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It's emerged this evening that households claiming the water conservation grant will have to go through a second registration process later this year.
This will be on top of households being required to register with Irish Water.
The Government had said that those wishing to get the €100 grant would have to register with Irish water before June 30.
That still applies but it is now been confirmed that to get the grant a second registration with the Department of Social Protection will also be required in August, before payment begins in September.
A dedicated website and call centre will be established by the Department to assist people in matching their unique Irish Water identification number with their claim.
The cost of this new registration is estimated at two-three per cent of the €130m budget set aside for the grant. | {
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: and 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists Karl Shaw Crown , Feb 13, 2007 - Reference - 304 pages 4 Reviews All in perfectly bad taste
Prepare to be amazed, appalled, disgusted, and hugely entertained by this compendium of indelicate oddities. Nothing is too inane, too insane, too bizarre, or too distasteful for this incredible, seemingly impossible, but absolutely true collection of facts from across the ages and around the world.
Did you know…
…that Pope Benedict XII was such a hardened boozer that he inspired the expression “drunk as a pope”? (From “10 Historic Drunks”)
…that as a special honeymoon treat, Prince Charles read Princess Diana passages from the works of Carl Jung and Laurens van der Post? (From “History’s 10 Least Romantic Honeymoons”)
…that the best-dressed gentlemen in medieval England exposed their genitals below a short-fitting tunic? (From “History’s 10 Greatest Fashion Mistakes”)
…that Alfred Hitchcock suffered from ovophobia—fear of eggs? (From “10 Phobias of the Famous”)
…that King Louis XIV only took three baths in his lifetime, each of them under protest?
(From “10 Great Unwashed”)
…that in 1930, Sears customers became enraged when the catalog was first printed on glossy, non-absorbent paper?
(From “12 Magical Moments in Toilet Paper History”) | {
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A long, long time ago -- way back in 2013 -- pro-choice progressives united in a new clarion call to make prescription birth control available over the counter. Now, for political reasons, they're changing their tune.
If you're one of the 10 million women in America who uses the pill, the prospect is nothing short of life-changing. Going to the doctor to refill the pill every month or even a couple times a year is annoying and time-consuming. And, according to many doctors, it's unnecessary. The pill is safe to take without a prescription.
"So why can't we have this, when the public and the medical establishment both think it's a great idea?" asked progressive journalist Amanda Marcottetwo years ago.
Indeed. Just last year, far-left women's groups Planned Parenthood and Emily's List also thought making birth control available OTC was a great idea.
And according to a Reason-Rupe poll, so do 70 percent of Americans.
Well, in an uncanny and highly unusual turn of events, lawmakers in Washington actually listened. Just this week, legislators introduced a bill that would encourage drug companies to apply to sell contraceptives without a prescription.
But if Republican Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, along with four other GOP senators, were expecting flowers from Planned Parenthood and others for their bill, the Allowing Greater Access to Safe and Effective Contraception Act, they should brace for disappointment. Suddenly, the idea doesn't sound so great, and the former supporters aren't mincing words.
Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said the bill is a "sham and an insult to women."
Karen Middleton of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado even got personal, saying, "Cory Gardner can't be trusted when it comes to Colorado women and their health care."
Why the about-face? Well, the story the libs are going with is that the bill will actually make the pill more expensive once it's no longer prescription (and therefore not covered by insurance). Which would be a fair point if it were true.
The actual text of the bill just became public late yesterday, but that hasn't prevented hyperventilating condemnation for what it was presumed to do.
An op-ed by Planned Parenthood's Jennifer Frizzell said women would be "forced to pay several hundred dollars more out of pocket each year" and "pay twice for their birth control -- first they'll pay for insurance coverage that includes birth control coverage, and then they'll pay out of pocket for it, too."
Of course, some women would rather not pay as much as $300 in monthly premiums for Obamacare when they can buy birth control a la carte from $10 to $30 a month. But more importantly, there's nothing in the Gardner-Ayotte bill that says all forms of birth control must be made available OTC. Some may remain prescription only. Furthermore, the Obama administration already mandates that Plan B, emergency contraception that is OTC, be covered by insurance, and it could require the same of birth control.
As Sen. Ayotte told me in an email:
"Those who are falsely saying our legislation would eliminate insurance coverage apparently haven't read the bill -- nothing in our bill changes current insurance coverage for contraceptives or prevents insurance companies from continuing to cover contraceptive costs."
Beneath the fear-mongering lies the more likely reason for the change of heart on the left. The bill was simply introduced by the wrong party.
If Democrats cede this issue to Republicans, they lose a major chit in their "war on women" narrative. For years, pro-choice groups have been peddling the charge that Republicans are against access to birth control. But it's utterly (and provably) false.
For one, Gardner and Ayotte are not the first Republicans to champion OTC birth control. Gov. Bobby Jindal introduced the idea in 2012. For another, last year Gallup found that a whopping 88 percent of Republicans find birth control to be morally acceptable. To put this into greater perspective, more Republicans are OK with birth control than Democrats are okay with gay or lesbian relations (71 percent) or abortion (59 percent).
But rather than do the right thing for women, progressives are putting politics before women's health. One hopes that when they actually read the bill, Planned Parenthood and others will change their tune. More likely? They'll just come up with another reason to say no to something women want, but that they alone want to take credit for. | {
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Pythonista 3.3 App Store Release Notes
• Support for dark mode on iOS 13 – you can now select separate themes for light/dark mode, and Pythonista will switch automatically between them. Switching between themes is also a bit faster now.
• New custom keyboard ("PyKeys") for running scripts in any app with text input. Have a look at the sample scripts in the Examples/Keyboard folder for some ideas of what you can do with this.
• Significantly improved support for external keyboards (more contextual shortcuts, arrow-key navigation almost everywhere…)
• The outline (list of functions) in the editor can now be filtered -- just start typing if the keyboard is already active, or drag down the list to reveal the filter text field. The filter supports fuzzy matching, and you can enter line numbers as well.
• Unified UI (and documentation) for creating script shortcuts in various places of iOS ("Shortcuts" option in the "wrench" menu).
• New URL generator for easier inter-app automation (you can also use this with the Shortcuts app, but full Shortcuts support will come later).
• Support for opening external folders using the system's file picker on iOS 13 (this was possible on iOS 12, but not easily discoverable).
• Revamped `notifications` module with custom action buttons, support for attachments, location triggers, and more – see the new "Notification Quiz.py" sample code for a demo. The module also works in the share sheet extension now.
• New "on device" option for speech recognition in the `speech` module (please note that this can be very slow though!)
• New `location.render_map_snapshot()` function to generate an image from a location (see new "Satellite Image.py" sample code).
• Console history is now persistent (you can clear it by tapping and holding the `^` button).
• Various bugfixes for iOS 13 and new screen sizes, new sample code, documentation, and more – you can find the full release notes in the in-app documentation (which also supports multiple tabs now btw).
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your patience with this release. It's not everything I'd like it to be (hello, Shortcuts app!), but there are still many new things to discover, and I hope you have a lot of fun with it! | {
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Last updated on: July 31, 2014 14:34 IST
Some analysts believe that it suits Prime Minister Narendra Modi at this stage to debunk the image of Sonia Gandhi as a woman who declined the prime ministership of the country with great personal sacrifice, just as it would suit him to portray Rahul as a coward who was afraid his mother would be killed -- claims made by former Union minister Natwar Singh in his yet-to-be-released book. Rediff.com contributor Renu Mittal reports.
Former Union minister Natwar Singh has set the cat amongst the pigeons by attacking both the Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party vice president Rahul Gandhi on the issue of why she did not accept the prime ministership of the country in 2004.
While it was widely believed that Sonia sacrificed the chair, Natwar Singh, a former close confidante of the Gandhis, writes in his upcoming autobiography that she gave up the PM’s chair because her son Rahul was against the idea and he felt that if she became the prime minister she too would be killed like his father (Rajiv Gandhi) and his grandmother (Indira Gandhi) -- both former prime ministers.
In the same breath, Natwar attacks Rahul that he is a coward who wanted to cling onto mummy and did not want her killed, so she must not be prime minister.
While Singh’s autobiography is releasing on August 7, he has revealed this in an interview to a television channel along with other details of what has been written about in the book.
Natwar Singh also mentions that in a late night meeting in which he, Dr Manmohan Singh, Suman Dubey, Priyanka and Sonia Gandhi were present, Priyanka articulated her brother Rahul’s feelings and said he is insistent that she must not be the prime minister.
Natwar Singh was known to be extremely close to Sonia Gandhi when the United Progressive Alliance I government was formed, and while Dr Manmohan Singh was made the prime minister, he was given the external affairs portfolio.
However, after the oil for food scam broke out in which Natwar Singh was cited as a beneficiary, he was asked to resign. Natwar Singh refused to quit and in the process his relations with Sonia soured when he tried to pressurise her into letting him stay. Finally Natwar Singh had an ignominious exit from the government.
Interestingly, Singh also reveals that in May this year Sonia and Priyanka visited him and asked him not to include the bit about the prime ministership. But he appears to have decided to go ahead with it.
Natwar Singh’s son Jagat is now a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Rajasthan, while he himself is no longer in the Congress party.
Natwar Singh has waited for a decade to publish his book, especially after the Congress’ poll debacle.
However, unlike former PMO media adviser Sanjay Baru, who in his book had attacked Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, Natwar at least waited till the Congress party was voted out of power.
Some analysts believe that it suits Prime Minister Narendra Modi at this stage to debunk the image of Sonia Gandhi as a woman who declined the prime ministership of the country with great personal sacrifice, just as it would suit him to portray Rahul as a coward who was afraid his mother would be killed.
Certainly, Natwar’s book portrays neither of them in a heroic light.
Meanwhile, the Congress has dismissed Natwar Singh’s claims and dubbed them as “ridiculous”. Party’s media chairman Ajay Maken said that it had become a fashion to make such claims to increase the sales of a book, adding the claims do not deserve a comment.
But the fact is that because of Natwar Singh’s past proximity with the Gandhi family, he has spoken on a number of issues including former PM Narasimha Rao, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and various contemporary events in his book which would be in the news pages in the days ahead -- leading to charges and counter-charges between the Congress and other political parties, mainly the BJP. | {
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The trouble in the government comes at a time when Finland is getting ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary of Independence.
Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila is set to resign on Tuesday as the Finns Party, one of the three partners in the ruling coalition that came to power in 2015, has elected a new chairman who is perceived as extremely right wing.
As Finland is a stranger to interim elections, Mr. Sipila, leader of the liberal Centre Party, may return to power with support from the Swedish People's Party and the Christian Democrats, which are currently in the Opposition, senior officials in Helsinki said.
Jussi Halla-aho, the new leader of the Finns Party, is a Member of the European Parliament, but wants the country to be taken out of the European Union, the officials said. His views on migrants and women are "horrendous", they added. He has been convicted of hate speech.
Right-wing populism
The nationalist party will now take the path of radical right-wing populism. But without its support, the ruling coalition will be reduced to 86 in the 200-member Eduskunta, the Finnish Parliament. With the support of the two Opposition parties, Mr. Siplia will have the support of 101 MPs, a margin of just one.
The officials said the Finnish economy had shown sign of recovery after a lost decade since the global economic crisis. The latest growth rate hovered around 1%, with an analyst predicting 3% in the coming year. But unemployment rate remained uncomfortably high at 9%.
The trouble in the government comes at a time when Finland is getting ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary of Independence. | {
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PepsiCo Inc. (NASDAQ: PEP) and Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) have been in business for over 120 years, but if they want to say in business, they'll need to enter the cannabis market.
U.S. soda sales dropped 12 years in a row from 2004 to 2016, according to Beverage Digest. Consumers are searching for healthier products, which is why the global health and wellness food market is expected to jump 14% from $707 billion in sales in 2016 to $811 billion by 2021.
Coca-Cola now offers a coconut water line, and Pepsi sells kombucha (fermented tea) to appeal to more health-conscious consumers.
It's a good start, but it's not enough.
And shareholders aren't happy with tepid returns…
In the past five years, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed 67.73%. During that same time, the PEP and KO stock prices are up just 37.93% and 16.04%, respectively.
In order to bring in more revenue, attract more investors, and create market-beating gains, each company has to enter new markets.
Follow topic Pot Stock Investing Get real-time marijuana industry news sent directly to your inbox. You're signing up for free Pot Stock Investing updates from Money Morning Profit Alerts. Just enter your email address: By submitting your email address you will receive a free subscription to Profit Alerts and occasional special offers from Money Map Press and our affiliates. You can unsubscribe at anytime and we encourage you to read more about our privacy policy.
Selling sugary sodas in an increasingly health-conscious market simply won't cut it.
That's why a cannabis beverage from Pepsi or Coke may hit the shelves sooner than you think…
CBD-Infused Drinks Are the Wave of the Future
Cannabidiol (CBD) is a compound found in the cannabis plant. It's believed to have anti-inflammatory properties and can help relieve stiffness and chronic pain.
And it's becoming popular in the health-conscious community, as athletes like UFC fighter Nate Diaz and NFL linebacker Derrick Morgan use CBD hemp oil to improve their athletic performance and overall health.
Unlike THC found in marijuana, CBD is not psychoactive, and it does not change a person's state of mind.
And Pepsi and Coke already have products that they could infuse with CBD…
Coke sells Gold Peak Tea, Honest Tea, Vitamin Water, and Zico coconut water.
Renegade Investment Expert: "It's time to double down – or even triple down – on your cannabis investments!" Read more…
But I believe Pepsi would be the first with a cannabis product because of its aggressive push into the health and wellness sector…
Pepsi sells "fun for you" products, which include Mountain Dew and Fritos. It has a line of "better for you" products, which include Pepsi Zero Sugar and Propel water.
But its "good for you" line shows how progressive Pepsi has become. This line features Kevita kombucha, Sabra hummus, and Naked Juice.
With the health benefits of CBD and with U.S. CBD consumer sales reaching $1.15 billion by 2022, it only makes sense for Pepsi to create a CBD-infused beverage line.
Now, I don't expect Pepsi or Coke to jump into the marijuana market until all cannabis use is legal under federal law.
But it's spotting trends like this now that will lead investors to the largest long-term gains.
And when I spoke with cannabis expert Danny Brody, the VP of Investor Relations of The Green Organic Dutchman Holdings Ltd. (OTCMKTS: TGODF), he was also bullish on the cannabis-infused beverage market.
"It is no secret that we view the infused-beverage vertical as a major disruptor within the cannabis sector. We believe Constellation Brands Inc. (NYSE: STZ ) and [its] large-scale investment into the industry is only the beginning. Soda sales are on the decline; beverage giants will be looking to diversify, de-risk, and enter this key market segment at an accelerated pace," Brody told me on Sept. 12.
You see, the times are a changing…
In a 2017 Gallup poll, 64% of Americans surveyed believed marijuana should be legalized.
Cannabis legalization is the will of the people.
And you can stake your claim right now in the $10 billion industry before it goes absolutely vertical…
In the election year of 2012, marijuana stocks started rare gains of as much as 3,240%.
In 2014, they started producing up to 4,606% profits.
In 2016, they began rare climbs of 6,074% and more.
How much richer could select cannabis stocks make YOU in the election year of 2018?
Take a look…
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Forty-one people died after a Russian plane made an emergency landing and burst into flames just after takeoff from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.
Videos on social media showed passengers using emergency exit slides to escape and run away from the burning Aeroflot aircraft. | {
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Right now you’ll need the Web Animations API polyfill to use the code above, though, but it’s pretty lightweight and does make life a lot easier!
If you want a more “in-production” context for FLIP check out the source for cards on the Chrome Dev Summit site.
What is it good for?
There is a window of 100ms after someone interacts with your site where you’re able to do work without them noticing.
It’s absolutely superb for times where you are responding to user input and then animating something in response. So, for example, in the case of Chrome Dev Summit, I was expanding cards that the user tapped on. Often the start and end locations and dimensions of the elements aren’t known, because – say – the site is responsive and things move around. This will help you because it’s explicitly measuring elements and giving you the correct values at runtime.
The reason you can afford to do this relatively expensive precalculation is because there is a window of 100ms after someone interacts with your site where you’re able to do work without them noticing. If you’re inside that window users will feel like the site responded instantly! It’s only when things are moving that you need to maintain 60fps.
Taking advantage of user perception.
We can use that window of time to do all that getBoundingClientRect work (or getComputedStyle if that’s your poison) in JavaScript, and from there we make sure that we’re reducing the animation down to nice-and-fast, compositor-friendly, look-ma-no-paints transform and opacity changes. (Why just those? Check out my Pixels are Expensive post.)
Animations that can be remapped to transform and opacity changes are the perfect fit.
Animations that can be remapped to transform and opacity changes are the perfect fit. If you’re already limiting to those properties in your JS or CSS animations then you’re probably good to go; this technique works best when you’re changing layout properties (like width and height, left and top) and you want to remap them to cheaper properties.
Sometimes you will need to rethink your animations to fit this model, and on many occasions I’ve separated and animated elements individually just so that I can animate them without distortion, and FLIP as much as possible. You may feel like that’s overkill, but to me it’s not, and for two reasons:
People want this. My colleague and friend Paul Kinlan recently ran a survey on what people want from a news app. The most popular answer (which was a surprise to him, at least) wasn’t offline support, sync, notifications, or anything like that. It was smooth navigation. Smooth, like no jank, no stutter, no judder. (/me mutters something about #perfmatters.) Native app devs do this. Of course this is a sliding scale and subjective, but I’ve heard many times of native developers spending days on end getting the transitions in their apps just right. Those “little touches” are a differentiator and, as we get faster loading sites through Service Worker, we’re going to be in the same boat. People will judge our sites based on how well they feel when they’re running.
Some caveats
There are a couple of things to bear in mind if you FLIP:
Don’t exceed the 100ms window. It’s important to remember that you shouldn’t exceed that window, because your app will appear non-responsive if you do. Keep an eye on it through DevTools to know if you’re busting that budget. Orchestrate your animations carefully. Imagine, if you will, that you’re running one of these animations all transformy and opacity-y and then you decide to do another, which requires a bunch of precalculation. That’s going to interrupt the animation that’s in flight, which is bad. The key here is to make sure your precalculation work is done in idle or the “response window” I talked about, and that two animations don’t stomp over each other. Content can get distorted. When you’re working in a scale and transform world some elements can get distorted. As I said above I’ve been known to restructure my markup a little to allow me to FLIP without distortion, but it can end up being quite the wrangle.
FLIP on, as it were…
I’ve come to love FLIP as a way of thinking about animations, because it’s a good match of JavaScript and CSS. Calculate in JavaScript, but let CSS handle the animations for you. You don’t have to use CSS to do the animations, though, you could just as easily use the Web Animations API or JavaScript itself, whatever’s easiest. The main point is that you’re reducing the per-frame complexity and cost (which normally means transform and opacity ) to try and give the user the best possible experience.
I have more to tell you about FLIP and a broader, unified model of performance, but that’s going to be the next blog post or so I’d say!
So, uhh, FLIP on. | {
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VENECIA - Alfonso Cuarón presentó su cinta Roma el 30 de agosto en el festival de cine de Venecia. Este filme, calificado por el director como "muy personal" está ambientado en el México de los años 70 e inspirado en la propia familia del cineasta, y en amores y desamores de criados y patrones del hogar donde creció.
"Es un filme sobre mi propia memoria", dijo el realizador tras recibir aplausos en la proyección para la prensa por su nuevo filme en concurso en Venecia.
La película fue rodada en blanco y negro y producida por Netflix .
¿De qué trata?
El cineasta toca temas como los contrastes sociales, un universo lleno de reflexiones y diferencias culturales. Esta es la primera cinta en español de Cuarón luego del éxito obtenido con Gravity, que obtuvo siete premios Oscar.
El cineasta logra capturar al espectador con la historia de su infancia y de las dos mujeres que la marcaron: Cleo, la doméstica de origen indígena que queda embarazada tras sus primeras experiencias sexuales, interpretada por Yalitza Aparicio, y la de la señora de la casa, la madre, interpretada por la actriz Marina de Tavira, a la que el marido está por dejar por otro amor.
Publicidad
Para contar un mundo íntimo y cómodo que está por transformarse, que cambiará la vida para siempre de esas dos mujeres en medio de un país azotado por los terremotos, las protestas estudiantiles y la represión, Cuarón reconstruyó fielmente, con lujo de detalles, la casa donde vivió su infancia.
Time and Space constrain us, but they also define who we are, creating inexplicable bonds with the others that flow with us at the same time and through the same places. pic.twitter.com/hGvwgo3ZKa — ROMA (@ROMACuaron) August 16, 2018
"Recuperé muebles, cuadros (...) recreé la vida real, momentos vividos hace 50 años. Formaba parte del proceso", indicó.
El cineasta llegó a recrear inclusive la masacre del jueves de Corpus, una matanza de estudiantes en junio de 1971, un drama que toca a Cleo, la cual asiste horrorizada desde la vitrina de una tienda de muebles.
"Uso el blanco y negro digital, contemporáneo. Es que es un filme sobre la memoria", indicó Cuarón en el encuentro con la prensa en donde también agradeció a Netflix por el apoyo dado.
Las actrices además verán por primera vez este jueves la película entera en su pase oficial en el Palacio del Cine veneciano.
"Para nosotros representa una oportunidad para que se valore nuestro lenguaje, nuestra identidad, nuestra cultura", reconoció Aparicio, quien en la cinta habla por momentos en mixteco.
México este año resulta uno de los grandes protagonistas del festival veneciano, con otra película en competencia el 4 de septiembre, Nuestro tiempo del director Carlos Reygadas, autor de Post Tenbras Lux, la película que le valió el premio a la mejor dirección en el Festival de Cannes de 2012.
El mexicano Alfonso Cuarón competirá con su nueva película Roma por el Premio del Público en la sección Perlas de la 66 edición del Festival Internacional de Cine de San Sebastián. | {
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The privatisation of public services has been branded a scandal by unions who say that leaked tender documents reveal that the opening-up of the prison system to competition is "heavily biased" in favour of private firms.
The Ministry of Justice has introduced competitive tendering for five jails as ministers seek to expand the role of the private sector. They claim that competition will result in more efficient services and a better deal for the taxpayer, but unions fear that it will result in widespread redundancies, poorer working conditions and reduced pensions for workers.
Prison governors warn that expanding the private sector's role in the custodial system will create a profit-maximising culture that favours incarceration and cutbacks to rehabilitation.
Internal documents seen by the Observer show that the in-house public sector teams seeking to run the first five prisons subjected to the new competition process were forced to increase the total cost of their bids by more than 21%. An earlier document, in 2009, forced an increase of only 13%.
Unions claim the substantial "add-ons" rendered the public sector bids uncompetitive compared with those put forward by their private sector rivals. The Principles Of Competition document, updated in August 2010, applies to Birmingham, Buckley Hall, Doncaster, Featherstone II and Wellingborough prisons.
The document's terms have prompted claims that Tory ministers are seeking to outsource the entire prison system to the private sector. Currently in the UK, there are 13 private prisons holding 15% of the incarcerated population.
"Prison privatisation is no longer based on efficiency, it's now ideological," said Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation union, Napo. "It's extraordinary that the public sector is forced to take into account huge additional costs. It puts public prisons at a total disadvantage. If this continues, there will be no state-run prisons in five years."
The documents will be studied closely by unions protesting against the introduction of the private sector into other public spheres, such as the NHS.
The Ministry of Justice argues the cost add on to the in-house bid creates a "level playing field" that allows the private sector to compete. But an email from unions to Michael Spurr, chief executive officer at the National Offender Management Service [Noms], which runs the UK's prisons, contests the claim. William Simpson, of the Noms trade union, told Spurr the add-ons were "eye-watering" and branded them a "scandal".
Spurr denied there was any bias in favour of the private sector. He said it was "appropriate" and "fair" that public sector bids should be compelled to increase the cost of their bids by 21% to "reflect the full cost of provision". | {
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Τη διοικητική διερεύνηση υπόθεσης θανάσιμου τραυματισμού ενός Αλβανού, μετά από πτώση του από το δεύτερο όροφο του Τμήματος Ασφάλειας Πατησίων στις 3-8-2016 διέταξε το Αρχηγείο της Ελληνικής Αστυνομίας, όπως αναφέρεται σε ανακοίνωση, με αφορμή σχετικά δημοσιεύματα σε αλβανικά ΜΜΕ.
Σύμφωνα με το υπουργείο Προστασίας του Πολίτη, από την Υποδιεύθυνση Ασφάλειας Αθηνών διενεργήθηκε προανάκριση, το υλικό της οποίας υποβλήθηκε στην Εισαγγελία Πρωτοδικών Αθηνών στις 11-08-2016, αναμενομένης της ιατροδικαστικής έκθεσης.
Παράλληλα, η Υποδιεύθυνση Ασφάλειας Αθηνών στις 4-08-2016 απέστειλε έγγραφο στην Πρεσβεία της Αλβανίας για το περιστατικό, προκειμένου να αναζητηθούν και να ενημερωθούν οι συγγενείς του θανόντος. | {
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London -- British Prime Minister Theresa May's proposal for how the United Kingdom should extract itself from the European Union appeared on Tuesday to be facing another defeat in Parliament. Lawmakers were to cast votes Tuesday night, for the second time, for or against the proposed Brexit deal that May has spent more than two years negotiating with the EU.
She won some last minute concessions from EU negotiators on Monday to try and get a majority of the House of Commons on board with her plan, but her own attorney general made it clear the changes were effectively cosmetic, and would not give the U.K. the legal power to cut loose of the EU unilaterally if negotiations drag on. It appeared to doom May's plan, as pro-Brexit lawmakers have remained adamant that any Brexit deal must not leave Britain trapped under EU rules post-breakup.
Attorney general Geoffrey Cox said the changes May won from Europe did "reduce the risk" that Britain could be stuck inside EU regulations indefinitely, but did not eliminate it.
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The so-called "meaningful vote" in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening comes less than three weeks before Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29.
Lawmakers defeated May's deal by a whopping 230 votes in January, but May hoped the changes she secured from the bloc would be enough to persuade many to change their minds. That appeared unlikely after Cox's assessment, however.
What happens after the vote
May herself has warned that another vote against her plan would dramatically increase the chances of a potentially catastrophic "no-deal" Brexit -- an exit without any agreement in place with Europe -- or a delayed Brexit, or possibly even no Brexit at all.
EU leaders have clearly warned the Brits that negotiations will not be resumed if London rejects May's deal again.
"In politics, sometimes you get a second chance. It is what you do with this second chance that counts. Because there will be no third chance," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Tuesday. "Let's be crystal clear about the choice: it is this deal or Brexit might not happen at all."
If the House of Commons rejects May's deal again, they will reconvene on Wednesday for a new vote on whether Britain should leave the EU without an agreement. Very few members of Parliament have said they'd be willing to risk a no-deal Brexit, and it's expected they would formally reject the prospect in a vote.
If they do, there will be another vote, expected on Thursday, when the lawmakers would vote on whether to ask the EU to delay the actual Brexit date.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks in Parliament in London, March 12, 2019, in this screen grab taken from video. REUTERS
May, her voice weak and raspy as she addressed Parliament ahead of the vote on Tuesday, warned that request to delay Brexit "would merely pass control to the European Union." She said Europe alone would be able to dictate the duration of any delay, and that it could "even lead to a second referendum, with all the damage that would do to our democracy."
If that happened, May said "it would be no good blaming the European Union" for the British Parliament's "failure to come together in the national interest and deliver."
May's fellow Conservative parliamentarian Bob Seely underscored Mrs. May's warning in a tweet, saying: "Today is our Hotel California moment. If we don't check out tonight, we may never leave." | {
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Introducing the Solo Senpai Interview Series
We are all in Black Shark Cult to learn, and that includes your friendly neighbourhood priests… With that in mind, I am proud to present the first instalment of a new resource offered by our Hunter Sect: the Solo Senpai interview series! We will be talking to experienced Solo PvP pilots, who have racked up hundreds or even thousands of solo kills — each one through a different unique mix of skill, talent and tactics (and maybe also some SP and ISK…).
Raylan Yutani
For this first interview, I talked to Raylan Yutani of Stay Frosty corporation (Zkillboard). Raylan has been playing for a while, but his focus on solo PvP is fairly recent — he has become very, very good at it very quickly. Raylan was nice enough to give us some insights into his tactics, learning processes, and favorite fits. Enjoy and learn!
Capsuleer Raylan Yutani of Stay Frosty
Thanks for taking the time for interview, Raylan! Can we start off by talking about when you started playing Eve, and how you ended up with Stay Frosty?
I started playing EVE in 2013. I opened a trial account and was immediately hooked on the depth of the game and the possibilities that the sandbox environment offered. Raylan currently has 66M SP, including approximately 15M SP extracted from my redundant alts. My first taste of PvP was a brief dabble with Faction Warfare after 12 months of carebearing. Overall, it was quite disappointing and I learned very little about PvP. Opposing faction pilots weren’t interested in fighting and I was clearly outclassed by pirates that would invade ‘my’ plexes.
It might have gone better if I had joined a FW corporation…
…but of course I’m quite solitary and self-reliant IRL and prefer to figure things out for myself rather than ask for help. I did take away some positives from that experience though; the thrill of my first solo kill (https://zkillboard.com/kill/39579990/), the camaraderie of helping fleetmates destroy an enemy (https://zkillboard.com/kill/38985135/) and a constructive conversation with a member of Tuskers after he inevitably destroyed my Firetail following quite a lengthy cat and mouse chase around Vifrevaert. He returned the salvage from my wreck (unheard of!), we discussed fits and he suggested I put in an application with Tuskers when I eventually honed my skills. I then became involved in anti-ganking after a friend lost his Leopard while auto-piloting through some system I’d never heard of named ‘Uedama’. He wasn’t particularly bothered by the loss but I set off on a crusade to hunt the criminal down and bring him to justice. Unfortunately, CCP beat me to it and struck the perp down with their mighty banhammer following the ‘Bonus Room’ episode.
Can you share any cool anti-ganking anecdotes? It’s not something I am very familiar with…
One of my favourite anti-ganking moments was interfering with the infamous Santo Trafficante when I prevented him from boarding his Maller and stole it from under his nose as he sat helpless in his pod…
Anti-ganking was interesting for a while but it wasn’t what I would call ‘proper PvP’ — despite what they may tell you on MinerBumping.com.
I did gain confidence in engaging enemies and learning about CONCORD and Crimewatch mechanics. I eventually moved away from anti-ganking. We managed to save the occasional freighter but it seemed to make little impact on the antics of CODE. Most victims failed to take even the basic measures to help themselves and I stopped caring. I then began running burner missions in highsec as a source of ISK. Burners taught me a lot about managing speed, tackle, repping and over-heating.
I also learned a few tricks from Feyd’s blog (http://evedarklord.blogspot.co.uk/). The Lords.of.Midnight seemed to have a lot of fun testing the boundaries of the sandbox. I experimented with a few shady practices such as suspect baiting, ninja looting and ganking for a while; they taught me how to hunt targets and line up the perfect warp-in. Reading Zappity’s Adventures forum post and blog (http://zappitysadventures.blogspot.co.uk/) inspired me to try out life as a lowsec pirate and proved it was a viable and entertaining occupation for a solo pilot. I reassessed my goals in EVE and decided I had to change things to get the fun back. I looked at various possible corps to join and Stay Frosty’s laid back attitude and ‘no drama, no demands’ ethos seemed like a perfect fit. So I dismantled my mining fleet, flogged off my assets, closed a couple of accounts and put in an application with Stay Frosty. It took a few weeks to find my feet and a playstyle that worked for me until I eventually topped the monthly killboard in November.
Nice! Now, can you tell us a little about how you fly with Stay Frosty? Do you enjoy flying fleets as well as flying solo?
The relaxed approach of Stay Frosty allows us to roam solo or team up in ad hoc fleets. We constantly share intel in our standing fleet chat regarding the local neighbourhood, and can count on each other if we need to bring moar firepower. I frequently help out local corpies and vice versa.
I’m not precious about my killboard so I’m more than happy if a Frosty dives in to help me out during a fight.
I do join the occasional organised fleet with comms and hope to do more of that, but I don’t really get involved in the kitchen sink roaming fleets (which more often than not become more akin to the Judean suicide squad. I’m not choosy about what I kill (farmers/miners/explorers whatever). I have a lot of time for people willing to learn and will frequently refund newbro losses.
Great, and thanks for that attitude by the way. We try to be the same in Black Shark Cult, and to teach our new pilots about pirate etiquette like that. Now, what is your number one favorite ship in Eve?
My absolute favourite ship is the Stratios. It’s gorgeous to look at — when it’s not cloaked, it’s very flexible and a tempting target that makes people linger in fight when they should really GTFO. My second favourite would be the Tristan. It’s a beast of a ship for a T1 frigate.
I have yet to actually fly the Stratios, but I agree it’s the best looking ship in the game for sure. Can you tell us in which ship you’ve been the most successful so far?
It depends on how you define successful… I have racked up many more kills with my Keres and Ishkur but I just love the sneaky-bastardness of the Stratios. Cloaky, drones, neuts and dual-rep sauciness!
Now, I realize this might be sensitive and OPSEC info, but could you shed some light on how you operate when you are looking for solo fights?
Hey, I’m giving away my trade secrets here!
I tend to operate from a number of small bases and stay within a radius of 4–5 systems of those hubs. Jump clones make it easy to avoid camp situations, stop things from getting stale and means I always have a good selection of ready-made ships to hand. I run two concurrent EVE sessions and use a scout to help locate targets or act as a warp-in for Raylan, if necessary. (I don’t use links for PvP.) Some more background about my setup: the overview tabs I use are PvP, Fleet, NPC, Drones, Salvage, Misc, All and GTFO. Auto-tracking camera is enabled (shift-C) so the camera follows any object I select. That helps me see where a target has run to. On entering a system, whilst still under gatecloak, I copy the contents of local into the Pirate’s Little Helper tool and identify potential targets and their probable fits. Then I start locating those targets, firstly with a full directional scan, gradually reducing the range and angle. If, for example, the target is between 5AU and 10AU I then manually adjust the distance until I have them within 0.1AU and compare that distance with the objects in my ‘All’ overview tab. With the angle set to 5 degrees, I select each object at that distance and scan. If the gatecloak expires before I finish, I will warp to a safespot central to the system and continue with d-scan. The typical places to look are FW plexes, belts and anomalies. If I can’t locate targets with d-scan, I pop out the Sisters combat probes to find their safespot or mission plex. Failing that, I will check if they are docked and wait outside the station to see where they are headed. After doing this for a while, you get a good feeling for where potential targets are likely to be hanging out depending on their ship and background, and it speeds up the process. i.e. LP farmers will be in plexes, a non-FW pilot in a plex wants to fight, a non-FW pilot in a belt is usually ratting, etc. Get familiar with the locals — learn who are the link and cyno alts. Ratters typically move from belt to belt, top to bottom, landing at the same distance from the beacon each time. So it’s easy to predict where they will land next and to sit waiting for them. I bookmark any safe spots. You will be surprised at how many pilots re-use the same safe spot even after being caught there in the past and it saves me the effort of making my own safe spots.
Wow, that is a boatload of valuable tips right there! Good stuff… So, more inside information please! What are your favorite fits you can share with us?
Well, I’m no fitting guru so don’t expect any revelations here. I borrow most of my fits from zKill or corpmates! The ship I’m probably best known for in Stay Frosty is my Keres anti-farming fit, which was spawned from my frustration with the number of FW pilots using warp core stabilisers and ‘forgetting’ to fit guns. It’s fast and has surprisingly good scram range; Warp Scrambler II is 18.9km heated. The negatives; DPS is low and tank is virtually non-existant so don’t engage any drone boats.
[Keres, Superweapon!]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Damage Control II
Tracking Enhancer II 5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Warp Scrambler II
Caldari Navy Warp Scrambler
Warp Scrambler II
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script 150mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
150mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S Small Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints II 'Augmented' Hobgoblin x2
Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S x3000
Spike S x1000
Nanite Repair Paste x40
The scram/kite Ishkur tends to be my go-to ship despite it being the ginger step-child of the assault frigate family. Overheat all the things, keep at range. Swap out the web for a second scram if the situation calls for it.
[Ishkur, Mortal Sword!]
Damage Control II
Coreli A-Type Explosive Plating
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste Coreli A-Type 1MN Afterburner
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier
Caldari Navy Warp Scrambler 125mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
125mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Small Knave Scoped Energy Nosferatu
125mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I 'Augmented' Hobgoblin x5
Acolyte II x5
Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S x3000
Spike S x1000
Nanite Repair Paste x40
I’ll have to try out that Ishkur one of these days. I suppose part of its success is that is flown very rarely and people will tend to underestimate it… Let’s pick your brain even more thoroughly. Do you fly with implants? If so, what is your typical solo PvP pod?
I use minimal impants — mainly for fitting purposes:- Slot 4: Genolution Core Augmentation CA-2 Slot 6: Inherent Implants ‘Squire’ Power Grid Management EG-603 Slot 7: Zor’s Custom Navigation Link Slot 10: Zainou ‘Gnome’ Weapon Upgrades WU-1003 I use Synth Exile for +3% armour repairer boost (although I normally forget that I have it in the cargo bay). I will be trying some stronger drugs soon now that transport of them in empire space is legal. I don’t use links for PvP.
What some people tend to forget is that flying solo, especially when you don’t fly super-blinged and without links, can be a costly playstyle. How do you make your ISK in game?
To make ISK, I use an alt to blitz L4 security missions in highsec or run burner missions, although recently the Sisters of EVE LP conversion rate has reduced significantly. I recently drained all the skill points from my redundant alts and sold the spare extractors, so I’m ISK positive for the foreseeable future. Looting my PvP kills covers my day-to-day piracy activities. I fund my subs with cash. PLEXing accounts can become a second job and that’s time you could be having fun instead.
Thanks so much for talking to us, Raylan. Lots of good insights and practical tips, just what I had hoped for… Do you have any parting wisdom for our Sharkies who aspire to solo greatness?
Flying blind into a situation will usually get you dead. | {
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Top 10 International Mineral Shows
By Jeremy Zolan
The newest finds and choicest mineral specimens are always the hottest items at the world’s biggest mineral shows. The most popular mineral shows are those that allow both businesses and the public the best and most exclusive specimens at the most competitive prices. Displays and activities also make shows notable. Many museums take the privilege to display extraordinary specimens rarely seen by others aside from the curators if they fit with the theme of the show, which many but not all shows have. Here is a selection of ten shows that currently attract the most notable attention, of course, as with all things in this world, in a few years, some of these shows might have ceased to be and new events will rise up.
#1 Tucson Mineral and Gem Shows- Tucson, Arizona, USA
One of the largest shows in the world, The Tucson Mineral and Gem Shows are held for about a month, starting in late January and running until mid-February. The environment is exciting and busy, perhaps overwhelming for some. At the main show at the end of the events, Vendors are typically larger, more established dealers selling mostly mineral specimens, but a few sell fossils or lapidary material as well. The displays at the show are very well known for highlighting extremely fine specimens with exciting themes. 2014’s main show theme was Diamonds and Gold. One of the greatest mineral show displays in history was featured at the 2008 Tucson Mineral and Gem show- the American Mineral Treasures exhibit. This show united many of the US’ finest native specimens in the same display cases.
Here is an ad for ONE of the shows, the Tucson Gem and Rock Crystal Show!
#2 Denver Gem and Mineral Show- Denver, Colorado, USA
The majority of the largest and most popular mineral shows in the US are held in the Southwest. The Denver Gem and Mineral Show certainly fits that category. This show is very similar to the TGMS show and is also themed. The 2014 show’s theme was be agate. It generally attracts a very similar crowd of dealers as well. The displays are especially famous- many of the world’s famous mineral museums and greatest private collectors put in mouth watering specimens.
The-Vug tours the Denver Mineral Show
Official site: http://www.denvermineralshow.com/
#3 Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines show, France
Outdoor mineral shows are always a great time, especially if they are held in an ancient mining town like the Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines Show! The gorgeous scenery and rich history of the French countryside setting make this perhaps the world’s most scenic major mineral show. It is one of the premier mineral events in Europe as well and has thousands of visitors. Last year was the 50th anniversary of the show. Check out this show from Thursday through the last weekend in June if you’d like to attend a superb European event!
Official site: http://www.sainte-marie-mineral.com/an_index.php
#4 Munich Mineraltage – Munich, Germany
This show takes place right around Halloween, late October, first days of November, typically. The show is located in three huge halls, which are formerly airplane hangers! The whole Trade Fair Center is the old Munich airport, converted into a giant convention center. The show has over 1,000 dealers from all over the world, separated into areas for mineral dealers, lapidary, fossils, crystal healing, and all sorts of other fun niches. Each year the show has a theme and the exhibits are never short of amazing. The show is run by the Keilmann family and you can see them breezing by on their scooters from hall to hall, ensuring that the show runs like clockwork.
Official site: https://munichshow.com/en/
#5 Tokyo International Mineral Fair- Tokyo, Japan
First held in 1988, the Tokyo International Mineral Fair is the largest and oldest mineral show in Asia. This show is focused on compact and high end booths geared towards a retail rather than wholesale audience. Rare and systematic mineral dealers are fairly numerous at the show due to the higher than average national interest in systematic mineral collecting. This is a good show to go to for those who are looking for unusual or specialized material. Japan also has many mineral localities that have produced wonderful specimens that are rarely if ever seen in the west. This is a great event to look at or purchase unique local Japanese material. The next show is being held on December 6th through 9th in 2014.
Official Website: http://www.tokyomineralshow.com/english/
#6 Rockhound Gemboree- Bancroft, Ontario, Canada
Every summer during the first weekend in August, Canada’s largest show is held in the nation’s heartland of mineral collecting. Bancroft is widely referred to as “Canada’s Mineral Capital” for having an abundance of abandoned mines and other mineral collecting localities open to the general public. This mineral show usually has an excellent selection of local material and esoteric specimens. It often attracts smaller dealers as well as major Canadian dealers. Swapping specimens is also encouraged at this show. Visitors looking for a fun outing in nature should consider mineral collecting in the region. Ask local museums or dealers what their recommendations are based on your experience. Many different kinds of minerals can be found like apatite, sodalite, rose quartz, and fluorescents.
Official site: http://rockhoundgemboree.ca/
#7 Quartzsite Gem and Mineral Shows- Quartzsite, Arizona, USA
This event has been an agate licker’s paradise for nearly 50 years. This unique series of mineral shows is held outside and dealers often sell specimens out of their RVs. Quartzsite offers a total of nine show locations with events being held from mid January to late February. These events are great for bartering or swapping of all kinds so bring plenty of trading material if you plan on going! While you are in Arizona for this event, you also may want to check out the many world famous mineral and gem shows in Tucson which happen at the same time.
Website: http://xpopress.com/QZ-show-schedule.html
#8 NY/NJ Mineral Fossil, Gem, and Jewelry Show- Edison, New Jersey, USA
The NY/NJ is the newest out of all the shows in this list but is a true up-and-comer. It is held yearly in Edison, NJ during mid-April and over 300 dealers attend making it the largest current mineral show held in the NYC metro area. There is something for everyone at this show and dealers selling material ranging from very inexpensive to the finest quality are present. Many dealers also have a small selection of locally dugs specimens too. Though the focus is mostly on minerals and fossils, jewelry and lapidary materials are sold in abundance too. The displays at this new show have big hits. They have featured wonderful classic East Coast specimens that have both been dug recently or are of historic importance.
Official Website: http://www.ny-nj-gemshow.com/
#9 Houston Fine Mineral Show- Houston, Texas, USA
The Houston Fine Mineral Show is one of the few major mineral shows that is free to the public to attend. Texas is home to many of the US’ finest recently assembled collections and their collectors, which means the displays at this event are typically some of the best that can be imagined. Dealers at this show typically specialize in fine minerals, meaning their specimens are of very high quality but are often quite expensive. Many of the world’s most advanced collectors visit this show and it serves as an important place for them to meet as well as purchase specimens.
Official Website: http://www.westwardminerals.com/finemineralshow/pages/houston.html
#10 Changsha Mineral and Gem Show – Changsha, Hunan Province, China
China has been cranking out plenty of new specimens over the past two decades so it should not be surprising that mineral collecting is getting extremely popular in this country. This is a new phenomenon; mineral specimen collecting culture is fairly new to China in comparison to other nations. Hunan province, where Changsha is located is home to many mineral specimen producing mines that are currently being worked. This mineral show is very large and growing quickly. It attracts international dealers and may soon become the largest mineral show in Asia. The 2014 show is being held May 15th through 20th.
Official site: http://www.changsha-show.com/html/en_index/ | {
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The art director for Grand Theft Auto V has told TechRadar that the game is so packed with references he doubts many people will even see them.
In an extensive interview into the world of GTA V, Garbut explains just how much the landscape has changed for a series that has become such a touchstone in modern gaming.
When asked about rumours of yetis and other visual easter eggs, Garbut confirmed that players would be wowed by the sheer amount.
Obscurity
"There's stuff that's so obscure that most people will never see it," said Garbut.
"I love the connection that social media has given us to the people that play our games.
"We can see what they like and what is interesting them as it happens, and this really has helped push more of these things into the game.
"I think everything in IV has been found, I'm not sure if the same thing will happen for 5."
We will start to see if GTA V, which launches tomorrow, gets the critical acclaim from when reviews sneak out from under embargo at 3pm.
In the meantime we'll get back to sitting next to our postboxes and hoping that we're among those lucky enough to get an early delivery. | {
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The Syrian ceasefire formally ended today, with the Syrian military announcing it was no longer sustainable amid growing rebel strikes. This was seen as all but inevitable since Saturday, when a botched US airstrike killed 83 Syrian soldiers and allowed ISIS to advance into crucial area around the Deir Ezzor Airport.
The ceasefire was already fraying, and the US airstrike effectively obliged Syria and Russia to launch renewed airstrikes against ISIS in the area around Deir Ezzor, if only to try to reclaim some of the territory the US strike cost them around the vital airport.
The truce began last Monday evening, and was a rousing success for the first few days, with no civilian deaths for several days, giving the country a rare period of calm after several years of war. There were some skirmishes reported later in the week, however, and then the US strike, by far the deadliest incident of the week, set off a powderkeg.
US officials are still trying to deal with the narrative surrounding the calamitous attacks, with Australian, British, and Danish warplanes now believed to have participated in some 20 minutes of strikes against the Syrian military base.
US officials are also speculating that the soldiers killed might have also been a battalion of former prisoners, saying that might’ve explained why they “looked like ISIS” to US officials. This is not confirmed, and appears to just be random US comments.
Either way, the attacks dramatically weakened Syrian defenses in the area, and ISIS was quick to take advantage. It also sparked a new row between the US and Russia, as US officials responded to Russia’s call for an emergency UN Security Council meeting with angry condemnation.
The US had sought to avoid UN Security Council oversight of the truce in the first place, with the council forced to cancel a previously planned meeting on the ceasefire because the US refused to allow the terms of the deal to be publicly discussed. Much of the truce was a secret for its entire duration. They accused Russia of trying to “score points” by complaining about the airstrikes.
It’s hard to see that another ceasefire would be attempted any time soon, with Russia still irked by the way this one ended, and US officials seem eager to shift focus back toward complaining about the Syrian government. | {
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The following is a guest post by Seth Brostoff, a legal metadata intern, who has been working at the Law Library of Congress for several months describing and creating metadata for a collection of Hispanic Legal Documents that span from the 15th to 19th centuries.
Now that the dust of the celebrations surrounding Cinco de Mayo has settled, this might be a better time for a more sober but certainly fascinating subject for our Mexicanists to ponder.
I thought it would be interesting to explore the relationship between the events surrounding Cinco de Mayo–the Mexican holiday commemorating Mexico’s victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla–and the history of Mexican codification.
Background
As a civil law country, Mexico relies heavily on various codes (the Civil Code, the Commercial Code, etc.) for its primary legislation. Yet when Mexico started its movement towards independence from Spain in 1810, it was governed by Spanish law, which had not been codified. The movement to create a national civil code for Mexico only really begins with the Mexican Constitution of 1857, and with the rise to power of Benito Juárez, an indigenous lawyer of Zapotec ancestry who became, first, president of the Mexican Supreme Court, and soon after, the president of Mexico.
Codification Efforts
The Constitution of 1857 replaced the long dictatorial rule of Santa Anna, and its promulgation of new individual rights represented a movement towards liberalism and secularism. As part of Juárez’s larger agenda, to cement the reach and permanence of the constitutional settlement, the president entrusted Justo Sierra O’Reilly with the task of systematizing Mexican law in one national civil code. According to Cruz Barney, Sierra O’Reilly finally produced a draft civil code in 1860, largely based on Florencio García Goyena’s “proyecto,” a proposed Spanish-language adaptation of the Napoleonic Code, as well as other sources such as the Louisiana Civil Code. Before Sierra O’Reilly’s draft could be adopted, however, the French under Napoleon III invaded Mexico, and–despite an early Mexican victory on May 5, 1862 at the Battle of Puebla–forced Juárez and the Liberals from power and launched the Second Mexican Empire.
The French placed a sympathetic Austrian archduke on the Mexican throne as Emperor Maximilian I. The French intervention and Maximilian’s rise to power, however, did not end the process of codification. Indeed, Maximilian’s government appears to have adopted much of the commission’s work, revised various articles, and then promulgated the first two books of the short-lived Código Civil del Imperio Mexicano in 1866 (hereafter, the 1866 Civil Code).
A year later, the process of codification was interrupted once more by political events. In 1867, while the third book was at the printer’s and the fourth was under editorial review, Mexican forces expelled the French and executed Maximilian. The old Constitution of 1857 was restored, and the 1866 Civil Code was abrogated. The Mexican government returned to the codification project in 1868, drafting a new federal civil code which it finished in 1870. This second national civil code (hereafter, the 1870 Code) incorporated aspects of both Sierra O’Reilly’s 1861 draft civil code and the 1866 Civil Code. The 1870 Code was subsequently promulgated on December 8, 1870 and entered into effect on March 1, 1871.
This new national civil code was initially only applicable to Mexico’s Federal District (Mexico City) and Baja California territory (today, the Mexican states of Baja California and Baja California Sur), but in rapid order most Mexican states adopted the federal code verbatim as their new state civil codes.
Structurally, both the 1866 and 1870 Codes were divided into four books, titled 1. De las personas (Matters concerning personal rights and family law); 2. De los bienes, la propiedad y sus diferentes modificaciones (Matters concerning property law, including real property and moveable property); 3. De los contratos (Matters concerning the law of contracts, loans and mortgages, and other obligations); and 4. Sucesiones (Matters concerning succession, or the law of inheritance). The first title (or título preliminar) briefly describes the rules that jurists should use when interpreting and applying the code. The four books themselves are then divided into titles, chapters, and articles. The 1870 Code, for example, contains 4,126 separate articles. The Code’s structure in four books covering persons, property, obligations, and inheritance is more or less consistent with the division of subject matter in several other Latin American civil codes.
The 1850s and 1860s were important decades in the history of Latin American codification, and Mexico was no exception. What is interesting is that Mexican codification proceeded apace despite the foreign intervention and tremendous political upheaval that occurred during this period.
Further reading
The Library possesses several general histories of Mexican law, as well as specific works on Mexican codification and its historical context, which may be of interest:
While we’re on the subject of Mexico, something we didn’t mention–but that our readers may like to know–is that this year marks the centennial of the Mexican Constitution of 1917. | {
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During Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “State of the Union,” former Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) called it “dead wrong for President Donald Trump to ask for “dirt” in his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Host Jake Tapper asked why Republicans won’t say if it is wrong for a president “to use his office to ask a foreign country to investigate their domestic political rivals.”
Kasich said, “I don’t understand it. Of course, it is wrong. And I don’t know what they’re afraid of. Nobody is asking them, are you for impeachment inquiry or impeachment? Nobody is asking them. They just say it is this right or wrong, and they won’t answer it, and it is a mystery to me. When I went through re-election, I had expanded Medicaid. And so I was out there telling people, this is why I did it. I’m not afraid of things. I’m going to tell people what I’ve for. It is true I don’t hold office today. I suspected that this president was going to engage in this kind of behavior, and it is why I didn’t go to the Republican convention. It’s why I didn’t vote for him, and I don’t intend to vote for him again.”
He continued, “Look in the mirror and figure out how do you want to be remembered later. There is nothing wrong with telling the truth and sharing your real feelings. I have a couple of things the Democrats should do. There should be a vote on inquiry in the House. I don’t understand why they don’t do that. And I’m also looking forward to the testimony of Sondland, the especially envoy.
“I’m looking forward to all of that conversation, all about the text messages that we saw,” Kasich added. “Because I think we want to get established in our minds whether there really was a quid pro quo. Of course, it is dead wrong for the president to ever talk to another leader to bring up dirt on his political opponent.”
Tapper interjected, “With or without the quid pro quo.”
Kasich continued, “It is just dead wrong. But if you go to another level and there is establishment of a quid pro quo, maybe that many Republicans, if it is established, that Republicans would say, yeah, that is a step too far.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | {
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Что такое «Dark web»
Цель «Темного интернета»
Как работает Dark web
Оплата товаров и услуг в Dark Web
Посредничество в депонировании
Поставка контрабанды
«Dark web» является частью всемирной паутины, состоящей из оверлейной сети и даркнета, использует общедоступный Интернет и требуют определенного программного обеспечения, конфигураций или авторизации получить доступ. В посте более подробно описано, что же из себя представляет «Dark web».Dark web, который иногда называют «Darknet» (темный интернет) или «Deep Web» (глубокая паутина) является частью теневого онлайн-рынка. Dark web представляет из себя специализированную группу сайтов, где личность каждого пользователя скрыта от власти, трекеров и правоохранительных органов. Обычные поисковые системы и стандартные веб-браузеры не могут видеть страницы Dark web. По сути — это частное виртуальное пространство, где люди действуют анонимно для достижения своих целей.Целью Dark web является предоставление полной анонимности онлайн с гарантией безопасности, где пользователи могут виртуально взаимодействовать друг с другом и не бояться закона. Dark web содержит форумы, блоги информаторов, услуги сводничества одних с другими, онлайн рынки, ресурсы с документацией и т.д.Положительное: если разобраться, Dark web выступает убежищем демократии и противодействием коррупции. Здесь информаторы могут сообщать о корпоративных и правительственных неправомерных действиях прессе, без опасений преследования рассекречивать коррупционные действия, которые скрыты от общественности. В этой сети царит полнейшая свобода слова и информации. Dark web — это также место, где люди из деспотических стран или репрессивных религий могут найти единомышленников и даже получить помощь. И конечно же Dark web является убежищем для журналистов и людей с весьма нестандартным образом жизни, чтобы общаться в сети и не опасаться репрессий.Отрицательное: у Dark web есть и темная сторона. Он выступает в роли черного рынка, где можно купить или продать что угодно, любую контрабанду, украденную вещь или незаконно добытую информацию. Наркотики, оружие, ворованные номера кредитных карт, различная порнография, услуги по отмыванию денег и даже наем убийц — все это есть на Dark web.Для работы в Dark web требуется установка и использование специального программного обеспечения. Для этого нужно быть довольно таки опытным пользователем. Есть два варианта: протокол I2P (Invisible Internet Project) и протокол TOR (The Onion Router). Это две разные технологии, которые делают работу анонимной.TOR представляет из себя систему прокси-серверов, позволяющих устанавливать анонимное сетевое соединение, защищённое от прослушивания. Сайты TOR используют имя домена .onion. Темный интернет-сёрфинг, как правило, быстрее с TOR.Сеть I2P является оверлейной, устойчивой (отключение узла не повлияет на функционирование сети) и анонимной. При передаче данных между узлами сети применяется шифрование. В скорости работы уступает TOR, но зато I2P более устойчива перед правоохранительным надзором.В обоих случаях Dark web работает с использованием сложного математического шифрования, чтобы зашифровать личность, сеть и местонахождение участника. Весь сетевой трафик перескакивает с сервера на сервер по всему миру, что делает отслеживание невозможным. Обмен сообщениями осуществляется с помощью псевдонимов, не связанных с настоящей личностью. Большинство денежных операций используют биткойны и услуги депонирования в третьем лице, чтобы защитить покупателя и продавца от нечестной торговли.Для участия в I2P или TOR, нужно установить специализированное шифровальное программное обеспечение, специальный веб-браузер. В случае совершения покупок, необходимо купить биткойны и установить кошелек Bitcoin.Так как PayPal или платежи по кредитным картам предоставляют информацию о личности, Dark Web предпочитает биткойны. Во многих случаях, услуга депонирования в третьем лице будет действовать как от имени покупателя, так и от имени продавца, действуя в качестве доверенного посредника в обмен на комиссионные.Обмены биткойнов осуществляются с использованием анонимных номеров счетов (также, как счета в швейцарских банках, но с большей маскировкой). Эти анонимные счета называются «биткойн кошелек». Важно помнить, что биткойн является не регулируемой валютой. Поэтому в случае обмана или нечестной финансовой операций не получится обратиться в банк для возврата денег.Услуги депонирования наделяют посредника возможностью действовать, как доверенное лицо. Посредник проверяет действительно ли у покупателя есть деньги для оплаты. Далее уведомляет продавца, что все в порядке. Перед передачей средств продавцу, посредник ждет подтверждения отправки товара покупателю.Услуги по депонированию иногда предоставляются самим рынком darknet (например, сайт «Nucleus» обещает услуги депонирования и разрешения споров для всех своих клиентов).Так же, как и посылки от Amazon, контрабандные товары Dark Web доставляются обычной почтой или курьерской службой. Степень риска покупки на Dark Web зависит от действий правоохранительных органов. Ведь в разных странах свои законы, которые касаются проверки и открытия посылок.В США почта и услуги доставки используют для выявления контрабанды рентген, собак и визуальный осмотр. Если в посылке обнаружили контрабанду, наркотики, оружие и все, что достаточно серьезно нарушает закон, правительство может назначить тайного агента для доставки ее адресату. И с помощью уловок вытянуть из получателя признание того, что он знает о содержимом посылки. | {
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It is a tantalizing vision – a trans-national corridor that would transport oil, gas, hydro and telecoms to export markets. “There will be those who say it can’t be done, that it is too ambitious,” Scheer said. “Canada is a country of ‘no’ under Justin Trudeau…But we need to move from ‘no’ to ‘yes’ and become a country where big things are possible.”
The problem is that it has been a good idea since the 1960s and nobody has been able to make it happen
The problem is that it has been a good idea since the 1960s and nobody has been able to make it happen. Arguably, it has become even more difficult in an era where the courts have handed Indigenous opponents of development an effective veto.
Scheer campaigned in the Edmonton Centre riding with Alberta Premier, Jason Kenney, later in the day. Kenney is an enthusiastic proponent of the idea and pointed out that a Council of the Federation meeting of last summer, 12 out of 13 premiers signed on to the concept. The only hold-out was Quebec’s Francois Legault, and even he agreed to the idea when it came to natural gas and hydro (which he wants to export). “Regarding oil there’s no social acceptability in Quebec,” he said.
There is a rare moment of consensus among provinces, most of which are conservative in their orientation. If Scheer were to become prime minister, it would give a boost to the belief that Canada is still capable of big things.
But this is a project that will take decades – Scheer said he hopes to have a blue ribbon panel report back on a possible route within his first mandate.
Whichever route is chosen will mean the expropriation of large amounts of land at huge public expense – a move that will face determined opposition from farmers, ranchers and other landowners. | {
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港湾整備などについて島袋秀幸伊江村長（右端）から説明を受ける翁長雄志知事（右から２人目）＝４日、伊江村の伊江港
【伊江】翁長雄志知事らは４日、就任後初めての離島視察で伊江村を訪れ、島袋秀幸村長らと港湾整備や医師派遣などについて意見交換した。県の担当者は、伊江村民が本島で車を利用する際に必要な本部港の立体駐車場整備について「来年度に予算化したい」と明言するなど要望に対して一部前向きな姿勢を見せた。
島袋氏は（１）伊江・本部間の架橋建設（２）伊江港の整備（３）本部港の立体駐車場整備（４）医師の確保（５）離島出身高校生の学生寮「さくら寮」の整備（６）伊江島空港の有効活用（７）農業基盤の整備促進―の７項目を要望した。
本部港の立体駐車場整備について、村民が本島での家族面会や医療サービスのために必要なことから、県土木建築部の伊禮年男土木整備統括監は「４００台収容可能な立体駐車場を２０１６年度に予算化したい」と応えた。伊江港整備については、港湾内で波のうねりが発生しやすく年間１８回もフェリーが欠航するなどの現状が報告された。伊禮氏は「１６年度からの事業化を目指す」と意欲を見せた。
翁長氏らは引き続き村内の医療施設、伊江島空港、伊江港などを視察した。視察後に翁長氏は「離島の振興、発展なくして沖縄の発展はない。多くの課題を村長から聞いて切実さが胸にずしんときた」と話した。
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The South Australian entertainer and disability advocate Quentin Kenihan has died.
The wheelchair-bound author, filmmaker and movie actor had the bone disease osteogenesis imperfecta and became a household name in the 1980s after a TV documentary with journalist Mike Willesee, which detailed his brittle bone disease. He also had a television series on Channel 10, acted in the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road and performed at the Adelaide fringe estival.
He recently put his hand up to become an area councillor for Adelaide city council at the November election.
The actor Russell Crowe said he was devastated by the loss of his “little mate”.
“The bravest bloke I ever met ... not confined anymore,” he tweeted.
Devastating news. My little mate , the bravest bloke I ever met... gone . We will meet again ... @qkenihan . Not confined any more ...
Between your interviews, your book, your one man show, your zany little movies ...what a creative and productive life.
Lots of love. — Russell Crowe (@russellcrowe) October 7, 2018
Former support worker and friend Ian Kissock told the ABC that Kenihan was unable to be revived on Saturday after he initially had trouble breathing.
“I saw him yesterday afternoon – he was fine,” Kissock said. “Then I get a phone call to say can I come and put his mask on. When I got here, there were two ambos here and they couldn’t revive him.
“Quentin was unique. He had a fantastic sense of humour. He had a brilliant mind.
“He’s done everything – he was on TV, he was on the stage, he’s been in major films … For a guy that had a major disability, he’s been phenomenal in that he’s been able to do all these things.”
Friend Filip Odzak said Kenihan’s life was dedicated to advocating for those with disabilities and said his legacy was “long-lasting and impactful”.
“He travelled the world and achieved things that no abled-body person could,” he said. “He had a sharp wit and a devilish sense of humour. We laughed about everything, it was constantly uplifting.”
Farewell Quentin Kenihan, 43.
Born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, he became a key advocate for people with disabilities.
On screen he was memorable as Corpus Colossus in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. pic.twitter.com/qq877Nd1By — Rhett Bartlett (@dialmformovies) October 7, 2018
This was supposed to be a surprise I was going to give to him when we caught up next month, but since he won't see it here's Quentin Kenihan's dedication from my next book pic.twitter.com/qYcsm0r8is — Maria Lewis (@moviemazz) October 7, 2018
The Australian Federation Disability Organisation said Kenihan would always be remembered for “his tireless advocacy for people with disabilities”.
Writer Eddie White said he was shattered to hear of his mate’s death.
“You did things your way right until the end buddy and your tenaciousness and warmth will never be forgotten. Rest easy Super Q,” he wrote.
Journalist Lousie Pascale spoke of “a great colleague and friend”.
“We are so lucky to have been left with such a legacy of work and passion,” she tweeted. “Don’t worry Q, I’ll keep fighting the good fight and I know you’ll be there with me.”
ABC content director Tim Verrall said Kenihan always made him smile when they caught up, and he had led an extraordinary life. | {
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Videos of teenager Ashley Smith taken in the months before she died in a prison cell show the teen was subjected to "degrading and dehumanizing" treatment, her family’s lawyer told a coroner’s hearing in Toronto Wednesday.
Julian Falconer led the hearing through the video clips shot prior to Oct. 19, 2007, the day the New Brunswick teen died from strangulation after tying ligatures to her neck in her cell at Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont.
Corrections Canada had gone to court to try to block the videos from being made public, but lost the case. Falconer is now fighting to have the videos played in front of a coroner's jury.
"To people who think this can't happen in Canada to a mentally ill 19-year-old, you know a picture speaks a thousand words. I'm embarrassed to be Canadian when I look at that video," the lawyer said outside the hearing.
In one of the videos, the 19-year-old is seen on an RCMP plane being transferred from a correctional service psychiatric facility in Saskatchewan to one in Quebec.
Smith is wearing two mesh hoods to stop her from spitting.
The RCMP co-pilot can be seen duct-taping her hands together and then to her seat. He then threatens to duct-tape Smith’s face if she does not behave.
"This is how the [correctional service] does business in transferring a victim," Falconer said.
A video played at the coroner's hearing shows Ashley Smith being duct-taped to a seat on an RCMP plane while being transferred from Saskatchewan to Quebec.
Another video shows Smith tied to a gurney at Joliette Prison in Quebec after she tried to cut herself in her cell. She is surrounded by corrections officers in full riot gear, including shields.
One of the officers places a shield on Smith's torso while a nurse injects her with a tranquillizer, described by Falconer as a "chemical restraint." She received five more injections over the next nine hours, the hearing was told.
Another video taken on July 26, 2007, shows half a dozen guards in riot gear entering Smith’s cell at 5:32 a.m. and telling her she had to have two injections in preparation for a transfer to another facility. Smith objects mildly but, surrounded by the guards, she presents her arm for the shots.
Falconer said a correctional service inquiry board had determined Smith agreed to the shots of her "own free will and without force being used." Falconer pointed out that a psychiatrist had only recommended drugs be administered to Smith if required and said the "abuse" of the rules contributed to her death.
Behavioural problems
Smith was first charged with a criminal offence in March 2002, when she was 14 years old. In the following year, she faced charges of causing a public disturbance, trespassing and assault, according to a report from the New Brunswick Office of the Ombudsman & Child and Youth Advocate.
Smith was first incarcerated at the age of 15 after an incident where she threw crab apples at a postal worker. She was convicted of multiple charges of breach of probation, common assault, trespassing and causing a disturbance.
She racked up six years worth of additional time behind bars for infractions while in youth custody — so many that she eventually ended up serving time in the federal adult prison system.
During the year she spent in federal custody, Smith was transferred 17 times between nine institutions in five provinces.
The correctional service is arguing that presiding coroner Dr. John Carlisle has no jurisdiction to investigate how Smith was treated in prisons in other provinces and that the videos should not be shown to the jury.
The agency is fighting to narrow the scope of the inquest into Smith’s death, claiming the coroner has no jurisdiction to delve into the federal prison system.
Falconer called the position absurd.
"Don’t let them get away with it," he told Carlisle.
"If you mistreat someone often enough, surely that will affect how they behave."
Focus of inquest questioned
Carlisle wants a broadly focused inquest that looks, among other things, into how the teenager was treated after repeated episodes of self-harm.
Lawyers for the correctional service and three Ontario doctors involved in Smith’s treatment argued Carlisle's approach oversteps his legal and constitutional authority.
"This has become an investigation into how [Corrections Canada] treated Ms. Smith, and not an investigation into her death," correctional service lawyer Nancy Noble said.
Carlisle wants to turn the inquest "into full-blown inquiry into operations and management of [Corrections Canada]," she said.
The agency wants the inquest limited to Smith's time at Grand Valley Institution, said Lori Pothier, a spokeswoman for Corrections Canada.
The hearing was adjourned until Nov. 13.
The coroner’s inquest is set to officially start with a jury in January. | {
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Arlan Hamilton chased her dream of starting a venture fund to support female, minority, and LGBT entrepreneurs. She landed investments from top names in tech, including Marc Andreessen and Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. Backstage Capital
After another long day of chasing down potential investors, venture capitalist Arlan Hamilton was ready for bed. The only problem was, she had no idea where she would sleep.
As day turned to night, Hamilton sat at a table outside of a grocery store in Palo Alto, California, with a backpack, her suitcase, and nowhere to go on this Sunday in September 2015. For more than a year, she had been pursuing her dream of starting a venture capital fund focused on female, minority, and LGBT entrepreneurs. But it's tough to get a fund going when you don't have any money to invest.
Hamilton had met with every investor she could track down and cold-called everyone in tech she could think of. No one had written her a check. Why would they? Hamilton, an African American lesbian, was a Silicon Valley outsider. She had no track record as a venture capitalist. And she wanted to invest in a segment of founders with little proven success.
She'd spent everything to bootstrap her mission. For months, she'd been homeless, sleeping on couches, in motels, out of cars, at airports. As a weary Hamilton sat, contemplating her next move, her phone buzzed.
"I'm in," read the text from Susan Kimberlin, a tech veteran who made a name for herself at Salesforce and PayPal. Kimberlin was ready to bet on Hamilton to bring more diversity to tech--and her check was the lifeline Hamilton needed to get Backstage Capital up and running.
Hamilton sat there in silence, lost in thought, letting the moment sink in. "I made it," she thought to herself before standing up to do a moonwalk and a little twirl. Then immediately, she went back to work, calling the startups she'd been wanting to invest in for months. She picked up her bags and started walking.
"I never had to be homeless again after that," she says.
Not a charity
There is a wave of new venture funds focused on bringing more diversity to Silicon Valley, by investing in women, people of color, or those of the LGBT community. Backstage Capital, along with Kapor Capital and Intel Capital's diversity fund, is an exemplar of such firms.
Since Kimberlin's first check, Backstage Capital has collected investments from a who's who of tech investors and executives, including Marc Andreessen, Lowercase Capital founder Chris Sacca and his wife, Crystal English, Rose Tech Ventures managing partner David Rose, Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie, and Swati Mylavarapu of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers.
To date, Hamilton, 35, has invested in nine sets of founders whose companies tap into ideas and markets that have been largely ignored by the predominantly white, Asian, and male Silicon Valley. With her $5 million fund, Hamilton looks to capture 1 percent ownership in early-stage companies that are seeking their first round of funding.
"Arlan's focus on diversity will unlock access to valuable talent and huge markets that haven't been on the radar of traditional investors," Sacca says.
"She's out there finding companies that I would never ever have seen," marvels Rose.
Hamilton's portfolio includes Text Engine, a startup that allows users with "dumb phones" to pull information from the internet; Radial, a music-streaming app focused on the soca, a Caribbean-based drum-heavy dance offshoot of calypso; and Tinsel, a hardware company that makes fashionable necklaces that double as headphones.
"Last year when I was raising money, being black, being a woman, being pregnant--it was just strike after strike of what investors are not interested in," says Aniyia Williams, Tinsel's CEO. "But when I talked to Arlan, she got it right away."
Like many of her tech idols, Hamilton wears the same uniform every day: a black shirt or black hoodie that proudly sports the name "Backstage Capital" in bold purple letters. Tall, African American, and female, wearing her hair in a short black bob, Hamilton looks nothing like the majority of venture capitalists in the Bay Area--but nonetheless has the goals of any investor.
"This is not a nonprofit or a charity. I want killer companies that are making money and will make money," says Hamilton, who rarely raises her calm and confident voice. "My job is to make money for my investors, and I can't do that with companies based on my heart. It has to be based on companies that are badass."
As with the rest of the tech industry, diversity among venture capitalists is scarce. Among 71 of the top venture capital firms, women represent only 8 percent of senior investment teams, according to data compiled in 2015 by Social Capital and The Information. Hispanics and African Americans make up just 2 percent of those ranks.
All this trickles down to startups. Only 2.7 percent of venture-funded companies are led by women, according to a 2014 report by Babson College. Just 1 percent of founders among venture-backed startups are black, according to 2010 data from CB Insights. More specifically, a mere 24 black women received any venture funding from 2012 to 2014, according to the #ProjectDiane report released in February.
Hamilton, obviously, understands that some of her founders will fail, but she believes they deserve to be given the same opportunities that are often plentiful for white, Asian, and male entrepreneurs. "For all of the Mark Zuckerbergs or the successful companies that we see that are founded by white men, how many have failed?" says Alicia Thomas, CEO of Dibs, a Backstage Capital-backed startup whose technology lets gyms charge dynamic--or surge--pricing for their classes. "Women and people of color aren't given the chance to fail because it's like, 'Oh, see, that's what happened.'"
Chasing billion-dollar ideas
Hamilton first started studying tech in 2012. At the time, she was working in the music industry as a production coordinator, helping orchestrate shows for acts like CeeLo Green, Kirk Franklin, and Amanda Palmer. This was Hamilton's dream job, but she noticed that many of the artists and music executives she admired were investing their music money in tech.
That piqued her interest. Hamilton began reading and watching anything she could get ahold of to teach her about the world of tech and venture capital. She'd watch keynote speeches on YouTube and read blog posts and books by investors, "even though I didn't understand most of it," Hamilton says with a chuckle. But she'd grown up knocking on strangers' doors as a Jehovah's Witness (she no longer practices), and had no qualms about randomly reaching out to founders and investors and offering to help in any way she could.
Making connections and helping young companies land investments gave her a high. It became a hobby, something she did at home in Houston in between her artists' tours.
And all her life, Hamilton had been insatiably curious. In elementary school, Hamilton would ask countless questions, often to the annoyance of her teachers. This landed her on both the honor roll and in the principal's office--for being disruptive.
Hamilton, who'd grown up without much money, was often one of few black kids in her honors classes. In them, she would make a point and see it receive little attention--but then, a white boy would be praised for saying something similar. "I grew up very quickly understanding that I was going to have to do more if I wanted to be seen as equal," she says. "I was going to have to work at least twice as hard if I was even going to be given a chance or taken seriously."
And, as she connected founders and investors, she saw that more often than not, it was the white male founders she helped that received the most opportunities: "It became clear really fast that there were certain people who were not getting meetings, even if they had a really great company."
To the queer black woman within her, this was wrong. To the hustler within her, it was a huge opportunity. While others saw markets like virtual reality and artificial intelligence as the next jackpot technologies, Hamilton saw the next billion-dollar ideas in that pool of untapped, underrepresented entrepreneurs.
As a side project to her music gigs, Hamilton chased the idea of a fund focused on LGBT entrepreneurs, for about six months in 2013. "I went hard on that, but it just didn't take off at all," she says. Hamilton had no credibility in the tech industry: "There was a lot of stuff I had to prove."
Her music career was on an upswing, but as months passed, Hamilton became obsessed with her idea. She decided she was going to give it another try. In August 2014, Hamilton wrote an email to all her music colleagues and told them she was putting her career on pause. "Anyone who works in music will tell you that it's hard to get a gig, and to turn down gigs is silly," says Hamilton, who was then ready to fully focus on her fund. "To turn down the only money that was coming in ... yeah, it was crazy."
She began living off her savings while lining up entrepreneurs she hoped to invest in and scrambling to meet more investors. She just needed to find one person who believed in her.
That proved tougher than she had imagined. As months went by, Hamilton was forced to leave her apartment and bounce around from one friend's couch to another.
By the end of 2014, she had yet to collect a single investment check, but she had begun building her profile with powerful Silicon Valley allies, including Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, the top startup accelerator.
Altman couldn't invest in Backstage Capital, given his commitments to Y Combinator, but one night as Hamilton sat in a motel room in Houston, unsure when her next meal would come, Altman sent her an email. "The world needs what you're doing, and I want to help you," he said.
"I just remember thinking, 'Wow. If he's saying that, that means this could be bigger than I thought,'" Hamilton says.
Dear White Venture Capitalists
On January 1, 2015, Hamilton relocated to Austin. A month later, she flew to San Francisco for Y Combinator's Female Founders Conference. "It wasn't, 'Oh, my god, this is Disneyland.' It was like, 'This feels right. I feel confident here. I feel like I belong,'" Hamilton says. Later, when she got accepted for 500 Startups' two-week seminar for new investors in Palo Alto, Hamilton bought a one-way ticket.
She got there in May and rubbed shoulders with dozens of other rookie investors. Many were already-wealthy industry veterans. One of them was Kimberlin. The two gravitated to each other thanks to their similar investment theses: They believed diversity was technology's next great opportunity. After working in tech for 18 years, Kimberlin knew firsthand how rarely women appear atop the corporate ladder. She wanted to change that through angel investing, and Hamilton intrigued her.
As part of the seminar, the investors were encouraged to establish their brands by writing essays for Medium. Write about what you know, 500 Startups' Dave McClure said. Hamilton penned a piece titled "Dear White Venture Capitalists: If You're Reading This, It's (Almost!) Too Late."
It went viral.
"Your goal is to make money as a VC or accelerator who is investing other people's money because you have a fiduciary duty to do everything in your power to bring your LPs returns," Hamilton wrote in her Medium post. She implored investors to dedicate fractions of their funds to underrepresented entrepreneurs and offered to help.
"Therefore, if you haven't hired a team of people who are of color, female, and/or LGBT to actively turn over every stone, to scope out every nook and cranny, to pop out of every bush, to find every qualified underrepresented founder in this country, you're going to miss out on a lot of money when the rest of the investment world gets it."
Hamilton's inbox exploded with emails from founders and others in tech thanking her for the post. Many invited Hamilton for meetings. Some were enticed by her arguments but not quite ready to make the jump. Others offered to bring Hamilton in--but have her work in the background, without any ability to invest.
"I pitched to well-known VCs, and I was met with a pat on the head. 'Good idea, but let's talk another time,'" Hamilton says. "I thought, 'Cool. We'll talk when I'm writing a check across the table from you.'"
Building brick by brick
Hamilton didn't need their support. She had Kimberlin.
"I got to the point where I understood what a difference it would make, what kind of possibilities it would unlock for somebody to write her that first check and let her form the fund," Kimberlin says. "It was an opportunity for me to put my money where my mouth was."
Hamilton won't disclose the size of that check--but it nonetheless came just in time. "I could only go so far on my own steam," Hamilton says. "There was a breaking point where I would not be able to go any further without any capital."
With the check in hand, Hamilton began calling entrepreneurs she'd met months before and finally made the investments she'd been waiting to make. She invested in entrepreneurs like Sarah Heering, co-founder of NailSnaps, which lets people print nail art designs as stickers--an idea that several male VCs failed to understand.
"You as a man don't get it; you don't walk into a salon and have to sit there for an hour smelling those chemicals," Heering says. "Having females on our investor sheet is important because it helps us solve the problem."
But one limited partner does not a venture fund make, and while Hamilton's Medium post spread her name, she still needed endorsements.
That's when Stewart Butterfield came in.
Butterfield, the co-founder and CEO of Slack--Inc.'s Company of the Year in 2015--is uniquely positioned to affect diversity in tech. While Slack's work force--around 600 employees--is tiny next to the likes of Google and Facebook, the company is growing so rapidly that its hiring over the next year or two could make it one of the first major tech companies to reach, or approach, gender and ethnic parity.
Butterfield has hired multiple leaders in the tech diversity movement, including Erica Baker, an engineer who left Google after she was reprimanded for raising awareness over salary inequality, and Leslie Miley, a former engineering manager at Twitter who left the company over its lack of diversity. Butterfield is among the few elite CEOs who has spoken about the topic at length, and he has given the limelight to his underrepresented employees during key moments, like the night Slack won the Crunchies award for Fastest Rising Startup.
When Butterfield caught wind of Backstage Capital, he followed Hamilton on Twitter and sent her a direct message. He wanted to invest.
"Stewart Butterfield changed things," Hamilton says. "It added more legitimacy to what I was doing."
With Butterfield's support, Hamilton's momentum picked up. "Each time we got a Stewart, each time we got a Marc Andreessen, it was one more step in us knowing we were on the right track," she says. "Every time we could tell our LPs that someone else had joined, it was a celebration."
She was still building the fund brick by brick--but now, when she had conversations with prospective investors, she could point to Kimberlin's and Butterfield's names on her list of limited partners.
"She's hustling," says Slack's Miley, who also decided to invest in Hamilton. "Whether it's chasing down billionaire investors or showing up at fundraising events, you know she put the work in to get where she is."
Many of Backstage Capital's LPs are venture capitalists themselves, but Hamilton supplied an opportunity to discover entrepreneurs they might have otherwise missed.
"She gets access to entrepreneurs that your typical Valley investor might not," says Lars Rasmussen, an angel investor and veteran of Google and Facebook. "It's almost like using an unfair advantage by knowing Arlan and using her connections into an area that is overlooked, and wrongly overlooked."
Others who have invested in Hamilton see it as doing their part to add diversity to the industry they love. "Part of our reason for backing Arlan is acknowledging and understanding that everyone in tech has these blind spots," says Zachary Bogue, co-managing partner of the firm Data Collective.
Creating the next generation
Now that her fund's up and running, Hamilton has the tough task of proving her thesis. Despite all her big-name investors, the fund is small, and, she says, must be run lean. Her investments are typically seed-round bets that range from $25,000 to $100,000.
"The next stage will be going out and finding truly world-class companies that can be game-changing in their respective markets. That's the hard part for any investor: still being incredibly selective on where you're going to put the capital to work," says Aaron Levie of Box. Levie joined Backstage Capital as an LP this spring. "It'll be exciting to see how the portfolio evolves over time."
For Backstage Capital, it's not enough to spot promising entrepreneurs. Hamilton and her staff--she now has a full team that includes Kimberlin as a venture partner--don't expect to see any returns on their investments within the next five years, so in the meantime, it's important that they, like many other top VC firms, help these founders get to the next stage.
"We try to punch higher than our weight, so if we're putting $50,000 in, we try to do enough work so it feels like we gave you half a million dollars," Hamilton says. The Backstage Capital business model is to connect founders with bigger investors--like those she's brought into her fund. Because, she says, "our $50,000 check means nothing if that company can't raise again." | {
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Scientists who combined an on-the-ground look at stream gauge data and an above-the-ground view from satellites have determined that as the Earth warms, the threat of flooding is growing in the northern half of the United States.
The research from the University of Iowa, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that shifting rainfall patterns and the amount of water in the ground are likely causes for the changes.
The work fed off research published in 2015 that looked at stream gauges in the central United States, said Gabriele Villarini, an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering at the university and a co-author of the new paper with Louise Slater. His earlier research showed limited evidence of significant changes in the magnitude of floods, but strong evidence pointing toward an increasing frequency of flooding.
“Now that we have detected the changes, can we try to identify what the potential major drivers of these changes were?” he said. “That’s why we looked at overall wetness and precipitation as a way of trying to explain this spatially distinct patterns that we saw from the data.”
Their research also found that the South and West are experiencing decreasing flood risk, an unsurprising finding, he said, given that those regions have experienced both recent and long-standing drought, and that there is less water stored underground.
Their findings, which also aim to shift how flood risks are communicated, could have fundamental implications for water managers, agricultural interests and the people who live in flood-prone regions.
Flood risk trends are usually communicated using streamflow, such as how many feet above a certain level a river might crest. Villarini said they think that their research will help better communicate changing flood patterns to a wider audience, compared with more traditional methods of looking at flood risk.
“Generally, we have been looking at discharge, and so you would have a certain value, say, cubic feet per second,” he said. “The problem is that then you would have to convert that discharge value to a stage level, because that’s usually how this information is communicated.”
He and Slater used water height information gathered between 1985 and 2015 from 2,042 stream gauges operated by the U.S. Geological Survey. They compared that stream gauge data with information gathered over more than a dozen years by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites, which can show what’s called “basin wetness.” That’s the amount of water stored in the ground.
The on-the-ground data and the satellite data “complement each other nicely,” Villarini said.
Climate scientists know that the intensity of extreme precipitation events is on the rise because there’s more water vapor in the atmosphere caused by higher global and sea temperatures. With rising global temperatures, the 2014 National Climate Assessment predicts that many communities will see more frequent extreme precipitation events like the one that hit Baton Rouge, La., last year.
Reprinted from ClimateWire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net. | {
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A live episode of the DTFH recorded at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn. Opening music by Emil Amos (Holy Sons, OM) Take a mind-bending dive into the depths of Buddhism and meditation with Buddhist teacher and author David Nichtern
David's Book
David's Website
Come to a workshop
Emil Amos | {
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Real Escape Game
Escape from the Werewolf Village in Chicago
This event has ended!
Thank you all for your participation!
There is no escape, unless you find the werewolf!
You lost your way and wandered into a village where werewolves attack people night by night. As the villagers disappear one by one, you can feel the fangs of the werewolves getting closer and closer to you. Can you reveal all the mysteries in time, and escape the Werewolf Village?
What IS this event exactly?
Real Escape Game is a live, puzzle-oriented entertainment event! It is unlike an escape room in that there are many teams, each with six people, all sharing one room. You have 60 minutes to find the clues, solve the puzzles, and escape not the physical room but the situation instead. Real Escape Games are held in all sorts of fun venues with tons of different themes. Each game can only be played once – don’t miss these limited engagements!
Do I need 6 people?
No! We assist with team-making for any people or groups that come with less than six. | {
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“All KP fans want to watch him in England blues one more time and the ECB will have to turn their attention to him one more time.”
The most talked about news in World Cricket recently has been the unheralded firing of Alastair Cook as captain of the England ODI Team ahead of the forthcoming World Cup 2015. In the wake of recent events, this comes as a major surprise for cricket fans who didn’t expect such a drastic measure ahead at this time. Time has been given to Cook, and nothing much has changed over the past few months about England’s tale of woe in the limited overs format. Though Cook was dragging the England team down and something had to be done, the fact his sacking comes two months before a World Cup raises plenty of questions.
The England selectors, led by James Whitaker, met on Friday at Trent Bridge to pick the squad for the World Cup, and indicated their desire for a change in leadership to the managing director of England cricket, Paul Downton. According to an ECB statement, further formal approval was then given by the ECB chairman, Giles Clarke, before the decision was ratified.
Whitaker said: “We spent a considerable time yesterday discussing the make up of a squad that gives England the best possible chance of success at the World Cup which begins in less than two months. Having reviewed the recent series against Sri Lanka we came to the conclusion that there was no place for Alastair Cook amongst our strongest 15 one-day players and therefore recommended Eoin Morgan be appointed one-day captain.
“We always said we would review this after the series. It was unfortunate from Alastair’s point of view but we have given the coaches the best possible team for the World Cup.
“Alastair, I have always said, is a man of immense integrity and honesty and he was determined to see it through. He has put more into England cricket than most people. He is a unique player. He is obviously very disappointed. There has been a lot of pressure on Alastair. He has carried it well. He has taken a lot of weight of England cricket for a number of months. I feel for him. We hope he will return to Test cricket fresh and strong.”
The ECB’s decision to sack Alastair Cook as ODI captain may be overdue, but it is also correct and gives England an outside chance of success at the World Cup.They had almost no chance with Cook in the side. They were carrying a man who had scored one half-century in his last 22 innings and had not managed a century for 30 months and 45 innings. That is not a poor run of form; it is a famine. To say the least, strategies must be changed and game plans must be modified with Cook out of the picture.
One such strategy might be calling back arguably England’s best batsmen ever.
The one person who was on cloud nine shortly after this decision was made was none other than Kevin Pietersen. Pietersen was axed by England in the wake of the Ashes whitewash last winter, with ECB managing director Paul Downton since claiming that the 34-year-old had become “disengaged” from the side.
Kevin Pietersen insisted he would listen to any offer to return as England selectors met on Friday to decide which players are set for World Cup duty. The batsman’s international career looks to be over after he was ditched from the England set-up following last winter’s heavy Ashes defeat, and went on to write a controversial autobiography. He wasn’t in the most subdued of modes earlier in the week, as could be seen on Twitter :
— Kevin Pietersen (@KP24)
“@MattWabe: The @ECB_cricket selectors meet today. Get @Eoin16 as captain and a little man called Kevin @KP24 into the side.” Phone is on!
After the news reached him, Pietersen tweeted his hope that he would get the chance to play under England’s new ODI captain:
— Kevin Pietersen (@KP24)
“Great news that @Eoin16 is new England 1-day captain. Top player, leader and bloke. Hope I get to play for him.”
It is no mystery that Cook hasn’t favored Pietersen at all and has always seen him as dangerous to the sanctity of the team as a whole. Pietersen has been equally at fault and has provided enough reason for people to believe that his inclusion in the team will lead to more precariousness within the team. But his formidable record and prodigious ability with the bat will make selectors think again.
England’s ODI form has been very poor and the recent 5-1 loss in Sri Lanka combined with a new leader to take up the mantle makes the need for experienced performers even more with the World Cup approaching. Kevin Pietersen’s 66 recently in the Big Bash proves that even at 34, he is as dangerous as ever. Support from Andrew Flintoff and Michael Vaughan surely does help his cause as well.
All KP fans want to watch him in England blues again and the ECB will have to turn their attention to him one more time. | {
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OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Nov. 22, 2017) - CannaRoyalty Corp. (CSE:CRZ)(CSE:CRZ.CN)(CNSX:CRZ)(OTCQX:CNNRF) ("CannaRoyalty" or the "Company"), today announced that its wholly-owned business unit CR Brands, has completed its first commercial production run of GreenRock Botanicals™ ("GRB") premium cannabis vape pens for medical cannabis distributor, River. River placed an initial purchase commitment of more than US$165,000 for GRB products, which equates to a retail value of over US$400,000. CR Brands expects to ship this initial order in the coming days. This is the second consumer product line that CR Brands has launched through its partnership with River in California, following the launch of its Soul Sugar Kitchen™ ("SSK") gourmet edibles line in October 2017.
California is the largest cannabis market in the world with annual sales of approximately US$2.8 billion in 2016.(1) Sales are forecast to grow to over US$6.8 billion in 2021 and vaporizer products are expected to account for 15% of the total. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 54% between 2017 and 2021(2).
"As we approach the advent of a full adult-use market in California in less than 40 days, we are ramping up commercial production for our portfolio of premium, quality cannabis products in the state," said Marc Lustig, CEO of CannaRoyalty. "With over 20 years of medical legalization and a broad range of permitted products, California is home to some of the most sophisticated cannabis consumers in the world. We have seen strong preliminary interest from consumers in our products but are still in the early days of executing our product and brand strategy. Over the next 12 months we will work to introduce new product lines and opportunistically add established, value-add brands to our portfolio in California, which can later be licensed into other key markets."
CR Brands is currently retrofitting its new Santa Rosa facility (the "Facility") to produce the growing suite of CR Brand products in the California market. The Facility is located in a commercial complex with several tenants that have been licensed for cannabis production and distribution by the city of Santa Rosa, and the Company is in the process of applying for its own processing license. The Facility has the capacity to accommodate significant growth in the growing CR Brands portfolio.
Dave Vautrin, President of CR Brands, added, "As a team, we have significant experience commercializing differentiated consumer products and building successful brands in the U.S. consumer-packaged goods space. Despite being in the initial phases of our growth in California, we are already pleased with the early uptake of Soul Sugar Kitchen™, which has been picked up by 92 dispensaries since its launch in September. We will next launch GreenRock Botanicals™ through the River distribution channel and will focus on growing the points of distribution for both product lines, as well as driving performance on an individual dispensary level. We are primarily focused on brand-building and uptake at this point, which will ultimately lead to sustainable traction on the top-line. Consolidating manufacturing and processing control into Santa Rosa and moving away from third-party manufacturers will also give us more control and visibility from concept to consumer and enable us to begin to optimize the price and cost equation as we scale."
Concurrent with the Q4 production and launch of GreenRock Botanicals™, the Company has released the Green Rock Botanicals website which can be found at http://greenrockbotanicals.com
Learn more about Soul Sugar Kitchen™ at http://soulsugar.kitchen
The investment in River has driven the growth of CR Brands' retail footprint in California. River has agreed to a preferred product distribution arrangement with a contractual commitment by River to purchase no less than USD$20 million worth of CR Brands' portfolio of products through December 31, 2024, subject to certain conditions including the commercial viability of the products.
About GreenRock Botanicals™
The GreenRock Botanicals™ classic line starts with premium cannabis distillate oil, features a variety of flavour profiles including but not limited to Grape Ape, Pineapple Express, Platinum Cookies and Grand Daddy Purp, and is coupled with a best-in-class vape pen delivery system. The GreenRock Botanicals™ vape pen cartridge features a stainless-steel tip, a quartz glass tank with a ceramic wick and Kanthal coil, and the ability to regulate airflow. The combination of quality cannabis oil coupled with the premium delivery system provides the consumer with a distinctly rich vaping experience every time.
About Soul Sugar Kitchen™
The Soul Sugar Kitchen™ brand features delicious, award-winning, cannabis-infused edibles, which use premium quality distillate to ensure clean taste profiles. Soul Sugar Kitchen™ recipes celebrate the free, fun-loving spirit of the cannabis movement and are created with love by passionate, enthusiastic chefs. The initial line, which was recently launched in the California market, features: homemade peanut butter chocolate cups in Raspberry Jam and Milk Chocolate Crunch flavors; premium savory snack mix seasoned with BBQ or Parmesan Ranch; and a gourmet collection of Grape, Cherry and Raspberry jelly candies.
About CannaRoyalty
CannaRoyalty is an active investor and operator in the legal cannabis sector. Our focus is building and supporting a diversified portfolio of growth-ready assets in high-value segments of the cannabis sector, including research, consumer brands, devices and intellectual property. Our management team combines a hands-on understanding of the cannabis industry with seasoned financial know-how, assembling a platform of holdings via royalty agreements, equity interests, secured convertible debt, licensing agreements and its own branded portfolio.
Forward Looking Statements
Statements in this news release that are forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in CannaRoyalty's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will, could, plan, estimate, expect, intend, may, potential, believe, should," and similar expressions, are forward- looking statements.
Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements including the Company's expectations with respect to pursuing new opportunities and its future growth and other statements of fact.
Although CannaRoyalty has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, including, but not limited to: dependence on obtaining regulatory approvals; investing in target companies or projects which have limited or no operating history and are engaged in activities currently considered illegal under US Federal Laws; changes in laws; limited operating history; reliance on management; requirements for additional financing; competition; hindering market growth and state adoption due to inconsistent public opinion and perception of the medical-use and adult-use marijuana industry and; regulatory or political change.
There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances or results will materialize. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, the results or events predicted in these forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results or events.
Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. CannaRoyalty disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and CannaRoyalty does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein.
(1) According to New Frontier Data, California has the world's largest cannabis market with annual sales in 2016 of $2.8 billion
(2) Brightfield Group | {
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A leading human rights group has discovered a banned British-made cluster bomb used by the Saudis in their war on Yemen.
Amnesty International found the undetonated bomb in a remote village in northern Yemen.
The controversial BL-755 cluster bombs, banned decades ago, were built in the 1970s by the British company, Hunting Engineering, and designed to be deployed on UK-made Tornado fighter jets.
Each bomb has a cluster of 147 little bombs inside that scatter over a wide area when dropped. Some do not explode until agitated by unsuspecting civilians when they take their toll.
Amnesty says a Yemeni herdsman in the village located several miles from the Saudi border in Hajjah governorate warned the rights group that “in the area next to us, there are bombs hanging off the trees.”
Amnesty says the British government needs to destroy its cluster bombs and help find those it sold in the past.
Britain is believed to have sold many such munitions, which are prohibited in over a 100 countries, since the 1980s and 90s to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – a Saudi ally in its war on Yemen.
It also sold scores of Tornado jet fighters to Riyadh ever since.
Amnesty International’s head of UK Arms Controls, Oliver Sprague, has reportedly said it would be an “absolute scandal” if British personnel had been in any connected to the incident.
“Cluster bombs are one of the nastiest weapons in the history of warfare, rightly banned by more than 100 countries, so it’s truly shocking that a British cluster munition has been dropped on a civilian area in Yemen,” he said.
A Yemeni man inspects the rubble following a Saudi airstrike on May 31, 2015 in the al-Thawra sport city, located north of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a. (AFP)
"Given that this type of cluster bomb is very likely to have been used in combination with Tornado war planes which the UK has also sold to Saudi Arabia, there’s even a possibility that British support personnel might have been involved in the cluster bombing of Yemen. This would be an absolute scandal if confirmed.”
Yemen has been under airstrikes by Saudi Arabia since the regime in Riyadh launched its fatal campaign against the impoverished country on March 26, 2015, in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to Saudi-backed former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. More than 9,400 people have been killed in the Saudi airstrike ever since. | {
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Sundari had a mental habit of ignoring entire worlds while pondering the more arcane facts of their biology, so she did not hear the song until her hair was washed. She was wrapping it in a towel and walking barefoot across the spicewood floor, past the bed and sample tables and chemstove and microscopes and netset, when it occurred to her that someone had been singing for the last few minutes.
The song got louder, breaking into three parts. This meant the Eskiloni was female; males only had one set of vocal chords, which was why they normally sang in chorus. Trilling and soaring and burbling all at once, the song was made of equal parts sadness, loneliness, and a dark-blue, icy-cold note Sundari had never heard in a Yama song.
Perhaps it was the unexpected note that made her stop to put on coveralls. As usual, she was wearing only cargo shorts – a reasonable habit in a region with average temperatures above fifty Celsius and two meters annual precipitation. Modesty was a ridiculous, utterly human notion among the Yama, who only noticed if she did wear much. Her sole human contact never minded her casual semi-nudity; he was her husband after all – “It is my right, duty, and privilege to see you naked as often as possible,” Ale liked to joke. Sundari felt a need to cover up now, and that disturbed her.
The air chilled as she pressed the double-layered cloth shut. The tiny indoor cold snap was enough reason for wonder, but then the light faded from evening orange to a strange, twilight azure and she felt the chill to her bones.
Putting her feet into sandals, Sundari pushed the banda-cane door open. The jungle was blue. It should have been green: chlorophyll was the same color anywhere in the universe. The song, which gained now in volume, did not come from anywhere in particular, but from that blue everywhere in the hilly jungle of equatorial Eskilon IV.
Her gaze turned to the clearing, to the singing maiden, amid the singing of the forested hills.
Like the foliage, Eskilon’s people were boringly Earthlike: bipedal, four-pair-base DNA, two eyes and ears and a minimum of decorative extras. The maiden was wrongly blue, like the jungle. There were no mottled spots on her slender hips. Her hair fell loose about her torso. Puberty covered Eskiloni flanks in brown, and mothers wove their hair about their heads. She could be no more than fifteen years old, local time – thirteen Earth years.
The maiden stroked a shell-comb down her long, silky tresses with one six-fingered hand while her other hand held them straight. That hair was the deepest indigo – but where it shined, it was the reddest of red, as if dipped in blood.
The maiden never looked at her. But Sundari saw her eyes: blue, like the jungle. Eskiloni eyes were green, or yellow, or sometimes a magnificent ochre, but never, ever, blue.
The knowledge of an experienced, highly-educated xenobiologist was suddenly insufficient. For the first time since her arrival on Eskilon, Sundari felt afraid.
That was why she felt a chill: it was the frosted touch of fear.
Without orders from her mind, her hand touched the nine-pointed star at her throat. She stepped backwards into the gohan, letting the door slap shut. The banda-cane made a hollow, woody bang, banishing the blueness and the terrible song. Just like that, the song had never been sung. The afternoon light was orange. She’d held her breath in a trance, perhaps? But, why would her skin be goose pimple-clammy?
Her hands shook. She wanted Alejandro – she even whispered “Ale, Ale” – but the time display on the netset said his shift had just ended. He would already be on his way from Port December, an hour’s commute.
Shivering, Sundari crossed to the bed, slipped under the netting, and curled up in a ball.
His electric motorbike was quiet, but the wheels crunched dirt road and his headlight shined through the windows. Sundari woke from her shivering half-sleep and looked at the netset: he was two hours late.
“Ale,” she called out. “Ale, where have you been?” She crossed her arms tightly and went to meet him.
He stepped off the bike and came up the steps. “Had to stay over,” he muttered. “Bad fusion coil on one of the shuttles.”
Sundari threw herself against and around him. “Again?”
He took her into his arms. They were solid, like steel beams. “You know how the shuttle jocks like to break atmo too fast. I hate it too,” he said, stroking her long hair. He kissed her softly on the lips.
Alejandro drove the distance four days a week, to and from the village, to be with her. Like other dirtside crew, he could have stayed overnight in barracks. He could have gone to Camptown to sample the brothels and saloons – it was depressing how quickly some Eskiloni had picked up on the worst ways to profit from humans outposting on their planet. But her Ale was not one of those men. He had her.
“Why are you wearing this?” he wondered, pulling at her coverall. “Christ, It’s forty degrees out there.”
She told him about the singer while he cooked an omelet of dageris eggs.
“You saw a ghost?” He asked in a flat voice.
Sundari shrugged.
Alejandro returned his attention to the omelet with renewed vigor. “I came two hundred light years to get away from superstitions. You’re a scientist, for fuck’s sake.”
“I didn’t say it was a ghost,” Sundari replied softly. “It was ghost-ly.”
“The world turned blue. The air turned cold. You’re playing with your little silver god now. You’ve seen a lizard-ghost. Explain the science, sweetie.”
Sundari stared at the floor and let her hand drop from the nine-pointed pendant. “They’re not ‘lizards,’ Ale.”
“Sorry, ma vida, it’s got so even the ones who work for us call each other ‘lizard.’” He was quiet for a time. “I tell you, it’s a good thing our chemicals mix, because an atheist and a believer? It wouldn’t work, otherwise.” He scooped the omelet onto a plate, set it on the table, and touched her chin with thick, gentle fingers. “A cloud covered the sun, a Yama girl sang, and you got spooked.” He leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Eat, you’ll feel better.”
She pulled his face to hers, and kissed him for a long time. “I feel better now.”
She watched Alejandro sleeping. One of her hands lay against his hip. The other hand touched a place below her navel.
It was not time. They were not ready. He refused to have his tubes opened. “Babies can wait,” he always said. “We all live three hundred years anymore, what’s the hurry?”
There was no hurry. Only desire. He smelled of the soap in the locker room showers, but it was the smell of Ale – the chemicals, he said – that made her want to hurry, and be full of him.
Sundari forgot about blue jungle and spectral songs. But she had dreams about them.
The Ansible News Agency had only the usual suspects to report today: Eskiloni factions making peace in exchange for development. Mars 5000 Exchange prices dropping in the trading period. Her home state, India, had completed the Diwali festival. It was always nice to hear news of home, but she wasn’t Hindu, so this news wasn’t satisfying.
Ale kicked the stand up. “I’ll be home early,” he said. “I’ve already got overtime for the week. Try not to see ghosts today.” He swung one leg over the cycle.
Sundari kissed him, said she would try, and wanted to keep her word. She looked at her notes and thought hard about Eskiloni biology. Complex but surprisingly elastic, Eskilon had developed inherited immunities to Earthborn diseases in just two generations. It was a good world to be a biologist. But her mind would not quit the song, so one hour after Ale left Sundari gathered up her things, tied on a sari, slipped on her hiking boots, and left to find Grand-man Tytharyth.
The men were all gone, and Tytharyth was not in his gohan. Mora Mina, his youngest daughter, waited outside his hut with a child on her broad, mottled hip. When Sundari asked after the Grand-man, she pointed to the jungle. “The men are all visiting ancestors,” she said. “He asked me to show you the way.”
He had a knack for that, did Tytharyth, for knowing when she would come. During her first year in the village, he’d insisted on taking her by the hand to point out and explain every plant, rock, and insect. If something grew or moved in his jungle, he knew all about it, wrapping its life-cycle in bizarre, yet amazingly descriptive mythologies. Eskilon boasted more innovations in one patch of jungle than she’d seen in all her Earth-bound studies. This biosphere’s intricate dynamism affected the way everything lived, and Grand-man Tytharith was a codex for understanding it all.
The Grand-man was partly shaman and partly chief, but mostly matchmaker. Like any social and sentient race, pair bonding was a critical affair. The Grand-man and Grand-woman made matches and negotiated contracts between clutches. Among the Yama, youth were indoctrinated for marriage and paired in a mass-ceremony every year. Eskiloni romance was thus equal parts business arrangement, basic training, and prom night orgy.
Afterwards, newly-adult Eskiloni were expected to arrange things by themselves as responsible adults; marriages were renewed, or not, with the arrival of spring and the mass-ceremony. Even Alejandro had undergone the ceremony with her, despite his many private protestations. His patience and forbearance that spring had sealed her love for him: “You are the only man for me,” she liked to tell him. “No other man would put up with a girl gone native like me.”
“I like you in mufti,” he had joked, tickling her bare hip.
Babies were not allowed to leave the village, so Mora Mina stopped at a carved border post.
“How much further?” Sundari asked, looking up the steep trail on the other side.
The maiden blinked the clear inner membranes across her slitted irises, a thing akin to humans licking their lips. “Not far,” she said, pointing up the trail. Which, given her dubious body language, meant: I have no clue.
When she finally came upon Tytharyth an hour later, he was sitting on the edge of a table-sized stump by the trail, his spindly legs crossed around his eight-foot banda-cane staff. His face was a gentle frown – a smile, on Eskilon’s faces.
Sundari stepped up to him with her hands outstretched, bending to equal his height. It was a gesture of respect that made her waist-length hair fall around her shoulders.
Tytharyth shook both of her hands. That was unique to the Yama: nowhere else on Eskilon IV did anyone shake both hands. “Welcome welcome, child-of-the-village.” He bent his head quickly and then released her hands. “Please,” he said, indicating she should sit with him on the stump.
Sundari pulled her daypack off and sat. “Are the ancestors talkative today?”
The Grand-man shook his head, which meant yes. “There is a controversy.”
“Really?” She settled into a more comfortable position and shut her eyes, a signal she was eager to listen. A distant chorus told her the village men were nearby, all in a group. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed strains of white chalk powder on the Grand-man’s forehead and shoulders.
He blinked his inner eyelids. “You have seen a thing,” he said in a low voice. “And you wish to know what it is.”
Sundira looked down at his waist. A leather pouch tied to his loincloth was dusted with chalk powder, too. “I did.”
He sighed. “I have seen this thing,” he said in that low, quiet voice. “I am the only man who has seen her and lived.”
Sundira pressed her mouth shut.
“There is a thing I must tell you,” he began, reaching for the pouch. “I must tell it and return to the men. They are nervous that I am even speaking with you right now.”
“Why?” Sundari asked.
“We are invisible today, so only the ancestors can see us.” He pulled a puffy blossom from the bag, covered in powder. “They are anxious for me, because I have made myself visible to speak with you. I didn’t want to frighten you by speaking like a ghost.”
“It won’t bother me if you’re invisible,” she said.
He bent his head back to say thank you without words and dusted himself with the powder. This took some time, even with her help. Satisfied at last that he was perfectly invisible, he settled again and insisted on sharing his lunch with her before beginning the tale.
“What you have seen is the Fera Kholos,” he said.
“Death Maiden?” Sundira repeated.
He hissed, Eskiloni for hush. “Not too loud, child-of-the-village.” His eyelids licked at his pupils again. “This is a hard thing to tell.” He stared into the jungle for a long moment.
Tingling, Sundira waited. Eskiloni did not like to tell hard things. When speaking of them became necessary, there was usually some amount of silence first.
“Before the ninth generation past,” he began again, meaning: Once upon a time. “A Yama maiden was betrothed to a very high-ranking prince. He was a haughty rascal, though, and on the day before the ceremony, the prince was discovered wooing another engagement.” His voice dropped off in a whisper. “A woman’s rank depends on her betrothals, yes? The maiden did not marry. Instead, she stayed in her hut for one year, less one day, refusing to come out.” He shook his head. “There was…concern. The Grand-man and Grand-woman tried to find her another match. She refused, and they insisted.” He nodded and smiled, meaning this was a bad thing. “Wisdom is knowing better.”
He was quiet for a time, dabbing more chalk over his body and face. Sundira looked away, letting him be as invisible as he wished.
“She was heard singing in the jungle that night. When they found her the next day, she was dead. She walked beyond the boundary-posts, combed her hair…and cut her stomach open with an obsidian knife.”
When he said it, Sundira could see it, so she covered her mouth with a hand. “Oh…”
“She is the Death Maiden now,” Tytharyth muttered. Then, he dusted the chalk on his palms and crossed his arms, meaning: The point of all this is… “Do you remember, when you asked to live among us three years ago, that we made you a child-of-the-village?”
Sundira shook her head. “The happiest day I’ve ever known.”
“We painted you, and welcomed you with kisses from the entire village. This is how the Yama take an orphan. Even orphans from the sky.” He looked up at the setting sun, the orange sky, and frowned sadly, inner eyelids flicking. “We invoked the ancestors to protect you. Do you remember?”
Sundira nodded.
“There are ancestors, and there are demons,” he explained. “When a Yama dies with an heir to learn their songline, they become an ancestor. If the Yama dies before learning their own songline, they return to us as ancestors. Even if they die without an heir to their songline, they can walk among the ancestors and earn the name after death.”
He paused for a long time, frowning at a cloud. “This is not a simple thing to explain,” he said. “Sometimes, when a Yama passes from the living in violence — especially if they die by their own hand — they return as demon, ancestor to no one. The Death Maiden is such a demon.”
The Grand-man stopped, listening to something Sundari could not hear. After a time, he seemed satisfied with what he heard, and continued. “The people can talk to the ancestors at any time. They walk among us always. But demons rarely walk among us. They only appear at times of great controversy.”
Sundari frowned as understanding dawned on her. Whatever the reason might be for the village men to come out here, this far from the village, and consult their ancestors, must also be the reason she had come to see Tytharyth. “And what is the controversy now?” She asked, keeping some of the tension from her voice.
“Child-of-the-village,” he said, “the Death Maiden wreaks her vengeance on faithless men. When she sings, they come. They see her, and want her. I saw her once – only once, and she was my test of strength, for if I had gone to her I would have died. They always go to her, they always die. She cuts them with her stone knife, she dips her hair in their blood, the drops fall across the jungle like rain. We find them…smiling.”
Sundira stared at him for several seconds, and then her jaw dropped open. She stood up. “No,” she said, voice deeper than normal. Her throat caught, and she gulped. Her chest was so tight, it hurt to swallow. “No…”
“She knows, child-of-the-village.” He nodded his head vigorously. “Today, the men atone. We are the ones who pass the trails, and hear word from far away, even as far as your world’s touching-place on our own.”
Unwilling in her understanding, Sundira nodded. ‘The banda-cane telegraph,’ as Port December called it, carried even the most trivial gossip to every point in the jungle, given enough time. It was perhaps the most human thing about the Eskiloni: every last one was a professional gossip.
“It was our duty to be watchful, and prevent this calamity,” he said. “But we stay here today, singing in chorus to drown out her song, that we should live and not die. Meanwhile, your husband — married to you by our own rites — returns to the village.”
“No,” Sundira breathed. She stood, grabbing up her knapsack. “No!”
“You cannot stop her,” Tytharyth called after her as she turned to run. “Can you not hear? She is already singing.”
Sundira did hear. As she ran on steep trails, and the afternoon rains came down in the blue jungle, turning the world to red mud, three hundred voices filled the air, and she finally did hear them. Yama females never sang together, but today every woman and girl in the village sang – even the Grand-woman. For no child-of-the-village would be shamed without invoking the terrible vengeance of Fera Kholos, whose three voices rose above the chorus, a haunting splendor of sound.
When men lie, they also tell lies. The song was of Ale, who lay with Camptown whores from the skid row of Port December. He was coming to the Maiden now, walking in a smiling trance to his death.
Sundira stopped running. Her legs refused to take more than sad, halfhearted, and heavy-footed steps. She walked to the border-post, where she fell to her knees, and joined her wailing note with the Death Maiden in a quartet of love, betrayal, anger, and sorrow.
She discovered the body at sunrise. Ale was hacked open, but smiling. | {
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The Most Interesting Man in the World
i don't always make a post
but when i do, i check it every 30 seconds to see how it's doing | {
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What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email
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David Cameron has broken a promise not to cut child tax credits - and the evidence is staring him in the face.
This footage shows the slick PM saying not once but twice that he'd protect the benefits, which top up the salaries of Britain's worst-paid people.
That was on April 30, before the general election.
Fast forward barely three months and he's taken a sledgehammer to his vow in yesterday's budget.
George Osborne unveiled a litany of cuts to child tax credit, including restricting the £2,700-a-year payments to the first two children.
Ministers insist existing families won't be affected - but they will if they stop claiming for more than 6 months.
(Image: BBC)
Labour says the changes will cost hard-working families hundreds of pounds a year, even when the new living wage is factored in.
Mr Cameron made his promise in the BBC Question Time election special on April 30 - and it's not gone unnoticed by Labour figures.
Leadership contender Yvette Cooper declared on Twitter: "David Cameron told David Dimbleby that child tax credit will not fall - today he cut it."
The exchange came when an audience member asked Mr Cameron to 'put to bed' rumours he'd cut child tax credit, or restrict child benefit to two children.
The idea was put forward in a report by the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank.
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He replied: "Thank you Jenny for that question.
"No, I don't want to do that. This report that's out today is something I rejected at the time as Prime Minister and I reject it again today."
Host David Dimbleby then pushed him on the detail, saying some people were clearly worried.
The PM replied: "Child tax credit we increased by £450."
"And it's not going to fall?" asked the presenter.
The PM confirmed: "It's not going to fall."
READ MORE: How will the Budget affect my tax credits? Everything you need to know about George Osborne's raid | {
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Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, the anthropomorphized loaf of stale bread resigning after this term, made clear his disgust over an Instagram post from Donald Trump Jr. mocking Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when the two were in high school.
Trump's oldest son posted a fake "sexual assault letter found by Dems," written in crayon, that says, "Hi Cindy, Will you be my girlfriend?" The letter is signed, "Love, Brett."
The shockingly unfunny joke is a reference to the letter Ford sent Senator Diane Feinstein (a Democrat from California) in July raising her allegation that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her, and covered her mouth during a high school party in the early 1980s.
Always ready to pounce on Trump and company for daily breaches of decency, Flake tweeted his dismay the next day, calling Trump Jr.'s joke "sickening."
This is sickening. No one should make light of this situation. pic.twitter.com/G7rlT3IKTQ — Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) September 19, 2018
Flake's denouncement is unsurprising. Just as unsurprising: His moral indignation only goes so far as doing exactly what the Republican establishment wants him to do.
A day before his criticism of Trump Jr., Flake tweeted that he wants to rush a vote to confirm Kavanaugh.
When Dr. Ford came forward, I said that her voice should be heard and asked the Judiciary Committee to delay its vote on Judge Kavanaugh. It did so. I now implore Dr. Ford to accept the invitation for Monday, in a public or private setting. The committee should hear her voice. — Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) September 19, 2018
Flake said this despite a previous statement that he would vote "no" if Ford didn't get a chance to testify first. Flake wavered when Ford requested an FBI investigation of her claims before appearing in front of Congress. Democrats support an FBI investigation of the claims, and Anita Hill wrote an op-ed saying such a step would be necessary to ensure Ford gets a fair hearing.
As New Times chronicled in July, Flake's modus operandi is getting mad when Trump or one of his allies says something heinous only to shrivel up when asked to actually do something about it. It's his essence. | {
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Oh, the pitfalls of working behind the camera on a news team.
When on-air talent can't be bothered to take part in a guest's activity, or isn't wearing the proper attire to do a random exercise on live television, it's time for the people that do all of the hard work to look silly at everyone else's expense.
Unfortunately for this poor man dressed in black at the Fox affiliate in Grand Rapids, Mich., his name was called when three exercise balls took the stage.
ThePostGame brings you the most interesting sports stories on the web. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to read them first!
As someone whose father spent years as a local news broadcast engineer, I can only shake my head in dismay. You can hardly blame the guy for falling off the ball. Have you ever tried an exercise like that? Rodeo clowns have an easier job. (Not really, but come on, it's unfair this guy had to hop on the ball in the first place). He's just lucky he didn't throw his arm out of his socket.
But you have to hand it to him for raising his pelvis, flexing his glutes, and giving it a whirl in front of live cameras, knowing full well it could end in (minor) disaster.
Popular Stories On ThePostGame:
-- An Insane Push-up Challenge To Test Your Limits
-- A Core Workout To Boost Your Slap Shot Power
-- How To Develop A Quicker First Step
-- Three Surprisingly Strong Ab Exercises | {
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Sexist developers, publisher malaise, the removal of used games - in this panel we'll not only talk about everything that fans the flames of 4chan, but we'll make it funny too! We'll discuss why it's so easy to be mad about something on the internet, especially about something we love like games. Our panel will tackle these tough issues, approach them from different angles and hopefully not end the hour by screaming at each other or you.
Participants:
Bob Chipman
Gavin Dunne
Jim Sterling
Mark J Kline
Main panel room sponsored by SMITE. | {
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Timothy Sweeney, 24, a medical student at Duke University, is seen in his home in Durham, N.C. Sweeney says he has given about $300 online overall to Obama's presidential campaign. Obama's army of small donors
Kriss Riggs isn't one to spend her money on politicians.
"Even the place you can donate a dollar on your taxes, I refuse to do it," says the 60-year-old photographer from Blue River, Ore.
Likewise for Kate Schwartz, a 24-year-old marketing expert from Chicago. Past elections, she says, always seemed far removed from young people.
"A lot of people felt like it wasn't happening in my demographic," Schwartz said.
Not this time.
Riggs and Schwartz are foot soldiers in Barack Obama's 1.5-million-strong army of campaign contributors. Dozens of Associated Press interviews with donors and an AP financial analysis show how contributions that make only a soft ka-ching by themselves, arriving in increments of $10, $15 and $50, have collectively swelled into a financial roar that has helped propel Obama toward the Democratic presidential nomination.
Altogether, Obama's campaign has taken in an unprecedented $226 million, most of it contributed online. His donor base is larger than the one the Democratic National Committee had for the 2000 election.
These are hardly political fat cats. Ninety percent of his donors give $100 or less, and 41 percent have given $25 or less, according to the Obama campaign. Overall, he has raised 45 percent of his money in small contributions. Hillary Rodham Clinton's figure is 30 percent, Republican John McCain's is 23 percent.
Riggs and Schwartz are examples of how Obama has become a financial colossus: Neither had given money to a candidate before; both have donated to him more than once; both expect to continue giving. And, just as significantly, they've gone on to help the campaign in other ways, such as staffing phone banks and canvassing neighborhoods.
In interviews with small donors around the country, the same message comes through: These donors feel they've taken ownership. They believe they're helping to set Obama free from the tug of big-money corporations and special interests.
Says Aaron Alpern, a 46-year-old actor from Chicago: Donors like him "don't have the pull of a gigantic corporation, but we have sort of the reverse — we give him freedom."
An AP analysis helps to fill in the portrait of Obama's small donors.
They are more broadly dispersed than Clinton's. People whose small contributions to Obama add up to at least $200 can be found in more than 14,000 ZIP codes nationwide, compared with a little less than 12,000 for Clinton, and less than 9,000 for McCain. Conversely, the 10 ZIP codes that contributed the most to Clinton's campaign account for more than 15 percent of her total contributions, while Obama's top 10 ZIP codes account for less than 5 percent of his take. McCain's top 10 ZIP codes account for just over 11 percent of his total.
Obama, a magnet for younger voters, is cashing in on that phenomenon. Among small donors, students have given $303,000 to him, compared with less than $100,000 to Clinton and less than $20,000 to McCain.
Campaigns are not required to disclose detailed information on donors who contribute less than $200, so little is known about the smallest givers. But campaigns do report information on small donors once their combined contributions top the $200 mark.
One such donor is Timothy Sweeney. The 24-year-old medical student at Duke University first noticed Obama when Sweeney was an undergraduate in Chicago, and liked his "high-minded approach to things." Sweeney has donated online in small increments adding up to about $300 so far, and says he may give $100 to $150 more if Obama makes it to the general election.
Obama, says Sweeney, strikes him as "just an honest, decent man, and I felt like somebody like that should be in the race."
Obama also appears to draw a disproportionate amount of support from black donors. In ZIP codes where 90 percent or more of residents are black, the AP analysis found, Obama attracted nearly $150,000 from individuals who gave small donations totaling at least $200, compared with less than $20,000 for Clinton and just $2,140 for McCain.
Obama gets 20 percent of his campaign dollars from the biggest donors, those contributing the maximum $2,300 for the primary campaign, compared to 34 percent for Clinton and 39 percent for McCain, according to the private Campaign Finance Institute.
While little is known about the characteristics of Obama's smallest donors, the impact of their giving is unquestioned.
Their combined purchasing power has turbocharged Obama's campaign, allowing him to do virtually everything he wanted in state after state in the prolonged Democratic duel with Clinton. They also have given Obama the luxury of spending more time talking to the public and less attending fundraisers, and have created a host of supporters working to elect him.
"Anybody that contributes, we immediately call them and ask them if they would like to be part of our organization," says Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. "Every state we go into, we have a foundation of support."
Not only can Obama keep returning to his donors for repeat contributions — only 2 percent have given the maximum $2,300 — he still has the potential to increase his pool of contributors from the names on his 3-million-plus e-mail list of contacts. Plouffe stresses that "we don't view our online community as an ATM" — rather as a network of supporters ready to help in all sorts of ways.
Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, said even the smallest contribution helps voters feel they have a stake in the campaign. Obama, he said, has taken to heart a lesson taught by Saul Alinsky, the father of community organizing, who often spoke about the importance of getting people to contribute even as little as 50 cents to get them invested in a cause. (Obama began his work as a community organizer in Chicago in 1985, more than a decade after Alinsky died, but studied Alinsky's methods.)
"Once a person does anything, that person is likely to do some other thing," Malbin said. In that respect, Malbin said, Obama's small donors are dramatically different from those of Howard Dean, the 2004 Democratic candidate who first tapped into small giving over the Internet but was unable to translate that support into votes.
"It's not just about getting the small gift," said Malbin. "It's about bringing a new person into the campaign, both financially and in terms of the volunteer program, and turning out the vote."
At least 20 percent of Obama's donors never have given to any candidate before, according to Plouffe.
Bonnie Reagan, a 56-year-old consultant from Nashville, Tenn., is an example. Obama is the first candidate she's ever given to — more than a dozen contributions so far totaling somewhere under $1,000. And after she gave, she took the campaign up on its invitation to help, and ended up working a phone bank during the early primaries.
Gerald Cook, a 67-year-old retired aerospace engineer in Denver, has $25 for Obama automatically deducted from his checking account each month and then tosses in "a little on top of that." He helped out on the Obama campaign in the lead-up to the Colorado caucuses.
Larry Levine, chair of a community services organization in tiny Hinton, W.Va., gives $50 or $100 every two or three weeks. Hardly anyone would see an Obama sign on his gravel road, he says, but he does keep an Obama sticker in the window of his car.
Riggs, the photographer from Oregon, began making calls for Obama after she began contributing, and even flew to Waco to canvass neighborhoods before the Texas primary.
"I've never done anything" before, said Riggs. "This man has stirred me."
And she's ready to help again.
While the small donors' impact in the immediate race is unquestioned, their future involvement in politics remains an intriguing question mark.
Are these new donors connected only to Obama, or a permanent part of the Democratic political apparatus? Individual donors suggest the answer could go either way.
Dan Cole, a 78-year-old retired teacher from Chicago, said he's willing to look elsewhere should Obama's campaign falter.
"What's of primary importance is that we get a Democrat in the White House," Cole says. "We're not going to fold up our tent and fall back to our hole if it's Hillary or nothing."
But Rosanna Williams, 82, a Philadelphia retiree who has given $500 to Obama in small increments, is adamant.
"If Obama doesn't win, then they can forget about me," she declared.
It could spell trouble for Democrats down the line if Obama's younger supporters don't transfer over.
Anthony Corrado, a campaign finance expert at Colby College in Maine, said there's good reason to think many of Obama's donors won't branch out should his candidacy falter.
"That $25 is their first foray into politics," Corrado said. If Obama doesn't win, he said, "Among these small donors, many will be done. Obama is their candidate." | {
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BMW Group uses Blockchain to drive supply chain transparency via MOBI HSV GTS Follow Apr 5 · 5 min read
Brief History of BMW
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, commonly known as Bavarian Motor Works, BMW or BMW AG, is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. BMW is headquartered in Munich, Bavaria. It also owns and produces Mini cars and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
or AG, is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. is headquartered in Munich, Bavaria. It also owns and produces Mini cars and is the parent company of Motor Cars. It was the successor of Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG, founded in 1916. 1916 is therefore considered BMW’s founding year.
The company was incorporated into Knorr-Bremse AG in 1920 before being refounded as BMW AG in 1922.
Five BMW Group Milestones
1916- Establishment of BMW in 1916
1923- BMW R 32- The first BMW motorcycle
1951- The BMW 501- The first post war BMW
1972- BMW starts up in South Africa
2001- Strategy- To be profitable and to enhance long term value from technological, structural and cultural perspective.
The mission statement up to the year 2020 is to become the worlds leading provider of premium products and premium services for individual mobility.
BMW Driver Experience Training
BMW group uses blockchain to drive further progress in supply chain transparency
The BMW Group is using innovative digital technologies to optimise its processes.
A good example of this is Blockchain, a technology that enables tamper-proof data sharing with potential applications throughout the entire automotive value chain.
The BMW Group is using this technology in purchasing to ensure the traceability of components and raw materials in multi-stage international supply chains.
In 2019 BMW conducted a successful pilot project for purchasing front lights. This year we want to expand the project to a large number of other suppliers.
The automotive industry’s international supply chains are highly complex.
They generally involve numerous players at different delivery stages and often undergo rapid changes. For this reason considerable effort can be needed to clearly track a component’s origin or supply route.
Up until now it has been customary for the many partners to manage their own data separately.
The companies respective IT systems have not always been able to communicate consistently with one another.
For the BMW Group’s purchasing experts and its suppliers, ensuring transparency therefore involved considerable manual effort.
BMW and the MOBI connection
In a series of meetings in late 2017 and early 2018 more than fifty percent of the world’s top automakers, along with many start-ups, tech-giants, foundations and forward thinking mobility providers met to discuss the potential of blockchain to make mobility safer, greener and more affordable.
The attendees came to the conclusion that a lack of scale and common standards were major obstacles to realizing potential benefits. As a result, the group decided to found and launch MOBI in May 2018, obviously BMW being one of these attendees.
MOBI would be a way for these organizations to meet in a more structured environment to organize their discoveries and conversations around the space.
Since MOBI’s founding over 100 corporations, government, NGOs and nonprofits have joined the community and now actively participate in working groups, events, hackathons and weekly channel calls to promote MOBI’s shared vision.
About MOBI
MOBI is a nonprofit organization working with forward thinking companies, governments and NGOs to make mobility services more efficient, affordable, greener, safer and less congested by promoting standards and accelerating the adoption of blockchain, distributed ledger and related technologies.
Blockchains will increasingly impact the provision of mobility services since it enables business networks to reduce the cost of coordinating their activities.
MOBI hopes to build a worldwide network of cities, infrastructure providers, consumers and producers of mobility services in order to hasten the adoption of this technology and realize its many potential benefits.
Ocean Protocol contribute $1 Million to the MOBI Grand Challenge
MOBI and BMW group kicked off the MOBI Grand Challenge, a 3 year initiative which commenced in late 2018 to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technology and data sharing which Ocean Protocol are proud to support.
are proud to support. With a $1 million commitment over 3 years, Ocean Protocol is a cornerstone partner to help make data and services available to solve challenges to coordinate vehicles, identify obstacles and route autonomous cars.
is a cornerstone partner to help make data and services available to solve challenges to coordinate vehicles, identify obstacles and route autonomous cars. The Grand Challenge commenced on October 12, 2018 and culminated with a public demonstration of selected technologies at an event hosted by the BMW Group, MOBI and Trusted IoT Alliance, in Munich, Germany on February 15, 2019.
The goals of MOBI, Trusted IoT Alliance and the automakers are aligned with those of Ocean Protocol . The Grand Challenge is an excellent forum to bring the public, government, industry and academia together, while unlocking data and services for problem solvers . Working together accidents, congestion and environmental impact of mobility can be significantly reduced, while increasing the flow of goods and improving accessibility to everyone.
. The Grand Challenge is an excellent forum to bring the public, government, industry and academia together, . Working together accidents, congestion and environmental impact of mobility can be significantly reduced, while increasing the flow of goods and improving accessibility to everyone. The winners of this first phase received $100,000 in Ocean Tokens. A further $900,000 worth of Ocean tokens will be granted over the next 3 years in later phases of the Grand challenge.
MOBI press releases
MOBI TEAM AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS
CONCLUSION | {
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UNDERNEATH all of the glitz and glamour, Dami Im has revealed the people she calls upon for help as her life is about to change forever.
On an exclusive News Corporation Australia reader blog today, Im revealed what the future now holds for her, and the people she will be calling upon for help.
She said turns to God, or her husband Noah.
"I pray to God, or call Noah :D Always helps me calm down and refocus."
News_Image_File: Dami Im
Read more of that blog below:
News_Module: Dami Im blog
Call it a Dami-lition job, the Korean-born pop princess surged to victory in this year's decider of Channel 7's The X Factor.
The 25-year-old Brisbane singer, mentored to the title by Dannii Minogue, beat out Ronan Keating's two-pronged attack of Taylor Henderson and Jai Waetford to win the title and a lucrative Sony Music recording contract.
News_Image_File: 8781f5c4-3fcc-11e3-9370-fad865867213
Declared the winner within weeks of the live performance episodes, Im completed one of the most stunning TV talent show transitions, after being sent home during boot camp - then given a second shot after the shock exit of another contestant.
News_Image_File: DAMI-LITION: Dami Im powers to victory in The X Factor Australia. Picture: Channel 7.
Im was carried into the winner's circle on a wave of support from her vast fan club, dubbed the Dami Army, who bombarded social media and rallied around the young singer - now poised to take her powerhouse vocals to her native Asia and beyond.
Their response to Im's rendition of Purple Rain confirmed she has also been the favourite of Australia's Twitter users.
News_Rich_Media: Dami sings 'Purple Rain'
The X Factor-related tweets flowed at a rate of 450 per minute during her performance of that song, putting her ahead of her competitors as she sang under a shower of water.
Minogue thanked their loyal fans on Twitter.
For celebrity coach Minogue, it was her first victory on the Australian X Factor series, after taking the title twice on the UK franchise.
News_Image_File: Dannii Minogue and Dami Im hug after she won The X Factor competition.
Drawing on all her pop diva experience, Minogue has helped makeover Im from a gangly girl, who the star described as "stumbling onto the stage like she was lost" in the early stages of the competition.
But there was no denying she owned that platform by the series' end, marrying soaring vocals with experimental and quirky costumes which will now be her signature.
When deciding on Im's costumes, Minogue said they saw Im as a "global star".
"When Square Division, (wardrobe consultant) Heather and I looked at Dami we saw her potential as a global star, someone epic who could take on the world...and so we went big."
Her winner's gown was both an epic finish to this cutting edge collaboration and the perfect fit for a fairy tale ending.
News_Image_File: Dami Im and Taylor Henderson after she was announced as the winner of X Factor.
As frothy and fashionable as her costume was, Im admitted they were also her armour at times.
"When I put them on I felt like a superstar until one day I actually believe it."
Her doubts almost crippled her chances in the competition exiting after boot camp when she forgot her lyrics.
Her fear fell away with one performance, of U2's One, in the first live show.
News_Image_File: Dami Im thanks her loyal fans, family and mentor Dannii Minogue.
With a mantra from her coach Minogue ringing in her ear - "you can talk yourself into this game or out of it" - she stepped up, playing a flying piano no less.
"After I got that first standing ovation, I thought 'well, maybe people like me.'"
They loved her, and crowned her the 2013 winner, marking this moment when another reality TV star was born.
The result mirrored iTunes activity after the last live performance show, with Im's rendition of Jennifer Hudson's Oscar-winning anthem, And I Am Telling You climbing into the top 10 ahead of Henderson's performance of the Cyndi Lauper hit Girls Just Want To Have Fun.
News_Image_File: TAYLOR TRAIN: Taylor Henderson sings for his life on The X Factor grand finale.
News_Rich_Media: Tayor Henderson survives the final cut to make it through to X Factor's final two, with Jai Waetford bowing out.
Despite his grand finale hiccup, forgetting the lyrics during his rendition of Damian Rice's Blower's Daughter, Henderson still managed to reach the top 10 with the single; while 14-year-old Jai Waetford was sitting at no.31 with his original track Don't Let Me Go.
News_Image_File: Jai Waetford finished as second runner-up after Dami Im and Taylor Henderson made the final two.
Adding to the occasion, US diva Katy Perry performed two of her hits, including the infectious call to arms, Roar; hot on the heels of UK boy band One Direction's appearance on Sunday night.
News_Rich_Media: Pop superstar Katy Perry performs her hit new song 'Roar' on the X Factor finale. Courtesy Channel Seven.
Guy Sebastian also performed his new song Like A Drum.
News_Rich_Media: Guy Sebastian sings his brand new single 'Like A Drum' live on the X Factor Finale. Courtesy Channel Seven
Im's adoring husband Noah could not contain his emotion, as he watched on while his wife performed her first single, Alive, and she was showered with glittery confetti and the well-wishes of the returning contestants from this year's series.
News_Image_File: Winner of The X Factor in 2013, Dami Im. Picture: Channel 7
The top 5 singers will have little time to celebrate, as they head into rehearsals for a national tour next month and will hit Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Perth.
The music spectacular will round out a record year for the Seven talent search series, which has average over 1.5 million viewers each week - building to a high of 3.03 million people nationally for Sunday night's live grand final episode.
For tickets to The X Factor Live Tour, see Ticketek or the X Factor website.
Originally published as Demolition Dami reveals her rock | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Supports right to bear arms doesn't constantly post pro-gun graphics and pictures with guns on facebook | {
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Colorfully named Kotaku commenter BubbleF**kingBuddy keeps it short and sweet in today's Speak-Up on Kotaku, asking why our readers love Minecraft but hate FarmVille.
Does it seem fair that Kotakuites often shit on Farmville for being "casual" or "pointless", and then go on to play Minecraft all day? Why the double standard?
About Speak-Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That's why we have that little box on the front page of Kotaku. You know, the one with "Got something to say?" written in it? That's the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Just make sure to include #speakup in your comment so we can find it. Every weekday we'll pull one of the best #speakup posts we can find and highlight it here. | {
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Debris falls from construction zone onto car at Huntington St. underpass
A car was struck by a piece of wood that fell from an underpass and nearly injured a driver Tuesday. Watch reportThe two by four shattered the windshield of the car as Nancy Shapiro was on her way to the Symphony.Shapiro was driving eastbound in the Huntington Avenue underpass by Massachusetts Ave. The 18 wheeler truck brushed a loose netting of the underpass, causing the object to fall on the car."I don't remember anything other than seeing it -- hearing something and seeing it. I wasn't scared until now and AAA is coming to tow my car," she said.The piece of wood pierced the windshield, six inches away from striking Shapiro.The truck driver told police he did not hear his truck hit any of the construction materials in the ceiling of the underpass.The incident shut down both ways of the road for several hours. The roads reopened just after 10 p.m. Police said the driver is lucky to be alive.The underpass was closed both ways as crews inspected the scene.Get the WCVB News App
A car was struck by a piece of wood that fell from an underpass and nearly injured a driver Tuesday.
Watch report
The two by four shattered the windshield of the car as Nancy Shapiro was on her way to the Symphony.
Shapiro was driving eastbound in the Huntington Avenue underpass by Massachusetts Ave. The 18 wheeler truck brushed a loose netting of the underpass, causing the object to fall on the car.
"I don't remember anything other than seeing it -- hearing something and seeing it. I wasn't scared until now and AAA is coming to tow my car," she said.
The piece of wood pierced the windshield, six inches away from striking Shapiro.
The truck driver told police he did not hear his truck hit any of the construction materials in the ceiling of the underpass.
The incident shut down both ways of the road for several hours. The roads reopened just after 10 p.m.
Police said the driver is lucky to be alive.
The underpass was closed both ways as crews inspected the scene. | {
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Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Youth climate activists pose with Greta Thunberg (C) during a demonstration
From the first protest by a single student, the school climate strike movement has been a lightning rod for criticism.
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who inspired the now-global movement, has become a primary target. On Wednesday, the 16-year-old arrived in New York after completing her voyage across the Atlantic aboard an environmentally friendly yacht.
She faced a barrage of attacks on the way.
"Freak yachting accidents do happen in August," Arron Banks, a businessman and prominent Brexit campaigner, tweeted . While Mr Banks said the tweet was a joke, many were outraged.
Ms Thunberg is not the only eco-activist under fire, though. Four young climate campaigners told the BBC of the abuse they have been subjected to. One was compared to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels while another said she had been racially abused.
These environmentalists have asked difficult questions of politicians, and been ruthlessly derided for doing so. With hostility heightening, why are young climate activists facing so much hate?
Since Ms Thunberg's first solo vigil outside Sweden's parliament in August 2018 media attention and criticism have gone hand-in-hand.
At first, they were told to stay in school. These students were not on strike, one British Conservative MP tweeted , they were truants.
Then there were claims that young climate activists were merely the puppets of adults. In February a far-right Dutch lawmaker said students were being influenced by teachers with a political agenda.
When Ms Thunberg travelled to the UK in April, several right-wing media outlets wrote polemics against the teen. One of them, an editorial by the website Spiked, mocked the "apocalyptic dread in her eyes".
There were sustained attacks by Germany's far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party ahead of the EU elections in May. Posts about Ms Thunberg and climate change spiked on the party's Facebook page, an investigation, led by Greenpeace Unearthed, found .
Weeks later, before her address to the French parliament in July, some far-right and conservative MPs hurled insults at the teen , calling her the "Justin Bieber of ecology" and a "prophetess in shorts".
Image copyright EPA Image caption Some French MPs hurled insults at the young activist ahead of her speech in the French parliament in July
Those who have resorted to personal attacks on the activist appear to be "retreating into various forms of denial", Nigel Thomas, professor of childhood and youth at the University of Lancashire, says.
Given the seriousness of scientists' climate warnings, some "may feel threatened by a teenager who has clearly understood and faced up to the trouble we are all in".
So far, she has shown restraint, staying mostly above the fray. Her tweeted response to Australian political blogger Andrew Bolt, who described her as "deeply disturbed", was an exception.
Sorry, this Twitter post is currently unavailable.
Instead, Ms Thunberg tends to focus her ire on political leaders. Her brand of environmentalism, however, does not appeal to everyone.
In particular, those who "don't like being told what to do" and feel children "don't have the right to say these things", Richard Black, the director of the environmental think tank the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said.
One theory is that, by using shaming tactics, some activists are provoking visceral reactions. But Mr Black said it is governments, not ordinary people, which she and others are targeting.
By couching her climate warnings in ominous terms, Greta's message has gained traction. Yet some have accused her of alarmism.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Greta Thunberg holds her "school strike for climate" sign onboard the racing boat Malizia II in the Atlantic Ocean
Prof Thomas disagrees with this assessment. He said her language "befits the very serious message she feels impelled to convey".
"I don't see how one can put climate change aside in assessing the appropriateness of her language; that's precisely the issue," he says.
Ms Thunberg has argued that climate activists are "just saying what scientists have repeatedly said for decades".
"I am just a messenger, and yet I get all this hate," she wrote on Facebook.
The reality is that the children who campaign, including school strikes, have become the bearers of bad news.
Global warming, according to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , is being caused by human activity. This conclusion is shared by 97% of actively publishing climate scientists, a 2016 study of peer-reviewed journals found . If carbon emissions are not curbed, and global temperatures continue to rise, researchers expect the risks of climate change to increase.
As purveyors of this scientific consensus, young climate activists are in the crosshairs of those who oppose radical action on it.
Dr Stephane Wolton, a London School of Economics professor whose research focuses on accountability, believes young activists should not be held to the same standards as adults.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Young people take part in a Fridays for Future demonstration for climate action at Düsseldorf International Airport
He says Ms Thunberg has to accept some scrutiny now she has put herself in the public eye "but we should not expect a 16-year-old, or even millions of them, to have solutions to such a complicated problem".
Although it is "fair game" to accuse her of "playing on emotions", personal attacks are not appropriate, he adds.
Michael Wyness, professor of education studies at the University of Warwick, says children are quite capable of accounting for their claims.
Many 16-year-olds would "probably not recognise themselves as children", Prof Wyness argues.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Ms Thunberg's school strike has become a global movement and set her up as a contender for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize
Regardless of age, Prof Thomas says all activists should be held to account for their political interventions.
But he says this should be done "in a manner appropriate to their age and any other relevant characteristics".
Ms Thunberg has sought to position herself as an impartial messenger, saying "our school strike has nothing to do with party politics".
The problem is, her campaign "may be captured by other activists with a broader agenda", Dr Wolton says.
Video caption Environmental activist Greta Thunberg says climate change is 'an existential crisis'
Sweeping changes to combat climate change will require increased state spending and intervention, an economic approach largely favoured by the left.
"I do think there are certain groups of campaigners, I would say a minority, whose main concern is changing the economic system," Mr Black, a former BBC environment correspondent, says.
This creates a dilemma for young activists professing their neutrality.
For the time being, three of the four young activists the BBC spoke to said they were not interested in politics. None of them intends to change the way they campaign and see politics, and the criticism that flows from it, as a distraction.
Aside from climate change, these youngsters have other interests, of course. For example, one said she's happiest when watching Netflix or playing with her dog.
Without the placards and slogans, it is easy to forget that many activists are, after all, children. But children doing what they believe to be right in what can be a cruel world. | {
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(This version of the story corrects spelling of Weiner in paragraphs 10, 12 and 13)
(Reuters Health) - The vapor from e-cigarettes may boost the production of inflammatory chemicals in the lungs, while disabling key cellular defenders against infection, a new study suggests.
In a series of laboratory experiments, researchers found that e-cigarette vapor impairs the activity of cells called macrophages, which normally remove allergens, bacteria and other particles that have made their way into the lungs, according to the report published in Thorax.
For the cultured cells, exposure to e-cigarette vapor induced many of the same changes in lung macrophages that have been seen in cigarette smokers and patients with COPD, the researchers note.
The concern is that long-term vaping might lead to breathing problems. E-cigarettes “are safer in terms of cancer risk, but if you vape for 20 or 30 years and this can cause COPD, then that’s something we need to know about,” senior study author Dr. David Thickett of the University of Birmingham in the UK, said in a statement.
Earlier studies looked just at the effect on cells of the liquid that goes into an e-cigarette rather than at the vaporized chemicals.
To determine what effect vaporizing might have, Thickett and his colleagues extracted macrophages from lung tissue samples from eight non-smokers who had never had asthma or COPD. One third of those cells were exposed to e-cigarette fluid, another third to vaporized liquid and the remaining third to nothing.
After 24 hours, the researchers saw cells dying in the groups exposed to fluid and vaporized e-cigarette liquid. But the vaporized liquid killed cells at lower doses than the unvaporized liquid.
The researchers also noted that when macrophages were exposed to doses too low to kill, the cells spewed out 50-fold higher amounts of oxygen-free radicals, the “rust” of the biological world, compared to unexposed cells. The cells exposed to vaped liquid also secreted a host of inflammation-inducing molecules.
Cells exposed to vaporized liquid also were not as good at battling bacteria, suggesting that e-cigarette users’ lungs might have more trouble fighting off infections.
The macrophages examined by the researchers are important cell defenders deep within the lungs, said Dr. Daniel Weiner, a pediatric pulmonologist at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC who was not involved in the study.
“They do a bunch of things,” he said. “One thing they can do is eat up foreign things, whether they be bacteria or viruses or just particles that have drifted down into the lungs. They can act as scavengers that present these particles to the immune system to activate an immune response.”
It’s important to keep in mind that the study was done on cells in a culture, not in an animal or a human being, Weiner said. Things might be different in vivo.
Nevertheless, this study, taken along with some earlier ones, suggests that we may need to worry a bit more about the use of e-cigarettes, especially among the young, Weiner said.
“Many people think of COPD as an older person’s disease,” he added. “But we’re seeing younger and younger kids vaping. And that may cause a loss of long function at a more accelerated pattern because they’re starting it in their teens.”
Research on e-cigarettes has been a bit of a moving target, said Dr. Michael Blaha, a professor of medicine and director of clinical research at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Lutherville, Maryland. That’s because every aspect of the devices and the fluids used in them has been changing at a rapid pace, he said.
The idea that vaporized e-cigarette liquid might be more toxic than the liquid itself, “is highly plausible,” Blaha said. “And there are some early studies that suggest that people using e-cigarettes have more respiratory symptoms, such as coughing and wheezing, than those using nothing at all.”
Initially public health experts were not that concerned about e-cigarettes because they were being marketed as a way to help smokers quit, Blaha said. “When the field was originally thinking of these as cessation devices, then some toxicity could be tolerated,” he added. “But now we’re looking probably at a couple million users in the United States who are being exposed to e-cigarette vapors who potentially wouldn’t have been exposed to any tobacco product.”
SOURCE: bit.ly/2P6nwKy and bit.ly/2w5NTHI Thorax, online August 13, 2018. | {
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If that took third place... Wow. This is one of the most spectacular cakes I have ever seen! How long did this take you? | {
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If Qaddafi is in Bab al-Aziziya as some observers believe, what's his plan? The compound has long been rumored to sit atop 20 miles of underground tunnels leading across the city. Nearby and also under the control of loyalist forces is the swanky Rixos Hotel, where a number of Western journalists are being held in a state of de facto captivity by armed guards. The hotel has also served at times as an informal command or communications center, with state-run TV broadcasting from its studio there or members of the Qaddafi family occasionally holing up. In May, while Qaddafi was dodging NATO bombing runs, he managed to sneak into the journalist-filled Rixos to record a video message. Could he be there now, hiding from rebels and NATO? That would help explain why loyalist troops are so fervently keeping the Western journalists locked up in the hotel, unwitting human shields NATO would never dare to endanger.
For its part, after months of trying to kill Qaddafi, NATO has suddenly decided they're no longer interested. "I don't think it really matters," NATO spokesman for the Libya operation Colonel Roland Lavoie told reporters of the Libyan leader's location. "If you know, let me know." That's an odd position for a military mission designed to dislodge Qaddafi, and backed by U.S. President Barack Obama and others who are still calling for Qaddafi. Could this sudden nonchalance be because NATO suspects (or knows?) that Qaddafi is someplace where they can't touch him? If he is in the Rixos, NATO could do little about it, and the Western alliance would likely want to make sure that Libyan rebels don't find out and make a sure-to-be-bloody run on the Westerner-filled hotel.
But even if Qaddafi's not really at the Rixos -- it's just a theory -- NATO has been aggressively bombing Bab al-Aziziya all day. It seems unlikely they would do so if they thought Qaddafi might be there. If a French bomb kills Qaddafi before Libyan rebels can lay their hands on him, it would undermine the entire narrative that NATO has so painstakingly worked to sustain: that Western powers are only providing background assistance in a fundamentally Libyan uprising. Those months of political and military contortions -- securing the proper UN approval, waiting for a Libyan opposition body to request help, keeping boots off the ground, securing support from other Arab states -- could be largely undone if a European fighter jet delivers the war's final blow. It's hard to believe, then, that NATO would be so cavalier about bombing Bab al-Aziziya unless they knew he was absent from the compound; and how could they possibly know he was absent unless they could be sure he was somewhere else?
Wherever in Libya Qaddafi might be, what could he be holding out for? Occasional press reports of peace talks and of floated deals suggest that negotiations between Qaddafi and NATO have been ongoing for some time. Perhaps Qaddafi, whose post-Libya options are severely restricted by an ICC arrest warrant and a lifetime of alienating foreign governments, is hoping for a peace deal that will allow him and his family to survive the revolution. There's not much leverage he has left except for the threat of sustained violence -- loyalist troops could continue terrorizing Tripoli for some time -- and the Western journalists held at the Rixos. Is that enough for Qaddafi to get what he wants? Could he believe it just might work?
As is so often the case with Libya, it's easy to get lost in the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and information-parsing. But it's difficult to believe that Qaddafi would hold on for so long without a plan, just as it's difficult to believe that NATO would so severely bomb the Bab al-Aziziya compound unless they felt certain it wouldn't kill the Libyan leader. What those two pieces of information really mean, only time will tell.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected]. | {
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Donald Trump started his Friday by posting a message to his Twitter account with another denial that he colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election — but on the same day, more evidence of possible collusion emerged when a new investigative report by the New York Times confirmed that Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., met in June of last year with a lawyer who was acting as a direct agent of the Kremlin.
That lawyer, 42-year-old Natalia Veselnitskaya, promised to deliver information damaging to the Democratic party and as a result, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton — information that may have come straight from a top Kremlin official, according to the Times report. Veselnitskaya has maintained that she acted independently and did not coordinate her meeting with Trump, Jr. on June 9, 2016, with Russian officials.
The supposedly damaging information concerned an American company that the Russian government claims had made investments in Russia, but dodged paying taxes on those investments. The company, Ziff Brothers Investments, was allegedly linked to two top Democratic party donors — and also to American-born businessman Bill Browder, one of Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critics. It was Browder who has successfully pushed for the Magnitsky Act, a Russia sanctions law that freezes the assets of numerous Russian oligarchs.
The June 9 meeting, also attended by Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, and his then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, centered around how Trump, as president, could end the Magnitsky Act sanctions. Read the complete New York Times report revealing Veselnitskaya as a Russian agent by visiting this link.
It is now commonly agreed, after many months of COSTLY looking, that there was NO collusion between Russia and Trump. Was collusion with HC! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2017
According to the Times report, Veselnitskaya shared her memo about the supposed Democratic donor with Russia’s top prosecutor — the equivalent of the U.S, Attorney General — Yuri Chaika months before the June meeting in New York’s Trump Tower with Trump, Jr., Kushner, and Manafort. Chaika had also given a nearly identical memo to pro-Russian California congressmember Dana Rohrabacher months before the meeting with Trump, Jr.
1/ Today @nytimes reported the Russian lawyer at the Trump Tower meeting shared her talking points with the Kremlin: https://t.co/Z91nAQDgTs — Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) October 27, 2017
The meeting was coordinated initially by Rob Goldstone, a British music manager who represents aspiring Russian pop singer Emin Agalarov — son of Aras Agalarov, a billionaire Russian real estate developer with close ties to Putin, and who partnered with Trump to bring the Miss Universe beauty pageant to Moscow in 2013. They also partnered on the unrealized, but still active Trump Tower Moscow project.
Goldstone set up the meeting by sending an email to Trump, Jr. stating, that by attending, Trump would obtain information that “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump, Jr. has since dismissed the meeting as “nonsense,” but at the time, his response to Goldstone’s email, which appears to be a clear offer of collusion between “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” and the Trump campaign, was, “I love it.”
Donald Trump Jr. (pictured) met with a lawyer now revealed as a Kremlin agent, according to anew report. [Image by David Becker/Getty Images]
In the email to Trump, Jr., Goldstone told the younger Trump that the supposedly incriminating information came from Aras Agalarov, who obtained the documents from, as Goldstone said, “the Crown prosecutor of Russia.” While there is no such position as “Crown prosecutor of Russia,” the top prosecutor in the Kremlin is Yuri Chaika, who appears to be the source of the information brought to the meeting by Veselnitskaya.
Veselnitskaya responded to the New York Times report, slamming the story as “lies and false claims.”
[Featured Image by Win McNamee/Getty Images] | {
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This morning, I was right beside a dog fight while shopping at the market. A larger retriever type dog had a smaller fluffy dog and was biting him. Everyone around me stopped what they were doing to watch in horror. The couple with the smaller dog were trying to get their dog away while swearing and screaming. Several people around me said that their day was completely ruined. I agreed. When will dogs be banned at the market? Even people with smaller dogs being walked on a leash get stepped on because their owners are not paying attention with the crowds the market brings. I had my tiny dog in a carrier strapped to my chest, but would be fine with leaving her at home if the ban was enacted.
Kathy Griffith
Cedar Rapids | {
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Last week was a great week for Hillary Clinton. The State of the Union was essentially 2016 Clinton’s campaign kickoff speech. Its themes of work and responsibility were vintage Clinton—Bill Clinton, anyway. Meanwhile, the Republicans were doing their best to have folks brand them as the party of plutocracy by again calling for “entitlement reform,” even as wages stagnate and fewer Americans see themselves as part of the middle class. Has anyone heard of Marie Antoinette?
Topping off the week that was, the latest Washington Post/ABC Poll showed Clinton with a double-digit lead over the leading possible GOP nominees both nationally and in the ever-important Midwest. Even more disturbingly for the GOP, she also leads among white working-class voters outside of the South, and among white non-evangelical Protestants. The distance between where the GOP is and where it must travel to reclaim the White House remains far.
To be sure, Obama’s State of the Union was a tacit admission that the Democrats’ estrangement from working-class whites has cost his party dearly, much like an alcoholic coming to grips with the reality of his drinking problem. Last November, the bill for catering to the Democrats’ Coalition of the Ascendant finally came due, and its price was hefty. In 2014, little more than one-third of white voters without college degrees voted to send a Democrat to Congress, and the effects of working-class rejection were devastating.
The Democrats lost control of the Senate, while Republicans picked up 13 House seats, gaining their largest majority since 1928. At the state level, the results were equally grim for the Democrats. Thirty-one states now have Republican governors, with the GOP controlling the largest bloc of state houses since 1926. Illinois, Obama’s home state, ever-blue Massachusetts, and recently (but deeply) blued Maryland now have Republican governors.
Substantively, the SOTU was a speech that a major part of the country liked, even if it made House Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans cringe. For the Republicans, that’s a problem, especially if the only thing Republicans have to offer the middle class is entitlement reform, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested in the run-up to the State of the Union.
In a pre-SOTU statement, McConnell beseeched the President to “allow us to save and strengthen Medicare,” and to “cooperate with both parties to save Social Security.” In other words, make sure both parties have their hands on the dagger and no one will get blamed.
McConnell’s prescription is a recipe for alienating the GOP’s electoral base, which is chock full of retirees and voters north of 50. Green eye shades and the worn eraser of an accountant’s pencil don’t win elections, and angry seniors can wreak havoc on presidential aspirations.
In 2008, grandma and grandpa stayed away from the polls, and the Democrats won going away. With voter self-identification as “middle class” shrinking, and with two-fifths of Americans calling themselves “lower class,” calls for cuts to Medicare and Social Security are politically self-defeating.
Oh, and then there’s also economic reality. Bond yields are low, with the 10-year treasury below 1.8 percent, and 30-year home mortgages going for under 4 percent. Given these numbers, cutting entitlements right here and now will likely bring more pain than benefit—except perhaps to some of Wall Street’s players.
Almost on cue, Glenn Hubbard, Mitt Romney’s chief economic adviser in 2012, compounded the situation by seconding McConnell’s call for entitlement reform in a post-SOTU New York Times op-ed. For those who forgot, this is the same Hubbard who immediately after Romney’s 2012 defeat wrote, “I have fond memories of summer trips to Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, Maine—for lobster but also for the scenery along Marginal Way, a narrow path along a cliff by the beach.”
Precious. The only things missing from Hubbard’s menu were the Grey Poupon and the Dom Perignon. Indeed, as Charles Ferguson, the Oscar winning creator of “Inside Job,” the 2010 documentary that examined the financial crisis and Hubbard’s own conflicts of interest, wrote: “Standing behind every great con artist is someone like ... Glenn Hubbard.”
As inconvenient as they may be to some Democrats and Republicans, working Americans are taxpaying Americans who have a right to expect something in return for their tax dollar—something other than Obamacare, with its false promises and its disruptions, or cuts to Medicare that have been championed by both this Administration and congressional Republicans. Politics is transactional, and if the donor bases of both parties can get tax breaks, subsidies, and taxpayer-funded windfalls, then Joe and Josephine Six-Pack have something coming to them—especially if they earned it.
Rather than gunning for Medicare, the Republicans should pick up on some of threads in Obama’s speech, while taking a hard line against tax hikes. The GOP should bash the President for looking to undercut saving for college and 529 accounts, and also push for a reduction in payroll taxes. The fact is that most Americans pay more in Medicare and Social Security taxes than in income taxes. And if wonks and purists criticize simultaneously sparing benefits while cutting taxes, just point out that being pro-middle class and pro-worker is about rewarding their efforts and lessening their burdens.
Republicans should seize on the President’s invitation to fund precision medicine to combat cancer and diabetes, and expand that war to fight Alzheimer’s and autism. They should also embrace rebuilding our infrastructure. In addition to new jobs, infrastructure is a cornerstone of commerce. If building a rail system was good enough for Abraham Lincoln, and forging a national highway system was all right with Ike, then the GOP should treat infrastructure as part of its own patrimony.
Obama’s sixth State of the Union and rising popularity should be taken as harbingers of what 2016 may bring. Sure, Hillary lacks Bill’s charm, and the polls show her to be divisive, but right now she’s connecting with the public, which is more than can be said of the current Republican field. To be blunt, Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama, and the middle class knows it. | {
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David Hasselhoff now comes in crab size. (Ian Gavan/Getty Images)
Discovered in 2010, the crab lives some 2,500 meters below on the Southern Ocean floor, along with newly found species of anemones, barnacles, an octopus, and predatory sea stars, The Post’s freelance writer Mark Schrope reports. The species were found because they were drawn to to the lights of the robotic research submersible.
The find was “almost like a sight from another planet,” expedition leader Alex Rogers, a professor of zoology at Oxford University, told the Scientific American.
Yeti crabs on rock. (National Environment Research Council)
While strange new life like “The Hoff” can be found at deep-sea vents around the world, scientists have only recently begun to explore hydrothermal vents in Antarctica, as the waters are especially treacherous, Schrope writes.
Jon Copley, a professor of earth and ocean science at the University of Southampton, who participated in the research, told Live Science scientists were also hindered by the harsh temperatures of the Southern Ocean.
The team’s first discovery was the unusal yeti crab. “Shouts from the scientists watching the monitors quickly drew everyone on board to gaze upon a landscape blanketed by what they quickly realized was a new species of kiwa crab,” Schrope wrote.
“They almost looked like a pile of skulls sitting on the seabed,” said the team’s leader, Alex Rogers, a deep-sea biologist at Oxford University. “It was an amazing, amazing sight.”
Below, watch video, taken by a remotely operated vehicle, from the deep sea vents:
More world news coverage:
- Iran threatens U.S. ships, alarms oil markets
- China pushes for North Korean stability
- Militant groups in Pakistan form united front
- Read more headlines from around the world | {
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Justin Fields throws two touchdown passes and runs for another to propel No. 4 Ohio State to a 34-10 win over Michigan State. (1:15)
On a Saturday in which the top two teams in the AP and coaches' polls didn't play, the other College Football Playoff contenders behind Alabama and Clemson held serve without much drama.
Georgia, LSU, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Wisconsin each won by 24 points or more.
Florida made the biggest statement of Week 6 with a 24-13 victory over Auburn. The Gators' reward is next weekend's trip to LSU.
Here are the ESPN Power Rankings after Week 6:
The Crimson Tide had the weekend off before their biggest test of 2019 so far -- next Saturday's trip to Texas A&M. The Tide lead the all-time series 9-3, including a 4-0 record in College Station. Alabama won last season's meeting 45-23 at home. Tide coach Nick Saban is 17-0 against his former assistants, including a 2-0 mark against Aggies coach Jimbo Fisher, who was his offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at LSU from 2000 to 2004. Saban's teams have won those games by an average of 41-14.
Up next: at Texas A&M (Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, CBS)
One of the concerns about Ohio State going forward was its offensive line, but the unit responded in the second quarter of a 34-10 victory over Michigan State. After struggling against the Spartans' menacing defensive front early (OSU had 16 yards on its first 16 offensive plays), the Buckeyes settled down and had 296 yards in the second quarter, when they exploded for 24 points. OSU had 323 rushing yards on 49 attempts. Justin Fields, who was sacked twice early and threw his first interception of the season, completed 17 of 25 passes for 206 yards with two touchdowns and one interception in his most difficult test so far.
Up next: at Northwestern (Oct. 18, 8:30 p.m. ET, Fox Sports 1)
Tennessee quarterback Brian Maurer and his receivers gashed Georgia's defense for big plays early. Not so much in the second half, however. Georgia's defense allowed only 104 yards after halftime, and linebacker Tae Crowder scooped up a fumble and returned it 60 yards for a touchdown as the Bulldogs pulled away for a 43-14 victory on the road. The Bulldogs had three sacks and 11 tackles for loss. Georgia has won eight of the past 10 against the Volunteers. The Bulldogs triumphed in the two most recent games at Neyland Stadium by a combined score of 84-14. One sore spot: UGA had 11 penalties for 107 yards.
Up next: vs. South Carolina (Saturday, noon ET, ESPN)
LSU's offensive renaissance continued Saturday, as the Tigers piled up 610 yards in a 42-6 rout of Utah State. Joe Burrow became the first LSU quarterback to throw for more than 300 yards in four consecutive games; he had 344 yards and five touchdowns on 27-for-38 passing against the Aggies. Burrow already has 22 touchdown passes this season, which is five more than the Tigers had in each of the previous two seasons and 10 more than they had in 2016. He needs only six more TD tosses to tie the school single-season record of 28 set by JaMarcus Russell (2006) and Matt Mauck (2003).
Up next: vs. Florida (Saturday, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN)
The Tigers also were idle Saturday, and they needed the extra practice time to get their offense back in rhythm. While the offense has unexpectedly struggled at times, Clemson's defense has been pretty stout. The Tigers has held each of their first five opponents under 300 yards of offense; Ohio State is the only other FBS program to do that. Despite losing four starting defensive linemen and two linebackers from last season's national championship squad, the Tigers are pressuring opposing quarterbacks 47% of the time, which is the fourth-highest mark in the FBS.
Up next: vs. Florida State (Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, ABC)
Whether it was because of bad weather, a sparse crowd, their opponent or looking ahead to next weekend's showdown against Texas in the Red River Rivalry, the Sooners seemed to be a little lackadaisical in a 45-20 victory at Kansas on Saturday. If a 25-point win is considered a letdown, Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley probably would take it every week. Jalen Hurts threw for 228 yards with two touchdowns and ran for 56 yards with two more scores. He is responsible for 21 touchdowns this season, which is tied with Kyler Murray (2018) for the most by an OU player through the first five games in the past 15 years, according to research from ESPN Stats & Information.
Up next: vs. Texas in Dallas (Saturday, noon ET, Fox)
Wisconsin's defense pitched a 48-0 shutout over Kent State on Saturday, and the Badgers are on pace to be one of the most statistically dominant units in Big Ten history. Wisconsin has allowed only 29 points in five games -- the fewest since it surrendered 26 in the first five games in 2004 -- and it posted its third shutout of the season, tying the school record for a single season set in 1937. The Badgers are the first Big Ten team to have three shutouts in the first five games since the 1973 Michigan squad. Kent State managed only 124 yards of offense -- 64 passing and 60 rushing.
Up next: vs. Michigan State (Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET)
Georgia won't waltz to the SEC championship game. Florida's defense made quite a statement in its 24-13 win over Auburn on Saturday, forcing four turnovers with three sacks. The Gators have allowed only 16 points in four home games this season. The Gators made their share of mistakes, turning the ball over four times (losing fumbles on three consecutive possessions) and failing to pick up a first down on a fake punt from their 34-yard line. But quarterback Kyle Trask showed some toughness by coming back from a sprained knee to complete 19 of 31 passes for 234 yards and two touchdowns.
Up next: at LSU (Saturday, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN)
The Irish passing game rolled against overmatched Bowling Green, as Ian Book became the first Notre Dame quarterback to throw five touchdowns (to four different players) in the first half during a 52-0 shutout. Book also joined Brady Quinn (2005) as the only Irish players with multiple games with five touchdown passes in the same season. The Irish posted their first shutout in more than five years; the previous one was a 31-0 victory over Michigan on Sept. 6, 2014. They are about to face their most difficult two-game stretch remaining -- at home against Southern California on Saturday and at Michigan on Oct. 26.
Up next: vs. USC (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, NBC)
Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger warned us that the "horns down" hand signals during West Virginia's 42-41 win in Austin last season wouldn't be forgotten. Ehlinger delivered on his promise Saturday, as he threw for two touchdowns and ran for two more in a 42-31 win over the Mountaineers. Texas' banged-up defense surrendered more than 30 points for the third time this season. But the Longhorns intercepted Austin Kendall four times, held the Mountaineers to only 96 rushing yards and limited them to 4-for-14 on third down.
Up next: vs. Oklahoma in Dallas (Saturday, noon ET, Fox)
The Nittany Lions jumped on a depleted Purdue team early and then took their foot off the pedal in a 35-7 win. Penn State scored touchdowns on each of its first four possessions for a 28-0 lead, but it scored only once more, on Noah Cain's 2-yard run with 5:44 to play in the contest. That was more than enough against the Boilermakers, who played without quarterback Elijah Sindelar and star wide receiver Rondale Moore. Penn State's defense had 10 sacks, which was one shy of the school single-game record.
Up next: at Iowa (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, ABC)
After a promising start to his Auburn career, freshman quarterback Bo Nix's youth showed in the 24-13 loss at Florida. Nix completed only 11 of 27 passes for 145 yards with one touchdown and three interceptions. The Gators rattled him with pressure early and often; he was 0-for-5 with two sacks when under duress. He is now only 8-for-38 when passing under pressure this season, according to ESPN Stats & Information data. Nix completed only 4 of 17 passes on attempts of longer than 5 yards against the Gators. The Tigers get an off week to correct address their offensive miscues.
Up next: at Arkansas (Oct. 19, TBD)
In the not-so-distant past, Oregon wouldn't have had a chance to win if its offense struggled. But Mario Cristobal continues to transform the Ducks into a physical team, and they were able to overcome a plethora of first-half mistakes to escape with a 17-7 win versus California. The Ducks had three turnovers in the first two quarters and trailed 7-0 at halftime. Then the Oregon defense opened the second half with four consecutive three-and-outs and an interception. The Ducks' leading rusher, CJ Verdell, left in the first half with a right ankle injury, and starting defensive end Gus Cumberlander hurt his knee late.
Up next: vs. Colorado (Friday, 10 p.m. ET, Fox Sports 1)
The Utes got the week off after their 38-13 victory over Washington State on Sept. 28, and the open date couldn't have come at a better time. Running back Zack Moss is expected back for Saturday's game at Oregon State, after not playing against the Cougars because of a shoulder injury. And a foot injury had been bothering quarterback Tyler Huntley. Meanwhile, junior slot receiver Britain Covey, who was coming back from a torn ACL that occurred in last season's Pac-12 championship game, suffered swelling, and he is expected to redshirt after playing in only four games in 2019. He had previously been bothered by continued swelling and pain.
Up next: at Oregon State (Saturday, 8 p.m. ET, Pac-12)
After being tested by Florida State and Marshall to start the season, the Broncos have rolled through their past three games, including a 38-13 victory at UNLV on Saturday night. It figures to get more difficult over the next two weeks, however, with games looming against Hawai'i at home and then BYU on the road. The Broncos were among the least penalized teams in the FBS before Saturday night, when they had 10 for 130 yards. Two 15-yard fouls helped UNLV score its first touchdown. The good news: The Broncos got back two key pieces for UNLV when safety DeAndre Pierce and right tackle John Ojukwu returned for the first time since the opener at FSU.
Up next: vs. Hawai'i (Saturday, 10:15 p.m. ET, ESPN2)
The Wolverines finally won a game that mattered, taking down Iowa 10-3 at home, and they can thank their defense for the victory. Michigan's D yielded only 1 rushing yard, in large part due to eight sacks, and allowed Iowa's running backs to average only 3.2 yards per carry. Michigan's offense still left a lot to be desired, though, as the Wolverines didn't score in the final 51½ minutes and converted four Iowa turnovers into only three points. Michigan had only 147 passing yards on 26 attempts and went 3-for-13 on third down.
Up next: at Illinois (Saturday, noon ET, ABC)
The Sun Devils should be better equipped after their bye week to defend Washington State's pass-happy offense after three key defensive players were able to recover from lingering injuries. Senior middle linebacker Kobe Williams, who had started 30 consecutive games before missing a 24-17 win at California on Sept. 27, had surgery last week to repair a broken middle finger on his right hand. Safety Cam Phillips (dislocated elbow) and cornerback Chase Lucas (wrist) also are expected to play against the Cougars, who had an open date as well after dropping consecutive games against UCLA and Utah.
Up next: vs. Washington State (Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, Pac-12)
The Demon Deacons, who also had a bye, have been one of the best stories in college football so far this season. They've won seven consecutive games going back to the final two of 2018, tying the longest winning streak in school history, also accomplished by the 1944 squad. They're 5-0 for the first time since 2006, when they went 11-2, won the ACC and played in the Orange Bowl. The Demon Deacons have won their past two games against Louisville -- 42-32 at home in 2017 and 56-35 on the road in 2018.
Up next: vs. Louisville (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, ACC Network)
Matt Rhule's remarkable work at Baylor continued as the Bears won 31-12 at Kansas State for their first road victory in Big 12 play in two years. Baylor's defense was once again the difference, as it had six sacks and 15 tackles for loss -- the most in a Big 12 game by the Bears in more than a decade. One concern: Quarterback Charlie Brewer exited with an undisclosed injury with about 11 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. Rhule didn't have an immediate update on his status. The Bears might be favored in their next four games before Oklahoma and Texas come to Waco, Texas, in November.
Up next: vs. Texas Tech (Saturday, 4 p.m. ET, TBD)
Iowa had turned the ball over once in its first four games, which was tied with Oregon State for fewest in the FBS. The Hawkeyes weren't nearly as secure with the football in a 10-3 loss at Michigan, throwing three interceptions and losing one fumble. The Hawkeyes also surrendered eight sacks in what was a miserable offensive performance at the Big House. The Hawkeyes had a couple of chances to tie the game late, but penalties and other miscues thwarted those possessions. It won't get any easier at home against Penn State next weekend.
Up next: vs. Penn State (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, ABC)
The Cavaliers had an extra week to bounce back from their 35-20 loss at Notre Dame on Sept. 28. There were plenty of mistakes to correct, after Virginia had five turnovers and surrendered eight sacks, including five in the third quarter. The Fighting Irish scored 28 points off Virginia turnovers, after its opponents had scored only 10 points off turnovers in the first four games combined. The Cavs have dropped four of their past six games against upcoming opponent Miami, but they won 16-13 at home in 2018.
Up next: at Miami (Friday, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN)
The Mustangs have been one of the best stories of the season, and their remarkable turnaround under Sonny Dykes continued in dramatic fashion with a 43-37 win over Tulsa in three overtimes on Saturday night. SMU rallied from a 21-point deficit in the fourth quarter and won in the third OT on Shane Buechele's 25-yard touchdown pass to James Proche. The Mustangs are 6-0 for the first time since 1982, when they finished 11-0-1 with Eric Dickerson and Craig James. The comeback matched the second-biggest in school history; SMU also rallied from 21 back against Baylor in 1975.
Up next: vs. Temple (Oct. 19, TBD)
The Bearcats clamped down on UCF's high-scoring offense to pull off a 27-24 victory on Friday night to take early control of the American Athletic Conference East race. The victory ended UCF's streak of 19 consecutive wins over AAC foes, and it snapped the Knights' string of scoring at least 30 points in 31 consecutive games, which was the longest such streak in the FBS since 1936. The Bearcats forced four turnovers and limited UCF to only 3.0 yards per carry. The Bearcats have recovered nicely from an early 42-0 loss at Ohio State.
Up next: at Houston (Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2)
The Tigers haven't played the most arduous schedule to date, but they have a couple of quality wins over Ole Miss and Navy. They also have a fantastic running back, Kenny Gainwell, who became the first Memphis freshman to run for 100 yards or more in three straight games. He had 209 yards -- on only 14 carries -- in a 52-33 victory over UL Monroe on Saturday, the highest total by a freshman in school history. Memphis' defense did surrender 575 yards of offense to the Warhawks.
Up next: at Temple (Saturday, noon ET, ESPN2)
After needing a quartet of narrow escapes to get through September unscathed, the Golden Gophers could finally relax in a 40-17 win over Illinois on Saturday. Minnesota's schedule hasn't been great, and its performances haven't been overly impressive -- it beat FCS foe South Dakota State 28-21 and struggling Georgia Southern 35-32 -- but there's also something to be said for figuring out how to win. The Gophers are 5-0 for the first time since 2004.
Up next: vs. Nebraska (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET) | {
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When Apple launched the iPhone 8, the company extensively talked about the A11 Bionic chipset powering the handset. A new benchmark test conducted by Tom’s Hardware has now concluded that the iPhone 8 (which went on sale earlier today in some regions), is comfortably the fastest phone available in the market right now.
The test took a variety of factors into account, including video editing performance, as well as GPU and CPU performance. It’s clear that the iPhone 8 excels in all departments, thanks to the three core GPU and the six-core CPU (2X Monsoon + 4X Mistral cores).
In the video processing test, the iPhone 8 was made to edit a 2 minute 4K video (shot on a drone) with effects and transitions, which was then exported and saved. The iPhone 8 managed to process the video in just 42 seconds, while the Galaxy Note 8 and the Galaxy S8+ took 3:03 minutes and 4:17 minutes respectively.
The story is pretty similar in terms of Geekbench results as well. This method uses both the CPU and the GPU, and is a very good metric to judge the true performance of a smartphone. With scores of 10,170 and 10,472, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus managed to perform better than the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Intel’s 7th-gen Core i5 CPU on board. Naturally, the two phones also beat the Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy S8, and the OnePlus 5 very convincingly.
The test also included a GPU test using 3DMark. The iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus managed to leave the competition behind here too, thanks to the all-new 3-core GPU used by Apple. The two iPhones managed to score 62,532 and 64,412 respectively. We must point out that the iPhone 8 Plus marginally edges out the smaller iPhone 8 in these tests.
These tests provide clear evidence that Apple wasn’t joking around when it talked about the prowess of the A11 Bionic. It will be interesting to see how the iPhone X scores in these benchmark tests, although we will have to wait a few more weeks to find out.
Apple has put in some excellent work in the camera department as well, with the iPhone 8 Plus currently sitting on top of DxOMark’s camera ratings, beating the HTC U11.
[Via Tom’s Hardware | {
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The Crypto Exchange BitFinex recently introduced its Affiliate program in an effort to attract new Customers to its Network.
BitFinex Shared this update for the community through their official twitter account on 17th October.
The latest Affiliate Program introduced by Bitfinex is offering unlimited commission earnings for affiliates. As mentioned in their Referral program, the rewards/commissions will be based on several factors and there will be additional earning opportunities for verified Affiliates and holders of UNUS SED LEO.
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Affiliate can Earn Unlimited Commission on their Referral
Affiliate can earn up to 40% commission on Fees
1.x fees multipliers and incentives Opportunity
Commission up to degrees of connection
How to Join the Bitfinex Affiliate Program and How it works
This affiliate program has a friendly interface with direct checking for any affiliate related tools. This program is simple as it says, you are going to sign up if you are not a member and then get access to your affiliate dashboard where you can monitor all the activity related to your account.
You can create or generate links for referrals that you can post on social media or capture your affiliates through the email network. For each referral sign up you can see your increase in income. You can earn up to +38% in fees, 1.2X fee multipliers and also the inclusion of incentives, up to 3 levels of the affiliate program. The Affiliate program of Bitfinex makes it one of a kind because of its unique pyramidal structure and network, you can get the commission as the percentage of the trading fees up to three levels in your circle of an affiliate network.
However, not just that, if your referrals meet the essential criteria, you’re likewise qualified for commission multipliers. You can follow the amount you procure and how your system performs progressively through the Affiliate Dashboard. Users can sign up with this link – https://bitfinex.com/?refcode=x6GI_wYi, or Scan the aforementioned QR Code to join the Bitfinex affiliate Program,
Now coming to the fee commission structure, If you refer someone directly from your link, say level 1, you can earn 18% of the fees, on level 2 you are entitled to 6% of the fees and on level 3 you get 2% straight.
Also, it features a multiplier board that gains you up to 1.2X for verification of your referrals and up to 1.5X times for referrals under UNUS SED LEO. One more gain for new users is that if you hold UNUS SED LEO tokens, you can appreciate many more advantages from the Bitfinex Affiliate Program which includes expense decrease and limits that you get while exchanging on Bitfinex. | {
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Toronto FC announced Tuesday its 2015 television broadcast schedule for all 34 regular season matches, along with the kick-off times for all home matches this season.
TSN enters its fifth season as the official broadcaster of Major League Soccer (MLS) in Canada. TSN will be home to 23 Toronto FC matches this season. Luke Wileman returns with the play-by-play call along with former Canadian national team member, Jason deVos as match analyst, with sideline reporter Kristian Jack. Also handling MLS on TSN broadcasting duties this season are Vic Rauter, Nigel Reed, Greg Sutton, and Kara Lang.
Sportsnet will carry 11 matches this season and will be split between Sportsnet and Sportsnet 360. Gerry Dobson will have the play-by-play with Paul Dolan as match analyst.
Toronto FC kick-off the ninth season in club history on Saturday, March 7 in Vancouver on TSN1, TSN3, and TSN4 at 6:00 p.m. ET. The Reds open their home schedule on Sunday, May 10 against Houston with kick-off set for 5:00 p.m. ET.
The complete regular season listings for television are attached on this media release. | {
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空手家でタレントの角田信朗（５５）が「２０１６年ボディビルフィットネス選手権大会」（１０日開催、大阪市）で初出場初優勝を目指す。
４日、日刊スポーツ新聞社（大阪市北区）を訪れた角田は、昨年９月にグアム開催となった「日本グアム親善 ボディビル選手権」で初出場初優勝を飾り今回は国内デビュー戦となる。「この世界、上には上がいる。アウェーを感じている」と言いながらも「思い出作りでやっているんじゃない。『勝ちたい』じゃなく、『勝つ』と宣言してやっている」と決意を示した。
仕上がりは順調で大会１カ月前には「９５％くらいのコンディションは作った」という。
熊本県から取り寄せた上質な馬肉を連日１キロずつ食べながら毎日２００グラムの減量、それでもトレーニングの強度は維持している。「誰でもできる方法ではないが、私にはドンピシャではまっている」と状態の良さをうかがわせた。
この日は着ていた服を脱いで鍛え上げられた上半身を披露。本番さながら数々のポーズを取って筋肉美を見せつけた。 | {
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's military is dealing with more than a million Pakistanis who have been displaced by fighting since last year, a military spokesman said Tuesday.
Pakistan has launched a massive military operation against the Taliban in the Swat Valley.
The military has set up headquarters to manage the 1.3 million internally displaced people, spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas said.
That number includes 500,000 Pakistanis who were uprooted from their homes since August, before the latest military push against Taliban militants in the country's northeastern region, he said.
The army has set up hospitals in many of the refugee camps and plans to build camps near the conflict zone, he said.
Pakistan's military is continuing an offensive against the Taliban along its western border with Afghanistan, particularly in the Swat Valley.
The military has been releasing regular reports saying it has killed Taliban militants in the region, but it has produced little evidence of the successes it claims. Journalists have not been permitted to observe the offensive and the army has not shown bodies of the militants it says it has killed.
Curfews have been imposed in the conflict zone, but are relaxed periodically to allow civilians to travel. It is not unusual now to see rickshaws and cargo trucks filled with fleeing civilians, rolling down Pakistan's main east-west highway.
Vehicles are not allowed back into the region, which has led to a shortage for those trying to leave. Watch the case of a girl who lost her family in the conflict »
On Sunday, at least 25 boys stranded at the Khpal Kor Foundation orphanage in Swat Valley had to flee the district capital, Mingora, on foot, according to director Mohammed Ali.
He said local government officials told him there were no vehicles to evacuate the children.
The 175-kilometer (110-mile) journey from Mingora to the western city of Peshawar normally takes about three hours by car. The boys walked for several hours, but had to spend the night in a madrassa -- a religious school -- outside of Mingora, because authorities had re-established the curfew.
CNN's Reza Sayah, Samson Desta and Ivan Watson contributed to this report.
All About Pakistan • The Taliban • United Nations | {
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A soldier called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on a pizza delivery man after he made a delivery to a military base in New York City, El Diario reported.
Pablo Villavicencio was arrested on Friday after delivering the pizza to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn.
Villavicencio’s wife, Sandra Chica, said Villavicencio was then taken to an immigration jail in Manhattan, where he contacted her, according to the report.
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“As usual, he went to the military base to deliver a pizza order. But this time, the guard — whom he identified as African American — asked him for a valid identification document, and since he didn’t have one, the soldier called immigration to arrest him,” Chica told El Diario.
Chica, who is an American citizen, said she met Villavicencio five years ago, got married and now have two daughters. In February, they began to apply for Villavicencio to get residency status.
“There aren’t any words that can define the drama that my daughters and I are living,” Chica said. “From one moment to the next, life changed for us and all I ask for now is for them to not deport my husband, to give him an opportunity.”
Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams (D) and City Council Member Justin Brannan (D) — who both represent Fort Hamilton — are expected to ask for answers concerning Villavicencio’s arrest, Kings County Politics reported.
Activists have called for Villavicencio to be released, for an investigation of the military base and for the base to stop collaborating with ICE, El Diario reported. | {
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'Mission: Impossible 6' Eyeing Paris Shoot
The shoot would take place in spring or early summer as production moves forward after a pay dispute.
Following London and Vienna, Tom Cruise may film his next Mission: Impossible in Paris.
Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that producers for the next installment of Ethan Hunt’s adventures are in talks to shoot part of the next film in Paris.
After several delays attributed to a pay dispute, filming is set to start in spring. Sources told THR that current talks see shooting coming to Paris in spring or early summer.
A representative for Paramount would not confirm anything at this time as talks are still ongoing.
Christopher McQuarrie, who directed Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, wrote and will direct the new installment, M:i 6.
Production on the latest film in the 20-year-old franchise was put on hold due to Cruise’s salary dispute with Paramount, but a deal was closed in September.
The film is set to hit theaters on July 27, 2018. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Notes for new Make users Alexander Gromnitsky
John Constable would have said that ‘There is nothing ugly in Make; I never saw an ugly build system in my life: for let the number of targets be what it may,–dependencies, recipes, and parallel jobs will always make it manageable.’
It’s funny to see a sudden spike of interest in Make-like tools on HN & reddit, when many start joyfully sharing their favourite tricks. I predict some ppl will get overexcited & start rewriting their existing build infrastructure to be more “Make friendly” only to realize it’s not that straightforward as it sounds.
The discussion about Make ordinaly ends up w/ ideas how Make can be improved. Nevertheless, instead of improving Make, avid & enthusiastic chaps invariably decide to start from ground zero, producing something unequivocally awesome, but incompatible w/ everything that was written before.
If you say Make is suboptimal, no one sane will disagree w/ you. However, it’s a solid, well known tool that (if used correctly, w/o wonky religious zeal) works like the Beverly Clock.
If you really curious about (GNU) Make, read on. I’m not going to evangelize Make, I assume you’ve already decided to try it.
Don’t try to be clever
Regardless of how you like your makefiles now, you’ll cringe at them in 6 months & laugh at them in 1 year. Your style will evolve.
The official docs
When in doubt, don’t google until you read the official manual from cover to cover . It’s a document of an astonishing quality. Go print the pdf.
Adhere to the common terminology
target: prerequisite(s) recipe
so in
out/bundle.js: main.js foo.js bar.js mkdir $(dir $@) browserify main.js -o $@
out/bundle.js is a target that has 3 prerequisites (dependencies): main.js , foo.js , bar.js . The set of lines prefixed w/ the TAB char is a recipe.
Rules may have empty recipes:
deploy: rsync rsync: compile rsync -a out/ user@host:/somewhere/ compile: out/bundle.js
The 1st rule that Make stumbles upon is called a default goal. Here, the default goal is deploy . You can override the default goal by passing the name of a desired target as an argument to the Make cmd:
$ make compile
Macros serve a 2fold purpose: as variables whose values you can override from the command line, & as a mechanism for writing custom functions. I won’t talk about the latter much, but here’s an example of the former, which you may find moderately amusing to play w/:
date = $(shell date -d $(today) +%Y-%m-%d) today = now comic: $(date).gif xv $< %.html: wget -q http://dilbert.com/strip/$* -O $@ %.gif: %.html nokogiri -e 'p $$_.css("img.img-comic").first["src"]' $< | xargs -I% wget -q -O $@ https:%
If you save it in the file named Makefile , then type make in the same directory, Make downloads the current Dilbert strip page, parses the html, downloads the .gif image & displays it. If you run make again, it won’t re-download or re-parse anything, but will display the .gif image right away.
If you run
$ make today=2002-04-10 wget -q http://dilbert.com/strip/2002-04-10 -O 2002-04-10.html nokogiri -e 'p $_.css("img.img-comic").first["src"]' 2002-04-10.html | xargs -I% wget -q -O 2002-04-10.gif https:% xv 2002-04-10.gif
the today macro gets overriden from its default now string to the supplied 2002-04-10 value. Notice how date macro recursively expands to get the properly formatted date string. It uses the internal shell() fn to get the output of the external date command.
Most important concept #1: DAG
‘The make utility shall update files that are derived from other files.’
— The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7
The 1st thing you need to understand about Make is that all you do is contruct DAG. You either do it by hand using simple explicit rules (I’m skipping the recipes for brevity):
foo.js.min: foo.es5 foo.es5: foo.js
which means a straightforward foo.min.js → foo.es5 → foo.js graph (where an arrow means depends on) or you use special pattern rules (smtms also called metarules) w/ which Make can generate DAG vertices (nodes) for you automatically:
%.js.min: %.es5 %.es5: %.js
In both cases, when you type make foo.min.js & you indeed have foo.js file–Make creates a proper dependency graph, checks that it doesn’t contain cycles, takes foo.min.js as it’s goal, sees that such a vertex has an out-degree number of 1 (i.e., it has exactly 1 prerequisite– foo.es5 ), recursively jumps from vertex to vertex until it hits a vertex w/ 0 prereqs (in compsci speak: w/ an out-degree number of 0). Then it creates the lonely leaf & unwinds itself until it reaches the orig goal. If anything goes wrong along the way, Make stops.
In the case w/ the pattern rules, Make cannot create the full DAG until it has all the vertices, hence it automatically searches for a so called implicit rule for file foo.js , finds a perfect match in %.es5: %.js , then looks for a rule for foo.es5 & so on.
This is all you need to know. When Make looks at a single graph endpoint, it runs a recipe for a target (remakes it) iff its prereqs are “newer”. This is how it avoids unnecessary work & as any young lad should know, the only way to improve performance is not to do something faster but not do it at all.
Most important concept #2: 2 phases
The 2nd thing you need to understand is how Make reads makefiles. It does it in 2 phases:
Creates a DAG. Invokes the recipes during which it resolves the required macros.
E.g., after the phase I, a makefile
opts = -s inline bundle = foo $(bundle).es5: $(bundle).js babel $(opts) $< -o $@
to Make looks like
opts = ? bundle = ? foo.es5: foo.js ?
Make was forced to expand bundle macro in the rule def line, but it did nothing for opts in the recipe.
If you forget about the 2 phases, it could lead to a misunderstanding when a rule creates some file that you expect Make to pick up later on.
The order of the garter
All macros & rules are hoisted so the order it which they appear in makefiles is irrelevant, but Make has also ordinal variables (called simply expanded variables, SEVs or plainly variables):
src := foo.js bar.js
(note := instead of = ) that get expanded exactly 1 time during the phase I only. Hence this will work as expected:
bundle.deps = $(js) vendor/baz.js js = foo.js bar.js
but this won’t:
bundle.deps := $(js) vendor/baz.js js := foo.js bar.js
here, bundle.deps will contain only vendor/baz.js string. Remember that if you use SEVs, their order does matter as well as the order of rules/macros that employ variables.
To reiterate again: macros get expanded every time they are accessed. This could be during the phase I if a macro is referenced in a target/prereq portion of a rule, or it can be expanded in the time of the phase II, when the DAG is ready and Make can invoke the recipes.
Variables, on the other hand, get expanded immediately in the course of the phase I.
times_expanded := macro = $(shell date; sleep 2; $(eval times_expanded += 1)) var := $(macro) q: @echo var = $(var) @echo var = $(var) @echo macro = $(macro) @echo macro = $(macro) @echo times_expanded = $(times_expanded)
The macro that I conveniently named macro should be expanded precisely 3 times:
$ make var = Tue Mar 6 15:45:57 EET 2018 var = Tue Mar 6 15:45:57 EET 2018 macro = Tue Mar 6 15:45:59 EET 2018 macro = Tue Mar 6 15:46:01 EET 2018 times_expanded = 1 1 1
Notice how the output for the ‘macro =’ lines contains a different time, but for the ‘var’ lines it’s always the same.
$(eval ...) in this example does exactly what you think: it combines a parser and an evaluator of the Make language.
Automatic variables
If you write metarules you can’t do it w/ the automatic variables, for in a rule
out/.cache/%.js: %.mjs babel $< -o $@
it’s impossible to know beforehand the actual names of the files. The popular clamour is that the autovars are too short & confusing. Unless you like to write magic makefiles (e.g., w/ .SECONDEXPANSION nifty tricks), you’ll need to remember only 3 autovar types:
$@ == target
== target $< == the 1st prereq
== the 1st prereq $^ == all prereqs
Are they really so hard to grasp?
HN user dahart came up with the following visual mnemonics:
“ $@ looks like a target, a ring with a bullseye. $< is pointing left, so it’s the first prereq. $^ is like a horizontal bracket that groups all prereqs.”
Functions
Make comes w/ a set of internal functions for text processing. Most of them are pure, idempotent & don’t do any IO. E.g., dir fn
$(dir lib/foo.js vendor/bar.js)
treats its argument as a string, returning lib/ vendor/ regardless of whether lib/foo.js or vendor/bar.js exist.
Some functions ( patsubst() , filter() , filter-out() ) support a tiny DSL: strings that use % char as a wildcard. If you don’t fully get the purpose of the % , the results are often confusing.
The 2 most important fn that do IO are:
wildcard() that in Linux/Mac/BSD uses glob(3) under the hood & smthg else in Windows;
shell() that is the equivalent of the bash command substitution ( `command` ). Only in reality, Make’s $(shell find . -name \*.js) is more like typing $ /bin/sh -c 'find . -name \*.js' | tr \
' ' in bash; i.e., after explicitly running the cmd under the particular shell, it replaces every newline w/ a space. On Windows it obviously cannot assume that bash is installed, thence is uses the horrible cmd.exe .
Because of this historical Unix vs. Windows diff, the pattern lang in windcard() & the command syntax in shell() are both inherently non-portable, unfortunately.
Why doesn’t Make support file names w/ spaces?
Initially it was a cunning plan to remove the necessity of having a support for a special list data type. Perhaps Stuart Feldman could have used , instead of a space for a delimiter, but that ship has long sailed. Also recall that many Unix utils that deal w/ file names return the list of file names join()’ed by a space or a newline. Thus the choice of a space char was very natural.
As Make doesn’t have any concept of lists, rules get their prereqs as a string: after expanding all macros, a rule chops the string into pieces that all together look like an array of targets, where each target may or may not be a file name.
In JS it would have looked like:
> src = 'foo.js bar.js' 'foo.js bar.js' > ` ${src} baz.css`.trim().split(/\s+/) [ 'foo.js', 'bar.js', 'baz.css' ]
The same goes for function arguments.
Compile everything to 1 directory
You may say it’s a matter of style, but I don’t like seeing the results of compilation scattered along the src files. I consider it a common antipattern. It’s popular, for makefiles that produce such output are the easiest to write, especially for novices. Partially this is also Make’s fault, for its collection of built-in metarules (observable via make -p ) has schooled ppl to write similar rules for their tools.
To remove the compilation results, ppl write clean targets, which are usually updated w/ the same consistency as comments in the code.
Don’t write clean or nuke targets. If your output goes under 1 umbrella dir, then all you need to do for starting from the clean slate is to remove 1 directory.
If you’re writing an SPA, copy your static assets & the relevant files from node_modules to the output dir too. A good makefile leaves a ready to deploy directory that doesn’t depend on files left in the src dir.
E.g., say the output directory is named _out . Our src tree:
. ├── src │ ├── a.js │ ├── b.js │ ├── index.html │ ├── style.css │ └── main.js └── Makefile
We need to transpile multiple src/*.js files before combining them to a bundle.
$ cat Makefile out := _out cache := $(out)/.cache build := $(out)/development mkdir = @mkdir -p $(dir $@) all: $(build)/main.js js.src := $(wildcard src/*.js) js.dest := $(addprefix $(cache)/, $(js.src)) $(build)/main.js: $(js.dest) $(mkdir) browserify $(cache)/src/main.js -o $@ $(cache)/%.js: %.js $(mkdir) babel $< -o $@
Run Make, & it creates the umbrella dir & populates it w/ the compilation results:
$ make babel src/a.js -o _out/.cache/src/a.js babel src/b.js -o _out/.cache/src/b.js babel src/main.js -o _out/.cache/src/main.js browserify _out/.cache/src/main.js -o _out/development/main.js $ tree --noreport -a _out _out/ ├── .cache │ └── src │ ├── a.js │ ├── b.js │ └── main.js └── development └── main.js
Of course to be able to test _out/development in the browser we need to copy the static assets to the umbrella dir too. Adding this to the makefile
$(build)/%: src/% $(mkdir) cp $< $@ static.src := $(wildcard src/*.css src/*.html) static.dest := $(patsubst src/%, $(build)/%, $(static.src)) all: $(static.dest)
… accomplishes our goal:
$ make cp src/style.css _out/development/style.css cp src/index.html _out/development/index.html
Multiple builds
It’s easy to add support for several builds from a single src directory. Make supports conditional directives, w/ which you may alter parameters to transpilers, change the output dir, etc. E.g., the enhanced version of the makefile from the prev section:
NODE_ENV ?= development out := _out cache := $(out)/.cache.$(NODE_ENV) build := $(out)/$(NODE_ENV) babel.opts := -s inline browserify.opts := -d ifeq ($(NODE_ENV), production) babel.opts := --minified browserify.opts := endif mkdir = @mkdir -p $(dir $@) all: $(build)/main.js js.src := $(wildcard src/*.js) js.dest := $(addprefix $(cache)/, $(js.src)) $(build)/main.js: $(js.dest) $(mkdir) browserify $(browserify.opts) $(cache)/src/main.js -o $@ $(cache)/%.js: %.js $(mkdir) babel $(babel.opts) $< -o $@
Conditional directives are evaluated during the phase I. There’s also if() fn that can be used in macros, but there’s no eq() fn (it exists in the Make’s src code, but under ‘experimental’ flag), that limits the applicability of if() . You can play w/ filter() inside if() (for if() treats a 0-length string or anything that expands to such a string as false) but it quickly gets unreadable.
Chain of rules
There are 2 categories of ppl:
those who write multiple rules, that work in a chain: e.g., first we transpile js, second we minify the transpiled output; %.js.min: %.es5 %.es5: %.js those who write a single rule .min.js → js, doing all steps in 1 recipe; there are 2 subcategories of such ppl as well: those who create tmp files in the recipe; those who use pipes, avoiding tmp files whatsoever; unfortunately I cannot recoment this method, for /bin/sh doesn’t signal an error if any of the cmds in a pipeline fail, except for the last one; with this approach you may (& will) easily end up w/ garbage in output or 0-length files; if you are perfectly sure that a system your makefile is going to run on has bash, you can add SHELL := bash -o pipefail .DELETE_ON_ERROR: at the beginning of the makefile. .DELETE_ON_ERROR has nothing to do with bash but with it Make automatically deletes the target when the recipe line fails.
When deciding what target to build next, Make is capable of recognising which targets are temporary.
foo.js.min: foo.es5 foo.es5: foo.js
Here, foo.es5 is an intermediary, but as it’s explicitly mentioned in makefile, it won’t be recognized as such.
The makefile below (taken from a simple shopping-hours program) uses the sequence of implicit metarules to create 2 UMD bundles: a minimized es5 & a usual js parcel:
out := dist mkdir = @mkdir -p $(dir $@) bundle.name := $(out)/shopping_hours compile: $(bundle.name).min.js $(out)/%.min.js: $(out)/%.es5.js uglifyjs $< -o $@ -mc $(out)/%.es5.js: $(out)/%.js babel --presets `npm -g root`/babel-preset-es2015 $< -o $@ $(bundle.name).js: index.js $(mkdir) browserify -s $(basename $(notdir $@)) $< -o $@
$ make browserify -s shopping_hours index.js -o dist/shopping_hours.js babel --presets `npm -g root`/babel-preset-es2015 dist/shopping_hours.js -o dist/shopping_hours.es5.js uglifyjs dist/shopping_hours.es5.js -o dist/shopping_hours.min.js -mc rm dist/shopping_hours.es5.js
Notice the last line (the rm command). There’s nowhere such a line could be found in the makefile! Make has automatically deduced that dist/shopping_hours.es5.js vertex is temporal & auto removed it before exiting.
Write makefiles in shell scripts stead
If you already have a bunch of small .sh files–move them to 1 makefile in the form of 1 .sh file == 1 target + recipe. By doint this you’ll get for free:
the dependency management (what target to run first); command line args processing (foo=bar args).
Make can run several recipes at once. Recall the Dilbert makefile. To download all the comics (starting from April 16, 1989) just generate the corresponding dates & pass them as targets. There is no need to modify the makefile itself.
Generate the target names:
$ seq `date -d 1989-04-16 +%s` $((60*60*24)) `date +%s` | xargs -Isec date -d @sec +%Y-%m-%d.gif > targets.txt $ head -3 !$ 1989-04-16.gif 1989-04-17.gif 1989-04-18.gif
Run Make w/ 50 parallel jobs (on a 2nd thought, don’t type that):
$ make -j50 `cat targets.txt`
(I’ve got banned pretty quickly.)
The beauty of the approach is that you may press Ctrl-C any time & when you run Make again it won’t re-download already processed pages.
You can even mask the makefile for a standalone script: add a proper shebang line to the aforementioned Dilbert makefile:
$ printf '%s
' '#!/usr/bin/make -f' | cat - Makefile > dilbert $ chmod +x !$
Now users can run dilbert today=1999-02-21 w/o ever suspecting they are using Make.
Tabs & shell
‘Why the tab in column 1? Yacc was new, Lex was brand new. I hadn’t tried either, so I figured this would be a good excuse to learn. After getting myself snarled up with my first stab at Lex, I just did something simple with the pattern newline-tab. It worked, it stayed. And then a few weeks later I had a user population of about a dozen, most of them friends, and I didn’t want to screw up my embedded base. The rest, sadly, is history.’
— Stuart Feldman
First, fix your editor, any decent one can highlight tabs. Second, if you’re still against tabs, redefine .RECIPEPREFIX variable:
blank := space := $(blank) $(blank) .RECIPEPREFIX := $(space)
w/ which you can use spaces before any recipe line.
If you’re feeling mischievous, Make has divers ‘secret’ vars & targets for you. For instance, you don’t have to ‘struggle’ w/ the ancient bash, for it’s possible to program recipes in any language that supports evaluations straight from the command line. This’ll help your prank get started:
$ cat Makefile SHELL := node .SHELLFLAGS := -e date != console.log(new Date()) q: @console.log('today is $(date)')
$ make today is 2018-03-03T10:02:05.789Z
!= is a syntactic sugar for the shell() fn.
Think that running every recipe line in a sub-shell is ‘expensive’? Make’s got you covered! Mentioning .ONESHELL target in a makefile sends all lines in a recipe to the sub-shell in bulk. If you resolve to profit by this circumstance, don’t complain about the consequences of inability to auto-detect errors in the middle of recipes.
Canned recipes, custom functions
You can exploit macros as user-defined functions. Because a macro gets expanded every time it’s being accesed, it’s save to include autovars in it or refs to other macros. Perhaps, the 2 most common examples are:
copy = cp $< $@ mkdir = @mkdir -p $(dir $@)
as in
_build/%.html: src/%.html $(mkdir) $(copy)
Such macros are called canned recipes.
If you need to pass a parameter to a macro, use a special call() fn to invoke it:
find = $(shell find . -name \*.$1 -type f) src := $(call find,js)
Because find contains refs to params ( $1 ), it’s called a parametrised function.
Deps
Writing makefiles for small programs often means a manual dependency management. If some out/bundle.js depends on several .js modules, it’s not hard to specify its prereqs manualy, but for large programs it becomes unmanageable.
There are several ways to tackle the dependency problem, the most popular one is colloquially called Tromey’s Way.
I’ve noticed that various (programming) books authors love to give examples that have little or no bearing w/ the subject, via explaining how they’ve solved some minuscule problem in the course of preparing their manuscript. This is just a ~30KB markdown file, but I feel that such a great tradition of ‘here’s an example from my book toolchain!’ should be continued.
Before handing down the .md file to pandoc, I preprocess it w/ erb. This allows me to write
<%= File.read 'dilbert/Makefile' %>
instead of a copy-pasting. But when I edit such a referenced makefile I want the .md file to be auto-recompiled. Manually specifying all included files as prereqs is lame, so I have a lilliputian script that reads the .md file & prints:
_out/web/index.html: dilbert/Makefile _out/web/index.html: umbrella/ver1.mk ...
I inject those lines into a makefile (via Make’s include directive). A simplified version of the whole scheme looks like:
define make-depend @mkdir -p $(cache) ./deps $@ < $< > $(cache)/$*.d endef $(out)/%.html: %.md $(mkdir) erb $< | pandoc -o $@ $(make-depend) -include $(cache)/index.d
define … endef is a multiline macro. ‘deps’ is the script in question. The main trick here is to invoke the macro after the successful .md to .html transformation. If I edit the .md–it doesn’t matter if there are new File.read commands in it, for Make rebuilds the .md file regardless, but if I change any of File.read ’ed files & then run Make, it picks up the proper prereq list & sees that it ought to recompile the .md.
Watchers
To auto-recompile on changes w/o manualy invoking Make means using an external file “watcher”. I have my own little watcher that plays different sounds depending on the return value of Make.
# npm i -g watchthis
Then in the project dir:
$ watchthis -e _out make test
See, how easy the life is, when you compile everything to 1 directory ( _out , in this example).
If you feel it’s time to be frugal with inotify watchers, try
$ while true; do make -q || make; sleep 2; done
The reason for make -q || make , instead of a simple make , is to prevent a terminal from filling up with annoying ‘make: Nothing to be done for target’ messages. The downside is that you compute the DAG twice for each ‘succesful’ run, not to mention a cpu waste from constant polling.
Auto-restarting
Make can auto-restart itself during a DAG construction if
it reads another makefile (via include directive), & it has found a rule where the target == included makefile name.
include _out/.npm _out/.npm: package.json npm i touch $@
How is this useful? If you have targets w/ prereqs from node_modules dir (e.g., a css library or already minified bundles) those files must exist before Make runs, otherwise Make throws an error. The auto-restarting facility allows Make to set forth with a clean slate and read the makefile anew, this time having all vertices in the DAG you’ve specified.
Files similar to _out/.npm are called empty targets.
Microscope
By default, all rules, macros & plain variables are placed in the global scope. Autovars are the obvious exception, for they are local to a particular recipe.
You can provide target-specific macros/vars for a rule. Say we want to compile .js files with different options and to a different directory, depending on the value of NODE_ENV environment variable:
NODE_ENV ?= development cache := _out/.cache/$(NODE_ENV) $(cache)/%.js: %.js @mkdir -p $(dir $@) babel $(babel.opts) $< -o $@ $(NODE_ENV): $(addprefix $(cache)/, $(wildcard *.js)) babel.opts := -s inline production: babel.opts := --minified
The name of the default rule in this example is equal to the value of the NODE_ENV var. If there’s no NODE_ENV in the environment, we presume it’s equal to ‘development’:
$ make babel -s inline a.js -o _out/.cache/development/a.js babel -s inline b.js -o _out/.cache/development/b.js
Nothing interesting is going on, until we override the said NODE_ENV var:
$ make NODE_ENV=production babel --minified a.js -o _out/.cache/production/a.js babel --minified b.js -o _out/.cache/production/b.js
We have 0 conditional directives in the makefile, but the value of babel.opts has somehow changed nevertheless. The following 2 lines:
$(NODE_ENV): $(addprefix $(cache)/, $(wildcard *.js)) production: babel.opts := --minified
after the phase I become:
production: _out/.cache/production/a.js _out/.cache/production/b.js production: babel.opts := --minified
The last line overrides the value of the global babel.opts variable, but only for the target named production . That target, in its turn, has 2 prereqs, each of which inherits the value of babel.opts from their incoming vertex ( production ). I.e., Make internally generates a rule for _out/.cache/production/a.js that looks quite similar to:
_out/.cache/production/a.js: a.js babel.opts := --minified @mkdir -p $(dir $@) babel $(babel.opts) $< -o $@
Debugging
Many saints have suffered martyrdom. Many users of Make have learned to tolerate the absence of debugging facilities. There’s --trace CLO but reading its output is tedious.
You’d expect Make to have an option ‘print how you see this makefile after the phase I’ (or in another words, ‘show me how you have constructed the DAG’), but no such feature exists in a polished state. You resort to -pk & grep:
$ make -rR -pk -q | grep -v ^#
( -rR disables a load of Make’s built-in implicit metarules/vars for C/C++). This also prints every env variable (for Make converts every env var into a macro (yes!), which is an interesting choice security-wise). We can write a little sh wrapper that reads all the env var names & filters them out alongside w/ often tangential build-in vars:
$ cat make-phase1 #!/bin/sh unset TERMCAP re_env=$(env | cut -d= -f1 | tr \
'|') re_dot_smthg='\.[^ ]+' re_autovars='[%*+<?^@][^ ]' re_misc='GNUMAKEFLAGS|MAKE([^ ]+)?|MFLAGS|SUFFIXES|-\*-command-variables-\*-' make -rR -pk -q "$@" \ | egrep -v "^(${re_env}#|$re_dot_smthg|$re_autovars|$re_misc) " \ | cat -s
Then type ‘make-phase1’ & pass any params to it as you would’ve done w/ ‘make’.
Even if you’re not a puts debugger, Make forces you to become one.
Everybody knows the trick how to print the value of the macro/variable, right? Create debug.mk file somewhere not far away, e.g., in ~/lib/ :
p-%: @echo "$(strip $($*))" | tr ' ' \
Then type:
$ make -f ~/lib/debug.mk p-SHELL /bin/sh
Adding -f makefile however many times you want & passing p-macroName , as a target, prints the expanded value of the macro.
There’s also a build-in warning() fn that expands its param & prints it to the stderr. It could be inserted anywhere, for its actual expanded value is an empty string.
Metarules could be frustrating if you’re unsure how the matching is done against provided targets. In the absence of a REPL of any kind, fall back to a helper .mk again:
$ cat ~/lib/metarule.mk match: $(T) $(P): @echo '$$@ == $@' @echo '$$* == $*'
To work properly it shoult be run in some tmp dir:
$ (cd /tmp; make -f ~/lib/metarule.mk P=out/%.js T=out/foo/bar.js) $@ == out/foo/bar.js $* == foo/bar
$* is a stem autovar that matches the % portion of the metarule. P is for ‘pattern’, T is for ‘target’. You know that the target doesn’t match when Make fails:
$ (cd /tmp; make -f ~/lib/metarule.mk P=out/%.js T=bar.js) make: *** No rule to make target 'bar.js', needed by 'match'. Stop.
Make has a ‘dry run’ CLO ( -n ) that just prints recipes instead of executing them. Combined w/ -t option, you get a terse view of what targets Make is going to rebuild. E.g., dry run the final makefile from Compile everything to 1 directory section:
$ make -tn -f ver2.mk touch _out/.cache/src/a.js touch _out/.cache/src/b.js touch _out/.cache/src/main.js touch _out/development/main.js touch _out/development/style.css touch _out/development/index.html
Beware that even w/ -n , Make expands all vars & required macros, so if any of them contain the shell() fn, Make executes it irrespective of the -n presence.
Additional reading
Apart from the official manual, a series of essays from the current GNU Make maintainer (Paul Smith) are super informative. His profile at stackoverflow, strangely enough, is mostly about Make.
Eric Melski’s blog posts:
John Graham-Cumming’s The GNU Make Book.
The original Stuart Feldman’s paper (pdf, Bell Labs, 1978): Make–A Program for Maintaining Computer Programs
The AWK programming language book has a Make-like program that fits on one page! (Ch.7, p.178.) Whilst it supports only static rules (no metarules, macros or functions), it’s easy to imagine how one could combine it w/ a decent preprocessor.
What’s Wrong With GNU make? “paper” lists divers valid points, although in a somewhat disgruntled style.
Make It Simple – An Empirical Analysis of GNU Make Feature Use in Open Source Projects (2015) – a study that looks at the diff between handwritten vs. generated makefiles.
If you have a compsci degree, you are accustomed to graphs, their terminology et al., thus when writing makefiles you should feel at home. My degree was in materials science/nanomaterials, therefore I’ve found the Ch 14 Graph Algorithms of Data Structures and Algorithms in Java very helpful. | {
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Books are having their iPod moment this holiday season. But buyer beware: It could also turn out to be an eight-track moment.
While e-reading devices were once considered a hobby for early adopters, Justin Timberlake is now pitching one on prime-time TV commercials for Sony Corp. Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reading device has become its top-selling product of any kind. Forrester Research estimates 900,000 e-readers will sell in the U.S. in November and December.
But... | {
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I miss round headlamps. Ford Ford provided an excellent illustration of how its famous Mustang has aged over the 50 years it's been around.
The company bolted together two halves of the iconic muscle car — one from 1965 and the other from 2015 — at an exhibit at the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum in Alexandria, Virginia.
The exhibit is also a good display of just how much cars have changed over half a century.
In 1965, a major technological innovation on the Mustang was the self-cancelling turn signal, according to Ford.
The 2015 Mustang, on the other hand, included several new innovations, like knee-level airbags packaged inside the glovebox door.
The years between the two models provided innumerable innovations across the automotive spectrum in safety, efficiency, reliability, comfort, and, of course, performance. | {
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Up until recently, if you’ve been in the position of thinking about making your home into an ‘Apple HomeKit’ smart home, the potential cost of realising such a dream, could run into hundreds and even thousands of dollars (or pounds/Yen etc), all of which would discourage younger customers beginning their journey into being a homemaker. However, now that many Chinese brands are making their presence felt, and along with them, a lot of much cheaper devices, the cost of putting together a basic smart home has come down considerably, at least for some items. One such brand, in case you’ve not been paying attention, is Aqara. Today, we’re looking at their budget-conscious smart tuneable white LED bulb.
This Aqara LED bulb (dimming version) is the first smart bulb to appear under the Aqara brand. The official price in China for this bulb at the T-mall flagship store is a lowly ¥89 (a mere UK£11.00 or US$14.00). Obviously, unless you happen to be in China, you’re going to have to pay a bit more from online resellers, but it goes to show how much the price can potentially come down. The packaging is as simple as ever, with a basic white box featuring the product, product name and the Aqara logo, with the back displaying a simple scene depicting a typical use case.
The base of the box indicates the model number: ZNLDP12LM, with the input voltage supporting only 220-240V～50/60Hz, so this bulb is of no use in 110-120V countries, unfortunately, although Aqara have said they’re working on a 110-120v version. It’s a reasonable 9W, bulb and as this is a tuneable white bulb (it can do ‘cool blue’ white to ‘warm orange’ white), the colour temperature range is 2700K-6500K. The maximum brightness is 806ml, which is on a par with the equivalent Philips Hue product. A multi-language manual is also included along with the bulb.
For stable and reliable network connections, most Aqara products connect using the Zigbee protocol. The Zigbee protocol avoids the potential issue of a congested Wi-Fi network and can still be controlled when the network is unstable. Aqara bulbs, along with most of their other products, also need the Aqara Hub to work, especially if you want HomeKit compatibility. If you don’t want HomeKit connectivity, below is a list of currently supported gateways devices that the bulb can also work with:
Mijia air conditioning partner
Aqara air conditioning partner
Aqara gateway (with Apple HomeKit support)
Mijia multi-function gateway
The Aqara LED bulb is slightly larger than the Philips Hue. The acrylic diffuser and plastic body are much lighter than the Philips Hue with the glass shade, but the acrylic is not as fragile as glass. The lamp can be screwed into most fixtures using the common E27 Edison type fitting. Despite being lighter than the Hue, as mentioned before, it has the same high 800 lumens brightness. The bulb pictured above is a white and colour ambience version, but the dimensions are the same as the tuneable white equivalent.
If you do opt for using the bulb to work with the Aqara HomeKit gateway (and really why wouldn’t you?), the Aqara LED bulb also supports voice control via Apple’s Home app and Siri. If you happen to have an Apple HomePod or Apple TV serving as a hub in your home, then Aqara LED bulbs can be turned on or off when no one is at home, and turn them on when someone comes back (a combination of motion or door sensors and geolocation data will achieve this).
The Mijia app supports the Aqara LED bulb, allowing you to turn it on or off, adjust the brightness and colour temperature. In the display specifically for the bulb, the rotating outer ring allows you to adjust the overall brightness with the centre of the circle allowing for adjustment of the colour temperature. As already mentioned, the Aqara LED bulb supports the 2700K-6500K colour temperature range, so for the morning or for times when concentration is needed, a cool light is recommended, while the warm light assists in winding down and relaxing before bed. The row of quick buttons below is for quick access to various presets, such as the basic switch, a timer, ‘relax’, ‘night light’, and ‘movie’.
Looking at the wider picture, the significance of the smart home is to change the way people interact with the environment. Nowadays, with the smart home, anyone can dive in and not have to worry about a PhD in electronics. For Aqara LED bulbs, you can have automations adjust the colour temperature according to different scenarios, all without having to run to every room or simply use a voice command to turn off all of the lights in the house.
As a light bulb, the Aqara is very affordable, but there are points where you begin to notice why Philips Hue and other ‘top line’ brands cost more. Much of this is down to software and firmware reliability along with ease of use. I encountered some small issue with the software side of things when using the bulb with the Mi Home app, but I hope to see improvement in the experience through later OTA updates. For example;
After the power is restored, the light bulb defaults to the state before the power is turned off. If it can be restored to a closed or customised state, then there will be a better experience, which Hue has already made available to their own products. When the light bulb is turned on or off, it creates a fade-in/fade-out effect, so that the eye can better adapt to changes in brightness. However, it is not as smooth as the Philips Hue bulb, which is reflected in the fact that when the light is turned off, the brightness gradually drops to about 30% and suddenly closes.
All in all, I’m really happy with the cost-quality ratio of this product, so I hope that Aqara will be able to solve these small problems in future OTA updates, and at the same time be able to introduce more types of lighting products for consumers to choose from, even to compete with Yeelight in China. If you are still hesitating to start a smart home product, it is better to start with Aqara LED bulbs, this will be the beginning of your “lazy” life. | {
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Laura Dern played Vice Admiral Holdo in the Rian Johnson-directed movie, which came out in 2017. And recalling when she was first offered the role, she said Johnson was speaking to her about it at great lengths before she realised it was anything even like a Star Wars project.
Star Wars 9 will be ‘fan service nostalgia after Last Jedi BACKLASH’?
In a video for Vanity Fair, she recalled: “Rian Johnson invited me to lunch to talk about a role in a movie.
“He started to talk about this thing he was writing and how he was seeing it, and describing this world. ‘It’s just like in space, when everything is so overwhelming and you have to take command of your ship.’
“And I was like, ‘my God, yes, that’s it! So where does it take place?’
“And he was like, ‘no, it’s space’. | {
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In 2013, I’ve drawn well over 200 Cardboard Crack comics. So I thought it would be fun to look back at some of the most popular ones from the last year. These are ranked by the number of page views they received. I’ll start with numbers 10 to 6 today. Click the pictures below to see the full size comics.
10. The new Chandra actually got a little play, although I’m not sure whether it satisfied what Magic players were hoping for.
9. This was my first experiment with animation and definitely my most popular.
8. This was one of the first comics I came up with when I was thinking of starting Cardboard Crack.
7. I debated what card to mention in this comic for quite a while. There are just so many good choices!
6. I wanted to draw this comic to show the other side of the Magic community, but I wasn’t sure how it would be received. Its popularity has opened the door for me to do more comics that don’t always have a traditional punchline. I’m really thankful to my audience for being so accepting of my experimentation.
Join me tomorrow when I’ll run down number 5 to 1. | {
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WASHINGTON — Law enforcement authorities in South Carolina said on Monday that a jail clerk there had made an error when entering information into a computer system about a February drug arrest of the man who is charged in the killing of nine people in a historically black church in Charleston last month.
The mistake, which was first reported by The Associated Press, was likely to have contributed to confusion the F.B.I. had about where the arrest occurred when it sought to obtain a police report about the drug incident.
The F.B.I. sought the report in April while it conducted a background check to determine whether the man, Dylann Roof, should be sold a gun, which was later used in the attack.
Although the F.B.I. never obtained the report and did not approve the sale, Mr. Roof was able to purchase the firearm through a loophole in federal gun laws several days after he initially applied to buy it. | {
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On Tuesday, Scott Morrison will announce yet more funding for mental health programs in schools. However, if Morrison considers this his “key focus”, he’s completely misread the issue.
On Tuesday, the Morrison government is set to announce funding to expand a mental health plan in schools around the nation. Per Fairfax, “The $2.8 million will go to a not-for-profit group, batyr, to offer more online services and support a program of school visits promoting youth mental health and suicide prevention. The group is named after a talking elephant.”
This push is apparently part of the $500 million plan to combat the issue of mental health, with the Liberal Party website stating that “…our $503.1 million Youth Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan is the largest suicide prevention plan in Australia’s history and focuses on expanding the headspace network, Indigenous suicide prevention and early childhood and parenting.”
I realise that $2.8 million to one NFP is barely worth a mention in the face of larger examples of funding, but considering that Morrison called the issues of mental health in the nation’s children a “key focus”, when you place this side-by-side with another scholastic-based policy, the numbers don’t add up.
In 2018, the Coalition rolled out the $247 million plan to place chaplains in public schools, a plan that Scott Morrison not only supported, but wanted to see “significantly expanded”. The plan was uniformly panned by the Australian Human Rights Commission (in a report), Labor senator Louise Pratt, who said that “….there’s an urgent need for youth workers with professional qualifications in our schools and that would be a much better priority for the government,” a sentiment echoed by the President of the Australian Education Union, who said: “We do not support the chaplains program. “Our schools need these funds to invest in programs such as school counsellors and student wellbeing programs in schools. We prefer to see that money invested in our schools more broadly.”
School chaplain program’s $247m budget extension rejected by teachers’ union #auspol https://t.co/v2hSwrFcOQ — Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) 9 May 2018
The mental health landscape in this country is in trouble. Accessibility and cost remain the salient issue. On a school level, help is reserved for those who can afford it, as the current embedded in-school counsellors are often the first step of mental health professionals beyond university. Ergo, they’re inexperienced and unable to offer ongoing care beyond textbook generalisations. An employed member of that system likened it to “a MASH unit, we patch them up, and try to keep them going…many parents cannot afford the minimum $150 per session the average youth therapist asks for…unpacking the puzzle of mental health is solely available for the rich. The poor just have to endure. The cause and effect of the current system had lead to this epidemic.”
Grattan Institute health program director Stephen Duckett warned that the government were not delivering on promises, leading to “yet another fail…the latest Panglossian national status report on mental health gives no hint of the underlying problems of poor access, misdirected funding, lack of teamwork, and appalling rates of suicide in Indigenous communities.”
As it stands, one in four Australians between the age of 16-24 experience mental health issues. However, merely combatting suicidal ideation, or those in crisis, ignores the scope of the issue. Clearly, the mentally unwell don’t arrive at suicide soon after diagnosis. Often, it is a choice made when help is not forthcoming, readily available, or seems to be working. A lack of education around the steps that lead to that dark place is systemic of the issue.
It speaks to what Morrison believes is the solution to the issue, rub some Jesus on it; ignore an objective crisis on a national scale for the incompatible subjectivities of religion. Moreover, continued census data points to the fact that our youth are ditching religion at a growing rate. I daresay that the word of some bloke from thousands of years ago matters little to the modern issues our children are subject to. This is especially the case if the openly religious don’t agree with who you are. What the school system needs is competent, experienced youth psychologists within an accessible system. The auspices of religion hiding under the guise of empathy will not do. Nor will a face-saving measure by someone advancing his own personal gospel. Throwing money at a talking elephant, a pseudo-Happy Harold, is a huge misread of the problem. | {
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Can you remember how startled you were when Jenson Button, caught in the middle of Honda’s (first) nightmarish 21st century return to Formula 1, pulled the proverbial rabbit from a hat and won the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix?
Well, imagine that same sense of shock spread over a four-month period and you have some idea just what effect Graham Rahal had on the Verizon IndyCar Series in 2015. After a slowish start to the season in terms of hard results, he went on to thoroughly reconfigure the perception of him within the paddock and the fanbase, taking two victories and an armful of podiums, and simultaneously building a strong title challenge.
A stubborn critic might question the excitement over what became fourth place in the championship. This was, after all, Rahal’s ninth year at the top level of open-wheel, despite being just 26 years old, and his 2015 performance didn’t suddenly legitimize the two or three years of underachievement. However, it certainly did validate his excuses when things didn’t go well this season past. People tend to listen when you talk the talk once you start walking the walk.
One direction
What particularly impressed most onlookers was that this impressive run of results came despite the fact that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing campaigned just one car for all races except the Indy 500. That’s certainly left IndyCar team owners questioning the value of multi-car squads, in terms of dollar-per-car-per-victory. Chip Ganassi Racing, Team Penske and Michael Andretti each ran four cars for the majority of the time, yet scored only three wins apiece. Seven of those 12 entries never saw Victory Lane.
So how much does the extra data stream from additional cars help a team succeed? That’s the question that needs to be answered when money is tight, as it is for the majority of IndyCar squads. Is there any point in stretching a budget to campaign two middling cars when a single entry could leave you enough dollars to populate it with the best available engineers, mechanics and pit crew? That’s the question that may receive a firm “No,” from race-winning teams such as KV Racing and CFH Racing in 2016.
When I drove on a one-car team, it meant the engineers were purely looking at what I wanted from the car, no distractions. Bobby Rahal
“Honestly, I believe that campaigning just one car, although it halves your chances, can actually be better,” says RLLR founder and co-owner Bobby Rahal, who scored all three of his Indy car driver titles while flying solo. “You only have one shot at winning, but the intensity of focus on that one car is awfully strong. When I drove on a one-car team, it meant the engineers were purely looking at what I wanted from the car, no distractions. Whereas if two drivers’ preferred setups are quite different, it’s more like running two one-car teams.
“The only disadvantage that I see is that all your eggs are in one basket. But again, I think that increases the responsibility on that driver but in a good way. He’ll try and give more at debriefs, he’ll work harder at self-analysis and self-improvement, he’ll race smarter knowing that the entire team is depending on him. And to be honest that heightened sense of challenge applies to the whole team, not just the driver.
“It’s also easier to build a real team with fewer people,” Bobby continues. “The more people you have, the harder it becomes to make them all pull in the same direction. So everyone on Rahal Letterman Lanigan is really protective of the team chemistry right now, and I wouldn’t want to risk that.”
Right people, right places, right attitudes
Chemistry is the key word there, according to Graham Rahal’s race engineer, Eddie Jones.
“To be fair, you could argue that a second source of data from having a second car could have benefited us at all events this year,” says Jones, who was in his third season at RLLR but his first working on Graham’s car. “But it’s so dependent on how well the team is structured, the dynamic between the drivers, the dynamic between the two sets of staff, and so on. Trying to run two cars if you have the wrong mix of people is counter-productive.
“Very much part of our success this year was having the right people – no weak links, no personnel clashes – and surrounding Graham with a small group of people who truly believed in him and who he had faith in. It doesn’t take much to upset that dynamic. You could have the budget to run three or four cars, but if those three or four sets of people and particularly the drivers aren’t working for the greater good of the team, or just don’t get on well, you’re going to be in for a long season.”
At the start of the season, we could really have used more cars Eddie Jones, RLLR race engineer
Nevertheless, the standard belief would be that in a year of substantial technical change such as 2015, when everyone was trying to fathom the breadth of potential created by the aero kits, one-car teams would suffer most. A lot of contemporary IndyCar team personnel are too young to remember the era of learning a new car at the start of every season, so mix-and-match aero kits and the huge number of variables contained therein came as a bit of a culture shock. Yet RLLR appeared to get its arms around the tricky Honda kit better and faster than any of its rivals.
Jones isn’t sure about this compliment, pointing out: “Honestly, at the start of the season, we could really have used more cars, especially when you consider how late we got the kits. My God, there were limitless configurations, and the bigger teams were able to try more of those combinations sooner than we were. But we’re fortunate to have Mike Talbott heading our vehicle dynamics program – he’s very strong – and as the season went on, we were able to refine our aero package.”
Bobby Rahal concurs. “You could see we were narrowing down the technical philosophies for road and street courses, to the extent that each successive weekend we started from a higher level, so we’d be in the top 10 right from the start of practice. Eddie became very specific about our start-off point each event and then the team would refine it according to the conditions. So I think next year we’ll be able to avoid that slightly slow first couple of races and we’ll be even stronger from the start.”
Driver input
All of this would have been for naught had the guy in the cockpit not played his part. But as well as skill and car control, Graham Rahal also developed a more malleable driving style. He listened whenever he was shown he was losing time on a certain corner, and on occasions when the fastest setup didn’t match his tastes, he was able to adapt and make the most of it.
“That’s the funny thing,” says Graham. “There were probably only one or two races where I liked the way my car handled, in terms of suiting my driving style. But I reached the point of accepting that… and maybe a bit sooner than a lot of the other drivers. The thing is, with the pitch sensitivity of the Honda aero kit, I didn’t see there’d ever be a way to fix the fact that this car is basically loose, so I just accepted it and found a way to go fast with it. And I think it worked out decently well. Getting it close enough and then going out and making the most of it was how we approached most races this year.”
There were probably only one or two races where I liked the way my car handled Graham Rahal
That positive approach to a fundamental and largely unsolvable issue was a sign of maturity from Rahal, and his enthusiasm for the task at hand was apparent. Like Bobby says, “when you have self-confidence, good things can happen,” and Jones agrees. He cites Rahal’s drive at Barber Motorsports Park – where in the closing stages he passed Will Power, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Scott Dixon – as a prime example of his driver’s renewed ebullience.
“You obviously have to have great skill to perform like that but it was also a sign of his confidence,” says Jones. “This year was the first time in a long time that Graham had a group who he felt really believed in him, and it showed.”
The underdogs
Graham himself acknowledges that psychological boost, and hints that it also derived from an “Us vs. the world” mentality. He really enjoyed the team’s underdog role in 2015.
“RLLR is a group of people who absolutely extract the best out of each other,” he says. “We don’t have the most resources or the most sponsorship, not by any means. Does that make it harder? Yes. Does it hurt? Yes. But should Andretti have beaten us this year? Yes!
“We all took a lot of pride in competing with Penske and Ganassi and beating Andretti this year. No one expected us to be anywhere near that level. And when the people at IndyCar tech inspection tell us the No. 15 is prepped as well as the Penske cars, our guys love that, as they should. It shows their quality.
“Obviously we sometimes missed. Go try and run an oval with a new aero kit and without a teammate. We honestly didn’t know where to start, and at Texas, that killed our speed because we didn’t have enough downforce for the conditions. Then at Pocono, we went the opposite way, and in the first two pit stops our priority was to try and get the downforce out. So those are times when being a one-car team hurt.
“But I think we proved that when you have a group of talented guys who have confidence in each other, you can still get it right a hell of a lot more often than you get it wrong. Look at Grand Prix of Indy – that really showed how we elevated our game, we overcame obstacles and we wouldn’t let anything get us down. That day we had great strategy, great pit stops, a fast car, and we came through from 17th on the grid to finish second.”
A rare blend
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing certainly made a concrete case for IndyCar teams to stop overstretching their funds to run more cars than they can comfortably handle. But downsizing won’t automatically lead to success as Michael Cannon, Dale Coyne Racing race engineer observes. He points out that RLLR’s success was the result of the actual talents involved and how they worked together.
“Personally I like to have another engineer to bounce ideas off,” says Cannon, “so I’m glad Dale runs two cars. But what Bobby did with his team this year was wonderful. He assembled the best lineup of engineering staff he could, no expense spared, he made sure there were no personality clashes, and then he committed them to just one car. No one was overstretched. Finally he had all the ingredients to do the job properly, and Graham rose to the occasion and recaptured all the potential we’d seen in him from back in the Atlantic days. Very impressive.”
Do I think it would be better to have a really, really good teammate? Ideally, yes Graham Rahal
From the drivers’ perspective, RLLR’s decision to run just one entry makes sense, in current circumstances.
“Do I think it would be better to have a really, really good teammate? Ideally, yes,” says Graham. “But how many of those are available? And where’s the money for that second car coming from? What makes most economic sense to RLLR is to have one very well-funded car, instead of cutting corners to run a second one that doesn’t add anything to the program and would probably actually hurt it.”
Even if funding a second car weren’t an issue, there would still be hesitancy within the RLLR ranks regarding expansion. Ask Eddie Jones how he might respond if Bobby were to tell him that he’d found $6m to run a second car in 2016, and he barely hesitates.
“First I’d ask for a pay rise,” he chuckles. “But seriously, I’d ask Bobby which driver he was looking at, and which engineer, too. And then I’d ask him if we really needed to go to two cars, given how we ran this year.”
Don’t be surprised to see others try and emulate the RLLR template next season. | {
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Chapter 8
Dark Tunnels
Doran walked down a long hallway, carful not to step in the muddy river of water that covered the center of the ground. The lack of windows made him nervous, and the echo of every drop of water made him jump. The lantern he held in his hands barley illuminated the dingy tunnel in front of him, resulting in him stepping in multiple unpleasant substances. The sounds of little feet, moving all about him, let him know that he was not the only creature down there.
He came across a fork in the road and paused, one path stretched right, the other left, and both reeked of urine and feces. He bent his knees and inspected the walls around both entrances, looking for the sign. He found the little black bird painted on the tunnel wall to his right. He inspected it for a moment, brushing the long black hair out of his eyes, stood up, and turned left.
Doran thought of himself as a rock. Through a steady, practiced, self control, he had gotten people to believe that he had no joy, or fear, or any emotion, earning him the name "The Statue" amongst those who knew his profession. He had even began to believe the rumors himself, until he met the council. Now he knew that everyone has at least one emotion, fear.
The tunnels had his nerves on edge. Every turn and shadow seemed to set his heart beating fast. More than once, he had drawn his bow and turned around, ready to loose and arrow, only to find a lizard mouse staring up at him with blank eyes. After what felt like hours of trudging through sludge and feces, he came across his destination.
The door in front of him stood in contrast with it's surroundings. The tunnels were dark, dreary and grey. This door, however, was bright red and gold, except for it's knob, which seemed to be a polished glass that reflected his image. His bright blue eyes stared back at him with a hollow look. He walked up to the door and knocked three times, then two times, then once. Someone on the other side replied with two quick knocks, and Doran gave two more.
The door swung open, and a tall, thin, pale-faced man with two long, slender swords strapped to his back, stepped out. Doran put down his lantern, and his bow and arrows, and raised both arms. The pale-faced man frisked him, finding a knife hidden in his boot. Doran simply shrugged at the pale-faced man, "forgot I had it." He said in an emotionless voice. The man didn't reply, but picked up Doran's affects and made a motion for him to enter the door in front of him, which he obliged.
Upon the door closing behind him, the stench of the tunnels vanished, and was almost immediately replaced with the scent of roses and lavender. The room he entered was as large as a theater, and held none of the offensive sights and smells of its surrounding tunnels. The theme of red and gold extended from floor to ceiling, all mixed with an assortment of intricate engravings. Servants walked too and fro delivering food and wine to the group of three men, who sat at a large semi-circular table.
"Ahh Statue," Said the man in the middle of the three, "Glad you could make it. Come, sit." His voice was energetic, and gave no inkling of mal-intent. A servant brought out a chair, and seated it at the table, across from the three men. Doran did as he was bid, knowing that it was a command, not a request. "We gave you a task, did we not?" said the man again. He was large, with no visible hair anywhere on his body. His eyes were intense, and his gaze made Doran uncomfortable. The two others to his left and right were indistinguishable from one another, from their red robes, to their narrow cheekbones. Doran knew from experience that they were lackeys, and that only one man on their council held the power. He spoke directly to him.
"Yes sir." His voice was emotionless, but even The Statue felt the effects of the bald man's eyes. "And I have failed. Her teammate jumped in front of my arrow. Forgive me sir."
"I was under the impression that you never missed." The bald man said incredulously. "In fact, according to you reputation, you never have. Surely this isn't the first time someone tired to sacrifice themselves, to stop one of your arrows. What made this special?"
Doran thought about his answer carefully. In truth, he didn't know how he had missed. He had seen the boy push The Avatar out of the way, he had used his gift to adjust the arrows path to compensate, yet, it didn't find it's mark. "The master Airbender must have interfered," he lied, "it caught me off guard."
"Why is it that you did not fire a second arrow?" demanded the lackey on the right.
"Chief Beifong, the master Airbender, and The Avatar had seen me. They would have captured me if I had stayed." Doran listed off in his monotone voice, "I thought it might serve your interests better if I were to finish my work another night, rather than be caught and stopped."
This answer seemed to annoy the lackeys, as they both spoke up, "How dare you presume to know what the interests of this council are," said the one to the right.
"We would have been much happier if you and your partner would have completed the task and perished. Now we must be delayed, our plans are stalled because of YOU. " finished the other one.
"You know what happens to those who fail us." continued the first, "We needed you to succeed in order to continue. The weapon will soon be-" the man in the middle slammed his had down on the table, cutting off the man, before he said too much.
The second man motioned to the pale-faced man, "Faust, Show The Statue to our lovelies." He turned back to Doran, "Maybe then, you will see what it means to fail us."
Doran felt panic grip his chest, he started to weigh the odds of being able to overtake the pale-faced man named Faust. He knew that by reputation he didn't stand a chance, but even death was preferred over what he had been sentenced to.
"Councilman Granis, Councilman Gryves," said the bald man, waving Faust away with his hand, "surely this man speaks the truth. If he had stayed, they would have captured him. If they had captured him they would have questioned him." The two other men looked upset, but said nothing. Doran wanted to feel relief, but knew that he wouldn't until he was safely back above ground. "And we don't want that, do we?" Doran shook his head, " Though, out of curiosity, what would you have said if they had captured you?"
Doran's answer was quick and honest, "Nothing, sir. To betray the council is a highest offence."
"Indeed it is." He waved a servant over to pour him more wine, "We are an order of secrecy. Our power lies in the fact that, to everyone else, we are invisible." He took a long drink, making Doran sit in silence. "But are we invisible, Doran Long?"
Doran froze. No one knew his real name. It was a secret that he had buried a long time ago. Less then 5 people in the world had ever known it, and he had personally silenced 3 of them. His shock almost made him forget to answer, "No sir." He managed to spurt out, his inflection changing almost imperceptibly.
"Goood, and since we are not truly invisible, we must act it, or we are lost. Tell me, how does one act invisible."
"I don't know sir."
"With fear." The bald man motioned to another servant, who brought Doran a folder, printed on it's cover was the black bird stamp. Doran opened it, and clenched his teeth. Inside, were pictures of a young girl, no older than sixteen. She was dressed in rags and was chained to a table, her face was covered with cuts and bruises and the latest Republic City Daily was resting on her stomach. "Don't forget why you're here for us Doran." The bald man's voice had turned sour, revealing the anger in his voice, "You said, you have failed. You could not be more right." He took a large bite of meat from his plate and pointed it at Doran with his fork, "If you were smart, and I believe you are, then I wouldn't fail us again." His eyes were dark and intense on Doran, "Or next time, she'll wish we were as merciful as we were today."
Doran put his hands under the table so that the council wouldn't see him clench his fists. "I wont fail you again…" he manage to say, barley able to control his voice through his anger.
"I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that. Can you say it one more time?"
"I wont fail you again… sir"
"Much better. That will be all Doran, we will send you instructions for your next task. Your are dismissed." Doran got up and left the room. "Oh Doran… Leave the folder please." Though his demeanor was statuesque, inside his mind, Doran was screaming.
When he left the red door, Faust wordlessly gave back his weapons. He slung his bow over his shoulder, and began to traverse the maze of tunnels beneath Republic City. He made it five minutes, before what he saw in the folder overwhelmed him. 'The Statue' leaned against a wall, closed his eyes, and broke down. His body was racked with sobs. | {
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SundanceTV has boarded The Name of the Rose, a limited international drama series based on Umberto Eco’s acclaimed novel, that stars John Turturro (The Night Of), Michael Emerson (Lost, Person of Interest) and Rupert Everett (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children).
AMC Networks’ cable network as well as Sundance Now have joined the series, which will also air on Rai in Italy in 2019 and is produced by 11 Marzo Film, Palomar and Tele München Group. Damian Hardung (Red Band Society), Sebastian Koch (Homeland), James Cosmo (Game of Thrones), Richard Sammel (Inglourious Basterds), Fabrizio Bentivoglio (Human Capital) and Greta Scarano (In Treatment) also star in the series, which is currently in production in Italy.
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Set in Italy in 1327, The Name of the Rose follows the Franciscan monk William of Baskerville (Turturro) and his novice Adso von Melk (Hardung) as they arrive at a secluded monastery in the Alps. There they become witnesses to a series of mysterious murders. While Baskerville and Melk investigate and search for the killer, they are hunted themselves by the merciless inquisitor Bernard Gui (Everett), who prosecutes those who criticize the pope.
The screenplay was co-written by Andrea Porporati (Il dolce e l’amaro, La Piovra), Nigel Williams and Giacomo Battiato (L’infiltré, Karol: A Man Who Became Pope), who also directs the series.
Bompiani/Harcourt
Eco’s The Name of The Rose has sold more than 50 million copies since it was first published in 1980.
Herbert L. Kloiber, Managing Director of Tele München Group and Tele München International: “We are thrilled to work with the AMC Networks family — on The Name of the Rose. Umberto Eco’s masterpiece hasn’t lost any of its fascination since it was first published and we are very much looking forward to bringing this authentic and multi-layered vision of Eco’s unparalleled novel to audiences around the world.”
“SundanceTV and Sundance Now are proud to join Tele München Group on The Name of the Rose, an entertaining murder mystery full of twists and turns, brought to life with first class talent in front of and behind the camera,” said Jan Diedrichsen, General Manager, SundanceTV and Sundance Now. “William of Baskerville is nothing less than a medieval Sherlock Holmes. The story is beloved because it combines the best of serialized crime drama – in the vein of SundanceTV’s Top of the Lake – with a dramatic, wildly visual setting rarely depicted on television. A smart, thrilling story, coupled with and extremely high production values, makes this project a perfect fit for our linear network and streaming service – it’s exactly what our discerning audience craves.”
Nicola Serra, Managing Director and Partner of Palomar: “AMC Networks, and especially Sundance TV and Sundance Now are synonymous with quality, creativity and very high standards in serialised drama, which is something the public knows very well. We are excited and delighted: this is the ideal partner for our story which will surprise, astonish, amaze and entertain their audience.”
TMG’s sales unit, TM International, is handling worldwide distribution of the series. | {
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This student has COVID-19 — and the stigma that comes with it
The family of a student with COVID-19 says they were shocked to find out their child — who, at the most, had a cough — ended up with the virus. | {
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Corporate America has drawn a red line around criticism of the teenage activist survivors of the Parkland massacre–but the sanction for crossing it only applies when it comes to conservatives.
Hulu, TripAdvisor, and more than a dozen other companies pulled their advertisements from Fox News’s Ingraham Angle after host Laura Ingraham tweeted last week that Parkland survivor David Hogg was “whining” about getting rejected from certain colleges. But when Joan Walsh, a paid politics talking head on CNN, tweeted a sarcastic remark at Kyle Kashuv–“good luck with your stress”–no advertisers pulled ads from CNN.
Two differences stand out. Ingraham is an outspoken conservative advocate while CNN’s Walsh is a left-winger. And Hogg is an advocate of gun control and vocal critic of the president, while Kashuv is a defender of the Second Amendment who recently made a friendly visit to the White House.
In other words, this appears to be a story of corporate America siding with the left wing against conservatives.
Many of the boycotting companies say they are applying a non-political standard. TripAdvisor said it pulled its ads from Ingraham Angle because it did not “condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster.”
“In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency. As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program,” a spokesperson for TripAdvisor told Breitbart News.
TripAdvisor did not respond to requests for comment about whether this standard would apply to the comments of CNN’s Walsh.
At least eighteen companies have pulled their ads from Ingraham Angle, many tweeting out statements about joining the advertiser boycott. These include Hulu, Wayfair, Nutrish, TripAdvisor, Nestle, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Expedia, Stich Fix, Jenny Craig, Office Depot, Atlantis Paradise Island, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Progressive, Miracle-Ear, Principal, and Honda.
Clothier Joseph A. Banks was initially reported to have pulled ads from the program but denied those reports to Breitbart News.
None of these companies has said they would pull ads from CNN.
A similar pattern emerged when Kurt Eichenwald, a journalist widely thought to be a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, told Parkland survivor Kyle Kashuv, “I have no respect for you.” All of the companies joining the anti-Ingraham boycott fell silent.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Vanity Fair said Eichenwald was not a contributing editor. This apparently came as a surprise to Eichenwald, who claimed that he had never been informed that he had lost the post at the magazine.
–Amanda House, Sean Moran, Matt Boyle, Penny Starr, John Binder, and Ian Mason contributed to reporting this article. | {
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"But when we understood that it was just a 17-year old kid who was unbalanced and under careful observation, we thought he was doing it for himself: it was a cry for help not an act against our children." | {
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Na convenção autárquica do CDS foram muitos os candidatos a autarcas que falaram de Assunção Cristas como a futura presidente da câmara de Lisboa. Porém, foi como líder do partido que Assunção surgiu este sábado no encerramento da convenção autárquica, no Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, apresentando um caderno de encargos para o Orçamento de Estado de 2018.
Entre as medidas que a presidente do CDS quer que o governo acolha é a redução do IRS em todos os escalões e não apenas num ou dois. Falando para as “esquerdas unidas”, Assunção Cristas desafiou: “se há margem para mexer nos impostos, então olhe-se para toda a carga fiscal, se há margem para baixar o IRS então que se baixe em todos os escalões”.
Depois a líder do CDS apresentou alguns números: “52% das pessoas não pagam IRS, 11% dos contribuintes pagam 70% do IRS arrecadado, é injusto e imoral defender baixas apenas para alguns, continuando a carregar nos outros”, rematando que “não há portugueses de primeira e de segunda”.
Nesta convenção autárquica, Assunção Cristas regressou ainda a um tema caro ao CDS de Paulo Portas: o Rendimento Social de Inserção (RSI). Aqui apelou à fiscalização desta prestação social, acusando que “voltaremos a renovações automáticas sem qualquer fiscalização”, considerando que é “inadmissível”, referindo que o CDS é “a favor de prestações sociais pagas a quem delas necessita, mas somos absolutamente contra prestações sociais dadas a quem delas não precisa”.
Também em matéria fiscal, Assunção Cristas promete voltar a propor a redução do IRC até aos 19%, desafiando o primeiro-ministro a cumprir aquilo que o PS de António José Seguro acordou com o anterior Governo.
Embalada pela aproximação da entrega e discussão do Orçamento de Estado na Assembleia da República, Assunção Cristas fez questão de levar à Convenção Autárquica a questão das cativações, anunciando a apresentação da proposta de “acrescentar limites às cativações, porque não achamos admissível que um primeiro-ministro nos diga que 30% de cativações é normal e desejável”, exigindo “transparência nesta matéria.
Antes, Assunção Cristas voltou a insistir no pedido de apuramento de responsabilidades sobre o que se passou em Pedrógão Grande e Tancos, que considera que “ não podem ficar esquecidos e nós não deixaremos que fiquem esquecidos, até que tudo seja claro, até que todas as responsabilidades sejam assumidas”.
Acusando depois o Governo de fugir “às responsabilidades pelas falhas de coordenação da protecção civil, um Governo que foge às responsabilidades em Tancos, um Governo para quem todos são responsáveis tirando ele próprio e os que a ele pertencem”.
As autárquicas vão “correr bem”
No encerramento da Convenção Autárquica, que contou com uma sala cheia no Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, Assunção Cristas, ela própria candidata à Câmara de Lisboa, deixou uma mensagem de optimismo às centenas de autarcas presentes.
Por diversas vezes repetiu “vai correr bem”, argumentando que “trabalhámos intensamente, ouvindo as pessoas, estando próximo, e construindo com elas os nossos programas” , ou ainda “vai correr bem porque trabalhámos única e exclusivamente para servir os nossos munícipes, os nossos fregueses”.
No final da intervenção, a sucessora de Paulo Portas fez um pedido. Que os autarcas que se candidatam às eleições de 1 de Outubro tenham “empenho máximo, empenho total neste nosso desafio autárquico”.
Num esforço de mobilização do partido, Assunção Cristas acrescentou que “todos são necessários e todos estão convocados, mesmo aqueles que por razões diversas não conseguiram abraçar este desafio na primeira linha”.
Falando já como candidata à câmara municipal de Lisboa, a líder do CDS disse que “eu estou muito motivada, muito animada, em todos os locais recebo sinais de confiança e de apreço, seja nas ruas de Lisboa, seja por todo o país”.
E o final da intervenção foi rematado com um “Vamos a isto, com ânimo, com motivação, com confiança, com ambição máxima porque o caminho é em frente”.
A Convenção Autárquica terminou com o habitual hino do partido cantado pela compositora portuguesa Dina, após mais de seis horas de intervenções dos autarcas-candidatos do CDS. | {
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Complains about being socially awkward in real life Socially abusive on the internet to make up for it
137 shares | {
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NFL player grants Iowa teen trip of a lifetime This Iowa teenager never dreamed his favorite player would write back. Share Shares Copy Link Copy
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WEBVTT Ankeny Christian football player Nathan Banderman is quite the kid. Despite dealing with his diabetes, Nathan helps raise his two foster sisters - and has a brother in the military he really looks up to. But what most people know him for - his obsession with the Baltimore Ravens! AN obsession that prompted his parents, to send an e-mail. At a time when we are hearing a lot of bad stories about NFL players, Tony Seeman has a good one, in tonights Sunday Sports Extra. <take one step in Nathan Bandermans room, and you get a hint of who his favorite team is. "flag up there, ravens helmet on one side the Baltimore B on the other side. The first football game I ever remember watching was a Ravens Browns game I think it was. I was so impressed with the defense I was like, I like that team! and his favorite player? Well that ones easy. "defintiely Haloti Ngata, hes very good statistically, definitiely his off the field character is very impressive." "its one of those things as a mom, you want to give your kids the desires of their heart. We would ask Nate what do you want, he wouldn't ask for anything but he loves the Baltimore Ravens." The diehard ravens fan never asked for much. Sp when he did make a request? His parents debi and steve took notice. "I really wish I could go to a game sometime." "Debi got tow work trying to set up a Ravens game, but the plane tickets, hotel stay and game tickets were too much, so she hit the internet and found the Haloti Ngata foundation." "I thought why not lets just see what happens and so I shot out an email and told them about our family and told them about Nathan. We just want to make this drema come true for our son. And about a month later, great news. "I get a notcie that they chose NAthan to get to go and so I just broke down and balled." "My mom didnt tell me until my brithday on the 25th, she kind of surpriseed me and I obvioulsy freaked out." The Ravens rolled out the red carpet. Nathan got to spend three days in Baltimore, head to a game, and spend some time withe the man who helped make it all possible. "Even meeting him after the game we just sat their and talked he shook my hand, he was very humble for someone so famous." "It was fun to watch I think at one point during the game I asked him if his face hurt becasue he had a permanent smile plastered on his face." It may have been three days, but the memories will last a lifetime. "ITs a one in a million chance, this guy in Baltimore read this random email form a kid in Iowa and decidd to help out it really touched me." "its one of those things you want to do but cant do and just to know somebody is making his dream come true was the most amazing feeling as a mom." Tony seeman kcci iowas sports leader. Haloti's foundation also gave Nathan;s older brother a signed jersey as a sign of appreciation for serving our country. Nathan plans on going to med school to be a pediatric doctor to help children with diabetes | {
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More than a year after India claimed to have conducted surgical strikes against Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that New Delhi tried to contact Islamabad before making news of the strikes public, The Times of India reported."India had repeatedly attempted to contact Pakistan government to inform them about the top-secret operation conducted by the Indian forces," claimed Modi while attending an event in London."I said before India gets to know, we should call Pakistan and tell them what we did. We were calling them since 11 am but they did not answer the phone. At 12 we spoke to them and then told the Indian media," elaborated the Indian prime minister.The Pakistani military had strongly rejected Indian claims about the strikes as an “illusion being deliberately generated by the Indians to create false effects”."This quest by the Indian establishment to create media hype by rebranding cross-border fire as a surgical strike is fabrication of the truth. Pakistan has made it clear that if there is a surgical strike on Pakistani soil, the same will be strongly responded."Modi further stated that the 2016 strikes on the country were aimed at sending a strong message to Islamabad, according to the Indian publication."We believe in peace. But we will not tolerate those who like to export terror. We will give back strong answers," alleged Modi and added that in such a case "India knows how to give a reply".The Indian PM was also forced to address the numerous cases of sexual assault in the Hindu-majority country that have sparked outrage across India, although he stopped short of mentioning the rape case of the Muslim minor from Indian occupied Kashmir which prompted mass protests.He said that rape is a matter of shame for the entire society, but should not be politicised."This is a matter of great concern for the country and these sinners are somebody's sons... The rape of a (daughter) is a matter of worry, a shame for the country," he said."Rape is rape. It cannot be tolerated. But should we compare the number of rapes in different governments? We cannot say there were this many rapes in our government and that many in yours. There cannot be a worse way to deal with this issue," he remarked.The India premier is in the United Kingdom for a four-day visit of bilateral engagements as well as multilateral discussions as part of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.This article originally appeared in The Times of India | {
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Renzi: Migranten helfen, aber in ihrer Heimat Jenny Perelli
Die Migrationskrise macht Italien EU-skeptischer
Die Migrationskrise hat sich in den letzten Wochen so zugespitzt, dass Italien sogar damit drohte, die Häfen vor Schlepperbooten zu schließen, falls das Land keine konkrete Unterstützung von der EU erhalte (vgl. Migranten aus Libyen: Italien will die Öffnung europäischer Häfen). Italien ruft verzweifelt nach Hilfe, denn das Land ist an seine Grenzen gelangt und kann keine weiteren Einwanderer aufnehmen. Die anderen Staaten bieten allerdings keine effektive Entlastung.
Es kommen täglich Hilferufe aus ganz Italien: Großstädte und Provinzstädte aus allen Regionen wollen und können keine weiteren Migranten mehr aufnehmen, denn die Kapazitäten sind ausgelastet. Die Pressemeldungen häufen sich, doch je mehr das Land zappelt, desto weniger internationales Gehör scheint es zu erhalten.
Situation in "Hot Spots" kritisch
Die Situation in den so genannten "Hot Spots", den Aufnahmezentren, wird vom italienischen Roten Kreuz mittlerweile als sehr kritisch definiert. Die Organisation für Migration (IOM) schätzt, dass 2017 an die 100.000 Migranten in der EU angekommen sind - ca. 85.000 davon landeten in Italien. Seit über zwei Jahren ist Italien zum Zielland geworden, während es zuvor in erster Linie ein Übergangsland für die Weiterreise nach Nordeuropa war; doch es gibt im Moment keine Hinweise auf einen quantitativ signifikanten Transit von Migranten in Richtung Norden.
Zu beachten ist, dass die Parlamentswahlen 2018 praktisch schon vor der Tür stehen und die so genannten "Populisten" in Sachen Italexit gewiss nicht lockerlassen.
Gestern gab es zwischen dem ehemaligen Premierminister und Chef der Regierungspartei Partito Democratico, Matteo Renzi, und dem Vorsitzeden der Euro-Gruppe Jeroen Dijsselbloem einen regen Wortwechsel in Bezug auf das italienische Haushaltsdefizit und die Migrantennotlage.
"Wie ist es möglich, dass Europa uns sagen darf, was zu tun ist und dann nicht in der Lage ist, die Verpflichtungen in der Relocation der Migranten zu erfüllen?
Renzi hatte seinen Vorschlag zur Überwindung des Europäischen Fiskalpaktes und zu einer Rückkehr zu Maastricht geschildert, der prompt abgewiesen wurde. Renzi konterte pikiert: "Wie ist es möglich, dass Europa uns sagen darf, was zu tun ist und dann nicht in der Lage ist, die Verpflichtungen in der Relocation der Migranten zu erfüllen? Ich habe großen Respekt, aber die Mitgliedstaaten müssen ihren Verpflichtungen nachkommen."
Nun ist Renzi gewiss kein Populist, oder war es zumindest nicht bis dato, doch auch er hatte auf der Facebook-Seite der Partei gepostet, Italien habe zwar die moralische Pflicht, den Migranten zu helfen, allerdings vor Ort, in ihrer Heimat. Dieser Post, den Renzis Pressebüro nach kurzer Zeit wieder entfernt hatte, hat viel Staub aufgewirbelt, da er vielen zu konservativ schien und schon beinahe einem Slogan der "ausländerfeindlichen" Partei Lega Nord glich. Dieser Satz war ein Zitat aus Matteo Renzis neuem Buch "Avanti", das eigentlich im Zusammenhang hätte gelesen werden sollen, doch der Grundtenor der gesamten Passage ist durchaus zuwanderungsskeptisch.
Schuldgefühl und Weltverbesserlogik
Laut Renzi sei es ein großer Fehler gewesen, die Dublin-Vorschriften zu akzeptieren. Italien sei nicht moralisch verpflichtet, alle Menschen aufzunehmen, denen es schlecht geht. Es müsse sich von diesem Schuldgefühl und dieser Weltverbesserlogik freimachen. Renzi verlangt nach einem Numerus clausus, denn eine willkürliche Einwanderung täte niemanden gut und würde zu einer ethischen, politischen, sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Katastrophe führen. Dieses Risiko einzugehen, könne Italien sich nicht leisten, wobei Kontrollen an den Grenzen kein Rassismus seien, sondern ein Anzeichen politischen Pflichtbewusstseins.
Italien muss zurzeit tatsächlich für seine geografische Lage büßen. Es fragt sich insistent nach dem Sinn eines Europas, das in einer derartig dramatischen Situation seine Kooperation verwehrt.
Während die österreichische Regierung die Stationierung von Truppen am Brenner-Pass angedeutet hatte, konnte Italien weder beim Innenministertreffen in Tallin noch während des G20-Gipfels in Hamburg in der Migrationsfrage große Erfolge verbuchen.
Sicher: Bei der Gelegenheit konnte die Notlage dargestellt werden, es konnte Druck auf die Mitgliedsstaaten ausgeübt werden und eine Obergrenze zur Aufnahmen von Migranten konnte ebenfalls ins Gespräch gebracht werden, doch die Migrantenboote werden de facto nicht in andere EU-Häfen umgeleitet werden und die anderen Staaten kommen Italien nur minimal entgegen. Deutschland etwa, wird 250 Migranten mehr im Monat aufnehmen. Zur Entlastung Italiens ist das zu wenig, ebenso wie die Stärkung der libyschen Küstenwache.
Premierminister Gentiloni brachte beim G20-Gipfel sein Erstaunen über die Attitüde der internationalen Gemeinschaft zur Sprache; es gebe zwar internationale Rettungsaktionen im Mittelmeer, Italien werde mit der Aufnahme der Migranten aber alleine gelassen.
Normatives Schlupfloch
Die Rettungsaktionen im Meer dürfen in der Tat nicht mit der Aufnahme verwechselt werden; laut der Dublin-Verordnung, bzw. den Bestimmungen der Triton-Operation, ist das erste Einreiseland in Europa auch für die Prüfung des Asylantrags zuständig.
Insbesondere mit der Einführung von Triton hat Italien einer Abweichung von einem grundlegenden Prinzip des internationalen Seerechts zugestimmt, laut dem das Land als der Erstankunftsstaat gilt, dessen Flagge das Schiff führt, von dem der Migrant an Bord gezogen wird. Wenn etwa Migranten von einem spanischen Schiff gerettet werden, müsste Spanien als Ankunftsland gelten, das auch für die Aufnahme und die Bearbeitung des eventuellen Asylantrages verantwortlich sein sollte.
Genau das war vor einigen Tagen passiert: ein spanisches Schiff hatte alle Migranten, die es auf See gerettet hatte, einfach in italienische Häfen an Land gehen lassen und die Aufnahmeprozedur den italienischen Behörden überlassen.
Das scheint ein normatives Schlupfloch sein, das die europäischen Länder im Augenblick ausnutzen, um sich der Mitverantwortung bei der Regelung und Aufteilung der Migrationsströme zu entziehen. (Jenny Perelli) | {
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The photos provoked a strong reaction on social media, with many commentators speculating on how tough it must have been for Khashoggi's son to shake hands with the man accused of organising his father's murder. Later on Tuesday, the Crown Prince attended the investment forum alongside King Abdullah II of Jordan. Crown Prince Mohammed sat front-row in the audience of an afternoon session and then looked at some promotional booths outside the main hall as an excited crowd of mostly young Saudi men filmed the encounter on their phones.
Khashoggi's death loomed large over the start of the event, known as the Future Investment Initiative, which came as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that Saudi officials murdered Khashoggi in their Istanbul consulate after plotting his death for days. The Turkish leader demanded the kingdom reveal the identities of all involved in the killing, regardless of rank. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Saudi Arabia, which for weeks maintained Khashoggi had left the consulate, on Saturday acknowledged he was killed there in a "fistfight". Turkish media and officials say a 15-member Saudi team was flown in to kill Khashoggi. They say the team cut off his fingers before killing and dismembering the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist, who had written critically about the Crown Prince. Crown Prince Mohammed has come under mounting pressure, with critics suspecting he ordered the high-profile operation or at least knew about it. Saudi authorities say they have arrested suspects and dismissed senior officials, but the crown prince has thus far escaped blame.
At the opening of the conference, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih described the journalist's killing as "abhorrent". Some of the forum's keynote speakers and numerous Western executives and officials had cancelled plans to attend over Khashoggi's October 2 slaying. Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, smiles as he attends the Future Investment Initiative conference. Credit:AP "As we all know, these are difficult days for us in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia," al-Falih said in a speech to attendees seated in the forum's ornate hall. "Nobody in the kingdom can justify it or explain it. From the leadership on down, we're very upset at what has happened," he added, referring to Khashoggi's slaying.
The forum is the brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammed and is aimed at drawing more foreign investment into the kingdom to help create desperately needed jobs for millions of young Saudis entering the workforce in the coming years. Despite the absence of key executives and speakers from the United States and other Western partners, some $US50 billion ($70 billion) in deals were signed on Tuesday at the forum, with Russian and Asian businesses and officials eager to do business with the kingdom. "Those partners who are here with us today to continue that journey with us are certainly going to look back and find out... how committed the kingdom is to its partners that stay the course," al-Falih said, just moments before several deals were inked on stage. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video The forum last year grabbed headlines when Crown Prince Mohammed wowed the crowd of global business titans with pledges to lead the ultraconservative kingdom toward "moderate Islam". He also announced plans to build a $US500 billion futuristic city in the desert.
At the time, Crown Prince Mohammed spoke on stage alongside Stephen Schwarzman of US private equity firm Blackstone. Loading Schwarzman is among those who've backed out of attending this year. Others include US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who met with Crown Prince Mohammed separately before the forum, according to Saudi state television. Among its many investments domestically and abroad, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which the Crown Prince oversees, has invested $US20 billion in a US-focused infrastructure fund with Blackstone. The Public Investment Fund has also invested $US3.5 billion in ride-sharing firm Uber, whose chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi also backed out of attending this year's forum.
Lubna Olayan, a Saudi businesswoman moderating the forum's first session on Tuesday, opened with remarks about Khashoggi. Loading "As we gather here in Riyadh this morning, it is natural that our thoughts tend to focus on recent events surrounding the death of Jamal Khashoggi - a writer, a journalist and a Saudi journalist known to many of us," she said. "May he rest in peace." She added that such "terrible acts... are alien to our culture and DNA". Some in the crowd applauded her remarks. Directors of the Saudi, Russian and United Arab Emirates' sovereign wealth funds took part in the opening panel. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan headlined another session, with Jordan's King Abdullah II expected to speak at the forum on Wednesday. | {
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Kendrick Lamar's new album Damn is stacked with enviable guest appearances and proven producers. Rihanna, U2, James Blake, Thundercat, and Kaytranada all show up with memorable contributions, but one mysterious name had fans scratching their heads: Bēkon.
Bēkon has a producer credit on Damn tracks "Blood," "Yah," "Element," "Pride," "XXX," "Fear," "God," and "Duckworth." Bēkon is also credited with additional vocals on each of those tracks, sans "Element." But who the hell is Bēkon? Assuming you're not already overwhelmed with Easter Sunday x Damn sequel speculation, let's take a look at some of the early (i.e. wrong) Bēkon identity theories that briefly persisted following Damn's release.
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At least one person posited that Bēkon could simply be a production pseudonym for Lamar:
But would this explain Bēkon's vocal credits? Not exactly, which is where another fan's guess came in:
Of course, Thundercat already has a bass credit on "Feel." So maybe the (jokingly suggested) bacon/Bēkon mini-investigation below made more sense?
Or maybe Bēkon could have been Jesus?
Or Taylor Swift?
Thankfully, those guesses are both extremely doubtful. Also, they're totally wrong. A response to Pitchfork's questioning of Bēkon, however, presented the genuinely interesting possibility that Bēkon was none other than Danny Keyz:
The @iambekon Instagram account's most recent post is a photo of Kendrick recording vocals: | {
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I hope everyone with a penis experiences this at least once
Get over 50 fonts, text formatting, optional watermarks and NO adverts! Get your free account now!
Pee stream split in two - Both made it into toilet bowl
Check out all our blank memes | {
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中日本高速道路株式会社
中日本エクシス株式会社
中日本高速道路株式会社のグループ会社 中日本エクシス株式会社は、2016年2月中の開通を目指す新東名高速道路（浜松いなさJCT～豊田東JCT）にNEOPASA岡崎（ネオパーサおかざき）（集約）、長篠設楽原（ながしのしたらがはら）PA（上下）をオープンします。
東海三県で最大規模となるNEOPASA岡崎は、上下線集約型である特徴を活かし、上下線それぞれにコンセプトを設定し、同じ商業施設でありながら、行きと帰りで趣きが全く異なる、2つのコンセプトを共存させた初めてのサービスエリアとなります。
名古屋めしを代表する味噌かつの名店「矢場とん」や、食パンがギネス世界記録に認定された地元で人気のベーカリー「パンのトラ」が高速道路初出店となるなど、計15店舗が出店します。 さらに、岡崎伝統の石工技術を活かした道標型案内標識・八丁味噌桶モニュメント・テーブルを設置するなど、三河地方の味と文化が詰まったサービスエリアとしてお客さまをお迎えします。
長篠設楽原PAは、「長篠・設楽原の戦い」をコンセプトに、本陣に見立てた建物外観に加え、歴史的観光資源を活かした火縄銃の展示や馬防柵を再現した戦国エリアとなります。
ぜひ新東名高速道路に誕生する新たなSA・PAにご期待ください。 | {
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(CNN) Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a series of amendments on Tuesday to the organizing resolution to set the parameters of the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Schumer's fourth amendment was to subpoena acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. | {
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THE LIGHT GARDEN - DỰ ÁN MỚI NHẤT GẦN SÂN BAY LONG THÀNH - ĐỒNG NAI , RÌA QL 51
Dự báo sẽ là một Lake Side thứ 2 (Lake Side là dự án đất nền Long Thành , nằm rìa quốc lộ 51, được mở bán từ năm 2017, chỉ trong vòng 2 năm giá đất đã tăng từ 9tr/m2 ---> 21tr/m2 trong năm 2019)
The Light Garden sở hữu tiềm năng tăng giá cao thu hút nhà đầu tư chính hiệu :
- Cách cổng B sân bay 5km
- Rìa QL51, Kết nối 5 KCN lớn nhất, đối diện KCN Gò Dầu, 500m đến cụm CN Phước Bình lớn nhất Đồng Nai hoạt động năm 2020
- Khu dân cư đông đúc hiện hữu
- Cách Cảng Cái Mép 10p, Cách Cao Tốc Biên Hòa – Vũng Tàu 200m
- Đất nền phân lô, SHR, XDTD
- Pháp lí sạch, hoàn thiện 100% cơ sở hạ tầng
- The Light Garden - 6,5tr/m2 - 100 -190m2
- The Light Garden sở hữu tiềm năng to lớn đầu tư ở và dễ dàng khai thác kinh doanh, buôn bán như quán ăn, cafe, dãy phòng trọ, khách sạn,...đáp ứng nhu cầu của cư dân địa phương, đặc biệt là nguồn nhân công lao động dồi dào được hình thành sắp tới trong năm 2020.
----------
TỔNG QUAN DỰ ÁN THE LIGHT GARDEN
- Tên dự án : The Light Garden
- Vị trí : xã Phước Bình, huyện Long Thành, Đồng Nai
- Diện tích tổng: 14572.5 m2
- Tổng số nền : 97 nền
- Diện tích trung bình: 100 - 190m2, 100% thổ cư
- Cơ sở hạ tầng : đã hoàn thiện, ( đường mặt tiền 7m, đường nội khu 4m, vỉa hè 1m)
- Pháp lí : sổ đỏ riêng, XDTD
- Gía dự kiến ; 6,5tr/m2. Nhận giữ chỗ 30tr/ nền có hoàn lại.
Nhận ngay báo giá từ CĐT:
VỊ TRÍ DỰ ÁN THE LIGHT GARDEN
Vị trí trọng điểm các khu CN lớn của Đồng Nai - tiềm năng tăng giá cao
- The Light Garden Đối diện KCN Gò Dầu đang hoạt động
- 500m đến cụm KCN Phước Bình đang hình thành, 2020 đi vào hoạt động
- 5km đến các KCN Mỹ Xuân, Mỹ Xuân A2, Mỹ Xuân B
Đối diện KCN Gò Dầu đang hoạt động
Kết nối các nút giao thông quan trọng khu vực Long Thành – Đồng Nai – TPHCM – BRVT, đi lại thuận tiện dễ dàng
- Khu vực ranh giới giữa huyện Long Thành và Phú Mỹ - BRVT
- The Light Garden cách QL51 khoảng3km. Đường vào lớn 12m
- Mặt tiền đường nối thông QL56, đi miền Trung.
- Cách Cảng Cái Mép 10p, Cách Cao Tốc Biên Hòa - Vũng Tàu 200m
- The Light Garden song song cao tốc Biên Hòa - Vũng Tàu, kéo về Vòng Xoay LonG Điền, BRVT
- Kết nối các cao tốc Bến Lức - Long Thành, Long Thành - Dầu giây
- Đặc biệt, The Light Garden cách cổng B sân bay Long Thành chỉ 5km
Vị trí trọng điểm các KCN - kết nối các tuyến giao thông quan trọng
Nhận ngay thông tin tư vấn : 093 77 333 68
CHÍNH SÁCH DỰ ÁN
- Pháp lí sạch, SHR, xây dựng tự do
- Cam kết 15% lợi nhuận nếu sau 8 tháng không có sổ đúng hạn.
- Thanh toán linh hoạt theo nhiều đợt
MẶT BẰNG DỰ ÁN THE LIGHT GARDEN
Nhận ngay báo giá từ CĐT:
TIỆN ÍCH DỰ ÁN THE LIGHT GARDEN
Nội khu
- Hệ thống nước máy, chữa cháy ngầm
- Hệ thống điện nổi
Ngoại khu
- Đối diện trường mẫu giáo và ấp văn hóa của xã
- Đường mặt tiền di chuyển QL 51 tầm 3km đến các tiện nghi : trường học, siêu thị, chợ,.. | {
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Progressive-compatible U.L.T. (Ultra Luminance Technology) image sensor (1/3-type 2.2-megapixel 3MOS sensor)
22x Zoom Lens with Wide Coverage from Wide-Angle to Telephoto
Full P2HD Image Quality with AVC-Intra Codec Recording
High-End Operation with Multi-Camera Synchronizing and VFR Recording
4-position (clear, 1/4 ND, 1/16 ND, 1/64 ND) optical neutral density filter wheel
The AG-HPX250 Memory Card Camera Recorder is a new handheld model for Panasonic's broadcasting and professional P2HD Series. Incorporating new technology in the lens, camera section and recorder section, this compact unit offers a level of performance that approaches full-size, shoulder-type broadcasting camera recorders. It's also the first handheld model to support AVC-Intra codecs.
Combined with the high-sensitivity, low-noise, 1/3-type 2.2-megapixel U.L.T. (Ultra Luminance Technology) 3MOS image sensor, it enables high-quality recording of Full-HD (1920 x 1080), 10 bit, 4:2:2 full sample broadcast-level images. In addition to covering a wide range, from wide-angle to telephoto, the lens is provided with three rings - a cam-type zoom ring, a focus ring and an iris ring - for the same kind of manual operation that you get with interchangeable lenses.
The AG-HPX250 also features GENLOCK input and TC input/output for synchronizing multiple cameras. Together with HD SDI output, this provides smooth operation in a live relay and recording system for multi-camera broadcasting and production work. A variable frame rate (VFR) function for slow-motion and quick-motion images, and a cine-like gamma setting also bring versatile expression to all kinds of image production. This stunning image quality, operating ease and handheld camera mobility work together to open a new dimension in news gathering and image recording.
Please click here for a list of operation manuals to download. | {
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By Per Ake Persson
WBA I/C champ Ryad Merhy (23-0) defends the title against American Nick Kisner (19-3-1) at the Spiroudome Arena in Charleroi in Belgium on December 16. The show is staged by 12 Rounds Promotion. Merhy is ranked # 3 by the WBA and # 11 by the WBO and a world title fight could be near depending on how the World Boxing Super Series Tournament develops.
...
It´s official: IBO light heavy champ Igor Mikhalkin (20-1) defends the title in Le Cannet (France) on December 2 but not against Mickael Diallo as planned. Diallo is unfortunately sidelined with an injury and is replaced by veteran Doudou Ngumbu (31-4).
It´s the third time Mikhalkin and Ngumbu clash and it´s been close both times with Igor winning a split decision in France in 2013 and a majority decision in Germany back in 2009.
Mikhalkin, from Russia, is promoted by EC Boxing in Hamburg, who during December also has Karo Murat defending the EBU 175 lb title against Dominic Boesel and heavyweight Christian Hammer up against Alexander Povetkin.
...
Cruiserweight prospect Tervel Pulev (5-0) headlines a memorial show for the late Fritz Sdunek, one of the best coaches in what used to be East Germany and later a top class trainer for Universum, on November 18 in Neustadt Glewe (Germany).
Tervel will of course have big brother Kubrat with him in the corner when he takes on Georgian veteran Mikheil Khutsishvili, who began his long career as a welterweight.
...
Two-time Olympic medallist Paddy Barnes is the third member of Belfast’s famous fighting ‘Three Amigos’ featuring in big bouts tonight with the European amateur champion and WBO European flyweight champion aiming to claim his second pro belt.
The 30-year-old (4-0 as a pro) takes on experienced Nicaraguan Eliecer Quezada (21-6-3) after some drama on the scales yesterday.
Barnes was forced to strip off in front of his Belfast fans in order to make the 112lb flyweight limit, with trainer Danny Vaughan shadowing the fighter with a towel as he successfully weighed in.
However, Quezada was unable to make the weight after two attempts, meaning the vacant WBO inter-continental title will only be on the line for Barnes when they clash tonight.
“It doesn’t make a difference to me,” said Barnes. “I still have a job to do. I had to whip off my boxers to make the weight, but I was happy to give the fans something to get excited about!
“I want a world title and I want one now. This will show me where I’m at. Maybe it’s too soon to take on such an experienced fighter at this early stage, but we’ll soon find out. I need to win this to get where I want to go.”
A total of 11 MTK Global-managed fighters feature on the ‘Frampton Reborn’ fight card, which will get underway at 4.30pm (approx) with TV coverage starting at on BoxNation from 7.25pm and on BT Sport 1 from 8.30pm. | {
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On the release day of the latest 11th volume of Kohei Horikoshi's Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia shonen action manga in Japan, November 4, Shueisha started screening a 50-second special PV on the street vision in front of the Shibuya Station in Tokyo, then also posted it on their official Manga-Net YouTube channel. The PV will be screened several times a day till November 10.
Special PV (Warning:this clip contains spoilers of the story in the volume)
11th volume cover
The street vision in front of the Shibuya Station
Ad displayed at the station
Message from the manga author for the volume
via: "My Hero Academia" official Twitter | {
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Zbog tržišnog natjecanja Hrvatskog telekoma i Podatkovnog centra Križ (Datacross) u gradnji podatkovnih centara, Hrvatska će u idućih godinu dana od države koja je na internet samo spojena postati država kroz koju internet doslovno prolazi, doznaje Poslovni dnevnik. Naime, Hrvatska je na internet spojena prije 20 godina, ali i dalje operateri i velike kompanije vezu na svjetski internetski "backbone" ili temeljnu mrežu ostvaruju zakupom optičkih kabela prema Beču i Frankfurtu.Krešo Troha, suvlasnik i predsjednik Uprave Podatkovnog centra Križ, koji je u četvrtak u Jastrebarskom otvorio svoju prvu farmu servera veličine 600 od ukupno planiranih 1300 kvadrata, ističe da ta investicija za izravnu posljedicu ima i strateško repozicioniranje Hrvatske u ICT svijetu.
Jeftiniji internet
"Ovakva infrastruktura nedostajala je najvećim globalnim telekomima, takozvanim Tier 1 operaterima, da izravno uđu na hrvatsko tržište i da dokinu potrebu da se domaći operateri i velike kompanije na globalni internet spajaju preko Beča i Frankfurta. Time će Hrvatska prvi put nakon 20 godina postati ne samo spojena, nego će postati sastavni dio globalnog interneta", kaže Troha. Dodaje da će to u srednjoročnom razdoblju utjecati na snižavanje veleprodajnih cijena interneta u Hrvatskoj i rast konkurencije te povećati atraktivnost Hrvatske za ulaganje u ICT.Prema analizi EBRD-a u Hrvatskoj najveći kapacitet podatkovnog centra trenutno ima HT s farmom servera od 4000 kvadrata, a slijedi Podatkovni centar Križ sa 600 kvadrata. Obje farme građene su prema visoko zahtjevnom standardu Tier 3. HT do kraja iduće godine kapacitet svog servera planira povećati na 5000 kvadrata, a Podatkovni centar Križ na 2900 kvadrata, od čega će dio kapaciteta nuditi prema još zahtjevnijem standardu Tier 4.
Uz dva najveća konkurenta, po nižem, Tier 2 standardu, svoje usluge na tržištu nude podatkovni centar Altus IT s kapacitetom 400 kvadrata i Megatrend sa 160 kvadrata.Troha upozorava da je razvijenost tržišta podatkovnih centara toliko mala da sve hrvatske farme servera zajedno zauzimaju prostor veličine svega jednog nogometnog igrališta. Usporedbe radi, Deutsche telekom je prije mjesec dana u Njemačkoj naručio od T-Systemsa gradnju svog 90. podatkovnog centra koji će zauzimati prostor veličine 30 nogometnih igrališta, čime će biti najveći u toj zemlji.U Europi je najveće tržište za podatkovne centre London, a u srednjoj i istočnoj Europi Poljska, Turska i Rusija. Godišnje stope rasta tržišta za podatskovne centre u Europi se razlikuju ovisno o konzultantskim kućama, ali svi su složni da su dvoznamenkaste. U EBRD-u su usporedbom Hrvatske s ostalim državama u srednjoj i istočnoj Europi došli do podatka da smo uz Češku i Austriju najisplativiji za ulaganja u podatkovne centre.
Izvozni centar
Troha kaže da ga to nije iznenadilo, već da to objašnjava zašto su većina zakupaca njihovog tek otvorenog podatkovnog centra u Jastrebarskom strani klijenti. Naglašava da to otvara put novim modelim izvoza."Do sada su mnoge domaće hosting kompanije zakupljivale diskovni prostor od američkih hostera koji su diskove držali u SAD-u, a sada će američkim hosterima biti jeftinije diskove držati u Hrvatskoj pa iz uvoznika prerastamo u izvoznike", zaključuje Troha.
Otvaranje u Jastrebarskom
Maras: I država zainteresirana
Farmu servera u Jastrebarskom tvrtke Podatkovni centar Križ u koju je Nexus FGS uložio više od 40 milijuna kuna i koju financijski prati EBRD, u četvrtak je otvorio ministar poduzetništva i obrta Gordan Maras. "Ovo je jedini takav objekt od Austrije do Bugarske pa sam uvjeren da će njegove usluge koristiti državna tijela, ali i banke, osiguravajuća te velika trgovačka društva", ističe Maras. | {
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, October 18. Please call your committee member and ask them to make sure they ask this key question on criminal justice reform.
Enter YOUR phone number (including area code). Make sure this phone is near you now. We’ll route your call to your own senator, if they’re on the committee. If not, we'll have you call Committee Chair Chuck Grassley.
Once connected, tell the committee member:
At Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Hearing with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, we hope you take this rare opportunity to get Sessions on the record with this question on criminal justice reform: "Today, close to 450,000 people are sitting in jail even though they haven’t been convicted of a crime, many because they cannot afford to pay bail. Why are people who are presumed innocent thrown in jail because they can’t afford cash bail?" | {
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Arlene Foster in the private room at Omagh leisure centre, its entrance manned by two security men. Picture by Mark Marlow/pacemaker press
Avoiding questions from the assembled media, Arlene Foster and the DUP kept themselves locked away in a private room with security at the Omagh election count.
The Fermanagh South Tyrone and West Tyrone DUP party group spent the majority of the afternoon at the count in a meeting room on the second floor of the Omagh Leisure Centre.
The special room was strictly private with two security men guarding the door and the blinds of the windows drawn.
Fermanagh and Omagh District Council chair Mary Garrity hit out at the “special treatment” and said she was never consulted.
“It is not appropriate, it is not necessary,” she said.
“We have MPs from other parties, former MLAs from other parties , dignitaries coming in and they aren't being given special treatment and no one should be.”
Mrs Garrity, a local SDLP councillor, tried to gain access to the room, but was refused, along with the Irish News.
“I asked could I gain access to this room and the answer was no,” she said.
“There's no need for this unless there's something that I haven’t been told about or there's something underlying. People all over this building that are of the same profile, from different sections of the community and backgrounds, they’re not in special rooms and this should not be the case,” Mrs Garrity added.
The party later vacated the room as the account moved into the evening at the Omagh Leisure Centre. | {
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Once in a while, the stars align and a team forms, that aims to change how we think. They work together to create a revolutionary idea, that the entire world stops and takes notice. The same wonderment has occurred with the team behind Nexus. Not merely a cryptocurrency, the technology that is being implemented in it’s Blockchain shows this team means business.
They are a big bunch of mathematicians who have created Nexus Earth. A decentralized platform with a difference. It aims to connect, people, computers and businesses. They aim to achieve and create from scratch new applications for the financial sector, technology field, service industry while giving it a unique sovereignty.
See Also: 9 Interesting Facts About Bitcoin
Nexus Earth: Decentralized Worldwide Network
“Not everybody has money but everybody has time.” This is the mission quote that has motivated the team to think outside the box. To decentralize the decentralization with the marriage of Software and Hardware, team Nexus has built the foundation of the most decentralized system. They have names it Nexus Earth. Change and freedom are 2 of the components which are featured extensively on this platform. The hardware on the other hand has been created by Nexus. They are :
Mesh Networks: Even distribution on individual nodes, via a mesh to solve telecommunication errors.
Cube Satellites: Line of Sight and transcontinental communication errors solved with deployment of a satellite that cache layers and mesh networks to further relay them to the mesh network on the ground for optimum coordination.
Ground Stations: They are the ones that shall coordinate the uplink / downlink operations. Ground stations also are responsible for the coordination of data all through the mesh network.
They have also created a set of softwares that play an integral part in the functionality and efficiency of operations on the nexus platform. A work in progress, but, some of its key features are mentioned below:
Nexus Deamon: Peer to peer network to exchange data and upload and secure it on the Blockchain.
Wallet: Under development is a ‘high level graphical application’. It’s interface is a modular framework that can be tweaked and further developed for sale to achieve greater user experience.
Library: a lower level library has 3 components. Crypto, Database and Protocol. These programing based templates are a foundation on which difficult structures are going to be created.
Security: A Priority
When we have a Bitcoin transaction, the time taken for clock drift is very high. With Nexus, focus is kept on achieving a smaller time taken so that no scope can be given to hackers to try and breach the security that is at that time vulnerable. Additional features that have been created are automated decentralized checkpoints, where in a complete check of the Blockchain is undertaken so that any hacker cannot create an alternative Blockchain from the last checkpoint time.
The Cryptocurrency Nexus
The crypto that has been created on this platform works on the Proof of Stake system. This peercoin protocol relies heavily on utilizing the energy efficiency threshold, the trust keys and logarithmic weights. This results in creating the fairest and most stable Proof of Stake system of all time.
In Conclusion
While the market is slowly getting flooded with multiple cryptos, it always serves our purpose if we look into the team which is behind it. For the value of the digital asset to grow, it becomes important that they deliver on the platform that they have created. Keep your eyes open for this one folks!
Next Read: Top 10 Cryptocurrencies That Performed In 2017 | {
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Oh my. God, I... I... there are no words. This is godlike work here. She's SO gorgeous and muscular- I can't imagine how her body could be depicted any better.
Her big, muscular thighs... that trim, toned waist... those breasts! That look on her face that screams "think you can keep up with me, little man?" I mean.. jeez. This is awesome. | {
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Death's Door is this year's Halloween event, and you can play it in RuneScape right now.
Help Death repel a ghostly invasion of his home, using specialised ghost-hunting equipment to dismiss the unwelcome dead before you're reduced to a gibbering wreck.
Earn points and trophies to be spent on XP lamps, gear that gives bonus damage against ghosts, the ability to burn bones on a bonfire for Prayer and Firemaking XP, and more.
Read on for the full, gory details!
How to Play
Find Muncher by the Burthorpe Lodestone, and speak to him to head to Death's house.
When you get there, you'll find that Death's beset by an invasion of ghosts - unleashed by Melzar the Mad - and that he's powerless to exorcise them himself.
He'll hand you a proto pack - the very latest in ghost-hunting technology - and set you to work banishing his unwelcome guests.
Examine the furnishings and ghosts will start to manifest, but beware: each hit you take will increase your fear meter - displayed in your minigames HUD window.
If the fear meter hits 100% you'll run screaming back to Death, and lose 20 of your hard-earned reward points.
You can reduce fear gradually by standing in moonlit areas of the house, or by using comforting items found in chests around the house.
Some ghosts are tougher than others and some have insidious special abilities, but the stronger they are the more points you'll earn for ousting them. Refer to the Ghostpedia from your minigames HUD to find out more.
Rewards
Chests will appear around the house every 10 minutes. You'll be told via the minigames HUD when there's one to find, and you'll have two minutes to get to it and claim its loot. They can contain:
Chocolates, teddies and night lights : comforting items that reduce your fear level when used.
: comforting items that reduce your fear level when used. Active ectoplasm : grants a temporary buff to your damage against the ghosts in the event.
: grants a temporary buff to your damage against the ghosts in the event. Demonic traces : five of these will let you summon demonic ghosts - the scariest and most rewarding spectres you can face.
: five of these will let you summon demonic ghosts - the scariest and most rewarding spectres you can face. Ectoplasmators : there's a rare chance to get this handy item - which gives Prayer XP when fighting ghosts - if you don't have one already.
: there's a rare chance to get this handy item - which gives Prayer XP when fighting ghosts - if you don't have one already. Ghostly essence : this very rare substance can attune your ectoplasmator (or recharge one that's already attuned), improving its abilities.
: this very rare substance can attune your ectoplasmator (or recharge one that's already attuned), improving its abilities. Other loot: including bones and seasonal sweets.
You'll get points for each ghost you dismiss. Muncher or Death will give you the following rewards in exchange for these:
Ghost hunter gear: a four-piece hybrid set that gives bonus damage and combat XP against ghosts fought outside the minigame. Its stats increase at level 50 and 70 Defence.
Cremation ability: this permanently unlocks the ability to burn bones on bonfires, granting you Prayer and Firemaking XP.
Large XP lamps.
Dismiss the dangerous demonic ghosts to earn up to one trophy a day, and spend them on the following rewards:
Ghost Hunter title .
. Proto Pack emote .
. Large XP lamps.
Finally, you'll unlock a set of proto pack cosmetic overrides for daggers, claws and crossbows, once you've dismissed 50 ghosts.
Get hunting those ghosts, and watch out for our terrifying Halloween quest - coming next week!
Join in the discussion on the forums and let us know what you think.
Mod Wilson and the RuneScape Team
In Other News
We've made the following changes to the Flash Powder Factory minigame:
You'll no longer incur a penalty if you leave the game early.
The price of rogue armour has been lowered by 10% of its original value.
Claiming XP rewards from Flash Powder Factory will now work with bonus XP modifiers.
The rubble is now easier to see.
Thieving XP bought from the Flash Powder Factory is now 1750 XP per 10 points, up from 1200 XP.
Herblore XP gained within Flash Powder Factory is now scaled based on the your Herblore level.
Read the patch notes for other updates released today. | {
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While people along and east of the Rockies seem to have thunderstorms almost every other day this time of year, folks along the West Coast never see our level of exciting weather. Putting aside the ongoing drought, why doesn't the West Coast ever seem to see thunderstorms?
Saying that the West Coast never sees thunderstorms is an overstatement, of course. The top image of this post shows a thunderstorm over the Bay Area in September 2001. The West Coast just doesn't see anywhere near the amount of storms seen east of the Rocky Mountains.
To highlight how few thunderstorms occur along the West Coast every year, we can look at climate data taken from some of the region's largest cities. The records keep count of the number of days that featured thunderstorms each year, along with the average number of thunderstorm days seen over the thirty year period between 1981 and 2010.
Thunderstorm data over the past couple of years is somewhat skewed due to the ongoing drought, but not by much. For example, Los Angeles normally sees three to four thunderstorm days per year, and the city saw one day with thunder in 2013, preceded by three days with thunder in 2012. Seattle and Portland see a few more days with storms, averaging between six and seven every year, with Seattle recording nine days with thunder last year.
And then we look east of the Rockies. Cities in the central and eastern United States see storms on a regular basis. Chicago reported thunder on 38 days last year, or almost 10.5% of 2013. Washington D.C. averages around 32 storm days each year, with New York following behind with around 25 days.
Why doesn't the West Coast see many thunderstorms? It comes down to two major factors: cold water and dry air.
1) The Pacific Ocean Is Cold
It's not really news that the eastern Pacific Ocean is cold, especially to people who have swum in it before. Meteorologists make a big deal out of the fact that cold water kills hurricanes, and the Pacific Ocean's temperatures cause pretty much the same phenomenon.
Water is able to slowly heat or cool the layer of air above it through conduction. When water temperatures are warm, it warms the air; cool water cools the air. Thunderstorms need warm, unstable air to form, so they thrive when they move over warmer waters. This is why hurricanes are able to strengthen so quickly when they move over the Gulf of Mexico, for example.
The cold water of the Pacific creates a very stable airmass along the coast and inland, killing any spontaneous convection. In other words, for thunderstorms to form along the West Coast, they need a strong forcing mechanism such as a cold front to help the air rise fast enough to create a storm.
2) The Air Is Usually Dry
A second factor directly related to the stable airmass that sets up thanks to the Pacific is that the air is usually too dry for hefty thunderstorm activity to form. When I talk about dry air, I'm not talking about the relative humidity, which is a crappy measure of moisture in the air, but rather the dew point. The dew point is the temperature to which the air needs to cool in order achieve full saturation, or 100% relative humidity. The lower the dew point, the drier the air.
Dew points lower than 55°F are generally considered to be comfortable, while readings above 60°F start to feel muggy. Dew point readings in the eastern two-thirds of the United States routinely reach 65-70° or higher, creating that signature soupy summertime atmosphere that's ripe for rocky weather.
Take a look at the average dew points during the summer months for some major cities around the country:
Cities along the West Coast typically see lower dew points than their counterparts to the east, keeping the air on the drier side and joining forces with the stable air to kill just about any chance of thunderstorm activity outside of a powerful storm system moving in from the west.
Even just plain old rain would be a welcome sight across the drought-stricken areas of the western United States, where almost 30% of the region is experiencing extreme or exception drought conditions.
[Images via AP and NOAA / charts by the author] | {
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Now seated in power for two years, President Rodrigo Duterte has consistently waged anti-Filipino policies that have become an added encumbrance to the already deleterious state of living of Filipinos across the country. He has proven himself to be nothing but a demagogue who gave false hopes to Filipino workers’ aspiration to end the country’s repressive labor policies.
Filipino workers have long carried the burden of anti-worker and anti-people policies. And the Duterte regime has done nothing but heed the demands of oligarchs, capitalists and other local cohorts. But amid this burden, Filipino workers remain vigorous especially in raising their militancy to fight the oppressive policies under the tyrannical regime of United States lapdog Duterte.
Currently, the minimum wage is pegged at Php 512 a day in the National Capital region. This is barely half of the Php 1,174 daily wage required for a family of six to live decently. In addition, regional wages drop even lower in several provinces in the country. The lives of millions of Filipinos remain dreary and bleak especially that prices of basic commodities and services have increased through the implementation of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Law.
Meanwhile, neoliberal policies enacted by the Philippine government are engineered to keep wages far below minimum and to allow employers to flout worker welfare laws that legally deny the provision of workers’ benefits such as accident insurance and health coverage, sick leaves, overtime pay and social security. Various contractual working schemes have since bedeviled the working class of the country leading to a perilous level of employment, denial of the right to union and association, and further exploitation.
Last February, Duterte said that he wanted to compromise on labor contractualization and admitted that he could not force big businesses to provide all-benefit to its workers. His flip-flopping decision to release an executive order to end “endo” during the early quarters of 2018 shows nothing but a clear insincerity to address the plight of the toiling masses and workers of the country. His maneuver to sign an anti-endo department order on labor day is nothing but a lousy attempt to appease the anger of the workers.
Filipino workers have no other choice but to fight against the repressive and exploitative policies of the US-Duterte regime. They are no longer buying the pathetic excuses of Duterte that puts their welfare in further peril while the rich and big bourgeoisie compradors continue to get grand political accommodations and super profit from the corrupt leader.
In the face of these attacks against Filipino workers, they have militantly fought for their democratic rights. Our workers are the key players of the economy and they are now proving that they can strike a blow against the current repressive system by launching strikes and protests.
The month of July began with protests by contractual workers of the Philippine Long Distance Company (PLDT) after the telecom giant terminated their contracts last June 30. Because of the termination, approximately 8,000 workers of PLDT have either completely lost their job or are in floating status. The workers demand to management to immediately implement DOLE’s prior order to regularize them instead of circumventing it.
Workers of PLDT and workers from the Harbour Centre who are also on strike, held a joint protest in front of the Department of Labor and Employment office in Intramuros on July 2 to denounce the ineffectual mechanisms of DOLE to promote workers’ welfare and to push the institution to implement order to regularize around 378 workers at the Harbour Centre.
Recently, terminated workers of Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC) camped outside the company’s warehouse in Paranaque City. According to a report published by the Manila Today last June 28, the JFC commissary and warehouse where the workers set-up their “beehive” is engaged in storing, handling and distributing products and other logistical needs of all other warehouses and Jollibee stores in Luzon. The workers conducted a picket-protest to slam JFC’s blatant circumvention of the DOLE Compliance Order on Regularization.
Despite the popularity of Jollibee and its other subsidiaries, the ongoing labor issues between the workers and the company prompted the public to boycott the restaurant. This resulted in the flunking of JFC’s stocks. Every single cent that cannot be earned by Jollibee Foods Corporation will eventually put a stronger pressure to the company to listen to their workers clamor for regularization.
Last May, 131 long time contractual workers of Middleby Phils. Corp., launched a sitdown strike against the company’s threat of termination and refusal to regularize them.
Workers from the Slord Development Corporation, the manufacturer of Uni-Pak Sardines mounted their month long “Kampuhan ng mga Kontraktwal” at the Navotas Fish Port Gate to protest against contractualization and the continuing failure of Slord to provide appropriate benefits for its workers. According to Elvira Jerez, secretary of the Samahang Manggagawa sa Slord Development Corporation, 44 employees were laid-off last May 11 because of organizing asking the Department of Labor and Employment for assistance regarding their condition.
In NutriAsia, the company deliberately benefits from the exploitation of its workers through labor contracting employment. Of the total 1,400 workers in NutriAsia, only 100 are regular workers. They earn P380 for eight hours of work while an overtime of four hours is paid P240. After the violent dispersal by the Philippine National Police on June 14 where 23 were arrested, workers have successfully regained their picket line. However, in a blatant and shameless attempt to bend facts and salvage what was left of their reputation, NutriAsia sent responses to various student and youth organizations who supported the workers of NutriAsia constantly denying that the workers who went on strike were illegally contracted or subcontracted.
However, stories of NutriAsia workers reveal otherwise. The attempts of NutriAsia are nothing but pathetic maneuvers in the wake of people’s outrage over their treatment of workers, and desperation for the sake of profit.
Workers at Monde Nissin baked goods factory in Sta. Rosa, Laguna are also on strike and have successfully constructed their tents and started their picket early June. The picket sparked after the management refused to implement DOLE order to regularize workers and terminated 18 of its employees.
Earlier this June, contractual employees of Pepsi Cola Products Philippines, Inc. held a picket in front of the Muntinlupa soda plant to protest the halting of production operations and the company’s refusal to let them work. 1,000 contractual workers were not allowed to work since, June 11.
Workers in the Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction Inc. in Zambales continue to slam the dismal occupational and safety standards observed in the shipyard that resulted in the death of several workers. Their contractual labor scheme also resulted in mass lay-offs and low wage payments.
Honda Parts Mfg. Corporation have also started their picket after the continuous termination of its contractual workers despite order from DOLE to regularize them.
Because of the dire conditions of labor, workers are now collectively organizing themselves and raising their militancy and resistance. The militant mass movement of the workers are emerging in different parts of the country as well — in CoreAsia, AlbertSmith, Pearl Island, Megasoft in Valenzuela City; in Alaska Milk, SMT, Nexperia, Magnolia, in Southern Tagalog; in PLLC in Cebu; and in Sumifru, Shin Sun, Freshmax, and Coca-Cola in Mindanao.
Under Duterte’s tyrannical and brutal regime, workers have no other choice but to tread the path of militant struggle. Over the years, Filipino workers carried the brunt of the country’s permanent crisis that have rapidly worsened under the current regime. Duterte keeps workers’ wage low to entice foreign investors while maintaining anti-worker, pro-capitalists labor policies. While fighting for their legitimate demands, workers are suppressed by the police and military in asserting their right to unionize and strike.
In this fascism-stricken times, Filipino workers have no other choice but to establish unions, ardently advance their democratic struggles, and lead the Filipino people in isolating, fighting, and overthrowing the US-Duterte regime. After all, Duterte is only as strong as his bawdiness and vulgarity. He cannot halt the growing resistance, anger and disgust of the Filipino workers and the Filipino people against his tyrannical and murderous regime. | {
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KYODO NEWS - Sep 21, 2019 - 08:42 | Sports, Arts, Lifestyle, Rugby2019
A farmer living near a rugby stadium in western Japan hosting a number of matches for the World Cup will be handing out watermelons shaped like rugby balls to visitors Sunday for free, hoping to help build excitement around the games.
The watermelons were grown by Kosuke Matsubara, an 86-year-old farmer who has been specializing in oval-shaped fruits and vegetables for decades.
Hanazono Rugby Stadium, Japan's first stadium built exclusively for rugby, will host Italy and Namibia in its World Cup match.
Matsubara first came up with the idea of growing rugby ball-shaped produce such as watermelons, pumpkins, cabbages and melons as a way of showing his support for the sport.
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"I would like people to enjoy them as a Hanazono specialty," he said.
He began the endeavor with pumpkins in 1992, slowly gaining national attention as he was featured in television programs and newspapers. He soon learned about a number of similarly shaped produce from around the country and gradually expanded his repertoire, teaming up in 2016 with a group of other farmers.
He delayed the July-August harvesting season for his watermelons to September this year to serve the fruit to spectators at Hanazono stadium.
"I would be happy if it becomes a part of people's memories of visiting Hanazono," he said. | {
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There is something inherently magical about rainbows – something that makes us look to the sky and ask “What does it mean?” That sublime spectrum of color is brought into the home in these examples of everyday objects organized by their colors.
Artist Helga Steppan arranged all of her worldly possessions into a series of compelling photographs, all of which consisted of items of a single color. Reds, blues, greens, blacks, greys – when arranged in this highly unconventional way, the objects look otherworldly. The artist also composed photos consisting of clear objects (like wine glasses) and “unclassified” objects which contained too many colors to be neatly fitted into one of the monochrome photos.
Some people might call Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli a little obsessive-compulsive. He carefully arranges things however he can – by size, by shape, by category or by color. The anal retentive among us might feel a great deal of satisfaction upon seeing those jumbled-up cars arranged in an orderly way, with each different color in its own section of the parking lot.
Have you ever thought about just how much of your grocery shopping experience is determined by marketers and manufacturers? Artists Marco Ugolini and Pedro Motta found that certain colors tend to appear across the same types of packaged consumer goods. They set off to the supermarket to illustrate their findings, and this oddly compelling color-coded photo series was the result.
Plenty of people organize their belongings by color, but this apartment in Stockholm, Sweden might be the only home that is entirely color-coded. The artists and architects involved in this unique color scheme drew their inspiration from the surrounding trees and plants which themselves cycle through a series of colors with the changing of seasons.
(images via: Dornob 1, 2)
Bookshelves lend themselves particularly well to organization by color. There is something oddly satisfying about looking at a bookcase full of rainbow-arranged spines. Of course, for people who are used to arranging their books alphabetically this new organization technique will be exceptionally maddening because there is no logical way to find a particular book unless you happen to remember its color.
It sort of seems like any colorful objects look much more interesting when grouped by color. The spectrum configuration pops up everywhere, from store displays to home closets and beyond.
That rainbow connection can even be found in entirely unexpected places like this home exterior. Be honest: if you were walking down the street and saw this fantastically cheery house, would you be able to resist smiling? | {
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“When you go out to eat, you shouldn’t get wage theft, racism and sick cooks in the kitchen, along with your meal. How the food tastes at a restaurant really doesn’t matter, if the people who work there are being mistreated.” – Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA
(MintPress) – Last October, cocktail waitress Victoria Liss arguably experienced all the downfalls of being a waitress by simply looking at one scribbled-on receipt. A table she was waiting on at Seattle’s Bimbo’s Cantina left her with a little less, but also a little more than she bargained for. After seeing an emphatic “0” next to the tip line, she found a message written just for her at the bottom of the receipt.
“P.S. You could stand to loose [sic] a few pounds,” a message scrawled in pen opined.
Liss encountered what many in the restaurant industry experience: Little money and lousy treatment, oftentimes simultaneously.
Being a server in today’s American restaurant industry means leaving entitlement at the door and working through a system of financial uncertainty, alleged wage theft tactics by restaurants and occasional emotional turmoil. Some cry foul at a federal minimum wage law that can see some servers in the United States make as little as $2.13 an hour for base pay – a rate that hasn’t changed in 21 years. Others pine for paid sick leave, as two-thirds of restaurant workers surveyed by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC) reported working with food while sick.
The faces of America’s restaurants are struggling, despite the industry being one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the American economy, employing more than 10 million workers. But the workers are acquiring a voice in activist organizations and proposed legislation that aims to reduce the impacts of their hardships.
The ‘gamble’
Lisa Jean can’t fathom a $2.13 base salary. A waitress in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Jean’s minimum wage is more than four times higher than the U.S. limit set by the Fair Labor Standards Act. And that is a common theme throughout Canada’s provinces: Minimum wage for those serving liquor in British Columbia is $9 per hour, while a non-tipped minimum wage worker makes $10.25 an hour. Other provinces set minimum wages for tipped workers anywhere from $8.55 to $9.05 an hour.
In the U.S., an employer can pay a tipped employee as little as $2.13 per hour if that amount plus the tips received by the employee equals at least the federal minimum wage, currently set at $7.25. Twenty-nine states have adopted their own minimum wage standards for tipped workers, ranging anywhere from $2.23 in Delaware to $7 in Hawaii. When asked if she would willingly work for $2.13 an hour, Jean replied, “absolutely not.” While the hourly wage doesn’t draw most servers to the industry, Jean said a fair direct wage is essential.
“We rely on tips. The wage itself doesn’t pay bills and is, in itself, less than national minimum wage,” Jean explained. “We do it on the gamble that the tips will compensate for the federally admissible decrease in minimum wage. This varies province to province, but not by much. It reflects the relative cost of living.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates the median annual wage for a full-time server in the U.S. at $18,570, with the lower 10 percentile earning $16,070. The wage scale leaves half of all restaurant workers earning less than the national poverty line, according to ROC, an organization dedicated to improving wages and working conditions for the restaurant workforce.
And the undesirable economic situations are affecting women far more than their male counterparts, as the serving industry is female dominated, ROC communications coordinator Meghana Reddy points out.
“Restaurant servers – of whom 71 percent are female – are almost three times more likely to be paid below the poverty line than the general workforce and nearly twice as likely to need food stamps as the general population,” Reddy said.
Submitting to a system
ROC recently released its 2012 Diners’ Guide, which explored the working conditions of America’s largest restaurants. The group chastised the restaurant industry for low wages, a lack of paid sick leave and occupational segregation. Its survey found a $4 wage gap between white workers and workers of color while 73 percent of its respondents said they had never received a promotion.
“Women, immigrants and people of color hold lower-paying positions in the industry, and do not have many opportunities to move up the ladder,” ROC said in its report.
Servers are also at the mercy of a system that regularly practices wage sharing, cut shifts and being subjected to working in areas that are not favorable for a server to make a sufficient amount of tips. For Kelly Suter, those variables determined whether she would end her shift with anywhere from $10 to $250 in her pocketbook.
As a waitress in college at two family-owned establishments, Suter, now a 23-year-old publicist in Minneapolis, recalls a competitive element that went into how much each waitress would leave with on a given night. She said it was “blatant” that managers would consider age and looks when determining what section to place a waitress in. Other waitresses say favoritism plays a role in landing a lucrative evening’s work.
“You could walk in and make the minimum wage because you were ‘expoing’ just because they decided it or you were just lucky because you had, you know, a motorcycle crew come in and that was your one section,” Suter explained. “If someone did have a background or personality that seemed like they would want to party, they wouldn’t assign you to a dance floor because you wouldn’t be able to have fun or to joke or flirt, or do whatever you need to do.”
In food service, the expeditor, or “expo” as it is commonly referred to as, is a position that acts as a liaison between the kitchen at the wait staff by communicating orders and sometimes bringing food to tables. Suter also said particular shifts can mean the difference between needing a second job or being able to pay the bills.
“No one likes working specials or happy hour because customers don’t consider what they’re saving and not tipping you for doing the same amount of work,” Suter acknowledged. “Lunch is the worst because it’s busy and it’s cheap.”
At both of Suter’s jobs, she made the minimum wage for a tipped worker, so every dollar was important. But just as every dollar made was crucial, every dollar lost was disheartening. Suter recalls one former employer who made the wait staff pay for any meal that was made via a wrong order or if it was not made correctly. The restaurant also punished the wait staff if a customer walked out on a bill without paying.
“If a dish was messed up and it was your fault, they made you pay for the whole meal, even if it wasn’t clear if the kitchen heard you right or heard you wrong,” Suter said. “And if people walk out on a $100 bill, it comes out of your tips.”
One of the most common, and questioned, practices in restaurants is requiring servers to share their tips with other employees, most commonly bartenders and busboys. Suter said she would usually have to split 30 percent of her tips between busboys and bartenders. Jean said that poor tippers, or those who left no tip out of displeasure with the restauraunt, ultimately hurt the server more than anyone.
“If you feel that you’ve had bad service, your food was cold, it came out late, the wine was off … and you don’t leave a tip, we still have to ‘tip-out’ on your sale,” Jean explained. “If you have a $100 tab and leave me nothing, it effectively costs me $5-$8 to serve you because I have to tip-out regardless. Most people don’t know that. If your food is bad and you don’t tip me I still have to give the kitchen money for that bad food.”
But what is seen as an inconvenient practice by some is looked at as an illegal practice by others. ROC is currently helping support a group of servers with a lawsuit against Darden Restaurants, the world’s largest full-service restaurant company, against allegations of wage theft. Darden owns large chains such as Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steakhouse and The Capital Grille. Reddy said that ROC sees three wage theft tactics used by these restaurants: Workers being clocked out early or clocked in late, tipped workers doing non-tipped work such as cleaning or janitorial work and servers tipping out and sharing tips with non-tipped workers.
Proposed relief
Despite a lineage of financial obstacles, at least one U.S. representative is taking note. In 2011, Maryland Democrat congresswoman Donna Edwards proposed the first piece of legislation ever that targets tipped workers. Dubbed the WAGES Act, it looks to close the wage gap between tipped and non-tipped workers.
The bill would slowly introduce new wage requirements to restaurants so they could gradually acclimate to the new expense. The way it’s written now, the first 90 days after the bill’s passage would require restaurants to increase their minimum wage for servers from $2.13 to $3.75 per hour. After one year of enactment, the rate would go up to $5.00 per hour and, after two years, $5.50 per hour. The bill has yet to be voted on by a committee.
Reddy championed the bill by saying minimum wage in America needs reform across the board, particularly for servers.
“It’s an incredibly important bill. It’s important for all workers to have a higher minimum wage, but it’s most important for those in the restaurant industry because those are some of the lowest-paying jobs,” Reddy said.
But some restaurant owners are already balking at the legislation. Restaurants in states that have increased the minimum wage have resorted to increasing menu prices or contemplating cutting employees. Advocates for the pay increases in states such as Washington, Florida and Arizona say it’s essential to help with a rising cost of living.
“These very modest increases are not job killers,” Paul Sonn, the National Employment Law Project’s legal co-director said. “They’re not even real increases, these are really cost of living adjustments.”
Too sick for work, too sick at work
In some restaurants, the only local ingredients diners are getting are the ones being coughed on to their food by a waitress that can’t afford to call in sick. With 90 percent of restaurant workers not allotted paid sick leave, many under financial constraints have no choice but to show up at work to make ends meet, even if it’s against their better judgement.
Katie Van Syckle worked as a waitress for nearly a decade before comfortably making a living as a freelance journalist. At 29, she has served in some of America’s most prominent restaurant cities, such as New Orleans and New York. She admitted to going to work even though she was less than 100 percent, and she knew of co-workers who were working through a shift, despite appearing visibly ill.
“I definitely know a lot of people that would come into work knowing they shouldn’t be there,” Van Syckle said. “It’s gross – these are people who are actually working with your food, and they’re sick. It’s a public health issue.”
Suter said the restaurants she worked at would try to conceal its sick workers behind the scenes and away from table interactions. But by doing that, they were often put in the kitchen near the food.
“They would put you back in the kitchen working expo because they didn’t want you coughing around the customers, but you were back there dealing with all the food.”
The reason? Servers relying on tips often cannot afford to miss a day of work. Two-thirds of restaurant workers surveyed by ROC reported cooking, preparing and serving food while sick. But a bill currently outstanding in Congress could allow workers to accumulate paid sick days. The Healthy Families Act died in 2009 before being reintroduced in 2011; it has yet to be discussed in committee, but is being heavily supported by ROC.
The bill would require businesses with 15 or more employees to allow workers to earn up to seven paid sick days per year. Workers would compile a minimum of one hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked.
“No one should face the impossible choice of caring for their health or keeping their paycheck or job,” ROC said. “At a time when families’ finances are stretched thin and losing a job can mean months of unemployment, working families need a paid sick days standard.”
The psychology of serving
Despite being the largest obstacle for most servers, money certainly isn’t the only obstacle. Serving can be a “degrading” profession where workers often feel “disregarded,” according to various servers interviewed. The proof is there to back it up, as well: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reports a 10.3 percent depression rate each year within the restaurant industry, the next-highest rate after personal care and service workers.
“Historically, service is a very lower, to lower-middle class activity. Slowly it evolved, and maybe it’s becoming more democratized,” Van Syckle speculated. “But what hasn’t really evolved is the thinking that this person (servant) is beneath you and that somehow you’re better than them because you’re sitting and they’re standing.”
Van Syckle dealt with her fair share of criticism from customers. She attended college at Dartmouth before graduating from Columbia University. But in between graduation and finding a job in her field, she waitressed. She said many of the customers she waited on would inquire about her and her employment situation.
“I would walk up to a table and they would say, ‘Well, what else do you do? You’re not just a waitress, are you?’ If I was just a waitress, wouldn’t that be okay?” Van Syckle said. “It just makes sense that when you put someone in a position of power and someone else in a position of taking orders, eventually you adopt a sense of weakness.”
Van Syckle acknowledged the very real potential of self-esteem issues among servers. She said that in the restaurant industry, chefs are widely considered artists, while servers are often considered “second class.”
“People don’t realize there’s this ambassador that’s in charge of making sure you enjoy your meal, and they’re the face of the operation, for better or worse,” she said. “They’re the face of the operation and they really don’t get any credit for what they’re doing for you. It’s all given to chefs, and obviously the kitchen is lifting a heavy weight back there.”
The act of being repeatedly told what to do was something Suter admitted to bothering her at times.
“Ten percent of people will maybe ask how you are or something about you, but otherwise you’re just standing there taking orders,” Suter said. “People literally give orders, or they’re rude or they’re drunk and they say the most outrageous things.”
Servers say it takes thick skin to to be good at the job, but also a certain adornment for food and drinks. Often those waiting on tables are passionate about food, the mixology of drinks or social aspect of interacting with customers on a daily basis.
For Jean, at 34, a passion for hospitality remains. She continues to work as a cocktail waitress while working on a degree. She said she would not have chosen waitressing as a job for more than 15 years if she did not like an aspect of it.
“Most of us love food and drinks and the hospitality business. We like this job: It’s social, it’s fun and we’re passionate about food whether it be vegetarian, ocean sustainability in fishing, wines for a sommelier, we love it. So you shake the dice with the pay,” Jean said. | {
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