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‘Desabafo’ Trechos de carta encaminhada para cerca de 450 deputados A minha indignação é que me traz a você. São muitos os que me aconselham a nada dizer a respeito dos episódios que atingiram diretamente a minha honra. Mas para mim é inadmissível. Não posso silenciar. Não devo silenciar. Tenho sido vítima desde maio de torpezas e vilezas que pouco a pouco, e agora até mais rapidamente, têm vindo à luz. (...) (...) Em entrevista à revista Época, o ex-deputado Eduardo Cunha disse que a sua delação não foi aceita porque o procurador-geral exigia que ele incriminasse o presidente da República. Esta negativa levou o procurador Janot a buscar alguém disposto a incriminar o Presidente. Que, segundo o ex-deputado, mentiu na sua delação para cumprir com as determinações da PGR. Ressaltando que ele, Funaro, sequer me conhecia. (...) (...) O que me deixa indignado é ser vítima de gente tão inescrupulosa. Mas estes episódios estão sendo esclarecidos.(...) (...) É um desabafo. É uma explicação para aqueles que me conhecem e sabem de mim. É uma satisfação àqueles que democraticamente convivem comigo. ‘Desabafo’ Trechos de carta encaminhada para cerca de 450 deputados A minha indignação é que me traz a você. São muitos os que me aconselham a nada dizer a respeito dos episódios que atingiram diretamente a minha honra. Mas para mim é inadmissível. Não posso silenciar. Não devo silenciar. Tenho sido vítima desde maio de torpezas e vilezas que pouco a pouco, e agora até mais rapidamente, têm vindo à luz. (...) (...) Em entrevista à revista Época, o ex-deputado Eduardo Cunha disse que a sua delação não foi aceita porque o procurador-geral exigia que ele incriminasse o presidente da República. Esta negativa levou o procurador Janot a buscar alguém disposto a incriminar o Presidente. Que, segundo o ex-deputado, mentiu na sua delação para cumprir com as determinações da PGR. Ressaltando que ele, Funaro, sequer me conhecia. (...) (...) O que me deixa indignado é ser vítima de gente tão inescrupulosa. Mas estes episódios estão sendo esclarecidos.(...) (...) É um desabafo. É uma explicação para aqueles que me conhecem e sabem de mim. É uma satisfação àqueles que democraticamente convivem comigo.
BRASÍLIA - O presidente Michel Temer encaminhou, nesta segunda-feira, uma carta aos deputados e senadores do Legislativo na qual diz ser vítima, desde maio, de "torpezas e vilezas" e que, apesar de "jamais" ter acreditado haver uma conspiração para o retirar do cargo de presidente da República, agora enxerga esses fatos como "incontestáveis". Um dos argumentos utilizados pelo presidente é uma entrevista concedida pelo ex-deputado Eduardo Cunha à revista “Época”. (LEIA AQUI A ÍNTEGRA DA CARTA)
"Começo pelo áudio da conversa entre os dirigentes da JBS. Diálogo sujo, imoral, indecente, capaz de envergonhar aqueles que o ouvem. (...) Quem o ouviu verificou urdidura conspiratória dos que dele participavam demonstrando como se deu a participação do ex-procurador-geral da República (Rodrigo Janot), por meio de seu mais próximo colaborador, Dr. Marcelo Miller", avalia Michel Temer.
No texto, o presidente se diz "indignado" por ser "vítima de gente tão inescrupulosa". Na entrevista à “Época”, Cunha diz que sua tentativa de fechar um acordo de delação premiada junto à força-tarefa da Operação Lava-Jato não foi bem sucedida porque o procurador-geral exigia que ele incriminasse o presidente da República.
"Esta negativa levou o procurador Janot a buscar alguém disposto", pondera Temer no documento ao se referir às delações de Lúcio Funaro, apontado como operador do PMDB no esquema de propina: "Ressaltando que ele, Funaro, sequer me conhecia", destaca.
O presidente também cita o vazamento dos áudios com conversas dos dirigentes da JBS, Joesley Batista e Ricardo Saud, em que avalia ficar claro o objetivo de "derrubar o presidente da República". Temer pontua ainda que nos áudios Joesley diz que, "no momento certo, e de comum acordo com Rodrigo Janot, o depoimento já acertado com Lúcio Funaro 'fecharia a tampa do caixão'".
"Tudo combinado, tudo ajustado, tudo acertado, com o objetivo de: livrar-se de qualquer penalidade e derrubar o presidente da República. (...) Afirmações falsas, denúncias ineptas alicerçadas em fatos construídos artificialmente e, portanto, não verdadeiros, sustentaram as mentiras, falsidades e inverdades que foram divulgadas", critica Michel Temer.
O peemedebista aproveitou para exibir índices que apontam a retomada do crescimento do país. Entre eles estão a queda da taxa Selic - que em maio de 2016 marcava 14,25% e, em setembro deste ano, chegou a 8,25% -, e o aumento do valor exportado, que acumulou US$ 164,603 bilhões desde janeiro de 2017.
"O Brasil não parou, apesar das denúncias criminosas que acabei de apontar", pondera Temer ao ressaltar a agenda de reformas propostas pelo seu governo: "O País avança com o teto de gastos públicos, lei das estatais, modernização trabalhista, reforma do ensino médio, proposta de revisão da Previdência, simplificação tributária".
Temer ressalta ainda que a carta tem tom de "desabafo", e afirma que a "armação está sendo desmontada". "É uma explicação para aqueles que me conhecem e sabem de mim. É uma satisfação àqueles que democraticamente convivem comigo", destaca sobre o teor do documento.
A carta, com quatro páginas, foi enviada aos parlamentares na semana em que a Comissão de Constituição e Justiça (CCJ) da Câmara se prepara para votar o parecer de Bonifácio Andrada (PSDB-MG) pelo arquivamento da segunda denúncia feita contra o presidente pelo Ministério Público (MPF) por obstrução à Justiça e organização criminosa. | {
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＊ケネディ大統領と親友のレム
元アメリカ大統領ジョン・F・ケネディに、ゲイの親友がいたことが明らかになった。
そして、その彼はあのホワイトハウスに自分専用の寝室を持っていたようだ。
ケネディ元大統領と親友カーク・レモイン・ビリングス（通称レム）は、高校時代に知り合って以来、生涯に渡って友情関係にあったそうだ。
そんな2人について書かれた本「ジャックとレム-語られていない驚くべき友情-」では、ほとんど知られていない二人の友情（愛？）について書かれている。
レムは、ケネディの大統領選の選挙運動の運営を手伝い、結婚式では案内役を務めるほど、二人は切っても切れない仲にあったという。
本の著者であるデイビッド・ピッツによると、二人は相当親しい関係にあり、お互い会えない期間は、長い手紙を書き合っていたのだとか。しかもレムは、あのホワイトハウスに自分専用の寝室を持っていたという。
レムはゲイとしてカミングアウトすることはなかったが、ケネディ元大統領とレムの共通の友人である新聞編集者のベン・ブラッドリーは、彼がゲイであることを認めた。
「レムは、ゲイとして知られていたよ。ジャック（ケネディ元大統領）にゲイの友達がいると知った時、俺は感銘を受けたね。みんなレムがゲイであることを知っていたけど、そういうことは話せない時代だったから。」
ケネディ元大統領とレムの親しい関係について、ケネディ元大統領の妻ジャクリーンも言及している。
ケネディ一家は敬虔なカトリック信者だったが、それでも二人の関係は続いた。
2009年のインタビューにおいて、ピッツは「二人の友情はとても深く、性的指向を超えていた。」「レムは、ケネディ元大統領にとって30年も親交のある、家族以外の世界で最も近しい人だった。彼はただのゲイ友達ではない。」
「ケネディ元大統領と近しい人でさえ、レムのことを知らなかったこともあるんだよ。例えば、ケネディ元大統領の側近テッド・ソレンセンは、いつもレムのことをホワイトハウスで見かけていたらしいけど、まさかレムがホワイトハウスに自室があって、大半をそこで過ごしていた事実を知らなかったんだ。」
「それが、二人の愛情の深さを証明しているよね。」ピッツは二人の関係が友情以上であると語る。
また、作家ジェリー・オッペンハイマーは、著書「ロバート・F・ケネディ-夢に潜む暗い闇-」において、「二人はオーラルセックスを行い、ケネディ元大統領はもっぱら受ける側だった」と、驚くべき記述をしている。
ケネディとレムは単なる友情関係にあったのか、それとも友達以上だったのか？？
レムは、ケネディが暗殺された18年後（1981年）に他界。2人の謎は闇に包まれている。 | {
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Rather, it was the moment, late in the show, when Ms. Monáe finally addressed Time’s Up from the stage, and then a host of women, including Camila Cabello, Andra Day, Ms. Lauper and the Resistance Revival Chorus appeared to accompany Kesha in her anthem to personal survival and strength, “Praying” — all wearing different outfits in suffragist white.
It was an unmistakable visual statement of solidarity, written in style.
And it underscored not just the message of the song, but the fact that once the door has been opened to using fashion to make more than just a pretty paparazzi-snagging picture, it’s almost impossible to go back.
This seems to have occurred to the music industry late in the game, when a call went out to guests to wear white roses in support of Time’s Up, because white “stands for hope, peace, sympathy and resistance,” according to the email urging support. Many complied, though as a practical matter it proved more effective for male attendees, who could simply pin a bud to their lapel, than the women, whose strapless, lacy and otherwise highly decorated gowns did not lend themselves to further adornment.
As a result, most, like Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus, ended up carrying their roses in their hands. Ms. Cabello, the young Cuban-American singer whose affecting speech about Dreamers and her own history, made after Kesha’s appearance, was another powerful moment, attached hers to her handbag. And they seem to have largely disappeared by the time the women entered the auditorium. Presumably, there were a lot of dead flowers left behind, which is probably not exactly the symbol the organizers were going for.
The Golden Globe Awards, with its surprisingly effective call for the women attending to wear all black in support of Time’s Up, not only raised our expectations of what clothes can say on the red carpet, but created the expectation that they should be used to say something in the first place. | {
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You were the best rabbit we ever had. Let them chase you and they'll stay off the important things.
During the 1988 campaign, Lee Atwater said this to Dan Quayle: | {
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If anyone ever questions where Light Yagami got his dramatic streak from please take a moment to remember that his father broke out of the hospital after suffering a stress related heart attack, only to drive a van into a tv station to take custody of the second kira tapes. Using a gun. With no plan on how to get back out again. | {
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angela
CommonSpace columnist Yvonne Ridley says the friends the UK is making ahead of its divorce from the EU should have people worried
THE last strand of moral fibre holding together the British government was unpicked in the Westminster Parliament this week with a simple question posed by Alex Salmond.
Normally the cut and thrust of Salmond’s barbed questions gives rise to laughter but yesterday there was none – on either side of the House – as he asked Theresa May about her willingness for Britain to trade with one of the most odious dictators on the planet.
It was a simple question, devastatingly put: “Can the prime minister identify for the house what shared values she has in common with president Rodrigo Duterte?”
Can Prime Minister Theresa May identify what shared values she has with the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte? #PMQs pic.twitter.com/qMVXCriUne — Alex Salmond (@AlexSalmond) April 26, 2017
Salmond exposed May’s alarming desperation in seeking trade deals after Brexit during Prime Minister’s Questions when he criticised her for sending Liam Fox, international trade secretary, to the Philippines in search of business. Defending the move, May said she wanted a “truly global Britain and we want to ensure prosperity across the whole of this country and jobs for ordinary working families”.
As she was speaking during the final PMQs of this parliament, legal documents were being scrutinised by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague which contained serious allegations against the controversial leader of the Philippines. Submitted by lawyer Jude Sabio, counsel of confessed Davao Death Squad assassin Edgar Matobato, the contents may well come back to shame the British government.
Since the Philippines is a signatory to the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, the court can accept jurisdiction, which means lawyer Sabio is well within his rights to ask the ICC prosecutor toinvestigate what he described as the “terrifying, gruesome and disastrous continuing commission of extrajudicial executions or mass murder” in the Philippines.
Article 14 of the Statute provides that “a state party may refer to the prosecutor a situation in which one or more crimes within the jurisdiction of the court appear to have been committed requesting the prosecutor to investigate the situation for the purpose of determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with the commission of such crimes”.
So what message are the Tories sending out to voters in the UK? That it’s perfectly acceptable to sit down and deal with individuals like Duterte?
So what message are the Tories sending out to voters in the UK? That it’s perfectly acceptable to sit down and deal with individuals like Duterte?
Both Death Squad assassin Edgar Matobato and his supervisor, or “handler”, retired policeman Arturo Lascañas – who has himself confessed to killing at least 200 people in Davao City – have given testimony which, in most countries, would have brought about the resignation and prosecution of the leader.
However this is President Duterte, the politician who called US President Barack Obama the “son of a whore” when the leader of the free world criticised the Philippine leader’s human rights record. Now that there is a new man in the White House, it seems Theresa May has developed political amnesia over that episode.
Others remember only too well Duterte’s human rights record, so when Liam Fox talked about “shared values” with Duterte as he sought to do some post-Brexit trade deals with the man whose war on drugs has killed 7,000 people, it caused alarm among right-minded people and human rights groups in the west.
Theresa May might well have gone to the Philippines herself but she was too busy in Saudi Arabia at the time flogging weapons to a regime which doesn’t recognise the human rights of women. And not once did she challenge the Saudis’ abysmal human rights record, including the bombing of schools and hospitals in Yemen. British bombs sold to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have helped kill more than 10,000 civilians and displaced more than three million people.
In the new post-Brexit Britain it is clear the Tories are willing to deal with international pariahs, which is something every voter should consider in the General Election.
So while May and her Tory government insist the UK will emerge “a stronger, fairer, more united and more outward-looking nation” as a result of their trade deals it is clear they, like the Saudis and leaders like Duterte have one shared characteristic – they are all utterly shameless.
However, in the new post-Brexit Britain it is clear the Tories are willing to deal with international pariahs, which is something every voter should consider in the General Election.
Surely our votes are worth far more than giving them to a party which will shred human rights for a fast buck?
Picture courtesy of Number 10 | {
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Scott talks to Philip Weiss about Israeli politics in light of Netanyahu’s recent victory in the election for prime minister. Israeli society, explains Weiss, leans heavily right wing, especially the young people, and this creates serious barriers to negotiations for peace with the Palestinians. In yet another setback, President Trump recently “promised” the Golan Heights to Israel, something that is not his to give. We are reminded of Horton’s Law: A politician will break all of his good promises and keep all of his bad ones. Scott suggests that the best the Palestinians might realistically be able to hope for these days is full citizenship as Israelis, not their own country.
Discussed on the show:
Philip Weiss is the long-time editor of Mondoweiss.net. Follow him on Twitter @PhilWeiss.
This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.
Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa. | {
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'People were screaming': 'La Voz' reporter describes powerful Mexico City earthquake
Daniel Gonzalez | The Republic | azcentral.com
PHOENIX — Trees swayed. Cars crashed into each other. People ran out of their houses, some wearing only towels, when Tuesday's 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Mexico City, killing at least 217 people.
"The ground shook very strongly," said Diana Garcia, the Mexico City correspondent for La Voz, a Spanish-language publication of The Arizona Republic. "People were screaming."
Garcia, 37, was sitting on a curb with two other reporters in the Santa Maria La Ribera neighborhood near the heart of Mexico City, watching a telenovela being filmed when the earthquake hit at about 1:15 p.m. Garcia was there because the show's director was to announce a benefit concert for people affected by the earthquake two weeks ago that shook Oaxaca.
"A lot of people started to run," Garcia said.
More: Mexico reels following devastating earthquake
More: World Cup finals venue severely damaged during Mexico City earthquake
She doesn't know how long the earthquake lasted, but it seemed like a long time, perhaps five minutes, she said.
Afterward, she and the other reporters stood in the street hugging, while others around them prayed. A few blocks away some houses had collapsed.
Garcia immediately thought of her 6-year-old son, Carlo Emiliano. He was in school at the time. His classroom is on the third floor. Garcia thought about hopping in her car, and driving over. But the earthquake had knocked out power in many parts of the city. With no traffic lights, traffic turned into gridlock.
Streets clogged in Mexico City after 7.1-magnitude earthquake Ambulances use bus lanes to navigate through streets clogged with traffic and pedestrians following the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that rocked Mexico City Sept. 19, 2017. Diana Garcia/azcentral.com
She called her dad and asked him to rush to the school, which is near their home in the Ticoman neighborhood just blocks from the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most important Catholic shrine in Mexico, and a major tourist attraction.
She found out later that a desk had fallen onto her son's head and injured his eye.
More: Celebrities, world leaders react to massive Mexico City earthquake
"They put the students under the desks and it fell over," Garcia said. "It's just a bump," she said.
Four hours after the earthquake, Garcia was still trying to drive home through heavy traffic, normally a 20-minute drive.
"The transit system is shut down and the streets are filled with people walking," she said. "You can hear helicopters hovering over the damage and the sound of ambulances."
As she inched along, Garcia snapped photos of some of the damage. One showed a large apartment building that had been heavily damaged. Another showed a gaping hole filled with rubble where a building had collapsed.
She also shot video showing streets clogged with traffic and filled with pedestrians.
"A lot of people are staying outside of their houses because they are afraid of aftershocks," Garcia said.
Garcia said many people were aware that Tuesday's earthquake occurred on the 32nd anniversary of a powerful earthquake that killed thousands of people.
"A lot of people have gone into a state of hysteria because they remember that tragedy," she said.
Follow Daniel González on Twitter: @azdangonzalez | {
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France mulls smartphone and tablet tax to fund culture Published duration 14 May 2013
image caption The French government says makers of tablets and smartphones currently "contribute nothing" to financially support digital content
The French government is considering introducing a 1% tax on the sale of smartphones and tablets to help fund French film, music and images.
The proposal estimates some 86m euros (£73m) could be raised per year.
The bid is based on France's so-called "cultural exception" policy, which aims to protect culture from market forces and foreign competition.
Broadcasters already pay fees to fund cultural projects but firms like Google and Apple are currently exempt.
The proposal was released as part of a government-funded report specifically examining the rise of digital content.
'Battle for France'
The study, led by the former CEO of French pay-TV channel Canal Plus, Pierre Lescure, proposed a total of 75 measures to "protect the cultural exception in the face of digital innovation".
The report said taxing internet devices could help fund culture because consumers were spending more money on hardware than on content.
"Today we have extremely sophisticated technological equipment that is extremely expensive to buy, but which contributes nothing to the financing of the works that circulate on that same equipment," Culture Minister Aurelie Filipetti said following the release of the report.
"Companies that make these tablets must, in a minor way, be made to contribute part of the revenue from their sales to help creators."
She added that the cultural exception remained "a battle for France".
Lawmakers will spend the summer reviewing legislation based on the report's recommendations.
The "culture tax" was likely to be included in a budget law to be submitted to parliament in November, Ms Filipetti said.
Last year, France became embroiled in a row with Google over government plans to tax the company's revenue made from posting ads alongside online search results.
The dispute was settled in February after Google agreed to create a 60m euro fund to help French media organisations improve their internet operations.
The cultural exception policy, introduced in France in 1993, asserts that cultural goods are to be treated differently from other commercial goods. | {
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The War on Voting
Session Type(s): Panel Training Tag(s): Elections Starts: Saturday, Jun. 9 1:30 PM (Eastern) Ends: Saturday, Jun. 9 2:45 PM (Eastern) Room: Ballroom A
In 2011 we witnessed the most significant rollback of voting rights since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, with conservative legislators and governors passing laws in more than a dozen states to restrict access to the ballot. These laws included requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, restricting voter registration drives, curtailing early voting, disenfranchising ex-felons and mandating government-issued photo identification to cast a ballot. These tactics harken back to the days when Dixiecrats used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting. According to the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice, the new laws could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012, with young, minority, low-income and disabled voters hit the hardest. This panel will look at the voter suppression tactics conservatives are employing and how to fight back to defend democracy.
[View the story “The War on Voting” on Storify]
Moderator
Ari Berman Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation magazine and an Investigative Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute. His stories have also appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone and The Guardian, and he is a frequent guest and political commentator on MSNBC, C-Span and NPR. He is the author of Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics. He’s written extensively about the new voting restrictions passed since the 2010 election. Berman’s September 2011 article for Rolling Stone, “The GOP War on Voting,” injected this hugely important yet undercovered topic into the national political discourse. my website Follow @AriBerman
Panelists
Sen. Ben Cardin Ben Cardin was elected in 2006 to represent the people of Maryland in the United States Senate. He serves on the Environment and Public Works, Finance, Budget, Small Business, Foreign Relations, and Budget committees. He previously was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Cardin believes that equal opportunity for every American is only possible when the government protects the civil rights and civil liberties of every citizen. For this reason, Senator Cardin has had a personal focus on ending deceptive voting practices in elections, since arriving in the Senate. He worked with then-Senator Barack Obama on legislation in 2007 and has recently teamed with Senator Chuck Schumer to lead the current fight for the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act. He also is the lead Senate sponsor of the Democracy Restoration Act that would create a national standard to restore voting rights for former felons. my website Follow @SenatorCardin
Keith Ellison Currently serving as Minnesota’s 30th Attorney General, Keith Ellison is the first African American and first Muslim American to be elected to statewide office in Minnesota. Before becoming AG, Ellison represented Minnesota’s 5th District in Congress where he focused on consumer, worker, environmental, civil- and human-rights protections for Minnesotans. As Minnesota’s AG, Ellison has championed affordable health care, a fair economy, and equal opportunity for all. Ellison has opposed a new rule revoking legal status for immigrants accessing public assistance, created a unit within the office of the Attorney General that focuses on investigating and prosecuting abuse of workers and wage theft, as well as filing lawsuits against opioid manufacturers. Following the killing of George Floyd, Governor Walz appointed AG Ellison to prosecute the case. my website Follow @keithellison
Keesha Gaskins Keesha Gaskins is Senior Counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. Keesha’s portfolio is within Voting Rights and Elections with a particular focus on voter suppression issues including voter identification and proof of citizenship laws. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Ms. Gaskins was Executive Director for the League of Women Voters Minnesota where she worked on a wide range of voting rights and civil rights issues. She is an expert on redistricting and redistricting reform. Ms. Gaskins is a frequent lecturer and writer on issues related to women and politics, movement building and democratic reform. Follow @keeshagaskins
Eric Marshall Eric Marshallis the Lawyers’ Committee’s chief organizer and is responsible for creating and managing the infrastructure necessary to direct large scale pro bono resources to address modern civil rights issues. Marshall is the co-leader of Election Protection, the nation’s largest voter support coalition. In addition to ensuring the effective collaboration of a large and diverse coalition, he directs various components of the Lawyers’ Committee’s Election Protection program, including: volunteer management, coalition building, online/offline communications, legal field programs, the hotline infrastructure, and various proactive problem solving programs. Eric plays a leading role in several election reform coalitions aimed at combating voter suppression legislation and advocating for policies that will expand access to our democracy for traditionally disadvantaged Americans. He has testified before state and local legislatures on election reform legislation, and has actively supported and advocated for voting rights legislation at the federal level. my website Follow @enmarshall
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Spain's Top Soccer League Fined For Using App To Spy On Fans In Fight To Curb Piracy
Enlarge this image toggle caption SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
On Tuesday, Spain's premier soccer league, La Liga, was hit with a 250,000-euro fine — about $280,000 — for using its mobile phone app to spy on millions of fans as part of a ploy to catch venues showing unlicensed broadcasts of professional matches.
The country's data protection agency said the league's app, which was marketed as a tool to track game scores, schedules, player rankings and other news, was also systematically accessing phones' microphones and geolocation data to listen in on people's surroundings during matches. When it detected that users were in bars, the app would record audio — much like Shazam — to determine if a game was being illegally shown at the venue.
The league used the technology only on Android phones. According to El Diario, the app has been downloaded more than 10 million times.
The Spanish news site reported that the agency found that La Liga did not adequately notify users about the app's surveillance components and therefore violated the basic principle of transparency under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation.
La Liga countered by saying it did offer two opportunities at the time of installation to block the spylike functions. But the watchdog said the soccer league should alert users every time the microphone is remotely activated, including adding an icon to the screen when the phone is recording.
Some other apps try to use the same features to gather information, if they're not blocked by users.
The surreptitious functionality was met with outrage from fans when it was discovered a couple of weeks after the EU's data protection regulations went into effect a year ago. The rules require app-makers to expressly convey to users what they are doing with the data they're gathering. At the time, El Pais reported that the discovery became a trending topic on social media and it sent Android reviews of the app plummeting.
The soccer league responded by telling fans that the app's snooping elements were designed to combat piracy. "These fraudulent activities represent an estimated loss of 150 million euros annually for Spanish football, which translates into direct damage for clubs, operators and fans, among others," La Liga said.
In a statement on Wednesday, La Liga said it "disagrees deeply" with the data protection agency's decision and accused it of not making "the necessary effort to understand how the technology works."
La Liga plans to challenge the decision, insisting it has followed all existing regulations. League officials sought to clarify that the software protects individual users' rights because it doesn't record, store or listen to conversations.
"All this technology was implemented to achieve a legitimate goal," La Liga said, adding that it has a responsibility to use all technological advances at its disposal to "fight against piracy."
La Liga also said it will not be applying the data protection agency's recommendations. It called the app "experimental" because the league was already planning to turn off those functions at the end of the season, which falls on June 30.
Dani Matias contributed to this story. | {
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"Initially services and support were not up to my expectations. But at later stages, they tried their best to solve all my problems and won back my confidence in them." | {
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Read Time:
A new study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation highlights health concerns related to the use of e-cigarettes. Using a mouse model, researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine have shown that chronic exposure to vapors from e-cigarettes can:
Disrupt normal lung function
Reduce the capacity of immune cells within the lungs to respond to viral infection
The above changes were observed in mice exposed to vapors without nicotine, suggesting more extensive investigation may be warranted to determine the safety of solvents in e-cigarettes.
"E-cigarettes currently are the most commonly consumed tobacco substitute in the adolescent population. More than 3 million high school age adolescents as well as about 10 million adults in the U.S. are active users," said corresponding author Farrah Kheradmand, in a recent press release.
Kheradmand explains that it was the discrepancies relating to safety reported in e-cigarette related studies that fueled the team’s efforts to further investigate: “… opposing views on the safety of e-cigarettes prompted one of my graduate students, Matthew Madison, to investigate the effects of chronic exposure to e-cigarette vapors and to conventional tobacco smoke on murine lung function."
As well as exploring effects on lung function the team investigated the impact of vapors on the functioning of immune cells within the lungs – honing in on one type in particular – macrophages.
Macrophages act as a first line of defense against viral infections, for example those caused by the influenza virus.
Experimental design
Group 2: Exposed to vapors containing only solvents but no nicotine.
Group 3: Exposed to tobacco smoke.
Group 4: Exposed to clean air.
The mice were exposed to the above, for a period of four months, following a regimen that aimed to reflect someone who had begun smoking during their teenage years, until their fifth decade of life. This regimen noticeably increases the chances of someone developing emphysema.
Findings
The excess buildup of lipids was caused by irregular turnover of the protective layer of fluid in the lungs. The buildup was also observed inside macrophages residing in the lungs.
When these lipid-filled macrophages were exposed to the influenza virus, they displayed a “reduced” response to the infection.
Kheradmand concludes: "In summary, our experimental findings reveal that, independent of nicotine, chronic inhalation e-cigarette vapor disrupts normal murine lung function and reduces the ability of resident immune cells to respond to infection, increasing the susceptibility to diseases such as influenza."
"Our experimental findings share similarities with previous multiple case reports describing the presence of lipid-laden macrophages in pulmonary fluid from people with e-cigarette-associated pneumonia. Our results support further investigations into the solvents used in vaping."
Reference: Madison, et al. (2019) Electronic cigarettes disrupt lung lipid homeostasis and innate immunity independent of nicotine. Journal of Clinical Investigation. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI128531. | {
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Fall of 1965, joined Cesar Chavez in his effort to unionize California farm worker, eventually becoming Director of Organizing of the United Farm Workers and serving on the National Executive Board
As senior lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, he teaches, researches, and writes on leadership, organization, and strategy in social movements, civic associations, and politics. | {
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While it was a record year for global warming, 2014 was also a banner year for the technologies that could help mitigate climate change.
"Spectacular" growth in the global renewable energy sector helped stave off increased greenhouse gas emissions in 2014, according to the 10th annual Renewables 2015 Global Status Report, released Thursday by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21).
In fact, the report states, the rise of solar, wind, and other renewable technologies has helped effect a "landmark decoupling" of economic growth and carbon emissions—as the International Energy Agency indicated earlier this year. For the first time in four decades, REN21 explains, the world economy grew in 2014 without a parallel rise in CO2 emissions.
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Still, the planet keeps getting hotter and scientists warn that if global emissions continue at their current levels, the world will miss its target of keeping warming below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced just this week that last month was the hottest May in modern history.
"Renewable energy and improved energy efficiency are key to limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius and avoiding dangerous climate change," said REN21 chair Arthouros Zervos, who released the new report at the Vienna Energy Forum.
Providing further evidence that the renewables revolution is well underway, the status report from REN21 shows leaps in renewable energy capacity and investment—renewables now account for close to 60 percent of net additions to the world's power capacity, while global new investment in such technologies jumped 17 percent from 2013 to 2014.
What's more, as Peter Bosshard of International Rivers noted in an op-ed published Friday at Common Dreams, wind and solar power capacity is growing at a much faster pace than that of large hydropower projects (whose environmental footprint is larger).
In early 2015, 164 countries had renewable energy targets and 145 had policies to support the sector. These include many in the developing world that had no such targets a decade ago.
However, the renewable sector's growth "could be even greater if the more than $550 billion in annual subsidies for fossil fuel and nuclear energy were removed," REN21 said in a statement, noting that such subsidies "perpetuate artificially low energy prices for those sources, encouraging waste and impeding competition from renewables."
Elimination of fossil fuel subsidies would "create a level playing field," said REN21 executive secretary Christine Lins, which in turn would "strengthen the development and use of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies."
This week's REN21 report comes on the heels of a study from Stanford University researchers, released earlier this month, which provided a road map for all 50 United States to transition to clean, renewable energy sources.
According to Phys.org, "The 50 individual state plans call for aggressive changes to both infrastructure and the ways we currently consume energy, but indicate that the conversion is technically and economically possible through the wide-scale implementation of existing technologies."
"Our plans are to change the energy infrastructure of each and every state in the United States, and, in fact, ultimately, every country of the world, to infrastructures run entirely on wind, water and solar power for all purpose," Stanford's Mark Jacobson said on Democracy Now! in early June.
Watch the full interview with Jacobson below: | {
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Barack Obama released a statement today on the third anniversary of Obamacare.
It’s chockfull of lies.
His statement is below with links directing you to the truth.
TRENDING: BREAKING: Milwaukee Trump Supporter Arrested for Brandishing a Gun at Black Lives Matter Mob That Was Surrounding His Home (VIDEO)
Of course, the liberal media will not challenge Obama on any part of today’s outrageous statement. | {
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A new Zeus P2P malware variant discovered last week by security vendor Trusteer is attempting to scam users of some of the Internet's most popular and trusted brands -- Facebook, Google Mail, Hotmail and Yahoo -- with promises of rebates and new security measures.
Slideshow: The Future of Malware
In a blog post, Trusteer CTO Amit Klein ays the scams "exploit the trust relationship between users and these well-known service providers, as well as the Visa and MasterCard brands, to steal users' debit card data."
As usual, the fraudsters try to trick users into providing confidential financial information: debit card number, expiration date, security code, and PIN. On Facebook, a web inject offers a 20-percent cash back offer by linking a Visa or MasterCard debit card to their account.
What is unique about this one, Klein writes, is that "in the attacks against Google Mail, Hotmail and Yahoo users, Zeus offers an allegedly new way of authenticating to the 3D Secure service offered by the Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode programs."
Trusteer's director of product marketing, Oren Kedem, says while web injects are common, this is the first time he has seen a scam try to use 3D Secure. "Many customers are familiar with it," he says, "and it has become so trustworthy that victims could see it as a plausible approach."
In this case, the lure is convenience. Victims are told that if they link their debit card to their web mail accounts, "all future 3D Secure authentication will be performed through Google Checkout and Yahoo Checkout respectively," and, of course, that they will be protected from fraud in the future, by providing their confidential information. The Hotmail attack is similar.
Users are "reassured" that, "Your Debit Card pin is ONLY used for verification purposes. It activates CashBack option. Never disclose your Debit PIN to anyone, including family and friends. Your Debit PIN is confidential and is for your use online."
Kedem says he does not know how many people have fallen for the scam, "but since this is a version of Zeus, which is the No. 1 malware out there and since just about everybody uses one of these services, there is a large number of targets." He says Trusteer has notified the companies of the new variant.
Kedem says the most common way to get infected with the Zeus malware is by "drive-by" download - simply by visiting a website with the malware present. It then takes over the user's browser when one of the targeted sites, like Facebook, is visited. He says users should take the usual precautions with any unsolicited offer they see online that asks for confidential information.
Another way to tell is to check the use of the language. While this scam uses relatively accurate English, there are mistakes. In the line about the Debit PIN, the web inject uses the lower-case "pin" one time, and capitalizes it the other two times. It also says, "It activates CashBack option," leaving out "the" before CashBack.
The Gmail web inject starts with: "We are glad to offer you participate ..." Such mangling of English, even in a minor way, should amount to a red flag.
There is little else to warn potential victims, Klein writes. "These web injects are well crafted both from a visual and content perspective, making it difficult to identify them as a fraud."
Read more about malware/cybercrime in CSOonline's Malware/Cybercrime section.
This story, "New Zeus Malware Scam Promises Rebates, Security" was originally published by CSO . | {
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Aslan Brewing in Bellingham just announced the opening of Aslan Depot, Barrels and Blending. The new taproom and barrel-aging facility is located in the historic Union Depot in downtown Bellingham, just a block away from the Aslan brewery and pub. Along with 15 taps, the Aslan Depot will offer a selection of bottles and cans that showcase the company’s barrel-aging and small-batch programs.
“We are excited to announce that the Aslan Depot: Barrels and Blending is now open!” said the company in an official release. “The Aslan Depot serves as a taproom, barrel-aging facility, and event space located in the historic Union Depot building in downtown Bellingham.”
“Aslan Depot features a range of craft beer, cider, and wine. A rotating list of 15+ taps and 50+ bottles and cans showcase Aslan barrel projects and small batch brews alongside a curated selection of styles from the craft brewing world. Additional bottle release information for our barrel projects will be shared via website and social media platforms.”
“Beyond the specialty taproom the Depot building serves as home to our expanding barrel program. Lining the walls and filling the back storage room, the growing collection of barrels has increased our ability to age, blend, and experiment with creative new beers.”
“Originally serving as the public station for the interurban, the Union Depot building is now reopened to the public as a place of beer discovery, community, and conversation. Our hope is that it can serve as a destination for craft beer enthusiasts and casual beer drinkers alike.
Find more information at aslandepot.com and the dedicated Instagram account @aslandepot.
Aslan Depot
1322 N. State Street
Bellingham, WA 98225
MAP
Hours:
Thursday thru Monday 3:00 PM – 1:00 AM
Photos courtesy of aslandepot.com . | {
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For One Piece TV specials, they are either hit or miss, but with 3D2Y, this is a hit and just one of the better specials. It has the same feeling and setup as a theatrical movie. The story might be a little rehashed, but I never had any problem with it. It always seems to bring in something new to the table. The antagonists are interesting and have a nice villain vibe from them (I like a good villain). It brings in some fan favorites like Buggy, Mihawk, and of course Boa Hancock. And the battles are not too over the top, but are not pushovers either, they actually do put up a nice fight. The only thing it needed was more special features besides trailers. There are a couple times on when to watch this cause it does have some spoilers if you’re not caught up. Before the credits will lead up to after the 2 years when they all meet up again, but the after credits scene will spoil something that happens in the Dressrosa arc. So be careful. In all, I would definitely recommend this one. | {
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If men are so easy to please, how come Christmas gift ideas for him are so hard to come by? Make your list and check it twice. You have to... | {
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‘Downstream - Drum Loops & Samples’ flows from ModeAudio’s studio to your speakers like the tranquil waters of a deep river. Submerging 120 drum loops and 60 drum samples beneath cool, slow-moving layers of sound, this release is ready and waiting to spread blissful, tripped-out percussive energy throughout your music!
Mixing powerful, ocean-deep drum sounds with smooth, slow-tempo rhythms and grooves, this drum loop and sample pack will caress your beats and basslines as much as subtly propel them upwards and onwards. These sounds have been soaked in meditative Downtempo rhythm and dried slowly on the warm, sandy shores of Chillwave, Trip Hop and R&B to perfectly match a wealth of music production contexts!
The drum loops have been divided between main loops and drum fills, all ranging in tempo from 60 - 110 Bpm. This offers you a pallet of rhythmic flavours to call on in your music, no matter which set of sounds you decided to work with. Each loop is also accompanied by a key-labelled MIDI file, so you can layer up the audio with your own drum sounds for extra weight and richness. 60 precision-edited, layered and processed drum samples round out the collection, bringing you instant percussive material to begin cooking up lazy, hazy beats in seconds.
Some of the drum loops included in this pack have been featured in a number of ModeAudio’s most popular demos, including Mirage - Massive Chillwave Presets, Dust Road - Massive Vintage Presets and Open Spaces - Massive Vintage R&B Presets, so now is your chance to take them into your own studio and productions.
Billow out the sails of your music and prepare for a peaceful musical journey - dive in and drift off with ‘Downstream - Drum Loops & Samples!
Please Note: The Demo features Melodic sounds that are not included in the Pack. Drum Loops & Samples Only. | {
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Once you’ve seen the progression that software goes through from birth as a hacker’s one-night-stand, to 3-man garage-startup’s baby, to Small Corp’s stubborn adolescent, to The-Next-Microsoft’s bloated 1000-developer software-engineering nightmare… you simply can’t ignore it and the programming language feature it seems to demand.
Hardening
In the beginning when you have an idea, you want a flexible medium for experimenting with. You really don’t know where you’re going to end up, so you want your medium to just get out of the way and let your creative juices flow. It’s the same in every industry really, whether it be software engineering, architecture, painting, or writing. But once you have a product, and hundreds of other people besides you care about the outcome of every little detail, everything from which shade of gray its background is to what happens when you press the Tab key when the last textbox of the final dialog of your Import Wizard has the focus, you have to worry about things like quality assurance.
Software, like concrete, hardens over time becoming a rigid unmovable mass. This happens as the original developers move on or simply forget about code they wrote and haven’t touched for a while. Code gets pushed down into layers of abstraction, becoming black boxes that no one ever looks into unless something goes wrong. This is the natural progression as new building blocks get created by combining the functionality of older building blocks. The fringes of development churn like mad, but over time, newer modules start depending on them, weighing them down by discouraging change.
On top of that, shear code size prevents change. Once you have a massive software system built from thousands upon thousands of man-hours, you simply can’t throw it away and start from scratch. Maybe in an ideal world where you didn’t have to worry about paying rent… but if you intend to make a living off of software, it simply isn’t an option.
Once a software system has been grown so large, you’re stuck with it. Steve Yegge talked about this in a blog post, but I think most people who read skimmed it just voted it up on their favorite news site and moved on to the next article. This is so fundamental — size! Not some theoretical cyclomatic metric. Size! And part of the reason size is so important is because once you have a sufficiently large code-base, re-writing it is no longer an option. Which means, changing it is no longer an option.
The code literally solidifies!
The Knob
Concrete naturally hardens over time. But what if your concrete were rigid even when you wanted to constantly mold it. Or what if it never completely hardened, even after you found the perfect form. That is what programming languages are like today. You have to choose the static language that’s too rigid to prototype with or the dynamic language that never completely hardens even in production.
HTML and PHP are good examples of languages that never completely harden. They were great at first; it was so easy to dive right in, and they blew up in popularity as a result. But years later we are stuck with large websites and code-bases which are living nightmares to maintain. Although this is partially the responsibility of the developers, as good developers can write good code in any language, the language itself should support this transition, not hinder it.
On the opposite side, we have languages like ML and Haskell whose type-systems are so strict that most people give up on them before writing a single useful program. They are not flexible enough for constant molding. I, of all people, understand the benefits of static type-systems. But I’m beginning to realize that when you’re prototyping, it’s okay to have some runtime errors. In fact, it’s desirable, because prototypes are by-nature underspecified. Any error that is caught statically must necessarily be determined by analyzing the source code alone, not its execution, which means that I must write more code to single-out those error cases. Like the None branch in a case expression that “shouldn’t happen”, it is literally error-handling code that is required by the compiler.
Writing error-handling code is — by definition — code that deals with uncommon special-cases. It’s common knowledge that most code paths don’t get exercised until perhaps years after being out in the wild. Why then should I care about catching them all statically in my prototype? Even in the first released version. It’s naive to think I even can catch them all.
And the problem with writing all this extra code is not that it takes longer to write the first time, but that it takes longer to change each time that you do, which is many many times when you are still in the prototyping phase and the code is constantly churning. So the code-base starts out rigid and gets even more rigid faster.
What we need is a dial — a knob — that can be tuned in the direction we are in: either flexibility for a prototype or rigidity for a production app.
Breaking Things
The problem stems from the fact that when you modify code you didn’t write, you can’t see the big picture. You only have a local view of the code you’re modifying, so you don’t completely understand the ramifications of your changes.
People fail to respect the great differences between writing new code and {modifying or maintaining} code they didn’t write.
Sure, both require knowledge of programming, but they’re completely different activities. In the film industry, the corresponding activities are called completely different things: directing and editing. Both require knowledge of film making, and experience doing one can help improve skills in the other, but they are fundamentally different tasks. When I am writing code from scratch, I start with a blank editor and combine language constructs that I am already intimately familiar with. When I am modifying code that I am not familiar with, my biggest concern is will this change break anything? And most of the time, that’s a difficult question to answer because I only have a local view of the code. I don’t completely understand the entire system and can’t see the big picture of what the change will affect. So I usually end up being extremely conservative, inevitably creating cruft that is otherwise unnesessary. Done over and over again, this can be extremely harmful to a code-base.
Basically, if you’re modifying someone else’s code, it’s because that code can not, for one reason or another, be re-written. That code is more rigid, closer to the production end of the spectrum. Now… a lot of effort (and resources) goes into making sure that production code works. So when you’re adding to or modifying code written by someone else, you don’t want to change anything that already works and undo all that effort, nullifying the resources already spent on it.
Today’s PLs
It would be nice if our language allowed us to keep our code nimble as long as possible, and then, when we were ready to push code into an abstraction or let someone else maintain it, solidify the code on cue.
Perl’s use strict allows you to adjust the amount of static checking done on a program. However, no sane programmer that I know of ever turns this switch off for a program more than a few lines long. This seems to say that without the strict option enabled, the language is too flexible even for prototyping. Paul Graham even experimented with implicit variable declarations in Arc, a language designed specifically for prototyping, but decided against it.
The closest feature I know of that resembles what I’m thinking of is optional type declarations. Languages which allow programmers to omit types and optionally insert type-constraints when and where they please are a step in this direction. It allows for flexibility during the prototyping phase and a little more compiler-checked guarantees when inserted. Additionally, it documents the code and allows the compiler to take advantage of type-directed performance optimizations, two things more valuable towards the production side of the spectrum. When an app is a prototype, performance usually isn’t as important as getting feedback on working features, and documentation is a waste because the code is more likely than not to change, rendering any documentation obsolete (and even misleading). Besides, you can always ask the developer who owns the code, as he’s still working on it and it’s fresh in his mind.
Lispers, I’m waiting for you to chime in right about now stating how Lisp has had this feature all along. And that’s great. But if people don’t understand why it’s so great, they won’t use or support it.
So how else can we tune a programming language from flexible to rigid? From dynamic to static?
Feature Flip-Flopping
I suppose that any feature that separates flexible languages from rigid ones is a candidate for being a knob in this regard. But I’m pretty sure this is fallow territory with lots of room for improvement.
For one thing, I think it would be useful to restrict which kinds of decisions are delayed until runtime. The more that is delayed until runtime, the more possibilities there are for errors that are uncatchable until the last moment, driving the cost of the errors up. If you can catch an error as early as compile-time, or even at edit-time with a little red squiggly underline directly in the editor, the cost is only a few moments of a developer’s time to fix it. But if that error is not caught until it’s being run by a client — heaven forbid, on a client’s 7-year-old desktop 273.1 miles away running Windows ME — not only is it extraordinarily difficult to reproduce and track down the error, but one of your paying customers is unhappy, and just might blog about how terrible your software is for all his friends to hear about it.
What kinds of decisions am I talking about? Ones that prevent reasoning about the code without executing it, like modifying the symbol table based on runtime values, calling eval , using reflection, or using dynamic dispatching. These things throw most, if not all, of your reasoning out the window. In general, it’s not possible to determine what the effect of a call to eval will be, so any guarantees are shot. With dynamic dispatching, it’s never quite clear at compile-time what code will be executed as a result of a function call, so again, just about anything could happen. All bets are off.
Again, these features are great for prototyping. They reduce the amount of code you have to write, reducing the amount of time you have to spend changing it while the code is still churning. Additionally, you are probably the one who wrote all the code, so there’s no issue of not being able to see the big picture to understand it.
However, at the same time, these features are bad for the maintainability of production code. It’s true that less code is easier to maintain than more code, as it is simply less that maintainers have to try to understand. But dynamic features actually make code more difficult to grok because they are more abstract. … Calculating offsets of fields. Generating code. Modifying code. Data-flow analysis. Code-transforming optimizations. All of these things are normal programming concepts. But if you add to the end of each phrase “in bed”… Sorry, I mean, if you add to the end of each phrase “at runtime”, they suddenly become horrors! In the same way that pointers are simply more abstract, so too is eval and dynamic features like it.
Am I suggesting that people should write code with eval and dynamic dispatching, and then when the code becomes stable, turn off those features and re-write the code without them? It does seem like the logical conclusion from the above observations.
This doesn’t sit right with me though. For one, it would mean re-writing code just when you wanted to solidify it, undoing all the testing effort that went into it.
The first thing that comes to my mind is: is there a way we can compile these features away when they’re switched off? perhaps by collecting data about runtime values and then generating static code which is functionally equivalent for the observed scenarios, explicitly triggering a runtime error otherwise? I honestly don’t know what the right thing to do should be, but I hope I’ve raised some interesting questions for others to consider. | {
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Early Estimates Suggest Star Wars: The Force Awakens Could Make $2.2 Billion at the Global Box Office
"As expectations begin to ramp/get framed for 'Star Wars' we look at how to benchmark the film compared to 'Avatar' and some of the other recent global blockbusters," said the analysts. "In aggregate, we believe that the film can gross around $2.2bn globally."
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is widely expected to be one of the biggest box office stories of the decade so far, but with Jurassic World recently cruising past the $1.5 Billion mark at the global box office, JJ Abrams' movie has some lofty competition for the title of 2015's biggest movie. Now, more than four months ahead of the movie's release, Wall St. analysts have suggested that Star Wars: The Force Awakens won't just be the biggest movie of the year, but it could also become one of the biggest movies of all time.According to analysts at Stifel Nicolaus, Star Wars: The Force Awakens will likely eclipse the figure taken by Jurassic World, taking around $2.2 Billion at the global box office, a figure that would place it behind only James Cameron's Avatar ($2.7B) in the all-time charts.While these are just estimates, it's certainly hard to argue against the idea that JJ Abrams movie could go on to be one of the biggest of all time. Just look at what happened when they released the trailer. Thousands of fans camped overnight in Anaheim's Convention Center to see the trailer on the big screen at Star Wars Celebration, while fans elsewhere helped to make it the most-viewed trailer in YouTube's history, racking up over 88 million views in its first 24 hours.And if those staggering numbers aren't enough to convince you that we've got a box-office behemoth on our hands, the overwhelmingly positive reaction to everything that has come out of the production so far should be. During the screening of the second trailer at Star Wars Celebration, we witnessed grown men weeping tears of joy and thousands of people raving about how good they felt about the movie's prospects. There is a level of excitement around the Star Wars franchise that hasn't been seen since the days of the original trilogy, and as Avengers: Age of Ultron discovered earlier this year, word of mouth is a big influencer in box office performance.Another key factor to The Force Awakens' success at the box office will be its ability to push people towards premium formats such as 3D and IMAX. JJ Abrams has been a big advocate of the 70MM format, and if his movie is going to topple the likes of Titanic and Jurassic World at the top of the box office charts, he's going to have to hope Star Wars fans share his passion.Abrams has already revealed that one entire sequence of the movie would be shot in 70MM, but yesterday a report circulated providing some insight into what that sequence may entail . As the image above shows, an IMAX screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens may well be worth the extra cash. | {
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Hoboken police caught an unlicensed Jersey City man who crashed a stolen vehicle into several parked cars after chasing him on foot, authorities said.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
Enrique Ramirez, 46, of Jersey City, was charged with theft, resisting arrest, possession of controlled dangerous substance paraphernalia, careless driving, leaving the scene of an accident and being an unlicensed driver, according to Police Det. Lt. Edgardo Cruz.
Police Officer Dennis Figueroa, Jr. was dispatched to the area of 11th and Adams Streets on a report of a black Jeep leaving the scene of an accident, officials said.
Sgt. Edward Sellick advised units he was with a vehicle matching the description in the area of 16th Jefferson Street. As Figueroa arrived, he observed Ramirez fleeing the scene on foot while Sellick pursued him, police said.
According to authorities, Figueroa joined the pursuit and was able to apprehend the defendant several blocks away. While Sellick suffered a minor leg injury during the pursuit, he remained on duty.
A search of the defendant found him to be in possession of a glass pipe commonly used to smoke CDS.
After investigating further, it was determined that the vehicle had been stolen several minutes after the victim left it running while making a delivery. Ramirez then crashed into several parked cars after taking the vehicle, police said.
He was issued several motor vehicle summonses and processed for the criminal offenses and then remanded to the Hudson County Rehabilitation Center. | {
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Sometimes we don't appreciate the benefits of living so close to Kentucky. While Tennessee makes some fine whiskey, no state can match our neighbors to the north for sheer variety of quality brown liquor. As a bonus, Nashville is often one of the few markets to receive an allocation of the limited releases of special whiskeys.
Old Forester is one of the distilleries that grace Music City with their special releases, and two new products should soon make appearances (albeit briefly) on local liquor store shelves soon. The first is the latest iteration of their popular "Birthday Bourbon" series, established to commemorate the birthday of George Garvin Brown, the founder of Louisville-based Brown-Forman and Old Forester. Here's how the company describes this year's gift to the drinking public:
Selected from a single day of production and handcrafted by Master Distiller Chris Morris, this limited edition small batch bourbon is vintage-dated — offering a one-of-a-kind character and flavor profile that will never be replicated. Its unique decanter-style glass bottle is a throwback to the late 1800s when Old Forester was first produced. Each bottle features the founder’s signature and the dates on which the bourbon was barreled and bottled. Available starting in September, the 2014 Old Forester Birthday Bourbon will have a suggested retail price of $59.99 and will be sold at most liquor stores nationwide. Old Forester Birthday Bourbon is bottled at 97 proof. “This year’s selection evokes a creamy, soft vanilla bean character with flavors of cinnamon spice, maple syrup and citrus,” said Morris. “The complex flavor and warm finish with just a hint of sweetness make this year’s batch a must-have release.”
It'll come and go quickly, so keep your eyes peeled. The second release is another historical reference to George Garvin Brown, this time to his practices as one of the premier (and premiere) blenders of whiskeys in the 19th century. Brown-Forman has maintained some sort of presence on Louisville's Whiskey Row since 1870, back when present day Main Street was still River Street, with warehouses full of whiskey strategically positioned to be loaded on steamships to travel the country.
George Garvin Brown used to buy whiskey from several different manufacturers and then blend them to create a consistent flavor profile for his own product. His personal guarantee of quality printed in his own handwriting still appears on every bottle of Old Forester.
In honor of Brown's talents, Chris Morris and his master taster Marianne Barnes have selected specific barrels from three different warehouses that have unique production dates and barrel entry proofs to blend for a new release they are calling Old Forester 1870 Original Batch.
This new expression of Old Forester will be a limited release, but Brown-Forman intends for it to be a permanent part of their product line. They also already have other new lines of spirits in the works that will represent other historic epochs and locations throughout the company’s history.
In the meantime, look for Old Forester 1870 Original Batch, since Nashville is one of only a few cities to receive an allocation. | {
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Europeanen worden steeds dikker, maar de Nederlanders zijn de uitzondering op de regel.
Dat stelt de Wereldgezondheidsorganisatie (WHO) in een nieuw rapport, dat woensdag werd gepubliceerd.
In 2030 zijn veel meer mensen in Europa zwaarlijvig. Sterker nog, de WHO waarschuwt voor een "overgewichtscrisis van enorme omvang". Ierland spant de kroon. Daar zal naar verwachting bijna elke volwassene over vijftien jaar te dik zijn.
De WHO keek naar de Body Mass Index (BMI), een berekening die wordt gemaakt aan de hand van het gewicht en de lengte van mensen. Een BMI van boven de 25 telt als overgewicht, een BMI hoger dan 30 wordt obesitas genoemd.
De Ieren, Spanjaarden, Grieken, Zweden, Oostenrijkers en Tsjechen zijn de volkeren waar de BMI's het hardst stijgen. Ook de Britten worden rap dikker.
Uitzondering
De Nederlanders vormen de welkome uitzondering op de regel. In 2010 was hier 54 procent van de mannen te dik, in 2030 is dat volgens het rapport minder dan de helft. Bovendien daalt het percentage mannen met obesitas van 10 naar 8 procent. Het percentage vrouwen met obese daalt van 13 naar 9 procent.
Desondanks raadt de WHO de regering aan om meer te doen om marketing voor ongezond eten te voorkomen en gezond eten te stimuleren. | {
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Product Category Types of Products Commission Rate Apparel & Accessories Sunglasses, shoes, wallets 14% Appliances Refrigerators, vacuums, coffee machines 12% Arts & Crafts General crafts, printmaking, pottery, ceramics & sculpting 13% Auto & Hardware Car electronics, parts & accessories, tires 10% Baby Health & safety, strollers, apparel 12% Bags & Luggage Travel, business cases, backpacks 14% Beauty Shavers, skincare, fragrance 12% Books, Media & Entertainment Textbooks, new & used books 13% Camera & Photo DSLR, point & shoot, lenses & accessories 9% Cell Phone Accessories Cases, cables, wired headsets & speakers 13% Computer Hardware Notebooks, desktop PCs, monitors 10% Consumer Electronics Tablets, LED TVs, audio 9% DVD & Videos Popular titles, collections, greatest hits 10% Health & Personal care Vitamins, supplements, hygiene 12% Home & Living Vacuums, furniture, cookware 12% Home Improvement Home automation, portable generators, power tools 12% Jewelry Necklaces & pendants, earrings, men’s accessories 12% Motorcycles & Powersports Vehicles, parts, riding gear 10% Musical Instruments Microphones, PA speakers, electric guitars 10% Office Supplies Gaming chairs, office furniture, ink & toner 13% Outdoor & Garden Grills, pool supplies, outdoor heaters 12% Pet Supplies Dog training aids, fish care, cat furniture & scratchers 11% Software Business & personal finance, operating systems, PC games 15% Sporting Goods Cardio equipment, bikes, binoculars & telescopes 12% Toys Games & Hobbies Drones, RC, learning & educational 12% Unlocked Cell Phones iOS, Android, Windows 8% Video Game Consoles Xbox One, Playstation 4, Nintendo Wii 8% Warranty & Service Replacement, installation, parts & labor 13% Watches Men’s, women’s, smart watches 12% Other 13%
*All categories are available for refurbished and some for used.
*US seller commission rates. For international sellers looking to sell in the US, click here for rates. For international sellers looking to sell globally, click here.
*For sellers looking to sell into China, please reach out to your category manager or fill out our contact form as rates will differ. | {
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If someone has a baby Wait till they get home to bring gifts
259 shares | {
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The computer gaming industry is not pleased with comments that AT&T filed with the Federal Communications Commission on how to define "broadband," particularly the suggestion that online games should be relegated to the category of "aspirational services." "For Americans who today have no terrestrial broadband service at all," AT&T wrote the FCC, "the pressing concern is not the ability to engage in real-time, two-way gaming, but obtaining meaningful access to the Internet’s resources and to reliable email communications and other basic tools that most of the country has come to expect as a given."
This did not sit well with Kenneth L. Doroshow, Senior Vice President of the Entertainment Software Association. "What AT&T describes as aspirational services are no less important to the future of the Internet than email and web browsing were to the past and are today," he told the Commission on Wednesday.
They're used for employee training and in schools, he noted. "Online video games are a meaningful part of our participative culture. They remove geographic barriers, connecting people from across the country and around the world. They teach cooperation, cultivate leadership skills, and empower users to express their creativity."
AT&T did acknowledge that the capacity to play games should be included in a larger definition of broadband. But at present, the concept "should take the form of a baseline definition of the capabilities needed to support the applications and services Americans must access to participate in the Internet economy—" the company wrote, "to learn, train for jobs, and work online." AT&T's "minimal set of applications" includes the ability to use email, instant messaging, and basic Web surfing. "It also should include the ability to engage in Internet-based education programs, interact with Internet based government services, and participate in online energy, healthcare, and public-safety programs."
But as Doroshow points out, interactive games are already used for employee training and in schools. "Entertaining does not mean trivial," he wrote.
Is gaming "civic"?
So is there a case for seeing two-way gaming as central to a definition of broadband? The cooperation/leadership argument may not be the strongest point, at least not if the implication is that games make gamers more helpful to society. A Pew Internet and American Life study released last September on Teens, Video Games and Civics concluded that almost all teens (97%) play computer, Web, portable, or console games for sure. And over a quarter of these kids play with others connected to the Internet.
But Pew also found that the most common civic behavior teens displayed while playing was helping others learn the game of the moment. Linking the play experience to moral, ethical, or social issues took place much less frequently. "There is little evidence to support the idea that playing video games, in general, is associated with a vibrant civic or political life," the survey concluded.
On the other hand, Pew did notice that teens tended to link gaming to civic issues more often when playing together in the same physical place, rather than when playing alone or with others online. Enjoying games together, they were more likely to look online for information about politics, raise money for charity, or try to persuade someone how to vote in an election.
But if the civic case for including games in a definition of broadband is still uncertain, the argument that they boost demand for the service seems stronger. Pew's latest report says that one out of every four "economic users" of the Internet—folks who go online to look for jobs or keep track of the economy—also go there to relax by watching a video or playing a game. This is especially true for young users (18-29), half of whom reported playing on the 'Net on a regular basis. If speeding up the rate of broadband adoption requires stimulating demand as well as availability, extending gaming capacity to a definition of broadband becomes that much more credible.
What it enables
All this has become part of the broadband definitional debate. And there's a noticeable divide here between the telcos and cable companies on one side, and content providers and users on the other. The latter camp very much wants the FCC to embrace an "application-based approach" to the broadband definition question, as the FCC put it in its request for definitional comments.
Google leads the pack on this issue. "Ultimately what interests us about broadband is not what it is, but what it enables," the search engine giant wrote to the Commission. Broadband should be defined at speeds "that enable full utilization of broadband services and applications." The connections should be "sufficiently robust" enough to let users "receive, generate and interact with voice, data, graphics and video, which will enable users to receive the maximum value of broadband."
Google's dream definition of broadband? "A high-quality, 'always on,' packet switched, technology-neutral, high speed communications transmission platform," the company suggests. "This platform further should allow users to harness the Internet, access and upload content, and otherwise engage in high-speed two-way connectivity and interactivity."
Internet2, a non-profit representing enterprise server users, argues in a similar vein. A definition "should encourage the construction of networks that will ensure that such users have access to the applications they need," the group argues. It is critical, contends the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition, that "community anchor institutions" have access to the bandwidth that "enables them to utilize all of the applications the public needs, not just a few of them."
But do we "need" online games? There's a question to keep us busy for eternity. | {
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Adorable! Even drooling-in-her-sleep Rarity is beautiful to Spike (and me). Plus there's such a great feeling of mutual trust with them positioned back-to-back and having Spike helping Rarity with her work. It says a lot that Rarity seem to rarely seek help from other ponies except when deadlines are involved but she asks Spike to help her fairly often with minor things. | {
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The Little Mermaid will resurface as a live musical TV special on ABC.
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Disney has officially announced The Wonderful World of Disney: The Little Mermaid Live, with a premiere date set for October 3. The two-hour special will be based on the animated movie.This version of The Little Mermaid will mix live action with animation, and Disney says it's using cutting-edge tech for the special. The cast — teased to include "favorite celebrity artists" — will be revealed at a later date.Now this isn't the only adaptation of The Little Mermaid that Disney is working on . The company is creating a live-action Little Mermaid movie with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Evan Campbell is a freelance writer who scripts the Daily Fix , streams games on his Twitch channel , and chats about movies and TV series on Twitter | {
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The fallout from an affair is still being felt and it’s not healthy just to wait around anticipating being separated, says Mariella Frostrup. Is it time to move on?
The dilemma I’ve been with my partner for 12 years; I’m 33 and he’s 38. On the surface our relationship seems fine – we spend time together and don’t argue – but I don’t feel emotionally close to him. I think it’s because of him having an affair five years ago – I have had to harden up so that I can cope on my own when he inevitably cheats again. We had counselling and I tried to move on, but I still find myself thinking about it every day. The trust has gone. We’re a good match in outlook on life – neither of us wants marriage or children. But my partner doesn’t share my main interest, which is the outdoors, and this is holding me back from enjoying myself, as I don’t want to go walking on my own or with a group of strangers. Am I being unreasonable? I don’t know what love is meant to feel like after 12 years. I don’t feel we are “soulmates”. Does it mean I don’t love him any more? I’ve not talked to him about any of this as I want to be more certain of my own thoughts and feelings before I open “Pandora’s box”.
Mariella replies The lid is off. Though much of what you describe here are just the side effects of long-term cohabitation, in your case there are additional elements. The fallout from his affair has definitely not receded into the past. It’s not healthy just to be waiting for him to do it again while anticipating the separation so vividly that you’ve emotionally prepared yourself. It’s certainly a lot to do with him and his choice to be unfaithful, but you also have to take some of the blame for where you are five years down the line. If you can’t forgive him, or move on past that unfortunate period, then there really is little point in staying together. A watching and waiting game is unhealthy for all concerned and if you don’t see any chance of your feelings changing, I would seriously consider moving on.
The endurance test you’ve set yourself and the detrimental effect it will have on your relationship just isn’t worth continuing with. If you can’t move on mentally, then you need to do so physically so that you can both continue your lives without remaining bogged down by past betrayal. It’s challenging to forgive and forget but you don’t really have options. Staying together but all the while anticipating separation is a death sentence for a relationship.
You do seem quite set in your ways. If you love the outdoors, why wouldn’t you want to go walking alone?
I wouldn’t worry so much about the overused phrases people bandy about. I’m not even sure what “soulmates” means aside from that exciting sense of connection you experience in the first few months of a relationship when you are regularly amazed that someone could know and care for you quite so well. We live in a big, bad world and sticking together in that environment is no mean feat, but it can also offer salvation. It’s the small things that really start to count, and trust and companionship are definitely high on that list.
That is why your struggle with the latter is worrying. You do seem quite set in your ways if you don’t mind me saying. If you love the outdoors, why wouldn’t you want to go walking alone? As a fellow walker I have to say it’s one of my essential sanity restorers. If you need a companion to get you going who’ll offer dogged devotion and a purpose for striking out across the countryside, perhaps you could get a dog.
You’re even dismissive of walking with a group of strangers, some of whom might indeed become friends. Some of my favourite adventures have been the charity walks I’ve been on with the Children’s Society, 50 total strangers hiking the Inca Trail or the foothills of Nepal, returning home with happy memories, new pals and, even on my last outing, a husband, who I met in Kathmandu!
Sometimes pushing yourself into uncomfortable situations is the best way to reinvent your life. We are often our own worst enemies when it comes to creating excuses for not doing what we know will give us pleasure. Of course there are plenty of couples to be seen wandering the highways and byways, holding hands as they pore over maps and sharing snacks from their his-and-hers knapsacks, but you’ll also see friends, families, siblings, colleagues and many other versions of companionship out on the footpaths. It really doesn’t have to be a coupled-up affair.
I’m not unsympathetic to your predicament – much of what you describe will chime with others in long-term relationships – but there are some bigger issues here that’s it’s hard to ignore. My advice would be to allow yourself a few weeks and a few long walks to think carefully about everything you’ve written here and work out where you can do better and where you are simply stuck. Then sit down and have a conversation with your partner, who may have views of his own on the future of your relationship.
Whether he surprises you with his differing view, or confirms your current feelings are accurate about where the relationship is heading, you’ll at least get to air and share your feelings. No relationship can be expected to survive if you can’t even discuss its future with your other half.
If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1 | {
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Colleagues Michael R. Boswell and William Riggs begin a "Autonomous Future" series of Planetizen features on autonomous vehicles (AVs), focusing on the policy and urban form implications for local planning in a new era of digital cities and transportation technology. Click here for more articles from the entire series, which range from issues related to multi-modal transportation, urban growth, and greenhouse gas impacts.
The emergence and reality of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and full driving automation will dramatically shape the future of cities. Many have speculated that this will result in a ripple effect of impacts, including longer commutes and increased vehicle miles traveled (VMT)—which one 2014 report referred to as "decluttering." In a June 2016 article in the Wall Street Journal, journalist Christopher Mimms predicts changes in urban growth patterns, with more cities sprawling beyond their bounds, will result in a "new class of exurbs." Respected author Rebecca Solnit argued that AVs will poach from transit and kill the walkable city.
While these reports don't have mush quantitative data to back up their arguments, as we have alluded to in a previous feature, they do bring up important questions for research and policy action not just a business-as-usual mindset. There is pressing need for policy makers to address the myriad of issues and questions about how AV adoption might change the design and development of cities—one of the most important being the relationship to urban growth and potential impacts on sprawl.
While we recognize the synergies AVs have with transit (something that is likely to be impacted by the technology that we will discuss in the future), we do not share the belief that AVs will cause a new, unprecedented wave of sprawl. Rather, growing patterns of sprawl and longer "super-commutes" are unlikely outcomes of AVs for three key reasons: 1) the presence of existing land use, transportation, and infrastructure controls and growth management plans; 2) trends in housing consumption and residential preferences; and 3) social dynamics and the emergence of more informed decision-making.
Land Use, Transportation, and Infrastructure Controls
Throughout the United States (and for that matter most of the world), land use policies exist that would not be eliminated (or subordinated) for the sake of an emerging technology. Though there is currently very little land use policy focusing on AVs, the emergence of this technology is not happening in a policy vacuum. Land use plans, for instance, still control development in cities and regions. Housing and transportation plans and, in some cases, greenbelt policies still guide regional development in many parts of the country.
Yes, in a world of AVs, adjustments to greenbelts and exurban growth controls might need adjustment to disincentivize long haul commuting, but the policy groundwork and regional thinking for such changes are already in place. Many communities have already developed sophisticated methods for allowing sustainable (and climate-conscious) growth. Furthermore, some locations have devised strategies to incentivize smart growth by providing funding. For example, the grants stemming from programs like California's Affordable Housing for Sustainable Communities program, funded from the carbon market established by AB-32, can be applied to affordable and transit connected housing units in the urban core.
Existing water and utility policies could also limit extreme commutes. In many communities these policies limit suburban development—especially in an era of extreme weather and heat events. Likewise, moves by transportation engineers and planners to begin quantifying the environmental impacts of development projects based on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) rather than level of service (LOS) at intersections provides an additional regulatory tool to slow the rise of a cadre of super-commuters, traveling ever-increasing distances as AVs become more widely adopted.
Housing Preference
Another reason doom-and-gloom claims about AVs may be overstated is that housing preferences have changed, while the factors that contribute to housing choices remain complex.
While those such as Joel Kotkin continue to claim that Americans only really want single-family homes, peer reviewed work by others suggest otherwise: many Americans want more urban lifestyles and smaller, more urban homes. Pitkin and Myers suggest that these housing preferences are most common in some of the largest cohorts of the U.S. population (namely the Baby Boomers and Millennials). Regardless of housing preference, research also suggests that while post-recession demand for suburban housing might increase, preferences toward walkability and urban accessibility will still be prevalent. Given this data, it is likely that a significant number of people will not choose to endure longer commutes, or want to change where they live because they change how they travel.
Furthermore, transportation is not the only factor in housing choice. On the contrary, housing choice is very complex. Much of the time, housing choice is dictated by factors other than transportation. Classic housing choice literature by experts like John Quigley suggests that many factors make up "residential services," and that travel mode may not be a primary choice (be it biking, walking, transit, driving, or being driven by an AV). For many individuals housing choice relates less to travel needs, and more to buyer preferences for things like affordability, school quality, neighborhood quality-of-life, accessibility to goods and services, social connectivity, etc. While these kinds of studies do not dismiss the importance of the built environment and "residential sorting," they do reinforce that housing decisions are complex (with "many pathways") and that other factors besides transportation influence housing decisions. These factors will likely not change in an AV future—undermining claims that AVs will dramatically reshape living patterns in the short term.
Social Dynamics and Informed Decision Making
Finally, assumptions about the sprawling effects of AVs are predicated on a shift in thinking about the value of social connectedness. The classic book Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, talked about the fall of human-to-human contact in the United States (facilitated by suburban growth) and the movement to increase those connections. Putnam attributed connectivity with an engaged citizenry and functional public dialogue. We could not agree more, and believe that these connections will still be important long into the future, withstanding many technology changes.
One of our master's students, Charlie Coles, interviewed Dr. Robert Bertini, former United States Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology, on the topic of AVs and social connectedness. Dr. Bertini had a comparable perspective. He argued that people are unlikely to value spending enough time in a vehicle to become super-commuters. He was quoted as follows:
Some people gravitate more towards those types of long driving experiences, but it removes the human component… The idea of home is still something that people seem to value… It seems to me that people would still assign value to the interaction with the people they care about… In terms of quality of life, I think to a lot of people that means spending time and interacting with people. Even with the developments in electronics, I'm not sure that people have changed so much that they won't value human-to-human interactions. One of the advantages, when I think about Millennials living in the city center and maybe not wanting to own a vehicle, is that … they're not wasting time in commuting so they can substitute that with more fun things that they value… Overall, I still think humans are social creatures. While there may be outliers that support the 'pod-lifestyle'… most people would not.
At the same time, much of the discussion about AVs as a physical technology intervening in our lives does not consider the information sector and increases in connectivity that could come from making additional information available. AVs will not be implemented in an information vacuum. While those such as Joe Cortright make a fair point in raising concerns about the quality of the information in a more connected world, from a simple economic utility standpoint, information can, with refinement and innovation, lead people to better transportation decisions.
This information factor is important, particularly from a behavioral economic standpoint. Better information, which recognizes our cognitive limitations, has the potential to optimize travel choices. Renowned behavioral economist Dan Ariely argues that people make "predictably irrational" decisions based on lifestyle and cultural factors (emotions, limited information, cultural biases, etc.) that are not in their best interest. When faced with a lack of appropriate information, people often rely on cognitive illusions, making choices that are not totally rational or in their best interest. For example, choosing to drive three blocks to the campus library when it is healthier and cheaper to walk (like some of our students).
Better information about the costs of choosing an AV can improve predictably irrational decision making. That is one of the promises of AVs—they have the potential to link with individuals as well as the grid in a data-enabled network and city. They could potentially provide a more robust set of choices and information. They could allow transportation planners to make better use of both market and social incentives and to take into account factors like health, the environment, and remind travelers of the human connection they have with their friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens.
In sum, from the perspective of land use, housing, and social dynamics, AVs are not likely to directly induce sprawl. Growth controls will remain. AVs will not likely shift housing preferences. New information will better inform consumers about the choices they face while commuting. While sprawl and uncontrolled growth should still be considered, they present a decades-old challenge that continues to require a balanced approach to how (and where) communities grow. AVs may present a challenge to questions about growth, but they also present an opportunity to optimize travel within existing urban areas and for individuals underserved by current transportation infrastructure.
So will AVs induce sprawl and kill walkable cities? We say: probably not.
William (Billy) Riggs, PhD is an Assistant Professor of City & Regional Planning and a leader in the area of transportation planning and technology, having worked as a practicing planner and published widely in the area. He has over 50 publications and has had his work featured nationally by Dr. Richard Florida in The Atlantic. He is also the principal author of Planetizen's Planning Web Technology Benchmarking Project. He can be found on Twitter @williamwriggs.
Michael R. Boswell, PhD is Department Head & Professor of City & Regional Planning at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and is an expert on strategies to reduce greenhouse emissions and increase community resilience to climate change. He is lead author of the book Local Climate Action Planning and most recently advised UN-Habitat on climate planning as a part of COP 21. His Twitter handle is @mboswell. | {
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Is there a vagina plant? Can someone get on that please? I mean we already have dick plants (A.K.A. cucumbers, corn, carrots, words, etc, etc.) Let’s going scientists, lets change the world for the better!
Javis | {
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Before
The Short Man
Apolo Ohno: Gold-medal-winning Olympic speed skater, Dancing with the Stars champ
5’8“
165 lbs
“All the suits I buy have to be tailored, no matter what. But it’s not just because of my height; it’s because I’ve been skating for so long. My waist is very small, but my legs are just huge. Most really nice suitmakers are Italian, and usually they make suit pants for Italian men. I’m like, Those Italians must have pretty skinny legs.“
Don’ts:
Don’t wear a longer suit jacket. It just makes your legs look shorter.
Don’t wear fat ties and wide lapels; keep it slim. | {
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IoT Malware Discovered Trying to Attack Satellite Systems of Airplanes, Ships
Researcher Ruben Santamarta shared the details of his successful hack of an in-flight airplane Wi-Fi network - and other findings - at Black Hat USA today.
BLACK HAT USA – Las Vegas – Ruben Santamarta was flying from Madrid to Copenhagen in November 2017 on a Norwegian Airlines flight when he decided to inspect the plane's Wi-Fi network security. So he launched Wireshark from his laptop and began monitoring the network.
Santamarta noted "some weird things" happening. First off, his internal IP address was assigned a public, routable IP address, and then, more disconcerting, he suddenly noticed random network scans on his computer. It turned out the plane's satellite modem data unit, or MDU, was exposed and rigged with the Swordfish backdoor, and a router from a Gafgyt IoT botnet was reaching out to the satcom modem on the in-flight airplane, scanning for new bot recruits.
The Internet of Things (IoT) botnet code didn't appear to have infected any of the satcom terminals on that plane or others, according to Santamarta, but it demonstrated how exposed the equipment was to potential malware infections. "This botnet was not prepared to infect VxWorks. So, fortunately, it was no risk for the aircraft," he said.
That was one of the long-awaited details Santamarta, principal security consultant at IOActive, shared today of his research on how he was able to exploit vulnerabilities in popular satellite communications systems that he had first reported in 2014. The flaws – which include backdoors, insecure protocols, and network misconfigurations – in the equipment affect hundreds of commercial airplanes flown by Southwest, Norwegian, and Icelandair airlines. Satcom equipment used in the maritime industry and the military also are affected by the vulns.
Santamarta emphasized that while the vulnerabilities could allow hackers to remotely wrest control of an aircraft's in-flight Wi-Fi, there are no safety threats to airplanes with such attacks. The attack can't reach a plane's safety systems due to the way the networks are isolated and configured. But an attacker could access not only the in-flight Wi-Fi network, but also the personal devices of passengers and crew members.
He also found the flaws in satellite earth stations and antenna on ships and in earth stations used by the US military in conflict zones.
"It can disrupt, intercept, and modify" satcom operations from the ground, he said.
Meantime, in his research he also found a Mirai botnet-infected antenna control unit on a maritime vessel. "There's malware already infecting vessels," he said.
Santamarta also exposed some serious physical safety risks of radio frequency (RF) heating that could cause burns or other physical damage or injury, and found the US military had satcom equipment exposed on the Internet. "You could get their GPS position" in some conflict zones, he said, declining to divulge any vuln details until all of the sites are remediated.
Santamarta's research was a massive coordinated disclosure process involving the aviation industry, satellite equipment vendors, and other parties.
Jeffrey Troy, executive director of the Aviation-ISAC, said in a press event yesterday previewing Santamarta's presentation that Santamarta shared his research with aviation experts who specialize in satellite communications for aircraft. "Then he learned more from the industry about his research," Troy said.
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Kelly Jackson Higgins is the Executive Editor of Dark Reading. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and editing for various publications, including Network Computing, Secure Enterprise ... View Full Bio
Recommended Reading: | {
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On Charon’s Unusual North Pole
Deep space exploration brings a surprise with each new destination. New Horizons made the point over and over again, and today we get word of new work on one of the mission’s discoveries, that dark red polar cap at the north of Pluto’s large moon Charon. Will Grundy (Lowell Observatory) and colleagues are behind the study, which digs into the theory that methane from Pluto’s atmosphere is trapped at Charon’s north pole.
In a new paper in Nature, Grundy and team have used New Horizons mission data in conjunction with their own modeling of the evolution of Charon’s ice cap over the course of a Plutonian year to demonstrate that the model of trapped methane works. It involves the processing of methane into complex organic molecules called tholins. From the paper:
The distribution of dark, reddish material around Charon’s northern pole is notable for its generally symmetric distribution across longitudes and its gradual increase with latitude, although there are local irregularities associated with craters, topographic features and perhaps subsurface variations in thermal properties. These characteristics, and the existence of an albedo feature around the southern pole with a similar latitude dependence, are consistent with our hypothesis that the combination of Pluto’s escaping atmosphere and Charon’s long, cold winters enables CH 4 to be seasonally cold-trapped at high latitudes, where some is photolytically processed into heavier molecules that are subsequently converted to reddish tholin-like materials.
Image: Mosiac of New Horizons MVIC color observations of Charon obtained during the final 6.4 day rotation on approach to the system during July 7-14, shown in polar orthographic projection. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.
Tholins are complex organic molecules that can be formed when ultraviolet light strikes simple organic molecules like methane. We find the dark red of Charon’s polar cap duplicated on the surface of Pluto in areas where these interactions occur. And as the paper notes, the nearby atmosphere of Pluto provides ‘potential feedstock’ for this complex chemistry at Charon’s pole. Grundy’s team was able to model the surface thermal environment on Charon, capturing the cold-trapping of material from Pluto and its processing into more complex molecules, all consistent with earlier theories but modeled for the first time quantitatively.
New Horizons provided data on the escape rates of methane and nitrogen. The former exists in a frozen state on Charon’s surface only during the polar winter night, which means that it is being processed quickly, although it need not be fully converted into tholins right away, but only into molecules that are non-volatile enough to remain on the surface when the pole is again exposed to sunlight.
As to radiation sources with an impact on Charon’s surface, the paper notes ultraviolet photons, solar wind charged particles, galactic cosmic rays and interstellar pickup ions. The latter result from solar wind protons interacting with neutral hydrogen atoms from the interstellar medium. The paper pegs the most important night-side radiation source as solar ultraviolet photons that have been scattered by the interplanetary medium.
Once the pole is back in sunlight, ultraviolet radiation directly from the Sun can drive further chemistry. Interestingly, we find a reddish spot on the small Plutonian satellite Nix, but the authors argue that it and the other small moons orbit farther from Pluto and have lower masses, which makes the process less efficient. Charon is a different story. With sufficient mass and a winter lasting for over a century, its trapping of Pluto’s methane produces a highly visible result.
The paper is Grundy et al., “The formation of Charon’s red poles from seasonally cold-trapped volatiles,” Nature 15 September 2016 (abstract). | {
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DK Property
A Plan for Property
DK Propert y are Glasgow- based residential property consultants. They have a diverse portfolio of properties and a broad range of skillsets and contacts within the property sector in Scotland.
| {
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Can you Debunk These Epic Tricks and Illusions? Credit — Various via Storyful
Can you Debunk These Epic Tricks and Illusions? Credit — Various via Storyful
IF YOU’RE driving around Cairns any time soon, you might want to be careful for an unusual road obstacle.
Enormous blocks, seemingly floating above the road surface, look ready to do some serious damage to your Commodore.
But it’s all just a trick of the eye as Cairns looks set to create Australia’s first “floating” pedestrian zebra crossing in a bid to slow down the speed of perplexed motorists.
On Wednesday, Cairns Regional Council signed off on $30,000 of taxpayers’ money to paint a “three-dimensional” zebra crossing outside a hotel and shopping complex in the CBD of the north Queensland tourist hub, reported the Cairns Post.
But some councillors have queried the cost of the project and slammed it as just an “art installation … an Escher drawing”.
The concept is said to have originated in India’s capital of New Delhi, with the idea then spreading to parts of Europe including Iceland.
Last year, Iceland’s environment commissioner, Ralf Trylla, recreated the crossing in a remote town in the northwest of the country.
Mr Trylla said it only took a couple of weeks to gain all the necessary permits from the police and transport authority.
A report by Cairns Regional Council directly referenced the Icelandic example.
“A council in an Icelandic fishing village recently installed a 3D pedestrian zebra crossing which creates the impression that pedestrians are walking on white blocks suspended in the air,” it said.
“The aim of this optical illusion was to change driver behaviour by encouraging drivers to think the pedestrian crossing is obstructing them, resulting in drivers slowing down.”
From the point of view of pedestrians, the crossing actual looks distinctly two dimensional. The familiar white stripes have the addition of some grey and black painted blocks.
But for approaching cars, the various shades on the painted surface come together to create not only the illusion of blocks but also that pedestrians and cyclists are using the crossing as a bridge.
From the air, admittedly not the usual perspective, the scene is even more striking with the crossing transformed into towering plinth blocking the road.
“Residents in the town hope the pedestrian crossing will function not only as eye-catching artwork, but also as a form of protection for pedestrians on the town’s residential streets,” said the report.
However, the innovative crossing comes with some possible downsides, said council staff. Drivers could overreact to the optical illusion slamming their brakes on causing rear end crashes while pedestrians might congregate in the middle of the crossing to take snaps.
The crossing could even have the opposite effect with “driver distraction of the 3D ‘artwork’, possibly resulting in motorists to be inattentive of pedestrians crossing the road”.
One councillor questioned whether $30,000 on a crossing was appropriate expenditure and if the installation would confuse motorists.
While another councillor, John Schilling, wondered if there was another motivation behind the crossing.
“Is it an art installation or is this being done for the safety of the community?” he asked. “It’s not advancement in technology, this is just an Escher drawing.”
Nevertheless, all but one councillor signed off on the move meaning motorists might soon get a shock when they see what appears to be solid blocks in the middle of the road.
Two 3D crossings for Clyde Street. Work starts this weekend - will take about a week. Pop down and check it out. https://t.co/rhoBxKORr5 pic.twitter.com/O0AldtKTgp — Dunedin City Council (@DnCityCouncil) February 9, 2017
Two new 3D crossings are now in use on Clyde Street.
More: https://t.co/oMj2DLZZWt pic.twitter.com/zLGexN4Od7 — Dunedin City Council (@DnCityCouncil) February 20, 2017
The New Zealand city of Dunedin has taken the 3D concept one step further with two radically different designs introduced in 2017.
One crossing featured white blocks, albeit with the addition of feet so it looked like the crossing was moving.
Another crossing resembled a rushing river with painted stepping stones for pedestrians. It was this that has caused consternation with locals fearing it was so abstract, motorists might not recognise it as a crossing, reported the Otago Daily Times.
In Sydney, a rainbow crossing was painted across the busy thoroughfare of Oxford St in Darlinghurst, a suburb popular with LGBTI residents, to celebrate 2013’s mardi gras.
Immensely popular with locals and tourists thronging to it, there were calls for the vibrant piece of street art to remain in place. But, following mardi gras, the State Government painted it back.
Cairns Regional Council will trial the 3D crossing for six months to see if it actually does slow down traffic. | {
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UPDATE: The accused party has emailed the CyanogenMod team and agreed to relinquish control of the CyanogenMod.com domain. Although he had a much different story than what was initially posted by the CM team, he has decided not to voice his opinion, instead opting to “wash his hands and move on.” UPDATE #2: Looks like the perp was telling the truth. Cyanogen himself just tweeted moments ago:
Some jaw dropping news coming out of the CyanogenMod camp this afternoon. No, the custom ROM we all know and love isn’t going anywhere. Well, actually… it kind of is.
The CM team released a blog post this afternoon revealing an alleged extortion attempt by a trusted member of the team that has resulted in the loss of CyanogenMod.com and the official CyanogenMod email account. Before you freak out wondering where you’re going to get your next ROM fix, don’t let that scare you — the site has simply been moved to CyanogenMod.org for the time being, with the new email being changed to [email protected].
While details are still murky, it’s unfortunate that this sort of stuff happens to a organization of developers that simply want nothing more than to make Android better. The CM team made it clear they will be pursuing legal action against the alleged perpetrator, in the mean time you can still grab CM downloads from Get.CM.
[CyanogenMod] | {
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Impeachment Today:
May 1st Thursday 7pm at
Maplewood Public Library (651-704-2033)
3025 Southlawn Drive
Maplewood, Minnesota
(Just west of Maplewood Mall;
south of County D (which is just south of 694);
north of Beam Ave)
The NorthEast Suburban Greens (NESG) present Jodin Morey co-founder of
Impeach for Peace. Jodin will discuss the history and present status of
impeachment and the reasons it so critical in the United States today.
For further information –Mike 651 645-9506
impeachforpeace.org | {
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When it comes to sports, Americans look with admiration on the comeback player of the year. We can’t resist the rediscovery of excellence in a tried and true athlete. And so it was this last year with the rediscovery of an old and excellent concept. The comeback concept of the year has been nationalism (along with its nephew, tariffs). My pick is reinforced by the December 31 column of the otherwise reliable liberal E.J. Dionne, who makes apologies on behalf of nationalism.
Dionne allows that “it’s common,” among liberal elites, “to denounce nationalism, to disdain supposedly mindless, angry populists, and to praise those with an open-minded, cosmopolitan outlook. Note that those involved are praising themselves” (emphasis added).
Dionne’s column repeats the concessions of many an establishment pundit of a point to Trump and his supporters. But this is more than a point they concede—in fact, they surrender the whole match.
Now, with a President Trump, Dionne and his crew admit what the run-down towns of flyover middle America have known for decades: “Globalization married to rapid technological change has been very good to the well-educated folks in metro areas and a disaster for many citizens outside of them. This is now a truism”—having been mugged by the reality of Donald Trump and his ascendancy to president by winning the Midwest and its eastern extension, Pennsylvania—“but it took far too long for [us] economic and policy elites to recognize what was happening.”
Then comes Dionne’s New Year’s resolution: “[C]ritics of Trumpism need to recognize the ways in which globalism undercuts the rights and fortunes of large numbers of democratic citizens.” Trump was right on this key theme, the only one right in both parties.
Moreover, Dionne tries to play down his contrite confession that borders mean something: “there is nothing new (or necessarily indecent [what, this isn’t racism?]) about citizens saying that nations have a right to control their borders and to decide what levels of immigration they want to accept at any given time.”
Now we need Dionne to allow that Trump was right to upset the bipartisan consensus that got us into endless Middle East wars, while dodging the threat from the principal enemy in that region, Iran, and even subsidizing its support of terrorism. The prescient Walter Russell Mead is another commentator who sees how Trump has stirred the old order.
In fact the begrudged praise of nationalism and the nation-state is a way of avoiding Trump’s more winning phrase, “America First.” This has nothing to do with isolationism, imperialism, or fecklessness toward other nations. It is a reiteration of the policy advocated by George Washington, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln.
Throughout his political career Lincoln emphasized preservation of the Union, most of all during the Civil War—whether it was slave or free. For slavery, to name the most pressing issue, could not be abolished unless the country were one—for we are a country that “demands union, and abhors separation.”
More well-known is the Gettysburg Address, which begins and ends with the reality of the nation born anew: “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . . this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Perhaps Dionne and others have been favorably influenced by the important new book by Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism. (See also American Greatness contributor John Fonte for his review of the book and his own defense of nationalism.)
Hazony points out that the problem of any form of government is whether it can keep people free. Not wealthy, not educated, not powerful—but free. While all these desirable traits are necessary for a good government, a government that provided all of them but did not make or keep us free, would be deficient. The central question of any good nation is how does the nation keep its citizens free?
As is typically the case, we must return to the meaning of freedom in Greek philosophy. The free man (the eleutheros) is not a slave but can act and care for himself. He gives freely from what he owns (whether it be sharing his lunch or his fortune). Ultimately, the free man has a free mind, not one merely unencumbered by ignorance or superstition but one educated in the moral and intellectual virtues. He assumes his duties as a citizen, fighting in its ranks and deliberating in the assembly.
Had Hazony developed his argument in this way, with a focus on understanding freedom more fully, he would not have denounced John Locke, the philosopher behind the Declaration of Independence, as he had. Hazony makes the error, similar to the one made by his graduate school colleague Patrick Deneen, that Locke’s America set forth the path to the self-centered, amoral nihilism we see today. On the contrary, Locke’s Americans are those of the Declaration’s protests against tyranny and for self-government. They respect the “Laws of nature and of nature’s God.” They are the ones demanding such respect still today.
American nationalism respects individual freedom. Contrast the first inaugural addresses of Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt.
Reagan sees ordinary American citizens as heroic, while FDR demands that Americans obey their president as soldiers do a general; citizens are self-governing in the one view, scarcely more than subjects in the other.
Trump would seem the best possibility of anyone on the political horizon to bind these two warring visions to affirm we are one nation. Trump’s America First nationalism can reconcile leading political elements of domestic and foreign policies. It is not in spite of his reputation as a disrupter, but precisely because Trump is a disrupter that he can redefine the political debate to the enduring benefit of Americans grateful for their freedom.
Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience. For licensing opportunities for our original content, please contact [email protected].
Photo Credit: Getty Images | {
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Article content continued
AHS continues to be successful in balancing its budget, meeting its targets every year since 2010 and recording an operating surplus in 2016/2017 of $67 million. Before AHS was formed, the average cost to treat a patient in hospital was rising by 3.4 per cent annually. Since 2014-15, that annual increase has dropped by one per cent, equating to more than $40 million in savings per year.
AHS is the most efficient health-care system in Canada when it comes to administration costs. It spends 3.3 per cent of total expenses on administration, the best in the country, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).
The Office of the Auditor General of Alberta has also recognized this. In a 2017 report, the OAG stated: “The formation of AHS in 2008 was a step forward and presented Alberta with significant opportunities to integrate public health-care delivery. This work has produced real results … .”
While Alberta continues to rank as one of Canada’s top per-capita spenders on health care, the benefits of operating as a single health region has allowed AHS to focus on finding efficiencies. AHS has saved more than $600 million over the last four fiscal years through a number of initiatives such as procurement and inventory best practices, and cost avoidance through different models of care.
AHS started as a merger of multiple health regions and entities 10 years ago. Since then, financial sustainability has been a clear focus, and equally important has been our focus on delivery of quality health care. In our 10 years, there have been many challenges, and many successes. Increasingly, others are also noting the successes that have helped AHS become a high-performing health-care organization, such as: | {
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I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.
As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
In April 2004, Stars and Stripes first reported that our troops were using makeshift vehicle armor fashioned out of sandbags, yet when a soldier complained to Donald Rumsfeld at a town meeting in Kuwait eight months later, he was successfully pilloried by the right. Proper armor procurement lagged for months more to come. Not until early this year, four years after the war’s first casualties, did a Washington Post investigation finally focus the country’s attention on the shoddy treatment of veterans, many of them victims of inadequate armor, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.
We first learned of the use of contractors as mercenaries when four Blackwater employees were strung up in Falluja in March 2004, just weeks before the first torture photos emerged from Abu Ghraib. We asked few questions. When reports surfaced early this summer that our contractors in Iraq (180,000, of whom some 48,000 are believed to be security personnel) now outnumber our postsurge troop strength, we yawned. Contractor casualties and contractor-inflicted casualties are kept off the books.
It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.
Image Credit... Barry Blitt
Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq. | {
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i told him we're visiting my sister tomorrow all he said was "Me Gusta"
275 shares | {
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Inspirations and fandom. Too many things, too many feels. NSFW occasionally. MAIN BLOG AND ART BLOG: @Juney-chan | {
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Three words loom largest now about Monday's split decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that calls for a 19-day rewrite of the state's current Congressional map, effective for the May 15 primary election.
If it stands.
Leaders of Republican-controlled state legislature quickly vowed to seek a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court that would put the decision on ice, just as it has issued stays in other mapping cases this winter.
"No matter how you cut this, this is a federal court issue," said Drew Crompton, chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County. That nexis starts, Crompton said, with the fact that the seats at stake are in the federal legislature.
"We suspect that the U.S. Supreme Court will hopefully have interest in this as they've had interest in the North Carolina case," he said, referring to an order earlier this month suspending a separate court's redistricting order there while the U.S. Supremes consider a third redistricting challenge, out of Wisconsin.
Attorneys for the voter plaintiffs in the Pennsylvania case, however, said they felt confident Monday's ruling would stand.
Their case, attorney Stanton Jones noted, was solely based on the Pennsylvania constitutional claims, and they will argue that case precedent dictates the state court gets deference in this situation.
"This decision means that Pennsylvania voters will finally have the opportunity to cast their ballots under a fair and constitutional map," said David Gersch, the lead attorney for 18 Democratic voters bringing the state suit.
"The current map is the worst partisan gerrymander in Pennsylvania's history. The Court was right to strike it down."
About the decision.
The court's order broke sharply along partisan lines.
Justices Max Baer, Christine Donahue, Kevin Dougherty, Debra Todd and David Wecht, all found the current maps - crafted after the 2010 census by a Republican-controlled General Assembly and approved by then-Gov. Tom Corbett, also a Republican - "clearly, plainly and palpably violates" the state constitution.
All were elected to the state court as Democrats.
Donahue, Dougherty, Todd and Wecht then signed off on that part of the order giving the current legislature first crack at developing a new map, with a deadline of sending it to Gov. Tom Wolf by Feb. 9.
While historically that's a short time frame for redistricting, evidence produced in the case has made it abundantly clear that with today's technology, maps can be generated very quickly once the parameters are agreed to.
Wolf would then have until Feb. 15 to accept or reject it.
If the Democratic governor and Republican legislative leaders fail to reach a consensus, the court said it could move to impose its own plan for the state's 18 U.S. House districts.
Either step, the majority held, should provide enough time to proceed with this spring's scheduled May 15 primary.
Baer, notably, said he would have permitted this year's elections to proceed under the existing lines, arguing that changes this close to the election cycle could lead to significant voter confusion.
The two Republican judges on the court, Chief Justice Tom Saylor and Justice Sally Mundy, disagreed with the majority.
They wrote that while there may be valid concerns over Pennsylvania's Congressional map, it can't be ruled unconstitutional - or properly replaced - without further guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The partisan breakdown of Monday's ruling was not lost on another partisan, Val DiGiorgio, chairman of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania.
He called the decision "a partisan attempt to overturn the will of the legislature, which approved these congressional maps with Democrat votes in 2011.
"The only things that have changed between then and now are makeup of the court and Democrats being dissatisfied with the results (of the Congressional elections)."
The plaintiff's attorneys downplayed the state court's split Monday, noting neither of the Republican justices, Saylor or Mundy, actually argued the current map should be upheld.
If there was partisanship in this issue, Gersch said, the crafters of the 2011 map have only themselves to blame. "The map is what's partisan, and the legislature is what brought about this result," he said.
Several recently-developed measures have held Pennsylvania's map up as one of the most partisan maps in the nation, though its defenders have argued those barometers are only academic exercises that must be subordinate to real voters' wishes, expressed in the context of real candidates, campaigns and issues.
The impact.
If it stands, the new map envisioned by the state court's decision - built on principles of compactness and contiguity, in addition to equal population - will impact every one of Pennsylvania's 18 U.S. House districts.
Pennsylvania's current, and endangered, Congressional map.
In many cases, like those districts anchored in the city of Philadelphia or the state's Republican 'T', the changes will be politically negligible.
But in others, it is quite likely that some candidates who have already launched campaigns in one district could - by the middle of next month - find themselves in a different arena.
Political analysts see the biggest impact in the Philadelphia suburbs, where tortured efforts to arrive at just-so, partisan math have led to Jackson Pollock-style lines.
Other changes could be coming in and around Pennsylvania 12th District, what some have called the "hammerhead shark" now super-imposed from the Ohio line to the Johnstown area, or in the elongated districts of northeastern Pennsylvania.
Monday's decision also left candidates, especially those who live toward the edges of the districts as they are, in the position of recalibrating their strategies on the fly.
Typical is the case of Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries, a Republican seeking to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, but who lives on the very western end of the sprawling 15th District.
Any move toward compactness may put Pries in any one of several other districts, and quite possibly one occupied by another Republican incumbent. Attempts to reach Pries for this story were not successful.
State Rep. Steve Bloom, R-Carlisle, launching a campaign to succeed U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta from the southern end of the current 11th Congressional District, was thrust into a similar position by Monday's order.
"The only thing I can do is keep working hard and try to stay focused on the things that are under my control, and then see how things are when the dust settles" when the court fights are over, he said Monday night.
At the national level, Democratic Party officials salivated over what they saw as an enhanced opportunity to tilt the current 13-Republican, five-Democrat Pennsylvania delegation in their direction.
That's big for them because if Democrats are to have any hope of taking back majority control in the U.S. House this year, most political experts say, it would almost certainly need to pick up one or more seats in Pennsylvania.
"Today's decision is a victory for democracy and another blow to the Republican Party's nationwide effort to game the system," Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
What's next.
Pennsylvania's current election deadlines call for candidates to begin circulating nominating petitions to get on the spring primary ballots starting Feb. 13. That process runs through March 6.
Crompton, speaking for the Senate leaders, said Monday that while their preference is for a stay, they will also start to work with House leaders on replacement maps. Just in case.
"We're not going to be foolish," Crompton said.
"The timeline (as set by the court) is what the timeline is, even though we disagree. So we will try to pursue maps to the best of our ability in the time frame that we've got." | {
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Bad Obsession Motorsport has decided it would be a good idea to build the fastest four-wheel drive Austin MINI ever by stuffing the engine from a Toyota Celica GT4 under the hood. Beginning with a 1980 Austin MINI 1000, which would have produced 40 horsepower when it came off the assembly line, the team hopes to mate it with a 200 horsepower Celica ST185 GT4.
The introductory video above explains what the team is attempting to create and where they started. They’ll be shoehorning not only the engine but the gearbox and all the running gear from the Celica into the tiny, tiny MINI. The project is a work in progress and the team is already on Episode 5 of its build documentary videos. They’ve made a good deal of progress in the past 15 months or so and all the episodes are worth watching since it seems the team spends more timing talking Star Wars and moose choreography than building the car.
We suggest you subscribe to the Bad Obsession Motorsport Youtube channel for upcoming episodes – we’ll definitely be watching. | {
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — An Arkansas doctor and a medical sales representative have been accused of taking part in a scheme which defrauded the U.S. military’s health insurer of more than $12 million.
Federal prosecutors announced Friday that Dr. Joe David May and Derek Clifton have been charged in a 43-count indictment. Both men are from Alexander.
According to prosecutors, Tricare, the military insurer, paid over $12 million in 2015 for prescriptions, which were rubber stamped without examining patients.
The indictment says the two men also took part in a widespread effort to obstruct an investigation by authorities.
Businessman indicted in $510 million Tricare fraud scheme Federal prosecutors say a Mississippi businessman has been indicted in one of the nation’s largest health care fraud investigations.
The charges in the indictment include conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, anti-kickback violations, aggravated identity theft, money laundering, lying to the FBI, falsifying records and obstruction of justice.
According to the indictment, Tricare beneficiaries allegedly were recruited, sometimes for pay, to receive expensive compounded drugs they didn't need. Prescriptions went to a Mississippi pharmacy, which shipped drugs nationwide and billed Tricare for reimbursement.
Authorities allege Clifton, a former basketball coach in Baxter County, sent May pre-filled prescriptions and May rubber stamped them for over 100 beneficiaries, for which Tricare paid $4.5 million.
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Court records did not list attorneys for either May or Clifton. | {
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The tiny WA town of Narrikup is home to the biggest bat in the Southern Hemisphere and what is believed to be the world's first-ever cricket bat boundary fence.
It is also now home to a cricket museum filled with signed memorabilia, tucked inside the newly renovated general store.
Former builder Tony Poad has never played a game of cricket and never run a shop before, but he is the driving force behind the town's unique cricket revival project.
Mr Poad was not a cricket fan when he first moved to Narrikup, a small settlement 380km south of Perth.
He had never picked up a cricket bat or bowled a ball into the nets.
"Probably even worse, I've never watched a game of cricket either," he said.
"I've spoken to Dennis Lillee and Tony Dodemaide and Kim Hughes and I didn't even know who they were originally."
Despite having never played or watched cricket before, Tony Poad is now heavily involved in the Narrikup cricket scene. ( ABC Great Southern: Ellie Honeybone )
It was only after Mr Poad's son started playing for the local team that things began to change.
"When I first moved in here with a couple of kids, the community basically didn't look sideways," he said.
"They looked after me and the kids and they got them involved in the cricket club.
"Of course, because I was still driving them around everywhere I got involved with the club as well. It's just proceeded from there."
Mr Poad came up with the idea of a boundary fence made from cricket bats after he initially made a gate to honour club life member Chris Norton when he retired in 2011.
The big bat came not long afterwards and earlier this year, Mr Poad purchased the neglected general store with the idea of turning it into a cricket museum.
Narrikup is home to the biggest cricket bat in the Southern Hemisphere. ( ABC Great Southern: Ellie Honeybone )
A few hundred cricket bats later
The Narrikup Cricket Club team had been running through the cricket bat gate for about three years when it was decided to go one step further and build the whole boundary fence in the same style.
"They're just bats that people were going to throw out or bats that have retired and they've just signed them, put their name on, where they're from, their best score or their worst score," Mr Poad said.
The cricket bat fence will encompass the entire oval once complete. ( ABC Great Southern: Ellie Honeybone )
"We've got bats signed by little kids from their first game. They're damaged but it doesn't really matter. It all adds character."
There are 17 bats in each panel of fence, with 26 panels already in place and another dozen or so ready to be installed.
Mr Poad estimates another 2,000 bats are needed to finish what he started.
"It's getting there but we still have a long way to go. I think everybody [in town] is into it," he said.
"Tourists have seen it, quite often heard about it on the radio. The whole community is behind it."
Another 2,000-odd bats are needed to finish what is believed to be the world's only cricket bat boundary fence. ( ABC Great Southern: Ellie Honeybone )
Restoring a 95-year-old building
It was a case of right place, right time for Mr Poad when he purchased the Narrikup Country Store earlier this year.
It had been abandoned for almost a decade, so it took the new owner a few months to get it back in shape.
"I'm not getting any younger in the building trade and I've got a few aches and pains," Mr Poad said.
The Narrikup store was in a rough state when Tony Poad first bought it. ( Supplied: Tony Poad )
"When the opportunity came up at the right price, I thought I would grab the bull by the horns and have a holiday, do something new.
"I spent five months getting it back up to scratch, tidying it up and bringing it into the 21st century."
Signed cricket bats, historic team photos, trophies and memorabilia lines the walls of the museum section of the store.
"It's going to be dedicated just to Narrikup," Mr Poad said.
"I'm going to put a display up of the shop's history and a display up of combined sports — netball and tennis.
"I've got a heap of cricket bats that have been signed by Test players and have been donated to us since we started the fence."
A few famous names can be found inside the Narrikup Country Store museum. ( ABC Great Southern: Ellie Honeybone )
Mr Poad hopes to have bats for sale at the store so visiting tourists can add their names to the famous fence.
From building houses to making coffee
The new and improved Narrikup Country Store was officially opened yesterday, and Mr Poad is hoping for a gentle first day.
"I don't think I'm going to compete with Woolworths or Bunnings — it's just a general store," he said.
"I hope it will become a spot for the community to get together and have a cup of tea.
"It will be more of a meeting place than anything."
After being abandoned almost a decade ago, the Narrikup general store is once again open for business. ( ABC Great Southern: Ellie Honeybone )
It is a different career path from construction, but Mr Poad has the community behind him.
"It is one hell of a change and it's a bit scary, but I reckon it'll work good and the community's supporting me so I think it'll be fine," he said. | {
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President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpBarr criticizes DOJ in speech declaring all agency power 'is invested in the attorney general' Military leaders asked about using heat ray on protesters outside White House: report Powell warns failure to reach COVID-19 deal could 'scar and damage' economy MORE’s choice to be secretary of Homeland Security went on record as holding views counter to Trump in a number of areas at a largely genial Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday.
Under questioning from Democrats and a Republican, retired Gen. John Kelly broke with Trump on the effectiveness of a border wall, using torture to interrogate terrorism suspects and whether Russia engaged in hacking to influence the election. He also said he opposed compiling a database of Muslims as part of a counterterrorism effort.
But Kelly did side with his would-be boss on enforcing immigration laws in so-called sanctuary cities and would not commit to not using information submitted by young undocumented immigrants as part of President Obama’s DACA program against them.
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Still, in all, senators seemed poised to confirm Kelly, with Sen. Heidi Heitkamp Mary (Heidi) Kathryn HeitkampCentrists, progressives rally around Harris pick for VP 70 former senators propose bipartisan caucus for incumbents Susan Collins set to play pivotal role in impeachment drama MORE (D-N.D.) calling the hearing a “love fest.”
Sen. Ron Johnson Ronald (Ron) Harold JohnsonGOP senator blocks Schumer resolution aimed at Biden probe as tensions run high The Hill's 12:30 Report - Presented by Facebook - Big 10 votes to resume football season GOP votes to authorize subpoenas, depositions in Obama-era probe MORE (R-Wis.) said after the hearing he expects Kelly to be confirmed on Trump's first day in office or shortly thereafter.
“We all share the same goal; we want a safe, prosperous, secure America,” Johnson said. “We realize the president, whether from your party or not, needs to have his national security, homeland security team in place as soon as possible. I just don’t see any stumbling blocks to this confirmation.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill Claire Conner McCaskillDemocratic-linked group runs ads in Kansas GOP Senate primary Trump mocked for low attendance at rally Missouri county issues travel advisory for Lake of the Ozarks after Memorial Day parties MORE (D-Mo.), ranking member of the committee, said she was heartened by Kelly’s responses during the hearing.
“I’m confident that he will be a moderating influence on President-elect Trump and some of his more divisive rhetoric that he displayed during the campaign when it comes to immigration and a Muslim ban and all the other things that were covered in the hearing today,” she said.
Toward the beginning of the hearing, Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainKelly's lead widens to 10 points in Arizona Senate race: poll COVID response shows a way forward on private gun sale checks Trump pulls into must-win Arizona trailing in polls MORE (R-Ariz.), who also gave a glowing introduction of Kelly, asked Kelly if he supports the use of torture. Trump said during the campaign that he would return to waterboarding and a “hell of a lot worse” to interrogate terrorism suspects.
“I don’t think we should ever come close to crossing a line that is beyond what we as Americans should expect to follow,” Kelly said.
Asked by McCain whether that includes following the Geneva Conventions, Kelly said “yes.”
McCain also asked Kelly whether he agrees a border wall is a not the best way to “prevent that flow of drugs and people.” The wall has been one of Trump’s key promises.
“A physical barrier in and of itself would not do the job,” Kelly responded, saying there also needs to be drones, sensors and other technology in place to patrol the border. Kelly also said border protection starts with partnering with countries to the south.
McCaskill asked Kelly whether he agrees with the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia hacked Democratic systems to influence the election. Trump has been dismissive of the findings, treating them as an attack on his legitimacy.
Kelly said he agrees with the assessment “with high confidence.”
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) repeatedly asked Kelly about Trump’s plans with regard to Muslims, saying Trump’s comments caused “particular anxiety” in his state, which is home to a large Muslim population.
Kelly said it is his understanding that putting mosques under surveillance and establishing a Muslim database would violate the Constitution.
He also said religion should not be the focus of counterterrorism efforts.
“I don't think it is ever appropriate to focus on something like religion as the only factor,” Kelly said.
But Kelly demurred on breaking from Trump on other immigration policies.
Kelly was pressed by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) on whether he would commit to not deporting people with the use of personal information submitted to the government as part of Obama’s program to protect young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.
Kelly said he has not been a part of the Trump’s teams discussion on the at subject and so couldn’t make the commitment Harris was looking for. But he promised to “keep an open mind” and “look very long and hard” at the issue.
Kelly also indicated he’d be willing to go after so-called sanctuary cities, which give shelter to undocumented immigrants.
“I don’t think I have the authority to pick and choose what laws need to be followed,” Kelly said in response to a question from Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) “I understand the perspective of some of the local leaders, but I do think the law is the law.” | {
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Солнечным утром 18 февраля 2015 года тверской водитель-дальнобойщик Борис Гаврилов ремонтировал во дворе своего дома машину жены. Неожиданно ему позвонили из Следственного комитета — следователь сказал, что нужно поговорить, и пообещал зайти. Борис обрадовался: этого звонка он ждал с тех пор, как в ноябре 2014 года его младшего брата Ивана Гаврилова избили полицейские.
У 34-летнего Ивана жизнь не задалась: он был судим, подрабатывал то разнорабочим, то могильщиком. Ранним утром 5 ноября 2014 года Иван шел на работу. В безлюдном месте около старого кладбища в тверском районе Затьмачье он увидел, как мужчина вытаскивает с заднего сиденья машины тело девушки и бросает в колодец теплового коллектора. «Мужчина заметил меня, стал на меня кричать, и я убежал», — рассказывал Иван.
Только вечером, после работы, он решился вернуться к страшному колодцу. Девушка была очевидно мертва, ее кожа посинела, рассказывал Гаврилов; он позвонил в МЧС и полицию. Его доставили в Центральный отдел внутренних дел Твери. Оперативники не поверили рассказу Ивана и потребовали, чтобы он сознался в убийстве. «Сотрудники полиции начали избивать меня, пристегнутого наручниками к стулу. Наносили удары ногами и руками по телу. После этого они стали одевать мне на голову пакет, не давая мне дышать», — вспоминал пострадавший. По его словам, полицейские, смеясь, называли этот прием «смерть водолаза». Гаврилов не выдержал и согласился. Днем 6 ноября его перевезли в Московский межрайонный следственный отдел Твери, где следователь Эдуард Довмалян записал его признание в убийстве.
Гаврилова вернули обратно в отдел полиции, где, как он рассказывает, продолжили бить. А вечером неожиданно снова отвезли в следственный отдел, где другой следователь — Дмитрий Магомалеев — допросил его уже как свидетеля. Как выяснилось, пока одни оперативники выбивали признания у Гаврилова, другие нашли настоящего убийцу — им оказался молодой человек, из ревности задушивший девушку проводом от телефона.
Однако Ивана не отпустили, а отвезли в суд, который арестовал его на четверо суток (по словам Гаврилова, перед заседанием полицейские заставили его выпить стакан водки). Мобильный у него отобрали. Ночью 11 ноября Гаврилова отпустили из спецприемника; только после этого он смог связаться с родственниками. Врачи в травмпункте зафиксировали у него ушибы грудной клетки и перелом двух ребер. Иван и его брат решили жаловаться на полицейских и подали заявление о преступлении. Рассказ Ивана о пытках записывал все тот же следователь Довмалян.
Решения по этому делу и ждал Борис Гаврилов. Поэтому звонок следователя его не насторожил, а напротив, обрадовал. Он поделился хорошей новостью со своей женой Людмилой Тумановой — и пропал.
Опознание после пресс-конференции
Только вечером Людмила обнаружила мужа в Московском межрайонном следственном отделе. Растерянный, он сидел в коридоре в грязной рабочей спецовке и тельняшке. «Он вот с такими глазами сидит, говорит: "Я ничего не пойму, какое-то изнасилование, о чем речь идет, не знаю"», — вспоминает женщина. Она быстро отыскала Борису адвоката.
«Когда я была с Борисом, он спрашивает адвоката: "А зачем меня сотрудники фотографировали сейчас на телефон?". Адвокат говорит: "Ну все, сейчас будет опознание, и она тебя опознает"», — рассказывает Людмила.
Как выяснилось, 42-летнего Бориса Гаврилова заподозрили в причастности к событиям 2003 года, когда на набережной реки Лазурь изнасиловали двух девушек. Одну из них насильники задушили. Несмотря на то, что с момента преступления прошло 12 лет, выжившая жертва Екатерина Кочеткова легко опознала в Борисе, грузном мужчине с большим пузом, одного из нападавших. На опознании Гаврилов был все в той же спецовке, но без очков, которые он носит с первого класса, отмечает Людмила Туманова: «А у близоруких вы знаете, как лицо без очков меняется? Я бы его не узнала». Более того, по ее словам, перед опознанием Кочеткова видела Гаврилова, когда его под конвоем вели по коридору.
Опознание проводил следователь Дмитрий Магомалеев, который раньше брал показания у Ивана Гаврилова. Именно Магомалеев возобновил приостановленное в 2003 году расследование изнасилования и взялся за дело.
Кочеткова опознала Гаврилова вечером 18 февраля. Но еще перед этим, в полдень, местные сайты сообщили, что полицейские спустя годы раскрыли жестокое убийство и установили троих подозреваемых. Тем же утром новый глава управления МВД по Тверской области Владимир Андреев проводил пресс-конференцию, во время которой отчитался о раскрытии этого преступления.
«В 2014 году улучшилась статистика по раскрываемости преступлений. В прошлом году полицейские раскрыли более 400 преступлений прошлых лет, из них 8 убийств. К примеру, установлены лица, которые почти 12 лет назад 18 апреля изнасиловали и убили на набережной реки Лазури девушку. Три молодых человека все это время находились в розыске. Спустя годы их нашли», — приводил слова Андреева портал Tvernews.Ru.
В протоколе опознания Бориса Гаврилова указано время — 22:43. Чуть позже, в час ночи, Кочеткова опознала еще одного человека — 43-летнего водителя Андрея Щурина. В 1993 году Щурин и Гаврилов работали водителями на автобазе, и с тех пор, как утверждают оба мужчины, почти не общались. Именно Щурин дал показания, на основании которых задержали Гаврилова.
Долгий след на банке пива
Водитель Андрей Щурин любил пить пиво. В начале двухтысячных, как он сам позже расскажет в суде, после работы Щурин ставил машину на охраняемую стоянку возле Академии ПВО и пешком шел домой на улицу Чайковского (позже в соседнем доме откроют музей Михаила Круга). Дорога шла по набережной реки Лазурь и занимала около 15 минут, по пути Щурин обычно выпивал купленное заранее пиво, а пустую бутылку или банку выкидывал в кусты — набережная Лазури была тогда замусоренным и неухоженным местом.
В ноябре 2014 года Щурин и пара его знакомых пили пиво во дворе. Их заметил полицейский патруль, который доставил мужчин в ближайший отдел, где на них составили протоколы за распитие алкоголя в неположенном месте. Там же у всех взяли отпечатки пальцев. По словам жены Щурина Ирины, до этого ее муж вообще никогда не задерживался полицией. Заплатив штраф, Щурин позабыл о неприятном происшествии. В феврале 2015 года его попросили зайти в Центральный отдел полиции, чтобы побеседовать о соседях по лестничной клетке. Немного удивившись подобной просьбе, мужчина отпросился с работы и утром 17 февраля явился в ОВД. Его встретили двое оперативников — Александр Нечаев и Денис Наумов; появлялись в кабинете и другие сотрудники.
Они рассказали Щурину про изнасилование 2003 года и сообщили, что на месте преступления были найдены пивные банки, на одной из которых оказался его отпечаток пальца. Оперативники потребовали, чтобы он признался в этом преступлении, вспоминал Щурин; когда он отказался, его стали бить ручкой бейсбольной биты по ребрам и кулаком по затылку. «Они мне говорили, чтобы я назвал фамилии друзей, с которыми я был в 2003 году, что я якобы с двумя своими товарищами пил пиво в 2003 году возле пункта приема макулатуры, что мимо проходили две девочки, одна из которых была пухленькая, другая худенькая, что я якобы со своими друзьями напал на них, затащил их в кусты, где совершил изнасилование», — рассказывал Щурин.
Расследование нераскрытых преступлений прошлых считается «одним из приоритетных направлений деятельности» Следственного комитета. «В каждом субъекте были созданы постоянно действующие аналитические группы, которые стали анализировать и систематизировать уголовные дела о нераскрытых преступлениях. … И такой системный подход стал приносить результаты. За девять лет раскрыто более 60 тысяч преступлений прошлых лет. Стала прослеживаться положительная динамика — общий остаток всех нераскрытых преступлений данной категории начал существенно снижаться», — сказано на сайте СК.
Глава СК Александр Бастрыкин любит рассказывать о раскрытии подобных преступлений и использующихся в работе с такими делами новейших технических средствах. «Криминалисты изучают уголовные дела о преступлениях прошлых лет, проверяют полноту выдвинутых версий и степень их "отработки", насколько эффективно ведется розыск лиц, совершивших преступления, и скрывшихся от органов следствия. Сегодня все подразделения криминалистики территориальных следственных органов оснащены современными образцами высокотехнологичного оборудования лучших мировых производителей», — говорил он в интервью «Российской газете» осенью 2016 года.
По его словам, полицейские требовали, чтобы он назвал имена друзей, вместе с которыми он якобы совершил преступление, и обещали, что никаких последствий для них не будет, поскольку сроки давности уже прошли. «Я долго не мог никого вспомнить, потому что в 2003 году я ни с кем не поддерживал дружеских отношений, ни с кем не гулял, "работа-дом". У меня всплыли люди, с которыми я работал на автобазе – я назвал "Гаврила" и "Шишок"», — вспоминал он. Сыну Щурина тогда было меньше двух лет.
Чтобы уточнить имена и фамилии этих знакомых, задержанному пришлось звонить своему старому другу Алексею Агафонову, который в девяностых работал на той же автобазе. Вспомнив с его помощью имена Бориса Гаврилова и Евгения Шишова, Щурин назвал их следователю Магомалееву, к которому его отвезли. Он утверждает, что следователь первым делом поинтересовался:
— Тебя били в отделе?
— Да.
— Что же вы, козлы, пока вас не ********, ничего не хотите рассказывать, не колетесь?
После этого Магомалеев записал его показания. В протоколе допроса, где Шишов ошибочно назван Шишковым, говорится, будто в ночь на 18 апреля 2003 года после дискотеки в Доме офицеров приятели пошли в парк Победы и там пили пиво возле вагончика, в котором принимали макулатуру. Мимо шли две девушки, худая и полная, с которыми Гаврилов и Шишов захотели познакомиться. Те были против, и тогда сначала Шишов одну девушку, а затем Гаврилов — другую, силой утащили их в кусты. Щурин, как сказано в протоколе, слышал крики и звуки борьбы, но сам оставался у вагончика. Когда мужчины вернулись без девушек, все трое убежали, при этом Гаврилов якобы заметил: «Ты мудила, Шишок».
После этого его выпустили из следственного отдела. Возле здания уже ждали родные Щурина, которые весь день пытались выяснить, куда он исчез после визита в полицию. Практически сразу, в 19:56, ему пришла смс: «Вернись в отдел. Это следователь».
«Андрей сел в машину, сидит и раскачивается. Сразу спрашиваем: "Тебя били?". Он говорит: "Да, я себя оговорил, я пацанов оговорил". Я его в таком состоянии никогда не видела, у него руки тряслись», — вспоминает сестра его жены Инна Николаева. В отдел возвращаться не стали, вместо этого Щурина отвезли в больницу, где его госпитализировали с подозрением на черепно-мозговую травму.
Ранним утром 18 февраля, по словам Инны, в больницу пришли полицейские, которые взяли с Щурина объяснения о том, что он не помнит, где и кто его избил. Она рассказывает, как приехала в больницу, а там уже «следователь ходит-расхаживает». К этому времени глава УМВД уже дал пресс-конференцию, на которой упомянул о раскрытии старого дела. Вечером, около семи часов, Щурина из больницы забрали полицейские, а ночью его опознала потерпевшая.
Насильник с бутылкой «Афанасия»
Труп 17-летней Дарьи Дроковой (имя несовершеннолетней изменено) утром 18 апреля 2003 года обнаружил спешивший на пары курсант Академии ПВО. Тело девушки, которое он сначала принял за манекен, лежало в куче мусора в кустах у воды, недалеко от пункта приема макулатуры. Быстро выяснилось, что студентка Тверского колледжа культуры Дрокова — не единственная жертва; вместе с ней пострадала ее подруга и соседка по комнате в общежитии Екатерина Кочеткова. Накануне девушки праздновали день рождения однокурсницы в клубе «От заката до рассвета». Около часу ночи, как рассказала следователям 19-летняя Кочеткова, им с Дарьей стало нехорошо, и они решили вернуться в общежитие. Остальные остались танцевать.
В общежитие на улице Орджоникидзе девушки решили идти через безлюдный парк Победы; по словам Кочетковой, другой дороги они не знали. Возле макулатурного вагончика к ним подошел светловолосый молодой человек, который представился Пашей. Он заговорил с девушками, попросил у них сигарету и предложил пива. «Мы отказались, но он все равно сунул мне бутылку в руку. У него в руках была стеклянная бутылка с пивом "Афанасий", еще одна бутылка стояла рядом с ним на земле», — вспоминала Кочеткова на следующий день после случившегося.
Потом из-за вагончика вышел худой и высокий молодой человек, представившийся Олегом. Девушка запомнила волосатые кисти рук. Он сказал, что тоже был в клубе, но ушел оттуда раньше. Через пару минут внезапно, «как будто вышел из-за кучи земли», появился еще один молодой человек с густыми черными бровями; как показалось Кочетковой, он был «не чисто русский, а с примесью кавказской национальности». Он хотел уточнить дорогу, и пока Кочеткова ему отвечала, кто-то неожиданно ударил ее по лицу, так что девушка упала. Она слышала, как вскрикнула и попыталась убежать подруга — за ней погнался один из мужчин. «Больше ни Дарью, ни этого мужчину я не видела», — рассказывала Кочеткова.
Саму же ее первые двое волоком потащили в сторону, в кусты, где по очереди, время от времени избивая, жестоко изнасиловали. Кочеткова, по ее словам, не кричала и не сопротивлялась, потому что ей пригрозили, что «убьют и скинут в реку Лазурь». Один из мужчин помогал другому — светил зажигалкой. Закончив издеваться над девушкой, незнакомцы несколько раз ударили ее, сняли с пальца серебряное кольцо с надписью «Спаси и сохрани» и ушли. Полежав какое-то время, пострадавшая собрала вещи и дошла до площади Капошвара, где поймала попутную машину и доехала до общежития. Дома она сходила в душ; потом вернулись соседки, они и сообщили о случившемся в полицию. Попыток узнать судьбу своей подруги Екатерина, судя по протоколу допроса, тогда не предпринимала.
Следователь, осматривавший место убийства, забрал оттуда пластиковый стаканчик, два шприца, «три стебля кустарника со следами бурого вещества, похожего на кровь», две банки из-под пива «Старый мельник» и «Охота крепкая» и черный женский полусапожок. Позже следователь вспоминал, что вокруг валялось много мусора, но он выбрал в качестве вещдоков именно эту тару, потому что «банки были свежие, по ним было видно, что их выбросили совсем недавно». Все найденное вместе с одеждой, в которой Кочеткова была той ночью, отправили на экспертизу. На ее юбке эксперты обнаружили пятно спермы. На банках пива — два отпечатка пальцев, которые не удалось идентифицировать.
Расследование изнасилования и убийства шло четыре месяца, следователи опросили знакомых пострадавших и сотрудников клуба «От заката до рассвета», но так и не смогли выйти на след преступников. Одного из подозреваемых даже привезли на опознание, но Кочеткова его не узнала. Экспертиза показала, что Дрокову задушили. 18 июля 2003 года расследование приостановили.
Вещественные доказательства хранились в прокуратуре, но когда в 2015 году дело возобновили, отыскать их не смогли. В деле остались лишь письменные материалы, протоколы, экспертизы и отпечатки пальцев неизвестного лица в системе дактилоскопического учета «Папилон». Один из этих отпечатков совпал с отпечатком задержанного за распитие пива Андрея Щурина.
Неожиданные воспоминания
Отпечатки пальцев у Щурина взяли 1 ноября 2014 года. Примерно через неделю эксперты отправили в Центральный отдел полиции Твери сообщение: отпечаток его правого среднего пальца совпал с отпечатком из дела 2003 года. Тогда же, в ноябре 2014-го, в этом отделе расследовали убийство девушки, признания в котором требовали от Ивана Гаврилова. Лишь через четыре месяца в полицию вызвали Щурина. Там, по его словам, его избивали и заставили оговорить своих знакомых Евгения Шишова и Бориса Гаврилова.
В тот же день, 17 февраля 2015 года, оперативник Александр Нечаев пишет рапорт о том, что им «были проведены ОРМ, в ходе которых гр. Щурин А.В. был вызван для беседы и сообщил сведения о факте изнасилования двух девушек в апреле 2003 года и об убийстве одной из них». Сразу после этого следователь Дмитрий Магомалеев вынес постановление о возобновлении расследования дела.
После допроса, во время которого он дал показания на Гаврилова и Шишова, свидетеля Андрея Щурина сначала отпустили, а затем задержали в больнице и после опознания арестовали.
20 февраля суд арестовал Гаврилова и Щурина по обвинению в изнасиловании 12-летней давности. В тот же день прошло еще два опознания — Екатерине Кочетковой показали упомянутого в показаниях Евгения Шишова и Алексея Агафонова, у которого Щурин уточнял имена старых знакомых. Всех их связывала совместная работа на тверской автобазе в начале 1990-х.
По словам Ирины Щуриной, когда усача Агафонова привезли в Следственный комитет, его сразу же сфотографировали на телефон. «Они говорят: "А давно усы-то носишь?" — "С армии". Возможно, его усы спасли», — говорит она. Усачей, как и очкариков, потерпевшая среди преступников не видела.
Евгения Шишова держали в полиции всю ночь, говорит Людмила Туманова, но насилия к нему не применяли. «Ему сестра сразу же привезла адвоката, который во время опознания успел быстро поменять его местами со статистом, четко перед приходом потерпевшей. Мы подозреваем, что это его спасло», — рассказывает Туманова.
Екатерина Кочеткова не опознала ни Шишова, ни Агафонова. У Евгения Шишова голубые глаза и светлые волосы, напоминает Туманова, а третьего нападавшего пострадавшая описывала как южанина с темными волосами и густыми бровями.
Третий нападавший так и остался в деле неустановленным лицом. Таким образом, первые свидетельские показания Щурина, в которых он назвал причастными к преступлению Гаврилова и Шишова, оказались не слишком достоверными. Он отказался от них, заявив, что выдумал все под давлением; позже суд исключит этот протокол из числа доказательств.
Отпечаток на банке пива Андрей Щурин объясняет тем, что он регулярно ходил этой дорогой домой и по пути пил пиво. Поскольку вещдоки утеряны, невозможно даже выяснить, на какой из двух банок пива нашелся его отпечаток — в карточке следотеки это не уточняется. Кроме того, Кочеткова и на следствии, и в суде уверенно вспоминала, что насильник пил «Афанасий» из стеклянной бутылки, а не из жестяной банки.
В итоге у следствия осталось два основных доказательства причастности обвиняемых к преступлению: отпечаток пальца и слова Екатерины Кочетковой, которая опознала их спустя 12 лет после нападения. При этом протоколы ее допроса в 2003 году и нескольких допросов в 2015-м не сходятся в деталях. Например, она по-разному описывает двух молодых людей, которые подошли к ней первыми. Уже в суде Кочеткова просто отмахнулась от этих расхождений:
— Я не знаю терминов. Меня спрашивал тот, кто писал протокол, он сам писал его. Я помню лицо внешне.
— Какие термины вы имеете в виду? — поинтересовался судья.
— «Круглолицый», «с толстыми губами», «с выпученными глазами». Я помню лицо целиком, а как написано по–юридически, я не знаю. Вот один сидит, а вот — второй, я их точно помню. Они стоят у меня перед глазами, по ночам я не могу спать. Что еще вы от меня хотите услышать? Откуда я знаю, что там написали?
Перепутала она и адрес клуба «От заката до рассвета», из которого в ту ночь возвращались девушки. Во время первой проверки показаний потерпевшая уверенно показывала, что клуб был в здании Академии ПВО, и только через полгода, во время второй проверки, указала верный дом по адресу улица Володарского, 3.
Куда более существенные расхождения в показаниях Кочетковой связаны с вопросом о том, пытались ли насильники ее убить. Первоначально Андрею Щурину и Борису Гаврилову предъявили обвинения в совершенном группой лиц изнасиловании и совершении иных насильственных действий сексуального характера (пункт «б» части 2 статьи 131 УК и пункт «б» части 2 статьи 132 УК в редакции 1996 года).
И в 2003 году, и в феврале 2015-го пострадавшая говорила, что преступники угрожали ей убийством, но не пытались исполнить свои угрозы. В июне 2015-го она неожиданно вспомнила, что после изнасилования один из молодых людей сказал: «Добивай». Тогда другой стал бить ее ногами. «Я притворялась, что я мертвая, чтобы они меня не убили, если бы я не притворялась, они бы меня точно убили», — утверждала Кочеткова.
В тот же день ее показания под видеозапись проверили на месте. В конце рукописного протокола проверки, составленного следователем Магомалеевым, похожим почерком, но другой ручкой дописана фраза: «Кроме того, Кочеткова Е.А. пояснила, что Щурин А.В. пытался убить ее, душа ее за горло». На видеозаписи этих слов нет, утверждает Ирина Щурина.
Уже во время следующего допроса следователь Магомалеев записывает за Кочетковой подробное описание попытки убийства: «Щурин обхватил мою шею руками и начал меня душить, при этом сдавливая мое горло до такой степени, что мне было совсем нечем дышать. В тот момент я притворилась, что мертва, я это решила сделать, чтобы они ушли, и я осталась жива. Когда Гаврилов и Щурин уходили, я услышала, как кто-то из них сказал фразу: "Все, добил", и они ушли». По словам потерпевшей, раньше она не рассказывала о попытке убийства, потому что не помнила, теперь же «вспомнила об этом и пояснила».
Благодаря этим показаниям к обвинениям в изнасиловании следствие добавило Гаврилову и Щурину обвинение в покушении на убийство с целью скрыть другое преступление (часть 3 статьи 30 и пункты «а», «ж, «к» части 2 статьи 105 УК).
Стриптиз и засекреченный таксист
Бывший руководитель службы безопасности клуба «От заката до рассвета» Денис Лошкарев — еще один свидетель обвинения, который утверждает, что помнит Бориса Гаврилова и Андрея Щурина: по его словам, в 2003 году они не раз заходили в клуб. На допросе 4 августа 2015-го Лошкарев утверждал, что лицо Гаврилова у него «ассоциируется с ночным клубом», а Щурин там бывал постоянно — обычно он стоял пьяный у барной стойки и в клуб «ходил, как правило, по четвергам». «Также данный мужчина ассоциируется у меня с мужчиной, который часто заказывал стриптиз», — вспоминал экс-сотрудник клуба.
Родные говорят, что оба обвиняемых никуда, кроме работы, не отлучались, у обоих в то время были дети-младенцы, а о ночных клубах речи идти не могло по чисто экономическим причинам. 17 апреля праздновали день рождения научной руководительницы Инны Николаевой, которая в 2003 году была студенткой, и Андрей забирал свояченицу из гостей — преподавательница подтвердила это в суде. Борис Гаврилов в то время вообще был в рейсе в Астрахани, говорит Людмила Туманова. Документы не сохранились, но показания давал его коллега-водитель, который предлагал Борису подработку, а тот отказался, поскольку был не в Твери.
В суде выступила и свидетельница, в 2003-м танцевавшая стриптиз в клубе «От заката до рассвета». По ее словам, выступления бывали только по пятницам и субботам — в другие дни танцевать было невыгодно, потому что в клуб ходили в основном бедные студенты.
Есть в деле и засекреченный свидетель под псевдонимом «Дмитрий», который в 2002-2003 годах якобы проводил «праздничные мероприятия» в клубе и одновременно подрабатывал таксистом. На допросе «Дмитрий» очень подробно пересказал детали случившегося на берегу Лазури, которые он «от кого-то услышал». «При этом одну из них насиловали сразу двое мужчин, она осталась жива, притворившись мертвой», — говорится в протоколе допроса «Дмитрия» от 15 мая 2015 года. Сама Кочеткова о том, что она притворялась мертвой, рассказала только 9 июня — почти месяц спустя.
Кроме того, засекреченный свидетель вспомнил, как осенью 2003 года он вез двух пьяных молодых людей, один из которых рассказывал другому, что «его друг по имени Андрей совершил преступление в отношении двух девушек на набережной реки Лазурь» — изнасиловал и убил. «Я хорошо запомнил, что один из молодых людей все время произносил фразу "износ"», — утверждал «Дмитрий». Он довез молодых людей до нужного им места и уехал. В полицию таксист до 2015 года с этим рассказом не обращался.
Экспертиза. Необъяснимый антиген и «интимные подробности»
Возможно, окончательную точку в вопросе о том, имели ли Гаврилов и Щурин отношение к изнасилованию Кочетковой, могла бы поставить молекулярно-генетическая экспертиза пятна спермы, обнаруженного на юбке пострадавшей. Но юбки в деле нет — как и остальные вещдоки, она пропала.
Сохранился только текст проведенной в 2003 году экспертизы — и он вызывает сомнения в причастности обвиняемых к преступлению. Исследовавшая черную шерстяную юбку эксперт тверского Бюро судебно-медицинской экспертизы Белова «в нижней части передней поверхности юбки с изнаночной стороны» обнаружила пятно спермы. В этой сперме она обнаружила антигены A, B и H.
Кровь принято делить на четыре группы в зависимости от наличия или отсутствия в ней антигенов A и B. Существуют четыре возможных комбинации этих антигенов:
0ab —первая группа крови, антигенов A и B нет;
Аb — вторая группа крови, есть антиген A;
Ba — третья группа крови, есть антиген B;
AB — четвертая группа, есть антигены A и B.
Антигены A и B образуются прикреплением дополнительных молекул к антигену H, который выделяется практически у всех людей.
«Потерпевшая Кочеткова Е.А. имеет группу крови 0ab», — констатировала эксперт. «Антиген A и B организму потерпевшей не присущ и, следовательно, [обнаруженные в сперме антигены A и B] могут произойти за счет спермы мужчины с группой крови AB», — констатирует эксперт. Однако если «половой акт был совершен с потерпевшей не одним мужчиной», то это могли быть мужчины с группами Ab и Ba. Примесь спермы третьего мужчины с группой 0ab также не исключена.
Из обвинительного заключения и слов потерпевшей следует, что непосредственно в изнасиловании принимали участие два человека — Андрей Щурин и Борис Гаврилов. Как установила экспертиза в 2015 году, группа крови Щурина — Ba, группа крови Гаврилова — 0ab. То есть найденного в пятне спермы антигена A нет ни у Кочетковой, ни у Щурина, ни у Гаврилова.
В материалах дела есть две отдельных экспертизы по вопросу о том, может ли пятно спермы происходить от Щурина и от Гаврилова.
«Происхождение спермы на юбке Кочетковой Е.А. от Щурина А.В. не исключается, но при обязательном присутствии спермы мужчины (мужчин) с группами крови AB, Ab», — говорится в экспертизе по Щурину. В экспертизе по Гаврилову уточняется, что в его случае необходимо присутствие «спермы мужчины (мужчин) с группами крови AB, Ab, Ba».
Экспертизы, которая документально оформляла бы очевидное предположение, что даже при участии в изнасиловании обоих обвиняемых — Щурина и Гаврилова — не могло появиться пятно спермы с антигенами A и B, среди материалов следствия нет.
Когда дело рассматривалось в суде, судья Владислав Нехаев отказался назначать эту экспертизу. По инициативе защиты судмедэксперт Андрей Скляров сделал консультативное заключение по всем экспертизам из дела.
«Поскольку по системе AB0 кровь гр-на Гаврилова Б.А. относится к группе 0αβ, гр-ки Кочетковой Е.А. к группе 0αβ, а гр-на Щурина А.В. к группе Вα, возможность образования обнаруженного на юбке гр-ки Кочетковой Е.А. пятна спермы, в котором выявлены антигены А и В, в результате смешения биологических выделений только от гр-ки Кочетковой Е.А., гр-на Щурина А.В. и гр-на Гаврилова Б.А. исключается, поскольку ни одно из вышеперечисленных лиц не является выделителем антигена А», — заключил специалист.
Приобщать это заключение к делу судья не стал. Более того, он отказал защите в допросе явившегося в суд специалиста, что грубо нарушает УПК, говорит адвокат Алексей Шеховцов.
Уже завершив процесс и уйдя в совещательную комнату для написания приговора, судья Нехаев неожиданно возобновил судебное следствие и все-таки допросил судмедэксперта Ольгу Левун. Та объяснила, что после сексуального контакта сперма может сохраняться во влагалище женщины от двух до пяти суток, а «на половом органе мужчины следы женской микрофлоры влагалищного эпителия» — до трех суток. А значит, есть теоретическая возможность того, что антиген А мог появиться из-за секса за пару дней до изнасилования. Это дало обвинению возможность утверждать, что присутствие антигена А на юбке объясняется предыдущими сексуальными контактами и не опровергает участия Гаврилова и Щурина в изнасиловании.
«Но вместе с тем сама потерпевшая еще в 2003 году указывала, что последний половой акт был совершен с ней за месяц до того, — возражает адвокат Шеховцов. — И опять же, локализация следа говорит о том, что он был получен именно в этих условиях».
Судья прояснять вопрос о происхождении злополучного антигена А не стал и в тексте приговора от него просто отмахнулся: «Выяснение происхождения в исследуемом следе образцов биологического материала, принадлежащего лицу с иной группой крови, нежели у потерпевшей и подсудимых, связано с интимными подробностями их личной жизни и выходит за пределы судебного разбирательства».
Терпеливый соучастник и удушение в шесть рук
Если обвинение в покушении на убийство Екатерины Кочетковой объясняется ее запоздалым воспоминанием о том, что Щурин ее якобы душил, то чем руководствовалось следствие, предъявляя обоим мужчинам обвинение в убийстве 17-летней Дарьи Дроковой, решительно непонятно. В окончательной формулировке к обвинению Гаврилова и Щурина добавились пункты «ж, «к» части 2 статьи 105 УК (убийство, совершенное группой по предварительному сговору и с целью скрыть другое преступление). Кроме того, их обвинили в изнасиловании и насильственных действиях сексуального характера в отношении Дроковой; к последним Уголовный кодекс относит любое сексуальное насилие кроме изнасилования в наиболее банальной форме — с проникновением члена во влагалище. Была ли Дрокова именно изнасилована, достоверно не известно, замечает защитник Шеховцов: точно установлен лишь факт насильственных действий сексуального характера.
По версии следствия, Андрей Щурин, Борис Гаврилов и их неустановленный соучастник изнасиловать и убить девушек договорились заранее. Для этого с потерпевшими сначала заговорил Щурин, позже к нему присоединились Гаврилов и неизвестный. Когда они напали на Кочеткову, Дрокова бросилась бежать, и третий мужчина «по договоренности с Щуриным и Гавриловым побежал за ней, догнал и применил насилие, переместив против ее воли в кусты к реке Лазурь».
Пока двое насиловали Кочеткову, неустановленный соучастник удерживал Дрокову, ожидая возвращения своих Щурина и Гаврилова. Держал он ее, видимо, достаточно долго: в обвинении 1:15 ночи указано как примерное время знакомства с девушками, а 2 часа ночи — как примерное время воссоединения соучастников.
Дроковой все трое «нанесли совместно не менее 15 ударов руками и ногами в область головы, туловища и конечностей». После этого Гаврилов, Щурин и неустановленный мужчина, «действуя совместно, с целью удовлетворения своей половой потребности» изнасиловали девушку — «поочередно ввели во влагалище потерпевшей свои половые члены».
После этого они зачем-то изнасиловали девушку валявшимися рядом ветками и убили ее. Причем из текста обвинительного заключения не ясно, как это происходило. Убийство девушки описано в нем одной-единственной фразой: «Находясь в вышеуказанном месте в вышеуказанное время Шурин А.В., Гаврилов Б.А. и неустановленный следствием мужчина, совместно удерживая потерпевшую, стали сдавливать ее шею руками, перекрыв тем самым дыхательные пути [Дроковой], до тех пор, пока она не перестала подавать признаки жизни». Труп бросили в реку Лазурь.
Приговор
Следователь Дмитрий Магомалеев объявил расследование оконченным и передал материалы в прокуратуру Тверской области в ноябре 2015 года. Ведомство четыре раза возвращало дело на доследование. В четвертый раз прокурор вернул дело Магомалееву в апреле 2016-го. Следователь упорно обжаловал решения районного прокурора, и в середине мая дошел со своими жалобами до центрального аппарата Следственного комитета. 16 мая заместитель председателя СК генерал-полковник Елена Леоненко переслала жалобу замглавы Генпрокуратуры Виктору Гриню. Только после этого лично Гринь утвердил обвинительное заключение и направил дело в Тверской областной суд.
Суд тоже сначала вернул дело в прокуратуру. «Складывается впечатление, что все это дело от себя футболили изо всех сил», — говорит Инна Николаева.
Только в начале сентября 2016 года Тверской областной суд начал рассматривать дело. Процесс вел судья Владислав Нехаев, который считается специалистом по процессам с присяжными. Но обвиняемые просить присяжных не стали, и решение Нехаев выносил единолично.
Дело рассматривалось в закрытом режиме, и родственников подсудимых не пускали не только в зал, но даже в здание суда, жалуется Ирина Щурина. Потерпевшая Екатерина Кочеткова, которая жила в тверской деревне Анисимово, после возобновления дела вернулась на родину в Керчь и приехала только на одно заседание. Ее допрос занял весь день.
По словам адвоката Шеховцова, во время заседаний «суд высказывался косвенно о виновности обвиняемых». Например, судья угрожал одному из свидетелей уголовным делом за дачу заведомо ложных показаний. «Прокурор очень много вопросов задавал не по существу, свидетель спросил: "Почему вы меня пытаете?". Судья ответил: "Пытать мы вас будем, когда вас будут судить за дачу заведомо ложных показаний"», — пересказывает адвокат.
«Мы считаем, что таким образом суд высказался относительно виновности еще до удаления в совещательную комнату», — говорит защитник.
Приговор Нехаев огласил в конце декабря. Судья зачитал только резолютивную часть приговора: обоих подсудимых он признал виновными, незначительно переквалифицировав отдельные пункты обвинения. Андрея Щурина он приговорил к 20, а Бориса Гаврилова — к 18 годам в колонии строгого режима. Кроме того, суд постановил взыскать с Щурина 2 млн, а с Гаврилова 1 млн рублей в пользу потерпевшей Екатерины Кочетковой. Полный текст приговора он выдал адвокатам осужденных только месяц спустя.
Из документа ясно, что судью не смутило ни одно из очевидно слабых мест обвинения — ни то , что нападавшие пили пиво «Афанасий» в стеклянных бутылках, а отпечаток Щурина нашелся на жестяной банке, ни избирательная память потерпевшей, которая только спустя 12 лет припомнила, что ее пытались задушить, ни экспертиза спермы, которая ставит под вопрос участие в изнасиловании как Гаврилова, так и Щурина.
«Все доказательства, положенные в основу приговора, получены в соответствии с требованиями уголовно-процессуального закона, логичны, последовательны и взаимосогласованы», — заключил судья Нехаев. | {
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cricket
Updated: Sep 07, 2019 08:25 IST
The BCCI has issued a showcause notice to out-of-favour India player Dinesh Karthik for attending a promotional event of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) franchise Trinbago Knight Riders, which is owned by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. The 34-year-old Karthik, who was a controversial pick in India’s World Cup squad, was seen in Trinbago Knight Riders dressing room and attending their opening CPL match against St Kitts & Nevis in Port of Spain.
Also Read: Pakistan pacer Hasnain gets hug from Shah Rukh Khan - Watch
“Yes, Dinesh Karthik has been issued a showcause notice by the BCCI. We have received photographs where Karthik is seen in the dressing room of Trinbago Knight Riders. BCCI CEO Rahul Johri has issued a showcause notice asking him to explain why his central contract shouldn’t be annulled,” a senior BCCI official, privy to the development said.
The BCCI got a screen grab of Karthik, who played 26 Tests, 94 ODIs and 32 T20Is for India, seen wearing Trinbago Knight Riders jersey and relaxing in the dressing room along side Brendon McCullum.
It is learnt that Karthik, who is the captain of Shah Rukh Khan co-owned franchise Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, didn’t seek any permission from the BCCI to attend the event in the West Indies.
“As a centrally contracted cricketer, Dinesh Karthik had no business being seen in a franchise league which is not IPL. His central contract prevents him from being associated with any private league as it has been the BCCI clause for all active first-class cricketers,” the senior official said.
Also Read: Malinga scripts history, takes four wickets in four deliveries against Kiwis
Karthik wasn’t available for comment but it is expected that he would be tendering unconditional apology as the National One Day Championship for the Vijay Hazare Trophy starts on September 24, where he is expected to turn up for Tamil Nadu.
The Tamil Nadu wicketkeeper-batsman’s international career is believed to be all but over after his failure in the World Cup having scored 8 and 6 in two games that he batted. His susceptible technique in bowler-friendly conditions was badly exposed after his selection in the national team without any proper ODI performance created a furore. | {
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Chile's Catholic bishops say they're open to whatever Pope Francis proposes to overhaul the Chilean church, which has been devastated by a clergy sex abuse and cover-up scandal, including removing bishops, reforming seminaries and paying financial reparation to victims.
Chilean bishops told reporters Monday they were heading into three days of meetings with Francis humbled, pained and shamed for their own errors in handling sex abuse cases by priests. They said they wanted to listen to Francis and follow his lead in asking forgiveness.
A conference spokesman, Bishop Juan Ignacio Gonzalez, said "it's possible" that some Chilean bishops will resign but that it was up to the pope. He said: "if he asks, we'll do it."
Francis summoned the bishops to Rome after receiving a report into an abuse cover-up scandal. | {
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AmDTuning.com team boss Shaun Hollamby says he hopes to see the Audi squad challenge for a podium finish before the end of the BTCC season.
The team heads for Silverstone this weekend seeking to maintain a solid campaign that has seen drivers Ollie Jackson and Ant Whorton-Eales regularly challenge for points finishes.
Both have led reverse grid races this season with the ever-improving S3 and Hollamby said he felt a ‘great result’ could be just around the corner.
“I feel very positive going into Silverstone,” he said. “We’ve been knocking on the door of a great result for a while now, and I think that both Ollie and Ant have shown that they have the pace to be on the podium if things were to fall our way.
“We’ve shown we can challenge for the top ten and score points, and to get onto the podium with the Audi has to be the new aim – hopefully before the end of the season.
“Silverstone should suit the car and having learned a lot again at Rockingham, I’m confident that – with the pace we have unlocked in the car – the guys can bring home some good results.”
AmDTuning.com has a single podium finish to its name, with Dave Newsham having taken second place at Knockhill back in 2014. | {
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DUBLIN DIOCESAN REPORT:LISTENING TO Taoiseach Brian Cowen in the Dáil on Tuesday as he delivered his semper fidelis (always faithful) defence of the Vatican and the papal nunciature to Ireland over their lack of co-operation with the Dublin diocesan commission, was to be reminded of other days and another taoiseach, writes PATSY McGARRYReligious Affairs Correspondent
In April 1951, during debate on the ill-fated Mother and Child Scheme, opposed by the Catholic bishops led by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, then taoiseach John A Costello felt impelled to announce, “I am an Irishman second: I am a Catholic first and I accept without qualification in all respects the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong.” He told the Dáil: “I, as a Catholic, obey my church authorities and will continue to do so.”
It is hardly unfair to suggest that in his doughty defence of the Vatican’s non-co-operation with a commission of this State, set up by a Government of which he was a member, our current Taoiseach has discovered he too is “an Irishman second”.
You might say the same of his dismissal of requests for him to call for the resignation of bishops currently in office and named in the Dublin report, as a matter for the church not the State.
Is it not truly remarkable that a Taoiseach of this State can be so sanguine about an institution whose officer class oversaw the mass cover-up of rape and abuse of children in this State?
And all this in the face of findings that this same institution, willy nilly, moved child rapists and child abusers hither and thither, without regard to the children they had or would destroy, as it protected itself. To be specific, the report concluded that “the welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages”.
It continued that instead their focus “was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members – the priests.”
Instead of criticising the bishops, the Taoiseach pointed the finger at the commission in the Dáil last Tuesday. It was not “unreasonable to assume the Holy See was open to responding to a further approach through diplomatic channels” from the commission, he said. Similarly where the papal nuncio was concerned.
He said “neither is it unreasonable to assume that when the papal nuncio received correspondence from the commission, in February 2007 and earlier this year, both the present and previous papal nuncios believed the matter was more properly addressed by the diplomatic note”.
The Irish Times has learned that contacting the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in September 2006 the commission understood it was communicating with a church not a State. Similarly, in communicating with the papal nunciature in Dublin, it felt it was addressing the papal legate (pope’s spiritual representative) rather than the Vatican’s diplomatic representative.
As explained in its report, the commission felt constrained in communicating with the Vatican or papal nunciature to Ireland through diplomatic channels because of its own status as independent of this State. As its remit involved investigating how State agencies dealt with allegations of clerical child abuse, it felt constrained from using State diplomatic channels in dealing with Rome. It is also believed the commission was not consulted in preparation of the Taoiseach’s written reply on the matter which he read to the Dáil on Tuesday.
It is understood that though the commission wrote to the CDF in September 2006, it was March 2007 before the CDF responded to the Department of Foreign Affairs through the Irish Embassy to the Holy See, explaining its protocol difficulties. The papal nunciature in Dublin ignored all correspondence from the commission, in February 2007 and early 2009.
The commission was interested in the Vatican’s 1922 Crimen Solicitationis document, updated in 1962, which addressed clerical child abuse, and in its letter of May 2001 to all Catholic bishops worldwide.
Sent by then CDF prefect Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela requested that all allegations of child sex abuse which had reached the threshold of “a semblance of truth” should be referred to the CDF in Rome.
The purpose of the letter, which was accompanied by separate correspondence also in Latin asking that it be kept secret, was to ensure a uniform response to the abuse issue, it was explained. According to the Dublin report the current chancellor of the Dublin archdiocese Mgr John Dolan told the commission that this 2001 CDF policy was later modified as “Rome was unable to deal with the vast number of referrals”. | {
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While anti-violence activists continue to push for stricter gun laws including an all-out ban on assault weapons, gun advocates have dug in their heels, arguing that banning firearms and concealed carry violates people’s rights. Here are arguments for and against gun control:
PROS OF GUN CONTROL:
Advances the NRA’s mission of responsibility with firearms
Cold, dead hands free to hold other things
Mailroom guy just stormed off after getting fired
Guns are so loud!
Nerds, freaks, and weirdos could once again be put in their place without fear of reprisal
Still hundreds of other ways to murder people out there
Family not worth defending
CONS OF GUN CONTROL:
Ugh, already bought so many guns
Leaves citizens defenseless against government with world’s largest military, vast stockpile of nuclear weapons
Shopping for wedding gift suddenly even harder
Already hollowed out Bible
Nothing to spin around finger when bored
May encounter some resistance
Bang! Bang! Bang! Woohoo! | {
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The female condom was redesigned and relaunched in the US
Washington DC will become the first city in the US to make female condoms available for free, the Washington Post has reported.
The contraceptives will be handed out in beauty salons, convenience stores and high schools in areas with high rates of HIV/Aids infection.
Male condoms have long been handed out but infection rates remain high among Washington's black residents.
Female condoms have been on sale since 1993 but take-up has been slow.
The initial version of the contraceptive was judged by US customers to be too expensive.
However, a new version now being used in countries including South Africa, Brazil, and Indonesia will be distributed in Washington DC and offered for sale in pharmacies alongside male condoms.
Cutting edge
"Anywhere male condoms are available, female condoms will be available," Shannon Hader, director of the city's HIV/AIDS administration, told the Washington Post.
"We're trying to make every effort count to build on what already exists... to expand options rather than limit them."
HIV/Aids infection is the leading cause of death for black women aged 25-34 in the US.
A 2008 report showed Washington DC's HIV/Aids rate at 3%, or about 15,100 adults, the Post reported. | {
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It was the first time any of the Democrats’ gun bills were taken up by a House committee. The Senate has passed four gun-control bills that will make their way to the same House committee later in the session.
Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington), the committee chairman, said the assault-weapons ban is still being worked on. “We hope to bring it up in short order,” he said.
The proposed ban is a top rallying cry for gun rights advocates, some of whom carried military-style weapons strapped across their chests during a huge rally Monday against gun control.
The bills that passed Friday include “universal” background checks for gun buyers, except for purchases between family members, at legal firearms shows or as part of a buyback or giveback program, or for temporary transfers that occur while the original owner is there, such as when a hunter lends a weapon to a hunting partner, as long as they remain together.
The one-handgun-per-month rule was in effect in Virginia until 2012. When it was removed, authorities reported a spike in the number of guns bought in Virginia being used for crimes in other states. Brian Moran, state secretary of public safety and homeland security, called that “a distinction we do not want.”
Also headed to the House floor is a “red flag” bill that would allow a judge, after a police investigation, to remove guns from individuals determined to be at risk to themselves or others. Gun rights supporters who flooded Richmond on Monday had protested that the measure would allow a vengeful neighbor or spouse to report someone without cause, but Del. Richard C. “Rip” Sullivan Jr. (D-Fairfax), sponsor of the bill, said the law “will not be used as a cudgel by an angry neighbor or angry brother-in-law. There are stiff penalties for false reports.”
Democrats, who wrested control of the majority from Republicans in November partly on the promise of enacting stiffer gun laws, also pushed through a measure that would allow cities, towns and counties to adopt their own gun laws, as long as none of them conflict with overarching state law.
The statute would not necessarily apply to “Second Amendment sanctuary” proclamations that have been approved in dozens of cities and towns across the state, with local officials pledging not to enforce laws they see as unconstitutional.
Other bills approved by the committee include ones that would raise the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony for those who recklessly leave a loaded gun in a place that endangers the life of anyone under the age of 18 and would require gun owners to report a lost or stolen gun within 24 hours of becoming aware of the loss, under threat of a $250 penalty.
Committee hearings on the gun legislation have been jammed with proponents and opponents of the bills, some of whom testified emotionally.
William Shaw, a gun owner from Louisa County, called the bill allowing local gun laws “the most impractical of all of them.”
“This bill will guarantee the most number of accidents,” he said. “It’s hideously impractical.”
Proponents of universal background checks included representatives from the state attorney general’s office, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Giffords gun-control group, the Virginia Catholic Conference, the League of Women Voters, the Virginia Nurses Association, the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police and Moms Demand Action.
Philip Van Cleave, president of the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League, warned that “if we do universal background checks, the next step is universal gun registration.”
The bills often, but not always, passed on party-line votes.
One bill that drew support from Republicans says any gun owner who is the subject of a permanent protective order may not possess weapons while the order is in effect.
“Would this remove the person from the right to protect themselves in their own home?” asked Del. Thomas C. Wright Jr. (R-Lunenburg).
Del. Michael P. Mullin (D-Newport News) offered an answer. “They should think about that before they start beating their spouse,” he said. “They were subject to a permanent protective because they were violent against someone in their family. They should not have a gun.” | {
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UPDATED with instructions on how to score a bottle of Big Mac Special Sauce. The mystery surrounding McDonald’s big surprise announcement on January 26, 2017 has been revealed, and it’s deliciously saucy: 10,000 bottles of Big Mac Special Sauce!
To celebrate the launch of the two new Big Mac sizes – Grand Mac and Mac Jr. – McDonald’s will be giving away 10,000 bottles of Big Mac Special Sauce on Thursday.
The mystery all started when McDonald’s issued a teaser on social media last week that referred to a special announcement on January 26, 2017 – accompanied by an image of the date “01.26.17.” Initially, the date numbers appeared to be spelled out with Big Macs or fries, but now we know those date numbers are spelled out with 10,000 bottles of Big Mac Special Sauce.
How to score a bottle of Big Mac Special Sauce
To score a bottle of Big Mac Special Sauce you’ll have to visit a participating location and say, “There’s a Big Mac for that.” No purchase is required to receive the sauce.
The giveaway will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
McDonald’s will also be offering fans who aren’t near a location where the bottles are being given away a chance to score a bottle by following McDonald’s on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. There will also be a Big Mac iMessage app available where you can find the nearest McDonald’s in your area location hosting a sauce giveaway.
If you want to get your hands on one of these individually numbered, limited-edition collector bottles of Big Mac Special Sauce – stay tuned. McDonald’s plans to reveal details on where and when you might get one on Wednesday, January 25, 2017.
Images – McDonald’s | {
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Shearer met Paul Gascoigne at Newcastle's Tyne Theatre before one of Gazza's solo talkshows
Alan Shearer's Euro 96: When Football Came Home Date: Sunday, 7 June Time: 22:30-23:30 BST, BBC One and BBC iPlayer
This article was originally published in June 2016 to coincide with the first screening of Alan Shearer's Euro 96: When Football Came Home. The programme is being shown again on Sunday, 7 June on BBC One and BBC iPlayer at 22:30 BST as part of BBC Sport's Euros Rewind programming throughout June.
I listened to the 'Three Lions' song quite a few times while I was making my documentary about Euro 96, but not as often as I did during the tournament itself.
Paul Gascoigne used to wake us all up every morning at England's team hotel by opening his bedroom window and playing it on his CD player at full blast.
I am not sure the other guests appreciated it as much as we did, but we could always rely on Gazza to keep us entertained.
He is not just my old team-mate; he is my friend and he was the first player I went to meet when I began putting the programme together at the end of November 2015.
It was great to see him in such good form, looking well and laughing and joking.
As I expected, he had some classic stories about Euro 96, including some other tales of what he got up to at the hotel and also how he did not let some of the Scotland players forget the spectacular goal he scored against them at Wembley.
Paul Gascoigne's sublime Euro 96 goal against Scotland
That moment - and our famous "dentist's chair" celebration when I squirted water down his throat - was one of the three things that came up with everyone I met up with to talk about the tournament's 20th anniversary.
The others were our 4-1 win over the Netherlands and the "Three Lions" song, which seemed to have been the soundtrack to everyone's summer, not just us England players.
'We were under pressure at the start'
The England team that faced Switzerland in their opening match of Euro '96 - back row: Paul Ince, Darren Anderton, Gareth Southgate, Steve McManaman, Teddy Sheringham, David Seaman, Alan Shearer. Front row: Paul Gascoigne, Gary Neville, Tony Adams, Stuart Pearce
Euro 96 does not feel like 20 years ago, but it has been great to look back at it all and remember how the momentum built and built until it felt like the whole country was behind us.
Things were very different when the tournament started. There had been some incidents during our Far East tour a couple of weeks earlier that saw us heavily criticised by the media - including the original "dentist's chair" escapade in a Hong Kong nightclub.
So we were under pressure because of that, and also because of the expectation on us to perform well on our own patch.
Personally, I had something to prove. I ended up as top scorer at Euro 96 and it was the defining moment in my England career but I had not scored an international goal in 12 matches over 21 months before the tournament started.
However, the manager, Terry Venables, did not stop believing in me, and he was the same with every player in his squad.
People remember the great team spirit that England side had, and Terry's man-management skills were a big reason for that.
From manager to hotelier - Venables was England boss from 1994 to 1996 but now owns a hotel on the edge of the Font Roja National Park in Spain
I went over to Spain to speak to him for the documentary - he and his wife run a little boutique hotel near Alicante so he spends half the year over there.
It was great to catch up. He looks back at Euro 96 as the best time of his managerial career - which says a lot when you consider his time at Barcelona and everything he achieved.
'Beating the Dutch was when the euphoria kicked in'
We did not actually begin the tournament very well, drawing 1-1 with Switzerland, although I did ease some of the pressure that was on me by scoring.
Things started to go our way when we beat Scotland 2-0 but it was only after our final group game, against the Netherlands, that the euphoria really kicked in.
That night we beat the Dutch 4-1 at Wembley is probably my favourite memory of Euro 96.
It was the biggest and best atmosphere I experienced in an England shirt and it was also the most complete team performance I was part of for my country - everyone was a 10/10 that night.
I had not watched that game for a long time until I started putting the documentary together and what I did not remember was that myself and my strike partner Teddy Sheringham were both substituted with about 15 minutes to go.
We had both already scored two apiece so I reckon we could have had a hat-trick if we had been left on.
Along with Paul Ince, David Seaman and Gazza, Teddy was one of the players I met up with to reminisce - in his case over a round of golf.
Euro 96: Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham hit the golf course
But I also spoke to people who I did not encounter at the time - for example David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, who were behind the "Three Lions" song, and the BBC commentators John Motson and Barry Davies.
Motson and Davies are another reason why those England games are so fondly remembered by millions of people, not just the ones who were lucky enough to be at Wembley to see them.
But while their commentaries are part of the memory of that summer for everyone who was watching on TV, they were all new to me.
Even the videos we were shown after the matches to go through things did not have a commentary on them so I had never heard them until earlier this year. Listening to them, you realise these guys are fantastic at their job.
Comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel co-wrote 'Three Lions' with Ian Broudie of the Lightning Seeds. It topped the charts for two weeks in May and June 1996
'No regrets - just great memories'
It was after the Netherlands match that things really went crazy, and not just because we thought we could go on and win the tournament.
I remember popping out of the team hotel the next day, and going into Burnham town centre to get my hair cut - yes, believe it or not I did have hair back then.
When I got out of the taxi, there was a kind of street party going on. I had been reading about it in the newspapers but it was different to see it for myself - that was one of the times I realised what the atmosphere was like around the entire country.
We got past Spain in the quarter-finals on penalties but, of course, our shootout defeat by Germany in the semi-finals meant the tournament did not end the way we all wanted it to.
Yes, we could have won it, and obviously I wish we had won it, but there are no regrets - there can't be - just great memories.
Everyone I spoke to said "look, we gave it everything". When that happens, you cannot ask for any more. It was just not meant to be.
We had a lot of fun along the way, and the whole country did too, which I think is important.
Lots of things made Euro 96 special but the overriding reason it is remembered so fondly by so many people in England is that it kind of brought football and the nation together again.
Alan Shearer was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan. | {
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WASHINGTON -- The state-appointed emergency manager who oversaw Flint, Michigan, when its water source was switched to the Flint River says he relied on state and federal experts, but the experts failed him and the city of some 100,000 people.
Darnell Earley says in prepared testimony for the first of two congressional hearings that he was overwhelmed by challenges facing the impoverished city and relied on experts from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to advise him.
Former DPS Emergency Manager Darnell Earley. CBS Detroit via DPS
Earley says that for months after the April 2014 switch he believed information he was receiving -- some of it scientifically complex -- was accurate.
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But he says in hindsight he should have done more to challenge the experts who told him Flint's water problems were harmless to human health and geographically limited in nature.
"In relying on experts, the solutions I oversaw failed to ameliorate the troubles plaguing Flint's water," Earley says in prepared testimony for a hearing Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of Earley's testimony in advance.
Flint switched its water source from Detroit's water system to the Flint River in 2014 to save money, but the river water was not treated properly and lead from aging pipes leached into Flint homes and businesses. Elevated levels of lead have been found in some children's blood, with lead contamination linked to learning disabilities and other problems.
The chain of events has fueled calls for Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to resign amid outrage over the treatment of the people of Flint, a predominantly African-American city. A recall effort is under way in Michigan for Snyder, who has been widely blamed for the crisis.
The governor is scheduled to appear before the committee on Thursday, along with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
Problems with the Flint River water became apparent soon after the switch was made, Earley says. In August 2014, tests indicated the presence of fecal matter and other contaminants. Under state guidance, the city issued an advisory telling city residents to boil their water before using it.
But Earley says he was not overly concerned, since he was "advised by these experts" that the contaminants were "generally harmless" and could be eradicated by adding chlorine and fresh water to the system, which the city did.
Earley, a longtime school administrator and municipal official who previously served as city manager in Saginaw, Michigan, took over as emergency manager in Flint in October 2013 -- seven months after the Flint City Council approved the water switch and former emergency manager Edward Kurtz signed it.
Earley said he was given a variety of explanations for the coliform bacteria in the city's water. Explanations ranged from low-water pressure to an unauthorized connection to a sampling error, he said.
"I could only understand these reports in conjunction with the scientific interpretations" provided by state environmental officials and water treatment staff, he said.
"At absolutely no time during these boil-water advisories were the issues of corrosion control or lead leaching brought to my attention," Earley said.
Earley's testimony comes as the House oversight panel holds two hearings this week on the Flint crisis. Besides Earley, former Flint Mayor Dayne Walling and Susan Hedman, the former head of the EPA's Midwest regional office, are set to testify. Hedman resigned Feb. 1 as the Flint crisis worsened.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the oversight panel, visited Flint over the weekend with other lawmakers.
"What happened in Flint cannot ever happen again," Chaffetz said in an opening statement prepared for Tuesday's hearing. "The people of Flint were being poisoned in their own homes by the water they used every day for drinking and bathing."
"It is almost unbelievable how many bad decisions were made" in Flint, at all levels of government, Chaffetz said.
There was a groundbreaking moment in Flint, Michigan in early March as a plumbing crew dug up a corroded lead pipe outside a home where an expectant mother and an eight-year-old girl live -- and replaced it with a copper pipe.
For the city, that means one down, about 8,000 to go, CBS News reported.
Nurse Toni Larocco spent part of that day in March checking on Stephanie Bradley's one-year-old daughter Ced-Janae, who tested positive for lead in September.
It was one of five house calls nurses from the Genessee County Health Dept made, part of a city-wide effort to keep track of kids with lead poisoning.
"It's gone up huge. Our numbers of families that we're seeing has exponentially grown," Larocco told CBS News.
Bradley says she drank the contaminated water throughout her pregnancy. When she first learned that her daughter had high levels of lead, "I was very, very afraid because of how young she is and I didn't know the dangers of it."
Five months after Flint switched its water supply back to Lake Huron, nearly a thousand homes still have dangerous levels of lead in the water, and 72 children are still testing positive for high lead levels in their blood. | {
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Argentina Coach, Alejandro Sabella is planning two very different sides for the upcoming World Cup Qualifiers with Peru and Uruguay. With qualification already confirmed but several first team players injured, including Captain, Lionel Messi, there is a chance for a number of fringe players to stake a claim for a place in next summer’s squad.
Alejandro Sabella’s most recent squad already included a couple of interesting talking points, with the inclusion of Mauro Icardi and the calls up for Argentine based players, Leandro Somoza and Gabriel Mercado. However, as the squad prepare for the double header at the training centre in Ezeiza, it appears that many will play a part in, at least, one of the fixtures.
With Lionel Messi and Gonzalo Higuain both missing through injury, Sabella will be without his potent attacking threat but with the absence of Javier Macherano and Fernando Gago, the midfield will also need tinkering.
It seems, Sabella will go with his strongest possible lineup for Friday night’s game with Peru in El Monumental. Sergio Aguero will be partnered with Ezequiel Lavezzi and Rodrigo Palacios in attack. Palacios was the man who replaced Higuain against Paraguay when he last missed out thorough injury.
In midfield, Sabella will turn to his direct replacements for Macherano and Gago, namely, Valencia’s, Ever Banega and Lazio’s, Lucas Biglia. Supposedly, Angel Di Maria will keep his place in this midfield trio.
One area which is back to full fitness is the defence and Sabella will deploy his first choice pairing in the game against Peru. Ezequiel Garay and Federico Fernandez both return from suspension and full-back, Marcos Rojo has recovered from the injury that kept him out. All are expected to play on Friday night.
The interesting game could be on Tuesday when Argentina make the short trip to Montevideo to face Uruguay. Sabella is wary of playing too many first team players because he does not want anyone picking up any suspensions in the event they were sent off in the final Qualifying fixture.
The Clásico del Río de La Plata has the potential to be a heated affair, particularly, as Uruguay still have a lot to play for, in terms of World Cup Qualification. With this in mind, changes are expected and the likes of debutant, Mauro Icardi, Erik Lamela, Fabricio Coloccini and some of the Argentine based players are likely to get the nod.
For these players it could be one of the last chances to firmly place themselves on Sabella’s list for Brazil. | {
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President Obama unleashed on Rep. Darrell Issa late Sunday, calling the California Republican a "shameless" congressman who has only managed to waste taxpayer dollars during his tenure.
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Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in California in support of Democratic challenge Doug Applegate, Obama charged that Issa was Republican presidential nominee Donald "Trump before Trump."
"This guy has spent all his time simply trying to obstruct, to feed the same sentiments that resulted in Donald Trump Donald John TrumpOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Pelosi: Trump hurrying to fill SCOTUS seat so he can repeal ObamaCare Trump mocks Biden appearance, mask use ahead of first debate MORE becoming their nominee," Obama said.
"Issa's primary contribution to the United States Congress has been to obstruct and to waste taxpayer dollars on trumped-up investigations that have led nowhere."
Obama also hit Issa over using a photo of the president in Issa's campaign mailers "touting his cooperation on issues with me."
.@ApplegateCA49 New Issa mailer: Brags abt basic decency, aligns w Obama after trying to ruin HRC. Go Team g8! pic.twitter.com/extxeWQgxv — (((em))) (@controlpremium) October 16, 2016
"Now, that is the definition of chutzpah," Obama said.
"Here's a guy who called my administration perhaps the most corrupt in history — despite the fact that actually we have not had a major scandal in my administration — that, when Trump was suggesting that I wasn’t even born here, said, well, I don’t know, was not sure. We can pull up the quotes," Obama said.
"And now he’s sending out brochures touting his cooperation with me. Now, that is shameless."
Issa is fighting a competitive race against Applegate as Democrats look to boost their numbers in the House. | {
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Sunnyside resident Gertrude “Gert” McDonald, a pioneer in Queens politics and longtime civic leader, died on Sunday, May 21. She was 100 years old.
In 1968, McDonald became the first woman to run for elective office as a Democrat in Queens County. She ran for a seat on the New York State Assembly and although she lost, local leaders such as Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan credit her for inspiring other women to run.
“Gert McDonald was a wonderful, community-minded person who cared about making our neighborhoods of Sunnyside and western Queens a better place,” she said. “She paved the way for many woman elected officials like myself to be more active in government.”
McDonald also served on Community Board 2, was the president of the 108th Precinct Community Council and member of both Sunnyside Community Services and United Forties Civic Association. She, along with other community leaders, fought in 2009 to bring back a decommissioned bus stop near Sunnyside Community Services to provide easier transportation access to seniors.
Congressman Joe Crowley called her “a true giant within our borough.”
“For nearly eight decades, Gert harbored an unrivaled passion for civic engagement and for making a difference in her community,” he said. “Gert shattered barriers for women in local politics and became a true inspiration for generations to come.”
McDonald leaves behind her daughter Eileen Auld, seven grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
The wake will be held at Edward D. Lynch Funeral Home, 43-07 Queens Blvd. on May 24 and May 25 from 2 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m.
A funeral Mass will be held 10:30 a.m. on May 26, 2017, at St. Teresa Church, located at 50-20 45th St. in Woodside. The burial will be in Calvary Cemetery, located at 49-02 Laurel Hill Blvd.
In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting donations in Gert’s memory to The New York Women’s Foundation at 39 Broadway, Suite 2300, New York, NY, 10006. | {
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Recent articles by Warren McGregor
A Workers Party and Elections or Class Struggle? Construyendo un contrapoder de la clase obrera negra contra la opresió... Unidade Da Esquerda Ou Frente Classista? Recent Articles about International Economy
Shock en el Mercado Petrolero. Caos en el Laberinto by José Luis Carretero Miramar. Here Comes Bourgeois Socialism Again by Dimitris Fasfalis A Case for Anarchist Class Analysis by Leroy Maisiri Anarchist Economics (a Brief Introduction) international | economy | opinion / analysis Monday September 05, 2011 17:52 Monday September 05, 2011 17:52 by Warren McGregor - ZACF by Warren McGregor - ZACF mcgregor.warren at gmail dot com PRESENTATION TO INKHULULEKHO ANARCHIST READING GROUP Comrades, this presentation covers the themes of global redistribution, economic growth of a new type, and renumeration and what these may mean in an economy based on anarchist principles. I was mandated to examine how these themes related to the two required readings for this week:
(i) Reads Kropotkin: Selections from his Works, and
(ii) Alberts Parecon
Introduction
I found it hard to locate bits from the reading that spoke to the themes. As such, I found it necessary to extrapolate from my understanding of the readings and the principles of justice and equality that underlie the writers contributions. I base that which is to follow in agreement with Alberts definition of an economy as a system of production and distribution that is based on human interaction for human needs and desires. I will expand on this a bit later.
Global Redistribution
An anarchist economy would be co-ordinated, deliberative and qualitatively and quantitatively indicative. The goal is a global economy planned through nested federations (Albert, 2003: 93) of worker and consumer/community councils in whose hands decision-making power would rest.
In accordance with the old communist ideal, distribution will be based on human need. Development of global productive capacity to fulfil this need would need to be widespread, thus fuelling job creation and the subsequent spreading of balanced job complexes (work tasks that, crudely, stimulate both the workers physical and intellectual development as well and that which allocates socially necessary tasks deemed unpleasant, e.g. cleaning toilets). This would have to mean (a) a global redistribution of physically and mentally stimulating and socially necessary labour and (b) eventual redistribution according to need and distribution for needs and desires. Thus, instead of over-production of commodities that we either cant afford or dont need (a production based on the logic of capitalist accumulation) and under-production for the majority (Kropotkin, in Read, 1942: 95-96), we would produce and distribute according to directly democratic, co-ordinated, federative and open discussion. We would produce what we need and want.
Production and distribution proposals would be the result of a process of consultation and revision between workplace and consumer councils at all the appropriate levels of federative organisation (taking into account those that the proposal would affect). These are thus created through discussion, edited, re-discussed, re-edited and so on, till agreement is reached.
The economy thus planned would be one in which the least amount of human effort is required for production and distribution. The incentive is then for continual technological and work process development and refinement to increase leisure time for the pursuit of desires, intellectual stimulation and physical activity. Balanced job complexes with the aid of technological advancement thus, would aim at balanced life complexes.
[Q: How does Kropotkins notion of local industrial development for local use fit into a global, federative planned economy? (Kropotkin, in Read, 1942: 96-97]
Economic growth of a new type
Production would seek to utilise all available human skills, both physical and mental, according to each ones ability, through planning and balanced job complexes. The increased efficiency of a deliberative economy (efficiency in terms of meeting peoples needs - the basis of our new economy) allows for increased production of what people actually want and need not what they are told to buy via advertising, peer pressure and capitalist consumerism.
This economy would not be based on the mathematical equations of ivory tower professors, government finance department bureaucrats and financial institution suit-and-tie flunkies, nor on the clueless central planners of a state hierarchy. These systems of political and economic domination have throughout history been built on the exploitation and oppression of the majority of that societys people. These systems have resulted in countless socio-economic crises that have always been borne by the poor and working classes in these necessarily hierarchical systems of market and central planning.
Anarchist economic growth would be based on the expansion of productive and distributive capacity, which harnesses abilities and natural resources in balanced developmental and ecologically sustainable practices. Through balanced job complexes and indicative planning, this growth would have as its functional rationale the enhancement of solidarity. Indicative planning would take into account all the social opportunity costs (Albert, 2003: 123) of producing things; how each link, group and individual in the ties that bind our new economy are affected assessing the full effects of the decisions proposed and made by ourselves and others. All consumption and production must be socially-determined. The nature of the economic agreements required will also be the result of the differing nature of decisions affecting different groups.
We seek, thus to build a true solidarity economy focussing not only on relations of ownership, but also on the nature of decision-making. Decisions are to be made by all able to and affected and thus based on the impact of those decisions on others and our collective resources.
One might pause here to ask questions regarding the time it may take to co-ordinate these decision-making processes and the negative impact it might have on efficient and timely production and distribution. One might, somewhat cynically, answer that this question is raised within the framework of a capitalist economy and is thus irrelevant to an anarchist one. However, perhaps further attention to this question is necessary.
Capitalism has over many centuries restructured time and production, seeking to utilise means of production and labour power in the most time-saving manner so as to produce the maximum amount of commodities for the market. After all, in a capitalist economy, whether centrally-planned, state interventionist, or market-dominated, time is indeed money!
A participatory economy removes the relationship between time and efficiency by basing itself on justice and democracy so as to meet everyones needs. Meetings are crucial at arriving at democratic and effective decisions for such an economy.
However, these meetings will serve to develop democratic federated structures across communities and workplaces to deal with the very efficiency of the system to deliver for our needs, so as to alleviate time spent at future meetings.
Renumeration
Alberts Parecon envisages a system that would reward for work done based on personal sacrifice and effort. These would be based on socially-determined averages of work effort which would also take into account personal need. All, however, would be guaranteed basic provisions deemed socially essentially. These may include provisions for health, education, shelter, nourishment, etc. Everyone would be rewarded equally (according to sacrifice and effort), but not all the same. This would be determined by individual freedom and preference.
Would this fit an anarchist social economy though? Immediately, the question is raised as to what Albert sees as reward, or has he left this totally up to human preference? Parecon leaves us uncomfortable and its reward as unclear. Perhaps more importantly, would not this manner of reward-for-effort create uneven renumeration which may very well lead to workplace and eventual social division, something which anarchism seeks to eradicate from all social interaction? Also, who is to determine reward? Surely not a parecon-ist peer review mechanism wide open to individual-based antipathies and biases?
Kropotkins insight provides a platform for engagement here. He saw it as impossible to measure reward quantitatively due to the collective history of production and invention:
Millions has laboured to create this civilisation on which we pride ourselves today. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labour to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left...but ruins. There is not one thought, or invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present (an extract from Kropotkin, 1906, Conquest of Bread, in Read, 1942: 91).
All knowledge is built on that which arrived prior to it. All invention is a synthesis of ideas and work gone before it. Therefore, it is important to reiterate the old communist adage from each according to ability, to each according to need. To this I would like to add that from each not only according to ability, but also according to mandates agreed upon and accepted after open discussion, debate and planning. Reward for work would thus be the full provision of what is needed and desired, as long as that which is desired does not infringe on the inalienable right of another to achieve the very same.
Conclusion
It is, however, important to remember Bakunins thoughts regarding work and its role in society. It is through work that one can have full access to the rights of freedom and association afforded by the new society (Bakunin, 1866). Thus, you cannot have responsibility and duty to others without rights to freedom and provision, but equally one cannot access these rights without responsibility to contribute for those around you.
To think of work in the anarchist social federation is to see it as re-imagined. Not the stimulating, enjoyable tasks to the few. Not the dreary drudgery of long hours of mind-numbing toil for others in complete subservience and to the sole benefit of the landlord, manager and owner. No longer the oppressive subjugation to the logic of owner accumulation and the maintenance of hierarchical formations of power and control. No longer the wastefulness of global mass unemployment so as to keep profits up and wages down.
We say no to this continued slavery!
But an economy based on decisions made by us for us. Work in this economy is to be reconstituted as that which seeks to meet our own needs and desires and those of others in society. But not only this; not only is work that which is socially necessary. An economy based on participation, direct democracy, mandates and planning an anarchist economy is one that sees work as developmental of the self and society. It re-imagines work as the attractive and most viable (if not the only viable) means of achieving individual, and thus social development (both physical and mental) and freedom (both physical and mental).
It is to this economy that we say yes!
Warren McGregor
30/08/11
REFERENCES
Albert, M. (2003). "Parecon: Life After Capitalism". New York: Verso.
Bakunin, M. (1866). Revolutionary Catechism.
Read, H. (1942). "Kropotkin: Selections From His Writings". London: Freedom Press.
I found it hard to locate bits from the reading that spoke to the themes. As such, I found it necessary to extrapolate from my understanding of the readings and the principles of justice and equality that underlie the writers contributions. I base that which is to follow in agreement with Alberts definition of an economy as a system of production and distribution that is based on human interaction for human needs and desires. I will expand on this a bit later.An anarchist economy would be co-ordinated, deliberative and qualitatively and quantitatively indicative. The goal is a global economy planned through nested federations (Albert, 2003: 93) of worker and consumer/community councils in whose hands decision-making power would rest.In accordance with the old communist ideal, distribution will be based on human need. Development of global productive capacity to fulfil this need would need to be widespread, thus fuelling job creation and the subsequent spreading of balanced job complexes (work tasks that, crudely, stimulate both the workers physical and intellectual development as well and that which allocates socially necessary tasks deemed unpleasant, e.g. cleaning toilets). This would have to mean (a) a global redistribution of physically and mentally stimulating and socially necessary labour and (b) eventual redistribution according to need and distribution for needs and desires. Thus, instead of over-production of commodities that we either cant afford or dont need (a production based on the logic of capitalist accumulation) and under-production for the majority (Kropotkin, in Read, 1942: 95-96), we would produce and distribute according to directly democratic, co-ordinated, federative and open discussion. We would produce what we need and want.Production and distribution proposals would be the result of a process of consultation and revision between workplace and consumer councils at all the appropriate levels of federative organisation (taking into account those that the proposal would affect). These are thus created through discussion, edited, re-discussed, re-edited and so on, till agreement is reached.The economy thus planned would be one in which the least amount of human effort is required for production and distribution. The incentive is then for continual technological and work process development and refinement to increase leisure time for the pursuit of desires, intellectual stimulation and physical activity. Balanced job complexes with the aid of technological advancement thus, would aim at balanced life complexes.[Q: How does Kropotkins notion of local industrial development for local use fit into a global, federative planned economy? (Kropotkin, in Read, 1942: 96-97]Production would seek to utilise all available human skills, both physical and mental, according to each ones ability, through planning and balanced job complexes. The increased efficiency of a deliberative economy (efficiency in terms of meeting peoples needs - the basis of our new economy) allows for increased production of what people actually want and need not what they are told to buy via advertising, peer pressure and capitalist consumerism.This economy would not be based on the mathematical equations of ivory tower professors, government finance department bureaucrats and financial institution suit-and-tie flunkies, nor on the clueless central planners of a state hierarchy. These systems of political and economic domination have throughout history been built on the exploitation and oppression of the majority of that societys people. These systems have resulted in countless socio-economic crises that have always been borne by the poor and working classes in these necessarily hierarchical systems of market and central planning.Anarchist economic growth would be based on the expansion of productive and distributive capacity, which harnesses abilities and natural resources in balanced developmental and ecologically sustainable practices. Through balanced job complexes and indicative planning, this growth would have as its functional rationale the enhancement of solidarity. Indicative planning would take into account all the social opportunity costs (Albert, 2003: 123) of producing things; how each link, group and individual in the ties that bind our new economy are affected assessing the full effects of the decisions proposed and made by ourselves and others. All consumption and production must be socially-determined. The nature of the economic agreements required will also be the result of the differing nature of decisions affecting different groups.We seek, thus to build a true solidarity economy focussing not only on relations of ownership, but also on the nature of decision-making. Decisions are to be made by all able to and affected and thus based on the impact of those decisions on others and our collective resources.One might pause here to ask questions regarding the time it may take to co-ordinate these decision-making processes and the negative impact it might have on efficient and timely production and distribution. One might, somewhat cynically, answer that this question is raised within the framework of a capitalist economy and is thus irrelevant to an anarchist one. However, perhaps further attention to this question is necessary.Capitalism has over many centuries restructured time and production, seeking to utilise means of production and labour power in the most time-saving manner so as to produce the maximum amount of commodities for the market. After all, in a capitalist economy, whether centrally-planned, state interventionist, or market-dominated, time is indeed money!A participatory economy removes the relationship between time and efficiency by basing itself on justice and democracy so as to meet everyones needs. Meetings are crucial at arriving at democratic and effective decisions for such an economy.However, these meetings will serve to develop democratic federated structures across communities and workplaces to deal with the very efficiency of the system to deliver for our needs, so as to alleviate time spent at future meetings.Alberts Parecon envisages a system that would reward for work done based on personal sacrifice and effort. These would be based on socially-determined averages of work effort which would also take into account personal need. All, however, would be guaranteed basic provisions deemed socially essentially. These may include provisions for health, education, shelter, nourishment, etc. Everyone would be rewarded equally (according to sacrifice and effort), but not all the same. This would be determined by individual freedom and preference.Would this fit an anarchist social economy though? Immediately, the question is raised as to what Albert sees as reward, or has he left this totally up to human preference? Parecon leaves us uncomfortable and its reward as unclear. Perhaps more importantly, would not this manner of reward-for-effort create uneven renumeration which may very well lead to workplace and eventual social division, something which anarchism seeks to eradicate from all social interaction? Also, who is to determine reward? Surely not a parecon-ist peer review mechanism wide open to individual-based antipathies and biases?Kropotkins insight provides a platform for engagement here. He saw it as impossible to measure reward quantitatively due to the collective history of production and invention: (an extract from Kropotkin, 1906, Conquest of Bread, in Read, 1942: 91).All knowledge is built on that which arrived prior to it. All invention is a synthesis of ideas and work gone before it. Therefore, it is important to reiterate the old communist adage from each according to ability, to each according to need. To this I would like to add that from each not only according to ability, but also according to mandates agreed upon and accepted after open discussion, debate and planning. Reward for work would thus be the full provision of what is needed and desired, as long as that which is desired does not infringe on the inalienable right of another to achieve the very same.It is, however, important to remember Bakunins thoughts regarding work and its role in society. It is through work that one can have full access to the rights of freedom and association afforded by the new society (Bakunin, 1866). Thus, you cannot have responsibility and duty to others without rights to freedom and provision, but equally one cannot access these rights without responsibility to contribute for those around you.To think of work in the anarchist social federation is to see it as re-imagined. Not the stimulating, enjoyable tasks to the few. Not the dreary drudgery of long hours of mind-numbing toil for others in complete subservience and to the sole benefit of the landlord, manager and owner. No longer the oppressive subjugation to the logic of owner accumulation and the maintenance of hierarchical formations of power and control. No longer the wastefulness of global mass unemployment so as to keep profits up and wages down.But an economy based on decisions made by us for us. Work in this economy is to be reconstituted as that which seeks to meet our own needs and desires and those of others in society. But not only this; not only is work that which is socially necessary. An economy based on participation, direct democracy, mandates and planning an anarchist economy is one that sees work as developmental of the self and society. It re-imagines work as the attractive and most viable (if not the only viable) means of achieving individual, and thus social development (both physical and mental) and freedom (both physical and mental).It is to this economy that we say yes!Albert, M. (2003). "Parecon: Life After Capitalism". New York: Verso.Bakunin, M. (1866). Revolutionary Catechism.Read, H. (1942). "Kropotkin: Selections From His Writings". London: Freedom Press. Digg this del.icio.us Furl Reddit Technorati Facebook Twitter << Back To Newswire
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If Figuratively can be used literally Why can't literally be used figuratively?
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The creative process behind each piece of Magic art is unique to the image and the artist.
From the art description to the final product, the Art in Focus series reviews every step involved in crafting the art of Magic the Gathering in the artist’s own words.
This week we shine the spotlight on the Terminate by Lucas Graciano from Modern Masters 2017.
Take it away Lucas.
I was assigned to show the Sun Titan falling apart as he turned to fiery ash from within.
I was trying to go for this powerful character being reduced to nothing and him coming to the realization that he was doomed.
I was given the Sun Titan, that I believe Todd Lockwood designed.
Wizards and myself, felt his armor and sword is what would make him most recognizable. I also gathered various images from google to help fill in the background. I did shoot some reference of myself for the titan, though I did have to embellish a little. ;) (If only the reference pictures were not mysteriously deleted -Editor)
Outside of the direct requirements Wizards needed, there were a few elements I wanted in the image to help convey the idea.
For example, the sunset colors was a deliberate choice to suggest a symbolic dying Sun Titan. He also needed to read as a very large character, so using elements like the birds and lowering the contrast on the character himself helped convey his size.
Like all of my work, I started with rough digital sketches. Once a sketch get approved, I collect and shoot reference and then usually get to work on a detailed, digital, drawing.
However, in the case of Terminate, I figured out a lot of the detail in the painting using the photo reference and skipped a detailed digital sketch.
With that finished, I transferred the image onto a painting surface. From here I applied thin layers of paint to establish the large local values and colors. This gave me a rough sense for what the final will look like.
From there, I started with the background elements and worked my way "forward" in the picture.
Looking at the end product, I'm happy with the mood and lighting of the piece.
When I was assigned the piece, I didn't know it was a reprint. I found out the day it was released and was happy to hear it was a popular card. That's always a bonus. ;)
The original artwork for Terminate was created traditionally. The original artwork sold on ebay earlier this month for $2,700.
You can check out Lucas's portfolio of work purchase prints of his work through his Website.
Thank you Lucas for sharing this story with us.
Check back next Thursday for more Art in Focus.
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San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released Privacy Badger 1.0, a browser extension that blocks some of the sneakiest trackers that try to spy on your Web browsing habits.
More than a quarter of a million users have already installed the alpha and beta releases of Privacy Badger. The new Privacy Badger 1.0 includes blocking of certain kinds of super-cookies and browser fingerprinting—the latest ways that some parts of the online tracking industry try to follow Internet users from site to site.
“It’s likely you are being tracked by advertisers and other third parties online. You can see some of it when it’s happening, such as ads that follow you around the Web that seem to reflect your past browsing history,” said EFF Staff Technologist Cooper Quintin, lead developer of Privacy Badger. “Those echoes from your past mean you are being tracked, and the records of your online activity are distributed to other third parties—all without your knowledge, control, or consent. But Privacy Badger 1.0 will spot many of the trackers following you without your permission, and will block them or screen out the cookies that do their dirty work.”
Privacy Badger 1.0 works in tandem with the new Do Not Track (DNT) policy, announced earlier this week by EFF and a coalition of Internet companies. Users can set the DNT flag—in their browser settings or by installing Privacy Badger—to signal that they want to opt-out of online tracking. Privacy Badger won’t block third-party services that promise to honor all DNT requests.
“With DNT and Privacy Badger 1.0, Internet users have important new tools to make their desires about online tracking known to the websites they visit and to enforce those desires by blocking stealthy online tracking and the exploitation of their reading history,” said EFF Chief Computer Scientist Peter Eckersley, leader of the DNT project. “It’s time to put users back in control and stop surreptitious, intrusive Internet data collection. Installing Privacy Badger 1.0 helps build a leaner, cleaner, privacy-friendly Web.”
To download Privacy Badger 1.0:
https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
For more on the new Do Not Track policy:
https://www.eff.org/dnt-policy | {
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Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, October 5, 2018
Jared Taylor and Paul Kersey explore the ominous implications of the Trump DOJ’s arrest of pro-white activists based largely on leftist investigations. They also discuss court decisions on TPS and California’s “sanctuary cities” law, the cravenness of Hyatt Hotels, the appalling whiteness of the White House press corps, Switzerland’s sensible moves on refugees, results of the Quebec provincial elections, and the heart-warming results of a German poetry contest.
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A state judge had former death row inmate Isaiah McCoy removed from the courtroom this afternoon as McCoy was delivering a verbal tirade, then denied McCoy the opportunity for release on bail while awaiting trial for robbery.
McCoy, 32, was free on $100,000 bail for the robbery case when he was arrested Monday at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport attempting to board a commercial flight for Los Angeles. He had a one-way ticket.
One of the standard conditions of bail is a prohibition on leaving the jurisdiction without permission from the court. McCoy did not have court permission to leave the state.
It was during a hearing this afternoon on the state’s request to deny him bail when McCoy had an outburst, yelling at Circuit Judge Todd Eddins, “You’re a loser, just like everybody else.” After he was taken out of the courtroom, McCoy could be heard from the back hallway yelling, “You’re a racist.”
McCoy’s tirade came as Eddins was saying that he was going to allow McCoy time to gather more evidence to oppose the state’s request, but in the meantime will have to remain in custody with no opportunity for release.
The robbery charge for which McCoy is scheduled to stand trial next month accuse him and a co-defendant of beating a man in Waikiki and stealing the man’s $20,000 watch.
McCoy came to Hawaii in 2017 after he was released from custody in Delaware where he just gotten acquitted of a drug-related murder. He was originally convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. Volunteer lawyers with the Innocence Project got the conviction overturned and got McCoy acquitted in the retrial. | {
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By Jo Lindsay Walton
It is Wednesday. I am in Helsinki. So is everybody else.
There are a few issues of Vector and FOCUS on the freebies table, courtesy of Dave Lally; but, of course, not for long.
I put in time in Messukeskus 209, the academic track. On Wednesday, Merja Polvinin introduces the Finnish Society for SFF Research (Finfar), its journal Fafnir, and the theme of the next five days. The theme is ‘estrangement.’
Speculative fiction isn’t about other worlds, it’s about this world! In speculative fiction, we encounter real, familiar things, only made strange! There is a political value to such encounters. In the movie Elysium, we encounter something real and familiar (unjust access to healthcare), only that thing is made strange.
By making the world strange, we can unsettle the distinction between what is possible and what is not. By making the world strange, we can see the world for what it really is, including all its promise and possibility.
At least, that’s the idea. Over the five days, I am struck by how accommodating and flexible and familiar the concept of estrangement has become.
When Darko Suvin first floated estrangement, way back before science fiction studies was really A Thing, he made a distinction between ‘cognitive’ and ‘non-cognitive’ estrangement. Or (to really boil it down), between ‘good’ estrangement and ‘bad’ estrangement.
Suvin’s ingenious distinction has never really caught on, and never really gone away. I think we need to get back to the root of Suvin’s project, which is about selecting and elaborating aspects of speculative fiction texts that can contribute practically to radical political struggle.
In the hostel, which is always full of light, I write some blog posts: binaries like playthings, toilets, beds.
The 75th World Science Fiction Convention, aka WorldCon 75, is the third-and-a-half con I’ve attended. And I finally understand the ribbons thing! It all starts innocently enough. Each stripe attaches to the previous, or to the name-badge. Some have some practical ID-like function: Programme Participant, Staff, Operations, Access …
… and then maybe you collect another stripe or two to show your support for future WorldCon bids or something like that …
… but then (and this was my epiphany) there are those ribbons created by anyone, for any reason, and just added to your rainbow for any reason, or even for no real reason, just for the sheer brio of bricolage …
… and before you know it, you’re wafting a Fourth Doctor scarf to and fro, and there is a complex pattern of traces, traces of chance and not-so-chance encounters, spreading across the convention. Fans secrete ribbons on each other like semiochemicals. By Sunday, a swarm intelligence is stirring. Olaf Stapledon writes in Star Maker:
In time it became clear that we, individual inhabitants of a host of other worlds, were playing a small part in one of the great movements by which the cosmos was seeking to know itself, and even to see beyond itself.
Badge ribbons are how WorldCon seeks know itself, and even to see beyond itself.
I put in time at BarCon. The theme is of the drinking track at WorldCon 75 is salmiakkikossu, a salty liquorice liqueur. There is political value to such encounters. They unsettle our sense of what is possible and what is not. No, salmiakkikossu is not ‘nice.’ But I am not convinced the eldritch intelligence we are randomly building out of bright ribbons is ‘nice’ either.
I am accustomed to transporting my sense, with a bottle of Homeric Malbec, down into the wine-dark sea. But salmia drowns its tourists in forests of dark pine.
I seem to have come unstuck in time. It is Monday. On the plane home, I read from two things people have given me. Some poems by Ivaylo “Evil Ivo” Shmilev. Some some draft novel chapters by Mike “Nice Mike” Krawec. “I am lying in the dark before the dawn / and waiting for you to be reborn,” says Ivo. “I’m sure you’re aware,” says Mike, “a Hellish visa may negatively impact your chances of entering the Kingdom of Heaven, should you ever want to visit or reside there.”
It is is Friday and Jeff VanderMeer is removing his bear mask. Underneath he’s wearing a bear mask.
Wednesday. Opening ceremonies.
It is Sunday. I am at the Strange Horizons tea party. We have drunk all the tea. Moving the chairs is especially a blast. I can’t explain but it was. Niall Harrison, once of Vector, now standing down as editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons, is getting semi-ambushed by people saying embarrassingly nice things about him. “The cuddly kind of ambitious.”
It is Friday. An academic paper at a convention can be tricky, obviously. Who’s going to be in the audience? What will they know and what won’t they know? Where do you pitch it? I admire Tiffani Angus‘s paper. It is full spectrum. It is about some of the things that are often missing from post-apocalyptic fiction: tampons, pads, contraception, period pain, menstrual diarrhoea, childbirth, menopause. They go missing from other kinds of fiction too, but they go missing from post-apocalyptic fiction in a special way. The phrase “Chekov’s tampon” is both funny and kinda the crux: what gets suppressed on the basis that it isn’t necessary to the story? Who defines ‘necessary’ and ‘story’?
Saturday. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren and his Public Affairs Officer Norma J Knotts are talking.
I tweet a lot.
Emma just namechecking loads of Dragrace queens and brilliantly deflecting GRR’s effort to steer gently toward epic fantasy #worldcon75 — Jo @ #CurledWan (@JolixJoverflow) August 9, 2017
One of the many beautiful, fitful, tangled conversations threaded across the week is about breaking the fourth wall. Can you break the fourth wall during a fourth wall break? That kind of thing: apparently Deadpool can. Can you intercept somebody else’s fourth wall break? Am I a fourth wallflower? Is the fourth wall a supporting wall? Can you break the wrong fourth wall, like you can talk into the wrong camera? If we broke the fourth wall now, what would we see? Even more Jo Waltons, Malkovich Malkovich style?
Nazis and nukes?
My panels go OK! When I make a joke, some people laugh. When I make a serious political point, everyone laughs.
I have moderated a panel on Systems of Healing Magic. I find out, too late, about the healing magic used by Väinämöinen, the hero of the epic Finnish poem The Kalevala. If you take an axe to the knee, the recommended course of action is to relate the origin story of the iron the axe is made of:
She who squeezed black milk from her was born soft iron; she who squeezed white milk from her were made things of steel, she who showered red milk from her was got pig iron.
In order to impose your mastery upon the iron and its effects you must, I guess, say some shit about the iron’s mommas. When that is done, Väinämöinen can boss around his own blood like Sebastian tries to boss Ariel:
Blood, stand like a wall; stay, gore, like a fence; like an iris in a lake stand, like sedge among moss, like a boulder at a field edge, a rock in a steep rapid! But if you should have a mind to move more swiftly then move in the flesh and in the bones glide! Inside is better for you, beneath the skin is fairer [...]
Magical healing is surely a theme of everything in the con.
Apparently the trade hall is a bit small by US standards. Maybe it is for the best.
I feel childishly at ease with practically anybody who is a bit Scottish.
As Kalle might say, “We have Clipping!”
It is Sunday before I realise why the fourth wall conversation is so captivating. WorldCon is when Twitter denizens step through the screen and become flesh. Paul Weimer. Adrian Tchaikovsky. Ian McDonald. Berit Ellingsen. Effie Seiberg. Erin Roberts. Remote Voices. Galoot. Crystal.
Crystal Huff and I have found each other. We are at the China party. We take an otherie. Crystal knows how to do this. It is like a selfie, made strange.
I’m not sure who the hunter creeping up on us is. I think it might be Dalibor Perković. Falling in with the Croatians is a delight. They organise SferaKon, and they are organising large chunks of WorldCon. I want to go to Croatia next year. SferaKon is mostly in English, so I might.
WorldCon feels huge and brilliantly organised. There are thoughtful touches everywhere. On the first day, attendance is much higher than expected.
We are the second biggest Worldcon ever.
10516 Members and Day Passes
7119 Warm Bodies on Site.#Worldcon75 — Worldcon 75 (@worldcon75) August 13, 2017
From Cheryl Morgan’s con diary:
[…] Someone, I think Kevin, said that Helsinki had scored a Critical Hit, but that doing so was not always good. No, I said. You have scored a Critical Hit. You are now covered in the intestines of the huge monster that you have slain with a single blow […]
The intestines Cheryl mentions are mostly queues. It is Wednesday and the rooms are rammed. The queues are shaped like Dave Lally’s badge ribbon tally at the Dead Dog.* The queues are shaped like Shai-Huluds made of shy hellos. But I’m impressed by how quickly and smartly the convention adapts to the numbers. By Thursday, new larger rooms have been secured, and the programme has been re-jiggled, conservatively but effectively, with the changes well-advertised. Vast new seating vistas open. There are still queues, but no more crushes.
Ready to go sad to leave #WorldCon75 — Jo @ #CurledWan (@JolixJoverflow) August 14, 2017
Thank you, WorldCon. You have been lucent and crystalline. You have been an omen whose every atom is a minuscule Moomin. And WorldCon 77 is coming to Dublin.
* I learned a little Fanspeak. ‘Concrud’ is what you call the pathology that develops in the individual neuron-humans as the gestalt convention grows perilously close to sentience. ‘Dead Dog’ is what you call the party at the end of the con. Sort of a cross between a GP waiting area and paradise. | {
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The winners of the annual RAF Photographer of the Year competition have been announced. There were more than 800 entries submitted by RAF personnel, including both professional RAF photographers and amateurs. | {
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The South American country’s move to full legalisation of cannabis has so far proved a success, especially for its 17,391 users
Every afternoon a long queue of people gathers outside a tiny neighbourhood pharmacy in Montevideo. The shop is so small that they can only be let in one at a time. It’s a slow process but the mostly young clients don’t seem to mind. They stand outside or sit on doorsteps chatting in groups of twos and threes as they wait their turn in the warm southern spring.
A chemist inside in a green medical coat asks them each to press their thumb on a fingerprint scanner. The electronic device is connected to a central government computer that will either authorise or deny the purchase of their allotted 10 weekly grams of legal marijuana. It is a state-controlled, high quality product guaranteed to provide excellent highs.
“On the street 25 grams of marijuana would cost you 3,000 pesos, that’s about $100 for something with probably a large amount of pesticide, seeds and stems,” says Luciano, a young buyer who is next in line. “But here the same amount would cost you only $30, and it comes in guaranteed, premium quality, thermosealed 5g packs.”
In July this year, tiny Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalise the sale of marijuana across its entire territory.
“The most important thing has been the change of paradigm,” says Gastón Rodríguez Lepera, shareholder in Symbiosis, one of the two private firms producing cannabis for the government’s Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis. “Uruguay dived in at the deep end without too much international support. They said it wouldn’t work. Well, it’s working now.”
With a population of only 3.4 million, squeezed in between its two giant South American neighbours Brazil and Argentina (population 208 million and 43 million respectively), Uruguay has long been at the forefront of liberal policies not only in South America but worldwide.
A divorce law that allowed women to separate from their husbands simply by asking a court for permission was passed as far back as 1913. Abortion was legalised in 2012, with Uruguay the only country in Latin America to do so apart from Cuba.
Part of the reason for Uruguay’s liberal temperament is a longstanding separation of church and state in a region where the Catholic Church remains dominant. There is no official Christmas day on Uruguay’s state calendar. Most Uruguayans refer to the holiday by its government denomination of family day. Easter week is referred to as tourism week.
Uruguay’s switch to a legal marijuana market has not been without its hitches, however, notably the resistance of most pharmacists to act as outlets for the recreational marijuana (medical marijuana remains illegal in Uruguay).
Only 12 of the country’s 1,100 pharmacies have signed up so far to supply the 17,391 government-registered consumers served by the system, which explains the long queues outside. The low price and slim profit margin partly explain their reticence. “But the main problem is that banks have threatened to close the accounts of pharmacies selling marijuana,” said one chemist who sells marijuana in Montevideo, but who did not want to reveal his name for fear of such bank intervention.
Although sales of the drug have been legalised in various US states, they remain illegal at federal level, leading to a situation where most banks refuse to handle marijuana-related accounts anywhere in the world. Even now that sales in Uruguay have been completely legalised, the fear of running into trouble with the US federal authorities has become concrete.
“The problem with the banks was an unforeseen hitch,” says Eduardo Blasina, president of Montevideo’s cannabis museum, set in an old house in the artsy Palermo district of the capital city. “But these bumps will get smoothed out eventually.”
The potency of the original government-licensed marijuana also failed to satisfy consumers at the start. “The government made a mistake because the first batch they released to the market in July had a potency level of only 2% THC,” says Blasina.
THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the main psychoactive constituent of cannabis content. This is much lower than the levels found in legal recreational weed in US states like Colorado.
“The government quickly got the message and has now upped the content to 9% THC,” says the Montevideo pharmacist. A consumer himself, he adds: “I’ve tried it and I can assure you that it provides a most satisfactory experience.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Registered users queue outside a pharmacy to buy legal marijuana in Montevideo. Photograph: Andres Stapff/Reuters
For those who would rather not buy their legal weed at a pharmacy, Uruguay’s marijuana law allows consumers to plant their own at home (up to six plants) or join special privately run “cannabis clubs” with a maximum of 45 members who are allowed to withdraw 40g per month from the club’s crop.
“The transformation of consumers has been astounding,” says Blasina. “They’ve gone from buying low-quality products from street dealers to becoming gourmet experts who compete with the crops at their clubs.”
Confident that pharmacists will eventually find a way to work round the refusal of banks to handle their accounts, Blasina is more worried about the ban on selling legal marijuana to visitors from abroad in a country where tourism keeps growing, partly due to Uruguay’s beautiful beaches, but also because of its growing reputation as a liberal haven in South America.
“Visitors arrive here hoping to enjoy freedom in one of the most liberal countries in the world, so they feel disappointed when they find out they can’t buy legal marijuana,” says Blasina. “They end up buying it on the street, which contradicts the whole point of the law, which is to cut traffickers out of the business.”
Blasina and others have started pressing the government for the passports of tourists to be stamped with a permit to purchase a small amount of marijuana during their stay. “A record number of visitors will arrive this summer and what will we say to them? Sorry, you can’t smoke?” he says.
There are ways round the problem, however. “The quality of the marijuana is so high that the 40 monthly grams permitted by the government far exceeds what I could smoke on my own,” says one Uruguayan who works with foreigners travelling here. “So I always have enough to share around with visitors.” | {
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A night map prototype has landed on the Battlefield 4 Community Test Environment and its called Infiltration of Shanghai.
The map will be familiar to Battlefield 4 players who mucked around in the Siege of Shanghai map.
DICE LA are using the CTE program as a way to get feedback on the nighttime map.
Watch Westie’s video above. | {
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Von altmod *)
Der „Dieselskandal“
Den 2. August 2017 wird man sich merken müssen, egal wie an diesem Tag der sog. „Dieselgipfel“ der Bundesregierung ausgehen wird. Die Parteien haben sich schon lange in Position gebracht und seit Tagen wird in den „Qualitätsmedien“ das Thema befeuert, damit sich die im Wahlkampf befindlichen Lager warm laufen konnten. Die linke Wirtschaftspostille Handelsblatt faselte denn in diesem Zusammenhang von einer „Staatskrise Dieselskandal“.
Worum geht es eigentlich?
Durch den sog. Abgas-Skandal – glaubt man allen lancierten Meldungen, allein durch die deutschen Automobilhersteller mit Luxussegmenten verursacht – geriet das Dieselauto endlich in den Focus aller umweltbewegten und antikapitalistisch orientierten Interessengruppen. Voran Greenpeace und die obskure „Deutsche Umwelthilfe“ mit ihrem Vorsitzenden Jürgen Resch, der sich in den Medien als Sieger von Stuttgart feiern durfte: man hatte vor dem Verwaltungsgericht ein mögliches Fahrverbot für Dieselfahrzeuge erstreiten können. Greenpeace informiert mit einer „Lichtinstallation“ an der Fassade des Bundesumweltamtes über die aktuellen „Todeszahlen“ durch den Diesel: „Vorzeitige Tote durch Stickoxid seit Dieselgate: 19.807† seit 1 Jahr 10 Monate 12 Tage 10 Stunden“. ( Quelle: http://www.eichsfelder-nachrichten.de/news/news_lang.php?ArtNr=217474
Ein sogenannter „Energieexperte“ des Qualitätsmediums ARD namens Jürgen Döschner machte den Diesel gar zu einem Holocaust-Korrelat, gewissermsaßen einem Nazi-Produkt, indem er twitterte: Die „Automafia“ – also Autoindustrie und Bundesregierung – „vergast jedes Jahr zehntausend Unschuldige“.
Man merkt – eine emotional aufgeladene Diskussion nach der Devise von Umweltaktivisten und -Politikern wie Jürgen Resch: „Ein Problem emotionalisieren, einen Schuldigen finden …“
Die sogenannten Experten, die jetzt zuhauf bei ARD und ZDF zu Wort kommen dürfen, geben aber in keiner Weise darüber Auskunft, was es mit den Stickoxiden einerseits – für deren Ausscheidung allein der Diesel verantwortlich gemacht wird – und der Feinstaubbelastung andererseits, es auf sich hat; und für den außenstehenden Laien wird dazu einfach alles in einen Topf geworfen: „Stickoxide“ (NOx) gleich „Feinstaub“.
Stickoxide
Betrachten wir zunächst das „Problem Stickoxide“. Wikipedia informiert uns darüber u.a. folgendermaßen: „Eine der Hauptquellen für Stickoxide in der Atmosphäre sind Abgase, die bei der Verbrennung fossiler Brennstoffe, wie beispielsweise Kohle oder Öl, entstehen.“ Aber man höre: „Nach Angabe des Umweltbundesamtes sind die jährlichen Stickoxid-Emissionen in Deutschland in der Zeit von 1990 bis 2014 von 2,885 auf 1,223 Mio Tonnen gesunken. In der Europäischen Union (EU28) sanken die NOx Emissionen in der Zeit von 1990 bis 2011 um 49 % von 17,338 auf 8,846 Mio Tonnen (nur! – d.Red.)“. Deutschland hat demnach eine deutlich bessere „Stickoxidbilanz“. Doch: „In Europa werden mehr als 50 %, in einigen Städten bis zu 75 % der NOx-Emissionen durch den Verkehr verursacht.“
Was bewirkt denn eine höhere Stickoxidbelastung an gesundheitlichen Folgen? Medizinische Experten weisen auf eine erhöhte Beeinträchtigung bezüglich Asthma oder „COPD“ hin und verweisen auf Zusammenhänge mit der gesundheitsschädlichen Ozon-Aufladung unserer Atmosphäre.
Es gibt ja bereits einen Untersuchungsausschuss des Bundestages zur VW-Abgasaffäre, vor dem einschlägige Experten zu Wort kamen. So unter anderen die Epidemiologin und „Feinstaub-Expertin“ Annette Peters, die stets für niedrigere NOx-Grenzwerte eintritt. Sie räumte vor den Abgeordneten ein, dass ein direkter Zusammenhang von Stickoxiden und Gesundheitsschäden epidemiologisch noch nie untersucht wurde. „Fürs NO2 bin ich mir keiner Studie bewusst, die das schon mal systematisch angeguckt hat“, sagte sie laut Protokoll.
Betreibt man nun weitere Recherchen bezüglich der Gesundheitsschäden durch NOx, lautet das Resümee tatsächlich: Dünne Faktenlage, keiner weiß, welche Schadstoffe Schäden verursacht haben, für die Stickoxide in der gegenwärtigen Diskussion pauschal verantwortlich gemacht werden.
Feinstaub
Fündiger wird man bei der Recherche über „Feinstaub“. Das scheint eines der beliebtesten und scheinbar ergebnisträchtigsten Themen in der epidemiologischen Forschung hinsichtlich Umweltbelastungen zu sein. Es ist damit natürlich ein Objekt für stets besorgte Regierungseinrichtungen. Demzufolge hat das Umweltbundesamt „errechnet“:
„ … so sind nach den durchgeführten Schätzungen bei Erwachsenen über 30 Jahren etwa 11 bis 14 Prozent (%) aller Todesfälle aufgrund kardiopulmonaler Erkrankungen und etwa 17 bis 20 % aller Todesfällen infolge von Lungenkrebs auf den Umweltstressor Feinstaub zurückzuführen.“
So kommt man auf beeindruckende Zahlen für „vorzeitiges Versterben“ in der Bevölkerung, auch wenn es sich tatsächlich nur um Schätzungen handeln kann, wie das Umweltbundesamt zugibt.
Man spricht in der epidemiologischen Forschung von „Disability-Adjusted Life Years”: „Summe aus Lebenszeit mit erkrankungsbedingt eingeschränkter Lebensqualität und verlorener Lebenszeit durch (statistisch gesehen) vorzeitiges Versterben.“ Das ergibt keine aus tatsächlich medizinischen bzw. naturwissenschaftlichen Forschungen gewonnene Dateneinheit, sondern ist ein soziologisch-statistisch gewonnenes Konstrukt.
Feinstaub ist denn ein ganz übler Schädling, gar der zivilisatorische Todesfaktor schlechthin, neben Cholesterin, Zucker, Fett und der Radioaktivität.
Ein medizinischer Informationsdienst meint festzustellen:
„Gerade winzig kleine Dinge können die Gesundheit ins Wanken bringen. Feinstaub ist nur etwa 0,01 Millimeter groß, aber äußerst gefährlich.“
Die Mikrobenangst – Gott hat sie bisweilen selig – läßt grüßen.
– Feinstaub verursacht „Trockenes Auge“ stellten Forscher aus Graz fest.
– Feinstaub läßt Gehirne schrumpfen
– Feinstaub verursacht Diabetes 2.
– Und verursacht Feinstaub Schlaganfälle.
Verfolgen wir einmal die Zahlen über Feinstaub-assoziierte Todesfälle in der zeitlichen Entwicklung.
Der Spiegel titelte 2005: 65.000 Tote pro Jahr in Deutschland. Doch es gab anscheinend Fortschritte, denn die FAZ zitierte 2015 eine Studie vom Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie in Mainz mit nur noch 35.000 Toten. Dagegen zitiert die Welt im gleichen Jahr eine andere Studie:
„Feinstaub in der Luft ist nach einem Bericht der Europäischen Umweltagentur pro Jahr für etwa 430.000 vorzeitige Todesfälle in der EU verantwortlich. Zum Vergleich: Laut Umweltbundesamt gibt es jährlich allein in Deutschland etwa 47.000 vorzeitige Todesfälle durch Feinstaub.“
Wer mag, kann hier den zitierten Artikel aus Nature nachlesen.
Im Reich der Mitte sterben vorzeitig 1,4 Millionen Menschen pro Jahr. In Indien sind es rund 650.000 Opfer. Auch in den Ländern der Europäischen Union führt Belastung der Atemluft mit Ozon und Feinstaub zu 180.000 Todesfällen, davon 35.000 in Deutschland. In Deutschland ist die Landwirtschaft mit 40 Prozent sogar die Hauptquelle für durch verschmutzte Luft verursachte Todesfälle.
Schreibt die FAZ.
Jetzt haben wir also noch einen Übeltäter: Die Landwirtschaft, welche mit „40 Prozent sogar die Hauptquelle für durch verschmutzte Luft verursachte Todesfälle“ ausmacht. Das wäre noch eine gesonderte Betrachtung wert.
Diesel versus Benziner
Es gibt in der Lückenpresse noch differenzierende Stimmen. Aber darf man denen glauben? Die Welt beruft sich auf eine Studie des ADAC (?):
Benziner dürfen laut Gesetz zehnmal so viel ausstoßen wie Diesel Aktuelle Tests des ADAC belegen, dass Benziner ein Vielfaches an Partikeln, also an Feinstaub, in die Luft blasen als Diesel-Motoren. Denn die sind seit Jahren auf Druck des Gesetzgebers flächendeckend mit Rußfiltern ausgestattet. Verschiebt sich der Marktanteil hin zu Ottomotoren, wird der Feinstaub-Ausstoß steigen. Denn Benziner dürfen laut Gesetz zehnmal so viel davon ausstoßen wie Diesel. Jüngste Untersuchungen der Schweizer Forschungsanstalt EMPA hatten allerdings ergeben, dass die getesteten Autos mit GDI-Technik, also Benziner mit Direkteinspritzung, zum Teil hundert mal so viele Partikel ausstoßen wie Dieselfahrzeuge.
Exakte Wissenschaft?
Wenn man gerade die oben zitierten Zahlen betrachtet, wird wohl niemand in diesem Zusammenhang von exakter Wissenschaft sprechen wollen. Gleichwohl dienen solche Zahlen zur emotionalen Aufladung des Publikums, auch wenn kaum einer sich in der Lage erweist, sie in einen rationalen Bezug zu setzen. Die diesbezügliche mediale Gehirnwäsche funktioniert, denn laut einer Umfrage befürworten 51% der Deutschen ein Dieselverbot.
Aber es gibt Hoffnung, die man auch durch „fundierte Studien“ belegen kann: „B-Vitamine: Pille gegen Feinstaub – mit B-Vitaminen gelang es in einer experimentellen Studie, den schädlichen Effekt kleiner Teilchen auf die DNA-Methylierung zu verringern…“.
Schöne neue Welt
Die Feinstaub- und NOx-Experten halten ein glückliches Zukunftsszenario für uns bereit. Man stelle sich vor: – Dieselautos werden verboten, dann alle Autos mit Verbrennungsmotor. – Wir schlachten alle Methan- und NOx-ausstoßenden Rindviecher und schaffen die herkömmliche Landwirtschaft ab. – Und der Strom kommt weiter aus der Steckdose.
Eine schöne neue Welt wird uns erwarten, wenn wir nur Greenpeace, der Deutschen Umwelthilfe und allen wohlwollenden Politikern folgen: ein Leben ohne Gestank, ohne trockenem Auge, Herpes, Asthma, Herzinfarkt, Schlaganfall, Demenz usw. Dank „Dieselgate“! Wir werden endlich vergessen dürfen, dass das Leben doch irgendwie lebensgefährlich ist und werden unbelastet sterben.
Habe ich nicht etwas vergessen? Ach ja, eine Petitesse: diese kerosin-ausstoßenden Flugzeuge über Stuttgart, Frankfurt, München, Berlin usw., in denen unsere Umweltpolitiker und Weltenretter zur nächsten Klimakonferenz fliegen; oder auch die aufgeklärten deutschen Dieselgegner, die jetzt in den Ferien oder ganzjährig nach Malle oder auf die Malediven düsen wollen, denn Flugzeuge fliegen ja nicht mit Diesel.
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2 Kommentare zu Massenmörder fahren Diesel
– Bauer Gerhard sagt (August 2, 2017):
(Hier noch was zu den Kreuzfahrtschiffen: https://heerlagerderheiligen.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/da-hilft-auch-kein-software-update-mehr/)
Ansonsten bin ich der Meinung, dass dies ein großangelegter Angriff auf die führende, deutsche Automobilindustrie ist. Ausgehend von den USA, man denke nur mal an die NSA-Affäre, die wissen alles und führen uns nun am Nasenring durch die Manege. Der Rest, die Emotionalisierung, ist Sache der nützlichen Idioten, sprich NGOs. All diesen Idioten würde ich ein sofortiges Fahrverbot, inkl. Elektrofahrrad, erteilen. Sollen sie doch zu Fuß gehen oder mit dem guten alten Drahtesel die Welt erkunden und ihre gar nicht so frohen Botschaften verkünden.
Diese Weltuntergangs- wie auch Deutschlanduntergangsphantasien gehen mir allmählich ziemlich auf die Nerven. Seit dem frühen Mittelalter dürften diese Spinnereien immer wieder gewaltigen Einfluss auf die Gehirne mancher Mitmenschen haben.
—–
– Alexander sagt (August 2, 2017)
Diesel wird ab 250 Grad Celsius destilliert. Kerosin ab 150 Grad. Die chemische Zusammensetzung beider Treibstoffe ist signifikant verschieden. Sie gleichzusetzen, nicht korrekt. Das ist, als wenn man Wodka mit Doppelkorn vergliche.
Ansonsten gebe ich Ihnen recht. Die »Diskussion« ist – gelinde ausgedrückt – hirnrissig. Politisch motiviert. Sie soll der grünaffinierten Klientel Wählerstimmen zutreiben. Wie einer Kuhherde, die Methan furzt und doch ständig Gras wiederkäut.
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*) „altmod“ ist Blogger (altmod.de), Facharzt und Philosoph sowie regelmäßiger Kolumnist bei conservo | {
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Lamont, 47, had little hesitation in allowing access to her social media profile, and believes the idea could provide more “equal access” in the highly competitive rental market. “For people who for whatever reason have been denied access to a rental property, I think it’s a brilliant way to open that door. So for me, it becomes a tool for social justice,” she says. Adelaide IT worker Jacquie Lamont had her trustworthiness measured using her social media data. Although this specific service is currently available only in South Australia due to tenancy laws, it is an example of a wider trend sweeping through financial services. Data trove
The boom in social media use has created a trove of data about consumers, and the finance sector is keen to put this information to use. Banks, insurers, credit bureaux and financial technology companies are working at ways to use this data to verify your identity, and figure out the risks of lending you money, or providing insurance. That means that just as banks have traditionally looked at your job, your income, and your spending habits, they may soon be keen to also look at your Facebook friends, or who you engage with on Twitter. Indeed, it is already happening overseas and there are moves to introduce such a system in Australia. China's government is creating a massive "social credit" system that aims by 2020 to have a database rating all of its citizens on their trustworthiness. Social scoring
In late 2017, an Australian start-up called Lodex launched with the goal of introducing "social scoring" locally, another way of predicting credit risk. The idea is that customers can apply to have their "social score", which is determined by an algorithm that sifts through their email account, and that banks will use this information alongside more traditional credit scores when assessing clients. The platform then acts as a "market place" for loans and deposits. Banks and brokers can look at a customer's traditional credit score, and their social score, and then bid for their business. Lodex co-founder Michael Phillipou says at this stage no banks are offering loans based on social scores, but he is hopeful this will change if he can prove the predictive power of social scoring. “We’d like to believe that in the short term, we’ll be able to demonstrate some correlation and it will be up to discussions with those individual lenders and organisations to take the insights which social credit scoring can offer.”
Identity checks Fintechs such as peer-to-peer lender Moneyplace also look at a customer's social media as part of their identity checks, to prevent loan fraud. So, how can a business figure out whether to trust you based on your social media accounts or email? Phillipou says if a customer wants a "social score" through Lodex, they can allow an algorithm to plug into their main email and look at "12,000 variables within their email and contacts". This includes such details as how quickly you respond to an email and whether you write a title in the subject line. The idea is that when all 12,000 variables are put together and analysed, it produces a score which can help predict whether you will repay the loan.
“What’s been shown is that the way you interact with friends, family and acquaintances, the behavioural analysis correlates to how you will behave when you’re going to pay back credit with a bank,” Phillipou says. Semantic analysis Suncorp's Trustbond works differently, but it is a similar concept. The founder of Suncorp's partner Traity, Juan Cartagena, says the company sifts through data obtained through platforms including Twitter, Airbnb, and Facebook. One technique it uses is "semantic analysis", looking at things such as reviews of you as a guest on Airbnb, to build a picture of how likely you are to look after a property. “If people say that you are a wonderful guest, you will be in the top 90th percentile of all Airbnb. If people say you are a nice guest, you are in the lowest 10th percentile,” he says.
It may also collect information from your digital social network including your friends, photos, tweets, "likes", followers and status updates. Cartagena says the technology could potentially be used in all sorts of scenarios where people find it hard to prove they can be trusted financially. “This happens to all sorts of people. Young families, freelancers, migrants – people who don’t have a traditional blue-chip background. They are subject to the evils of the traditional credit industry.” Data assets Suncorp's executive general manager of global partners, Nigel O’Rorke, says Trustbond is also a test for people owning their own data and using this as an asset.
“Your digital profile is an asset – and it can be used to determine whether you’re suitable for tenancy,” O'Rorke says. KPMG's national leader for banking and global co-lead for fintech, Ian Pollari, says the move towards a "gig economy" is another reason why banks are increasingly keen to look through customers' digital footprints. If more people move towards contract work, with less-stable incomes, banks will need to look at other ways of assessing risk, aside from traditional data such as pay slips, or your employment. “As more people move to contract forms of employment, this will become an important dimension,” Pollari says. It is also a way to target millennial customers who may have less of a credit history.
The 2017 breach of US credit bureau Equifax, in which a cyber attack affected the financial data of up to 143 million Americans, illustrates the serious privacy and security issues at stake. Credit:AP Privacy concerns But what about the obvious privacy concerns? The 2017 breach of US credit bureau Equifax, in which a cyber attack affected the financial data of up to 143 million Americans, illustrates the serious privacy and security issues at stake. Lodex's Phillipou points out that having a "social score" is completely optional.
He says the algorithm looks only at metadata, not personal information. Its service is provided by Lenddo, which he says operates in 20 countries overseas, and has never had a breach of data. Cartagena acknowledges customers are worried such technology will probe what they get up to in their private lives, but he says this isn't the goal when it is trawling through Facebook. “People always think of the example, oh, you are going to look at my drunk pictures," he says. "It’s not like that, it’s more about consistency of the network. You say that you live in Sydney, do you have any friends in Sydney? You say that you studied at Harvard, do you have many friends from Harvard?” Cartagena says. Whether Australian consumers are willing to allow such detailed sharing of their personal information with big companies remains to be seen.
But the forces of technological change suggest we will only be seeing more financial institutions trying to delve further into their customers' digital lives. | {
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In his book Back To Blood, the late and lamented Tom Wolfe portrays Hialeah, the city in Florida that has an almost entirely Spanish-speaking population, as a separate world from the United States. [Back To Blood, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, December 21, 2012] As he usually was, he was right, as a new incident at a Taco Bell confirms:
A video of an argument with a Taco Bell employee in Hialeah has unleashed a wave of indignation on social media. The incident happened on Wednesday night, when Alexandria Montgomery was trying to place an order — in English — at a Taco Bell drive thru window at 785 East Ninth St. The employee refused to take her order because she wasn’t speaking Spanish. In the video, which was posted Thursday night, Montgomery asked the annoyed woman, “Do you have a manager here?” “She is in her house sleeping,” the employee replied in Spanish in a dismissive tone. There was no one else to take the order, the employee claimed. “Honey, I have a car behind you,” the employee says in Spanish and closes the window. “Can you move please? I have an order behind you. There is no one who speaks English,” the woman tells Montgomery in the video and threatens to call the police. “This is Hialeah, I’m sorry,” she said in Spanish. ['This is Hialeah!' Taco Bell employee refuses to help client who doesn't speak Spanish, by Mario Penton, Miami Herald, September 14, 2018]
Americans are already having a hard time obtaining certain jobs because they can't speak Spanish. No one helps them. In contrast, when employers require employees to speak English, an army of lawyers, judges, activist organizations, and reporters rally against them. ["Revised" language policy remains functionally the same, discrimination continues against Spanish-speaking employees, ACLU, July 2, 2013]
What is needed is federal recognition of the English language as the official language of this country, followed by legislation that ensures no one can be denied service or a job because employers or employees don't want to speak English. This is an overwhelmingly popular issue and could give the GOP something to run on in the upcoming midterm elections. It might upset the Cheap Labor Lobby, but GOP politicians needed to decide whether they want to stay in office with upset donors, or please their donors but need to find a new job.
If the GOP doesn't do anything, we are going to see more of this. It will stop being a novelty and no employees will be fired for it. And more cities and stretches of "American" territory, will, like Hialeah, cease being part of this country in any real way. | {
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Cellphone and TriMet surveillance videos played during the opening days of the double murder trial of Jeremy Christian offer the public a view for the first time of precisely what went down on the packed MAX train on the afternoon of May 26, 2017.
The clarity of the footage – taken by multiple cameras from different angles, some of it including sound – is rare in a murder case.
The videos show a chilling scene of anger, injury and death in the moments before and after Christian stabbed three passengers, killing two.
They expose the ugliness of the carnage, but they also reveal the goodness of many people who rushed to help.
A former Marine testified that he stepped between Christian and two teenage girls, one who was wearing a hijab, to shield them from Christian’s disturbing rants about Muslims, beheadings and nationalism.
Jeremy Christian trial, January 31, 2020 Beth Nakamura, The Oregonian/OregonLive/Pool
Train passengers can be seen trying to stem the bleeding by placing their hands on the necks of the wounded men.
Strangers chased after Christian as he ran a mile from the train, telling Portland police where he was heading.
Among the dark moments is a figure seen grabbing the backpack of Ricky Best, one of the victims, as he lay bleeding on the train car’s floor. The man then strides up to Best and moves to strip the wedding ring off Best’s finger.
The trial began with opening statements last Tuesday and prominently featured the videos throughout the week as more than a dozen people in the frames and those who took them explain what they saw and did.
The videos are expected to continue to play a central role in both the prosecution’s case and the defense arguments as the trial continues in Multnomah County Circuit Court, likely until the end of February.
WHAT CHRISTIAN SAID
Christian is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Best, 53, and Taliesin Namkai-Meche, 23, and with the attempted first-degree murder of Micah Fletcher, then 21.
He also is charged with second-degree intimidation, a hate crime, for allegedly targeting the two girls on the train because of their national origin or race. One is African American and the other immigrated from Somalia.
Defense attorneys are pointing to the videos to claim Christian’s stabbing spree was a legally justified act of self-defense.
Prosecutors say Christian carried out a calculated plan to kill anyone who challenged him for loudly broadcasting his racist and xenophobic beliefs.
The videos captured Christian yelling that circumcision should be banned -- “My body my choice!” He also can be heard exclaiming “(Expletive) Saudi Arabia!” “Go home, we need American here!”
Witnesses said Christian also talked about Muslims, Christians and Jews dying, beheadings and his right to shout about it all on the MAX train because of free speech.
It was about 4:30 p.m. on a Friday, a warm and sunny start to the Memorial Day weekend.
“Free speech or die!” Christian can be heard saying.
Video shows Shawn Forde standing close to Christian. Forde is African American and said he served on four combat tours as a Marine. He testified he wanted to use his 6-foot-4-inch, 290-pound frame as a shield because as a father, he felt for the two girls.
“I changed my position on the train to ... get him to focus on me rather than focus on these two young girls,” Forde said. “...They looked really out of sorts. They looked scared.”
“I remember turning around briefly to the young ladies and I mouthed, ‘Are you OK?’’ And one of them said, ‘Yes. Thank you.’”
This still frame shows Micah Fletcher pointing his finger as he speaks in the direction of Jeremy Christian on May 26, 2017, after Christian ranted loudly. On the left of the frame, teen girls Destinee Mangum and Walia Mohamed are moving away from Christian. On the right of the frame, passenger Shawn Forde is pictured. Beth Nakamura/Staff
THE ATTACK UNFOLDS
The videos present a grim sequence of events.
They show Fletcher moving closer to Christian but what he’s saying isn’t audible. According to witness testimony, Fletcher is confronting Christian. After that, Namkai-Meche walks across part of the train and sits down in a seat in front of Christian with his cellphone out.
Although it can’t be heard on any video footage played for jurors at this point, a woman sitting nearby testified that Namkai-Meche said, “You’re about to become an internet sensation.”
Christian can be seen grabbing or slapping the phone out of Namkai-Meche’s hand. The phone makes a loud thud as it hits the floor.
That’s when Namkai-Meche and Christian both pop up from their seats, their faces inches apart, and Christian repeatedly shouts: “Do something, (expletive)!”
Jeremy Christian, Taliesin Namkai-Meche and Micah Fletcher stand close together after Christian grabbed or swatted Namkai-Meche's phone to the floor of the train on May 26, 2017. Beth Nakamura/Staff
Meanwhile, Fletcher moves in closer and Christian shoves him and then Namkai-Meche -- in what appears to be the first physical contact between the men.
That prompts Fletcher to grab Christian and throw him back toward some seats. Fletcher shoves Christian a total of three times before Christian pulls out the knife and starts stabbing.
After Jeremy Christian shoved Micah Fletcher and Taliesin Namkai-Meche, Fletcher threw him back toward some seats. Beth Nakamura/Staff
Although the full videos were played in court -- drawing some muted gasps from victims’ families and others in the courtroom -- The Oregonian/OregonLive has blurred out some graphic sections of videos posted to the news organization’s website.
Namkai-Meche doesn’t appear to lay a hand on Christian. While the scuffle between Christian and Fletcher is underway, Namkai-Meche is picking up his phone and inspecting it.
Namkai-Meche looks up just as the blade of Christian’s 4-inch knife enters the left side of Fletcher’s neck below the jaw. Fletcher runs outside through the open doors of the train, which has just arrived at the Hollywood Transit Center.
Christian next stabs Namkai-Meche in the neck, face and hand. Namkai-Meche falls back onto some seats, grasping himself below the jaw line.
Christian then takes a step forward to grab Best, who has been standing behind Namkai-Meche and appears to have had no interaction with Christian. Christian stabs him in the neck and face. Best falls to the floor.
Fellow commuters testified that at first they thought Christian was throwing punches because they hadn’t seen the folding knife he had flicked open in his right hand.
They realized their mistake when they saw the men’s blood. The videos show the pandemonium as people stormed out of the train to safety.
BYSTANDERS RESPOND
Passenger Ana Luisa Rivera can be heard murmuring a prayer in Spanish as her phone takes in the turmoil. She said she started recording because she was frightened by the things Christian was saying and she wanted to make a video as evidence.
Part of her video shows Christian striding off the train, still waving the knife in the air. He encounters Forde, the former Marine, on the platform and points the knife at him while quickly walking toward an escape route.
“(Christian) said, ‘Anybody else want some?’” Forde testified, describing how he jumped backward to steer clear of the blade.
The video shows Charles Button, a 21-year-old pre-med student at Portland State University at the time, rushing toward Best with a sweatshirt in hand. Button kneels beside Best on the floor of the train car as he applies pressure to his neck. Another unidentified man also tries to help.
Morgan Noonan, a former Army medic, also can be seen hurrying toward Best. Noonan testified that he assessed Best’s condition and determined he couldn’t survive his wounds. Best’s heart was pumping waves of blood onto the train floor, Noonan said.
Button testified he was “very shaky,” “covered in blood” and “very sad” when he realized Best had died.
“I think I just felt like I let the man down,” Button said.
While Button and the others attended to Best, a man later identified by police as George Tschaggeny walks into the camera’s view.
With shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair and wearing dark shorts and a T-shirt, Tschaggeny steals Best’s backpack, lying on the floor feet from his body.
A concerned man’s voice is heard exclaiming, “Is he OK? Is he OK?” as Tschaggeny steps toward Best and the men who are trying to help him. It’s unclear if it’s Tschaggeny’s voice.
Then Tschaggeny reaches down toward Best’s body a few times. He pauses at one point to wipe the blood off his hands and onto his shorts. He strips the wedding ring off the finger of Best, a father of four.
Investigators said Tschaggeny also made off with Best’s credit cards, then immediately headed to Beaverton, where he used them at a Big 5 sporting goods store and Fred Meyer.
Six days later, after police released a surveillance image and pleaded with the public to identify the man, they received a tip and found Tschaggeny at a homeless camp. He was wearing Best’s ring on his pinky finger.
Tschaggeny had a raging heroin addiction. He apologized to one of Best’s adult sons during a private meeting before he was sentenced to 13 months in prison and a drug treatment program.
As Tschaggeny stole Best’s belongings, others tried to save Namkai-Meche, who had stumbled toward the open doors of the train before collapsing.
Noonan, who had been with Best, eventually joined them after realizing he couldn’t save Best.
Noonan said he also quickly determined there was no way to stop Namkai-Meche’s bleeding. The knife had penetrated his trachea and he was spitting up blood, he said.
CHRISTIAN CHASED DOWN
Out on the streets above the Northeast Portland transit center, two men on foot and a woman in a car pursued Christian as they kept a 911 dispatcher updated about his location. Christian had run across Interstate 84 and down a pedestrian path.
Alvin Hall, a former Marine who was riding in a different car of the train that day, stepped onto the platform and saw strangers attending to the wounded.
“The only thing I could think of was to ask, ‘Who did this?’ and “Where did they go?’” Hall testified.
People on the platform said Christian had run up the stairs and across Interstate 84, so Hall followed for about a mile. At one point, he got within about 6 feet of Christian, who was behind a tree washing blood from his body with a container of soda, Hall said.
Christian threatened him, Hall told jurors, barking: “Are you a (expletive) snitch? Do you want some of this?” Then, Hall said, Christian held up his knife and said:
“I’m going to have to (expletive) do the same thing to you that I did to those guys.”
Hall moved away but kept sight of Christian, he said. Ultimately, police arrived to arrest Christian with pointed AR-15s, Hall said.
Back on the platform, video shows Fletcher propped up against a pole by Marcus Knipe, who had been waiting on the platform to catch a train to the Rose Festival with his wife, son and their friends.
Knipe, an Army veteran with some trauma knowledge from his time at basic training, testified that a woman gave him a child’s jacket and a baby blanket. He held them to Fletcher’s neck to try to stop the bleeding.
Moments earlier, Fletcher had staggered off the train yelling, “Somebody, help me!”
“I told him he needed to match my breathing, calm down. ... I knew his heart rate was elevated,” Knipe said. “If there was the slightest chance it was close to the jugular ... it could burst and it would be very hard to keep him alive.”
Knipe helped Fletcher call his mother but urged Fletcher not to tell her how badly he was hurt. He said he overheard Fletcher ask his mom to tell his bosses at Stark Street Pizza that he wouldn’t make it to work that day.
As Knipe worked on Fletcher on one side, Amee Pacheco knelt by Fletcher’s other side. Pacheco had been sitting just a few feet away when Christian’s attack began.
Video shows Pacheco gently stroking Fletcher’s left arm, then holding his hand.
Fletcher looks wide-eyed and alert at first. But as time passes, his eyelids begin to droop and he looks dazed.
People can be seen milling around the platform near Pacheco and Fletcher, seemingly unsure of what to do. Paramedics roll a yellow bag with a body away on a stretcher.
Pacheco testified that she has a lot of “blank spots” about what happened minutes earlier on the train. A still frame from cellphone video shows her instinctively grabbing Christian’s arm while was in the midst of stabbing the three men.
That image scares her, Pacheco said. She hadn’t realized Christian had a knife.
“I thought it was going to be a fight where they were pushing and hitting,” she said. “It didn’t occur to me that he’d actually hurt anyone. I just underestimated the situation.”
Pacheco said she still has trouble talking about that afternoon.
“I have a lot of anxiety,” she said. The feeling of terror, “it hasn’t left.”
-- Aimee Green
[email protected]
o_aimee
Keep up with key trial events and takeaways by signing up for The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Jeremy Christian trial newsletter at oregonlive.com/newsletters.
Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox. | {
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Ajit Pai has long signaled that he would approve a T-Mobile/Sprint merger, but today the FCC chairman made it official. In spite of widespread opposition suggesting that the combining of the country’s third and fourth largest carriers would reduce competition in the marketplace, Pai takes the stance that such a move would actual promote competition.
“After one of the most exhaustive merger reviews in Commission history, the evidence conclusively demonstrates that this transaction will bring fast 5G wireless service to many more Americans and help close the digital divide in rural areas,” Pai said in a statement. “Moreover, with the conditions included in this draft Order, the merger will promote robust competition in mobile broadband, put critical mid-band spectrum to use, and bring new competition to the fixed broadband market. I thank our transaction team for the thorough and careful analysis reflected in this draft Order and hope that my colleagues will vote to approve it.”
Today, I circulated an order that would approve, subject to conditions, the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. The deal would advance fast #5G across the country, help close #digitaldivide, and put critical mid-band spectrum to use. My full statement: https://t.co/fBKvLnPgmm pic.twitter.com/21r3Us9cUG — Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) August 14, 2019
Pai’s statement echoes that of many conservatives on the topic. While T-Mobile and Sprint are in third and fourth place, respectively, AT&T and Verizon are significantly ahead in terms of subscriber bases. Pai and other have suggested that combining the two under the T-Mobile umbrella would help the carriers get a leg up when it comes to competing on a 5G roll out.
“Consumers will directly benefit from improvements in network quality and coverage, which in turn will foster innovation in a wide variety of sectors and services (itself creating significant public interest benefits),” Pai’s team writes. “Moreover, the transaction will help to close the digital divide by bringing robust 5G deep into rural areas, with enforceable conditions in the draft Order requiring coverage of at least 99% of Americans within six years.”
Last month, the proposed merger was given the go-ahead by the U.S. Department of Justice on the condition that Sprint sell its prepaid assets (including Boost) to Dish network. A growing number of state attorneys general, meanwhile, have opposed the merger. Oregon joined the lawsuit yesterday, bringing the total up to 15 states and the District of Columbia.
“If left unchallenged, the current plan will result in reduced access to affordable wireless service in Oregon — and higher prices,” Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum said. “Neither is acceptable.”
Pai noted earlier this year that he planned to approve the $26.5 billion deal, which would knock the country’s premium carriers down to three. No word yet on when the Commission will formally vote on the deal.
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel had a different take on things, noting, “The FCC’s draft order approving the largest wireless merger in history just landed in my inbox. I believe we need more competition, not less. I am not convinced that removing a competitor will lead to better outcomes for consumers. But what I am convinced of is that before the FCC votes on this new deal negotiated by Washington, the public should have the opportunity to weigh in and comment. Too much here has been done behind closed doors.” | {
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Rip the refs? Get fined. Kick a player? Get warned.
Henrik Lundqvist undoubtedly will — and should — be fined for accusing the referees of having a pro-Senators agenda in the Rangers' 3-2 win in Game 6 Monday night. But Ottawa's Milan Michalek escaped with only a warning from the NHL for kicking Rangers defenseman Dan Girardi during a third-period scrum.
"No comment," John Tortorella said of Michalek's actions during a conference call with his team off Tuesday, two days before Game 7 at the Garden.
Video replay of Monday night's controversial scrum in Lundqvist's crease with 39 seconds left in the third period not only revealed Ottawa's Chris Neil kicking the puck into the net to draw the Senators to within a goal, but also revealed Michalek at the bottom of the pile kicking Girardi in the thigh.
Hurricanes forward Jeff Skinner got two games for similarly kicking the Blues' Scott Nichol along the boards on March 15.
Skinner's infraction was more obvious than Michalek's, and the Sens forward was responding to a glove to the face by Ryan Callahan, but he nevertheless intended to kick an opponent, so the absence of discipline is confusing.
Monday in Game 6, frustration built on both benches with referees Steve Kozari and Tim Peel, and it boiled over during and following the late-game pile-up.
Michalek skated away with no consequences. Neil kicked at the puck with his skate. Then Lundqvist lost it in a postgame interview over the referees' inability to whistle Neil for goaltender interference as the Senator jammed his stick into the goalie's gut, interfering with his ability to make the save.
"It's an absolute joke. Oh my God. It scares me," Lundqvist ranted. "When it's such an obvious play, goalie interference and a kick, and they still call it a goal? It scares me that someone can call that. It's just unbelievable. It still upsets me, because we have this game, and then they get a chance. Someone wants them back in the game obviously, because there's no other explanation, I think."
Tortorella also would not comment on Neil's threat toward Michael Del Zotto for the Rangers defenseman's hit with 5:30 remaining in the third that caught the Senator admiring his own pass.
"I'm sure I'll catch him with his head down one of these times," Neil said.
The Blueshirts coach talked instead about his thoughts on Game 7, the Rangers' first at the Garden since the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals.
"My thought is to win it," Tortorella said. "And as far as (this being the first) Game 7 at Madison Square Garden since 1994, it doesn't affect anything we do. We're going into a Game 7 with an opportunity to win a hockey game based on our game last night. That's all we're concerned about."
Tortorella said he's encouraged by the mind-set of rookie Chris Kreider, and he's also seen marked improvement from 21-year-old center Derek Stepan and even signs of life from the young Del Zotto.
"I felt real good in Game 5, I wanted to try to carry that over," said Stepan, who had no points in the first five games of the series but put seven shots on net in Game 6, helping him to gain confidence. "I didn't get results. But I felt my game was a lot better than the first four, and I just wanted to try and continue to play." | {
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After AMD’s keynote at Computex 2019, I had the opportunity to sit-down with Forrest Norrod for a few minutes and chat about the server industry, and where AMD is headed. Forrest is SVP and GM of AMD’s Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Business Group. He is also the executive holding what many in the server industry regard as the most highly anticipated server chip release of 2019: the second generation AMD EPYC codenamed “Rome.” In my travels talking to server vendors across the globe, customers, resellers, and ISVs, the Rome hype is palpable even in casual conversation.
Since we only had 35-40 minutes to chat, some of the questions I asked required fairly complete industry perspective. Forrest has this perspective, but I am conscious that all of our readers may not have the same background. Below are the nine key topics we discussed, along with with my notes from the discussion and some extra context and perspective from my side.
Product Strategy Questions
S1. Price wise, a 64-core Rome CPU offers more capabilities than what Intel Xeon has out today, is there any sense of where pricing should land? Are 64-core Rome parts going to be priced more like the Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 or Intel Xeon Platinum 9200?
Forrest’s response to this he asked me specifically not to quote verbatim. After speaking about this, my sense was:
Forrest agrees that most customers are not paying $10,000+ for an Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 chips.
Forrest declined to give pricing guidance. Instead, I got the sense that AMD may look to increase the street price of 64-core parts over the 32-core AMD EPYC 7601, but I also got the sense that AMD is going to try to be more realistic on pricing and not go to a high list price/ high discount model that Intel is using at the high-end.
Street price of the current generation “Naples” is not equal to list price. I can say that at STH the AMD EPYC systems we purchase for some of our infrastructure deployments are not using list price AMD EPYC 7401P chips. This is normal in the industry.
I did not get the impression that AMD was going to price a 64-core Rome CPU at the same level as the Intel Xeon Platinum 9200 series, let alone an Intel Xeon Platinum 8280L.
S2. There has been a lot of talk about high-end parts, but do you have any plans to address lower-end segments? (e.g. the Intel Xeon E-2100/ Xeon E-2200 series?)
This one surprised me a bit. As we discussed this, Forrest seemed to be focusing more on the mainstream market, rather than the lower-performance market.
Personally, I think a Ryzen with unbuffered ECC, or better yet, RDIMM support would be a category killer for the low-end UP server market.
My sense is that the TAM for this market is too low for AMD to prioritize versus the mainstream market.
S3. Does AMD have any plans to support Compute Express Link also known as CXL?
I asked this, fully expecting to get a “no.” Instead, Forrest was more diplomatic and thoughtful in his response.
AMD has not announced CXL support yet.
AMD will monitor CXL. If it is open, and truly open, is something that AMD will look at.
If there is a push in the silicon industry for CXL, AMD will consider adopting it.
Forrest was careful not to say that AMD will never support CXL. He just said that AMD wanted to ensure that it would be adopted in the market and is a truly open standard.
S4. It seems AMD is pushing for a model where there is a strong CPU at the center of an accelerated platform. Is that correct? What feedback are you getting on that messaging?
Forrest gave me an “absolutely” here.
After discussing this with Forrest, I think it is fair to say that AMD is not just trying to be the best platform for AMD CPUs combined with AMD GPUs. Instead, AMD wants to provide the platform that other hardware companies, and those that write software for big hardware, want to be on.
I think this is really interesting. AMD is providing a larger Rome platform with more PCIe I/O. Extended PCIe connectivity means that one can add more storage and more accelerators. That goes alongside having more DIMM channels than Intel’s mainstream parts.
If you read our IDC 1Q19 Quarterly Server Tracker Dell EMC Top and Inspur Grows discussion piece, you will see contracting unit shipment volume with higher ASP. A driver of higher ASP is putting more capability into a single box. Here, AMD EPYC Rome is set to deliver a more expandable platform at a time when the industry trend is consolidating to fewer machines with more resources per machine.
Market and Competitive Landscape Questions
M1. Are you seeing a strong ABI (Anything But Intel) pull in the market?
Forrest said not really. Instead, they are seeing the pull of having a new platform with more capabilities.
What was interesting with this response is that ABI very commonly heard when speaking to Arm server vendors. AMD due to compatibility has a much easier path to convert Intel Xeon sockets to AMD EPYC sockets. One would think that if ABI was a strong force, AMD would be one of the biggest beneficiaries.
M2. Intel is using the Xeon Platinum 9200 series as a halo product for marketing. Are you hearing any impact from your customers about this marketing?
Forrest told me that they are not seeing an impact with most customers.
His reasoning was that buyers for servers are generally more sophisticated and know the difference between mainstream platforms and niche platforms.
My sense is that Intel is fairly effective getting Platinum 9200 figures competitively out there, although we explained some challenges in Why the Intel Xeon Platinum 9200 Series Lacks Mainstream Support.
We had a bit of discussion about the AMD EPYC Rome 64-core NAMD benchmark, and Intel’s response. See our piece AMD EPYC Rome NAMD and the Intel Xeon Response at Computex 2019 for more here.
M3. What are the segments most interested in the next-generation AMD EPYC Rome family? Is it the GPU compute segments, storage segments, or other parts of the market?
Here Forrest said essentially all of these markets.
From my discussions with vendors of systems, accelerators, and storage, Rome has the industry buzzing. Forrest was well aware that his next-generation product had a lot of industry buzz.
M4. How does AMD compete with the huge marketing funds that Intel feeds the industry and that many companies rely on?
For those who are not aware, in the industry, Intel provides marketing support funds to their partners. Intel has some strict requirements to claim these funds. Examples include the partner logo and Intel logo need to be the same size. Logos in a trade show booth cannot be too low (e.g. must be above normal booth table height.) This extends even to sales collateral where you see the Intel logo featured prominently alongside the partner’s logo. To those who are in the industry, this is the way things operate. It provides significant headwinds to competitors.
Forrest had a very pragmatic view here. He suggested that there are a few items that AMD needed to execute well on.
He suggested that there are a number of reasons that people buy servers. Among those reputation, performance, and even sales representative recommendations.
Rome is designed to have leadership performance capabilities that he expects will generate customer demand. He expects that as they raise general awareness, customers will ask their sales reps for AMD EPYC solutions and sales reps will sell what their customers demand.
M5. Does the ecosystem need to be faster to support Rome than Naples to capitalize on the market before Intel “Ice Lake” Xeons arrive?
Here is some background. Next-generation Intel Xeon chips codenamed “Ice Lake” we expect to have 8-channel memory along with PCIe Gen4 and Intel has offered small glimpses at their next-generation parts. These new Xeons are not the Cascade Lake parts launched in Q2 2019. Instead, we expect them in 2020. That means if you want a mainstream server CPU (not Cooper Lake) that has the memory bandwidth and PCIe Gen4 speeds in 2019, AMD EPYC Rome is going to be the option. When the current EPYC generation came out in 2017, it took several months or quarters for large OEMs like HPE and Dell EMC to sell ProLiant and PowerEdge servers. If they take a similar amount of time, Intel may be nearing its next-generation shortly thereafter.
Forrest mentioned that Naples was about getting the first 5% market share and getting the ecosystem back to AMD. Naples was viewed as an ecosystem primer.
Most current models will support Rome CPUs with a BIOS flash. Forrest acknowledged that new servers (motherboards) would be needed in many cases to utilize PCIe Gen4.
Forrest was very optimistic about the work AMD has done with its OEM partners. From his perspective, he was aware of the need to have systems ready faster. Naples was the enabler for this generation.
Although he did not say anything definitive, and not sharing anything I know from talking to server vendors, my sense from Forrest was that he was confident that AMD’s partners would deliver servers supporting Rome in a timely manner.
Final Words
Speaking with Forrest is always a treat. Here is someone who has an entire industry excited about a next-gen product, yet he is very measured in his thought process and approach. Even with a strong design, Forrest realizes that there are other market forces at work and has a pragmatic methodology to address market challenges. At the same time, Forrest is an engineer at heart. It is painfully obvious behind the measured demeanor that he is an engineer that knows he has a killer product launching.
Stay tuned to STH for complete AMD EPYC “Rome” generation coverage as we get into the launch cycle next quarter. | {
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Interacting with Other Organisms
Upon hatching, the octopuses experience a very vulnerable planktonic stage. They are snacks for very many creatures, including crabs. A crab can be seen snatching hatchlings out of the water in the video on the reproduction page at around 4:56. (The crab is in the lower right corner of the screen.) Many Pacific octopuses do not even reach maturity, which occurs at about 2-3 years of age.
In adulthood, the octopus lives a solitary lifestyle. They will rarely see another octopus and will, occasionally, even eat a fellow Pacific octopus. The only time two octopuses are ever seen together is during the mating process.
The Pacific octopus is food for many other marine creatures. Moray eels are great predators of octopuses. They are able to sneak into dark dens where the octopuses live and attack. Sharks are also major predators of the Pacific octopus. (Although, that's not how it played out in this video.) Killer whales, or orcas, have also been observed eating the giant Pacific octopus. It is believed however that they only consume senescent males because the whale is far too big to get down into an octopus's den. Seals and other marine mammals also enjoy an octopus meal.
Bacteria often affect an octopus going through senescence. During senescence the octopus will develop lesions, which frequently get bacterial infections. The octopus is unable to fight off the bacteria, so the bacteria win and the octopus dies. Although a virus is not a living creature, it has also been found to greatly affect the octopus. Autophagy is a neurological disorder in which the virus attacks the octopus's central nervous system. This disruption causes the octopus to eat its own arms. It was once believed the octopus did this due to stress.
Humans are some of the greatest predators of the Pacific octopus. They are fished to be used as fishing bait for other creatures and to be sold as seafood. Octopus can be used as an ingredient in almost any seafood dish, including sushi and pastas. It has a bit of a tough or rubbery texture so sometimes the "baby" octopuses are used when available. This video show's how to properly clean and cook an octopus into a spaghetti dish. In the cooked form, octopus contains about 140 calories per ounce.
Studies have also shown that Photobacterium phosphoreum, cyanobacteria, and Streptococcus mutans are active metabolizing bacteria that can be found in octopuses. This affects humans due to the fact that these bacteria affect the octopus's shelf life in grocery stores.
Back to Reproduction Forward to Intelligence | {
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About Rob Noble
I am a lecturer in applied mathematics at City, University of London. I use mathematical and computational models to investigate evolutionary and ecological systems. I am currently working, in close collaboration with laboratory scientists, on models of cancer evolution and the development of drug resistance. My methods include game theory, analysis of dynamical systems, spatially structured models, and Bayesian inference. During my PhD at the University of Oxford (2009-2013) I used mathematical models, informed by statistical analysis of laboratory data, to understand the immune evasion mechanisms of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. | {
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An implanted nerve stimulator may help patients with the most severe depression get some of their day-to-day lives back, even if it doesn’t fully relieve their symptoms, doctors reported Tuesday.
Patients who have been using the vagus nerve stimulator say they have regained significant quality of life, and the improvements have lasted for as long as five years, the team reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
They hope that their findings will help encourage health insurance companies to pay for the pacemaker-like devices and the surgery needed to implant them. Although the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the devices for depression in 2005, health insurance companies, including Medicare, rarely pay for them.
The improvements were enough to help people work, socialize and interact with their families better, said Dr. Charles Conway of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who led the study team.
“It includes overall well-being and sex drive,” Conway said in an interview. “They describe improvements beyond ‘I am not feeling sad or down anymore.' They say things like, ‘I am more enthusiastic about life. I am more involved with my family.' ”
His team studied nearly 600 people; all received typical antidepressant treatment but half of them also had the device implanted. It’s attached to the vagus nerve, a large nerve that travels from the body up into the brain.
"We found that patients who had as little as a 34 percent drop in depression symptoms reported a meaningful improvement in their quality of life," Conway said.
It’s not clear how it might work for depression. The device is also approved to treat epilepsy.
“Brain imaging studies suggest that vagus nerve stimulation may bring about its effects via changes in the prefrontal, cingulate and insular cortex as well as the brain stem,” the team wrote in its report.
“We don’t know for certain but we know that the vagus nerve projects up into the brain and influences a number of regions involved in mood and regulation of mood,” Conway said.
It worked for Charlie Donovan, a St. Louis mortgage contractor.
“At the time, it was life-changing, life-altering,” Donovan told NBC News.
“I was in utter despair and hopelessness. I had probably tried 15 different medications, several hospitalizations, electroconvulsive shock therapy. Nothing was working and I was getting worse.”
Donovan joined an early trial of the device in 2001, which enrolled patients with severe depression who had failed four or more other treatments.
“You had to be the worst of the worst to be in the study,” Donovan said.
It did not do much for him at first, but after six months, Donovan noticed a difference.
“I was not isolating myself,” he said. “I was able to go out and go to the grocery store, do some pretty basic things — go see a movie and have enough concentration to follow the plot, or read a book."
“I started to care about things in my life — how I looked, how I dressed, how I acted in public. These things sound woefully minor to anyone who has not suffered from severe depression.”
Donovan has had a vagus nerve stimulator implanted now for 17 years, although he’s had to have surgery several times to have its battery changed. He also continues on his medications.
“This is the formula that works. I am not changing it. Once you have been in the depths of despair, you don’t want to risk going back to those days,” Donovan said.
Donovan does not pay for the devices or the surgery, but he said he has spoken to other depression patients who cannot persuade their insurance companies to pay for the device or for the procedure to implant it. “It’s probably a $50,000 procedure,” he said.
Donovan said the device maker, a company formerly called Cyberonics and now called LivaNova, provides the device to patients who volunteered for the studies and requires physicians to volunteer their services to implant it.
LivaNova paid for Conway’s study and helped design the trial, but Conway said the company had no control over the findings. “The quality-of-life ratings were done by the patients,” he said. “I oversaw the analysis.”
He said some critics may argue that the placebo effect may account for the findings. "But the placebo effect doesn't usually last for years," Conway said.
The need for better depression treatment is clear.
Major depression is on the rise among Americans from all age groups, but is rising fastest among teens and young adults. A recent Blue Cross and Blue Shield study found a 33 percent increase in major depression diagnoses since 2013.
Persistent and severe depression is strongly linked to suicide, which is also on the increase. Anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent of depression patients do not respond to current therapies.
Several other teams have also studied vagus nerve stimulation for depression. Only the implanted device is approved in the U.S. for depression, but a hand-held, noninvasive device is approved in Europe. At least one small 2016 study has suggested that it might help treat depression, as well. | {
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O
n a weekend that featured Undertaker’s first Summerslam match in seven years, a rare wrestling appearance from Brock Lesnar, an above-average celebrity performance from Stephen Amell and a shocking heel turn by Jon Stewart, the biggest moment of WWE’s Brooklyn takeover wound up belonging to two women whose combined age (49) is less than the Undertaker’s (50).
For more than a month, the WWE has been pushing the “Divas Revolution” on its main roster in an attempt to revitalize the women’s division. For years, the female performers were positioned as a buffer segment for bigger moments on almost every show. Often, the live crowd would use their segments as an opportunity to use the restroom, grab another $12 beer or hit the merchandise table.
While this type of fan behavior was taking place on Raw, Smackdown and WWE’s monthly pay-per-view events, a fresh presentation of women’s wrestling has been setting the Internet on fire as of late. The women of NXT (WWE’s developmental brand) have been presented in an equal spotlight to the male performers on the roster, and viewers have responded with overwhelming support.
The success that female wrestlers like Sasha Banks, Bayley, Charlotte and Becky Lynch have had in NXT proves that women have the ability to hold a crowd’s attention for 20-25 minutes if the crowd is not only conditioned to take them seriously, but also has an emotional investment in the individuals and their storylines.
Bayley’s quest to gain the NXT Women’s Championship, which spanned more than a year, was the type of storyline anyone could easily gravitate towards. She was presented as an underdog who was left behind by Charlotte, Lynch and Banks when they made their main roster debuts on the July 13 edition of Raw. In the weeks leading up to the biggest show in NXT’s young history, Bayley defeated Charlotte in a fantastic match, then beat Lynch to become the number one contender for Banks’ title at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn.
The buildup for their title match had an old-school feel — the hot contender beats whoever is in their path to eventually get to the champion. But the combination of Bayley’s mission to win her first championship and Banks’ ability to play a convincing heel to a point where she actually gets cheered, gave their title match just enough personal issues to make the match even more compelling.
Bayley entered the match with an “injured” right hand and Banks, in heel fashion, quickly went to work on it in order to gain an advantage. (Bayley did have a legit injury to the hand months prior, but it was completely healed.)
After knocking her opponent outside of the ring, Banks removed the protective wrap off of Bayley’s hand and went to work on the injury. She slammed Bayley’s hand off of the metal ring steps, stomped on it and then wedged the hand between the steps and the ring and kicked the steps. It was a brutal sequence that the crowd immediately responded to. Oohhs and aahhs filled the Barclays Center.
Banks then immediately shifted the match into another gear. As Bayley was recovering on the outside, the referee stopped Banks from continuing her attack. Sasha proceeded to jump over the referee and the top rope to the floor, where she landed right on top of Bayley.
When the two returned to the ring, the No. 1 contender for Banks’ championship turned the match around by knocking Sasha to the floor. Bayley then continued her comeback with a suplex on Banks into the corner turnbuckles.
Banks then stopped the momentum by slamming Bayley’s injured hand on the mat and locking in her finishing submission hold, the “Banks Statement”. (A crossface type maneuver where Banks locks the arm of her opponent with her legs and pulls back on the neck.)
As Bayley reached for the ropes, with her “injured” hand, to break the hold, Banks began stomping on the hand. It was an incredibly well-thought-out spot that the crowd immediately responded to. Bayley then countered the hold and locked the same move onto Sasha, who was able to get her foot on the rope in order to break the hold.
Bayley then connected with her finishing move — the “Bayley-to-Belly” suplex. (A move that starts off like a hug, but ends with the opponent being slammed onto the mat.) Banks was able to kick out at two and the crowd showered the pair with “This is awesome!” chants.
After Sasha regained control by throwing Bayley off of the top rope, she jumped off of the top rope and slammed her knees onto the shoulders of a sitting Bayley. A clever pinning combination that Bayley kicked out of.
The crowd continued chanting, this time with a dueling screams of “Let’s go Bayley!” and “Let’s go Sasha!”
Banks lifted Bayley up and sat her on the top rope facing the audience. As she climbed up to attack her, Bayley countered and switched spots with Banks. The crowd collectively lost its mind when Bayley sat on top of Banks’ shoulders, while also facing the audience, and did a back flip in order to send Banks crashing to the canvas. (A reverse hurricanrana for the wrestling enthusiasts out there.) It was the first time this move has been done in a WWE ring.
Almost all of the announced 15,589 fans were on their feet when Bayley got up, fired her trademark headband into the crowd and hit Banks with another Bayley-to-Belly suplex. The crowd roared along with the referee’s three count and began jumping around after his hand hit the mat for a third time.
After Charlotte and Lynch ran down to the ring from backstage, Banks stood up, gathered herself and became Mercedes Kaestner-Varnado (her real identity) by embracing Bayley with an exuberant hug. The “Four Horsewomen” stood next to each other while holding hands and bowing to the crowd. It was their curtain call and a moment that could have closed Summerslam, let alone the NXT TakeOver special.
The weekend featured 20 matches in the same arena, but the bout between Bayley and Banks, and subsequent celebration with Charlotte and Lynch, felt like the only moments that the crowd emotionally connected with from beginning to end.
There wasn’t a controversial finish that sucked the air out of the building. Jon Stewart made a surprise appearance, which drew some mainstream attention, but ultimately felt out of place.
The storyline connecting Bayley and Banks was universal for the fans, which is why they had such an easy time connecting with it. Almost everyone can think of a time in their life when they worked extremely hard to overcome obstacles in life, whether they were personal or professional. It’s the response to those obstacles that builds a person’s character and helps them going forward.
Professional wrestling is similar to real life in that way. The characters are supposed to garner a variety of emotions from the audience. Bayley was given obstacle after obstacle to overcome before finally completing her goal in front of a crowd that was moved by her accomplishment because they, too, were part of the ride.
The fans were part of a moment they actually cared about instead of being treated to another ultimately pointless segment without any direction, which is what took place on Raw two nights after the NXT TakeOver event.
Two months ago, Stephanie McMahon stood in the middle of the ring on Raw and introduced Lynch, Charlotte and Banks as the next wave of talent on WWE’s main roster. The trio shined on NXT by putting on some of the best matches in the promotion over the last 18 months, while being positioned in equal spots on the card as their male counterparts.
When Charlotte, Banks and Lynch made their main roster debut on Raw they were put alongside the Bella Twins, Paige, Naomi, Alicia Fox and Tamina. All veterans on the main roster who had suffered through a time period when women were lucky to receive more than five minutes of television time on a three hour broadcast.
At first the “new and improved” Divas division showed signs of major change. The women were given multiple back-to-back segments (10-14 minutes) in order to have thorough matches. Those extended segments were sometimes positioned at the top of the second and third hours of the show, which is a tune-in point for casual viewers.
But after weeks and weeks of the same scenario every week (some combination of the nine women wrestling each other without any progression) the crowd is showing signs of tuning out. Even though the commentators and male wrestlers continue to give the “revolution” a hard sell, the women still lack any meaningful stories to tell.
Where is the tale of the young contender coming up through the ranks to face the champion? What about the story of the veterans trying to keep the fresh faces away from taking their spot?
WWE’s crowd can sense this, which is why they let loose on Paige, Charlotte, Lynch, Fox and the Bellas during the Raw after Summerslam at the Barclays Center. The 15,000-plus fans in attendance did the wave, booed when a pin was broken up — because it meant that the match had to continue — chanted for retired wrestlers and expressed their desire to see Banks, who didn’t make an appearance on the show.
If the audience has a reason to care, they will give the performers their attention. If talent is presented as nothing more than a filler for bigger moments on the show, they will respond accordingly.
The women in NXT were able to grow with their audience thanks to well thought out stories that advanced characters. It’s a simple equation that is being lost somewhere in this “revolution.”
Storytelling + well-built characters + in-ring product = Emotional Response.
Sometimes, wrestling just needs to be simple to be great. | {
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Image copyright PA
An article in the Sun that claimed nearly one in five UK Muslims had "sympathy for Jihadis" was misleading, the new press regulator has ruled.
The paper's story in November reported the results of a survey of UK Muslims, generating more than 3,000 complaints.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation ruled it breached the accuracy clause of its editors' code.
It said the paper's presentation of the poll had been "significantly misleading".
The paper has published the regulator's ruling, as required.
'Significantly misleading'
The Sun's article on 23 November, based on a poll carried out after the Paris terror attacks, said "nearly one in five British Muslims has some sympathy with those who had fled the UK to fight for IS [so-called Islamic State] in Syria".
The article was illustrated on the front page with a photograph of Mohammed Emwazi - the British militant known as "Jihadi John", who was killed in a drone strike - and was captioned "Support ... Brit Jihadi John who went to Syria".
Ipso said the coverage presented as a "fact" that the poll showed one in five British Muslims had sympathy for those who left to join IS or even the group itself - although the questions and answers in the survey about "sympathy" never mentioned the IS group.
The Sun had argued the meaning of "those who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria" was not ambiguous.
The paper said previous questions in the telephone survey had made explicit reference to IS and the overwhelming majority of those who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria are joining IS.
It also noted in its story that the survey showed "a clear majority of the 2.7m Brits who follow Islam are moderate".
But in its adjudication, published on page 2 of The Sun on Saturday, IPSO concluded the newspaper had "failed to take appropriate care in its presentation of the poll results, and as a result the coverage was significantly misleading".
An Ipso spokesman said: "The newspaper had provided various interpretations of the poll result which conflated important distinctions between those travelling to Syria and those already fighting in Syria; between "sympathy" for these individuals and "support" for their actions; and between individuals attracted by the ideology of IS, and the ideology of IS itself."
Image caption The paper illustrated its story with a photograph of Mohammed Emwazi - the IS militant killed in a drone strike
Ipso also upheld a complaint about the headline of an article in The Times which reported the Sun's survey with the headline "One in five British Muslims has sympathy for Isis".
The press regulator was established on 8 September in 2014 after the Press Complaints Commission was wound up.
It rules on whether newspapers and magazines have breached its editors' code and can ask publications to print prominent corrections or critical adjudications when they are judged to have breached its code. | {
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WEST BLOOMFIELD TWP, Mich. – Police are investigating a crime scene Friday morning at a vacant school in West Bloomfield Township where a torched vehicle was found with human remains inside.
Two people were interviewed by police and are considered persons of interest. One was arrested on an unrelated warrant out of Detroit.
READ: Police interview 2 persons of interest in West Bloomfield torched vehicle death
The vehicle was found behind Pine Lake Elementary School on West Long Lake Road, between Orchard Lake and Middlebelt roads.
Police said they responded at about 1:30 a.m.
Once the fire was extinguished, police found human remains inside the car. An autopsy was conducted and dental records were needed to make a positive identification. The case is being considered a homicide.
Chief Michael Patton said the situation is not connected to the missing woman from Farmington Hills.
The identity of the woman wasn't immediately released, but police say they believe they know her name. According to sources, she lives in the neighborhood.
Burned car just removed from crime scene. Female victim still not identified. Should happen early today. #local4 pic.twitter.com/4IKHRNbLNq — Nick Monacelli (@nickmonacelli) December 9, 2016
Detectives are expected to be on scene for several hours gathering evidence.
Dive crews searched Orchard Lake for evidence Friday afternoon. According to police, the person of interest that was arrested on an unrelated warrant was at a boat launch during the early morning hours. An officer on a routine patrol made contact with the person and he was questioned the next morning.
Stay with Local 4 and ClickonDetroit.com as more details become available. | {
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Expandifide Chopper, blue unique Assault Rifle from Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt in Borderlands 2
Expandifide Chopper is a rare blue assault rifle in Borderlands 2. It is a returning gun from the original Borderlands.
How to get Chopper [ edit ]
Dropped by Dexiduous The Invincible.
Requires: Hammerlock's Hunt
Main Attributes [ edit ]
Stats will be different based on weapon level.
Rarity: Blue (Rare/Unique)
Type: Assault Rifle
Manufacturer: Bandit
Value: $32,460
Weapon Stats [ edit ]
Damage: 4511x4
Accuracy: 42.5
Fire Rate: 14.3
Reload Speed: 6.8
Magazine Size: 1533
Status Effects and Other Bonuses [ edit ]
"Get to it." (red text effect)
Variants [ edit ]
Fast Bulets Chopper
Wyld Asss Chopper
Zapper Chopper
Greesy Chopper
Hevy Chopper | {
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24140
Christine and the Queens is challenging for Number 1 on this week’s Official Albums Chart.
The French performer’s sophomore album Chris holds pole position on today’s Official Chart Update, but it is going to be a very close race to the top spot; less than 2,000 combined sales are currently separating the Top 4.
Christine’s debut album Chaleur Humaine peaked at Number 2 on the UK’s Official Chart, following headline-grabbing performances at Glastonbury and on Late Night with Jools Holland.
Less than 1,000 units behind Christine are Suede, with The Blue Hour at Number 2. The alt-rock group’s eighth studio album may take out their highest UK chart placing in 19 years, since 1999’s Head Music reached Number 1.
Number 1 for the past three weeks, Eminem is currently at 3 with Kamikaze, while Guns N’ Roses legend Slash is set for his highest UK chart entry as a named artist; Living The Dream, his third collaborative album with Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy is at Number 4.
New entries and high climbers
A fourth UK Top 10 album is on the horizon for Joe Bonamassa, as Redemption sits at Number 6, Josh Groban is on the cusp of a third Top 10 entry with Bridges at Number 7, and Prince is one slot behind at 8 with posthumous rarities collection Piano & A Microphone 1983.
Wolf Alice return to the Top 40 with Visions Of A Life following their Mercury Prize win, currently back up to Number 11. A further four new entries are looking to impact the Top 20: The Big Bad Blues from ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons (16); The Art of Pretending To Swim from Irish group Villagers (17); Chip is at 18 with Ten10; and Northern Irish collective Therapy? may claim their first Top 40 album since 1998 with Cleave (20).
The self-titled debut album from Brighton rockers Black Honey opens at 22, one rung higher than Iridescence, the major label debut from hip-hop group Brockhampton (23). Doncaster group The Blinders are also vying for a Top 40 finish with their debut album Columbia (28).
Finally, Kylie Minogue’s self-titled 1994 album could re-enter the Top 40 following an exclusive white vinyl release (27), while her latest album Golden rebounds 21 places to 35 as she kicks off her UK arena tour. | {
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
Born: July 30, 1947 Thal, Styria, Austria
[Please note that we are recovering from a bad database backup and some of our bio entries might be a bit stale. We are baking up a fresh batch as soon as possible.]
Arnold Schwarzenegger has played everything from a loin-cloth clad barbarian to a pregnant man. He also served as governor of California. If that’s not a varied career, what is?
Born in Austria on July 30, 1947, Arnold is so gung-ho on the American Dream that even with his accent you can easily forget that he wasn’t born in the States. Working hard to achieve his goals is something that Schwarzenegger really puts his mind to. Though his father was a police chief, the family lived in impoverished conditions. Training for the local soccer team, Arnold began lifting weights and soon began to dream of winning the Mr. Universe contest.
While serving his then mandatory year in the Austrian Army, Arnold skipped base to compete in the Mr. Junior Europe contest. Unfortunately, this not only won him the title, but also several days in army prison for going AWOL. When he was released, he resumed his body-building ambitions and won the Mr. Universe title by 1967. Though he was second in 1968, he worked hard and won Mr. Universe another four times and Mr. Olympia six times in a row. He then retired to focus his attention on his new goals.
One of those goals was acting, and though his voice had to be dubbed, he won a role in 1970’s Hercules Goes to New York. His performance didn’t have people lined up around the block and except for some small parts here and there, his acting career was stagnant. Rather than mope, Schwarzenegger realized he needed to have something behind him while he worked on his acting. He started a mail-order business, bought some real estate, and received his bachelor’s degree in business and international economics.
In 1975, Schwarzenegger managed to snare the Best New Actor Golden Globe for Stay Hungry, a fitting title considering Arnold’s drive. He became famous when Pumping Iron brought him to national attention in 1977. He played Jayne Mansfield’s husband in a 1980 TV movie, but acheived his cinematic breakthrough when his was cast as Conan in the 1982 action hit Conan the Barbarian. Critics hated the film and Schwarzenegger’s performance, but the film was popular with audiences.
Two years later, playing a character with few lines, he teamed up with director James Cameron in The Terminator which reaped huge rewards at the box office. He cranked out other action flicks like Commando, Predator and The Running Man. Then in 1988, he surprised people when he tried his hand at comedy, starring opposite Danny DeVito in Twins. 1990 saw him do an action film and a comedy, releasing both Total Recall and Kindergarten Cop in the same year.
Schwarzenegger’s cyborg character minted gold in 1991 when he appeared in his most successful film, Terminator 2. Of course, even a guy who plays superhumans has to stumble a bit and when Schwarzenegger made The Last Action Hero and Junior audiences didn’t really care. That trend was stopped when Arnold once again teamed up with James Cameron and made True Lies in 1994. Audiences loved the action-filled story of a spy and his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis).
End of Days was Arnold’s first film since his role in 1997’s Batman & Robin. The buzz was that Schwarzenegger seemed rested after his absence from the screen.
In 2000, Arnie appeared in The 6th Day and released Collateral Damage in 2002.
Arnold returned to his most famous role in 2003’s T3: Rise of the Machines. It apparently took a $30 million payday for him to play the Terminator again.
Deciding he wanted to change his focus to politics, Arnold ran as a Republican for the Governor of California in the special recall election. He was elected governor on October 7th, 2003 and served out the rest of the term of recalled governor Gray Davis. He was re-elected on November 7, 2006, defeating Democrat Phil Angelides. He left the office on January 3rd, 2011.
Offscreen, the Republican was married to Maria Shriver, JFK’s niece. Despite being married into America’s most famous Democratic family, the two appeared to have a great marriage and had four children. The marriage came crumbling down after 25 years when, in the spring of 2011, it was revealed that Arnold had a son, now 14, with the family’s long-time housekeeper Mildred Baena. Shriver filed for divorce.
In 2010, Arnold had a brief appearance in The Expendables, which featured a cast of action stars like Sylvester Stallone and Jet Li. He expanded his role in 2012’s The Expendables 2 and made his lead role return to the screen as a sheriff in 2013’s The Last Stand.
As time progresses, we'll have more info about Arnold Schwarzenegger here. If you have any comments or suggestions about our coverage, please email us. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Likes organic food Doesn't like an organic economy | {
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There are, as it happens, at least two kinds of fake news. The one that has become a dirge through the first days of Trump, simple fibs dressed up as facts on Facebook et al – and the more insidious fakery that no one seems to have rumbled yet: mindless news, empty news, news as transient as the latest tweet from the Donald.
British journalists who haven’t been concentrated on Trumpian tactics may, perhaps, be excused last week’s farce. But would any prime minister in her right mind make Nigel Farage – loosest of cannons, most lethal of preening enemies – ambassador to the United States? It’s a joke, a non-starter. So why did a tweet from the president-elect seem to start it?
Because that’s what he does, that’s how he plays the media game: by total distraction. Why talk about serious policies or serious appointments (not to mention serious promises swiftly shredded) when you can whip up a meaningless storm in 140 characters?
Here’s his new White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, sounding off. “The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country. It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f–ing idea what’s going on. If the New York Times didn’t exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post and everything else is predicated on the New York Times. It’s a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information — and her confidence. That was our opening.”
So what do you do to bubbles when you win? You burst them. You undermine their confidence. You threaten and bluster. And you make your antipathy to them, and their fear of you, a permanent theme. Remember, according to Gallup, that only 14% of Republicans have a fair amount/great deal of trust in the media, as opposed to 51% of Democrats. It’s important for Trump to keep that distrust and hostility alive.
Important: and pathetically easy, because a warm bath of portentous introversion swills around inside this bubble. Trump’s aim, as Nic Dawes, a brilliant South African editor now head of media at Human Rights Watch in New York, tells fellow journalists in the Columbia Journalism Review, is simple: “To delegitimise accountability journalism by framing it as partisan … Why should anyone care about your investigation of the president’s conflicts of interest, or his tax bills, if they emanate from the political opposition? The scariest thing about ‘fake news’ is that all news becomes fake. Yours too.”
And see how easily the gullibility game works out. Worried about the dodgy details of that $25m Trump University settlement? No sweat. Watch the cast of a Broadway musical slag off your vice-president, then start firing off tweets as usual. Result: no one stops to bother about those university details. The pack has moved on, as you knew they would. “He tweets and they go crazy,” says the mordant commentator Michael Wolff.
So it is, too, with top jobs for rightwing boys such as Bannon, and strategic withdrawals from campaign promises that don’t work any longer, such as locking up Clinton. Who wants to dwell on such things when you call America’s media luminaries in for an off-the-record session with the elected one, then smirk as news of his alleged fury with them leaks all over compliant papers? No problem with how such leaks happened. Need to confect another front in your war against the liberal elite? Mission all too possible.
Look, here’s a tweet calling off a meeting with the New York Times! And here’s another one putting it back on his schedule. Is that a story, or rather two stories? Meeting cancelled; meeting reinstated. Is the Times to be praised for its fortitude in welcoming Trump on the record? Or is that, too, just more space devoted to examination of media navels – an obsession Trump plays on to perfection?
It’s so easy when a tweet or two provokes headlines round the globe. Easy when a single tweet can send Fleet Street and Westminster into a flimsy panic over Farage. Easy when the 24-hour news cycle that Alastair Campbell used to wail about can be spun up and away every time the president-elect logs on to Twitter.
You can present the coming of Trump as a threat to press freedom, the first amendment, and American democracy. Heavy meetings duly summoned. Stiff lips quiver. We’ll see. But, for the moment, it’s more a threat to media sanity as the Donald hooks another open-mouthed big fish, and grins as he winds it in. | {
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(CNN) Five Harvard students are suing university officials over Harvard's investments in what they call the "prison-industrial complex."
The students are accusing the university's president, a senior fellow of Harvard Corporation, and Harvard's endowment manager, Harvard Management Company (HMC), of a "violation of fiduciary duty and breach of the Harvard charter."
Jason Newton, a spokesman for Harvard University, confirmed the university received a copy of the complaint Wednesday but wouldn't comment further.
Jarrett Drake, a plaintiff in the case, described the "prison-industrial complex" to CNN as the mixture of overlapping interests between the government, prisons, police, and corporations in "keeping bodies confined and controlled."
Harvard uses its endowment to "help ensure Harvard University has the financial resources to confidently maintain and expand its leadership in education and research for future generations," according to HMC's website.
Read More | {
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The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has again cautioned Nigerians to be wary of investments in crypto currency as they are virtual currencies that are not legal tender in Nigeria.
Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okoroafor, gave the warning in a statement on Wednesday.
He noted that crypto currencies such as Bitcoin, Ripples, Monero, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Onecoin, and Exchanges such as NairaEx were not licensed or regulated by the CBN.
Okoroafor said “dealers and investors in any kind of crypto currency in Nigeria are not protected by law, thus may be unable to seek legal redress in event of failure of the exchangers or collapse of the business.”
The CBN further warned Nigerians against investing in crypto currencies as doing so would be at their own risk.
Bitcoin was the best performing currency of the year 2016. It appreciated from four cents in 2010 to over $1,000 in 2017. | {
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For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.
The Trump administration boasted on Thursday of a drop in illegal border crossings last month, crediting the administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that caused more than 2,000 children to be separated from their parents. That policy, some top-level administration officials have claimed, was carried out in order to deter additional families from coming to the country illegally.
“Following the implementation of the administration’s zero-tolerance policy, the June 2018 Southwest Border Migration numbers declined by 18 percent when compared to the previous month,” the Department of Homeland Security announced in a statement on Thursday.
But there are two major problems with the claim that “zero tolerance” was reducing illegal immigration. First, the number of families being apprehended at the border—the people who would actually be deterred by the policy—stayed flat. From May to June, that number went from 9,485 to 9,449, a statistically meaningless 0.38 percent drop.
And second, the 18 percent drop in overall apprehensions is hardly unusual. DHS’s attempt to attribute it to the president’s controversial immigration push appears to ignore the agency’s own statement, which links to US Customs and Border Protection numbers showing that there’s a decline in apprehensions nearly every year around this time. In fact, an equal 18 percent drop was recorded in 2016 under the Obama administration.
Also on Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar revealed that more than 2,000 children—and possibly as many as 3,000—who were separated from their parents under the policy have yet to be reunited with their families. Azar on Thursday was unable to provide an exact figure. | {
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In 2016, writer Tom King concluded spectacular runs on THE OMEGA MEN and Vision, as well as his war-torn crime noir THE SHERIFF OF BABYLON. But he also began the most high profile comics project of his career so far when he took over writing duties for BATMAN, which along with continuing to be one of the most popular books on the stands also made the leap to a twice monthly title.
After a tone-establishing BATMAN: REBIRTH one-shot, King catapulted readers into “I Am Gotham,” the first chapter of a three part “I Am…” trilogy that introduced us to two new heroes, Gotham and Gotham Girl, as well as a spare storytelling style that eschews the internal monologs and frequent text boxes that are common in most superhero stories for a subtler, more character-driven approach. The result has been a greater sense of both urgency and poignancy than what we’re accustomed to seeing in Batman comics.
The first Batman trade collection of the Rebirth era, BATMAN VOL. 1: I AM GOTHAM, lands in stores today, offering fans who haven’t been reading a chance to see what all of the buzz is about. But for fans who have, we offered King an opportunity to look back at “I Am Gotham” as well as expand on what lies ahead. Please note that the below interview contains spoilers if you haven’t yet read his first storyline.
Congrats on an amazing first arc. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Gotham and Gotham Girl, but in the end they broke my heart. How big of a role will Claire be playing in Batman’s story going forward?
She’s in it for the long term. She’s in there till the end of these three stories we’re doing: “I Am Gotham,” “I Am Suicide” and “I Am Bane.” She’s the driving force behind them. But unfortunately, she’s sort of out of commission for most of it. She’s been infected by the Psycho Pirate’s fear. She needs to get that out of her head and the only one who can do that is the Psycho Pirate himself. So to save Claire—to save this one last remnant of this hope he has in issue #1—Batman has to find Psycho Pirate, and that mission leads him directly into Bane.
You ended issue #5 with a pretty cryptic voiceover given by Claire. Is that basically what you’re building towards with your story? When will we find out more about what she was talking about?
I am building towards that! At the end of issue #5, Claire talks about how she and Duke get married and that she basically kills Batman. That’s a huge story, and it’s going to play out for a long time. I don’t want to give it a limit because it’s going to be the underlying rumblings of my entire run on Batman.
Grant Morrison said it best. He said during your run you have to give Batman a death and you have to give him a birth. We gave him a birth, that was issue #1, and we’ll eventually give him a death.
I find it interesting that Psycho Pirate has played such a key role in these first two storylines. He’s kind of a fringe character. Was it always your plan to use him? Are you a Psycho Pirate fan?
I don’t think of him as a fringe character. He plays a huge part in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. That’s where I was first introduced to him. He’s the guy who kills Barry Allen! So he’s played a role in the DCU for years. And then Grant Morrison took him into ANIMAL MAN and made him the one character in all of DC continuity who can remember the Multiverse. He remembers what happened beforehand. So he has both those aspects of him—he’s played a key role in this huge crossover and he also has this bizarre memory. He’s this huge character…and he’s a wimp. He’s a nobody! He’s terrible. He’s always manipulated by other people.
After Jessica Jones came out, I think people saw the seriousness of the Purple Man and the idea that one person who could take over a mind could take over the world. That’s what Psycho Pirate can do. I just think there’s a lot there. It wasn’t a tough pick.
Batman is now over 75 years old. There are so many stories that have been written about him before you got your chance at the character. As a writer, how do you tackle a character like that? With respect to everything that’s come before, how do you tell a story knowing how many other great Batman stories are out there?
There are a few things you do. First of all, if you’re not writing from truth or writing from yourself, then it’s meaningless. Everybody’s experienced Batman, but they haven’t experienced my Batman. They haven’t experienced a Batman through the lens of a guy who was in the CIA, who’s seen some crazy, sad, weird, wonderful crap and gone through the experience of my life. So that’s part of it. You put yourself into it.
The other half of it is that you use that 75-year history to make it awesome. That’s not a weakness of this character, the fact that everything’s been done before. That’s a strength. You can build upon all of that. I can have a scene with Kite Man—a one-page scene in issue #6—and it’s so much fun and wonderful because Kite Man’s a character from thirty years ago that fans remember fondly. You take that history and you make it work for you. You show all of that stuff—all of those writers and all of their contributions. You find what’s essential to them and why it stuck.
Finally, of all of Batman’s qualities and attributes, what’s the one that really speaks to you?
To me, it’s his mortality. It’s the idea that he could die—that he’s human. There’s something about Superman and Wonder Woman that says to me that they go on forever. If you came to Earth one hundred years from now, Superman and Wonder Woman would still be here. But Batman’s like one of us, right? He can die. He has that risk factor to him, and every time he goes out at night, he faces that and still triumphs over it. That just makes him the most human character in the DCU to me, the idea that he’s not a god. He lives among the gods and tries to do his best. | {
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The Tegra Note is a 7-inch Tegra 4 based tablet, built by a contract manufacturer for NVIDIA. The tablet will be offered by NVIDIA but not directly. Instead, you'll be able to buy co-branded versions of the Tegra Note through some of NVIDIA's traditional partners like EVGA, Zotac and PNY. If this sounds like how you presently buy NVIDIA graphics cards, you'd be right. The difference, at least initially, is that there's effectively no partner level customization offered on the Tegra Note. I get the impression that if successful, future versions may allow some flexibility on behalf of NVIDIA's partners, but not today.
The Tegra Note features a 1280 x 800 display, 1GB of memory and of course a 1.8GHz quad-core Tegra 4 SoC. There's 16GB of NAND on-board, with a microSD card slot for expansion. NVIDIA promises to ship Tegra Note with the latest version of Android, and promises to provide OTA updates directly to customers.
The tablet falls somewhere in between the 2012 and 2013 Nexus 7s in terms of size and weight. The Note comes from the inclusion of NVIDIA's DirectStylus - a passive stylus technology that NV demonstrated a while ago as a way of bringing stylus support to lower cost platforms. NVIDIA is promising up to 10 hours of video playback. No word on what the WiFi hardware inside the Tegra Note looks like. Update: It seems to be 2.4GHz 802.11n.
NVIDIA Tegra Note SoC 1.8GHz NVIDIA Tegra 4 Display 7-inch IPS LCD 1280 x 800 RAM 1GB WiFi 2.4GHz 802.11n Storage 16GB + microSD (up to 32GB) I/O Micro HDMI connector OS "Latest" Android OS with OTA updates from NVIDIA directly Battery 4100 mAh (15 Wh?) Size / Mass 199 x 119 x 9.6 mm, 320g Camera 5MP Rear Facing Camera
VGA Front Facing Camera Price $199
The tablet will retail for around $199 and will begin shipping in the next few months. If the rest of the package is well executed, this could be a very affordable way to get a very high performing 7-inch Android tablet. | {
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