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First Minister Alex Salmond has warned that handing control of the UK’s helicopter search and rescue (SAR) service to a private company could undermine the life-saving service.
It was announced yesterday that Texan firm Bristow Helicopters has been awarded a £1.6 billion contract to provide the service for 10 years from 2015.
For the past 70 years helicopter SAR has been the responsibility of the RAF and Royal Navy.
In an exclusive interview with The Courier, the First Minister said he is “deeply suspicious” of the plans.
He said the changes run the risk of making the service “less effective” than at present.
However, Stuart Johnson, team leader with the Tayside Mountain Rescue Team, has no such concerns.
He said: “Mountain rescue has absolutely no concerns whatsoever with the contract going into private hands and I would even go so far as to say we are delighted the announcement has been made.
“This will allow us to move forward with the training programme with new helicopters for their deployment in 2015.”
For more on this story, and our Alex Salmond interview, see Wednesday’s Courier or try our digital edition. | {
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What NOT to do
While this guide covers pretty much everything you need to know about how to punch faster and harder, the way of humans is to err. For that, I’ve included some common mistakes people usually do when punch training or in an actual fight, so you know what to avoid or correct.
Telegraphing
This is one of the most common mistakes you’ll see, especially in a street brawl. Thinking they’ll gain more momentum and strength to land a punch, people have the tendency to bend their elbows back, or to cock their arm, as they say. This actually makes you wastes energy and so loses power and furthermore causes slight imbalance as body weight is shift back and then foreward. More importantly, it’s a HUGE tell for your opponent, who will be able to see what you’re about to do and avoid your hit completely. Telegraphing prolongs the time it takes you to land a punch, and in any real fighting situation, every millisecond counts. Just don’t do it.
Overreaching
Each type of punch takes a specific distance to throw correctly. You’ve seen how uppercuts are ideal as an inside hit, meaning they’re to be used when you’re really close to your opponent.
If you have to reach too far to hit your opponent, the power of your fist will be reduced. You could also lose balance and basically miss hitting as hard as you can. regular training will enable you to find your range.
Lifting your feet
If you’re to use your entire body for a power punch, then lifting your feet as you throw will only help in decreasing your strength and make you lose balance. The appropriate stance as we have discussed is to pivot on the balls of your feet, only lifting the heels as you rotate transferring your body weight from the floor through your body to the point of impact.Both feet should be kept on the ground for maximum body torque and maximum punching power.
Squaring up your feet
This is when your feet are next to one another horizontally, instead of one in front of the other. Remember you have to keep your feet slightly wider than shoulder width, with one leading – depending on which arm you’re going to use first. If your feet are squared up, you’ll be off balance and unable to capitalise on the torque of turn your body through the full range of motion
Staying tense
This cannot be stressed enough – keep you body relaxed throughout the fight. If you stay tense, you’re just wasting energy and delivery potential. When your muscles are relaxed, you’re able to rotate your body properly, snap out punch and kicks and utilise entire body weight as you strike. | {
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From the beginning, bitcoin has assumed a shadowy, almost outlaw mystique. The technology’s origin and founder remain shrouded in mystery, even to this day. Add to that the Silk Road scandal, in which anonymous users traded bitcoins to buy drugs, landing its pioneer in prison for life, and it’s easy to see why many initially viewed bitcoin as a funding mechanism for the underworld. Even the mathematics of the technology are inscrutable enough to believe the worst.
The irony is that the mathematical foundations of bitcoin create a solid record of legitimate ownership that may be more ironclad against fraud than many of the systems employed by businesses today. Plus, the open, collaborative way in which bitcoin processes transactions ensures the kind of network of trust that is essential to any business agreement.
[ Build and deploy an effective line of defense against corporate intruders with InfoWorld's Encryption Deep Dive PDF expert guide. | Get the most out of collaborative programming with InfoWorld's 20 essential pointers for Git and GitHub. | Stay up to date on the latest security developments with InfoWorld's Security newsletter and hot topics in programming with our Application Development newsletter. ]
In other words, look a little more deeply into the technology behind bitcoin, and you can readily see several intriguing possibilities for business use beyond crypto currency.
What follows is a deeper look at bitcoin’s foundation and mechanisms, and how companies could cash in on the integrity of bitcoin’s backbone, the blockchain.
Bitcoin’s true value: The blockchain
A currency’s viability depends in large part on its ability to guard against counterfeiting and to eliminate potential ownership disputes. Bitcoin tackles these problems by establishing a clear chain of ownership for each coin in circulation through a shared public ledger known as the blockchain. The blockchain -- and the process by which it is updated and maintained -- has been so successful that it is fast capturing the interest of researchers and entrepreneurs looking to create systems that nurture trust between competitors in realms beyond cryptocurrency.
The blockchain’s function is simple: To log every bitcoin transaction ever conducted. When one person transfers ownership of a specific denomination of bitcoins to another person, that transaction is confirmed by the bitcoin network (via a process known as mining) as an entry in a block of transactions that is then added to the long chain that goes back to the beginning of the project. This chain of blocks is more powerful than a table of owners because it allows everyone in the network to follow any given coin’s trail of ownership all the way back to when it was first created.
Another important wrinkle in the blockchain is that it employs public key encryption for identifying owners in the ledger, recording one half of the public key pair rather than names or Social Security numbers. Only the person who holds the corresponding private key can decide what happens next to their coin.
This layer of cryptography offers a certain amount of privacy because no names are recorded. But the cryptography offers a greater value in that it ensures transactions are endorsed only by the person who controls the private half of the key pair. Enterprises thrive on trust and assurance, and the cryptography built into the blockchain offers a great foundation for fostering trust among vested parties.
Another key component of the blockchain is the distributed way in which new entries are added to the ledger. There is no central record keeper like there may be with other ledger-based schemes such as travelers’ checks or PayPal. Instead, anyone can organize the next block of bitcoin transactions and update the blockchain through a process known as mining. This open, collaborative structure makes the blockchain attractive for more than supporting an alternative currency. Any organization or group of organizations can place trust in the blockchain because everyone in the network can play a part in the way it is extended.
Adding a bunch of new transactions to the blockchain may not sound exciting enough to generate wide interest in the task, but bitcoin sweetens the pot by offering rewards to those who do. To add the next block of transactions to the chain, you must solve an obtuse mathematical puzzle built from complex cryptographic primitives. The first to solve the puzzle gets to add the block to the chain and receives 25 coins, worth several thousand dollars. The prize is so lucrative that some groups use custom hardware that runs much faster, increasing their chances of finding the answer to the puzzle first, thereby mining more coins. Because the mathematical puzzles are hard and very fair, everyone gets a chance to compete, and that means everyone has a role and investment in the blockchain.
Pushing the blockchain beyond cryptocurrency
The digital signatures that certify each transaction and the collaborative process by which the blockchain is created offer an enticing amount of certainty and assurance for those interested in using the blockchain for tasks beyond banking and currency.
While bitcoin’s blockchain is generally filled with bitcoin transactions, many companies are exploring ways of using the blockchain to track other swaps, trades, or exchanges. Some are looking to bundle their transactions in bitcoin’s blockchain, while others plan to create an entirely separate blockchain using most of the same principles.
The more interesting work being done is in adding new features to the blockchain itself, features that do more than simply create another competing currency with another competing name.
More than 100 companies are exploring ways to extend the blockchain. Some want to build a trading platform; others want to create a more reliable secure identification card; some want to build "self-executing contracts"; some want to handle bitcoin accounting so that businesses can adopt the currency with a minimum of fuss. The applications are exploding.
Because the blockchain provides an unimpeachable record of transactions between two or more parties and evolves collaboratively among vested (and often competing) entities, there is significant potential for organizations to leverage blockchains to seal sophisticated business relationships in a way that reduces fraud and abuse.
Contracts
Most transactions in the blockchain are prosaic, transferring a certain number of bitcoins from one person to another. But the technology also includes a novel limited language for describing the transaction. This description can include more complex logic that can be used for much more than paying off a debt. It can check for agreement between multiple people and provide some kind of escrow.
In the simplest form, this technology can bind a digital signature of a text document into the blockchain. This freezes an indisputable record of what people agree to do and when they made the agreement. If there's an argument in the future, the blockchain can be used to settle disputes. The solution isn't perfect because it won't settle debates about the way to interpret the language in the contracts, but it will eliminate questions about what bytes are in the contract document.
Working with an arbitrary text document is only the beginning. Some developers have created escrow contracts with thresholds that lock up money until everyone agrees the terms have been met. These can be used in more complex group deals like the crowdsourcing projects from Indiegogo or Kickstarter. When people commit the money, it can only be unlocked if the project raises more than a preset threshold.
The next generation of blockchains can use even more elaborate and complex logic. Some might imagine contracts with checkpoints and audits than check completion. Others may want boilerplate contracts that can be deployed quickly and understood by everyone. These will unlock even more opportunities to work together while using the blockchain to ensure that everyone is protected.
Digital collectables
Money gains much of its value because there's a limited amount of it in circulation. No one can simply mint another dollar. One of bitcoin's greatest features is the algorithm it uses to keep the supply of bitcoins tightly controlled.
This doesn't need to be limited to protecting the world of currency. A number of popular objects like baseball cards or art prints are also issued in limited quantities. Scarcity, no matter how artificial, is often a desirable feature for collectors who are interested in investing.
There are other more prosaic needs. Some marketing teams want to limit how many times a coupon can be redeemed. While some want their coupons to be used by any and all customers, others want to offer special deals that must limit how many coupons circulate. Perhaps the inventory is limited; perhaps they want to build demand by making the coupons exclusive. In any case, ensuring that there is a fixed number of some digital good is right in the blockchain’s wheelhouse.
It’s easy to envision a future version of a blockchain that makes the process of limiting digital circulation simpler by tracking and validating the existence of digital goods, such as collectibles or coupons. Instead of limiting the blockchain to currency, it could allow users to add arbitrary objects and fields that could be anything but digital cash.
Voting
A typical cash transaction takes place between two people, one paying and the other receiving. But the bitcoin exchange logic can include a requirement that multiple users all provide valid signatures.
Many corporate boards and organizations do a poor job with voting. Many votes are taken by voice, a process that doesn't record who cast votes. If a true tally is collected, it often isn't recorded, and if it is recorded, it often isn't perfect. Many organizations simply don't do a good job with minutes or records.
The blockchain's solution for binding multiple owners of cash can also be used to track whether people agree to do other things. By tracking votes and ensuring that the results are available to guide everyone long into the future, the blockchain can be the foundation of governance.
Bills of lading
Shipping goods is a complex process that usually involves people from many companies. If the packages get to the final destination, everyone is happy. If they don't, someone must pay.
One of the traditional solutions is a "bill of lading," a paper document that travels alongside the goods and tracks responsibility. A blockchain transaction mechanism is a better solution because it can use cryptographic signatures to eliminate distrust. If all of the shippers are part of the process of computing the blockchain, they will be more willing to trust the transactions.
Future versions of the blockchain could extend the process to abstract goods. A person signing off at the end of a work shift could transfer responsibility to the next manager. A security team could swap roles and responsibilities every so often and track these changes via a blockchain.
Ironclad predictions
Everyone has a guess on who will win the Super Bowl, but only the ones who predict the game correctly like to brag about it afterward. The blockchain is a perfect way for people to lock in their predictions in a way that can't be denied later.
This is becoming more and more useful as companies experiment with prediction markets where employees bet on the future. Getting people to wager real money (or points) on events usually generates better guesses and results than simple polls or relying on one so-called expert. The markets aggregate the wisdom of the crowds and produce better results.
While prediction markets are best known for guessing the outcome of elections, they can be quite useful inside the enterprise for aggregating the predictions of the employees. Some plan investments in new product lines by asking employees to bet on the first year's sales. There are dozens of business decisions that can be allocated to employees in a crowdsourced manner, like guessing on attendance at proposed future conferences or predicting which colors will prove most popular for upcoming products. All of these predictions can be certified by a blockchain.
Microtransactions
In the past, many businesses embraced subscription services that charged one amount for access to an unlimited number of transactions. Charging one amount is simpler for everyone to understand and simpler to track because it removes the need to count all transactions.
While these solutions are popular and simple, they have problems of their own. It becomes harder to track which offers are truly valued by the customers and which are consumed because they're part of the bundle. Overconsumption and waste are common because the users don't need to pay for each item. Complex offerings are often driven out by cheap ones.
The blockchain can open up more complex transactions by tracking everything. While this is possible to do with a regular database or file, it doesn't have the same certainty or broad trust. Customers can be included in the computation of the blockchain, giving them the chance to validate transactions. If customers build the blockchain, they'll trust it and the enterprise. | {
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London — Former London Mayor Boris Johnson has been chosen by his party to become Britain's next prime minister. He will replace Theresa May, who was forced to resign amid a bitter feud in the U.K. -- and within both her and Johnson's Conservative Party -- over Britain's exit from the European Union.
As CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata reports, the new leader of America's closest ally is one of Great Britain's most prominent figures, and probably a familiar face to many Americans.
By a quirk of British politics, Johnson was not elected by the general public but instead chosen to lead by about 160,000 registered Conservative Party members. He won with 92,153 votes to rival Jeremy Hunt's 46,656 — a margin of almost two to one.
Boris Johnson speaks after being announced as Britain's next prime minister at The Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, Britain, on Tue., July 23, 2019. Reuters
The new prime minister will officially take office on Wednesday, when May formally resigns the post. Johnson thanked his opponent in the leadership contest, Hunt, and May in remarks to gathered party members in London after the results of the election were announced Tuesday.
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Johnson vowed to "unite this amazing country and take it forward" while pulling it out of the European Union to "take advantage of all the opportunities that it (Brexit) can bring."
He replaces the beleaguered May, who was forced out after repeatedly failing to deliver a deal for Britain to leave the EU that the British Parliament could agree on.
What's it mean for U.S. relations?
Despite once accusing President Trump of "stupefying ignorance" and "being unfit for office" for suggesting there were parts of London so violent they were "no-go" areas even for police, Johnson has recently softened his tone considerably.
Notably, he kept quiet about President Trump's description of now-former British Ambassador Kim Darroch as "wacky" and "very stupid guy" after leaked diplomatic cables revealed Sir Darroch's low opinion of the current American administration.
Jeremy Hunt, Johnson's challenger to lead the Conservative Party whose loss was confirmed on Tuesday, was more forthright in condemning Mr. Trump's stinging personal attack on Darroch, which forced the ambassador to resign.
Johnson's brand of bombast, brashness and bad hair has earned him a reputation of something of a political renegade in the U.K. But he has repeatedly stressed the importance of having a close relationship with the United States.
President Trump welcomed Johnson's victory, predicting in a tweet early Tuesday that the new prime minister would "be great!"
Congratulations to Boris Johnson on becoming the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He will be great! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2019
The change of leadership comes at a critical time for U.S.-U.K. relations, with a British tanker currently in the hands of the Iranian military and both America and Britain boosting their military presence in the Persian Gulf.
As a reminder of the potential geopolitical tinderbox he will inherit, Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif sent a tweet addressing Johnson on Tuesday, congratulating him and adding a reiteration of Tehran's view that the seizure of an Iranian tanker off Gibraltar, which preceded the seizure of Britain's tanker by Iran, amounts to "piracy, pure & simple."
"Iran does not seek confrontation," Zarif said. "But we have 1500 miles of Persian Gulf coastline.These are our waters & we will protect them."
The May govt's seizure of Iranian oil at behest of US is piracy, pure & simple. I congratulate my former counterpart, @BorisJohnson on becoming UK PM. Iran does not seek confrontation. But we have 1500 miles of Persian Gulf coastline.These are our waters & we will protect them pic.twitter.com/svEqmEHQBM — Javad Zarif (@JZarif) July 23, 2019
The U.K. is working with other European nations to move more military vessels to the Gulf region to secure the vital shipping channels in and out of the body of water, but thus far most EU nations have resisted the Trump administration's call for a "flotilla" specifically operating with a mandate to keep Iranian vessels in check.
Boris and Brexit
Johnson will take the reins of power in the U.K. just ahead of a crucial split in the road for Britain's political future.
Britain is currently scheduled to leave the European Union on Oct. 31 — per the wishes of a majority in Britain's four countries (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) expressed in a 2016 public referendum.
Johnson has been a hardline "Brexiteer" since before the referendum, pushing for the U.K. to exit the trade and customs bloc it helped found more than half a century ago. He has vowed to deliver that exit Oct. 31, with or without a deal in place with the EU to lay out new rules for trade and travel to replace the web of regulations built up over decades among the 28 member states.
Economists and politicians have warned that such a "no-deal" divorce could wallop Britain's economy, as the free-trade among neighbors and dozens of trade deals negotiated with the wider world by the bloc would suddenly be replaced for the U.K. by World Trade Organization rules.
That would require Britain, only the EU's second largest economy, to negotiate new, unilateral trade deals with all of its trading partners across the globe, including the U.S. It would have to do so from a much weaker position, without the collective bargaining power of the rest of Europe behind it.
Dire warnings of bottlenecks at ports and airports as new customs and travel rules are put in place, and even possible shortages of food and medicine, have been issued over the "no-deal" Brexit scenario.
But Parliament could try to stop Johnson letting it get to that point. Many members of his own Conservative Party, and crucially a majority of all Members of Parliament, do not believe the U.K. should crash out of the EU without a deal in place.
If Johnson lasts long enough in the office (he could be ousted at any time with a vote of no confidence leading to a new national election) to try and force a no-deal Brexit, Parliamentarians have been working behind the scenes for weeks on a way to stop him — and the way Britain's democracy works, they may well be able to do it.
If Parliament were to block a no-deal Brexit, it's unclear when, how or even if Britain's exit from the European Union might actually happen.
As has been the case with Brexit since the day after the referendum, regardless of who inhabits the Prime Minister's official residence at 10 Downing Street, nothing is certain. | {
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WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Republicans who were angered to learn on Wednesday that the former I.R.S. official Lois Lerner had referred to them as “crazies” and “assholes” responded later in the day by voting to sue the President of the United States.
“Calling us crazy assholes is insulting, derogatory, and beneath contempt,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters. “And now if you’ll excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I have to go sue Obama.”
Determined to burnish their reputation as extremely sane people who are not assholes at all, House Republicans in their lawsuit accuse the President of “coldly and arrogantly seizing power granted to him by the United States Constitution.”
The lawsuit alleges that “having signed 181 executive orders to date, Barack Obama seems intent on chasing the records of such notorious renegades as Dwight Eisenhower (484) and Theodore Roosevelt (1,081).” | {
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HEARTBEAT: This one's for the foodies! Wendy Wagner will share her grandma's WWII cookie recipe, and Steven Silver is offering a collection of traditional Armenian recipes and their history.
You'll also be treated to an exclusive interview with several of the authors, who will talk about food and how it's influenced their lives and writing.
And, of course, you get the physical book, the ebook, the bookmark, credit in the backer section of the book, backer updates, and any stretch goals.
Less | {
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'Is This The Year The SEC Beats Each Other Up?': Gary Danielson Previews LSU Mississippi State, Week 1 Of SEC ScheduleThe SEC on CBS analyst is preparing for the return of the conference this week with a new look LSU.
Pillar, Márquez Help Rockies Hand Giants Costly Loss, 7-2Kevin Pillar homered against his former team and German Márquez pitched six strong innings to snap a five-game losing streak as the Colorado Rockies beat the San Francisco Giants 7-2 on Monday night.
Athletics Clinch First AL West Title Since 2013The Oakland Athletics clinched their first AL West title since 2013 on Monday night with an assist from the rival Houston Astros.
Injuries Could Derail Season For Defending NFC Champ 49ersThe injury bug that has disrupted the San Francisco 49ers' season seems impossible to contain. | {
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The governor’s mansion -- a kingly abode for the governor and his family, right?
Don’t think like a peasant. It is so much more.
"Executive residences," as the National Governors Association calls them, are "regarded as an important symbol of the state’s culture and heritage. As state treasures, executive residences provide an appropriate setting for official state entertaining and are often highly valued as a venue for community functions."
Oh.
The NGA goes on:
"Given the critical role executive residences play in official state and cultural activities, considerable care is required in managing, staffing and maintaining the executive residence."
Gee, sounds like that could get kinda expensive. Just how much does it cost taxpayers to run the Wisconsin governor’s mansion -- ahem, executive residence?
Too much, says state Sen. Bob Wirch, a Democrat from Pleasant Prairie in Kenosha County. Echoing a call he made in 2002, when Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle was elected, Wirch wants Republican Governor-elect Scott Walker to sell or lease the 34-room manor.
"Over the course of one four-year term," Wirch claimed in a news release Nov. 15, 2010, "it costs taxpayers more than $1 million simply to operate."
Wirch also noted Walker’s own call to citizens for ideas on how to make state government run more efficiently. After all, with a structural deficit, lost revenue because of a state Supreme Court decision and other issues, the new governor faces a projected shortfall of $3 billion for the 2011-’13 budget.
"It is hard to set a good example," Wirch said in his statement, "if you are living in a mansion."
Walker, who will be inaugurated Jan. 3, 2011, plans to move with his family from Wauwatosa into the residence, said his spokesman, Cullen Werwie.
He said Walker has no comment on Wirch’s recommendation to sell or lease the mansion, which is perched on the shores of Lake Mendota.
The home’s "replacement value" is $1.63 million, according to the state Department of Administration. But Wirch believes that with its 3.7 acres of land, the estate is worth more than $2.5 million.
Perhaps, like us, you’ve never been to the mansion (although you can see it in pictures).
Well, according to the Department of Administration, the state Historical Society and the office of first lady Jessica Doyle, it:
Is a three-story, 21,000-square-foot (including basement) Georgian Revivalin Maple Bluff, a village northeast of Madison.
Was built in 1921 for Madison industrialist Carl A. Johnson and became home to governors after being purchased by the state in 1949.
Has 13 bathrooms, seven bedrooms, seven fireplaces and seven garden areas.
Nice. So, who takes care of it?
Seven employees, according to Vicki Heymann, the mansion’s residence director. Full-timers include Heymann, a chef, a gardener and a "facilities maintenance specialist." The part-timers are a housekeeper, a "laundress and flower arranger," and the head of the waitstaff, who has worked at the mansion for more than 32 years.
OK, now let’s get to Wirch’s claim that operating the mansion costs more than $1 million during a four-year term.
Wirch’s office said the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau put the operating costs at $265,000 per year. That would come to $1.06 million over four years.
The senator’s per-year number is a touch high, but his four-year figure of more than $1 million is on target.
The fiscal bureau told PolitiFact Wisconsin that the mansion’s operating expenses are budgeted at $262,500 in 2009-’10 and the same amount for 2010-’11, nearly all of which is salaries. That’s a total of $1.05 million over four years.
In fact, actual expenditures are running higher, according to the state Department of Administration. They were $290,462 in 2008-’09 and $273,340 in 2009-’10. If that were carried out over four years, the total would be $1.13 million.
Wisconsin is one of 44 states that provided a governor’s residence as of 2004, according to the most recent survey done by the National Governors Association.
Here’s how three of the other six treat their governors:
Rhode Island doesn’t have a mansion -- and probably doesn’t need one. You can drive across the state in an hour, said Amy Kempe, spokeswoman for the governor.
Idaho had a governor’s residence, then didn’t, then did again when one was donated by a billionaire potato magnate. Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter had been receiving a monthly housing allowance of more than $4,000. But Otter stopped taking the money in March 2009 when the 7,400-square-foot Idaho House became available and he opted to continue commuting from his ranch, his spokesman said.
California’s governors are on their own, because the state doesn’t provide a residence or a housing allowance, said Joe Wolfenden, senior guide at the California Governor’s Mansion. Now a state park destination, the mansion was last used by a governor in 1967, when Ronald Reagan lived there for three months before moving to a home that had been purchased by friends.
OK, let’s bring all this mansion talk home.
In calling on Governor-elect Scott Walker to save taxpayer dollars, state Sen. Bob Wirch said selling or leasing the governor’s mansion would enable the state to cut more than $1 million over four years on the cost of operating the mansion. Based on the latest budget and expenditure figures, the operating costs do exceed $1 million over four years.
We rate Wirch’s statement True. | {
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is now encouraging the recount efforts in the Florida Senate race where Republican Gov. Rick Scott leads incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.) by 12,000 votes. But back in 2006, Schumer was not a fan of recounts and told Republicans to end their "futile" efforts in two Senate races where the Republican candidates were trailing.
"And so I'm urging with all due respect to the president today, to urge Mr. Allen to forgo this futile recount and contestation policy which will simply delay the inevitable which is that Jim Webb will be the new senator from Virginia," Schumer said in comments after the 2006 midterm elections, which were first flagged by NTK Network.
Schumer, then the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) chairman, wanted Republicans George Allen (Va.) and Conrad Burns (Mont.) to concede their Senate races. Allen lost by a margin of 7,000 votes, and Burns lost by a margin of 3,000 votes.
Schumer cited other Republicans who lost their races by fewer than 1,000 votes and still conceded without a recount to reinforce his point. He added that it would be the "gentlemanly thing to do" for the Republican candidates to concede.
Now, after the 2018 midterms, Nelson trails by a wider margin than Allen or Burns, and Schumer is encouraging a recount and is confident Nelson will be declared the winner.
"Republicans know that if this recount is conducted fairly and thoroughly that Sen. Nelson has an excellent chance of being reelected," Schumer said during a press conference on Tuesday. "If this is done fair and square, we believe Sen. Nelson has an excellent chance, a much greater than half chance of being reelected."
The recount is currently underway in Florida but there are reports some counties are experiencing mishaps and won't be able to meet the deadline to have all the votes recounted. Democrats have filed a lawsuit to extend the time for counties to tabulate the recount. | {
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Pitching guest posts? Submitting a story? Forwarding a press release?
No matter how you do it, landing content & acquiring a link on a whole another domain is one of THE best ways to create brand awareness and drive traffic back to your site. However, getting featured on a cannabis publication will not do your website any justice or increase your rankings unless it has good authority and a sufficient amount of traffic already going to it.
To better understand how search engines work, you need know about the qualitative measurements that significantly affect the property’s overall visibility and rankings in search engines. There are plenty of other metrics to take into consideration but here’s are the two most important –
1) Domain Authority – The strength(or value) of the entire website
2) Page Authority – The quality of an individual web page (varies by page & not included in this post)
Both are measured on a scale from 0 – 100. With zero being where everyone pretty much starts off and one hundred being almost impossible to ever get unless you’re Youtube and owned by Google. So, somewhere between 30 -40 is good, above 50 is awesome and anything under 20 is probably just a waste of time.
And, since the average person wouldn’t have a clue as to how to find these metrics, I’ve gone ahead and done all the dirty work for you. Plus, included contact information for each one. Enjoy! | {
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Teenage Bobbi Blair Provides A Uber-cute Tugjob
That is proper! Lately now we have the ultra-cute Bobbi Blair paintings wonders on a pink cigar. Bobbi Blair likes providing handjobs and little angel seems luxurious as little angel heads down on her knees and provides this fortunate stud’s pecker a cupping and makes use of each palms to jack him off. | {
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Alanna Kelly
A Kelowna man is still desperately trying to find his dog after it was stolen from a fenced yard.
Atlas the Golden Retriever was taken from the Taylor Crescent property by a woman about 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
Surveillance footage shows the dog being taken.
Ian Galt says he heard the secure fence open and drag along the concrete.
“I came out, and the gate was open three feet, and there was a young lady running down the street with Atlas right behind her,” he said.
RCMP believe the theft was targeted.
“RCMP are taking the matter seriously,” said Cpl. Jesse O’Donaghey. “Police have followed up on some investigative leads, as they continue their efforts to identify the woman in the video and ultimately locate Atlas.”
Taylor Galt says the dog may be in Calgary, and he's asking people to keep an eye out on social media.
“I need to rule some people out here,” said Galt. “Buy and sells, Facebook pet pages, Kijiji, Craig’s List, if we can get the public looking in those places that would be the most helpful.”
Galt says he spoke with his veterinarian who put a high alert in his chip so when he is brought in they will be alerted that he is a missing dog.
He purchased the dog at eight weeks old from a breeder himself and has paid for all the veterinarian bills.
Police say the woman left in a white SUV. She is described as Caucasian, with blonde hair, and was wearing a dark-coloured jacket, dark pants and a white toque.
“There are some indications that the theft may have been targeted, however police will continue to treat the incident as random until that can be confirmed,” said O’Donaghey. “At this time, there are no other similar reports that we are aware of.”
A $5,000 reward has been offered by the family for anyone who can bring Atlas home. | {
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Often its has sought ransoms for them to swell its coffers, and some governments have reportedly handed over hefty sums of cash.
In other cases, where money isn't forthcoming, the Islamic militant group has publicized its barbaric killings of the hostages, apparently in an effort to score propaganda points with its extremist followers.
The number of foreign captives killed by ISIS is dwarfed by the masses of Iraqis and Syrians slaughtered under the militants' murderous rule over parts of the region.
But the fates of some of ISIS' most high-profile hostages, outlined below, have brought home to the West the brutality of the militant group.
James Foley
The first American hostage whose slaying ISIS publicized, James Foley was a freelance journalist from Rochester, New Hampshire, who was abducted during a reporting trip in northern Syria in November 2012. He had a "bold commitment to bearing witness of the suffering in conflict zones," according to his family. Foley had previously been held captive in Libya by forces loyal to the former dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
ISIS at one point demanded a ransom of 100 million euros ($113 million, at current exchange rates) for Foley's release, according to GlobalPost, one of the news organizations for which he worked.
U.S. special forces failed to find Foley, 40, and other American hostages during an attempted rescue operation in July.
A video of his beheading was posted online on August 19.
In his last letter , conveyed to his family by a former fellow hostage who memorized it just before his release, Foley talked about memories, like a long bike ride with his mom, that took him "away from this prison."
And he underscored how prayer had helped him during his ordeal: "I feel you all especially when I pray. I pray for you to stay strong and to believe. I really feel I can touch you even in this darkness when I pray."
Steven Sotloff
Freelance writing for publications like Time and The Christian Science Monitor took Steven Sotloff to the Middle East.
"I know reporting on an international level is what he always wanted to do," recalled one of his college friends
Sotloff, a Miami Dolphins fan from South Florida, visited a range of countries including Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and eventually Syria. Shortly after crossing into the war-torn nation in August 2013, Sotloff and his guide were kidnapped by gunmen who jumped out of cars.
Sotloff's family has suggested that other rebels received tens of thousands of dollars for tipping off ISIS that he had entered Syria. The family refrained from public comment during his captivity, but broke their silence after ISIS released a video of his beheading on September 2, 2014.
Sotloff, 31, was "no war junkie," they said.
"He merely wanted to give voice to those who had none," they explained. He studied Arabic, enjoyed watching South Park and would chat to his dad on Skype about his golf game. "Steve had a gentle soul that this world will be without," his family said, "but his spirit will endure in our hearts."
David Haines
It was in the Balkans that David Haines, who grew up in Scotland, started to realize that he wanted to become a humanitarian aid worker. At the time, he was an aircraft engineer for Britain's Royal Air Force serving under the United Nations.
He found himself "helping people in real need," according to his brother, Mike. After he left the air force, he spent more than a decade helping the victims of conflicts in different parts of the world.
"David was most alive and enthusiastic in his humanitarian roles," his brother said.
His work as a logistics and security manager for the Paris-based relief group ACTED took him to a refugee camp in Syria, near the border with Turkey.
Haines was abducted near the camp in March 2013. His family said they had repeatedly tried to make contact with his captors but never heard back. ISIS threatened to kill him in the video of Sotloff's slaying. And on September 13, 2014, the militants posted a video showing the beheading of Haines, a 44-year-old father of two daughters.
"His joy and anticipation for the work he went to do in Syria is for myself and family the most important element of this whole sad affair," his brother said. "He was and is loved by all his family and will be missed terribly."
Alan Henning
A taxi driver from northwest England, Alan Henning traveled with a group of Muslim colleagues and friends to Syria in December 2013 to deliver food and water to people affected by the civil war. They nicknamed him "Gadget" because he loved to fix things. It was his fourth trip to Syria with an aid convoy, and he was the only non-Muslim in the group.
"It's all worthwhile when you see what is needed actually gets where it needs to go," he said in a video recorded the day before he was kidnapped by masked gunmen.
After ISIS threatened to kill Henning, 47, in September 2014, his wife publicly pleaded with them to spare him, describing the father of two as a "peaceful, selfless man."
"I cannot see how it could assist any state's cause to allow the world to see a man like Alan dying," she said. But ISIS ignored her calls, releasing a video showing his beheading on October 3. His wife reportedly said that family and friends were "numb with grief" after receiving "the news we hoped we would never hear."
Peter Kassig
After spending time in the Middle East as a U.S. Army Ranger stationed in Iraq, Peter Kassig said he felt compelled to go back to the region to help people caught up in the Syrian conflict. He trained as an emergency medical technician and went to offer his services in Lebanon, where many Syrian refugees end up.
"The way I saw it, I didn't have a choice," he told CNN in 2012. "This is what I was put here to do. I guess I am just a hopeless romantic, and I am an idealist, and I believe in hopeless causes."
Kassig eventually founded Special Emergency Response and Assistance, an aid organization, and moved its base of operations to a Turkish city near the Syrian border in the summer of 2013. He was on his way to Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria for work when he was detained on October 1, 2013. His family said that they, along with friends and colleagues, worked "tirelessly and quietly" to try to secure his release.
He converted to Islam during his captivity, changing his name to Abdul-Rahman Kassig, although the journey toward the faith started before his abduction, his family said. ISIS published a video showing his beheading on November 16, 2014.
Haruna Yukawa
A series of heavy setbacks in life befell Haruna Yukawa before he decided to travel to the Middle East with dreams of running his own private security company. Over the previous decade, he had attempted suicide, lost his wife to cancer, and then lost his home and business. The events appeared to take a psychological toll.
On a blog, Yukawa once wrote, "I look normal outside, but inside I'm mentally ill." He came across as a lost soul, but he appeared to find renewed purpose in Syria.
"He seems to have felt satisfaction being there and living together with the locals," one of his friends told CNN.
But Yukawa, 42, was abducted in August 2014 and ended up in the hands of ISIS. His plight gained wider attention last month when ISIS posted a video threatening to kill him and another Japanese hostage unless Tokyo paid a $200 million ransom. Days later, on January 24, they released a video containing an image of Yukawa's decapitated body.
"I have been praying such a thing would not happen but, unfortunately, it has finally come to pass and my heart aches," his father, Shoichi, said.
Kenji Goto
The other Japanese hostage, Kenji Goto , was a veteran journalist who had been reporting from conflict zones for years. He said he wanted to tell the stories of people suffering in war zones, especially children.
Goto, 47, met and befriended Yukawa in Syria, apparently helping show his less experienced compatriot how to get by in a risky environment. After Yukawa's capture, Goto decided to head into ISIS-controlled territory to try to rescue his friend, leaving his wife and three daughters in Japan, the youngest of them only three weeks old. He reportedly told a Syrian colleague that he thought he would be OK because he wasn't American or British.
But ISIS apparently didn't see it that way, adding him to its collection of foreign hostages. After announcing the killing of Yukawa, ISIS said they would swap Goto for an Iraqi terrorist on death row in Jordan. But no deal was reached and on January 31, ISIS released a video showing Goto's beheaded body.
"Kenji always has been a kind person, ever since he was little," his mother, Junko Ishido, said. "He was always saying, 'I want to save the lives of children in war zones.'"
Lt. Moath al-Kasasbeh
After his F-16 fighter jet crashed over Syria in December, Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot Lt. Moath al-Kasasbeh was taken prisoner by ISIS. He was the first member of the coalition of air forces carrying out bombing raids on ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq to fall into the hands of the militants.
Al-Kasasbeh, 27, was a devout Muslim who memorized the Quran and hailed from a large family and prominent tribe noted for its loyalty to the monarchy. One of eight children, he was "a very modest and religious person," according to his father, Safi al-Kasasbeh. He had gotten married just a few months before his plane crashed in Syria.
The pilot's fate after his capture was unknown until ISIS brought him into the equation of the prisoner swap of Goto for the Iraqi terrorist. But they never explicitly offered to release him and didn't provide Jordan with a proof-of-life for him.
On February 3, ISIS posted a video and images showing the killing of al-Kasasbeh in which he was burned alive in a cage. Jordanian officials said they believed he had been killed weeks earlier, on January 3.
"He always wanted to be a pilot," his cousin, Layla al-Kasasbeh, said after the news of his death . "He was a really smart guy, and everyone loved him."
Kayla Mueller
From her teenage years onward, Kayla Mueller devoted herself to helping those less fortunate than her.
In high school and at college, she campaigned against international atrocities. After graduating from college in 2009, the Arizona native traveled to northern India, the Palestinian territories and Israel to assist humanitarian groups, her family said. She then went to Syria to help people whose lives had been torn apart by war, especially children.
"Syrians are dying by the thousands and they're fighting just to talk about the rights we have," the humanitarian worker told The Daily Courier, her hometown paper in 2013.
She was kidnapped in August 2013 after leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Aleppo, her family said. They heard nothing from her captors until 10 months later, when ISIS got in touch with a ransom demand of nearly $7 million. Her parents said the militants told them they would treat her as their guest.
But on February 6, ISIS claimed Mueller had been killed in a building that was hit during a Jordanian airstrike on Raqqa. Her parents initially held out hope that she might still be alive, but they announced Tuesday that they had received confirmation she had lost her life.
"Kayla was a compassionate and devoted humanitarian," the family said. "She dedicated the whole of her young life to helping those in need of freedom, justice and peace."
John Cantlie
A British photojournalist who has also written articles for newspapers, John Cantlie was captured in northern Syria at the same time as James Foley. His LinkedIn profile says he has 20 years of experience and specializes in working in hostile environments, including Afghanistan, Somalia and Libya.
"I love stories of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances," he wrote in an online portfolio describing his work. He was previously abducted in Syria with a Dutch journalist in July 2012. Both were shot when they tried to escape through a hole in their tent. Several days later, they were rescued by Free Syrian Army rebels.
ISIS appears to have used Cantlie differently to its other Western hostages, making him perform as a journalist telling ISIS' side of the story.
"You're thinking, 'He's only doing this because he's a prisoner. He's got a gun at his head, and he's being forced to do this.' Right? Well, it's true. I am a prisoner. That I cannot deny," Cantlie said in the first video in September 2014. "But seeing as I've been abandoned by my government and my fate now lies in the hands of the Islamic State, I have nothing to lose." | {
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Pilot fish’s new boss is an old-school project manager: been there for decades, worked his way up in the ranks, and if a technology didn’t exist when he started out, he has no use for it.
But when fish’s boss gets a new boss, fish’s boss is soon “retired.” Lucky fish then gets the task of cleaning out seven big file cabinets in his old boss’s office.
And what does he find there? “At least a decade’s worth of interoffice memos,” sighs fish, “plus just about every company email he had ever received — all printed out and stamped with his name and the date he received it.”
Sharky doesn’t keep every piece of email, but I’ll take special care of your true tales of IT life. Send them to me at [email protected]. You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter. | {
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Though his fiancee, Victoria Kohout, told authorities that Meyer was a "big teddy bear," her June 20 petition for the restraining order described him as an "unpredictable drug addict" who had threatened her with a gun, and threatened to burn down her house, slash her tires and break the windows on her car. The judge noted in the file that Meyer had four guns. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Yea I took a shower this morning in the sink | {
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I just asked ASRock sales via [email protected] email address if/when ASRock would be releasing an ITX motherboard for the AM4 platform. This was JC Chung's response:
First text block in this image is me replying to the above email:
Yes, my name is Payden.
I am excited for this ITX board, but was hoping for some magic to be done with the X300 chipset boards. I figure since the chipset would be very small, you could fit other things on the motherboard that you normally wouldn't see in an ITX form factor.
Say:
A second PCI-e slot (look at current ITX motherboards, remove the chipset, and you have just enough room for another slot imo).
A second M.2 slot, or added USB functionality.
Four RAM DIMM slots.
You get the idea. Something ITX normally doesn't have.
JC's logic for going for B350 on an ITX form factor makes sense. Unless you consider external GPU enclosures via Thunderbolt or USB 3.1 Gen 2 (if this board would have a port for that).
Still, I'll probably grab this ITX board before switching to an X300 chipset ITX board once they are released just so I can get a PC again for a while. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Wanted for murder and armed robbery Unlawfully flees prosecution | {
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Get over 50 fonts, text formatting, optional watermarks and NO adverts! Get your free account now!
I used to wonder how facebook page admins came up with so much OC - Then I discovered Reddit
Check out all our blank memes | {
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The World Press Photo contest has four verification processes to ensure compliance with its code of ethics and entry rules.
1. Entry checks
Entry rule 10 states the contest is for single frame, single exposure pictures. This means multiple exposures, polyptychs (diptychs, triptychs, etc.), stitched panoramas (either produced in-camera or with image editing software), and pictures with text added within the frame, are not eligible. These entries that are not eligible are removed from the contest.
2. Manipulation review
Entry rule 12 states “the content of a picture must not be altered by adding, rearranging, reversing, distorting or removing people and/or objects from within the frame.”
There are two exceptions to this: (i) cropping that removes extraneous details is permitted; (ii) sensor dust or scratches on scans of negatives can be removed.
The process for ensuring compliance with this rule takes place in the later rounds of the judging. Entrants whose pictures remain in the contest and are eligible to progress are contacted before the final rounds and required to provide the file as recorded by the camera. These files could be:
RAW file(s)
Full format JPEG file(s). These must be as delivered by the camera, and provided in a series showing at least three frames before and after the contest entry
For smartphones, the image captured with the built-in, stock camera app, emailed from the phone to [email protected]
Unprocessed positive scans of film negative(s), plus a contact sheet to show a series of at least three frames before and after the contest entry.
Failure to provide these files will lead to the elimination of the entry, making it ineligible for the final round and a possible award.
Two independent digital analysts compare original files with contest entries to determine whether the content of any picture (either a single picture or frame in a story) has been altered. The guidance on manipulation describes and shows what alterations to the content of a picture are not allowed. The workflow of the manipulation review is provided here.
3. Fact-checking
During the judging process an independent analyst will check the context in which each remaining image or story was produced, distributed and/or published.
Entry rule 9 states “all pictures must have accurate captions,” and the guidance on captions details what information must be provided in captions.
The process for ensuring compliance with this rule takes place after the jury decides on the prize nominees. An independent fact-checking team will review all captions to verify the completeness and accuracy of the information given. They will also examine the metadata in the picture files. If required information is missing or incorrect, photographers will be contacted and asked to provide the correct information.
The fact-checking process will be where clause 2 of the code of ethics (that entrants “must not intentionally contribute to, or alter, the scene they picture by re-enacting or staging events”) is handled. Captions must explain the circumstances in which a photograph was taken. If the photographer influenced the scene in any way, or gave directions to a subject to pose in any way for a portrait, this must be disclosed in the caption.
4. Story text
Once the jury has selected the nominees, the World Press Photo Foundation will deploy a research team to gather background information on each image and story. While we rely on the photographers for the basic captions, which are lightly edited for accuracy and clarity, we often need additional information. This is so we can provide - in the yearbook, exhibition and on the website - the full story that gives the context for each image and story. The foundation is responsible for the content of this text.
If at any time after an award is announced an entry is found to have broken one or more entry rules, or contravened the code of ethics, it will be disqualified. The process for determining the status of an award will be detailed in the Judging Procedures Handbook, Section I. | {
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Decommissioned Works
The following pieces have been removed from reproductive circulation but are available for your viewing enjoyment here.
Fate Tectonics (2013) - Sold original: anonymous Chicago collector
A shift in the apocalyptic landscape attempts to tear apart the rooted couple. They cling until their last, aflame with love and doom.
The Arrow that Flies By Day (2013) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
With this piece I wanted to bring motion and color together in an evocative, yet simple scene. The title is taken from Psalm 91, however, with responsibility in mind, my intent is that "the arrow" is really the self. Enmity of God is a constant biblical theme, but before that can be addressed, man's enmity of himself needs to be explored. How does one get saved from oneself if his own (supposedly eternal) fate rests in his own extremely flawed hands? Perhaps, in differing degrees, we're all naturally set up for beautiful, flaming destruction.
High Winds (2012) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
This piece gave me difficulty from start to finish; the purple ink atop airbrushed green paint took days and days to dry. That'll teach me to try a more abstract approach. Whether you think this air rush is taking place in the High Sierras or deep in the high seas, it matters not to her (fragmented) highness.
Sequiteur (2010) - Sold original - Colleen Curry, Plainfield, IL
Non sequitur - non + saboteur = Sequiteur
To follow an order + one who commits sabotage = order by force on behalf of a self-serving cause.
The stagecoach and masthead represent antiquated masculine invention. The fire is the impending destruction of the status quo. The woman’s head embodies the feminine gender forced into specific direction through the ages, void of extremities and power. Women’s hair has often mirrored their role in societies of olde; each strand quietly in its place. Tightly wound, organized on the surface and pulling back the woman’s head in a locked position, so she is able to see only one way. But on the other side the internalized pressure builds: there is an inevitable explosion from the valve, an exhaust of her excess madness.
Years ago I had loathed pink. I refused to use it as a large color component simply because I thought it was too "little girly". Then I grew up and realized my mistake; I was conditioned by a society to see a color not only as gender-associated (my own, no less) but actually negative. In using more shades of pink in my work it started to become for me a "power color" rich with nuance, and strength.
The Gospel According to Thecla (2012) - Sold original - Courtney Bollino, Wilmington, IL
The only known record of Thecla, a virgin saint of the early Christian church and unsung biblical radical feminist figure, comes from the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (circa 2nd century). A cult figure in the Eastern church, Thecla is a protomartyr among women viewed as equal to the apostles. As the story goes, she was miraculously saved from being burned at the stake by a sudden storm. Later on, a nobleman tried to rape her and, after fighting him off, she was put on trial and found guilty of assaulting him. She was sentenced to be stripped naked and eaten by lions, but was saved as the female lions turned to protect her from the male lions. She then committed the unthinkable and revolutionary act of baptizing herself in a nearby vat of water. Once she did this, a ring of fire sprang up, surrounding her and keeping her safe from harm. She went on to live a long monastic life.
This is a story where various attempts at subjugation were repeatedly quelled by a woman who was protected by an obviously feminist God. To no surpise, though, this story has been held back from the mainstream books of the bible through the decisions of...other men.
Long live Thecla.
Ghosts of the 4th Dimension (2012) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
This drawing was inspired by Carl Sagan's educational explanation of a 4th dimension. We are not even in the infancy stages of knowing and if our energy does go on after death in an organized manner perhaps it occupies this 4th plane. My imaginative gears keep turning over this possibility.
Hapax Legomenon (2011) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
A word that occurs only once in a written text, Hapax Legomenon relates a fascination with the juxtaposed interconnectedness / disconnect of the universe and the degree to which we can describe these ideas. A picture is worth 1,000 words, but this one is worth only 1.
Shadow & Substance (2012) - Original donated to Inspiration Corporation Chicago
"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas; you’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.” – Rod Serling
Inspired by the sheer wonder of existence as well as this brief musical composition: Happy Flight by Klaus Doldinger
Eon Somnia (2012) - Sold original - Douglas Meese, Chicago, IL
Death on the installment plan, sleep is that nightly reminder of how we lack control over this human shell and all the electrical impulses charging through it when we're not entirely behind the wheel. A time to reset and recharge, a time to dream of the glorious and the grotesque. Upon waking, dreams range from kind to cruel and resonate with one not at all, or for minutes, hours, days, weeks, or years. Perhaps the recesses of sleep are really a "Twilight Zone" playground of sorts between the living and the almost unliving.
Glamours of the Deep (2009) - Sold original - Abigail McNabb, Mazon, IL
Continuing fascination with the movement of the ocean inspired this piece. Looking into sea water, one can see a plethora of colors, which I chose to separate out into their own strands. There are numerous references that personify the ocean as female and I worked in these three siren Glamours emerging from their cool depths of blue and purple dreamery.
Force Majeurette (2011) - Sold original - Michael & Kristy Hayden, Chicago, IL.
Feminizing the title, this piece is an interplay of color and negative space. I paired opposing feelings of calmness in the contemplative Majeurette with the erratic explosion of Her Force, like the lovely dichotomy of perfectly manicured hands swinging a huge sharpened axe.
Fathoms (2011) - Sold original - Colleen Curry, Plainfield, IL
I sought to re-imagine a ship on the ocean's floor stylized to near-unrecognition and I think about how a passing vessel might simply see the crow's nest peaking above the surface and just take it for an empty bucket and flag. This was joyful for me - and as therapeutic as a coloring book. A measurement of depth, I assigned each fathom its own personality and flow.
And so it goes...what matters always lies beneath, doesn't it?
The Anthraxian (2012) - Original available for purchase - contact Sarah.
A take on Pestilence, one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse symbolizing plague in some interpretations of the Book of Revelation, The Anthraxian is my own slightly more colorful version. The tundra mammoth of destruction moves slow in the hands of this jester rogue, but it does move nonetheless. All they have is time, time to inch on toward The End.
Anima Lux (2010) - Sold original - Pam McNabb, Morris, IL
A texture collective, Anima Lux (soul light) was also formed to "shape" the feeling of the subject, even beyond the second dimension. I am attracted to the pairing of blues and browns (water and earth) as well as trees and ships. This ship is made of trees – it just uses the element of water differently. I parallel this connection to thefirst law of thermodynamics: being that energy is neither created nor destroyed but only changes form. I personally believe our core consciousness (soul) is a form-changing (or even shape-shifting) energy. I like to think that once we "shuffle off this mortal coil", we'll navigate ethereal oceans in a new and quite different Age of Discovery.
Lithium of Star Anise (2009) - Sold original - Brian Cicirello, Chicago, IL
An homage to science, this piece is shaped like the Periodic Table of Elements and combines nature, alchemy and physiology in a stream-of-consciousness-like connection. Lithium has many forms and purposes and is often used as a mood stabilizer. Star Anise is a spice flavoring such things as licorice and absinthe. I could see a similarity in the Lithium (Li) atom and the shape of the Star Anise pod and decided to invite them both to my two-dimensional party. Again, due to size, detail restrictions apply. Ironically, I happened to introduce this piece to the world on Nikola Tesla's birthday - he sits in the corner with his coil.
Inverno Mascherato (2007) - Sold original - Chris & Jennifer Crnkovic, Plainfield, IL
Italian for "winter masquerade", this piece gives you a tranquil glimpse into a woods clearing that echoes with both aristocratic dignity and a bleak longing. I used a neutral-colored illustration board and a muted color scheme and the results were very Moonlight Sonata-esque. Divided by a stream and rooted into either bank are the masked tree figures that reach out to each other in a frozen Waltz. The intertwining of their extremities is as close as they’ll ever be to one another. It’s not so much the distance that separates them (as it tends to do for humans) but rather, how deeply they are rooted to where they've grown, unable to move. The costume and hairstyles are reminiscent of the more romantic eras, that I can't seem to purge from my mind. I basically grew up in a forest, so fewer things are as swooning to me as statuesque trees covered in snow, deathly still under the moonlight.
Harbor No Illusions (2008) - Sold original - Mark Koppenhoefer, Chicago, IL
Everyone has journeys. Journeys of self discovery are the most adventurous. My 30-year journey out of the lands of organized religion was a tumultuous one. Rough like the ocean with an ocean's worth of salty tears. The wrecked ship "Faust" represents my dramatic divorce from Catholicism. The ocean waves and faces in the rocks provide a backdrop of metaphor that helped me define and close this long chapter of my life. Thankfully, I now embark on a healthier quest of spirituality that has brought me closer to God - and this new journey is on solid ground. Because of this piece's size, the details may be difficult to see in pixels and vectors. A condensed online version can never really replace seeing the real thing in person, but I guess that goes without saying. I provide you with a mere fleeting glimpse...
Belladonna Halcyon (2005) - Sold original - Chris & Jennifer Crnkovic, Plainfield, IL
A Gestalt of meanings comprise this work; the puzzle pieces indicate a coming apart of sorts, but they float peacefully. A comfortably numb Belladonna drifts off into oblivion in her little ship that seems to absorb her. Flowing hair, garments and sails adorn the maiden and regardless of where she's headed, she is going there peacefully.
Lure of the Xanadu Vapors (2002) - Sold original - John & Pam McNabb, Morris, IL
My mom and dad's favorite, this piece was one I had kicked around in my head for four years prior to creating it. Using a straw to blow acrylic paint around the illustration board, I brought my spider-like trees to life and using the white of the board, I shrouded the scene in a winter fog. Camouflaged in the trees are several vapors (ghosts) who have set up the fire to lure the entity with the lantern (another vapor, perhaps) to arrive and inspect. What happens next is left to the imagination.
Storm in a Teacup (2001) - Sold original - Jennifer Skvarla, Plainfield, IL
Inspired by a line in a song by Garbage, this piece combines several random elements that I favor: tea, the ocean, detailed hair with unexpected structural elements, colorful bubbles, and an environment of mixed metaphors. Using negative white space to cushion the softness of the gray steam tendrils, the tea - a symbol associated with being "proper" - spills through the crack in the cup gaining momentum in reverse, waving into a tempest in time with the thunderous cellist above the tidal waves, a shiny tea kettle and some happy bizarre-ness. I liken the scenes I draw to someone walking down a hallway of open doors and just quickly glancing inside to see a single moment of something interesting but inexplicable happening.
Toys in the Attic (2006) - Sold original - Toby McNabb, Mazon, IL
In the ongoing struggle of good vs. evil, there are always those imaginative wars that wage in a child's room at night. When I was little I hated the doll staring at me at night from across the room, or the thought of that toy clown pulling me under the bed like in the movie Poltergeist. I took that theme and combined it with your standard Heaven vs. Hell conflict. The crucifix in the window shines protection on this little one while the plastic demon-symbols and rats inspired by The Nutcracker encroach. I began this piece Christmas 2005 (with my new set of Prismacolors) and finished Halloween 2006. The floor alone took roughly 18 hours. The song I recommend to pair with this piece (like a good wine) is Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones.
Shypovfuls (2001) - Sold original - Cathy & Jeff Godke, Itasca, IL
One of my more energetic and happier works, this lighter piece is a joint effort between the white space and the blending of colors to create a fun atmosphere. Each person on board this ship was injected with an individual personality and the sub-sea level view was an experiment in visual depths, inspired by a picture book I had as a child called "Once Upon a Pirate Ship". The title's naming convention is also an exercise in creative freedom. The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction.
The Killing Frost (1999) - Sold original - Brian Cicirello, Chicago, IL
My original sketch was entirely different than how this piece turned out, but the initial concept never changed. I took advantage of the illustration board's white space, manipulating it as snow. As detail-heavy as parts of this piece are I didn't feel scenic pressure to complete the body of Frost. The anthropomorphic trees and rocks that sigh and bleed, in deathly distress, accompany the mistress on her chilling journey into the afterlife. The image of the man Frost was very much inspired by the look of Gary Oldman's character in Bram Stoker's Dracula and the title was inspired by Pink Floyd's haunting song Terminal Frost.
Lilacs, Grapes, and Violets (1998) - Sold original - Abigail McNabb, Mazon, IL
I love to construct mounds and clusters of detailed hair. For this piece I wanted to adhere to an aristocratic color palette that was still feminine, so shades of purples and pinks were in order. I wanted to convey that this lady was more coy than conceited, so I positioned her to look over her shoulder with a bit of modesty. I swirled the background with dreamy, curling smokey shades that played and interacted with her feather, creating a connection between her and her environment. The small dainty hands symbolize the supposedly delicate nature that the women of the 17th century were viewed for... however, as with women of any era, her dark secrets lie in the depths of her eyes. | {
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Attorney-General Tommy Thomas says he was not aware of the prosecution's cross-appeal in the sedition case of independent preacher Wan Ji Wan Hussain until a new sentence was issued on Tuesday.
Describing a sequence of events beginning with Wan Ji's initial charge in 2014, Thomas said in a statement today that it is clear that the cross-appeal by the prosecution on the sentence was made prior to last year's general election.
Wan Ji was found guilty and convicted by the Shah Alam Sessions Court on April 9, 2018.
He was sentenced to nine months' jail, and immediately filed an appeal against the conviction. The prosecution filed a cross-appeal on the same day.
"No written representations were ever made by the accused or his lawyer to me, and I was not personally aware of this matter until after the decisions of the High Court on July 9 became publicly known."
"This is hardly surprising, because on any given working day, the federal and 13 state governments are involved, literally, in hundreds of criminal and civil cases in all the courts of the land.
"It is therefore impossible for any one person to be personally acquainted with even a tiny fraction of these cases," the attorney-general said.
Stressing the importance of delegation and decentralisation of authority, Thomas added that the Attorney-General's Chambers is studying options with respect to Wan Ji’s (photo) appeal.
He added, however, that the margin of discretion of his office is substantially limited with regard to the preacher's conviction by two courts.
"The Wan Ji case has once again brought to sharp focus the continued use by this chambers of prosecution for offences under the Sedition Act 1948, and the misinformation surrounding the subject.
"The facts are as follows. First, the Sedition Act is among the Acts of Parliament that the Pakatan Harapan manifesto states will be repealed."
"Secondly, the cabinet has not informed the chambers of any decision to repeal or amend it.
"Under our system of government, it is the cabinet that decides on behalf of the executive branch, to enact, repeal or amend laws for presentation to Parliament, with the chambers assisting in the drafting of new laws," he said.
"Thirdly, the cabinet has not 'instructed' this chambers to refrain from relying on the Sedition Act.
"Such an instruction would not, in any event, be lawful because it would offend the discretionary power under the constitution vested solely in the office of the attorney-general to decide on prosecutorial matters on behalf of the state."
Wan Ji, who was sentenced to nine months' jail on the 2014 sedition charge, had his sentence enhanced to one year after the Shah Alam High Court allowed the appeal by the prosecution.
The sedition charge was over a Facebook post about Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah of Selangor.
Wan Ji was charged under Section 4(1)(c) of the Sedition Act, which carries a maximum jail term of three years and a fine of RM5,000 upon conviction.
Judge Abdul Halim Aman ordered Wan Ji to begin his sentence at the Kajang Prison on Tuesday.
Today, however, the Shah Alam High Court allowed Wan Ji a stay of execution pending appeal.
RELATED REPORTS
No new charges under Sedition Act since GE14, says Thomas
Sedition charge: Wan Ji released from jail pending appeal
Exercise caution in comments over Wan Ji's case, says his lawyer | {
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The 2016 Prospects Challenge for the Buffalo Sabres, New Jersey Devils, and Boston Bruins is taking place at the HarborCenter in Buffalo, New York. Today, they’re entering their third and final day of the Challenge, and in last night’s game, we saw New Jersey’s top prospects face off against Boston’s, which showed that the NHL may have another pair of rivalry teams in the near future.
http://gty.im/505903716
The way everything played out last night revealed a lot about each team’s identity. After all, before players get drafted, they’re scouted, and scouts look for guys who obtain a similar style-of-play to their own team — it simply increases the chances of that draft pick fitting in the lineup. While some players seemingly enjoy to push and shove, others seem to enjoy being focused on the game at hand, and Steven Santini is one of these focus guys.
Santini is one of New Jersey’s defensemen who saw a lot of ice time in last night’s match, and he’s also on the cusp of entering the NHL on a full-time basis. Drafted at No. 42 in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft, Santini showed the Devil’s that he’s ready to take the next step in his career. He wasn’t the only defenseman being watched, though, as close eyes were also on Joshua Jacobs, another up-and-coming New Jersey defenseman.
Jacobs at the Prospects Challenge
The 6-foot-2, 192-pound defenseman was drafted by the New Jersey Devils at 2014 NHL Draft, in the second round at No. 41, and currently, plays for the OHL’s Sarnia Sting.
Game over. Devils rally comes up short in 4-3 loss to Bruins. NJD split #ProspectsChallenge, going 1-1. — New Jersey Devils (@NJDevils) September 19, 2016
Although New Jersey’s prospects weren’t victorious in last night’s game, Jacobs gave the Devils a stellar performance and showed them who he was by implementing his player identity on the ice.
“It was a tough game out there,” he told The Hockey Writers. “They came out flying and everything like that. It was a hard game — just trying to keep it simple, trying to help out as much as possible.”
In this one-on-one interview with Jacobs at the Prospects Challenge, he shared with The Hockey Writers a little bit about his role with the Sting, and how that’s helped him create an identity for himself at this year’s Prospects Challenge.
“I’m a two-way defenseman,” Jacobs said. “I try not to get too much into offence — it’s a lot of take away from my defence… I just want to get pucks in net. I want to be a strong defenseman in the corners, and block a lot of shots. In Sarnia, that’s what I was. It’s definitely defined my role here, and it’s definitely helped me out.”
Last year, Jacobs had an excellent playoff season with the Sarnia Sting. Sometimes this can happen because of a role change, but it can also happen because some players just perform better when the pressure’s on.
In Jacobs’ case, it seems that it might have a little more to do with the latter.
“It’s playoffs – it’s a whole other level,” Jacobs told The Hockey Writers. “Taking that into consideration, I probably pushed the pace a little bit more… we were down 3-1, so we had really nothing to lose. We had to come together as a team, and try to play our best — and for myself, just trying to play individually really well, so I thought it was a good first round. It sucks that we were out, but other than that, I thought it was a good role play from the season transition to the playoffs.”
Jacobs spent the last season playing with Pavel Zacha, another player drafted by the New Jersey Devils. Zacha spent last season on the penalty kill and was named best penalty killer in the western conference by coaches. Their experience playing together could have an influence on Jacobs’ likelihood of testing out a penalty-killing role in the upcoming season.
“I’ve always been a big penalty killer my junior career, and in the USHL, and in College, playing big minutes on the PK (Penalty Kill),” Jacobs said. “I mean, if I had a choice of playing on the PK or PP (Power Play), it’d probably be the PK. I just like to go out there and block shots… and box out guys. I think that’s a huge strength of mine, and with Pavel Zacha out there, we were real good in Sarnia. I think we had one of the best PK’s in the league, so it definitely helped that he was out there with us.”
In terms of playing on the power play, Jacobs is already doing that.
“With Sarnia, I was on the second PP,” he said of the Sting’s second power-play unit. “They liked the first PP – they were really hot, and we had a lot of guys like Chychrun, Zacha, Konecny out front, and Matt Mistele, who was actually out here playing tonight. They have a lot of deep guys playing in the power play unit, but other than that, I got my chances out there. We had a couple of goals, a couple of assists… it was a good win.”
Having experience on the penalty kill, and on the power play is all part of a player’s defined role with his team. It can also be part of his player identity, and having a strong player identity is how players get promoted to the professional rankings. Gaining experience on the penalty kill and power play is quite valuable for young prospects looking to break through to the NHL level, and that’s what the Prospects Challenge is all about. It’s about giving players an opportunity to show their prospective NHL team why they should be promoted to the NHL, and how they can help out in their lineup. | {
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Can a Website Be Prosecuted for Users' Crimes? Craigslist Targeted by South Carolina AG
In the wake of the disastrous press generated for Craigslist by alleged "Craigslist Killer" Philip Markoff, it probably should come as little surprise that Craigslist is now reported to be engaging in talks with the Attorney Generals of a number of states aimed at getting rid of ads on the site for prostitution and "other suspected illegal sexual activities".
However, for South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, this might be too little, too late. According to the AP, McMaster sent a letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster saying that, despite much of the "valuable service" provided the public by the site, "it appears that the management of Craigslist has knowingly allowed the site to be used for illegal and unlawful activity after warnings from law enforcement officials and after an agreement with 40 state attorneys general." The letter goes on to give Craigslist until May 15 to take down "sex-related postings from its South Carolina sites" or face prosecution.
Now that sounds pretty daunting, particularly coming from a state Attorney General, but does Craigslist really have anything to worry about here? The legal reality for web sites such as Craigslist is that federal law generally immunizes them for the postings of third-parties using the site (e.g., user-generated ads or posts). Specifically, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Craigslist, for its part, has faced pressure from states' attorney generals in the past, and actually agreed to implement certain safeguards such as user-flagging of improper postings.
So why would Craigslist even come to the table to discuss the matter with the state AG's, you might wonder? Well, the negative press plus the costs of a potential litigation blitz alone might make it a good business decision for Craigslist to sit down and at least discuss ways with which it can address some of the concerns being raised. CEO Jim Buckmaster seemed to say as much via a statement, saying he "anticipates making further progress toward the common goal of eliminating illegal activity from craigslist, while preserving its full utility and benefit for tens of millions of law-abiding Americans who value and depend on craigslist's free local community services in their everyday lives."
The degree of immunity and freedom with which websites operate online has been under increasing scrutiny in recent months in other ways too. One example would be that review sites such as Yelp have been sued by individuals who want to get at users who allegedly post defamatory reviews. Although there has always existed a degree of tension between online freedoms on the one hand, and abusive (or even illegal) behavior online on the other, at some point lawmakers may be forced to take another look at how the equation is currently balanced. | {
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TRUMP TOPS THE AGENDA AT SAUDI CABINET MEETING: Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud launched his cabinet session on Tuesday with a briefing on his conversations with President Trump on the crisis involving slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which could have severe economic and energy-related consequences for the world.
“At the outset of the session, the King briefed the cabinet on telephone contacts with President Donald Trump of the United States of America during which latest developments in the region were discussed,” the Saudi government’s state-run news wire reported.
The king and Trump discussed Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa “during which bilateral historical, distinguished and close relationships were asserted with the keenness of all to strengthen and develop them,” according to the Saudi Press Agency.
Cooling tensions, or not? This could be seen as a cooling of tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia over the murder of the Saudi journalist and U.S. resident. Or, at least, that’s what its intent is.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C, said on Fox and Friends Tuesday morning that he is “going to sanction the hell out Saudi Arabia.” He is one of 22 senators who prompted an investigation in Khashoggi’s murder.
Trump has vowed to take firm action if Khashoggi was murdered, while the Saudi government said Monday it would counter any action by the United States.
A worst-case scenario: Analysts believe the worst-case scenario would be that the Saudis use the oil weapon if economic sanctions are imposed by the U.S. But there are some caveats with that.
“The worst-case scenario would be, first of all the sanctions being imposed, and then secondly the Saudis’ response to it as increasing the oil prices,” said Saruhan Hatipoglu, CEO of Business Environment Risk Intelligence, on CNN Tuesday morning.
He thinks raising the oil price is under consideration, but he is “not so sure whether the kingdom will go that route.”
He noted that raising the oil price would hit Saudi Arabia's other customers, not only the U.S., and that would ultimately hurt the Saudi economy.
Instead, he thinks the Saudis will begin to scale-back investments in the United States, which could include the billions of dollars in arms sales that Trump wants protected.
Doesn’t look good for the Saudis: New developments on Tuesday could test U.S.-Saudi relations even further, as Turkish officials confirmed that Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
At the same time that was being reported, the Saudi cabinet “welcomed the announcement by the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey” that it is ready to form a joint working team bringing together specialists from the two countries to reveal the circumstances of the Khashoggi disappearance.
Pompeo in the desert: The cabinet session occurred after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met in Riyadh with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“During the meeting, historical relationships between the two countries, latest developments in the region and joint efforts being exerted towards them were reviewed,” according to a government news dispatch.
At the same time, the oil-rich kingdom moved forward with an energy agreement to better establish ties with Iraq’s energy ministry. The Saudi Cabinet authorized that the Minister of Energy, Industry, and Mineral Resources sign and submit the final version of a draft Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries soon.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, compiled by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers John Siciliano (@JohnDSiciliano) and Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe). Email [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list.
FRANCIS ROONEY BECOMES THE LATEST REPUBLICAN TO CARE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE: Rep. Francis Rooney, a 64 year-old congressman first elected in 2016 to a safe Republican district, initially followed the company line that climate change is real, but humans’ impact on it is uncertain. Then he read about the science.
“Life is a journey of continuous learning,” Rooney told Josh in an interview. “Sea level rise [is] existential for Southwest Florida.”
How he earned climate credentials: Last month, Rooney joined the growing bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus and co-sponsored a carbon tax bill introduced this summer by Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, the co-chair of the climate caucus.
Later, he introduced a resolution “expressing the sense of the House that sea level rise and flooding are of urgent concern impacting Florida” and requires immediate action to adapt and plan for.
Sea level rise is an entree to do more: He says sea level rise is a “existential” threat for Southwest Florida, and he hopes the issue can be a “gateway” for Republicans in Congress to go further with combating climate change.
“The more we can publicize the reality of sea level rise and the risk to a lot of places that are low, maybe some of those people will realize that you can be a plenty good conservative Republican on border security, on foreign affairs, on taxes, on business, and still care about the environment and whether you are going to get flooded,” Rooney said.
Read more of Josh’s interview with Rooney in this week’s Washington Examiner magazine.
TRUMP PUTS MINE SAFETY CHAIRMAN BACK IN PLACE AS A COMMISSIONER: President Trump on Tuesday announced his intent to keep William Althen as a serving member of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission.
Althen had been on the commission since 2013, and was serving as acting chairman from January 2017 to August 2018.
Althen will serve on the commission for a term of six years expiring August 30, 2024.
ZINKE SAYS HE’S CONSIDERING USING MILITARY SITES TO EXPORT FOSSIL FUELS: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Monday that the Trump administration is considering using West Coast military sites to export coal and natural gas.
Zinke, in an interview with the Associated Press, claimed the export proposal is a national security priority -- a common refrain as the Trump administration tries to boost fossil fuels.
He only named one potential military installation as a potential export site, a former Navy base in Alaska.
States have rejected coal export projects: He said opposition from Democratic-controlled coastal states, such as Washington, to export projects is preventing the U.S. from exporting affordable energy to allies in Asia.
Last year, Washington state environmental regulators killed the proposed Millennium Bulk coal terminal, which would have been the largest such facility in the country.
“I respect the state of Washington and Oregon and California,” Zinke said. “But also, it’s in our interest for national security and our allies to make sure that they have access to affordable energy commodities.”
Democrats pounce on the proposal: Democrats and environmentalists quickly denounced the proposal, saying it would circumvent the authority of West Coast state leaders who have rejected private sector efforts to build coal export facilities.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, called the proposal a “harebrained idea.”
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat of the Armed Services Committee, also criticized the proposal, saying climate change is the real national security facing the country, and military bases.
“This is a clear attempt to circumvent environmental oversight and protections,” Smith said. “The Trump Administration is once again using national security as an excuse to drive their short-sighted agenda. Turning our military bases into export terminals could be an encroachment risk and potentially harm military training, operations, and readiness.”
COURT BLOCKS TRUMP’S PUSH TO SHUT DOWN KIDS’ CLIMATE CHANGE LAWSUIT: An Oregon federal judge ruled Monday that a climate change lawsuit brought by children against the U.S. government can continue in court, dealing a blow to the Trump administration, which sought to shut the case down.
But U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken said Trump cannot be named a defendant in the case, only U.S. government agencies can.
The decision came days before the case is scheduled to go on trial on Oct. 29.
What the children are alleging: The case involves 21 children who allege that government policy has exacerbated global warming and climate change.
Our Children’s Trust, representing the group of kids, claims the government, by propping up fossil fuels, has failed to address climate change on behalf of future generations, endangering their health and prosperity. The group originally filed the lawsuit in 2015 in Oregon federal court during the Obama administration.
How the government is fighting the case: Both the Trump and Obama administration argued the case threatens the separation of powers, contending that courts cannot rule on broad and speculative issues such as the impact of government policy on climate change.
The federal judge, however, said the children have made a strong enough claim to have the case considered at trial.
CLEAN ENERGY GROUP RELEASES SCORECARD FOR GOVERNOR CANDIDATES: Advanced Energy Economy on Tuesday began rating candidates for governor in nine key states on clean energy with an online scorecard.
The group will advertise candidates’ records on issues such as modernizing the power grid, electrifying transportation, and setting clean energy targets.
The highlighted states are: California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio.
AEE says 14 candidates in these nine states have included at least one of the group’s policy priorities in their clean energy platform.
Candidates are proposing ‘bolder’ visions: For example, the Democratic candidates for governor in Illinois, JB Pritzker, and Colorado, Jared Polis, have proposed requiring their states to obtain 100 percent of energy from renewable sources.
Both major party nominees have expressed support for at least one AEE policy priority in California, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, and Ohio.
“Candidates recognize voters want someone with a vision,” J.R. Tolbert, vice president of state policy at AEE told Josh. “They want something they can respond to. The bolder the vision the candidate campaigns on, the easier it is for me to hold them accountable once election day happens.”
MORE STORES PLAN TO OFFER E15 FUEL AFTER TRUMP ANNOUNCEMENT: A growing number of gasoline and retail outlets have announced they will be selling 15-percent ethanol fuel blends in the wake of the president’s announcement a week ago that he would be working to open up a year-round market for the fuel.
The large convenience store chain Cumberland Farms is the latest company to add its name to the list of firms that will be selling E15, the ethanol trade group Growth Energy announced on Tuesday.
Over a dozen retail chains and counting: Cumberland Farms joins the ranks of Casey’s, Kwik Trip, Sheetz, Kum & Go, Minnoco, RaceTrac, Thorntons, Protec Fuel, QuikTrip, Family Express, Holiday, Murphy USA, Rutter’s, and Cenex in selling E15.
The Massachusetts-based Cumberland Farms will begin offering E15 at more than 120 of its stores in the Northeast United States, according to Growth Energy, which supports the Prime the Pump program that works to help retailers sell E15.
Not everyone is enthusiastic: The National Marine Manufacturers Association on Tuesday released a digital essay on E15 labeling titled, “Protecting Boaters at the Gas Pump.”
The boat manufacturers have warned against making E15 available year round because of the damage the fuel causes to marine engines.
It wants Congress to mandate firm labeling regulations to ensure fuel retailers are protecting boaters and other users of small engines from the harm that E15 can cause.
RUNDOWN
Politico Rick Perry’s coal rescue runs aground at White House
Wall Street Journal Another victim of the trade spat: US oil to China
Bloomberg The Permian oil basin is showing signs of overheating
New York Times Heat and drought could threaten world beer supply
Utility Dive States reassert authority over power generation | {
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Countries have a right to control their borders and decide who enters. Someone who leaves their dangerous country to escape persecution or war should be treated differently to someone who leaves their safe country in the hope of economic advancement.
A refugee arriving in a safe country should have their case decided in that country and not automatically acquire the right to move on to other safe countries.
These three propositions are simple common sense, hard to fault in their logic, practicality and fairness. So it says something about international – and especially European – attitudes to immigration issues that by affirming them this week, Theresa May will be challenging much orthodox thinking.
Migration policies have failed to keep pace with changes in the way people move around the world of the early 21st century. Most countries’ rules are not fit for purpose in an era of mass migration. | {
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If you pitched the idea of a solar-powered race car to the average motorsport fan, they would laugh you out of the elevator, down the hall, through the doors, and into the gutter. Even Formula E cars don't make it the full race distance on one battery charge, why are we to believe something powered by solar panel and the hopes and dreams of engineering students can complete a single lap, let alone race for hours? Well, according to the race's organizers, American Solar Challenge, this is no mere test to see if these teams can complete a lap, it's a real race, and a competitive one at that.
The event is held annually, and the event of this and some past years has taken place at Circuit of the Americas, just outside Austin, TX. According to the track's blurb on the race, competitors hail from eighteen schools, spread across the USA, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The list of participating schools can be found at the foot of COTA's announcement. When the cross-country American Solar Challenge race is held, this "Formula Sun Grand Prix" serves as the qualifying event, one which teams must complete in order to be granted entry to the main race.
The cars themselves resemble an odd amalgamation of naval, aerospace, and green technology, with the fuselages designed to maximize surface area for solar panels, and minimize drag. Wheels are as small as teams can get away with, and to save time on pit stops, tires are run until the cords show. They carry a battery on board, from which, some power is drawn, but these cars try to creep along on the power available from the Texas sun as much as possible. The entire event is open to the public, with an open paddock, and runs from 8am to 5pm this Saturday.
If what is said about slow cars being more fun to drive fast than fast cars being forced to drive slow is true, then these cars may be amongst the most thrilling cars on the planet to drive at their limits, as funny as that may sound. That, or the most boring. You decide. | {
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In a landmark vote, government officials in Ecuador have ruled in favor of marriage equality for same-sex couples.
The vote in question, which occurred this Wednesday, June 12, comes almost a year after the nation’s Family, Women, Children, and Adolescents Court ruled in favor of an Ecuadorian lesbian couple’s right to marry.
Although the Inter-American Court of Human Rights—which presides over 20 Latin American countries, including Ecuador—had also approved marriage equality back in January 2018, the country’s Constitution had not been updated accordingly. Hence, the aforementioned lesbian couple was denied a marriage license when they approached the conservative country’s Civil Registry.
El debate sobre el #MatrimonioIgualitarioEC, ahora en la @CorteConstEcu, inició en 2018, cuando Efraín Soria y Javier Benalcazar fueron al Registro Civil para casarse. Su solicitud fue negada y se encuentra en la Corte de Pichincha pic.twitter.com/YDWqCWWqTF Vía @GYRivadeneira — El Universo (@eluniversocom) June 4, 2019
However, today’s pro-marriage equality vote was decided by Ecuador’s official Constitutional Court, meaning same-sex couples are guaranteed a constitutional right to tie the knot.
The Constitutional Court of Ecuador has approved marriage equality. https://t.co/nOJ8YRrBw2 pic.twitter.com/fMjA0BCPhL — GLAAD (@glaad) June 12, 2019
The road to equal marriage in Ecuador hasn’t been an easy one: As Gay Star News reports, today’s ruling was pushed back from its original date of June 4, since judges requested more time to make a choice. However, the nation has had civil unions for same-sex couples since 2014.
Some Ecuadorian LGBTQ activists, including partners Pamela Troya and Gabriela Correa (pictured below), have championed marriage equality for years, rallying support among fellow citizens.
No tengo palabras, no sé cómo expresarlo. Esto es increíble. La @CorteConstEcu aprobó #MatrimonioIgualitarioEC y @Gaby3081 y yo nos vamos a casar ️ pic.twitter.com/TR8QoJLrRG — Pamela Troya (@pametroya) June 12, 2019
Still, homophobia and anti-LGBTQ violence remain rampant in Ecuador. As NewNowNext reported last February, gay conversion therapy is a “very lucrative” business in the South American nation, where LGBTQ people are routinely subjected to physical violence, solitary confinement, and “corrective rape” because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Anti-LGBTQ violence in South America isn’t limited to Ecuador, either. Queer activists from other traditionally conservative nations on the continent, including Brazil, which is majority-Catholic, have reported staggeringly high numbers of hate-motivated violence against LGBTQ citizens. | {
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Whatever we hear from all quarters we are very apt to believe, whether it requires some effort to believe, whether it is true or not, especially if it requires some effort to examine it. Of all the modern delusions, the ballot has certainly been the greatest. Yet most of the people believe in it.
In the first place, it is founded on the principle that the majority shall lead and the minority must follow (no matter whether it will be any advantage to the majority to have the minority follow them or not). Let us take a body of legislators, absolutely honest, and see what they can do. A, B and C have each a distinct principle to carry out, and there is no good reason why each one should not carry out his principle to a certain extent without interfering with the other two. Politics steps in and says: let us decide this matter by the ballot, for that is fair. What is the result? A and C finally reach a compromise and unite by giving up a portion of their ideas. A and C are then the majority and B’s principles get no further consideration, but are simply ruled out of existence. This is majority rule.
Notice the result. Instead of three well-defined principles that might have been continued, developed and enjoyed, we have lost one altogether, and corrupted the other two. This is the inevitable result of majority rule in a legislative body which attempts to manufacture laws to enforce upon people of large communities who have all kinds of conflicting interests.
Of course it is better to have majority rule if it represents the real wishes of a large number of people than to have minority rule which is only in the interest of the few, as is the case today, where all laws are practically in the interest of the capitalistic class. But the principle of rulership is in itself wrong; no man has any right to rule another man.
Of course, if one is invading the rights of another, he must be restrained. This is not rulership, but self-preservation. Let us see for example, how our law factories are operated. A corruptionist works a majority as follows: He hires a tool called an attorney or lobbyist to hang around the capitol and buttonhole the members of the legislature and present to them his scheme in the brightest colors and in a way that will make it appear to be a great blessing to the country. In this way, together with some graft, he usually gets the votes of the majority of the members.
If the scheme to be put through is so barefaced that the majority cannot be misled into voting for it, then the job is done by a compromise. The lobbyist has persuaded A that the bill is all right, and B, being opposed to it—but favoring some other scheme that A opposes—it is only necessary to get B to agree to vote for the bill on condition that A will vote for B’s bill when it comes up. This scheme is called honest, or at least “all things are fair in politics.” The lobbyist who is running A might have put the two jobs up with the lobbyist who was running B.
Thus do our lobbyists use one member of the legislative bodies against another to pry a fat job out of the people for the benefit of the moneybags. It makes no difference who the member of congress may be, or what his principles may be—the job can be worked on him just the same. Therefore, what does the people’s voting amount to in the choice of members?
Let us take this example: Suppose a legislature is composed of ninety-nine members; on the above scheme, twenty-five will make a majority, even if all are present; the twenty-five swap jobs with twenty-five more and thus make fifty votes—a majority of one. The lobbyist makes it his business to know how many are sick or absent, or he strives to bet the worst opponents on commissions or investigating committees out of town. But there is much in trading votes, for each member generally feels like keeping his trades to himself, or can be persuaded to do so, therefore it is easy to trade A’s vote with B, C, D and E and make each one think that he alone traded with A. In this way ten such men as A can easily get four a majority of ninety-nine, and ten such men are not hard to find when capital has use for them.
But this is not the end. A cannot trade with F, so A introduces a bill or an amendment repulsive to F and then agrees to drop it on condition that F will either vote for the bill or be absent when it comes up. These are some of the tricks played in law-making.
Can you blame an Anarchist who declares that man-made laws are not sacred? Society would not disband or revert to barbarism if laws were done away with. With thousands of laws being enacted and hundreds of corruptionists playing their tricks, what becomes of the voter’s victory at the polls? What becomes of his reforming all things by the use of the ballot? So long as he is willing to submit to a bad law until it is repealed, what better leverage do rogues want on humanity?
The fact is money and not votes is what rules the people. And the capitalists no longer care to buy the voters, they simply buy the “servants” after they have been elected to “serve.” The idea that the poor man’s vote amounts to anything is the veriest delusion. The ballot is only the paper veil that hides the tricks.
Can you blame an Anarchist when he sees a political bummer conniving for a job in a law factory that he fails to see anything sacred about him, or his laws? We know there never was a law passed that ever prevented one single crime from being committed. We know crime will cease only when men are taught to do good, because it makes them happier to do right than wrong. We know that if passing laws would have prevented crime or made men better, that we would all be angels by now.
We say: Turn the law factories into schools and place scientists in them to teach the truths of human solidarity, love and fraternity, and make these possible by abolishing monopoly in the means of life, and mankind will quickly develop that which is best, noblest and purest in his nature. | {
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Taiwan based chipset manufacturer, MediaTek has just announced its new octa-core processor based on recently announced ARM’s Cortex A17 architecture.
MT6595 is the upcoming octa-core processor by MediaTek that is claimed to be the world’s first 4G LTE octa-core processor based on Cortex A17 architecture. MediaTek said that MT6595 is meant for the premium devices, competing directly against QualComm’s Snapdragon 800 and 805.
The upcoming MT6595 features eight cores: four A17 cores running at 2.2-2.5 GHz and four A7 cores running at 1.7GHz. It will also be equipped with Rogue PowerVR Series 6 GPU and an integrated H.264 Ultra HD decoder for 4K/UHD content.
MT6595 will be using ARM’s big.LITTLE technology and Heterogeneous Multi-Processing that will allow all eight cores to be used simultaneously for heavy tasks or use one or two cores for basic tasks.
More information on Engadget. | {
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used the Ohio weatherman who berated his audience for griping about breaking into a broadcast of “The Bachelorette” for a tornado warning to slam Republicans for their stand on climate change.
“This guy reminds me of every climate scientist warning people we have 12 years left to cut emissions in half before our future is irreversibly damaged & all the GOP wants to do is yell about communist cow farts,” Ocasio-Cortez posted on her Twitter page.
“‘No! We’re not going back to the show!,” the New York Democrat wrote, echoing what meteorologist Jamie Simpson told viewers during his tornado forecast Monday on Fox 45 in Dayton, Ohio.
Republicans zeroed in on a fact sheet, since removed, published during the rollout of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal that mentioned how “farting cows” could contribute to climate change.
The language was later changed to “emissions from cows.”
Republicans, including President Trump, mocked the idea by saying the Green New Deal would ban people from owning cows.
Ocasio-Cortez has been an advocate for fighting climate change and is a chief sponsor of the environmental plan that calls for the elimination of greenhouse gases and the need to develop renewable energy sources.
Simpson, during Monday night’s report, scolded his audience for complaining about breaking away from the popular ABC reality show.
”Think about if this was your neighborhood. I’m sick and tired of people complaining about this. … Our job here is to keep people safe, and that is what we’re going to do,” he said. | {
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Contribute to: Disaster Relief-U.S. Flooding (DR000191)
This designated account supplements the One Great Hour of Sharing offering and enables members and congregations to support the PC(USA) response to episodes of flooding within the United States. Funds into this account will help communities overall relief and recovery efforts associated with flooding to include assessments, clean-up efforts, and rebuilding. Your prayers and faithful giving are deeply appreciated.
If you want to donate to a different ministry you can change it here.
To give by phone, call 800-872-3283. To send a check, please designate where you want your gift to go on the memo line and mail to:
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) P.O. Box 643700 Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700 | {
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バネバグース赤坂見附店でなんともユニークなスタイルのテラス席が登場です。今回登場したのはテラス席で冬の定番「こたつ」に入りながら食事を楽しめるという斬新すぎるスタイル。
寒いんだから部屋の中でゆっくり食事すれば良いのにと思うかもしれませんが、やはりテラス席ならではの開放感を味わえるのは格別なわけです。
しかもバネバグース赤坂見附店のこたつテラスは暖房機器、ルーフトップも完備されているそう。お酒が入ってくれば時折吹く冷たい風が逆に気持ちよく感じられそう。
「こたつを囲む」というのはテーブルを囲むよりも相席の人とより近しくなった感覚を与えてくれる気がします。こたつでのコミュニケーションで取引先の人とより良い関係を築くなんてこともできるかもしれませんよ。
日本の飲み屋の新しいスタイルとして「こたつ呑み」。なかなかいいかもしれません。
テラス限定の「もつ鍋コース」もスタートしているそうなので、みんなでこたつを囲んでテラスでお鍋、いかがでしょうか？ちなみにデザートに完熟みかんも用意されています。
熱々もつ鍋プラン
料理8品２時間飲み放題5,000円（税抜）／一人
【前菜】・炙り明太子・とり皮ポン酢・からしレンコン・塩キャベツ
九州料理にこだわったラインナップ！「鶏皮ポン酢」「炙りめんたい」「からし蓮根」は全て自家製です。
【鍋】・もつ鍋
国産モツを使用したプリプリの弾力あるモツを厳選！
「黒醤油 （ガツンと濃い味）」「白みそ（まろやか甘口）」「赤チゲ（癖になる辛さ）」の中からお好きなスープをどうぞ
【〆】・ラーメン
もつ鍋にぴったりなラーメンを〆に
【デザート】・完熟みかん
素朴な味わいのジューシーな完熟みかん | {
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Źródło grafiki: blog projektu Monolith
Na rynku istnieje już spora liczba kart, które umożliwiają wydawanie krypto. Żadna z nich jednak nie wzbudziła we mnie szczególnego zainteresowania. Idea udawania, że się płaci krypto, podczas gdy tak naprawdę dokonywana jest konwersja do standardowej waluty jest moim zdaniem dość słaba. Co więc sprawiło, że karta Monolith (dawniej TokenCard) wzbudziła moje zainteresowanie i postanowiłem ją przetestować?
Fakt, że jest to karta dla której to ty sam jesteś bankiem. Z tego co mi wiadomo, jest to pierwsza karta, do której środki są przechowywane na blockchainie. Monolith korzysta z blockchaina Ethereum. Dla każdego użytkownika tworzony jest indywidualny smart contract. Pełni on rolę portfela, na które użytkownik może przesyłać oraz przechowywać Ether oraz tokeny ERC-20 (na początku tylko wybrane: TKN, DAI, DGX oraz DGD). Następnie za pomocą tego portfela, możesz wykorzystywać zgromadzone środki do doładowania swojej karty. I w tym momencie następuje konwersja krypto na waluty fiat. Środki trafiają do tradycyjnego systemu finansowego. Wcześniej jednak, dopóki nie dokonaliśmy doładowania, byliśmy jedynymi mającymi dostęp do zgromadzonych na adresie środków w postaci kryptowalut. Jest to spora różnica, gdzie inne karty umożliwiają albo wydawanie krypto znajdujących się w ich systemie (np. Coinbase Card) bądź nawet bliżej nieokreślonych pochodnych krypto (np. Revolut). Co wynika z tej różnicy?
Przede wszystkim musimy pamiętać, że jeśli nie jesteś posiadaczem klucza prywatnego do swoich środków krypto, to one nie są Twoje. Czy na giełdzie, czy kantorze, czy w systemie karty płatniczej. Oznacza to cztery podstawowe ryzyka:
instytucja sprawująca kuratelę nad “Twoimi” środkami, może okazać się nieuczciwa i przywłaszczyć sobie Twoje środki
instytucja sprawująca kuratelę nad “Twoimi” środkami, może okazać się nieudolna i w efekcie niewypłacalna
instytucja sprawująca kuratelę nad “Twoimi” środkami, może paść ofiarą ataku i Twoje środki mogą zostać skradzione
instytucja sprawująca kuratelę nad “Twoimi” środkami podlega regulacjom jurysdykcji w której jest zarejestrowana. I zgodnie z obowiązującym prawem może na polecenie regulatora zamrozić Ci dostęp do Twoich środków
Im więc Twoje środki dłużej pozostają po za taką instytucja, tym bardziej ryzyka te są zminimalizowane.
Plus dokładamy swoją cegiełkę do budowania zdecentralizowanych instytucji finansowych. A o to w tym wszystkim przecież chodzi:
Najważniejsze informacje o Monolith (TokenCard)
Monolith jest spółką zarejestrowaną w Wielkiej Brytanii i jej usługi są dostępne we wszystkich krajach Europejskiej Wspólnoty Gospodarczej. W tym więc też i w Polsce. Według zapewnień twórców nie powinno to ulec zmianie po Brexicie.
Fakt świadczenia usług na terenie Unii Europejskiej sprawia, że możemy zamówić albo kartę nominowaną w funtach brytyjskich albo w euro.
Jest to już minus dla mieszkańców Polski, ponieważ będzie nas dotyczyć przewalutowanie środków na karcie z waluty karty (euro lub funt) na walutę płatności (polski złoty). Według cennik systemu VISA, z którego korzysta TokenCard, opłata za przewalutowanie 1.75% transakcji.
Drugi minus jest taki, że TokenCard obsługuje zdecentralizowany stablecoin DAI. DAI jest stabilizowany wobec amerykańskiego dolara. Wiec fajnie by było mieć kartę, w której blockchainowego dolara wymieniasz na tego fiatowego na karcie.
Przyjrzyjmy się teraz opłatom związanymi z kartą :
Wydanie karty jest darmowe. Otrzymujemy ją za pośrednictwem poczty. Nie ponosimy kosztów wysyłki. Nie jestem pewien czy warunek ten będzie stały, czy dotyczy tylko pierwszych użytkowników karty.
Nie ma żadnej miesięcznej opłaty za posiadanie karty
Jedyne opłaty występują w momencie doładowanie karty. Czyli konwersji naszego krypto na walutę karty. Możliwe są dwie opłaty: 1% prowizja od doładowania karty (top up fee). Jest ona pobierana zawsze opcjonalna prowizja licencyjna (license fee) wynosząca również 1%. Jest ona naliczana w przypadku gdy doładowanie następuje w przypadku innego krypto niż token TKN (natywny token systemu TokenCard). Środki zgromadzone z license fee trafiają do wspólnej puli. Posiadacze tokenów TKN mają prawo rościć sobie udział w partycypowaniu w zyskach z tej puli . Krypto na fiaty jest wymieniane po kursie rynkowym. W moim przypadku rzeczywiście tak było. Kurs wymiany był bardzo zbliżony do średniego kursu z CoinMarketCap
Operacja doładowywanie karty jest wykonywania na blockchainie Ethereum. Wiąże się to z koniecznością uiszczenia opłaty dla górników. Jest to kolejny koszt który będziemy ponosić. Opłata jest zależna od obciążenia sieci. Im większe obciążenie sieci, tym więcej trzeba zapłacić, aby transakcja dostała się do bloku. Aplikacja Monolith wykonuje operacje doładowania z opłatą transakcyjną gwarantującą szybkie dostanie się do bloku. W czasie dużego obciążenia sieci może być to znaczący koszt.
Na starcie były obsługiwane tokeny TKN, DAI oraz sam ETH. Następnie 16 sierpnia 2019 do grona obsługiwanych tokenów dołączyły dwa kolejne: DGX, DGD. będą dodawane kolejne tokeny przy nawiązywaniu oficjalnej współpracy z projektami.
Projekt jest obecnie w momencie rebrandingu. Został on oficjalnie ogłoszony dwa dni przed publikacją tego tekstu . Wraz z rebrandingiem aplikacji część ekranów prezentowanych w niniejszym artykule mogło się zmienić. Zmieniła się też nazwa aplikacji z TokenCard na Monolith. W tym artykule obie nazwy są stosowane zamiennie.
Instalacja aplikacji Monolith (TokenCard)
Na chwilę obecną aplikacja jest dostępna jedynie na urządzenia z systemem iOS. Wersja dla systemu Android jest w zaawansowanym etapie powstawania. Powinna więc się pojawić w ciągu najbliższych miesięcy.
Udajemy się więc do sklepu AppStore gdzie w wyszukiwarkę wpisujemy “Monolith” bądź “TokenCard”. Powinna ukazać się nam aplikacja:
Ponieważ aplikacja jest już zainstalowane na moim telefonie to strzałka wskazuje na guzik “Open”, który otworzy aplikację. Jeśli nie masz jeszcze zainstalowanej aplikacji dokładnie w tym samym miejscu będzie znajdował się guzik służący do jej zainstalowania. Kliknij go i zainstaluj aplikację w swoim telefonie. Po jej uruchomieniu przywita Cię ekran powitalny.
Tak jak wspomniałem projekt przechodził rebranding podczas pisania tego artykułu. Pierwsze screeny powstały na początku lipca 2019 pod marką TokenCard. Ostatnie w połowie sierpnia 2019 już pod nazwą Monolith. Dlatego prezentowane przeze mnie screeny mogę się różnić od tych, które Ty zobaczysz w swojej aplikacji. Niestety nie jestem w stanie przeprowadzić procesu zakładania portfela i zamawiania karty po raz drugi. Zwróć więc proszę uwagę, że niektóre prezentowane ekrany mogę się różnić od tych wyświetlanych w Twoim telefonie.
Po przejściu przez ekrany powitalne zostaniemy poproszeni o zapoznanie się z warunkami korzystania z aplikacji. A następnie o zabezpieczenie aplikacji za pomocą PINu. W opcjach aplikacji będzie potem dostępna opcja włączenia korzystania z Touch ID / Face ID.
Wygenerowanie klucza prywatnego
Po utworzeniu i zweryfikowaniu swojego PINu do aplikacji mamy możliwość utworzenia swojego portfela:
Mamy do wyboru dwie opcje
Create New Seed – jeśli korzystamy z aplikacji po raz pierwszy i chcemy wykorzystać nowy klucz prywatny do stworzenia portfela. Z tej opcji skorzystamy Recover Existing Seed – jeśli chcemy skorzystać z już istniejącego, posiadanego przez nas klucza prywatnego
Klikamy więc w guzik “Create a New Seed” i przechodzimy dalej. Portfelowi zajmie chwilę wygenerowanie naszego Seeda, po czym zobaczymy następujący ekran:
Za chwile nastąpi kluczowy moment zabezpieczenia naszego portfela, który będzie połączony w przyszłości z naszą kartą. Zostanie nam wyświetlona lista 12 słówek, których podanie w odpowiedniej kolejności pozwoli na wygenerowanie naszego klucza prywatnego. A nasz klucz prywatny daje dostęp do zgromadzonych środków. Dlatego musimy zadbać o dwie rzeczy. Abyśmy my sami bezpiecznie przechowywali tę listę i nie stracili do niej dostępu. Oraz aby nikt inny nie wszedł w jej posiadania. Klikamy w guzik Continue i przechodzimy do kolejnego ekranu:
Wyświetla nam się lista naszych 12 słówek. Na screenie są one zasłonięte z oczywistych względów. Nie chcę abyś za ich pomocą uzyskał klucz prywatny do mojego portfela i gwizdnął moje środki tam przechowywane. Ty też się zatroszcz o bezpieczeństwo swojego portfela.
Nie powinniśmy robić screena tego ekranu i potem trzymać go na telefonie, komputerze czy dysku w chmurze. Nie powinniśmy też trzymać tej listy w pliku tekstowym czy mailu przechowywanym na telefonie, komputerze czy dysku w chmurze. Takie rozwiązania nie są bezpieczne i narażają nas na stratę naszych środków. Ktoś, kto uzyska dostęp do naszego komputera bądź maila będzie mógł je w łatwy sposób wykorzystać.
Jedyne dwa rekomendowane sposoby to zapisanie listy na papierze bądź manager haseł.
W przypadku zapisania na papierze ważne jest przechowywanie jej w bezpiecznym miejscu. Bezpiecznym, zarówno w kontekście tego, że nie zostanie ona zgubiona / zniszczona. Jak również w kontekście tego, że nie wpadnie łatwo w ręce osób trzecich.
Przechodzimy dalej klikając w guzik “Verify Seed”
Jesteśmy poproszeni o umieszczenie wybranych słówek z naszej listy, aby potwierdzić, że została ona przez nas zapisana. Gdy tego dokonamy, klikamy guzik Confirm Seed.
W kolejnym ekranie autoryzujemy nasz klucz prywatny. Następnie decydujemy o tym, czy TokenCard może monitorować naszą aktywność w aplikacji w celu jej ulepszania. Jeśli chcesz otrzymywać coraz lepiej działające produkty, to rekomenduję tutaj wyrażenie zgody.
Deployment naszego portfela na blockchain Ethereum
Tak jak wcześniej wspomniałem, nasz portfel będzie smart contractem umieszczonym na blockchainie Ethereum. Smart contract gwarantuje nam bezpieczne dysponowanie naszymi środkami oraz łatwą możliwość wykorzystywania funkcjonalności związanej z kartą, która będzie z nimi powiązana. Kod smart contract jest otwarty oraz został na nim przeprowadzone cztery niezależne audyty .
Czas więc umieścić nasz osobisty smart contract na blockchainie Ethereum:
Wystarczy, że na powyższym ekranie klikniemy guzik “Deploy”, a nasz portfel zostanie wysłany na blockchain. Otrzyma tam swój adres pod którym będzie dostępny i będzie mógł nam służyć. Plusem jest to, że opłatę dla górników za zrealizowanie transakcji umiejscowienia walletu na blockchainie pokrywa w całości Monolith. Jak skomentował Daniel Chmielewski. polski programista pracujący w projekcie, ten fakt może się w przyszłości zmienić. Na razie nie ma jednak planów co do tego. Proces ten może potrwać od kilkudziesięciu sekund do kilku minut:
Gdy proces zostanie zakończony ukaże się na nam nasz nowy portfel:
Jak na razie oczywiście z zerową zawartością. Jeśli przewiniemy sobie ekran w dół ukażą nam się kolejne informacje oraz opcje:
U samej góry widzimy adres naszego portfela. Przyda nam się on nam już niedługo, gdy będziemy chcieli przelać na niego środki. Oprócz tego mamy kilka opcji związanych z bezpieczeństwem:
Wallet Backed Up – tutaj możemy ponownie zobaczyć naszą listę seed words. Aby lista została nam wyświetlona musimy najpierw uwierzytelnić się ustawionym PINem bądź poprzez Touch ID / Face ID. Whitelisted addresses – lista adresów na które środki z portfela mogą być przelewane bez limitów Daily Send Limit – maksymalna ilość środków, jaka może być w ciągu doby przelana z portfela na adresy które nie znajduje się na powyższej whiteliście Daily Gas Tank Limit – nasz dzienny limit ile wpłat do baku na gas.
Gas Tank to specjalna pula Etheru na naszym portfelu, które jest przeznaczona na opłaty dla górników. Wszystkie operacje dokonywane na naszym portfelu, w tym doładowanie naszej karty, są realizowane na blockchainie. Ktoś musi dokonać tych opłat. W przypadku utworzenia samego portfela a także pierwszego uzupełnienia Gas Tanka (będzie o tym mowa później) opłaty wziął na siebie TokenCard. Potem my będziemy za to odpowiedzialni. Do tematu jeszcze wrócimy, a teraz zamówmy sobie naszą kartę.
Zamawianie karty Monolith(TokenCard)
Aby rozpocząć proces zamawiania karty klikamy w jej symbol w dolnym menu aplikacji. Pojawia się następujący ekran:
Jak informuje nasz wzmianka na tym ekranie, zanim dostaniemy kartę, będziemy musieli potwierdzić swoją tożsamość. Czeka więc nas pełnoprawny proces KYC. Włącznie z machaniem dowodem osobistym do kamerki. Zupełnie tak jak na giełdach. Więc wszyscy Ci, którzy mieli w głowie wydawanie krypto bezpośrednio z karty, aby się skarbówka nie dowiedziała mogę w tym momencie przestać czytać. Ale z drugiej strony, jak doszedłeś tak daleko, to może doczytaj do końca.
Klikamy w guzik Order i zaczynamy cały proces:
Proces składa się z czterech kroków. W sumie zajmuje on dosłownie parę minut i został zaprojektowany w przyjemny sposób. Miałem wrażenie, że wszystko zostało maksymalnie uproszczone, aby spełniać wymogi prawa, jednocześnie dbając o komfort użytkownika.
Pierwszy krok to wybranie waluty naszej karty. Tak jak wspomniałem wcześniej mamy do wyboru euro oraz funta. Jeśli mieszkasz w kraju z obowiązującą jedną z tych walut, to wybór jest prosty, W przypadku zamieszkania w Polsce lepszą opcją wydaje się być karta w euro. W przypadku karty w funtach może okazać się, że nasze transakcje nie są przeliczane ze złotówek bezpośrednio na funty, tylko po drodze może być jeszcze wykonywana pośrednia konwersja na euro. Co zwiększa nasz koszt dokonania transakcji.
Opłata za konwersję walutową to 1.75%. Jest to goła opłata systemu VISA. Wszystkie karty VISA ją naliczają. Dodatkowo większość banków, wydawców karty dolicza do tego swoją prowizję. Na szczęście TokenCard (Monolith) tego nie robi.
Drugi krok to informacje o nas. Wśród nich będą adres email i numer telefonu. W obu przypadkach zostanie na nie wysłany kod weryfikacyjny, aby potwierdzić nasz realny do nich dostęp.
Trzeci krok to podanie adresu. Adres musi znajdować się w obrębie Europejskiego Obszaru Gospodarczego. Polska jak najbardziej się kwalifikuje. Oprócz podania samego adresu trzeba również dokonać jego potwierdzenia. Możemy to zrobić przesyłając zdjęcie rachunku za media dotyczącego tego adresu bądź pismo bankowe dotyczące nas wysłane na wskazany adres.
Ostatni krok to potwierdzenie naszej tożsamości. Czyli świecenie dowodem osobistym i robienie sobie z nim selfie. Standardowa procedura KYC, którą tak dobrze znamy i nie lubimy z giełd.
Po poświęceniu kilku minut na wypełnienie powyższych kroków proces zamawiania karty jest zakończony:
Teraz pozostaje nam tylko czekać, aż pocztą przyjdzie do nas karta. Zazwyczaj powinno to zająć mniej niż tydzień. Gdy to nastąpi wracamy do powyższego ekranu i klikamy w guzik “My TokenCard has arrived” aby dokonać jej aktywacji. Gdzie zgodnie z instrukcjami podajemy znajdujący się na odwrocie karty kod zabezpieczający. I myk, karta jest aktywowana. Gotowa do użycia. Teraz porą ją doładować
Doładowanie karty Monolith (TokenCard)
Doładowanie karty odbywa bezpośrednio z portfela, który utworzyliśmy we wcześniejszych krokach. Problem z naszym portfelem jest typowy. Jest on pusty:
Musimy sobie przelać na niego jakieś drobne, aby móc eksperymentować z naszą kartą. W tym celu klikamy w znajdujący się na dole strony guzik “Receive”. Zostaniemy poinformowani, że na razie nasz portfel obsługuje jedynie ETH, TKN oraz DAI (ostatnio zostały dodane także tokeny DGX i DGD):
Następnie możemy skopiować adres naszego walleta i dokonać w innym portfelu transakcji przesłania na niego środków. Gdy te środki dotrą na portfel w pierwszej kolejności powinniśmy doładować nas Gas Tank, z którego będą opłacane opłaty dla górników dla transakcji wychodzących z samego portfela. Z tego co pamiętam, to aplikacja chyba sama to proponuje po otrzymaniu pierwszej wpłaty. Jeśli nie, to klikamy guzik Top us Gas z poniższego ekranu:
Następnie wybieramy jaką ilość Etheru chcemy zatankować do baku. Aplikacja poinformuje nas na ile mniej więcej transakcji wystarczy dana ilość. Poinformuje nas też o tym, że tym razem pokryje za nas koszty transakcyjne, ale na przyszłość musimy pamiętać o tym, aby pilnować aby doładowywać Gas Tank póki jego poziom pozwala na przeprowadzenie chociaż jednej transakcji. Transakcji jego doładowania.
Gdy mamy paliwo w baku możemy przystąpić do doładowania samej karty. W tym celu wybieramy ikonę karty z dolnego menu aplikacji.
I następnie klikamy guzik Top Up Card.
Następnie określamy, jaką ilość Etheru chcemy wykorzystać albo ile euro chcemy doładować na kartę. Uzupełniamy tylko jedno z pól, a system sam przelicza drugie. Czego brakuje mi w tym miejscu, to informacji o tym, po jakim kursie następuje przeliczenie. Mam nadzieje, że to zmieni się w przyszłości. Teraz dokonamy samodzielnego przeliczenia kursu: 4,22 EUR / 0.025 ETH daje nam kurs w wysokości 168.8 EUR / ETH. TokenCard deklaruje, że konwersja dokonywana jest po cenie rynkowej. Oczywiście jeśli chodzi o pieniądze nikomu nie wierzymy na słowo. Sprawdzamy co na temat kursu mówi CoinMarketCap
Średni kurs rynkowy Etheru, ma moment zawieranie transakcji, wynosi 168,98 EUR. Zgadza się więc to z przeliczeniami aplikacji.
Od Daniela, programisty pracującego nad projektem, wiemy, że na chwilę obecną Monolith dla rozliczeń w Euro korzysta z giełdy kraken.com. Na przyszłość tą z tą giełda możemy sobie sprawdzać zgodność kursu. Aczkolwiek Daniel zastrzega, że w przyszłości może nastąpić zmiana giełdy.
Decyduje się na dalsze przeprowadzenie transakcji. Najpierw jednak podejrzymy sobie naszą transakcję, to dokładnie ma się tam dziać. w tym celu klikamy w link View Transaction Breakdown znajdujące się pod formularzem wymiany.
Widzimy więc, że 0.025 ETH zostanie zamienione na 4.22 EUR. Do tego zapłacimy transaction fee (1%) w wysokości 0.00025 ETH. Do tego zostanie naliczone licence fee. Moglibyśmy tego uniknąć, gdybyśmy korzystali z tokenu TKN do doładowania karty. License fee również wynosi 1%. Jakoże prezentowana kwota wynosi 0.0002525 ETH wygląda na to, że to 1% procent naliczone jest po dodaniu do naszej kwoty wymiany transaction fee. IMHO powinno być to obliczane bezpośrednio od wymienianej kwoty. Następnie zobaczymy, że totalny koszt naszej transakcji to 0.0255025 ETH. Do tego będzie trzeba doliczyć opłatę dla górników za umieszczenie transakcji na blockchainie. Co odbędzie się na kolejnym ekranie:
Na ekranie tym zatwierdzamy opłatę dla górników. Przy większości transakcji będziemy mogli wybrać jedną z opcji – wolno (i tanio), standardowo bądź szybko (i drogo). W przypadku transakcji doładowania karty dostępna jest jednak tylko opcja szybka. Można to wytłumaczyć tym, że doładowania karty dokonujesz tuż przed jej wykorzystaniem i nie chcesz utknąć czekając na realizację transakcji, bo przyoszczędzić parę groszy na opłacie dla górników.
Klikamy Confirm aby potwierdzić naszą transakcję.
Ostatni krok to zatwierdzenie transakcji ustalonym wcześniej PINem bądź poprzez Touch ID / Face ID jeśli wcześniej ustawiliśmy taką opcję. Po wykonaniu potwierdzenia transakcja jest wysyłana do blockchaina. Gdzie w ciągu kilkudziesięciu sekund powinna zostać potwierdzona. Środki będą wtedy dostępne do wykorzystania na karcie.
Korzystanie z karty Monolith (TokenCard)
Od momentu doładowania korzystania z karty wygląda dokładnie tak samo jak w przypadku standardowych kart. Mamy już na niej środki w euro, które po prostu wydajemy.
Co jest ważne, pierwsza transakcja musi zostać przeprowadzona przy pomocy PINu.
Jaki jest nasz PIN? Możemy tego dowiedzieć się z ustawień karty. W widoku karty klikamy ikonę zębatki.
Następnie wybieramy View my PIN, który po podaniu kodu CVV2 z tyłu karty wyświetli nam jej PIN.
Co ciekawe nie ma opcji zmiany PINu poprzez aplikację. Możne tego dokonać jedynie w bankomatach.
Podsumowanie
Samo doświadczenie korzystania z aplikacji i zamawiania karty oceniam bardzo pozytywnie. Widać duże starania twórców, aby miło się użytkowało aplikację. Chociaż wielokrotnie korzystamy z blockchana, to wydaje się to nie być jakiś dużym narzutem.
Bardzo ważną kwestią jest ekonomiczny sens korzystania z karty i opłaty z tego wynikające. Ich poziom wydaje mi się być akceptowalny. Do nich trzeba będzie doliczyć opłaty dla górników przy realizowaniu transakcji na blockchainie. Dodatkowo dla transakcji realizowanych w innej walucie niż waluta karty będzie miała miejsce konwersja walutowa z opłatą wynoszącą 1.75%. Dużym plusem jest konwersja z krypto na fiat po aktualnej cenie rynkowej. Nie korzystałem z innych krypto kart, więc ciężko mi przyrównać ją pod tym względem do konkurencji.
Czynnik ekonomiczny nie jest tutaj dla mnie decydujący. Decydujące było najbardziej zdecentralizowane i oparte na blockchanie podejście do tematu. Projekt deklaruje w swojej wizji chęć stworzenia z aplikacji bramki do świata decentralized finance. Jest to temat dla mnie bardzo interesujący, dlatego będę się nadal przyglądał rozwojowi projektu.
Jeśli chodzią o samą kartę, to na razie nie stała się moją domyślną opcją. Ale w połączeniu z DAI wydaję się być atrakcyjną opcją jako hedging wobec osłabiającej się złotówki i umacniającego się tajskiego bahta (mieszka w Tajlandii i to jest waluta którą wydaję na co dzień). Dodana właśnie obsługa tokenu DGX, który jest stablecoinem wobec złota sprawia, że chyba rzeczywiście będę wykorzystywał kartę do wydawania dolarów i złota, jeśli kurs złotówki będzie dalej się osłabiał.
Tradycyjnie liczę na Twoje feedback. Zarówno w komentarzach, jak i w anonimowej ankiecie. Szczególnie, jeśli korzystasz z innych krypto kart. Czy TokenCard wydaje Ci się być atrakcyjną opcją? | {
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The world is safer and more peaceful with strong U.S. leadership. That requires the U.S. government to maintain its advantage in critical technologies such as AI. | {
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Workers at an Edhi mortuary in Karachi received quite the shock on Monday when a pregnant woman who had been declared dead and was being prepared for burial suddenly came back to life.“When she was being given ghusal, Manzoora Bibi, 55, suddenly got up and started reciting the. Everyone was shocked,” Edhi Foundation’s spokesperson Anwar Kazmi told“Manzoora Bibi was pregnant and was brought to the mortuary by her husband, Bashir, a worker at a poultry farm,” Kazmi added.The 55-year-old belonging to Dumba Goth near Karachi’s Super Highway was brought to the foundation for performance of final rites and burial.“We can’t ascertain why the woman, around 55-years-old was declared dead,” he added.According to Kazmi, the woman must have fainted and was believed to be dead by the family. “The family thought that the woman was dead and without confirming it with a doctor, brought her straight to the morgue,” the spokesperson further said.Half an hour later, the woman was sent back with her family from the Edhi morgue at Sohrab Goth. | {
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Timelapse of the installation of the portrait wall at Te Papa.
A pūtātara (conch shell) that once belonged to a Tūhoe chief dating back to the 1600s is the oldest taonga going on display as part of Te Papa's grand opening of its refurbished art gallery.
After a year of drastic restructure that used steel equal to the weight of 467 rugby players, the new gallery space is finally opening on levels 4 and 5 and is the equivalent size of 15 tennis courts.
From 10am this Saturday, the public can discover Toi Art, with four major art exhibitions that span four centuries of New Zealand art from the 17th to the 21st – from a Tūhoe pūtātara thought to be last used near the New Zealand land wars, to challenging jewellery made of soft fabrics by Lisa Walker.
Te Papa's head of art Charlotte Davy said there was a real sense of variety and breadth.
Vivienne Haldane. Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists Niwhai Tupaea, Central Church, Beresford Square, Auckland, 1993.
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"We are trying to show a big swag of the collection and show how diverse the collection is in a number of ways," she said
"We've got 4000 square metres of refurbished gallery space, so it's a lot of room to bring important works out of the collection for, but also some works that haven't been out for a while too."
TE PAPA/Michael O'Neill Tūrangawaewae: Art and New Zealand is one of four major exhibitions opening in Te Papa's Toi Art this weekend.
The four main exhibitions include Tūrangawaewae Art and New Zealand, Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists, Lisa Walker: I want to go to my bedroom but I can't be bothered and Kaleidoscope: Abstract Aotearoa.
Tūrangawaewae Art and New Zealand will see two pieces finally come to the public eye after undergoing a major conservation treatment ahead of the exhibition.
George Dawe's Duke of Wellington, from about 1829, was gifted to the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in 1936 by the artist's nephew James Prendergast, who travelled to New Zealand with it in 1862.
Prendergast went on to become New Zealand's chief justice.
It is the first time Duke of Wellington has been on exhibition at Te Papa, much like Māori girl, by German artist Wilhelm Dittmer, from about 1904, which also underwent significant treatment for it premier appearance.
The oldest pieces in the exhibition include Tūhoe's pūtātara Te Umukohukohu, dating back to the 1600s, and Mrs Humphrey Devereux, an oil painting by the renowned American artist, John S. Copley, made in 1771
Other beloved works from the national collection will also be on show, including paintings by C.F. Goldie, Gottfried Lindauer, Rita Angus, Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon, Gordon Walters and Robyn Kahukiwa.
"This is an exhibition that really explores the idea of what is art and what is New Zealand. It's looking at a sense of identity in New Zealand and the sort of cross-cultural conversations that position New Zealand in the Pacific," Davy said.
"It's a really beautiful show in that it contains really much-loved work in our collection. It's a really beautiful survey of the collection and some of our most important works. I think people will find that quite a breathtaking and uplifting exhibition with regards to what New Zealand art is and what it means to be a New Zealander."
Meanwhile, Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists, will profile the garments and performance used by eight Māori and Pacific women from the 1990s.
Pacific and Māori artists Lisa Reihana, Rosanna Raymond, Ani O'Neill, Suzanne Tamaki, Selina Haami, Niwhai Tupaea, Henzart @ Henry Ah-Foo Taripo, Feeonaa Wall and Jaunnie 'Ilolahiam once described themselves as the Polynesian version of Andy Warhol's Factory, using fashion, art and music as platforms of activism.
"Some of the photography that happened around their work started to make its way into mainstream publications in the forms of fashion editorial," Davy said.
"They were using young Pacifica and Māori people that they would grab off the street as models and created these beautiful fashion shoots which was very cutting-edge at the time because Māori and Pacific people weren't really seen in fashion magazines at all in that period.
"It's a very vibrant exhibition, with beautiful moving images of some of the performances, together with some of the costumes."
In another part of the gallery, Island Bay artist Lisa Walker will display a collection of her works which spans the last 30 years.
The world-renowned New Zealand jeweller trained in Dunedin and then went to Munich to create jewellery that questioned the sense of value.
"She doesn't use precious metal, for example, she uses found materials. Her most famous works are made from soft toys – there's a very fabulous squirrel on a skateboard. It can be very funny and very challenging in terms of its wearability," Davy said.
Toi Art opens on Saturday, March 17 from 10am. Entry is free. | {
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As the 49ers opened a three-day mini-camp Tuesday, the focus was on improving what offensive coordinator Greg Roman called “situational football.” That means more work on red-zone plays and third-down conversions — two problem areas that plagued the 49ers even during a season that took them to the brink of the Super Bowl.
Roman acknowledged Tuesday that the 49ers felt limited last season by an off-season lockout that erased the traditional summer team activities. Robbed of the chance to fully install Coach Jim Harbaugh’s offense, “we kind of had to throw it all against the board and see what stuck.”
“I can assure you that it did put us under a tremendous amount of stress,” Roman said.
During this camp, Roman will get chance to improve an offense that finished 26th in the NFL in yardage last season. The 49ers ranked 31st in third-down conversion percentage.
Was that because of a lack of execution? Or was the offense lacking in complexity?
“It’s probably a little bit of both,” Roman said. “I mean, it all comes down to execution and a lot of it is time on task (in practice).
“The more you do something, the more you’re going to get out of it. We’ve got more time so I think we’ll be more efficient and maybe be able to branch out a little more, too.”
Quarterback Alex Smith, too, is eager to see what the 49ers can do now that they have a whole off-season to learn the system. During the lockout of 2011, Smith arranged for players to practice together at informal workouts that became known as Camp Alex.
“It’s kind of laughable to compare this to last year,” Smith said Tuesday. “This time last year we were at San Jose State doing what we could, which wasn’t much.
“This year, even with the limited time and the new regulations, we really got a lot of work in and really pushed the tempo. We’re not even close to where we were last year.” | {
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Pantallazo
Dady Brieva: “Perón me enseñó que tenemos que tomar champagne y viajar a Miami”
El actor habló sobre la situación que vive Argentina y lo que le enseñó el Peronismo. ¡Mirá!
Dady Brieva estuvo de invitado al programa de Mauro Viale de Argentina en A24 y lanzó polémicas frases sobre la situación que vive Argentina con el gobierno de Macri.
"¿Sos kirchnerista o peronista?", comenzó preguntando Mauro.
"Qué pregunta pelotuda, Mauro", respondió Dady, en tono chicanero con el conductor.
"Siempre fui peronista y ahora me hice kirchnerista. El kirchnerismo es peronismo. Y sino que lo digan los peronistas que se fueron con Macri. ¿Encontraron más peronismo con Macri que en el kirchnerismo?", agregó.
"Qué pensás de Macri", le preguntó Mauro.
"Yo no personalizo, son representaciones de ideología. Que se corra si no le gusta gobernar, o lo hace mal o no está conforme. Conozco mucha gente que dice 'prefiero pagar 20 mil pesos la luz pero que el negro no viva al lado mío'", sostuvo.
"Muchos dicen 'pago 500 mangos dos zapallitos, pero no quiero que vuelva la yegua. Hay gente que arenga. La grieta no se supera", dijo.
"Hay gente que da zapatillas para tranquilizar su conciencia, pero no quieren que esa señora salga de la pobreza. A mi Perón me enseñó que tenemos que vivir todos bien, todos tenemos que tomar champagne, todos tenemos que ir a Miami". | {
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Federal Labor frontbencher Mark Butler's seat is set to be abolished ahead of the next national election, but he looks unlikely to switch into a new seat nearby.
SA will lose one seat in the redistribution, taking the number of House of Representatives electorates in the state to 10.
Many voters in Mr Butler's seat of Port Adelaide will move to his Labor colleague Nick Champion's seat of Wakefield, which will be renamed Spence.
Mr Butler said the Australian Electoral Commission's recommendation was still a draft, but he was "disappointed" at the proposal to abolish the seat he' has held since 2007.
"I will be looking at all my options as I continue to serve my community and as we await a final decision by the commission," Mr Butler said.
Mr Champion said he expects to be the only Labor candidate for preselection in Spence.
"Preselections are always spirited affairs but I think I've done a good job," he told reporters in Adelaide on Friday.
When asked what Mr Butler's future was, Mr Champion said the Labor party was famous for its maturity and "unity", and challenges would be overcome.
Former federal Labor minister Kate Ellis is retiring in the seat of Adelaide, but Mr Butler would have to do a factional deal to win preselection there.
The redistribution spares coalition frontbencher Christopher Pyne, who was tipped to lose his seat.
ABC election analyst Antony Green said Hindmarsh and Spence would become much safer for Labor, while Sturt had been "barely touched".
Hindmarsh would shift from being an ultra-marginal seat, held by a 0.6 per cent margin, to a safe Labor seat with a margin of around 8.2 per cent.
Labor's margin in Spence would be around 18 per cent.
Nick Xenophon Team MP Rebekha Sharkie's prospects of holding Mayo against a Labor or Liberal challenge would be more difficult under the new boundaries.
Electoral commissioner Tom Rogers said a seat had to be abolished, but nine of the 11 eleven seats had too many or too few voters.
The new seat is named after a prominent advocate for female suffrage and electoral reform, Catherine Helen Spence.
Objections can still be made against the proposed boundary changes, with the final redistributions announced by July. | {
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Predictably President 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 tweeted out “mission accomplished” after bombing Syria. Clearly, he has not learned from President Bush’s premature boasting about Iraq. Neither is he the type to learn from past experience in strategic affairs.
If you look deeper, this mission was a wasted opportunity. It now turns out that Syria has used chemical weapons, in defiance of the Chemical Weapons Convention — 50 times during its civil war. After the U.S. strike a year ago it has again used these weapons another seven times.
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Despite the most recent mission this use of chemical weapons has not lead to any major restrictions on Assad and it has already encouraged others like Russia to believe they can follow suit with equal impunity. Therefore, the damage to Syria’s chemical weapons complex will undoubtedly be repaired, and whenever Assad deems it necessary, he will use them again. In the meantime, he will devote himself to other means of massacring innocents with impunity.
Clearly, the allies and the Pentagon do not wish to become involved in a wider war and evidently they restrained Trump’s bellicose instincts that made a bad situation worse, as they invariably do.
This restraint also makes things worse because ineptly using force does not generate positive strategic outcomes, quite the contrary. It will embolden Moscow to believe that it has a free field of action in Syria and that its reckless threat to shoot at American ships succeeded in limiting U.S. power.
One rule of thumb is never to encourage Moscow in the delusion that its threats can intimidate the West on issues for which Moscow is not prepared to fight. Had the U.S. taken out Assad’s air defenses, there is little Moscow could or would have done despite its own reckless threats and its status as Assad’s main military backer. Indeed, it would be a salutary lesson for Russia, as was its attack on U.S. forces and allies that led to several hundred Russian fatalities in the private “Wagner” army, earlier this year.
It might have sobered up the Russian leadership about U.S. capability and resolve and the larger Western resolve. Instead, the Russian leadership will likely conclude that they have an open field for action in Syria and the West is only interested in meaningless demonstrations of power, not true strategic operations.
Moscow, having seen Assad’s success in chemical warfare, has launched similar an attack against Russian spies in Great Britain and continues to deny it stridently in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. A strong Western response, coming on top of recent expulsions of diplomats and sanctions might have had a restraining effect on policymakers in Moscow.
Iran, too, may well draw a similar lesson. Taking out Assad’s air defenses would also be a useful blow to Iran, which is gearing up for more probes against Israel. Such a strike on Assad would have left his forces defenseless against the Israeli Air Force, something that undoubtedly would figure prominently in Tehran’s strategic calculus.
Lastly, the self-imposed limitations on this attack continue to display the growing U.S. disinterest in strategic action in the Middle East and unwillingness to determine what precisely it seeks to accomplish in regard to Syria and to other burning questions in this volatile region.
Bitter experience should teach us that if the U.S. abdicates its role as the primary guarantor of world order the ensuing result is either anarchy or the usurpation of that space by bad actors.
A venerable Russian proverb tells us that “a sacred space is never empty.” For Russia, Iran, ISIS, among others the Middle East is precisely such a sacred space that they must fill — especially if we retreat.
The results of those actors is the greatest humanitarian catastrophe since 1945. Under the circumstances of this catastrophe, Assad’s hands are free to continue butchering his people while we and our allies stand by impotently. On what basis can we say that the mission was accomplished?
Trump may talk tough and fling threats right and left but he acts like any other street corner bully — fearing resistance. His government remains incapable of genuine strategic perspective or action.
Stephen Blank, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, focused on the geopolitics and geostrategy of the former Soviet Union, Russia and Eurasia. He is a former professor of Russian National Security Studies and National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. He is also a former MacArthur fellow at the U.S. Army War College. | {
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Video footage of Pyotr Kropotkin's funeral which took place from 10th to 13th February, 1921. It was documented by 'Section of social chronicles of all-Russian cinema and photo publishing'.
Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (Russian: Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин; 9th December, 1842 – 8th February, 1921).
From 0:33 onwards you may see organising commission for the funeral, which included a number of well known anarchists at the time - Sandomirskyi, Perovskyi, Lebedev, Yarik (0:49), Askarov, Pavlov, Atabekyan (01:00), T. Shapiro, A. Shapiro, Alexey Borovoy, Piro (01:11), Gogelio, Maximov, Markus, Anosov, Chernyi (1:31) and Aleksandr Berkman (01:45).
Following is the funeral procession in Dmitrov, special procession train to Moscow and farewell in the house of the trade unions, where at 6:40 you may see Emma Goldman and Alexandr Berkman. .
Perhaps the most touching moment of the documentary is at 7:40, which is footage of anarchist political prisoners temporarily released in order to attend the funeral. A number of them never had another free day in their lives. Kropotkin's funeral was also to be the last public demonstration of anarchists in Moscow until 1988.
Finally, from 9:36 there is footage of speakers at Novodevichy cemetery on 13th February. These are Sandomirsky on behalf of anarchist organisations, Schteinberg on behalf of left-wing socialist revolutionaries, Pavlov on behalf of anarchists, Mostovenko on behalf of the Communist party (official authorities could not afford to ignore such an event), Ermansky on behalf of the Social democrat mensheviks, Rosmer on behalf of the communist international, Emma Goldman on behalf of American anarchists, Pevin on behalf of Moscow students and Baron on behalf of the Ukrainian anarchist federation 'Alarm'.
http://avtonom.org/en/news/film-about-kropotkins-funeral | {
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University of Texas at Dallas economist Stan J. Liebowitz drops a huge bomb on conventional wisdom about the real estate bubble: This has not been a "subprime" mortgage crisis at all. In fact, subprime mortgages in some categories are still not defaulting at record-high levels.
Instead, by far the most important determinant of default—and the common feature of nearly all defaults since 2006—is whether the mortgage has an adjustable interest rate:
The mortgage data do not suggest that subprime loans went bad first, followed by Alt-As and then prime loans. Instead, the data suggest that adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) went bad first, with the rise occurring at about the same to for both prime and subprime ARMs. Foreclosure rates on fixed rate mortgages (FRMs), both prime and subprime, barely participated in the foreclosure outbreak, having much smaller and much later increases in foreclosures.
To understand why this is important, please consider how widespread the belief in the subprime crisis really is. The president believes it. The media believe it. I believed it, and if you want to play gotcha on me, here's your chance.
I can not speak to the quality of Liebowitz's data, which are drawn from the Mortgage Bankers Association's National Delinquency Survey. But the case he puts together is pretty damned interesting. And it makes intuitive sense: If you're flipping or buying a second home or betting on the come, you want to reduce your short-term exposure. And we already know that being underwater on a mortgage is the primary factor in the decision to default.
Back at the end of the Bush Administration (were we really so young back then? will we ever learn to laugh again?), there was a fad for a financial metaphor drawn from epidemiology: that the crisis began with subprime loans but could begin to "spread" to prime loans. In fact, however, prime default rates began spiking at the same time as or even slightly before subprime default rates. But while the role of ARMs was getting a lot of attention at the time, nobody defined it as the reset crisis or the recast crisis.
So for example, at the moment Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was giving this May 2007 speech about the sub-prime crisis, there was already a year's worth of data showing that prime and sub-prime loan defaults were growing, in percentage terms, at almost exactly the same rate. (Sub-prime loans have higher ordinary default rates.)
Bernanke of course had a personal stake in deceiving the public in this way. He himself was carrying an adjustable-rate mortgage at the time, which he has subsequently managed to refi—thus locking in an attractive rate before raising interest rates on the rest of us.
But why was everybody else so eager to believe it? Liebowitz suggests a possibility: "The subprime story provided an easy scapegoat: subprime lenders."
Even more convenient are the scapegoats who don't get any attention: subprime borrowers. Nobody would doubt that subprime borrowers, who are most likely to have low incomes and little financial experience, must be the leading edge of the default phenomenon.
Except that it seems to be untrue. A low-income, bad-credit borrower who is serious about owning a home is more likely to keep making payments in hard times than a higher-income, good-credit person who has arranged his purchase so as to have little or no equity in the house.
Major pieces of the conventional wisdom about the mortgage collapse continue to fall apart on inspection. We know, for example, that houses still sell when you cut the asking price, that unemployment is not a major factor in defaults, that modifying loans does not help bad borrowers. If Liebowitz is right about ARMs as the main cause of defaults, we will, as he says, "have very different economic explanations for the defaults and very different remedies." We'd also have a better understanding about why all efforts to treat the situation are just making the patient worse.
But there's a class element here too. The right hates poor people and the left loves them to death. But both agree that the poor must not be left to make their own decisions on financial matters. My friend John Hope Bryant says the difference between being broke and being poor is that being poor is a state of mind. Apparently it's a state of mind you can be in even if you're rich. The sad part is that once upon a time good New Deal liberals were leading the drive to get poor people the tools to help themselves: | {
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18 killed in Uttarakhand rains, death toll may rise as several missing
india
Updated: Jul 02, 2016 01:16 IST
At least 18 people were killed missing as torrential rains triggered flashfloods and landslides in Uttarahand, officials said on Friday, underlining the vulnerability of hill states to weather extremes.
While “18 to 20” people were killed in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli and Pithoragarh since Thursday.
In Uttarakhand, pounded by torrential rains since Thursday night, the toll is likely to increase, chief minister Harish Rawat said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed grief over the loss of lives and hoped normalcy would return at the earliest.
I am grieved by the loss of lives caused due to cloudburst & heavy rain in parts of Uttarakhand. Condolences to bereaved families: PM — PMO India (@PMOIndia) July 1, 2016
My prayers are with those injured. I hope normalcy returns to the rain-affected areas at the earliest: PM @narendramodi — PMO India (@PMOIndia) July 1, 2016
The death and destruction in Chamoli and Pithoragarh came just over three years after more than 5,000 people were killed when the Kedar valley was hit by a similar cloudburst, a term used to describe highly concentrated rainfall over a small area and lasting for a few minutes to few hours.
In Dehradun, officials put the number of confirmed deaths at 11 based on the number of bodies recovered.
People stranded at Rishikesh - Badrinath national highway after heavy rainfall and cloudburst. (HT Photo)
Rawat announced Rs two lakh as ex-gratia to the next kin of each dead.
Rescue workers used helicopters to shift the injured to hospitals but were hampered due to poor visibility, officials said.
Large tracts of agriculture fields were destroyed in Suva village in Pithoragarh’s Dharchula area. (HT Photo)
A team of the Natural Disaster Response Force (NDRF) could not reach the disaster sites – around 180 kms apart – as choppers could not land due to bad weather.
“We have recorded 12 cm rain in the 24 hours in Kapkot (Pithoragarh),” said Vikram Singh, the state metrological department head. The met office also issued warning for heavy rains in some parts of the state in the next 48 hours.
(With inputs from HTC, New Delhi ) | {
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Back in April on 2016, congress ordered a formal study on the costs and feasibility of restarting F-22 production. The order came amid deteriorating relations with a militarily resurgent Russia and decaying technology supremacy over China's growing military apparatus, and over half a decade after the Raptor line was originally shuttered. The move made big news, and it stood as yet an another indication that what some of us had been saying for years was finally becoming the consensus inside and outside the USAF—that production of the world's first 5th generation super fighter was terminated far too early. As time went by, and the political winds in Washington changed direction, the possibility of a Raptor reprise faded into background as did the pending report. But now, six months after it was due, the study has quietly materialized—and nobody gets to read its findings but certain members of congress. But some details are emerging and they aren't really surprising or too encouraging.
Unofficial estimates have varied drastically, from relatively affordable to horrendously expensive, on how much it would take to start building F-22s again. Also, false rumors have been rampant that the tooling for the jets, which is supposed to be carefully stored away along with videos on how each part of the Raptor construction process was executed, had been junked. There has also been much speculation as to what a new "F-22B" would look like and what the jet would be equipped with, but the question of how much money it would take to just get any form of Raptor back into production remained a mystery.
Lockheed Martin
Now that mystery is likely solved, yet the USAF won't let the American people see the details. This really isn't too surprising as The USAF and industry will do seemingly anything to keep competition for the ultra lucrative F-35 program at bay, so deep sixing the F-22 study could very well be just another in a long line of moves to protect the Lockheed's true "golden goose." But even with the secrecy, here's what we are finding out, with both Military.com and the Washington Examiner posting similar figures: -Approximately $50 billion to procure 194 additional F-22s -Total includes an estimate of approximately $7 billion to $10 billion for non-recurring start-up costs and $40.4 billion for aircraft procurement costs -An estimated cost of $206 million to $216 million per aircraft (the last F-22 produced had a unit cost of $137 million) In many ways this actually beats some cost estimates as far as restarting the production line. And at roughly $200 million per jet, the USAF could buy two F-35s for a single new F-22. But comparing the two is troublesome, as with both jets are in inventory and you don't need anywhere near the numbers of Raptors as you do F-35s. Additionally, buying more F-22s could (and should) mean less F-35s would be required depending on how you look at the USAF's overall force structure. Not just that, but involving other countries in the restart, notably Japan and possibly Australia, these costs to the USAF alone can come down.
Lockheed Martin | {
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No two people are alike, nor are any two sponges; exotic display peices that will ignite your imagination. | {
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If AMD stuck with it’s 2016 roadmaps, it would be in for a big fight with Intel next year. The roadmaps SemiAccurate and Fudzilla reported back then were not followed and the server market is no longer a fight.
This is the long way of saying two things, one we got the information right two years ago but that information changed and it is wrong now. The second part is that the changes make 2019 something far less than a fight and more of a steamrollering. Nope, shouldn’t have used that term, maybe bulldozering. Damn. Lets just say the roadmaps are vastly different from those 48-core behemoths envisioned back then. What is AMD planning? A 7nm monster called Rome.
Note: The following is for professional and student level subscribers.
Disclosures: Charlie Demerjian and Stone Arch Networking Services, Inc. have no consulting relationships, investment relationships, or hold any investment positions with any of the companies mentioned in this report. | {
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The Scots and the English share many things, but a sense of humour is not always one of them. As the Scottish National Party's ruling body met on Friday at the end of a tumultuous week for the nation, one senior member ventured his own suggestion for resolving the new problem presented by an agitated Prime Minister down at Westminster.
"Maybe we should organise a whip-round," he told the SNP's National Executive Committee (NEC), "so we can pay for David Cameron to fly up here and help out the independence campaign a bit more."
This dry suggestion captures the disconnect between Holyrood and Westminster over the latest twist in the saga of Scottish independence. In London, the Prime Minister and his colleagues are jubilant over his achievement in "calling Salmond out" on a definite timescale for a referendum; in Scotland the Nats point to the coalition's concession of a legally binding referendum.
Above all, however, Mr Salmond faces the prospect of having a Conservative leader bogeyman in London bolstering his cause. His many indignant references to "a Tory Prime Minister in London" culminated, on Friday, with an official invitation to Mr Cameron and his deputy, Nick Clegg, for independence talks in Scotland. The dramatic – and very public – gesture contrasted sharply with the Scotland Secretary's written invitation to the First Minister, revealed yesterday, for talks on the referendum on Thursday in Edinburgh – "to try to get things moving".
The uncomfortable fact for the Prime Minister is that in the – for him unfathomable – world of Scottish politics, the more he opposes independence the more likely Scotland will be to support it.
It had all been so different last weekend, when Mr Cameron launched into the independence debate with the enthusiasm of a man honouring a January resolution. Most significantly, the PM said: "I think, frankly, that a referendum on Scotland in the United Kingdom, sooner rather than later, would be a better thing than this uncertainty continuing."
Mr Cameron's sudden ardour was, his closest aides say, part of a long-term plan to stop Scotland "sleepwalking into independence". However, while Tories interpreted his intervention as a masterstroke that forced Mr Salmond on to the back foot, behind the scenes not everyone in the Government was so sure. In particular, the insistence on an 18-month deadline for a vote went further than planned. "The PM went off a bit half-cocked on Sunday," confessed a Whitehall source. "There was some mopping up to be done."
Mr Salmond's initial response was scornful. While the Scottish government's response to Mr Cameron's attack was straight from the SNP playbook – Westminster was "trying to interfere in Scottish democracy" – it was delivered not by the First Minister but his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon.
Within 24 hours, however, Mr Salmond had been forced to follow Westminster's lead and confirm plans to hold an independence referendum in 2014. While the SNP maintained that the announcement merely firmed up what they had previously suggested, their opponents insisted that Mr Cameron had forced the First Minister into a corner and extracted the promise. "While Salmond had control over the 'what' and 'when', he held all the cards," said one minister. "Now we have a seat at the table and he'll have to enter a debate on a more equal basis."
The coalition is gambling that support for independence will remain in the minority – currently below 40 per cent – up to the referendum and the issue will be killed off for a generation. The real risk is the lingering possibility that the Scots will vote "yes" to leaving the UK – or that they somehow get the chance to vote on new powers short of independence. "Devo max", increased powers for Scotland, emerged as Mr Salmond's best chance of emerging from a referendum with some form of victory – and more power. Mr Cameron insists that he will not countenance anything other than a single-question, yes/no vote on independence. But in consenting to a binding referendum he may have started a process, rather than ended it.
SNP sources confirmed that they would argue the case for a multi-option referendum including devo max. "They have the overall legal power, but we have the moral authority," one said. "I would like to see Mr Cameron try to impose a referendum on the Scottish people in the way he has tried to dictate the agenda this week."
It is a telling observation. If the coalition demands a yes/no vote, the SNP will brand it "Westminster's referendum" and thus maximise their chances of victory. If they lose, they will declare the result invalid and hold their own consultative referendum. However it happens, devo max appears the most likely option for Scotland's future.
Westminster is already marshalling its forces against Mr Salmond's march out of the UK, not least through briefings that warn of dire consequences for an independent Scotland. The outline of a cross-party "no" campaign is also starting to emerge. Even the most ardent Tory will admit the pro-Union movement "will not be led or fronted by Cameron and Osborne". Instead they will call in Labour big beasts and Lib Dems, but also business, which is more anti-independence than the public.
The SNP have transformed themselves under Mr Salmond. The party has also benefited from increasingly nationalistic – and anti-English – sentiments. The Scottish composer James MacMillan said yesterday: "There is a kind of accepted orthodoxy here that the Scots are not racist in the ways that the English can be. The SNP need this reservoir of anti-Englishness to power their secessionist agenda."
"This is High Noon," said former Lib Dem leader Lord Ashdown. "Only one of these two men is going to be standing at the end of this. David Cameron cannot continue as Prime Minister of the UK if he loses, and in my view Alex Salmond cannot carry on as First Minister of Scotland if he loses."
However elated Mr Cameron and his allies are over the accomplishment of the first week of their Scottish mission, Mr Salmond is far from crushed by the UK establishment. In Scotland, his reputation has been enhanced, and it will be Scottish voters who ultimately pick the winner.
The view North of the border: 'Where will the Pied Piper really lead us?'
"The 'status quo' is probably not sustainable, and I would support more autonomy being extended northwards. However, there are too many economic uncertainties in Europe to be going it alone right now, and most Scots will recognise this."
Clive Fairweather; Former SAS colonel
"We should aim for full independence. Scotland should go it alone if there are tax benefits for companies to work and be based in Scotland to generate revenue and low unemployment."
Sonia Scott Mackay; Model and owner of a Glasgow talent agency
"I think 'devo max' is a good solution. It means that Scotland retains a sense of independence without becoming vulnerable on the global stage. In a referendum I would vote for whichever option benefits the people rather than politicians."
Serah Kimuyu; Acting general manager for a charity in Falkirk
"Alex 'the Pied Piper' Salmond is fusing 700 years of anti-English sentiment with an almost primordial desire for 'national freedom'. The pipings of the flute sound so fine, but to where will Scotland's people really be led?"
Pen Hadow; Polar explorer and motivational speaker
"I consider myself a Scottish citizen and also contribute to the Scottish economy and social life. I think Scotland is capable of running the country by itself and making its own decisions." | {
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Verizon-owned Oath has agreed to pay a $5 million penalty for violating a federal privacy law that prohibits online advertisers from tracking children without parental consent.
The ad business run by Oath's AOL property deliberately ignored the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), state prosecutors in New York said on Tuesday. "AOL flagrantly violated the law — and children's privacy — and will now pay the largest-ever penalty under COPPA," New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a statement.
According to prosecutors, AOL's ad exchange knew it shouldn't be serving targeted ads on children-directed websites covered by the privacy law, but it did so anyways. As a result, AOL paved the way for online advertisers to use internet cookies to track children over the web and serve them targeted ads.
The ads were served to websites such as children's gaming platform Roblox.com and the teen girl-focused site Sweetyhigh.com, according to The New York Times, which was first to report the settlement.
"AOL conducted billions of auctions for ad space on hundreds of websites the company knew were directed to children under the age of 13," according to Underwood's office, which examined the company's ad practices from Oct. 2015 to Feb. 2017. Documents obtained from AOL also show that at least one company account manager broke the privacy law to help increase advertising revenues.
In response to the $5 million fine, an Oath spokesperson said: "We are pleased to see this matter resolved and remain wholly committed to protecting children's privacy online."
According to New York prosecutors, Oath has agreed to establish a "COPPA compliance" program to keep the company in line with the privacy law when selling advertising space to clients. "AOL has also agreed to destroy all personal information collected from children that is in its possession," the New York attorney general's office said.
Tuesday's settlement comes amid growing scrutiny over children's digital privacy. In April, consumer groups also accused YouTube of violating COPPA by collecting children's online data without parental consent. Other experts are calling out the ad practices used in mobile apps for kids as "manipulative."
"Our investigation into the illegal online tracking of children by marketers and advertisers will continue," New York's attorney general said on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com. | {
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WoS/World of Sport held the first of their new year tour shows last night from Southampton. The O2 Guildhall in Southampton was reportedly near capacity and there were a number of big bouts confirmed for the card. In the main event WoS Champion Justin Sysum and Robbie X defeated Alpha Bad (Iestyn Rees & Kip Sabian).
The card also saw the following bouts take place:
Grado vs. Martin Kirby
Crater vs Gabriel Kidd
Rampage vs. Will Ospreay
Ladder Match – Adam Maxted vs. Nathan Cruz
- Advertisement -
The biggest result of the night saw WoS Women’s Champion Kay Lee Ray lose her belt to Viper. As we reported recently Kay Lee Ray is NXT UK bound, however interestingly Viper is also looking to leave WoS when her contract expires. Bea Priestley, who also featured in the title match is also being rumored as being bound for NXT UK when her contract ends. These three performers are easily the backbone of the WoS Women’s division, so it will be interesting to see how/if they deal with the situation. | {
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04-28-16
Not a bad afternoon’s work. The Amazon CEO saw his 82.9 million shares increase in value by $6 billion as the company’s shares jumped over 10% in after-hours trading on earnings results that beat expectations. [chart via Bloomberg] | {
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi shakes hands with his Bhutanese counterpart Lotay Tshering (AP)
NEW DELHI: PM Narendra Modi on Friday announced that India would contribute Rs 4,500 crore to Bhutan’s 12th five-year economic plan after a meeting with visiting Bhutanese PM Lotay Tshering, a significant outreach with an important neighbour who occupies a strategic geography between India and China.
A transitional Trade Support Facility of Rs 400 crore over a period of five years was also announced to strengthen bilateral trade and economic linkages. Modi assured Tshering, who took over as PM last month, that India would continue to play the role of a reliable friend and partner for Bhutan. The meet was aimed to cement ties with the new government and though India’s relations with China have improved, shadow of the military standoff at Doklam in 2017 only underlined the importance of stable relations with Bhutan.
The new five-year plan of Bhutan began this year and will end in 2022. Underscoring the importance of hydropower projects in India’s relations with Bhutan, Modi said work on the Mangdechhu project would soon be completed. Mangdechhu is a 720 mw hydroelectric project on the Mangdechhu river in central Bhutan. The river projects will serve to increase the already close economic linkages with the Himalayan nation.
“Today, we discussed this crucial sector and reviewed cooperation on all the major projects. Work on the Mangdechhu project will be completed soon. We have agreed on the tariff for this project. Work on other projects has been happening at a very satisfactory pace,” Modi said.
Tshering, said to be contemplating plans to diversify Bhutan’s economy, acknowledged that hydropower had been the main source of revenue for Bhutan. “We are very happy that the government of India is fully committed to support whatever negotiations that are going on for determining tariff for power from Mangdechhu project as well as to make Sankosh (hydropower) project happen as soon as possible,” Tshering said. The two leaders reiterated their commitment to jointly develop 10,000 mw of hydropower generating capacity in Bhutan.
Modi thanked Tshering for deciding to introduce in Bhutan the Indian RuPay card which is a debit and credit card payment network. Tshering said Modi had assured him of helping Bhutanese traders hit by implementation of GST in India.
“We are very very happy that PM Modiji has personally committed to be with us, to support us... Government of India has extended full support for our XII Five-Year Plan and also to our traders who are being affected by the GST that has come into action in India,” the Bhutan PM said.
Tshering arrived here on Thursday on his first foreign visit after taking charge as PM.
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WINOGRAD'S SHRDLU
Reference Cognitive Psychology 3 No 1 1972 Academic Press 1972
Winograd's program for understanding natural language.
INTRODUCTION
It is not a simulation but it uses important ideas about human syntactic semantic and problem solving activities and about their interactions in understanding natural language discourse.
The system answers questions executes commands and accepts information in an interactive English dialogue. Understanding of English requires an integrated study of syntax semantics and inference. Winograd felt that the best way to experiment with complex models of language was to write a program which can actually understand language within some domain. In this case with a robot which has a hand and eye and the ability to manipulate toy blocks.
The program attempts
1 to be a useable language understanding system
2 to gain a better understanding of what language is and how to put it together
3 to understand what intelligence is and how it can be put into computers.
A comparatively recent commendation of SHRDLU.
SHRDLU is head and shoulders above contempoary systems when it comes to intelligent conversation. Although its domain of discourse is restricted to a tabletop world of coloured objects SHRDLU really understands this world in terms of the relation between semantics and the physical properties of the blocks and the tabletop. It consists of subsystems that parse interpret and construct sentences carry out dictionary searches and semantic analyses and makes logical deductions. Conversational systems such as SHRDLU undoubtedly herald the future the advantages of a computer that is able to discuss problems intelligently with humans rather than passively accepting programs to solve the problems are too obvious to miss. Computer scientists in artificial intelligence work in part to this goal.
The system uses Halliday's systemic grammar which emphasises the limited and highly structured choices made in producing syntactic structure abstracting the features that are important for conveying meaning. The parser is special and interprets the recognition grammars. Meaning is covered by the development of a formalism for concepts within a language user's model of the world representing objects events and relationships. Semantics is represented by a system which is developed to work in conjunction with the parser a dictionary and the problem solving programs. It considers not only meaning but context.
1 MONITOR is a small LISP program which calls the other parts of the system.
2 INPUT is a LISP program which accepts typed English input looks up words in the dictionary performs morphemic analysisand returns a string of words with their definitions. This is the string upon which the grammar works.
3 The GRAMMAR is the main coordinator of the understanding process it is written in PROGRAMMAR. The routines are then translated into LISP.
4. SEMANTICS is a collection of LISP programs which work witrh GRAMMAR to interpret sentences. Each basic unit of grammar has many programs asociated with it.
5 ANSWER is a collection of LISP programs that control the responses of the system and it also remembers conversation for future discussion. It uses heuristics to produce the best English in its answers.
6 PROGRAMMAR is a parsing system which interprets the grammars written in terms of programs. It is written in LISP and builds a parse tree and has mechanisms for manipulating and exploring the tree.
7 The dictionary consists of two parts the first part holds the syntactic features of each word. The semantic features of each word are held in the second part and are interpreted by the SEMANTICS program. There are facilities for irregular forms and the definitions are held in a property list.
8 SEMANTIC features are also held in a property list and used in semantic analysis.
9 BLOCKS is a collection of PLANNER theorems which handle the dynamics of the building blocks on the tabletop.
10 MOVER is a set of display routines which simulate robot's world on the DEC340 graphic display attached to the PDP-10
11 PLANNER is the deductive system used to direct the parsing process and to deduce facts in the BLOCKS world. STRUCTURE OF THE SYSTEM
Click here for Picture
SAMPLE DIALOGUE
start at figure 3
1 pick up a red block
OK
in order to pick up the red block it had to find a space to place the gren one on top.
2 grasp the pyramid
I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHICH PYRAMID YOU MEAN
there are three pyramids so nothing is done
3 find a block which is taller than the one you are holding and put it in the box
BY "IT" I ASSUME YOU MEAN THE BLOCK WHICH IS TALLER THAN THE ONE I AM HOLDING OK
the system interprets one and it and puts down the red block and picks up the taller blue block reach figure 4
4 what does the box contain?
THE BLUE PYRAMID AND THE BLUE BLOCK
5 what is the pyramid supported by?
THE BOX
earlier the system did not know which pyramid now it assumes the one in the box
6 how many blocks are not in the box?
FOUR OF THEM
7 is at least one of them narrower than the one which I told you to pick up?
YES THE RED CUBE
the phrases "at least one of " and " the one which " refer back to previous questions and the form of noun groups ie the syntactic structure helps here.
8 is it supported?
YES BY THE TABLE
passive
9 can the table pick up blocks?
NO
the semantic rules make this silly thus false
10 can a pyramid be supported by a block?
YES
the deductive system can find an example of this occurring
11 can a pyramid support a pyramid?
I DON'T KNOW
the deductive system cannot find an example
12 stack up two pyramids
I CAN'T
the system tries and fails
13 the blue pyramid is mine
I UNDERSTAND
14 I own blocks which are not red but I don't own anything which supports a pyramid
I UNDERSTAND
15 do I own the box?
NO
the box supports a pyramid
16 do I own anything in the box?
YES TWO THINGS THE BLUE PYRAMID AND THE BLUE BLOCK
17 will you please stack up both of the red blocks and either a green cube or a pyramid?
OK
it places the green block on the big red block removes the green pyramid and then puts the red block on the top see figure 5
18 which cube is sitting on the table?
THE LARGE GREEN ONE WHICH SUPPORTS THE RED PYRAMID
this helps to distinguish the correct cube
19 is there a large block behind a pyramid?
YES THREE OF THEM A LARGE RED ONE A LARGE GREEN CUBE AND THE BLUE ONE
20 put a small one onto the green cube which supports a pyramid
OK
a small one means a small block
21 put the littlest pyramid on top of it
OK
littlest must be interpreted from its root
22 how many things are on top of green cubes
I'M NOT SURE WHAT YOU MEAN BY " ON TOP OF" IN THE PHRASE
" ON TOP OF GREEN CUBES"
DO YOU MEAN
1 DIRECTLY ON THE SURFACE
2 ANYWHERE ON TOP OF?
2
THREE OF THEM
where there is ambiguity questions involving paraphrases are developed using heuristics
23 had you touched any pyramid before you put the green one on the little cube?
YES THE GREEN ONE
the system needs to find the correct event which involves the tenses of verb groups
24 when did you pick it up?
WHILE I WAS STACKING UP THE RED CUBE A LARGE RED BLOCK AND A LARGE GREEN CUBE
the time consists of the goal
25 why?
TO GET RID OF IT
26 why did you do that?
TO CLEAN OFF THE RED CUBE
the answer involves considering the subgoals in the tree
27 why did you clear off that cube?
TO PUT IT ON A LARGE GREEN CUBE
28 why did you do that?
TO STACK UP THE RED CUBE A LARGE RED BLOCK AND A LARGE GREEN CUBE
29 why did you do that?
BECAUSE YOU ASKED ME TO DO IT
it cannot remember the command
30 how did you do it?
BY PUTTING A LARGE RED BLOCK ON THE TABLE THEN LETTING GO OF IT THEN PUTTING A LARGE GREEN CUBE ON IT THEN LETTING GO OF THAT CUBE THEN PUTTING THE RED CUBE ON THAT CUBE THEN LETTING GO OF THAT CUBE
this is a complete printout of all the subgoals achieved
31 how many objects did you touch while you were doing it?
FOUR OF THEM
32 what did the red cube support before you started to clean it off?
THE GREEN PYRAMID
it uses its memory of past events
33 there were five blocks to the left of the box then
NO ONLY FOUR OF THEM THE RED CUBE TWO LARGE GREEN CUBES AND A LARGE RED BLOCK
34 put the blue pyramid on the block in the box
OK
there is an ambiguity here but as there is no pyramid on a block in the box it understands that it has to move the pyramid on the block into the box
35 is there anything which is bigger than every pyramid but is not as wide as the thing that supports it
YES THE BLUE BLOCK
36 does a steeple
SORRY I DON'T KNOW THE WORD STEEPLE
37 a "steeple" is a stack which contains two green cubes and a pyramid
I UNDERSTAND
38 are there any steeples now?
NO
39 build one
OK
the process begins by clearing one of the green cubes removal of a red cube then the two green cubes and a red pyramid are stacked
40 call the biggest block superblock
OK
41 have you picked up superblock since we begun
YES
42 why did you drop it?
BY "IT" I ASSUME THAT YOU MEAN THE SUPERBLOCK
I CAN'T EXPLAIN A NONEXISTENT EVENT
there is no record of this
43 is there anything to the right of the red pyramid?
YES FOUR THINGS THE BOX THE RED CUBE THE BLUE PYRAMID AND THE BLOCK NAMED SUPERBLOCK
44 END OF SESSION
SYNTAX
SYNTAX and MEANING
The decision to consider syntax as a proper study devoid of semantics is a basic tenet of many recent linguistic theories. Language is viewed as a way of organising strings of abstract symbols and competence is explained in terms of symbol manipulating rules. Although these methods have been remarkably successful in one sense they have almost completely lost the semantics. The problem is not that current theories are finding wrong answers to the questions they ask it is that they are asking the wrong questions. What is needed is an approach which can deal meaningfully with the question
"how is language organised to convey meaning?" rather than
"how are syntactic structures viewed in isolation?"
Syntax helps the speaker convey meaning beyond the meaning of words. The sentence is a series of syntactic structures chosen by the speaker to encode meaning. The listener must detect these structures to interpret the meaning of the sentence. The system is based upon Halliday's grammar which places greater emphasis on the way language is structured. It deals with word groupings rather than deep structures. Systemic grammar pays more attention to the way language is organised into units each of which has a special role in cinveying meaning
.
In English we can distinguish three basic ranks of units
the CLAUSE,
the GROUP and
the WORD.
There are several types of GROUP
NOUN GROUPS NG
VERB GROUPS VG
PREPOSITION GROUPS PREPG
ADJECTIVE GROUPS ADJG
Consider the analysis of the sentence
the three big red dogs ate a raw juicy steak
which is parsed using systemic grammar as shown on the next page.
The WORD is the basic building block and any particular word has features so dogs is seen as plural, the word ate is eat in a different tense. Click here for Picture
The next unit above a WORD is a GROUP and there are four types. Each group has a particular function in conveying meaning NG describe objects VG can convey messages about time. Each group can have variable numbers of slots for the words. NG allows number determiners adjectives and nouns. Each group exhibits features such as definite -the- plural modal -could have been seen-. The CLAUSE can be a QUESTION or a DECLARATIVE or an IMPERATIVE. It can be active or passive.
The above parse tree has a three level structure where the CLAUSE is split up into three GROUPS and each of the GROUPS is split into individual WORDS. As not all sentences have this structure we encounter the concept of a rankshift where a group can occur at a different level , for example , the man who came to dinner , or ,by leaving the coutntry. The rankshift is one of the principles of the systemic grammar.
The next question to tackle is why does the rankshift provide an advantage over the deep structure and the answer lies in the features that each unit can have. We can sat that all sentences can be a QUESTION or a DECLARATIVE or an IMPERATIVE and that if they are questions then they can be subdivided into YES_NO or WH types. This last choice is meaningless if the sentence is not a question but if it is then the distinction must be made. If the CLAUSE is a sentence or a MAJOR clause then it must be partitioned into one of the permissable types but this distinction is not appropriate for a secondary clause SEC. We can depict these structures as follows on the next page. Click here for Picture
The work of relating the set of features of an actual sentence to the surface structure is done in systemic grammar by realisation rules. If we consider sentences in different forms
Sally saw the squirrel
did Sally see the squirrel?
the squirrel was seen by Sally
In transformational grammars these forms would be equivalent but the word orders would be achieved by means of transformations. In systemic grammar the features would be noted and these would have a good overlap except for active | passive declarative | question. The realisation rules would then signal the exact word order.
PARSING
The parsing for this program is achieved by using the language PROGRAMMAR and an interpreter. It is basically a top-down left-to right parser but it can modify this technique if it sees fit. Chomsky said that the grammar should associate a structural description to each permissable sentance in the language and this parsing program does that. We can set up special tools to handle complexities such as 'and, or' and these cause interrupts in the parsing process. Interrupts are also caused by idioms. The parsing process can be interrupted at any time and semantivc considerations can be introduced. When we see the sentence
he gave the boy plants to water.
we do not confuse it with
he gave the house plants to charity.
The phrase boy plants is not meaningful like boy scouts so we reject any structure based upon this concept. This ability to integrate semantics with syntax is particularly important.
AMBIGUITY
The program tries to find a possible parsing for a sentence and as soon as ot finds an answer it returns it this is what it is designed to do. The process is unified with the results of the semantic interpretation being used to guide the parsing. If in parsing a noun group a call to the semantic interpreter fails to make sense of the noun group the parsing is immediately redirected.
The way to treat ambiguity is not to list all possible solutions to the parsing problem by finding all possible interpretations of the sentance but in being clever in choosing the first possible parsing. The parser will consider a failure if one occurs analyse the reasons for its occurrence and then take appropriate action. Suppose we have the sentance
I rode down the street in a car
the parser may wish to consider the noun group
the street in a car
the semantic analyser will reject the phrase
in a car
as a qualifier of a street.
Since the semantic programs are part of a general deductive system with a definite worl model the semantic evaluation which guides parsing can include both general knowledge and specific knowledge. Few sentences seem ambiguous to humans when first read. They are guided by an understanding of what is said to pick a single parsing and a few very different meanings. By using this same knowledge to guide its parsing a computer understanding system can take advantage of the same technique to parse meaningful sentences quickly and efficiently.
A semantic theory must account for multiple meanings of wordsphrase and sentences. Words may have several senses producing multiple possible interpretations of phrases and sentences involving them. Sometimes a sentence may also be described with several different syntactic structures leading to ambiguities. The sentance
the woman sitting in the room saw the flash of lightning
will be ambiguous if each word has a specific meaning. It could mean
the woman who was sitting in the room
the woman who is sitting in the room
In parsing we do not carry forward two possible structures we try to find the best and only seek others if we run into trouble. In semantics we take the other approach and if a word has two possible meanings we proceed in parallel.
There is a danger here of combinatorial explosion. If each word in a group of four has three meanings there could be 81 alternatives.
Consider the phrase
the green ball
we know that green can mean the colour unripe or a rooky
ball can be a sherical object or a grand dance
but it would be naive to associate the meanings
a rooky dance
or an unripe dance
so we are left with a coloured spherical object.
PROCEDURAL DEDUCTIVE SYTEMS
The system requies programming techniques capable of using procedural information but at the same time expressing this information in ways which do not depend on the idiosyncracies of particular languages. PLANNER is a goal-oriented procedural language designed to specify the bill. It handles simple assertions efficiently and it can handle complex information expressable in predicate calculus. Complex information is expressed in procedural form and this can include ideas of how to go about a proof. Being goal-oriented it is not concerned about interaction between procedures. The language is concerned with achieving goals not in how they are achieved and any valid accelerator can be introduced. New theorems can be easily added. PLANNER is a uniform notation for expressing procedural knowledge just as predicate calculus is a notation for describing a limited range of information.
COMPARISON WITH OTHER PARSERS
The early machine-translator dseigners were forced to develop their own linguistics as they worked and they produced rough versions. The parsers were packages of routines that evolved as the grammars emerged and grew to handle more complex sentances. When the machine-translation failed it seemed clear that it had been premature to tackle the natural language problem without sufficient linguistic development. Computer programs for natural language took separate paths:
the first was to ignore syntax completely and to use a general pattern matching process to derive information for example SIR STUDENT and ELIZA. They limited the user to a small set of inputs or their understanding to things that ignored syntax.
the second was to take a simplified subset of English which could be handled by a well understood form of grammar. Bobrow has produced a summary of this work.
AUGMENTED TRANSITION NETWORKS
ATN's have the power of Turing machines since they have changeable registers and can transfer control depending on the state of these registers. They can handle any type of gramar that can be parsed by any machine. ATN's appear to operate more closely with the way humans work thus they give a natural and understandable representation for grammars.
GRAMMAR
As we have seen it uses the concepts of CLAUSE GROOUP and WORD
the structure of a CLAUSE is quite complex and a simplified form has been shown.
NOUN GROUP
The noun group consists of the components
determiner the
ordinals first
numbers six
adjectives intelligent
classifier wales
noun england
qualifier prepositional group ---in the moon
VERB GROUPS
ACTIVE
took--past
takes--present
will take--future
can take--modal
has taken--past in present
was taking--present in past
was goint to have taken--past in future in past
was going to have been taking--present in past in future in past
PASSIVE
is taken--present
could have been taken--past in modal
has been going to have been taken--past in future in past in present
Words have features
There is a sophisticated algorithm to analyse word endings
The grammar appears in LISP
for example
1 S ->NP VP
2 NP ->DETERMINER NOUN
3 VP ->VERB/INTRANSITIVE
4 VP ->VERB/TRANSITIVE
5 DETERMINER ->the
6 NOUN ->giraffe
7 NOUN ->apple
8 VERB/INTRANSITIVE ->dreams
9 VERB/TRANSITIVE ->eats
(DEFUN SENTENCE
(((PARSE NP) NIL FAIL)
((PARSE VP) FAIL FAIL RETURN)))
(DEFUN NP
(((PARSE DETERMINER ) NIL FAIL)
((PARSE NOUN ) RETURN FAIL))
(DEFUN VP
((PARSE VERB ) NIL FAIL)
(ISQ H TRANSITIVE) NIL INTRANS)
((PARSE NP) RETURN NIL)
INTRANS
((ISQ H INTRANSITIVE ) RETURN FAIL)))
(DEFPROP GIRAFFE (NOUN) WORD)
(DEFPROP DREAM (VERB INTRANSITIVE) WORD)
SEMANTICS
We need a transducer that can work with a syntax analyser and produce data which is acceptable to a logical deductive system. The semantic theory must describe relationships at three different levels.
It must define the meaning of words which involves its relationship to a vocabulary and a structure of concepts. The next level relates the emaning of groups of words in syntactic structures. We need an analysis of the ways in which English structures convey meaning and the roles that words play. Finally an English sentance is not viewed in isolation. A semantic theory must describe how the meaning of a sentance depends on its context.FUNNY SENTENCES WITH AMBIGUITY
I rode down the street in a car.
I carried regularly goldfish in a bowl.
The councillors refused the demonstrators a permit because they feared violence.
The councillors refused the demonstrators a permit because they advocated revolution.
He hit the car with a large rock.
He hit the car with a missing bumper.
The woman played the piano with a wooden leg.
Fruit flies like a banana
WOODS
The ATN through its use of flags allows for the merging of similar parts of the network by recording information in registers and interrogating it ... and to merge states whose transitions are similar except for conditions an the contents of the registers;
the networks capture the regularities of the language ... whenever ther are two essentially identical parts of the grammar which differ only in that the finite control part of the machine is remembering some piece of information ... it is sufficient to explicitly store the distinguishing piece of information in a register and use only a single copy of the subgraph .
The use of subroutines with an argument and a parameter.
Click here for Picture | {
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WASHINGTON — A tea party group has launched a campaign to support primary challenges against all 87 Republicans who voted for the deal in late October to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling.
The Tea Party Leadership Fund, a PAC affiliated with the group TheTeaParty.net, began a fundraising push — dubbed the "Primaries for Traitors Fund" — shortly after the shutdown deal passed in the House, and they are now ramping up efforts to find "credible candidates" in each of the districts, said the fund's treasurer, Dan Backer.
"From our perspective, we see this as a signature vote. You can't be a conservative and vote to raise the debt ceiling," Backer said. "I recognize there are some places where voters may actually think that was the right vote. And there may be places where you have an incumbent who wins with 90% of the vote every time and there's not a credible challenger. I recognize that, but we're certainly going to do our best."
Backer says the group has honed in on a few specific members to start: Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, New York Rep. Peter King, North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger, Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany, and most importantly, Backer said, House Speaker John Boehner in Ohio.
"Our goal is to keep going one after another after another as our resources allow. To get our feet wet, we're starting out with a few, but nobody is going to get a pass," he said.
Questions have been raised about the PAC's fundraising. The liberal blog ThinkProgress called their fundraising push a "gimmick." Despite raising more than $1 million in 2012, the group only spent around $27,000 in support of two Republican candidates last cycle, according to Open Secrets, and no money against Republican incumbents.
Backer says they are deadly serious about finding candidates. He acknowledges their goal may be unattainable but doesn't think that should stop them from trying to make life difficult for members. And those members whose voting records have been otherwise solidly conservative? Backer wants to take them out too.
"Everyone says, 'We want to elect leaders.' No we don't. We're electing representatives," Backer said. "If they were good representatives they shouldn't have taken that vote. And if we're wrong, they'll win their primary and that's healthy for democracy." | {
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Justin Fields suffered an injury scare midway through the third quarter when he went down with an apparent knee injury, but after the game Fields revealed that he was playing banged up from the start.
In his postgame press conference, Fields said he suffered an MCL sprain at the end of last week's win against Penn State, when he went down with an injury on a quarterback rush. Fields re-aggravated that injury against Michigan.
Justin Fields said he sprained his MCL on the final play last week and re-aggravated it today. — Dan Hope (@Dan_Hope) November 30, 2019
Fields returned to action on the same drive, tossing a 30-yard touchdown pass across his body to Garrett Wilson in the back of the end zone. He said he was not worried he would be unable to continue after re-aggravating the injury, but just went to the sideline to put on a bigger brace on his knee.
“I thought it was a magical moment. I thought it was a Heisman moment,” Ryan Day said of Fields' return. “I’ve never been around a tougher quarterback than that guy." | {
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You know my love for essential oils. We use them for every ache and pain and to make my house smell good. The fun part about oils is creating recipes. Whether it’s making your house smell like Fall by diffusing Cinnamon, Orange and Ginger together or making a DIY Orange Zest Sugar Scrub to make your skin softer. My favorite way to mix things up is by making roller bottles because they are ready to go and easy to apply. Let me show how easy it is to DIY Essential Oil Blends.
Got Oil Supplies has fabulous DIY Essential Oil Blends Kits which includes glass roller bottles, labels already made, and recipes for your favorite essential oil blends. All for $11.95! Add funnel or pipette dropper to pour the oils for another dollar or so. The best part? You can reuse the bottles when empty and make them all over again!
I couldn’t wait to gather my essential oils. See why I choose Young Living Essential Oils.
I used a few of the recipes from Got Oil Supplies and a few of my own to make new blends.
Focus Blend was a recipe that was part of the kit that called for 20 drops of Peppermint and 20 drops of Orange. Fill the rest of the bottle with fractionated coconut oil which I always have on hand as my carrier oil. Slap on a pretty label and voila your roller is ready.
For my own blends, you’ll see below how I used alphabet stickers that I had laying around.
I place my rollers in a spot in our house where everyone in the family can easily grab when needed.
Every accessory you would possibly need for your essential oils and more you probably didn’t even know you needed until you saw them at the Got Oil Supplies site.
Lots of fun DIY Essential Oil Blends Kits to choose from.
Glass & Plastic bottles and containers – in all shapes, sizes and colors. Perfect for gift making or to send samples for people to who want to try essential oils.
Accessories for foam soap and lip balm and lotion pumps.
Diffusers, displays, purses, jewelry {watch for an essential oil necklace in my gift guide next month!} and so much more!
What do you need from GotOilSupplies.com?
The prices are SO good!
WIN any of the essential oil blends I made here & an empty roller bottle to make your own!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I partnered with Got Oil Supplies for this sponsored post. All opinions are my own.
This giveaway will end on Oct. 30, 2017 at midnight MST. Winners will be drawn via rafflecopter. Once a winner is drawn I will contact them and they will have 48 hours to reply before I draw a new winner. Giveaway is open to anyone in the US. You must be 18 years of age or older. Giveaway is not affiliated with Facebook & I release them of liability. Winner will be posted in the rafflecopter widget. | {
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BuzzFeed published a vanity newspaper edition of its website just weeks after laying off some 200 staffers.
On Wednesday morning, using its verified Twitter account, the far-left BuzzFeed posted photographs of a “one-off” publicity stunt: editor-in-chief Ben Smith handing out newspapers to New York City subway commuters.
Get your BuzzFeed newspaper in NYC today for all the best of the internet without the internet! pic.twitter.com/xklQOjTLJB — BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) March 6, 2019
Judging from the photographs, BuzzFeed does not appear to be charging for the newspaper, just handing them out like literature.
The company is not, apparently, looking to expand its advertising revenue through print — a model that has worked well for DC’s Politico. But according to a press release sent out Tuesday night, this is a “one-off” event — paying money merely to goof on the site’s love of gifs and niche Internet subcultures using a medium which many legacy publications are finding too costly to sustain.
Confident @BuzzFeed is the first outlet to print a gif in a newspaper, we are rocket scientists pic.twitter.com/CqW5CYydMc — Tom Namako (@TomNamako) March 6, 2019
You can pick up a free copy of the BuzzFeed newspaper (???) this morning in subway stations in Manhattan. Enjoy my ~~~cover story~~~ on Momo erotic fanart https://t.co/lfNDxdmIa2 — Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) March 6, 2019
The sight of Ben Smith’s publicity stunt must be painful to watch for the hundreds of staffers recently laid off by BuzzFeed.
Over the last 15 months, in two desperate cost-cutting attempts, BuzzFeed has fired some 300 employees, which amounts to more than 20 percent of its staff. The first round of layoffs in November of 2017 totaled 100. Then, just a little over a year later, in January of 2019, 200 more layoffs were announced.
“The move is meant to trim costs and maintain growth as the company aims to hit profitability this year,” the Times reported in January. “BuzzFeed, which employs over 1,300 people, generated more than $300 million in revenue in 2018. That was a jump of better than 15 percent from the previous year, but the company still loses money.”
This second round of layoffs came just days after the left-wing company was humiliated with a major fake news scandal involving a false report about President Trump explicitly telling his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. BuzzFeed even claimed there was written documentation of Trump suborning perjury.
To make matters worse, BuzzFeed still refuses to retract a story no one else in the media has been able to corroborate, a story so false the Special Counsel’s office declared it fake news. What’s more, in his congressional testimony this week, Cohen testified Trump did not explicitly tell him to lie. The only thing Cohen — who has now turned against the president — could say is that Trump’s body language indicated he wanted Cohen to perjure himself.
Body language is a long way from “explicit” and there being documented proof, as BuzzFeed claims.
Regardless, BuzzFeed has never explained why the president would order his attorney to lie when his son, Don Jr., testified on the same subject and told the truth.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here. | {
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About This Game Grab your friends and family: it’s time to dance! Just Dance is back with over 40 new tracks, 6 game modes, updated content all year long, and access to 200+ songs through Just Dance Unlimited! A 3-month trial is including with every new copy.
From the hottest hits to family favorites, dance to over 40 new tracks including Lean On by Major Lazer Ft. MØ & DJ Snake, Sorry by Justin Bieber, Cheap Thrills by Sia Ft. Sean Paul and many more!
How to play? It’s easy! You only need to download the free Just Dance Controller App and follow these steps:
1- Buy Just Dance 2017 and install it on your PC
2- Download the free Just Dance controller App (on iOS or Android) that turns your smartphone into a controller that scores your moves.
3- Connect your smartphone to your computer by making sure that both of your devices are connected to the same wireless network.
4- Dance! | {
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Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy tapped a host of inspirations to build their Emmy-winning sci-fi drama for HBO — including the first Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games’ game-changing video game that upped the ante for CG storytelling in 2010.
Looking back on when Nolan and Joy made the reveal during 2016’s New York Comic Con, Rob Nelson, co-studio head of Rockstar North, tells EW, “I think it’s wonderful that games have come on that much, that we are now influencing some of the influences that we perhaps had earlier on in making them.”
Games have long sought to emulate the realism of cinema and television, as when Rockstar looked to works like Unforgiven and The Wild Bunch to craft the first Red Dead Redemption. As Red Dead Redemption 2 now gallops towards its debut, eight years after the original installment, games have become the influencers.
After the age of “Peak TV” saw television rise to match the prestige quality of film, the Red Dead sequel becomes part of an ongoing wave of video games, released over the past couple years, that seek to elevate the medium.
Stories are more character-driven, as with the new God of War, an intimate father-son story set against a brutal backdrop of Norse myth. Computer graphics are more cinematic, as with Marvel’s Spider-Man, where the developers wanted to create a playable superhero movie. More actors are also gravitating towards gaming for voice and motion-capture performances — Grey’s Anatomy‘s Camilla Luddington still plays Lara Croft in the Square Enix series of games, ones that even inspired the latest Tomb Raider movie with Alicia Vikander.
“Sometimes I feel like [the games] capture more than the movies are capturing,” Luddington told EW. “And I think when you’re feeling and seeing more of what the character’s feeling, you’re more invested emotionally in playing the game.”
Image zoom Rockstar Games
Kensei Fujinaga, producer of the live-action, CG hybrid The Quiet Man, believes the elevated experience in gaming comes from consumers asking “for more mature story.” For Nelson, this doesn’t necessarily mean replicating the movie-watching experience or chasing after the juice of Peak TV. “Cinema and TV are a passive viewing experience,” he explains. “So what we really tried to do with this game… is blur the lines between what’s passive, what’s active, what’s interactive, and what’s partially interactive, and blur the lines between you as a player and you as a viewer.”
Red Dead Redemption 2 is a prequel to the first. As the red credits fade in and out of the opening cinematic, similar in style and subject matter to Quentin Tarantino’s opening of The Hateful Eight, gamers are introduced to the Van der Linde gang of outlaws. They are the former gang of John Marston, the main character in the first Red Dead who also makes an appearance in the sequel. We meet them guiding their caravan through a volatile blizzard in search of shelter. Arthur Morgan, righthand man to the gang’s leader, Dutch, is our lens into this story, one where the age of the Wild West is coming to an end. These criminals, in particular, are on the run after a robbery gone wrong and now they have to start fresh somewhere else.
“There’s usually two things that we need to figure out: where it’s gonna take place — the setting, the world that we have to build — and then the story that we want to tell,” Nelson says. “Not necessarily just the linear narrative or the narrative of the main character but the world that we want to create, the characters that are gonna live in it, and roughly what narrative we’re gonna weave through that.”
Pitches for a Red Dead sequel came in during production of the first game. This writers room of developers considered multiple options for a possible story treatment, but found the idea of a gang “too compelling to turn away.”
“There was a lot of history set up in the last about Marston’s former gang and the character of Dutch and what he was all about,” Nelson continues. “And so that was something that we really thought we could explore and juxtapose the idea of being this partially reformed outlaw in the last game to being an active, working outlaw living with a gang in this game.”
Earlier this year, the devs at Quantic Dream experimented with a choice-driven concept in Detroit: Become Human. Leaning on performances from Grey’s Anatomy‘s Jesse Williams, Friday Night Lights‘ Minka Kelly, and Aliens‘ Lance Henriksen, the main tension came from split-second decision making and each move made yielding a different set of consequences. This idea, that choices effect the outcome of the game, seamlessly blends into the narratives at play in Red Dead. Pursuing hunting, for example, may seem like a more tiresome task, but doing so will keep the camp happy — and if the camp is happy, they might be more willing to open more avenues for you to explore.
The interactivity of gaming is what sparked Westworld to drop characters into an Old West setting, giving them room to chase desires and pursue different narratives, while always remembering “these violent delights have violent ends.” Rockstar seeks to push this concept, something they’ve already been developing for more than a decade, even further — though Nelson sees the moral crossroads presented to players as more choosing between the “dark gray” hat and “light gray” hat. “You can play it straight as this guy that you pick up and he’s a certain way and you can take him left or right down this path, but we ended up pulling a lot of [story] stuff out and then making it optional [to play] either good or bad.”
It’s easy to get lost in a seemingly endless world with so many choices and lush graphics. While on a side mission to track down infamous outlaws, for example, the gothic horror image of the Southern Louisiana swamp calls on you to explore like a siren calling wayward thrill-seekers to their deaths. The danger here is losing your horse to a gator waiting in the mud or losing your kidney to a backwoods hillbilly offering you food and water.
Another option: you can forget the missions and just get so hammered in the local bar that you’ll mistake the local ladies of the night for your drinking buddy.
Image zoom Rockstar Games
An original score by Woody Jackson (one of the first game’s composers) and an ensemble of collaborators further heightens the drama of the experience, while motion-capture performances from a reported 1,200 actors bring photo-realistic renderings to characters across 300,000 animations and 500,000 lines of dialogue. Everything seems to hinge on the technology. It’s why so many games can more easily experiment with storytelling, character design, and world-building in fresh and nuanced ways.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is the first project from Rockstar Games built specifically from the ground up for the current generation of consoles, Playstation 4 and Xbox One. It came down to, as Nelson says, the “increase we had in memory.” More memory means a consumer’s hardware can handle the higher quality.
“When we did a next-gen version of Grand Theft Auto V [originally released in 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360], we added as much as we could to that game [for Playstation 4 and Xbox One] but it was built on the last generation,” he explains. “So we spent a long time on those next-gen versions of V to try and give them everything that we possibly could. We spent a lot of time with our own game looking at it and we were able to enhance it in a lot of ways: greater draw distance, more cars, more people, all these things. But we couldn’t really get back down to the foundations of our systems and rework them.”
Starting from scratch with a game on the newer consoles meant Rockstar could “hit the ground running,” Nelson adds. “With the additional memory, we really exploded on this game. Besides the graphics and engine enhancements was memory for animation. And so we ended up being able to have 10 times the amount of animations in game, which means that the world around you, it’s going to look and feel much more alive and varied because you’re not seeing as much more repeating loops animations. You can run things a lot longer, but they all need to be created by hand. They need to be written they need to be cast they need to be acted, performed, motion-captured, cleaned up, broken into systems that work ‘cause it’s all happening in real time. And they need to be interactive so that if you, the player, go over and mess with it, it works.”
Other titles with still-unclaimed release dates also seek to forge something new for the gaming experience. Death Stranding, an upcoming release from Metal Gear Solid‘s Hideo Kojima, touts an enthralling apocalyptic world with performances from The Walking Dead‘s Norman Reedus, Doctor Strange‘s Mads Mikkelsen, Spectre‘s Léa Seydoux, The Bionic Woman‘s Lindsay Wagner, and The Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro. Leaked footage of a mystery Harry Potter game teased what a RPG could look like in the Fantastic wizarding world of J.K. Rowling — something previous Potter games couldn’t quite achieve.
Against the abundance of high-quality games, Red Dead Redemption 2 still feels unique. As one Rockstar employee put it, to build a more vast open world, you go inward instead of out — meaning you develop a more intricate network of story, character, and interactivity instead of focusing on how big a map you can make. Although, this game still flaunts a massive map. Nelson doesn’t even know how long it would take for Arthur to walk it on foot.
He just laughs at the thought. “Probably some crazy person has. I think certainly on horseback people have done it.”
Red Dead Redemption will be available on Playstation 4 and Xbox One this Friday. | {
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İzmir’de Birleşik Haziran Hareketi çatısı altında bir günlük eğitim boykotu için Basmane Meydanı’nda toplanan binlerce kişi, pankartlarla Konak Meydanı’na yürümek istedi. Polis yürümek isteyen gruba TOMA ile müdahale etti.
İzmir’de Birleşik Haziran Hareketi çatısı altında bir günlük eğitim boykotu için Basmane Meydanı’nda toplanan binlerce kişi, pankartlarla Konak Meydanı’na yürümek istedi. Polis yolları kesip, izin verilmeyeceği anonsu yapınca grupla güvenlik güçleri arasında gergin bekleyiş başladı.
Birleşik Haziran Hareketi çatısı altında, KESK’e bağlı sendikalar, sol partiler, Alevi dernekleri bayrak ve pankartlarıyla binlerce kişi Basmane Meydanı’nda toplandı. Polis ise TOMA araçları, Çevik Kuvvet otobüsleri ile Basmane Meydanı’na gelen tüm yolları kesti. Fuar Basmane kapısı önünde toplanan göstericiler, sloganlar atarak Konak Meydanı’na yürüyeceklerini, burada açıklama yaptıktan sonra dağılacaklarını bildirdi.
Bu sırada İzmir Emniyet Müdürlüğü’nde görevli bir şube müdürü kalabalığa anons yaparak, yürüyüşe kesinlikle izin vermeyeceklerini, bulundukları yerde basın açıklaması yapıp dağılmalarını istedi.
Göstericilerin arasındaki bir kişi de megafonla polise seslenip, “Biz demokratik hakkımızı kullanıyoruz. Polis arkadaşlar sizin için de bu mücadelemiz. Yolumuzu açın yürüyelim” dedi.
Ancak polis yürüyüşe izin vermedi. Polis yürümek isteyen gruba TOMA ile müdahale etti.
Zorunlu din derslerine ve okulların imam hatipleştirilmesine ‘hayır’ demek için Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin uzun süredir hazırlandığı ‘uyarı boykotu’na, Edirne’den Hakkari’ye, Antalya’dan Rize’ye birçok ilde eylemler yapıldı…
ANKARA’DA BAZI OKULLARDA BOYKOT VAR
Uyarı boykotu’na bugün Başkent’te veliler destek vererek çocuklarını okulla göndermedi. Ankara Mamak ve Tuzluçayır, Dikmen, Yenimahalle ve Batıkent bölgelerindeki bazı okulların girişlerine ‘Bu okulda boykot var’ ve ‘Özgür bilimsel eğitim için 13 Şubat Cuma günü boykottayız’ pankartları asılırken öğrencilerde, ‘Gerici eğitime hayır’, ‘Zorunlu din dersi kaldırılsın’, ‘Okullarda mescid değil, laboratuar istiyoruz’ dövizleri taşıyan öğrenci ve velileri Kızılay’a yürüyerek burada Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı önünde basın açıklaması yapmak için harekete geçti.
Boykotu örgütleyen Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin internet sayfasından tüm öğrenci velilerine buradan yaptığı duyuruda, “Biz, çocukların gözlerindeki kararlılığı, inadı ve umudu sürekli kılabilmek için bilimsel ve laik eğitim için ayaktayız ve boykottayız. 13 Şubat ‘ta iktidarı uyarmak için çocuklarımızı okula göndermiyoruz. O günü çocuklarımıza ayıracağız. Alternatif dersler, çocuk oyunları ve şenliklerle özgür bir geleceğe olan umudumuzu güçlendireceğiz” ifadeleri kullanıldı.
Eğitim-Sen ise okul boykotuna grev yaparak destek veriyor. Eğitim-Sen üyesi öğretmenler bugün Ankara’nın mahallelerinde yapılacak çeşitli etkinliklerin ardından saat 13.30’da YKM önünde buluşup Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı önüne yürüyecek.
ŞİŞLİ İLÇE MİLLİ EĞİTİM MÜDÜRLÜĞÜ ÖNÜNDE ‘BOYKOT’ EYLEMİ
Eğitim ve Bilim Emekçileri Sendikası (Eğitim Sen) İstanbul 3 No’lu Şubeye bağlı bir grup, çeşitli sivil toplum örgütlerinin çağrısıyla Türkiye genelinde okullarda gerçekleştirilen boykot ve bir günlük iş bırakma protestosu kapsamında Şişli İlçe Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü önünde eylem yaptı.
Vali Konağı Caddesi’ndeki İlçe Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü binası önünde toplanan grup, ‘Eşit, parasız, bilimsel, laik, anadilde eğitim istiyoruz’ yazılı pankart açtı. ‘AKP elini eğitimden çek’, ‘Zorunlu din dersi kaldırılsın’ sloganları atan grup adına Eğitim-Sen 3 No’lu Şube Başkanı Hüseyin Tosu, basın açıklaması yaptı.
İktidarın eğitim politikalarının eleştirildiği açıklamada özetle, “Eğitim sistemi ve okulların tamamen siyasi tamamen iktidarın denetimine girmesine ve egemen ideolojiye teslim edilmesine asla izin vermeyeceğiz. Bugün ülke çapında gerçekleşen okul boykotu ve iş bırakma eylemimiz siyasi iktidara yönelik toplumun vicdanını sesini yansıtmaktadır. Siyasi iktidarı, toplumu din, dil, mezhep ve kimlik farklılıkları üzerinden kutuplaştırma politikalarına son vermeye, kamusal, bilimsel, laik ve anadilde eğitim karşıtı uygulamalarını derhal durdurmaya çağırıyoruz” ifadelerine yer verildi.
Grup basın açıklamasının ardından olaysız bir şekilde dağıldı.
BOYKOTA KATILIM AZ
Bazı göstericilerin bugün okula göndermedikleri çocukları ile eyleme geldikleri gözlendi. Basmane Meydanı’ndaki bekleyiş sürüyor. Sabah da Bornova ve Narlıdere ilçesindeki 2 okulda öğrenci ve bazı öğretmenler okul önünde açıklama yapıp dağıldı.
Milli Eğitim yetkilileri de il genelinde boykota katılımın fazla olmadığını söylerken, boykota katılanlarla ilgili ne işlem yapılacağı konusunda ise bilgi vermedi.
POLİS MÜDAHALE ETTİ
Polis Basmane Meydanı’ndan Konak’a yürümek isteyen göstericileri saat 13.15’de su ve gaz sıkarak dağıttı. Bu sırada çıkan arbededen etkilenenler oldu. Kabalalığın bir bölümü Mürselpaşa Bulvarı’na, bir bölümü de Kültürpark içine doğru koşarak, su ve gazdan kaçmaya çalıştı.
KADIKÖY’DE “BOYKOT” YÜRÜYÜŞÜ
Çeşitli sivil toplum örgütlerinin çağrısıyla Türkiye genelinde okullarda gerçekleştirilen “boykot”la ilgili Kadıköy’de yaklaşık 400 kişinin katılımıyla yürüyüş gerçekleşti
Eğitim-Sen tarafından düzenlenen yürüyüşe Alevi dernek ve federasyonları da katıldı. Grup saat 11.00’da Kadıköy Boğa Meydanında toplandı. Buradan yürüyüşe geçerek Bahariye Caddesi boyunca ilerleyen grup Kadıköy İlçe Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü binası önüne geldi. Grup basın açıklamasını Kadıköy İlçe Eğitim Müdürlüğü bahçesinde yapmak istedi. Ancak, kapılar kapalı olduğu için grup sloganlar atarak bir süre bekledi. Bu arada grup içerisinden seçilen sözcüler, içeriye girerek yetkililerle basın açıklamasını burada yapmak için görüşme yaptı. Görüşmeden olumlu sonuç alan grup, açılan kapılardan Kadıköy İlçe Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü bahçesine girdi. Burada sloganlar eşliğinde basın duyurusu okundu.
Grup adına basın duyurusunu okuyan Eğitimsen 2 Nolu Şube Başkanı Turgut Yokuş, “Eğitim sistemi ve okulların tamamen siyasi iktidarın denetimine girmesine ve egemen ideolojiye teslim edilmesine asla izin vermeyeceğiz. Bugün ülke çapında gerçekleşen hem okul boykotu ve iş bırakma eylemimizi siyasi iktidara yönelik toplumun vicdanının sesini yansıtmaktadır. Siyasi iktidarı, toplumu din, dil, mezhep ve kimlik farkları üzerinden kutuplaşma politikasına son vermeye, kamusal, bilimsel, laik ve anadilde eğitim karşıtı uygulamalarını derhal durdurmaya çağırıyoruz” dedi.
Grup basın duyurusunu okuduktan sonra, Kadıköy İlçe Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü bahçesinden ayrıldı. Kadıköy İskele Meydanına kadar yürüyen grup, buradan vapurla Eminönü’ne geçti.
ANTALYA’DA ÖĞRETMENLER ‘LAİK VE BİLİMSEL EĞİTİM’ İÇİN YÜRÜDÜ
Kamu Emekçileri Sendikaları Konfederasyonu’nun (KESK), Eğitim-Sen öncülüğünde okullarda yaptığı boykot ve bir günlük iş bırakma eylemi nedeniyle Antalya’da yürüyüş düzenlendi.
Alevi örgütlerinin de destek verdiği yürüyüş TRT Kavşağı’nda 1 saatlik gecikmeyle başladı. Ellerinde 6 dilde yazılan ve ana dilde eğitime dikkat çekilen pankartlar taşıyan eylemcilerin arkasında küçük çocuklar yer aldı. Yaklaşık 500 kişilik grup, Türkçe ve Kürtçe şarkılar eşliğinde sloganlar atarak İl Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü önüne kadar yürüdü.
Güzergah boyunca bazı vatandaşlar araçlarından korna çalarak, bazı vatandaşlar da kaldırımdan alkışlayarak eylemi destekledi. Yoğun güvenlik önlemlerinin alındığı yürüyüş sırasında çevik kuvvet ekipleri, civardaki sokaklarda olası olaylara müdahale etmek için konuşlandı.
‘DEVLET, BÜTÜN İNANÇ VE KİMLİKLERE TARAFSIZ OLMALI’
Lise öğrencilerinin de destek verdiği yürüyüş sonrasında açıklama yapan Eğitim-Sen Antalya Şube Başkanı ve aynı zamanda KESK Dönem Sözcüsü Kadir Öztürk, devletin bütün inanç, kimlik ve dünya görüşleri karşısında eşit mesafede ve tarafsız olması gerektiğini vurguladı.
Devletin sadece belli bir inanç sisteminin kural ve ibadetini okullarda bütün öğrencilere dayatmasını kabullenemeyeceklerini belirten Öztürk, devletin kişisel bir alan olan inanç alanından elini tamamen çekmesini ve ana dilde eğitimin önünü açması gerektiğini söyledi.
Basın açıklamasının ardından eylem olaysız sona erdi.
BEŞİKTAŞ’TA BOYKOT ÇADIRI
Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin çağrısıyla Türkiye genelinde, laik ve bilimsel eğitim talebiyle yapılan boykot kapsamında, Beşiktaş’ta Boykot Çadırı kuruldu. Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin çağrısı ve Eğitim-Sen ile Alevi örgütlerinin desteğiyle, bugün Türkiye genelinde laik ve bilimsel eğitim talebiyle, okullara gitmeme boykotu yapıldı. Bu eylem kapsamında Beşiktaş Meydanı’nda toplanan yaklaşık 50 kişi Boykot Çadırı kurdu. Toplanan kalabalık hazırlanan afişler önünde hatıra fotoğrafı çektirdi. Kurulan çadırda katılımcılara ve çevredeki vatandaşlara çay, kahve ve kahvaltı dağıtıldı. Burada yapılan konuşmalarda laik ve bilimsel eğitim için mücadelenin süreceği söylendi.
MANİSA’DA ÖĞRETMENLER OKULA GİTMEDİ, EYLEM YAPTI
Kamu Emekçileri Sendikası Konfederasyonu’na (KESK) bağlı Eğitim ve Bilim Emekçileri Sendikası (Eğitim-Sen) Manisa Şubesi’ne üye öğretmenler, laik-demokratik anadilde eğitim ve demokratik yaşam için boykota gittit etti. Bir günlük iş bırakan öğretmenler yürüyüş düzenleyip Manisa Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü önünde eylem yaptı.
Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin ‘Laik ve bilimsel eğitim için bugün okula gitmeyin’ çağrısına Eğitim-Sen Manisa Şubesi de de destek verdi. Derslere girmeyen öğretmenler okulu boykot edip Manisa Lisesi önünde toplandı. Yaklaşık 500 kişi ellerinde pankartlar ve sloganlarla 1 kilometre boyunca yürüdü. Öğretmenlerin boykotuna CHP Manisa Milletvekili Özgür Özel ve CHP Manisa İl Başkanı Mustafa Ada ve öğrenci velileri de destek verdi. Kızını okula yollamadığını açıklayan milletvekili Özel, AK Parti Hükümetinin eğitimi yaz boz tahtasına çevirdiğini söyledi.
‘Laik bilimsel eğitim istiyoruz’, ‘Zorunlu din dersleri kaldırılsın’ sloganları atan öğretmenler, Manisa İl Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü önüne gelindiğinde basın açıklaması yaptı. Eğitim-Sen Manisa Şube Başkanı Metin Demirel, AK Parti iktidarının eğitim sistemini ve toplumsal yaşamın bütün alanlarını kendi siyasal ve ideolojik hedefleri doğrultusunda baskıcı ve bir sistem kurmaya çalıştığını söyledi.
EĞİTİMCİLER BOYKOT YAPIP DERSE GİRMEDİ
Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin Türkiye genelinde hazırlandığı uyarı boykotuna Adana’daki eğitimcilerden destek geldi. Derse girmeyen Eğitim-Sen Adana Şubesi üyesi eğitimciler, yaptıkları eylemle zorunlu din dersini protesto etti.
Boykot çağrısı yapan Birleşik Haziran Hareketi üyeleri de Atatürk Parkı’nda basın açıklaması yaptığı
Yaklaşık 300 kişilik grubun önü, İnönü Parkı’nda çevik kuvvet tarafından kesildi. Eğitim-Sen Adana Şubesi Başkanı Ahmet Karagöz, Güvenlik Şube Müdür Yardımcısı Şeyhmus Filiz’e demokratik haklarını kullandıklarını belirtip önlerinin açılmasını istedi. Filiz de bunun üzerine yürüyüşe katılanların suç unsuru bir söylem ve harekette bulunmaları halinde Cumhuriyet Savcılığına suç duyurusunda bulunacağını belirtip çevik kuvvet ekibi çekti.
Sloganlar atarak yürüyüşe devam eden grup, 5 Ocak Meydanı’ndan sonra İnönü Parkı’nda geldi. Burada bir açıklama yapan Ahmet Karagöz, Ak Parti’nin 12 Eylül darbeci zihniyetin günümüzdeki temsilcisi olduğunu, başta eğitim sistemi olmak üzere toplumsal yaşamın bütün alanlarını kendi siyasal ve ideolojik hedefleri doğrultusunda baskıcı ve otoriter uygulamalar üzerinden tüm topluma dayattığını söyledi.
‘UYARI BOYKOTU YAPIYORUZ’
Zorunlu din dersinin yıllardır din ve vicdan özgürlüğü açıkça ihlal edilerek uygulandığını ifade eden Ahmet Karagöz, şöyle devam etti: “Eğitimin gerçek anlamda demokratik, bilimsel ve laik bir içerikte örgütlenmesi, herkesin kendi anadilinde eğitim almasının sağlanabilmesi için Eğitim-Sen, Alevi Bektaşi Federasyonu, Alevi Dernekleri Federasyonu, Alevi Vakıflar Federasyonu ve Pir Sultan Abdal Kültür Derneği olarak tüm halkımızı çocuklarının ve ülkenin geleceğinden endişe eden veliler, eğitim ve bilim emekçileri olarak bir günlük uyarı boykotu ve iş bırakma eylemi gerçekleştiriyor, çocuklarımızın ve öğrencilerimizin geleceğimize sahip çıkmayı sürdüreceğimizi kamuoyuna duyuruyoruz.”
RİZE’DE BİRLEŞİK HAZİRAN HAREKETİ ÜYELERİNE TEPKİ
Rize’de, Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin çağrısıyla düzenlenen ‘Laik ve bilimsel eğitim için boykot’ etkinliği kapsamında toplanan gruba, sözlü tepki gösterilince gerginlik çıktı.
Cumhuriyet Meydanı’nda toplanan Eğitim- Sen üyelerinin de bulunduğu grup ‘Bilimsel ve Laik eğitim için ayaktayız’ pankartı açtı. Birleşik Haziran Hareketi sözcüsü Bilgehan Kadıoğlu, ülkede bilimsel ve laik eğitimin büyük tehdit altında olduğu belirterek okulda, işyerinde, mahallede eğitim sisteminin gericileştirildiğini, bilimsellikten ve laiklikten uzaklaştırıldığını iddia etti. Kadıoğlu, “Bizler, bu gidişe ortak bir irade ile dur diyebilmek için, bugün Türkiye genelinde boykot kararı aldık. Eğitim-Sen’in aldığı grev kararını da bu anlayışla çok değerli buluyoruz. Bu ülkenin güzel bir gelecek düşleyen insanları, gericiliğe karşı hep birlikte sesimizi yükseltmenin çok önemli olduğuna inanıyoruz. Bizler, tüm inançlar laik bir ülkenin teminatı altına alınsın istiyoruz, dinciliğin siyasi ve ticari çıkarlarla inançları sömürmesine karşı duruyoruz” dedi.
Polisin çevrede güvenlik önlemi aldığı basın açıklaması sırasında alana gelen 5-6 kişilik bir grup, açıklama yapanlara “Bizim hayatımız Kuran, dini yasaklayamazsınız” sözleri ile tepki gösterdi. Etkinliğe katılan gruptakiler bu kişilerin üzerine yürüyünce araya giren polis gerginliği önleyip laf atanları alandan uzaklaştırdı.
GAZİANTEP’TE ÖĞRETMENLER ‘LAİK VE BİLİMSEL EĞİTİM’ İÇİN YÜRÜDÜ
Gaziantep’te Eğitim- Sen Şubesi’ne üye öğretmenler, laik ve bilimsel eğitim için bugün derslere girmedi, protesto yürüyüşüne katıldı. Yürüyüşe bir grup öğrenci de katıldı.
Maarif Meydanı’nda Eğitim- Sen öncülüğünde ellerinde pankart ve dövizlerle toplanan çeşitli siyasi parti ve sivil toplum kuruluşları üyeleri, davul ve zurna eşliğinde halay çekip, hükümetin eğitim politikasını eleştirip, zorunlu din dersinin kaldırılmasını istedi. Gaziantep Valiliği önüne slogan atarak yürüyen grup adına basın açıklamasını okuyan Eğitim-Sen Şube Başkanı Ali Ersönmez, AK Parti iktidarının her alanda baskıcı ve otoriter uygulamalar yaptığını öne sürdü. Siyasi iktidarın farklı inanç ve kimlikteki insanların düşüncelerini yok saydığını iddia eden Ali Ersönmez, şöyle konuştu:
“Çok inançlı, çok kültürlü Türkiye halkları, iktidar tarafından okulda, işyerinde, mahallede ve sokakta inanç ve kimlik farklılıkları üzerinden kutuplaştırıp karşı karşıya getirilerek bölünmeye çalışılmaktadır. 12 Eylül askeri darbe sonrasında uygulanmaya başlanan zorunlu din dersi, yıllardır din ve vicdan özgürlüğü açıkça ihlal edilerek uygulanmaktadır. Avrupa İnsan Hakları Mahkemesi zorunlu din dersinin, din ve vicdan özgülüğünün ihlali olduğuna karar vermiş, ancak yargı kararlarına rağmen bugüne kadar gerekli adımlar atılmamıştır.”
Grup, açıklamanın ardından dağıldı.
BOYKOTA DESTEK VEREN LİSELİLER MEB’E YÜRÜDÜ
Türkiye genelinde Eğitim-Sen ve Alevi Dernekleri tarafından yapılan ‘Laik, Bilimsel, Anadilinde Eğitim ve Demokratik Yaşam’ için boykot ve iş bırakma çağrısı nedeniyle Ankara’daki bazı okullarda destek eylemi gerçekleştirildi.
Çankaya’da bulunan Öğretmen Necla Kızılbağ Anadolu Lisesi önünde biraraya gelen Liseli Genç Umut üyeleri ‘Bilimsel, laik, demokratik, eğitim için boykota, gerici kuşatmayı dağıtmak için sokaktayız’ yazılı pankart açtı. Sloganlar atan grup üyeleri daha sonra Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı’na (MEB) yürüyüşe geçti. Uzun süren yürüyüşün ardından Bakanlığa ulaşan liseliler burada açıklama yaptı. Grup adına yapılan açıklamada mevcut eğitim sistemi eleştirilirken, gerici eğitim anlayışına karşı oldukları için boykot yaptıkları belirtildi.
Balıkesir’de öğretmenler ‘laik ve bilimsel eğitim’ için yürüdü
Kamu Emekçileri Sendikası Konfederasyonu’na (KESK) bağlı Eğitim ve Bilim Emekçileri Sendikası (Eğitim-Sen) Balıkesir Şubesi’ne üye öğretmenler, Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin çağrısına uyup okulu boykot etti. İş bırakıp yürüyüş düzenleyen öğretmenler, İzmir’deki eylemde meslektaşlarının güvenlik güçlerinin şiddetine maruz kaldığını söyleyerek tepki gösterdi.
Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin ‘Laik ve bilimsel eğitim için bugün okula gitmeyin’ çağrısına, Eğitim-Sen Balıkesir Şubesi’ne üye öğretmenler de destek verdi. Çavuş Sokak’taki Eğitim-Sen Balıkesir Şubesi’nin önünde bir araya gelen grup, ‘Laik, bilimsel, ana dilde eğitim’ pankartı açtı. Ellerinde ‘Gerici, ırkçı, piyasacı eğitime hayır’, ‘Zorunlu din dersine hayır’ ve ‘Cinsiyetçi eğitime hayır’ yazılı dövizler taşıyan 500 kişilik grup, ‘AKP’den hesabı emekçiler soracak’, ‘Kurtuluş yok tek başına ya hep beraber ya hiç birimiz’ sloganları eşliğinde yürüyüşe geçti.
“BİZDEN KORKUYORLAR”
Alihikmetpaşa Meydanı’nda son bulan yürüyüşün ardından basın açıklaması yapan Eğitim-Sen Balıkesir Şube Başkanı Abdurrahman Bulut, “Bizden korkuyorlar. İşte bugün Türkiye’nin dört bir yanında arkadaşlarımız bu miting nedeniyle saldırıya uğradılar. İzmir’deki arkadaşlarımız saldırıya maruz kaldılar. Ama onların gazı, copu, bombası, TOMA’sı bize geri adım attıramayacaktır. Bizler dindar ve kindar nesil istemiyoruz. Bilimsel, çağdaş, demokratik bir eğitim istiyoruz. Okullarımızın bilim yuvası olmasını istiyoruz. AKP’ye kesinlikle teslim olmayacağız. Var gücümüzle direneceğiz. Bu mücadelemiz sürecek. Direne direne kazanacağız” dedi.
Basın açıklamasının ardından grup, sessizce dağıldı.
İzmit’te davullu- zurnalı ‘laik ve bilimsel eğitim’ yürüyüşü
Koceli ‘de ‘laik ve bilimsel eğitim’ için derslere girmeyen Eğitim- Sen Şubesi eğitimciler, protesto yürüşüne de katıldı. Yaklaşık 1000 kişi, davul- zurna eşliğinde yürüdü.
Merkez Bankası önünde biraraya gelen Eğitim- Sen Şubesi üyeleri, KESK’e bağlı sendikalar, siyasi parti temsilcileri ve vatandaşlar laik, bilimsel ana dildinde eğitim ve demokratik yaşam için yürüyüş yaptı. Grup, ‘Sermayeye kul. AK Partiye köle olmayacağız’, ‘Parasız eğitim tek yol devrim’ sloganları atarak Sabri Yalım Parkı’na kadar yürüyerek uygulanan boykota destek verdi.
Burada grup adına açıklamayı okuyan Eğitim- Sen Şube Başkanı Suca Omurca eğitim sistemi üzerinde dayatma yapılmak istendiğini söyleyerek, “Gündeme getirilen karma eğitimi kaldırma girişimleri öğrencileri imam hatiplere yönlendirme, normal ortaokullar içinde imam hatip sınıflarının açılması, reşit olmayan kız çocuklarının zorla başının kapatılması, okullara zorunlu mescit uygulaması, ders kitapları ve müfredatta dini söylemlerin kullanılması ve son olarak içeriği itibariyle din şurası şeklinde gerçekleşen 19. Milli Eğitim Şurası’nda alınan kararlar, bizler için bardağı taşıran son damla olmuştur” dedi.
Yapılan açıklamanın ardından katılımcılar, davul- zurna eşliğinde halay çektikten sonra olaysız dağıldı.
Elazığ’da biber gazlı müdahale, Batman’da davul zurnalı eylem
Batman, (DHA) – EĞİTİM- Sen üyeleri, Elazığ ve Batman’da okulları boykot eylemi yaparak yürüyüş düzenledi. Elazığ’da, valilik kararıyla toplantı ve gösterilere yasaklanan PTT Meydanı’na yürümek isteyen gruba polis biber gazıyla müdahale etti. Batman’da ise sendika üyeleri davul-zurna eşliğinde olaysız yürüdü.
Hürriyet Caddesi Eğitim Sen Şubesi önünde toplanan gruba, Fevzi Çakmak Mahallesi’nden gelen çoğunluğu lise öğrencilerinin katılması ile 200- 250 kişilik grup, PTT Meydanı’na yürümek istedi. Burada sıkı önlem alan polis yetkilileri ile sendika üyeleri arasında yaşanan tartışmalardan sonra, polisin yolun açılması konusunda yaptığı uyarıya rağmen yürümekte ısrar eden gruba, biber gazı sıkalarak müdahale edildi. Biber gazından fenalaşanlar olurken, grup içerisinde ye ralan bazı göstericiler de ellerindeki flama sopaları ile polise saldırdı. Kısa süren arbede sonrası, biber gazı sıkılarak grup dağıtıldıktan sonra, Eğitim Sen Şube Başkanı Fuat Koç, basın açıklaması yaptı. Yapılan konuşmadan sonra grup sessizce dağıldı.
BATMAN’DA DAVUL-ZURNALI YÜRÜYÜŞ;
Eğitim-Sen Batman Şubesi ‘Laik, bilimsel, ana dilde eğitim ve demokratik yaşam’ için bir günlük boykot eylemi yaptı. Sanat Sokak üzerinde bir araya gelen sendika üyelerine, sivil toplu örgütü temsilcileri de destek verdi.
Davul-zurna eşliğinde halay çeken eğitimciler, daha sonra Eğitim-Sen Şube Başkanı Aziz Turay’ın yaptığı basın açıklaması, yoldan geçen vatandaşlar tarafından alkışlarla desteklendi.
Tunceli’de bin kişi ‘zorunlu din dersine hayır’ diyerek yürüdü
Tunceli’de Eğitim- Sen üyesi öğretmenler derslere girmeyip ‘laik, bilimsel ve anadilde eğitim’ için yürüdü.
Tunceli Sanat Sokak üzerinde biraraya gelen sendika üyeleri ile sivil toplum örgütleri temsilcilerinden oluşan yaklaşık 1000 kişilik grup ‘zorunlu din derslerine hayır’, ‘AKP halkı hesap verecek’ sloganları atarak Cumhuriyet Meydanı’na yürüdü. Basın açıklaması yapan Eğitim- Sen Tunceli Şube Başkanı Hasan Ölgün, iktidarın eğitim politikalarını eleştirdi. Ölgün, “Siyasi iktidar, eğitimde bilimsel, laik ve demokratik ilke ve değerleri temel almak yerine, farklı din, mezhep ve kimlikleri yok sayan ayrımcı, ötekileştirici politikaları hayata geçirmektedir. Çok inançlı, çok dilli, çok kültürlü Türkiye halkları, iktidar tarafından okulda, işyerinde, mahallede ve sokakta inanç ve kimlik farklılıkları üzerinden kutuplaştırıp karşı karşıya getirilerek bölünmeye çalışılmaktadır” dedi. Ölgün şöyle devam etti:
“AKP hükümeti AİHM’in türban ile ilgili kararını gerekçe göstererek yasal düzenleme yaptı. Fakat AİHM’in zorunlu din dersleri ile ilgili kararını ise görmezlikten gelerek çifte standart uyguladı. Sendika olarak velilerin okullara öğrencileri için zorunlu din dersi istemediğini belirten dilekçeler vererek hukuki süreçle de eylemsellik başlattık. AİHM’in son verdiği zorunlu din dersi kaldırılsın, yasalar
demokratikleştirilsin kararına AKP hükümeti itiraz ederek zulme devam etmektedir. Daha önce AİHM’in türban ile ilgili lehte kararını insan hakları çerçevesinde görüp hemen yasal değişikliği gerçekleştiren hükümet, zorunlu din dersi ile ilgili verilen lehte kararını uygulamamaya karar vermiştir. Bu çifte standarta ve AKP’nin 12 Eylül faşist darbenin ürünü olan anayasaya sığınarak zulüme devam etmesine karşı hem demokratik eylemliliklerimize hem de her türlü hukuki mücadelemize devam edeceğiz. Cumhuriyetin kuruluşundan beri anadil üzerindeki zulüm nasıl mücadele edilerek büyük bedeller ödenerek bu gün yasalar hiçleştirildiyse, zorunlu din dersleri zulümüne gerekçe olarak önümüze konan faşist yasları da hiçleştireceğiz.”
Basın açıklamasından sonra protestoya katılanlar olaysız dağıldı.
Denizli’de okulu boykot eden öğretmenler yürüdü
Kamu Emekçileri Sendikası Konfederasyonu’na (KESK) bağlı Eğitim-Sen Denizli Şubesi’ne üye öğretmenler, Birleşik Haziran Hareketi tarafından yapılan çağrıya uyup okulu boykot etti. İş bırakan öğretmenler yürüyüş düzenledi.
Bugün öğle saatlerinde Candoğan Parkı önünde toplanan yaklaşık 300 kişi, sloganlar atarak Delikliçınar Meydanı’na yürüdü. Alevi Kültür Dernekleri Federasyonu’nun da destek verdiği eylemde, hükümetin eğitim sistemi eleştirildi. Basın açıklamasını okuyan Eğitim- Sen Denizli Şube Başkanı Mehmet Dede, “12 Eylül darbeci zihniyetinin günümüzdeki temsilcisi olan AKP iktidarı başta eğitim sistemi olmak üzere toplumsal yaşamın bütün alanlarını kendi siyasal hedefleri doğrultusunda tekçi, baskıcı ve otoriter uygulamalarla tüm topluma dayatmaktadır. Siyasi iktidar eğitimde bilimsel, laik ve demokratik ilke ve değerleri temel almak yerine farklı din, mezhep ve kimlikleri yok sayan ayrımcı, ötekileştirici politikaları hayata geçirmektedir” dedi.
Zorunlu din dersinin din ve vicdan özgürlüğünü açıkça ihlal ettiğini ileri süren Dede, “Eğitim sistemi ve okulların tamamen siyasi iktidarın denetimine girmesine asla izin vermeyeceğiz. Bugün ülke çapında gerçekleşen okul boykotu ve işi bırakma eylemimiz toplumun vicdanının sesini yansıtmaktadır. Siyasi iktidarı toplumu din, dil, mezhep ve kimlik farklılıkları üzerinden kutuplaştırma politikalarına son vermeye, kamusal, bilimsel, laik ve ana dilde eğitim karşıtı uygulamalarını derhal durdurmaya çağırıyoruz” diye konuştu.
Basın açıklamasının ardından grup sessizce dağıldı.
Çorum'da öğretmenler ‘laik ve bilimsel eğitim’ için yürüdü
Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin çağrısıyla Eğitim- Sen üyesi öğretmenler ‘laik ve bilimsel eğitim’ için boykot eylemi yaptı.
KESK’e bağlı Eğitim-Sen Çorum Şubesi üyeleriyle onları destekleyenlerden oluşan yaklaşık 700 kişilik grup, Bahabey Caddesi’nde bir araya geldi. Sloganlar atarak Gazi Caddesi’nde yürüyen grup Saat Kulesi önüne ulaştı. Burada Hürriyet Parkı’nda grup adına Eğitim- Sen Çorum Şubesi Başkanı Mehmet Öztürk basın açıklaması yaptı. Öztürk, Ak Parti iktidarının başta eğitim sistemi olmak üzere, toplumsal yaşamın bütün alanlarını kendi siyasal, ideolojik hedefleri doğrultusunda, tekçi, baskıcı ve otoriter uygulamalar üzerinden tüm topluma dayattığını söyledi.
Okul öncesi eğitimden üniversitelere kadar eğitim sistemi, bilimin en temel evrensel gerçekleri yok sayılarak, iktidar tarafından sürekli istismar edilen dini kural ve referanslara göre düzenlendiğini kaydeden Mehmet Öztürk, şunları söyledi:
“Siyasi iktidar, eğitimde bilimsel, laik ve demokratik ilke ve değerleri temel almak yerine, farklı din, mezhep ve kimlikleri yok sayan ayrımcı, ötekileştirici politikaları hayata geçirmektedir. Çok inançlı, çok dilli, çok kültürlü Türkiye halkları, iktidar tarafından okulda, işyerinde, mahallede ve sokakta inanç ve kimlik farklılıkları üzerinden kutuplaştırıp karşı karşıya getirilerek bölünmeye çalışılmaktadır. Bizler bu oyuna gelmeyeceğiz.”
Eyleme katılımın nasıl olduğuna ilişkin sorular üzerine Çorum İl Milli Eğitim Müdürü Seyit Ali Büyük, “Şuana kadar bize kanunsuz olarak intikal eden bir durum söz konusu olmadı. Sendikal haklarını kullandılar” dedi.
Artvin'de, ‘laik ve bilimsel eğitim’ eylemi
Türkiye çapında gerçekleştirilen ‘laik ve bilimsel eğitim için eğitim boykotu’ eylemi Artvin’de de yapıldı. Eylemle ilgili bildiri dağıtımı sırasında dün 7 arkadaşı ile birlikte gözaltına alınan ve dün gece serbest bırakılan Birleşik Haziran Hareketi Temsilcisi Sercan Dede, “Bu baskılara karşı mücadelemizin süreceğini cümle aleme duyuruyoruz” dedi.
Kızılay İşhanı önünde biraraya gelen Birleşik Haziran Hareketi ve Eğitim Sen üyelerine CHP’liler ve Halkevleri üyeleri de destek verdi. Toplanan yaklaşık 300 kişiye hitap eden Eğitim- Sen Şube Başkanı Köksal Gümüş, “Laik olmayan eğitim sisteminin demokratik ve bilimsel olması, demokrasi, eşitlik ve özgürlük mücadelesine hizmet etmesi ve bireylerin inançlarını hiçbir baskı altında kalmadan özgürce yaşaması mümkün değildir. Gerçek anlamda eşit, özgür ve laik bir eğitim ancak demokrasinin, eşitliğin, temel hak ve özgürlükler alanının genişlemesi, bütün yurttaşların eşit haklar temelinde, barış içinde bir arada yaşaması ile gerçekleşebilir” dedi. Dün eylemle ilgili bildiri dağıtımı sırasında 8 arkadaşlarının gözaltına alınmasını kınayan Gümüş, “Gözaltılar sadece adli-idari bir vaka değil aynı zamanda Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin temel ilkelerinden laikliğe yapılan bir saldırıdır. Son yıllarda şiddetten beslenen siyasi iktidar, bu tutumunu ilimizde de uygulamaya başlamıştır” diye konuştu.
ÇOK YOĞUN SALDIRILAR ALTINDA KALDIK
Dün gözaltına alınan ve gece geç saatte 7 arkadaşı ile birlikte serbest bırakılan Birleşik Haziran Hareketi Artvin Temsilcisi Sercan Dede de yaşadıklarını anlattı. Dede şunları söyledi:
“Laik ve bilimsel eğitim kampanyasını Artvin’de örerken çok yoğun saldırılar altında kaldık. Emniyet, açtığımız bütün afişleri arkamızdan teker teker toplamaya çalıştı. Afiş asan işyerlerine giderek afişleri sökmeleri konusunda uyarılarda bulunuldu. Dün de valilikten alınmış izinle stant açmak istedik, açtıktan yaklaşık yarım saat sonra 50’ye yakın çevik kuvvet polisi standı kaldırmamızı istedi. İzin aldığımızı söylediğimiz halde bizleri orantısız şekilde müdahaleyle, bazı arkadaşımızı darp ederek gözaltına aldılar. Yaklaşık 12 saat boyunca ‘Kaçak saray diktatörlüğü’ ibaresinden Cumhurbaşkanına hakarete bağlanarak adli kontrol istemiyle yargılanmamız talep edildi. Mahkemede adli kontrol uygulamasından beraat ettik. Bu saldırılar Türkiye’nin dört bir yanında gerici eğitime karşı çıkan, laik ve bilimsel eğitimi savunan herkesin önüne çıkıyor. Dün İzmir’de gece yarısı, 11 Ocak’ta okuduğu metinden dolayı Cumhurbaşkanına hakaret tespit edilen arkadaşımız Onur Kılıç çıkarıldığı mahkemece tutuklandı. Onur Kılıç arkadaşımızın yanından olduğumuzu herkese bildiriyoruz. Bu baskılara karşı mücadelemizin süreceğini cümle aleme duyuruyoruz.”
Van ve Hakkari’de, ‘laik, bilimsel, anadilde eğitim’ yürüyüşü
Birleşik Haziran Hareketi tarafından yapılan ‘laik ve bilimsel eğitim’ için boykot çağrısına Van ve Hakkari’de de Eğitim- Sen üyesi eğitimciler destek verdi. Eğitimciler yürüyüş düzenledi, basın açıklamaları yaptı.
Van’da yaklaşık 500 kişi Sanat Sokağı’nda bir araya geldi. Açıklamaya Eğitim-Sen Şube Başkanı Gülcan Kaçmaz Sayyiğit, Egitim-Sen üyeleri ve öğrenciler katıldı. Burada halay çeken eylemciler, ‘Gerici, ırkçı, piyasacı eğitime hayır’, ‘Demokratik, laik, bilimsel, anadilde eğitim’ sloganları atarak pankartlar taşıdı.
Eğitim-Sen Hakkari Şubesi tarafından Bulvar Caddesinde yapılan yürüyüş ve basın açıklamasına, aralarında Hakkari Belediye Başkanvekili DBP’li Nurullah Çiftçi, DBP Hakkari İl Başkanı Musa Çiftçi, HDP Hakkari İl Başkanı Rahmi Temel, KESK ve Eğitim-Sen yöneticileri katıldı.
Van ve Hakkari’de okunan ortak basın açıklamasında ise şöyle denildi:
“12 Eylül darbeci zihniyetinin günümüzdeki temsilcisi olan AKP iktidarı, başta eğitim sistemi olmak üzere, toplumsal yaşamın bütün alanlarını kendi siyasal, ideolojik hedefleri doğrultusunda, tekçi, baskıcı ve otoriter uygulamalar üzerinden tüm topluma dayatmaktadır. Bütün din ve inanışlar öğrencilere eşit mesafede tanıtılmamakta, bu durum okullarda özellikle Alevi ve gayri Müslim öğrencilere yönelik ayrımcı, dışlayıcı uygulamaların ortaya çıkmasına neden olmaktadır. Eğitimin gerçek anlamda demokratik, bilimsel ve laik bir içerikte örgütlenmesi, herkesin kendi anadilinde eğitim almasının sağlanabilmesi için, eğitim ve bilim emekçileri olarak bir günlük uyarı boykotu ve iş bırakma eylemi gerçekleştiriyor, herkesi bu boykota destek vermeye davet ediyoruz.”
Bursa'da laik ve bilimsel eğitim yürüyüşü
Bursa’da, bazı sivil toplum kuruluşu üyeleri, laik- bilimsel eğitim ve demokratik yaşam’ talepleriyle yürüyüş düzenledi.
Merkez Osmangazi İlçesi Ünlü Cadde’de toplanan Eğitim- Sen, Pir Sultan Abdal Derneği, Evrensel Sevgi Derneği, Alevi Kültür Dernekleri ve Hacı Bektaşi Veli Derneği üyesi yaklaşık 700 kişi, sloganlar atarak Fomara Meydanı’na yürüdü. Fomara Meydanı’nda grup adına basın açıklaması yapan Eğitim- Sen Bursa Şube Başkanı Güney Özkılınç, eğitim üzerindeki baskıların son 12 yılda tarihte hiç olmadığı kadar arttığını savundu.
Siyasi iktidarın, eğitimde bilimsel, laik, demokratik ilke ve değerleri temel almak yerine, farklı din, mezhep ve kimlikleri yok sayan, ayrımcı, ötekileştirici politikaları hayata geçirdiğini öne süren Özkılınç, “Çok inançlı, çok dilli, çok kültürlü Türkiye halkları, iktidar tarafından okulda, işyerinde, mahalle ve sokakta, inanç ve kimlik farklılıkları üzerinden kutuplaştırılıp karşı karşıya getirilerek bölünmeye çalışılmaktadır” dedi.
Özkılınç, çocuklarının ve ülkenin geleceğinden endişe eden veliler eğitim ve bilim emekçileri olarak bir günlük uyarı boykotu ve iş bırakma eylemi gerçekleştirdiklerini de kaydederek, “Çocuklarımızın ve öğrencilerimizin geleceğine sahip çıkmayı sürdüreceğimizi kamuoyuna duyuruyoruz” dedi.
Grup üyeleri basın açıklamasının ardından davul- zurna eşliğinde bir süre halay çektikten sonra olaysız dağıldı.
Kayseri’de laik ve bilimsel eğitim yürüyüşü
Kayseri’de Eğitim Sen’in laik, bilimsel eğitim talebiyle başlattığı iş bırakma eylemine bazı siyasi parti ve sivil toplum kuruluşlarının temsilcileri de destek verdi. Eğitim Sen Kayseri Şube Başkanı Ulaş Apaydın, “Bugün ülke çapında gerçekleştirilen eylemimiz, siyasi iktidara yönelik toplumun vicdanının sesini yansıtmaktadır. Siyasi iktidarı artık farklılıklar üzerinden toplumu kutuplaştırmaktan vazgeçmeye çağırıyoruz” dedi. Eylemde, Kürtçe pankart da dikkat çekti.
Sivas Caddesi’nde bir araya gelen yaklaşık 500 kişilik kalabalık daha sonra Cumhuriyet Meydanı’na doğru yürüyüşe geçti. Çeşitli sloganların atıldığı yürüyüş sırasında Kürtçe, ‘Anadilde eğitim istiyoruz’ yazılı döviz de dikkat çekti.
Meydanda kalabalık adına basın açıklamasını Eğitim Sen Kayseri Şube Başkanı Ulaş Apaydın yaptı. İktidar 12 Eylül darbeci zihniyetinin günümüzdeki temsilcisi olarak değerlendiren Apaydın şöyle dedi:
“Başta eğitim sistemi olmak üzere, toplumsal yaşamın bütün alanlarını kendi siyasi, ideolojik hedefleri doğrultusunda, tekçi, baskıcı ve otoriter uygulamalar üzerinden tüm topluma dayatmaktadır. Siyasi iktidar, eğitimde bilimsel, laik, demokratik ilke ve değerleri temel almak yerine, farklı din, mezhep ve kimlikleri yok sayan ayrımcı, ötekileştirici politikaları hayata geçirmektedir. Çok inançlı, çok dilli, çok kültürlü Türkiye halkları, iktidar tarafından okulda, işyerinde, mahallede ve sokakta inanç, kimlik farklılıkları üzerinden kutuplaştırılıp karşı karşıya getirilerek bölünmeye çalışılmaktadır. 12 Eylül askeri darbesi sonrasında uygulanmaya başlanan zorunlu din dersi, yıllardır din ve vicdan özgürlüğü açıkça ihlal edilerek uygulanmaktadır.”
Beyazıt’tan Cağaloğlu’na boykot yürüyüşü
Birleşik Haziran Hareketi’nin çağrısı ve Eğitim-Sen ile Alevi örgütlerinin desteğiyle, bugün Türkiye genelinde laik ve bilimsel eğitim talebiyle, okullara gitmeme boykotu yapıldı. Bu eylemler kapsamında çeşitli ilçelerden gelen Eğitim Sen, Alevi Bektaşi Federasyonu, Alevi Dernekler Federasyonu, Alevi Vakıflar Federasyonu ve Pir Sultan Abdal Kültür Dernekleri’nin üyeleri Beyazıt Tranvay Durağında toplanarak bir yürüyüş gerçekleştirdi. Tramvay yolundan Sultanahmet’e gelen eylemci grup, buradan da Cağaloğlu’nda bulunan İstanbul İl Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü’nün önüne geldi. Bu sırada tramvay seferleri kısa süreli aksadı.
TOMA’lar ve çevik kuvvet ekipleri müdürlük önünde yoğun güvenlik önlemi aldı. Grup üyeleri basın açıklamasını müdürlük önünde okumak istediyse de polis buna izin vermedi. Polis amirleri ve eylemciler arasında anlaşma sağlanınca grup müdürlüğün yakınında basın açıklamasını yaptı. Basın açıklamasını yapan Eğitim Sen üyesi Hüseyin Özer, “12 Eylül darbeci zihniyetinin günümüzdeki temsilcisi olan AKP iktidarı başta eğitim sistemi olmak üzere toplumsal yaşamın bütün alanlarını kendi siyasal, ideolojik hedefleri doğrultusunda tetikçi, baskıcı ve otoriter uygulamalar üzerinden tüm topluma dayatmaktadır.” diye konuştu.
Konuşması sloganlarla kesilen Özer, şöyle devam etti: “Eğitim sistemi ve okulların tamamen siyasi tamamen iktidarın denetimine girmesine ve egemen ideolojiye teslim edilmesine asla izin vermeyeceğiz. Bugün ülke çapında gerçekleşen hem okul boykotu ve iş bırakma eylemimiz siyasi iktidara yönelik toplumun vicdanının sesini yansıtmaktadır. Siyasi iktidarı toplumu din, dil, mezhep ve kimlik farklılıkları üzerinden kutuplaştırma politikalarına son vermeye kurumsal, bilimsel, laik ve anadilde eğitim karşıtı uygulamalarını derhal durdurmaya çağırıyoruz.” Eylem basın açıklamasının ardından olaysız bir şekilde sona erdi. | {
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Officials from five countries including Canada have agreed to "engagement" with communication-service providers on the use of encryption among terrorists and other criminals – which Canadian law enforcement and government agencies have described as an impediment to investigations.
Security and justice officials from Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand – known as the Five Eyes – gathered in Ottawa this week to discuss national-security challenges, including the use of encryption applications such as WhatsApp and Signal by extremists to hide their electronic communications.
"Ministers and Attorneys-General also noted that encryption can severely undermine public safety efforts by impeding lawful access to the content of communications during investigations into serious crimes, including terrorism. To address these issues, we committed to develop our engagement with communications and technology companies to explore shared solutions while upholding cybersecurity and individual rights and freedoms," read a joint communiqué released by the Five Eyes on Wednesday.
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Opinion: The battle over encryption and what it means for our privacy
The Five Eyes did not expand on what it means by "engagement" and what possible shared solutions would be.
The alliance is looking at whether security agencies should be able to lawfully access encrypted communications during investigations into serious crimes.
Companies in Five Eyes countries are not required by law to hold decryption "keys" that unscramble encrypted communications, such as text messages, and when they do not, it's impossible for them to provide government or law-enforcement agencies with data.
For instance, the RCMP were unable to read Islamic State supporter Aaron Driver's encrypted messages with two well-known members of the terrorist group; Mr. Driver was shot dead during a raid led by the Mounties in August, 2016. While Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has acknowledged the significant obstacles encryption presents for Canadian law enforcement and national-security agencies, he said the technology is essential for the growth of Canada's digital economy and the safeguarding of cybersecurity and online privacy.
On the other hand, British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron recently called for greater access to encrypted communications as a part of their counterterrorism joint action plan. The plan was announced June 13, after a string of terrorist attacks in Britain and France.
Australian Attorney-General George Brandis led the calls for new limitations on encryption for messaging applications heading into the Five Eyes meeting on Monday and Tuesday. Speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio National after the meeting in Ottawa, Mr. Brandis said the Five Eyes will engage with Internet service providers and device makers to develop a "series of protocols as to the circumstances to which they will be able to provide voluntary assistance to law enforcement."
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Wesley Wark, a national-security expert at the University of Ottawa, said the Five Eyes are handing off responsibility to the private sector.
"They're increasingly moving from a legal instrument to enforce some solution or another to a softer regulatory matter and partnerships with the private sector to see if some kind of understanding can be arrived at about how to deal with that very narrow band of communication that might be of concern to national-security communities," Dr. Wark said.
He suspects the Five Eyes will not go as far as requiring companies to hold decryption keys, but rather agree among themselves to develop capabilities to decrypt certain types of information upon request and under legal authority. But Dr. Wark says one thing is for sure: The companies, many of which work internationally, will not be open to legislative requirements from governments.
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said a crackdown on encryption threatens the privacy rights of individuals. "Law-enforcement and intelligence agencies are going to have to learn to live with encryption, just as they've had to learn to live with other tools that the public uses to preserve its privacy, whether whispering or closing the blinds – the many practical things that people have done for eons to guard against snooping."
Signal, developed by Open Whisper Systems, and WhatsApp did not reply to The Globe and Mail's request for comment on Wednesday.
The Five Eyes also committed to supporting a new industry forum led by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter to address terrorist use of the Internet. | {
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There is no truth in flesh, only betrayal.
There is no strength in flesh, only weakness.
There is no constancy in flesh, only decay.
There is no certainty in flesh but death.
^^ good work
| {
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PHOTO: REUTERS / FILE
MULTAN: A newborn was found alive in a heap of garbage in Dera Ghazi Khan on Saturday, Rescue 1122 officials said.
The ambulance service officials told The Express Tribune that a resident informed them that a woman had thrown a child wrapped in a plastic bag in trash at a street corner. The baby, however, was still alive when the rescue workers reached there and was moved to the district hospital.
The head of the hospital’s children ward, Shakeelur Rehman, said the child was in a critical condition as the birth was premature.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 23rd, 2017. | {
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Related: The Good, Bad and Strange from UFC on Fox 21
Barely 48-hours departed from his win at UFC On Fox 21, Anthony Pettis was back in the gym in Milwaukee and supporting his teammate CM Punk during a media workout.Pettis was in good spirits having just broken a three-fight skid against Charles Oliveira this past weekend. The former UFC lightweight champion gave a reporter from 120 Sports his breakdown of how the bout played out.“It was tough fight,” Pettis said. “I knew he was going to be a tough opponent because he’d previously dropped down from 155 pounds as well. I’d seen him before but I didn’t know he was going to have that much heart; that’s why I’ve got so much respect for the guy.“I thought I had him finished in the first round—I saw his eyes roll into the back of his head, but then when I punched him again he just came back to consciousness. It happened like three times and I kind of gassed myself out trying to finish him.“In the second round he came out like guns blazing and I was just like—I need to catch my breath a little bit. It felt great to get him in that third round.”The bout with Oliveira was Pettis’ debut in the featherweight division and the first time he’d made 146 pounds on the scales. Pettis said he was thankful for the new approach he’d taken to his nutrition thanks to his new nutrition specialist.“The weight cut was a little interesting,” Pettis admitted. “I don’t remember the last time I weighed 146 pounds. I hired Loutrition who is a nutritionist out of New Jersey, but he works out in Albuquerque and I met him in Jon Jones’ camp. He helped out big time and without him I wouldn’t have made the weight class.”Having put a big marker down in the featherweight division by defeating the number #6 ranked guy, Pettis is now focused on becoming a two-weight champion and challenging for the title.“I’m here for belts, that's why I set out to fight,” Pettis said. “I want to be a champion and prove my skill set against the best in the world. I didn’t pick an easy fight, I picked the number #6 in the world. Maybe one more and I get a title shot or maybe they just give it to me.“Jose Aldo is the guy that had that belt the whole time and Conor came in and stole it from him. You know, Conor it was a great performance by him, but there are other great fights in this weight class. BJ Penn coming back, there’s Frankie Edgar, there’s Max Holloway—man, there’s so many good fights in this weight class. I didn’t even look at the weight class when I moved down here, I just said let’s look at the weight class and see what happens after.”Pettis was speaking on an evening where most of the attention was on Punk and seeing him complete an open workout session. Unsurprisingly, the former champion had nothing but good things to say about his teammate.“Progression is what I’ve seen,” Pettis said. “This guy didn’t come in a stud. He came in like everyone else, for real, with no mixed martial arts experience. He’s fighting some of the best guys in the world in this training room and there are young hungry bucks in here that can throw down. So for him to show up every day and throw down just shows you how much this guy wants it.” | {
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: Awww. That’s so sweet!
: That explains why friend Sandbar keeps taking photos when friends all together!
: It does. If only he could turn off the Flash - I’m starting to develop epilepsy...
: Oh yeah, What did you want to be after school?
: I want to be meeeeeeeeeeee!
: Same - but bigger. Gallus’ ambition is clearly to become a stand up comedian.
: Yona want to continue to be Yak!
: I don’t know what I’d like to be...
: Probably a book. | {
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The Department of Homeland Security warned of a recent cyberattack directed at the agency in an "emergency directive" issued Tuesday.
“[A]ttackers have redirected and intercepted web and mail traffic, and could do so for other networked services,” according to the directive .
The attack is believed to be out of Iran, according to ZDNet.
The emergency directive requires all employees to take multiple login precautions, including changing passwords and implementing multifactor authentication, and all agency-related domains will be audited.
The attacker tampered with the domain name system and was able to redirect site traffic. The hijacker, however, was also able to obtain encryption certificates for organizations’ domain names, which allows any redirected traffic to be decrypted, revealing any data the user submitted.
The DHS directive will stay in effect for an unspecified time, according to the statement.
In the meantime, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will continue to track the series of incidents and will regularly provide technical assistance.
The new cybersecurity agency, as part of the Department of Homeland Security, is affected by the ongoing partial government shutdown that has left some 800,000 federal employees either furloughed or working without a paycheck. | {
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At the latest Chaldea Broadcasting Station U.S. Branch Stream, they confirmed that they were working on "reference material" for US players to understand the material to Fate/Extra CCC before the Fate/Extra CCC Collaboration Event comes out. However, many of us want what many fans to believe to be some of Kinoko Nasu's best work in its original form, which was a PSP game that came out in 2013. Hardcore fans have been waiting for nearly for 6 years to read and play this sequel to Fate/Extra and thought that the localization of the event in FGO would push to make it happen. However this is not the case, but it's something we want.
My proposition is to port the games in a compilation to Steam, both Fate/Extra and Fate/Extra CCC. Considering the possibility that the game is probably not being translated or developed for any port since there will be a most likely inferior recap material or the non-replacement spin-off manga Fate/Extra CCC Foxtail, that this won't be possible in such a short turnaround. However, we would like confirmation that there will be a push for an official translation of Fate/Extra CCC. Considering the mature nature of Fate/Extra CCC's themes, it was believable as to why Aksys did not want to localize such a controversial sequel to a game that did not sell that well in 2011. However, considering the success of Fate/Grand Order USA, as well as the localizations of Fate/Extra, Fate/Extella, Fate/Extella LINK... AND the Fate/Extra CCC Collaboration Event for Fate/Grand Order USA, it is an absolute travesty that English speaking fans do not have access to the original source material that is Fate/Extra CCC. I believe due to the enormous success of Fate/Grand Order Global, the fans deserve to be able to read and play Fate/Extra CCC and Aniplex USA, Marvelous should try to move mountains in order to make it possible. | {
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Artistic rendering of Enceladus being devoured by a Milky Way-like galaxy. Credit: René van der Woude, Mixr.nl
Some 10 billion years ago, the Milky Way merged with a large galaxy. The stars from this partner, named Gaia-Enceladus, make up most of the Milky Way's halo and also shaped its thick disk, giving it its inflated form. A description of this mega-merger, discovered by an international team led by University of Groningen astronomer Amina Helmi, is now published in the scientific journal Nature.
Large galaxies like our Milky Way are the result of mergers of smaller galaxies. An outstanding question is whether a galaxy like the Milky Way is the product of many small mergers or of a few large ones. The University of Groningen's Professor of Astronomy, Amina Helmi has spent most of her career looking for 'fossils' in the Milky Way that might offer some hints as to its evolution. She uses the chemical composition, position and trajectory of stars in the halo to deduce their history, and thereby to identify the mergers that created the early Milky Way.
The recent second data release from the Gaia satellite mission last April provided Professor Helmi with data on around 1.7 billion stars. Helmi has been involved in the development of the Gaia mission for some 20 years, and was part of the data validation team on the second data release. She has now used the data to look for traces of mergers in the halo: "We expected stars from fused satellites in the halo. What we didn't expect to find was that most halo stars actually have a shared origin in one very large merger."
The movie shows an N-body simulation of the merger of a Milky Way-like galaxy (with its stars in blue) and a smaller disky galaxy resembling the Small Magellanic Cloud in mass (with it stars in red). At the beginning, the two galaxies are clearly separated, but gravity pulls them together and this leads to the full accretion of the smaller one. Distinguishing the accreted stars from the rest is not easy by the final stage, but it is possible using the motions of the stars and their chemical composition. Credit: H.H. Koppelman, A. Villalobos, A. Helmi (University of Groningen)
Thick disk
The chemical signature of many halo stars was clearly different from the 'native' Milky Way stars. "And they are a fairly homogenous group, which indicates they share a common origin." By plotting both trajectory and chemical signature, the 'invaders' stood out clearly. Helmi says, "The youngest stars from Gaia-Enceladus are actually younger than the native Milky Way stars in what is now the thick disk region. This means that the progenitor of this thick disk was already present when the fusion happened, and Gaia-Enceladus, because of its large size, shook it and puffed it up."
In a previous paper, Helmi had already described a huge 'blob' of stars sharing a common origin. Now, she shows that stars from this blob in the halo are the debris from the merging of the Milky Way with a galaxy which was slightly more massive than the Small Magellanic Cloud, some 10 billion years ago. The galaxy is called Gaia-Enceladus, after the Giant Enceladus who in Greek mythology was born of Gaia (the Earth goddess) and Uranus (the Sky god).
The data on kinematics, chemistry, age and spatial distribution from the native Milky Way stars and the remnants of Gaia-Enceladus reminded Helmi of simulations performed by a former Ph.D. student, some 10 years ago. His simulations of the merging of a large disc-shaped galaxy with the young Milky Way produced a distribution of stars from both objects, which is totally in line with the Gaia data. "It was amazing to look at the new Gaia data and realize that I had seen it before," says the astronomer.
Explore further New GAIA data reveals mergers in Milky Way
More information: Amina Helmi et al, The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way's inner stellar halo and thick disk, Nature (2018). Amina Helmi et al, The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way's inner stellar halo and thick disk,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0625-x [1] Helmer H. Koppelman, Amina Helmi, Jovan Veljanoski: One large blob and many streams frosting the nearby stellar halo in Gaia DR2. APJ Letters, 12 June 2018, DOI: 10.3847/2041/aac882 Journal information: Nature | {
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If I didn't know it before, the primary election has taught me that what the pundits say means absolutely nothing. I have grown weary of the puffed up pontificating by the self-appointed experts and the arguments of agenda and the spin cycle of what passes for news. Doesn't matter how "well-informed" we think we're becoming by watching them; none of it really matters.
At a time when people are so desperate for truth that that they're turning to the likes of Oprah by the millions, I'm here to proclaim just where to find it ... and it's not in her online class or the network programming. It's in that book you pushed aside to read all that other stuff. Yeah, the Bible. Psalm 119:160 says, "The entirety of your word is truth." The entirety. Every single word. Despite the commentaries to the contrary, it is what is real.
But it's not only truth; it's power for real Christians. But who is that?
I quit asking people if they are "Christian" because there are so many with that label that they no longer know what it means. Charles Spurgeon said, "If righteousness has not changed your behavior, it has not changed your eternal destiny." A frightening thought for millions, to be sure. Perhaps a better question when you want to know the relationship someone has with their Creator is: "Are you in love with God?"
If you are one of the ones who love God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength, this column is for you. If you are not, seek Him and He will be found. And when you trust Him and His every word more than the "experts," more than circumstances and more than every emotion to the contrary, you are moving to the place I'm talking about.
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Now, if every word God says is true, and I'm convinced it is, then listen to what is in store for the Christian who trusts in it and loves God enough to actually do what He says.
In Matthew 9:29, when healing the blind, Jesus said, "According to your faith" it will "be done to you." Take a look at how the Amplified Bible defines faith:
Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]. – Hebrews 11:1
Need assurance? Proof? Confirmation? How about the "title deed"? That's what faith is. A done deal.
This isn't for the outsider who's praying to become a rock star. This verse is for the people who are in a friendship relationship with God, the ones who spend so much time with Him that they know God's heart, what He loves, what He hates, what He wants. That's how you know the kind of prayers to pray. And when we pray according to His will, we know two things according to 1 John 5:14-15: First, He hears us, and second, we "have" it (even before we happen to see it):
Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him. – 1 John 5:14, 15
So, if you're praying in God's will, in faith, you have the "title deed," but there's something else you have when facing a huge dead-bolted door: the key.
In Matthew 4, the devil, whom the Bible called "the ruler of this world," tempted Jesus with the planet, saying, "All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me."
Of course, Jesus said (essentially), "No deal." Satan was running the place, but when Jesus took the punishment our sins deserved on the cross and rose again, Jesus "got the keys back." He reconciled us to himself and handed them over to us as he said in Matthew 16:19:
And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
With the keys Jesus gave us, we have authority, responsibility, access and ownership. Which brings us back to "Plan A" in the first chapter of Genesis where God told us to "have dominion over … every living thing that moves on the earth."
With the title deed and the keys we've been given, we now can take dominion as was the original plan and see God's will be done "on earth as it is in Heaven," just like we've been praying in the Lord's prayer all this time.
So, here's my question. Just what do you have faith for? Psalm 2:8 says: "Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possessions." That sounds pretty good to me. I'd like to start with taking my country back. To "occupy" until He comes.
I've turned off the pundits to tap into the power. I want to know God's heart enough to come into alignment with Him and start turning some keys and opening some doors. It's time we take ownership and occupy the centers of influence and the areas of our culture Christians have vacated. It's time we stop whining about how big the giants are and start coming back to "Plan A": dominion. You have the keys. You have the title deed. What are you waiting for? Even the heaviest iron door doesn't stand a chance.
Related special offer:
"Taking America Back" | {
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Reggio Emilia, 23 luglio 2018 - Un brutale stupro si è consumato nella serata di ieri in via Petit Bon, nella prima periferia di Reggio Emilia. La ragazza, una ventenne reggiana, ha raccontato di essere stata aggredita alle spalle intorno alle 21 da uno sconosciuto, probabilmente straniero. La giovane era uscita per fare una passeggiata da sola, come era solita fare in queste sere d'estate. All'improvviso è stata avvicinata alle spalle da un uomo e spinta spinta dietro un cespuglio (FOTO).
AGGIORNAMENTO / Arrestato un ucraino di 26 anni
In quella zona al riparo da passanti e nella penombra è avvenuta la violenza. Subito dopo il bruto è poi scappato, dileguandosi, e per adesso ha fatto perdere le proprie tracce. In città è in corso un'ampia caccia all'uomo per trovarlo (VIDEO). Secondo le prime dichiarazioni della ragazza, si tratterebbe di un trentenne di orgine straniera.
La ragazza, ferita e sotto choc, è stata poi soccorsa dai sanitari del 118 e trasportata all'ospedale per le medicazioni e per far partire il protocollo sanitario che si applica in caso di violenze sessuali. Sul posto gli uomini delle Volanti, della Squadra Mobile e della Scientifica per trovare tracce della violenza. Ora la polizia indaga per chiarire la dinamica dell'evento. In giornata, la vittima verrà sentita dagli investigatori per acquisire elementi utili a rintracciare il suo aggressore e gli agenti sono tornati sul luogo dell'aggressione (FOTO), dove già ieri sera avevano cercato a lungo reperti. La caccia all'uomo, dunque, prosegue a ritmi serrati.
© Riproduzione riservata | {
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Nicht vorhandene zivilisierte Manieren im Sportclub…
Heute ist mir im Fitnesscenter wieder etwas geschehen, was meinen Verdruss über die Männerwelt zum wiederholten Mal vermehrt hat.
Das Ereignis
Für den Fall, dass ich mich auch einmal dafür bringen kann im Fitnessstudio zu stählen, dann genehmige ich mir im Anschluss relativ gerne eine Runde auf dem Sonnenstudio. Ich preferiere es, mit durchbluteten Muskeln genüsslich zu rösten. Will man somit erwähnte Röstsession abschließen, nimmt man sich seine Solariumskarte und führt sie an den Terminalleser. Ist die Bräunungskabine frei, kann man im Folgenden die anvisierte Zeit einchecken. So machte ich es ständig. Da das Display anzeigte, dass jene Brutzeleinheit leer stehen würde, und auch die Eingangstür der Kabine aufstand, buchte ich mich ablaufkonform ein. Folglich betrat ich die Maschine. Ich wollte mich bereits entblößen, da registrierte ich neben dem Spiegel hinter der Eingangstür eine Dame. Auf meine Frage hin erwiderte sie, dass sie sich gerade abschminken würde. Ich dachte zuerst, dass sie evtl. noch Zeit brauchen würde. Sie erzählte allerdings, dass sie bis dato noch nicht gestartet wäre, da sie mit ihrem Gefährten zusammenfallend fertig werden will. Ich klärte sie darüber auf, dass ich leider Gottes bereits eingecheckt habe, weil ich vorher niemanden gesehen hatte. Um diesen Prozess zu canceln, müsste man die Beschäftigten herholen. Sie ließ mir dann allerdings den Vorrang, da auch sie der Meinung gewesen ist, dass dieses Verhalten nutzloser Quatsch ist.
Spast auf Ärgerkurs
Gleich wie ein roher Primat springt ihr Gefährte aus der Sonnenbank und markiert sogleich den Badboy. Zunächst extrem ruchlos glotzen und einen auf Herr machen. „Gibt’s ein Problem?“ grunzt er mit böser Gesichtsmuskulatur.
Die Freundin erklärte dem Idioten den Weltuntergang, was von ihm mit keinem Wort ergänzt wurde. Er guckte spartanisch wie ein Vollkoffer. Mir war dies alles zu beschränkt und so betrat ich zum wiederholten Male die Sonnenbank. Noch nicht ganz versperrt ging es auch bereits los: „Warum müssen wir jetzt bitte warten?“, „Was drängelt der Penner sich jetzt vor?“, „Ich könnte grad platzen, ist der Kerl so respektlos!“
Nicht allein, dass er kaum Kenntnis von einem sozialkompetenten Antritt hatte, er ist ebenso noch das peinlichste Tratschmaul.
Ich frage mich gerade, wie verzagt jemand sein muss, wenn man sich selber aufgrund eines versehentlichen Ereignisses so aufregen muss. Ich käme niemals auf die Idee mürrisch auf so was zu kontern.
Vermutlich verharre ich allerdings auf der Seite der Unterzahl. Ein armseliger Umstand… | {
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Table of Contents
How to get help with CryptorBit
BleepingComputer.com was one of the first support sites to have reports of the CryptorBit, or HowDecrypt, ransomware. At the time, though, we were unable to help as this infection has been incredibly elusive and any supposed samples would not work. Recently, a member known as DecrypterFixer, has been able to recover some files that were supposedly encrypted by this malware. Due to our ability to now help users with this infection we have put together a guide that contains all known information about the CryptorBit infection.
All of this information has been compiled from reports by victims and consultants who contributed to our over 31 page CryptorBit support topic. Big thanks to everyone who contributed, especially DecrypterFixer, Piglet 65, Dalicar, Cody Johnston, and Happy Heretic for their assistance in working on the repair process. This guide will continue to be updated as new information or approaches are gathered. If you have anything that you think should be added, clarified, or revised please let us know in the support topic linked to below.
There is a very active CryptorBit support topic, which contains discussion and the experiences of a variety of IT consultants, end users, and companies who have been affected by CryptorBit. This topic also contains information on how to decrypt files that were encrypted by CryptorBit. If you are interested in this infection or wish to ask questions about it, please visit this CryptorBit support topic. Once at the topic, and if you are a member, you can subscribe to it in order to get notifications when someone adds more information to the topic.
What is CryptorBit or the HowDecrypt Ransomware
CryptorBit is a ransomware program that was released around the beginning of December 2013 that targets all versions of Windows including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. When infected, this ransomware will scan your computer and encrypt any data file it finds regardless of the file type or extension. When it encrypts a file, it will also create a HowDecrypt.txt file and a HowDecrypt.gif in every folder that a file was encrypted. The GIF and TXT files will contain instructions on how to access a payment site that can be used to send in the ransom. This payment site is located on the Tor network and you can only make the payment in Bitcoins.
When CryptorBit modifies your files it is actually not encrypting the entire file, but rather corrupting it by replacing the first 512 bytes of the file. What it appears to be doing is copying the first 512 bytes of the file's original file header, encrypting those bytes, and storing them at the end of the file. It will then create a different 512 byte header and replace the file's normal header with it. This effectively corrupts the file because a program that would normally open this type of file would see an unknown header and not be able to open it. The good news is that a technique has been found that can repair the file's header and thus allow you to recover your corrupted files.
As for the registry and file paths this infection is using, not much is known at this time. We have not been able to acquire a working dropper or samples that will run and thus can't give definitive information on what files and registry entries it creates. What we do know is that it will create random files and folders under the %AppData%, %LocalAppData%, or %ProgramData% system folders. It will also create HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce entries to start the infection when Windows starts.
Another component that is commonly bundled with CryptorBit is a cryptocoin miner. This component will utilize your computer's CPU to mine digital coins, such as Bitcoin or other coins, for the malware developer that will then be deposited into their wallet. This generates further revenue for the malware developer.
Unfortunately, no dropper for this infection has been actively seen in the wild at this time. Victim's reports indicate that their files had become corrupted right after installing a fake Flash update or being infected by a rogue anti-virus program of some sort. At this time, none of these reports have been corroborated.
If you find that you are infected with CryptorBit it is suggested that you automatically scan your computer with an antivirus or antimalware program. We have seen that many antivirus vendors are able to detect the infection files and clean them. As these files are widely detected by AV programs, it has been discussed that this infection may actually be installed remotely by someone hacking into a server or computer. This would allow them to disable any AV programs, install the encrypter, encrypt your files, and then clean up the installer. This would also explain why no one has been able to find the installer for this infection. With that said, make sure you change your passwords on your computer and if you use remote desktop, please consider changing your remote desktop port as described in the following tutorial:
How to recover files encrypted by CryptorBit
The first method is to try and restore your files from a backup. If a backup is unavailable, then you should attempt to restore your files from Shadow Volume Copies. Windows XP Service Pack 2 and higher utilize a feature called Shadow Volume Copies that, if enabled, automatically create backup copies of some your data files for you. For more information on how to restore files via the Shadow Volume Copies, please see this section of the guide:
If a backup does not exist and you are unable to restore from the Shadow Volume Copies, then there is still good news! A BleepingComputer.com member named Nathan Scott, aka DecrypterFixer, has come up with a program that will allow you to recover JPG, PST, MP3, PDF, .DOC, .XLS, .XLSX, .PPTX, .and DOCX documents that have been encrypted by CryptorBit. To use DecrypterFixer's tools, please use the link below:
How to restore files encrypted by CryptorBit using Shadow Volume Copies
If you had System Restore enabled on the computer, Windows creates shadow copy snapshots that contain copies of your files from that point of time when the system restore snapshot was created. These snapshots may allow us to restore a previous version of our files from before they had been encrypted. This method is not fool proof, though, as even though these files may not be encrypted they also may not be the latest version of the file. Please note that Shadow Volume Copies are only available with Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, Windows 7, & Windows 8.
In this section we provide two methods that you can use to restore files and folders from the Shadow Volume Copy. The first method is to use native Windows features and the second method is to use a program called ShadowExplorer. It does not hurt to try both and see which methods work better for you.
Using native Windows Previous Versions:
To restore individual files you can right-click on the file, go into Properties, and select the Previous Versions tab. This tab will list all copies of the file that have been stored in a Shadow Volume Copy and the date they were backed up as shown in the image below.
To restore a particular version of the file, simply click on the Copy button and then select the directory you wish to restore the file to. If you wish to restore the selected file and replace the existing one, click on the Restore button. If you wish to view the contents of the actual file, you can click on the Open button to see the contents of the file before you restore it.
This same method can be used to restore an entire folder. Simply right-click on the folder and select Properties and then the Previous Versions tabs. You will then be presented with a similar screen as above where you can either Copy the selected backup of the folder to a new location or Restore it over the existing folder.
Using ShadowExplorer:
You can also use a program called ShadowExplorer to restore entire folders at once. When downloading the program, you can either use the full install download or the portable version as both perform the same functionality.
When you start the program you will be shown a screen listing all the drives and the dates that a shadow copy was created. Select the drive (blue arrow) and date (red arrow) that you wish to restore from. This is shown in the image below.
To restore a whole folder, right-click on a folder name and select Export. You will then be prompted as to where you would like to restore the contents of the folder to.
How to fix files encrypted by CryptorBit using DecrypterFixer's Tools
Nathan Scott, aka DecrypterFixer, has developed tools that can fix various types of files that have been encrypted by CryptorBit. Currently his tools can recover corrupted PST, JPG, PDF, MP3, DOC, and XLS files. In order to use his tool you must have Microsoft Net Framework 4.0 or higher installed on your computer. If you using Windows XP, you will need to have service pack 3 installed before you can install Net 4.0. If you find that his tools have helped you recover your files, please feel free to send him a tip using one of the methods below:
How to send a tip to DecrypterFixer Bitcoin Address: 1BRmwJWpbt6occBRErQ6JBFF1tvbdJ96HJ
Paypal: DecrypterFixer Paypal Link
To recover JPEG/JPG, .PDF, .WAV, .PST, .DOC, .XLS, .XLSX, .PPTX, .DOCX, and .MP3 files, you need to download Anti-CryptorBit.exe from the following links.
Once the file has been downloaded, extract the zip file, and run the Anti-CryptorBit.exe program. This will open the main dashboard for Anti-CryptorBit as shown below.
Simply click on the recovery method that you wish to run and follow the instructions. If you need any help with Anti-CryptorBit please post your questions in the CryptorBit support topic.
Information about the Malware Developer's CryptorBit Decryptor Site
When you are infected with CryptorBit, the infection will create HowDecrypt.txt and HowDecrypt.gif files that contain information on how to pay the ransom. Below is the contents of the HowDecrypt.txt and HowDecrypt.gif messages:
HowDecrypt.txt:
File Decryption costs ~ $ 500.
In order to decrypt the files, you need to perform the following steps:
1. You should download and install this browser
2. After installation, run the browser and enter the address: 4sfxctgp53imlvzk.onion
3. Follow the instructions on the web-site. We remind you that the sooner you do, the more chances are left to recover the files.
Guaranteed recovery is provided within 10 days.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
Your Personal CODE: 00000001-xxxxxx All files including videos, photos and documents on your computer are encrypted.File Decryption costs ~ $ 500.In order to decrypt the files, you need to perform the following steps:1. You should download and install this browser http://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en 2. After installation, run the browser and enter the address: 4sfxctgp53imlvzk.onion3. Follow the instructions on the web-site. We remind you that the sooner you do, the more chances are left to recover the files.Guaranteed recovery is provided within 10 days.IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Your Personal CODE: 00000001-xxxxxx
HowDecrypt.gif
The instructions tell the victim that in order to pay the ransom they need to install a special program called Tor. Once Tor is installed they can use it to access their hidden web site at the TOR address 4sfxctgp53imlvzk.onion. When a user visits that address using the Tor browser they will be shown a page that gives instructions on how to pay Bitcoins in order to receive a CryptorBit decryptor. The current cost for the decryptor as of 02/13/2014 is .6 BTC.
Click on the image above to see full size and other associated images.
In order to submit the payment you will need to first enter the Personal Code from your HowDecrypt.txt files. The site will report back how many bitcoins you need to send as your ransom payment. Once you send the bitcoins to the requested address and fill in the rest of the information, you will supposedly be sent a CryptorBit Decryptor program. I have no first-hand knowledge of anyone paying the ransom and have not seen the decryptor. Based on the payments sent to known CryptorBit Bitcoin addresses, though, quite a few people appear to have paid the ransom.
Previous CryptorBit Decryptor Purchase page screenshots:
Date Link to Image 12/12/13 https://www.bleepstatic.com/swr-guides/c/cryptorbit/tor-decryption-service-old.png
Known Bitcoin Payment addresses for CryptorBit
CryptorBit allows you to pay the ransom by sending bitcoins to an address shown in the CryptorBit Decryptor Purchase page. Bitcoins are currently worth over $600 USD on some bitcoins exchanges. CryptorBit has used different bitcoin payment addresses for those who were infected. Some of these addresses are below:
You can use the links above to see transactions into the wallet and out of the wallet. You can typically tell which payments to this address are from ransom victims as there will be many payments with the same amount.
How to prevent your computer from becoming infected by CryptorBit
You can use the Windows Group or Local Policy Editor to create Software Restriction Policies that block executables from running when they are located in specific paths. For more information on how to configure Software Restriction Policies, please see these articles from MS:
The file paths that have been used by this infection and its droppers are:
C:\<random>\<random>.exe
C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\<random>.exe (Vista/7/8)
C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\<random>.exe (Vista/7/8)
C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Application Data\<random>.exe (XP)
C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Local Application Data\<random>.exe (XP)
%Temp%
In order to block the CryptorBit you want to create Path Rules so that they are not allowed to execute. To create these Software Restriction Policies, you can either use the CryptoPrevent tool or add the policies manually using the Local Security Policy Editor or the Group Policy Editor. Both methods are described below.
Note: If you are using Windows Home or Windows Home Premium, the Local Security Policy Editor will not be available to you. Instead we suggest you use the CryptoPrevent tool, which will automatically set these policies for you.
How to use the CryptoPrevent Tool:
FoolishIT LLC was kind enough to create a free utility called CryptoPrevent that automatically adds the suggested Software Restriction Policy Path Rules listed above to your computer. This makes it very easy for anyone using Windows XP SP 2 and above to quickly add the Software Restriction Policies to your computer in order to prevent CryptorBit and Zbot from being executed in the first place. This tool is also able to set these policies in all versions of Windows, including the Home versions.
A new feature of CryptoPrevent is the option to whitelist any existing programs in %AppData% or %LocalAppData%. This is a useful feature as it will make sure the restrictions that are put in place do not affect legitimate applications that are already installed on your computer. To use this feature make sure you check the option labeled Whitelist EXEs already located in %appdata% / %localappdata% before you press the Block button.
You can download CryptoPrevent from the following page:
For more information on how to use the tool, please see this page:
Tip: You can use CryptoPrevent for free, but if you wish to purchase the premium version you can use the coupon code bleeping30off to get 30% off. The premium version includes automatic and silent updating of application and definitions on a regular schedule, email alerts when an application blocked, and custom allow and block policies to fine-tune your protection. Note: In full disclosure, BleepingComputer earns a commission for the sales of CryptoPrevent.
Once you run the program, simply click on the Apply Protection button to add the default Software Restriction Policies to your computer. If you wish to customize the settings, then please review the checkboxes and change them as necessary. If CryptoPrevent causes issues running legitimate applications, then please see this section on how to enable specific applications. You can also remove the Software Restriction Policies that were added by clicking on the Undo button.
How to manually create Software Restriction Policies to block CryptorBit:
In order to manually create the Software Restriction Policies you need to be using Windows Professional or Windows Server. If you want to set these policies for a particular computer you can use the Local Security Policy Editor. If you wish to set these policies for the entire domain, then you need to use the Group Policy Editor. Unfortunately, if you are a Windows Home user, the Local Policy Editor ir not available and you should use the CryptoPrevent tool instead to set these policies. To open the Local Security Policy editor, click on the Start button and type Local Security Policy and select the search result that appears. You can open the Group Policy Editor by typing Group Policy instead. In this guide we will use the Local Security Policy Editor in our examples.
Once you open the Local Security Policy Editor, you will see a screen similar to the one below.
Once the above screen is open, expand Security Settings and then click on the Software Restriction Policies section. If you do not see the items in the right pane as shown above, you will need to add a new policy. To do this click on the Action button and select New Software Restriction Policies. This will then enable the policy and the right pane will appear as in the image above. You should then click on the Additional Rules category and then right-click in the right pane and select New Path Rule.... You should then add a Path Rule for each of the items listed below.
If the Software Restriction Policies cause issues when trying to run legitimate applications, you should see this section on how to enable specific applications.
Below are a few Path Rules that are suggested you use to not only block the infections from running, but also to block attachments from being executed when opened in an e-mail client.
Block CryptorBit executable in %AppData% Path: %AppData%\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Don't allow executables to run from %AppData% . Block CryptorBit executable in %LocalAppData% Path if using Windows XP: %UserProfile%\Local Settings\*.exe
Path if using Windows Vista/7/8: %LocalAppData%\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Don't allow executables to run from %AppData% . Block Zbot executable in %AppData% Path: %AppData%\*\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Don't allow executables to run from immediate subfolders of %AppData%. Block Zbot executable in %LocalAppData% Path if using Windows XP: %UserProfile%\Local Settings\*\*.exe
Path if using Windows Vista/7/8: %LocalAppData%\*\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Don't allow executables to run from immediate subfolders of %AppData%. Block executables run from archive attachments opened with WinRAR: Path if using Windows XP: %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temp\Rar*\*.exe
Path if using Windows Vista/7/8: %LocalAppData%\Temp\Rar*\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Block executables run from archive attachments opened with WinRAR. Block executables run from archive attachments opened with 7zip: Path if using Windows XP: %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temp\7z*\*.exe
Path if using Windows Vista/7/8: %LocalAppData%\Temp\7z*\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Block executables run from archive attachments opened with 7zip. Block executables run from archive attachments opened with WinZip: Path if using Windows XP: %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temp\wz*\*.exe
Path if using Windows Vista/7/8: %LocalAppData%\Temp\wz*\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Block executables run from archive attachments opened with WinZip. Block executables run from archive attachments opened using Windows built-in Zip support: Path if using Windows XP: %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temp\*.zip\*.exe
Path if using Windows Vista/7/8: %LocalAppData%\Temp\*.zip\*.exe
Security Level: Disallowed
Description: Block executables run from archive attachments opened using Windows built-in Zip support.
You can see an event log entry and alert showing an executable being blocked:
If you need help configuring this, feel free to ask in the CryptorBit help topic.
How to allow specific applications to run when using Software Restriction Policies
If you use Software Restriction Policies, or CryptoPrevent, to block CryptorBit you may find that some legitimate applications no longer run. This is because some companies mistakenly install their applications under a user's profile rather than in the Program Files folder where they belong. Due to this, the Software Restriction Policies will prevent those applications from running.
Thankfully, when Microsoft designed Software Restriction Policies they made it so a Path Rule that specifies a program is allowed to run overrides any path rules that may block it. Therefore, if a Software Restriction Policy is blocking a legitimate program, you will need to use the manual steps given above to add a Path Rule that allows the program to run. To do this you will need to create a Path Rule for a particular program's executable and set the Security Level to Unrestricted instead of Disallowed as shown in the image below.
Once you add these Unrestricted Path Rules, the specified applications will be allowed to run again. | {
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The New U.N. Envoy to Syria Should Kill the Political Process to Save It
The United Nations has appointed a new Syria envoy who could fundamentally shift the U.N. approach to the conflict. Rather than keep alive a political process unable to deliver genuine reform, the new Norwegian envoy, Geir O. Pedersen, should deliberately freeze the current U.N. track in order to force international and Syrian actors, many of whom still want U.N. approval, to finally engage more seriously. In short, the new envoy needs to kill the political process in order to salvage a future for any U.N.-led political negotiations.
Staffan de Mistura, the outgoing special envoy, has dedicated the last four years to trying to forge a political solution to the Syrian crisis. The last year, in particular, has been focused on advancing a constitutional reform process meant to lead to U.N.-backed elections. But this track is now at a dead end.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has emerged victorious in the civil war—even if he has not recaptured the entire country—and he is currently unwilling to make any meaningful political concessions. Syria’s foreign minister recently stated as much, telling de Mistura on his last trip to Damascus in October that there was no room for external involvement in reforming the country’s constitution.
While Assad’s key external backer, Russia, claims that it supports the U.N. political process, Moscow has also made clear that it expects this to be led by Assad and has shown no willingness to push Damascus toward meaningful compromises. Ultimately, continued U.N. and international support of this approach is likely to result in the worst possible outcome: a continued descent to the lowest common denominator until international signoff is secured on meaningless reforms and an entirely hollow election process. While this may provide satisfaction to international actors invested in securing the external semblance of a political agreement, it will be worthless on the ground.
De Mistura has long kept the political process alive even when there was nothing going for it, hoping that outside players would eventually shift the equation in his favor. It has failed not because of de Mistura but because international players—including Russia, Iran, and Turkey—did so little to pressure their Syrian allies to meaningfully engage.
Instead, Syrian and international actors continuously took advantage of the political cover provided by de Mistura’s initiatives to advance their mutually contradictory ambitions on the ground.
Russia and Assad have been at the center of this deceptive process, pushing for further military gains even as they have expressed support for ongoing talks. But they are not the only ones. While President Donald Trump’s recent decision to recommit the United States to political engagement in Syria encouraged opposition backers, U.S. policy today is focused on dislodging Iran from the country. The political process is seen as a means to that end, and anyone betting on sustained U.S. backing for a political process is likely to be disappointed.
Pedersen must create his own leverage by exposing the hollow positioning of external and Syrian actors. Rather than keep the political process on life support, he should freeze U.N. sponsorship, making it clear he will not manage an entirely fake process and commit to re-engagement only once the relevant actors show a genuine commitment to moving it forward.
While Russia, in particular, may oppose this approach, it may be the envoy’s only hope of reasserting U.N. relevance and injecting some momentum into a political process. Ultimately, Pedersen reports to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, and his support will be critical to sustaining this approach. But it could also be bolstered by European backing and even a U.N. General Assembly resolution.
The reason this approach could succeed in making limited progress in Syria is that a number of key actors do seek the international legitimization stemming from a U.N.-backed political agreement—especially Russia, which has long sought international approval for its Syria project. This is evident from its intense outreach to Europe for reconstruction support, which is based first and foremost on a desire to secure European political backing for its Syria policy rather than on a meaningful desire to rebuild Syria.
A change of course by the new U.N. envoy would challenge Moscow’s position. Rather than be the subject of continued U.N. and international outreach, the burden would be on Russia to squeeze meaningful concessions from Assad as a precursor to U.N. political involvement. It is notable that the one time that the U.N. did play hardball on this front, prior to the Russian-sponsored Syria conference in Sochi in January, Moscow conceded to U.N. demands.
For his part, Assad clearly rejects the need for Western legitimization or reconstruction support. But behind this bluster there are also vulnerabilities. European finance sector sanctions, for instance, which will only be lifted through a U.N.-backed process, are blocking even Russian companies from doing business in Syria. And while Assad does not want Western money, he does need some channels of external financial support to meet the demands of his own supporters after seven years of war.
Ultimately, this approach will not deliver a transition, nor will it open the prospect of fair, near-term elections. The continued pursuit of either will only be counterproductive, given Assad’s secure position and Russian ambitions. But a more assertive U.N. approach that makes clear to Moscow and Damascus that they cannot take eventual U.N. signoff for granted may give the envoy a better chance of forcing lower-level political reforms.
A hardening of the U.N. position on the political front should not translate into full disengagement. On the contrary, rather than work to keep alive a defunct political track, the new envoy should prioritize international attention to critical developments on the ground that are shaping the day-to-day lives of Syrian civilians far more than the stagnant political process.
The priorities should be preserving the fragile cease-fire in Idlib province; ensuring full humanitarian access across the country; working to establish a degree of locally managed stabilization support mechanisms, through which the U.N. Development Program can more transparently channel aid; providing security and property rights guarantees for refugees and internally-displaced persons looking to return; and a heightened focus on ensuring information about and family access to the tens of thousands of detainees whose fates remain unknown. Progress on these issues should be one of the necessary preconditions for the resumption of the political process.
While there has been much talk of a new power-sharing constitution, the U.N. envoy should initially concentrate on telling Assad to implement the country’s existing constitutional measures, such as Legislative Decree 107, a decentralization law that is supposed to allow for a degree of meaningful local control. Damascus and Moscow would have less space to accuse the U.N. of external meddling in sovereign issues if the U.N. focused on pressing Assad to enforce Syria’s own laws.
These efforts would not replace the political settlement needed to address the core drivers of the Syrian civil war. But they might help create a marginally better future for Syrians and would represent a notable advance on the status quo. If it fails, then the U.N. will at least have distanced itself from a political process that is going nowhere. | {
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Dans le cadre des débats relatifs à la loi Macron, le Sénat a adopté hier un amendement autorisant les commerces de détail de biens culturels, et en particulier les libraires, à ouvrir chaque dimanche. Il s’agit là d’une revendication portée notamment par la FNAC, qui pointait il y a peu la concurrence du cybermarchand Amazon et la différence de traitement vis-à-vis des magasins de bricolage .
Dérogation pour les librairies, disquaires, magasins de jeux vidéo...
Selon la dizaine de sénateurs UMP à l’origine de cet amendement, l’ouverture dominicale devrait « permettre au commerce culturel de proximité, notamment du livre, de faire face à la concurrence exponentielle d’Internet, dont les ventes le dimanche sont les plus importantes, de maintenir son implantation de proximité au cœur des villes, et ainsi de continuer à permettre un accès aisé aux produits culturels ».
Sur un plan juridique, ces élus menés par Philippe Dominati proposaient de modifier le Code du travail de telle sorte que les « commerces de détail de biens culturels » (libraires, disquaires, magasins de jeux vidéo...) puissent expressément « déroger à la règle du repos dominical en attribuant le repos [de leurs salariés, ndlr] par roulement ». Ces magasins devraient ainsi rejoindre les bureaux de tabac, restaurants, fleuristes, musées, etc. autorisés à fonctionner le dimanche sans autorisation préalable, en raison de leurs contraintes de production et des besoins du public.
Même si cette façon de légiférer semble cavalière, dans la mesure où le Code du travail prévoit actuellement que cette liste des établissements pouvant ouvrir à leur guise les dimanches est déterminée par décret ministériel (c’est ce qu’il s’est passé l’année dernière pour les magasins de bricolage), Emmanuel Macron n’a pas émis d’avis défavorable à cet amendement. Le locataire de Bercy s’en est en effet remis à la « sagesse » des parlementaires, sans davantage de commentaires.
« On peut acheter un livre le samedi et le lire le dimanche »
Du côté des sénateurs, en revanche, la proposition a rapidement fait mouche. « Les cinémas, les théâtres, les salles de concert sont ouverts le dimanche. Seules les librairies resteraient fermées ? Elles sont pourtant les plus durement frappées par la concurrence d'internet » a embrayé l’UMP Roger Karoutchi, suivi par la socialiste Nicole Bricq : « Les magasins de bricolage et de meubles sont ouverts le dimanche et pas les enseignes culturelles ? Cela n'a pas de justification. La logique est certes au zonage et à la clarification. Mais on ne se nourrit pas que de nourritures matérielles... »
Quelques réticences se sont toutefois fait entendre sur les bancs écologistes et communistes. « La comparaison avec le cinéma ou le théâtre est trompeuse : ces spectacles sont en direct, alors que l'on peut acheter un livre le samedi et le lire le dimanche... » a ainsi rétorqué Jean Desessard (EELV). « L'ouverture des cinémas et théâtres le dimanche est encadrée par le Code du travail, des compensations sont prévues. Les salariés des enseignes culturelles en bénéficieront-ils ? Ne risque-t-on pas un alignement des garanties par le bas ? » s’est de son côté inquiétée la communiste Annie David. Avant de signifier que son groupe ne voterai pas cet amendement : « Nous en revenons à une question philosophique, quelle société voulons-nous ? Une société où nous ne pourrions à aucun moment échapper à la frénésie de la consommation ? De cette société-là nous ne voulons pas. Il faut arrêter l'hémorragie ! »
Ces mises en garde n’ont toutefois pas convaincu les autres sénateurs en présence, puisque l’amendement a été adopté par une assemblée désormais passée à droite. Malgré tout, il faudra encore attendre le 12 mai pour savoir si les élus du Palais du Luxembourg voteront l’ensemble du projet de loi Macron, faute de quoi toutes les modifications apportées au cours des dernières semaines seraient réduites en poussières. | {
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Shape of glass and amount of alcohol poured: Comparative study of effect of practice and concentration; BMJ Volume 331 pp 1512-4
People pour 20-30% more alcohol into short, wide glasses than into tall, narrow ones of the same volume, but they wrongly believe that tall glasses hold more, finds a study in this week's BMJ.
Even professional bartenders pour more into short, wide "tumblers" than into "highball" glasses, suggesting that experience of pouring alcohol has little effect.
The study involved 198 college students and 86 bartenders from a large city in the United States.
After several practice pours, half the students were given tall, slender 355 ml glasses and half were given short, wide 355 ml glasses. They were then asked to pour a standard "shot" of alcohol (1.5 ounces, 44.3 ml) for four mixed drinks (vodka tonic, rum and Coke, whiskey on the rocks, and gin and tonic).
Each bartender was also asked to pour the same four drinks, either with no instructions or after being told to take their time.
Both students and bartenders poured more into short, wide glasses than into tall, slender glasses. Among students, practice reduced the tendency to overpour into tall glasses, but not into short, wide glasses. Most students also believed that the tall glasses held more.
Despite an average of six years of experience, bartenders poured 20.5% more into short, wide glasses than tall, slender ones. Paying careful attention reduced but did not eliminate the effect.
These findings suggest that alcohol consumption studies should include questions about the shape of the glass, say the authors.
To avoid overpouring, they suggest using tall, narrow glasses or ones on which the alcohol level is marked. And to realise that when alcoholic drinks are served in a short, wide glass, two drinks are actually equal to two and a half.
### | {
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Orthodox Israeli Jews dance with Israeli flags on Jerusalem Day at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, May 12, 2010. Israelis are celebrating Jerusalem Day, which marks 43 years since they captured mainly Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. UPI/Debbie Hill | License Photo
TEL AVIV, Israel, April 6 (UPI) -- Amid concerns the new regime emerging in Cairo will be less committed to Egypt's historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel than ousted President Hosni Mubarak, it may be more than mere coincidence that the Jewish state has unveiled one of its best-kept secrets.
Yossi Melman, a journalist and commentator with close links to Israeli intelligence, says that Operation Yated, or Stake, run during the 1950s and '60s by Israel's General Security Service, was revealed during a lecture at last week at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center in Tel Aviv.
Writing in the liberal daily Haaretz March 31, he offered no explanation as to why a counterintelligence operation run by the GSS, universally known by its Hebrew initials Shin Bet, should be brought into the public domain now.
But he said that the operation was "one of the most remarkable deceptions in Israeli intelligence history."
It involved Shin Bet, which is responsible for counterintelligence in Israel, arresting an Egyptian agent named Rifat al-Gamal in the early 1960s and "turning" him into a double agent who would feed Egyptian intelligence false information.
His Israeli codename was Yated, which became the name of the deception operation built around him.
"The crowning achievement of Operation Yated was the transfer of false information to Egypt in 1967, on the eve of the Six Day War," Melman wrote.
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At the time, Egyptian President Galam Abdel Nasser had booted U.N. peacekeeping forces out of the Sinai Desert and massed 100,000 troops with 950 tanks there.
Israeli generals planned a pre-emptive strike as part of a major operation to hit Arab forces.
Yated told the unsuspecting Egyptians that, according to war plans he had acquired, Israel would launch an offensive against Egypt with a massive ground operation. But at 7:45 a.m. June 5, Israel unleashed all but 12 of its 200 operational combat jets against Egypt's airfields, catching Nasser's 420 Soviet-built combat aircraft on the ground and in the open.
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They destroyed 338 aircraft and damaged many more, killing 100 pilots. Israel lost 19 aircraft, mostly to ground fire.
Soon after, the Jordanian and Syrian air forces had also been decimated. By June 10, the Jewish state was three times larger and all its key Arab foes had been soundly defeated.
According to Melman, "That was deception of the highest level. It begs comparison with Operation Mincemeat, the brilliant deception carried out by British intelligence during World War II regarding the site of the Allied landing during the 1944 invasion of Europe."
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The false information provided to Cairo by Yated was "one of the reasons the Egyptians were so laid back before the war and left their planes out in the open on their airfield runways."
The Israeli airstrikes "effectively decided the outcome of the campaign."
Melman observed that Avraham Ahituv, then head of Shin Bet's Arab Department, commented at the time, "He spared us a great deal of blood and using him was equal to the strength of a division."
In 1973, Israel had the services of another Egyptian, Ashraf Marwan, Nasser's son-in-law, who tipped them off about Egyptian plans to attack across the Suez Canal to recapture land lost in 1967.
Melman wrote that Rifat al-Gamal had been recruited by Egyptian intelligence, apparently in the early 1950s, after becoming entangled in legal problems.
While awaiting trial in Cairo, he was approached to work for the intelligence service. He did so and was given the identity of an Egyptian Jew named Jacques Bitton.
In early 1955 he went to Italy to build his cover story, then emigrated to Israel and set up a travel agency in Tel Aviv. He traveled frequently Europe to meet his handlers but after one trip he was arrested when he flew back to Tel Aviv.
The Israelis turned him. He was allowed to photograph selected military installations and send genuine military data to Cairo.
After the war, the Israelis let Yated go. He died of cancer in Germany. He was reburied in Egypt where his exploits as an Egyptian agent were lauded.
Israel remained silent. Melman recalled that Israeli spymaster Isser Harel told him at the time, "If it makes them happy, let them continue to believe their tall tale." | {
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is to be interviewed on October 17 at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, say Swedish prosecutors.
The questioning will be conducted by a prosecutor from Ecuador, however Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a police investigator from Sweden will also be present and are expected to ask questions through the Ecuadorian.
“I welcome the fact that the investigation will move forward,” said the Swedish director of prosecutions, Marianne Ny.
The results of the inquiry will be reported from Ecuador. The Swedish prosecution will then decide whether to pursue the investigation further.
Read more
Last month, the Ecuadorian Embassy confirmed it would allow prosecutors to question Assange. He has been living under virtual house arrest at the Knightsbridge address since June 2012 to avoid possible extradition to Sweden.
Assange is wanted by Swedish authorities over allegations of sexual assault and rape, which the 45-year-old denies.
In February, a UN Working Group found that Sweden and the UK were violating Assange’s rights by detaining him without charge, and called for his release and compensation.
“The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention considers that the various forms of deprivation of liberty to which Julian Assange has been subjected constitute a form of arbitrary detention,” said the group’s head Seong-Phil Hong.
“The Working Group maintains that the arbitrary detention of Mr. Assange should be brought to an end, that his physical integrity and freedom of movement be respected, and that he should be entitled to an enforceable right to compensation,” Hong added. | {
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The annual Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas on Wednesday, with virtual reality, ultra-high-definition television, wearable gizmos and the internet of things expected to be the main attractions.
An estimated 150,000 attendees from 150 countries will flock to the annual trade show — one of the largest tech events in the world — to see 3,600 exhibitors debut all manner of new technologies.
This year, virtual reality is expected to take centre stage, led by San Francisco-based Oculus Rift.
Purchased by Facebook for $2 billion US in 2014, the company is promising to release its long-awaited headset to consumers within the first quarter of 2016.
A number of competitors, including Samsung and HTC, are expected to go toe-to-toe with the company over a market that could be worth $150 billion by 2020.
The headset makers will be showing off their products at CES, but the event is also expected to be a launching pad for an entire ecosystem of content and related hardware to surround the emergent technology.
Content creators, ranging from Hollywood movie studios to video game developers, will be announcing upcoming initiatives while accessory manufacturers will be gauging media and investor interest in their associated joysticks and controller devices.
"These are all important pieces of the puzzles," says Shawn Dubravac, chief economist at the Consumer Technology Association, the organization behind CES.
The bandwidth problem
Despite the inevitable hype and expectations, VR may be limited out of the gate by a number of factors.
Content makers, for one, are likely to face distribution challenges in the form of internet bandwidth limitations.
Fully immersive experiences will require super-fast connections and take a toll on the monthly usage caps that many consumers have, which probably means that any substantial VR applications are going to have to come on discs for the time being.
As a result, video games and movie-like experiences will likely make up the bulk of the early market, with the more experimental efforts — say, live streams of concerts or sporting events — still years away.
"This new incarnation of VR has real potential of course, but for now it will be one up from those 3D glasses from a few years ago," says Kaan Yigit, president of Toronto-based consumer trends tracking firm Solutions Research Group. "So, no iPhone moment yet for VR as far as I can see."
2016 could be the year of the virtual reality headset as they move from tech shows to consumer stores. (Axel Schmidt/Reuters)
4K TVs
Speaking of discs, the ultra-high-definition video ecosystem is also likely to get a boost at CES with manufacturers expected to show off 4K Blu-ray players.
4K TVs, which offer better resolution than regular high-definition panels, have been around for a few years, but consumers have had little reason to upgrade thanks to a lack of content.
Sales have recently picked up as prices have dropped, with 4K sets no longer carrying substantial premiums over regular HD panels.
4K Blu-ray, along with more ultra-HD titles on streaming services such as Netflix and Canada's Shomi, should further spur the TV-set market in 2016.
Broadcasters such as Rogers are also starting to move to the new technology. The Toronto-based company, for one, has announced that all Blue Jays home games in 2016, as well as a handful of NHL games, will be aired in 4K (though Shomi hasn't announced any 4K content offerings yet).
The big TV manufacturers — including LG, Sony and Samsung — will also be talking up high-dynamic range, another new technology that promises sharper pictures and whiter whites.
Many consumers are likely to be wary of new TV gimmicks after years of questionably useful features such as 3D and curved screens, but independent observers believe high-dynamic range is the real thing.
"Is this new technology worth the hype? In two words: yes, hopefully," writes Geoffrey Morrison on technology site CNET. "I am pretty jaded when it comes to new TV tech, and I'm really excited about HDR."
The internet of things
Wearables and the internet of things have also been riding the hype wave for the past few years, with varying results.
Dubravac expects both a widening and maturing of such devices at this year's CES, with manufacturers refining and streamlining their new products based on lessons learned from previous efforts.
The result should be better-looking smartwatches that have longer battery life, he says, as well as smart home devices that accomplish a few tasks well, rather than trying to do too many things at once.
That's not to say exhibitors won't be experimenting.
Dubravac expects a number of "firsts," with companies and entrepreneurs continuing to apply digital technology, sensors and connectivity in a variety of new ways, especially in regards to health and fitness.
He expects to see devices that can scan a plate of food and estimate how many calories it contains, adjustable beds for the home and affordable and easy-to-use blood monitors that plug into a smartphone.
"Things that were once only in the purview of doctors are now becoming available to consumers," he says. | {
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This is part of a series I started in March 2008 - you may want to go back and look at older parts if you're new to this series.
- exps = [ :do ] + zero_or_more ( :defexp ) + exps = zero_or_more ( :defexp ) + vars = deep_collect ( exps , Array ) { | node | node [ 0 ] == :assign ? node [ 1 ] : nil } + exps = [ :let , vars ] + exps
# Visit all objects in an array recursively. # yield any object that #is_a?(c) def deep_collect node , c = Array , & block ret = [] if node . is_a? ( c ) ret << yield ( node ) end if node . is_a? ( Array ) node . each do | n | if n . is_a? ( Array ) || n . is_a? ( c ) ret << deep_collect ( n , c , & block ) end end end ret . flatten . uniq . compact end
The code as at the end of this part can be found here I won't promise to keep up the posting frequency I've kept over the last week or so, but here's a tiny little part showing the next step. This time we're getting rid of "let". Well, sort of. I won't remove it from the syntax tree, but I will hide it, by making the compiler identify all :assign nodes in a function and creating a let for the variable referenced. Note that the current version is simplistic: It will ignore any :let nodes, and so may introduce redundant variables if you embed s-expressions with :let nodes, and it also ignores expressions on the left hand of an assign - %s(index arr 0) for example is a valid expression on the left hand of an assign. But it's a start.If you're following my Github repository , you may already have seen the code, but here's a quick explanation.First we make this change to the parsers #parse_defexp method:It leaves the method looking like this:# def ::= "def" ws* name args? ws* defexp* "end" def parse_def return nil if [email protected] ("def") @s.ws raise "Expected function name" if !(name = parse_name) args = parse_args @s.ws exps = zero_or_more(:defexp) vars = deep_collect(exps,Array) {|node| node[0] == :assign ? node[1] : nil} exps = [:let,vars] + exps raise "Expected expression of 'end'" if [email protected] ("end") return [:defun, name, args, exps] end As you can see the new thing is a call to a new function - deep_collect - that is used to collect the variable names. Lets take a look at deep collect:
I am sure there's cleaner way of doing this, but the purpose is to walk through the tree of arrays we use as a syntax tree, and yield any object that #is_a?(c). #parse_defexp use that to check if one of the Array nodes in the tree starts with :assign, and assumes that the first argument to :assign will be a variable name (in the future we'll need to expand on that to walk through any trees there instead of just expecting a variable name), and return an array of the identified variable names.
Then #parse_defexp will create a :let node instead of a :do node like it used to.
That's all there's too it. The next part will look at something more interesting: I'm plugging in an adaptation of my operator precedence parser. Also note that code is already on Github to handle "while" - I won't be going through those changes as they're pretty straightforward, and uses exactly the same approach as I did to handle "def". | {
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Fellow Indians, forget the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge! Welcome the Indian version of the challenge with open arms and big hearts.
Manju Latha Kalanidhi of Hyderabad has started this campaign after watching the Ice Bucket Challenge going viral in Indian media, among Indian Celebrities and common people.
The Facebook page of the Rice Bucket Challenge says, “Indian version for Indian needs.”
The rules are pretty simple and you don’t even have to drench yourself with ice cold water and waste it. All you have to do is find a needy person and donate him/her a bucket full of rice. Just like the Ice Bucket Challenge, use hashtag #RiceBucketChallenge and challenge your friends to do the same. Instead, people can also donate medicines worth Rs 100 to their nearest government hospital.
Manju Latha Kalanidhi posted it on Facebook and started off this challenge. She wrote, “My own local, practical and tangible version/response to #icebucketchallenge…save water feed the hungry!”
The #RiceBucketChallenge is getting popular and people are posting pictures on twitter and facebook to spread the message. | {
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Attack - The unstoppable force
You'll take my life but I'll take yours tooYou'll fire your musket but I'll run you throughThat is how Iron Maiden's legendary song "The Trooper" starts. See the following link for a boost in morale:What I mean to say with this is: War is hell, death is final, and you or your men dying does not matter, as long as you reach your goal. Now back to Insurgency and why this philosophy is important:The first charge out of your spawn was a success - some losses due to rocket and grenade barrages that pummeled you, but your squad is largely intact. Behind a wall of smoke and under the thundering, flashing rain of depleted uranium you have advanced to the first position of cover and can now engage the enemy face to face. You are pumped and would love to just hop over the sandbags and shove your gun up their bum while pulling the trigger - but that is not a good idea. A horrible one, actually. Because if you die, your team will no longer be able to hear you. For them, you have to stay alive and be as useful as possible.You will now have to order your men to go on while you hang back. That is hard, I know. You came here to shoot dudes and sip chamomile tea, and you are all out of tea. But you can do that from back there, too. Order your sniper to cover the flank you are on (with a focus on high ground and windows, as these are hard to fight against) and then count down. On three, you want your guys to have loaded guns, on two they should aim down the sights and on one they should be moving.When you leave cover in Insurgency, you always gamble. You gamble on seeing the enemy first, you gamble on being quicker. But you can tilt the odds in your favor. You can be better at aiming, but you can also have the only thing better than skill: BACKUP. So this is what you are for your men now. You are the backup, the cavalry charge, you are motherf*cking Gandalf at Helms Deep. So this is what you do:You pop out behind your men, tell them you have got their back, and you trust them. You trust them to check corners and clear directly in front of them. They got this ♥♥♥♥. What you do is scan the horizon. You seek the danger that they have not even noticed. You look for the ghost in the shadow, the monster under the bed. The assassin in the windows. You cover the corner they will reach in 20 seconds. You spit hot lead at enemies that do not even realize you exist behind the charging madmen you just sent their way.And all the while you observe. You observe where the enemy is dug in the deepest, where you want the frag grenades and rockets to go in, where you want suppressing fire. And you give exactly those orders and information. In the quickest way possible. Example:“Window, top left, throw frags!”“Sniper, straight ahead, hill! Suppressing fire!”“Camper, right side, Garage!”No order should take longer than three seconds, preferably two.And if your men have made it to a site or fortified position you move up with them and you are a loving father to the son that just became valedictorian. You are proud and you tell them that. Remember, respect.You are now the rearguard. You come in and cover your backs while ordering who holds which window, and you tell them where you want to go next. Plan out your next moves. And tell the guys you lost on the way where you are precisely and that you expect their asses there in a few seconds when you intend to move on.You should not leave this cover until you got some backup. At this point, you may also inform the rest of the team of your success and where you would like them to go in the meantime.As soon as your reinforcements arrive, you do the same thing again. Smokes, flashes, your men move, you cover and relay information.But after such a success it is hard to stay slow and focused, I know. You long to use the momentum. You have the urge to be a force of nature. You want to steamroll those lazy, spawnkilling cowards with the superior force of skill and coordination. But that is only possible if you maintain discipline. This is a marathon, not a sprint.Thus, what I do at this point is remind my squad not to sprint unnecessarily. “Don't sprint! Weapon to shoulder!” has worked pretty well as a descriptive way to explain what I mean.Do not despair if your first attempt does not work perfectly, you get crushed by grenade spam or taken out by a cowardly sniper across half the map. Just try again. You have quite a lot of waves to play with for that.If all went well, you should have won the attacking side twice and go into defense confidently and with a rather smug grin on your face. | {
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The BC Lions’ Ontario excursion began with some 4th quarter fireworks at BMO Field Friday and continued with Canada Day Fireworks on the shores of Confederation Park one night later. Yes, it was both a leisurely and festive start to the club’s four-day stay in Kingston, roughly 264 KM East of Toronto and 288 KM Southwest of Montreal, where they will tangle with the Alouettes on Thursday.
Along with saving time, staying out east allows the players to bond and even enjoy a little activity between practices and meetings. Kingston also provides history buffs like Ty Long a chance to soak in some new information about another place he has never visited.
“I didn’t even cross the border until I signed here,” said the rookie kicker.
The product of Alabama-Birmingham nearly jumped from his seat when told of the famous Kingston Penitentiary Tour. The old maximum-security prison housed some of Canada’s most notorious criminals from Clifford Olson to Paul Bernardo.
“I am definitely going to check that out,” added Long. “I grew up a few hours away from Savannah (Georgia); which is a ghost town. I have always been into that kind of stuff. I would have been a history major if it paid a bit more.” (Laughter)
Emmanuel Arceneaux is enjoying his seventh season north of the border and recently made the lower mainland his offseason home. The speedy slotback has learned all about how special Canada Day is.
“It’s pretty good that everybody in the community can come together and make an event like this just work as they celebrate Canada Day for the whole weekend,” said Arceneaux of the Kingston celebrations.
“It’s good to see less drama. That’s what the world needs, just everybody getting along.”
Arceneaux himself loves history and tourist activities and hopes to experience some of that in the midst of relaxation and prep for Montreal.
“It would be nice, but it was a bit of a slugfest a couple of days ago so I need as much time as I can off my feet,” added Arceneaux.
“I’ll be checking my teammates’ Twitter and Instagram over the next couple of days to see what guys had a chance to see out in the community in Kingston.”
Despite the fact Vancouver and Kingston are over 4600 KM apart, there are a couple of close connections to the Lions football club. Former defensive lineman and Ring of Honour member Brent Johnson called it home before migrating to The Ohio State University and the West Coast. Queen’s University head Coach Pat Sheahan served as a guest coach for the Lions at this year’s training camp in Kamloops. Sheahan and Wally Buono were coaches with the Montreal Junior Concordes squad that made it to the Dominion Final in 1982.
Buono and the coaches also have to adjust to not being home. While not being in the comfort of their own beds or having access to everything they need at the training facility, time is always too valuable in this game. Staying out east provides the best chance for them to take the most advantage of that short week.
For special teams coach Marcello Simmons it has been a chance to spend time with his wife and two young kids who live in his house in Burlington, Ontario during the season. Burlington also where the Lions stayed during the Toronto leg of the trip, allowing Simmons to be at home.
“It’s always good to see family, whether it’s for a day, two days or even a few hours,” said Simmons.
“You get to re-charge and refocus while still doing something that you love to do. The toddler is going to only have so many hours in a day so if you can get some of that time it’s a bonus.”
As far as the football part of it goes Simmons admits this type of arrangement has many pros, but also a few cons.
“It doesn’t help that you have one day less to prepare and you have to have the logistics worked out before you leave,” explained Simmons.
“You have to have an idea before you leave because there is some things you don’t have access too on the road that you would in the office, like access to video and things like that. You still have your laptops so you can work, but it’s limited and you can run into a lot of issues being away, but staying out here is good.
“To fly back across the country on a short week and then coming all the way back would be asking for a lot. Your team also has a different focus when they are on the road. It’s a chance to team build and do some things you probably wouldn’t if you were at home.”
Spending in a non-CFL city like this also has caused some of the locals and fellow tourists to do some double takes on the streets. Aside from training camps it is rare to spend any extended time as a team in an area that is home to no pro sports entities.
“We were able to see the fireworks, go to some of the local delis for food and run into some of the people that don’t get to see football too often, “added Arceneaux.
“A lot of people keep asking if we’re the real BC Lions and if we’re real football players. They have welcomed us with open arms. In Surrey we finish practice and then go home. When you’re in a hotel you look for more things to do other than sit in your room all day and stare at the TV or look at the little paintings on the wall.”
The comeback win over the Argonauts certainly will allow these next couple of days to be more enjoyable. Defeating the Alouettes would make it back-to-back years of sweeping the extended eastern trip. The club prevailed in Ottawa on August 25th and stayed four extra days in the nation’s capital before a victory in Toronto six days later.
Kingston Historical Facts
Along with being home to the prison, some other neat tidbits about Kingston include:
It was the first capital city of United Canada.
Canada’s first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald lived here many years. He was elected as Kingston’s Member of Parliament in 1844, and 23 years before Canadian Confederation.
Macdonald’s old house serves as a guided tourist attraction that commemorates his early life and career.
It is home to Fort Henry, which was used to protected entrance to Kingston, the naval port at Point Frederick and the Rideau Canal. The existing Fort Henry was completed in 1867 to replace the original structure from the War of 1812.
Football History
The Queen’s Gaels have won four Vanier Cup titles. The latest came in 2009 under Sheahan’s guidance. Notable Queen’s alumni currently in the CFL include Rob Bagg (Saskatchewan), Giovanni Aprile (Hamilton), Derek Wiggan (Calgary) and Matt O’Donnell (Edmonton).
The Frontenac Falcons high school program won the National Capital Bowl (Ontario Provincial Championship) five times from 2000 to 2011. Bagg was part of one of those championship squads before his time at Queen’s.
Extra Points with Simmons
Our chat with the special teams guru also provided some nice insight on Long’s development in the kicking game. The rookie went three for three on field goal attempts and made good on his lone convert try in Toronto. Although he may want a do over on a couple of his punts, Long’s position coach insists he is happy with the progress.
“I’m proud of him because he bounced back and stepped up when we need him to,” said Simmons.
“The game isn’t always going to go where you want it. There is always going to be ebbs and flows and when it was ebbing it ebbed because we had the missed punts, but it did flow, he bounced back. He helped our team win and when you have that it’s not something you can discount. It’s a learning curve for him, but I think he’s answering the call.”
Long’s best punt was a 62-yard bomb that forced Ricky Ray to start at his own 14-yard line. It came two plays before DeQuin Evans’ forced fumble set the Lions up to pull away late in the 4th quarter.
Swayze Waters also made the extended trip and the feeling is he is very close to returning from injury. If he doesn’t, the coaches know they have a solid insurance policy in Long. The team will practice at the Queen’s campus on Monday and Tuesday before taking a bus ride to Montreal on Wednesday. Kickoff against the Alouettes is 4:30PM Pacific on Thursday.
Matt Baker: [email protected] | {
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What’s that building in the distance? Where’s the nearest Starbucks? How do I get to there from here? These are questions you’d likely find answers to in your smartphone’s map application—but with Apple’s ARKit, one developer showed it could be even easier with a recently revealed project that demonstrates the practical application of turn-by-turn directions and basic landmark-based orientation displayed in augmented reality.
Created by London-based iOS developer Andrew Hart, the project was built using two Apple tools; ARKit and Core Location, the latter of which provides devs access to data from the phone’s onboard hardware including Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, magnetometer, barometer, and cellular hardware so it can be used to gather relevant positioning data. Integrated it into a map project, Hart was able to demonstrate landmark orientation and even turn-by-turn directions that appear with the click of a single button.
ARKit + CoreLocation, part 2 pic.twitter.com/AyQiFyzlj3 — Andrew Hart (@AndrewProjDent) July 21, 2017
Hart says he’ll be publishing the project on GitHub soon, and that he’d like to make sure the experimental app is in “a solid place before opening it up.”
Apple ARKit was first revealed at the company’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), and works on newer iPhone and iPads that have the ability to opt into the iOS 11 beta. While Apple is working with third-parties such as IKEA, Lego, and Niantic to build apps using ARKit, the company also released the tool for general use so enterprising developers can start building AR apps today—many of them going viral on the Internet like AR inter-dimensional portals and a project that built positional tracking for a VR headset using ARKit.
There’s no telling what Apple has up its sleeves hardware-wise, whether it’s simply a new iPhone with ARKit integrated at its core, or an AR headset that some patents would suggest is currently in the works. In the meantime though, we’ll be casting wistful stares at the iOS developers of the world to see what they come up with next. | {
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Raiders’ David Sharpe: ‘I held it down over there the best I could’
ALAMEDA — The Raiders asked a lot of David Sharpe in his first career start.
Replace three-time Pro Bowler Donald Penn on Derek Carr’s blind side. On Monday Night Football. Against the team with the NFL’s best record.
Sharpe had two wishes on his Christmas list: play well and win. The rookie fourth-rounder from Florida only accomplished one of those, but there’s solace in his sturdy performance at left tackle despite the Raiders’ loss to Philadelphia. Sharpe didn’t allow a sack and surrendered only one quarterback pressure in 32 pass-blocking snaps, per Pro Football Focus. If anything, Sharpe can use his first substantial game time as a building block moving forward despite the Raiders only having one game left this season.
“I was impressed with David,” Oakland offensive coordinator Todd Downing said Thursday. “That’s a hard assignment. Monday Night Football against that front as your first start. I thought he did some really good things. I was pleased with his effort.” Like our Oakland Raiders Facebook page for more Raiders news, commentary and conversation.
Sharpe owned only three career snaps prior to his first start. All of them came against the Giants in Week 13, and they didn’t go so hot. Raiders’ head coach Jack Del Rio could’ve opted for second-year offensive lineman Vadal Alexander at left tackle against the Eagles, given Alexander has vastly more experience than the rookie. Yet Del Rio inserted Sharpe, the 6-foot-6, 357-pounder, and he did more than suffice.
While right tackle Marshall Newhouse got abused by Philadelphia defensive end Chris Long all night – Newhouse surrendered a sack and six quarterback pressures – Sharpe held his own.
“My initial assessment was it was pretty good,” Del Rio said of Sharpe’s outing. “We ran it pretty good, we ended up giving up one sack … I thought for the most part he did well.”
To start the game, the Raiders utilized several six-linemen sets with Alexander as the extra man. Once he suffered a concussion in the first quarter and didn’t return, Sharpe fended for himself on the left side. With Penn and guard/center Jon Feliciano already placed on injured reserve before the game, Oakland’s deepest position group suddenly became its thinnest.
Alexander hasn’t practiced yet this week, so expect Sharpe to handle 100% of the offensive snaps on Sunday as he did against the Eagles. This week’s game against the Chargers may deliver a tougher test, though, with arguably the NFL’s best pass-rushing tandem in Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram lining up across from him.
“They do a great job of moving their alignments around,” Downing said. “Sometimes in third down, you know passing situations, you’ll get them both on the same side of the field, which can create a little bit more difficult chipping scenario. You better make sure you know where they’re at.” For complete Oakland Raiders coverage follow us on Flipboard.
Bosa and Ingram have combined for 22.5 sacks this season. If both line up on Sharpe’s side, he’ll need some help. Blocking just one of them is a tall enough order. He could have two in his sight at times. Sharpe seems confident in his ability, even if he doesn’t do much talking. His play Monday talked for him, and it ended up being more than enough, especially for a NFL debut.
Now there’s no excuse of a debut for the mammoth rookie, though growing pains are still expected. Sharpe has set the bar fairly high, and there’s only one chance left to leave a positive impression before the offseason.
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Kurtenbach: Why the Raiders might be best served by keeping Jack Del Rio in 2018 “It was like God-given,” Sharpe said. “You get to play on Monday night, big stage, first start, against the Eagles. Man, it was crazy. It was just a great feeling.
“You could always do better, but I did well. I held it down over there the best I could. Coach was pleased, so that’s always good. Definitely got more to work on.”
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Nevertheless, the vilification of refugees — Syrians in particular — has been central to Trump's political messaging since the early months of his campaign. Such grandstanding has done nothing to address the plight of Syrians, especially the most vulnerable among them.
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More than half of Syria's population has been forced to flee their homes. There are more than 4 million refugees registered by the United Nations, and at least an estimated 1 million more living unregistered in neighboring countries. For children in particular, the cost has been staggering: According to Unicef, the U.N.'s children's agency, 8.4 million Syrian children and adolescents — more than a third of the nation's total population — are in need of humanitarian aid, and more than 2.5 million kids are currently living as refugees or on the run in search of safety.
But it will take much more than international fundraising to staunch their suffering.
A report published this week by Save the Children detailed the astonishing and tragic fate of an entire generation of Syrian children who are growing up with the trauma of six years of bombing and bloodshed. Researchers interviewed 450 Syrian children, adolescents and adults still living inside the country. They found that many Syrian children are suffering from "toxic stress" as a result of the conflict. According to the British charity, at least 3 million kids remain in the country and know nothing but war.
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“I would be confused if I didn’t hear or see airstrikes, because they happen so often," said Ala'a, an adolescent living in the country's south, who was interviewed in the report.
This has profound consequences in terms of their development. Various rights groups and humanitarian organizations have warned of an alarming spike in child suicides. They fear the devastating long-term consequences for Syria's future as its young people grow up amid the ruins of one of the Middle East's most venerable societies.
"After six years of war, we are at a tipping point, after which the impact on children's formative years and childhood development may be so great that the damage could be permanent and irreversible," said Marcia Brophy, a mental health adviser for Save the Children in the Middle East.
The report, titled "Invisible Wounds," laid out a chilling snapshot of what more than a half a decade of fighting has done to a generation of children:
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80 percent of children and adults said children and adolescents have become more aggressive, and 71 percent said that children increasingly suffer from frequent bedwetting and involuntary urination — common symptoms of toxic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among children.
Two-thirds of children are said to have lost a loved one, had their house bombed or shelled or suffered war-related injuries.
51 percent of adults interviewed said adolescents are turning to drugs to cope with stress.
59 percent of adults said they knew children and adolescents who had been recruited into armed groups. Almost half knew of children working at checkpoints or barracks.
One of every four children is now at risk of developing a mental health disorder.
According to the report, 48 percent of adults surveyed said they had seen children who had lost the ability to speak or who had developed speech impediments during the course of the war. My colleague Louisa Loveluck detailed her own encounter with this phenomenon on Twitter:
Given the total collapse of the Syrian state in large parts of the country, access to mental health and counseling is extremely limited and in many cases simply unavailable. Save the Children estimates there are currently two psychiatrists for 1 million people in the country. According to Unicef, some 2.6 million Syrian children are no longer in school.
Save the Children, like so many other international rights groups and humanitarian organizations, has called for an immediate cessation of the violence and urged the international community to do more to address the needs of Syrian children. Such entreaties often fall on deaf ears in regional and Western capitals.
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Of course, ending the war isn't easy. Foreign diplomats have struggled for years to forge a roadmap toward some kind of political resolution, and there seems to be little appetite in the West to get more deeply involved in either the war or forging the peace. But in the meantime, starving efforts to help and resettle Syrians — the U.N. refugee agency is chronically and woefully underfunded — make little sense. The fate of a generation of Syrian youth scarred by war has profound global implications, and an eventual post-war Syria will be a basket case if its young people cannot live something like normal lives.
"I feel like I’ve seen so many terrible things. We need to go back to school so we can study and get educated," said Zainab, an 11-year-old girl living in Hasakah governorate. "What if I get old and I continue on this same path and I lose out on my entire future? I want to study and grow up and teach my children as well. I want to be a teacher. What if all these years pass by and I don’t become anything? It’s not fair." | {
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Peyton Manning says he won't run for office.
“I certainly have an interest in politics and in our country,” Manning said on Nashville radio station WGFX. “I just have zero interest in being a politician.”
Speculation was rampant Tuesday after Bob Corker announced he wouldn't run to keep his U.S. Senate seat in 2018. Corker said Wednesday the chances of Manning running were low.
"Is there a chance down the road that he can be enticed to run for the United States Senate or something like that? I hope so," Corker, a Republican, said in Washington.
Manning played golf with President Trump earlier this year.
Tennessee's other senator, Lamar Alexander, thought aloud about it earlier this year: “Everybody likes Peyton Manning, including me," he said with a chuckle.
One report, quoting a congressman from Tennessee, said Manning wouldn't likely run in 2018, but that 2020 is a possibility.
More on Peyton Manning
► He's now a voice actor
► What to expect in a Manning statue
► He has said 'no' to politics before
The political world is already hot with Manning-to-the-Senate speculation.
And to add a little levity to the possibility: | {
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Bei den Syrien-Gesprächen zwischen Türkei, Iran und Russland verkündet der russische Delegationsleiter ein faktisches Flugverbot für Kampfflugzeuge der US-geführten Anti-IS-Allianz. Eine Reaktion aus Washington steht noch aus.
Russland hat den Luftraum über den künftigen Schutzzonen in Syrien für Kampfjets der USA und ihrer internationalen Koalition geschlossen. Das stehe zwar nicht ausdrücklich in dem Memorandum über die Einrichtung der sogenannten Zonen der Deeskalation, erklärte der Leiter der russischen Delegation bei den Syrien-Gesprächen in Astana, Alexander Lawrentjew, laut Interfax, "aber die Flüge über diesen Territorien werden eingestellt".
Russland, die Türkei und der Iran hatten am Vortag beschlossen, in syrischen Rebellengebieten vier Zufluchtsorte für die kriegsgeplagte Bevölkerung zu schaffen. Die Kämpfe dort sollen ab Samstag ruhen. "Der Einsatz der Luftwaffe, vor allem von Kräften der internationalen Koalition, ist absolut nicht vorgesehen. Ob mit oder ohne Ankündigung - diese Sache ist jetzt entschieden", sagte Lawrentjew. Die USA und ihre Verbündeten sollten ihre Angriffe auf den Islamischen Staat (IS) in Rakka, Deir as-Saur und im Euphrat-Gebiet beschränken, sagte er.
Deutsche Tornados betroffen?
Das faktische Flugverbot für Jets der US-geführten Anti-IS-Allianz gilt demnach in der gesamten Provinz Idlib sowie in Teilen der Provinzen Latakia, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Damaskus, Daraa und Kuneitra. Die fraglichen Regionen liegen überwiegend im Westen Syriens.
Inwieweit die Tornado-Aufklärungsflüge der Bundeswehr in Syrien von der Einrichtung der geplanten Schutzzonen betroffen sind, ist noch offen. Die deutschen Maschinen fliegen ihre Einsätze bislang von der Nato-Basis im türkischen Incirlik aus. Die geplanten Schutzzonen könnten beim Flug ins Einsatzgebiet unter Umständen größere Umwege erforderlich machen.
Kein Ende der Luftangriffe
Moskau selbst hat keinen völligen Verzicht auf Luftangriffe in den Schutzzonen verkündet. Es solle zwar im Grundsatz keine Einsätze geben, Ausnahmen seien im Notfall aber möglich. In den fraglichen Gebieten ist - neben den regimetreuen Kräften - unter anderem auch die Al-Kaida-nahe Extremistengruppe Tahrir al-Scham stark vertreten.
Auch für die syrische Luftwaffe gab Lawrentjew keine vollständige Garantie ab. Demnach könnten die Luftangriffe in den Schutzzonen unvermindert weitergehen - lediglich die Kampfjets der von den USA geführten Anti-IS-Allianz blieben aus der Region ausgesperrt.
Wie Moskau etwaige Verstöße ahnden oder verhindern will, sagte Lawrentjew nicht. Die russischen Streitkräfte verfügen in Syrien über starke Systeme zur Luftabwehr und dürften Flugbewegungen in der Region elektronisch überwachen. Wie die Anti-IS-Allianz mit der neuen Lage umgeht, ist noch unklar. Reaktionen aus Washington lagen zunächst nicht vor. | {
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“Los más angustiante es que lo que se hace en educación en el 2018 se llora en el 2040”. Así comenzó la entrevista a la rectora del Lengüitas, Cecilia Pfister, quien le pone el cuerpo, al igual que otras maestras, alumnos y madres y padres, a la defensa de los institutos de formación docente que quiere cerrar el gobierno porteño para abrir una universidad.
Pfister dice además que le resulta incompresible el ensañamiento que tiene este gobierno con los docentes y asegura que los institutos pueden convivir con la Universidad.
Con 37 años de experiencia docente, Pfister insiste en que una cosa no invalida la otra y que pueden coexistir la universidad y los institutos. Y aclara que la comunidad educativa en general acompaña la apertura de nuevos espacios de formación siempre y cuando no implique el cierre de otros.
“Por lo que se viene anunciando –explica–, se supone que se van a desintegrar los 29 institutos de formación docente para dar vía libre a la creación de una única institución de carácter universitario que cancele, por esa misma desintegración, los 29 concejos directivos y los equipos de conducción que son elegidos de acuerdo a un reglamento orgánico institucional, regido por un reglamento orgánico macro. Y todo eso desaparecería. Eso quiere decir que lo que desaparece es la representatividad de todas esas instituciones en sus directivos.
–Son 29 institutos que funcionan en distintas escuelas.
–En el caso particular de los institutos que están en las escuelas normales, no vendría a ser como una instalación del instituto dentro de la escuela, sino que la escuela tiene sentido porque los otros niveles son departamentos de aplicación. ¿Aplicación de qué? De todas las prácticas y todos los contenidos teóricos que se dan en todos los institutos de formación docente.
–¿Al cerrar estos institutos las escuelas normales desaparecen?
–Las escuelas normales desaparecen, porque desaparece su unidad académica. La unidad académica es el terciario. A tal punto que los rectores, elegidos por toda la institución, son profesores del terciario. Entonces, es el terciario el que nutre de una coherencia pedagógica a todas las instituciones. Y por eso nosotros hablamos de identidades que se van a perder para siempre. Porque las “Lenguas” por ejemplo, van a perder esa esencia que los caracterizaba. Y así con cada uno de los IES que tienen departamento de aplicación.
–El Lengüitas dejaría de ser el Lengüitas.
–Exacto. Pasa a ser tres escuelas. Puede ser que conserve el nombre. Lo que a mí me parece importante es recalcar que no estamos debatiendo y discutiendo los nombres. Si terciario sí, si universidad... Porque lo que a veces dice el gobierno es que “no hay gente estudiando en los profesorados porque ¿quién quiere ir a un terciario?” Como si el terciario fuera de tercera categoría. “Lo importante es lo universitario”.
–¿Podría coexistir la universidad con los institutos?
–Absolutamente. De hecho hay universidades en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires y los institutos existen también. Y de hecho, muchos de nuestros alumnos son producto del desgranamiento universitario. Mucha gente pasa por distintas universidades, por mandatos familiares... “No vas a estudiar para ser profesor, estudiá para ser licenciado”, y después se dan cuenta que, cuando empiezan a trabajar, en suplencias en colegios privados, les gusta la docencia. Entonces, necesariamente el ámbito de formación son los institutos.
–¿Cuál es el argumento para el cierre?
–Que hay pocos docentes. Entonces se cree que esa escasez de docentes está determinada por una suerte de desaliento, pero no tienen en cuenta la parte de cómo el Estado reconoce a los profesionales de la educación, es un tema que pareciera ser algo no central. Plantean que faltan docentes por cuestiones de prestigio.
–La reunión en la Comisión de Educación de la Legislatura no fue muy alentadora para los docentes.
–Fue la primera reunión constitutiva de la Comisión de Educación y como se sabe fue una reunión interrumpida, porque según el presidente de la Comisión, (Maximiliano) Ferraro, no ameritaba dar la voz a todos los involucrados de los institutos de formación docente porque no lo establecía el protocolo de una primera sesión. Lo que llama poderosísimamente la atención es cómo se destruye todo lo que en educación queremos construir, con esos pequeños actos.
–El oficialismo cuenta con los votos, lo que significa que es altamente probable que este proyecto salga.
–Hay que ver muchos aspectos de este proyecto. Porque al ser un proyecto de dos o tres páginas, no se puede evaluar, hay cuestiones legales, hay infinitas cuestiones curriculares, hay que ver cómo se van a hacer. ¿Qué va a pasar con los planes de estudio? Porque hay distintos planes de estudio, hay distintos profesorados. ¿Cómo se van a combinar? Bueno, no se van a combinar porque de hecho se van a desintegrar. En realidad uno tozudamente apuesta como docente a convencer a los gobernantes y a la ciudadanía en general, de que esto es un gravísimo error. Pero bueno, es casi como una enunciación de deseo. No nos tenemos que olvidar que dentro de nuestras máximas autoridades hay un ingeniero químico que vino a plantearnos el tema de la Unicaba, al principio dialogando, pero luego nos retiramos porque ya era una agenda pautada y totalmente digitada. (Diego) Meiriño, el Subsecretario de Educación es ingeniero químico, y creo que tiene dos años de residencia en el país. Entonces, uno se pregunta: ¿dónde está el conocimiento? Y hay algo que para todos los docentes es básico, ¿cómo puedo poner a alguien que no sepa en frente de un aula? Nadie pensaría en poner adentro de un quirófano a alguien que no sea un cirujano. Por qué sistemáticamente en educación tenemos que lidiar con alguien que carece de conocimiento específico.
–¿Qué expectativas reales tienen para evitar el cierre de los institutos?
–La pelea hay que darla en la Legislatura pero desde la Legislatura se nos saca el micrófono, se nos apagan las luces para que nos vayamos del recinto. Además, lo más angustiante de todo esto es que en educación lo que se hace en el 2018, se llora en el 2040. La gente puede reaccionar, la comunidad entera, el contexto social más macro reacciona frente a la inmediatez, frente al corte de luz, frente al corte de calle, pero frente al corte de la formación docente, no. Con este nivel de maltrato, nuestros adolescentes probablemente quieran ser cualquier cosa menos docentes. Hay todo un discurso instalado de que no vale ser docente, por todo lo que se dice después de los docentes. Faltan, no trabajan, son vagos, no saben nada. El nivel de especificidad que tienen nuestros egresados en cuanto al contenido curricular es altísimo. Y la comunidad que nos mira desde afuera, como las universidades, muchas ya han expresado su solidaridad y apoyo porque saben cómo formamos. Ahora, cuestionar al docente porque los chicos tengan problemas de lectocomprensión, por ejemplo, es equivocar el análisis. Es como decir la gente se enferma porque los médicos están mal formados. Uno no puede pensar en una forma tan lineal. El maestro está muy devaluado socialmente, entonces debe ser seguro culpa nuestra. Sinceramente quisiera entender el porqué. ¿Por qué tanto ataque? A nivel local, a nivel provincial y a nivel nacional. Ese es un interrogante que tengo. ¿Por qué tanto ensañamiento, por qué tanto ataque sistemático? Eso no me lo puedo explicar. | {
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New Jersey has joined a growing list of states with confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus. On Wednesday, officials in the state confirmed the first presumptive positive case of COVID-19 in a 32-year-old male.
The patient, who was not identified, has been hospitalized in Bergen County since March 3, according to a news release from the State of New Jersey Department of Health. The positive case “came from a sample tested by the New Jersey Department of Health at the New Jersey Public Health Environmental Laboratories (PHEL) and is now being submitted to the CDC for confirmatory testing,” said officials, who are now tracking the man’s close contacts to identify anyone who may have been exposed.
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“My administration is working aggressively to keep residents safe and contain the spread of COVID-19 in New Jersey,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement. “We take this situation very seriously and have been preparing for this for weeks. I urge residents to remain calm and use resources from the New Jersey Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control to prepare and prevent the spread of infection.”
It was not immediately clear how the man contracted the virus.
CALIFORNIA OFFICIAL BRIEFING ON CORONAVIRUS LICKS HER FINGERS MOMENTS AFTER WARNING NOT TO TOUCH YOUR FACE
The news comes as neighboring New York has reported more coronavirus cases in recent days, with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio reporting two additional cases of the virus early Thursday. The new cases — both New York City residents, a man in his 40s and a woman in her 80s — are currently in the intensive care unit and have no connection to any of the other reported cases or travel history to areas currently experiencing a COVID-19 outbreak.
The two new cases came just one day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the state has seen 11 cases of coronavirus, the majority of which have been linked to a Westchester County man who has underlying respiratory issues but is said to be improving.
The man, who works as an attorney in midtown Manhattan, visited a Bronxville hospital before being transferred to New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. His wife, two children and a neighbor who drove him to the hospital all eventually tested positive for the illness, as did several other members of a family who had contact with him.
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The state's first case involves a 39-year-old health care worker who lives in Manhattan and had traveled to Iran. She has been recovering at her home and did not need hospitalization. Her husband, who was also experiencing possible symptoms, tested negative.
Fox News' Alexandria Hein contributed to this report. | {
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A 20-year-old man threatening to harm himself is the centre of a police standoff at a bungalow at 124 Avenue O South.
Members of Saskatoon police's Tactical Support Unit on scene of a standoff on Avenue O South. (Dan Zakreski/CBC) Police said the man called 9-1-1 just before 4 a.m. CST. He said that he was armed and threatened to hurt himself.
Multiple Saskatoon police patrol cars, along with the Tactical Support Unit cordoned off the entire block around Avenue O South. They made phone contact with the man and managed to get their robot inside the house.
A member of the Saskatoon police's Tactical Support Unit outside a barricaded house on Avenue O South. (Dan Zakreski/CBC) Just after 6 a.m. CST a woman came out the front door of the house with her arms raised. Officers whisked her away from the scene.
Police spokesperson Kelsie Fraser said the shots were confined to the inside of the home and were not directed at officers.
Fraser did not know whether the man was making any demands.
Traffic has been restricted and the public is being asked to stay away.
A one block radius has been cordoned off with police tape.
More to come. | {
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accounts linked to the man arrested for allegedly sending mail bombs to an ever-growing list of Trump critics previously threatened a number of celebrities and politicians on Twitter. In at least one case, the social media company seems to have refused to take steps against such a threat.
A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on Friday, referring to the issue as “an ongoing law enforcement investigation.” The company suspended two accounts associated with the suspect Friday afternoon, and on Friday night tweeted that it was “deeply sorry” for not having acted earlier.
Authorities identified the suspect of the mail bombing campaign as Cesar Altieri Sayoc, a Florida resident. Soon after the arrest, Twitter users began to unearth two accounts featuring selfies of the suspect, including a video that was likely taken at a Trump rally.
Sayoc apparently used these accounts to directly threaten a number of actors and politicians, including Jim Carrey, Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, George Soros, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and others.
Screenshot: Twitter
A number of those threats included screen grabs from news stories about murders, plane crashes, and other violent incidents, while others featured gory imagery of decapitated animals. “Not option no way out silence no shots, no traces like never existed,” the suspect wrote in a tweet directed at Warren. Other tweets ended with the line “Hug your loved ones real close every time you leave your home.”
Fox News contributor Rochelle Ritchie said Friday that she reported such a tweet by the suspect earlier this month — only to be told by Twitter that “there was no violation of the Twitter Rules against abusive behavior.”
Hey @Twitter remember when I reported the guy who was making threats towards me after my appearance on @FoxNews and you guys sent back a bs response about how you didn’t find it that serious. Well guess what it’s the guy who has been sending #bombs to high profile politicians!!!! pic.twitter.com/xBY8FMbqnq — R O C H E L L E (@RochelleRitchie) October 26, 2018
Twitter responded to this late Friday evening, tweeting that it made a mistake when it rejected the report. “The tweet clearly violated our rules and should have been removed,” the company said in a tweet. “We are deeply sorry for that error.”
In a separate incident, the suspect apparently posted what appeared to be the home address of George Soros on Twitter, which also represents a clear violation of the company’s rules.
“We want Twitter to be a place where people feel safe, and we know we have lot of work to do,” the company concluded Friday night.
Update: This post was updated multiple times throughout the day following the suspension of Sayoc’s Twitter accounts as well as a statement made by the company late Friday. | {
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Over the past year, the lack of universal pre-kindergarten for American four-year-olds has become a national issue. In 2013, President Obama proposed to fund an ambitious new nationwide pre-kindergarten program through a new cigarette tax. That plan failed to gain support, but Bill de Blasio gave new urgency to the issue when he swept into the New York mayor’s office promising universal pre-K for all city children—which will begin in the fall. Even as these efforts are being made, however, new research is making it increasingly clear that educational disparities start much earlier.
The value of universal access to early education has long been recognized: it improves the life chances of disadvantaged children and is crucial to keeping a level playing field for all. The United States has fallen well short of this goal. In most of Europe there is universal, good-quality preschool for three- and four-year-olds. In America, recent data show that fewer than half of all three- and four-year olds are enrolled in some form of preschool. Head Start, the main federal program, provides preschool funding for only about two fifths of poor children in this group.
Moreover, America has the second highest child poverty rate out of the thirty-five nations measured by the United Nation Children’s Fund (only Romania is worse). Twenty-three percent of American kids are poor by international standards, compared to 10 percent in the UK and 7 or 8 percent in the Nordic countries. According to studies on the US population, the poorest children are those five and under—indeed, they are the poorest demographic group in the nation. Many of these kids live in deep poverty, with family income less than half of the poverty line. Poverty rates for black and Latino children are especially high.
Scholars have long documented that children who grow up poor face greater obstacles to social development and good health, obstacles that often remain with them the rest of their lives. They are more likely to have chronic diseases like asthma or attention deficit disorder, few of them graduate from high school, their wages are lower, and they often end up on welfare. Poor teenage women have more unwanted births.
But neurological evidence from recent years strongly suggests that the causes of these poor outcomes are neither solely cultural nor a function of a weak gene pool, as commentators like Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, once claimed. As Dr. David Keller made clear at a recent conference on child poverty in Washington, D.C. called “Inequality Begins at Birth” (primarily sponsored by the think tank I direct, The Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative at the Century Foundation), there is new biological evidence that a high-stress environment for very young children does not simply affect cultural and psychological conditions that predispose the poor to failure; it can also affect the architecture of the brain, changing the actual neurological functioning and quantity of brain matter.
In other words, pre-K is not enough. What is concerning, moreover, is that these findings have been known for some time but are not getting adequate attention. In fact, the original documentation was published back in 2000 in a vanguard book edited by Jack P. Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development, and corroborating studies have multiplied since then.
Indeed, two studies completed in 2013 relate neural deterioration directly to poverty. A group of researchers from six universities measured the brain activity of adults who had been poor at age nine and found that the areas that control emotions were physically underdeveloped. A Washington University study found that poor children who are nurtured adequately, thus avoiding constant stress, usually have normally developed brain tissue, while those with less nurturing have less white and grey matter and smaller control centers, such as the hippocampus.
What’s been discovered is that human beings have a chemical reaction to stress that at first protects them from damage. But the defense is limited. Should a young child, whose brain is still forming, be bombarded by constant stress—from violence at home, lack of food, parental drug abuse, and, not least, chronic lack of attention or nurturing—the overloaded mechanism fails and the brain is adversely affected.
Dr. Shonkoff, who now runs the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, has produced numerous articles with colleagues describing the result of studies on animals and, increasingly, on children. Under stress, the body produces two hormones that are protective, adrenaline and cortisol. But when stress becomes excessive—what the field now describes as “toxic stress”—the excessive hormonal activity damages neural connections, undermines immune responses, and changes the parts of the brain that directly affect memory, learning, and emotional control.
These studies generally concur that persistent neglect and inadequate nurturing are primary causes of brain deterioration. Evidence based on a wide variety of studies of children, including children in foster care around the world, clearly shows, usually with the use of MRIs, the detrimental consequences for neural connections and brain size of seriously inadequate nurturing.
Sociological research, in turn, shows how common child neglect is among the poor. Poor parents are fraught with anxieties about providing adequate food and transportation, and often the safety of their communities and the stability of their families. Some may simply be irresponsible, or use drugs, but numerous ethnographies of the poor, by the Children’s Defense Fund, independent scholars, and others, show that these parents, including single mothers, care about their children as much as parents of greater means. The issue is rather that they often can’t get jobs that allow time for them to spend with their children and lack the resources, time, or freedom from anxieties to cope. Studies also show that the quality of prenatal care can affect early childhood development and that pregnant women on drugs or in depression can also affect the newborn child’s neurological growth.
What is most fascinating about the recent discoveries is that they split the difference between those who put the onus on the gene pool, like disciples of Murray, and those who put it on culture. Genes do in fact matter, it turns out, but the parental and cultural environment, researchers find, can improve neural capacities or prevent deterioration. Dr. Keller, an MD and researcher, is president of the Academic Pediatric Association. As he puts it, “the new research is not pure Darwin, there is a bit of Lamarck here.”
Medical and science professionals now virtually all agree that the earlier a positive intervention is made in a child’s life—including home visitations by professionals, parent counseling, treatment for substance abuse, and relatively new programs, such as reading to toddlers even before they have language skills—the better. Pediatricians, including the giant American Academy of Pediatrics, are developing plans to use pediatric visits as a platform for more extensive intervention when undue stress is evident. One favorite program is a free book with every shot.
What concerns me most, however, is that our political leaders and legislators have until now largely overlooked the connection between poverty, poor educational attainment, and even neural malfunctions—and the extent to which effective poverty reduction itself can correct the problem. Economists Janet Gornick and Markus Jantii analyzed data across nations and concluded that child poverty is far lower in European nations, not because their economy produces higher wages for lower income workers, but because of more robust social programs. Most of these nations, and many in Latin America, for example, provide direct cash allowances for parents with children.
More and better paying jobs are vital to combating child poverty and the problems it leads to. A full employment economy, with good jobs, is still possible with substantial fiscal stimulus, especially including public investment in infrastructure.
But social programs are critical. Contrary to the widespread cynicism about social programs and welfare, the US knows how to reduce poverty. As Robert Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes, the federal safety net, including Medicaid, Food Stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child Tax Credit, kept 41 million people out of poverty in 2012, including 9 million children. Without government benefits, today’s poverty rate would be 29 percent. Instead, using the best measures of poverty, which include government transfers and tax credits, the rate has dropped from about 26 percent in the late 1960s to 16 percent today. In other words, the War on Poverty begun in the 1960s worked.
But amid growing inequality between the very rich and the rest of society and decreasing social mobility at all levels, the challenge for low-income Americans is great. Our current general poverty rates—especially among young children—are still dangerously high. Particularly disturbing, child poverty rates, after rising during the recession, have not fallen in the recent economic recovery.
I’d begin a new war on child poverty by developing a federal system of cash allowance to poor families with children, as so much of the world now does. Now, aid is mostly limited to purchases of food or dependent on getting a job, which for many in this group these days is especially hard. But in a political environment in which Congress seeks even to cut back food stamps, persuading our legislators of the moral and economic good sense of direct cash outlays will take a great deal of work.
The research is now undeniable. Inequality in America begins at birth, or, for those born to women who are ill during pregnancy or do not have adequate prenatal care, even before. Through no fault of their own, up to one quarter of American children start off well behind, and another quarter live in families that earn only twice the poverty line—about $48,000 a year for a family of four. Armed with the unambiguous findings of twenty-first-century neuroscience, we can no longer just tell children raised poor to study harder and find jobs as they grow up. A nation that needs all its citizens to be productive workers, and that promises a fair and dignified life to all, regardless of race or color, must now turn its attention to its enormous pool of poor children. | {
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DID WE JUST CLOSE A DEAL WITH OTB?!
VIEW TSN ARTICLE 3ICE is a New Action Packed 3 on 3 Professional Hockey League to begin playing in 2021 | {
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First World Problems
forgot to turn on porch light
now i have to eat all this candy | {
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Liam Gallagher has said he believes his brother Noel, is having a “mid-life crisis.”
Speaking to Nihal Arthanayake on BBC Radio 5 Live, the former Oasis frontman also said that despite offering his brother a number of “olive branches,” that their feud remains.
“I think he [Noel] is having a mid -life crisis. It’s down to him and it’s down to the people around him – there’s only so many olive branches you can give someone without going, ‘I don’t think he really cares anymore’, but that’s life, we’ll see how it ends up,” Liam said.
He continued: “I was saying the other day if, God forbid, something happens to my mam and we haven’t made up by then… then there will be war. Because there have been so many opportunities on his behalf.
'I like giving back to the people and letting them know where I'm at.' Here are some of the best bits from @TherealNihal interview with @liamgallagher A thread: pic.twitter.com/PAG7WSluUr — BBC Radio 5 Live (@bbc5live) September 16, 2019
“It’s not about the band getting back together, I’m not arsed about that. It’s about going ‘look, let’s go for a beer let’s have a chat of whatever.’ Obviously I say shit in the press and he says stuff, and his missus says something and I say something and it’s all childish, and we should all grow up… but at the end of the day basically it’s down to him, innit.”
Asked whether his recent single ‘One of Us’ is an olive branch to his estranged brother, Liam said: “Yeah course man, but that’s the last one, there’ll be no more. There’s lots of things on the album that you could put towards him cos he’s a big part of my life. Me and him was in this band and it meant a lot, like it should do.”
He added: “Being in a band man, having a crack with him. Having a banter just having a laugh, just all that stuff, that’s life isn’t it?”
Liam also offered Noel a further olive branch over the weekend when he revealed that he will invite his brother to his forthcoming wedding.
Last week, Liam spoke out about his ongoing feud with Noel, saying that he’s convinced his brother no longer “likes” him.
Liam is set to release his new album ‘Why Me? Why Not’ on September 20, while Noel’s next EP ‘This Is The Place’ follows on September 27. | {
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Arun Jaitley has strongly defended the government's new order to monitor data in computers.
Highlights Order allowing 10 agencies to snoop on any computer triggered row
Arun Jaitley defends it after arrests of 10 ISIS-inspired terrorists
Investigators said they were plotting attacks including in Delhi
Senior minister Arun Jaitley today defended a recent government order on monitoring all computers as he congratulated the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for the arrest yesterday of 10 members of an ISIS-inspired group allegedly planning a terror attack.
"Well done NIA for cracking the dangerous terrorist module," the Union Finance Minister said in tweets.
"Would this crackdown of the terrorist module by NIA have been possible without interception of electronic communications?"
The Congress and other opposition parties have attacked the government's order empowering 10 agencies to intercept and monitor data in computers and even seize devices. "It's only going to prove to over 1 billion Indians what an insecure dictator you really are," tweeted Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Mr Jaitley said the order was under a 2009 rule and the opposition was "making a mountain where even a molehill doesn't exist".
The ISIS-inspired terror module was planning major attacks on VIPs and at public places in north India, especially Delhi.
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram commented, "If anybody is going to monitor the computer, including your computer, that is the Orwellian state. George Orwell is around the corner. It is condemnable".
Today, the minister retorted in his tweet: "Were the maximum intercepts done during the UPA Government? Surely George Orwell was not born in May, 2014."
Mr Jaitley said national security and sovereignty are "paramount" and added: "Life and personal liberty will survive only in a strong democratic nation - not in a terrorist dominated State."
On Wednesday, the NIA said it had caught a group led by a cleric operating in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, which was planning suicide attacks on the country's vital installations and VIPs. It had planned to strike at the Delhi police headquarters and the local office of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on Republic Day, said sources. Ten people were arrested.
Mr Jaitley had put out a strong defence of what was dubbed by many as the government's "big brother" order last week. Earlier, only the home ministry could scan calls and emails of people. Now the same power has been assigned to the NIA, Intelligence Bureau, Narcotics Control Bureau, Enforcement Directorate, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, CBI and the Delhi Police Commissioner. | {
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New York Times and Washington Post knew about secret drone base in Saudi Arabia but agreed not to disclose it to the public
US news organisations are facing accusations of complicity after it emerged that they bowed to pressure from the Obama administration not to disclose the existence of a secret drone base in Saudi Arabia despite knowing about it for a year.
Amid renewed scrutiny over the Obama administration's secrecy over its targeted killing programme, media analysts and national security experts said the revelation that some newspapers had co-operated over the drone base had reopened the debate over the balance between freedom of information and national security.
On Tuesday, following Monday's disclosure by NBC of a leaked Justice Department white paper on the case for its controversial targeted killing programme, the Washington Post revealed it had previously refrained from publishing the base's location at the behest of the Obama administration over national security concerns.
The New York Times followed with its own story on the drone programme on Wednesday, and an op-ed explaining why it felt the time to publish was now.
One expert described the initial decision not to publish the base's location as "shameful and craven".
Dr Jack Lule, a professor of journalism and communication at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, said that the national security implications did not merit holding on to the story.
"The decision not to publish is a shameful one. The national security standard has to be very high, perhaps imminent danger," he said. "The fact that we are even having a conversation about whether it was a national security issue should have sent alarm bells off to the editors. I think the real reason was that the administration did not want to embarrass the Saudis – and for the US news media to be complicit in that is craven."
The Obama administration has resisted any effort to open up its targeted killing programme to public scrutiny. The White House legal advice on the assassinations program, including the killing of a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, has been withheld from the public and Congress, despite repeated requests to make it public.
The New York Times is attempting to obtain this memo though the courts, and Margaret Sullivan, the Times's public editor, used this argument in her piece on Wednesday, which said that the Times was right, at last, to publish details of the Saudi drone base.
However, Lule said that in not publishing the location of the base when it had the information, the newspaper had failed in its responsibility to the public.
Lule said: "We have two partners' participation in the secrecy of the drone programme: the government and the news media. If we are looking to open it up to scrutiny, where do we go?"
"It happened at the top ranks of the media, too. We look to digital media, but they do not have the contacts and the resources to look at this. They should have been leading the pack in calling for less secrecy. For them to give up that post is terrible."
Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, said the Washington Post had a long history of seeking input from government on stories which they felt may have security implications. She cited a column the Post's former editor Ben Bradlee, written in the 1990s about this issue, which generated a lot of criticism.
"The argument was: what is wrong with going to the government to find out the possible impact so that we can make an informed decision? That is the argument they have made in the past."
Kirtley said her own view as a lawyer would be: "The default position is to publish."
Part of the problem, she said, was that the term "national security" could be used as a cover for embarrassing revelations, or information the government does not want in the public domain.
"How to judge national security is the real conundrum. News organisations, as a rule, think about the consequences of their stories. The problem with dealing with national security is that it is so amorphous. Journalists are trained to be sceptical of these types of assertions. The repercussions are not always obvious, compared to, for instance, movement of ground troops in a war zone.
"The comments on the Washington Post story reflect that dichotomy."
Kirtley said that in such cases it is vital for a news organisation to explain to its readers why the decision was made.
"To public perception, it begins to appear that those decisions were made not for national security reasons but to provide cover for the administration. That is the tightrope that news organisations walk in these situations.
"The whole brouhaha has become so complex over what the implications are for John Brennan, and whether the Post has done this for political reasons. That is why it's is so important to explain to their readers why a decision was made."
While the publication of the white paper itself has brought renewed scrutiny to the Obama administration's insistence on secrecy, Stephen Vladeck, a professor of law at American University who specialises in national security issues, said there was an irony.
"We have a Freedom of Information Act. And, unlike Britain, we have no Official Secrets Act. But in the last decade we see less and less release of national security information.
"The aftermath of 9/11 has provided a very powerful counter-argument against freedom of information. My suspicion is that, out of western democracies, the US is at the far end of the secrecy spectrum"
Vladeck said that the US press, which has been responsible for some of the most important national security stories in recent years, including George W Bush's wire-tapping, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and the existence of the CIA "black site" secret interrogation programme, had shown it could be complicit with the administrations secrecy and pushing against secrecy.
"Every institution in this story has a responsibility. Our courts have been increasingly deferential to the government in FOIA actions – for instance, in the OIC memo about Awlaki."
Vladeck said that the issue would generate debate but added: "Whether it will generate anything more than debate is up to Congress." | {
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Researchers have found 234 Android applications that are constantly listening for ultrasonic beacons in the background, allowing companies to track users’ current location or their habits – without the users’ knowledge.
They also found four stores in two European cities that use the technology for user location tracking, but still no use of ultrasonic beacons on TV channels and Top 500 Alexa websites.
What is ultrasonic tracking, and how widespread is it?
Ultrasonic audio beacons can be embedded into television or web advertisements, and picked up by mobile apps that contain a receiver.
The researchers analyzed millions of Android applications submitted to the VirusTotal service, and found only a few that used the Shopkick and Lisnr ultrasonic audio technology. On the other hand, there were many more that use the SilverPush SDK, which can allow developers to track users across multiple devices.
Previous research, dating back to April 2015, revealed that SilverPush’s software was used by 6-7 apps, allowing the company to monitor 18 million smartphones, but that number is constantly growing.
“The applications reach a high coverage among people and are not only downloaded a few hundred times. Even if the audio beacons are not embedded in actual TV commercials, our findings indicate that SilverPush has launched its deployment on the receiver side,” the researchers noted.
This might become a serious privacy threat in the near future, allowing media, location, and cross-device tracking, as well as website user deanonymization (e.g. a malicious web service can disclose the relation between a Bitcoin address and a user’s real-world identity, or reveal the identity of users who browse the Internet through anonymity networks such as Tor).
“The case of SilverPush emphasizes that the step between spying and legitimately tracking is rather small,” the researchers noted.
“SilverPush and Lisnr share essential similarities in their communication protocol and signal processing. While the user is aware about Lisnr’s location tracking, SilverPush does not reveal the application names with the tracking functionality.”
How can users protect themselves?
With the deployment of ultrasonic tracking increasing in the wild, and still no indication that regulators will push for effective protections, it will be down to the users to protect themselves from this new encroachment on their privacy.
It’s actually easy: both Android and iOS users can make it so that an app isn’t allowed to use the device’s microphone.
While that permission is necessary for some apps to work as intended (e.g. videoconferencing or VoIP apps), there are plenty of apps out there that should not even ask for it – and yet they do.
The researchers have noted a couple of countermeasures that could be introduced in the Android platform to prevent surreptitious tracking via ultrasonic beacons: detection (and flagging) of implementations, and improved notification.
“A more fine-grained control of the audio recording is likely the best strategy for limiting the impact of ultrasonic side channels. A combination of user notifications and a status in the pull down menu can inform the user when a recording takes place and lets her detect unwanted activities,” they explained. | {
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This season Last Word on Sports will be keeping you up to date on the Arsenal players out on loan, as they continue to develop their skills and prove they are ready to compete for a place in the Arsenal side. There are currently twelve players out on loan from Arsenal.
The players already away on loan are:
Wojciech Szczesny (GK), on loan to AS Roma in Serie A
Carl Jenkinson (RB), on loan to West Ham United in the Premier League
Yaya Sanogo (ST), on loan to Ajax in the Eredivisie
Serge Gnabry (MID), on loan to West Bromwich Albion in the Premier League
Ainsley Maitland-Niles (MID), on loan to Ipswich Town in the Championship
Isaac Hayden (CB/MID), on loan to Hull City in the Championship
Chuba Akpom (ST), on loan to Hull City in the Championship
Daniel Crowley (MID), on loan to Barnsley in League One
Jon Toral (MID), on loan to Birmingham City in the Championship
Emiliano Martinez (GK), on loan to Wolves in the Championship
Wellington Silva (MID), on loan to Bolton in the Championship
Gedion Zelalem (MID), on loan to Rangers in the Scottish Championship
Clean Sheet for Emiliano Martinez Highlights Weekend of Loan Action
Wojciech Szczesny missed Roma’s draw 2-2 with Sassuolo through injury. Szczesny dislocated his finger in a collision with Barcelona’s Luis Suarez in Roma’s 1-1 draw with last year’s champions. The Arsenal GK had to be replaced in the match and is set to miss up to six weeks.
Carl Jenkinson started and played 85 minutes as West Ham continued their giant killing ways, defeating Manchester City 2-1 at the Etihad. Jenkinson was solid defensively, making two interceptions, two blocks, and 10 clearances while committing zero fouls in the win.
Yaya Sanogo once again failed to make an appearance for Ajax as they won 2-0 over Exelsior.
Serge Gnabry made the gameday 18 but did not get on the pitch as West Brom beat Aston Villa.
Ainsley Maitland-Niles played 80 minutes for Ipswich as they drew 1-1 with Birmingham City. The midfielder attempted two shots and created two chances for teammates, but completed only 63 percent of his passes. For Birmingham City, Jon Toral was an unused substitute.
Isaac Hayden was an unused substitute for Hull City as they drew 1-1 with QPR. Chuba Akpom came on in the 65th minute but was unable to break the tie.
Daniel Crowley did not feature as Barsnely drew 1-1 at Blackpool.
Wolves’ 0-0 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion saw a clean sheet for Emiliano Martinez, who saved the draw. Martinez saved Tomer Hemed’s penalty attempt in the 23rd minute and also managed to keep out the follow-up attempt from the rebound. Wolves played most of the second half with 10 men, but Martinez’s eight saves preserved the point. It was Martinez’ first clean sheet of the season in his fourth league appearance. Wolves have no wins, two losses, and two draws in Martinez’ four starts. So far, Wolves boss Kenny Jackett has seemed unsure on who his number one keeper is, using both Martinez and veteran Carl Ikeme. Last week, Jackett seemed to suggest he favors Martinez, saying:
There’s no clause that he has to play. I believe in the player. He’s had a shaky game or two, on Saturday we saw what he’s capable of. I’ve got a lot of confidence in Emi Martinez, I think he’s going to have a top season.”
Wellington Silva played 63 minutes as Bolton lost 4-1 to Huddersfield Town. There was not much positive for Bolton on the day, and Wellington didn’t do anything to stand out above his teammates.
Gedion Zelalem played the full 90 as Rangers continued their perfect league start to the season with a 2-1 win over Dumbarton. Zelalem nearly opened the scoring just seconds after kick-off as Spurs loanee Dominic Ball played a ball over the top that that the keeper was barely first to.
Photo by David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images | {
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Why you should watch KADO: The Right Answer (Seikaisuru Kado)
@PurposeDevoid (Matthew)
©TOEI ANIMATION,KINOSHITA GROUP,TOEI
My absolute favourite show this season is "KADO: The Right Answer (Seikaisuru Kado)" and I'd like to try convince you to watch it too! 'Tis the sleeper of the season, with top comments of the most recent reddit thread saying:
"Why is this shit so underwatched?! It's amazing!"
"If only every show I watch could keep me this riveted all the way through. Shows like this take effort to write. You don't have to be an anime fan to enjoy this show. Any fan of scifi would eat this stuff up. "
"holy fuck, this is anime to show to counter old argument "anime is for kid" shit. "
This show is so captivating! I can't get over it. It's creative and smart and thoughtful, and it's somehow pretty gorgeous. The CGI is actually impressive.
(The series has just recently aired its third episode, fourth if you include the pre-air zeroth episode.)
If this has already convinced you, then my job here is done! Going into the show blind may well be the best option (scroll to the bottom to see the section on how to watch), as a big part of the appeal is the intrigue each episode delivers. However, I can still hear you say "but Matthew, what is 'KADO: The Right Answer' about?".' Continue reading, and you will find the right answer...
(While attempts have been made to keep this article relatively spoiler free, the cost of describing any show inevitably comes with some minor spoilers. You have been warned!)
The show - a synopsis
"KADO: The Right Answer" is an engrossing, diplomatic/political sci-fi, set in real world modern day Japan. When a strange giant dynamically varying fractal cube appears and lands at Haneda airport it swallows up a taxiing passenger plane and its 252 passengers, whom Kojiro Shindo is among. Renowned in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his skill as a negotiator, he is one of the first to meet the mysterious being called Yaha-kui zaShunina that appears from the 2 kilometre sided cube, who wishes to make contact with humanity. While the otherworldly Yaha-kui zaShunina's motives continue to be ambiguous, he requests Shindo's help as a mediator for the ensuing talks with the world.
Unsubbed trailer for the series
Yaha-kui zaShunina (left) and Kojiro Shindo (right)
Bullet point advantages
Not a high school magical harem battle show
Every character a working adult, working their job as part of KADO's arrival
Super ~~intriguing~~
Grounded in realism, the supernatural parts of the setting is convincingly approached in a realistic way by the cast, i.e. scientifically and sensibly. Sci-fi done right (see also Brandon Sanderson's Laws of Magic for related concepts).
Has a Professor of Physics, and a genki (energetic) overactive quick-talking female Theoretical Physicist who's just loving all the new physics going on!
Theoretical Physicist, Shinawa Kanata,
While only recently introduced, has a young but experienced female negotiator, Saraka Tsukai, judged as an equal match to Koujirou and appointed to be his "opponent" in negotiations. Not just a token female character, but one with known experience as an international negotiator representing humanity on the table.
Saraka Tsukai and Kojiro Shindo
My Thoughts - the CGI
First let's address the elephant in the room: the show is mostly CGI. Some people are a bit turned off by this, with its visual style slightly similar to Ajin and Knights of Sidonia (from Polygon studios). In the case of the recent Berserk anime, the choice of CGI (and its poor quality) for the adaptation has assisted in dragging CGI's name in the mud, with a CLANG.
I don't think I can easily persuade someone who dislikes CGI to suddenly like it, but I would argue that KADO: The Right Answer not only has high quality CGI for its character animation and interactions, but also makes impressive use of its use for the visualisation of the cube, KADO, and the other ethereal elements present.
Promotional art of the the eponymous cube of the show, KADO
If the show was primarily done with regular 2D animation, the CGI objects and effects that Yaha-kui brings about would appear heavily out of place due to their incongruent nature. The choice of CGI for the entire show allows for a different range of animation effects that would otherwise not be possible.
No better entity in the show exists to illustrate this better than the cube KADO, which is featured in the show's Episode 0 ending theme (which you can see below). Apparently created using a combination of Houdini, Maya and Unity, the show realises the cube KADO and other effects in an entirely novel way for anime.
Eien no Kotae (An Eternal Answer/永遠のこたえ) by HARUCA
Most shows that solely use CGI have relatively weak character animation, but correspondingly have impressive scenes of otherwise impossible-to-animate action, such as the fantastic mech fights of Knights of Sidonia or the dynamic gun combat featured in Ajin. I believe that KADO will entirely forgo this advantage of CGI; it is not a show about cool looking action. Rather, it uses its effects to impart a kind of magic and in parts majesty to the otherworldly actions that occur, conveying in my mind the idea of a higher-order existence.
The Themes
A negotiation. Getting what's in your interest is the goal of negotiations. But defeating your opponent and temporarily gaining what you want will always come back to bite you in the long term. What's best for you is giving both parties something in their interest. There isn't just one answer, for one thing. We aren't God. We'll never know what was right – and what was the right answer – for our whole lives. But, even if we don't know, we just have to keep looking.
Kojiro Shindo, from the first part of Episode 1
It's may be a little early to say, but the show to me asks the question: "God is present, and he has a test. He asks you to think, and to keep thinking, to solve this test. For even in the presence of miracles, it is only though both action and thought, and to keep thinking, that you are truly human, worth being saved". It clearly looks into the idea of communication, the idea of reaching common ground with those you do not fully understand, bridging the gap to reach compromises. It looks at the value of critical thought, its place in decision making, and relates it to trust. And maybe, it is going on to explore the components that make up society as a whole: looking into altruism and greed, the motives of the individual and the collective, how we each affect each other. Only in continuing to think can things ever be improved.
The Indescribable
There are various components of the show I would love to comment more on, but am not really knowledgeable enough to really go into, such as the visual direction, the sound direction, information on the staff involved, voice actors, and so on. I̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶u̶r̶c̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶t̶e̶r̶i̶a̶l̶,̶ ̶a̶̶̶ ̶̶̶M̶̶̶a̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶a̶̶̶ ̶̶̶o̶̶̶f̶̶̶ ̶̶̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶s̶̶̶a̶̶̶m̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶n̶̶̶a̶̶̶m̶̶̶e̶̶̶ I've been told by reddit user /u/manticorpse that the anime is an original, and the manga is a kind of co-release. Guess I do know a bit more now :) !
I also would like to talk a bit about the story and the script's qualities that lead to the convincing Sci-fi real-world setting, one of the strongest elements of the show for me, but doing so would not only approach spoiler territory a little, but like dissecting a joke would probably weaken or ruin the experience when watched later. I will say though that the science based approach to the supernatural effects of KADO is great to see, though my delight in their appreciation towards this may come from my education in physics :3
One more reason
You want one more reason to watch the show ? I'm incredibly addicted to the opening theme, it's absolutely breathtaking to me. See here for a full length off-vocal version of the song, or the youtube embed below for the OP-length vocal version. However due to my obsession with the song, I have made (with help from lyrical nonsense) a subbed version of the OP length (regular) vocal version, which can be watched -->HERE<--.
KADO: The Right Answer OP - Tabiuta (旅詩) by Saraka Tsukai (徭 沙羅花) starring M・A・O (Mao Ichimichi)
Where to watch
KADO: The Right Answer (Seikaisuru Kado) is available (legally) on Crunchyroll for users worldwide excluding Asia: CLICK HERE. .... Or don't, I guess, up to you ... :'(
Note that there is an Episode 0 also available, aka "Seikaisuru Kado: Ninovo", which is primarily 2D animation and acts as a prequel character introduction to the main series for Kojiro Shindo and colleague Hanamori Shun (who is also present on the plane). While not 100% necessary watching, it do recommend it since the impression and maturity of the overall series is shown effectively even before KADO appears.
Acknowledgements
Thank you for reading this, I hope you enjoyed it!
Quick thanks to assdare, teryhanazawa, and <sigh> yaoisex tumblr users for the source of the gifs, to lyrical nonsense for their translation of Tabiuta (旅詩), and to this fantastic article at manga.tokyo from which I unapologetically obtained some excellent screencaps. The article even has some translated comments from the voice actors of the main characters, super interesting, do check it out!
And of course, to all of those who have worked to create this show, and those who bring it to us, my greatest thanks.
Contact:
Twitter: @PurposeDevoid | {
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