment of artists, including Azari & III, Chromeo, Boyz Noize, Gesaffelstein, Proxy, and most recently Clarian. As a producer, Tiga\’s remix releases depict the diversity that his sets are known for and include artists such as the XX, LCD Soundsystem, Depeche Mode and Justice. His connections to critically acclaimed artists are not limited to remixes as he has also collaborated with artists such as Soulwax and Matthew Dear. As a solo artist, Tiga has released two full length albums, including Sexor, which won the Juno Dance Recording of the Year in 2007. While his role as the founder of a record label and successful productions demonstrate his taste for music, it is his technical ability and instinct for reading a crowd that make Tiga\’s sets memorable.
Controlling the decks alongside Tiga, for the Chicago premier of their back to back tour, is Audion, Matthew Dear’s unforgivingly harder edged alter ego. As Matthew Dear’s renowned flavor of pop techno propelled him to international success, it was the his performances and productions as Audion that catered to the driving, body moving music palate of underground parties around the world. Paradigm’s Halloween event will mark one of an extremely limited amount of Audion performances seen internationally in 2014, and marks his first return to Chicago since his appearance as Audion at 2013’s Wavefront Music Festival. Rivaling Tiga\’s proficiency for crowd instinct, the meeting of these techno legends should not be missed.
The Artist Alley
Readers of EDM Chicago might recall a post I had made previously calling for artists interested in having their artwork on display at a Paradigm Underground event. The result of this art call will be a gallery of hand selected artwork from Chicago artists on display for all attendees of the Halloween party. The Artist Alley will feature artwork from the following artists:
Alexander Espinosa
Arley Valdez
David Bozic
Jim Markus
Brendan Cooney
Josiah Neniskis
Angela Aznavorian
Andrew Seabrook
Peter Deligdisch
Ayo Catrance
Smoketique
Luz Letamendi
A Costume Contest Unlike Any Other
In addition to the production quality, artist performances, and the Artist Alley gallery, will be a costume contest judged by Apollonia. While the concept of a costume contest being judged by Apollonia is enough to attract attention, it is the prizes lined up that will have you working extra hard on your costume preparation. All event attendees must do to enter the competition is tag photos during the event of themselves and their crew with #ParadigmHalloween on Instagram and they will be automatically entered. The winner will be chosen based on creativity, originality, and scare factor. Once choosen, the winner will receive an Apollonia prize package including their new album Tour à Tour, Red Bull Prize package and two VIP passes to Paradigm’s New Year’s Eve event.
Your Chance to Win
EDM Chicago and Paradigm have come together to offer a very special contest where the winner will win not only free admission to the event but will be able to bring two of their friends along for free as well.
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LANSING (AP) — Organizers of a ballot initiative that would raise Michigan's minimum wage to $12 an hour say they will sue if the Republican-l… | {
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The message to the parents of the Boston bombing suspects was clear and unmistakable: “pack and go.”
And soon after the phone call from the Chechen authorities Tuesday, a car carrying government officials arrived to accompany the couple out of the republic.
The deportation followed a speech by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, in which he referred to the Tsarnaev brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar as “the worst devils.” “I will never defend them, never say a word in their support,” Kadyrov told a local television station Monday.
In the weeks since the attack on the Boston Marathon that killed three people and wounded 264 others, the suspects’ father, Anzor, and their mother, Zubeidat, have been on the run—hunted first by reporters seeking interviews and now kicked out of Chechnya, where they had gone to escape the media pack in Dagestan.
And apparently the pressure is getting to the parents.
In a phone interview with The Daily Beast, Anzor said the family hadn’t watched Kadyrov’s televised speech, but that “everything was clear.” Sounding dejected, the father said he felt sick and predicted that Chechen officials would ask them to leave the country.
Zubeidat, who kept cool in front of flocks of reporters while in Dagestan, has been seen crying in public on several occasions after coming to Chechnya recently.
Portrayed in the press as bad and clueless parents, Anzor and Zubeidat have continued to insist that their “innocent sons” never committed any crime in Boston but were “set up by the FBI.”
The parents, who lived in Dagestan, had come to Chechnya for support—and at first it seemed the Chechens were welcoming the Tsarnaevs.
After a press conference the parents gave on April 26, during which the couple complained that American authorities would not allow them to see their son Dzhokhar, who was wounded during the police chase following the April 15 attack, the parents became well known in Chechnya and were often approached by well-wishers on the streets and in cafés.
A group of people even distributed fliers addressed to President Obama in support of Dzhokhar, featuring a photo of him standing next to his mother under a headline proclaiming “innocent.” The fliers also asked for contributions for the parents to help their younger son as they had already suffered a “violent” and “unjustified” loss of their older son, Tamerlan, the fliers said.
The parents told The Daily Beast that they have no money to transport the body of their older son, Tamerlan, to Russia, and a local mosque in the U.S. reportedly refused to give him a Muslim burial. As yet, he has not been buried.
(Tamerlan died while fleeing police after the bombing attack.)
Last week Kheda Saratova, a Chechen human-rights activist helping the Tsarnaevs, posted a video address from Zubeidat with a similar plea—along with the number of a bank account where her son’s supporters could contribute money.
In Dagestan, reporters are still trying to uncover the story behind Tamerlan’s six-month stay in the region in 2012. Russian officials, including Dagestan’s minister of interior affairs, denied that Russian special forces had any records of Tsarnaev’s visit. However, sources who presented themselves to journalists as members of a key police unit, told several publications that during his stay in Dagestan, Tamerlan established contacts with members of the radical underground.
The parents, who have now gone back to Dagestan, told The Daily Beast that Anzor’s current plan is to wait for his American lawyers, who are coming to the region later this month.
Saratova plans to support the parents, who have not been charged with anything. “I am being attacked for supporting the parents of terrorists. But I see my job as a doctor’s job. I am here when people feel bad—no matter who they are,” she said. | {
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Presidential Marylebone Serviced Apartments are located in the very heart of the Central London, surrounded by the London's famous shopping areas of Marylebone High Street, Oxford Street, Regents Street, and Baker Street, the world-renowned medical district of Harley Street, open green spaces of Regent’s Park, and some of the London's best restaurants in Marylebone.
The location is very impressive if you want to go sightseeing in London. Famous museums like Madame Tussauds, Planetarium, and many more are very close to Presidential Serviced Apartments Marylebone Mayfair. The neighbouring location of Covent Garden and Soho promises the distinctly vivacious London nightlife, live performances, and buzzing theatres from the West End, and exploration of the rich culture. Lovers of classical music will be pleased to have on their doorstep, the prestige-laden Wigmore Hall which stages around 400 recitals a year and acts as a performance platform for the world`s most sought-after soloists and chamber musicians.
Contemporary style interior decoration has been done in all our luxury serviced apartments. We have paid special attention to your entertainment and hence all the apartments are fitted with plasma screen TV’s, selected Sky Channels, DVD players and free WiFi Internet. Our modern kitchens are fully equipped with a wide range of appliances such as ovens, microwaves, fridge freezers and washer/dryers. All these features make these apartments as one of the best furnished holiday apartments in Marylebone.
Presidential Apartments Marylebone is conveniently located within easy reach of all London airports and benefit from a wide range of train, bus and underground tube transport services. If you are looking for holiday lets London, Presidential Marylebone Mayfair Serviced Apartments offer a comprehensive range of services that will guarantee an enjoyable and relaxing stay. | {
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Wolves are survivors, but climate change is affecting the prey available to them and the way they hunt. Shorter, warmer winters mean there's less ice for the wolves to cross to hunt beavers. Populations in Ontario remain strong, but climate change is altering their way of life. | {
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