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This microphone is a classic — it has basically been the industry standard for decades and decades. I got mine at Guitar Center when I was living in New Orleans. I think I had just graduated college. I could barely afford it; at the time, the mic was probably the most expensive thing I had ever bought. But I wanted to make that investment in myself and my career. It was a really proud day for me. Now, I keep it in the studio in my house, where I use it almost every night. It’s the only way I’m getting through quarantine. I’ve made close to 200 songs in the past 12 months. Most of them will never see the light of day, but some are on my upcoming album. It’s a sequel to my first album on a major label, These Things Happen, because it’s a full-circle story about coming back home. | {
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I already know there’s going to be that one person out there, surrounded in their cluttered room of MMA memorabilia that will comment on this article stating he/she actually knew everything that was disclosed in this 8-part YouTube video series. Well, you’re wrong — and even if you’re right, you’re still wrong. You’re living your life wrong. Go outside and run after a bird. Strike up a conversation with your local convenience store cashier. Use your library card, you know those antiquated government-funded facilities that have things made from paper called ‘books.’ There’s an entire world out there that is separate from this sport known as MMA — you don’t need to be a walking Sherdog Fighter Finder to justify your existence.
Now, if you want to be enlightened by certain esoteric facts in the sport we all love, check out this newly-released 8-part series on a slew of rare MMA facts and secrets. It’s just fantastic general info that can certainly fill in some gaps in your mental MMA timeline.
Even more MMA goodness after the jump.
Volume II
Volume III
Volume IV
Volume V
Volume VI
Volume VII
Volume VIII | {
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FILE - This June 15, 2017, file photo shows the Fayetteville Works plant near Fayetteville, N.C. Wilmington, Delaware-based Chemours Co. has faced questions for six months about an unregulated chemical with unknown health risks that flowed from the company’s plant near Fayetteville into the Cape Fear River. The company has said virtually nothing in its own defense about chemicals it may have discharged for nearly four decades, and it skipped legislative hearings looking into health concerns. (Ken Blevins/The Star-News via AP, File)
FILE - This June 15, 2017, file photo shows the Fayetteville Works plant near Fayetteville, N.C. Wilmington, Delaware-based Chemours Co. has faced questions for six months about an unregulated chemical with unknown health risks that flowed from the company’s plant near Fayetteville into the Cape Fear River. The company has said virtually nothing in its own defense about chemicals it may have discharged for nearly four decades, and it skipped legislative hearings looking into health concerns. (Ken Blevins/The Star-News via AP, File)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Americans have grown accustomed to hearing apologies from everyone from cheating car-makers to cheating presidents, but a Fortune 500 chemical company with a pollution problem in North Carolina is following a different model: don’t apologize, don’t explain.
For six months, Wilmington, Delaware-based Chemours Co. has faced questions about an unregulated chemical with unknown health risks that flowed from the company’s plant into the Cape Fear River, which provides drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people.
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The company has said virtually nothing in its own defense about chemicals it may have discharged for nearly four decades, and it skipped legislative hearings looking into health concerns.
Earlier this month, North Carolina environmental regulators said they might fine Chemours, revoke its license to discharge treated wastewater into the nearby river and open a criminal probe. State officials said the company chose silence over reporting a chemical spill last month as required.
In a rare response, Chemours said it’s committed to operating the plant, which employs about 900, “in accordance with all applicable laws and in a manner that respects the environment and public health and safety.”
New tests have detected the chemical GenX, used to make Teflon and other industrial products, at levels beyond the state’s estimated but legally unenforceable safety guidepost in 50 private water wells near Chemours’ Fayetteville plant and at a water treatment plant in Wilmington, about 100 miles (62 kilometers) downstream. There are no federal health standards addressing GenX and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies it as an “emerging contaminant” to be studied.
Lack of information about the chemical, its prevalence and health effects has disturbed people across eastern North Carolina.
John Fisher, 77, said when he moved into his home 20 years ago the company’s predecessor, DuPont, would invite neighbors through the gates for picnics and plant tours. But the only contact he’s had with Chemours was a notice a couple of weeks ago that his water well needed testing, and its outside vendor arranging to drop off bottled water.
“They haven’t officially gotten a hold of us saying, hey, we feel sorry for you, this is what we’re going to do for you,” Fisher said.
Fisher said he wonders whether GenX or other chemicals in his well water caused the cancer deaths of his dog and his daughter’s dogs next door.
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“They would get big balls hanging off their bellies and they were all cancerous,” Fisher said. “We couldn’t figure out why all our dogs were dying of cancer.”
DuPont began using GenX to replace another fluorinated compound after neighbors of the company’s Parkersburg, West Virginia, plant claimed in more than 3,500 lawsuits that the compound made them sick. DuPont spun off Chemours into a separate company two years ago. A jury in July 2016 found the two companies liable for a man’s testicular cancer that he said was linked to a chemical emitted by the West Virginia plant.
The two companies this year agreed to pay nearly $671 million to settle further lawsuits.
Chemours’ zipped-lip strategy is likely a defensive crouch against the threat of costly lawsuits at a time when its financial future looks bright, said Geoffrey Basye, a public affairs consultant and former Federal Aviation Administration spokesman under President George W. Bush. Bond rating agency Moody’s has upgraded its opinion of the company and Chemours’ stock price has more than doubled since the start of the year.
“Not only can a stock’s performance play a pivotal role in how a company chooses to respond, or not respond, major shareholders and the board can also influence a company’s public affairs posture,” Basye said.
The company’s caution could make people think it’s hiding something, he said, but he noted that industrial companies like Chemours tend to have a different culture from enterprises that deal directly with consumers.
“Companies who tend to operate in the shadows before a crisis occurs have a tendency to stay in the shadows once the crisis hits,” Bayse said.
Chemours’ silence runs contrary to legal lessons and social science research that suggest addressing mistakes eases hard feelings and saves corporations money, said Maurice Schweitzer, a Wharton business school professor who teaches negotiation and corporate decision-making.
Studies have found an apology for medical mistakes can be enough to satisfy aggrieved patients, leading to fewer malpractice actions, greater willingness to settle lawsuits and lower demand for damages, Schweitzer said.
“The natural tendency to keep a low profile, hope things blow over, is exactly what anyone who’s been harmed by some action doesn’t want,” he said.
___
Follow Emery P. Dalesio on Twitter at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio. His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/emery%20dalesio | {
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Without some kind of 11th hour miracle, the American vaping industry could potentially be on its last legs. Livid over the rise in teen vaping, anti-tobacco groups have sued the FDA. The plaintiffs demanded that the agency retract its August 8, 2022 deadline for approval and require pre-market tobacco applications (PMTA) from all vaping product manufacturers immediately. The FDA lost the lawsuit and proposed a new PMTA deadline of May 2020. If that’s the final deadline, most of the vaping products in the United States will become illegal to sell in just nine months.
America’s vapers and vape shop owners have plenty of venues in which to vent their frustrations and urge their legislators to act before it’s too late. That’s not what this article is about. It’s not about complaining; it’s about getting real. We’re going to tell you what you can do to make sure that your vape shop survives.
Your Vape Shop Hangs in the Balance
Until now, you probably thought it was safe to assume that your vape shop could continue doing business as normal until at least 2022. Maybe you even hoped that a lawsuit or act of Congress would force the FDA to change the predicate date of February 15, 2007 for grandfathered vaping products. Unfortunately, it now seems as though none of those things are going to happen. Right now, the safest thing to assume is that you will need to clear out the products you’re currently selling and either find new products – or close up shop – by May of next year. You need to immediately begin transitioning to products that will still be legal to sell in 2020.
Our recommendation is CBD.
The sooner you begin your transition to CBD sales – the sooner you can position your vape shop as your city’s new CBD superstore – the more likely it’ll be that you will emerge from the changes in May 2020 not just alive, but even healthier and more profitable than you currently are.
I Want to Start Transitioning My Vape Shop to CBD Right Now. Where Can I Get Help?
We suggest working with a CBD company that understands the vape industry and offers products and a pricing structure conducive to a vape shop setting. One such company is Crescent Canna, founded by vape industry entrepreneurs who have been selling CBD in vape shops for over two years. They know what products vape shop customers are likely to buy and understand the margins that you need to earn in order to remain profitable. Many CBD companies are offering wholesale margins of 30-50% for retailers, which is unacceptable for vape shops. Crescent Canna’s margins are at least 100% for vape shops with no minimum order quantities. At larger volumes the margins get even better. With deep knowledge of the vape industry, they make initial order recommendations designed to move in a vape shop setting and will swap out products or flavors that don’t move. Crescent Canna’s CBD products are made from THC-free CBD isolate, and they’re manufactured from organic hemp grown in the United States. Crescent Canna subjects all product batches to third-party testing to ensure that every product is safe and free from contaminants.
We encourage you to do your own research into CBD companies based on your specific needs, but highly recommend Crescent Canna as a good place to start. They’ve also offered to answer any questions about CBD for the VapeMentors community. Just email [email protected] with any questions or to discuss an order for your shop.
What Is CBD?
If you keep up on the latest health trends, you may already know about CBD. You might, in fact, sell CBD products in your vape shop already. CBD and vaping products tend to go hand in hand because inhaling CBD is an extremely fast way of absorbing it. For the uninitiated, though, here’s a primer.
CBD Is the Primary Active Component of Industrial Hemp
Cannabidiol (CBD) is one of the cannabinoids – or active components – in the cannabis plant. It’s present in all cannabis, but it’s particularly abundant in the form of cannabis known as industrial hemp. Unlike marijuana – which also contains the psychoactive cannabinoid THC and is a prohibited Schedule I substance according to the Federal government – industrial hemp contains almost no THC and has no psychoactive effects.
Industrial hemp is one of the world’s most useful cash crops. It’s used for textiles, biodiesel and building materials. It’s also grown for its nutritious seeds. The 2018 United States Farm Bill signed into law by President Trump removed some of the regulatory obstacles for would-be hemp farmers and made the crop legal to grow in the United States.
People Use CBD to Treat Many Health Conditions
By exposing hemp plant material to pressurized carbon dioxide or another solvent, it’s possible to extract the plant’s essential oils. The essential oil of industrial hemp is rich in CBD and other compounds, and medical researchers have found that CBD may have a number of remarkable health benefits. It’s been discovered, for example, that CBD helps to prevent seizures for those who suffer from certain seizure disorders. That discovery led to the first ever FDA approval of a prescription drug derived from cannabis with CBD as its main active ingredient.
Health-conscious consumers have latched on to CBD in a big way. People take it for conditions such as chronic pain, arthritis, anxiety, sleeplessness, panic and more. Although scientific research is still ongoing, preliminary studies suggest that CBD could actually be useful for treating those and other conditions.
Is CBD Legal to Sell in My Vape Shop?
Note: We are not lawyers, and nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. We recommend that all small business owners in the vaping industry retain lawyers and consult them for guidance.
CBD is a product that’s in a bit of a legal gray area. On one hand, when CBD is derived from the hemp plant, it’s a natural extract that’s federally legal to grow, process, and sell. In addition, it’s been well established for many years that CBD helps to prevent some types of seizures, so many states have laws in place specifically allowing CBD sales.
On the other hand, when CBD is derived from marijuana, or contains more than .3% THC, it’s still a Schedule I prohibited substance with no medicinal value according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
So far, the Federal government hasn’t taken action against CBD products except those marketed with unproven medical claims and those derived from marijuana and containing more than .3% THC. This doesn’t mean that the FDA will never step in and begin regulating CBD products, but it probably means that such action is far away and that you’ll have plenty of warning first. For now, the FDA has its hands full with the vaping industry.
Will CBD Be Profitable for My Vape Shop?
The CBD market is huge. A recent forecast suggests that the size of the global CBD industry may reach $20 billion by 2024. The same forecast suggests that general retail stores – like your vape shop – will be the largest sellers of CBD products.
How dramatically can CBD transform your vape shop? To get an idea of where the market is heading, we spoke with David Reich of Crescent City Vape, a chain of four vape shops in the New Orleans area. Crescent City Vape began selling a small assortment of CBD products two years ago, but it wasn’t until the shops fully embraced CBD and began putting significant promotional effort behind it that CBD sales started to take off. The biggest move they made was turning an entire section of each vape shop into a CBD pop-up experience which seamlessly introduced customers to CBD products and helped to guide their first purchases.
“When you add an entirely new class of products to your vape shop,” Reich said, “I think it’s important to ensure that you’re the one telling the story. Your customers have already seen CBD products in other stores. Some of them are buying the products, and others aren’t. For the customers who are getting their CBD products elsewhere, you need to make the case that there’s a real benefit to buying those products from you instead. For the customers who aren’t buying CBD yet, you’re uniquely positioned to build trust in the legitimacy of CBD products because you already have the trust of those customers.”
Speaking about what CBD products have done for Crescent City Vape, Reich continued, “CBD products now account for more than half of our total sales volume. While the growth of the vaping industry in our region has been stagnant for a while, CBD sales continue to grow by leaps and bounds. Many of the customers who now come to us for CBD products don’t actually vape at all.”
What Types of CBD Products Should My Vape Shop Stock?
Different CBD products have different benefits and use cases, so it’s a good idea to carry the widest variety of products possible. These are the most popular types of CBD products currently on the market.
CBD Oils and Tinctures: CBD oils are the most common CBD products because of their price and versatility. Out of all CBD products, CBD oils tend to have the lowest cost per milligram of CBD. Since users can hold the oil under their tongues before swallowing it, CBD oil has a faster absorption rate than some other CBD products.
CBD oils are the most common CBD products because of their price and versatility. Out of all CBD products, CBD oils tend to have the lowest cost per milligram of CBD. Since users can hold the oil under their tongues before swallowing it, CBD oil has a faster absorption rate than some other CBD products. CBD Edibles: Edible products such as gummies are all that some CBD users buy. Edibles are more slowly absorbed because they’re processed entirely by the digestive system. Because they’re absorbed more slowly, though, they tend to promote steady CBD levels in the body throughout the day. In addition, many people simply like the way CBD edibles taste; CBD oil has a distinctive flavor that doesn’t work for everyone.
Edible products such as gummies are all that some CBD users buy. Edibles are more slowly absorbed because they’re processed entirely by the digestive system. Because they’re absorbed more slowly, though, they tend to promote steady CBD levels in the body throughout the day. In addition, many people simply like the way CBD edibles taste; CBD oil has a distinctive flavor that doesn’t work for everyone. CBD Isolate: CBD isolate is an oil-soluble crystalline powder isolated from raw hemp essential oil. Raw hemp oil is a full-spectrum extract that may contain trace THC. There is a chance, then, that taking a large amount of full-spectrum CBD could potentially result in a false positive for marijuana use on a drug test. CBD isolate is over 99 percent pure CBD and should not cause a positive drug test result. It’s also easy to use because it mixes easily with almost any food or beverage.
CBD isolate is an oil-soluble crystalline powder isolated from raw hemp essential oil. Raw hemp oil is a full-spectrum extract that may contain trace THC. There is a chance, then, that taking a large amount of full-spectrum CBD could potentially result in a false positive for marijuana use on a drug test. CBD isolate is over 99 percent pure CBD and should not cause a positive drug test result. It’s also easy to use because it mixes easily with almost any food or beverage. CBD Capsules: CBD capsules are gelatin or cellulose capsules containing CBD oil or CBD isolate. Some people prefer CBD capsules because they’re easy to swallow and don’t have the distinctive flavor of hemp oil. CBD capsules are also pre-measured and help to ensure consistent dosing.
CBD capsules are gelatin or cellulose capsules containing CBD oil or CBD isolate. Some people prefer CBD capsules because they’re easy to swallow and don’t have the distinctive flavor of hemp oil. CBD capsules are also pre-measured and help to ensure consistent dosing. CBD Balms and Salves: CBD absorbs through the skin, so balms and salves make it possible for people to target specific issues such as acne and muscle aches.
CBD absorbs through the skin, so balms and salves make it possible for people to target specific issues such as acne and muscle aches. CBD Beauty Products: With preliminary studies indicating that CBD could be useful for almost anything, some people have begun using it for almost everything. There’s a growing market for CBD beauty products such as cosmetics, moisturizers, facial masks and bath bombs.
With preliminary studies indicating that CBD could be useful for almost anything, some people have begun using it for almost everything. There’s a growing market for CBD beauty products such as cosmetics, moisturizers, facial masks and bath bombs. Transdermal Patches: As mentioned above, many people use CBD to treat aching muscles and joints. A transdermal CBD patch makes it possible to target a specific area with a large amount of CBD that’s absorbed steadily over several hours. Transdermal patches often also have other pain relivers such as menthol and lidocaine.
As mentioned above, many people use CBD to treat aching muscles and joints. A transdermal CBD patch makes it possible to target a specific area with a large amount of CBD that’s absorbed steadily over several hours. Transdermal patches often also have other pain relivers such as menthol and lidocaine. Pet Products: Does Fido seem to have a bit of anxiety? Some people have taken to giving their pets CBD-infused treats with the hope that it’ll calm their animals’ anxiety and improve their moods.
Does Fido seem to have a bit of anxiety? Some people have taken to giving their pets CBD-infused treats with the hope that it’ll calm their animals’ anxiety and improve their moods. Vaping Products: One of the reasons why CBD has been such a natural match for vape shops is because CBD – like its better-known cousin THC – is often consumed by inhaling. You can find CBD e-liquids, disposable vape pens, pre-filled pods and more. People like CBD vaping products because inhaling is the fastest way to absorb CBD. And in a vape shop environment, these products have the potential to really fly off the shelves.
Please note that some states have prohibited the sale of CBD edibles and CBD vape products, so it’s important to know your local laws. It’s also a good sign of a reputable CBD vendor if they know what products you are or aren’t allowed to sell in your shop.
Are There Any Vaping Products That My Vape Shop Can Still Sell After May?
Yes. Although e-liquid vaping could be nearing the end of its life in the United States, dry herb vaporizers will remain available. Herbal vaporizers have always been popular among cannabis users who’d rather avoid smoking. In addition, with the potential demise of e-liquid vaping, dry herb vaporizers are also usable with tobacco and may find new life among former cigarette smokers who will lose the ability to buy e-liquid vaping products. If your vape shop isn’t already stocking vaporizers for dry herbs and wax, now might be the time to start.
With regards to e-liquid vaping products, the future is uncertain. The language of the FDA’s regulations suggests that only products with nicotine – or intended for use with nicotine – will be subject to the regulations. It therefore seems likely that disposable CBD vape pens and other closed-system CBD vaping products would still be legal to sell because those products can’t be used with nicotine e-liquids. This is an area in which you’d be wise to consult with your attorney. | {
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A Sydney couple, whose battle to rebuild their home uncovered a major corruption scandal within the NSW Government's Mine Subsidence Board (MSB), say they have not been able to return home for almost five years.
Key points: Frank and Louisa Kozak's fight to get back into their house led to a major corruption scandal
Frank and Louisa Kozak's fight to get back into their house led to a major corruption scandal Damage from mine subsidence has left the couple out of their home for 5 years
Damage from mine subsidence has left the couple out of their home for 5 years They say their rebuilt home is in need of repairs
Frank and Louisa Kozak went to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) after complaining to the government for years about dodgy practices at the board, which administers a multi-million dollar fund to repair homes damaged by underground coal mining.
Since then, the ICAC has heard allegations a district manager at the MSB took at least $300,000 in kickbacks from building contractors he employed to fix hundreds of damaged houses.
The couple live in an area affected by mine subsidence near Picton, south-west of Sydney.
They first noticed defects in their home in 2006 and sought compensation from the MSB.
"There were cracks in the walls, you could put your hand through the cracks, water was gushing behind the walls, floors were uneven," Mr Kozak said.
"At first they said it wasn't mine subsidence but eventually they agreed that the house was a write-off and it needed to be demolished and rebuilt."
Got a confidential news tip? Email ABC Investigations at [email protected] For more sensitive information: Text message using the Signal phone app +61 436 369 072 No system is 100 per cent secure, but the Signal app uses end-to-end encryption and can protect your identity. Please read the terms and conditions.
In 2010, the Kozaks were relocated to another house nearby while the work was done.
"They told us it would probably take 12 months and then we could move back in," Mr Kozak said.
"We've been in this house for four-and-a-half years. This will be our fifth Christmas in this house."
Engineers found ground movement had caused damage to the Kozak's home. ( Supplied )
For years, the Kozaks complained to the MSB and various government ministers about poor workmanship, misconduct and conflicts of interest.
Frustrated by what they perceived to be a lack of government action, the Kozaks turned to ICAC.
What its investigators uncovered was explosive.
"We approached ICAC and gave them the information," Mr Kozak said.
"They got back to us and said, 'yes, we've found something but it's under investigation'.
"We were told not to say anything. It took about 15 months and then a hearing was opened up and it all came out."
The Kozaks say they were told the work on their house would take about a year. ( Supplied )
At hearings in April, the ICAC was told the former district manager of the MSB's Picton office, Darren Bullock, took at least $300,000 in kickbacks from two builders over seven years.
It is alleged Mr Bullock took cash payments from the builders, in exchange for awarding them the contracts to repair homes.
Mr Bullock allegedly spent the money on house extensions, a swimming pool, cars and family holidays.
Mr Bullock denies the allegations.
Mr Bullock (left) denies allegations he took kickbacks from builders. ( AAP: Dan Himbrechts )
The Kozaks said they felt vindicated by the ICAC investigation.
"It was a big weight off our shoulders, but I don't understand why we're still here," Ms Kozak said.
"They promised us a new home. I haven't got that. There are cracks in the concrete and damage from water leakage. It's all repairable but they just won't do it," Mr Kozak said.
They believe corruption could be far more widespread across NSW — a possibility the ICAC is examining.
ICAC commissioner Megan Latham is expected to hand down her findings next year.
NSW Finance Minister Dominic Perrottet issued this statement to the ABC: | {
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Margot Robbie stopped by The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday to promote her new movie, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. During the interview, Fallon asked the actress about Suki Waterhouse’s recent housewarming party in London, which corralled high-profile guests like Sienna Miller, Cara Delevingne, and some polite redheaded man. The rest of the party was business as usual, including a trip to the photo booth with her model friends (and the redheaded mystery man). The twist? That handsome, bespectacled redhead, whom Robbie thought was Ed Sheeran, was actually Prince Harry! “What are you talking about? You don’t know who Prince Harry is?” Fallon exclaimed. “He’s the coolest!” Her excuse for the mix-up? “He wasn’t wearing a crown!” Watch the clip below. | {
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Illuminated manuscripts are a wild ride. At least this isn’t the penis tree.
Like the comic? Support it on Patreon! | {
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Motivation
This blog post is intended to be a very detailed and informative article for those who already have used the Couchbase Java SDK and want to know how the internals work. This is not a introduction on how to use the Java SDK and we’ll cover some fairly advanced topics on the way.
Normally, when talking about the SDK we mean everything that is needed to get you going (Client library, documentation, release notes,…). In this article though, the SDK refers to the Client library (code) unless stated otherwise.
As always, if you have feedback please let me/us know!
Introduction
First and foremost, it is important to understand that the SDK wraps and extends the functionality of the spymemcached (called “spy”) memcached library. One of the protocols used internally is the memcached protocol, and a lot of functionality can be reused. On the other hand, once you start to peel off the first layers of the SDK you will notice that some components are somewhat more complex because of the fact that spy provides more features than the SDK needs in the first place. The other part is to remember that a lot of the components are interwoven, so you always need to get the dependency right. Most of the time, we release a new spy version at the same date with a new SDK, because new stuff has been added or fixed.
So, aside from reusing the functionality provided by spy, the SDK mainly adds two blocks of functionality: automatic cluster topology management and since 1.1 (and 2.0 server) support for Views. Aside from that it also provides administrative facilities like bucket and design document management.
To understand how the client operates, we’ll dissect the whole process in different life cycle phases of the client. After we go through all three phases (bootstrap, operation and shutdown) you should have a clear picture of whats going on under the hood. Note that there is a separate blog post in the making about error handling, so we won’t cover that here in greater detail (which will be published a few weeks later on the same blog here).
Phase 1: Bootstrap
Before we can actually start serving operations like get() and set() , we need to bootstrap the CouchbaseClient object. The important part that we need to accomplish here is to initially get a cluster configuration (which contains the nodes and vBucket map), but also to establish a streaming connection to receive cluster updates in (near) real-time.
We take the list of nodes passing during bootstrap and iterate over it. The first node in the list that can be contacted on port 8091 is used to walk the RESTful interface on the server. If it is not available, the next one will be tried. This means that going from the provided http://host:port/pools URI we eventually follow the links to the bucket entity. All this happens inside a ConfigurationProvider , which is in this case the com.couchbase.client.vbucket.ConfigurationProviderHTTP . If you want to poke around on the internals, look for getBucketConfiguration and readPools methods.
A (successful) walk can be illustrated like this:
GET /pools
look for the “default” pools
GET /pools/default
look for the “buckets” hash which contains the bucket list
GET /pools/default/buckets
parse the list of buckets and extract the one provided by the application
GET /pools/default/buckets/
Now we are at the REST endpoint we need. Inside this JSON response, you’ll find all useful details that gets also be used by SDK internally (for example stre amingUri , nodes and vBucketServerMap ). The config gets parsed and stored. Before we move on, let’s quickly discuss the strange pools part inside our REST walk:
The concept of a resource pool to group buckets was designed for Couchbase Server, but is currently not implemented. Still, the REST API is implemented that way and therefore all SDKs support it. That said, while we could theoretically just go directly to /pools/default/buckets and skip the first few queries, the current behaviour is future proof so you won’t have to change the bootstrap code once the server implements it.
Back to our bootstrap phase. Now that we have a valid cluster config which contains all the nodes (and their hostnames or ip addresses), we can establish connections to them. Aside from establishing the data connections, we also need to instantiate a streaming connection to one of them. For simplicity reasons, we just establish the streaming connection to the node from the list where we got our initial configuration.
This gets us to an important point to keep in mind: if you have lots of CouchbaseClient objects running on many nodes and they all get bootstrapped with the same list, they may end up connecting to the same node for the streaming connection and create a possible bottleneck. Therefore, to distribute the load a little better I recommend shuffling the array before it gets passed in to the CouchbaseClient object. When you only have a few CouchbaseClient objects connected to your cluster, that won’t be a problem at all.
The streaming connection URI is taken from the config we got previously, and normally looks like this:
streamingUri: "/pools/default/bucketsStreaming/default?bucket_uuid=88cae4a609eea500d8ad072fe71a7290"
If you point your browser to this address, you will also get the cluster topology updates streamed in real-time. Since the streaming connection needs to be established all the time and potentially blocks a thread, this is done in the background handled by different threads. We are using the NIO framework Netty for this task, which provides a very handy way of dealing with asynchronous operations. If you want to start digging into this part, keep in mind that all read operations are completely separate from write operations, so you need to deal with handlers that take care of what comes back from the server. Aside from some wiring needed for Netty, the business logic can be found in com.couchbase.client.vbucket.BucketMonitor and com.couchbase.client.vbucket.BucketUpdateResponseHandler . We also try to reestablish this streaming connection if the socket gets closed (for example if this node gets rebalanced out of the cluster).
To actually shuffle data to the cluster nodes, we need to open various sockets to them. Note that there is absolutely no connection pooling needed inside the client, because we manage all sockets proactively. Aside from the special streaming connection to one of the severs (which is opened against port 8091), we need to open the following connections:
Memcached Socket: Port 11210
View Socket: Port 8092
Note that port 11211 is not used inside the client SDKs, but used to connect generic memcached clients that are not cluster aware. This means that these generic clients do not get updated cluster topologies.
So as a rule of thumb, if you have a 10 node cluster running, one CouchbaseClient object open about 21 (2*10 + 1) client sockets. These are directly managed, so if a node gets removed or added the numbers will change accordingly.
Now that all sockets have been opened, we are ready to perform regular cluster operations. As you can see, there is a lot of overhead involved when the CouchbaseClient object gets bootstrapped. Because of this fact, we strongly discourage you from either creating a new object on every request or running a lot of CouchbaseClient objects in one application server. This only adds unnecessary overhead and load on the application server and adds on the total sockets opened against the cluster (resulting in a possible performance problem).
As a point of reference, with regular INFO level logging enabled this is how connecting and disconnecting to a 1-node cluster (Couchbase bucket) should look like:
Apr 17, 2013 3:14:49 PM com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseProperties setPropertyFile INFO: Could not load properties file "cbclient.properties" because: File not found with system classloader. 2013-04-17 15:14:49.656 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Added {QA sa=/127.0.0.1:11210, #Rops=0, #Wops=0, #iq=0, topRop=null, topWop=null, toWrite=0, interested=0} to connect queue 2013-04-17 15:14:49.673 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Connection state changed for [email protected] 2013-04-17 15:14:49.718 INFO com.couchbase.client.ViewConnection: Added localhost to connect queue 2013-04-17 15:14:49.720 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseClient: viewmode property isn't defined. Setting viewmode to production mode 2013-04-17 15:14:49.856 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Shut down Couchbase client 2013-04-17 15:14:49.861 INFO com.couchbase.client.ViewConnection: Node localhost has no ops in the queue 2013-04-17 15:14:49.861 INFO com.couchbase.client.ViewNode: I/O reactor terminated for localhost
If you are connecting to a Couchbase Server 1.8 or against a Memcache-Bucket you won’t see View connections getting established:
INFO: Could not load properties file "cbclient.properties" because: File not found with system classloader. 2013-04-17 15:16:44.295 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Added {QA sa=/192.168.56.101:11210, #Rops=0, #Wops=0, #iq=0, topRop=null, topWop=null, toWrite=0, interested=0} to connect queue 2013-04-17 15:16:44.297 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Added {QA sa=/192.168.56.102:11210, #Rops=0, #Wops=0, #iq=0, topRop=null, topWop=null, toWrite=0, interested=0} to connect queue 2013-04-17 15:16:44.298 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Added {QA sa=/192.168.56.103:11210, #Rops=0, #Wops=0, #iq=0, topRop=null, topWop=null, toWrite=0, interested=0} to connect queue 2013-04-17 15:16:44.298 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Added {QA sa=/192.168.56.104:11210, #Rops=0, #Wops=0, #iq=0, topRop=null, topWop=null, toWrite=0, interested=0} to connect queue 2013-04-17 15:16:44.306 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Connection state changed for [email protected] 2013-04-17 15:16:44.313 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseClient: viewmode property isn't defined. Setting viewmode to production mode 2013-04-17 15:16:44.332 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Connection state changed for [email protected] 2013-04-17 15:16:44.333 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Connection state changed for [email protected] 2013-04-17 15:16:44.334 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Connection state changed for [email protected] 2013-04-17 15:16:44.368 INFO net.spy.memcached.auth.AuthThread: Authenticated to 192.168.56.103/192.168.56.103:11210 2013-04-17 15:16:44.368 INFO net.spy.memcached.auth.AuthThread: Authenticated to 192.168.56.102/192.168.56.102:11210 2013-04-17 15:16:44.369 INFO net.spy.memcached.auth.AuthThread: Authenticated to 192.168.56.101/192.168.56.101:11210 2013-04-17 15:16:44.369 INFO net.spy.memcached.auth.AuthThread: Authenticated to 192.168.56.104/192.168.56.104:11210 2013-04-17 15:16:44.490 INFO com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection: Shut down Couchbase client
Phase 2: Operations
When the SDK is bootstrapped, it enables your application to run operations against the attached cluster. For the purpose of this blog post, we need to distinguish between operations that get executed against a stable cluster and operations on a cluster that is currently experiencing some form of topology change (be it planned because of adding nodes or unplanned because of a node failure). Let’s tackle the regular operations first.
Operations against a stable cluster
While not directly visible in the first place, inside the SDK we need to distinguish between memcached operations and View operations. All operations that have a unique key in their method signature can be treaded as memcached operations. All of them eventually end up getting funneled through spy. View operations on the other hand are implemented completely inside the SDK itself.
Both View and memcached operations are asynchronous. Inside spy, there is one thread (call the I/O thread) dedicated to deal with IO operations. Note that in high-traffic environments, its not unusual that this thread is always active. It uses the non-blocking Java NIO mechanisms to deal with traffic, and loops around “selectors” that get notified when data can either be written or read. If you profile your application you’ll see that this thread spends most of its time waiting on a select method, it means that it is idling there waiting to be notified for new traffic. The concepts used inside spy to deal with this are common Java NIO knowledge, so you may want to look into the NIO internals first before digging into that code path. Good starting points are the net.spy.memcached.MemcachedConnection and net.spy.memcached.protocol.TCPMemcachedNodeImpl classes. Note that inside the SDK, we override the MemcachedConnection to hook in our own reconfiguration logic. This class can be found inside the SDK at com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseConnection and for memcached-type buckets in com.couchbase.client.CouchbaseMemcachedConnection .
So if a memcached operations (like get() ) gets issued, it gets passed down until it reaches the IO thread. The IO thread will then put it on a write queue towards its target node. It gets written eventually and then the IO thread adds information to a read queue so the responses can be mapped accordingly. This approach is based on futures, so when the result actually arrives, the Future is marked as completed, the result gets parsed and attached as Object.
The SDK only uses the memcached binary protocol, although spy would also support ASCII. The binary format is much more efficient and some of the advanced operations are only implemented there.
You may wonder how the SDK knows where to send the operation? Since we already have the up-to-date cluster map, we can hash the key and then based on the node list and vBucketMap determine which node to access. The vBucketMap not only contains the information for the master node of the array, but also the information for zero to three replica nodes. Look at this (shortened) example:
vBucketServerMap: { hashAlgorithm: "CRC", numReplicas: 1, serverList: [ "192.168.56.101:11210", "192.168.56.102:11210" ], vBucketMap: [ [0,1], [0,1], [0,1], [1,0], [1,0], [1,0] //..... },
The serverList contains our nodes, and the vBucketMap has pointers to the serverList array. We have 1024 vBuckets, so only some of them are shown here. You can see from looking at it that all keys that has into the first vBucket have its master node at index 0 (so the .101 node) and its replica at index 1 (so the .102 node). Once the cluster map changes and the vBuckets move around, we just need to update our config and know all the time where to point our operations towards.
View operations are handled differently. Since views can’t be sent to a specific node (because we don’t have a way to hash a key or something), we round-robin between the connected nodes. The operation gets assigned to a com.couchbase.client.ViewNode once it has free connections and then executed. The result is also handled through futures. To implement this functionality, the SDK uses the third party Apache HTTP Commons (NIO) library.
The whole View API hides behind port 8092 on every node and is very similar to CouchDB. It also contains a RESTful API, but the structure is a little bit different. For example, you can reach a design document at /<bucketname>/_design/<designname> . It contains the View definitions in JSON:
{ language: "javascript", views: { all: { map: "function (doc) { if(doc.type == "city") {emit([doc.continent, doc.country, doc.name], 1)}}", reduce: "_sum" } } }
You can then reach down one level further like /<bucketname>/_design/<designname>/_view/<viewname> to actually query it:
{"total_rows":9,"rows":[ {"id":"city:shanghai","key":["asia","china","shanghai"],"value":1}, {"id":"city:tokyo","key":["asia","japan","tokyo"],"value":1}, {"id":"city:moscow","key":["asia","russia","moscow"],"value":1}, {"id":"city:vienna","key":["europe","austria","vienna"],"value":1}, {"id":"city:paris","key":["europe","france","paris"],"value":1}, {"id":"city:rome","key":["europe","italy","rome"],"value":1}, {"id":"city:amsterdam","key":["europe","netherlands","amsterdam"],"value":1}, {"id":"city:new_york","key":["north_america","usa","new_york"],"value":1}, {"id":"city:san_francisco","key":["north_america","usa","san_francisco"],"value":1} ] }
Once the request is sent and a response gets back, it depends on the type of View request to determine on how the response gets parsed. It makes a difference, because reduced View queries look different than non-reduced. The SDK also includes support for spatial Views and they need to be handled differently as well.
The whole View response parsing implementation can be found inside the com.couchbase.client.protocol.views namespace. You’ll find abstract classes and interfaces like ViewResponse in there, and then their special implementations like ViewResponseNoDocs , ViewResponseWithDocs or ViewResponseReduced . It also makes a different if setIncludeDocs() is used on the Query object, because the SDK also needs to load the full documents using the memcached protocol behind the scenes. This is also done while parsing the Views.
Now that you have a basic understanding on how the SDK distributes its operations under stable conditions, we need to cover an important topic: how the SDK deals with cluster topology changes.
Operations against a rebalancing cluster
Note that there is a separate blog post upcoming dealing with all the scenarios that may come up when something goes wrong on the SDK. Since rebalancing and failover are crucial parts of the SDK, this post deals more with the general process on how this is handled.
As mentioned earlier, the SDK receives topology updates through the streaming connection. Leaving the special case aside where this node actually gets removed or fails, all updates will stream in near real-time (in a eventually consistent architecture, it may take some time until the cluster updates get populated to that node). The chunks that come in over the stream look exactly like the ones we’ve seen when reading the initial configuration. After those chunks have been parsed, we need to check if the changes really affect the SDK (since there are many more parameters than the SDK needs, it won’t make sense to listen to all of them). All changes that affect the topology and/or vBucket map are considered as important. If nodes get added or removed (be it either through failure or planned), we need to open or close the sockets. This process is called “reconfiguration”.
Once such a reconfiguration is triggered, lots of actions need to happen in various places. Spymemcached needs to handle its sockets, View nodes need to be managed and new configuration needs to be updated. The SDK makes sure that only one reconfiguration can happen at the same time through locks so we don’t have any race conditions going on.
The Netty-based BucketUpdateResponseHandler triggers the CouchbaseClient#reconfigure method, which then starts to dispatch everything. Depending on the bucket type used (i.e. memcached type buckets don’t have Views and therefore no ViewNodes), configs are updated and sockets closed. Once the reconfiguration is done, it can receive new ones. During planned changes, everything should be pretty much controlled and no operations should fail. If a node is actually down and cannot be reached, those operations will be cancelled. Reconfiguration is tricky because the topology changes while operations are flowing through the system.
Finally, let’s cover some differences between Couchbase and Memcache type buckets. All the information hat you’ve been reading previously only applies to Couchbase buckets. Memcache buckets are pretty basic and do not have the concept of vBuckets. Since you don’t have vBuckets, all that the Client has to do is to manage the nodes and their corresponding sockets. Also, a different hashing algorithm is used (mostly Ketama) to determine the target node for each key. Also, memcache buckets don’t have views, so you can’t use the View API and it doesn’t make much sense to keep View sockets around. So to clarify the previous statement, if you are running against a memcache bucket, for a 10 node cluster you’ll only have 11 open connections.
Phase 3: Shutdown
Once the CouchbaseClient#shutdown() method is called, no more operations are allowed to be added onto the CouchbaseConnection . Until the timeout is reached, the client wants to make sure that all operations went through accordingly. All sockets for both memcached and View connections are shut down once there are no more operations in the queue (or they get dropped). Note that that the shutdown methods on those sockets are also used when a node gets removed from the cluster during normal operations, so it’s basically the same, but just for all attached nodes at the same time.
Summary
After reading this blog post, you should have a much more clear picture on how the client SDK works and why it is designed the way it is. We have lots of enhancements planned for future releases, mostly enhancing the direct API experience. Note that this blog post didn’t cover how errors are handled inside the SDK; this will be published in a separate blog post because there is also lots of information to cover. | {
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Folk singer-songwriter Dave Gunning has a lot of passion. The pride of Pictou County is passionate about both his music and his hometown, particularly dedicating a decade to trying to clean up the Pictou County Pulp Mill, which is polluting the local beaches and waterways.
We met after his “Wheel Decide” workshop Sunday, Aug. 18, 2019 at the 58th annual Philadelphia Folk Festival. We talked about playing upright bass on tour with Stompin’ Tom Conners, our shared love of Stan Rogers, how the pollution from Northern Pulp Mill is impacting the wildlife and indigenous people in Pictou County and the festival. Find out more about this important cause at https://www.friendsofthenorthumberlandstrait.ca/
Gunning has released 12 albums; his most recent is “Up Against The Sky.” His current tour will bring him throughout Canada in September. | {
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Fresh evidence implicating the Church of Scientology in the mistreatment and exploitation of some of its most loyal adherents will be aired on Four Corners tonight.
The allegations come just days before an expected Senate vote on whether to launch a Parliamentary inquiry into the church.
Tonight's program, Scientology: The Ex-Files, focuses on the stories of Australians and Americans who have left the church and are now speaking out. Some are taking legal action against the church.
The men and women featured in the program belonged to Scientology's elite unit of full-time staffers, the Sea Organisation - or Sea Org.
The allegations in tonight's program include first hand accounts that some women have been coerced into having abortions because the Sea Org does not allow its members to have children while they work in the organisation; that children as young as 15 are interrogated about their sex lives, asked to work excessive hours, and punished severely if they fail to meet targets for recruiting members of the public; and that 'public' Scientologists - Scientologists who live and work in the broader community - are pressured over long periods of time into donating their life savings to the church.
The church itself denies the allegations, and is vigorously defending the legal actions which are underway in the United States.
As a religion, the Church of Scientology is tax-exempt in Australia and the United States. In other countries - for example, the United Kingdom - it does not have charitable status.
The UK Charity Commission has determined that the Church of Scientology was not established for the public benefit.
Over the past year, the Church has opened a number of new churches around the world, largely it is believed, funded by tax-free donations from ordinary parishioners.
Tonight's program features an exclusive interview with a former rugby league player, Joe Reaiche, who played for Eastern Suburbs and Canterbury Bankstown in the 1970's.
Mr Reaiche, who now lives in America, was declared a "suppressive person" and expelled from the church in 2005.
He has not seen his children - who work in Hollywood and who remain public Scientologists - since then, and says he believes that they were warned not to contact him after he was declared a "suppressive person".
Mr Reaiche told reporter Quentin McDermott: "You don't do that to a parent."
Church of Scientology spokesman, Tommy Davis, denies that the church has a policy of disconnection.
He says that members of the Church are free to maintain contact with relatives who have been expelled, but acknowledges that they would not then be welcome in the Church.
Mr Davis told Four Corners: "If somebody is expelled from the church, anybody who insists on continuing to be connected to somebody who's been expelled from the church would be told that as long as they maintain that connection they're not welcome in the church."
Tonight's program features interviews with three members of the Anderson family from Canberra.
Liz Anderson, who left the church last year, has not seen her eldest daughter Fiona since 2005, when Fiona was posted overseas by the Sea Org in Sydney to join the Sea Org at its base in Clearwater, Florida.
Mr and Mrs Anderson arranged for their youngest daughter Jordan to leave the church last year. Both Jordan and her older sister Fiona joined the Sea Organisation aged 14.
Jordan tells Four Corners that she was asked to work excessive hours for minimal pay - and once worked 72 hours straight without sleep.
The church's senior spokesman, Tommy Davis tells Four Corners that if that were the case, it would be "utterly and completely unacceptable".
Tonight's program also highlights the issue of alleged "coerced" abortions within the church.
Two former members of the church in America describe in detail how they were pressured to have abortions when they fell pregnant to their husbands within the Sea Organisation.
Both women say that they wanted to give birth to the children, but were told not to do so.
Mr Davis tells Four Corners: "Sea Org members do not have children. If someone is a member of the Sea Organisation and they wish to have a child, they would need to do so outside of the Sea Org," but he denies that the church has any policy of coercing women into having abortions.
However, one of the women reporter Quentin McDermott interviewed has composed a list of 40 other women who - she says - say that they too were "coerced" into having abortions in America.
Tonight's Four Corners presents evidence that women inside the Sea Org in Australia have also been put under pressure to have abortions when they fall pregnant.
This week Independent Senator Nick Xenophon is expected to move that an inquiry take place into "the abuses against Australians that have taken place within the organisation of Scientology".
Senator Xenophon told the Senate last November: "Scientology is not a religious organisation. It is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs."
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd commented at the time: "Many people in Australia have real concerns about Scientology. I share some of those concerns." | {
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144HZ with lovely curves.
My personal current recommendation for people who want to "test the waters of professional gaming" but are uncertain about taking the financial leap. I've this monitor for around a year and I've never been interesting in getting an alternate 144HZ monitor. Nowadays there are monitors better than the G24C but I don't want to make recommendations without personal experience. Pros: - The curve in the monitor was very noticeable but it didn't affect any of my in-game movements like some people said it would. The curved panel helped a lot with media immersion. - I never got to use the adaptive sync with this monitor but knowing that MSI offers it is a welcome addition. - Media creation and viewing always produced a decent result. I would not suggest this monitor for professional use though. Cons: - The G24C *doesn't* offer any pivotal/height adjustment. The monitor can only be tilted at around 10° in each direction. - No VESA compatible mount. - The onscreen menu was difficult to deal with. There is no differentiation between buttons besides the *extremely hard to read* icons engraved on the bezel of the monitor. - Crosshairs that can be enabled are disgusting and cannot be customized.Read full review
Verified purchase: No | {
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Botswana has been ranked number one in the world for its efforts to conserve megafauna. This is according to a new study titled “Relative efforts of countries to conserve world’s megafauna,” published in the latest edition of the Global Ecology and Conservation journal also available online in pdf format.
The study was carried out by a research team at Oxford University’s The Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, in conjunction with the conservation organisation, Panthera. They designed a Megafauna Conservation Index (MCI) based on 152 countries with the aim of assessing each country on how well they’re preserving their largest wildlife. Since a large number of the biggest animals – such as gorillas, elephants, and tigers – face extinction, given the fact that they often play a critical role in ecosystems, the researchers decided to focus primarily on these.
The team used three main measures to assess how much each nation is committed to conservation. Firstly, they looked at how much of the country is occupied by the megafauna. They then assessed what proportion of the large animals’ ranges were within protected areas, and finally, they analysed how much money each nation was spending on conservation – both domestically and internationally – relative to their GDP.
Four of the top five performing countries were found in Africa; with Botswana in first position followed by Namibia, Tanzania, Bhutan and Zimbabwe in that order.
Overall, the study concluded that despite its economic and political challenges, the African continent as a whole is the region most committed to conservation. By contrast, the report found that around a quarter of Asian and European countries were classified as major underperformers who should be doing much more to protect their fauna.
According to the researchers, the reason why poorer nations are on average doing better to protect their larger animals is not simply because they’re more likely to have the megafauna survive within their borders, as the index takes into account money spent on international conservation. They suspect it could rather be because these nations to value their wildlife more. Tourism, for example, often makes up a larger proportion of their GDP.
The team hopes that their score will become an annual measure of what each country is doing to protect their wildlife and that nations will strive to improve each year.
Reference: sciencedirect.com – iflscience.com
For the “Relative efforts of countries to conserve world’s megafauna,” report (pdf format): @ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989416300804 | {
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Mining giant Adani has shrugged off accusations it exaggerated the number of jobs its massive Queensland coal mine would produce.
Environmental organisation Coast and Country seized on revelations in court on Monday the Carmichael mega-mine in the Galilee Basin would create an average of 1464 jobs per year, not the 10,000 jobs figure more commonly associated with the project.
Adani's Carmichael mine would be Australia's biggest. Credit:Rob Homer
The organisation is looking to block the mine in the Land Court of Australia, represented by lawyers from the Environmental Defenders Office Queensland.
Coast and Country spokesman Derec Davies accused the Indian mining giant of misrepresenting the numbers. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Grandpa has fallen down Finish him | {
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RECENT NEWS
The PBE has been updated! As we continue the 7.6 PBE cycle, today's update includes VFX updates forand, skin tweaks forand, and more!Continue reading for more information!
( Warning : PBE Content is tentative and subject to change - what you see below may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers at the end of the cycle! Manage your expectations accordingly.)
Table of Contents
Galio Update - Skin VFX Updates
Moo Cow Alistar & Pug'Maw Skin Tweaks
Riot Stellari
"Still WIP, the team will be making a couple more tweaks during PBE :)"
Riot Stellari Retweeted Moobeat
* READ THIS *: Both the FIRST and SECOND patch of March 10th included texture/model changes for PUG'MAW - there are obvious changes vs the [old] iteration but between #1 and #2 it's mostly minor color/shape changes, most noticeable on back.
Miscellaneous
Blast Cone's targeting indicator has been improved, it now moves around more smoothly. [gif]
Balance Changes * Remember *: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, and sometimes radical or experimental changes. Be aware that what you see below may be lacking context or other changes that didn't make it in or were implemented in an earlier patch this cycle! These are not official notes.
*: The PBE is a testing grounds for new, tentative, and sometimes radical or experimental changes. Be aware that what you see below may be lacking context or other changes that didn't make it in or were implemented in an earlier patch this cycle! These areofficial notes.
Champions Aatrox
[ 3/10 mid patch update!]
Base health increased from 537.8 to 580 Dark Flight (Q) cooldown lowered from 16/15/14/13/12 to 13/12.5/12/11.5/11 Blood Thirst/Blood Price (W) damage increased from 30/60/90/120/150 to 45/80/115/150/185
Galio context / These three changes were hotfixed to live in
Solcrushed
Colossal Smash (Passive)
Now scales off BONUS MR instead of total MR.
Bonus MR Ratio lowered from 40/50/60% to 40%
Base damage lowered from 10-160 to 15-100
[ new ] 40% AP ratio added
Winds of War (Q)
Range increased from 800 to 825
DOT base damage increased from 30/45/60/75/90 to 45/60/75/95/105
Shield of Durand (W):
Time Galio can maintain the charge increased from 1.75 to 2 seconds
DR linger duration lowered from 4 to 2
[4% per 100 bonus Armor] ratio on damage reduction removed .
.
Cooldown now starts on cast instead of on discharge.
Cooldown lowered from 18/16.5/15/13.5/12 to 16/15/14/13/12
Hero's Entrance (R)
Channel duration increased from 0.75 to 1 (total time to land unchanged)
[4% per 100 bonus Armor] ratio on damage reduction removed .
Double Up (Q)
Damage increased from 20/35/50/65/80 to 20/40/60/80/100
Total AD ratio increased from 85% to 100%
Tormented Soil (W) [new grievous wounds application when under 35% hp has been removed . This was an effect added in an earlier PBE update this cycle.]
Heightened Sense (W) Attack Speed bonus increased from 20/25/30/35/40% to 20/35/50/65/80%
Skystrike (R) total AD ratio lowered from 100% to 40%
Shen
Ki Barrier (Passive) cooldown reduction effect for hitting abilities on ally/enemy champions changed from 4 to 7.5 (based on level) to 5 seconds.
Items Knight's Vow
[The previous PBE changes have been reverted . Meddler noted they were not put on PBE intentionally.]
Notes
Solcrushed
"Tank Galio looks to be out of line both damage and durability wise, draining power out of the base numbers and putting them back to AP ratios and Q. Full tank passive damage will drop significantly while builds that feature some AP should be affected less."
"Spell queuing for E and R should be in! Taking out the Armor ratios as they are confusing and making him too good vs physical damage. Armor already grants defense against them and W's DR will still work. No need to have extra % tacked on. Reduced the DR linger to match the taunt duration better to signal windows better, but made it so W cooldown starts on cast instead of discharge."
Solcrushed
Meddler
"Aatrox hotfix
All going according to plan we should be putting out a balance hotfix for Aatrox today. We concluded he was definitely in too poor a state to leave until the next regular patch and wasn't likely to recover enough just based off relearning. Changes include increased starting health (580, was 537 and had been kept low historically because of the impact of the previous revive in lane), Q CD down (13-11, was 16-12) and W damage up (45-185, was 30-150). Suspect it's likely we'll also make Aatrox changes in 7.6, though we'll need to see where these put him first of course. "
"Knight's Vow on PBE
We saw some reports yesterday that Knight's Vow had been reverted to its older stats and build path on the PBE yesterday. Going to be looking into that today, it's not an intended change so it's either a datamining error or we've accidentally stomped the newer version with an old file somehow."
Today's patch includes visual effects changes for several ofskins! We have new VFX sets forandas well as unique R decals for several skins.has a new vfx set and a new R decal has a new vfx set and a new R decal and Debonair Galio also now both have unique R stamps:recall and dance sounds are in - donk donk donk donk donk donk!textures have been changed but are still aBelow are a few notes and posts relating to current PBE content in 7.6 cycle. The PBE was updated twice on 3/10 - once around 2 PM PT and again around 8 PM PT.provided a changelist for and context on today'schanges in the PBE Galio Feedback thread. also provided a list of changes originally meant for 3/13 but that went out in the second 3/10 update tonight:noting in most recent quick gameplay thoughts that Knight's Vow PBE revert is not intentional:and3)updated VO special interactions | {
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WHO, WHAT, WHY?
The Magazine answers...
A five-year-old girl in Merseyside has been killed by what police describe as a pit bull terrier type of dog. But what should people do when confronted by what they think is a dangerous dog? Ellie Lawrenson died of severe head and neck injuries after being mauled at her grandmother's house in St Helens. The exact circumstances of her death are unclear, but it would appear a small girl like her could do little to defend herself against a killer dog. However experts say if an individual believes a dog could be intent on attacking them, there are ways to help to defuse the situation. KEY TIPS No sudden movements Put hands in pockets Avoid eye contact Back away but do not run away Children can accidentally provoke a dog Never try to break up two fighting dogs "Standing still and put your hands in pockets because they like to get hold of something," says Madeleine Forsyth, a veterinary surgeon and non-practising barrister based in York. "A waving arm is an obvious target." Avoid eye contact because it is confrontational and it is always unwise to turn your back, says Miss Forsyth, so standing sideways and looking slightly away is advisable. If a dog does bite, do not pull away because that will tear the flesh, she says, but shout for help. "Hope there is someone with a breaking stick to introduce between the jaws. "Anything will do that can be slid between the teeth at the side, but given the strength of the jaw and the leverage, it would have to be a very powerful bit of stick or it will just break." No warning Dog attacks are very rare, says Miss Forsyth. What is called "dominant" aggressive behaviour like barking is normal and does not make a dog likely to attack unless provoked. More dangerous is "predatory" aggression which is unusual but means the dog can strike without any warning at all. And if a target like a person has been attacked once, the dog will seek out human targets again. WHO, WHAT, WHY? A feature to the BBC News Magazine - aiming to answer some of the questions behind the headlines Never run because the dog will always overtake you, says Stephen Lomax, a veterinary surgeon and barrister from Shropshire. "Move away slowly and don't make any sudden movements. And don't approach the dog. "But the most important advice is never ever try to separate dogs having a fight because of the risk of accidental and serious injury." A spokesman for the RSPCA said it is important to study a dog's reaction to you. "If it stiffens up, holds it tail high, snarls and stares at you then be on your guard. If it shows its teeth it may be safest to go no further, but don't turn and run - back away slowly." And acting in a friendly and confident way will lessen their own fear, he adds. Below is a selection of your comments. If you are about to be attacked by a dog, stand very still, face it and point over and away with your right arm and in a commanding and loud voice shout GET HOME. most command dogs and domestic dogs will turn away and go.
Graham, Nottingham Water is one of the best remedies, when you see a dog attack, if someone can get a bucket of water, that tends to help!
Mike Richards, Thame Oxfordshire Surely the onus should be on the owner to control the dog. How are we meant to reconcile all these horrible stories of attacks with advice to stand still and look sideways? You can't explain that to a child when a dog of equal size is bounding towards them making loud and threatening noises. My own child was knocked over in to water at Cooden Beach by an out of control Labrador dog. The owner's response? I should look after my children better!
John Gregory, Windsor My brother was attacked by pit bull few years ago. He punched into dogs nose and kicked him few times in a ribs. Pit bull ran away like a little puppy.
Erik, London I have always been told that with animals such as bears this is correct do not try and fight back however DO fight back with dogs They can sense fear and will stand down if they think you will attack them back....are you sure this is correct or people could end up getting hurt!
Alexis, oxford I was told by an American firearms team that, if attacked by a big dog one should push one's hand as far down the throat of the dog as possible and lock the other free (and unbloody) arm around its neck, thereby stopping it moving away. The dog will eventually collapse. When asked the obvious question about its teeth, the American said, 'Whatever it's doing to your forearm, it ain't doing it to your groin.'
Derek Smith, Brighton Much to the owners upset I'm sure the dogs having chosen to assault me over the years have probably come off worst. Fortunate in cycling to work in winter I wear heavy coats, gloves and hobnail steel toe cap boots. Having slowed to a walking pace on a public right of way an Alsatian and large Labrador still decided I was fair game, one dog got the hobnail boot in the mouth hard and the other backed off from the bicycle club about to lamp it one. The owners response? 'I've told you before, they attack cyclists!' Like that's normal? Educate the owners, I don't blame the dogs.
Adrian Barnard, Didcot This article provides information I had not seen before, and is most helpful. I am elderly but in good health, and being able to get out and walk regularly and safely is a necessity. Thank you very much.
Ray McDonald, Vacaville, California, USA Having been confronted by an Alsatian and seconds later a Doberman I was able to stop the dogs in their tracks with an extremely load shout of GET OUT OF IT. This must have startled the dogs and I was able to ride off safely, I just hope I do not have to try it again,
Trevor, Oxfordshire Yes. Next time I get attacked by a rampant dog, I am going to stand still and put my hands in my pockets. That sounds plausible.
Fi, London
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The 3-megajoule, 35-kilogram module stores all that excess heat by melting a waxy phase-change material augmented by a variety of other thermal materials. What exactly these materials are seems to be a trade secret at this point, but by allowing that heat energy to be consumed by melting that waxy substance, the device can pull 230 kilowatts of heat away from the primary weapon. "To put it into perspective, it's the equivalent of melting about 20 pounds of ice in 13 seconds," said Dr. Paul Clark, a manager in Advanced Power Systems at General Atomics, in a press release. | {
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I’ve got some good news about methane, some bad news about methane, and some worse news about methane. The good news is that it’s the primary ingredient in the fossil fuel known as natural gas, which produces far less carbon dioxide than coal when burned to generate electricity, as well as much smaller quantities of other pollutants like soot, smog precursors, and mercury.
The bad news is that when methane escapes into the atmosphere unburned, it can trap a lot more heat than an equivalent amount of CO2 — up to 86 times more over a 20-year period, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And the worse news is that, currently, quite a lot of methane does escape into the atmosphere during the oil and gas production process, due to leaks and intentional venting for safety purposes. Scientists call these incidental releases “fugitive emissions,” and studies have estimated that anywhere between 1 and 9 percent of the nation’s total gas production ends up on the lam.
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I was a bit of a movie nut in high school (my Yahoo email alias back then was “JLFilmFreak” — I actually put that on my college applications), and whenever I think about “fugitive methane,” I can’t help but also think about The Fugitive. You remember the film: Harrison Ford as a doctor-turned-convicted-murderer on the run; Tommy Lee Jones as the gruff-yet-thoughtful federal marshal tasked with tracking him down. Handily enough, the pollutant-movie connection turns out to be revealing.
See, The Fugitive taught us that some problems require a federal solution — preferably a federal solution with a charming Southern accent. The marshals ride into town because the local sheriff just isn’t going to get the job done. And the same holds true for methane. Swap in “greenhouse gas” for “Dr. Richard Kimble” and “EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy” for “Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard” and you’ve got yourself the greatest environmental thriller never made. (While McCarthy lacks a southern accent, she does have a pretty great Boston one.)
It seems that 16 prominent environmental groups agree with me on this, because last month they called on President Obama to regulate methane emissions from oil and gas operations. Of course, not everyone supports federal intervention. In a recent letter to EPA, Sen. James Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma argued that the agency should let industry handle this problem on its own, because oil and gas producers already have “distinct economic incentives to prevent [methane] from being emitted into the atmosphere.”
Inhofe, who has famously insisted that climate change is a hoax, is not entirely wrong about industry’s financial incentives. It’s true that methane’s commercial value should motivate drilling companies to address some leaks. This doesn’t mean, however, that the companies will engage in an optimal amount of leak prevention. Why not? Consider a more familiar sort of leak. Imagine there’s a hole in my car’s oil pan that will, over the remaining life of the vehicle, result in my losing about $100 worth of oil. If fixing the oil pan costs $50, it’s in my interest to do it, because the value of the saved oil outweighs the cost of the repair. If, on the other hand, the repair costs $150, I’m better off just living with the leak.
The problem is that what’s financially sensible for me might not be so sensible for society as a whole. If my car is leaking oil onto public streets, the local government will have to spend taxpayer money — let’s say $100 — to clean it up. Once this extra cost is taken into account, it becomes clear that, from a societal perspective, it’s more efficient to fork over $150 to fix the leak, because the total benefits of doing so (saving $100 of oil and avoiding $100 of cleaning fees) outweigh the repair cost. But because I get to foist most of the street-cleaning bill onto my fellow taxpayers, I’m unlikely to make the efficient choice — unless the government steps in with a regulation. Economists call this a “market failure.”
Leaky oil and gas wells present a similar problem, but with much higher stakes. In deciding how much to invest in leak-preventing work practices and technologies, oil and gas producers are likely to consider the private costs of leaks (forgone sales revenue from the lost gas) but not their social costs (fugitive methane’s contribution to climate change). And those latter costs aren’t chump change: A 2012 study by EPA economists estimated that each ton of methane emitted in 2015 will cause about $1,000 of climate-related damage. This is a key difference between The Fugitive’s fugitive and fugitive methane: Dr. Kimble hadn’t actually hurt anyone; methane will.
Furthermore, while a handful of states have taken it upon themselves to regulate methane emissions within their borders, we shouldn’t count on the rest to follow suit. As NYU Law Professor Richard Revesz explained in recent testimony before a House Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy, states have a “significant incentive to under-regulate methane-producing activities,” because the gas’s harmful effects are global rather than local. A state can enjoy the economic benefits of oil and gas production (jobs, tax revenue, etc.) while suffering only a fraction of its environmental costs. As a result, Revesz sees fugitive methane as “a paradigmatic example of an environmental problem requiring federal regulation.” (Full disclosure: Revesz is the director of NYU Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, where I work as a legal fellow.)
Per President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, EPA is currently weighing its options for reducing methane emissions from oil and gas operations and will announce this fall whether it plans to issue new regulations. Politics being what they are, that announcement is unlikely to come before the November elections. In the meantime, let’s hope McCarthy is channeling her inner Tommy Lee Jones. | {
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Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre probably isn’t a movie you associate with Halloween – after all, the film is set during the summer and has no discernible connection to the holiday aside from A) being a horror movie and B) featuring a killer in a creepy mask – but the film did begin its theatrical run in October… and that’s good enough for us.
On the road to Halloween and in the wake of the 1974 horror classic turning 45 years old just a few weeks ago, Netflix just put The Texas Chain Saw Massacre up for streaming today!
My own most recent revisit of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was on VHS back in July – yes, I own the far superior Blu-ray but felt like going old school that night – and my single biggest takeaway was something I really don’t need to tell you but I’m going to anyway: holy hell does that movie hold up. Hooper’s masterpiece is as savagely terrifying in 2019 as it must’ve been in 1974, and there’s truly never been anything quite like it – not before and not since.
One of my other big takeaways from my 2019 revisit was a whole lot more surprising than the realization that the film is as good now as it ever was: I actually don’t dislike Franklin as much as I used to? As I tweeted over the summer, I found myself feeling more sympathy for Franklin than I ever did before on my most recent rewatch. Chalk it up to me getting older and softer, but I always find it interesting that our experiences with movies change as *we* change. Which is why it’s often worth revisiting a favorite movie you hadn’t seen in many years.
In any event, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is now streaming on Netflix. Do whatever you’d like with that information. And if you’ve somehow never seen it – we don’t judge and we don’t gate-keep! – get on that this Halloween! It’s never too late to catch up on a classic.
[Related] The Artful Brilliance of ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ is Too Often Overlooked | {
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Those in the West who have heard of Dharavi — the largest slum in Asia — may have been exposed to it through Slumdog Millionaire, the 2008 British-made film about an Indian boy named Jamal Malik who unexpectedly wins the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? His lack of education and status as a “slumdog” arouse the suspicion of the police, forcing him to recount the story of his life in order to absolve himself of cheating. Interestingly, though set entirely in India, the film was written and directed by white British men, and went on to obtain critical acclaim in Western media. Hollywood even nominated the film for 10 categories at the 2009 Academy Awards.
Flash forward to 2019 and the film Gully Boy, a Hindi film written and directed by Indian women, which also features a protagonist from the Dharavi slum. Murad Ahmed, a senior college student, lives with his younger brother, grandmother, mother, and abusive father in a Muslim household. Toward the beginning of the film, his father brings home a second wife, and we immediately note his status as head of household: as his new bride enters the home, nobody utters a word of protest. Murad observes the uncomfortable scene with earbuds in and rap music blasting. He’s only physically here; mentally he’s checked out in another world. The six of them are crammed in their tiny living space, and Murad’s mother is reduced to sleeping on the kitchen floor.
In these brief moments, the film paints a complex representation of life for someone of Murad’s upbringing. At night, once everyone has retired to bed, Murad sits on the roof by his bedside window. Tears finally emerge, manifesting all the emotions he has no channel to express except in his notebook, where he scribbles down a few lines of poetry. In time, these scribbles evolve into mature rap lyrics, and music becomes the vehicle through which Murad begins to question the rules of his world, and the role he desires to play in it.
In contrast, the opening scenes of Slumdog jump between Jamal being tortured and interrogated in the present, and scenes of his impoverished childhood. Twelve minutes into Slumdog, we observe a 5-year-old Jamal jumping into a pit of human feces in order to capture an autograph from a moviestar. These scenes depict poverty with an overtness that feels forced, and an over-the-top-quality that renders “poverty in India” an alien, unrelatable form of existence. No wonder the film felt patronizing to many Indian people.
Under the careful direction of Zoya Akhtar, Gully Boy delivers an incredibly nuanced, authentic, and moving portrayal of class struggle in India. Compared to Hollywood attempts at the same subject matter, Gully Boy humanizes the people it is trying to portray, and with musical numbers consisting of thought-provoking gully (“street”) rap, shows off an emerging, grittier side of Bollywood.
A Society Entrenched in an Ancient Class System
In contrast to the glamorous, colorful optimism exuded by typical Bollywood films, Gully Boy seeks a realistic portrayal of how class oppresses members of Indian society. These struggles are perhaps best embodied by Murad’s father, who openly refers to himself and his children as “servants”, and who performs his job —driving for a wealthy family—without question.
His mindset likely reflects the remnants of India’s 3,000 year old caste system, which traditionally divided people into categories at birth. Though caste-based discrimination has been outlawed by the Indian government since 1950, it left behind a deeply entrenched notion of class that persists in many parts of India—particularly in poor, under-educated communities. A glaring parallel of this situation should be obvious: despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, racial discrimination continues to plague the black community in America decades later. When mapped onto each other, the problems of one country are not so different from another’s.
Interestingly, Murad and his family are Muslims, whereas the caste system is rooted in ancient Hindu scripture. Murad’s family could therefore reflect the millions of Muslim converts existing in India today, who sought to escape oppression by caste. One should note, however, that Hindu scripture did not at its roots promote an immutable social hierarchy that would become the basis of centuries of discrimination. But the exploitation of religion for oppressive purposes is yet another common theme in the history.
“Dreams? Who do you think you are?” rebukes Murad’s father. “You must match your dreams to your reality.” His words reflect the bitterness of a man who felt he had no choice but to accept his role in society. We observe him not as a one-note antagonist, but a victim of the cycle of abuse: his angry disposition is not a choice, but the only way to cope in the confines of his reality. Such is the nuance of the film—no character is a trope or a cheap dramatic tool. Their plights are real, and reflect the problems in society around them.
A Cultural Film With Global Themes
On New Year’s eve, Murad substitutes for his father and waits upon the wealthy family as they attend a party that could well extend into the early morning. As he sits in the parking lot, sounds of celebration could be heard off screen, as inaccessible to the viewer as they are to Murad. He whips out his phone and writes: “My time will come. The lava of my words will melt the shackles that hold me.”
Not all rap lyrics constitute poetry, but this film succeeds in blending the two: every line that Murad pens is an emotional plea for change as he begins to discover his own voice through music.
Throughout the film, Murad raps about poverty, wealth gap, tradition, and the nonsensical “distance” between two people who may sit in the same vehicle, but are worlds apart due to the class lines that divide them. When the young lady he drives for leaves a club crying one night, Murad realizes he can do nothing to comfort her, as a single word out of place could get him fired. In his song Doori (which translates to “distance”), he asks: “What is the story of this world? Who’s the one who pulls the strings?”
This major plot point is also the most appealing part of the film — it explores class struggles in India through the lens of a young man’s singular obsession with rap, a form of music that spans continents. By rooting the story in such a way, the filmmakers not only create a modern picture of how an ancient and controversial class system affect people of today, but they also create room for audiences of all backgrounds to relate. Class struggles are after all, universal, no matter how much western civilizations pride themselves on their progressiveness. In some ways, that the Indian caste system is so black-and-white makes it easier to talk about. Issues cannot be simply hidden or assuaged by PC language, casting choices, or dubious capitalist arguments. In Gully Boy, we witness the damaging effects of class-based discrimination in its rawest form.
Class issues aside, the film also explores gender inequality with similar ambition. The silent suffering that Murad’s mother endures depicts the struggles of a dutiful wife in a patriarchal society. The tension between her and her mother-in-law (a trope in many cultures) deftly reveals the double-edged sword of gender inequality — the extent to which women adopt and promote the patriarchal narrative that they are victims of.
Murad’s girlfriend, Safeena, could easily outcompete many of Hollywood’s attempts at a strong female lead—she isn’t just cheerleading his musical talent from the side: she spends most of her time studying to become a surgeon, dreaming of one day owning her own medical practice despite her mother’s desire to have her become a housewife. And if she catches another girl eyeing Murad, she’ll literally take a wine bottle and smash it over her head. “Swear on me you won’t get violent again,” Murad begs. “Then you’ll die,” Safeena quips, smiling.
Why is she so set on him? “You let me be me,” she tells Murad. In a great departure from the woman-as-sidekick, woman-in-distress, and woman-as-prize roles (i.e. in Iron Man, Skyfall, Wolf of Wall Street, just to name a few), Safeena loves that Murad makes her feel confident as a strong, ambitious woman. A moment like this can’t help but stand out in an era of entertainment that still fails to capture proper boyfriend material.
As Murad continues to befriend new people within Mumbai’s small rap community, we observe glimpses of a world where class lines don’t exist. He meets MC Sher, an aspiring local rapper dating an English girl, and Sky, a wealthy young woman who studies abroad at the Berklee College of Music (“They have entire schools dedicated to music?” Murad asks incredulously). The three meet as equals: artists whose love of music transcends caste and creed.
The road to achieving his dreams is, of course, laid with thorns. Every day Murad watches his mother silently suffer her abuse. He places his dreams on hold to make ends meet, or else arouse the ire of his father. He starts working an office job under his maternal uncle, who reminds him that he is the son of a “servant”. On a bus ride home from work, Murad observes the blank stares of passengers around him, and writes: “people live out all their lives, never asking if this path will lead them somewhere…what if we had taken the path less travelled?”
Murad’s question applies not only himself, but to all people who desire a sense of fulfillment, and who carry dreams larger than the shoes they currently fill. Such is the power of Gully Boy, which seamlessly blends cultural specifics into a universal story about class struggle. The film’s thematic elements are deftly interwoven into the characters and their interactions, “showing” rather than “telling” us how socio-economic disparities impact their natural, every day lives. The final effect is a story that should resonate with audiences all over the world.
A Film That Succeeds Where The Other Fails
In Slumdog Millionaire, we observe a young orphaned boy running from the cruel manifestations of poverty around him, trying to survive. In Gully Boy, we watch an adolescent man living his life, seeking refuge in the most unlikely art: rap music.
Where Slumdog succeeds in depicting how ruthless poverty can be on a child, Gully Boy succeeds in showing how diligence and passion can open doors, despite a class system that seems to seal them shut.
Where Slumdog succeeds in showing how poverty can divide a race of people, causing them to fight amongst each other for scraps, Gully Boy succeeds in showing how music unites us all, in spite of race, gender, and class.
Where Slumdog is a foreigner’s take on the curious reality of what life looks like for the lowest members of Indian society, Gully Boy is an insider’s hope for what their life can one day become.
What makes Gully Boy an exceptional story is that it transcends the very thing it is trying to depict. Yes, it shows us the harsh realities of slum life; yes, it boldly depicts the seemingly insurmountable wall of class lines. However, at the heart of the movie is a universal story about class struggles, carried with both levity and gravitas by a young man who chooses to chase his dream in spite of all odds. I came into the theater prepared to witness a cultural perspective different from my own, yet I emerged from the dark thinking that we are all more similar than we think. If you don’t walk away feeling inspired, at the very least you will enjoy the Hindi rap music.
Gully Boy—India. Dialog in Hindi. Directed by Zoya Akhtar. Running time 2 hours 33 minutes. First released February 14, 2019. Starring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt.
Xingting Gong is a writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. | {
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So fantastic!! The bat print is absolutely adorable and will be going up on my wall tonight! The book came just in time because I just finished one and I needed something new. And cinnamon cookies!!! (I made my love for cinnamon no secret hehe)
Bonus of my dog Denver awkwardly smiling for the camera. | {
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Fifteen international scientists recently collaborated to assemble one of the most comprehensive analyses of temperature and ice sheet changes for Greenland and the Canadian Arctic ever produced. Briner et al., (2016) synthesized over 100 records from a large and accumulating database to publish “Holocene climate change in Arctic Canada and Greenland” in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
The results are not good news for those who wish to maintain that today’s Greenland Ice Sheet is losing ice area at an unprecedentedly accelerated rate, or that modern temperature values for the Arctic region are dangerously high. Greenland’s Ice Sheet has a larger ice extent now than it has had for most of the last 7,500 years; only the Little Ice Age period (~1300-1900 A.D.) had more ice mass. And both regions (Canadian Arctic and Greenland) are still 1 to 2°C colder now than they were just a few thousand years ago.
The Greenland Ice Sheet Is Now At Nearly Its Highest Extent In The Last 7,500 Years
In the climate alarmism world, the Greenland Ice Sheet has been cooperating with the ice-is-melting-faster-than-ever paradigm for decades. For headline-creators who warn of “ominous” and “catastrophic” rates of change — and how humans are to blame for most of it — the Greenland Ice Sheet has been losing mass at “unprecedented” rates since the 1990s. For example: The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing 110 million Olympic size swimming pools worth of water each year. … ‘The Arctic Is Unraveling,’ Scientists Conclude After Latest Sobering Climate Report – Unprecedented warming has sent the Arctic into uncharted territory, says latest NOAA report … Alert! Greenland’s Ice Now Melting At Catastrophic Speed
But what does “unprecedented” actually mean with regard to ice loss or temperature change in the Arctic? Effectively, precedence only extends back to the beginning of the 20th Century in most cases. Some may only extend precedence back to the 1961-1990 period, which is the baseline for nearly all surface mass balance estimates. So ice is said to be melting faster than any time since 1900, or since 1961-1990. But consider that in 1900, with centuries of solar minima and large-scale volcanic eruptions leading to plummeting Little Ice Age temperatures, the Greenland Ice Sheet had accumulated more ice and expanded its margins more than at any time in the last 7,500 years. And as the 15 scientists contributing to Briner et al. (2016) reveal in this encapsulating graph from the paper, the Greenland Ice Sheet’s surface area has only negligibly retreated from that high point (~1900). Today’s ice sheet extent is still among the highest of the Holocene.
Briner et al., 2016 “The Greenland Ice Sheet retracted to its minimum extent between 5 and 3 ka [5,000 and 3,000 years ago], consistent with many sites from around Greenland depicting a switch from warm to cool conditions around that time.”
Taking a closer look at what this graph depicts, we first of all can clearly see that Greenland’s ice sheet reached its much-lower-than-now minimum extent between 6,000 and 2,000 years ago, with the absolute lowest levels between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago. This millennial-scale ice sheet recession took place at a time when an anthropogenic influence was non-existent, and when CO2 levels were safely in the range of 260 ppm – about 140 ppm lower than today’s levels (400 ppm).
And as mentioned above, it is also clearly discernible that the modern Greenland Ice Sheet extent has not only not fallen outside the range of natural variability, it barely even falls below the coldest centennial-scale periods of the last 10,000 years (the Little Ice Age). Here is a much closer look (with annotations) at the last ~1,500 years of Greenland Ice Sheet area changes as shown in Briner et al. (2016):
Greenland and Canadian Arctic Temperatures Were 2°C Warmer Than Now For Most Of The Last 10,000 Years
Not only did Greenland’s ice sheet margins experience far greater retreat and higher melt rates during most of the last 7,500 years, but Greenland’s (and the Canadian Arctic’s) temperatures were also much warmer than today’s during the Holocene too. Below are some of the summarizing comments from Briner et al. (2016) describing the temperature changes for this region. Again, these much warmer temperatures occurred while CO2 levels were in the 260 ppm range.
“The temperature decrease from the warmest to the coolest portions of the Holocene is 3.0 ± 1.0 °C on average (n = 11 sites). … The temperature record, which integrates all seasons, shows rapid warming from the onset of the Holocene until ~9.5 ka [9,500 years ago], relatively uniform temperature at the millennial scale until ~7 ka [7,000 years ago], followed by ~3.5 °C temperature decline to the Little Ice Age [1300-1900 C.E.], followed by ~1.5 °C warming to today. [Today’s Greenland Ice Sheet temperatures are 2.0 °C colder than the Early and Middle Holocene] . The record also shows centennial-scale variability on the order of 1-2 °C, and a ~3 °C temperature oscillation during the 8.2 ka event.”
“Reconstruction results [Canadian Arctic] showed that summers warmer than today (~1 to 2 °C) prevailed prior to 4-3 ka [4,000 to 3,000 years ago]. … At Qipisarqo Lake [Greenland], pollen data indicate a sharp increase in July air temperature of 3-4 °C at 7.5-7.0 ka [7,500 to 7,000 years ago] and higher temperatures until 5.5-5.0 ka [5,500 to 5,000 years ago]. After 5 ka [5,000 years ago], a progressive cooling of 1-2 °C is inferred.”
Another synopsized graph from the paper depicting the temperature changes for each region of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic yields a clear and decisive verdict: modern Arctic-region temperature changes are not unusual or unprecedented.
Other New Papers Confirm That Modern Temperatures, Ice Loss Not At All Unusual For the Arctic Region
In the last few decades, the interior of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been melting at a slower rate than it did for 95% of the last 9,000 years according to scientists publishing in the journal Science. This finding is similar to the aforementioned conclusion that the ice extent for the Greenland Ice Sheet is now higher than it was for more than 90% of the last 7,500 years, rendering recent “losses” relatively insignificant and well within the range of natural variability.
MacGregor et al., 2016 [press release] (Greenland Ice Sheet)
“[I]ce flow in its [the Greenland Ice Sheet’s] interior is slower now than the average speed over the past nine millennia.”
“[T]he interior of the GrIS [Greenland Ice Sheet] is flowing 95% slower now than it was on average during the Holocene [the last 9,000 years].”
—
Fortin and Gajewski (2016) find that the central Canadian Arctic has not warmed in the last 150 years, and that the region was 3°C warmer than now just a few thousand years ago.
Fortin and Gajewski, 2016 (Canadian Arctic)
“A study of chironomid remains in the sediments of Lake JR01 on the “Boothia Peninsula in the central Canadian Arctic provides a high-resolution record of mean July air temperatures for the last 6.9 ka …. Biological production decreased again at ~ 2 ka and the rate of cooling increased in the past 2 ka, with coolest temperatures occurring between 0.46 and 0.36 ka [460 and 360 years ago], coinciding with the Little Ice Age. Although biological production increased in the last 150 yr, the reconstructed temperatures do not indicate a warming during this time . … Modern inferred temperatures based on both pollen and chironomids are up to 3°C cooler than those inferred for the mid-Holocene.”
—
Spolaor et al., 2016 [press release] (Arctic Ocean, Region)
“Researchers have found that 8000 years ago the Arctic climate was 2 to 3 degrees warmer than now, and that there was also less summertime Arctic sea ice than today.”
Other Recent Reconstructions Of Greenland, Canadian Arctic Climate Also Do Not Indicate ‘Unprecedented’ Modern Changes
Lecavalier et al., 2013 (North Greenland)
Levy et al., 2013 (Greenland Ice Sheet)
Andersen et al., 2004 (North Iceland Shelf, East Greenland, Vøring Plateau SSTs)
“Our results show that the Nordic Seas circulation system is highly sensitive to the large-scale insolation [surface solar radiation] changes as the general Holocene climate development follows closely the Northern Hemisphere insolation. … Century-scale surface current variability for the Holocene is shown to be 1 – 1.5°C for the Vøring Plateau and East Greenland shelf, and 2.5– 3°C on the North Ice-land shelf. … The first cooling [East Greenland Shelf SSTs] from 2400 to 2000 cal years BP was introduced by a 1.5°C temperature drop starting at 3000 cal years BP which culminated in an SST low around 2100 cal years BP. The second cooling occurred around 300 cal years BP and preceded a rapid warming [during the 1700s A.D.] , where SSTs rose with more than 1.5°C within 70 years. The third cooling took place in the second half of the last century. Until the last three centuries, SST variability atthis site has been 1°C, while SSTs varied with amplitudes of 1.5– 2°C during the last 300 years.”
Cook et al., 2009 (Canadian Arctic)
Remember The Larger Context For Claims Of ‘Unprecedented’ Arctic Change
Geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook offers a cogent summarizing perspective on the modern levels of relative Arctic quiescence.
Easterbrook, 2016
“In the past 500 years, Greenland temperatures have fluctuated back and forth between warming and cooling about 40 times, with changes every 25–30 years. … Comparisons of the intensity and magnitude of past warming and cooling climate changes show that the global warming experienced during the past century pales into insignificance when compared to the magnitude of profound climate reversals over the past 25,000 years. At least three warming events were 20–24 times the magnitude of warming over the past century, and four were 6–9 times the magnitude of warming over the past century.”
So the next time we read a headline that uses words like dangerous and catastrophic and unprecedented to refer to Arctic temperatures or ice mass losses, let’s remember that the far larger context strongly suggests that modern changes in the Arctic are comparatively minor, even negligible. | {
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Today’s update reworks the Ranked matchmaking system, as our inaugural six-month Ranked Season is ready to begin. Entering the season, all players will be able to earn a new Rank Medal on their profile that represents their highest performance level for the current season. A Seasonal Rank Medal never decreases in rank once you’ve achieved it. Initial calibration games will be seeded roughly based on your previous skill.
There are seven levels of Rank Medals, and within each level are five stars of progress to earn towards the next Medal. These Medals are: Herald, Guardian, Crusader, Archon, Legend, Ancient, and Divine.
Your performance in both Party and Solo games is considered when evaluating your skill and determining when your Medal gets upgraded, with Solo games having a bigger impact. In order for players to achieve either the Ancient or Divine Medals, only Solo-game performance is considered.
This update also expands the Leaderboard system to include many more players. Players with 5 stars on the Divine Rank Medal (the highest rank) will now have a leaderboard number listed with the medal that broadcasts their position amongst other players. This leaderboard position will always be displayed alongside the Medal, and will be visible to all players in the game and on your profile. | {
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I've been showing friends something I picked up at Google's developers conference yesterday, and it's been inspiring ooohs, and wows, and squeals of joy and delight. No, it isn't a smartwatch. It isn't even a gadget. It's a cheap piece of cardboard, and it's getting even the tech-jaded people here excited.
The premise is simple. A cardboard contraption you can assemble in about 45 seconds. Just drop your phone into the little cardboard viewfinder you wind up with, hold it up to your face, and you're immersed in a virtual reality world comparable in resolution to the first version of the Oculus Rift, if not better (depending on your phone). Turn your head to scroll through a row of apps, and on the left side there's a metal washer that's held on by a magnet. Flick it down to click on something. It's incredibly intuitive, and equally impactful.
Facebook has Oculus. Sony has Project Morpheus. Reports have Samsung making a VR headset as well. So why, it was fair to wonder, wasn't Google getting into the VR game? Well, it just did, and the way it's going about it is absolutely genius. Rather than relying on an expensive piece of equipment (a headset with dedicated screens) Google Cardboard essentially gives virtual reality to everyone who has an Android phone. For free. The implications of that are tremendous. It's the first time that virtual reality—good virtual reality—has ever been so ubiquitous, cheap, and readily available.
Google gave out a kit yesterday, but it's easy to make one of your own at home. Less than 24 hours after it was announced, Dodocase is already making and selling pre-made kits online for $20. You can expect to see more (many more) soon. They'll be made from different materials (3D printed?), some will surely allow you to comfortably strap them to your face, just like an Oculus. Essentially, it can instantly be as ubiquitous as Android phones. You just have to install the Cardboard app on your phone, and be running a recent-ish version of Android.
This isn't the first time we've seen something like this, actually. Back in March, when we visited USC's Institute for Creative Technologies and tried the Navy's version of the Oculus Rift, we also saw some open-source prototypes that were, essentially just like this. Some were made of cheap foam-core, some were 3D printed, but basically they were holders for a couple cheap lenses with a divider between them, and they held a phone.
So anybody could have made something like this at home, provided they had a bit of coding knowledge. The difference is that Google had the wherewithal to make an easy-to-use app that already has a bunch of great examples of how Cardboard can be used, and, of course, they're making the development platform open so that anybody can make awesome apps that leverage this technology. It's the instant democratization of virtual reality, made dirt cheap and readily available to literally hundreds of millions of people.
Yeah, viewer setups like these have been around for forever (including some really weird, terrible ones). Obviously, the physical cardboard isn't the truly exciting part of Cardboard. What's special here is the software platform, the instant spread, and of course Google's considerable leverage behind it.
What can you do already? You can fly through space, or over cities in Google Earth. You can use Tour Guide to get more information about a place you're visiting. You can see what it looks like to climb up Mount Everest. You can find yourself in a room full of YouTube videos, where you flick the washer to pick the one you want to watch. You can find yourself inside the Pixar-like world of Windy Day, watching the story unfold around you. You can play games where you run around to collect coins and physically jump to reach the ones above you.
Many Android phones allow you to take Photospheres—full 360 degree panoramic images. With Cardboard you'll be able to go back to those locations and experience them like you're standing there again. It's legitimately incredible. And that's before app and game developers have even gotten their hands on it.
Sure, there are a handful of very good developers working on stuff for Oculus—and there will be plenty more now that Facebook is driving the bus—but there are orders of magnitude more people who are already actively developing for Android, trying to reach a much wider audience. That's going to equal rapid deployment of some very cool stuff.
Today at an I/O session, we saw an example of how it can work with the phone's camera, for not only virtual reality, but augmented reality type scenarios. You will be able to have virtual objects overlaid over the real world. Using the phone's camera, you may be able to manipulate them with your hands.
We also got to hear a little more about how Cardboard works. For example, the washer makes for an effective clicker because these phones have a magnetometer that serves as a compass. When you flick the washer it disrupts the magnetic field slightly, which your phone can sense. The downside is that it renders the phone's compass effectively useless while you're using it, which is too bad, because this could have some cool navigation applications. Maybe they'll figure out a way around that in the future, like voice-based commands, or a motion something that uses the accelerometer. The Cardboard we were given also has an NFC tag in it, which tells the phone when it's in the viewer.
What might we see next? Probably Google's Spotlight Stories added to the Cardboard catalog. There is a ton of stereoscopic 3D content on YouTube already, so we wouldn't be surprised to see YouTube work to make Cardboard a viewer for all that great content that most of us don't get to check out at home. Imaging how much more terrifying all those crazy GoPro videos will be when they become super immersive.
Cardboard was started as a 20-percent project of Googlers David Coz, Christian Plagemann, and Boris Smus, and it's very much in its nascent stages of development, but because it's already available to consumers, it has all the potential to become the most widely-adopted virtual reality platform in history, practically overnight. All that from a bit of corrugated paper. | {
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President Trump slammed “politically correct” automakers on Wednesday, defending his plan to roll back Obama-era carbon emissions standards.
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“My proposal to the politically correct Automobile Companies would lower the average price of a car to consumers by more than $3000, while at the same time making the cars substantially safer,” Trump tweeted.
In June, 17 major auto companies called on the Trump administration and the state of California to compromise on emissions standards. Then in July, four automakers came to an agreement with California on gas mileage and emissions standards, side-stepping the Trump administration.
“Engines would run smoother,” Trump continued. “Very little impact on the environment! Foolish executives!”
California's rules would require light duty model year 2026 vehicles from Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW to hit a minimum of 50 miles per gallon. Trump wants the current standard of 37 miles per gallon to continue until 2026 without rising.
"Ensuring that America's vehicles are efficient, safe and affordable is a priority for us all," the automakers said in a July statement. "These terms will provide our companies much-needed regulatory certainty by allowing us to meet both federal and state requirements with a single national fleet, avoiding a patchwork of regulations while continuing to ensure meaningful greenhouse gas emissions reductions."
Ticker Security Last Change Change % F FORD MOTOR COMPANY 6.51 -0.15 -2.25% HNDAF HONDA MOTOR 24.57 -0.85 -3.34% VWAGY VOLKSWAGEN AG 17.03 -0.17 -0.99% BMWYY BMW AG 23.07 -0.51 -2.16%
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that the deal with automakers was a "big blow" to the Trump administration.
“This is pathetic and it shows the weakness of the administration,” Newsom said of Trump's push against the standards, according to the Los Angeles Times. “No one wants [Trump’s mileage policy] except the oil companies. And what a sad, pathetic state of affairs that they’re the ones calling the shots.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS | {
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As my husband and I deepen our discussions around family planning, we’re tackling a number of questions about budgeting, housing, childcare, employment and so on. Most of our inquiries are of a fairly practical nature, such as “How can we afford this?”, and “What kind of parental leave can we work out?”
But some of our questions tend to veer into the wild, snake-infested territory of “what ifs”. One of my favorites to ponder, with an urgent hopelessness, is “What if we screw up and our kid grows up to resent us for it?”
It’s an impossible question to answer right now, but in 20 years or so, I might be asking this same question, and justifiably so.
“Even when they do their best, parents fall short regardless and there will be memories and experiences that children find hurtful,” says Lauren Cook, MMFT, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Pepperdine University. “There is no such thing as a perfect parent.”
So what is a parent to do if, after raising their kid as best they could, their grown child begrudges them for how they were raised or how said parent handled a particular issue?
Through consulting numerous therapists, we’ve pieced together a 8-step process detailing how parents can deal with this difficult situation, and ultimately build a better relationship with their grown children.
Step 1: Listen without interjecting
Arguably the most important and difficult step is the first one, which is to listen to your child without interrupting or begging to differ.
“Most importantly your children want to be seen and heard, so even though it may be difficult to hear them out without interrupting or finding counter arguments, it is the first step in the right direction,” says Dr. Viola Drancoli, PsyD, a clinical psychologist. “It often takes clients a long time to confront parents with those resentments, either because they don’t expect to be understood or because they don’t want to hurt their parents. Either way, the more open and non-defensive you can listen, the better.”
Dea Dean, LMFT, adds that while it may be difficult to acknowledge your child’s negative perception of you, especially when you never intended to cause harm, “listening without defending shows respect for the reality of your child’s experience and leads to resolution.”
Step 2: Don’t correct your kid’s story
When you lead with correction over connection, you miss an opportunity to have your child feel truly heard.
“When you listen to your child’s experience it can be tempting to want to let them in on what was really going on with you, or to want to correct them if their perception or experience wasn’t 100 percent correct [in your opinion],” says Dean. “When you lead with correction over connection, you miss an opportunity to have your child feel truly heard. When you acknowledge their feelings first, they will be more likely to naturally want to listen to your side of things and be open to learning what it was like to be you in the moment being discussed.”
Step 3: Be compassionate if your kid is reactive — they’re literally channeling their inner child
Your child may be an adult now, but when they’re talking with you about these deep-rooted, possibly painful issues, they may seem like a kid all over again.
“Even though your child is now an adult, they’re still your child and when you’re working through issues of the past, you’re likely interacting with a younger part of them that can be emotionally reactive,” says Dean. “It’s important to have empathy for your adult child if they’re struggling to understand your side of things in a past interaction that hurt them. When we accrue emotional wounds, they occur on the right hemisphere of the brain, where we store experiential memories, and when those stored memories are walked through again, the right hemisphere of your child’s brain will likely become engaged, reigniting those old feelings of ‘fight or flight,’ that they might have felt in the moment from the past. This is why their emotional reaction may seem incongruent with the intensity of the actual interaction. They’re not the adult sitting in front of you during the present discussion, they are experiencing the feelings and using the logic of the child they were when the incident occurred. Have compassion for that younger part of them and practice nonjudgmental acceptance for their experience.”
Step 4: Apologize in a way that is validating
Once your kid has said everything they have to say, and you’ve both taken whatever time you need to feel your feelings, you should apologize. It’s best to do this in a way that is truly thoughtful and aims to validate rather than sweep the issue away. Again, you’ll want to focus on letting go of any defensive urges.
“We get the desire to explain why we may have done something, usually with good intent because we don’t want our people to hurt, and therefore we try to explain why they shouldn’t,” says Nicole Herrera, MFTC. “This has the opposite effect through. The adult child will feel as though they need to do one of two things, one, explain their feelings further — which usually causes escalation, or two, start to shut down again and create greater resentment. For the parent, if they can focus on the feelings their kid is having rather than the content they are bringing up, they have a better chance of validation and apology.”
So for example, if you chronically missed your kids’ sports games, rather than saying, “Well you know I had to work late and I tried my best to provide for our family,'' Herrera suggests saying something like, “Wow, I had no idea that stuck with you so strongly. I’m so sorry you didn’t feel worthy. You are so important to me and I would have never wanted you to feel that way. I’m so sorry — this sounds like it’s still a pretty big deal.” | {
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We have a growing family made up of some of the best aquascapers in the world who are all proud to use CO2Art equipment in their best projects. Our Artists consist of high ranking international aquascapers who put our equipment at the heart of their artwork. | {
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Antonio Pastini, the pilot killed on Sunday when his small plane plunged into a Yorba Linda home, was first identified by California authorities as a retired Chicago police officer. But a spokeswoman for the Chicago police said Pastini, 75, was never employed by the department and was carrying a Chicago police badge missing since 1978.
Carrie Braun, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said the metal police star recovered from Pastini’s body “appeared to be legitimate,” and initially led authorities to describe Pastini as a retired Chicago police officer.
But Chicago police told the sheriff’s department Monday that they had no record of Pastini being employed by the department. Michelle Tannehill, a spokeswoman for the Chicago police, said the badge found on Pastini was reported lost in 1978.
The missing badge adds another question to an investigation already rife with them. The four people killed in the home struck by Pastini’s plane remain unidentified, and the cause of the crash is still unknown. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board could take as long as 18 months to learn why Pastini’s plane broke apart and plunged, flaming, into an Orange County suburb.
About 10 minutes after taking off from Fullerton Municipal Airport on Sunday afternoon, Pastini’s twin engine Cessna came apart in the sky and crashed into the 19000 block of Crestknoll Drive, in a residential neighborhood of Yorba Linda, authorities said. Pastini was killed, along with four people inside the home. Wreckage of the plane was strewn across the suburban neighborhood.
Investigators have yet to identify the victims because their bodies were badly burned. Braun, the sheriff’s spokeswoman, said they had obtained dental records for some of the victims and hoped to identify them on Tuesday. Two others suffered moderate burns.
Julia Ackley, a Torrance resident and one of Pastini’s daughters, told The Times that her father often flew to Southern California to visit her family from Oregon or Nevada, where he was a restaurant and business owner.
Pastini had no record with the Federal Aviation Administration of accidents, incidents or discipline, said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the FAA. | {
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Grants will support programs and provide resources for youth in underserved communities
PITTSBURGH, Pa., Oct. 3, 2018 – The family of Malcolm McCormick (Mac Miller) has partnered with The Pittsburgh Foundation to establish the Mac Miller Fund in honor of the Pittsburgh native and nationally known rapper and producer.
The partnership is in conjunction with yesterday’s announcement of the “Mac Miller: A Celebration of Life” concert that will benefit the new fund. Family members have set the philanthropic purpose as “to provide programming, resources and opportunities to youth from underserved communities, helping them recognize their full potential through exploration in the arts and community building.”
“Mac Miller: A Celebration of Life” concert will be presented Oct. 31 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, featuring artists including Action Bronson, Anderson Paak, Chance the Rapper, Dylan Reynolds, Domo Genesis, Earl Sweatshirt, J.I.D, John Mayer, Miguel, Njomza, ScHoolboy Q, SZA, Thundercat, Travis Scott, Ty Dolla $ign and Vince Staples. Ticket sales will begin at 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST on Oct. 5, through Ticketmaster.com. Donations can be made and information about the fund can be found at http://www.pittsburghfoundation.org/macmiller.
McCormick’s family issued the following statement as part of the announcement of the new fund:
“Malcolm had a passion and commitment, not only to the arts, but to creating, deepening and protecting the idea and practice of community. The Mac Miller Fund will continue his vision of giving access and opportunities to kids to explore the arts and to have a positive impact on communities across the country. He cared very much about working to make the world a kinder place and we will continue to do just that.”
In announcing the Fund, Pittsburgh Foundation President and CEO Maxwell King commended the family for establishing a philanthropic legacy in the city that had a profound influence on McCormick’s development as an artist. “Mac Miller was among the brightest young talents to emerge from our city. His vitality and creativity live on through this fund at the Foundation. We plan to work closely with his family to support programs that help young people find their voice and their truth through the arts.”
McCormick was born in Pittsburgh in 1992 and grew up in the city’s Point Breeze neighborhood. He attended Winchester Thurston School before graduating from Pittsburgh Allderdice High School in 2010. A gifted and self-taught musician, McCormick began recording his own music at age 15, regularly performing at the Shadow Lounge in East Liberty and other venues around Pittsburgh. In 2010, at age 18, he released his breakout mixtape “K.I.D.S.” and went on to release five studio albums, including his chart-topping, Pittsburgh-referencing “Blue Slide Park” in 2011. His most recent studio album “Swimming,” was released Aug. 3 by Remember Music and Warner Bros. Records. Production on the album was handled by McCormick himself under a pseudonym, along with others and was praised upon its release as his finest artistic achievement to date.
MEDIA CONTACT
Douglas Root
The Pittsburgh Foundation
412-394-2647
[email protected] | {
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Newly released transcripts tell last, gruesome moments of columnist Jamal Khashoggi The gruesome new details were leaked by Turkish officials.
Newly released transcripts provide insight into the final moments of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi before he was killed by Saudi agents inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
The authenticity of the transcripts, which were published Tuesday in the Turkish media for the first time, were confirmed to ABC News by Turkish authorities.
The transcripts reveal gruesome details from the murder that has cast a shadow over Saudi relations with the United States.
The reported transcribed conversations show the 15-member team of Saudi officials discussing what to do with Khashoggi's body before he arrived at the consulate, seeking paperwork for his upcoming marriage to his fiancée Hatice Cengiz. It's unclear how Turkey was able to record the events in the Saudi consulate as they unfolded.
Saudi Arabia has said that the team was rogue, misinterpreting an old edict to convince Saudi dissidents to come home and killing Khashoggi by accident. Those 15 individuals have been on trial in the kingdom, but the proceedings have been closed to the public.
"Is it possible to put the body in a bag?" asked Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a senior member of the team, 12 minutes before Khashoggi arrived on Oct. 2.
Dr. Salah Muhammed Tubaigy, who served as forensic chief at the Saudi General Security Department, responded, "No. Too heavy, very tall too."
"I know how to cut very well," Tubaigy added. "I have never worked on a warm body though, but I'll also manage that easily. I normally put on my earphones and listen to music when I cut cadavers. In the meantime, I sip on my coffee and smoke. After I dismember it, you will wrap the parts into plastic bags, put them in suitcases and take them out."
According to Turkish officials, the team did that, removing Khashoggi's body in pieces in five suitcases. His remains have never been found.
In another portion of the transcript, after Khashoggi arrived, he was told to send his son a text message. Mutreb told him to "write something like 'I'm in Istanbul. Don't worry if you cannot reach me.'"
Khashoggi responded, "How can such a thing take place at a consulate? I'm not writing anything."
"Write it, Mr. Jamal. Hurry up. Help us so we can help you, because in the end we will take you back to Saudi Arabia and if you don't help us you know what will happen eventually," Mutreb fired back.
"There is a towel here. Will you have me drugged?" Khashoggi asked.
Tubaigy then stepped in and said, "We will put you to sleep."
The team then put a plastic bag over his head and suffocated him, with scuffling and struggling heard and a few commands given, such as, "Keep pushing" and "push it well."
Khashoggi's last words were, "I have asthma. Do not do it, you will suffocate me," according to the transcripts.
Shortly afterward, the sound of a bone saw is heard.
A United Nations special investigator determined in a report in June that Khashoggi's murder was perpetrated at the highest levels of the Saudi Arabian power structure and required further investigation of senior Saudi officials, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Saudi Arabia blasted the report as based on "many unfounded accusations" and questioned "the impartiality and lack of objectivity of the report" and its author, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnès Callamard.
"The kingdom will never accept any attempt to harm its sovereignty and that it categorically rejects any attempt to derail this issue away from the kingdom's justice system or any attempt to influence it in any way," according to Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al Jubeir.
President Donald Trump was equally dismissive of the investigation, saying he did not raise the issue with the crown prince in a meeting at the G-20 and telling NBC News that the murder had "been heavily investigated. ... By everybody."
The Trump administration has said it continues to collect evidence on the murder, but has largely accepted the Saudi defense that it was a rogue operation carried out by a 15-member team -- all of whom were placed under U.S. sanctions last November.
"We continue to urge the Saudi government to ascertain all the facts and hold those responsible for the murder accountable. We are awaiting conclusion of the criminal trial in Riyadh," a State Department spokesperson told ABC News on Tuesday. "If additional facts come to light, we will consider further measures."
Members of Congress -- in both parties -- have challenged Trump on his efforts to dismiss Saudi Arabia's role in Khashoggi's death in an effort to keep business as usual. | {
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President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Pelosi: Trump hurrying to fill SCOTUS seat so he can repeal ObamaCare Trump mocks Biden appearance, mask use ahead of first debate MORE’s national security team is discussing plans to dismantle the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), an adviser and a former intelligence official consulting with the transition team told The Intercept.
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The reports, if true, come a day after the current director of national intelligence, James Clapper, announced his resignation, effective in approximately three months.
Trump’s transition team is reportedly discussing how to remove the Cabinet-level position and incorporate its responsibilities into the intelligence agencies it currently oversees, according to both sources.
The process will be “long and messy,” the former intelligence official told The Intercept, but Trump’s team is confident it will be successful.
The office — which was formed under former President George W. Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks — has long been a source of friction in the intelligence community, where some see it as unnecessary bureaucracy.
The ODNI was a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission Report, intended to facilitate smoother information-sharing between the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community.
But critics have characterized it as lacking sufficient authority to lead the sprawling U.S. intelligence apparatus effectively. The ODNI maintains control of the national intelligence budget, but lacks the power to direct any element of the intelligence community — including hiring and firing personnel — beyond its own staff.
Unwinding the agency would reverse a 2004 law passed by Congress establishing the role.
Trump on Friday morning announced his pick of Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) to lead the CIA but made no announcement for the DNI position. Prior to 2004, the CIA director was the head of the intelligence community.
According to the former senior official who spoke to The Intercept, the transition team is also considering reversing reforms undertaken in the CIA under current Director John Brennan. In 2015, the spy agency embarked on sweeping reforms intended to expand the focus on digital espionage.
The overhaul created hybridized “mission centers” that teamed up analysts with operators. The move earned praise from Clapper and other Obama administration officials, but raised concerns amongst critics that it would undercut human intelligence.
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | {
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(CNN) A transgender woman who traveled to the United States in a migrant caravan through Mexico has died while in the custody of immigration officials.
Roxana Hernandez, 33, of Honduras died Friday at a hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She died from what appeared to be cardiac arrest, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
She arrived at the San Ysidro, California, port of entry near San Diego on May 9 to seek asylum, according to ICE and Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which organized and guided the caravan.
She had been in custody for about two weeks, waiting to be deported, when she died.
Read More | {
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The once hushed cries for Vitor Belfort to receive a middleweight title shot have become a roar in the wake of Belfort's dramatic 77-second victory over Dan Henderson at UFC Fight Night 32.
Belfort, 36, now rides perhaps the largest wave of momentum of his career, having scored consecutive head kick knockouts over Michael Bisping, Luke Rockhold, and Henderson. Though his remarkable accomplishments remain clouded by his usage of Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT), as each of Belfort's past three wins were contested in Brazil, where he is free to undergo the controversial treatment.
Common belief is that the same would not hold true if Belfort sought a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) in Nevada, in part due to Belfort's muddled history with drug abuse.
"That's not true, that's completely not true," UFC President Dana White said over the weekend. "There is no reason why Vitor Belfort can't fight in Las Vegas or anywhere else in the United States. Vitor Belfort has not been abusing TRT. In a million f--king years I would never let that happen.
"Vitor could fight in the United States now. There's no reason why he couldn't fight in Las Vegas, no matter what (Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director) Keith Kizer says. He should be allowed to fight in Las Vegas. It's ridiculous."
Belfort's ability to gain licensure in Nevada was never in question, as the state has licensed far more severe offenders, even recently granting three-time culprit Josh Barnett a license to fight on the condition of year-long random drug testing.
The issue of whether Belfort could receive a TUE for TRT, though, is a more complicated one. And it may not be as set in stone as first believed.
"Due to his past, Mr. Belfort would need to go before the Commission if he applies for a TRT TUE," Kizer told MMAFighting.com. "This is not anything new. (For example, I would not administratively grant Antonio Margarito a contestant's license so he had to appear before the full Commission -- likewise, Dave Herman.)
"The Commissioners could grant (with or without condition), deny, or take other action on any such application."
While Kizer has voiced doubts in the past about whether Belfort would be granted a TUE by the NSAC, when asked about the scenario on Monday, Kizer responded that he couldn't say what the outcome would be for certain, and that any final verdict, "would be up to the five Commissioners."
Back in late-2006, Belfort infamously failed a post-fight drug test in Nevada, then disregarded the NSAC's subsequent nine-month suspension and fought overseas in London the following April.
Regardless, if the situation arises, Belfort doesn't anticipate running into any problems in Nevada.
"It's easy, Chael Sonnen's fighting in Las Vegas," Belfort said on Saturday. "We here, we do everything by the book. I'm just gonna take my blood right now, after [the press conference], so everything is good. We can get licensed, that's no problem." | {
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The PC (Personal Communications) Police. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Despite its manifest desire to mislead the public about its activities and intentions, Donald Trump’s White House might well be the most “transparent” of any in our history. The administration allowed an adversarial reporter unfettered access to the West Wing for most of Trump’s first six months in office. And even after John Kelly evicted Michael Wolff, the administration continued to keep the public informed about every little piece of petty palace intrigue that transpired at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — including those generated by staffers keeping the public informed about every little piece of petty palace intrigue that transpires at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Thus, White House staffers leaked word last week that an administration aide had made an irreverent comment about John McCain’s impending death — and the White House responded by redoubling its efforts to crack down on leaks, which we know, because the details of said efforts immediately leaked.
On Thursday, administration staffers gave CNN an intimate look into how John Kelly’s ban on personal communication devices in the White House has been playing out. Specifically, they divulged that an anti-leaking squad — armed with devices that can detect the presence of non-government-issued phones — now patrols the West Wing in search of traitors:
Officials now either leave their personal devices in their cars, or, when they arrive for work each morning, deposit them in lockers that have been installed at West Wing entrances … Sources said it’s common to find several staffers huddled around the lockers throughout the day, perusing their neglected messages. The lockers buzz and chirp constantly from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The ban isn’t based on an honor system. Sweeps are carried out to track down personal devices that have made it past the lobby and into the building. According to sources who are familiar with the sweeps, men dressed in suits and carrying large handheld devices have been seen roaming the halls of the West Wing, moving from room to room, scouring the place for devices that aren’t government-issued. If one is detected, one of the men will ask those in the room if someone forgot to put their phone away … if no one says they have a phone, the men begin searching the room.
Alas, there are no signs that the phone patrol has managed to plug the sieve. Ultimately, the president’s management philosophy — pitting his underlings against each other in a battle for who can best flatter his ego, subjecting those who fail to abusive tirades, and, most critically, making massively consequential policy decisions on the basis of what he hears in the media — ensures that the leaks will just keep coming. As leakers who spoke with Axios explained:
The most common substantive leaks are the result of someone losing an internal policy debate,” a current senior administration official told me. “By leaking the decision, the loser gets one last chance to kill it with blowback from the public, Congress or even the President.”
“Otherwise,” the official added, “you have to realize that working here is kind of like being in a never-ending ‘Mexican Standoff.’ Everyone has guns (leaks) pointed at each other and it’s only a matter of time before someone shoots. There’s rarely a peaceful conclusion so you might as well shoot first.”
A former senior White House official who turned leaking into an art form made a slightly more nuanced defense of the practice. “Leaking is information warfare; it’s strategic and tactical — strategic to drive narrative, tactical to settle scores,” the source said.
So, expect leaks (and leaks about leaks, and leaks about leaks about leaks) to continue flooding from the Trump White House for the duration of its tenure. | {
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Phil Murphy campaign promise tracker: On minimum wage, PARCC testing, NJ Transit and more
Last updated Feb. 27, 2020.
Gov. Phil Murphy made a lot of promises while running for governor. Now he has to try to fulfill them. The Record and NorthJersey.com have compiled a list of those promises and is publishing them here as a way of informing the public and to hold Murphy accountable.
This list is comprehensive but not exhaustive, and is culled from statements Murphy made during the campaign or posted on his website. The Record will update this list as needed with the status on these promises as Murphy moves through his tenure.
Taxes, spending and the economy
Promise: Pass a millionaire's tax
Murphy has supported raising taxes on New Jersey's highest earners for a while, and he has not moved off his position despite wavering by other Democratic leaders.
“Everything we’ve talked about this entire campaign is to back the truck up and get back to reinvesting in the middle class and asking those, the biggest among us, the wealthiest among us, to pay their fair share,” Murphy said in November 2017.
Unlike past attempts by Democrats to pass a tax on high earners, Murphy said on MTP Daily on Jan. 17, 2018 that he wants a true millionaire's tax.
Related: Gottheimer to Murphy - Don't hike taxes on NJ millionaires
"When we talk about a millionaire's tax, that's a millionaire," Murphy said. "We'll figure it out because the middle class needs, in our state, at all costs to be rescued," he added.
Status: This is a promise partially kept.
In his March 13, 2018 budget address, Murphy called on the Legislature to pass a measure "asking those with taxable incomes in excess of $1 million to pay a little more." He anticipated raising rates from the top 8.97 percent to 10.75 percent on incomes over $1 million to raise $765 million in the 2019 fiscal year.
He faced a major obstacle, though. Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, had expressed resistance to the millionaire's tax and said it should be the "absolute last resort" after passage of President Donald Trump's federal tax overhaul.
After intense negotiations to avoid a government shutdown, Murphy abruptly abandoned his years-long quest to pass a true millionaire's tax and agreed to a Sweeney-backed proposal increasing the top tax rate to 10.75 percent on incomes over $5 million — a "multi-millionaires" tax, as Murphy put it. When asked what changed enough for him to change his mind and accept the higher income threshold, Murphy said it was the tax rate.
"A millionaire's tax was an existential item for me and for us, I believe, in order to achieve tax fairness," Murphy said in a June 30 news conference to announce a budget agreement. "The notion of how we did it was never as important as doing it and establishing that recurring revenue for the wealthiest among us."
That is quite a turnaround in philosophy from just one day earlier, when Murphy called the $5 million threshold a symbolic gesture from legislative Democrats because, he said, about 21,000 millionaires earning up to $5 million would be exempt from the new rate. And raising the threshold would dramatically reduce the expected revenue for the budget — about $280 million compared to the $765 million from a true millionaire's tax.
"We've got folks who are trying to protect 21,000 millionaires. I literally don't get that," Murphy said during a June 29 news conference.
Promise: Create a state bank
This was one of Murphy's big policy ideas at the outset of his campaign. He envisions it to invest tax dollars in small businesses, student loans and infrastructure projects and offer low-interest loans.
"I can look back at periods in this state under the leadership of both or either party, when we were both fiscally responsible, proudly progressive and we dreamt and took chances and took risks and embraced big ideas," Murphy said at a gubernatorial forum held by the New Jersey Bankers Association in April 2017. "If we believe in our future, let's put our money where our mouth is. Let's again think deeply and do more," he added.
He told CNBC's "Squawk Box" in March 2017 that the bank would be owned by the residents of New Jersey "and the business that it does would be restricted to New Jersey."
Status: This is a promise launched.
On Nov. 13, 2019, nearly two years into his term, Murphy signed an executive order creating an "implementation board" to work out the details of how a state bank would be run in New Jersey. The 14-member board has one year to present its plan.
Promise: $15 hourly minimum wage
Murphy made this one of his top campaign promises and said on Jan. 17, his first full day in office, that it is "high on that list" of his legislative priorities. But Murphy favors a "clean" bill to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and said last March during a forum with the New Jersey Working Families Alliance that he would veto what the forum moderator called a "watered down" proposal.
Status: This is a promise kept.
On Feb. 4, 2019, Murphy signed the wage increase to make New Jersey the fourth state to pass a $15 hourly minimum wage law.
"Big day for New Jersey," Murphy said in an interview after the bill-signing.
The increase won't be automatic. The 2019 minimum wage of $8.85 an hour is scheduled to increase to $10 in July, then rise by $1 each January until 2024.
There are also exceptions. Seasonal workers, employees at businesses with fewer than six workers and farm laborers will have their pay increase on a slower timeline, beginning with an increase to $10.30 an hour in 2020.
Promise: Legalize recreational marijuana
Murphy has said marijuana legalization is a social justice issue and that the revenue generated from it is one of the last reasons he is in favor of it. He has said that as a father of four, it has taken him some time to come around to the idea of legal marijuana, but he has come to view laws being unevenly applied to minorities and young people.
"I want to legalize it, regulate it. I'm glad we're not the first state, because a lot of other states have done it and made mistakes," Murphy said during a debate on Oct. 18, 2017. "And at the end of the day, will we earn some revenues from it? Yes. But it's got to be social justice first."
Status: This is a promise stalled.
Murphy had hoped to legalize marijuana through legislation, but New Jersey will instead put it in the hands of voters.
Senate President Stephen Sweeney announced in May 2019 that lawmakers, who had blown deadline after deadline to post a bill, would no longer try and instead plan on a 2020 referendum.
"There's no sense dragging this out," Sweeney said.
In the meantime, lawmakers are moving forward with measures to expand medical marijuana — which Murphy can and said he will do through executive powers — expunge criminal records and decriminalize the drug.
Murphy is in favor of medical expansion and expunging records, but said he is "not a fan" of decriminalization. Sweeney is not either, saying he's "not there right now."
Promise: Guarantee earned sick leave
Paid sick leave, like the $15 minimum wage, is another one of Murphy's central promises that he included to be "high on that list" of policy priorities early in his term. At a Jan. 17 round table in Newark on the two topics, Murphy said that even though about a dozen towns have passed sick leave ordinances, "we have 565 communities in our state and we need a statewide agenda, we need a statewide law that ensures earned sick leave."
Status: This is a promise kept.
On May 2, 2018 Murphy signed bill A-1857 giving most workers an hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. It caps sick time at 40 hours.
"This is not just about doing what's right for workers and their families," he said of paid sick leave. "This is about doing the right thing for our economy and protecting more New Jerseyans' place in that economy."
The law took effect at the end of October 2018.
Promise: Equal pay for equal work
Murphy aims to close the gender wage gap with a statewide law. On inauguration day he signed an executive order, his first, prohibiting state agencies from asking about a job applicant's pay history, saying employers should "pay people based on what their job is, not on what their past pay was." His campaign website said that he would sign a bill that "strengthens penalties for wage discrimination, bans employers from asking job applicants for their salary history, and prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who discuss compensation."
On inauguration day he called for lawmakers to deliver.
"They don't need urging on this one, trust me, they lead on this one," he said on inauguration day. "Send the bill to my desk to make this simple and common sense practice state law. As I said earlier, I will sign it."
Status: This is a promise kept.
In an April 24, 2018 ceremony at the Trenton War Memorial, Murphy signed that bill, known as the Diane B. Allen Equal Pay Act. It is considered one of the strongest, if not the strongest, wage discrimination laws in the country. Among other things, it prohibits employers from paying a woman or minority less than a male doing "substantially similar" work and allows for up to six years of back pay to be awarded to workers.
Promise: Create a new retirement plan for employees of small businesses.
According to his campaign website, "Phil will offer, just as a growing number of states do, a simple, opt-in retirement plan for small business employees. Doing so will help ensure that all workers in our state can adequately save for their retirement."
Status: This is a promise kept.
On March 28, 2019, Murphy today signed the New Jersey Secure Choice Savings Program, requiring employers with 25 or more workers to participate in a retirement savings program administered through automatic payroll deductions. They will be automatically enrolled in the program, which is funded through a payroll deduction, but can also opt out. Employees of businesses of any size can also participate.
By creating the program, Murphy said in a statement, "we are ensuring that every worker in New Jersey will have the opportunity to save for the future. "
Promise: Make home ownership affordable and accessible.
According to his website, Murphy plans to achieve this by "stopping Governor Christie’s practice of diverting affordable housing funds to plug holes in the budget; expanding counseling programs to keep people in their homes and repurposing foreclosed properties as affordable housing; expanding tax credits to create new housing; and lowering property taxes by funding our schools, incentivizing shared services, and restoring rebates to low-income, seniors and disabled residents."
Status: This is a promise partially kept.
In Murphy's 2019 budget, $59.3 million was dedicated for affordable housing and neighborhood preservation. The Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit, which among other things is used to develop affordable housing, increased from $10 million to $15 million for the fiscal year.
And after maintaining a cut in his budget proposal to the Homestead rebate program that helps low-incomes, seniors and disabled residents, Murphy restored $150 million to to bring the total appropriation to $298 million.
On Aug. 14, the Department of Community Affairs announced a new mediation program designed to save up to 2,000 homeowners from foreclosure. The New Jersey Housing and Finance Agency is providing $1 million to the program and there are at least two counseling agencies serving each county, according to the department, which is led by Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver.
Under the program, homeowners who have been served with a foreclosure notice will be notified of free U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-certified counseling services and a counselor will help them navigate the process. The counselor can also determine if further assistance, such as negotiating with the lender or transition assistance, is needed.
In many cases, mediation can help avoid foreclosure.
Promise: Expand Earned Income Tax Credit
The earned income tax credit, or EITC, is a state benefit intended to help poor and low-income households. Christie had cut the state credit percentage relative to the federal credit in leaner years, but he raised it to 35 percent of the federal credit in 2017, his final year in office.
Murphy wants to raise the earned income tax credit to 40 percent of the federal level, his website said, "so that working families can lift themselves out of poverty."
Status: This is a promised kept.
Murphy outlined a plan in his 2019 budget address to reach the 40 percent level in three years. Aides said the credit would help more than 510,000 low-income families who could see an average benefit of more than $1,160.
Increasing the credit from 35 percent to 40 percent was included in the budget package Murphy signed July 1.
Promise: Create a new child care and caregiver tax credit
This didn't get much attention during the campaign, so there aren't many specifics. Murphy told the AARP Bulletin that he would create a credit similar to the state's child-care tax credit and, the bulletin wrote, "educate caregivers about how they can use the New Jersey Family Leave Act and make it more accessible."
Status: This is a promise kept.
In his budget address, Murphy said he would create a "Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit" for middle-class and working families. His office later said it would be tied to the federal program and would help more than 70,000 people in New Jersey earning less than $60,000 "with assistance to support the care of a child or other dependent when necessary for the taxpayer’s employment."
Like the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, the child care tax credit was part of the budget Murphy negotiated with Democrats and signed July.
Promise: Close loopholes for "wealthy individuals and large corporations"
Murphy talked often about closing loopholes without identifying them to help bring in revenue.
"We're going to stand for tax fairness," he said in the Jan. 17 MTP Daily interview. "If you're a hedge fund and you're getting away with carried interest that we should close as a loophole at the federal [level], we're going to find a way to do that at the state level, I hope with other allied states. If you're a big corporation that's living off of loopholes," he added, "we're going to close those loopholes."
Status: This is a promise kept.
The 2019 budget recommended changes that would "modernize and improve" business taxes and bring in an extra $110 million to the state.
Murphy's proposals included several changes, including combined reporting of corporate business taxes and re-instituting taxes on international holding companies.
In his budget agreement with Democrats, Murphy signed into law a business tax modernization that includes:
Combined reporting, which targets tax avoidance of companies by requiring multi-state corporation to add together the profits of all of its subsidiaries, regardless of their location, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Recapturing income made available through the enactment of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Addressing "abusive" profit-shifting activities
A four-year tax on corporations earning more than $1 million
Closing various loopholes
These changes are expected to yield $861 million in the 2019 fiscal year, many times more than Murphy had anticipated his initial business recommendations would.
Promise: Divest pension funds from hedge funds and private equity
This is one of the ways, along with closing loopholes and raising taxes, that Murphy plans to raise revenue to support his policy ideas. In an interview with NorthJersey.com and The Record in April 2017, he said that the state pays "exorbitant fees to hedge funds and private equity managers" but "the evidence is overwhelmingly the case you no longer get what you pay for."
"The space is overcrowded, the returns are mediocre, the fees are exorbitant. That's one obvious area," to save money, he said. "Probably not the only area, but it's the area that I'd look to first."
The State Investment Council, already facing criticism in Gov. Chris Christie's later years for its hedge fund investments, began scaling back its allocations in 2016 and seeking better fee structures.
Status: This is a promise launched.
Under Murphy, the State Investment Council has continued to decrease its investments in hedge funds. The council moved in March 2018 to hold off making any commitments to hedge funds given Murphy's view that the fees are too high for questionable returns.
At that time, equity-oriented hedge funds accounted for 1 percent of the public employee pension fund's assets and credit-oriented hedge funds represented 1.15 percent of assets, according to the trade publication Pension & Investments, citing a report submitted to the council.
As investment council chairman Tom Byrne noted in the body's annual report issued in February 2018, "No member of this Council has ever moved to get rid of hedge funds entirely." But Byrne also announced his plan to leave the council and the decision may rest with Murphy, who will choose Byrne's successor.
Promise: Establish a state-level Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and strengthen existing regulations in light of President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back the federal Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.
Murphy has not spoken much about specifics on this idea, but said when he named Assemblywoman Marlene Caride his choice to be the next Department of Banking and Insurance Commissioner that it is up to the state to push back against what he views as harmful policies of Republican President Donald Trump. Murphy specifically named the administration's actions to take control of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as the sort of "destruction that's coming at us from Washington."
Status: This is a promise kept.
On March 27, 2018 Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced the appointment of Paul Rodriguez as director of Division of Consumer Affairs, the lead agency in charge of protecting consumer rights.
Although Murphy has not established a state-level Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an Attorney General spokeswoman said Rodriguez "the existing office will be used in a new way to tackle consumer financial protection."
Promise: Prosecute financial fraud
This is another promise light on details but was included on Murphy's multi-step plan of "ending Wall Street's influence on State Street." The state Attorney General's office already does prosecute financial fraud with regularity.
Promise: Reclaim the innovation economy
Murphy often talked about New Jersey being "Silicon Valley before there was a Silicon Valley." According to Murphy's website, he wants to return New Jersey to its technological glory by:
"Launching a “Computer Science for All” initiative to offer computer science education to every public school student; partnering with companies to expand access to science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, internships and vocational programs; providing loan forgiveness for STEM educators in high-need schools and creating a new STEM-educator fellowship program to recruit and train a new class of STEM teachers."
Murphy said he would also establish a Grant Management Office "to make sure we get our fair share of federal funds for research and development," increase state funding for research and development, provide affordable, high-speed internet for all New Jerseyans and configure public spaces to be digitally and universally accessible; convene an "innovation cabinet," increase access to capital for small businesses and startups and forgive student loans for new graduates launching businesses in "under-served and distressed communities."
Status: This is a promise launched.
Murphy's 2019 budget includes $2 million for a "Secondary School Computer Science Education Initiative," which his office says fits into his "computer science for all" plan.
And on May 29, 2018 Murphy announced plans to pay interns and chip into student debt in STEM fields.
Under Murphy's student debt plan, the state would pay up to $1,000 annually for four years toward eligible workers' college debt through the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority. Employees must live in New Jersey and work in eligible science, technology, engineering and math fields for four years before becoming eligible. The state would then pay for the next four years. And Murphy's office said employers would have to match the cost, giving the worker $8,000 toward student debt.
Democratic lawmakers said at the time they planned to sponsor bills for the debt relief, but the measures had not made it to Murphy as of July.
Murphy's paid internship proposal would also apply to the STEM fields. Through the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the state would reimburse participating employers up to 50 percent of wages paid to student interns in information technology, life science and health care fields. The program would cap employer reimbursements at $1,500 per student, Murphy's office said.
Murphy planned to pay for the initiative by increasing the state's Career Accelerator Program from $1.5 million to $4 million. But the 2019 budget he signed included $3 million for the program, which will come from the $34.5 million Workforce Development Partnership Fund, according to his office.
On Aug. 13, Murphy named Beth Simone Noveck, director of the Governance Lab at New York University Tandon School of Engineering, as the state's first chief innovation officer.
That position's responsibilities include "designing and deploying more effective and agile government services," using new technologies and collaboration with other governments, higher education institutions and private sector businesses to solve public problems; and helping to craft policies to "respond to the opportunities and challenges of new technology," Murphy's office said.
Noveck was the country's first deputy chief technology officer, under former President Barack Obama, before being appointed as former United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron's senior adviser for open government. She is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and is a member of the Scholars Council of the Library of Congress.
"Beth is an experienced, high-caliber professional who will make New Jersey a leader in government effectiveness," Murphy said in a statement.
Noveck will be paid $140,938 a year through Rutgers University, where she will be a visiting senior fellow at the university's Heldrich Center. That money will come from a $500,000 line item in Murphy's budget to Rutgers for an office overseeing coordination and improvements to technology and innovation.
On Dec. 14, Murphy signed into law a STEM Loan Redemption Program within the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority providing graduates of colleges and universities employed in STEM fields with $1,000 each year, for a maximum of 4 years, towards their student loans. The loans would be matched by the graduate's employer.
Health
Promise: Restore Christie's annual $7.5 million cut to Planned Parenthood
Christie repeatedly cut funding to Planned Parenthood and vetoed efforts from the Democratic Legislature to pass annual funding of $7.5 million. Murphy promised to restore that funding throughout the campaign, and during his inaugural address called on lawmakers to send him a bill to do so.
"To my partners in the Legislature: I ask you to send me the bills, among others, to reaffirm our support for women’s health and Planned Parenthood," Murphy said.
Status: This is a promise kept. After eight years of denials by Christie, the Democrats who control the Legislature were eager to send the bill appropriating $7.45 million for family planning services to Murphy for approval. Murphy signed the bill — his first — during a Feb. 21, 2018 ceremony at the Trenton War Memorial, where he was surrounded by lawmakers, his wife, Tammy, and Planned Parenthood's outgoing president, Cecile Richards.
Promise: Lower insurance premiums by reining in excessive out-of-network costs
Lawmakers in Trenton have tried for nearly a decade to end surprise medical bills due to out-of-network costs. Murphy has made doing so part of his plan to raise about $1.3 billion in revenues.
When he named Dr. Shareef Elnahal his choice to be the next health commissioner on Jan. 10, Murphy said that one of his challenges is going to be "helping close the out-of-network loopholes that erode affordability." Murphy likely has an ally in Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, who, before being named to lead the chamber, sponsored legislation to rein in excessive costs.
Status: This is a promise kept.
Murphy signed the "Out-of-network Consumer Protection, Transparency, Cost Containment and Accountability Act” on June 1, 2018 making New Jersey one of the rare states with such a strong consumer protection law.
It requires healthcare providers disclose what they expect to charge for out-of-network services and for insurers to disclose what they expect to pay. Patients will be able to find out in advance what their financial responsibility will be.
Out-of-network doctors and hospitals will have to enter into baseball-style arbitration over reimbursement disputes, which will be decided by an independent arbitrator.
Promise: Work to identify the state’s 75,000 uninsured children and enroll them in health coverage
Murphy listed this promise on his campaign website, but he has not laid out how he would achieve it.
Promise: Expand access to addiction treatment and services
Another unclear promise on his website. Murphy suggested during his inaugural address that he would continue Christie's work combating opioid addiction, but did not specifically say how in his speech.
"There is much in your body of work from which to choose, but, in particular, your work to save lives from the epidemic of opioid addiction is a legacy worth applauding and continuing, and I intend to do so," Murphy said.
Status: This is a promise kept.
Murphy's 2019 budget included $100 million in opioid funding. That is half of what Christie budgeted in his final year budget, but Murphy said in April 2018 that just about $90 million of that was spent on treatment. A key component of Christie's push in his last year to highlight the heroin and opioid epidemic was a series of commercials and advertisements.
Murphy said most of the money he budgeted, $87 million, was to be directed to expanding treatment access and maintaining existing programs, such as linking overdose victims with recovering addicts and providing housing and workforce training to families and individuals. The remaining $13 million was planned to build out a "modern" data infrastructure to collect and analyze drug-related information and increase the use of electronic health records for providers.
Promise: Tackle opioid epidemic
According to his website, Murphy would do this by: pooling state, federal and private resources to expand access to addiction treatment facilities statewide; requiring health insurers to cover Medication-Assisted Treatment and allowing nurse practitioners, pharmacists and physician assistants to prescribe any medications necessary to treat addiction; and lowering the cost of Narcan.
Environment
Promise: Rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
Murphy said he would "immediately" restore New Jersey's place in the cap-and-trade program that Christie pulled out of in 2011 because, he said, it was a failure. Murphy sees it as a necessary tool to help reduce emissions and follow a standard of environmental stewardship. In an April 2017 press release, Murphy's campaign said "he would make rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) one of his first acts in office."
Status: Murphy signed an executive order on Jan. 29, his 13th day in office, directing his administration begin the process to rejoin the cap-and-trade program. But it is not an immediate re-entry. The administration must work with the nine other member states to determine the best way to get back into the program and the state must create regulations on how to administer the program.
Promise: 100 percent clean energy by 2050
In an April 26, 2017 press release, Murphy outlined details of his plan and "committed, within his first 100 days in office, to starting the process of creating a new State Energy Master Plan to set New Jersey on a path to 100 percent clean energy by 2050, with higher renewable standards to motivate public and private sector actors to adapt and expand the clean energy market."
His plan also includes: A target of producing 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind generation by 2030, a goal of 600 megawatts of energy storage by 2021 and 2000 megawatts of storage by 2030; increasing funding and incentives for energy efficiency; and "prioritizing solar energy expansion and ensuring that New Jersey regains its status as a national leader in solar energy production and job creation — including the establishment of a community solar program, allowing low-income communities to work together to afford clean energy options."
Another component of his clean energy plan is a ban on fracking and storage of fracking waste in New Jersey, as well as a fracking ban in the Delaware River.
Status: This is a broken promise on clean energy and a promise launched on wind production.
Murphy signed an executive order on Jan. 31 directing his administration to develop on offshore wind plan, specifically with the 3,500 megawatt power generation goal by 2030.
Murphy announced a day later that the state intends to vote in favor of a fracking ban in the Delaware River basin.
But Murphy has broken the main component of his promise: 100 percent clean energy. He unveiled the state's Energy Master Plan on Jan. 27, 2020, saying that "in the absence of climate change leadership in Washington, these reforms will help propel New Jersey to 100 percent clean energy by 2050."
But the Murphy administration defines clean energy as "carbon neutral," meaning the carbon is captured or eliminated. That change allows the state to use other energy sources, such as natural gas, a fossil fuel that emits carbon. As a candidate, Murphy had pledged to "eventually" reach 100 percent carbon-free electricity.
Read the plan here.
The energy plan also does not include a moratorium on pending fossil fuel projects, which environmental groups had called for. Not including the moratorium, they say, will hamper Murphy's clean energy goals.
"Governor Murphy has changed the definition of clean energy to dirty energy," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club. "If Murphy really cared about reaching 100% clean energy, he would put a moratorium on all fossil fuel projects and make sure New Jersey divests from fossil fuels.”
On offshore wind production, the Board of Public Utilities took the first step toward meeting Murphy's power production goal by voting Sept. 17, 2018 to solicit applications for developers to build facilities to produce 1,100 megawatts of energy. The board said it intends to act on the applications by July 1, 2019.
Beyond that, Murphy called on the board to open two more 1,200 megawatt solicitations, in 2020 and 2022.
“In the span of just nine months, New Jersey has vaulted to the front of the pack in establishing this cutting-edge industry,” Murphy said in a statement the day of the board vote.
On Nov. 19, 2019, at an event with former Vice President Al Gore, Murphy said he plans to double the state's wind energy production, to 7,500 megawatts by 2035.
"When we meet this goal, our offshore winds will generate enough electricity to power more than 3.2 million New Jersey homes," Murphy said.
"We will meet half of our electric power need," he said. "We will generate billions of dollars in investments in our state’s future that will, in turn, generate thousands of union jobs."
Promise: Protect the Jersey Shore
"We will resist the dangerous and wrong attempt to allow drilling for oil off our precious shore. We will not allow this threat to our environment and our economy to stand. Our administration, along with the bipartisan support of our federal delegation, will not back down in our fight to protect the Jersey Shore from President Trump and the energy industry special interests," Murphy said in his inauguration speech.
Status: This is a promise kept.
During a beachside ceremony on April 20, 2018 Murphy signed into law a measure banning offshore drilling in state waters. But state waters extend just three miles from the coastline and Murphy does not have the power to extend the ban beyond that, into federal territory.
Conceivably the federal government could allow drilling off the Jersey Shore past the three mile point, but the bill Murphy signed includes prohibitions on pipelines and infrastructure crossing state territory, acting as a strong deterrent.
Promise: Preserve open space
According to his website, Murphy will "stop the practice of diverting constitutionally-dedicated open space funding away from its intended purpose" and "will also depoliticize key environmental staff and commissions — including those that protect the Highlands and Pinelands — and restore New Jersey as a leader in smart planning."
Guns
Promise: Sign all gun legislation Christie vetoed
"You can assume the measures he's vetoed we would have signed, and we'll endeavor to do so," Murphy said on an Aug. 24, 2017 conference call, where he accepted the endorsement of Americans for Responsible Solutions.
Status: This is a promise partially kept.
Christie vetoed more than a dozen gun-related bills during his eight years as governor, but the Legislature, as of July 2019, had not sent Murphy all those measures for his promised signature.
But Murphy has signed what he could. On July 16, 2019, he approved a bill to open the market up to smart guns, personalized firearms that use a fingerprint or radio frequency chip to identify just one authorized shooter. The intent is to prevent accidental deaths.
And Murphy signed six gun-related bills on June 13, 2018. Of them, three had been vetoed by Christie: reducing the magazine capacity limit from 15 to 10; requiring background checks for private gun sales; and codifying the state's justifiable need standard for a concealed carry permit.
The three other bills Murphy signed that day were:
A-1217: Allows a police officer, family or household member of a gun owner to petition for an “extreme risk protective order,” authorizing authorities to seize the weapon.
A-1181: Requires law enforcement to seize firearms from individuals deemed by a mental health professional to pose a threat to themselves or others.
A-2759: Adopts the federal definition of “armor-piercing ammunition” into state law.
Promise: Tax gun sales to prevent violence
From his website: "All gun sales should be subject to a tax that will fund law enforcement, drug treatment centers, and mental health services." And on an Aug. 24, 2017 conference call, Murphy said he supports a tax on guns but he lacked specifics.
"We have not picked a particular level yet. That’s something we’re still trying to work through," Murphy said.
Status: This is a promise unfulfilled.
Murphy proposed the tax in his 2019 budget. While he did not specify a rate, he did anticipate $1.4 million in revenue from the fee increase, which he said haven't been updated in many years. But he did not have the support of legislative leadership and it was stripped from the budget he signed.
Promise: Create a regional gun coaliton
Murphy offered the idea of a gun coalition as a way to cut down on illegal weapons crossing state lines. It was a plan modeled loosely on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to reduce carbon emissions. He didn't have much detail on the gun coalition plan at the time he discussed it with The Record in October 2017, but he said, "You’re stronger if you do this in numbers."
Status: This is a promise kept.
Murphy announced the States for Gun Safety coalition on Feb. 22, 2018 during a conference call with the participating governors of Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island.
Murphy said the coalition will strengthen ties between the states by sharing intelligence and information on guns, such as protective orders for individuals that would prohibit them from purchasing firearms. The states will also study gun violence, he said, and create a cross-state task force to trace and intercept illegal guns.
Days later, Delaware, Massachusetts and Puerto Rico joined the coalition. Murphy said he hopes to add more states in the future.
Immigration
Promise: Make New Jersey a sanctuary state*
During the Oct. 10, 2017 debate with Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, Murphy said: "if need be, we'll be a sanctuary, not just city, but state."
Murphy quickly backed off that language after the election, saying he recognized that the term was charged. He instead adopted "welcoming community." Still, he has not provided a clear definition of what that may mean. In a December 2017 interview, Murphy explained his thinking:
"How we get it done, what the trigger is, I haven’t given more thought to that. But I will repeat what I said on the campaign trail: We’ll do what we have to do. And, by the way, that also is invariably going to mean we’re going to need to engage the federal government. And I don’t mean engage in a Kumbaya. I mean we’re going to need an attorney general, a governor, a lieutenant governor who are prepared to stand up to the Trump administration, probably locking arms with other like-minded states."
*There's a catch. Murphy did not propose making New Jersey a sanctuary state as something he would pursue on his own. It is a measure he would take in response to President Donald Trump's immigration policies. It isn't clear what exactly would prompt him to pursue sanctuary policies.
Promise: Protect immigrant rights
Murphy was vocal about being resistant to policies put forth by President Donald Trump that he found un-American and perhaps unlawful. He vowed to protect so-called "Dreamers", young immigrants who came to the United States illegally, and said he would oppose "any efforts," according to his website, to use state and local police to assist in mass deportations.
Murphy said he would extend immigrant protections to identification and education.
"I'm all in and I've been all in for years on everyone gets access to (a) driver's license, not just some of us, everyone gets a state identification card, everybody gets not just in state tuition but in state financial aid," he said at the March 2016 New Jersey Working Families Alliance forum. "That can't be for some. You're either in or you're out. And I want to be in, and you have my word I will be."
Status: The Murphy administration has kept the promise to oppose efforts to use state and local police in mass deportations, but New Jersey remains a popular place for the federal government to hold immigrants.
Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced a new directive on Nov. 29 restricting law enforcement's cooperation with the federal government's immigration operations.
Under the Immigrant Trust Directive, local police officers can no longer stop, search or detain any individual over immigration status or detain immigrants at the request of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, except in cases of serious or violent crimes or final deportation orders.
"There is a difference between state, county, and local law enforcement officers, who are responsible for enforcing state criminal law, and federal immigration authorities, who enforce federal civil immigration law," Grewal said. "Put simply, New Jersey’s law enforcement officers protect the public by investigating state criminal offenses and enforcing state criminal laws."
But arrests of immigrants rose 35 percent in 2017, and ICE warned after Grewal issued his directive that more raids would come to New Jersey.
New Jersey jails are popular holding spots for detainees as well. The federal government pays Bergen, Essex and Hudson counties to hold immigration detainees, a practice that has been protested as hypocritical.
Promise: Create an Office of Immigrant Defensive Protection
Murphy wants to develop an office he described to The Washington Post as a "legal services-oriented" resource for immigrants. He said on MSNBC on Jan. 17 that there are a lot of "scared" people in the state and a "lot of rumors" going around under Trump. "We want one point of contact where folks can call up and get the right answer," Murphy said.
Status: This is a promise kept.
On July 4, 2019 Murphy signed an executive order to "design" an Office of New Americans — a name different from what he'd promised but whose function is "the same thing" he proposed during the campaign, according to his office.
The office is will "work to empower immigrants and refugees throughout the state" and must submit a plan to Murphy by the end of the year detailing its actions.
The office's objectives, according to the order are: "promoting trainings that inform new Americans of the availability of services and their rights, including in the employment context; working with organizations and advocacy groups to increase accessibility to state programs for new Americans; and ensuring that services are accessible to New American populations, including those who speak languages other than English."
In announcing the new office, Murphy also said his administration had submitted its intent to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement to regain the state's role in overseeing New Jersey's resettlement program. Republican former Gov. Chris Christie pulled out of that program in 2016.
Murphy had already taken one "legal services-oriented" step toward aiding immigrants when he made the announcement.
On Nov. 19, 2018 the Treasury Department announced that it would allocate $2.1 million out of Murphy's first budget to help pay for legal representation for immigrants. The state's principal contractor, Legal Services of New Jersey, was scheduled to receive $925,000 for direct representation services to eligible immigrants. Another $925,000 was expected to go to the American Friends Service Committee for its direct representation services, and $125,000 for each of the law school clinics at Rutgers University and Seton Hall University.
“Families who came to New Jersey for a better life do not deserve to be torn apart by the federal government’s cruel and discriminatory policies,” Murphy said in a statement.
Education
Promise: Fully fund school funding formula
Murphy made it a feature of his candidacy to fully fund education under the Corzine-era School Funding Reform Act, which has not been done since it was passed in 2008 and upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2009. Three days after he was elected, speaking at the New Jersey Education Association conference in Atlantic City, he made his first big promise as governor-elect.
“For too long our educators, our students and New Jersey property taxpayers have suffered from under-funding,” Murphy said. “We are going to stop the under-investment in public schools. It is priority number one.”
Murphy has not said exactly how or when he would do that.
Status: This is a promise launched.
Murphy's 2019 budget increases school funding by $283 million, or 3.5 percent more than last year. Most districts — 94 percent — would receive extra aid, with the remaining districts getting flat funding. Total state education spending under Murphy's proposal would be $14.9 billion.
Murphy said he intends to reach full funding under the School Funding Reform Act in four years.
Promise: Tuition-free community college
Murphy announced the promise during a Sept. 18, 2017 news conference in Trenton with U.S. Sen. Cory Booker. He said it would cost between $200 million and $400 million.
"This is investing in the economy," he said. "This is investing in our most important asset, which is our people, so the return on the investment, if you will, is significant and relatively soon."
Status: This is a promise launched.
Murphy presented a path toward free community college within three years during his budget speech. In his first fiscal year, 2019, he has allotted $50 million that would allow about 15,000 low-income students attend college next spring. But the spending must be approved by the Legislature before he signs the budget into law. It's also unclear how Murphy arrived at the tuition cost, and other analyses suggest tuition-free college would ultimately cost much more than Murphy's estimate of $197.5 million.
Under the first budget Murphy signed July 1, 2018 his initial plan to spend $50 million was cut to $25 million.
With the reduced funding, Murphy formally rolled out a pilot program that July 31 to cover tuition and mandatory fees for students of the select colleges who make less than $45,000 in adjusted gross income and take at least six credits in the spring 2019 semester.
Due to limited funding, not all 19 community colleges in New Jersey will be selected for the pilot program. But every college that applies will receive at least $250,000 to either implement the program or "build capacity" for future rounds of funding.
Promise: End PARCC testing and eliminate exit test graduation requirement
“Good teachers and good students can have bad test days. Too much emphasis is being put on a single test, as opposed to weighing a student’s progress through years of instruction," Murphy said on his website.
Murphy said he is "committed" to ending Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, testing and the requirement that students take an exit test to graduate high school. Instead, Murphy said he would direct the state Department of Education to create an assessment that would meet the standards set in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.
Status: This is a promise launched but unlikely to be fulfilled in the near future.
In March 2018, Murphy instructed education commissioner Lamont Repollet to form an advisory group “fulfilling the governor’s call to transition away from and to improve upon the current system of PARCC assessments.”
That advisory group conducted about 75 meetings and traveled the state over two months seeking input on the testing. It recommended number of changes that Murphy embraced, but during a July 10 news conference in Atlantic City he acknowledged that "we're not eliminating PARCC completely."
During that news conference Murphy announced that the state would transition away from the testing beginning with the 2019 school year by cutting down the length of testing and reducing the weight of assessments on teacher evaluations.
Before dropping PARCC, the state has to consider new testing vendors and costs, and make sure the new tests align with New Jersey’s education standards, Repollet said.
The transition is expected to take a couple of years, Murphy said.
“While I would have personally liked to have ditched PARCC on day one, that simply wasn’t feasible,” Murphy said. “But we are now on a clear path away from it.”
Promise: Expand universal pre-kindergarten
Providing pre-kindergarten statewide “is absolutely our aspiration,” Murphy told NJTV in September 2017. “I don’t think you can get there overnight, though. I think you have to phase it in over some number of years.”
Status: This is a promise launched.
New Jersey will not get to universal pre-K overnight, as Murphy acknowledged. But his budget proposal for the 2019 fiscal year would direct $57 million in new funding for pre-kindergarten, the largest increase in more than a decade, for a total of $83 million. The new money will support pre-k expansion in the current year as well as prepare districts for future expansion. More than 3,500 4-year-old students are expected to "gain access" to pre-k this year, the administration said.
Murphy's 2019 budget includes $403 million for education, including the pre-k expansion.
Diversity, equality and military
Promise: LGBTQ equality
On his website, Murphy said he would work toward equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people by: Allowing transgender people to select their gender on birth and death certificates and ensure that access to facilities is non-discriminatory; ensuring that all residents, regardless of sexual orientation or gender, have equal access to healthcare and fertility treatment; expanding state contract set-asides to include LGBTQ-owned businesses;and reclassifying veterans dishonorably discharged due to the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to an honorable discharge so they will be eligible for state benefits.
Status: This is a promise launched.
On July 3, 2018 Murphy signed a pair of bills into law allowing transgender people to select their gender on their birth and death certificates. He also created a 17-member Transgender Task Force to study issues on health care, housing and criminal justice, among many others, affecting the lesbian, gay and transgender community.
Promise: Gender parity and diversity
According to his website, "Phil believes the perspectives of women and minorities must be represented in every rank of government. He will appoint a cabinet that reflects the diversity of New Jersey, establish a Chief Diversity Officer position, and publish an annual review of state diversity contracting and procurement."
Status: New Jersey already has a Chief Diversity Officer, identified by the Treasury Department as Maurice Griffin.
Christie approved the position's creation in 2017 with his signature of A-1869. That person's duty is "to monitor the state’s public contracting process for the purpose of compiling information on the awarding of contracts to minority-owned and women-owned business enterprises, the total value of all contracts and the percentage of the value of those contracts awarded to minority-owned and women-owned business enterprises."
Griffin earns an annual salary of $130,000, according to Treasury Department records.
This counts as a promise kept by default. But Murphy had nothing to do with it.
Still, Murphy named his own choice for the position on April 20, 2018: Hester Agudosi, a 19-year veteran of state government. An attorney who previously worked in the Attorney General's office, Agudosi most recently served as director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Public Contract Assistance at the Department of Environmental Protection.
Agudosi will earn an annual salary of $135,000, according to the Treasury Department. She will replace Maurice Griffin, who had been assigned the role while still working as the department's director of purchase and property. Griffin will return to his previous position. Agudosi will be full time, which the department said is more in line with the intent of the legislation.
Promise: Reflect New Jersey's diversity in his administration
"We will put together an administration that looks like our state in all its great diversity, experience and intelligence. We will seek the right people working in public service for the right reasons trying mightily to do the right things," he said on election night.
Status: Even though Murphy is still filling out his administration, he has kept his promised to make it a diverse one. On Feb. 20, 2018 Murphy became the first governor in state history to nominate a majority of females to his Cabinet, he announced.
The female Cabinet nominees are: Zakiya Smith Ellis as the secretary of higher education; B. Sue Fulton as chief administrator of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission; Deirdre Webster Cobb as chief executive officer of the Civil Service Commission; Elizabeth Maher Muoio as treasurer; Marlene Caride as commissioner of the Department of Banking and Insurance; Tahesha Way as secretary of state; Carole Johnson as commissioner of the Department of Human Services; Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti as commissioner of the Department of Transportation; Catherine McCabe as commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection; and Christine Norbut Beyer as commissioner of the Department of Children and Families.
Murphy's Lieutenant governor, Sheila Oliver, also serves as a Cabinet member, leading the Department of Community Affairs.
Murphy's Cabinet includes many minorities. Gurbir Grewal is the first Sikh attorney general in the country. Murphy's nominee for health commissioner, Dr. Shareef Elnahal, would be the first Muslim-American Cabinet member in state history. And he has also named two African Americans to his Cabinet: Lamont Repollet for education commissioner and Col. Jemal J. Beale to lead the state National Guard.
All nominees besides Grewal, who was already confirmed, must be approved by the Senate.
Promise: Help people with disabilities
Murphy said in his inauguration speech that having a stronger and fairer economy means that it "remembers that we all have value and we all can contribute, including, and especially, the differently abled." And on his campaign website he said that the state budget "is a $35 billion statement of our priorities. We must get back to prioritizing services for the people who need them the most, including those struggling with disabilities." He added that he is "determined to make New Jersey the most inclusive and most accessible place to live, work, and raise a family for people with disabilities."
Murphy plans to achieve that by better coordinating state services and making sure that people with disabilities "have a seat at our policy-making table."
Status: This is a promise kept.
Murphy named former Ridgewood Mayor Paul Aronsohn on April 19, 2018 to lead the Office of the Ombudsman for Individuals with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities and Their Families, an office created by a law signed by former Gov. Chris Christie a week before he left office in 2018.
In the ombudsman position, for which he will be paid $120,000 a year, Aronsohn will be "the administration’s lead advocate and ally for New Jersey residents in need of critical services ranging from early childhood through adulthood," Murphy's office said.
Among other things, the office is charged with providing information to people with disabilities about resolving disagreements with state agencies, identifying concerns for disabled individuals and coordinating state programs. The office will also have to issue an annual report on its work.
Promise: Divide the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs into two agencies — one with responsibility for the National Guard and another responsible for veterans
"Veterans’ issues are fundamentally distinct from military affairs, and our bureaucratic structure should reflect that reality," Murphy said on his website.
Murphy said that "at a minimum," the new veterans affairs department should consist of divisions for employment and skills development; mental health; higher education; veteran-owned businesses and military transitions and families.
Transportation
Promise: Improve NJ Transit
Murphy has said that NJ Transit was once a model for the nation, but it has in recent years become a "national disgrace."
On his website, Murphy outlined a number of immediate steps for near-term commuter relief: "Appointing an emergency manager to re-convene a working relationship with Amtrak — a relationship that currently is broken — around issues at Penn Station, as well as coordinate with various state and federal agencies, including the Port Authority; undertaking an immediate capital and personnel audit of NJ Transit to understand the true needs of the agency; improving customer service by deploying more uniformed NJ Transit personnel in NY Penn Station, Secaucus, and Newark Penn, among other key stations."
More from the website: "Murphy also would require NJ Transit to have push notifications about delayed trains on its app, create a “Where’s my train?” app that would mirror the “Where’s my bus?” app, and make it easier for commuters to obtain delay letters both online and through the app; expanding options for alternative service by creating an indefinite cross-honoring agreement with PATH and also cross-honoring with ferries and bus services, including private carriers; increasing transparency by requiring weekly reports by NJ Transit including data on number of trains on time during peak and off-peak hours and length of delays, as well as opening more NJ Transit board meetings to the public and streaming them online; holding Amtrak accountable on repairs to ensure that no hour in which tracks are closed is wasted and disruptions are minimized disruptions, including requiring work to be done during off-hours and through holiday weekends."
In the long term, Murphy said he would: Restore operating assistance for NJ Transit; work with New Jersey’s Congressional Delegation and federal and regional officials to secure funding for the Gateway Tunnel Project and the Port Authority Bus Terminal among other critical infrastructure investments; and would work to build new relationships with public sector actors throughout the region – including both legislators and Port Authority commissioners – to better coordinate infrastructure investment."
Finally, Murphy said he would: "Restore professionalism to NJT management by implementing the recommendations of the capital and personnel audit to hire a new class of professional and nationally-qualified management," and "ensure NJ Transit’s board has commuter representation to better allow the agency to respond to consumer concerns, establish an ongoing working arrangement with Amtrak, NJTransit, and the LIRR to fund capital improvements in and around Penn Station, including those that would facilitate better passenger movement" and "expedite implementation of safety measures, including positive train control automatic braking technology, to guarantee long-range passenger safety."
Status: Murphy took the first steps toward his promise of improving NJ Transit but has a long way to go. He signed an executive order on Jan. 22 directing an audit of the transportation agency to be completed "as expeditiously as possible." He also named Kevin Corbett the agency's new executive director on Jan. 30, promising he would "yank it back from the brink."
Murphy also earmarked $242 million in his 2019 budget for NJ Transit, though much of that makes up for money the agency stands to lose from off-budget sources. Still, the infusion of cash will keep fares flat for the year, Murphy said, and allow the agency to hire more than 100 new employees and invest in improved communication with customers.
The long-awaited audit, released in October 2018, showed an agency where "morale is at an all-time low." It had become politicized, underfunded, lacked succession plans and had high vacancy rates in key areas, according to the audit.
On Dec. 6, Murphy unveiled a new initiative, called "Engage. Inform. Improve." It aims to improve customer service by having transit workers actively engage customers and identify problem, improve communications and upgrade technology. That included an upgraded smartphone app with transit alerts and the ability for customers to make purchases.
Murphy also said the agency was in the process of purchasing 113 new multi-level rail cars and 182 cruiser buses.
The agency successfully installed Positive Train Control by the end of 2018 and is moving to meet a 2020 deadline to have the safety system operational.
And on Dec. 20, 2018, Murphy signed into law the first major restructuring of NJ Transit in a generation. The law will expand the agency’s board of directors, add transparency requirements, streamline procurement procedures and create a new “consumer advocate” to represent the needs of commuters inside the agency. | {
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There’s nothing like the intervention of a true racist to provide a sense of proportion. The public dispute between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the group of four young, electric, progressive female legislators of color known as the “squad”—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)—was headed off the rails when Donald Trump butted in. Sensing that he had lost the spotlight, Trump posed as Pelosi’s defender with the vile racist taunt that the four should “go back” to their “countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe.” (Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York, Tlaib in Detroit, Pressley in Cincinnati. Omar, who came to the United States from Somalia as a child refugee, is an American citizen.) Ad Policy
Trump’s hate briefly sowed unity, as Pelosi defended the four legislators via tweet. But the tensions are not likely to go away, for this isn’t a “catfight,” as Kellyanne Conway put it, nor a misunderstanding caused by the generational divide between the speaker and the freshmen. This is a fight about what the Democratic Party stands for, the majority coalition it seeks to build, and the way it does politics.
Though she’s lately received significant criticism from the left, Pelosi is the most effective and progressive speaker of the House in our time. The most powerful female elected leader in US history has been a forceful advocate for women’s rights and for increasing the influence of women in the House. That is what makes her repeated public denigration of the “squad” so jarring.
Notorious New York Times op-ed arsonist Maureen Dowd lit the latest flare-up, quoting Pelosi as saying: “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world. But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many [congressional] votes they got.” Ocasio-Cortez responded on Twitter: “That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment. And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country.”
The cause for this exchange was a debate over emergency funding to lessen the horrors at the southern border. In June, the four progressive freshmen voted against the original spending bill Pelosi ushered through the House, fearing what CBP and the Trump administration might do with the money. While Pelosi may have been miffed, their resistance had no legislative effect, as she pointed out in the Dowd interview. But she was embarrassed when the bill reached the Senate, where majority leader Mitch McConnell passed a version stripped of the Democrats’ existing spending restrictions. With conservative Democrats forcing a choice of no bill or the Senate bill, Pelosi chose the latter, triggering opposition from 95 Democrats, with progressive leaders publicly scouring the conservative members.
“Some of you are here to make a beautiful pâté,” Pelosi said, “but we’re making sausage most of the time.”
The truth is, of course, that Democrats aren’t making the sausage—any dish they pass to the Senate gets fouled by McConnell—and with or without the border bill, tension between Pelosi and the four newcomers was inevitable. AOC, the most famous among them, burst into national attention by upsetting Pelosi’s likely successor in a Democratic primary and joining a Sunrise Movement sit-in in the speaker’s office to demand action on a Green New Deal. Her three compatriots have also challenged the leadership, taking positions to the left of the party line on issues from Israel to impeachment. The intense public criticism they’ve received often sparks concern over the four legislators’ safety, especially in the case of Omar, who has been the object of constant nationalist and Islamophobic tirades. Current Issue View our current issue
It’s easy to see the conflict as personal: the veteran versus the freshmen, the inside powerhouse versus the outside insurgents, the old ways of Washington versus the new politics of Twitter. But fundamentally, Pelosi and the squad have conflicting missions. The speaker’s job is to keep Democrats together, consolidating the majority in the House while setting the stage for Trump’s defeat. The young insurgents, by contrast, spearhead a broad movement demanding bold changes in the party and the country. They champion and model grassroots organizing that scorns the big-money politics of the Democratic establishment. Ocasio-Cortez is quite open about supporting efforts by Justice Democrats—a group that will challenge House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel (D-NY) and eight-term representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) in the next election cycle—and others to replace incumbents who stand in the way. That—not their work as legislators—is what sparks Pelosi’s ire.
As legislators, the group has impressed with their diligence in preparing for hearings and their pointed questioning of administration witnesses. They have not whipped votes against a major leadership priority nor forced a caucus battle over launching impeachment, which Pelosi opposes. They chose not to assail Pelosi when she dismissed Medicare for All and the Green New Deal as “enthusiasms” and “exuberances.”
Pelosi, by contrast, is focused on consolidating and expanding the Democratic majority. Her commitment to protecting incumbents was expressed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, essentially the speaker’s vehicle, when it announced it would ostracize any campaign houses or operatives that worked for a challenger to a sitting Democrat. No small part of this is about money. When incumbents face primary challenges, they are less likely to contribute their dues to the DCCC. That makes Pelosi’ s task as the most prodigious Democratic fundraiser all the more difficult.
Beyond that, Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez wave a particular red flag by openly identifying as democratic socialists. Trump and Fox News have giddily made the latter the face of the Democratic Party while bloviating about Democrats’ turning the United States into Venezuela, and Republicans clearly plan to make charges of socialism and extremism central to their 2020 campaign message. Pelosi’s public dismissal of the squad is designed to make clear that the insurgents are not the leaders of the party, that Trump’s red baiting is ridiculous, and that the Democrats are not as “extreme” as the right claims.
An old truism in Washington holds that Republicans fear their base, while Democrats scorn theirs. That now is changing. Movement activism—younger, more diverse, and more organized than in recent years—demands more from politicians seeking support. In the House, a stronger and larger Congressional Progressive Caucus—including chairs of 14 House committees—wields real muscle. And at the presidential level, progressive ideas and energy drive the Democratic primary.
Despite her shots at the dissenters, Pelosi probably knows that the progressive insurgency isn’t going away. It is, in fact, vital to the mobilization of key Democratic constituencies. To consolidate the party, Pelosi should be working to empower rather than suppress this new energy. She could direct it toward exposing the pervasive corruption of the Trump administration while passing message bills that dramatize what could change under full Democratic control. HR 1—the landmark electoral reform bill to increase voter access and campaign equity—exemplifies that task. But Pelosi could go further by front-loading popular progressive reforms. The $15 minimum wage, which should have been passed in the first 100 days, is only now gaining a place on the calendar. Instead of scorning the Green New Deal, Pelosi could have pushed legislation to establish a Joint Congressional Committee with a mandate to act on climate change. McConnell’s refusal to consider it in the Senate would have dramatized the choice for the 2020 election.
Regarding the blowup with the young progressives, Pelosi told the press: “I have no regrets about anything. Regrets is not what I do.” By catering to the cautions of more conservative House members and publicly dissing the young progressive stars, however, she risks weakening efforts to energize young voters and activists in 2020. Hopefully, Pelosi and the “squad” will meet together soon to call a cease-fire and agree to disagree. But the fundamental argument—over what the Democratic Party champions, how it builds its campaigns, and who it is prepared to fight for—has only just begun. | {
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With a renewed hope and the help of the Knave, Alice searched for her lost love and went to a place where she knew the only place she knows he’ll be safe. But with both Jafar and the Red Queen on to the genie as well, who will get there first? Will Alice find Cyrus? Will Jafar succeed and be able to change the laws of magic? Where does the Red Queen’s allegiance lie?
What an awesome winter finale! Mark Isham’s soundtrack really made it, too, blending it well with the story. The writers, Edward Kitsis, Adam Horowitz and Zack Estrin also wrote a great eighth episode.
Past Wonderland
So Cyrus wasn’t always a genie. He was, in fact, once a human. The question is though, how did he become a genie? Is it something that we are about to see in the upcoming episode? Did Cyrus became a genie when he tried to free another genie?
I have this sorta crazy theory about how Cyrus became a genie. We have Jafar in our story but we have yet to see Aladdin and Jasmine, two people tied to Jafar. What if Aladdin and Jasmine are actually in the past and distantly related to Jafar? My theory goes like this: Cyrus was born a long time ago in Agrabah to Aladdin and Jasmine, who were the Sultan and Sultana, thus making Cyrus Jafar’s distant ancestor. Aladdin still has the bottle containing a genie from his time as a “street rat” that he got from the cave of wonders. He has one wish left. Somehow Sultana Jasmine falls ill and there is no way to save her except to use the third and final wish. Aladdin uses the wish on Jasmine but the price of the wish is that his son Cyrus now becomes the new genie of the bottle and is cast out of Agrabah to find a new master. It’s a really great parallel to what we saw in 108 “Home” with Will and Cyrus (this is ONCE. They love their parallels). Also, Cyrus was very attached to his mother’s compass. If her life was saved but his freedom forfeited, I imagine he’d be rather attached to something that belonged to her. — RumplesGirl
Does Aladdin and Princess Jasmine have anything to do with Cyrus becoming the genie? Wouldn’t it be cool to see not only the two of them, but Abu as well? On the other hand, Jafar already had the oil lamp, which looked a lot like the ones in Aladdin’s tale so it looks like the show could go even without introducing Aladdin and Jasmine. Furthermore, is Cyrus’s mother still alive? Is she in a different realm, that’s why the compass doesn’t stop pointing?
Alice and Cyrus’s fighting scenes with the men that ambushed them was awesome. Alice really can fight!
Some of the subtle hints showing Alice and Cyrus felt a bit more sexual, taking a bit away of the purity and innocence of their relationship. Perhaps they would have shown Alice finding out about the compass in another way. After all, they aren’t married yet.
Cyrus’s Lost and Found compass reminded us the very compass that Emma and Hook searched for in Once Upon a Time in the episode Tallahassee, as well as Hansel and Gretel’s tale in the episode True North. It also reminded of Pirates of the Caribbean, where the compass points you to your true love.
Cyrus told Alice that “Sacrifice is the measure of true love,” making him want to sacrifice everything to keep Alice alive. However, Alice seemed to be willing to do the same.
Whoopi Goldberg, by the way, did an awesome job as Mrs. White Rabbit! It sure was fun to hear her voice in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.
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Present Wonderland
This episode showed us a lot of Anastasia and Will’s old wagon, which was actually their old place before Anastasia come to power as the Red Queen. The Red Queen also looked and sounded more like Anastasia in this episode, even taking her crown off and letting her hair down like the old Anastasia.
The Red Queen would have realized what she was losing ever since Jafar playing against the rules, making her change allegiance and go by her instincts.
By the way, the Red Queen’s chest looked the same place where she stole the crown before marrying the King. The chest is even arranged in the same in the same way.
Which of the Tweedles betrayed the Queen? Is it Dee or Dum? They weren’t named in the episode, after all, just Tweedle 1 and 2.
It seemed that Jafar could feel that the bottle wasn’t the right one by its weight compared to the others. Does the bottle’s weight changed when the genie isn’t inside the bottle? How did he figured out that it was fake?
It was nice to see the White Rabbit confessed and repented; he did it only because the Red Queen is holding his family hostage, and that he just did everything he did to keep them alive. He also said that “When someone you love is in danger, you’ll do anything to save them,” it may have cost him to betray his friends along the way, but his reasons were somehow justified. In addition, it was great that Alice gave the White Rabbit the benefit of the doubt.
The White Rabbit has a name — Percy, meaning to penetrate the hedge.
When Jafar made the storm, we initially thought he was making his own curse. He must be really wagering with revenge and intelligence when he sent that cloud after the queen.
The Red Queen came a little unhinged in this episode, looking a bit desperate for Alice, Will and Cyrus to believe her. Is she just keeping the mean Red Queen facade to be able to get what she wants and change the past?
It was also awesome to see her wanting to sacrifice for love; sacrifice everything just to get Will’s love back again. However, with Will’s heart not inside him, it seemed that Alice may be able to help her bring her own love back. Is the Red Queen going to go back to being Anastasia?
When the Red Queen used the bottle to deflect the lightening, it bounced off and hit Will, thus hurting him and Alice. When Will wished to end Alice’s suffering, Will accidentally released Cyrus, making himself the genie.
Another Lost reference in this episode — a shot in the scene with Will’s eye opening when he woke up inside the bottle as the new genie.
Does the water flowing through the “out” lands lead OUT of Wonderland?
Now that Will is the genie, it seems like everyone is on a race to find the bottle. Who will find it first? Now that the genie has changed, does it matter who the genie is? Or does it really not matter whether who the genie is as long as Jafar can get his hand on the bottle? If there are other genie’s that exist, why go that far on getting it?
I’d just like to say that I really like the idea of Will (The Knave) being the Genie now, because if you think about it Will is more like the Genie from the original animated Aladdin then Cyrus was because Will is both the comic relief and knows all the modern day pop culture of our world (Land Without Magic) just like the Genie in Aladdin did. Just something I thought I point out Thanks Once Podcast. — DarkOnes1Fan
If they got Robin Williams to voice the genie just like what they did with Whoopi Goldberg as Mrs. White Rabbit, wouldn’t it be cool since he voiced the genie in Aladdin?
There are still five more episodes to go of the 13 episodes the show is slated to do when the show comes back next year after the long hiatus and a lot more stories can be told within those five episodes. What else is in store for Alice and Cyrus? How would the season will end? What if Jafar became a genie?
The Red Queen seemed to be a lot smarter than everyone thinks of her. Despite Will and the other people (ie; Alice) are still having second thoughts about her sincerity, it looks like the Red Queen tried to make everyone prove otherwise. But will Anastasia win back Will’s love? If Jafar finds Will first, can Jafar even use him because Will doesn’t have his heart? Will the Red Queen be willing to work with Alice and Cyrus to find Will and get his heart back? Is the Lost and Found compass come back into play to help them find Will?
Let us know what you think about “Home” by sharing your thoughts below on the comment section or sending us an email.
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Goodbye Lakshmi: Langur 'student' of Andhra school, who took internet by storm, dies
The female langur was mauled to death by stray dogs, leaving the children and teachers heartbroken.
news Animals
On Saturday, a pall of gloom descended over the Government Primary School in Vengalampalli in Andhra Pradesh's Kurnool district, as the students and staff mourned a loved one. Several students were dejected and some even broke down over the loss of someone they had treated as a 'classmate'; a langur fondly called Lakshmi.
Last month, Lakshmi, a female grey langur, had taken the internet by storm, after photos and videos showed the animal regularly visiting the school and even sitting in classrooms along with the children, and playing with them during their breaks.
Unfortunately, Lakshmi was mauled by a pack of dogs on Saturday afternoon. Speaking to TNM, the school's headmaster, S Abdul Lateef says, "A youth from the village saw the attack and called me. By the time I reached, the dogs had already killed the monkey."
The sorrow is evident in Lateef's voice, as he speaks like a teacher who has lost a favourite student. He says he hadn't seen Lakshmi in 10 days.
"Around 10 days ago, some person put Lakshmi in a sack and took the langur away when we were not there, to scare some monkeys in his garden. We were hopeful that Lakshmi would come back soon. The langur came back to the village last night, and even visited the school in the morning and left," Lateef says.
"I was sure Lakshmi would return again in the evening as usual, so I even ordered for some bananas. But before that could happen, I received the call," he adds.
The headmaster and his assistant, along with a few youngsters from the village, held a small burial ceremony for Lakshmi at the outskirts of the village.
"The children are devastated. They have been dull since they received the news. Two of the children, the ones to whom Lakshmi was most attached, broke down and were crying. Lakshmi was a close friend to everyone. The langur didn't harm anyone, and would sit close to the children; sometimes even climb on top and sit on their shoulders," Lateef says.
He recollects many memories, including how Lakshmi used to longingly stare into class whenever they used to lock the monkey out as the children were getting distracted.
"Whenever we would lock Lakshmi out, she would listen to the teacher from the window like a sincere student," Lateef says. He also remembers how the monkey would curiously peek into textbooks that the children were reading from, and at other times, jump up on his desk, where he would feed the animal bananas.
In fact, Lakshmi was such a sincere student that the school's absentee rate came down - more children wanted to go to school to be with Lakshmi.
"The entire school got very attached to her. Because of her, our school got to be known across the country. Now we're all heartbroken," he says.
Read: Meet Lakshmi, the langur, most sincere student in a govt school in Andhra Pradesh | {
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Hey there frequent visitors! You may have noticed a little change with my site, specifically in regards to my URL. What once was culinaryxcouture.blogspot.com is now culinarycoutureblog.com. Basically, I bought a piece of the Internet with my monies and now it's mine and I own it. No more subdomain, no more extra periods, and no more extra letters. Woot woot!
I definitely should have made this change sooner as it would have prevented a lot of annoying instances when giving out my url to friends and family, but it's all good now! The change has been made, I am super happy about it, and this calls for a celebration!
Of course, every celebration needs a phenomenal chocolate dessert. Enter deep dish chocolate chip cookie pie. Don't worry, it's not as fat as it sounds, I promise. It doesn't have any butter OR refined sugar. And it's vegan, which means it's totally healthy. Fat pants can stay in the drawer for this one. Just bring a fork and a tall glass of milk and you're good to go.
Since this delicious pie is made of hearty ingredients, you're less likely to overeat because you'll feel full sooner. And when you do feel full, it won't be the gross kind of full where you regret everything you just ate. No, with this pie, you'll walk away thinking "Mmm that ooey gooey chocolate chip cookie pie was so good for me, I feel amazing". Or you know, some other variation of that thought process.
My point is, you really have to make this pie. And if my blabbering about how awesome it is hasn't convinced you yet, I'll let the melted chocolate do the talking. Yup, that should do the trick. | {
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Das Park Hotel was designed by Austrian architect and designer Andreas Strauss , and it is located in Linz / Austria. From inside, ‘rooms’ have been humanized by Austrian artist Thomas Latzel Ochoa, who painted illustrations on walls. Hotel is open from May till October. Hotel website / Photos: Dietmar Tollerian
9 Comments | {
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General Motors Co. has struck a deal with a Detroit-based hospital system to offer a new coverage option to employees, upending the traditional benefits setup in an attempt to lower costs and improve care.
The auto maker’s agreement with Henry Ford Health System covers everything from doctor visits to surgical procedures. By signing a contract directly with one health-care provider, as other companies have done, GM says it can offer a plan that costs employees less than other options while also promising special customer-service... | {
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Are the rich and powerful meeting in Davos truly addressing the need for a more just global economic system?
Davos, a tiny town in the Swiss mountains, has hosted the annual World Economic Forum for the past 46 years. The rich, powerful and famous mingle over five days of sessions and networking with the stated aim of improving the world.
High in the Alpine air, problems of inequality are discussed by some of the planet's richest and most successful leaders. Here too environmental issues are discussed by some of the worlds' biggest polluters.
The international elite are acutely aware of the widening gap between rich and poor, gender inequality and the deteriorating state of the environment. And they are nervous about the political fallout. But are they truly addressing the need for a more just global economic system?
Gregor Irwin, chief economist at Global Counsel, says "there's partly inequality between countries ... and inequality within countries ... The global economic system is certainly working for some and it's certainly delivering and has delivered over the past 10 years an improvement in the living standards of many people. But there are real questions about just how widely shared the benefits are."
"We are seeing not just the concentration of incomes among richer people, but also wealth inequalities, perhaps more important now than income inequality. That's tied with this question of monetary policy, low interest rates, and asset prices become much higher and inflated, that boosts the wealth of the wealthiest and that's one of the reasons why we now see wealth concentrated in such a small group of people - many of whom are in Davos this week."
The global economic system is certainly working for some and it's certainly delivering and has delivered over the past 10 years an improvement in the living standards of many people. But there are real questions about just how widely shared the benefits are. Gregor Irwin, chief economist, Global Counsel
According to Irwin, "one issue people at Davos will need to consider is executive pay - whether it really is grounded in reality ... Beyond that, when you look at new technologies - the prospects of digitalisation for artificial intelligence, the effect they will have on the economies of the future. We're seeing new technologies becoming mainstream, so that's going to open up a new set of issues around disruption of jobs and potentially widen some of the inequality gap."
Africa: A ir transportation as an engine for economic growth?
It's about to get easier for almost 700 million Africans to travel across the continent by air.
The idea of a single African air transport market was first put forward at the African Union 30 years ago, but it's now finally being launched. It's one of the AU's pan-African Agenda 2063 flagship projects, which aims to use air transport as an engine for economic growth.
So will it prove a game changer for the region's economy? Tania Page reports from Johannesburg.
While "there's an opportunity for carriers to be growing and it would make it easier with an open skies agreement," says Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, "but what would be more helpful would be a free trade arrangement within Africa ... that might make more of a difference. The most important trade growth is going to come from selling to the rest of the world."
"You've got over a billion people in Africa, but in terms of GDP it's about 2 percent or so; 98 percent of the wealth is outside of Africa, and tapping into that wealth is what will bring manufacturing and industrialisation to Africa and much stronger growth rates," says Robertson.
Also on this episode of Counting the Cost:
Seafood slavery in Thailand: Thailand exports 1.8 million tons of seafood annually and is one of the top five global exporters of shrimp. Seafood from Thailand ends up in supermarket frozen ailes and even as canned pet food. The three biggest markets for Thai seafood are the US, Japan and the European Union.
A recent 134-page report, "Hidden Chains: Forced Labor and Rights Abuses in Thailand's Fishing Industry," authored by Human Rights Watch (HRW) describes how migrant fishers from neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia are often trafficked into fishing work, prevented from changing employers, not paid on time, and paid below the minimum wage. Migrant workers do not receive Thai labour law protections and do not have the right to form a labour union.
Thus, the seafood on your plate and in your sushi could still be fished by what's being called slaves. As a result there are calls for seafood companies and supermarkets to take more responsibility for proving supply chains are free from rights abuses. While multinational companies say they investigate allegations of abuse in their supply chains, they rarely share negative findings, reports Victoria Gatenby.
Hong Kong lights: Hong Kong may be famous for its bright neon signs and glittering skyline, but it's also earned the title of one of the worst cities in the world for light pollution. In cities such as Shanghai, Seoul, Paris and London, billboard lighting and signage is regulated and there are penalties for violators of the law. But in Hong Kong there are no such laws, reports Sarah Clarke.
US tariffs: China and South Korea have condemned a US decision to impose steep tariffs on imported solar cells and washing machines, as Adrian Brown reports from Beijing.
Source: Al Jazeera | {
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Greed: A selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed. A continual lust for more.
Envy: A feeling of resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions or qualities or wealth.
Someone might want to tell Hillary Clinton that greed and envy are two of the seven deadly sins. She’s guilty of both.
Her new revised tax plan would raise the estate tax to as high as 65 percent — up from 40 percent today. She would also apply the hated death tax to as many as twice as many estates.
It’s one of her dumbest ideas yet — which is saying a lot. It won’t raise any revenue to speak of. It’s a bow-tied gift to estate tax lawyers and accountants. Many studies have found that the cost to the economy of taxing a lifetime of savings more than outweighs any benefits. It actually could end up costing the Treasury money by reducing investment in family businesses that are a major engine of growth for our economy.
But Hillary wants to take us back to the 1970s. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis, the plan would “impose a 50 percent rate that would apply to estates over $10 million a person, a 55 percent rate that starts at $50 million a person, and the top rate of 65 percent, which would affect only those with assets exceeding $500 million for a single person and $1 billion for married couple.”
What Hillary doesn’t get is this: anyone who’s smart enough to make half a billion dollars is smart enough to find a way to dodge this confiscatory tax. That’s the whole history of the death tax — the very rich never pay it. | {
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“They’re freeing people from oppression.’’
“Wherever they go they’re changing things.’’
“What I’m saying is they will only kill people that will fight them.’’
Alexander Ciccolo said these things and more about the terror group ISIS in a recorded interview shown by prosecutors publicly in federal court Tuesday, a rare occurrence for federal criminal court proceedings. Prosecutors said he spoke willingly with investigators in what resembled a standard office cubicle.
Ciccolo was arrested on July 4 after taking possession of firearms from a witness working with the FBI. The FBI had been tracking Ciccolo since the fall of 2014, when he expressed a desire to fight for ISIS. According to a complaint unsealed on Monday, Ciccolo threatened to use pressure cooker bombs and guns on an unidentified university.
Ciccolo looked away from the video while it was played during his detention hearing at the U.S. District Court in Springfield.
Prosecutors played the video in an effort to convince a federal judge to keep Ciccolo locked up until his pending trial. The entire interview lasted “over an hour and a half,’’ according to Assistant U.S. District Attorney Kevin O’Regan, so a “representative portion’’ was shown to the court by the prosecution.
“This is a person who is willing to kill innocent Americans,’’ O’Regan said.
Ciccolo planned to use styrofoam to make the bomb materials stick to his victims, O’Regan said.
“He was going to shoot innocent people,’’ he said.
During a routine medical exam while in custody, Ciccolo slammed a pen down on the top a nurse’s head “so hard the pen actually broke in half,’’ said O’Regan.
“Mr Ciccolo feels bad about that,’’ said David Hoose, Ciccolo’s attorney, of the attack on the nurse.
Hoose asked for “strict house arrest’’ for his client, which would have involved Ciccolo staying with his mother and stepfather in a remote part of Berkshire County. Ciccolo is “extraordinarily close’’ to his mother, he said.
“He would do nothing that would put his mother in harm’s way,’’ Hoose said.
Ciccolo’s stepfather and mother were seated in the front row of the courtroom . After Ciccolo walked into the courtroom, wearing a beard and dressed in beige prison clothes, he mouthed “I love you’’ to his family.
The hearing ended with Judge Katherine Robertson ordering Ciccolo be held pending trial.
Ciccolo’s father, Boston Police captain Robert Ciccolo, was not present in court. But U.S. District Attorney Carmen Ortiz and Vincent Lisi, the FBI special agent in charge for Boston, were present. | {
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Films like Ex Machina explore the bounds of emotional interaction between human and machine. Credit: Universal Pictures
There was to have been a conference in Malaysia last week called Love and Sex with Robots but it was cancelled. Malaysian police branded it "illegal" and "ridiculous". "There is nothing scientific about sex with robots," said a police chief.
However, others believe there are many interesting and important aspects of intimate robot partners that are worth researching and discussing.
There is a lot of science in Ava and Kyoko, the sexually capable robots in the movie Ex Machina, for example. Concepts raised in the film include the Turing Test and the Mary's room thought experiment of ANU's Frank Jackson, among others. Although, inevitably, as is the way of fiction, the robots turn on the humans.
Putting aside the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robophobic tropes of movies such as Oblivion, Robocop and Transcendence, is there a moral issue when it comes to intimacy with a robot?
Some believe there is. There is a Campaign to Stop Sex Robots, which has called for sex with robots to be banned. The organisation's argument is that sex robots would reinforce gender inequality. It links to similar arguments made against pornography and prostitution.
However, if you argue that something ought to be banned because it reinforces gender inequality, you would be committed to banning the Iliad or various plays by Shakespeare, or novels by Jane Austen. If this is the objection, one could no doubt develop sexbots that do not reinforce gender stereotypes, either in behaviour or form.
A more salient concern about sexbots might be: what would happen if everyone started bedding bots? What would be the trajectory? Where would humanity end up if these devices proliferated?
Perhaps we'd be in much the same place as we are now. The invention of sex toys has not stopped people getting married and having babies. Slippery slope arguments are intuitively tempting but they need strong gravity and weak friction.
Arguments in favour of sexbots put by proponents, such as David Levy, are that robot prostitutes are a lesser evil than human prostitutes. They will reduce incentives to traffic humans and subject them to the "degradation" of sex work. Robot prostitutes might be safer than human ones, and therefore preferable.
Perhaps the stickiest moral problem is whether sex with a robot would count as adultery. But does an orgasm with a toy count as adultery? A sexbot today might be little more than a programmed artefact, but by 2050, who knows what it might look resemble?
Artificial bonding
Perhaps a more tractable moral issue in the short term is what Mattias Schuetz, Director of the Human Robot Interaction Lab at Tufts University, calls "unidirectional emotional bonds". This is where someone falls in love with a robot, but the robot cannot fall genuinely reciprocate the sentiment.
It is well-known that humans affectively bond with robots. People name their robot vacuum cleaners, and even introduce them to their parents by name. Gnarly bomb disposal specialists beg the Baghdad robot hospital to fix their beloved blown-up robots because they have gone through hell together.
One could plausibly program a robot to go through the motions of expressing love. It could gaze at you with robo-dilated eyes, or could hold your hand and smile at you. It could play music like the "Gigolo Joe" character in Steven Spielberg's movie Artificial Intelligence. It could do all this and yet feel nothing.
It might have an ability to sense your affective states and produce actions that you would interpret as emotions, but inside the robot there would be no feeling, just a Turing machine applying its rulebook to sensory inputs, passing scripted outputs to its actuators.
The robot would act "as if" it loved you, but it would not love you any more than a rock would love you. Is this moral? Should such devices be banned?
Personally, I think not, as long as we understand exactly what we are getting into bed with. People already get into bed with animated yet lifeless artefacts. There are artefacts on the market that enable people to experience orgasms. Are machine generated orgasms as good as the real human deal? Who is to judge? Opinions differ.
I do not see a persuasive case for banning sex toys, whether they are manually or remotely piloted or even embodied and autonomous. However, there is a case for a health warning to ensure people know about unidirectional emotional bonding. Robots may be able to perform sex acts today but it may be decades or centuries before they can return your love.
Explore further Why trying to ban sex robots is wrong
This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives).
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Watch Tamika Butler’s Vision Zero Cities Keynote L.A. County Bicycle Coalition Executive Director put the question to advocates: "Can Vision Zero work in a racist society?"
Last week at Transportation Alternatives’ Vision Zero Cities conference, LA County Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Tamika Butler delivered a strong message to attendees from around the country: Vision Zero does not exist in a bubble, separate from America’s history and ongoing repression of people of color — and advocates cannot leave the work of addressing that solely to the people of color in their ranks.
In her speech, which you can watch in full below, Butler recounts the story of Joe Bray-Ali, a prominent L.A. bike advocate whose City Council campaign was upended earlier this month by the discovery of racist and transphobic comments he’d posted online. Two years ago, Bray-Ali publicly attacked Butler and others for raising concerns about LAPD’s role in Vision Zero enforcement.
“You have to think about the other things that are going on in our communities,” Butler said. “If there are only folks of color doing the work to make this industry better, it won’t get better.”
Here is her talk in full:
You can read Butler’s contribution to TransAlt’s Vision Zero Cities journal, which touches on the same themes, here. | {
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Um novo vídeo publicado na rede social do deputado federal Cláudio Cajado (PP-BA) mostra o presidente Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) novamente tratando de forma pejorativa os nordestinos.
Na segunda vez em que estaria na Bahia, foi questionado pelo deputado se já estava "virando um cabra da peste". Ele respondeu: "Só tá faltando crescer um pouquinho a cabeça", diz, em seguida dando uma grande risada e lembrando o sogro dele é de Crateús.
O vídeo foi gravado durante a inauguração da Usina Solar Flutuante, em Sobradinho, no sertão da Bahia, ontem. Foi a segunda visita de Bolsonaro ao estado em menos de 15 dias --antes tinha inaugurado o aeroporto de Vitória da Conquista.
Nas imagens, Bolsonaro tratou a visita como uma " grande satisfação" para inaugurar "essa plataforma que vai renovar energia solar do lago". "O país só vai crescer se tiver energia, esse pioneirismo mostra para o mundo que estamos no caminho certo", diz.
Bolsonaro ainda usa o vídeo para "mandar um abraço a todos os parlamentares" pelo apoio dado ao seu governo, "não só no tocante à nova Previdência, mas porque começaremos em breve a reforma tributária, e o Brasil vai chegar no lugar que merece. E o Nordeste? E o Nordeste é nosso", finaliza o presidente.
Na postagem, seguidores elogiaram e criticaram a fala do presidente. "Além de inaugurar algo que não fez, ainda insiste em ofender os nordestinos", reclamou um deles. "Eu admiro o senhor, presidente; sou nordestina e não vejo em suas declarações nada que me diminua", contradiz outra seguidora.
Na segunda visita, o presidente voltou a trocar farpas com o governador Rui Costa (PT), ao negar que é preconceituoso com nordestinos. "Tenho preconceito é com governador ladrão", disse. Costa não compareceu a nenhum dos dois eventos do governo federal.
Reportagem do Estadão revelou, na sexta-feira, que apenas 2% dos empréstimos feitos pela Caixa estavam sendo destinados a estados e prefeituras do Nordeste. Bolsonaro contestou o dado dizendo que as prefeituras da região "são as mais inadimplentes do país".
Polêmicas com nordestinos
Essa não é primeira polêmica que o presidente se envolve ao tratar nordestinos de forma pejorativa. No dia 19 de julho, aparentemente sem saber que estava sendo gravado, ele falou ao ministro da Casa Civil, Onyx Lorenzoni (DEM), que "dentre os governadores de 'paraíba', o pior é o do Maranhão. Não tem que ter nada com esse cara".
Dias após, Bolsonaro negou que tenha falado de forma pejorativa sobre os nordestinos e disse que se referiu, na verdade, ao governador da Paraíba, João Azevedo (PSB).
No dia 22, em transmissão ao vivo em seu Facebook, Bolsonaro voltou a tratar nordestinos de forma pejorativa. Ele perguntou ao ministro da Infraestrutura, Tarcisio Freitas, se "tem algum parente 'pau de arara'?". Ao ministro responder que sim, ele emendou: "Com esta cabeça aí, tu não nega, não", disse, soltando uma gargalhada. | {
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A distressed dog was saved after a UPS driver paused his delivery route to save the scared young pup in Bozeman, Montana, media reports revealed late last week.
Ryan Arens said he was delivering packages just before Christmas when he heard a dog "screaming and crying and going crazy."
BOO, THE FAMOUS SOCIAL MEDIA DOG, DIES OF A BROKEN HEART, HIS OWNERS SAY
The employee told the Great Falls Tribune in an article published Friday that he quickly delivered a package, then drove to the other side of the pond, where he saw the animal.
"I could see the dog trapped about 10-15 feet off of shore, with ice all around it," Arens said.
An older man was on a boat trying to rescue the dog, according to Arens, but was having difficulty chipping away at the ice to get closer — so the UPS employee knew what he had to do.
"I stripped to my boxers and got the guy out of the boat. Then, I slid the boat out onto the ice, using it to distribute my weight," Arens said. "I shimmed out to where the ice was thin."
STRAY DOG CRASHES RUNWAY AT MUMBAI FASHION SHOW, GOES VIRAL ON TWITTER
Soon, he crashed through the thin ice and fell from the boat. Arens said he noticed the dog "was starting to go under," and so he swam for her. Arens was able to grab the dog's collar and tried to pull her to thicker ice.
Arens told the news outlet the two were able to slide across the ice and back to shore together, where a bystander gave him a blanket. They went into the older man's home where they warmed up before authorities arrived to help.
"Animals are my weakness. It was the highlight of my 14-year UPS career," Arens said.
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He told the Tribune that he found where the dog's owner lived, and happened to have a delivery for him. He spotted the rescued dog — named Sadie — in a car, and said "she was freaking out" when she saw him.
"She must have remembered me," Arens said. "It sure made me feel good." | {
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Rund 2400 Kameras will Lidl in seinen Filialen installieren. imago/Gerhard Leber (Symbolfoto) Foto:
In den letzten Jahren nahmen bei Lidl die Einbrüche und Diebstähle immer mehr zu. Zwischen 2012 und 2017 gab es rund 500 Diebstähle und Brüche, teilte der Konzern mit.
Lidl reicht's jetzt offenbar! Der Discounter baut nun Videokameras in die Filialen, bis Ende des Jahres sollen knapp 2400 Stück installiert werden, teilt das Technik-Magazin „Chip” mit. Schließlich entstanden durch die Einbrüche nicht nur hohe Schäden, auch Mitarbeiter gerieten in Gefahr.
Derzeit gibt es nämlich in keiner der 3200 Filialen Kameras. Lidl entschied, diese 2008 nach dem Bespitzelungs-Skandal komplett zu verbannen. Versteckte Kameras über den Kassen und in den Pausenräumen für Mitarbeiter sorgten damals für einen Skandal.
Kameras sorgten für Skandal
Nach Recherchen des Nachrichtenmagazins „Stern” hatte Lidl seine eigenen Beschäftigten über mehrere Jahre in über 500 Filialen durch Detekteien systematisch überwachen lassen.
Verbraucherschützer warnten damals dringend vor der Zahlung mit EC-Karten. Lidl hatte nämlich in einem Schreiben an Kunden mitgeteilt, dass die Aufzeichnung der PIN-Eingabe nicht vollständig auszuschließen sei.
Das Unternehmen musste wegen Datenmissbrauchs 1,5 Millionen Euro Strafe zahlen. Nun sollen die Kameras also zurück kommen. Diesmal aber nicht versteckt.
(mg) | {
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Insurance companies bought into Obamacare exchanges with the promise that federal premium subsidies would convince more people to sign up, but they appear to be getting worried about pending lawsuits that could end the subsidies in federal exchanges.
According to insurance news service Inside Health Policy, insurance companies offering plans on HealthCare.gov this year had a new clause inserted into their contracts with Obamacare administrator the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that allows them to cancel plans if federal premium subsidies are eliminated.
Forbes’ contributor and Obamacare subsidy expert Michael Cannon, who highlighted the change, argues that this could spark Supreme Court review of the legality of premium subsidies in federal exchanges.
The contract says that insurers’ participation in HealthCare.gov exchanges is “based on the assumption that [premium subsidies] and [other cost-sharing subsidies] will be available to qualifying Enrollees,” according to Forbes. “In the event that this assumption ceases to be valid during the term of this Agreement, CMS acknowledges that the Issuer could have cause to terminate this Agreement subject to applicable state and federal law.”
That’s a real possibility — and one that would be disastrous for Obamacare exchanges and the insurers that are selling plans on them. If all premium subsidies were done away with, an HHS-sponsored Rand Corporation study found that Obamacare exchanges would fall into a “death spiral.” (RELATED: HHS-Funded Study: Obamacare Will Suffer ‘Death Spiral’ If Subsidies Fail)
Most customers would not be able to afford the actual price of their Obamacare exchange coverage. At the end of the first enrollment period in mid-April, 86 percent of HealthCare.gov had some level of financial assistance, along with 82 percent of sign-ups in state-run exchanges.
Were the subsidies eliminated, according to Rand, Obamacare enrollment would fall by 68 percent (after premiums skyrocketed by over 43 percent). That would be catastrophic for the insurance companies on the exchanges — who now have their guarantee that they can pull out if the subsidies disappear, doling out their own final death blow to the exchanges.
It’s still up in the air about whether Obamacare subsidies will falter at all, but now that challenges are coming in from all over, insurance companies want their own insurance for their participation in the Obamacare exchanges. There are four top pending lawsuits that challenge an IRS rule which says it authorizes Obamacare premium subsidies in the federally-run exchange.
Two cases — Halbig v. Burwell and King v. Burwell — made it through federal appeals courts this summer, just one step away from the Supreme Court. The D.C. circuit court ruled that federal exchange subsidies are illegal but agreed to re-hear the case with a panel of each and every circuit court judge; the Fourth Circuit ruled that they’re admissible. The plaintiffs in both lawsuits have asked the Supreme Court to hear their cases.
On top of that, a federal district court ruled the subsidies illegal yet again just last month in Pruitt v. Burwell. Next up is Indiana v. Irs, yet another case that targets the subsidies. A federal district court in Indiana heard oral arguments on the case earlier this month.
All in all, Obamacare subsidies are far from safe — and both the Obama administration and Obamacare insurers seem to be preparing for the possibility that the courts will turn against them.
Follow Sarah on Twitter | {
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"Presuppositionalism" is the name given to a special branch of Christian apologetics. In this blog, I will post my criticisms of presuppositionalism as it is informed and defended by apologists such as Greg Bahnsen, John Frame, Cornelius Van Til, Richard Pratt, and their latter-day followers. | {
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The following is sponsored content from Comedy Club China's partners at China Liar: Beijing's least reliable news source.
Last Monday, Jeffrey Parker, a long-time Beijing resident and young learner acquisition specialist at Happy Giraffe English, conquered the linguistic equivalent of Mount Everest: he passed the HSK 1.
We spoke with Mr. Parker at Mr. Shi’s Dumplings, where he confidently ordered “两个 beef and cheese dumplings.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I failed the test last spring because I thought that the listening section would also be in pinyin. I spent the last year drilling all 150 characters in a variety of ways, and it seems my hard work has finally paid off.”
Following his astounding achievement, Mr. Parker has noticed improvement in all aspects of his life. “Learning these words just helped me get more in touch with Chinese culture.” He noticed a marked improvement at work, where his young learners have acquired English faster than before. “We aren’t supposed to speak Chinese in the workplace, but every once in a while I like to throw a little ‘猫’ or ‘狗’ in there just to make sure the children understand why I am on all fours barking like a hound.”
With his newfound mastery of the language, Mr. Parker is considering a career switch. “I think these 150 words have opened a new door for me, or a ‘门’ as the Chinese say. I just think so many Western companies need foreigners with applicable language skills like me if they want to penetrate the Chinese, or ‘中国’, market. My teacher used to remind me that I was '一文不值,' something about being valuable but that's HSK 3.”
Outside of his budding career prospects, Mr. Parker’s personal life has also taken an upward turn. “I’ve been in Beijing for six years now, and I’ve been single the whole time. I want a serious relationship and a lot of Western girls are just too immature. Now that I’ve mastered the HSK 1, I’ve been able to build meaningful connections with the waitresses at Slow Boat.”
We asked Mr. Parker about his tips and strategies for preparing for the HSK 1. He laughed and put down his fork. “I think it’s all about repetition. You have to live and breathe the language. I did a lot of flashcardwork, but most of my preparation was immersing myself in the culture. You have to get out there and talk; 这个 this and 呢个 that. Just listening to Chinese movies and TV, even if I didn’t understand everything, really improved my fluency. Some of my favorites were Old Boy, Spirited Away,and Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. I watched with subtitles because I didn’t always understand the tones, but it really helped me ace the test.”
When the meal was over, Mr. Parker called the waiter over and flexed his Mandarin muscles: “请给我们一个菜单.” The waiter brought over the menu and Mr. Parker shot him a look of disappointment. “买单吗？我说了菜单。你能不能说中文？” He looked at me. “Service in this city, am I right? But I guess everyone makes mistakes.”
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My Purple Stuff
When you see anything Purple
Think of Purple Stuff©
The Great American Temperance Drink
The Adventurer's Relaxation beverage
The name itself causes the smile that releases endorphins.
Socially viral; this is the soda we are all talking about.
What is it?
Is it real or imaginary?
Is it really all Purple inside?
What does it taste like?
Where can I buy some now?
The peer reviews are in:
The awesomest tasting soda ever.
It works!
I Love Purple Stuff.
Is Purple Stuff a boy or a girl?
I want to marry you Purple Stuff!
My anxiety is gone, Thank You!
You are my Favorite color and my favorite drink.
Purple Stuff; you really care about us…you are good people with the best soda ever! | {
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CHARLOTTENBERG (TV 2): Tonje Jacobsen flyktet til Sverige for å føde, fordi hun følte seg forfulgt på grunn av diagnosen lett psykisk utviklingshemning. I Sverige blir hun betraktet å være en god mor.
20 år gamle Tonje Jacobsen følte seg forfulgt fordi hun har diagnosen lett psykisk utvikllingshemmet, og så ingen annen mulighet enn å flytte til Sverige og føde der.
Nå har svensk barnevern konkludert med at hun er en god mor med gode omsorgsevner.
Og en psykologspesialist mener diagnosen til Tonje med stor sannsynlighet er feil.
200 barn tas fra foreldrene
Den siste tiden har TV 2 avdekket at 200 barn årlig fratas foreldre med lett psykisk utviklingshemming eller kognitive vansker.
Det skjer til tross for at internasjonal forskning viser at det kan settes inn tilpasset hjelp, og at mødre og fedre i denne gruppen kan være gode foreldre.
Barnevernsflyktning
Vi møter Tonje når hun er ute på trilletur med babyen sin i Charlottenberg. Hun forteller at hun har blitt barnevernflyktning i Sverige på grunn av en diagnose, nye undersøkelser viser kan være feil.
Og hun forteller sin dramatiske historie for å sette søkelyset på hvordan unge mødre med en diagnose blir behandlet.
Fra samme kommune som Natasha
– Jeg er fra Stange kommune og allerede tidlig i graviditeten kom det bekymringsmelding fordi jeg har diagnosen lett utviklingshemmet, forteller Tonje, som ønsket å føde barnet og blir mor. Hun ble veldig engstelig da hun mitt i graviditeten, så TV 2s innslag om Erik og Natasha Myra Olsen. De ble fratatt tvillingene sine fire timer etter fødselen. Og kommer fra samme kommune.
Hovedbegrunnelsen til barnevernet var at Natasha hadde diagnosen lett psykisk utviklingshemmet, noe som i ettertid er dokumentert feil.
– Da jeg så innslagene ble jeg ennå mer redd og tenkte at jeg kom til å miste sønnen min, sier Tonje.
Spurte etter fostermor
Barnevernet hadde varslet undersøkelsessak under graviditeten, noe Tonje som mener diagnosen er feil, sa nei til. Da hun kun var fire måneder på vei, fikk moren hennes spørsmål om hun eller noen i nettverket kunne være fostermor. Og det ble gitt beskjed til sykehuset om at barnevernet skulle varsles når fødselen skjedde.
– Det er merkelig at de spør mamma om å være fostermor når de ikke engang vet om jeg er i stand til å ta vare på ungen min, sier Tonje.
Reagerer sterkt
Moren hennes, Sissel Hermansen, reagerer også sterkt på barnevernets opptreden.
– Jeg ble helt sjokkert og forsto ikke grunnlaget for at de skulle begynne å lete etter fosterforeldre. For babyen var jo ikke født. Og de hadde ikke sett hva slags relasjon Tonje ville ha til babyen. Men jeg føler at med den diagnosen er det kun den det blir sett på og ikke individet, sier moren.
Kommunen svarer
Kommunalsjefen i Stange, Tove Nordli Selnes vil ikke beklage barnevernets håndtering av saken.
– Hadde de bestemt seg for å ta barnet, da de begynte å lete etter forsterforeldre?
– Det er en av flere mulige utfall i en barnevernsak. Når det er meldt bekymring så må vi belyse alle muligheter.
– Også under graviditeten?
– Det er unntaksvis, men på bakgrunn av meldte bekymringer så har vi da valgt og også vurdere det.
– Hvorfor det?
– Det vet jeg ikke, sier kommunalsjefen som opplyser at hun ikke har lest sakens dokumenter.
Måtte flykte
Tonje og moren valgte å flytte til Kongsvinger, men det kom raskt bekymriingsmelding dit fra barnevernet i Stange.
– Jeg ble kjemperedd, forteller Tonje.
Høygravid tok hun en dramatisk beslutning.
– Jeg valgte å flytte til Sverige å føde her.
Sak i Sverige
Etter fødselen tok barnevernet i Sverige kontakt. De hadde fått bekymringsmelding fra Norge. Det ble iverksatt undersøkelser med flere hjembesøk og vurderinger av samspillet mellom mor og barn.
Og TV 2 var tilstede da Tonje og advokaten hennes hadde vært på møte med barnevernet i Sverige og fått resultatet av undersøkelsene.
En god mor
– De hadde ingen bekymringer om morsevnen. De synes at barnet og mor fungerte bra, og de har fulgt dem opp i fire måneder, sier Tonjes advokat, Astrid Gjøystdal.
– Vi var inne ti minutter siste gangen og så får Tonje følgende beskjed: Vet du hva, du er verdens beste mamma. Og det var så stort å høre, sier moren til Tonje, Sissel Hermansen.
Og for Tonje var det selvfølgelig en fantastisk beskjed.
– Jeg ble helt sjokka. Og jeg er kjempeglad.
Ikke skapt tillitt
Stange kommune innrømmer at de ikke har håndtert saken godt nok.
– Vårt mål i enhver barnevernsak er jo å skape tillit. Det har vi ikke lyktes med, sier kommunalsjef Tove Nordli Selnes.
– Hva tenker du om det?
– Det er leit.
Feil diagnose
Og nå viser det seg at hele historien kan skyldes en feil diagnose. Tonje har blant annet blitt re-testet av psykologspesialist Ester Solberg, som også har vurdert hvordan hun fungerer i hverdagslivet. Konklusjonen er at Tonje med stor sannsynlighet ikke er lett psykisk utviklingshemmet.
Men til tross for de nye opplysningene tør ikke Tonje å reise hjem til Norge ennå.
– Nei, det tør jeg ikke. Ikke før jeg er sikker på at alt er i orden.
Uforståelig
Moren til Tonje, Sissel Hermansen, reagerer sterkt på måten Stange kommune har behandlet saken. | {
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SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — When three transgender women were murdered within 72 hours in El Salvador back in February, local activists were shaken but, sadly, not surprised. The string of murders was just the latest threat of violence against the country’s increasingly vulnerable LGBTI community.
“They’ve put out an order to get rid of all of us,” Sebastian Cerritos said. His colleagues sat in silence, motionless as Cerritos spoke. “The gangs in one area here have said: We will kill all trans people here.”
Cerritos is a coordinator for Astrans LGBTI, an LGBTI charity based in El Salvador, and he has every reason to be concerned. El Salvador is considered the most dangerous place in the world outside of a war zone — earlier this year, the country celebrated its first homicide-free day in two years.
Many Salvadorans live under the control of the local gangs, and territories on the outskirts of the city are ruthlessly run using unspoken codes dictated by gang leaders. In the busy city center, police armed with shotguns stand on most corners, guarding everything from convenience shops to bakeries.
“We’re used to the violence,” Cerritos said. “We know it’s a risk every time we step outside.”
Cerritos and his colleagues were left reeling from the recent spate of murders in San Luis Talpa, 30 minutes outside the city. There, three transgender women were murdered within just 72 hours in February. The third victim, Elizabeth Castillo, was reportedly kidnapped, tortured, and killed after attending the funeral of the other two other victims.
The police were seemingly unsympathetic, describing the murdered women as “men who were wearing women’s clothes.”
Astrans LGBTI told VICE News that the spate of killings ignited fear in their community, and highlighted the impunity granted to perpetrators of anti-LGBTI crime. Though a law that recognized hate crimes motivated by gender or sexual orientation was introduced in 2015, campaigners say no one has ever been convicted of the murder of transgender people in the country.
“We still don’t know who killed those three women,” Cerritos added.
Astrans LGBTI, founded in 2007, say the demand for their work in the city and rural areas has increased in the last year. Their services, which include hormone treatment and sexual health advice, currently benefit 83 trans women and 26 trans men, but they can support up to 200 people at any given time.
The staff at the charity say people — often isolated by their community, ostracized by their family, or facing threats — come to them in a desperate state.
“People come to us crying, sometimes scared,” Cerritos said. “They place so much hope in us because there’s such little help out there.”
Cerritos was once in the same position. After he came out to his parents at 18, he fled home. Feeling alone and trapped, he travelled to the coast. There, he contemplated suicide. _“_I wanted to see the ocean. I wanted it to be the last thing I saw in my life,” he said.
Cerritos ultimately decided to return home, and started university in San Salvador in 2014. Today, he fights his own battles, as well as those of other transgender people. In El Salvador, transgender people are not legally allowed to change their name or gender on official documentation. This means that when Cerritos graduates later this year, they will not call out his real name at the ceremony.
“I’m fighting that,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
Many in the LGBTI community in El Salvador, including Cerritos, once held out hope of being granted asylum in the U.S. In a country where Salvadorans are the fourth-largest population of Hispanic origin — they believed they could be safe from persecution. Two members of Astrans LGBTI — including the president of the charity — were forced to flee El Salvador in 2015 after death threats from gangs, and were later granted asylum in the U.S.
But some people in El Salvador’s LGBTI community now say the desire to flee to the U.S. has diminished since President Trump took office. Though Obama deported more people than any other president, Trump’s treatment of transgender people, as well as his rhetoric and policies regarding immigration, has fueled further concern — many now fear that any future asylum requests would be rejected.
“At the moment, people don’t see the magnitude of the problem,” Cerritos says, “but if it [Trump’s deportations] continues the way it is, it’s going to cause a lot of problems for us.”
Countries in Latin America pose the deadliest threat to LGBTI people, according to the research group “Transrespect versus transphobia worldwide.” Their study recorded a total of 2,115 reported murders of transgender people worldwide between January 2008 and April 2016, and 78 percent of them occurred in Central and South America.
As long as the killers of the transgender women in San Luis Talpa continue operate with impunity, Cerritos and his team say, there is little hope of safety for El Salvador’s transgender community.
“To us, those murders are just the start,” Cerritos said. “The killers believe what they’re doing is allowed.” | {
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Ben Carson plans to release a new mission statement for the Department of Housing and Urban Development that drops phrasing vowing to make its housing “inclusive” and “free from discrimination,” according to a new report from HuffPost.
In a staff memo from March 5 obtained by HuffPost, the department’s public affairs assistant secretary wrote that the update was intended “to align HUD’s mission with the Secretary’s priorities and that of the Administration.”
Here is the current mission statement, still on the HUD website:
HUD’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes; utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination, and transform the way HUD does business.
Here is the proposed mission statement in the memo:
HUD’s mission is to ensure Americans have access to fair, affordable housing and opportunities to achieve self-sufficiency, thereby strengthening our communities and nation.
The considerably shorter statement drops the terms sustainable, quality, quality of life, inclusive, and discrimination. It also abandons the phrasing related to strengthening the housing market and protecting consumers, and it instead emphasizes “self-sufficiency.”
According to HuffPost, the memo explained that Carson and his deputy weighed in on the new mission statement. “A mission statement describes an organization’s purpose, what it intends to do, and whom it intends to serve,” the memo said. “Most importantly, an organization’s activities must be embodied in its mission.”
The tone of the proposed statement isn’t shocking. Carson has said that “government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality create consequences that often make matters worse,” that poverty is a choice, that LGBT people do not deserve “extra rights,” and that if public housing were too comfortable, low-income Americans would have no incentive to pull themselves out of poverty.
It’s not yet clear if the mission statement is final, as the memo did ask for comments from the staff. | {
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Topic for Thursdays event is "How to get the best performance out of your Sitecore website"
Sitecore Partner Adelphi Digital are bringing along their team to present to our meet-up on how to get the best performance out of your Sitecore website. The presentation will look at the critical relationship between designer, front-end and back-end developer in achieving exceptional results – as well as practical tips and advice. Presenting will be Adelphi’s Senior Designer, Senior UX Developer and Senior Sitecore Developer/
Delicious nibbles and drinks will be provided in a magic venue on the 35th floor of 360 Collins St. RSVP yes, come along, look forward to seeing you there. | {
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EAST LANSING – If Tom Izzo was writing a story about his Michigan State team as it hits the halfway point of this Big Ten season, he knows what he would put at the top.
“My headline would be "consistency" with a question mark,” Izzo said.
That one word may be brief for a headline, but it cuts to the biggest issue the 25th-year Michigan State coach sees with his team right now.
Michigan State is alone in first place in the Big Ten, at 8-2, following a 29-point home win on Wednesday over Northwestern, but Izzo isn’t seeing his team play with the start-to-finish consistency that he thinks will be necessary to win the Big Ten and then advance in the postseason.
“Where we are now will not get us anywhere close to where we need to be,” Izzo said.
Wednesday’s final score masked what was an up-and-down first half for the Spartans and an example of the inconsistency that Izzo is trying to root out of his team.
Michigan State took an early 16-2 lead, then missed nine of its next 10 shots and gave up a 13-2 run and nearly its entire lead.
The Spartans rallied from there to easily win, but Izzo worries that that won’t be possible in other scenarios.
“You can get away with that against certain teams,” Izzo said. “You probably aren't going to get away with it on the road anywhere in this league.”
That problem was the inverse of what’s been more common lately for Michigan State. The Spartans have gotten off to poor starts in many recent games and had to try to claw back from behind, including when they fell behind by 10 points in the first halves at Purdue and Indiana.
And its inconsistency has gone game-to-game: the Spartans’ earlier this month went from a 16-point win over Minnesota to a 29-point loss to Purdue to a 12-point win over Wisconsin.
Izzo sees the reasons for the Spartans’ inconsistency as multiple. Start with the fact that the team has a pair of freshmen and two sophomores with little experience in its playing rotation.
The loss of Joshua Langford for the entire season and the limited availability of Kyle Ahrens – he returned on Wednesday from a three-game injury absence to play eight minutes – has had significant drawbacks in terms of experience and players who know how to put together a complete game.
He also knows the constant changing of the Spartans’ rotation isn’t making things easier. Particularly at power forward, the Spartans have had three different starters and significant changes in minutes distribution from night to night, and players constantly adjusting to different combinations.
Yet his answer for the issue is simple: for point guard Cassius Winston to pull everyone together.
“Cash has got to run this team,” Izzo said. “He’s so good and he does so many good things but holding people accountable is a hard thing for best players to do.”
Spartans forward Xavier Tillman said Michigan State tries to find consistency offensively by getting the ball to the player with the hot hand at all times. At different points on Wednesday, Tillman said, the Spartans were working to get the ball to Marcus Bingham Jr. or Malik Hall to have the best chance to score.
“Really it’s finding the hot hand and just going through that,” Tillman said.
Izzo knew he was sounding negative when he was asked to assess his first-place team at the midway point of Big Ten play and harped on its consistency after its biggest win of conference play. But as he looks through February and into March, he knows what can happen to a team that’s inconsistent.
“If we don’t get that consistency, it’s going to rear its ugly head,” Izzo said. | {
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Krize, která v současnosti probíhá a především ještě probíhat bude, je přitom „ideální“ dobou se ctí opustit všechny nesmyslné nápady, se kterými ministerstvo přišlo a trvalo na nich navzdory odborné kritice. U Účtenkovky to ministerstvo pochopilo rychle, na posledních dvou vlnách EET a prodloužení lhůty na vratky DPH ale nepochopitelně stále trvá a jen je milostivě navrhuje odložit o pár měsíců.
Čtěte více: Každá koruna se bude hodit. Účtenkovka skončí, oznámila Schillerová
Nezapomínejte na usnadnění restartu
Bohužel už je takřka jisté, že firmy a OSVČ nezasáhnou jen stávající mimořádná opatření, ale tvrdě na ně dopadne i ekonomický pokles, který bude následovat. Nyní podnikatelé především potřebují přímou finanční podporu a odpuštění odvodů a byrokracie. Vláda už schválila zavedení jakéhosi ošetřovného pro OSVČ a firmám bude proplácet mzdy zaměstnanců, kteří museli zůstat doma. Na mimořádném zasedání parlamentu (proběhne 24. března) by se navíc měly odsouhlasit novely, které OSVČ dočasně odpustí zálohy na pojistné. Všechna tato opatření rozhodně pomohou a jde o krok správným směrem.
Až krizový stav pomine (a asi všichni doufáme, že to bude co nejdříve), i další přímá podpora neuškodí, ale mnohem důležitější bude, aby stát neházel podnikatelům klacky pod nohy a nechal je ekonomiku znovu co nejrychleji nastartovat. Není samozřejmě jisté, jak dlouho zotavení potrvá, ale může jít až o roky. V době „zotavování“ a „restartu“ prostě musí mít podnikatelé co nejnižší administrativu a daně, klidně i za cenu zvýšení procenta daňových úniků.
Poslední vlny EET samozřejmě zrušit/odložit jdou
Každý soudný člověk by tak předpokládal, že všechny normy, které ještě nenabyly účinnosti a budou podnikatelům komplikovat život a zvyšovat jim byrokracii a náklady, spadnou na několik let pod stůl či úplně ze stolu zmizí. Jak ale ukazuje v posledních dnech ministerstvo financí, předpoklady se mohou od reality značně lišit. Ministerstvo totiž zcela nepochopitelně trvá na tom, aby odstartovaly poslední dvě vlny EET a aby se prodloužila lhůta na vratky DPH na 45 dnů. A aby toho nebylo málo, hájí to nesmyslnými argumenty.
Začněme posledními dvěma vlnami EET, které mají odstartovat v květnu. Novela již vyšla ve Sbírce minulý rok, ale účinnost paragrafů, které startují evidenci pro řemeslníky, lékaře (ano, i lékaře, které chce ministerstvo, asi jako projev vděku, v dalších měsících nutit pořídit pokladnu), účetní apod. je stanovena až v květnu. Místo toho, aby ministerstvo rychle připravilo jednoduchou novelu, že se EET pro poslední dvě vlny ruší nebo třeba aspoň odkládá na začátek roku 2022 a v rámci legislativní nouze ji během pár dnů prohnalo legislativním procesem, uvedlo, že to prostě nejde.
Případný odklad neumožňuje legislativa, uvedla ministryně financí Alena Schillerová a povýšila přísloví „kdo chce, hledá způsob, kdo nechce, hledá důvod“ na novou úroveň. Ministryně se totiž ani neobtěžovala hledat důvod, prostě řekla, že to nejde a tečka. Ministerstvo jen milostivě uvedlo, že tři měsíce nebude podnikatele za nedodržení povinností u EET pokutovat.
Jak může ve skutečnosti vypadat „nejde“, ukázala v posledních dnech ministryně práce a sociálních věcí Jana Maláčová, která rychle připravila několik novel, které bude parlament projednávat v úterý. Jde o novelu (oproti odkladu či zrušení EET značně rozsáhlou), která mění ošetřovné, či o novelu, která OSVČ na půl roku odpouští sociální pojištění. Také ministerstvo zdravotnictví rychle připravilo novelu zákona, která má ulevit OSVČ. Dočasně jim odpustí zálohy na pojistné, na rozdíl od sociálního pojištění ale budou muset zdravotní doplatit. Návrhy bude parlament projednávat ve stavu legislativní nouze a měly by nabýt účinnosti během několika příštích dní.
Návrh novely volně k dispozici
Na druhou stranu se dá pochopit, že zrovna paní ministryně financí toho má v poslední době hodně a musí například vítat letadla s dodávkou roušek a respirátorů. Proto se autor tohoto textu rozhodl ministerstvu financí pomoci a návrh na zrušení/odložení EET během pětiminutové prodlevy, než se mu vylouhoval ranní čaj, připravit.
Návrh novely zrušení/odložení EET pro poslední dvě vlny
Návrh na zrušení/odložení posledních vln EET by Podnikatel.cz on Scribd
Nejsem právník, takže pokud byl problém s tím, že ten samý den (1. května 2020) nabude účinnosti jak zavedení EET, tak zrušení/odklad, dá se zrušení/odklad posunout na 2. května 2020. Speciálně pro ministerstvo, kdyby tvrdilo, že to nejde – udělá se to tak, že číslici 1 v datu nahradíte číslicí 2. | {
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A former John Mueller protege has taken over the space at East Sixth and Pedernales streets formerly run by the Taylor native, as first reported by Daniel Vaughn at TMBBQ.com. Mikey Perez, who worked for Mueller for a couple of years, has opened M-Train BBQ, and is open Thursday-Monday from 10:30 a.m. until sold out.
Perez tells me he smokes �hot and fast� with oak, using a simple salt-and-pepper rub. His current menu includes pork ribs, pork shoulder, brisket, chicken, potato salad, chips, water and soda. The 29 year-old Chicago native grew up in the Austin area and graduated from Leander High School. His trailer is located on the back lot of Kellee�s Place, a bar opened by his grandfather and namesake, Madaleno Perez, about 25 years ago, and operated by his uncle, Joe Perez, for about the last 15 years.
The state closed John Mueller Meat Co. in August for failure to pay taxes.
�Mikey worked very hard for JMMC, and I have no doubt he will be successful,� Mueller told me via text. He added that he had no comment on his own future.
Related:
From 2015: Austin�s Barbecue All-Stars From 2014: The Best Barbecue in Austin From 2012: After years of battling personal demons, John Mueller is back and better than ever before
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U.S. stocks rallied Wednesday, with the Dow industrials jumping 257 points, led by a surge in financial, health-care and industrial stocks, as investors bet on the infrastructure spending policy promised by President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump’s acceptance speech early Wednesday mentioning Keynesian-style spending and sounding a touch more conciliatory than had been the case during his campaign appeared to reset investors’ expectations.
The 70-year-old real-estate developer pledged to supporters gathered in New York City that he will “be president for all Americans.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.57% gained as much as 316 points, briefly surpassing the all-time closing high set in August. The index closed 256.95 points, or 1.4%, higher at 18,589.69, its highest level since Aug. 18. Pfizer Inc. PFE, -0.05% and Caterpillar Inc CAT, -1.75% led the gains, rallying more than 7%.
The S&P 500 index SPX, -1.86% ended up 23.70 points, or 1.1%, at 2,163.26, as big gains in health care, financials and industrials more than offset sharp losses in defensive sectors such as utilities and consumer staples. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF IBB, -0.79% was one of the clearest winners, surging 13%.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -2.50% advanced 57.58 points, or 1.1%, to 5,251.07. Technology stocks in general were weaker, with uncertainty of trade policies hanging over global giants like Apple Inc. AAPL, -3.69% .
See:Trump trade policies could cost millions of U.S. jobs and hurt companies like UPS
The Russell 2000 index US:RUT outperformed the large-cap index, soaring 3.1% to 1,231.20 on Wednesday, to stretch the small-cap-stocks tracker’s win streak to four sessions.
Read:Trump victory divides stock market into winners and losers
Some analysts said the positive reaction in markets reflects the notion that the election results haven't changed the fundamentals of the economy.
“Not much changes short-term except emotions and rhetoric. So dips are opportunities because fundamentals are positive and if Trump plans to spend more, the economy and stocks will move higher next year too. Stocks are very resilient,” said Kate Warne, investment strategist at Edward Jones.
Read: Trump says he will honor ‘forgotten men and women’ as president
The rally on Wall Street was in contrast to sharp losses seen in the futures market before the market opened, as it became apparent that the Republican contender was close to pulling off a major upset in the U.S. presidential contest.
Dow futures plunged as much as 800 points late Tuesday and early Wednesday as Trump claimed victories in several key battleground states, while S&P 500 futures hit a trading limit, down 5%, the biggest futures decline allowed under CME Group rules.
Read: Trump victory a second wake-up call for complacent investors
As calm returned to Wall Street, implied volatility on the S&P 500, as measured by CBOE Volatility Index, VIX, +6.10% fell 20% to 15.02, after spiking well above 20 premarket.
The ICE U.S. Dollar index DXY, +0.32% , a measure of the dollar’s performance against a basket of six rivals, rose 0.7% to 98.545.
Marco Rubio is re-elected to Senate in Florida
Individual stocks: Financials surged thanks to a jump in interest rates to their highest levels since January. Shares of Bank of America Corp BAC, -1.60% surged 5.7%, Wells Fargo & Co. WFC, -2.32% gained 5.4% while J.P. Morgan Chase JPM, -1.11% rallied 4.5%. Navient Corp NAVI, -2.54% shot up 17% and was the top gainer on the S&P 500.
Biotechnology and pharmaceutical stocks also benefited. Pfizer Inc. PFE, -0.05% jumped 7.1%, while Celgene Corp US:CELG surged 11%.
Solar stocks sold off as investors contemplated how a Trump presidency would impact the renewable energy sector. The Guggenheim Solar ETF TAN, +1.93% tumbled 5.6%. First Solar, Inc. FSLR, +1.34% was down 4.2%.
Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. FCX, -5.58% was up 8.1% as prices of copper hit 52-week highs.
Other markets:Asian stocks fell sharply, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 NIK, -0.05% registering a 5.4% drop and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index HSI, +0.10% sliding 2.4%.
In Europe, the U.K.’s FTSE 100 UKX, +1.19% finished 1% higher, while the Stoxx Europe 600 index SXXP, +0.55% gained 1.5%.
Gold futures US:GCZ6 gave back most of their early gains to trade 0.1% higher at $1,276.3 an ounce. Treasury yields TMUBMUSD10Y, 0.680% rose 20 basis points to 10-month highs above 2%. | {
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Here at Sensible Investing, we’re always emphasising the importance of stock market history, and few people understand this subject better than Elroy Dimson. As well as being Emeritus Professor of Finance at London Business School and Visiting Professor at Cambridge Judge Business School, he also chairs the Strategy Council for the Norwegian Government Pension Scheme and co-directs the Endowment Institute at Yale School of Management. But Professor Dimson is possibly best known for editing the Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook, which contains data spanning 114 years of history across 25 countries.
SITV: In a general sense, how can investors learn from market history?
Elroy Dimson: One of the problems investors face is that they learn too much from recent experience. So, at the end of the 1990s, investors knew that shares would always go up. By the end of the 2000s they knew that shares are a bad idea. People learn too much from the last 10 or 20 years they’ve gone through. What the historian can do is to enable them to learn from the critical decade that their parents had, or their grandparents had, or great-grandparents. There’s a lot to learn from looking at the long-term to avoid being influenced by the very recent past.
SITV: It does seem that since, say, the Asian crash in 1997, we’ve had to contend with higher-than-average volatility. Is that actually true?
Elroy Dimson: We have seen more than our fair share of crashes in recent memory. But is the market any more uncertain than it ever was before? The jury is out on that. One way we can look at the volatility is to study the VIX Index, sometimes known as the Fear and Greed Index, which measures how volatile US securities are. The current level of the VIX is below the long-term average. The prices that investors are setting today do not anticipate a level of volatility that’s unusually high. If anything, it’s lower.
SITV: All investors would do things differently with the benefit of hindsight. But trying to time the market is never easy, is it?
Elroy Dimson: Any investor who has the choice should always go for having very good foresight, because hindsight is misleading! When we look back in time, we can see when shares looked expensive and we should have got out, and when shares looked cheap and we should have got in. But at any particular point in the past, we only have data that’s available at that time, and that makes it very much more difficult to determine when’s a good time to invest. So the mantra we should share is the importance of time in the market rather than timing the market. Time in the market enables you to take a long-term perspective and to reap rewards if you’re in there long enough. Timing the market means you may avoid the bad times, but you may get out of an asset class just when it’s about to do well.
SITV: What does history tell us about the importance of diversification?
Elroy Dimson: Not only can companies lose all or much of their value, but sometimes even complete markets can do that. Spreading your money across different geographies and different asset classes reduces the extremes that you can suffer. The price you’ll pay for that, of course, is that you won’t have the extremes on the upside. You’ll get an average return - but an average return that reduces the chance of financial catastrophe. It is true that the correlations between markets during the credit crunch were higher than in the crises we saw in earlier times. The benefits of diversification are not as great as they were, but they’re still there for the taking, and they’re well worth taking advantage of.
SITV: Why do market bubbles keep recurring?
Elroy Dimson: What we teach our students in their very first finance class is that the value of an investment is equal to the prospective dividend that we’re going to get from our investment, divided by the difference between the return that we expect and the growth rate of those dividends. In a period of investor enthusiasm, risks seem low, and so we don’t require a very large return; and we’re also expecting very large growth rates. So at times when the market has gone up - say, at the end of the 1990s - investors are taking prospective dividends and they’re discounting those at a gap between a required rate of return that’s low and a growth rate’s that large, and that’s quite fragile. The more confident people feel about the future, the more a tiny nudge in perceived risk or prospective growth rates can seriously knock it down. That’s the most dangerous time. And at times when people are feeling gloomy, after a bubble has burst, it’s less fragile.
SITV: Generally speaking, does history tell us that investing in equities is a good idea?
Elroy Dimson: It tells you that although over certain periods you can fail to be rewarded for investing in equities, over the very long term equities have given a return of 4% over what you would have got from holding cash and about 3% above what you would have got from government bonds. That’s worth having. Compound interest has a big impact. So if you’re an investor for the long term, small periods of superior performance can add up. And in today’s world, where real interest rates are so low, the long-term performance of a portfolio will be determined by the reward one receives from exposure to equity-type risk. Given today’s more modest expectations of a reward for stock market risk, paying large amounts by way of fees is something that one should do with great caution. I would not advise that people should only ever go passive, but I would always argue that you should look at the hidden and explicit costs involved, and identify how much of the expected reward is actually being spent on fees, commissions and other drags on eventual performance.
SITV: Finally, what do you think is the best sort of investment?
Elroy Dimson: One of the conclusions one reaches nowadays, when rewards are so difficult to find, is that one has to chase after the safest investment there is. I would say this, wouldn’t I? But education is a safe investment. So if I’ve learned anything it’s that you should invest in an education for oneself and one’s family before investing in the hope of becoming just financially rich.
Professor Dimson is one of the main contributors to our highly-acclaimed video series Stock Market History: A Crash Course for investors. The series is in eight parts, and if you haven’t watched it yet, please do. We’d be very interested to receive your comments and opinions. | {
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The Earth is quickly heading for the "point of no return" unless we act immediately, climate scientists have warned.
If governments don't act decisively on global warming before 2035, it will be very unlikely that we will be able to limit global warming to under two degrees, according to a major new study. If warming reaches over that point, it is likely to trigger climate catastrophe that could make much of the world unliveable.
The researchers also say that the deadline to stop global warming reaching 1.5C has already passed, unless we commit to radical action now. They hope that the strict deadline can become an important moment to commit to action on the climate.
Lisa Murray's climate change photography Show all 12 1 /12 Lisa Murray's climate change photography Lisa Murray's climate change photography Dinka cattle herders starting their migration in South Sudan Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography A Dinka woman fetches water in South Sudan Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Veronica in South Sudan preparing tea outside her home, recently ravaged by heavy flooding Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Children playing in Vietnam. When it floods, transport to and from school is a major challenge Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Sugeng, a fish and crab farmer from Indonesia who suffers financially every time the area floods Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Tan, a vegetable farmer, learning new methods through Oxfam in Vietnam Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Maluk, a 19-year-old from Tonj South, South Sudan Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Normally this farmer in South Sudan would be harvesting sorghum, but rains are late so the hunger season continues Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Herders bringing home their cattle in Afar, Ethiopia Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Farmers harvesting chilli in Ethiopia Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography A woman in Tigray, Ethiopia, scares birds away from her crops with a slingshot Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Irula tribe woman in Tamil Nadu Lisa Murray
Without that action, Earth will fall past the point of no return and it will be impossible to stop global warming, they warn. And even those dramatic projects might be overly optimistic, they note.
"In our study we show that there are strict deadlines for taking climate action," says Henk Dijkstra, a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and one of the study authors. "We conclude that very little time is left before the Paris targets [to limit global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C] become infeasible even given drastic emission reduction strategies."
All of the work depends on the world moving towards renewable energy sources in the coming years. To work out the deadline, researchers took available climate models and tried to understand how fast that process would need to happen to stem the disastrous effects that a 2C rise might have, calculating that we would have to begin meaningfully embracing renewable energy before 2035.
And the assumptions used to do that could be too optimistic, they noted. | {
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(CNN) They came, they saw and they failed to convince. In short order, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson beat a path to Washington but left empty-handed.
The last time Europe and the US were this far apart was on the eve of the Iraqi invasion in 2003; even then the Brits went along with Operation Enduring Freedom
This time, the consequences seem more dangerous and far-reaching. We don't yet know whether Iran will remain in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, but President Trump's promise that the US would impose "the highest level of economic sanctions" suggests the administration is intent on punitive action rather than a graduated approach that leaves the door open for compromise.
And Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said shortly after Trump's announcement that he had ordered the country's "atomic industry organization to be fully prepared for subsequent measures if needed so that in case of need we will start our industrial enrichment without limitations."
Under the terms of the JCPOA, renewed US sanctions would start to bite over several months as the US Treasury develops guidance for companies and banks. But there's no roadmap for opting out; expect a tide of FAQs on what will be a complex process.
The alliance
Among Washington's European allies, wariness of the Trump administration has evolved into exasperation bordering on mistrust. It's not just about Iran: there's climate change, steel and aluminum tariffs and the sheer unpredictability of US policy.
JUST WATCHED Rouhani: Trump is not loyal to commitments Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Rouhani: Trump is not loyal to commitments 01:12
France's President Macron invested heavily in his relationship with Donald Trump; he's been snubbed. British Prime Minister Theresa May is desperate to keep the US President away from London when he visits this summer to defuse mass protests. German Chancellor Merkel's attitude has often verged on disbelief.
Trump's reimposition of sanctions amounts to a major rebuke to US allies.
Earlier this week, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson wrote of the JCPOA: "Now that these handcuffs are in place, I see no possible advantage in casting them aside."
The US has now discarded its allies' advice and the EU has neither the incentive nor more significantly the capability to wring concessions out of Iran: on its ballistic missiles, its regional expansionism or on a longer-term deal to reinforce JCPOA. As one European diplomat told CNN: "We have no leverage any more."
The Europeans may however try to protect growing commercial interests in Iran from what they regard as the unfair impact of US sanctions on European business. Italy and France have supported trade and investment in Iran this year through credit guarantees. But the US sanctions passed by Congress in 2012 -- and likely to be the first reintroduced -- demand other countries reduce Iranian oil imports or risk penalties.
The worst-case scenario would see the EU reintroduce what's called the blocking mechanism first devised in 1996 when Congress imposed sanctions on all firms, including non-US firms, if they were doing business with Libya or Iran. The blocking mechanism made it illegal for any European firm to abide by those sanctions.
But there is no ironclad protection against the reach of the US in the international financial system. Even the threat of renewed US sanctions has deterred some European businesses from investing in Iran.
Russia and China
Trump's decision will be greeted with glee in the Kremlin. Any time Europe and the US are "decoupled" it's a win for Russian foreign policy. Moscow will likely paint the US as an unreliable actor, while its more assertive policy in the Middle East -- from Turkey via Syria to Libya -- may also benefit from American abstention.
China wants the JCPOA to survive, but may also see a silver lining in the US decision. It already invests heavily in the Iranian energy and construction industries. The China National Petroleum Corporation has a 30% stake in the development of the huge South Pars oil and gas field in Iran. If European competitors like Total and Siemens are scared off by the specter of US sanctions, so much the better for Chinese companies.
Beijing also sees Iran as a vital notch in its Belt and Road project to spread Chinese influence and commerce westwards. State-owned investment arm CITIC Group has a $10 billion credit line and China Development Bank is considering another of $15 billion.
The Iranian response
Rouhani sold JCPOA to the Iranian people on the pledge that their country would be open to the world again, that investment and trade would flow. He also sold it to the skeptical Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and overcame the hostility of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
To many Iranians, the results have been disappointing. The Iranian riyal has plummeted and unemployment is in double digits.
Now the balance inside Iran has changed. Hardliners are declaring that the US was never to be trusted. The leader of Friday prayers in Tehran, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, said on Tuesday that Khameini's prediction "about JCPOA was correct" -- that it "would eventually be destroyed."
Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Khamenei has said that "if the United States withdraws from the nuclear deal, then we will not stay in it."
That's at odds with Rouhani's pledge on Monday that "If we can get what we want from a deal without America, then Iran will continue to remain committed to the deal."
A battle royal is shaping up in Tehran's corridors of power. Some Iranian officials have even suggested that Iran could withdraw altogether from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ending inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Once again, the world would be left to guess Iranian intentions even as it accelerates its ballistic-missile program.
Iran stopped producing 20% enriched uranium as part of the 2015 agreement, but the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, claims Iran can now enrich uranium to a higher level than it could before the deal. Experts believe that, should it choose to resume the enrichment of uranium, Iran could build a bomb within about a year.
Defeat for Iran's moderates would carry dangers even if the broader Middle East was at peace. But in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, the hardliners of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps will feel emboldened, not deterred. Theirs' is an ideological war.
The collapse of the deal could make Syria a proxy battlefield between Israel and the Iranian militia embedded there. The signs are already present. On Monday, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz warned: "If Assad allows Iran to turn Syria into a forward operating base against us, to attack us from Syrian soil, he should know that will spell his end." And on Tuesday, the Israeli military ordered the opening of civilian shelters after detecting what it called "irregular activity" among Iranian forces in Syria.
Iran could also leverage its support of Shia militia in Iraq to undermine any efforts by the next government (elections are on May 12) to sustain relations with the US. Iranian and Iraqi militia already in Syria could expand attacks against the Syrian Democratic Forces and the US troops who support them.
These are all worst-case scenarios, but they are far from inconceivable.
US leadership
On a visit to Europe in 2009, President Barack Obama was asked whether he believed in 'American exceptionalism.'
"I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships," he replied. Nowadays, the term seems to mean 'except for America' on a broad range of issues.
US leadership cannot be replaced on the global stage -- witness North Korea -- but a series of makeshift alternatives are coming into view.
In the case of the nuclear agreement with Iran, Europe finds itself the spurned partner in search of a role, suddenly on the same side as Russia and China. Iran will look to Asia -- China, India, South Korea -- for investment and trade. And it will look to Russia for energy cooperation. The US, enthusiastically backed by Israel and Saudi Arabia (which would incidentally benefit from curtailed Iranian oil exports), might threaten Iran with much worse than sanctions if it is perceived as accelerating its nuclear program.
Further afield, what of the prospects for a deal between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un? Will Kim decide that to satisfy this administration he will have to make verifiable and permanent concessions leading to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula? Or will the Iranian example deter him from negotiating a nuclear deal -- because an unreliable America would exploit his lack of a "nuclear shield"?
To resurrect that old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." | {
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As war continues to ravage Yemen, at least 16 million people—nearly two-thirds of the country's population—are now without access to clean water, a humanitarian crisis that threatens to escalate, Oxfam warned on Monday.
According to a statement released by the international aid group, "People are being forced to drink unsafe water as a result of the disintegration of local water systems, bringing the real risk of life-threatening illnesses, such as malaria, cholera, and diarrhea."
"Yemen's hospitals are in no condition to adequately cope with an outbreak of a water-borne disease," the organization stated.
In addition, the price of water that is trucked in from other areas has tripled, making it an unfeasible alternative for most Yemenis. Prior to the airstrike campaign, which began March 26, 2015, trucked water cost $9 in the western governorate of Al Hudaydah. It now costs $36.
Al Hudaydah and nearby Hajjah have seen 40 percent of their water systems shut down.
Roughly 13 million people in Yemen were already without access to clean water before the war began, with estimates from previous years warning that the capital city of Sanaa could be without "economically viable water supplies" by 2017.
That means it has taken only seven weeks of bombings, ground fighting, and blocking of humanitarian aid to cut off water access for an additional three million people.
"If the fighting, the fuel shortages, the lack of medical supplies, lack of sleep due to bombing, and the spiraling prices were not enough, now nearly two thirds of Yemenis are at risk of being without clean water or sanitation services."
—Grace Ommer, Yemen Oxfam
Without a ceasefire between Houthi factions and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition—which includes the U.S., Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, and Morocco—the crisis is unlikely to let up, and it will be civilians who pay the price, Oxfam warned.
"If the fighting, the fuel shortages, the lack of medical supplies, lack of sleep due to bombing, and the spiraling prices were not enough, now nearly two thirds of Yemenis are at risk of being without clean water or sanitation services," said Grace Ommer, country director for Yemen Oxfam.
She added: "This is equivalent to the populations of Berlin, London, Paris and Rome combined, all rotting under heaps of garbage in the streets, broken sewage pipes and without clean water for the seventh consecutive week."
Seven weeks of bombing by the coalition has not only caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure in Yemen, it has displaced about half a million people—in turn compounding the growing water crisis, Oxfam said in a media briefing (pdf) last week.
On Monday, Ommer repeated Oxfam's plea to end the military assault and give Yemenis a chance to recover from the crisis.
"Yemen needs an urgent ceasefire, and the opening of trade routes so vital supplies can enter the country to allow for the rebuilding and revamping of the water infrastructure," Ommer said. "Anything short of this will usher a health disaster to add to the pile of miseries that Yemenis are facing."
"Yemenis have the right to a better life, but they face an increasing risk of life threatening illness and disease," Oxfam stated on Monday. "This is a direct infringement of their right to health and wellbeing, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." | {
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The new census data released on Tuesday should infuriate young Australians because it shows definitively how the housing market is being rigged against them.
It dispels for good the myth that a shortage of dwellings is what’s causing house prices to rocket beyond their reach.
The key myth-busting statistic is the average number of people per dwelling, which has not budged an inch in the five years since the last census. It’s staying at 2.6 which is where it was back in 2000 well before the house price boom began.
Breaking down that number, the census shows the number of occupied dwellings increased by 6.8 per cent over five years, which is less than population growth over the same period: 8.8 per cent.
However, the number of unoccupied dwellings grew at 11.3 per cent over five years. That equates to 105,000 more empty dwellings since 2011.
Those numbers explain the apparent paradox of ‘people per dwelling’ remaining static, while renters and home buyers experience a tightening market.
And it is getting tighter, as shown by the rental data. Median rents increased by 17.5 per cent over the period, outstripping average income growth of 13.7 per cent over the same period.
That pushed more people into ‘rental stress’, defined as requiring them to spend more than 30 per cent of their disposable income on rent. In 2011 the proportion was 10.4 per cent, but that has now risen to 11.5 per cent.
Home rage
So the dwellings are there, but either not on the market or increasingly unaffordable if they are.
What’s maddening about those two problems is that they are caused by politicians, not ‘the market’ as the pollies always try to pretend.
There are two categories of market participants that have led to this situation.
One is overseas property investors, dominated by buyers from mainland China. They are permitted to buy only new dwellings – a rule that is supposed to stimulate housing supply and put downward pressure on prices.
In reality, there are two major exemptions. They can buy homes for their adult children to live in during periods of study in Australia, and, more recently, to house children as young as six who enrol in Australian primary schools.
But the investors who are leaving properties vacant aren’t interested in accessing education. They buy off-the-plan apartments as a store of wealth, much like giant gold bars.
If China suffers an economic or geopolitical collapse, which many commentators think likely, some of their fortune will be sitting in high-rise towers in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane.
The second class of market participants operating in a decidedly non-free-market way are local investors seeking to minimise tax through negative gearing and profit from the 50 per cent discount that applies to any capital gains they make.
Those investors are subsidised by other taxpayers to outbid would-be owner-occupiers.
Over time, the toxic combination of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount have returned tens of billions of dollars to generally older, wealthier Australians, thereby increasing the tax bills of younger Australians.
Oh yes, and pushing property prices way out of reach.
That is turning younger Australians into a generation of renters. Tuesday’s census figures confirm this ongoing trend, with the percentage of Australians renting rising from 29.6 to 31 per cent since 2011.
Put together, these numbers are absurd, inequitable, and a drag on the economy because of the ever-increasing proportion of wages being handed by young Australia to the bank-share-owning and cash-deposit-holding older Australians.
If young Australians weren’t furious before the census data came out, they should be now. | {
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Większość Was raczej rzadko odczuwa dumę z tego, że jest Polką/Polakiem lub nie czuje dumy (52 proc. raczej rzadko, 33 proc. Was praktycznie się to nie zdarza). Częściej natomiast odczuwacie wstyd (34 proc. bardzo często, 44 proc. dość często).
Starsi spośród Was częściej są dumni z osiągnięć transformacji po ’89 (68 proc., a wśród młodszych 46 proc.), z wielkich Polaków (42 proc., a wśród młodszych 28 proc.), a młodsi częściej ogólnie z wyjątkowej historii kraju (22 proc., a wśród starszych 10 proc.). | {
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For Birdman, there is light at the end of the tunnel in his relationship with Lil Wayne and he says he is hopeful for reconciliation.
In an interview with Cari Champion on her Be Honest ESPN podcast, the Cash Money mogul explains his side of the story.
“I’ma heal that,” Birdman says. “Still my son. I don’t like how a lot of this shit went down. Definitely don’t like a lot of the shit he has said. But at the end of the day, I would never in my life say nothing negative about him.”
Lil Wayne has publicly blasted his father figure at recent concerts. He first made the strained relationship known on Twitter back in 2014, saying that he wanted off Cash Money. He filed a $51 million lawsuit against the label, claiming that they were holding Tha Carter V.
Even though there were glimpses of reconciliation with both appearing on Mannie Fresh’s “Hate” along with Juvenile. They were even spotted partying together over New Year’s. But the reunion was short-lived as Lil Wayne halted settlement talks in the lawsuit back in May.
But, according to Birdman, both sides are still talking.
“Lot of shit going on and we definitely talking as far as his end and my end,” he says. ‘That’s a goal for me in this game. I said I want to finish the game what I started and Wayne’s somebody that I really would like to finish the game with. Even if we finish with respeck of him still being my son. That means more to me than the money and the music. I don’t give a fuck about none of that. I care more about our relationship and that’s what I wanna heal.”
Listen to Birdman speak about reconciling with Lil Wayne below: | {
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Passive Love Tap Miss Fortune deals bonus physical damage whenever she basic attacks a new target.
Q Double Up Miss Fortune fires a bullet at an enemy, damaging them and a target behind them. Both strikes can also apply Love Tap.
W Strut Miss Fortune passively gains Movement Speed when not attacked. This ability can be activated to grant bonus Attack Speed for a short duration. While it's on cooldown, Love Taps reduce the remaining cooldown of Strut.
E Make It Rain Miss Fortune reveals an area with a flurry of bullets, dealing waves of damage to opponents and slowing them. | {
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Brasília
Um depoimento dado à Polícia Federal e uma planilha apreendida em uma gráfica sugerem que dinheiro do esquema de candidatas laranjas do PSL em Minas Gerais foi desviado para abastecer, por meio de caixa dois, as campanhas do presidente Jair Bolsonaro e do ministro do Turismo, Marcelo Álvaro Antônio, ambos filiados ao partido.
Haissander Souza de Paula, assessor parlamentar de Álvaro Antônio à época e coordenador de sua campanha a deputado federal no Vale do Rio Doce (MG), disse em seu depoimento à PF que "acha que parte dos valores depositados para as campanhas femininas, na verdade, foi usada para pagar material de campanha de Marcelo Álvaro Antônio e de Jair Bolsonaro".
Em uma planilha, nomeada como "MarceloAlvaro.xlsx", há referência ao fornecimento de material eleitoral para a campanha de Bolsonaro com a expressão "out", o que significa, na compreensão de investigadores, pagamento "por fora".
O presidente Jair Bolsonaro e o ministro do Turismo, Marcelo Alvaro Antonio - Pedro Ladeira/Folhapress
A Folha revelou, em reportagens publicadas desde o início de fevereiro, a existência de um esquema de desvio de verbas públicas de campanha do PSL em 2018, que destinou para fins diversos recursos que, por lei, deveriam ser aplicados em candidaturas femininas do partido.
Álvaro Antônio, deputado federal mais votado em Minas Gerais, foi coordenador no estado da campanha presidencial de Bolsonaro.
O ministro foi indiciado pela Polícia Federal e denunciado pelo Ministério Público de Minas Gerais na última sexta (4) sob acusação dos crimes de falsidade ideológica eleitoral, apropriação indébita de recurso eleitoral e associação criminosa —com pena de cinco, seis e três anos de cadeia, respectivamente. Ele nega irregularidades.
Haissander foi preso por cinco dias no final de junho, ao lado de outros dois investigados —entre eles um atual assessor de Álvaro Antônio no Turismo—, e jamais havia reconhecido, até então, a existência de fraude no uso das verbas públicas do PSL durante a campanha de 2018.
No depoimento em que aponta suspeitas de caixa dois —que é a movimentação de dinheiro de campanha sem declaração à Justiça— na campanha de Álvaro Antônio e de Jair Bolsonaro, Haissander afirma ainda que "com certeza Lilian não gastou os R$ 65 mil recebidos".
A declaração se refere a Lilian Bernardino, uma das quatro candidatas laranjas reveladas pela Folha. As mulheres, apesar de figurarem no topo das que nacionalmente mais receberam verba pública do PSL, não apresentaram sinais evidentes de que tenham realizado campanha.
As quatro, juntas, receberam um total de R$ 279 mil de verba pública do partido e alcançaram apenas 2.074 votos. Parte desse dinheiro foi parar em empresas ligadas ao gabinete do hoje ministro.
Lilian, formalmente, disputou uma vaga na Assembleia Legislativa de Minas, mas, apesar de haver registro de repasse de R$ 65 mil em recursos públicos do PSL para ela, obteve apenas 196 votos.
O depoimento de Haissander, que integra os autos da investigação, foi dado nove horas depois de ele ser preso, no dia 27 de junho. A demora ocorreu devido à espera por um advogado, que não chegou a tempo.
No interrogatório de custódia, o ex-assessor afirmou que não confirmava as declarações que havia dado anteriormente.
A defesa tentou invalidar o primeiro depoimento, mas a Justiça negou o pedido, argumentando que "todas as garantias constitucionais e legais restaram asseguradas, dentre elas a prévia ciência de permanecer em silêncio".
Álvaro Antônio, Haissander, Mateus Von Rondon (assessor especial do ministério), um ex-assessor, dois representantes de gráficas, um deputado estadual do PSL e as quatro candidatas foram denunciados na sexta.
Cabe agora à Justiça decidir se aceita ou se rejeita a denúncia do Ministério Público.
A investigação da PF, que reúne diversos depoimentos, buscas nas gráficas que teriam produzido os materiais, entre outros elementos, aponta indícios de que o dinheiro formalmente declarado para as quatro candidatas foi parar em outras candidaturas, como a de Álvaro Antônio.
Planilha
Uma das principais provas colhidas na investigação é a planilha apreendida na empresa Viu Mídia, que, segundo as informações dadas pelos candidatos e partidos à Justiça Eleitoral, prestou serviços a duas das candidatas laranjas, ao PSL e, em menor volume, ao hoje ministro do Turismo.
A planilha lista pagamentos recebidos por serviços eleitorais em uma coluna intitulada "NF" —no entendimento da polícia se referindo a Nota Fiscal— e em outra coluna com o título "out", se referindo, também na compreensão da PF e do Ministério Público, a pagamento "por fora".
Nessa planilha, há referência ao fornecimento de 2.000 unidades de material eleitoral (laminado) para a campanha de Bolsonaro, sendo R$ 4.200 "out" e R$ 1.550 com "NF".
No entanto, não há registro, na prestação de contas entregue por Bolsonaro à Justiça Eleitoral de gastos com a empresa Viu Mídia.
Na mesma planilha há registro de fornecimento de 1.400 laminados para a campanha de Álvaro Antônio, sendo que o pagamento teria sido feito R$ 3.360 por fora e apenas R$ 740 com nota fiscal.
Na prestação de contas de Álvaro Antônio à Justiça, há registro de gasto de R$ 280 com a Viu Mídia.
Em outra linha do documento, há menção a 2.000 adesivos de material conjunto, entre o ministro e Bolsonaro, com pagamento de R$ 1.000 por "NF" e R$ 4.000 "out".
"Essa análise [da planilha] demonstra indícios de que os valores pagos para produção de material gráfico para Naftali e Camila [duas das candidatas laranjas] foram utilizados para a produção de material gráfico para outros candidatos do PSL", afirma o relatório da Polícia Federal, em posse do Ministério Público de Minas Gerais.
Após a publicação das primeiras reportagens da Folha, outras candidatas do PSL passaram a acusar publicamente Álvaro Antônio de patrocinar o esquema, entre elas a deputada federal eleita Alê Silva (PSL-MG), que disse ter recebido relatos de ameaça de morte vinda do ministro.
Dezenas de pessoas foram ouvidas pelos investigadores, incluindo um contador do partido, que afirmou ter cuidado da parte contábil da prestação de contas das candidatas investigadas a pedido de um irmão de Álvaro Antônio, Ricardo Teixeira.
Apesar de não aparecer na prestação de contas do ministro, seu irmão também é apontado no depoimento de Haissander como o responsável por toda a parte financeira da campanha.
Além de Minas, a Folha revelou a existência do esquema de laranjas também em Pernambuco, terra do presidente nacional da legenda de Bolsonaro, o deputado federal Luciano Bivar.
A repercussão do caso resultou na demissão do coordenador da campanha de Bolsonaro, Gustavo Bebianno, da Secretaria-Geral da Presidência. Ele presidiu o PSL nacionalmente em 2018.
Na época, em fevereiro, ele negou em entrevista que o caso das laranjas do PSL tivesse desencadeado uma crise entre ele e Bolsonaro.
Bebianno foi desmentido publicamente pelo presidente e por um de seus filhos, o vereador Carlos, e acabou demitido dias depois.
O ex-coordenador da campanha de Bolsonaro diz que jamais teve contato com as candidatas laranjas e que os repasses do partido a elas, tanto em Minas quanto em Pernambuco, foram de responsabilidade dos diretórios do PSL nos respectivos estados, versão corroborada posteriormente por Bivar e Álvaro Antônio.
No último dia 17, o TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral) decidiu que fraude à cota de gênero nas eleições leva à cassação de toda a chapa eleita.
A lei determina que as coligações devem ter ao menos 30% de candidatas mulheres e também que os partidos devem destinar ao menos 30% dos recursos públicos para as candidaturas femininas.
O julgamento do TSE, o primeiro na corte a tratar da burla à cota de gênero, foi sobre um caso específico do interior do Piauí, mas pode ser adotado pelo tribunal nos casos semelhantes.
Defesa de Álvaro Antônio afirma que não há ato irregular
A defesa de Marcelo Álvaro Antônio, por meio de nota, afirma que a investigação das candidaturas laranjas do PSL não apontou nenhum ato irregular do ministro.
"Não concordamos com os artifícios da teoria do domínio do fato, uma vez que, em matéria de direito penal, presumir conduta é um artifício e não se compatibiliza com diversos princípios constitucionais, como o da presunção de inocência, da legalidade e da intranscendência da pena."
Domínio de fato é a tese segundo a qual o ocupante de cargo mais alto de um esquema nem sempre atua diretamente nas fraudes, mas tem conhecimento sobre elas.
Segundo o advogado Willer Tomaz, defensor do ministro, a jurisprudência do STF exige, para aceitação da tese de domínio do fato, que sejam apontados indícios convergentes idôneos, "ou seja, é necessário que o denunciado não só tenha tido conhecimento do crime como também tenha agido ou se omitido finalisticamente a fim de que o crime fosse cometido".
Ainda de acordo com a defesa, embora o ministro tenha ocupado a posição de direção do partido, ele não "exerceu qualquer ato relacionado ao objeto das apurações".
"E apesar de ter sido profundamente investigado durante esses oito meses de inquérito instaurado não há um depoimento ou prova sequer que demonstre qualquer ilícito imputável ao ministro."
A nota acrescenta ainda que "se há alguma conduta ilícita, somente quem a cometeu deve ser responsabilizado".
"A denúncia pode ter as todas razões, menos jurídicas. É manifestamente inepta e carece de justa causa com relação ao ministro Marcelo Álvaro Antônio, razão pela qual a defesa acredita que o Judiciário irá apreciar de maneira isenta e rejeitá-la", conclui o advogado do ministro.
Procurada pela reportagem, a assessoria de imprensa do Palácio do Planalto afirmou que não comentaria. Haissander Souza de Paula, ex-assessor parlamentar de Álvaro Antônio, e a empresa Viu Mídia não foram localizados.
Entenda o caixa dois
Quando um candidato omite da sua prestação de contas à Justiça Eleitoral alguma verba que tenha empregado em sua campanha, trata-se de caixa dois. É um crime eleitoral, previsto no Código Eleitoral, cuja pena pode chegar a cinco anos de prisão
Gastos de campanha declarados à Justiça
R$ 2,46 milhões
foi quanto declarou Jair Bolsonaro
R$ 506 mil
foi quanto declarou Marcelo Álvaro Antônio
Entenda o esquema dos laranjas do PSL-MG
Qual a origem da suspeita sobre o esquema? A Folha revelou, em 4 de fevereiro, que o atual ministro do Turismo, Marcelo Álvaro Antônio (PSL), deputado federal mais votado em Minas Gerais, patrocinou um esquema de quatro candidaturas de laranjas no estado, abastecidas com verba pública do PSL
Como funcionou o esquema? Álvaro Antônio era presidente do PSL em Minas e tinha o poder de decidir quais candidaturas seriam lançadas. As quatro candidatas laranjas receberam R$ 279 mil da verba pública de campanha da legenda, ficando entre as 20 que mais receberam recursos do partido no país inteiro. Parte desse montante foi destinado a empresas de assessores, parentes ou sócios de assessores do ministro
Quais as evidências de que as candidaturas eram de laranjas? Não há sinais de que elas tenham feito campanha efetiva durante a eleição. Juntas, somaram apenas cerca de 2.000 votos, apesar do valor expressivo de recursos recebidos. Em buscas realizadas pela Polícia Federal em Minas Gerais no final de abril, os policiais não encontraram nas gráficas citadas nas prestações de contas das mulheres nenhum documento que indicasse que as empresas de fato prestaram os serviços declarados à Justiça Eleitoral
Se a verba não foi gasta com a campanha das mulheres, como os recursos foram gastos? Um ex-assessor de Álvaro Antônio, Haissander Souza de Paula, afirmou em depoimento acreditar que parte dos R$ 279 mil declarados como gastos das candidatas laranjas foi utilizado, na verdade, pelas campanhas de Álvaro Antônio e Jair Bolsonaro. A PF também apreendeu uma planilha que indica pagamentos por fora a uma gráfica pela impressão de material de campanha do ministro e do presidente
O esquema envolve caixa dois? O caixa dois ocorre quando um candidato emprega recursos em sua campanha e não declara os gastos em sua prestação de contas à Justiça Eleitoral. Álvaro Antônio e Jair Bolsonaro podem responder por caixa dois se ficar comprovado que utilizaram verba das candidatas mulheres em suas campanhas sem declarar à Justiça
Quais acusações pesam sobre o ministro? Álvaro Antônio foi indiciado pela Polícia Federal e denunciado pelo Ministério Público de Minas Gerais sob acusação dos crimes de falsidade ideológica eleitoral, apropriação indébita de recurso eleitoral e associação criminosa —com pena de cinco, seis e três anos de cadeia, respectivamente
O que é a cota de gênero? A atual legislação exige que 30% das candidaturas sejam do sexo feminino e que 30% do fundo eleitoral sejam destinados a candidatas mulheres
O que diz Marcelo Álvaro Antônio? O ministro afirma que “a distribuição do fundo partidário do PSL de Minas Gerais cumpriu rigorosamente o que determina a lei” e que “refuta veementemente a suposição com base em premissas falsas de que houve simulação de campanha com laranjas no partido” | {
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People in the media and especially on this site have long attacked Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (D) for not knowing how to get things done and more recently for not knowing the specifics of policies he wants to pass. Take this article from The New York Times as a more recent manifestation of this narrative:
The easy slogan here is “Break up the big banks.” It’s obvious why this slogan is appealing from a political point of view: Wall Street supplies an excellent cast of villains. But were big banks really at the heart of the financial crisis, and would breaking them up protect us from future crises? Many analysts concluded years ago that the answers to both questions were no. Predatory lending was largely carried out by smaller, non-Wall Street institutions like Countrywide Financial; the crisis itself was centered not on big banks but on “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers that weren’t necessarily that big. And the financial reform that President Obama signed in 2010 made a real effort to address these problems. It could and should be made stronger, but pounding the table about big banks misses the point. Yet going on about big banks is pretty much all Mr. Sanders has done. On the rare occasions on which he was asked for more detail, he didn’t seem to have anything more to offer. And this absence of substance beyond the slogans seems to be true of his positions across the board.
But that is beside the point of this diary.
Robert Reich recently defended Bernie from these sorts of attacks in an interview, an excerpt of which is posted in the title picture of this article. I did a little research just to see if Reich was correct about Sander’s being able to get things done and here’s what I found:
The facts about Sanders’ back Reich’s statements up. Sanders knows what he’s doing, contrary to some conclusions drawn from the much hyped New York Daily News Interview, and he certainly knows how to ‘get things done’.
Politifact rated Sanders’ Amendment King claim as True
From Politifact:
From Alternet:
Not only has Sanders gotten a lot more things done than Clinton did in her own short legislative career, he's actually one of the most effective members of Congress, passing bills, both big and small, that have reshaped American policy on key issues like poverty, the environment and health care. The Amendment King Congress is not known to be a progressive institution lately, to say the least. Over the past few decades, the House of Representatives was only controlled by the Democrats from 2007 to 2010, and a flood of corporate money has quieted the once-powerful progressive movement that passed legislation moving the country forward between the New Deal era and the Great Society. Yet, as difficult as it may be to believe, a socialist from Vermont is one of its most accomplished members. ... Sanders did something particularly original, which was that he passed amendments that were exclusively progressive, advancing goals such as reducing poverty and helping the environment, and he was able to get bipartisan coalitions of Republicans who wanted to shrink government or hold it accountable and progressives who wanted to use it to empower Americans.
What are some of those pieces of legislation you may ask? Well here are several of them that he worked on as Vermont’s only U.S. Representative:
Corporate Crime Accountability (February 1995): A Sanders amendment to the Victims Justice Act of 1995 required “offenders who are convicted of fraud and other white-collar crimes to give notice to victims and other persons in cases where there are multiple victims eligible to receive restitution.” Saving Money, for Colleges and Taxpayers (April 1998): In an amendment to H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, Sanders made a change to the law that allowed the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education to make competitive grants available to colleges and universities that cooperated to reduce costs through joint purchases of goods and services. Expanding Free Health Care (November 2001): You wouldn't think Republicans would agree to an expansion of funds for community health centers, which provide some free services. But Sanders was able to win a $100 million increase in funding with an amendment. Fighting Corporate Welfare and Protecting Against Nuclear Disasters (June 2005): A Sanders amendment brought together a bipartisan coalition that outnumbered a bipartisan coalition on the other side to successfully prohibit the Export-Import Bank from providing loans for nuclear projects in China.
And as Senator…
Protecting Our Troops (October 2007): Sanders used an amendment to win $10 million for operation and maintenance of the Army National Guard, which had been stretched thin and overextended by the war in Iraq. When the Affordable Care Act was in danger of not having the votes to pass, Sanders used his leverage to win enough funding for free health treatment for 10 million Americans through Community Health Centers. This gutsy move—holding out until the funds were put into the bill— has even Republican members of Congress requesting the funds , which have helped millions of Americans who otherwise would not have access.
An article from The Intercept puts Bernie’s bipartisan work on healthcare:
Over the years, Sanders has tucked away funding for health centers in appropriation bills signed by George W. Bush, into Barack Obama’s stimulus program, and through the earmarking process. But his biggest achievement came in 2010 through the Affordable Care Act. In a series of high-stakes legislative maneuvers, Sanders struck a deal to include $11 billion for health clinics in the law. The result has made an indelible mark on American health care, extending the number of people served by clinics from 18 million before the ACA to an expected 28 million next year.
This article in particular sums up Sanders’ congressional career very nicely, because it is apparently, possible to ‘get things done’ without selling your heart and your soul to the powerful few:
How Bernie Gets Things Done in Congress Without Being Bought Off
He kicked off his political career with an amendment to start a National Program of Cancer registries, which is now maintained by all 50 states. In 2001, he successfully passed an amendment to the general appropriations bill which banned the importation of goods made with child labor , and passed an amendment to increase funding by $100 million for community health centers.
and finally, in the last section of the piece…
When Mr. Sanders was elected to the Senate in 2006, he continued pushing amendments through legislation, including securing $10 million in additional funds for the Army National Guard, providing financial assistance for childcare to people in the armed forces, exposing corruption in the military industrial complex, support in treating autism in the military’s healthcare system and ensuring bailout funds weren’t used to displace American workers.
But of course,
Despite Mr. Sanders’ impeccable record in Congress, The New York Times recently ran an article initially praising his ability to work with both parties to get amendments added to legislation and passed—but later edited it without any footnotes or addendums explaining why the changes were made. The Times has been infamously harsh on Mr. Sanders in favor of Ms. Clinton, possibly because the top shareholder of the company, billionaire Carlos Slim, is a major donor to the Clinton Foundation.
The right donations to the right people can really work some magic can’t it? Or as one might say, it can distort reality. It can make it seem like the Iraq War was just fine and dandy because contractors were making billions off of the deaths of Iraqi civilians, the destruction of their homes, and the collapse of their economy. It can make it seem like the TPP is a good thing for anyone but the wealthy and powerful interests when it’s not. It can make it seem like certain candidates were there for the Fight For $15 an hour all along when they weren’t.
Indeed, the right money to the right people can even make a progressive, pragmatic legislator, like Senator Bernie Sanders, seem like he’s some meddling old fool who doesn’t know what he’s doing and hasn’t done anything but twiddled his thumbs in congress for three decades.
We know that’s not true.
Robert Reich knows that’s not true.
Enough is enough.
#FeelTheBern | {
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São Paulo
Neste domingo (31), o golpe militar de 1964 completa 55 anos. Em São Paulo e no Rio, grupos se reuniram para relembrar os anos de ditadura e, entre aqueles que apoiam o período, comemorar a data.
Três clubes da série A do Campeonato Brasileiro divulgaram mensagens de apoio à democracia em suas redes sociais.
O Corinthians, que venceu o Santos neste domingo, pela semifinal do Campeonato Paulista, publicou duas mensagens. A primeira é uma foto de Walter Casagrande, de costas, com uma camiseta do clube onde está escrito “Democracia Corinthiana”.
A Democracia Corinthiana foi um movimento de jogadores do clube que aconteceu na primeira metade dos anos 1980, quando eles participavam de forma ativa das decisões do time e que, na época, servia de contraponto à ditadura.
A outra postagem é uma foto da faixa que a torcida levou para o jogo, com a frase “ganhar ou perder, mas sempre com democracia”, acompanhada da hashtag #DemocraciaCorinthiana. A faixa foi colocada em frente à estátua de Sócrates (1954-2011), no estádio em Itaquera. O jogador foi um dos líderes do movimento.
O Bahia foi outro time a fazer uma alusão à sua própria história para falar de democracia.
Em suas redes, um vídeo afirma que o clube é o "mais democrático do Brasil”, por ter eleições diretas para presidente.
O vídeo é acompanhado pela mensagem “Na alegria ou na tristeza. Na saúde ou na doença. De Democracia a gente entende. Hoje e sempre: #NuncaMais ”.
As hashtags #NuncaMais e #DitaduraNuncaMais são utilizadas neste domingo para demarcar a oposição à ditadura.
No Twitter, o Vasco compartilhou um vídeo da música "O Bêbado e a Equilibrista", de João Bosco e Aldir Blanc, acompanhado por texto, onde pede que se lembrem que a "democracia deve ser sempre a nossa verdade e nunca mais uma esperança equilibrista".
Eduardo Bolsonaro (PSL-SP), filho do presidente Jair Bolsonaro e deputado federal, também usou as redes sociais para divulgar vídeos que fazem referência ao aniversário do golpe.
Em um deles, que foi encaminhado pelo Planalto em um de seus canais de comunicação, um homem elogia a atuação do Exército no golpe e afirma que ele foi necessário para acabar com as dificuldades e com o medo que a população brasileira enfrentava, por causa do comunismo. | {
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Though many economists would have you believe that raising the minimum wage would result in higher unemployment rates, they are mistaken. Statistical analyses of a significant sampling of studies have shown no evidence that unemployment rates are affected by wage increases.
As fast food workers protest across America, more than a hundred economists are signing a petition that supports raising the minimum wage. Boosting wages benefits employees and employers alike. Employees are more productive and consume more goods and services when they are financially rewarded, and employers waste less time and money on recruiting and instructing new staffers. During this seemingly endless recession, this kind of stimulation would go a long way.
College student Emily Chong poses the following pertinent question in Salon:
So if we have no evidence linking high wages to job loss, our next question is: are higher wages needed as a poverty reduction tool? Currently, the 2013 Federal Poverty guidelines stipulate $23,550 for a family of four as poverty level. A $7.25 minimum wage currently nets the protesting fast food workers $15,080 a year if the workers are lucky enough to work 40 hours a week. In a typical household with two parents and two children, parents who make $7.25 earn far below the living wage of $13.55, according to an MIT wage calculator. The numbers become even starker when you separate out true living expenses: food, medical care, housing, transportation, and other needed expenses add up to a required $37,540 annual income before taxes, which is notably different than the poverty guidelines that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services set. Even if the two parents worked 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, they would only earn $30,160 in total, significantly below the resources they need to live. Moreover, these estimates are only for a typical nuclear family. The struggle that single-income families, large families, or families living in high-cost cities go through is exponentially higher. The buying power of minimum wage has steadily been waning due to the effects of inflation for the past 40 years. When prices increase, a worker’s paycheck buys less and less.
At McDonald’s, studies have shown that a rise in an average worker’s pay would mean increasing the price of a Big Mac by 5 cents. Isn’t giving Americans a chance at a better quality of life worth a nickel?
—Posted by Natasha Hakimi | {
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ANKARA - When suspected Islamic State (IS) fighters organised a deadly attack on Turkish activists in Suruc on the Syrian border in July, respected newspaper commentator Kadri Gursel responded with a tweet critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"It's embarrassing that foreign leaders call the person who is the number one cause of the IS terror in Turkey to present their condolences for Suruc," he tweeted.
Gursel was referring to allegations - vehemently denied by Ankara - that Erdogan had supported rebels in Syria in the hope they would oust the Syrian regime.
The response by his newspaper Milliyet - long seen as a respected and mainstream title - was swift and merciless.
Gursel, who started working for the paper in the 1990s and began his column in 2007, was fired the same day.
The paper said Gursel's comments were journalistically unethical and violated its editorial principles.
His case highlights the problems faced by the Turkish opposition press as Erdogan pushes a relentless offensive against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels and prepares for snap legislative elections on 1 November.
Turkey already has a history of cracking down on media freedoms and was the world's top jailer of journalists in 2012 and 2013 before improving slightly, according to International Committee to Protect Journalists.
The situation appears to have again deteriorated in recent weeks with the arrests and deportations of international journalists, attacks on the Hurriyet newspaper and a police raid on a holding company that owns opposition media.
'No surrender'
"Erdogan wants to restore his party as the single party of government," Gursel told AFP.
"To achieve his goal, he is seeking to silence remaining critical voices in traditional media," he said.
Karin Deutsch Karlekar, director of free expression programmes at PEN American Centre, agreed.
"As the elections approach, the space for media to operate freely continues to shrink at an alarming rate," she told AFP.
Milliyet is owned by the Demiroren Group, one of Turkey's largest conglomerates with interests in energy, construction and media. Its chief, Erdogan Demiroren, is widely seen as close to the president.
Mehves Evin, another pro-opposition Milliyet columnist, was fired last month.
"I will not surrender. I will keep on writing!" she tweeted.
At least 140 journalists have been fired over the last couple of months, according to a report from EU-funded Press for Freedom Project.
"There is no sign of hope. Press freedom is declining in Turkey," said Yusuf Kanli, veteran journalist and project coordinator.
'Crush you like a fly'
Meanwhile, the pro-government Star newspaper's columnist Cem Kucuk accused leading Hurriyet columnist Ahmet Hakan of backing the outlawed PKK, and media outlets perceived to show similar backing earn routine accusations of treachery.
"We could crush you like a fly if we want. We have been merciful until today and you are still alive," Kucuk wrote on 9 September.
Hurriyet's Istanbul headquarters was attacked twice last week by pro-government demonstrators who accused the paper of misquoting Erdogan.
It came after the president repeatedly criticised the Dogan Media Group, which owns Hurriyet and does not always toe the government line.
In another incident earlier this month, Turkish police swooped on the Ankara-based offices of Koza-Ipek media group - close to Erdogan's political rival, the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen - after a report documenting weapons shipped from Turkey to IS in Syria.
And on Monday, authorities raided the premises and detained the managing editor of the magazine Nokta for a cover satirising Erdogan.
The government however denies meddling with Turkey's press freedom and Erdogan has repeatedly stated that the country has "the freest press in the world".
But Korkmaz Alemdar, professor of communications, said "we cannot talk about media freedom" in Turkey under Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), in office since 2002.
He added that the general public was often unaware of critical media sites and many took their information mostly from national television channels.
'Full submission'
International media have also been affected.
Dutch journalist Frederike Geerdink was deported this month after being detained during clashes between Kurdish rebels and Turkish security forces, while the BBC was accused by Ankara of PKK propaganda over a recent report on the group's female fighters.
Last month, Turkish authorities arrested on terror charges two British reporters and their Iraqi translator working for US-based Vice News. The Britons were deported but translator Mohammed Ismael Rasool is still being held.
The European Union voiced concern about the arrests and warned that any country seeking to join the bloc "needs to guarantee respect for human rights, including freedom of expression."
Turkey is a long-standing candidate for membership of the 28-nation EU, beginning its accession talks in 2005, but the process has been bogged down for years over complaints on its human rights record.
"The repression of press freedom in Turkey has continued systematically since 2008," Gursel told AFP.
"This latest wave is only a new chapter towards the full submission which is the ultimate target," he added. | {
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The Number Of Days In Which JPMorgan Lost Money Trading In The First Half Is.... | {
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Suicide Notes
Paste this code into your blog or home page to link to this Wordle:
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In this guide, we are going to go through some smart contract platforms out there and see what sets them apart. Some of them are already working, while some are under development.
We are living in the era of the smart contract. While Bitcoin may have shown us that a payment system can exist in a decentralized peer-to-peer atmosphere. However, it was with the advent of Ethereum, that the floodgates well and truly opened. Ethereum ushered in the era of the second generation blockchain, and people finally saw the true potential of Dapps and Smart Contracts.
A Deeper Look at Different Smart Contract Platforms
Before we do that though, let’s ask ourselves a question.
What exactly are smart contracts?
Smart contracts are automated contracts. They are self-executing with specific instructions written on its code which get executed when certain conditions are made.
You can learn more about smart contracts in our in-depth guide here.
So, what are the desirable properties that we want in our smart contract?
Anything that runs on a blockchain needs to be immutable and must have the ability to run through multiple nodes without compromising its integrity. As a result of which, smart contract functionality needs to be three things:
Deterministic.
Terminable.
Isolated.
Feature #1: Deterministic
A program is deterministic if it gives the same output to a given input every single time. Eg. If 3+1 = 4 then 3+1 will ALWAYS be 4 (assuming the same base). So when a program gives the same output to the same set of inputs in different computers, the program is called deterministic.
There are various moments when a program can act in an un-deterministic manner:
Calling un-deterministic system functions: When a programmer calls an un-deterministic function in their program.
Un-deterministic data resources: If a program acquires data during runtime and that data source is un-deterministic then the program becomes un-deterministic. Eg. Suppose a program that acquires the top 10 google searches of a particular query. The list may keep changing.
Dynamic Calls: When a program calls the second program it is called dynamic calling. Since the call target is determined only during execution, it is un-deterministic in nature.
Feature #2: Terminable
In mathematical logic, we have an error called “halting problem”. Basically, it states that there is an inability to know whether or not a given program can execute its function within a time limit. In 1936, Alan Turing deduced, using Cantor’s Diagonal Problem, that there is no way to know whether a given program can finish in a time limit or not.
This is obviously a problem with smart contracts because, contracts by definition, must be capable of termination in a given time limit. There are some measures taken to ensure that there is a way to externally “kill” the contract and do not enter into an endless loop which will drain resources:
Turing Incompleteness: A Turing Incomplete blockchain will have limited functionality and not be capable of making jumps and/or loops. Hence they can’t enter an endless loop.
Step and Fee Meter: A program can simply keep track of the number “steps” it has taken, i.e. the number of instructions it has executed, and then terminate once a particular step count has been executed. Another method is the Fee meter. Here the contracts are executed with a pre-paid fee. Every instruction execution requires a particular amount of fee. If the fee spent exceeds the pre-paid fee then the contract is terminated.
Timer: Here a pre-determined timer is kept. If the contract execution exceeds the time-limit then it is externally aborted.
Feature #3: Isolated
In a blockchain, anyone and everyone can upload a smart contract. However, because of this the contracts may, knowingly and unknowingly contain virus and bugs.
If the contract is not isolated, this may hamper the whole system. Hence, it is critical for a contract to be kept isolated in a sandbox to save the entire ecosystem from any negative effects.
Now that we have seen these features, it is important to know how they are executed. Usually, the smart contracts are run using one of the two systems:
Virtual Machines : Ethereum and Neo use this
: Ethereum and Neo use this Docker: Fabric uses this.
Let’s compare these two and determine which makes for a better ecosystem. For simplicity’s sake, we are going to compare Ethereum (Virtual Machine) to Fabric (Docker).
So, as can be seen, Virtual Machines provide better Deterministic, terminable and isolated environment for the Smart contracts.
Ok, so now we know what smart contracts are and the fact that Virtual machines are better platforms for smart contracts. Let’s look at what exactly do Dapps require to run efficiently.
What do Dapps require?
Or, to frame it more specifically, what does a DAPP require to be successful and a hit with the mainstream audience? What are its absolute minimum requirements?
Support for Millions of Users
It should be scalable enough for millions of users to use it. This is especially true for DAPPs that are looking for mainstream acceptance.
Free Usage
The platform should enable the devs to create Dapps which are free to use for their users. No user should have to pay the platform to gain the benefits of a Dapp.
Easily Upgradable
The platform should allow the developers the freedom to upgrade the Dapp as and when they want. Also, if some bug does affect the Dapp, the devs should be able to fix the DAPP without affecting the platform.
Low Latency
A DAPP should run as smoothly as possible and with the lowest possible latency.
Parallel Performance
A platform should allow their Dapps to be processed parallelly in order to distribute the workload and save up time.
Sequential Performance
However, not all the functions on a blockchain should be done that way. Think of transaction execution itself. Multiple transactions can’t be executed in parallel; it needs to be done one at a time to avoid errors like double spends.
So, what are the platforms available to us when it comes to DAPP creation?
BitShares and Graphene have good throughput but are definitely not smart contract suitable.
Ethereum is clearly the most obvious choice in the market. It has amazing smart contract abilities but the low transaction speed is a major issue. Plus, the gas price can be problematic as well.
Ok, so now that we know what Dapps require, let’s go through some smart contract platforms.
We will be looking at:
Ethereum
First and foremost, we have Ethereum, the one that started it all.
This is how Ethereum’s website defines it:
“Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference. These apps run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property.”
But in simpler terms, Ethereum is planning to be the ultimate software platform of the future. If the future is decentralized and Dapps become commonplace, then Ethereum has to be the front and center of it.
The Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM is the virtual machine in which all the smart contracts function in Ethereum. It is a simple yet powerful Turing Complete 256-bit virtual machine. Turing Complete means that given the resources and memory, any program executed in the EVM can solve any problem.
In order to code smart contracts in the EVM, one needs to learn the programming language Solidity.
Solidity is a purposefully slimmed down, loosely-typed language with a syntax very similar to ECMAScript (Javascript). There are some key points to remember from the Ethereum Design Rationale document, namely that we are working within a stack-and-memory model with a 32-byte instruction word size, the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) gives us access to the program “stack” which is like a register space where we can also stick memory addresses to make the Program Counter loop/jump (for sequential program control), an expandable temporary “memory” and a more permanent “storage” which is actually written into the permanent blockchain, and most importantly, the EVM requires total determinism within the smart contracts.
So, before we continue, let’s check out a basic Solidity contract example. (Codes were taken from github).
Let’s run a simple while loop in solidity:
contract BasicIterator { address creator; // reserve one "address" - type spot uint8[ 10 ] integers; // reserve a chunk of storage for 10 8 - bit unsigned integers in an array function BasicIterator() { creator = msg . sender; uint8 x = 0 ; // Section 1 : Assigning values while (x < integers . length) { integers[x] = x; x ++ ; } } function getSum() constant returns (uint) { uint8 sum = 0 ; uint8 x = 0 ; // Section 2 : Adding the integers in an array . while (x < integers . length) { sum = sum + integers[x]; x ++ ; } return sum ; } // Section 3 : Killing the contract function kill() { if (msg . sender == creator) { suicide(creator); } } }
So, let’s analyze the code. For ease of understanding, we have divided the code into 3 sections.
Section 1: Assigning Values
In the first step, we are filling up an array called “integers” which takes in 10 8-bit unsigned integers. The way we are doing it is via a while loop. Let’s look at what is happening inside the while loop.
while (x < integers . length) { integers[x] = x; x ++ ; }
Remember, we have already assigned a value of “0” to the integer x. The while loop goes from 0 to integers.length. Integers.length is a function which returns the max capacity of the array. So, if we decided that an array will have 10 integers, arrayname.length will return a value of 10. In the loop above, the value of x goes from 0 – 9 (<10) and assigns the value of itself to the integers array as well. So, at the end of the loop, integers will have the following value:
0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.
Section 2: Adding the array content
Inside the getSum() function we are going to add up the contents of the array itself. The way are going to do it is by repeating the same while loop as above and using the variable “sum” to add the contents of the array.
Section 3: Killing the contract
This function kills the contract and sends the remaining funds in the contract back to the contract creator.
What is Gas?
“Gas” is the lifeblood of the Ethereum ecosystem, there is no other way of putting that. Gas is a unit that measures the amount of computational effort that it will take to execute certain operations.
Every single operation that takes part in Ethereum, be it a simple transaction, or a smart contract, or even an ICO takes some amount of gas. Gas is what is used to calculate the number of fees that need to be paid to the network in order to execute an operation.
When someone submits a smart contract, it has a pre-determined gas value. When the contract is executed each and every step of the contract requires a certain amount of gas to execute.
This can lead to two scenarios:
The gas required is more than the limit set. If that’s the case then the state of the contract is reverted back to its original state and all the gas is used up.
2.The gas required is less than the limit set. If that’s the case, then the contract is completed and the leftover gas is given over to the contract setter.
While Ethereum may have paved the way for smart contracts. It does face some scalability issues. However, innovations such as plasma, raiden, sharding etc. may solve this issue.
EOS
EOS are aiming to become a decentralized operating system which can support industrial-scale decentralized applications.
That sounds pretty amazing but what has really captured the public’s imagination is the following two claims:
They are planning to completely remove transaction fees.
They are claiming to have the ability to conduct millions of transactions per second.
These two features are the reasons why Dapp developers are fascinated with EOS. Let’s look at how EOS achieves both of these things.
Removal of Fees
EOS works on an ownership model whereby users own and are entitled to use resources proportional to their stake, rather than having to pay for every transaction. So, in essence, if you hold N tokens of EOS then you are entitled to N*k transactions. This, in essence, eliminates transaction fees.
The costs of running and hosting applications on Ethereum can be high for a developer who wants to test their application on the blockchain. The gas price involved in the early stages of development can be enough to turn off new developers.
The fundamental difference between the way Ethereum and EOS operate is that while Ethereum rents out their computational power to the developers, EOS gives ownership of their resources. So, in essence, if you own 1/1000th of the stake in EOS then you will have ownership of 1/1000th of the total computational power and resources in EOS.
As ico-reviews states in their article:
“EOS’s ownership model provides DAPP developers with predictable hosting costs, requiring them only to maintain a certain percentage or level of stake, and makes it possible to create freemium applications. Furthermore, since EOS token holders will be able to rent/delegate their share of resources to other developers, the ownership model ties the value of EOS tokens to the supply and demand of bandwidth and storage.”
Increased Scalability
EOS gets its scalability from its DPOS consensus mechanism. DPOS stands for delegated proof of stake and this is how it works:
Firstly, anyone who holds tokens on a blockchain integrated into the EOS software can select the block producers through a continuous approval voting system. Anyone can participate in the block producer election and they will be given an opportunity to produce blocks proportional to the total votes they receive relative to all other producers.
How does it work?
Blocks are produced in the rounds of 21.
At the start of every round 21 block producers are chosen. Top 20 are automatically chosen while the 21st one is chosen proportional to the number of their votes relative to the other producers.
The producers are then shuffled around using a pseudorandom number derived from the block time. This is done to ensure that a balance of connectivity to all other producers is maintained.
To ensure that regular block production is maintained and that block time is kept to 3 seconds, producers are punished for not participating by being removed from consideration. A producer has to produce at least one block every 24 hours to be in consideration.
Since there are so few people involved in the consensus, it is faster and more centralized than Ethereum and Bitcoin, which uses the entire network for consensus.
The WASM Language
EOS uses WebAssembly aka WASM programming language. The reason why they use it is because of its following properties (taken from webassembly.org):
Speed and Efficiency: WebAssembly executes at native speed by taking advantage of common hardware capabilities available on a wide range of platforms.
Open and Debuggable: It is designed to be pretty-printed in a textual format for debugging, testing, experimenting, optimizing, learning, teaching, and writing programs by hand.
Safe: WebAssembly describes a memory-safe, sandboxed execution environment that may even be implemented inside existing JavaScript virtual machines.
EOS is the perfect platform to create industrial scale Dapps. Let’s imagine that you are creating a decentralized Twitter. If you created that on Ethereum, then the user would have to spend some gas whilst executing each and every step of a tweet.
If you did the same thing in EOS, users won’t need to spend gas because transaction fees are 0! However, since EOS is not as decentralized as Ethereum, Dapps that require high-degrees of censorship resistance may not be a good fit for it.
Stellar
Stellar is the brainchild of Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim was formed back in 2014 when it was forked from the Ripple protocol. Stellar, according to their website,
“is a platform that connects banks, payments systems, and people. Integrate to move money quickly, reliably, and at almost no cost”.
Using Stellar, one can move money across borders quickly, reliably, and for fractions of a penny.
Unlike Ethereum, Stellar Smart Contracts (SSC) are not Turing complete. The following table gives you a good idea of the differences between Stellar and Ethereum smart contracts:
Image Credit: Hackernoon
Some stats may pop up straight away.
Most notably, the 5 second confirmation time and the fact that a single transaction on the Stellar network costs only ~$0.0000002!
$ stellarNetwork -> buildTransaction( $ customerKeypair) -> addCreateAccountOp( $ escrowKeypair, 100.00006 ) // 100 XLM after setup fees + transfer transaction -> submit( $ customerKeypair); } print "Created escrow account: " . $ escrowKeypair -> getPublicKey() . PHP_EOL; /* * In order to make this an escrow account, we need to prove to the worker that * no one is able to withdraw funds from it while the worker is searching for * a vanity address . * * This is accomplished by: * - Making the worker and customer signers of equal weight ( 1 ) * - Requiring both signers to agree on any transaction (thresholds are set to 2 ) * * However, we also need to handle the case where no worker takes the job and we * need to reclaim the account . This can be done by adding a preauthorized merge * transaction that 's not valid until 30 days from now. * * This allows the worker to know that the funds are guaranteed to be available * for 30 days . */ // Load up the escrow account $ account = $ stellarNetwork -> getAccount( $ escrowKeypair); // Precalculate some sequence numbers since they 're necessary for transactions $ startingSequenceNumber = $ account -> getSequence(); // Track how many transactions are necessary to set up the escrow account // We need this so we can correctly calculate the "reclaim account" sequence number $ numSetupTransactions = 5 ; $ reclaimAccountOrPaySeqNum = $ startingSequenceNumber + $ numSetupTransactions + 1 ; // Update the account with a data value indicating what vanity address to search for print "Adding data entry to request a vanity address..." ; $ stellarNetwork -> buildTransaction( $ escrowKeypair) -> setAccountData( 'request:generateVanityAddress' , 'G*ZULU' ) -> submit( $ escrowKeypair); print "DONE" . PHP_EOL; // Fallback transaction: reclaim the escrow account if no workers generate the // vanity address in 30 days $ reclaimTx = $ stellarNetwork -> buildTransaction( $ escrowKeypair) -> setSequenceNumber(new BigInteger( $ reclaimAccountOrPaySeqNum)) // todo: uncomment this out in a real implementation //-> setLowerTimebound(new \DateTime( '+30 days' )) -> setAccountData( 'request:generateVanityAddress' ) -> addMergeOperation( $ customerKeypair) -> getTransactionEnvelope(); // Add hash of $ reclaimTx as a signer on the account // See: https: // www . stellar . org / developers / guides / concepts / multi - sig . html #pre-authorized-transaction $ txHashSigner = new Signer( SignerKey::fromPreauthorizedHash( $ reclaimTx -> getHash()), 2 // weight must be enough so no other signers are needed ); $ addReclaimTxSignerOp = new SetOptionsOp(); $ addReclaimTxSignerOp -> updateSigner( $ txHashSigner); print "Adding pre-authorized reclaim transaction as a signer... " ; $ stellarNetwork -> buildTransaction( $ escrowKeypair) -> addOperation( $ addReclaimTxSignerOp) -> submit( $ escrowKeypair); print "DONE" . PHP_EOL; print "Added pre-auth reclaim transaction valid at sequence " . $ reclaimAccountOrPaySeqNum . PHP_EOL; print "To reclaim the escrow account, run 90-reclaim-escrow.php" . PHP_EOL; // Add worker account as a signer of weight 1 $ workerSigner = new Signer( SignerKey::fromKeypair( $ workerKeypair), 1 // requires another signer ); $ addSignerOp = new SetOptionsOp(); $ addSignerOp -> updateSigner( $ workerSigner); $ stellarNetwork -> buildTransaction( $ escrowKeypair) -> addOperation( $ addSignerOp) -> submit( $ escrowKeypair); // Add customer account as second signer of weight 1 $ workerSigner = new Signer( SignerKey::fromKeypair( $ customerKeypair), 1 // requires another signer ); $ addSignerOp = new SetOptionsOp(); $ addSignerOp -> updateSigner( $ workerSigner); $ stellarNetwork -> buildTransaction( $ escrowKeypair) -> addOperation( $ addSignerOp) -> submit( $ escrowKeypair); // Increase thresholds and set master weight to 0 // All operations now require threshold of 2 $ thresholdsOp = new SetOptionsOp(); $ thresholdsOp -> setLowThreshold( 2 ); $ thresholdsOp -> setMediumThreshold( 2 ); $ thresholdsOp -> setHighThreshold( 2 ); $ thresholdsOp -> setMasterWeight( 0 ); $ stellarNetwork -> buildTransaction( $ escrowKeypair) -> addOperation( $ thresholdsOp) -> submit( $ escrowKeypair); print PHP_EOL; print "Finished configuring escrow account" . PHP_EOL;
Cardano
One of the most interesting projects to have come out is Cardano. Similar to Ethereum, Cardano is a smart contract platform however, Cardano offers scalability and security through layered architecture. Cardano’s approach is unique in the space itself since it is built on scientific philosophy and peer-reviewed academic research
Cardano aims to increase scalability via their Ouroboros proof of stake consensus mechanism. In order to code smart contracts in Cardano, you will need to use Plutus, which is based on Haskell, the language used to code Cardano.
While C++ and most traditional languages are Imperative programming languages, Plutus and Haskell are functional programming languages.
So, how does functional programming work?
Suppose there is a function f(x) that we want to use to calculate a function g(x) and then we want to use that to work with a function h(x). Instead of solving all of those in a sequence, we can simply club all of them together in a single function like this:
h(g(f(x)))
This makes the functional approach easier to reason mathematically. This is why functional programs are supposed to be a more secure approach to smart contract creation. This also aids in simpler Formal Verification which pretty much means that it is easier to mathematically prove what a program does and how it acts out. This gives Cardano its “High Assurance Code” property.
Let’s take a real-life example of this and see why it can become extremely critical and even life-saving in certain conditions.
Suppose, we are coding a program that controls air-traffic.
As you can imagine, coding such a system requires a high degree of precision and accuracy. We can’t just blindly code something and hope for the best when people’s lives are at risk. In situations like these, we need a code that can be proven to work to a high degree of mathematical certainty.
This is precisely why the functional approach is so desirable.
And that is exactly what Cardano is using Haskell to code their ecosystem and Plutus for their smart contracts. Both Haskell and Plutus are functional languages.
The following table compares the Imperative approach with the Functional approach.
Image Credit: Docs.Microsoft.com
So, let’s let’s look at the advantages of the functional approach:
Helps with creating high assurance code because it is easier to mathematically prove how the code is going to behave.
Increases the readability and maintainability because each function is designed to accomplish a specific task. The functions are also state-independent.
The code is easier to refractor and any changes in the code are simpler to implement. This makes reiterative development easier.
The individual functions can be easily isolated which makes them easier to test out and debug.
Neo
Neo, formerly known as Antshares, is often known as the “Ethereum of China”.
According to their website, Neo is a “non-profit community-based blockchain project that utilizes blockchain technology and digital identity to digitize assets, to automate the management of digital assets using smart contracts, and to realize a “smart economy” with a distributed network.”
Neo’s main aim is to be the distributed network for “smart economy”. As their website states:
Digital Assets + Digital Identity + Smart Contract = Smart Economy.
Neo was developed by Shanghai based blockchain R&D company “OnChain”. Onchain was founded by CEO Da Hongfei and CTO Erik Zhang. Research on Neo started around 2014. In 2016, Onchain was listed in the Top 50 Fintech Company in China by KPMG.
Neo wanted to create a smart contract platform which has all the advantages of an Ethereum Virtual Machine, without crippling their developers with language barriers. In ethereum, you will need to learn solidity to code smart contracts, while in Neo, you can even use Javascript to code smart contracts.
Neo Smart Contract 2.0
Neo’s smart contract system aka The Smart Contract 2.0 has three parts to it:
NeoVM.
InteropService
DevPack
NeoVm
This is a pictorial representation of the Neo Virtual Machine:
Image Credit: Neo Whitepaper
As the Neo Whitepaper states, the NeoVM or Neo Virtual Machine is a lightweight, general-purpose VM whose architecture closely resembles JVM and .NET Runtime. It is similar to a virtual CPU that reads and executes instructions in the contract in sequence, performs process control based on the functionality of the instruction operations, logic operations and so on. It is versatile with a good start-up speed which makes it a great environment to run smart contracts.
InteropService
The InteropService increases the utility of the smart contracts. It allows the contracts to access data outside the NeoVM without compromising on the overall stability and efficiency of the system.
Currently, the interoperable service layer provides some APIs for accessing the chain-chain data of the smart contract. The data that it can access are:
Block information.
Transaction information
Contract information.
Asset information
….among others.
It also provides storage space for smart contracts.
DevPack
DevPack includes the high-level language compiler and the IDE plug-in. Since the NeoVM architecture is pretty similar to JVM and .NET Runtime, it enables contracts to be coded in other languages. As you can imagine, this greatly reduced the time taken by developers to learn how to create smart contracts.
Hyperledger Fabric
According to their website, “Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration, hosted by The Linux Foundation, including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing, and Technology.”
Maybe the most interesting project in the Hyperledger family is IBM’s Fabric. Rather than a single blockchain Fabric is a base for the development of blockchain based solutions with a modular architecture.
With Fabric different components of Blockchains, like consensus and membership services can become plug-and-play. Fabric is designed to provide a framework with which enterprises can put together their own, individual blockchain network that can quickly scale to more than 1,000 transactions per second.
What is Fabric and how does it work? The framework is implemented in Go. It is made for enabling consortium blockchains with different degrees of permissions. Fabric heavily relies on a smart contract system called Chaincode, which every peer of the networks runs in Docker containers.
In order to write Chaincode, one must be well-versed in four functions:
PutState: Create new asset or update existing one.
GetState: Retrieve asset.
GetHistoryForKey : Retrieve history of changes.
DelState: ‘Delete’ asset.
Following is an example of a Chaincode:
// Define the Smart Contract structure type SmartContract struct { } // Define the car structure, with 4 properties . type Car struct { Make string ` json: "make" ` Model string ` json: "model" ` Colour string ` json: "colour" ` Owner string ` json: "owner" ` } /* * The Invoke method is called as a result of an application request to run the Smart Contract "fabcar" * The calling application program has also specified the particular smart contract function to be called, with arguments */ func (s * SmartContract) Invoke(APIstub shim . ChaincodeStubInterface) sc . Response { // Retrieve the requested Smart Contract function and arguments function, args : = APIstub . GetFunctionAndParameters() // Route to the appropriate handler function to interact with the ledger appropriately if function == "initLedger" { return s . initLedger(APIstub) } else if function == "createCar" { return s . createCar(APIstub, args) } return shim . Error( "Invalid Smart Contract function name." ) } func (s * SmartContract) initLedger(APIstub shim . ChaincodeStubInterface) sc . Response { return shim . Success([]byte( "Ledger is now running, success!" )) } // Add new car to database with obtained arguments func (s * SmartContract) createCar(APIstub shim . ChaincodeStubInterface, args []string) sc . Response { if len (args) != 5 { return shim . Error( "Incorrect number of arguments. Expecting 5" ) } var car = Car{Make: args[ 1 ], Model: args[ 2 ], Colour: args[ 3 ], Owner: args[ 4 ]} carAsBytes, _ : = json . Marshal(car) APIstub . PutState(args[ 0 ], carAsBytes) return shim . Success(nil) } func main() { // Create a new Smart Contract err : = shim . Start(new(SmartContract)) if err != nil { fmt . Printf( "Error creating new Smart Contract: %s" , err) } }
Conclusion
So, there you have it. Some of the smart contract platforms and the various properties which make them unique. There is no “one-size-fits-all”, at least for now. You will need to choose the platform that best suits the functionalities required for your Dapp.
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Bob Costas visited The O’Reilly Factor tonight to discuss those gun comments he made a few days ago in the wake of the Jovan Belcher suicide/murder tragedy. It seemed that the two guys had a prior friendly relationship and if they didn’t before, they do now. Costas stood by his comments and added on to them, with minor challenges from O’Reilly. In fact, O’Reilly’s biggest concern seemed to be that Costas “call a Christmas tree a ‘Christmas tree.’”
Costas emphasized that he is “not looking to repeal the Second Amendment… I didn’t call for any specific prohibition on guns, never used the words ‘gun control.’ But he had a powerful message that O’Reilly let him deliver almost completely uninterrupted.
Since I made these comments, I have heard from players past and present, from coaches, from executives in the NFL saying they have long been alarmed and concerned by the number of players who cavalierly believe that you have to have a gun. … I am not the least bit afraid to talk about the gun culture, to talk about domestic violence. I thought it was self-evident that this was a domestic violence case, self evident. To talk about the effects that football and the culture of football have on many of the people who play it. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. I will look for places where there’s more time to do it. In retrospect, I don’t back up on anything I said, but I think it might have been more effective if I said, ‘Look, if we’re looking for perspective on this, we’re gonna have to have a serious discussion within sports, an ongoing discussion, not five minutes of faux tears about it, but a serious discussion about domestic violence, about the culture of the game itself, about the easy access to guns, about steroids, drugs and alcohol and in the future, we will soon do that… I think that would have… led to less misunderstanding of where I was coming from. …I can not think of a single instance involving a professional athlete whereby that athlete having a gun averted or diminished a dangerous situation but I can give you a long list of tragedies that came about because guys were packing.
O’Reilly, ever grandiose, concluded by telling Costas, “Anytime you get in trouble, you come right here, we’ll get you out of it.”
Costas said, “Merry Christmas.” | {
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Physically-active video games (‘exergames’) have recently gained popularity for leisure and entertainment purposes. Using exergames to combine physical activity and cognitively-demanding tasks may offer a novel strategy to improve cognitive functioning. Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to establish effects of exergames on overall cognition and specific cognitive domains in clinical and non-clinical populations. We identified 17 eligible RCTs with cognitive outcome data for 926 participants. Random-effects meta-analyses found exergames significantly improved global cognition (g = 0.436, 95% CI = 0.18–0.69, p = 0.001). Significant effects still existed when excluding waitlist-only controlled studies, and when comparing to physical activity interventions. Furthermore, benefits of exergames where observed for both healthy older adults and clinical populations with conditions associated with neurocognitive impairments (all p < 0.05). Domain-specific analyses found exergames improved executive functions, attentional processing and visuospatial skills. The findings present the first meta-analytic evidence for effects of exergames on cognition. Future research must establish which patient/treatment factors influence efficacy of exergames, and explore neurobiological mechanisms of action. | {
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One Humboldt Broncos player finally returned to the ice rink less than a year after a semi-truck collided with the Canadian hockey team's bus, killing 16 people.
Kevin Matechuk took to Twitter Tuesday to share an inspiring video of his son, Layne, back on the ice for the first time since the deadly crash last April, which caused serious injuries to the young player.
“After 9 months @LayneMatechuk returned to the rink to skate for the first time since the accident,” the father said in his tweet. “Could not be more proud of Layne! #Believe”
The 18-year-old suffered extensive injuries after the crash of the bus carrying the team headed to a playoff game in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League.
DRIVER OF TRUCK THAT COLLIED WITH CANADIAN HOCKEY TEAM BUS PLEADS GUILTY: ‘I DON’T WANT A TRIAL’
An update from the family in September revealed that Layne sustained a serious brain injury and was struggling to regain his speech.
But, on Tuesday, Matechuk shared multiple videos of Layne skating and shooting pucks. Two other survivors returned to the ice in September to play for the Broncos in their first game since the crash, SI.com reported.
Layne's father has documented the player’s recovery, sharing that he "has been working hard everyday.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Layne’s return to the ice came the same day that the driver of the truck, Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, pleaded guilty to 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 13 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm.
He is set to be sentenced in court later this month. | {
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Wiki site Fandom announced yesterday that they will acquire Curse Media, which runs gaming wiki site Gamepedia, from Twitch. Twitch owned Curse Media for just two years.
“We’ve signed a definitive agreement to acquire Curse Media from Twitch, Inc; including all media assets and employees,” a Fandom rep said in an e-mail to Kotaku. Fandom plans on “combining” Gamepedia into their operation.
Curse Media is a network of gaming sites that have included Hearthpwn, MMO-Champion and forums for Minecraft. Gamepedia is one of the jewels in its cap and, according to SimilarWeb, earns an average of 133 million monthly visits. While at face it seems intuitive to consolidate these two behemoth gaming wikis, the reality of the deal may be more complicated. Fandom has over 300,000 wiki communities, many of which overlap with Gamepedia’s 2,200 wikis. In September, Kotaku reported that some community members running Fandom’s wikis were considering jumping ship to Gamepedia in part because of Fandom’s intrusive autoplaying ads. Now, they may be in a bind. When Kotaku asked Fandom how the site will look in the coming months, Fandom did not offer any specific details.
Gamepedia also has autoplaying video units, but in the form of Twitch livestreams embedded at the bottom of its wiki pages. In October, Kotaku reported that Gamepedia may have been inflating some channels’ Twitch views by embedding livestreams on their much-trafficked wiki pages. A couple of livestreams saw their viewer count inflated by 700-800% because of these Gamepedia embeds. One streamer, SirSlaw, said his views were one inflated by 2,156% because of Gamepedia. These views appeared superficial—while they aren’t botted, and are initiated by humans, these humans may not have been actually viewing the livestreams as they browsed the Gamepedia pages they were embedded in.
In a statement to Kotaku, Twitch wrote, “We’ve signed an agreement for Fandom to acquire Curse Media and make it part of their offering to gamer communities. . . Twitch will continue to focus on our priorities supporting streamers’ ability to earn a living educating and entertaining fans.”
Fandom says they expect the deal to close early 2019.
[Correction—11:40 am ET]: An earlier version of this story stated that Fandom is acquiring Curse LLC from Twitch. Fandom is acquiring Curse Media from Twitch—that’s Curse’s network of websites. We regret the error. | {
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Ali G: Fooling Serious Interviewees, All for a Laugh NPR's Robert Siegel talks to Sasha Baron Cohen -- aka Ali G, host of Da Ali G Show on HBO. Cohen, in the character of a Cockney-accented, dim-witted wannabe "wiseguy," regularly fools government officials and other interview subjects who believe he's a popular but unorthodox British "hip-hop journalist." | {
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Take off your shoes before entering or else.
It’s pretty well-known that in Japan you’re usually supposed to take your shoes off before you enter somebody’s house. However, there are some cases where you’d probably be forgiven for not doing so. For example, if there’s a medical emergency and you have to rush into a house to help someone, most people would probably be fine with you getting their floor a little dirty. Unfortunately, for an ambulance crew member in Kyoto, he seems to have met a man who doesn’t fall under that “most people” category.
On Thursday Kyoto police arrested a 66-year old unemployed man for allegedly punching an ambulance crew member who took a single step into the suspect’s home with his shoes still on.
According to police, on November 15, at around 1 p.m. the 66-year old man called 119 (emergency telephone number) complaining of pain in his left leg. In response to this call the Seika Town Fire Department dispatched an ambulance to the suspect’s residence. After arriving at the residence, one of the ambulance crew members, a 42-year old man, took a single step into the suspect’s house while still wearing his shoes. The suspect, who was lying in bed, saw this, became enraged and reportedly said to the emergency responder “Hey, you! Where are you going? I oughta give you a whoopin’!” Upon hearing this the crew member got on his hands and knees and apologized to the suspect. However, this didn’t seem to satisfy the suspect because he then got up from the bed, went over to the crew member and punched him in the left side of the face. The suspect was then attended to by different crew member and taken to the hospital. The victim was unharmed.
The suspect, who is being accused of interfering with the duty of a public official, is denying the allegations, saying “I have no memory (of the incident).”
However, if the suspect decides to fight this in court he may have a strong case because apparently, in the entranceway to his residence there was a wooden sign on display that read “No Shoes Allowed.” So obviously, this mean’s that the suspect was totally justified in his actions…
Source: Sankei West | {
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Newark, NJ – The New Jersey Devils today re-signed forward Beau Bennett to a one-year, one-way, $725,000 contract. The announcement was made by Devils’ Executive Vice President/General Manager Ray Shero.
New Jersey had recently acquired Bennett in exchange for a 2016 third-round pick (#77 overall, used to select Connor Hall) at this year’s draft in Buffalo. | {
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Eddie Johnson’s first goal for the United States Men’s National Team came in the forward’s first start on October 10, 2004. Johnson, then 20 years old, netted three more three days later against Panama and finished 2006 World Cup qualifying with seven goals in six games. The Florida-born Johnson was strong, fast, and talented, exactly what the future of U.S. soccer was supposed to look like.
Then, perhaps inevitably, he began to struggle. A combination of injuries, believing the hype, and bad luck plagued Johnson, who played for five clubs between 2006 and 2011. There were occasional highs — a goal for the U.S. against Barbados in 2008, a strong if brief run with Cardiff City in 2009 — but mostly lows. He continued to make money to play soccer, which is not a bad life, but that incredible promise was slipping away. When a deal to play for Puebla in the Mexican League fell apart last winter because Johnson was out of shape, the subsequent conversation didn’t revolve around when we would see the forward in the Stars and Stripes again, it focused on whether he would continue to play professionally at all.
Which bring us to a drenched cricket field in North Sound, Antigua, where Johnson found himself in the starting lineup — at left-midfield, no less — for a crucial World Cup qualifier on Friday night. Jurgen Klinsmann’s team needed four points from two games to reach the final round of CONCACAF 2014 World Cup qualifying. Johnson, despite a recent rejuvenation with the Seattle Sounders, was a surprising choice to make the roster, much less start against Antigua and Barbuda. But Klinsmann, who controversially left Dutch league leading scorer Jozy Altidore and MLS leading scorer Chris Wondolowski off the roster for the U.S.’s two matches, put his faith in Johnson. In the 20th minute of the match, the now-28-year-old talent repaid that belief. He rose over an A&B defender to head home Graham Zusi’s left-footed cross. Johnson was back and Klinsmann — subject to increasing second-guessing — was a genius.
The U.S. conceded five minutes later when Peter Byers beat defender Geoff Cameron, then crossed to Dexter Blackstock, who tapped the ball into the net. It was the first goal A&B scored at Sir Vivian Richards Stadium during the semifinal round, and yet another example of the tendency Klinsmann’s team has to let off after scoring.
The home side, inspired by the goal and a 10,000-person crowd, one-ninth of the tiny nation, was in the match. Perhaps this shouldn’t have been surprising since A&B proved frisky in the last fixture between the two teams, but it certainly wasn’t the script the American coach wrote. The U.S. continued to dominate time on the ball — they would end the match with 76 percent of the possession and complete almost five times as many passes — but managed to create only a single shot on goal in the run of play. For much of the match, the CONCACAF minnows looked like they had a better chance of scoring.
Part of the issue was the quality of the field, which was more slop fest and less playing surface. It was a mud pit, especially after the sky opened up in the second half. And, at 70 yards by 110 yards, the field was as small as FIFA will allow for a regulation game. (In general, a smaller field benefits the underdog because it squeezes players together.) But it’s not like CONCACAF teams haven’t done this before. Every time the U.S. plays away from home, the field is of variable quality. Plus, you know what happens during October evenings in the tropics? It pours. And yet the U.S. team continues to be surprised by these adverse conditions. (Clint Dempsey, who was borderline invisible on Friday night, tweeted an image of the field in disgust.) The sooner the Americans realize that despite superior talent they will struggle to pass around teams if every third pass hits a clump of dirt and bounces in a strange direction, the better. Not even Spain could look good on that cricket oval.
To his credit, Klinsmann’s roster choices reflected a reality of qualifying in CONCACAF that he is slowly coming to understand: It doesn’t have to be pretty; it does have to be successful. Johnson and super-surprise call Alan Gordon found their way into the American camp because of their ability to be target men: to receive a long ball, hold it up, and lay it off to a teammate. In press conferences leading up to Friday’s match, the coach talked of taking “Route One” to attack, basically using the U.S.’s size and athleticism to play more directly. You go through rather than around. It produces ugly soccer — light-years away from the tactical revolution Klinsmann promised, and has so far failed, to bring to the Red, White, and Blue — but it can be effective and, when playing away games within CONCACAF, necessary. Bob Bradley figured this out, shocking everyone by starting big, old, and slow Conor Casey against Honduras in San Pedro Sula in a crucial qualifier in 2009. The forward responded with two goals, helping the Americans clinch their spot in the 2010 World Cup.
Klinsmann also needed a result. He relied on future star turned afterthought Johnson, who responded not once but twice. In the dying stage of a 1-1 game, second-half substitute Sacha Kljestan passed to second-half substitute Gordon, who hit a onetime cross. Johnson rose again, got his head to the ball, and nodded it past A&B goalkeeper Molvin James. The strike, Johnson’s 10th in World Cup qualifying, ties him with Brian McBride for second place all-time, two goals behind Landon Donovan. Suddenly, a Stars and Stripes performance that fluctuated between tired, angry, and lackadaisical was forgiven (if not forgotten). They came for three points. They got three points.
The United States national team travels to Kansas City needing only a draw against Guatemala on Tuesday. It could be an unattractive affair, as the Chapines will also advance with a point, but the field will be pristine, the crowd supportive, and the weather perfect. The time for excuses is over. But so is the time for the beautiful game. There is reaching the next round, and there is everything else that comes afterward. Klinsmann, it seems, learned this lesson just in time.
Noah Davis (@noahedavis) is a freelance writer and deputy editor at American Soccer Now. | {
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The Liberal government is facing renewed political pressure from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to increase defence spending to meet the benchmark established by NATO.
Robert O'Brien, the new U.S. national security adviser, said it is an "urgent priority" to get allies across the board to set aside military budgets that are equal to two per cent of the individual country's gross domestic product.
Speaking with journalists at the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday, O'Brien rattled off a list of the world's flashpoints, including Iran and Venezuela, as well as traditional adversaries such as Russia and China.
"There are very serious threats to our freedom and our security," he said. "Canada made a pledge at [the 2014 NATO Summit in] Wales to spend two per cent. We expect our friends and our colleagues to live up to their commitments, and Canada is an honourable country; it's a great country."
O'Brien was a lawyer and former U.S. State Department hostage negotiator before being appointed this summer to the top security job. He noted the construction of the Canadian navy's new Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships, the first of which was on sea trials during the security forum, but said it could use some heavier armament given the potential warships and submarines it could face in the North.
"Canada has got a lot of real estate to defend," he said, noting that the Arctic is an area of interest for not only Russia, but China.
"As nice as it is to say we don't want to militarize the Arctic, other people are going to make that decision for Canada. And Canada needs to be in a position to defend itself, defend its values."
'You can't just do this overnight,' Sajjan says
Every time Trump has complained allies are not paying their fair share of the security of the West, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government has countered with its defence policy, which committed to a 73 per cent budget increase by 2026-27.
That would bring Canada's defence spending to 1.4 per cent of GDP. It currently sits around 1.27 per cent, according to NATO figures released last June.
Responding to O'Brien on Saturday, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan insisted the Liberal government is working towards what was promised in Wales.
"You can't just do this overnight," he said. "It's a buildup. And the decisions we've made as a government are building towards that."
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said the Liberal government is working towards what was promised at the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales. (Tim Krochak/The Canadian Press)
Sajjan also noted that Canada delivers high quality troops and equipment whenever NATO asks, including taking up two leaderships roles under the alliance banner in Latvia and Iraq.
However, an internal defence department slide deck briefing obtained by CBC News and dated from February 2019 shows how defence spending will rise until 2026-27, but then begin to fall again once several major capital purchases are underway and booked.
In addition to NATO, the Trump administration has been leaning on allies in the Far East to shoulder more of the collective defence costs.
The U.S. president has asked Tokyo to quadruple payments for U.S. troops in Japan and is currently negotiating a new deal with South Korea. O'Brien said rich countries with healthy economies should be paying more to defend themselves. | {
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It was those castmembers who approached Kinberg, saying they'd return if he took the helm.
So the filmmaker got to work, drawing upon years of conversations he'd had with his cast to help shape their arcs. His script introduced the mutant island of Genosha for the first time in the films, with Kinberg knowing that was territory Fassbender had long wanted to explore for Magneto.
He crafted a story arc that challenges Prof. X's legacy, taking into account long conversations he'd had with McAvoy about the nature of Charles Xavier, a man who at his best is paternal, and who at his worst is patriarchal. And Kinberg finally got to make good on his favorite comic book storyline, which he partially adapted as co-writer of X-Men: The Last Stand, but which he has long acknowledged fell short. This time, the story of Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) would be the story.
Dark Phoenix, opening June 7, comes as the X-Men are at a crossroads. Marvel Studios' President Kevin Feige will assume control of the property going forward thanks to the Disney-Fox merger. Dark Phoenix is presumed to be the final movie with this cast, while the future of the Kinberg-produced Deadpool franchise is unclear.
In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Kinberg reflects on his long relationship with Feige, discusses retooling Dark Phoenix's third act and shares his thoughts on New Mutants, which will undergo reshoots ahead of its 2020 release.
You've said you write your films from a personal place. What was going on in your life as you sat down to start Dark Phoenix?
Something that I definitely relate to in the movie is the notion of letting go of the façade of control. So much of this movie is about a character trying to hold on to control of herself. Characters around her trying to control her. I found myself, for so much of my life, trying to contain and control things..... I think the repression of things and the instinct to control yourself or others is so much of what's unhealthy in ourselves. It was just feeling like I could just let loose a little bit.
This is a fourth movie for much of your cast, and not all of them had deals in place to return. Did you have alternate drafts of the script that would work without, say, Michael Fassbender or Jennifer Lawrence?
We presumed the First Class core cast — Fassbender, McAvoy Jennifer and Nic [Hoult] were coming back for this film. Part of the reason I presumed that was at the end of finishing X-Men: Apocalypse, when it was clear Bryan Singer was not going to direct the next movie, it was the actors that approached me about directing the next of the X-Men movies. Jennifer especially. Jen said she wouldn’t come back for another movie unless I directed it. So, I had a lot of support from them.
The writing and the producing and now the directing, they are all different job titles, but I approach them all the same way…in all cases I am looking at it from, how do I tell the best possible story with the richest themes and the deepest, most resonant characters? Each of those jobs, I feel like that is my responsibility.
How much do you think about budget in regard to star salaries or your story as you are writing?
I'm never really thinking about budget. Ultimately, there is somebody else who is thinking about budget and tells me what I can and can't afford to do. Especially at the writing phase, when anything feels possible and I'm sitting alone in a room with crumpled-up pieces of paper and a pen in one hand a stack of white empty pages in the other, I do live in a world of infinite possibility.
With Apocalypse, you and Fassbender took a plane ride and had the idea of Magneto having a family. Was there anything on Dark Phoenix that you and an actor conceived of together that was significant?
I knew Genosha [an island refuge for Mutants] was something Michael had wanted to explore. He was a fan of comics even before getting involved in the films and we'd never gotten to do it in the movies before, so when I was trying to come up with where geographically we would meet him, Genosha sprung to mind and it was something that interested him.
[James McAvoy and I] had talked in the past, not specifically about this movie, about the notion that there is an ego drive involved with this character [Prof. X], and a patriarchal side to a man who names a superhero team after the first letter of his last name. He lives in a mansion and feels that he has the right or the wisdom to define the fates and the identities of these kids around him. There was something about that that was obviously benevolent and paternal, and there was something about it that could tip into something that was a little patriarchal and domineering.
There is a crowd-pleasing line in Dark Phoenix that I won't spoil, but it's a nod to the fact that the X-Men feels like an outdated name, given that many of its members are women.
One of the things I loved about the X-Men comics in some ways in distinction to most other comics, is it had incredibly strong female characters. Not just Jean, but Storm, Mystique, Rogue, Kitty Pryde. They are incredible female characters. They had been strong in the movies in the past, but they were not the foreground characters in the movies in the past. The movies had been so focused on Xavier, Magneto and Wolverine as the leads of the films. I just thought this was an opportunity to tell a story where not just the lead character, but other female characters around her could at least take an equal amount of screen time and lines and focus from the main male characters.
You've said most things are negotiable for things on your movies. But there are always a few "lines in the sand" that you won't budge on, that you will fight for. Were there any lines in the sand on Dark Phoenix for you?
Having been the co-writer of X-Men: The Last Stand, where the Dark Phoenix story was the secondary plot of that film, the first and foremost line in the stand was this needed to be the Dark Phoenix story. That it was not sharing a film with other plots and subplots, but it was a movie that is squarely about Jean, her struggle and the struggles of the people most closely associated with Jean.That was my first line in the sand.
As I was writing the movie, I was starting to feel and create the tone of the film on the page. It was a tone I wanted to make sure I would have the support to bring to screen and it was a very different tone than the previous X-Men movies. It's more personal, intimate, emotional. A more raw tone than we've done in these films before, that have been a little more formal and larger than life. I wanted to make it really true to life and more grounded.
That was the kind of line I never had the opportunity to draw in the past, but on this film, I felt [that tone] was critical to establishing a new kind of X-Men movie and also to telling this story in the best possible way, because it is a story that is so character-driven that I felt like it needed to be more emotional and visceral than we've done before.
The third act is something you were still tweaking later in the game with reshoots. What were you looking to change?
With the Avengers movies, there are inevitably pickups you do when you are making the movie. You build it into the budget and the schedule. They know exactly when they are going to do it.
On the Fox/Marvel movies, we have never done that. We probably should have, because it just makes life easier. Getting this kind of cast all at the same place at the same time is not an easy thing to do. They go off and they have other things going on.…
In postproduction of the film, what I felt in watching the third act of the movie…this film is so much about the family that was established in X-Men: First Class.... It's this family of outsiders and outcasts, strangers who come together to form this surrogate family and over the span of these movies have conflicts, but mostly their conflicts are with the outside villains, so the family is tested but remains together. This is a film that would tear the family apart.
What I felt in watching the third act of the film [before reshoots] is it didn't fully pay off, the reconciliation of that family. There was not the kind of catharsis I wanted the audience to have where having gone through all of the trauma with this family that you as an audience have gone through with them, you want to see them come together at the end. You want to see them come together in a different form at the end, a more mature form. When you heal, you get stronger, but you're different from it. I wanted the third act to reflect that and so we went back and did pickups to really create for me what was a more satisfying, cathartic ending.
There are not many writer-directors of your generation who also make movies on this scale. Your friend Drew Goddard has come close a few times with Sinister Six and X-Force. Do you two have conversations about what it's like to make a movie on this level?
Drew is one of my closest friends and somebody I admire so immensely as a filmmaker. When Drew and I worked together on The Martian…he wrote it to direct. At the same time, he had written one of the Spider-Man movies, Sinister Six. It was supposed to be the third or fourth in the rebooting of that franchise and he had to make a choice between directing The Martian and directing Sinister Six. He went off to direct Spider-Man because it was always a childhood dream of his, having read the comics. I understood that as a comic fan myself. His Spider-Man movie never happened for all kinds of reasons.
Drew and Damon Lindelof and Alex Kurtzman, there's a group of us who are all of the same generation. David Benioff. And we really root for each other and send each other encouraging emails in the best of times, in the worst of times. We all want to work together when we can. We'll show each other the work.
I showed Drew the script of Dark Phoenix. We walked around. He was on the Universal lot at the time shooting an episode of a TV show. And we walked around the lot for three hours, years ago. With him just giving me his thoughts on Dark Phoenix. I did the same thing for him on Bad Times at the El Royale.… Drew unquestionably will direct some big movie, probably a comic book movie, because he is a huge comic book fan.
You and Drew Goddard talking for three hours about Dark Phoenix sounds like a great podcast.
It boiled down to Drew saying, "People just want to see Dark Phoenix kick ass."
Disney's Bob Iger has said multiple times Deadpool can remain R-rated at Disney. You have shepherded the franchise as a producer. Have you had conversations yet about the future of Deadpool and if you will be involved?
I have not had any talks with them about it. Kevin Feige and I go way back to my first X-Men movie actually. He was the producer when I was the co-writer on The Last Stand. We've been friends over the years and are also people that root for each other and support each other. I saw him actually. We sat down to catch up. We'll have a meal every now and then, though obviously we've both been pretty busy over the past however many years. We met just before the Disney merger was made official, so we didn't talk about any business. We actually spent most of the time talking about Twilight Zone. But it was fun. It was cool.
The only thing we talked about in terms of Disney and Marvel was just how great the Disney marketing team is, because the only thing that has impacted Dark Phoenix from the Disney-Fox merger is the fact that the Disney team has become part of the marketing and publicity process. They are really great and I've known the Disney guys for a while now. I produced Cinderella over there. I had a hand in helping out and working on a few of the Star Wars movies. I know them well and to see them up close in the marketing and publicity of the film is really impressive. It's a pretty historic run Kevin has had and Disney has had. I haven't had any talks with them formally about their plan.
New Mutants is now dated for April 2020. Were you involved in that decision to push it back?
We do pickups on pretty much all of these movies, and we haven't had a chance to do the pickups on New Mutants. Largely because it’s a cast of actors, almost all of them are on television shows.... Getting them all together again at the same time and at the same place has proven difficult, but I think we've figured out a way to do it this year so that the movie will be ready in time for the new release date.
Dark Phoenix is the final X-Men movie of this 19-year saga. How early did you conceive of your ending?
I feel as though the notion of this being the last of this cycle of X-Men movies is tied for a lot of people, at least in the industry, to the Disney-Fox merger. In truth, when I sat down to write this movie, which was three years ago, I thought about it as the culmination of this cycle of X-Men movies.
***
Dark Phoenix opens June 7. | {
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Jordan Brown returns to tSG to preview C Tour at Nottingham WindFarm
So my predictions for London Calling left me looking like a right pillock, with only four of my predicted top eight making it into the bracket by the end of the Open Tour season opener. Massive congratulations go to Thunder Pressure whose combined might of players from Brighton and Herd saw them (almost) cruise through proceedings at Tour 1.
You’ve got to feel sorry for Flyght Club though. They’d smashed their way through the pool and subsequently kicked EMO 2 to the curb, only to come unstuck against the eventual winners who edged past them in sudden death in the quarters. While still being arguably the second best team on paper, Flyght battered the rest of their opposition, finishing in a respectable, yet disappointing, fifth place and out of reach of one of those sought after promotion spots to B Tour.
Having only lost one match by a single point in the last event, it’d be surprising if they didn’t show the same class and quality on home turf – especially with Thunder Pressure not around to chuck a spanner in the works. They’re likely going to still be smarting from Pressure’s initial misseeding and their being knocked out of contention, so you’d expect Nottingham’s Open side to be out for blood and not give an inch.
Lemmings, Guildford and Vision all got relegated from B Tour – pretty much due to the work of Camden. Leamington lost narrowly to the north-west London side in their last match so will be out to prove a point. However, the way the seedings have played out means that they’re fairly likely to be up against Flyght Club in their semi-final and I’m not entirely convinced they’ll be able to take down the home team. However, I’d fully expect them to close out a 3/4 with a win and qualify for B Tour in Cardiff.
As for GU and Vision, the smart money would ordinarily be on Guildford to finish higher. However, they only won a single game at Tour 1 – which was their final against Vision. On a similar note, Vision also only enjoyed a solitary victory – funnily enough, a pool match against Guildford. The potential 2v3 grudge match should be a good one if it happens. While I expect Vision will likely hold seed until the semis, GU will potentially have a spot of bother escaping the pool with their seeding still in place, considering group-mates NEO will be strong competitors in the forecast gales. Regardless, should it happen, I’d expect Vision to edge it as they have a wealth of experience flip-flopping between the two divisions and will approach Tour 2 with confidence and familiarity.
Elsewhere we have Hampshire, who performed well in London. After losing to finalists Cloud City, they were defeated by Glasgow in the bronze medal match and so will be looking to take out their frustrations on C Tour. They’ve been threatening to click for a while and looks like all of their hard work over the seasons is starting to pay off. Having said that, their holding seed is likely to see them trying to defend their fourth spot against Flyght Club in the quarters and that won’t be easy. I’d expect history to repeat itself here but in Flyght’s favour – meaning Hampshire would drop out of contention for promotion to B Tour despite potentially being the second best team in the division.
Black Sheep 1 proved themselves to be a tough competitor in London, finishing a respectable sixth. They’ll be looking to continue their climb as will Reading 2 who did surprisingly well. NEO and Brixton defied expectations – but for opposing reasons. Despite having played in A Tour and subsequently B Tour previously, the Aberdeen squad continued to drop down the table and didn’t even make the top eight at Tour 1 – which I imagine they weren’t best pleased with. You’d expect them to be looking to stop the rot and challenge the 5-8 bracket with a bit of fervour – particularly with the windy conditions playing to their strengths.
Brixton, on the other hand, provided me a fork for me to scoff a slice of humble pie. They proved they’d finished ‘adapting from being an indoors-only club’, to top their group on a three-way tie. They then lost in sudden death to local rivals and finalists, Cloud City and won everything until they came unstuck again NEO who beat them 11-9 in the de facto plate final. Bloody flipping well done to them on that performance. Here’s hoping they can climb higher at Tour 2 and make the top eight.
Brighton Shiny was another team to perform well at Tour 1. After topping their pool, they lost their quarter to Hampshire and their semi to Black Sheep before winning their last game against Reading 2. I’d expect them to take advantage of the gusty conditions at WindFarm and do some damage with Mex & Flex, which should see them bag a top eight finish.
Further down the table, Devon 2’s performance at London Calling saw them finish second in their tied-up pool, sticking them right in the path of a rampaging Thunder Pressure which saw them knocked out of contention for a top eight spot, finishing 11th overall. One of their lowest results of the past few years, it was only two places above their third team. Still, that’s not any indicator that they’d lost their momentum as Devon 3 caused a few upsets as I’d pretty shrewdly predicted. Still, with Devon 2’s squad missing some players from Tour 1 and replacing them with some greener additions than they could have, they’re arguably weaker this time around. However, the addition of AirBadger supremo Kofi Jones to their roster means they’ll have a player who can very competently handle against the impending Nottingham hurricane. Nevertheless, it’ll be a surprise if they can escape the middle of the division.
While I’m not anticipating any massive upsets from them, there are a few new outfits strutting their stuff at WindFarm this weekend too. UEA based Concrete will start their campaign in C Tour and will look to hit the ground running. Bottom seeds Archbishops of Banterbury will be eager to show their worth too, especially after missing out on a spot at Tour 1. UCLan alumni team, Prone, will be having their first crack at C Tour as well, so it’ll be interesting to see how they get on.
Overall, it’s going to be pretty competitive at the top of this massive 32-team division, particularly with teams having had a longer break to lick their wounds and prepare. My (hopefully more accurate) predictions for the top eight are as follows:
Flyght Club Vision Leamington Lemmings Guildford Hampshire 1 Black Sheep 1 Brighton Shiny NEO
Featured photo by Andrew Moss. | {
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In Dallas-Fort Worth's tight housing market, finding a home is half the battle.
Then buyers have to come up with the cash. In D-FW, homebuyers have to fork over an average $42,057 just to get in the door, according to a new study by Zillow.
That's slightly ahead of the nationwide cost of $40,080.
The upfront cost figures include average down payments, closing costs and moving expenses.
"Buying a home, especially for the first time, is an exciting but stressful experience," Justin LaJoie, with Zillow's RealEstate.com, said in the report. "Some of that stress can be eased by making sure you know all of the costs that come with buying and owning a home, so you can budget appropriately and not get caught off guard well into the buying process."
While buying that North Texas house costs a chunk of change up front, the expense in the D-FW area is much lower than in coastal markets.
In San Francisco, you need more than $152,000 in cash on average to swing a home purchase. And in Seattle, it takes more than $80,000.
Among the major Texas markets, the average upfront cost is $52,142 in Austin, $37,347 in Houston and $35,327 in San Antonio.
The Zillow estimates for the D-FW area are based on a median home value of $231,100, which is a bit less than the most recent estimates from real estate agents.
The comparison also assumes the buyer is making a 15 percent down payment. Many first-time buyers pay much less than that up front. | {
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The first Guantanamo detainee to face a civilian trial was acquitted Wednesday of all but one of the hundreds of charges he helped unleash death and destruction on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 — an opening salvo in al-Qaida’s campaign to kill Americans.
A federal jury convicted Ahmed Ghailani of one count of conspiracy to destroy U.S. property and acquitted him on more than 280 other counts, including one murder count for each of the 224 people killed in the embassy bombings. The anonymous jurors deliberated over seven days.
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Prosecutors said Ghailani faces a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of life in prison at sentencing on Jan. 25.
Ghailani, 36, rubbed his face, smiled and hugged his lawyers after the jury left the courtroom.
FULL AP STORY FOLLOWS BELOW | {
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Feta is undoubtedly one of the most famous Greek cheeses. In fact, Feta occupies 70% stake in Greek cheese consumption. The cheese is protected by EU legislation and only those cheeses manufactured in Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaly, Central Mainland Greece, the Peloponnese, Lesvos and Island of Kefalonia can be called ‘feta’. Similar cheeses produced elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean and around the Black Sea, outside the EU, are often called ‘white cheese’.
To create traditional feta, 30 percent of goat's milk is mixed with sheep's milk of animals grazing on pastures in the specific appellation of origin regions. Nowadays, many stores sell goat and cow’s milk feta as well. The firmness, texture and flavour differ from region to region, but in general, cheese from Macedonia and Thrace is mild, softer and creamier, less salty with fewer holes. Feta made in Thessaly and Central Greece has a more intense, robust flavour. Peloponnese feta is dryer in texture, full flavoured and more open. Local environment, animal breeds, cultures all have an impact on the texture, flavour and aroma of feta.
On the whole, Feta is a pickled curd cheese that has a salty and tangy taste enhanced by the brine solution. The texture depends on the age which can be extremely creamy, or crumbly dry. Upon maturation of 2 months, feta is sold in blocks submerged in the brine. The cheese can be used a table cheese or melted on a traditional Greek salad, spanakopita, pizza or pie. It tastes delicious with olive oil, roasted red peppers and nuts. If required, it can be washed under water to remove the extra saltiness. The salty flavour of Feta pairs well with beer, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel. | {
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The polar bear's survival is linked to the Arctic sea ice, a habitat greatly affected by climate change.
Research shows that it's not too late to take action to save sea ice and polar bears by greatly reducing carbon emissions.
Polar Bears International scientists have put together a list of which individual actions have the most impact. Look through these tips, find out what you're already doing—and then commit to doing more.
Together, we can leverage our power as citizens and get involved as members of community groups and organizations to save the sea ice that polar bears depend on! | {
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This year marks 100 years since the Balfour Declaration and 50 since the Six-Day War. As a young, committed British Jew living in Israel, I should be proud to be here during this momentous year. But I am ashamed.
I’m not ashamed of the state of Israel. I’m some form of Zionist – even if the current political and military leaders of Israel are responsible for policies that I oppose with a passion. Like many young Jews in the diaspora, I fight hard to hold my Zionism in spite of hostility from my political counterparts and all the criticism that the Israeli government attracts.
I’m ashamed of activities endorsed by two of the most influential members of the Orthodox movement: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. This week they were in Jerusalem to support festivities planned by the organisation Mizrachi Olami.
One of these events is the annual Jerusalem Day March of the Flags on 24 May (yesterday). Thousands of young people from across the country were bussed in to march through the Jewish Old City, shutting down most of the Muslim quarter and surrounding areas.
This march has come to be associated with growing levels of hate speech and racist violence, including shouts of “Death to Arabs” and vandalism to Palestinian property. Today (Thursday), some of the delegates were due to visit Hebron and dance through the streets with IDF soldiers.
Hebron is a city in which 200,000 residents live under the control of 600 soldiers, protecting 850 settlers. This celebration is an unequivocally political act, blatantly supporting the settlers’ presence there.
The extent of the involvement of the Mizrachi Olami trip does not make a material difference; once they comply with these events, they blur the incredibly fine line between Israel and occupation.
This distinction is too fragile to be messed around with – whether or not Brits enter the Muslim quarter or attend Hebron themselves, they are unmistakably associating themselves with the controversies of these places.
Neither Rabbi Mirvis, Rabbi Lord Sacks or indeed any of the UK delegation will take part in the trip to Hebron. But if Rabbi Sacks is unwilling to participate himself, surely his support for the entire event urges others to
do so?
In his promotional video, he says that joining in with the celebration will be “one of the great moments of your life and mine”. Why is this moment so precious to him, when this delegation and its actions actively support the occupation, and undermine negotiations towards a peaceful two-state solution?
The hypocrisy of such prominent Jewish leaders in supporting this provocative display of fanaticism is damaging to the future of the diaspora. Young Jews like me strive to clarify that support for Israel is not the same as support for the occupation.
How can we maintain this, on university campuses, in Jewish societies and among non-Jewish friends, while our supposed representatives encourage dancing in triumph around the streets of one of the most focal points of the conflict, and a march that so publicly violates human dignity?
It is hugely important that this dangerous elision of Israel with the occupation does not go unnoticed. Hundreds of people have signed a letter, to which you can add your name, to Rabbi Lord Sacks calling him out on his promotion of this reprehensible political strategy.
We know from research that people place Israel at the core of their Jewish identity. Many young Jews around the world, however, cannot reconcile this aspect of their heritage with ideas of Tikkun Olam (healing the world) and the Jewish values we have inherited. The Jewish community is pushing its youth towards a precipice, implying again and again that to support Israel is to support the occupation.
If such important community leaders can get away with this, it’s less and less likely that the next generation of British Jews will be motivated to defend the state of Israel.
Where does this leave us? | {
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The Stena Line Belfast Giants are pleased to announce the return of Cody Brookwell to the lineup for the 2014/15 season. Brookwell, a 6 foot 4 defenceman first joined the Giants in 2013 and played a huge part of last season’s record breaking side that won the Elite League title in February, with ten games remaining.
In the 2013/14 season, Cody posted 6 goals and 24 assists, good for 30 points in 63 games played during his first season in the Elite League and collected the Coach’s Player of the Year Award at the End of Season Awards Night.
Brookwell’s signing completes the Giants Defensive corps for the season ahead and sees the Giants keep the consistency of having the same line-up in defence for a second consecutive season, joining Calvin Elfring, Jeff Mason, Davey Phillips, Kevin Phillips and Robby Sandrock on the blueline.
“We are really excited to have our full D-corps back as it was one of last season’s strengths,” said Steve Thornton. “Having D-men who can make decisions and can move the puck will be more critical this season and that’s what we have.”
“They’ve played together before and they know each other’s tendencies – hopefully we’ll have start the season on the right foot and it’s exciting for the Giants fans to know who’s wearing their uniform.”
Although the 2014/15 season will be Thornton’s first coaching Brookwell, he has completed enough research to know how successful the defenceman was in his debut season in Belfast, “Brookwell was steady as a rock, he had a great partnership with Elfring and with the extra import rule this season, it seems to have created more size in the league and it was important to have a big body to create some room in front of the net, be physical in the corners and still have ability to have quick feet and make that outlet pass which is a rare combination for a big man, but that’s what Cody has.”
Watch Cody Brookwell and his teammates in action in the Stena Line Belfast Giants first game of the new season, on Saturday 30th August against the Cardiff Devils at the Odyssey Arena. Tickets on sale now from Ticketmaster online or from the Odyssey Arena Box Office in person or by calling (028) – no longer available -. | {
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Deadly protests at the Israel-Gaza border have waned over the past two days because Egypt has pressured Hamas to stop stoking the violent demonstrations, Israel said Wednesday.
The news comes as a senior Hamas official admitted that 50 of the rioters killed Monday by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip were members of the Islamist militant group.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and other top Hamas leaders made a trip to Egypt on Sunday, and were told "unequivocally" that Egypt would not tolerate Hamas' continued instigation on the Gaza Strip, Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said, according to Reuters.
Egypt has acted as a political broker between Israel and Hamas, and has worked with both bitter enemies to fight ISIS.
“Haniyeh returned to Gaza, Hamas gave an order ... and miraculously, this spontaneous protest by a public that could not handle the situation any more dissipated,” Katz told Israeli media.
Hamas denied the claim, although Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar told Al Jazeera television that Egypt had expressed interest in improving the conditions in Gaza and avoiding further bloodshed on the border.
WHY SO MANY GAZA PROTESTERS HAVE LITTLE TO LOSE
At least 60 people were killed, including a baby who died from tear gas inhalation, during a chaotic scene at the Gaza border where Palestinians protested the U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem on Monday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel regards Jersualem as its capital, and Hamas has denied Israel's right to exist at all.
But turnout was dramatically down at the protests the next day, with Gaza health officials reporting that only two Palestinians had been fatally shot on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
"There was no popular protest; this was an organized mob of terrorists organized by Hamas." — Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon.
And no fatalities were reported on Wednesday, although the Israeli military described a tense confrontation in which it said its troops were fired upon.
Israel maintains that Hamas uses weekly border protests, which have been occuring regularly since March 30, as cover to stage terror attacks.
"It was clear to Israel and now it is clear to the whole world that there was no popular protest; this was an organized mob of terrorists organized by Hamas," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said.
WATCH: ISRAELI MILITARY BRACES FOR MORE GAZA CLASHES
Demonstrators say the violent protests are intended in part to draw attention to poor living conditions in the Gaza Strip. Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade of the Gaza Strip, leaving it in economic ruins, ever since Hamas took control of the region from the Palestinian Authority in 2007.
But the protests appeared to do little to dampen the mood in the White House.
President Trump, who had long promised to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, celebrated the embassy opening on Twitter even as the violence unfolded Monday, writing that it was a "Big day for Israel." | {
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Economy grew by 7.6 per cent in the second quarter of 2012, the slowest pace in more than three years despite stimulus.
China has said its economy grew by 7.6 per cent in the second quarter of 2012, the slowest pace in more than three years.
This dragged down growth for the world’s second-largest economy to 7.8 per cent for the first half of the year, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.
Gross domestic product growth was 8.1 per cent in the first quarter, according to previously released figures.
Export growth has fallen steadily amid anemic global demand and Chinese domestic consumer spending has weakened. The government has cut interest rates twice since the start of June and launched a flurry of stimulus measures.
Analysts expect economic growth to rebound in the second half of the year but the slowdown raises the threat of job losses and political tensions.
June retail sales growth was 12.1 per cent adjusted for price changes, down from the previous month’s 13.8 per cent growth. Growth in factory output edged down to 9.5 per cent from May’s 9.6 per cent.
In a reflection of government efforts to spur the economy with higher investment, growth in spending on factories, real estate and other fixed assets accelerated to 23.2 per cent in June, up from the previous month’s 20.1 per cent.
Overheating
The government has orchestrated a controlled slowdown in GDP from previous double-digit growth to prevent an overheating of the economy.
In March, Beijing lowered its forecast of economic growth this year to 7.5 and has taken measures since then to stimulate the economy.
Lower demand in other countries for what China produces has taken a bite out of its growth as has weak domestic demand.
While its economic growth continues to be strong, its government has yet to achieve its goal of creating a more balanced economy that is not so dependent on exports and where demand from consumers at home is far stronger. | {
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Reputation: Swordfish, sailfish, tuna and other large marine fish are capable of breathtaking top speeds, zipping through the water at 68mph (110km/h). They stab their prey with their long, sword-like bills.
Reality: It is physically impossible for the fish to even approach these speeds. However, at least one of them can accelerate its bill at an astonishing rate. They do not use their bills for stabbing.
It is almost unbelievable how fast swordfish and sailfish can reportedly swim.
Their hearts are three times larger than those of many fish
Look online and in some of the scientific literature, and you will learn that swordfish can reach speeds of about 60mph (97km/h). Sailfish swim even faster: their top speed is almost 68mph (110km/h). Other large marine predatory fish, such as tuna and marlin, reach similarly extraordinary speeds.
If these top speeds seem beyond belief, well, they are. In fact these predatory fish max out at speeds far below these record figures.
Still, swordfish and their kin certainly look like they have evolved for speed. They are muscular and streamlined, with powerful tails. But arguably, it is the more subtle internal adaptations that really seem to suggest they live life in the fast lane.
For one thing, the gills of these large predatory fish have a surface area many times larger than most fish, allowing them to pull more oxygen out of the water.
And, as explained by marine biologist Richard Ellis in his 2008 book Tuna: A love story, their hearts are three times larger than those of many fish, relative to their body size. Their blood also has an unusually high concentration of oxygen-carrying haemoglobin.
These fish don't just heat their eyes, but their brain too
What's more, swordfish – and other large predatory fish – can do something no other fish can: they can keep parts of their body warmer than the surrounding water. Exactly why this should be the case was unclear for many years, but a study in 2005 suggested an explanation.
Three marine biologists took eyes from dead swordfish and studied how temperature affected their ability to respond to light. They discovered that, at temperatures of about 21C, the swordfish retina can respond to very short flashes of light; up to 25 per second. However, at a chilly 6C the retinas could only respond to one flash per second.
This might be an adaptation for hunting at speed, says team member Eric Warrant of Lund University in Sweden.
"If you're in a situation where a prey item is moving erratically and changing directions often, you need to be able to spot those turns to hunt that fish," says Warrant. "Warmer tissues work more effectively than cold ones. These fish don't just heat their eyes, but their brain too, so they can process information more rapidly in the brain because it's a little warmer."
These observations all fit with the idea that swordfish and other large predatory fish are astonishingly fast. But they are not.
The most recent evidence of this comes in a paper published in August 2016 that tackles the myth head-on.
In theory, sailfish might be able to reach a speed of about 25mph
An international team of marine biologists looked at several large fish, including sailfish; close relatives of the swordfish that also sport a long, sword-like bill. They measured how quickly the muscles midway down each animal's body could twitch in response to an electrical stimulus. Then they used a few simple calculations to estimate how quickly each fish could beat its powerful tail and how fast it should be able to swim.
The results fell some way short of the widely-quoted speed records.
The scientists calculated that, in theory, sailfish might be able to reach a speed of about 25mph (40km/h). Tuna came in at about 16mph (26km/h). In reality, the fish probably reach maximum speeds significantly below this, and spend most of their time swimming at a much slower pace.
Many other biologists have found similar results.
As far back as 2007, Gil Iosilevskii at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and his colleagues explored the problem from a more mathematical perspective.
Some of those high-speed figures come from articles published in the 1940s and 1950s. One comes from Country Life
They found that, at swim speeds above 31mph (50km/h), a beating fish tail would begin to experience cavitation. That is, it would be moving so quickly through the water that it would create tiny bubbles as it did so. When those bubbles burst, they can cause damage to the tissue and reduce swimming performance.
This puts a fundamental limit on the speed that any fish or marine animal can swim in shallow surface waters, says Iosilevskii.
Studies in which fish have been tagged and then tracked fit with the slower speeds too. They show that large marine fish rarely swim much faster than 5mph (8km/h) – although they might reach speeds of about 18mph (30km/h) when they are hunting.
So why are they so often quoted as swimming faster?
"It's very frustrating," says Jens Krause at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin, Germany, a co-author of the myth-busting paper. "Some of those high-speed figures come from articles published in the 1940s and 1950s. One comes from Country Life, it's not even a scientific journal."
If these fish do not swim at high speed, why do they have an internal anatomy that seems so carefully optimised for speed?
Nobody seems to know why speed measurements made so long ago, by non-scientists, are still so widely quoted. It probably does not help that swordfish and other predatory fish are relatively rare animals and the open ocean is a huge place, so actually finding fish to study can be tricky.
Worse, measuring swimming speeds in fish is difficult, because the water they swim through is moving. A fish swimming at 50mph into a current of 50mph would appear stationary. A fish swimming at 5mph and going with the flow of a current travelling at 45mph would appear to be swimming at 50mph. Teasing apart actual swim speed from water speed is difficult.
Perhaps the popularity of the high-speed myth largely rests on the fact that swordfish and other large predatory fish have an anatomy and physiology that seems to suit high speeds.
But that raises an obvious question. If these fish do not swim at high speed, why do they have an internal anatomy that seems so carefully optimised for speed?
Richard Brill at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point, who co-authored the "fast swordfish eye" paper, has some ideas. The starting point is to understand a little about the way these fish live.
If they stop swimming they sink and suffocate
"Most marine fish, after they have been involved in a chase to exhaustion, will go and hide, become inactive for a while," says Brill. This gives them some valuable recovery time.
But swordfish and their ilk cannot do this. "They're living in the open ocean," says Brill. "There's no place to hide."
Even if there was a hiding place, the way these fish breathe would prevent them from settling down for some rest and recovery. "They are obligate ram ventilators," says Brill. This means they need to have water flowing over their gills in order to breathe. "If they stop swimming they sink and suffocate."
Swordfish, sailfish and tuna need to recover quickly after a sudden burst of activity, and this is why they have such large hearts and gills, says Brill. "When tunas go through a burst of activity they use their muscles anaerobically, like a 100m sprinter does. But then they need to pay back that oxygen debt, and tunas have evolved to do that very quickly."
There is at least one large marine fish that can move at truly high speeds
Their unique anatomy brings additional advantages, says Brill. For instance, it allows these predatory fish to grow very quickly. "Tunas and billfishes [swordfish and sailfish] have very high growth rates," he says.
Brill suggested these ideas in the mid-1990s and other marine biologists have largely accepted them – although they do not seem to have killed off the high-swim-speed myth yet. Perhaps the new myth-busting paper by Krause and his colleagues will be the final nail in the myth's coffin.
However, Krause's previous work does suggest there is at least one large marine fish that can move at truly high speeds.
In a study published in 2014, Krause and his colleagues studied the hunting behaviour of the Atlantic sailfish, a large predatory fish with a tall sail and a long sword-like bill.
They found that a hunting sailfish would slowly and carefully insert its long bill into a school of sardines – and then vigorously thrash its head from side to side. The sailfish's bill can be 12in (30cm) or so long, so its tip tears through the water very quickly during the head shakes.
Teeth sticking out sideways from the bill slash any sardine that happens to get in the way
Krause's team estimated that the tip accelerated at about 130m/s/s. That is among the fastest accelerations recorded by any marine animal with a backbone, although much slower than the accelerations achieve by some tiny marine creatures.
"The bill is so thin and long that it can achieve enormous acceleration," says Krause. "Faster than the fish escape response, in fact." Teeth sticking out sideways from the bill slash any sardine that happens to get in the way, leaving them injured and easy to eat.
So far, the fast swordsmanship is a hunting style that seems unique to the Atlantic sailfish. "Other billfishes don't seem to have perfected the technique," says Krause.
But even in this case, it is acceleration rate rather than top speed that makes the sailfish attack so effective. The maximum speed of the bill tip is probably only about 12mph (20km/h).
The truth is that swordfish and their like, despite appearances, are not particularly fast.
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University of Alabama archaeologists are discovering artifacts that will help them piece together the lives of people who lived thousands of years ago.
UA's Office of Archaeological Research was contracted by the City of Trussville last year to perform an archaeological investigation of the Hewitt-Trussville Stadium site, which is located at the Trussville Civic Center on the banks of the Cahaba River and west of Hewitt-Trussville High School.
Since excavation began in June, archaeologists have found evidence of occupations that date back 10,000 years ago, and provide a rare glimpse into two very interesting times in prehistory, said Matt Gage, OAR Director.
The first occurs at the end of the Late Archaic Period, when populations were transitioning from the earlier nomadic hunter gatherers to a more sedentary lifestyle. Pottery technology replaced stone vessels and other containers, and people were storing food items at different locations for use throughout the year. Horticulture was becoming more prevalent and the need for territorial control appears to have become more important.
"We're finding fragments of early pottery and lithic tools that are from approximately 2,000 to 2,500 years ago that will help to answer some of the questions surrounding this shift in lifeways," Gage said.
The second has to do with populations moving across landscapes. It is known that the West Jefferson phase occupants of the Black Warrior Valley began moving eastward into the Cahaba and Coosa Valleys about 1,200 years ago. They brought new pottery vessel technology, subsistence strategies and lithic tools, some of which were made of raw materials from the Black Warrior Valley that they likely brought with them or traded for, Gage said.
"The impetus for this migration and its effect on the people who were already living in that area are unclear," he said. "By looking through the remains of their daily life (their trash), we can gain a better understanding of what they were eating, who they were interacting with and how their technology influenced surrounding populations."
Field work on the project began last summer and has progressed through the various phases of identifying the site, testing the site to help determine its significance and now mitigation or data collection. OAR has worked closely with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Alabama Historical Commission's State Historic Preservation Officer, the State Archaeologist and the City of Trussville. In addition, OAR has worked closely with Trussville City Schools and Trussville students and teachers have had an opportunity to take part in the dig.
Gage estimated the field work to be complete by the end of the month, and then analysis and report preparation will begin. During this phase, the artifacts and other recovered samples will be returned to the laboratory for processing and analysis. Specialized samples will be sent off for dating, botanical analysis and geoarchaeological studies, and that information will be included in the final report.
Explore further Archaeologists unearth Tuscaloosa's early history | {
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