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Killing Them Softly’s Andrew Dominik will direct the Scott-produced Netflix project, which will star Hardy as a decorated Navy Seal
This article is more than 3 years old
This article is more than 3 years old
Tom Hardy and Ridley Scott are pairing up for a Navy Seal drama, funded by Netflix.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, War Party will star Hardy, with Scott’s company, Scott Free Productions, handling production. Andrew Dominik, best known for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Killing Them Softly, will co-write and direct. Plot details are under wraps but the film will be based on real-life events, with Hardy playing a decorated US Navy Seal.
Netflix has won what is believed to have been a highly competitive bidding war for the project, with Amazon, Lionsgate and Universal among other interested parties.
Alien: Covenant trailer: five things we've learned about the xenomorph saga Read more
Hardy and Scott have worked together before: Scott Free produced the actor’s BBC period drama Taboo, which was recently commissioned for a second series, and Hardy featured in Scott’s 2001 film Black Hawk Down.
Later this year Hardy will appear in Christopher Nolan’s second world war film Dunkirk. Next up for Scott is Alien: Covenant, the second instalment in his Alien prequel series, after 2012’s Prometheus. The director has also indicated that he would like to make a sequel to his 2000 film Gladiator. | {
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Europeans will take to the streets this weekend in protest at the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an international agreement that has given birth to an ocean full of red herrings.
That so many have spawned is, say critics, in no small part down to the way in which this most controversial of international agreements was drawn up. If the negotiating parties had set out to stoke the flames of Internet paranoia they could not have done a better job.
Accepted there are two things that should never be seen being made in public—laws and sausages—the ACTA process could be a case study of how not to do it. Conducted in secret, with little information shared except a few leaked documents, the ACTA talks were even decried by those who were involved in them.
That the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America, had even a tangential role has done nothing to calm fears among opponents that the agreement is little more than a stitch up by rights holders against the interests of a free and open Internet.
According to Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, the problems with the agreement appeared at the start of the process, when too many things were swept under the ACTA umbrella. | {
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The Best Toys of 2010
The awesome action figure is an elusive creature, indeed. Only rarely sighted in its natural habitat of the aisles of toy stores and comic book shops across the nation, it is easily confused with its lesser and more bountiful cousin, the peg-warmer.
This hasn’t been an fantastic year for toy hunting, but there are the few exceptional specimen that were sighted in the fields of mediocre plastic. Here is a glimpse of those rare beasts.
Best 8-Inch Line: The Venture Bros. by Biff Bang Pow!
I really have to give two thumbs up to Biff Bang Pow! They resurrected the old fashioned 8-inch market with great reproductions of classic MEGO figures. The Star Trek line looks just as good, if not better than the original 60’s counterpart and they did the same for the DC MEGOs, although the only figures I’ve seen from the DC line have been Sinestro and Lex Luthor. Recently, though, I got a chance to see some of the figures from the Venture Bros. series and they blew me away. The mix new and old style action figure (especially the addition of real clothing) is a real treat. The Monarch figure rules!
Best (sort of) 3¾-Inch Figure: Marvel Universe Galactus
The last three years have been good to Hasbro. First off, they own the rights to the big four of toys: G.I. Joe, Transformers, Star Wars and Marvel. G.I. Joe had a big year in 2009 because of the movie tie-in and even though the movie wasn’t that great, most of the toys were cool. This year they continued with the Pursuit of Cobra line and recently redesigned classic characters like Firefly and Zartan. And that’s not even getting into the two Resolute 7-packs, featuring most of the characters from the G.I. Joe: Resolute cartoon.
I am a hardcore G.I. Joe fan. As much as I love the POC and the Resolute figures, the Marvel lines is what caught my eye this year.
Last year, Hasbro launched Marvel Universe. They moved away from the 6-inch format into a realm that was ruled solely by G.I. Joe – 3¾-inch. While they put out many versions of Iron Man and Spider-man, they have also focused on some under the radar characters like Union Jack and Absorbing Man. The real winner for me is the 14-inch Galactus with sound and lights. This figure just about gets Toy of the Year from me. He comes packed with Silver Surfer and looks ready to devour some worlds.
Best 12-Inch Figure: Sideshow Collectibles Firefly
2009 saw Sideshow release the uber-cool 12″ G.I. Joe line. Their first figure was Snake Eyes, followed by Cobra Commander, Duke and Storm Shadow. All of them were extremely detailed and extremely pricey. I remember when Sideshow sold their Hellboy figures for around $50, but I guess with the increase in cost of living, the figures now go for an average of $120. Still, they are worth it. It would cost a customizer much more to piece together a figure with as much detail as the Sideshow versions. This year we saw Flint, Beachhead and Firefly.
Firefly was controversial. Forums were ablaze with some harsh criticisms of the re-imagined Firefly. I couldn’t understand it. The figure looks similar to the original, but is more modernized. He sports his grey camouflage scheme and mask and has some new features like a camouflage hood and a single sling backpack. While it’s not like the original backpack, it still has plenty of room for his sabotage equipment. The exclusive version included an I.E.D. I guess I do have to thank those countless fans for voicing their opinions, though. The head was originally designed with just a black mask, but because of some rabble rousers, they added an extra head with matching camouflage scheme. See, some companies really do listen!
Toy of the Year Runners Up: Shocker Toys and DC Direct’s 12-Inch Jonah Hex
There needs to be an honorable mention for Shocker Toys. I have seen their figures at several cons over the last few years. The first two they released was The Maxx and Scud: the Disposable Assassin. They have since added Kabuki and Shadowhawk and now are producing indie figures as well as some old school heroes like The Phantom, Zorro and Grendel. Their focus on lesser known characters is commendable.
My second honorable mention goes to DC Direct’s 12-inch Jonah Hex. The movie might not have been all that, but the figure looks beautiful. While last year’s Heath Ledger Joker figure looks good (not as good as the Hot Toys version), this Jonah Hex figure blows it out of the water.
Toy of the Year: Hot Toys Ghost Rider
Hot Toys is a Hong Kong based action figure company that creates astounding 12-inch figures based on a variety of licenses. This year they produced some of the best Predator figures ever! Their Predator figures stand at about 14 inches and the level of detail is amazing, from light up helmets to retractable arm blades. They also produced figures from Iron Man 2, The Expendables, Inglorious Basterds and Platoon.
The figure that has set everything on fire is the 12-inch Ghost Rider figure. If I had $250 laying around, I would have surely picked up this bad boy. Styled like the Dan Ketch Ghost Rider (black leather and spikes), Ghosty features a light up head, extra Nick Cage head, shotgun and chain whip. And that’s not all. He comes with the Hell Cycle! This thing is massive. Measuring at about 24 inches long, the Hell Cycle leaps off of the comic book page and lights up, leaving a trail of fire in its wake.
While it might not be kid friendly, it certainly is geek friendly. The figure and bike are so beautiful that a passerby would almost think it’s a statue – that is until they saw it again in a different pose. Hot Toys’ Whiplash figure almost beat out Ghosty, for the simple fact that it is an action figure of Mickey Rourke. The last Mickey Rourke figure was the heavily stylized Marv from Sin City, but this figure is undeniably Mickey Rourke.
And who doesn’t want a Mickey Rourke action figure?
~
That’s a wrap for 2010. Here’s hoping 2011 brings my fellow toy collectors some really great and inventive stuff that will blow the doors off of Toy Fair. Happy toy hunting! | {
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Michel Ouazine et Jean-Jacques Bertrand étaient à Madrid vendredi matin. Les représentants de Hatem Ben Arfa ont été vus au centre d'entraînement du Rayo Vallecano, où ils se sont entretenus avec les dirigeants du club madrilène en vue d'une éventuelle signature de l'international français chez les Franjirrojos. Signe que le milieu offensif (31 ans, 15 sélections) n'est pas insensible à l'intérêt que le lui porte le promu espagnol, il a, de source bordelaise, reporté un autre rendez-vous prévu le même jour avec les Girondins. Malgré des arguments financiers moindres et même si aucun accord n'a encore été trouvé, le Rayo est considéré comme une vraie option par Ben Arfa, de source espagnole. L'idée serait de s'engager une saison pour se relancer, avant de rebondir, si possible, dans une plus grosse cylindrée. | {
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YANGON (Reuters) - Kyaw Soe Oo, one of two Reuters journalists accused of obtaining state secrets in Myanmar, told a court on Monday that the information in documents police say were found on his mobile phone was already public.
Slideshow ( 6 images )
The 28-year-old reporter said he did not know how the documents, previously submitted to the court in Yangon by the prosecution during pre-trial hearings, had got on to his phone.
Kyaw Soe Oo and his Reuters colleague Wa Lone, 32, are facing up to 14 years in prison for allegedly violating Myanmar’s colonial-era Official Secrets Act. Both have pleaded not guilty to the charges and have told the court how they were “trapped” by police officials who planted documents on them.
Referring to what he said were “top secret” documents found on his phone and in his possession, lead prosecutor Kyaw Min Aung accused Kyaw Soe Oo during cross-examination of having “a habit of collecting those documents...to write news and send to foreign news agency Reuters”.
In response, Kyaw Soe Oo, sitting in the witness box facing the judge, said: “I didn’t collect those documents voluntarily.”
At the time of their arrest in December, the journalists had been investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys in a village in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The killings took place during an army crackdown that United Nations agencies say sent nearly 700,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh.
The trial has attracted global attention and has come to be seen as a test of press freedom and reforms in the fledgling democracy.
Defense lawyers also called as a witness on Monday a driver for Reuters, Myo Thant Tun, who had dropped the reporters off for a meeting on the evening they were arrested.
Myo Thant Tun said the pair were carrying “nothing but their handphones” when they entered a restaurant where they met police officials who handed them a set of papers shortly before they were detained.
Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone have testified that Police Lance Corporal Naing Lin and another officer handed them documents during their meeting at the north Yangon restaurant, but that they had no time to look at them before being arrested as they left.
A police captain, Moe Yan Naing, has also testified that a superior officer had instructed his subordinates, including Naing Lin, to “trap” the reporters. Naing Lin has told the court he met the reporters, but denied giving them anything.
Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay has mostly declined to comment throughout the proceedings, saying Myanmar courts are independent. He did not answer calls seeking comment on Monday.
In their testimony, the journalists have described how they were handcuffed, hooded, deprived of sleep, and forced to kneel for hours while being questioned by interrogators who focused on their reporting of the massacre of Rohingya Muslims, rather than the documents they are accused of obtaining.
Judge Ye Lwin adjourned the trial until next week, when the defense is expected to call character witnesses. | {
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A black hole about 390 million light-years away has caused the biggest eruption ever seen in the universe.
The supermassive black hole sits at the center of a galaxy located in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Its eruption was about five times greater than the last record-holder.
Black holes suck up matter that comes close to them, but they often expel matter as well. When matter falls toward the black hole, it’s sometimes redirected into beams or jets that blast into space and slam into surrounding material.
Suspicions of an explosion arose in 2016 when NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reported evidence there was an unusual curved edge in the Ophiuchus cluster. Scientists thought such a structure could be carved out by the jets from the supermassive black hole, but only if there was a massive explosion of unprecedented magnitude. And the 2016 study couldn’t confirm whether that was the case.
But then followed the radio evidence: A new team of scientists looked at the cluster with radio telescopes and their data showed the same curved edge. Based on their observations, the edge is the boundary of a cavity in the hot gas filling the cluster, which could only have been cleared out by an intense blast from a supermassive black hole.
“The radio data fit inside the X-rays like a hand in a glove,” Maxim Markevitch, a co-author of the paper, said in a NASA press release. “This is the clincher that tells us an eruption of unprecedented size occurred here.”
Ultimately, the discovery used data from a number of instruments — including Chandra, the European Space Agency’s X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, the Murchison Widefield Array in Australia, and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India.
The eruption is no longer going on, according to the researchers, as the radio data don’t show any evidence of current jets, which most likely ran out of fuel for growth. A paper with the findings was published February 27 in the Astrophysical Journal. | {
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The marijuana stock market has seen quite a year over the course of 2019 and prior. During that time, we have seen legislation shift as well as the public opinion of the substance itself. The stock market has also been blessed by the opportunities that have come from cannabis given the massive potential it has for the coming future. With predictions showing that marijuana as a whole could see tens of billions in revenue in the next few years, it seems as though now is a better time than ever to take a second look at the world of weed.
Ionic Brands Corp. (IONC) (IONC.CN) is a company that has been working through their various subsidiaries to produce large quantities of premium cannabis products for sale on the open market. The company is headquartered in Washington State, which is one of the largest weed industries in the nation.
Currently, their brand known as IONIC is widely regarded as the #1 vaporizer brand in the whole of Washington state. The company has also been working to expand their market to all around Washington in addition to Oregon, Nevada, and California. These statewide markets alone present a large amount of opportunity for the company as they continue to traverse the future of the market.
The company recently announced that they have launched a platform known as Lucid Green which will help to bring in trust and transparency into the cannabis world. The platform is incredibly powerful and will provide consumers and sellers with a large amount of detailed information regarding everything from the safety of the product to the various aspects of how it was produced. The product will be used as a part of the packaging of cannabis and will contain a QR code that can be scanned by any smartphone.
According to a report “Lucid Green provides access to a library of product-specific insights instantaneously – including test results, dosage guidance, effects and more, while also earning Ionic loyalty rewards. Lucid Green is a technology company that was the first in the cannabis industry to develop a direct-to-consumer data platform, that enables consumers to have a safe, consistent and enjoyable cannabis experience.” All in all, this new technology looks as though it could revolutionize the world of marijuana.
Cronos Group (NASDAQ:CRON) is considered to be one of the largest cannabis companies in the world and the third largest by market cap which stands at around $6 billion. The company recently secured a large amount of capital infusion after the tobacco producer Altria (NYSE:MO) decided to invest around $1.8 billion into the company.
Although this seemed controversial at the start due to the nature of Altria’s business, it seems as though they will be able to benefit greatly from this large amount of capital. Cronos states that they will be able to put out as much as 120,000 kilograms of cannabis when operating at peak capacity which is quite substantial. All of these reasons make Cronos Group a company to definitely keep a close eye on.
Pursuant to an agreement between an affiliate of MAPH Enterprises, LLC (owners of MarijuanaStocks.com), Midam Ventures LLC and Ionic Brands Corp (IONC), Midam has been paid $50,000 from Ionic Brands Corp (IONC) for a period from April 2, 2019 to May 2, 2019. We may buy or sell additional shares of (IONC) in the open market at any time, including before, during or after the Website and Information, to provide public dissemination of favorable Information about Ionic Brands Corp (IONC).
MAPH Enterprises, LLC | (305) 414-0128 | 1501 Venera Ave, Coral Gables, FL 33146 | [email protected] | {
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That man over there Is putting my posture to shame
241 shares | {
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SOLID HDS2-9048 (DVB-S2 / MPEG-4 / FULL HD) BIS APPROVED HEAVY DUTY SET-TOP BOX - Best for Cable Operators and Broadcasters.
Features and Functions:
Fully complaint with the DVB-S2 digital TV Reception standards.
Support SDTV MPEG-2/ MPEG-4/ H.264 decoding.Support 480i/480p/576i/576p/720p/1080p.
Convenient auto search function.
Intelligent graphical user interface design.
Capacity of stroing up to 2000 transponders and 4000 TV channels.
Support DVB-S/S2 digital TV signal modulated in QPSK/8PSK.
Input frequency range 950 MHz to 2150 MHz.
Support DiSEqc1.0 and DiSEqc1.2
Reception for SCPC/MCPC, C/ku Band reception.
Fast channel selection
Favourite channel Edit, parental lock
Variable aspect radio (4:3, 16:9) 4:3 Pan and Scan or Letter Box modes.
Support Multi audio feed
Support USB 2.0 and OTA software upgrade.
Support USB 2.0 PVR, MP3, JPG photo playback.
Accessories Included:
Remote Control
AV Cable
Manual
Note - This Set-Top Box is suitable only for free-to-air broadcast. You can get TV channels from C-Band and DD Free Dish. The dish antenna is required for set-top box installation.
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So the chattering classes of defense “experts” are lining up to defend the cuts to military pensions made in the recently passed NDAA. I get a news compilation via daily email of what we used to call the “Early Bird,” a listing of top defense-related news stories from around the world. In the past week, I have counted three opinion pieces defending the cuts, as well as coverage of Congressman Paul Ryan defending them as “no accident.”
What drives me insane about every one of them is the complete absence of any sense that they understand what military life is like. I mean, it’s one thing to declare yourself a “defense expert” because you and your journalism degree trot around the Pentagon and Congress interviewing people for shallow articles on stuff you know nothing about. I’m not saying a journalist (or a member of Congress for that matter) has to have served in the military themselves to speak about it with credibility. But what they DO need for credibility is to make a serious attempt to understand the sacrifices of the actual people defending the country. These people work in places they call Squadrons, Companies, and aboard ships. Some of them are unlucky and get plucked away to work in Washington, but they know who is really doing the grunt work – the grunts are!
So when these journalists and pundits say we are overcompensated – being paid pensions in the prime of our lives with medical care premiums “wildly outside the norm,” it becomes really evident to me that they never talk to the actual people they write about. They either compare military personnel to federal employees or to the population at large. I worked with federal employees my whole military career. In fact, for a couple years, I was a federal civilian employee. I like them. They contribute a LOT to the defense of the nation. But they are NOT asked to make the same sacrifices military personnel make, not even close.
Here is the main difference between military personnel and everyone else, what General Ronald Fogleman called the “unlimited liability clause.” A military member commits his or herself to their country fully, up to and including their lives if necessary. But wait, you say, policeman and firefighters risk their lives for others every day! Very true. But the difference is that no one will ever send firefighters into a building KNOWING some percentage of them will be killed to get the fire out. Firefighters do get killed or injured in the course of doing a dangerous job, but if a Fire Chief knew 30% of his firefighters would die fighting a big warehouse fire, he would not send them in. I worked with an Air Force pilot who was shot down and captured during the first Gulf War. He flew an F-16CJ in the first attack on the Iraqi air defense system. He was a Captain at the time, probably in his mid-twenties. They expected to lose around 30% of the aircraft on that first sortie – his was one of them. Know what? Every one of those guys got into their aircraft and flew their missions anyway, just like we expected them to. Young troops now say, “I’m just doing my job.” Some job! I think what they mean is that they are doing their “duty,” a word we don’t use much anymore, but one which defines their actions perfectly.
Congress has traditionally recognized this difference, as well as many other hardships inherent in military life for members and their families. When I joined the military, one could retire at 20 years of service (like most civilian police and firefighters) with an expectation of free medical care for life. Pretty nice huh? Nice, but also necessary to recruit and retain a quality all-volunteer force. All of us retirees are very angry with the current Congress, possibly the worst in our history, because they cut our retirement pay. I didn’t put “cut” in quotations in the previous sentence like the pundits do because a pay raise 1% below the rate of inflation is in fact a cut in pay. It is a little ironic that we blame Congress though, when, for the most part, it is Congress that has resisted Department of Defense efforts to cut pay and benefits. Every SECDEF since Cohen has come after our pay and benefits somehow. Our current SECDEF brings young enlisted folks to his office to let them know he cares, and then talks publicly about the need to renege on benefits they were promised. Remember that “free health care” promise? Well, not so much. This is one area where Congress caved in to DoD, and created the TRICARE managed health care system. We used to get free care in military hospitals, but now we have an HMO, which we get the privilege of paying for. Not only that, but DoD constantly complains we don’t pay enough, trying to dramatically raise our premiums every year. Then they fudge budget numbers about how personnel costs are eating too much of the budget, when what we really need to do is spend more money on weapons systems. Don’t get me started on that! If Americans really understood the waste factory that is DoD, they would reintroduce the gallows.
But hang on for a second (ha ha). Suppose all the pundits are right and we should be treated like other federal employees and the populace at large – retroactively. OK then, on behalf of my brothers and sisters in arms, here is some stuff we’d like to be compensated for since we are regular folks now:
1. Overtime! Wahoo! Many specialities in the military are what I call “git er done” jobs. That means you work till the work is done, not 8 to 5. Aircraft maintainers are like that, up before dawn or working all night to get the jets ready for the day’s sorties and fix them when they come back. Even in peacetime, this is a hard job with long hours. I’m thinking many of them work at least 60 hours a week, so that is 20 hours of time and a half they will get now right? Not to mention wartime where you just work all the time! Bonanza! Double time for holidays too right? Right?
2. Equal pay for equal work. Military personnel will now get at least as much as their civil service and civilian counterparts for doing the same job. This will be VERY expensive since civilians make substantially more now than their military counterparts, but hey, we are all equal now.
3. Spouses. Few of them get to establish careers because they move with their military members. Even skilled positions like nursing are always starting at the bottom again. Try moving 18 times in 32 years if you don’t think this is important. We should compensate them for lost wages and lost opportunities.
4. Housing. Certain federal and corporate employees receive a house buy-back benefit when they, infrequently, relocate. Military families don’t get this, so they either buy a house here and there when they can, often losing money when they are ordered (ORDERED) to move, or they are renters, never developing equity in a home. They defend the American dream but must defer participating in it for the duration of their service. So awesome they will now get equal treatment!
5. Kids. We’d like to see their births now if that is OK, plus first steps, first words, first everything, all the way to high school graduations etc., and not on frickin’ Skype or U-Tube. Personally, I would have liked to pick up my then seven-month old daughter and not be afraid she would scream because I was a total stranger to her. I’m not sure how to attach cost value to the incalculable but I’ll sure try now that we all are equal.
6. Our wounded heroes. I don’t think I can express my shock and disgust that they were included in the pay cut, for those medically retired due to combat injury. But hell, since we are all equal now, let’s restore them to full function shall we, since we won’t be expecting anyone to make their sacrifice again? After all, we won’t be doing our duty anymore; we’ll be doing “jobs.” | {
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E. coli.
Scientists have generally thought that superbugs are weaker than normal bacteria in drug-free environments because they expend more resources to maintain resistances, as seen by their slower cell-division rates. But researchers have now reported in the journal PLoS Genetics
that some antibiotic-resistant superbugs can out-perform their normal cousins even when there are no drugs present. The results suggest that fighting these resilient bacteria will take more than just curbing antibiotic use. In the study, researchers saw that 10 percent of drug-resistant strains of
E.coli
divided faster than non-resistant bacteria when grown in a dish. Even more alarming, when these bacteria—which gained their resistances through mutations—picked up additional resistances from other bacteria
, the number of superbugs that could divide faster than normal bacteria jumped to 32 percent. Moreover, around half of these new strains of E. coli divided even faster than those with only a single resistance. "It is as if your PC with a mistake or bug in the operating system began to run faster after receiving a computer virus," lead researcher Francisco Dionisio told The Huffington Post
. [Read more New Scientist
, The Huffington Post
, and PLoS Genetics
] Image courtesy of Eric Erbe and Christopher Pooley,
USDA | {
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Leicester have not beaten Manchester City since 2003
Beat Manchester City on Saturday and Leicester will win the Premier League title, draw or lose at Etihad Stadium and they will have to settle for second place.
That is the verdict of SAM (Sports Analytics Machine), the super-computer built by Ian McHale, professor of sports analytics at the University of Salford, together with his colleague Tarak Kharrat.
We've asked SAM to predict the outcome of every Premier League game between now and the end of the season - and the results suggest the race will be so tight that the destination of the title hinges on this one game.
If you're sceptical about the ability of a computer to predict football matches, it is worth noting that SAM took on BBC pundit Mark Lawrenson in Lawro's predictions earlier this season and remains top of the guest leaderboard, having been more accurate than any other participant during 2015-16.
How it all hinges on one game
According to SAM, Leicester will lose only one more match this season - their game against Manchester United at Old Trafford on 30 April.
So excluding Saturday's game, the two teams are predicted to be separated by less than half a point at the end of the season, with a series of draws allowing Manchester City to leapfrog Leicester.
Note: SAM calculates expected points by taking the probability of winning and multiplying it by three points for a win/one point for a draw, hence the decimal points in predicted points totals
That tiny margin shows just how big an impact the weekend's meeting could have. Here's how the table will vary at the end of the season depending on the outcome:
The bad news for Leicester fans? SAM has Saturday's game down as a draw, meaning Manchester City will go on to win a third Premier League title in five seasons.
Game by game - how the season will play out
A draw on Saturday will keep Leicester in control at the top of the table for the time being, while three wins in their following five games will strengthen their position.
But SAM expects Manchester City to be similarly consistent, and predicts they will finally overtake the Foxes on 23 April with a home win against Stoke, while Leicester's home draw with Swansea on the same weekend will prove costly.
It is a lead Manuel Pellegrini's men will not relinquish. Despite a predicted winless final three games to the season for Manchester City (draws against Southampton, Swansea and Arsenal), Leicester will also fail to win any of their last three fixtures (loss to Manchester United before draws with Everton and Chelsea).
If things do go as predicted it will make for a thrilling end to the season, with the title race going to the final day, but Manchester City will be champions and Leicester will have to make do with second and a place in the Champions League.
SAM takes into account a wide range of factors to work out match results, looking at average performances so far and calculating what that means for the remaining fixtures. It is based on players remaining fit and continuing with their average performance levels, so an injury to Sergio Aguero or Jamie Vardy, for example, would have a significant impact on these predicted outcomes. | {
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Broken Wind, Third Degree Sideburns, King Complex, Bloaty Head—simply jotting down some of Theme Hospital's afflictions, some 20 years since launch, makes me smile. Project Hospital is the debut project from Oxymoron Games and is a throwback to Bullfrog's '90s hospital construction-meets-management simulator.
Sporting a familiar top-down isometric view, Project Hospital has players building their own medical institutions from the ground up, crafting specialised wings and departments, managing staff, diagnosing patients, and exploring hundreds of medical conditions. Where Project Hospital deviates from its main source of inspiration is its scope for realism—"learn about real world diseases and injuries and how to diagnose and cure them," says the developer. No Hairyitis or Slack Tongue, then.
Most interestingly, Oxymoron asks prospective players to let it know "what you miss", and that doing so can help define the future of the game."Or mod in your very own content for you and your friends," the dev adds.
Here's a trailer:
With that, you'll have the chance to fill the roles of architect, manager and doctor all at once as you alter and adjust and nip and tuck your establishment to your heart's content.
"Contract different insurance companies to gain access to patients with interesting medical conditions, perform examinations, laboratory tests and use various equipment to solve the diagnostic puzzles," says Oxymoron in a statement. "Treat your patients by various methods and gain reputation to access different departments and the most advanced equipment.
"Focus on any aspect of the game—Is it the most fun for you to keep your staff and patients happy? Do you aim to cure as many people as possible or solve the most complicated cases? Or do you maybe want to become the best manager and make biggest profit?"
Will Project Hospital cure our nostalgia?, asks the game's official site. Find out for yourself when Project Hospital comes to Steam in 2018.
Thanks, Eurogamer. | {
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Israel may have denied it, but the Eurovision Song Contest factored into the decision to end the fighting against Hamas earlier this month after a bloody three-day round of hostilities, in order to ensure that the event will take place in Tel Aviv as planned.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worried that the contest's cancellation will damage Israel's image internationally, with ramifications to Israel's future hosting of large, international events.
>> Read more: Eurovision in Israel is still too tempting a target for Hamas ■ Netanyahu can no Longer pacify Gaza With Qatari cash and empty promises | Opinion
For the Israeli military, the fighting wasn't a complex or challenging operation. Over the past years, Israel has been fighting continuously with Hamas, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah in a manner that doesn't qualify as war, but is rather characterized by short rounds of fighting that last just several hours. Israel's main difficulty has been on the political level. Last week, Netanyahu had to explain to Israeli residents of Gaza-border communities, who were in their bomb shelters while 700 rockets were fired at them from the Strip in just 48 hours, why a cease-fire with Hamas was warranted.
Throughout, Netanyahu and his ministers insisted that Eurovision is not a priority. "Various cultural events should not factor into the magnitude of our attack, we must amp up our response in Gaza until quiet is restored, and renew our policy of targeted killings," said Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who is a member of the security cabinet. "It's at the bottom of the priority list," said Science Minister Ofir Akunis.
Nonetheless, it was clear to these ministers and the others who left the security cabinet session on the day these comments were made that Eurovision must take place, and that everything should be done to end the fighting. On that day, Israel permitted the transfer of fuel into the Gaza Strip, under fire. Israel also tried to send a message to Hamas that they are unafraid of further escalation, by killing Hamas's Hamed al-Khoudary, the first targeted killing since 2014. It was convenient for the political rank to make it appear as if Israel didn't care too much about Eurovision, and the military cooperated.
On Monday, at 4:00 A.M., the Israel Air Force received an order to stop its attacks in Gaza, amid denials that a cease-fire agreement has been reached. The money transfer from Qatar took place, fuel was let into the Strip, the fishing zone was enlarged, and border crossings were opened.
Even though Israel made substantive moves over the past week vis a vis Hamas to make sure that Eurovision will take place, the security apparatus cannot be certain that Hamas won't continue to blackmail Israel for more benefits. That is why the military deployed its Iron Dome missile defense system throughout the south and center of Israel. When Israel's representative in the competition will set foot off the Eurovision stage, Iron Dome soldiers will make their way back to the south, to protect residents who will be targeted in the fast-approaching next round of fighting. | {
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A California city councilwoman fired back against critics who released photos of her engaging in “lascivious, drunk and drug-addled behavior” at the Burning Man festival and threatened to post more if she didn’t pull out of November’s council race.
Rachel Hundley, a former mayor of the Sonoma city where she’s running for the position on the city council, released a video slamming the threats from “spineless individuals” who tried to blackmail her with her pictures from Burning Man, an arts and music festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, where she is allegedly seen wearing only a bra and underwear.
She accused the blackmailers of “slut shaming” and insisted she never considered giving in to their demands. The recorded video addressing the situation was posted online by the campaign.
“I realized there were two paths I could take,” Hundley told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I could continue with the campaign and ignore it all, or I could acknowledge that this is something that happens to women all over the country, and is something we should talk about.”
Hundley admitted that she has attended Burning Man and served wines from her city at a bar at a “consent-focused sex-positive theme camp” at the festival.
“What was especially disturbing in this era of Me Too was the attempt to slut shame me for celebrating my body and for my attendance at Burning Man,” she said in the video.
The candidate added that the now-disabled website “Rachel Hundley Exposed,” which called Hundley a “cruel and demented person” and “a cancer” in the city, was created to force her to withdraw from the race and “to make me afraid, to silence another strong female voice by scaring me out of this election and denying you the right to make a choice.”
It remains unclear who created the website as it was anonymized and signed only by “Sonoma Citizens for Peace and Cooperation.” She said the email from the attackers told her that unless she drops out of the race, more incriminating information will be posted online.
But Hundley said much of the information on the website is fabricated, giving an example of a woman smoking weed through a bong, which wasn’t actually her.
“This is a volunteer position, it takes a lot of time,” she told the Chronicle about the councilwoman’s position. “The website not only hurt me but hurt my family. I did consider the weight of it. But this is something I enjoy doing and want to do for another four years.” | {
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will lead the American delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week, filling in for President Donald Trump, two senior administration officials said.
Slideshow ( 3 images )
Trump, who attended last year’s Davos event, had planned to go again this year but last week pulled out as he grapples with Democrats in the U.S. Congress over funding for a border wall that has led to a partial shutdown of the U.S. government.
While Trump has vowed to remain at the White House for the most part until the shutdown is resolved, the senior administration officials told Reuters that the Davos event was too critical to American economic and foreign policy goals to cancel attendance by a high-ranking delegation.
“It’s important to note that the world doesn’t stop just because the Democrats don’t want to work with us to reopen the government,” said one official.
Democrats say they are willing to reopen the government but want to approve funding that does not include Trump’s border wall, which they consider too expensive and ineffective.
Mnuchin and Pompeo will be joined by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and the deputy White House chief of staff for policy, Chris Liddell, the officials said.
Mnuchin, Lighthizer and Ross have been key players in Trump’s policy of using tariffs and the threat of them to try to rebalance free trade agreements around the globe, particularly with China.
Mnuchin and Pompeo plan to speak jointly to the opening session of the World Economic Forum on Jan. 22, a session that Trump was expected to address when he was still going. The officials said Mnuchin and Pompeo would make remarks and take questions from the audience.
Mnuchin and Pompeo will also jointly host a dinner of the Group of Seven foreign and finance ministers while in Davos to discuss national security and economic issues, the officials said.
Last year Trump had hosted a dinner of European business leaders while in Davos.
For his itinerary in Davos, Mnuchin has close to 50 meetings set up with foreign counterparts, bankers, U.S. business leaders and other officials, one officials said.
French President Emmanuel Macron will also not attend Davos this year, citing a busy schedule including debates launched in response to the “Yellow Vests” protests. | {
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"I did shove the driver of the van in the arm," he testified.
"I thought he'd just killed my mom and I wanted him to know that," Gutowski added.
His defense attorney argued that although Gutowski admitted to purposely shoving the man, testimony did not prove the victim suffered pain due to the assault.
Judge Wood said he understood Gutowski's concern for his mother, but assaulting the other driver was "not the appropriate reaction."
Schell did not return a call Monday afternoon to comment on whether the outcome of the trial would affect Gutowski's employment.
East Helena Police Chief Dale Aschim had previously said he told the mayor to fire Gutowski. He also told the Independent Record the state council that oversees police certification is reviewing the case. The Montana Public Safety Officer Standard and Training Council could revoke Gutowski's certificates, which would make him ineligible to be a police officer.
When contacted after the verdict, Aschim deferred questions to Schell. | {
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Tigers are an endangered species. So are the Javan and black rhinoceros, leatherback turtles and Amur leopards.
Hundreds of other species, many you have never heard about, are threatened. Some exist in the precariously low double digits (brown spider monkeys, 80) while others aren’t much better off (Bactrian camels, 800).
They all need conservation dollars.
But in the murky world of species conservation, there is massive inequality in investment, says George Wittemyer, an assistant professor at Colorado State University and chair of Save the Elephants.
“There are an enormous number of species that are imperiled in many ways but (they) receive very little attention,” he says.
“It’s sad but that is how it is … It is all very arbitrary.”
Much of that has to do with the charisma of the species involved; the more captivating a species, the more excitement — and funds — they generate, says Wittemyer.
“Look at marine species ... we don’t see them and we don’t relate to them. The pandas, we go crazy about.”
Giant pandas, generally believed to get the most attention and a big chunk of conservation money, are the perfect example of charisma and pull: their black-and-white markings make them unusual and they attract lineups wherever they are.
There are about 1,600 pandas in the wild, mostly in a few mountain ranges in the Sichuan province in central China. Another 300 or so live in captivity.
For China, the panda is a national emblem and the country has invested heavily in the species, says Wittemyer, adding that investment in elephant conservation there is comparatively less.
This pattern of selection is obvious across different countries and demonstrates “what the priorities are.”
Exact dollar figures, though, are tough to compile for any conservation effort, including pandas, tigers or even rhinos, because of the many wildlife agencies, governments and private donors involved.
“Species are not equal, that’s right,” says Clement Lanthier, CEO of the Calgary Zoo. But “without the charismatic animals like giraffes, hippopotamus, grizzly bears, there would be no resources for the Vancouver Island marmot, the sage-grouse or even the swift fox which are not (charismatic).”
The Calgary Zoo operates a ranch just outside the city where it runs its conservation program for endangered species, and these three are among those being “treated” there.
One feeds the other, Lanthier says.
The zoo will receive a pair of pandas from China in 2018. They’ll give the facility more visibility, more resources and “more partnerships to address the situation of less charismatic species,” Lanthier says
Ironically, once a species begins to make headlines — usually when it’s being hunted to obliteration — it gets easier to seek financial help.
Cathy Dean, director of the England-based Save the Rhino International, says rhinos have got more money since they returned to poachers’ hit list in 2008.
When she joined the agency in 2001, her job was easy and hard at the same time, she said. Rhinos were then recovering from the previous poaching crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. “In a sense, it was all good. But it made our work harder to fundraise. They (rhinos) weren’t in the news.”
But agencies still needed money to protect the animals and develop infrastructure, she said.
All that changed in 2008 when the current poaching onslaught began.
With rhinos in the news again, the agency is raising more money, said Dean. “Our funding has increased from £300,000 annually in 2001 to £1.3 million in 2015.”
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In 2014, in South Africa alone, a staggering 1,215 rhinos were killed by poachers — one every eight hours.
Animals in demand
Rhinos
Demand: Primarily Vietnam
Why: People there believe rhino horn powder improves health, prevents illness and treats ailments. Also, a fad for the nouveau riche.
How much: Up to $80,000 per kilogram in Vietnam. A horn usually weighs about five kilograms.
Elephants
Demand: Mostly China but also Thailand and Korea
Why: Ivory is coveted and used to make many objects, including name seals. Owning ivory also means status.
How much: A male elephant’s two tusks can weigh more than 115 kilograms; a kilogram of ivory fetches as much as $690 on the black market.
Tigers
Demand: Mostly Southeast Asia
Why: In eastern medicine, its organs, pelts, the eyes, hair and bones are believed to have medicinal value. Tiger penis is used in a soup as an aphrodisiac.
How much: varies largely in what is being sold.
Pangolin
Demand: China, Vietnam and Malaysia
Why: their meat is considered a delicacy and some Chinese believe pangolin scales have medicinal qualities and can stimulate lactation, cure cancer or asthma.
How much: a single pangolin can be priced between $1,000 and $7,000. Pangolin fetuses are considered a delicacy in Asia and cost even more.
Tibetan antelopes
Demand: Worldwide
Why: Down hair from the antelopes is used to weave shahtoosh shawls but it can’t be sheared off, they have to be killed for it.
How much: A shawl can sell between $10,000 and $100,000. It takes down fur from four antelopes to weave just one shawl. | {
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For 14 years, Urbanscapes has been one of the most popular creative arts festivals in Malaysia, bringing together performers, artists, and art lovers for a full day of music, arts, and fun. This year is surely to follow suit. Urbanscapes has announced their first act for the year, which is Australian rock band, Tame Impala, who have graced massive events like Glastonbury, Coachella and Laneway in the past.
The band, consisting of Kevin Par Coeur (guitar / bass / drums), Sing Jay Watson (keys), Dominic Simper (guitar / synth), Cam Avery (bass) and Julien Barbagallo (drums), debuted in 2008 with a self-titled EP.
Since then, they’ve released three studio albums, including their latest album, Currents, which won Best Album at the West Australian Music Awards in 2015 and has been nominated for the Grammy 2016 Best Alternative Music Album. Their first single from Currents, Let It Happen, has garnered over five million views on Youtube. Watch it below:
Tame Impala at Urbanscapes: the details
Tickets will be go on sale on 21 January 2016 at www.urbanscapes.com.my
Ticket price:
Phase 1 RM199
Phase 2 RM229
Phase 3 RM259
Location: KL Live
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The Bills spent the past few years raising expectations.
So at least now they’re not raising ticket prices.
According to Jay Skurski of the Buffalo News, the Bills sent season-ticket holders an email Monday which said there would be no price hike this year.
“On behalf of the entire Buffalo Bills organization, thank you for your valued support as a Season Ticket Member,” the email read. “We recognize how fortunate we are to have the best fans in the NFL. We are pleased to announce that season ticket prices will remain flat for the 2017 season.”
Tickets in Buffalo are among the cheapest in the league, averaging $68.18 on average last year. And by hiring a first-time coach (Sean McDermott), they were able to keep costs down this offseason. Now we just have to see if they can avoid $27.5 million in injury guarantees for quarterback Tyrod Taylor. His groin surgery last month cast some doubt as to whether he’ll be well enough to pass a physical before March 11, when the guarantees would trigger. | {
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Bound is a Los Angeles based digital entertainment company focused on digital fiction and audio production with an emphasize on high quality production and top talent. We work with leading entertainment companies on franchise extensions and story development.
Drop us your email to get our latest updates. | {
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Max Page, the 7-year-old star of Volkswagen's Star Wars-themed 2011 Superbowl spot, goes under the knife Wednesday for a heart condition he's had from infancy.
Page is an ambassador for the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, and his agency is asking people to donate money to the center to help support Page and other children with heart problems.
Until now, Page has had to rely on a pacemaker, but the operation will fix a hole in his heart and replace one of its valves. His mother, Jennifer, wrote a letter describing her son's trials and optimism.
We told Max and Els [Max's brother] Sunday afternoon. Initially, Max was crying and repeating how scared how he was. We unpeeled the layers by asking what exactly he was afraid of and tackled each issue as he could verbalize it. Blood draws, spending the night in the hospital and hurting are the big three. He was also very sad that summer would be in rest in recovery instead of playing baseball, golf and traveling. Around bedtime he asked if I would stay up with him and talk. He wanted to make a "CAN DO" list. So we wrote out all the things he can do so he could focus on those. Then he said we definitely had to "Fun Up" the house. So we went and got Els out of bed and spent the next hour redesigning each room with a theme, special rules and secret codes. In the Library (Els Room) we have to read with flashlights. On Whisper Lane (the hallway) you have to whisper. Going up the stairs you have to sing "Take me out to the ball game". The most favorite is the garage-Explode Zone-science experiments and art projects, the messier the better. Last night, I wanted to make sure he was doing as well as he seemed. He said, "Mom I don't have a choice. I have to go through it. I don't like it and it's still scary-but I have to. So I think I might as well go through it with a good attitude." So as we hop on Max's coattails to go on this ride-we too, shall do it with a good attitude. Though we will still tremble with tears and have our overwhelming moments-we will focus on the "CAN DO" and enjoy our Fun Up House. Mighty Max wants me to include one more thing-one of the lines he uses when he speaks to groups. "Kids, if you use your FORCE and dream big, you can achieve anything. We may be small-but we're mighty!"
Mighty indeed. You can donate here.
(Hat tip to @bgluckman!) | {
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Homeowners in Ireland have been asked to pledge spare rooms or vacant properties to house migrants for periods of up to a year as part of the government’s Irish Refugee Protection Programme.
In a new national campaign urging people to “put empty space to better use”, the Irish Red Cross said: “Pledging a vacant property or spare room will play a significant and valuable role in helping Syrian refugees rebuild their lives and settle in Irish communities.”
As well as calling on homeowners to pledge spare beds or rooms, the charity also wants holiday homes, second homes, and any other vacant properties in Ireland to be offered up for the cause of housing migrants.
Any asylum seeker or refugee housed through the scheme would be given a caseworker who provides them with education, healthcare, and employment support, explains the Irish Red Cross on its website.
The organisation, which was set up by Dublin nurse Elizabeth O’Herrin in 1939 to provide humanitarian aid, is administering the programme as part of Ireland’s effort to resettle 4,000 asylum seekers from camps in Greece and Italy.
British Red Cross 'Too White', Chief Exec Calls Words 'British' and 'Cross' a 'Challenge' https://t.co/9xsH85c129 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 10, 2017
While hundreds of free rooms and vacant homes were pledged in response to the organisation’s previous campaign in 2015, only 88 translated into actual accommodation for migrants, with many people withdrawing their offers once they were contacted by the Irish Red Cross.
Despite limited success with regards to the number of people housed, the scheme has been promoted as a win-win situation for both Irish natives and migrants by the organisation as well as in the mainstream media, almost entirely with one example of a Baldoyle woman.
Featured in multiple pieces across several Irish newspapers and on the Red Cross website, Mary O’Reilly’s story has been promoted as a major success as she reported being “enriched” by her decision to welcome a 26-year-old Syrian man into her home looking out onto Dublin Bay.
“I have a house here with a spare room and I heard somebody say — and it was so true — the only difference between them and us is luck and it is, it’s just luck,” she said. “Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s my nature, but lots of people take in an Irish person. What’s the difference, are we not all the same?”
Exclusive: Tiny Irish Town Taking Hundreds of Migrants Had No Say, Locals Fear Being Called Racist https://t.co/CzJMCsp8dn — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 7, 2018
Reporting that the arrangement was working well, the Red Cross said Mary was pleased to be “here to help” Wassim after taking redundancy to look after her mother, who died four years previously.
The Syrian has become “like one of the family”, she told Dublin Live, remarking that being able to sample the food he cooks is like “having an injection of Middle Eastern culture into my home”.
“I love different cultures. I went to Cuba this year. I love travelling and I would love to have gone to Damascus, but now I have this culture come and live with me.
“If there’s one downside to having Wassim stay with me it’s that he gets on a little too well with Lolly, my Tibetan terrier. It’s double the tidbits for her,” Mary added. | {
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Earlier this year at Microsoft’s Build conference, the company revealed it was working with Apple to get iTunes included in the Windows Store. The promise was that it would be available by the end of 2017, but now it looks like that won’t be happening.
In a statement emailed to ZDnet, an Apple spokesperson said, “We have been working with Microsoft to deliver the full iTunes experience to our customers and we need a little more time to get it right." So at least there’s some good news: Apple isn’t scrapping the project entirely, and plans are still in place for iTunes to come to the Windows Store (now called Microsoft Store). Apple did not comment on what specifically is causing the delay.
iTunes is one of the most searched for apps that’s currently absent from the Microsoft Store, and the delay is sure to be a major bummer for those using Windows 10 S, which can only run apps that appear in the Microsoft Store. | {
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After two low scoring events in Malaysia and South Korea, the final leg of the Asian swing on the PGA Tour kicks off at Sheshan International Golf Club for the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai, China.
WGC events are big money cash grabs that attract almost all of the Top 60 golfers in the world, but because this one is held on the other side of the world several big names are passing in favor of extending their fall season break. Notable golfers skipping the WGC-HSBC Champions includes Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth, Tiger Woods and 2015 WGC-HSBC Champions winner Bubba Watson.
Even with not as much star power as the other WGC’s, this particular one is badly in need for a rebrand. On its outset, this event was supposed to enable both the PGA Tour and the European Tour to tap into the potentially lucrative Chinese market in order to expand their brands. However, this endeavor has proved futile as the ruling Communist Party has barred its members from playing golf and shut down dozens of golf courses in the country. Yet this event is still played because, well, when has the Chinese government really played by the rules if there’s millions and millions of dollars at play, right?
As far as the golf course itself, there really isn’t that much to write home about. Shehan International plays about 7,200 yards with bentgrass greens, bermuda fairways, an overabundance of fairway bunkers and just an overall lack of creativity or strategy hole to hole:
Yawn.
In terms of navigating the track, it’s fairly simple – hit a long drive either away or over the water or bunker hazards, then hit solid iron shots onto soft, receptive, soggy greens. Lather, rinse, repeat. The event is routinely a birdie fest and it’s no wonder the more elite ball-strikers in the world like Justin Rose, Dustin Johnson and Hideki Matsuyama all call themselves former winners. Other past champions like Ian Poulter, Martin Kaymer and Phil Mickelson were well in their prime of elite ball-striking ability at the time they won.
There is one redeeming bring spot to this event, though – the ridiculous staged promotional photos that are taken of the golfers before the tournament.
Here’s a few beauties through the years:
The silliness started in 2009 when Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods were photographed wielding Chinese swords. While Tiger is clearly laughing off this chirade, I’m about 84% sure Phil actually practices the ancient art of swordsmanship in his spare time.
2009 also gave us this likely conversation:
Phil: “So this piece right here, the Shiang, it’s one of the most powerful pieces of the game, and I’m going to let you take it out. I’ll lay you 3/1 I’ll still wipe the floor with you”
Tiger: “It’s your turn Phil just go”.
In 2015 the world was introduced to newest boy band in pop-music, led by Jordan Spieth (the serious artist who strives for perfection), Rickie Fowler (the babyfaced heart throb), Henrik Stenson (the clown of the group who’s most likely to take over as host of America’s Got Talent), and Bubba Watson (the token deadbeat that winds up making cameos as “Washed-Up Celebrity X on Hell’s Kitchen).
This is the #GOAT of the WGC-HSBC promotional photos. This one ranks right up there on anything you might see on awkwardfamilyphotos.com. Let’s ignore the fact they’re all dressed in ridiculous capes, holding spears and surrounding a male Chinese Opera Singer (I looked it up and that’s actually who he is). You have Rory with a $hiteating grin and clearly knows this shoot is a farce. You have Phil, Justin Rose and Ian Poulter all doing their best to look as serious as possible but end up looking completely ridiculous. And as for Jason Dufner, well, Duff Daddy is staying on brand with his patented #Dufnering face.
********
As far as what types of golfers to target for your DraftKings lineups or betting cards, you’ll face similar challenges that you had the last few weeks. You’re mainly relying on old data to pick golfers who haven’t played a lot of golf of late. The benefit over last week, however, is that there is much more course data at your disposal to try and identify trends of the type of golfers that fare well at Sheshan International.
My approach this week will be to rely on a combination of season long strokes gained data stemming from the end of the 2018 season, as well as looking at recent form history since the beginning of September. While not perfect, that gives the best look at who’s ball-striking is on point heading into this week.
Here’s who I like this week (with DraftKings values and odds courtesy of mybookie.ag):
The Favorites:
Dustin Johnson – 8/1, $11,500
Justin Rose – 8/1, $11,200
Brooks Koepka – 9/1, $11,000
Rory McIlroy – 10/1, $10,700
Jason Day – 16/1, $10,300
Hideki Matsuyama – 18/1, $10,100
Tony Finau – 18/1, $9,900
Tommy Fleetwood – 18/1, $9,500
Francesco Molinari – 20/1, $9,800
Jon Rahm – 20/1, $9,300
From a futures or matchup perspective, I won’t be touching any of these guys. At a golf course that tends to bring out the best in the more elite ball-strikers in the world, any one of these golfers is capable of winning the event. All of them have played great golf tee-to-green since the beginning of the FedEx Cup. Save your money for props on golfers farther down the odds list.
As far as DraftKings, I’ll expect Dustin Johnson, Justin Rose and Brooks Koepka all to be popular favorites despite their big price tag because of their course history. Dustin Johnson won the event in 2013 and should have won last year too if it weren’t for a Back Nine blowup. The man who beat him was Justin Rose, who is playing the best golf of his life at the moment and suits quite well at this track. And the hottest golfer on the planet is new World #1 Brooks Koepka, who won the C.J. Cup last week and is looking to add another trophy at a big money event, tournaments he has excelled at in his career.
However, the group of golfers valued lower than them are also talented in their own right and playing great golf tee-to-green at the moment. Because of that, I tend to find myself gravitating towards those in order to field a more deep lineup. Guys like Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama and Jon Rahm are all flying under the radar despite posting strong strokes gained statistics tee-to-green, off the tee and on approach shots since the beginning of September.
Other Contenders:
Patrick Cantlay – 30/1, $8,800: Cantlay tees it up at the WGC-HSBC Champions for the first time since the Safeway Open. Cantlay finished a respectable T15 at this event in 2017 to help set up his first career win one week later at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. Cantlay is a consistent ball-striker who’s averaged 0.95 Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green since the beginning of the FedEx Cup and can pile on birdies when he gets hot. You can also grab him at -140 over Alex Noren, who has been fairly pedestrian over the last six weeks.
Byeong-Hun An – 66/1, $8,300: Byeong Hun-An had one bad round ruin his C.J. Cup when he shot a 77 in his second round. He was fine in his other three and while he let me down last weekend, I’m going to jump back on board with him. Unfortunately, he’s paired up against another guy I like in Kyle Stanley on head to head props, but I like rolling him out again in DraftKings as a nice mid-tier option for a lineup.
Lucas Bjerregaard – 80/1, $7,800: While Brooks Koepka and Justin Rose are the hottest players on the PGA Tour, Lucas Bjerregaard is the hottest player on the European Tour. Bjerregaard has five Top 10 finishes in his last six starts, including a win at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. Bjerregaard ranks 12th in Strokes Gained Tee-To-Green on the European Tour and against a strong field I expect him to surprise and run within the Top 20.
C.T. Pan – 110/1, $7,000: I was amazed myself at how well Pan ranked in several key statistical categories I used this weekend, but he’s been very solid ever since the beginning of the summer. Pan hasn’t missed a cut since the Travelers in June and has six Top 30 finishes during that time. He’s slowly risen up the ranks in terms of ball-striking, and against a struggling golfer like Charley Hoffman he’s someone I favor in a head to head matchup at -110.
WGC-HSBC Champions DraftKings Lineup #1
Rory McIlroy – $10,700
Rafa Cabrera Bello – $8,900
Patrick Cantlay – $8,800
Lucas Bjerregaard – $7,800
C.T. Pan – $7,000
Andy Sullivan – $6,800
WGC-HSBC Champions DraftKings Lineup #2 | {
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クリスマスバージョンキャラクター解放武器が復刻登場！
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※すでにキャラクターが仲間になっている場合、武器を獲得しても新たなキャラクターは仲間になりません
※武器【ローゼンメイデン】【ホーリーチャンター】【ツリーワンド】が出現する期間は、12月25日(月) 23:59までとなります
※武器【ローゼンメイデン】【ホーリーチャンター】【ツリーワンド】は、今後のガチャ更新にて再度出現する場合があります
※同名のキャラクターは、同一パーティに編成することができませんのでご注意ください
クリスマスバージョンキャラクター登場！
ロゼッタ（クリスマスバージョン）（CV.田中理恵）
◆アビリティ◆ ネメシス 敵に闇属性ダメージ/毒状態の敵に追加ダメージ ドミネイション 敵の強化効果を1つ無効化 イルミナティフロース 味方全体のHPを回復/弱体効果を1つ回復
◆奥義◆ ダーティ・ローズ 闇属性ダメージ(特大)
◆サポートアビリティ◆ ローズパレス 味方全体の防御UP
ラカム（クリスマスバージョン）（CV.平田広明）
◆アビリティ◆ ラピッドファイア 敵に土属性ダメージ/自分のダブルアタック確率UP デュレーション 敵がオーバードライブ時にモードゲージを減少 コラテラルダメージ 自分のHPを犠牲にして敵全体に無属性ダメージ
◆奥義◆ バニッシュピアース 土属性ダメージ(大)
◆サポートアビリティ◆ デュレーショニズム ダブルアタック確率UP
ウェルダー（クリスマスバージョン）（CV.山口勝平）
◆アビリティ◆ アンブッシュ 敵の全ての攻撃を回避/攻撃UP(小) オーナメントボール 敵に土属性と光属性ダメージ
◆奥義◆ スティルショット 土属性ダメージ(大)
「トゥインクルナイトスキンセット」販売開始！
※宝晶石での購入はできません
トゥインクルナイトスキンセット(ホーリーナイトビスチェ)
カタリナ用スキン「ホーリーナイトビスチェ」とレジェンド10連ガチャチケットのセットです。
※本スキンセットを購入しても、新たなキャラクターは仲間になりません。
カタリナ用スキン「ホーリーナイトビスチェ」とレジェンド10連ガチャチケットのセットです。
トゥインクルナイトスキンセット(ホーリーナイトプリンセス)
ヴィーラ用スキン「ホーリーナイトプリンセス」とレジェンド10連ガチャチケットのセットです。
※本スキンセットを購入しても、新たなキャラクターは仲間になりません。
レジェンド10連ガチャチケット
レジェンド10連ガチャセットを1回利用することができるチケットです。
レジェンド10連ガチャセットを1回利用することができるチケットです。 スキン
スキンを適用すると、キャラクターの外見やマイページのセリフを変えることができます。
カタリナ用スキン「ホーリーナイトビスチェ」
ヴィーラ用スキン「ホーリーナイトプリンセス」
※「スキン」は「キャラクター」とは異なります。スキンを購入しても、新たなキャラクターは仲間になりませんのでご注意ください
※本キャンペーンのご利用は1種類につき1回限定です
※以前登場した「トゥインクルナイトスキンセット」と同様の内容となります。既に購入している場合、再度購入することはできません
※スキンは購入後、キャラ詳細画面の「スキン・POSE切り替え設定」から使用できます
※仲間になっていないキャラクターのスキンは、仲間になった後、使用できます
※特殊な演出を行うアビリティを使用した際、スキン・POSEを切り替えていても、切り替え前の見た目で演出が行われる場合があります
※本キャンペーンにて登場したスキンセットは、今後再度登場する場合があります
※画像およびサービス内容は開発中のものであり、実際の開催・実施時には異なる場合がございます。
※本記事内で使用している表現は、ゲーム内と一部表現が異なる場合がございます。
※本掲載内容・日時は、予告なく修正を行う場合がございます。修正を行った場合は、修正個所を追記してお知らせいたします。
こんにちは、運営事務局です。12月13日(水)19:00よりレジェンドガチャにクリスマスバージョンキャラクター解放武器が登場することをお知らせいたします。また、同じく12月13日(水) より、「トゥインクルナイトスキンセット」を販売いたします。【提供期間】2017年12月13日(水) 19:00 ～ 12月15日(金) 18:59提供期間中、下記「出現率アップ対象装備」の出現率がアップいたします。【出現率アップ対象装備】レアリティ：SSレア属性：闇タイプ：回復種族：星晶獣得意武器：短剣レアリティ：Sレア属性：土タイプ：特殊種族：ヒューマン得意武器：銃レアリティ：レア属性：土タイプ：バランス種族：ヒューマン得意武器：短剣12月13日(水)19:00より、「トゥインクルナイトスキンセット」が登場いたします。「レジェンド10連ガチャチケット」1枚と「キャラ専用スキン」1種類のセットを、3,000モバコイン、3,000グラブルコイン、3,000GREEコイン、または3,000DMMポイントで購入することができます。おひとり様1セットのみの販売です。【購入可能期間】2017年12月13日(水)19:00 ～ 12月25日(月) 23:59【価格】3,000モバコイン、3,000グラブルコイン、3,000GREEコイン、または3,000DMMポイント【内容】全2種類のセットがあります。おひとり様、1種類につき1回のみの販売です。【アイテム詳細】今後とも「グランブルーファンタジー」をよろしくお願いいたします。「グランブルーファンタジー」運営事務局 | {
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Hei, denne artikkelen er over ett år gammel og kan inneholde utdatert informasjon
(Dagbladet): Norge er frikjent for brudd på menneskerettighetene i Den europeiske menneskerettsdomstol (EMD).
Norge har ikke brutt artikkel 8, retten til respekt for privatliv og familieliv heter det i dommen som er publisert i dag. Dommen ble avsagt med knappest mulig flertall.
Torsdagens dom i Den europeiske menneskerettighetsdomstolen i Strasbourg ble vedtatt med fire mot tre stemmer. De tre siste dommerne har tatt ut en dissens der de retter kraftig kritikk mot norske myndigheter for måten saken er blitt håndtert på.
De tre dommerne mener saken i altfor stor grad har handlet om hvorvidt riktige prosedyrer ble fulgt. Ifølge dem tilslører dette hvilke «vidtrekkende inngrep i familie- og privatlivet» det er snakk om. Dommerne trekker blant annet fram at det ikke er funnet tegn til svikt i omsorgen for kvinnens andre barn, skriver NTB.
Saken omhandler ei norsk mor som ble fratatt babyen sin kort tid etter fødsel.
Barneverntjenesten mente moras omsorgsevne ikke var god nok. Et sentralt spørsmål i saken var at babyen hadde et vekttap etter fødsel som de mente mora ikke innså alvoret i.
Tvangsadopsjon
Etter at hun fødte en guttebaby i september 2008, fulgte en lang dragkamp med barnevernet i fylkesnemnd og domstoler.
Det kulminerte med at tingretten 22. februar 2012 bestemte at mora skulle fratas foreldreansvaret og at fosterforeldrene skulle få lov til å adoptere ham.
Dette til tross for at mora, på domstidspunktet, var gift og hadde fått et nytt barn som barnevernet i parets bostedskommune mente kunne bo sammen med sine foreldre.
Paret har i dag to barn sammen som de har fått beholde omsorgen for.
Mora prøvde å kjempe mot vedtaket om tvangsadopsjon av hennes førstefødte, men anke ble avvist av både lagmannsrett og Høyesterett.
Klaget til EMD
Av saksdokumentene framgår det også at det norske rettsapparatet har vært i tvil om hvorvidt det i utgangspunktet var riktig å frata mora omsorgen for hennes eldste barn.
I september 2009 mente tingretten at vilkårene for omsorgsovertakelse ikke var tilstede. I april 2010 kom lagmannsretten til motsatt konklusjon.
Familien klaget saken inn for Menneskerettighetsdomstolen i 2013, og den slapp gjennom det trange nåløyet i EMD i desember 2015. Både mora, hennes foreldre og hennes to yngste barn står som klagere.
- Situasjonen er smertefull. Det er helt feil at de andre barna mine ikke skal få vokse opp med broren sin. De spør stadig om når de skal få treffe storebror. Det kan jeg ikke svare på, uttalte mora til Dagbladet i mars 2016.
- Vi meldte oss raskt som fosterforeldre, men fikk aldri bli det. Vi har mistet barnebarnet vårt, og gutten er blitt frarøvet familien sin, uttalte besteforeldrene.
Norge er tidligere dømt for å ha brutt EMKs artikkel åtte, som omhandler retten til familieliv.
Dette skjedde første gang i 1996, i den såkalte Adele-saken.
7. september i år ble Norge frikjent for menneskerettighetsbrudd i den første av i alt ni norske barnevernssaker som EMD har valgt å ta til behandling. | {
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Vladimir Putin has said Russia was so fearful of attack at the height of the Ukraine crisis that it was preparing to arm its nuclear weapons, in extraordinary claims aired on state TV on Sunday night.
Amid ongoing Russian media speculation that the President was watching the Crimea documentary from his sickbed, Mr Putin’s full interview with Rossiya One provided new insight into his country’s involvement in the annexation of the Black Sea peninsula.
In the documentary, which marks a year since the referendum that saw Russia take control of Crimea, Mr Putin described the Ukrainian revolution to oust Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 as an armed coup “masterminded by our American friends”.
He said Washington tried to “trick” the world into thinking the regime change was “supported mostly by the Europeans”, according to a translation of the interview on Russia Today.
But he instead accused the US of orchestrating the crisis, saying: “They helped training the nationalists, their armed groups, in Western Ukraine, in Poland and to some extent in Lithuania. They facilitated the armed coup.”
Mr Putin expanded on comments aired ahead of the full documentary that well-armed forces known as the “little green men” who helped bring about the referendum in Crimea were indeed Russian soldiers.
He also revealed that as part of the operation to take control of the peninsula, Russia deployed K-300P Bastion coastal defence missile “in a way that made them seen clearly from space” as a military deterrent to the perceived threat of attack from the West.
And on Russia’s willingness to arm nuclear weapons if necessary, Mr Putin said: “We were ready to do this ... (Crimea) is our historical territory. Russian people live there. They were in danger. We cannot abandon them.”
9 controversial Putin quotes Show all 9 1 /9 9 controversial Putin quotes 9 controversial Putin quotes 2004 “Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.” Getty images 9 controversial Putin quotes December 2005 “There is no such thing as a former KGB man.” Getty images 9 controversial Putin quotes G8 Summit press conference 2008 “If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back.” Getty images 9 controversial Putin quotes 2010 “Russia doesn't negotiate with terrorists. It destroys them.” After the Moscow Metro bomb Getty images 9 controversial Putin quotes September 2013 “They say that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a homosexual. Truth be told, we don’t love him because of that, but he was a great musician, and we all love his music. So what?” Interview with Associated Press Getty images 9 controversial Putin quotes March 2014 “The West’s leaders seem, from what they say, entirely to have forgotten that there are some leaders in the world who want to conquer other countries.” Getty images 9 controversial Putin quotes 2014 Amazingly elaborate metaphor regarding the West and Russia “[Sometimes I think] our bear should probably just sit quietly and just eat honey instead of hunting animals, maybe then they will leave the bear in peace, but, no, they will not. What they are trying to do is chain the bear, and when they chain the bear they will take out his fangs and claws. This is how nuclear deterrence is working at the moment. If they take out the bear’s fangs and claws, then the bear will not be able to do anything. It will just be a stuffed animal.” Russian President’s annual press conference Getty images 9 controversial Putin quotes 2014 After Ksenia Sobchack, a well-known anti-Kremlin activist and journalist, was allowed to ask a question about Putin’s government suppressing opposing political viewpoints: “Why did you give her the floor?” Russian President’s annual press conference Getty images 9 controversial Putin quotes January 2014 “You can feel relaxed and calm [in Russia], but leave children alone, please.” Directed at gay people in January 2014, before the Sochi Winter Olympics Getty images
The documentary comes as speculation continues to grow about Mr Putin's 10-day absence from public view. After a number of cancelled meetings in the past week, the opposition TV station Dozhd reportedly cited anonymous sources on Sunday saying the leader was recuperating from the flu in one of his country manors outside Moscow.
On Monday, he is scheduled to take part in a meeting with the president of Kyrgyzstan, in what would be his first public appearance before the news media since 5 March.
Other admissions made by Mr Putin in the documentary, which was entitled “Crimea: The Road Back Home”, were that he ordered the defence ministry to deploy elite units to Crimea “under the cover of strengthening the protection of our military facilities”.
But despite admitting this subterfuge, Mr Putin said Russian troop numbers in the peninsula never exceeded the 20,000 allowed under the terms of basing its Black Sea fleet there.
The comments were reported on the state broadcaster’s website, after the documentary aired in the Russian Far East but before it was due to go out in Moscow.
Mr Putin also confirmed that Russian forces oversaw the movement of the ousted president Yanukovych from Kiev to Russia, and suggested that those who benefited from the “armed coup” had plotted to assassinate him. | {
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Actress Nimrat Kaur reprised her role from season 4 of Homeland for the final season of the series. Nimrat, who is known for her roles in films like The Lunchbox and Airlift, played the role of Tasneem Qureshi, a member of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence in Showtime's terrorism drama Homeland.
American actress Claire Danes, who recently celebrated her 41st birthday, received a special message from Nimrat. "Feels like a distant dream to have been celebrating this special one’s birthday this day last year. Blurry pictures of a night clearly etched in my heart filled with insane amounts of deafening music and laughter, more tagine than one needed to consume and Aperol Spritz Martinis that ran out before sunset. Happy birthday Claire...thinking of you and all the great times that never run out. #OffSetAllies #FellowGiggler #HomelandMemories #Season8 #ThisDayLastYear @sho_homeland @clairedanes," she wrote on Instagram.
Homeland is an American spy thriller TV series starring Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin. The final season began earlier this year.
Nimrat Kaur has also co-starred opposite Jason Patric on the Fox series Wayward Pines. The actress was last seen in Alt Balaji's The Test Case.
Catch us for latest Bollywood News, New Bollywood Movies update, Box office collection, New Movies Release , Bollywood News Hindi, Bollywood News Today & upcoming movies 2020 and stay updated with latest hindi movies only on Bollywood Hungama. | {
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EXCLUSIVE
"Aladdin" star Mena Massoud would rather get around town on a flying carpet than get behind the wheel of another Tesla -- he's suing the company for causing his car wreck.
According to a new lawsuit obtained by TMZ ... the actor says his brand new Tesla Model 3 had manufacturing and design defects that made him crash the whip into a tree.
In the docs, Mena says he bought his Tesla last September, and the very next day he was changing lanes on Hollywood Boulevard when the front right wheel suddenly crumpled and flew right off the car!
He says his vehicle went skidding off the sidewalk and only stopped when it smashed into a tree. The lawsuit includes photos of his banged-up ride ... as well as the innocent tree that got jacked up.
Mena, who's hired attorney Kevin K. Javidzad at Colony Law, says he suffered personal injuries and his Model 3 was totaled. In the suit, he says the blame lands squarely on Tesla's shoulders because wheels shouldn't just be flying off of their cars. | {
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india
Updated: Jul 22, 2019 17:50 IST
After Chandrayaan-2, the ISRO has planned launch of its solar mission, Aditya-L1, in the first half of 2020 to study the Sun’s corona, according to the space agency.
Aditya-L1 is meant to observe the corona, which are the outer layers of the Sun, extending to thousands of kilometres. “How the corona gets heated to such high temperatures is still an unanswered question in solar physics,” the ISRO stated on its website while sharing information about the mission.
India on Monday successfully launched its second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 onboard its powerful rocket GSLV-MkIII-M1 from the spaceport here to explore the unchartered south pole of the celestial body by landing a rover.
In a news conference last month, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) K Sivan had said, “It is 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth. It will always look at the Sun and give analysis of the corona because it has a major impact on climate change.” He said the mission is planned for launch in the first half of 2020. Another interplanetary mission to Venus will be launched in the next 2-3 years, Sivan, who is also the secretary, Department of Space, had said.
Aditya-L1, with additional experiments, can provide observations of the Sun’s photosphere, chromosphere and corona. In addition, particle payloads will study the particle flux emanating from the Sun, it added. These payloads have to be placed outside the interference from the Earth’s magnetic field and cannot be useful in the low earth orbit, the ISRO added.
(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.) | {
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Team Refugees
Ten young men and women who fled their countries in search of protection. Ten talented athletes who never gave up.
In August 2016, the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team competed at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Their participation was a tribute to the courage and perseverance of all refugees.
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Chinese TV star makes apology over Mao insult
A POPULAR Chinese television celebrity has apologised for insulting the founder of Communist China, after his remarks about Mao Zedong at a private dinner caused a stir in China and rekindled debate on the complicated legacy of the revolutionary figure.
By DIDI TANG Saturday, 11th April 2015, 1:00 am
A huge portrait of Mao Zedong still has pride of place in Beijings Tiananmen Square. Picture: AP
Bi Fujian, the host of talent show “Avenue of Stars” at the state broadcaster China Central Television, issued the apology on his personal microblog that has 1.3 million followers.
“I feel extremely guilty, and my heart aches,” Bi wrote. “I sincerely expressed my deep apology to the public.”
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Bi added that, as a public figure, he would draw a lesson and better discipline himself.
In a home video that circulated widely online before censors removed it this week, Bi apparently was amusing his audience at a private dinner by singing a revolutionary song about Communist Party-led soldiers battling bandits in north-eastern China in the 1940s.
To the laughter of guests, Bi added his own commentary in a speaking voice between lines.
After the lyrics mentioned Mao, Bi referred to him, using a vulgar Chinese insult that includes a reference to female genitals, and says “he has ruined us all.” Bi also mocked the soldiers, suggesting their battles were pointless and the song’s claim of victory boastful.
The incident renewed debate both on free speech and about Mao, who many Chinese feel should be held responsible for disastrous periods such as the 1959-1961 famine and the chaos unleashed by the decade-long Cultural Revolution in 1966 when Mao appealed directly to the masses to root out reactionaries.
Wang Cailiang, a Beijing lawyer, said the leaking of the private clip and its aftermath was worrisome. “When a dinner becomes a set-up, who can be free from fears?” she said.
Though some of Mao’s policies have been officially critiqued, the ruling Chinese Communist Party can hardly renounce him because it has built much of its legitimacy upon the imagery surrounding the revolutionary leader. A huge portrait of him still hangs in the heart of Beijing.
A small but vocal slice of the population still worships Mao, while many Chinese pay lip service to him and his ideology. The cover from such pretence was blown off when Bi – a host for one of the key mouthpieces for the party’s policies – made his apparently candid and irreverent remarks.
“Everyone is a victim of Mao, but no one dares to say it,” Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian and independent commentator, said. “Yet in private settings, even those senior officials working for the system have no good word for him. This political system breeds duplicity and schizophrenia.”
State-run newspapers have responded with harsh criticism of Bi, saying his comments – even if made privately – were improper for such a public figure. “It’s extremely unfitting of Bi’s status that such lewd words to mock the people’s leader and people’s heroes should have come out of him – a Communist Party member and someone who has claimed to have served in the armed forces,” wrote the state-run China Youth Daily in an editorial.
The paper chastised Bi for his lack of integrity. “You owe everyone in China an apology,” it said in the editorial.
Bi also received some strong support online, with many people defending his right to speak his mind privately and condemning whoever leaked the video. Zha Jianguo, a dissident who has recounted some of the violence under Mao’s reign, said Bi had done nothing wrong. “To say a despot has ruined us all, how can that be an insult? How could that be irreverent?” he said.
FOLLOW US | {
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PROVO — Mormon missionaries from the United States entered Botswana again last month after a four-year prohibition, U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, said on Thursday.
Flake described how Botswana agreed to allow American missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as he delivered the keynote address at BYU's Religious Freedom Annual Review.
Botswana issued a blanket prohibition on visas for foreign missionaries in late 2013, just after the LDS Church established the Botswana/Namibia Mission. Foreign missionaries with visas and permits were allowed to complete their service, said LouJean Wilson, who served alongside her husband, Merrill Wilson, the first president of the mission, from 2013-16.
The number of Mormon missionaries in Botswana dropped from about 60 to fewer than 10, Wilson said. Until last month, the only Mormon missionaries in the country had been young Botswanan men and women.
Wilson said Botswanan government officials were protecting their people.
"They'd been taken advantage of by some religious groups," she said. "Neither the government nor the people were hostile to us. They were loving and kind to us. We had reasons to believe this was God's will at the time."
Flake said extensive dialogue and diplomacy failed to change the government's mind.
"We took steps to highlight the benefits of a vibrant relationship with the U.S. and to explain the downside of a unilateral action to deny visas," he added. "We had an amendment adopted during consideration of the International Religious Freedom Act reauthorization last year to expand reporting in the State Department's international religious freedom report to include routine denial of religious visas. The amendment expressed the sense of Congress that the routine denial of religious visas is indicative of a lack of religious freedom."
The United States also increased scrutiny of U.S. visas being issued by Botswanan authorities.
"Finally, the Botswanan government has found a way to accept LDS missionaries into the country on renewable, temporary visas," he said. "The first American missionaries reentered Zimbabwe after almost four years of absence just last month."
Flake's own son, Elder Tanner Flake, is now serving in the Botswana/Namibia Mission.
"Protecting religious freedom worldwide is particularly near and dear to me," the senator added. "As a young man, I served my Mormon misssion in southern Africa, serving in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Cheryl and I spent a year in the country of Namibia. For a political junkie, that was nirvana, to be there when a country writes its constitution and has its first elections. It was a wonderful time."
Wilson said the church continued to grow in Botswana even when there were three or four missionary companionships for a dozen congregations. Church members picked up the slack, she said.
The LDS Church now has more than 3,200 members in Botswana in 13 congregations.
Flake's speech kicked off the Religious Freedom Annual Review at the BYU Conference Center. The review continues with more speeches and panels on Friday, and is sponsored by the BYU International Center for Law and Religion Studies.
The LDS Church declined to comment. | {
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A woman is behind bars in Madison County after reportedly releasing her bowels on an arresting deputy.
The Madison County Sheriff says 26-year-old Amanda Peters had given the deputy a false name. When he determined who Peters really was, he was able to track her down to a home on Liberty Avenue.
An arrest citation says that the homeowner gave permission for the Deputy to search the home for Peters. The citation continues saying Peters had locked herself in the bathroom in an attempt to resist arrest.
When the Deputy got into the bathroom, the citation says Peters continued to resist arrest, and “intentionally released her bowels in an upward motion and with purposeful direction at this Deputy – causing said bodily waste to land on the face, arms, and legs of this Deputy.”
Peters was charged with identity theft, giving false identifying information, resisting arrest, and assault. She was taken to the Madison County Detention Center. | {
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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called out The Washington Post on Saturday, saying its report on President Trump Donald John TrumpUS reimposes UN sanctions on Iran amid increasing tensions Jeff Flake: Republicans 'should hold the same position' on SCOTUS vacancy as 2016 Trump supporters chant 'Fill that seat' at North Carolina rally MORE's visit to Florida following the school shooting there this week was "very misleading."
Sanders said the story, which said Trump's visit focused more on praising first responders to the shooting than comforting the victims and their families, was inaccurate since Trump didn't allow reporters into the hospital rooms of the victims he visited.
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The press secretary's comments came in response to Philip Rucker, the White House bureau chief for the Post, who praised the "very nice" article for its portrayal of the visit as Trump acting "not as comforter in chief, but as congratulator in chief."
"Actually @PhilipRucker it's not very nice, but it is very misleading," Sanders responded, saying the president "spent private time w/ victims of the shooting & their families. Out of respect for them he didn't bring media into their hospital rooms but don't let the truth get in the way of your anti-Trump narrative."
Very nice @jdawsey1 dispatch on Trump at Florida hospital — not as comforter in chief, but as congratulator in chief. Keep reading to the end. https://t.co/ZVW93zIjH1 — Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) February 17, 2018
Actually @PhilipRucker it’s not very nice, but it is very misleading. @POTUS spent private time w/ victims of the shooting & their families. Out of respect for them he didn’t bring media into their hospital rooms but don’t let the truth get in the way of your anti-Trump narrative https://t.co/APx9ZSbpEh — Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) February 17, 2018
Trump on Friday visited a South Florida hospital where eight wounded victims from the high school shooting were treated, along with the suspected gunman. Two of the victims being treated at that hospital have since died, according to officials.
The Post's report noted that Trump "spent much of his time congratulating the responders instead of memorializing the victims" of the shooting during his public remarks, and praised police and doctors for their quick actions to save the injured and secure the school.
"It’s sad something like that could happen,” Trump said at the hospital.
Trump called doctors at the hospital “incredible.” He also complimented the response of emergency personnel as “record-setting” and “in one case 20 minutes.”
The president later shared photos of his visit on Twitter, including one photo of himself inside a hospital room along with others with him alongside medical staff.
Our entire Nation, w/one heavy heart, continues to pray for the victims & their families in Parkland, FL. To teachers, law enforcement, first responders & medical professionals who responded so bravely in the face of danger: We THANK YOU for your courage! https://t.co/3yJsrebZMG pic.twitter.com/ti791dENTy — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2018
The president and first lady Melania Trump Melania TrumpMelania Trump: Ginsburg's 'spirit will live on in all she has inspired' The Hill's 12:30 Report - Presented by Facebook - You might want to download TikTok now Warning label added to Trump tweet over potential mail-in voting disinformation MORE later visited the sheriff's office in Parkland, Fla., which responded to the shooting on Wednesday.
“Thank you all very much. Fantastic job. Thank you,” Trump told law enforcement officers. “Incredible job and everybody is talking about it."
Trump has yet to weigh in on demands by Democratic lawmakers and members of the school for tighter gun control measures following the shooting, where a teenager is accused of using a a semi-automatic weapon to kill 17 students and faculty and wound more than a dozen others. | {
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Perhaps more so than any other large-scale tech company, Apple prides itself for its commitment to the environment and for its ongoing efforts to “leave the world better than we found it.” Earlier this week, with Earth Day on the horizon, Apple released its 2017 Environmental Responsibility Report and signaled its plan to eventually stop mining the earth for materials.
“It sounds crazy, but we’re working on it,” Apple’s report reads in part. “We’re going deeper to pioneer a closed-loop supply chain, where products are made using only renewable resources or recycled material to reduce the need to mine materials from the earth. That means continuing to invest in ways to recover materials from our products—like Liam, our line of disassembly robots—and encouraging our customers to return products through Apple Renew, our recycling program.”
Incidentally, Apple introduced its Liam robot last year when it rolled out the iPhone SE, a video of which can be seen below.
Now recycling old products is a great way to harvest materials, but some folks are claiming that the rules governing what Apple’s recycling partners can and can’t do with old machines could be far more environmentally friendly.
According to a report from Vice, Apple’s recycling partners are subject to contracts which prevent them from reusing, reselling or harvesting parts from older iPhones and MacBooks. Instead, piles of old Apple products are shredded into tiny sized pieces whereupon similar metals are grouped together and, per Apple, are then used “for production stock in new products.”
It’s arguably a bit nit-picky, but some folks feel that Apple can do better in this regard.
Jason Koebler of Vice writes:
Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, notes that recycling “should be a last option” because unrecyclable rare earth metals are completely lost and melted down commodities are less valuable and of generally of a lower quality than freshly mined ones. Repair and reuse are much better ways to extend the value of the original mined materials. To be clear, Apple’s practices are often against the wishes of the recycling companies themselves, who don’t like to shred products that are still valuable. In a weird twist of fate, I visited ECS Refining before I knew that it did recycling for Apple. While I was there, I watched workers crowbar and crack open recent-model MacBook Pro Retinas—worth hundreds of dollars even when they’re completely broken—to be scrapped into their base materials.
I’m not sure it’s fair to call Apple out in this regard but it’s an interesting point of view to consider nonetheless. The main problem with this critique, I think, is that it’s easy to nitpick about what Apple can do better while completely ignoring the industry-leading measures Apple has made with respect to environmental responsibility over the last few years. | {
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the xlc pd-s01 is a designed for the practice of mtb with a large support surface made in aluminum that provides great stability and a high security. the pd-s01 allows the anchoring of the cleat on one side. the other side has no anchor but helps the stability of the foot descents and descents and the ease of set foot on the soil where it is necessary. features: -use in mtb. -aluminium body. -aluminum frame. -chrome shaft. -anchor of chrome on only one side. -ball bearing. -compatible with spd. -weight of the torque: 465 gr. -dimensions: 112 x 65 mm. | {
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I don't always floss my teeth but when i do, I bleed like a virgin wife
504 shares | {
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Apple is working on an enhanced version of Siri in time for the launch of the iPhone 8, indicate supply-chain sources cited by Digitimes. The sources suggest that Apple will respond to increased competition in the field of intelligent assistants – in particular, Google Assistant and the expansion of Amazon’s Alexa to smartphones.
Google has launched Google Pixel smartphones with Google Assistant and is expected to promote the adoption of the Google Assistant by other smartphone vendors, noted the sources, adding that Xiaomi has already adopted the Google Assistant […] Huawei pioneered the latest development trend by showcasing its Huawei Mate 9 featuring Amazon’s Alexa voice services. Huawei, which currently ranks as the third largest smartphone vendor globally, is apparently trying to compete with Apple and Samsung for the number one title with the advanced feature, said the sources. LG reportedly is in talks with Amazon and Google for utilizing AI-based platforms developed by the two Internet service companies. In addition to using the Alexa on its smart household appliances, LG is also expected to integrate the Alexa into its new flagship smartphone, the LG G6, indicated the sources.
While the report says that ‘Apple’s next-generation iPhone devices are likely to come with enhanced Siri,’ it’s of course more likely that this refers to an iOS update rather than anything specific to the new phone.
Apple bought the machine learning company Turi back in August, a team it later expanded to work on a variety of projects, including Siri. The company has also started reining back a little on the secrecy of its AI work in order to attract the best researchers.
Competition within the intelligent assistant field has increased with the popularity of the Amazon Echo and Google Home speakers. We recently discussed how Apple might best respond to this, be it simply making Siri better or making its own speaker too.
Photo: CNET
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: | {
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User Clip: Obama calms the crowd
by
September 13, 2016 User-Created Clipby John Weber September 13, 2016 2016-09-13T14:06:49-04:00 https://images.c-span.org/Files/cad/20160913140716013_hd.jpg Obama reacts to person fainting. Obama reacts to person fainting.
This clip, title, and description were not created by C-SPAN. | {
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A broken sewer line sent raw sewage flowing out of a basement toilet and bathtub this week in Aberdeen, New Jersey.
Owner Eloise Smart-Loadholt described a "river of feces" flowing non-stop throughout the basement, where she lives in the home.
Smart-Loadholt said when she discovered the messy scene she found a pair of boots and immediately called for help.
“I mean feces is pouring out of the toilet, pouring out of the tub like a river. I said, ‘Niagara Falls is coming here?’” Smart-Loadholt said.
According to workers nearby, a sewer main cracked, and because her basement is below the level of the pipe, the feces from multiple homes literally ran back downhill, flowing out of her toilet and bathtub.
Photos Smart-Loadholt took show murky water covering the floors of her home.
Smart-Loadholt was trying to get the foul odor to go away Thursday. The carpeting was ripped out, most of the furniture was outside, and fans were blowing and windows were open.
The sewage flow was finally stopped but it will take a couple of days to repair the sewer main so that she can start using her toilet again. | {
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MUSKEGON, MI – Universal access to Muskegon Lake for all area residents will take a giant step forward with a Great Lakes Fishery Trust grant.
The state award of $253,000 to the West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission will allow for the construction of fully-accessible fishing piers at the city of Muskegon’s Hartshorn Marina.
Plans for the Hartshorn Peninsula Pier includes a walkway, three fishing piers and a picnic pavilion.
The universally accessible shoreline fishing facility will be constructed on the peninsula that creates Hartshorn’s small boat basin on the northwest portion of the marina. The area already is used for shoreline fishing and has some of the most stunning sunset views on Muskegon Lake.
Work on the fishing pier will begin this construction season and is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
“It is great to bring a universal access facility of this type to the urban area,” said Erin Kuhn, WMSRDC interim executive director. “Right now, the only other recreational facility of its kind on Muskegon Lake is at the channel. This increases access but still protects the habitat restoration work that was done.”
The community was awarded $10 million in shoreline and habitat restoration funds in 2009 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That part of Hartshorn Marina and private property immediately to the west has received extensive shoreline rehabilitation.
The new fishing pier will be along the city’s Lakeshore Trail, a pedestrian and bike pathway. The city will own and maintain the pier facility.
“We are moving in the direction of universal accessibility with all of our new recreational facilities,” said Cathy Brubaker-Clarke, the city’s community and economic development director. “This will be one more access point we will have to Muskegon Lake for the public. And it is in the central part of the city.”
The fishing pier project is not the only universally-accessible recreational facility being constructed on that portion of the Muskegon Lake shoreline, according to Susan Cloutier-Myers of West Michigan Disability Connection. The nearby Rotary Park at Heritage Landing has universally-accessible playground equipment and kayak launch dock.
"It all rolls into the idea of Complete Streets and universal access design in multi-model transportation facilities," Cloutier-Myers said. "The fishing pier will be great for everyone in our community."
The Peninsula Pier will have parking at the nearby Hartshorn Marina boat launch ramp, which has existing public restrooms. Plans call for a pathway out the peninsula with three 60-foot-by-10-foot fishing platforms along the way. A picnic pavilion will be built at the end of the peninsula, city officials have said.
Just to the west of the planned Peninsula Pier is another access point called Foundry Park, which is private property where the public has been allowed by the prior owners of the Michigan Steel Inc. property. That property is no longer used for a manufacturing operation and is up for sale.
The state’s Great Lake Fisheries Trust is a private, non-profit with an association with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. It was established in 1996 as part of a court settlement among the state, conservation groups and Consumers Energy over the operations of the public utility’s Ludington Pumped Storage Plant on the shores of Lake Michigan. Over the years, the plant had destroyed Lake Michigan fish as water from the lake was pumped up to a reservoir that was drained during times of peak power.
The trust fund has supported dozens of waterfront projects throughout Michigan, providing more than $50 million in grants. Muskegon-area grants over the past decade and a half have included fishing access in Montague’s Medbery Park on White Lake, a Mona Lake fish cleaning facility in Muskegon Heights and a fishing pier as part of the Muskegon Lake Nature Preserve in North Muskegon.
Dave Alexander covers business and local government for MLive Muskegon Chronicle. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. | {
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Two police conscripts were injured on Monday evening as a gunman opened fire on a security checkpoint located on Haram Street in Giza.
The injured men were taken to Haram Hospital for treatment, where their wounds were said to be non-critical.
Major General Hesham al-Eraqy, Giza security chief, and Major General Khaled Shalaby, head of Giza investigations department, headed to the scene of the incident to take control of the response.
Several checkpoints were set up in the area to capture the attacker. So far, security forces have identified no leads in the case.
Egyptian military and security forces have been battling a mounting insurgency since the removal of former President Mohamed Morsi in June 2013. Militants linked to the Islamic State terrorist group frequently conduct ambushes, mortar attacks and roadside bomb attacks, mainly in the North Sinai governorate.
In one of the largest single attacks, at least 15 police personnel were killed in an assault on a checkpoint in Arish, North Sinai. According to news reports, the attack was initiated by a car bomb at the checkpoint, followed by mortar fire.
Militants from the Sinai Province terrorist group, which is affiliated to Islamic State, later claimed responsibility.
In a typical attack, militants will detonate explosives and then fire on ambulance crews when they arrive to treat the casualties.
Though such attacks are mostly confined to the troubled north of the Sinai Peninsula, militant attacks have also been seen in Greater Cairo.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm | {
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BTCPay Server, an open-source payment processor, has announced a Bitcoin crowdfunding campaign for the Tor Project, a non-profit organization that develops the privacy-focused Tor protocol and web browser.
People can donate Bitcoin to the campaign, using the BTCPay portal or contribute via onion, that can be accessed using the Tor browser. The Tor Project, being non-profit, depends completely on donations from users to run its operations.
Raising Funds for the Tor Project
The crowdfunding campaign has set its minimum soft cap goal at $10,000. As of July 16, the campaign has raised over $8,500 in donations, achieving 85 percent of its goal with over 290 contributors. The campaign is set to end on July 30, 2019.
[Update: July 17, 2019, BTCPay Server has reached its full $10,000 goal for the Tor Project]
In the crowdfunding portal, BTCPay notes that the funds received from the campaign will go directly to the Tor Project’s cryptocurrency wallet, with no fees or intermediaries involved. It also thanked Ledger, the company that makes cryptocurrency hardware wallets for sponsoring the crowdfunding event with a limited edition engraved hardware wallet.
After its first crowdfunding campaign in 2015 which raised over $200,000 from over 5,000 donors, the Tor Project has been looking to get more spending flexibility and expand its donor base beyond the U.S. government.
BTCPay: The Go-To Crypto Crowdfunding Platform?
BTCPay Server, a self-hosted and open-source alternative to crypto payment processors like BitPay, was created by Nicholas Dorier in 2017. BTCPay Server’s fundraising efforts have made news in the past, with the most recent instance being the crowdfunding of Hodlonaut’s legal battle against Craig Wright.
BTCPay Server’s main contributors noticed that Tor was using BitPay to accept donations in a manner which was neither private nor efficient when this made them reach out to Tor.
“…about privacy and security improvements they can get by BTCPay Server, not only for themselves but also for their donors.”
“With BTCPay, people are their own payment processor,” said Pavelnex, a BTCPay Server contributor. The open-source project also offers better privacy since its developers have “integrated Tor into BTCPay as a default option for all deployments.”
BTCPay Server has been looking to expand its crowdfunding model to other open-source projects, seeing Bitcoin (BTC) as a viable fundraising option for the future.
Do you think these fundraising events will help BTCPay gain further goodwill from the cryptocurrency community? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. | {
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As part of our announcement for Pathfinder Second Edition, we recorded a game session with the hilarious crew from the Glass Cannon Network. They were kind enough to invite us to their studio in New York, where Erik Mona and I playtested the game with them, converting the first ever Pathfinder Module, Crypt of the Everflame, to the new rules.
Because this was a live session, and because I was converting this adventure "on the fly," I thought it might be useful to all the listeners out there to include a companion blog post that explores some of the spoilers from the recording and corrects a few of the mistakes that we made during play.
Note that the following commentary includes spoilers, so if you have not listened to the podcast, you should probably go and download it from the Glass Cannon Network site right now (or from wherever you subscribe to podcasts). Entries include an approximate time stamp to let you know at what point they happen during the session.
Commentary for Part 1
This commentary refers to the first part of the podcast.
(03:00) I should note that the new version of Pathfinder has been in design now for well over two years. The first playtest of the core mechanics was only a few months into the design process, back in 2016.
(04:00) Obligatory Princess Bride reference.
Obligatory Princess Bride reference. (04:40) The only preparation for this adventure was to pull together existing monster statistics that correspond to those in the adventure. So, if the adventure featured wolves, the document I had with me had the new wolf stat block. Nothing else was converted—not the traps, random skill challenges, or monsters—without a corresponding converted stat block.
The only preparation for this adventure was to pull together existing monster statistics that correspond to those in the adventure. So, if the adventure featured wolves, the document I had with me had the new wolf stat block. Nothing else was converted—not the traps, random skill challenges, or monsters—without a corresponding converted stat block. (06:00) This is the actual beginning of the module, starting with player and character introductions and the reveal of the adventure they are about to undertake. For ease of reference, the players and their characters listed here: Pherise (Matthew Capodicasa) , Elf Rogue
Mamolo Blunch (Skid Maher) , Goblin Alchemist
Keith Slashmaster (Troy Lavallee) , Human Fighter
Grellun the Green (Erik Mona) , Human Wizard,
Emmerich Kant (Joe O'Brien) , Human Paladin
Sifferus Sufferas the Vociferous (Grant Berger) , Human Cleric
This is the actual beginning of the module, starting with player and character introductions and the reveal of the adventure they are about to undertake. For ease of reference, the players and their characters listed here: (31:40) The first skill check in the game is a Society check. This skill covers knowledge about towns, people, their customs, and their history. The information they are looking for here is relatively common knowledge, and the number they needed to roll (the Difficulty Class) is only a 10. Keith (Troy) fumbled the check and got false information, which was quickly debunked by the others.
The first skill check in the game is a Society check. This skill covers knowledge about towns, people, their customs, and their history. The information they are looking for here is relatively common knowledge, and the number they needed to roll (the Difficulty Class) is only a 10. Keith (Troy) fumbled the check and got false information, which was quickly debunked by the others. (35:30) The party leaves town, entering exploration mode as they venture into the Fangwood.
The party leaves town, entering exploration mode as they venture into the Fangwood. (39:00) Erik, playing Grellun, just starts reading the spell descriptions from his character folio. Of note, when he reads off acid splash , he mentions "somatic" and "verbal," which does not seem to be much of a spoiler, but those are actually the names of the two actions you must spend to cast the spell!
Erik, playing Grellun, just starts reading the spell descriptions from his character folio. Of note, when he reads off , he mentions "somatic" and "verbal," which does not seem to be much of a spoiler, but those are actually the names of the two actions you must spend to cast the spell! (39:50) To keep the adventure moving along, in the hope to make this only a few hours long in total, there are a number of minor encounters that get skipped. During the journey, for example, I left out the encounter with the wolves, as it is ultimately unnecessary to the overall plot. Of course, the game still ran extremely long, due in large part to the fact that we were just having too much fun.
To keep the adventure moving along, in the hope to make this only a few hours long in total, there are a number of minor encounters that get skipped. During the journey, for example, I left out the encounter with the wolves, as it is ultimately unnecessary to the overall plot. Of course, the game still ran extremely long, due in large part to the fact that we were just having too much fun. (40:10) Here we have the first fight of the game, against a trio of bloodthirsty orcs.
Here we have the first fight of the game, against a trio of bloodthirsty orcs. (43:50) That's right, Perception is no longer a skill. Your class gives you an initial proficiency in Perception and might possibly increase it over time.
That's right, Perception is no longer a skill. Your class gives you an initial proficiency in Perception and might possibly increase it over time. (47:30) A note on attacking more than once in a round. If he had attacked with all three of his actions, the third attack would have been at an even larger penalty.
A note on attacking more than once in a round. If he had attacked with all three of his actions, the third attack would have been at an even larger penalty. (54:10) Most of the maneuvers—grabbing, disarming, tumbling, and tripping—are now associated with the Acrobatics or Athletics skills.
Most of the maneuvers—grabbing, disarming, tumbling, and tripping—are now associated with the Acrobatics or Athletics skills. (59:00) As the fight rages on, it quickly becomes apparent to some of the characters that these orcs are not real. Created by illusion magic, they vanish the moment they are struck. These phantom foes are created using a new spell called illusory creature. Created by a hidden wizard, these orcs are bit more difficult to hit than ordinary foes, basing their statistics on the caster. The fact that they are a spell also explains why they have only two actions each turn and hit for so little damage (all of which is halved once the illusion is revealed).
As the fight rages on, it quickly becomes apparent to some of the characters that these orcs are not real. Created by illusion magic, they vanish the moment they are struck. These phantom foes are created using a new spell called illusory creature. Created by a hidden wizard, these orcs are bit more difficult to hit than ordinary foes, basing their statistics on the caster. The fact that they are a spell also explains why they have only two actions each turn and hit for so little damage (all of which is halved once the illusion is revealed). (1:05:30) The developers made me change that back. Neon green dice once again roll just as well as any other color of dice.
The developers made me change that back. Neon green dice once again roll just as well as any other color of dice. (1:07:20) Nimble Dodge has seen a lot of play in office playtests and has saved the lives of countless rogues.
Nimble Dodge has seen a lot of play in office playtests and has saved the lives of countless rogues. (1:11:40) The characters in this playtest have decent bonuses to attack, but that is of little help when everyone is rolling lower than 10. No amount of redesign can account for fickle dice.
The characters in this playtest have decent bonuses to attack, but that is of little help when everyone is rolling lower than 10. No amount of redesign can account for fickle dice. (1:16:00) A note on flanking. I made a small error here. Flanking does not grant you a +2 bonus to hit. Instead, it now makes the target flat-footed to your attacks, causing it to take a –2 penalty to its AC. It's the same result, but the distinction is relevant.
Commentary for Part 2
(02:30) I call that a skill unlock, which is an old term for what we now call a skill feat, which characters get starting at 2nd level.
I call that a skill unlock, which is an old term for what we now call a skill feat, which characters get starting at 2nd level. (05:00) Small mistake here. The three-action casting of heal does indeed target everyone in the group, but it heals only an amount equal to the caster's spellcasting ability modifier at this level (which should be only 4).
Small mistake here. The three-action casting of does indeed target everyone in the group, but it heals only an amount equal to the caster's spellcasting ability modifier at this level (which should be only 4). (07:10) I probably should have waited until he rolled to announce the result.
I probably should have waited until he rolled to announce the result. (11:10) The Survival skill can be used to navigate in the wild, make a shelter, and find food. In this case, instead of making shelter, the skill was used to simply find a good, defensible place to camp.
The Survival skill can be used to navigate in the wild, make a shelter, and find food. In this case, instead of making shelter, the skill was used to simply find a good, defensible place to camp. (14:10) Remnants of the wolf encounter that I decided to skip to keep things moving.
Remnants of the wolf encounter that I decided to skip to keep things moving. (19:00) Okay, I admit, my description of the body may have been a bit too detailed, but it is important for the tone shift that happens at this point in the adventure. Things are starting to get serious.
Okay, I admit, my description of the body may have been a bit too detailed, but it is important for the tone shift that happens at this point in the adventure. Things are starting to get serious. (21:10) This really does begin to show the relationship between proficiencies and crafting that will undoubtedly be the topic of a future blog post. Suffice it to say, the higher your proficiency, the higher the quality of the items that you can craft.
This really does begin to show the relationship between proficiencies and crafting that will undoubtedly be the topic of a future blog post. Suffice it to say, the higher your proficiency, the higher the quality of the items that you can craft. (23:50) For clarity, there is a pair of puncture wounds on the upper torso and another on the lower torso. The punctures are about an inch in diameter, with the pair about 12 inches apart.
For clarity, there is a pair of puncture wounds on the upper torso and another on the lower torso. The punctures are about an inch in diameter, with the pair about 12 inches apart. (24:20) The only way the illusion is detected is if it is lower-level than the detection spell. If it is of the same level, it is unnoticed.
The only way the illusion is detected is if it is lower-level than the detection spell. If it is of the same level, it is unnoticed. (36:10) In converting this particular hazard, I treated the various results on the table as the failure, critical failure, success, and critical success results of the new effect. The DC was changed to 15. I modified the damage a little, but the only other significant change was to remove the ability damage from the critical failure effect, replacing it with a condition to represent a sprained ankle.
In converting this particular hazard, I treated the various results on the table as the failure, critical failure, success, and critical success results of the new effect. The DC was changed to 15. I modified the damage a little, but the only other significant change was to remove the ability damage from the critical failure effect, replacing it with a condition to represent a sprained ankle. (46:10) If this were during combat, when time was short, I could have called for an Athletics skill check to move the horse carcass, instead of just looking at their Strength scores and figuring out how much spare bulk they had to move it around.
If this were during combat, when time was short, I could have called for an Athletics skill check to move the horse carcass, instead of just looking at their Strength scores and figuring out how much spare bulk they had to move it around. (51:50) Repeated the mistake here with heal again. It should have been only 4 points restored.
Repeated the mistake here with again. It should have been only 4 points restored. (55:10) The skeletons here are not very powerful undead, but in large numbers like this, they can be deadly. Most problematic, they have resistance 5 to weapon damage, but they still have a weakness to bludgeoning, which can cancel out that protection.
The skeletons here are not very powerful undead, but in large numbers like this, they can be deadly. Most problematic, they have resistance 5 to weapon damage, but they still have a weakness to bludgeoning, which can cancel out that protection. (1:01:20) Skeletons also have resistance 5 against fire damage.
Skeletons also have resistance 5 against fire damage. (1:05:25) Claws are agile weapons, which is why the skeletons use them as their second attack, reducing the penalty on the attack roll to –4.
Claws are agile weapons, which is why the skeletons use them as their second attack, reducing the penalty on the attack roll to –4. (1:09:00) The Shield Block reaction is very powerful, preventing damage by forcing the foe to beat its way through your protection. It does mean that warriors tend to go through shields with some frequency.
The Shield Block reaction is very powerful, preventing damage by forcing the foe to beat its way through your protection. It does mean that warriors tend to go through shields with some frequency. (1:11:00) The shield spell is also a cantrip, meaning that you can cast it as often as you like.
The shield spell is also a cantrip, meaning that you can cast it as often as you like. (1:13:30) Explaining the confusion, there was an earlier draft of acid splash that hit multiple targets. That is no longer the case.
Explaining the confusion, there was an earlier draft of that hit multiple targets. That is no longer the case. (1:16:10) Troy just cannot roll above a 5 in this fight.
Troy just cannot roll above a 5 in this fight. (1:19:00) I finally realized that I was doing the heal spell wrong, and then promptly missed the part where the skeletons should get a save against the effect. Fortunately, it didn't matter much; they were all pretty damaged at this point.
I finally realized that I was doing the heal spell wrong, and then promptly missed the part where the skeletons should get a save against the effect. Fortunately, it didn't matter much; they were all pretty damaged at this point. (1:21:45) Sweeping the leg is probably an Athletics skill check...
Sweeping the leg is probably an Athletics skill check... (1:24:50) There are two doors leading out of the room: one to the east, one to the west. The scream came from the west. Somewhere in the dungeon, a tortured soul calls out for help.
That wraps up this look at the first part of the playtest podcast with the Glass Cannon Network. Stop by on Monday when we will be investigating how you level up using the new rules!
Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design | {
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A friend of mine recently slimmed down on Weight Watchers. She joined two months ago, and in just a couple of weeks, she'd shed 10 pounds. She'd been trying for a year to lose weight, but nothing worked – until now.
Why did Weight Watchers work so well? For a really fascinating reason: because it isn't a normal diet. It's something more. Something fun.
It's an RPG.
The Weight Watchers program is designed precisely like a role-playing dungeon crawler. That's why people love it, stick to it and have success with it. And it points to the way that we could use game design to make life's drudgery more bearable.
Let me unpack this a bit. When I asked my friend to see how Weight Watchers works, she showed me the ingenious system. "The best part is the web tool," she said, pulling it up on her laptop.
When you first log in to Weight Watchers, it determines how much food you'll be allowed to eat that day, expressed as a number of "points." My friend gets 23 points per day. Each time she eats a piece of food, she enters it into the online database, and it calculates how many points she's used. A small apple is one point; a piece of fried chicken is seven points.
When she first started the program, she was stunned at how quickly she burned through her daily points. A single bagel was six points – more than 25 percent of her daily quota. "How the hell am I going to do this without starving?" she wondered.
But pretty soon she learned to hack her daily eating to suit the system. She snacked on vegetables that took zero points – like bell peppers – or only one or two points, like a tasty brand of microwave popcorn. Then she'd save up the big points for a really decent dinner. Better yet, Weight Watchers assigns her an extra 35 bonus points per week that she can use if she goes over her daily limit. Or she can bank them for a big blowout restaurant meal on the weekend.
What makes this point-counting possible is Weight Watchers' elegant online tool. Type in any food you can think of – including brand-name snacks or boxed meals – and Weight Watchers has already calculated the points for you. If she makes a special sandwich at home, she can calculate the ingredients, save it with a custom name, and then drag and drop it into her day every time she eats one.
As I watched her poke around on the screen, managing inventory, calculating points, staying within her range, it hit me:
Weight Watchers is an RPG.
Think about it. As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your inventory and resources, and try to achieve a goal. Weight Watchers' points function precisely like hit points; each bite of food does damage until you've used up your daily amount, so you sleep and start all over again. Play well and you level up – by losing weight! And the more you play it, the more you discover interesting combinations of the rules that aren't apparent at first. Hey, if I eat a fruit-granola breakfast and an egg-and-romaine lunch, I'll have enough points to survive a greasy hamburger dinner for a treat!
Even the Weight Watchers web tool is amazingly gamelike. It has the poke-around-and-see-what-happens elegance you see in really good RPG game screens. Accidentally snack on a candy bar and ruin your meal plan for the day? No worries: Just go into the database and see what spells – whoops, I mean foods – you can still use with your remaining points.
And those 35 extra points you get every week? They're like a special buff or potion – a last-ditch save when you're on the ropes.
Indeed, I'm in awe of the sheer brilliance of Weight Watchers in adopting the word points as its metric for measuring food. The word immediately shoves the user into the semantics – and fun – of gameplay. You regard losing weight as an intriguing challenge, as opposed to a mere grind.
This puts me in mind of the talk that Jane McGonigal – a brilliant and pioneering alternative-reality game designer – gave at this year's South by Southwest conference. She argued that game designers ought to put their skills to use in the real world by reshaping dull, everyday activities into fun challenges. Why not a game that gives you points for walking your dog or jogging?
"Games are an incredible language and system. They should be everywhere," she said. "Why are we making games only for the bound pages for a computer screen or console? Why aren't we doing that to help people navigate and understand the world around us?"
She couldn't be more right. As McGonigal points out, there are already some witty attempts – like Chore Wars, Wii Fit or Seriosity's system that tries to limit corporate e-mail overload by forcing people to "spend" virtual totems to send a message. I can think of tons of things I'd love to see turned into a game: doing my taxes, dealing with my inbox backlog, being stuck in traffic.
And this stuff is clearly possible, because if Weight Watchers can turn something as unpleasant as dieting into a playful activity, the sky's the limit.
Just ask my friend.
- - -
Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to Wired and New York magazines. Look for more of Clive's observations on his blog, collision detection.
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Killer Gamer Asks, 'Where Have All the Bodies Gone?' | {
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hes a mutant teal blood but disguises himself as a normal teal blood
he is a guy
- god tier is mage of void
- player planet is land of ice and shards
- strife spec. is scythekind and polekind
- his lusus is similar to the jersey devil; devil-dad
- lives in a colder climate so he has snow booties and a warm hoodie
- is an assassin for pay
- his scythe is similar to a light saber (no woosh sound sorry)
- trollian username is cryogenicDiabolos
his typing quirk is No capitals except the first letter. periods replace any punctuation except exclamation and question marks.
"I don.t see how any of this is to do with the topic at hand." | {
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Police in Spain have dismantled an international Chinese human trafficking gang that smuggled people into the UK and Ireland.
Officers arrested 155 people over the last three years, the vast majority of the migrants had been planning to go the UK.
Gardaí believed that only one of the 155 people arrested had planned to come to Ireland.
Most of the 155 people who were arrested were detained at airports.
Each victim is reported to have paid €20,000 for the trip
Officers said Chinese people were charged €20,000 each and supplied with fake passports and other documents forged in China.
The smuggling operation was discovered after five migrants decided to give evidence against the gang leaders and entered a witness protection programme.
Four suspected gang leaders were arrested today when the police raided three properties near Barcelona.
The migrants stayed in apartments where they were supplied with new forged documents before boarding at Barcelona, Madrid, Alicante, Bilbao, Malaga and other Spanish airports.
They were also taught key phrases in English to help them get through customs and immigration.
The gang supplied "teachers" and "passers" who guided them on their trips.
They also continually adapted to new routes, different rules and immigration controls.
Police have described the gang’s operation as an extensive and lucrative human trafficking network.
Spanish police also raided three properties near Barcelona and arrested four people they believe are the gang leaders.
A Garda Liaison Officer based in Spain is continuing to liaise with the authorities there. | {
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David Cameron has instructed his ministers to stay away from the Sochi Paralympics because of escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine, while several national Paralympic associations are discussing whether their athletes should still take part.
After an announcement by the foreign secretary, William Hague, that the UK was withdrawing from preparatory talks before the G8 summit in Sochi, scheduled for June, Cameron tweeted: "Because of the serious situation in Ukraine, William JHague & I believe it would be wrong for UK ministers to attend the Sochi Paralympics."
Following Cameron's announcement Buckingham Palace said Prince Edward had pulled out of the Paralympics on the advice of the government after Russia's decision to take military action in Ukraine. The prince is patron of the British Paralympic Association and was due to attend the Sochi Games for three days next week.
Russia, meanwhile, got in a little retaliation against the west when its main television channel announced it would no longer show the Oscar ceremony. It said in a statement: "Due to the large amount of news concerning the situation in Crimea and the Ukraine and the audience's rising interest in news programmes, Channel One considers it impossible to air the Oscars ceremony for five hours, particularly in the morning."
None of the 44 countries taking part in the 11th Winter Paralympics, which open on Friday, have yet hinted at withdrawal, but a number are monitoring the situation.
The Russian venue, which has just finished hosting the Olympics, is less than 300 miles from Simferopol, Crimea's administrative capital, although there are no immediate security fears for the 700 participating athletes. However, should the situation escalate significantly in the next few days some Paralympic associations could come under political pressure to reconsider.
A British Paralympic Association said there had as yet been no change of plan for its 15 athletes. A spokeswoman said: "We are clearly monitoring the events in Ukraine and continue to be in close contact with the Foreign Office, who are leading on security matters."
A spokeswoman for the US Olympic Committee, which deals with Paralympic matters, said: "Nothing has changed in our planning. We are looking forward to a great 2014 Paralympic Winter Games."
In a statement on Saturday the International Paralympic Committee said it hoped to see Russia adhere to the Olympic truce, a tradition backed by a UN resolution that asks nations to cease hostilities during the Olympics and Paralympics. It said: "We want the story here to be the great festival of sport that has already taken place in Sochi and will continue now that athletes are arriving for the start of the Winter Paralympics."
Russia experienced a lesser degree of political pressure over the Sochi Olympics, mainly connected to its law against disseminating gay "propaganda" to children and wider human rights issues. Britain was represented by the relatively lowly culture secretary, Maria Miller, rather than Cameron, seen as something of a snub since London had held the previous Games. Other leaders to stay away included Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and François Hollande.
The concept of the Olympic truce, codified by a UN resolution in 1993, came in the wake of the tit-for-tat boycotts of Summer Olympics that badly affected the 1980 and 1984 Games. Dozens of nations withdrew their athletes from the 1980 Moscow event in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, including the US, West Germany and Canada. British athletes took part, despite domestic political pressure to stay away.
Four years later in Los Angeles the Soviet Union and more than a dozen other communist nations and allies opted to not compete, officially because of fears about anti-Soviet feeling in the US. | {
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Delegates to the 19th National Congress in Beijing will be fed buffets of “homestyle” cooking rather than lavish banquets. Source: Shutterstock | {
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Forget what you think you know about hula. An Oahu resort offers a two-day hula workout that has nothing to do with women in grass skirts swaying their hips to the sound of ukuleles. High Intensity Hula Training focuses on rigorous activities that challenge participants to channel their inner ancient Hawaiian warrior.
The class, open only to guests at the Four Seasons Resort Oahu at Ko Olina, is taught by Kumu Hula (or master hula teacher) Laakea Perry, from the award-winning, all-male Ke Kai O Kahiki dance troupe. It’s open only to resort guests.
For the record: The High Intensity Hula Training class, the subject of this story, has been canceled.
Members of an all-male hula dance troupe teach the techniques practiced by ancient warriors during a class at the Four Seasons resort on Oahu. (IJfke Ridgley)
Perry puts his students through rugged paces as he trains them in the ways of the warriors of centuries past. Stamina-building activities include rock running underwater, swimming in the ocean and tree climbing.
The course is open to men and women. Perry’s goal, according to a news release, is for participants to emerge as better people, with the forbearance, grace and strength of generations past.
Male hula dancers pay tribute to the end of the day during a beachside, sunset ritual. (Four Seasons Oahu at Ko Olina)
The class costs $3,500 per person, and participants must be guests at the Four Seasons. The resort is located in West Oahu, roughly 30 miles from the resorts along Waikiki Beach.
The price includes special meals featuring indigenous ingredients intended to provide energy and hydration. A welcoming 80-minute massage is also included in the price. Hotel rooms cost extra.
Women practice their hula skills on the grounds of the Four Seasons resort. (Four Seasons Oahu at Ko Olina)
Info and reservations: Four Seasons Resort Oahu at Ko Olina (808) 679-0079
ALSO
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[email protected]
@latimestravel | {
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A famine in Somalia in 2011 killed an estimated 260,000 people, half of them under the age of 6, according to a report to be published this week. The estimate is more than double previous assessments of the toll exacted by the famine. Many international aid activists believe that tens of thousands of people died needlessly because outside nations were slow to respond to early signs of approaching hunger in East Africa in late 2010 and early 2011. The toll was also exacerbated by extremist militants from the Shabab, who prevented food deliveries to the areas of south-central Somalia that they controlled. A previous estimate by the British government determined that between 50,000 and 100,000 people had died in the famine. Three international officials who had been briefed on the new report, to be made public on Thursday, confirmed its findings. | {
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Credit: CC0 Public Domain
A new study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that women in eight sub-Saharan African countries are gaining access to and using modern contraception at a faster rate than previously projected. This rate is well ahead of benchmark goals designed to give access to family planning services to an additional 120 million women in 69 of the world's poorest countries by 2020.
The researchers found improved average annual growth rates of change in the modern contraceptive prevalence rate, an important metric that measures contraception use by women. For all women in the study, the average annual rate of change was 1.92 percent, with the average rate of change for married women even higher at 2.25 percent. Both numbers exceed the 1.4 percent benchmark set at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning. This 1.4 percent benchmark is considered ambitious because it is substantially higher than the historical rate of annual increase.
The study was published online May 17 in The Lancet Global Health.
The family planning community created the Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) initiative at the 2012 London Summit. This study examined post-London Summit trends of modern contraceptive prevalence rates in nine settings in eight sub-Saharan African countries, which together represent almost 73 percent of the population of the 18 initial FP2020 countries in the region. The eight countries include Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria and Uganda.
The study team used data from Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA) surveys, formerly Performance and Accountability 2020 (PMA2020), all undertaken since 2012, which involved women ages 15—49. The study looked at all women, cohabitating women and married women. PMA uses innovative mobile technology to support low-cost, rapid-turnaround surveys that monitor key health and development indicators.
"This study presents a different picture of progress in eight significant countries since the 2012 London Family Planning Summit," says study lead Saifuddin Ahmed, Ph.D., MBBS, professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health and senior technical adviser at the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Bloomberg School. "Using advanced trends-analysis techniques and drawing upon data from at least four points in a period, the study suggests contraceptive uptake in some parts of Africa may have even surpassed ambitious expectations."
The findings, along with continued monitoring of these trends and their causes, will help inform thinking and provide guidance beyond 2020 as the global family planning community makes a push to achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2030.
The authors note that one possible explanation for these high rates of growth for modern contraceptive prevalence rates include the introduction of contraceptive implants in the sub-Saharan region. Among nine study settings, the proportion of users relying on implants ranged from 12.4 percent in Lagos, Nigeria to 50.3 percent in Burkina Faso. Another explanation for the high growth rates is that countries are now committing more resources to family planning.
"This study provides further evidence that with the countries' own commitment and resources and with support from international donors, family planning services are becoming more accessible and used more by women in Africa to make informed reproductive decisions," says Scott Radloff, Ph.D., director and senior scientist for PMA at the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health.
Other factors contributing to the robust increases in modern contraceptive prevalence rates are that proactive local programs have improved provider training, supply and distribution of contraceptives, and there has also been an increase in family planning content in mass media.
"Having frequent monitoring surveys establishes trends with directly measured rates and avoids having to compare, and possibly reconcile, estimates across other surveys conducted around the same time," adds Radloff. "Future PMA surveys will follow the same cohorts of women and provide even more accurate estimates of annual contraceptive use change and allow for a better understanding of factors that are driving that change."
Explore further New estimates of modern contraceptive use in the world's poorest countries
More information: Saifuddin Ahmed et al, Trends in contraceptive prevalence rates in sub-Saharan Africa since the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning: results from repeated cross-sectional surveys, The Lancet Global Health (2019). Saifuddin Ahmed et al, Trends in contraceptive prevalence rates in sub-Saharan Africa since the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning: results from repeated cross-sectional surveys,(2019). DOI: 10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30200-1 | {
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The head of the IOM’s mission in Haiti also discussed the modern-day threats and political instability many Haitians face which shares a border with the crisis-hit country.
There are at least 34,000 people living in displacement camps 10 years after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti.
Just shy of a decade since the temblor brought the island nation to its knees on Jan. 12, 2010, the head of the IOM’s mission in Haiti, Giuseppe Loprete, told EFE about how the organization has intervened to help the population.
When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, there were 1.5 million displaced people in over 1,500 camps and displacement sites, he said.
"Now, we have about 22 displaced sites that are still open and 34,000 people still living in the situation of displacement, although we have to say that, after 10 years, for many of them this has become the normal situation."
According to him, they are not either willing or do not have the possibility to move out of the displacement site, while some are even doing construction, trying to settle in these areas.
In the camps, he reported that there was no electricity for most of the day, access to waters if difficult, there are areas that you can see just walking around that are very overcrowded, overpopulated.
Since the crisis has left 3.7 million people with food insecurity, there has been a boost in immigration, and a lot of people – at least one member of the family, mostly men between 18-35 years old – are looking for job opportunities, especially in Brazil but also in the Bahamas.
It is estimated that around 1.5-2 million Haitians are living abroad, corresponding to one-fifth of the population - mostly in Canada, the US, Brazil and Chile. | {
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UPDATE:Picked up cash on Route 3? Give it back, say police.
A malfunction with the rear door of an armored Brink's truck scattered money across Route 3 west in East Rutherford Thursday, causing delays as people got out of their cars to scoop up the cash fluttering around on the highway, witnesses say.
East Rutherford Police received calls at 8:30 a.m. that the truck was spilling cash along the highway. A video posted on Twitter showed several people grabbing money while other cars were delayed or driving around them.
People were getting out of their vehicles attempting to remove cash causing two crashes, police said. East Rutherford police said they don't know how much money is unaccounted for.
The Quest Diagnostic training building used by the New York Giants could be seen in the background of the video.
Betsy Richards, a Montclair resident, was on a NJ Transit bus into New York when traffic started to slow down on Route 3.
Richards said she could see a man in a Brink’s uniform running through traffic trying to collect the money that was flying around the road.
“People started stopping and people were jumping out of cars grabbing cash,” Richards said.
Richards said she could see $1, $5 and even $100 bills on the road and people on her bus felt bad for the Brink's worker.
Money for nothing:If you picked up money off Rt. 3, give it back to Brink's, police say
Celebrity sighting:Ariana Grande goes ice skating in Montclair
Surprise:Having a Christmas tree is not as traditional as you think it is
"People were saying he's definitely going to get fired," she said. "It's Christmas for some and the loss of a job for another."
Several videos and photos from people traveling Route 3 were posted to Twitter and Facebook.
In May, another Brink's truck dropped more than a half million dollars on Interstate 70 in Indianapolis. The vehicle's back doors swung open when it slowed to a stop, causing $600,000 in bags, bundles and loose bills to fall out.
People then were jumping over fences and crawling on the ground to claim some of the cash, police said.
Similar incidents happened when armored vehicles' doors malfunctioned in June 2016 in Providence, Rhode Island; in July 2015 in Baltimore; in April 2015 in both Weatherford, Texas, and Salt Lake City; in January 2015 in Queens, New York; in October 2014 in Urbana, Maryland; and March 2012 in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Brink's did not immediately return calls for comment. Police are investigating the incident and asked anyone with information or videos to call them at 201-438-1065.
Crime:NJ woman forced Sri Lankan woman to marry her, enslaved her for 9 years
Ouch!:Montvale man burns face in failure to drink flaming shot | {
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You'll have plenty to celebrate when you subscribe to the Liverpool FC newsletter Sign me up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email
Liverpool FC will receive a £560,000 windfall after Hull City and Blackpool reached an agreement over a transfer fee for the signing of Tom Ince.
The Reds are entitled to 35% of the £1.6m the Tigers will pay the Championship strugglers due to the sell-on clause they negotiated prior to the winger’s exit from Anfield back in 2011.
Ince, the son of former Liverpool captain Paul, signed for Hull on a two-year deal last summer after his contract with the Seasiders expired. However, with him being under the age of 23 Blackpool were entitled to compensation.
A tribunal had been set up on Thursday to rule on a figure but on Wednesday night the clubs struck a deal. Blackpool settled on a fee of around £1.6m up front and that figure could rise to £2.3m depending on appearances and Hull City avoiding relegation from the Premier League.
Ince’s solitary senior appearance for Liverpool was in the League Cup defeat to Northampton Town back in September 2010. He has struggled to establish himself at Hull and was sent out on loan to Nottingham Forest earlier in the season.
Tom Ince in pictures: | {
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The Washington Redskins are inviting fans to Redskins‘ Draft Night Presented by 7-Eleven on April 25, the night of the first round of the NFL Draft, at The Anthem in the District.
Past draft parties were often held at FedEx Field, but this year, the Redskins will take over The Anthem, the concert venue in the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood of Washington that opened in 2017.
Attendance is free, but tickets are required and can be reserved on the Redskins‘ website.
Several current Redskins are slated to make appearances for autographs and pictures, including Adrian Peterson, Chris Thompson, Jonathan Allen, Matt Ioannidis, Ryan Anderson, Trey Quinn and Tim Settle.
The Washington Redskins Marching Band and the team’s cheerleaders will also perform at a “pre-party” at 5:30 at Transit Pier. The Anthem will open its doors at 6:30, with the party beginning at 8.
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Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. | {
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The Queen joined three Canadian military regiments in London, to commemorate the regiments' role in a historic First World War battle.
The Calgary Highlanders, Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and the Canadian Scottish Regiments are in Europe to mark the 100-year anniversary of the Second Battle of Ypres, where Germany used chemical weapons on a large scale for the first time.
The commemoration took place at London's Green Park on Sunday, after which Queen Elizabeth joined the regiments for a reception at Canada House, the Canadian high commission in London.
The Queen, who is colonel-in-chief of the Calgary Highlanders, was joined by her husband Prince Philip, colonel-in-chief of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, and Princess Alexandra, colonel-in-chief of the Canadian Scottish Regiment.
"(It's) very unusual for the Queen to attend an event in London on a Sunday afternoon, but it’s a mark of high esteem for this regiment that she's colonel-in-chief of, and also for the significance of the anniversary," said CTV News royal commentator Richard Berthelsen.
The regiments' visit to London is part of a European commemorative pilgrimage continuing the traditions of the original Battalions of the 1st Canadian Division who took part in The Battle of Saint Julien, a battle within the Second Battle of Ypres.
CTV London Bureau Chief Ben O'Hara-Byrne attended the ceremony at Green Park Sunday.
The Queen and Prince Philip arrive at Canada House to honour 3 Cdn regiments on centenary of 2nd battle of Ypres pic.twitter.com/ka8gE6XFJg — Ben O'Hara-Byrne (@BenCTV) April 19, 2015 | {
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The Browning Hi-Power is a creation of the famous firearm designer John Browning, along with the legendary 1911 pistol. This handgun was designed in the 1920s and although less popular than the 1911 (at least in the USA) it has been continuously manufactured from 1935 until now and served as a standard service pistol in the armies of more than 50 nations. The Hi Power’s latest model,the Mark III, features an ergonomic grip, cast frame,forged slide, epoxy coating as well as a firing pin safety.
While working on the Hi-Power design, John Browning could not use any of his previous innovations used in the 1911 design. The sale of the patents to Colt prevented this. As a result the Hi-Power is very different from the 1911.Thanks to the genius of its creator it lacks some of the problems of the famous predecessor. It is much easier to field strip and functions with a wider variety of ammunition. Current models work perfectly with hollow point ammunition.
After Brownings death in 1926 the Hi Power design effort was turned over to the Belgian small arms designer Dieudonné Saive after the Colt patents expired in 1928.
Specification
In early 1920s the French government announced a tender for a new handgun for their police force and military. The requirements were as follows: it should be compact, have a magazine capacity of at least 10 rounds, have an external hammer, external safety, be simple to fieldstrip and fire a caliber of 9mm or larger.
FN Herstal won the contract after the completion of the final design of Saive.
Hi-Power Mark III technical spec Caliber 9mm, .40 S&W Barrel length 4 5/8” (117.5mm) Overall length 7 3/4” (196.8mm) Height 5.02” (127.5mm) Width 1.4” (36mm) Sight radius 6 5/16” (160mm) Frame Cast steel Safety devices Ambidextrous external safety, magazine disconnect, firing pin block Weight (empty) 2lb 0oz Capacity 13 (9mm), 10 (.40S&W) + 1 Trigger action Single Action Trigger pull ~ 7.5lb Pressure rating Regular only
Unique features
The Hi Power Mark III is an update of the previous Mark II model that came out in 1988. For several years it has been going through a fine tuning process with features added and removed. The model III I reviewed had the following:
Ergonomic grip covers
The grip panels have a raised ledge for the thumb that supposed to ensure a proper grip. I found that the ergonomics of the panels are more suitable for one handed shooting. Using a two hand grip (which is a majority of times for me) is not that comfortable because the thumb rest causes the weak hand thumb to ride on top of the thumb rest. People have different hand sizes and different grips so your experience may be different than mine.
Ambidextrous external safety
The safety lever is large, conveniently located and can be easily manipulated on and off using either hand. It can be useful for left handed shooters.The slide lock and the magazine release are still available only for the left side.
Black mate epoxy finish
The gun has a unique black epoxy finish that makes it look beautiful. It is smooth to touch and looks great when the gun is buffed up. Because I had the gun for a limited time I did not have a chance to evaluate how good it protects against corrosion, dents, and scratches.
Magazine ejection spring
The magazine has a small spring that’s compressed when inserted into the magwell. When the release button is pressed, the magazine literally flies out of the gun.
It’s an interesting feature but, in my opinion, isn’t very practical. In normal circumstances the weight of the metal magazine is usually enough to get it moving. In the case of a malfunction the spring is not strong enough to eject the magazine and it will require manual handling as with any other gun.
My impressions
Ergonomics: ***
[-] As I pointed out already, the grip is more convenient for a one handed grip. The thumb support is located too low for a two handed grip (although we all have different hand size, so your experience may vary).
[-] While the HP does have an ambidextrous safety, it does not have an ambidextrous slide release or magazine release. A quick search yielded no aftermarket solution online.
[+] The safety lever is large, conveniently located and can be engaged/disengaged easily with either hand.
Shootability: ***
Trigger
[-] The trigger is way too heavy for a single action. From what I read it is by design, due to the magazine safety feature (which I personally do not like in a first place). The trigger pull can be greatly improved by having a gunsmith remove the mag safety.
[-] The trigger does not provide any tactile indication of a reset. In other handguns I’ve had a chance to shoot there has always been a click you could feel with your trigger finger when the trigger is reset and the handgun is ready for another shot. In the Hi-Power the trigger is reset somewhere mid-way to being fully released, but there is no tactile indication. You can memorize the location after shooting the HP enough to become very familiar with it. Knowing when the trigger is reset is critical to master the double tap and fast shooting in general.
[+] As it would be expected from a single action gun, the trigger has a short pull.
[+] The trigger is also very crisp and gives very clear indication when the sear is about to release.
Sights
The Hi-Power Mark III comes with slightly larger sights compared to previous models. They do allow a fairly quick sight picture acquisition, but nothing out of ordinary. It would be fair to say they do their job adequately.
Recoil/Balance
[-] I was surprised to see that the gun, while being much heavier, has similar recoil compared to the “plastic guns” so prevalent these days. I own both a (Glock 19 and M&P). Usually heavier guns have lower recoil, but not in this case. Saying that, the recoil is not out of ordinary and should be manageable even for shooters with smaller hands.
Capacity
[-] For the times it was designed for it had an impressive 13 + 1 magazine capacity. For modern times it’s on the lower end for a full size 9mm pistol.
Accuracy
[+] When I took it to a range and shot it at a regular distance of 7-10 yards I didn’t notice much difference in accuracy between the Hi Powers 4.5” barrel and the Glock 19s 4.0” barrel. It seems to be a limitation of the shooter, so I took it back for a greater challenge. I shot both guns at standard 8” paper targets at 100 yards from a bench. At this distance the additional 0.5” of barrel length showed a clear advantage. With the Glock I was able to get only 1 out of 10 rounds on paper at this distance.The Browning put 5 out 10 in the target. (obviously you can see that shooting a handgun at 100 yards is not my thing).
Maintenance: ****
[+] The 1930s handgun can be disassembled as easy as any modern polymer gun such as a Glock or M&P. The cleaning and lube is also straight forward.
Concealability: *
This is a full size handgun designed for military and police use. It is heavy and long, although fairly thin. If you are looking for a concealed carry pistol, this is not a good choice.
Reliability: ****
I haven’t had a chance to shoot a great deal with this gun, my experience is limited by a couple of trips to the range where I fired about 500 rounds through it. I used different types of ammo: cheap steel cased Wolf, mid-range FMJ Federal, JHP Hornady Critical Defense. All worked flawlessly. I had zero malfunctions.
Accessories: ****
While Hi Powers are not as popular as 1911s or Glocks, they’ve been in constant use and production since the 1930s. As a result there is a good selection of aftermarket parts and accessories for this handgun. Holsters are available from any major manufacturer (e.g. Falco, Blade-Tech, DC Holsters, Bianchi, Galko, etc.). Crimson Trace produces their laser grip for it. Sights are available also. Trigger reduction springs, and other parts are available as well.
Cost effectiveness: **
Similar to 1911s the High Power is less about practical use and more about collector value and owning a piece of history. This is reflected in its price – the MRSP is $1,070, which is on the high side for a handgun. The street price is of course $150 or so less than the MSRP.
Conclusion
With almost 90 years of history it cannot beat modern firearms in terms of capacity, concealability, and reliability but still demonstrates good performance.
It is not a practical gun. For each application you can find a better analogue among modern handguns. It is too heavy and bulky for concealed carry. Its heavy trigger prevents optimum performance. The unnecessary magazine safety and low capacity makes one question its utility for home defense or as an issued weapon for military and law enforcement.
In my opinion, the biggest value of this gun is in its history. It is a beautiful piece of machinery that has a long and remarkable history in use in different parts of the world. Every serious firearm collector or firearm history enthusiast should have one. | {
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Jake Chambers Cast
Entertainment Weekly reports that Tom Taylor has been cast as Jake Chambers in The Dark Tower Movie.
Sources close to the production have confirmed to EW that newcomer Tom Taylor will play the key role of Jake Chambers, a young boy who Roland crosses paths with in the series’ first book on his hunt of the man in black. Taylor previously appeared in the BBC series Doctor Foster and also showed up in the now-cancelled TNT series, Legends, as the younger version of Sean Bean’s protagonist, Martin Odum.
Thanks to Hans von Wirth | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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CHILDREN are never too young to be taught about the damaging effects of internet porn, authorities in the UK say, because it's warping a generation's idea of the opposite sex.
Maria Miller, Britain's culture secretary, has delivered an impassioned address warning that young boys who see explicit images risk growing up with a warped idea of how to treat girls.
She demanded that teachers, parents and internet giants do more to prevent children from accidentally viewing such images.
And she denounced the culture that has led to an explosion of X-rated net pictures, saying: "Too often in the past we have been happy to say 'anything goes'. Well - it doesn't."
The culture secretary's intervention came as the Prime Minister's adviser on the sexualisation of children, Claire Perry, said it was never too early to start educating youngsters about the dangers of online porn.
"People say primary school is too young. No: Babies can swipe iPads. You can't, in some ways, start young enough," Mrs Perry told a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
And Mrs Miller, a mother of three, stressed that "responsible parents" needed to speak to children earlier about the effect internet porn had on their understanding of relationships.
Charities say children as young as 11 are becoming addicted to internet porn, giving them "unrealistic expectations" of sex. They also say it is encouraging boys to grow up viewing girls merely as sex objects.
Counsellors at ChildLine also report a surge in calls from youngsters traumatised after seeing adult images online.
Teaching unions have called for pupils to be taught about porn from the age of 10 so they can protect themselves from stumbling across adult images.
Mrs Miller did not suggest an age, but said authorities should think about whether it should be tackled in schools.
"There is guidance available to schools in terms of the way they can help young people navigate their responsibilities in this area. I am fearful of the result if we don't take action particularly in terms of young boys' attitudes to girls, their relationships, what's seen as a normal relationship between two young people."
It is the first time the Culture Secretary, who is in charge of internet policy, has spoken out over school lessons on porn. While groups such as the NSPCC are in favour of such a move, some believe it could have the opposite effect of introducing children to adult material for the first time.
But Mrs Miller said many schools would naturally want to "ensure the children in their care understand the importance of not accessing material like that when they are underage, and also the pernicious effect of pornography in their lives long-term".
She also said imposing filters on internet porn would not be enough - children had to be taught to use the web responsibly.
Special adviser Mrs Perry, Tory MP for Devizes, called on Education Secretary Michael Gove to bring in new statutory guidance for secondary schools about how teach children about online porn. "Teenage boys send teenage girls naked selfies [self-taken photos] and teenage girls send them," she said.
"There are so many things wrong with that, and part of the problem is that children don't understand that giving away digital identities is something that can stay with you for ever."
Last night a spokesman for the NSPCC said: "It's absolutely essential that young people are educated about the dangers of pornography. Online videos, some of them violent and degrading, are now just a few clicks away for many young people.
"And children as young as 11 or 12 tell us that they are using porn to learn about sex. We must speak to young people about what healthy, meaningful and respectful relationships are before their views are warped by the prism of online porn." | {
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The ancient commercial roads that linked the city of Thessaloniki and Macedonia of the Roman era with the cities of the wider region of the Black Sea have been revealed by the coins found during the archaeological excavations at the under construction stations for the Thessaloniki metro.
A total of 672 coins were discovered during the excavations of the metro stations of Thessaloniki. 137 cannot be identified, 393 were issued in Thessaloniki, 47 in Rome, 13 in Antioch, 6 in Edessa of Syria, 6 in Syskia, 3 in Milan, 2 in Africa, 1 in Ravenna and 1 in Arles.
The other 57 came from the regions of Propontis and the Black Sea. The Human Science School of the International Hellenic University organizes the congress “International Congress for the Black Sea in the Antiquity” on September 18-20 during which the 57 copper coins that were issued in Propontis and the Black Sea will be presented for the first time.
Twenty-two of them are from Constantinople, 18 from Cyzicus, 5 from Nikomedia, 9 from Heraklia, 1 from Troad, 1 from Bythynia and 1 from Panticapaeum and are dated back to the 3 to 4 centuryy AD.
“These coins prove that a trade relation between Thessaloniki and other cities in the Propontis and the Black Sea had been developed in the Roman Era,” assistant professor of Classical Archaeology Manolis Manoledakis said to ANA-MPA. “We are aware, from a large number of Roman sarcophagus in Thessaloniki, that some of the persons buried in the city were born in Asia Minor and Propontis,” the University’s professors underlined, adding that “the excavations in the metro as well as the restoration of the coins continues and we expect to find more coins from Propontis and the Black Sea that will broaden our knowledge on the communication and interaction between these areas and the city of Thessaloniki.”
(source: ana-mpa)
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Communities in Charlottesville, Va., are reeling from a murderous Nazi and white supremacist march on their town — one that stole the life of anti-Nazi protester Heather Heyer and wounded many more. I spoke with Lisa Woolfork, a member of Charlottesville’s Black Lives Matter chapter, about what solidarity and anti-racist organizing looks like in this moment.
I am of the belief that everyone out there in the spirit of community defense was acting in robust and muscular love.
She explained that Charlottesville’s Black Lives Matter chapter formed in June as “committed Black folks coming together from a variety of walks of lives, to stand up for preservation of Black lives, to stand up and make sure Black issues are not forgotten.” Woolfork, who is an associate professor at the University of Virginia (UVA), underscored that she is proud of everyone in her community who rallied together to resist organized white supremacists. “This is what community defense looks like,” she said. “You say, ‘Not here, not in my town.’”
Sarah Lazare: How are you, your community and Black Lives Matter holding up after a harrowing few days?
Lisa Woolfork: I believe we are resilient. The reason we came out in the first place was for community defense. All the actions that took place that day were about defending Charlottesville as a community, standing up for our city, and saying no to the racists who wanted to invade and take over. I feel we did that very successfully. It was wonderful to stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with a variety of people. It was Black folks joining in with folks from many different walks of life. I was moved by that.
At the vigil last night for Heather Heyer, the woman who was murdered, I saw it again. The same resolve for Black self-determination. For what Black Lives Matter stands for. To stand up and to say, “You might come armed — our community is willing to stand up against that.” The alt-right comes armed with assault weapons. They came to do damage. This was about the liberation of Black lives as well as criticizing white supremacy.
White supremacists are not just marching in the street, but they seem to be endorsed at the highest levels. The White House now has Stephen Bannon as a special adviser to the president. In some ways, he is the godfather of the alt-right.
What Charlottesville let the world see is that there is a connection between racist ideas and racist action. The reason the alt-right came to Charlottesville is that they were terrified to lose their Civil War participation trophy, their confederate monument to Robert E. Lee — who fought to maintain a white-supremacist republic. That’s why the alt-right was here. Principles of white supremacy and Black subjection still appeal to them.
Sarah: How can people across the country and the world show solidarity right now?
Lisa: There are a variety of ways people can stand up. Support Black Lives Matter — not just in Charlottesville, but all around the country. Get tapped into local organizations. Have uncomfortable and difficult conversations that can open the door to greater understanding. Be willing to be uncomfortable. Don’t just go along with racism and casual white supremacy. That just normalizes white supremacy.
There is a reason white supremacy is the air we breathe in this country. White supremacy is not just the Nazis and alt-right. It’s also very casual and subtle. It’s saying things like, “You’re pretty for a Black girl.”
Trump cannot reprimand that alt-right, because they are his base. There were a lot of people out there with “Make America Great Again” hats. The rise of Trump has coincided with a spike in hate crimes during the first months of his presidency. After he was confirmed by electoral college, there were tons of acts and incidents that very day. This is something we might want to think about.
I’ve never heard of a sore winner. They won [the election], and they are acting as if they lost. They are beating people in the streets. If you won, why are you beating up Muslims and immigrants? They are the party of the aggrieved white people, and we saw them marching through our streets and our city, throwing up Nazi gang signs. They were right near the library where I take my kids, right across the street where my son gets his hair cut.
Sarah: What do you want people to know about what happened in Charlottesville over the weekend?
Lisa: This is what community defense looks like. You say, “Not here, not in my town.” You come out, speak out. That’s what Charlottesville Black Lives Matter came out to do. We are pleased we were able to do that and fortify our community, fortify ourselves, stand up against this violent tide of white hatred that should not be allowed to go unchecked.
I believe that can happen in overt and covert ways. All across the country, there were solidarity rallies: in New York, Atlanta. People all over the country stood in solidarity with Charlottesville. This is the opportunity and this is the time. If not now, when?
Sarah: What is your response to people who say we should just ignore fascists?
Lisa: I believe that the claim that we should just ignore them is problematic. The alt-right is not out there because they want attention; they are out there because they want to promote white supremacy. They have tons of followers on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit. They have a strong social media presence. They have a global following. They are everywhere. They are trying to maintain white supremacy. That’s what they’re fighting for. To say they are out there for attention is to treat them like they’re naughty toddlers, not dangerous terrorists.
It’s a tacit and silent endorsement of white supremacy to say it can be tolerated or that everyone has a right to their opinions. It belies the fact that racist thought and racist action are connected. The symbol of Lee is a magnet for racists and white supremacists. We are inviting them by maintaining that negative hatred at the center of our city. We create hospitable conditions for them.
Sarah: Is there anything you want our readers to know about what local organizing looks like from here?
Lisa: As we move forward, we have a lot of issues we are working to promote. We want awareness of some of the inequities and issues of injustice in our city. Nearly 80 percent of stop-and-frisks in Charlottesville are of African Americans, even though we only comprise 19 percent of the population. We want people to pay attention to the court case about the Confederate monument. We call on Charlottesville city council to fight to remove confederate monuments from public spaces, so we’re a less hospitable place for Nazis, white supremacists and racists. There is the case of a missing transgender women, whose disappearances are overlooked nationally.
I would advise people to look forward, look within, and look locally. What can you do to challenge white supremacy in your daily life? We have to stop believing white supremacy is someone else’s problem. Because we live in America, which has white supremacy at its base, it lurks in all of us. Challenge things, ask questions, intervene if you see someone harmed.
Look locally. See what’s happening right in your town where you can help. What is the poverty rate in your city? How is public education? Do you have a public education system that fails Black and Brown students? What kind of steps can you take to remedy that? What about hunger? How does that work in your town? The problems with Charlottesville are problems with every city in America.
Sarah: What is your response to politicians and pundits who are demonizing people who are resisting fascism?
Lisa: I believe there should be a diversity of tactics in order to fight white supremacy. I believe that these fascists came to invade our town and to terrorize. They came with weapons, with bats. They create a false equivalency when they say Nazis are equal to anti-racist activists. That is an unbalanced equation. By demonizing the anti-fascists, it makes fascism look as if it’s a viable social position. There were people out there Saturday in khaki pants and white polo shirts who marched to where I teach at UVA and shouted, “Death to the Jews, we will not be replaced.”
I recognize that there is a diversity of tactics, and I am of the belief that everyone out there in the spirit of community defense was acting in robust and muscular love. Love for humanity and justice, against the tide of white supremacy and all sorts of things being normalized. | {
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Former RNC Chairman: Evangelical Leaders Backing Trump Are ‘Biggest Phonies Of All’
The man who used to be the head of the Republican Party derided evangelical Christian leaders for continuing to support President Donald Trump, according to transcripts of conversations within a recently published book.
Speaking with Tim Alberta, who published their conversations in his book on the Trump administration “American Carnage,” former RNC Chairman Michael Steele explained he had no respect left for religious leaders that were willing to look the other way when it came to Trump’s misdeeds in the past and present.
“These evangelical [leaders] are the biggest phonies of all,” Steele said, per reporting from Business Insider.
Steele went on to deride Christian leaders, using explicit language and comparing them to Judas.
“These are the people who spent the last forty years telling everyone how to live, who to love, what to think about morality,” he said. “And then this motherf—er comes along defiling the White House and disrespecting God’s children at every turn, but it’s cool, because he gave them two Supreme Court justices. They got their thirty pieces of silver.”
“American Carnage,” which contains Steele’s words and other candid revelations from political leaders, was released this past week.
Michael Steele is not playing around pic.twitter.com/l5spXJWixn — Captain Mordecai (@CaptMordecai) July 16, 2019
This isn’t the first time Steele has spoken out against evangelicals. In 2018, he also derided leaders for failing to condemn Trump’s actions when it was revealed he had paid to silence adult film actress Stormy Daniels after the two had an extramarital affair.
“Just shut the hell up and don’t preach to me about anything ever again,” Steele said about evangelicals dismissive of Trump’s behavior. He added, “They have no voice of authority anymore for me,” per reporting from Mediaite.
Evangelicals make up a strong proportion of the voting bloc that make up Trump’s base of supporters. In the 2016 presidential election, 77 percent of evangelicals in the U.S. voted for Trump. | {
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Every time you recharge your lithium-ion batteries, their storage capacity decreases just a little bit. That is why your mobile gadgets won't stay on nearly as long as they did even a year ago. But thanks to research by the US Department of Energy, we finally know why exactly that occurs and, more importantly, how to stop it from happening.
As Lithium-ion batteries discharge, the lithium ions (Li+) carry an electrical charge from the anode to the cathode across a non-aqueous electrolyte. This is what powers your phone. It is not a perfectly repeatable system though, and each time the lithium ions move through the battery, they cause minute changes to the electrodes' physical structures. This is what eventually kills your battery's capacity.
Two recent studies published by the journal, Nature Communications, by teams at national DoE labs—including Lawrence Berkeley, Brookhaven, SLAC and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory—have peered intensely into this process and have made some surprising discoveries.
"We discovered surprising and never-before-seen evolution and degradation patterns in two key battery materials," Huolin Xin, a materials scientist at Brookhaven Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and co-author on both studies, said in a press release. "Contrary to large-scale observation, the lithium-ion reactions actually erode the materials non-uniformly, seizing upon intrinsic vulnerabilities in atomic structure in the same way that rust creeps unevenly across steel." As Li+ ions move across the nickel-oxide anode when discharging, it causes minute breaks in the material, diminishing its capacity.
"Consider the way snowflakes only form around tiny particles or bits of dirt in the air," Xin explains. "Without an irregularity to glom onto, the crystals cannot take shape. Our nickel oxide anode only transforms into metallic nickel through nanoscale inhomogeneities or defects in the surface structure, a bit like chinks in the anode's armor."
On the other hand, as lithium ions move across the cathode when charging they generate a kind of rock-salt that forms an electrically-insulating crust, also reducing its capacity.
"As the lithium ions race through the reaction layers, they cause clumping crystallization—a kind of rock-salt matrix builds up over time and begins limiting performance," Xin said. "We found that these structures tended to form along the lithium-ion reaction channels, which we directly visualized under the TEM [transmission electron microscope - ed]. The effect was even more pronounced at higher voltages, explaining the more rapid deterioration."
So now that we know how these batteries are slowly breaking down over the course of their operational lives, researchers should be able to leverage the data into new and more robust battery designs.
"It may be possible to use atomic deposition to coat the NMC cathodes with elements that resist crystallization, creating nanoscale boundaries within the micron-sized powders needed at the cutting-edge of industry," Xin said. "In fact, Berkeley Lab battery experts Marca Doeff and Feng Lin are working on that now."
Obviously it's going to be a few years before this technological breakthrough trickles down to the consumer market but, when it does, we'll be one step closer to cutting ties with our power cords for good. [Brookhaven via R&D Mag] | {
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Bee Facts
• Some beekeepers in Alberta and Saskatchewan regularly harvest over 300 lbs (136 kg) of honey per colony. National and Provincial information can be found here: http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/pick-choisir?lang=eng&p2=33&id=0010007
• It takes one colony of honey bees (around 30,000 bees) to pollinate an acre of fruit trees. Pollination success increases if there are more honey bees present at the time of peak flowering.
• A colony of honey bees in early spring can have approximately 10,000-15,000 bees.
• A colony of honey bees in summer has 50-80,000 bees. A honey bee flies up to 24 km /hr or 15 mph and its wings beat 200 times per second or 12,000 beats / minute.
• A normal colony of honey bees contains only one QUEEN who may lay 2,000 eggs per day during her busy season
there may be 60,000 or more WORKER bees (undeveloped females ) who do all the work. There will also be several hundred DRONES (Male bees).
• A worker bee gathers in her entire life 0.8 gram (0.0288 ounce) of honey.
• It requires 556 worker bees to gather a pound of honey.
• Bees fly more than once around the world to gather a pound of honey.
• The average life of a honey bee during the working season is about six weeks.
• Nectar as gathered by the bee contains about 70% water (Honey is about 17% water).
• Bees remove the excess moisture from nectar by rapidly fanning their wings over the open cells in the hive which circulates fresh air into the hive and the moist air out. .
• Honey ranges in colour from water white through to dark brown/black. Most Canadian honey is white in colour, which has a mild but sweet taste..
• The value of bees pollinating fruits, crops, vegetables and legumes is almost 20 times the value of honey produced (over $4.4 billion in Canada)
Bee Trivia
Q. How many bees in a hive?
A. 25,000 to 100,000 depending on the time of year
Q. How many flowers must a bee tap to make 454 g (one pound) of honey?
A. Two million (here’s the calculation)
Q. How far does a hive of bees fly to bring you 454g (one pound) of honey?
A. Over 55,000 miles (here’s the calculation)
Q. How much honey does the worker bee make in her lifetime?
A. 0.8g (1/10 teaspooon)
Q. How fast does a honeybee fly?
A. About 24 km/hr or 15 mph
Q. What is the name given to wine made with fermented honey?
A. Mead
Q. How long have bees been producing honey from flowering plants?
A. About 10-20 million years
Q. What Scotch liqueur is made with honey?
A. Drambuie
Q. How many wings does a bee have?
A. Four
Q. How many sides does each honeycomb cell have?
A. Six
Q. How many flowers does a honey bee visit during one collection trip?
A. 50-100
Q. How do honeybees communicate with each other?
A. By dancing. Honeybees do a dance which alerts other bees where nectar and pollen is located. The dance explains direction and distance.
Q. What is the per capita consumption of honey in Canada?
A. One kilo (2.2 pounds) per year. | {
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"My sympathies go out to the officers who now are left paying a surcharge on their freedom," said University of Maryland law professor Doug Colbert, who supported Mosby's decision to charge the officers, but has also been one of the state's most vocal opponents of cash bail. "Maybe the officers' bail situation will bring much-needed attention to the unnecessary use of money when people are accused of crime." | {
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The first trial in humans of a gene-editing technology called CRISPR Cas9 won approval from a federal panel Tuesday, according to medical news siteThe experiment would alter immune cells in participants to attack different forms of cancer and was proposed by University of Pennsylvania scientists. While the test still needs approval from the Food and Drug Administration, clearance by the National Institutes of Health panel is a major step forward for the innovative treatment technique. Dr. Michael Atkins, an oncologist at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, told Stat that the procedure could "hopefully form the basis of new therapies" for cancer patients.CRISPR essentially gives scientists the ability to replace genes of their choosing, allowing a potentially hazardous gene to become benign or even beneficial. Beginning with a small trial, scientists plan to test the safety and effectiveness of the method. They plan to remove cells that target outside invaders like bacteria from cancer patients and modify them to attack cancer cells instead.The research is funded by the Parker Institute, created by Napster co-founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker, who's valued at $2.4 billion. Parker has said the research is the "Manhattan project for curing cancer with the immune system," according toThe institute provides support for a team of researchers from Penn and will continue the work of Dr. Carl June, a prominent authority in the field who said that due to the test’s nongovernment funding, "Frankly, we're more nimble than the big pharmas and the big biotechs," according to a report on | {
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ATLANTA (AP) — Lil Wayne ended a performance early after rumors of gunshots caused panic at the A3C Festival in Atlanta.
Police say the rapper was on stage Sunday when a person in the crowd yelled they heard gunshots. People tried to flee.
WXIA-TV reports at least a dozen people were hurt with injuries ranging from sprained ankles to gashes.
Police say there’s no evidence any shots were fired.
Lil Wayne tweeted that he hoped everyone was safe. | {
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Normally, we wouldn’t weigh in on a confirmation hearing for a gubernatorial pick to a low-profile office in Austin.
This year, we’ll not only weigh in on David Whitley’s appointment to the office of Texas secretary of state. We’ll recommend a loud and resounding: NO.
Whitley was named in December and his short tenure in the obscure and nominally nonpartisan office has been tarnished by a civil rights scandal that garnered national attention and condemnation. Texans deserve an official they can trust to oversee elections across the state. Gov. Greg Abbott, too, deserves an appointee whose every move won’t be justifiably second-guessed. Our state isn’t lacking for Republican politicos who could serve in this role. The governor should simply replace Whitley with a qualified candidate so we can all move on.
RELATED: Texas’ voter fraud falsehoods distract from real civic participation
The crisis of confidence began when, after only five weeks on the job, Whitley’s office released an advisory to local election administrators claiming that 95,000 noncitizens were improperly registered as voters and should be removed from the rolls. This report seemed to confirm the suspicions of Republican politicians who have crusaded against the spectre of illegal voting for years, with little to show for it. President Trump pounced on cue, railing on Twitter about “95,000 non-citizens registered to vote.”
Just one problem: It wasn’t true.
Whitley calculated the 95,000 number by counting registered voters who, at some point, had told the Texas Department of Public Safety they were not citizens when obtaining a driver’s license or ID. But here’s a funny fact about life in Texas: People can become citizens after legally obtaining a driver license.
Thousands upon thousands of Texans do that every year — and plenty of those new citizens registered to vote and cast ballots in the 2018 election.
That’s why the secretary of state’s office began backtracking almost immediately after releasing its memo. Turns out that roughly 20,000 names were wrongly added. The list included duplicate names and people who had properly become naturalized citizens. In Harris County alone, more than 60 percent of the listed names were quickly tossed out, and that stat keeps growing.
This kind of public failure wouldn’t be tolerated in the private sector, and it falls on the Senate Nominations Committee to ensure we don’t accept it in Texas government.
A litany of civil rights organizations and individual voters have lined up to sue Whitley and the county officials who acted on his wrongful report. They allege state officials violated the Voting Rights Act and 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, including claims that the list unconstitutionally burdened minority groups. At a time when symbols of discrimination are being removed from the Texas Capitol, our elected officials should aim similar scrutiny at actions with an actual discriminatory effect.
Whitley’s list wasn’t ready for public consumption and yet he released it anyway. The seven senators on the Nominations Committee tasked with assessing the secretary of state’s fitness can only come to one of two conclusions:
Either Whitley had not properly checked his work, recklessly releasing an inaccurate product in a manner unworthy of his office.
Or, he knew exactly what he was doing and purposefully fanned the flames of partisan conspiracy theory about noncitizens fraudulently voting en masse.
Neither should be tolerated. Nor should such antics be excused as as politics as usual.
We know the governor is capable of appointing a competent elections chief who approaches the duties fairly. Rolando Pablos, an Abbott appointee whom Whitley replaced, dedicated himself to ensuring that high school officials were following state law and registering young Texans to vote. Carlos Cascos, also appointed by Abbott, told Texas Monthly recently that Whitley’s list should be rescinded entirely.
Both men appear to share a respect for new voters, which should come as no surprise. Both were born in Mexico.
It’s unclear how much damage Whitely has done with his ill-conceived scheme, whether it will have a chilling effect on voter registration or scare registered voters away from the polls. Abbott and other Republican leaders should also contemplate the political effects of such ploys. Those ambitious, patriotic Americans-by-choice who once filled Republican ranks may feel their role in the Grand Old Party reduced to little more than scapegoat.
Democrats on the Senate Nominations Committee — including Houston’s Borris Miles and Carol Alvarado — have partisan reasons to vote ‘no’ on Whitley. Republicans have strong reason as well: to protect Texans’ right to vote from bureaucratic threat. It will only take one Republican to cross over. We’d like to see state Sen. Lois Kolkhost, for instance, stand up for her constituents in a diverse and growing Fort Bend County.
There’s a place for politics. It’s not in the voting booth, and it’s not at the secretary of state’s office. Any state official seriously concerned about the integrity of our voting system should require integrity in the person appointed to oversee it. | {
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Wall Streeters have a penchant for pulling pranks on each other and they're usually pretty funny. But this Velociraptor chase from a game show in a Japanese office takes the prize for the best prank ever. [via i09.com]
Watch below: | {
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Sen. Marco Rubio. | AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee Rubio clashes with Trump’s Russia rhetoric
TALLAHASSEE — Senator Marco Rubio put more distance between himself and President-elect Donald Trump when he criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin in a statement late Thursday welcoming President Obama’s newly released sanctions.
“From his repression of the Russian people and the assassination of his critics, to his dangerous invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Crimea, to his threats against our NATO allies in Central and Eastern Europe, to the war crimes committed by Russian forces and their Syrian and Iranian allies in Aleppo, Putin’s Russia is a threat to global stability,” Rubio said in a statement released late Thursday.
The statement was critical of Obama, calling the sanctions "long overdue” following "years of weakness that have invited and encouraged Russian aggression.”
But it also clashed sharply with Trump’s consistently positive outlook on Putin and the Russian Federation.
While Trump released a statement following the White House announcement saying it's time "to move on” from claims of election interference from Kremlin-backed groups, Rubio accused Putin of "becoming so emboldened" as to try to "undermine American democracy by meddling in our election.”
Trump has expressed skepticism of the widely accepted consensus from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election with cyber intrusions against the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal email account. But he said he does plan to "meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.”
It’s not the first time Rubio, a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, has clashed with Trump when it comes to foreign policy.
During his Senate reelection campaign, Rubio expressed disagreement with Trump’s suggestion that the United States shouldn't automatically come to the defense of fellow NATO members if they are attacked. And earlier this month, Rubio introduced the Preventing Destabilization of Iraq and Syria Act, legislation that would mandate sanctions aimed at Russian and Iranian officials who participate in destabilizing the two countries.
Obama’s eleventh-hour Russia sanctions present a test for many congressional Republicans, who are torn between decades-old GOP principles and their new standard-bearer's unusual embrace of Putin.
Nolan D. McCaskill and Austin Wright contributed reporting.
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Are you looking for a place to live in the Metro Vancouver area, but are sick and tired of listings featuring sky-high rent and outrageous landlord stipulations?
If so, this particular listing by a Coquitlam, B.C., resident may be just what you’re looking for - providing you’re willing to show a little compassion.
As Kelowna Now reports, 32-year-old Brice Royer has posted an unusual ad listing on Craigslist in search of a roommate to occupy a single bedroom in his home.
What makes this living arrangement unique is there’s no actual rent to pay, and if you’re the right fit Royer will even be willing to pay you $1,500 dollars a month minimum to live there.
Royer is a stomach cancer survivor who’s still dealing with chronic fatigue while he recovers. The listing states he’s specifically “looking for a compassionate, kind, sensitive, and gentle roommate” and one “who can be here for basic support during the day and 5 overnights in case of emergency.“
The ad also states potential roommates wouldn’t be responsible for facilitating Royer’s medical or personal health needs.
Instead, the right roommate would ideally be there to keep him company while he recovers, and also assist in duties like cooking simple meals and helping him handle the occasional bit of paperwork.
This isn’t the first time Royer has made headlines for eye-catching Craigslist ads. He’s previously put out an ad selling unconditional love for zero dollars and also helped raised the funds necessary to purchase a 300-square-foot solar-powered home for a single mother in need as well.
Top image via Craigslist | {
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Watch CBS News Videos Online
And here's the blur of the male kiss and the reveal of the female one: | {
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Members of Parliament were today debating whether the UK really has to leave Euratom, the atomic energy organisation, when it leaves the EU. The UK government has already served its intention to leave both bodies at the same time, but in recent days there have been concerns about the possible impact of this. So is it feasible to reverse course on the Brexit process in part?
There are three possible scenarios. First, the government presses ahead with its plan to leave Euratom entirely. One of the planned Brexit bills, on nuclear safeguards, will partially give effect to this intention. The problem here is that there are reportedly enough Conservative MPs ready to rebel on the Euratom issue to overturn the slim combined Tory/DUP majority in the House of Commons, unless they back down following government reassurances.
In the second scenario, the government could make clear its intention that the UK should seek an association agreement with Euratom after Brexit. This isn’t inherently unfeasible, since Switzerland and South Korea have such deals. But the UK would likely be asking for a stronger relationship than those countries have, and the EU side would have to agree to this. There may not be enough time to negotiate it before Brexit Day, and so the UK could enter into a transitional deal in the meantime. This might not be controversial in itself, but it would likely be hard to separate from the issue of a transitional deal relating to the EU, which is far more controversial. There would be a limited role for the EU court, the European Court of Justice, which would upset those who are strongly opposed to any role for this court as regards the UK.
In the third scenario, the government tries to reverse course, and cancel its intention to leave Euratom. This raises multiple questions. Can the EU and Euratom even be separated for this purpose? Although they are legally distinct bodies created by separate treaties, there are still links between them. In particular, the Euratom treaty says that Article 50 of the EU Treaty—the famous legal rule governing withdrawal from the EU—applies to Euratom too.
That could mean that withdrawal from one necessarily means withdrawal from the other, in which case trying to stay in Euratom (but not the EU) is futile anyway. Or it could mean only that the same process applies to leaving either body, but it’s not necessary to leave them both at the same time. Even in that case, staying in Euratom would be awkward, since (as I discuss in more detail here) the Euratom treaty also says that the rules on the EU institutions apply to Euratom. That means the UK would stay part of the ECJ, the European Parliament and the European Commission. Even staying in these bodies for limited purposes will likely upset many of those who voted Leave.
There’s another issue too. Since the Article 50 letter to leave both the EU and Euratom has already been served, could it be withdrawn at all? Would this need the EU’s consent? Can withdrawal be only partial? And any move to withdraw the letter in part opens up a can of worms as regards the certainty of the government’s intention to leave the EU.
The easiest and most sensible course for the government may be to ask for an association agreement with Euratom after Brexit. Yet, as noted above, even that requires potentially difficult negotiations and compromises that could spill over and affect more controversial issues. Euratom could turn out to be a small thread of the Brexit process that, if pulled, causes a greater unravelling. | {
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Global marine fisheries catches have been declining, on average, by 1.2 million metric tons every year since 1996 and FAO knew very little about this.
Fortunately, the Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries has just been released and it explains, in detail and country-by-country, the reasons behind this unprecedented phenomenon, its consequences when it comes to food security and the steps that can be taken to ease the dire situation.
The 520-page book, published by Island Press, is the product of a 10-year research effort led by two renowned scientists from the Sea Around Us project at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries: Dr. Daniel Pauly and Dr. Dirk Zeller, who were backed by close to 400 researchers from 273 countries.
Why wasn’t this issue reported before? Because for the past 50 years, member countries have been giving FAO misleading information regarding their fishery data. Thus, while the UN agency officially divulged a peak in global catches of 86 million metric tons by 1996, the real figure the UBC experts unearthed was of 130 million metric tons. Following that spike, numbers have been in sharp decline.
Countries’ inaccurate information is the result of unaccounted catches, such as those originating from recreational, artisanal, and illegal fishing, as well as from discarded bycatch.
One of the three chapters on Canada included in the Atlas reveals that Arctic catches, for example, are entirely missing from official reports. “These are almost exclusively subsistence for the local people,” Zeller explains. “So, what Canada is telling the world community is that no one is eating fish up there in the Arctic, which is simply wrong.”
The Atlas also shows the impact of discards in Canada’s fisheries data. “The northwest Atlantic was the area with the largest discards worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s,” Zeller says. The reasons for discarding were mostly getting ‘non-marketable animals’ and high grading, a ‘fish the best and leave the rest,’ -kind of practice.
Catches everywhere have been bountiful up until now, the Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries states. But the decline in volumes reveals that fish stocks are in danger. And climate change is only making things worse.
There is still hope, though. The Sea Around Us scientists present a series of recommendations on how nations can rethink the way they approach ocean management, in order to rebuild their fish stocks.
The Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries is, thus, an indispensable resource for policy makers, researchers, students, professionals in the fishing industry, and all others concerned with the status of the world’s oceans.
Until January 6, 2017, the book will be available around the world for a reduced price of $60.00. Island Press ships worldwide and readers can use the code 4ATLAS for an additional 20% discount.
The Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries is also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local independent bookseller, and through international distributors in the UK and Europe, Canada, and Australia. | {
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If you’re feeling stressed, here’s a clever GIF out there to remind you to do what’s absolutely essential: Breathe.
Studies show that breathing exercises offer a world of good, from lowering blood pressure, boosting your immune system and of course, abating stress.
Harvard Medical School recommends taking long, slow and deep breaths, known as abdominal or belly breathing, to invoke relaxation:
Deep abdominal breathing encourages full oxygen exchange — that is, the beneficial trade of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. Not surprisingly, it can slow the heartbeat and lower or stabilize blood pressure.
Buddhist meditation disciple Hwansan Sunim also shares that by practicing correct breathing techniques “we can learn to regulate our mind.”
“This, in turn, means that by breathing correctly, we can learn to eradicate some of the suffering that we experience in states of fear, anxiety, rage, loneliness, and depression,” he wrote in an April blog post that offers guidance on Breath Counting Meditation. | {
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Finalmente, ci siamo! Qualche ora fa è stata annunciata la location ufficiale che andrà ad ospitare l’edizione 2018 del World Championship in HMB “Battle of the Nations” e si tratta di una località italiana!
Il luogo è lo splendido castello di Santa Severa: uno dei luoghi più suggestivi del territorio laziale, situato lungo la costa Tirrenica a Nord di Roma. Un patrimonio di inestimabile valore sia storico che culturale.
Di seguito il comunicato stampa ufficiale:
“HMBIA proudly presents the Castle of Santa Severa as the official location for the World Championship in HMB “Battle of the Nations”-2018, that will be held on 3-6th May. The castle was built in the 14th century, and its medieval spirit will provide us with the most outstanding complement to the atmosphere of the Championship!
Santa Severa is one of the most fascinating places in the Lazio Region, close to Rome. It is one of the most important and striking monuments of archaeological and historic interest on the Tyrrhenian coast, which will help to create the necessary atmosphere of the Middle Ages and will inspire the participants of the tournament for exploits.
You will feel and see the history there! Additionally, everyone can explore the archaeological area of Pyrgi – one of the most important and historical spots in Italy. After tough fights with the strongest HMB athletes in the world you can even hit the beach! It one of the best places you can ever visit – historical castle, awesome views and the seaside. It’s important to mention that there will be everything that everyone could need – a camp with dry hay, fresh water, firewood and all the necessary infrastructure items like showers and toilets.
As you can see, the place has much more opportunities for having fun than any other spot in the center of the city including free beach, wide fields for encampments with bonfires and others. And those ancient walls are a really perfect background for the greatest battle ever.
Participants and support teams can live at the historical camp right in front of the Castle. Additionally, there is a possibility to live in the modern camp that will be placed next to historical one. If you have already booked accommodation in Rome, the fastest and easiest way to reach Santa Severa from Rome – is by Train. It costs 4 EUR and takes only 52 minutes from Termini to Santa Severa station and then 10 minutes’ walk to the Castle.
Prepare yourself and join us on 3-6 May at the most epic event of HMB movement!”
Questo magico luogo accoglierà, dal 3 al 6 Maggio, trentatré nazioni costituite da donne e uomini che si sfideranno in diverse categorie (e diversi armeggi: spada a due mani, spada e scudo, spada e brocchiero, armi in asta) , ben contraddistinte da un regolamento specifico. In breve le categorie sono:
Duello 1 vs 1;
“Buhurt” 5 vs 5;
“Buhurt” 21 vs 21 (solo maschile);
“Tutti contro Tutti” (fuori competizione).
Se volete maggiori informazioni sulle categorie e su tutto quello che vi incuriosisce vi invito caldamente a visitare il sito ufficiale del Battle of the Nation (link: http://botn.info/en/) e ovviamente likare la pagina ufficiale del Team Italy che quest’anno, come non mai, porterà alta la bandiera del Bel Paese giocando “in casa”.
Mi piace: Mi piace Caricamento... | {
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The Naked Cowboy performs outside of Trump Tower in New York City. Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images The man who has been dubbed the Naked Cowboy, who often poses for pictures with New York City tourists in Times Square, explained in a recent interview his "affinity" for President-elect Donald Trump, saying, in part, his undocumented wife's fear of being deported was a good thing.
"I have an affinity with Trump. I get him," the Naked Cowboy, whose real name is Robert Burck, told The New Yorker for the magazine's January issue. "We’re both media promoters, media whores, whatever you want to call it. People get hung up on political stuff, but I don’t care. Black, white, gay, transvestite—just stand up and make something of yourself."
He continued: "Look, my wife’s a Mexican immigrant. She still doesn’t have her papers. Maybe she’ll be the next to be deported, who knows? I don’t think he’d do that. But if he does, hey, that’s fate. Plus, it’s a nice thing to have hanging over her head — you know, 'Do the dishes, or else.'"
The New York City icon, known for playing his guitar nearly naked no matter the weather, is often dressed in a pair of Fruit of the Loom underwear with "TRUMP" written on its rear.
Burck has regularly performed at Trump Tower in the wake of the billionaire's surprise victory last month. | {
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Selfie with daughters is a symbolic gesture. And who knows the power of symbolism than a Gujarati? It was another Gujarati, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who used salt as a symbol to fight against the British. Of course, the ideological forerunners of Kavita Krishnan and Shruti Seth did not take it to the digital social media to hashtag Salt Satygraha as ‘bourgeoisie deception’ and Gandhi-Bose et al as ‘lackeys’ and ‘flunkeys’. Twitter and Facebook did not exist then. But they surely put those tags permanently in the print media available to them. | {
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Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke announced a sweeping plan Wednesday to overhaul the American immigration system, offering citizenship to most immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, halting President Trump’s border wall and proposing a new visa for communities to sponsor would-be refugees.
Mr. O’Rourke, a former congressman, said he wants to protect millions of immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally from the danger of deportation while giving Congress the space to pass broader legislation with a full pathway to citizenship, erasing the punishment for past illegal presence.
“I think we go a lot further than really anyone in this plan,” Mr. O’Rourke said in an interview with CNN that aired Wednesday. “We stop the chaos that we have on our border right now — chaos that was imposed by President Trump.”
He did appear to soften his border wall stance.
At one point earlier this year he’d said he would consider tearing down parts of the 700 or so miles of fencing and barriers that already protect the U.S. border — including miles of barriers in his hometown of El Paso, Texas.
But he now says he would leave things up to local communities.
Mr. O’Rourke said he would end family separations at the border — though it’s not clear what he means by that. The Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, which had led to separations, was ended last year, and at this point the only separations are the one or two cases a day where authorities feel parents are a danger to children.
Mr. O’Rourke would also loosen policies to make it easier for people fleeing their home countries to seek asylum in the U.S.
His administration would also ensure there are “lawful and humane conditions” at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities, including access to medical treatment, mental health care, social workers and translators, his campaign said.
Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign also said he would issue an executive order to require detention “only for those with criminal backgrounds representing a danger to our communities.”
To solve the surge of migrants heading north from Central America right now, his plan would invest $5 billion in the “Northern Triangle” region of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
And he said for those that do come, he’ll seek ways to free them from detention.
“I think the vast majority of families and children who are fleeing the deadliest countries on the face of the planet, who are seeking asylum in this country, they don’t try to flee arrest, they don’t try to evade detection, those families pose no threats or risk to this country,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
That cuts against the advice of immigration officials, who say detaining immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally is the surest way to stem the surge.
Border Patrol leaders testified to Congress that without detention, many of the families will skip their hearings and disappear into the shadows, adding to population of immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally.
Mr. O’Rourke’s plan doesn’t go quite as far as an immigration proposal from former Obama administration official Julián Castro, who wants to generally decriminalize border crossings.
Much of Mr. O’Rourke’s plan would require action from Congress, which has tried and failed for years to pass comprehensive immigration bills.
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Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. | {
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Please enable it to continue. | {
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What Is Netflix?
Netflix started as a competitor to brick-and-mortar video rental stores, renting DVDs by mail, and expanded its business with the introduction of streaming video in 2007. Originally, Netflix was only available in the United States, but that changed when the service launched in Canada in 2010. By January 2016, Netflix was operating in over 190 countries. Today, we know Netflix as the world's leading internet entertainment service. As a Netflix subscriber, you can watch TV shows and movies when you want, where you want, and on whatever device you want. You can play, pause, and resume watching without commercials or commitments.
Netflix Originals
Netflix spends billions of dollars on original TV shows and movies annually with the aim of making 50% of its library to be original content. This strategy has been a profitable one and has led to Netflix boasting almost 200 million subscribers worldwide. Today, Netflix subscribers pay for the service in order to watch Netflix originals, such as hugely popular series Orange Is the New Black and Stranger Things. Netflix's original movies are succeeding as well, and its recent action movie, Bright, starring Will Smith, has already become one of the most watched Netflix originals ever.
Here are some Netflix originals that you may want to watch:
BoJack Horseman
This animated comedy series follows the struggles of BoJack Horseman, the star of the hit TV show Horsin' Around in the 1990s. Now, 20 years later, BoJack is a self-loathing alcoholic who lives in Los Angeles and complains about everything.
The Crown
This historical drama series is a biographical story about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. The series has received several accolades, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama in 2017 and 2018.
Grace and Frankie
Two women, proper Grace and eccentric Frankie, begin to bond after their husbands announce that they are in love and intend to marry. Both couples have adult children who are equally knocked out by the news.
Making a Murderer
This documentary series explores the story of Steven Avery, a man who was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault and attempted murder of Penny Beerntsen but exonerated by DNA evidence 18 years later in 2003. In 2007, Avery was convicted again – this time for the murder of local photographer Teresa Halbach.
Master of None
Aziz Ansari stars as Dev, a 30-year-old actor who lives in New York City and has no idea what he wants in life. He struggles to make decisions concerning his professional and romantic life.
Narcos
Seasons 1 and 2 are based on the story of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar (1949–1993), who became a multibillionaire and the wealthiest criminal in history by selling cocaine. Season 3 concentrates on the rise of the infamous Cali Cartel that once controlled over 90% of the world's cocaine market.
Orange Is the New Black
A privileged New Yorker is sentenced to a year and a half in a women's prison for an old crime of carrying a bag of drug money from the United States to Belgium. As a normally law-abiding person, she isn’t prepared for prison life's conflicts and surprises.
Stranger Things
A disappearance of a young boy leads residents of a small town to uncover a mystery involving secret experiments and supernatural forces. Things become even weirder when a little girl with a shaved head comes into the story.
Leaving Netflix
In addition to producing original content, Netflix partners with other content providers to license streaming rights for TV shows and movies. The TV shows and movies that Netflix licenses are available for Netflix subscribers to stream for a limited time, which can range from less than a year to several years. That's why Netflix's library is constantly changing. And that's also why you might want to know whether something you want to watch is leaving the service within the next couple of weeks.
How Much Is Netflix?
How much Netflix costs depends on which of its three plans you choose. You can opt to pay $8.99/month for the "Basic" plan, $12.99/month for the "Standard" plan, or $15.99/month for the "Premium" plan.
Of these, the Standard plan is the most popular. It offers HD streaming on up to two devices at once. The Basic plan offers only one SD stream at a time, while Premium gives you four screens in 4K Ultra HD.
Try Netflix for free | {
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A 17-year-old boy has been charged in connection to the fatal shooting of a transgender woman in Chicago.
Dejanay Stanton was found with a gunshot wound to the head this past August. She was taken to the hospital where she died.
Prosecutors have charged Tremon Hill with first-degree murder in connection to Stanton’s death.
According to Assistant State’s Attorney Britt Steinberg, Hill sent a text message to Stanton on the morning of the shooting, asking her to meet him in a parking lot.
Hill allegedly then shot Stanton in the head just outside of her car and left her for dead.
Related: Judge rules that ‘gender’ in hate crimes law includes trans people
Stanton was a sex worker and the two had a sexual relationship that started the previous month, prosecutors believe. She was 24 and investigators say that the teen lied and said he was 18-years-old.
They sent each other over 400 texts after their first encounter. In the text messages, Hill at first expressed interest in Stanton, but then later said that their sexual encounter made him suicidal.
He also wanted her to delete some photos from her phone, and prosecutors say that she did.
Cell phone data shows he was in the vicinity of the shooting when it happened, and a search of his home found clothes with “small red stains” similar to those Hill was seen wearing in surveillance video.
Even though they had been texting constantly just up to the shooting, Hill stopped texting when she was shot.
“She was so sweet. Every time you saw her she had a smile on her face,” LaSaia Honey Wade of Chicago’s Brave Space Alliance told the Windy City Times.
“She was just trying to live her best life as a young girl.” | {
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Congratulations, you've installed Windows 8. Now what? Now, you have to figure out how to actually use Microsoft's new operating system before your boss, friends, or family expect you to do something productive. That's just what this guide is for. We'll show you how to find your desktop again, how to change Windows settings, and what those fancy new touchscreen gestures are all about. We'll explain how to do the same things with a mouse and keyboard, in the rather likely event that you aren't using touchscreen hardware.
In other words, we'll show you how to get where you're going in Windows 8, so that you can get back to work.
Gestures
Windows 8's primary user interface looks like something you'd see on a smartphone, and it can be controlled like one too. It even has a lock screen, a nice colorful picture with no obvious button to get to where you're going. To dismiss the screen, swipe up. It's the first of many basic gestures you'll learn. Mouse or touchpad: press any key, or click once.
you'll be greeted by a field of Live Tiles
When you make it to the Start Screen, you'll be greeted by a field of Live Tiles, each one corresponding to a software app. Tap any one of them to launch that program, or press and hold to drag the tile anywhere you want. Pretty easy so far, right? If you've already had enough of the new Windows 8 UI and want to get to your familar Desktop, that's a tile you can click as well. Mouse or touchpad: click to launch, or click and drag to move tiles around. Keyboard: Windows + D gets you to the desktop immediately, no matter where you are.
Swipe down gently on any tile on the Start screen to select it, and open a menu: you can unpin apps, uninstall them, and make some Live Tiles larger or smaller, in addition to a variety of other possible options. You can select multiple tiles at a time this way, to unpin a whole bunch of apps at once. Mouse or touchpad: right-click on any tile.
On the Start Screen, or inside apps, you can also drag across the screen with a single finger to scroll, or get a zoomed out view of all your Start screen apps by pinching two fingers together. Swipe with two fingers on a touchpad or use a mouse scroll wheel to scroll, and hold down Ctrl and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
Once you're in a program — let's say Internet Explorer — swipe down from the top or swipe up from the bottom of the screen to pull up a menu of app-specific commands. In Internet Explorer, you'll see your open website tabs up top, and on the bottom you'll see Back, Forward and Refresh controls flanking the URL bar. With mouse or touchpad, right-click anywhere where it wouldn't activate a different function. With keyboard, Windows + Z.
Drag from the very top to the very bottom of the screen to close an app. Mouse or touchpad: Click and drag instead. Keyboard: Alt + F4.
Put your mouse cursor in any corner of the screen to simulate gestures
Swipe from the right side of the screen to activate the Charms menu, where you can quickly search or share, send documents to devices (like printers) or access computer settings. Mouse or touchpad: you'll use a hot corner instead: put your cursor in the upper-right or lower-right hand corner for Charms to appear. Keyboard: Windows + C.
Tap the Start charm, or press the Windows button on your computer or keyboard, to go back to the Start screen again. Mouse or touchpad: put your cursor in the lower-left hand corner and click.
Multitasking
If you have a few apps open, swipe from the left edge of the screen to cycle through your previously used apps one at a time. You can swipe repeatedly. Mouse and touchpad: put your cursor in the upper-left hand corner of the screen and tap on the little image that appears. Keyboard: Windows + Tab.
Swipe away from the left edge, and then towards it again, to pull up the app switcher. Mouse or touchpad: place your cursor in the upper-left corner, then drag it down along the left edge.
If you've got multiple apps open, why not view two side by side? Drag an app from the left edge and hold it over the left or right side of the screen to snap a smaller version alongside. Or, drag down from the top of the screen, as if you were going to close an app, then snap it to the left or right. Mouse or touchpad: click and drag from the top-left corner, or right-click on an item in the app switcher.
Drag the three-dot divider to make the smaller of two visible apps larger, or the larger one smaller. Keyboard: Windows + period key.
Where it gets a little tricky is when you're using multiple apps and multiple desktop programs at the same time. The desktop apps won't appear in the app switcher, but if you've got a keyboard handy you can multitask with them, too. Hit Alt-Tab to cycle through both Windows 8 apps and traditional programs.
More handy keyboard shortcuts
Windows + H = Opens the Share charm
Windows + I = Opens the Settings charm
Windows + K = Opens the Devices charm
Windows + Q = Search for apps
Windows + F = Search for files
Windows + W = Search for Windows settings
Windows + X = Access common admin tools (you can right-click on the lower-left hand hot corner, too)
Windows + E = Launches File Explorer in the desktop environment
Windows + O = lock screen orientation
Windows + R = Opens a Run dialog
Windows + L = Lock the computer
Windows + Print Screen = Saves a screenshot to your Pictures > Screenshots folder
Windows + any of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 = Launches the corresponding program pinned to the taskbar
Ctrl + Shift + Esc = Open Task Manager
Want even more shortcuts? Here's a lengthier list.
How to find things
So now that you know how to navigate the OS, how do you find what you want? Well, you could try Windows 8's Search charm, which is quite powerful. Simply type anywhere on the Start screen to begin searching, and then simply change the type of search to get different types of results.
For instance, if you want to hear a particular song, you could first search your local files, and if it doesn't turn up, click on Music to search Xbox Music, and if that fails, click on Internet Explorer to begin a web search, all without ever leaving the search bar. In fact, you can search in just about any app from this same box, from locations in the Maps and Weather apps, to stock results in the Finance app, to the names of new apps in the Windows Store.
Each new app you download can potentially add a new search category, if it supports the charm, so you may end up with quite a few. To promote your favorite searches higher in the ranking, press and hold (or right-click) on them and pin them higher, or hide the ones you don't want.
For quick access to your favorite apps and desktop programs, pin them to your Start screen by right-clicking them, or press and hold on a touchscreen.
Many apps add their own new search categories
If you prefer Google Chrome and Google Search rather than Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Bing, you can easily install both from getyourgoogleback.com and set them as your defaults.
To determine which app or desktop program a particular type of file gets launched with, right-click on them in File Explorer and select "Choose default program."
Common tasks
Between the familiar desktop interface and the Search charm, you shouldn't have much trouble finding most things, but others are more obscure. How do you shut down the computer, for instance? It took us a few minutes to figure that one out. Here are some things you might be looking for, and others that you might like to know about.
First off, you'll find a number of answers in the Settings charm. You can easily connect to a wireless network, change the volume or screen brightness, adjust the keyboard layout, and yes, power down your computer. Additionally, if you invoke the Settings charm from within an app, you'll be able to adjust that app's specific settings.
The Settings charm also lets you access the familiar desktop Control Panel for a variety of settings... but before you get lost in Control Panel minutiae, go back to the Settings charm and check out Change PC settings at the very bottom. This touchscreen-friendly menu lets you change your lock screen and start screen backgrounds, set up user accounts and passwords, manage desktop notifications and privacy settings, add devices like printers, and check for updates to your computer. Be aware that both the left and right sides of the PC Settings menu can scroll up and down, even if it doesn't look like it.
Charms are also good for sending things from one place to another without requiring drag and drop or copy and paste. For instance, if you're looking at a photo, document, or a webpage, you can pull up the Share charm to send it to any app that supports sharing, like an email or social networking client. If you've got a connected device, like a printer or a smart screen, you could also send that photo or document to be printed or displayed with the Devices charm.
To get a list of all the apps on your computer, go to the Start screen, then hit right-click (or drag up / down, or press Windows + Z), and select All apps. Or just press Ctrl + Tab anywhere on the Start screen to get there even faster.
Where do you go if you want to update your apps? Go to the Windows Store app: all available updates will appear in the upper right hand corner.
Sync your accounts
To get the most out of the new user interface, you'll want to sync up your email, calendar, location, contacts, social networks, and SkyDrive to your Microsoft account, the same one that you use to log into your computer. All your Live Tiles will then pop with new information — new status updates, image uploads, emails, and more. To set these up, you'll need to go to a variety of apps, including Messaging, Mail, Weather, Apps and SkyDrive, then add accounts to each from the Settings charm. The People app is probably the best example: if you access settings on the People tile, you can import your contacts from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Hotmail, Outlook, Gmail, and LinkedIn, and have their status updates appear there. Because these accounts are synced to your Microsoft account, they'll be accessible from any Windows PC you log into.
If you want to add another user, or log in to someone else's PC with your credentials, simply go to the Settings charm > Change PC settings > Users, and scroll down to add a user. If you feel comfortable enough, you can also sync your passwords across PCs. To make your passwords portable, in that same Users menu, click "Trust this PC" and confirm on Microsoft's website.
Now go forth and demonstrate your knowledge of Windows, with your data stored in the cloud!
Evan Rodgers contributed to this article. | {
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CARACAS (Reuters) - A gunman opened fire inside Venezuela’s central bank on Monday, wounding two guards before he was shot dead by security officers, according to two sources, in the latest violent episode to shake the country.
Slideshow ( 6 images )
The unidentified assailant barged into the bank’s headquarters in central Caracas shooting and shouting, “Where are the board members?,” the institution’s president, Nelson Merentes, said.
“He wounded two guards, fortunately they are stable and are currently in a clinic,” Merentes told journalists, adding that the shooter’s motives were unclear and an investigation was underway.
A security source and a central bank source who asked not to be identified said the attacker was killed.
The assailant set off a metal detector in the main entrance of the bank, at which point he took out his weapon and began firing, said a bank employee.
Merentes said the man briefly took a woman hostage in the reception area, ran up the stairs, and was confronted by security forces between the fourth and fifth floors.
Bank employees said they were holed up in their offices, in downtown Caracas, while the episode was underway.
One source inside the bank said the attacker was a young man who claimed to have a bomb in his briefcase, although the bag was ultimately found to be empty.
Venezuela is one of the world’s most violent countries and illegal gun possession is common.
The country’s opposition accuses the leftist President Nicolas Maduro of allowing crime to flourish, while he says right-wing opponents promote violence against his administration. | {
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At least four people have died after an apartment building partially collapsed following an apparent gas explosion in Russia.
Authorities said four others were injured and in hospital, while 68 residents remained unaccounted for in the incident in Magnitogorsk, a city of 400,000 about 870 miles southeast of Moscow.
Some residents could have been buried under debris after the accident, officials added.
Cries for help could be heard from the rubble, local news reports said. Witnesses apparently reported being able to smell gas in the area.
It happened around 6am on Monday – a public holiday in Russia – when most residents were still asleep.
The Investigative Committee said the collapse of a section of the 10-storey building was apparently caused by a gas leak.
Of more than 100 apartments in the building, 48 were damaged, the Emergencies Ministry said. | {
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By Mike Dunn and Walt Hunter
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has announced a ban on the feeding of large numbers of homeless and hungry people at sites on and near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
Mayor Nutter is imposing the ban on all outdoor feedings of large numbers of people on city parkland, including Love Park and the Ben Franklin Parkway, where it is not uncommon for outreach groups to offer free food.
Nutter says the feedings lack both sanitary conditions and dignity.
“Providing to those who are hungry must not be about opening the car trunk, handing out a bunch of sandwiches, and then driving off into the dark and rainy night,” Nutter said.
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The city’s leading homeless advocate, Project Home’s Sister Mary Scullion, voiced tentative support for the mayor’s announcement. She said the mayor is “between a rock and a hard place” on the issue of outdoor feedings.
“I really want to thank the mayor for this courageous … this is not an easy position. But I do think it’s a great opportunity,” Scullion said.
Among the groups unhappy with the mayor’s announcement is Brian Jenkins of Chosen 300 Ministries, a homeless outreach group that does both indoor and outdoor feedings.
“The fact that city of Philadelphia is saying now that the homeless don’t have the right to eat on the Ben Franklin Parkway or eat around Center City is a clear violation of civil rights,” Jenkins explained. “It says that people that have … can eat in a certain place. But people that have not, can’t.”
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Nutter’s aides will work with the homeless groups to encourage more indoor feedings.
In the meantime, the groups will be allowed to offer food on the north apron of City Hall, provided they register with the city.
The ban on parkland feedings takes effect in 30 days. Groups that violate the outdoor feeding ban would face two warnings and then a nominal $150 fine.
Nutter says large family gatherings in the park are not affected by the ban. | {
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Switzerland national team won their opening Euro2020 qualifier against Georgia 2-0 and Steven Zuber was the man who opened the score before Denis Zakaria doubled the lead.
Following the game, VfB Stuttgart midfielder exclusively told to Vbetnews.com: “I played with Under-21 side against Georgia and I think it was a little bit the same, tough game.”
“The first half was really difficult for us because Georgia was really deep, they didn’t let us play. But in the second half, everything has been changed. We changed our game system and earned an important three points.” | {
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Many of the world's most important farming regions can't rely on rain alone to water all their crops. So they also pull freshwater from underground aquifers that have slowly filled up over many thousands of years. Notable examples include the Central Valley in California or the Indus Basin in Pakistan and India.
The problem is that these underground aquifers take a long, long time to recharge. So if farmers are drawing water faster than it gets replenished, the basins will eventually run dry. This is a looming concern in California right now, as farmers dig deeper and deeper for groundwater to cope with the ongoing drought. But for a look at how bad things can really get, check out Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia depleted its aquifers, and agriculture collapsed
Over at Reveal News, Nathan Halverson has a terrific piece on how Saudi Arabia squandered its groundwater supplies in just a few short decades. Back in the 1970s, the government allowed landowners to dig as many wells as they desired, in order to transform the desert into lush farmland. An agricultural boom followed, and Saudi Arabia improbably became the world's sixth-largest exporter of wheat.
"By the 1990s, farmers were pumping an average of 5 trillion gallons a year," Halverson writes. "At that rate, it would take just 25 years to completely drain Lake Erie." The problem was that Saudi Arabia doesn't get nearly enough annual rainfall to replace those withdrawals. Its aquifers had built up over tens of thousands of years and were now being drained all at once.
Not surprisingly, the party didn't last. By the 2000s, the aquifers had become dangerously depleted. Wells dried up. Oases that had persisted since biblical times were now gone. The country will need to build costly desalination plants for drinking water. Most important, Saudi Arabia's agricultural output declined sharply, with the amount of farmland now less than half of what it was in the 1990s. In an attempt to conserve what water remains, the country has announced that the 2016 wheat harvest will be its last. An entire industry, gone.
Saudi Arabia is an extreme case, but other aquifers are also in trouble
Saudi Arabia is a particularly glaring example of water mismanagement, but it's hardly an isolated case. Earlier this year, researchers from the University of California Irvine used data from NASA satellites to measure the rate of groundwater depletion around the world. They found that a number of key freshwater aquifers were drained between 2003 and 2013 much faster than they could be recharged:
The researchers found that eight of the world's 37 biggest aquifers were "overstressed" during this time frame, which meant that they were being drained quickly and there wasn't much natural recharge. Topping their list was none other than the Arabian Aquifer System, which straddles Saudi Arabia and Yemen and supports some 60 million people. Also in worrisome shape were the Indus Basin that straddles India and Pakistan and the Murzuq-Djado Basin in Africa.
Beyond that, the researchers also categorized five major systems as "extremely" or "highly" stressed: They're being replenished by some rainwater, but not nearly enough to offset withdrawals. That list included, notably, the aquifers underneath California's Central Valley.
As California endures its fifth straight year of brutal drought, many farmers have been compensating for the lack of surface water by pumping groundwater at increasing rates. There are currently few regulations around this. In 2014, California passed a law to put aquifer management on sustainable footing, but that will take years to take effect.
These groundwater withdrawals have helped farmers weather the current drought, and they're a big reason why California's farm revenue hit record highs in 2013 and 2014. But they come at a long-term cost. The aquifers beneath the Central Valley are getting drained; farmers have to drill deeper and deeper wells each year; and the ground is actually sinking, which in turn means these aquifers will be able to store less water in the future, even after the rain comes again. That means less protection against future droughts. And, as the Saudi example shows, eventually farmers max out their credit.
So when will doomsday hit? That's the thing: Nobody really knows. The UCI researchers pointed out that we don't really have good estimates of how much water is actually in these underground basins, and estimates of storage for some areas tend to range widely, from decades to millennia. Ideally, governments would sponsor research to drill deeper down into the rock layers, take stock of their water supplies, and put withdrawals on a sustainable footing. Because once this non-renewable resource runs out, it can't be easily replaced.
Further reading: Seriously, read Nathan Halverson's piece on the mystery of Saudi Arabia's vanishing water. It's well worth your time. | {
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Beijing has built 4,300 5G base stations in the city's urban core areas and iconic buildings, the Beijing Youth Daily reported Tuesday.
As of the end of May, the capital city has launched pre-commercial 5G services in the administrative areas for Beijing's sub-center, the new airport, the International Horticultural Exhibition, test venues for the 2022 Winter Olympics, Tiananmen Square and the main artery, Chang'an Avenue.
By 2021, the city's core zones, including the central business district, innovation centers and economic-technological development area, will have 5G network coverage, said the newspaper citing the municipal communication bureau.
The country's three telecom carriers, including China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, had been granted trial 5G licenses at the end of 2018 and last week's announcement gives the go ahead to begin commercial deployment ahead of the original timeline that was targeting that for 2020.
Source(s): Xinhua News Agency | {
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Two gray-haired men from Tokyo Medical University bowed their heads in shame before the assembled media in early August. An internal inquiry into one curious case — how did a government official’s son gain admission despite doing poorly on the entrance exam? — had exposed a pattern of fraud and discrimination. For more than a decade, investigators found, the school had systematically altered entrance-exam scores to restrict the number of female students and to award admission to less-qualified male applicants. The supposed rationale, that female doctors are prone to leave the profession after marriage or childbirth, only inflamed a national debate on gender inequality. The school initially denied any knowledge of the wrongdoing, but one of the bowing men — Tetsuo Yukioka, who happened to be chairman of the school’s diversity promotion panel — offered an oblique explanation: “I suspect that there was a lack of sensitivity to the rules of modern society.”
A century and a half after opening up, Japan is now one of the planet’s most advanced, affluent and democratic countries. But in one key respect, it has remained stubbornly regressive: Japanese women, to a degree that is striking even by the lamentable standards of the United States and much of the rest of the world, have been kept on the margins of business and politics. Five years ago, the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, vowed to create what he describes as “a society where women can shine.” Falling birthrates had left Japan with one of the world’s oldest and fastest-shrinking labor forces. (The population from ages 15 to 64 is expected to plummet to 45 million in 2065 from 76 million in 2017.) Rather than open the gates to immigration, an unpopular solution in insular Japan, Abe embraced a plan to ease the way for millions of married and middle-aged women to return to work. The effort, Abe said, was “a matter of the greatest urgency.”
The nickname for Abe’s program, “womenomics,” originated with Kathy Matsui, the vice chairwoman of Goldman Sachs Japan. Matsui, a Japanese-American who has lived in Japan on and off for more than three decades, told me she became aware of women’s underutilized economic potential soon after the birth of her first child during the stagnant 1990s. “A lot of my ‘mama’ friends were not returning to the work force to the extent that I assumed,” she recalled. “I realized that maybe the growth solution for Japan was right in front of my face.” After Abe adopted “womenomics” in 2013, Matsui predicted that the plan could add 7.1 million employees and lift Japan’s gross domestic product by nearly 13 percent. Activists and scholars were skeptical — the breathless calculations seemed to underplay the institutional sexism that pervades Japanese society — but Matsui credits Abe with depoliticizing the debate. “He moved the issue of diversity out of the realm of human rights into the realm of economic growth,” Matsui says.
The correlation between the advancement of women and increased development rates follows a simple logic: More working women means more growth, especially in rapidly aging societies, where their participation alleviates the impact of a shrinking labor force. And a more inclusive economy can create ripple effects, expanding the talent pool, forming a more skilled work force and putting more money in the hands of women. In Japan, the ultimate hope was that women would no longer be faced with the cruel choice between remaining single (to pursue a career among men) or having a family (and giving up a career). “With this one stone, we could hit three or four birds,” says Rui Matsukawa, a legislator and member of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and mother of two. “It was like a survival strategy.” | {
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Passage of the measure with support from liberal Democrats — and no Republicans — could set up another difficult showdown between Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and her left flank. Negotiations with the Senate will almost certainly result in a compromise measure that jettisons many, if not most, of the amendments secured by House liberals. That could set up a final vote that liberals will oppose, leaving Democratic leaders to appeal for Republican votes.
For now, though, the House bill bears the stamp of the resurgent left. The House passed a bipartisan amendment on Friday that would curb Mr. Trump’s ability to authorize a military strike on Iran unless he obtained Congress’s explicit approval. The 251-to-170 vote reflected general war weariness after almost two decades of conflict in the Middle East; 27 Republicans joined all but seven Democrats to approve it.
Last month, Mr. Trump led the United States to the brink of a retaliatory missile strike before abruptly reversing course minutes before launch. On Thursday, three Iranian boats briefly tried to block passage of a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defense.
Mr. Trump said last month he believes he does not need congressional approval to strike Iran. The vote on Friday amounted to a pointed bipartisan rebuttal — led by Representatives Ro Khanna, a liberal Democrat from California, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of Mr. Trump’s most strident Republican allies in Congress.
“If my war-hungry colleagues, some of whom have already suggested we invade Venezuela and North Korea and probably a few other countries before lunchtime tomorrow, if they’re so certain of their case against Iran,” Mr. Gaetz said, “let them bring their authorization to use military force against Iran to this very floor. Let them make the case to Congress and the American people.” | {
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Show full PR text
Sep 14, 2011 23:37 ET
Sony Computer Entertainment to Offer Software Development Kit for PlayStation®Suite Starting This November
SCE to Provide Strong Support to Content Developers for PlayStation®Suite With the Distribution of the Newly Developed Content Starting Next Spring
TOKYO, Sept. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that it will offer software development kits (SDK) for PlayStation®Suite (PS Suite), called "PlayStation®Suite SDK," *1 for content developers starting this November. PS Suite is an initiative solution to deliver the world of PlayStation® to Android™ based portable devices.
Through PS Suite SDK, content developers can create content for PlayStation™Certified (PS Certified) devices, hardware certified through the PS Suite license program, as well as for PlayStation®Vita (PS Vita).
Supporting C# as the programming language, PS Suite SDK can run programs developed in C# on virtual machine equipped on both PS Certified devices and PS Vita. By supporting development for multiple devices and by adopting libraries to create a variety of content not only limited to games, PS Suite SDK will not only help developers save their cost in creating new content but also allow them to efficiently create their content on one SDK and without having to create on several different SDKs.
Through PS Suite SDK, SCE will provide to game developers and publishers the potential to further expand their business opportunities to Android based portable devices. In addition, SCE can approach to a wider range of content developers, non-gaming developers and individual programmers. The detailed information of PS Suite SDK, including how to download, will be announced via a dedicated PS Suite section on SCE's official website.
As of September 15th, 2011, PS Certified device line-up includes Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB's Xperia PLAY, Sony Corporation's "Sony Tablet" S, "Sony Tablet" P, and SCE will continue to further accelerate the expansion of PS Certified devices in addition to the current hardware line-up.
Furthermore, SCE will provide a variety of content towards these PS Certified devices from end October through PlayStation®Store*2 on PlaySation®Network, starting with original PlayStation games (PS one® classics). The service will start in nine countries including Japan, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Australia and with more countries to follow. In next spring, SCE will enhance the PS Store for PS Certified devices and provide content created by PS Suite SDK, further prevailing the world of PS Suite.
Through PS Suite, SCE will deploy various measures to support content developers in their business for rapidly prevailing Android based portable devices and will expand the PlayStation entertainment experience on an open operating system.
*1
Software Development Kit is a set of development tools and software libraries. Developers are able to obtain this SDK by signing a license agreement with SCE and by purchasing tool products.
*2
Users can download vast digital content including games through PS Store for PS Network for PS3, PSP, PS Vita and PS Certified devices.
*3
Number of content differ by regions.
About Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Recognized as the global leader and company responsible for the progression of consumer-based computer entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) manufacturers, distributes and markets the PlayStation® game console, the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system, the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) handheld entertainment system and the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3®) system. PlayStation has revolutionized home entertainment by introducing advanced 3D graphic processing, and PlayStation 2 further enhances the PlayStation legacy as the core of home networked entertainment. PSP is an innovative handheld entertainment system that allows users to enjoy 3D games, with high-quality full-motion video, and high-fidelity stereo audio. PS3 is an advanced computer system, incorporating the state-of-the-art Cell processor with super computer like power. SCEI, along with its subsidiary divisions Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd., and Sony Computer Entertainment Korea Inc. develops, publishes, markets and distributes software, and manages the third party licensing programs for these platforms in the respective markets worldwide. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is an independent business unit of the Sony Group.
PlayStation, PS one, PS3, PSP are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Xperia is a trademark of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB. "Sony Tablet" is a trademark of Sony Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
SOURCE Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. | {
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After cruising up the West coast of the National League landscape with some breakout NL West prospects last Friday, we all pile in the family station wagon today and head a little further East to talk about the National League Central. As a whole, the NL Central isn’t as prospect sexy as the NL West. There’s no San Diego type systems here and if you go off my system grades from my top-25’s this offseason, two of the five worst systems as a whole reside in this division, Milwaukee and Chicago.
But wait just one second. That doesn’t mean there are some prospects on the rise that begging for some attention like a dog waiting for its dinner or a cat that you haven’t patted in 2.5 seconds. I even found three in the Cubs system. Gasp! Without further ado, here are your prospects on the rise in the NL Central.
Other Divisions: NL West | NL Central | NL East | AL West | AL Central | AL East
If you aren’t playing your dynasty leagues on Fantrax, you’re missing out on the deepest player pool and most customization around. Just starting out in a dynasty league? Then check out Eric Cross’ Top-250 prospects and Top-300 Dynasty League Rankings.
Breakout Top Prospects – NL Central
Note – I did not include prospects from my top-50 overall rankings.
Mariel Bautista, OF, Cincinnati Reds
2018 Stats (RK): .330/.386/.541/.927, 12 2B, 8 HR, 16 SB, 6.9 BB%, 12.4 K%, 209 AB
After three straight seasons hitting .320 or better in Rookie ball, it’s time to put Mariel Bautista on the map as he likely advances to Single-A in 2019. During his time in the DSL, Arizona League, and Pioneer League, Bautista flashed an above-average hit tool and plus speed, and his average to above-average raw power finally started translating into games last season with 24 extra-base hits (eight homers) in 56 games. There’s enough raw power here to approach 20 homers and the speed to match and exceed that. One thing I would love to see him do before feeling confident about his hit tool longterm is using the whole field more. Bautista has pulled the ball over 50% of the time in each of his four seasons, something that will likely be exposed by more advanced pitchers in Single-A and Double-A. Still, the upside here is worth investing in.
Current Rank: 207 | Projected 2020 Rank: 125-150
Mike Siani, OF, Cincinnati Reds
2018 Stats (RK): .288/.351/.386/.737, 6 2B, 2 HR, 6 SB, 7.8 BB%, 17.1 K%, 184 AB
Once you get past the top guys, Mike Siani was one of my favorite players from the 2018 FYPD. An exceptional athlete with plus speed and strong defense in the outfield, Siani has a real chance to push for top-100 overall prospect status by this time next season. The speed should translate into 25-plus stolen bases more often than not and there’s some sneaky good pop here as well, with the potential for some 20-homer seasons. But like with Bautista, the question about how much average Siani hits for moving forward is the real question. A question I expect him to answer in a big way.
Siani has phenomenal bat speed and has shown that he can use the entire field with clean swing mechanics. Projecting a .280 average for him is something I feel fairly confident in. Obviously, it’s still very early, but there’s a lot to get excited about here.
Current Rank: 161 | Projected 2020 Rank: 75-100
Joe Gray, OF, Milwaukee Brewers
2018 Stats (RK): .182/.347/.325/.672, 5 2B, 2 HR, 6 SB, 18.4 BB%, 25.5 K%, 77 AB
No team got a lower grade this offseason from me than the “D” I gave the Milwaukee Brewers. Outside of Keston Hiura, this system gets shallow quick, but there is some upside lurking with Joe Gray. A common theme in this article, Gray has a tantalizing power/speed blend with questions about his overall contact skills and plate approach. The 18.4% walk rate sure was nice, but remember, that was only in 77 at-bats.
While his hit tool is worlds behind Keston Hiura’s, Gray’s power/speed combination is tops in the Brewers system. As of now, Gray is more speed than power, but as he develops and adds strength, I expect that to flip-flop. The upside here is a 25/20 outfielder, but whether Gray reaches that is all up to the development of his hit tool. If he can just be a .250 hitter, expect him to be a big riser up prospect rankings.
Current Rank: 231 | Projected 2020 Rank: 150-175
2018 Stats (A+): .275/.354/.424/.778, 24 2B, 9 HR, 33 SB, 8.8 BB%, 20.2 K%, 396 AB
In my Pittsburgh Pirates top-25 prospect list back in early-January, I ended the section about Jared Oliva with the following:
“Grab some Oliva dynasty stock now or regret it later.”
I know, it’s going to take more than 10 words to make people want to hop aboard the Oliva train that I’m conducting. So here’s a little more. How about plus speed, an advanced feel for hitting, and the upside for 15-20 homers? I’d be grabbing Oliva in any dynasty league that rosters 250 or more prospects right now. The skills are there for him to be an above-average offensive outfielder.
Current Rank: NR | Projected 2020 Rank: 150-200
The more I watch #Pirates Jared Oliva, the more impressed I am. This guy really has no weakness in his game. pic.twitter.com/8Ea8EuU5As — Looting is a sign of rebellion (@Jasenelpartido) July 8, 2018
Jhon Torres, OF, St. Louis Cardinals
2018 Stats (RK): .321/.409/.525/.933, 9 2B, 8 HR, 4 SB, 10.2 BB%, 19.9 K%, 162 AB
This is likely the last time you’ll see Jhon Torres outside the top-100. Plan accordingly. The soon to be 19-year-old Colombian outfielder is a middle of the order slugger waiting to happen. He’s big at 6’4 and has displayed natural plus raw power already with more power projection down the road as he continues to mature physically and add strength. While power is his carrying tool, Torres has shown that he can hit for average and work a walk as well, a promising sign as he advanced to Single-A in 2019. If Torres can continue to make consistent contact to go along with his 30-plus homer pop and double-digit speed, a spot in my top-50 overall could be calling his name very soon.
Current Rank: 132 | Projected 2020 Rank: 50-75
Malcom Nunez, 3B, St. Louis Cardinals
2018 Stats (RK): .415/.497/.774/1.272, 16 2B, 13 HR, 3 SB, 13.1 BB%, 14.6 K%, 164 AB
Another rookie ball phenom in the Cardinals system, this one with even more offensive upside than Torres. Nunez signed for just $300K last July and then proceeded to demolish the DSL as you can see by his stats above. He might only be 18-years-old, but Nunez is a bad, bad, man in the batters box. With easy plus raw power, lightning-quick bat speed, and an advanced feel for hitting, it’s easy to project big things for Nunez down the road as a player capable of hitting for a high average and plenty of power. He’s already cracked my top-100, and with his tools, this is just the beginning.
Starting week 3 of my international scouting trip. Here's Malcom Nuñez, 16-year-old Cuban third baseman here in the Dominican Republic. pic.twitter.com/YAnID1Ul8s — Ben Badler (@BenBadler) November 5, 2017
Current Rank: 100 | Projected 2020 Rank: 25-50
Rochest Cruz, SS, Chicago Cubs
2018 Stats (RK): .302/.420/.404/.824, 9 2B, 4 3B, 2 HR, 56 SB, 15.5 BB%, 10.4 K%, 225 AB
You’re not going to find Rochest Cruz in either the MLB.com or Baseball America Cubs top-30 lists. Shame on them. Granted, those lists aren’t exactly geared for dynasty leagues, but there’s plenty to like about Cruz, a speedy infielder who can’t seem to find a defensive home. Cruz spent time at second, third, and short last season and it’s still up in the air on which position he settles in at down the road. But one thing is for certain with Cruz and that’s his intriguing offensive skill set.
Throw power out the window, as he only projects as a 5-10 homer guy, but Cruz makes up for that with his 70-grade speed and an advanced approach at the plate. That approach led to more strikeouts than walks last season, finishing with a 15.5% walk rate and 10.4% strikeout rate. Yes, it was the Dominican Summer League. Yes, we always need to take numbers from rookie leagues, especially the DSL, with a grain of salt. However, Cruz isn’t on this list due to his stats. Cruz is here because he has the offensive tools to really make a strong move up prospect rankings over the next year or two. Worth a look in deep dynasty leagues.
Current Ranking: NR | Projected 2020 Ranking: Approaching top 250
Cole Roederer, OF, Chicago Cubs
2018 Stats (RK): .275/.354/.465/.819, 4 2B, 4 3B, 5 HR, 13 SB, 11.2 BB%, 23.0 K%, 142 AB
As a whole, the Cubs system is one of the worst in baseball. No doubt about it. But if you take a look at some of the guys that entered this system in 2018, you’ll find some names to target in dynasty leagues, especially with the players they took in the first two rounds of the 2018 FYPD. The second of their three second-round selections was Cole Roederer, a high school outfielder out of California that has the potential to really make some noise in 2019.
Outside of Nico Hoerner, the Cubs first round pick, Roederer arguably has the highest upside of anyone in this Cubs system due to his power/speed blend and feel for hitting. He wasn’t a big power guy coming out of high school, and still isn’t, but Roederer added some strength and loft to his swing, enough to project him as a 20-25 home run hitter moving forward. While he might not have one of the bigger names in the 2018 FYPD crop, Roederer has the tools to surprise and become one of the better dynasty assets from this class. He’ll advance to the Single-A Midwest League in 2019, which will be a good test for him.
Current Rank: 225 | Projected 2020 Rank: 100-125
Brennan Davis, OF, Chicago Cubs
2018 Stats (RK): .298/.431/.333/.764, 2 2B, 0 HR, 6 SB, 13.9 BB%, 16.7 K%, 57 AB
Right now, speed is the name of the game when it comes to Brennan Davis. Another 2018 2nd round pick by the Cubs, Davis possesses easy plus speed, but that’s not the only thing to get excited about with him. At 6’4, Davis has flashed above-average to plus raw power and should begin tapping into that once he adds some strength to his lanky frame. His speed will always be his most prominent offensive tool, but don’t be surprised if his power progresses to the point where he’s a 20-plus home run hitter annually down the road.
The only question I have about him is if he can continue to make enough contact moving forward to fully unlock his power potential. His rookie league showing was a good start, but he’ll need to keep that going against more advanced pitching in the Midwest League this season. With his plus bat speed and solid hand-eye coordination, I think Davis should be able to sustain a .260-.270 batting average for the most part, which should allow his power to play.
Current Rank: NR | Projected 2020 Rank: 150-200
Photo/Video Credit: Ben Badler, Jason Woodell.
Eric Cross is the lead MLB/Fantasy Baseball writer and MiLB prospect analyst for FantraxHQ and has been with the site since March 2017. In the past, he wrote for FantasyPros and FanSided. He is also a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA). For more from Eric, check out his author page and follow him on Twitter @EricCross04.
Fantrax is one of the fastest growing fantasy sites of 2019. With multi-team trades, designated commissioner/league managers, and drag/drop easy click methods, Fantrax is sure to excite the serious fantasy sports fan – sign up now for a free year at Fantrax.com. | {
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In the decentralized crypto-space, Binance, created by Zhao Changpeng quickly became a hit in the market. Presently, it has become the world’s largest crypto-exchange, with profits of up to $150 million in the last two quarters. This is higher than the same quarterly profit of Deutsche Bank, which has 148 branches and more than 100,000 employees.
Earlier this year, Forbes magazine released the first cryptocurrency list and the 41-year-old Jiangsu born Binance founder ranked third, becoming the only Chinese on the world top ten list. With the huge wealth effect and the fact that the exchange ranks near the top in trade volume, Zhao has become the hottest figure in the world of blockchain.
Bumps in the Road
It wasn’t always easy for Zhao, who likes to be called by his initials CZ. The rapid development of the exchange has also brought many problems, and about 700 million yuan was stolen by hackers. A legal dispute between CZ and a unit of Sequoia Capital also offered a rare glimpse into one of the digital-asset industry’s fastest-growing startups. Sequoia claimed that the CZ had violated terms of an exclusivity agreement by holding fundraising talks with other potential investors. It is believed that negotiations between the two parties broke down after Binance shareholders were left unimpressed by Sequoia’s valuation of Binance, at a proposed $80 million.
After this ordeal, CZ rarely made himself available for interviews. But since the emergence of FCoin (known for its innovative business model), the daily trading volume quickly surpassed the total of the second to seventh exchanges in the world, and almost all small and medium-sized exchanges followed suit. Zhao started posting on Weibo to attack the transaction mining model as a pyramid scheme and “high price ICO”.
Thoughts on FCoin
Regardless of the sense of crisis or the questioning of the trading mining model itself, Zhao Changpeng quickly accepted an exclusive interview with Caijing. In this interview, he described all the recent thinking about the business model of transaction mining. It also unveiled the mystery of the coin-on-coin rule in detail and explained why the transaction mining model will collapse.
During the interview, CZ said “the model of transaction is not going to work. In the long run, this model will collapse and this will happen after mining for dozens of days. The issue is that everyone wants to receive dividends and no one wants to pay a 0.1% fee. The person holding the coin can be termed as the dividends, but if no one trades, the dividend return rate will be very low, and people will not hold the money. At this time, others will sell, and when they sell, the price of the coins will also fall. It is a vicious circle and according to the current transaction volume of the currency security, the users are now estimated to be around 10 million”.
He also said, “The core value of the exchange includes security, products, services, and customer service. How to do customer service when you have 10 million users is also a challenge. Even if trading volume is one thousand BTC, that 10 million people can only split the fee of one BTC per day, which is not enough. The Chinese especially like the dividends. It sounds very good. Actually, there is no money. In the long run, this model does not work”. | {
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Gets Air Hockey Table for the garage Buys "quiet" pucks so as not to disturb neighbors
203 shares | {
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} |
3 January 2006
From: State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, James Risen, published 3 January 2006, pp. 42-60.
Hayden wanted the American public to know that the NSA was abiding the rules.
"Could there be abuses? Of course, there could, but I am here looking you and the American people in the eye and saying there are not," Hayden told CNN. "After Church and Pike, on this question, the ball and strike count on the agency is no balls and two strikes," Hayden added. "We don't take any pitches that are close to the strike zone. We are very, very careful. We can't go back to the American people with, 'Oh, well, we're sorry for this one, too.' We don't get close to the Fourth Amendment.
Hayden gave speeches. He went on television, and he talked to newspaper reporters and to authors writing books about the agency. He even hosted off-the-record dinners for the press at his horne at Fort Meade. A key element of Hayden's case was his argument that the NSA was struggling to cope with the rapid pace of change in an age of information overload, a new world of cell phones and Black-Berries and Internet telephone calls. The NSA was collecting more communications than anyone could ever listen to; even its supercomputers, with artificial-intelligence software, had trouble sorting the wheat from the chaff. Downplaying the NSA's capabilities, Hayden liked to say that the NSA was once an information-age organization in the industrial age, and now it was an information-age organization in the information age. It was losing its competitive edge. Commercially available communications technology was catching up. Hayden's implicit message was that the NSA was too archaic, maybe even too incompetent, to spy on America. Hayden didn't say that the NSA was a toothless giant, but he certainly wanted everyone to believe that the NSA was not to be feared.
"Despite what you've seen on television, our agency doesn't do alien autopsies, track the location of your automobile by satellite, nor do we have a squad of assassins," Hayden said reassuringly in a speech at American University in Washington in 2000. "The best 1 can hope for now is to wipe away some of the mystique surrounding the National Security Agency."
But that was Michael Hayden before 9/11.
Since the attacks, the NSA, with Hayden at the helm until 2005, has been transformed by the Bush administration, in ways that Hayden and other administration officials don't want to talk about. In fact, for the first time since the Watergate-era abuses, the NSA is spying on Americans again, and on a large scale.
The Bush administration has swept aside nearly thirty years of rules and regulations and has secretly brought the NSA back into the business of domestic espionage. The NSA is now eavesdropping on as many as five hundred people in the United States at any given time and it potentially has access to the phone calls and e-mails of millions more. It does this without court-approved search warrants and with little independent oversight.
President Bush has secretly authorized the NSA to monitor and eavesdrop on large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States to search for potential evidence of terrorist activity, without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection. Under a secret presidential order signed in early 2002, only months after the September 11 attacks, President Bush has given the NSA the ability to conduct surveillance on communications inside the United States. The secret decision by the president has opened up America's domestic telecommunications network to the NSA in unprecedented and deeply troubling new ways, and represents a radical shift in the accepted policies and practices of the modern U.S. intelligence community.
The NSA is now tapping into the heart of the nation's telephone network through direct access to key telecommunications switches that carry many of America's daily phone calls and e-mail messages. Several government officials who know about the NSA operation have come forward to talk about it because they are deeply troubled by it, and they believe that by keeping silent they would become complicit in it. They strongly believe that the president's secret order is in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches, and some of them believe that an investigation should be launched into the way the Bush administration has turned the intelligence community's most powerful tools against the American people.
One government lawyer who is aware of the NSA domestic surveillance operation told reporter Eric Lichtblau that the very few people at the Justice Department who are aware of its existence simply refer to it as "the Program." It may be the largest domestic spying operation since the 1960s, larger than anything conducted by the FBI or CIA inside the United States since the Vietnam War.
In order to overturn the system established by FISA in 1978, and bring the NSA back into domestic wiretaps without court approval, . administration lawyers have issued a series of secret legal opinions, similar to those written in support of the harsh interrogation tactics used on detainees captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush administration legal opinions that supported the use of harsh interrogation techniques on al Qaeda detainees have, of course, proven controversial, drawing complaints from allies, objections from civil liberties advocates, and court challenges. The administration faced its first serious legal rebuke in June 2004 when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the administration's effort to hold "enemy combatants" without a hearing. The court warned that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president."
The same could be said about the Program. Yet the NSA domestic spying operation has remained secret, and so the legal opinions and other documents related to the NSA program are still classified.
The administration apparently has several legal opinions to support the NSA operation, written by lawyers at the White House, the CIA, the NSA, and the Justice Department. They all rely heavily on a broad interpretation of Article Two of the Constitution, which grants power to the president as commander in chief of the armed forces. Relying largely on those constitutional powers, Congress passed a resolution just days after the September 11 attacks granting the president the authority to wage a global war on terrorism, and Bush administration lawyers later decided that the war resolution provided the legal basis they needed to support the NSA operation to eavesdrop on American citizens.
While the Bush administration has never publicly discussed the NSA operation, the Justice Department did hint at the administration's thinking on domestic spying in a little-noticed legal brief in an unrelated court case in 2002. That brief said that "the Constitution vests in the president inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority." The search for foreign "agents" has led the NSA to peer into domestic streams of data.
Debate within the government about the moral and legal issues involved in the NSA operation has been extremely limited because only a handful of high-ranking government officials are aware of the existence of the eavesdropping program. "It was a closed program," said one very senior administration official. "People normally in the chain didn't have access to it."
At the Justice Department, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was one of the few people informed, and he then brought in a small, select group of like-minded conservative lawyers to help craft some of the legal opinions to buttress the Program. They may have been some of the same lawyers involved in the legal opinions supporting the harsh interrogation techniques.
The NSA eavesdropping operation has been hidden inside a "special access program," a level of secrecy reserved for the government's most sensitive covert operations. "This is the biggest secret I know about," said one official who was deeply troubled by what he knew.
Bush administration officials justify the presidential order by arguing that existing rules curbing the domestic powers of the NSA and CIA impeded the United States in detecting and preventing terrorist attacks. They say that the NSA domestic spying operation is critical to the global war on terrorism, although they offer few specifics. They have not explained why any terrorist would be so naive as to assume that his electronic communication was impossible to intercept.
The small handful of experts on national security law within the government who know about the NSA program say they believe it has made a mockery of the public debate over the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act of 2001 has been widely criticized for giving the government too much power to engage in secret searches and to spy on suspects, and even some Republicans chafed at the idea of giving the government still more surveillance powers under an extended and expanded version. The Patriot Act has increased the ability of the nation's intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to monitor conversations and Internet traffic by terrorist suspects with the approval of the special FISA court. But it still requires the FBI to obtain search warrants from the FISA court each time it wants to eavesdrop on a telephone conversation, e-mail message, or other form of communication within the United States. In order to obtain a warrant from the FISA court, the FBI must present evidence to show that the target is linked to a terrorist organization or other foreign agent or power. Even then, the FBI has, in comparison with the NSA, relatively limited technological resources and doesn't have the ability to monitor huge telecommunications networks. It lacks NSA's banks of supercomputers at Fort Meade, believed to be home to the greatest concentration of computing power in the world.
The Patriot Act has given no new powers to the NSA. The Bush administration purposely did not seek congressional approval for the NSA operation, apparently because the White House recognized that it would be too controversial and would almost certainly be rejected. "There is nothing explicit in the Patriot Act for NSA," said one former congressional aide who was involved in the drafting of the Patriot Act, but who was unaware of the NSA operation. "Their surveillance is supposed to be directed outside the United States."
It is now clear that the White House went through the motions of the public debate over the Patriot Act, all the while knowing that the intelligence community was secretly conducting a far more aggressive domestic surveillance campaign. "This goes way beyond the Patriot Act," said one former official familiar with the NSA operation.
President Bush's secret order has given the NSA the freedom to employ extremely powerful computerized search programs -- originally intended to scan foreign communications -- in order to scrutinize large volumes of American communications. It is difficult to know the precise size of the NSA operation, but one indication of its large scale is the fact that administration officials say that one reason they decided not to seek court-approved search warrants for the NSA operation was that the volume of telephone calls and e-mails being monitored was so big that it would be impossible to get speedy court approval for all of them. It is certainly true that when the FISA court was created, Congress never envisioned that the NSA would be involved in a massive eavesdropping operation inside the United States. No one in the 1970s could have predicted the enormous growth of telecommunications traffic in the United States, or the degree to which Americans would become addicted to digital, electronic communications. Today, industry experts estimate that approximately 9 trillion e-mails are sent in the United States each year. Americans make nearly a billion cell phone calls and well over a billion land line calls each day.
NSA's technical prowess, coupled with its long-standing relationships with the nation's major telecommunications companies, has made it easy for the agency to eavesdrop on large numbers of people in the United States without their knowledge. Following President Bush's order, U.S. intelligence officials secretly arranged with top officials of major telecommunications companies to gain access to large telecommunications switches carrying the bulk of America's phone calls. The NSA also gained access to the vast majority of American e-mail traffic that flows through the U.S. telecommunications system. The identities of the companies involved have been kept secret. Unknown to most Americans, the NSA has extremely close relationships with both the telecommunications and computer industries, according to several government officials. Only a very few top executives in each corporation are aware of such relationships or know about the willingness of the corporations to cooperate on intelligence matters.
The main rationale behind the Program, officials said, was that existing rules curbing the domestic powers of the NSA and CIA had left gaps in the ability of the United States to detect and prevent terrorist attacks. They say that one such gap had opened up because many purely international communications -- telephone calls and e-mail messages from the Middle East to Asia, for example -- end up going through telecommunications switches that are physically based in the United States. As a result, the rules that limit domestic intelligence gathering by the NSA have meant that such international calls could not be monitored, since they were transiting the United States. Some phone calls and e-mail traffic among terrorists operating overseas were being missed by American counterterrorism investigators.
The new presidential order has given the NSA direct access to those U.S.-based telecommunications switches through "back doors." Under the authority of the presidential order, a small group of officials at NSA now monitors telecommunications activity through these domestic switches, searching for terrorism-related intelligence.
To understand how the Bush administration is spying on the American people, it is important to know a few basics about the U.S. telecommunications network. The telephone network today is digital and computerized, but is still built around a switching system that routes calls from city to city, or country to country, as efficiently and quickly as possible.
In addition to handling telephone calls from, say, Los Angeles to New York, the switches also act as gateways into and out of the United States for international telecommunications. A large volume of purely international telephone calls -- calls that do not begin or end in America -- also now travel through switches based in the United States. Telephone calls from Asia to Europe, for example, may go through the United States-based switches. This so-called transit traffic has dramatically increased in recent years as the telephone network has become increasingly globalized. Computerized systems determine the most efficient routes for digital "packets" of electronic communications depending on the speed and congestion on the networks, not necessarily on the shortest line between two points. Such random global route selection means that the switches carrying calls from Cleveland to Chicago, for example, may also be carrying calls from Islamabad to Jakarta. In fact, it is now difficult to tell where the domestic telephone system ends and the international network begins.
In the years before 9/11, the NSA apparently recognized that the remarkable growth in transit traffic was becoming a major issue that had never been addressed by FISA or the other 1970s-era rules and regulations governing the U.S. intelligence community. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches that were physically on American soil, eavesdropping on those calls might be a violation of the regulations and laws restricting the NSA from spying inside the United States.
But transit traffic also presented a major opportunity.
If the NSA could gain access to the American switches, it could easily monitor millions of foreign telephone calls, and do so much more consistently and effectively than it could overseas, where it had to rely on spy satellites and listening stations to try to vacuum up telecommunications signals as they bounced through the air. Of course, that would mean NSA would also have direct access to the domestic telephone network as well.
Any debate within the NSA about the legalities of monitoring transit traffic became moot after 9/11. President Bush was determined to sweep away the peacetime rules that had curbed the activities of the U.S. intelligence community since the 1970s, and he readily agreed to give the NSA broad new powers. The Bush administration's answer has been to place the NSA right into the middle of the American communications bloodstream by giving the agency the secret "trapdoors" into the switching system. One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the NSA said that the United States government has recently been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international communications traffic that is routed through American-based switches. It appears that at least one motive for doing so may be to bring more international calls under NSA scrutiny.
According to government officials, some of the most critical switches are in the New York area, a key intersection between the domestic and international telecommunications networks. Switching facilities in the region feed out to telecommunications cables that dive into the Atlantic Ocean bound for Europe and beyond. The NSA now apparently has access into those switches, allowing it to monitor telecommunications traffic as it enters and exits the United States.
In addition, the NSA has the ability to conduct surveillance on the e-mail of virtually any American it chooses to target. One of the secrets of the Internet is that its infrastructure is dominated by the United States, and that much of the world's e-mail traffic, at one time or another, flows through telecommunications networks that are physically on American soil. E-mail between Germany and Italy, for example, or Pakistan and Yemen, is often routed through America. The secret presidential order has given the NSA the freedom to peruse that international e-mail traffic -- along with the e-mail of millions of Americans.
In the Program, the NSA is eavesdropping both on transit traffic -- calls from one foreign location to another that are routed through the United States by international telecommunications systems -- and on telephone calls and e-mail between people inside the United States and others overseas. Officials who defend the Program claim that the NSA tries to minimize the amount of purely domestic telephone and Internet traffic among American citizens that it monitors, to avoid violating the privacy rights of U.S. citizens. But there is virtually no independent oversight of NSA's use of its new power. With its direct access to the U.S. telecommunications system, there seems to be no physical or logistical obstacle to prevent the NSA from eavesdropping on anyone in the United States that it chooses.
NSA also claims that it is eavesdropping only on people suspected of having links to terrorism, but there is no way to confirm exactly who in the United States is being monitored by the agency. According to officials familiar with the NSA operation, it was launched in 2002 after the CIA began to capture high-ranking al Qaeda operatives overseas. At the time of their capture, the CIA also seized their computers, cell phones, and personal phone directories and flew them to the United States for examination.
As the al Qaeda operatives began to fall into American hands, their seized laptops, cell phones, and directories led to the discovery of telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of people with whom they had communicated all around the world. The CIA turned those names, addresses, and numbers over to the NSA, which then began monitoring those numbers, as well as the numbers of anyone in contact with them, and so on outward in an expanding network of phone numbers and Internet addresses, both in the United States and overseas.
In the Program, the NSA determines, on its own, which telephone numbers and e-mail addresses to monitor. The NSA doesn't have to get approval from the White House, the Justice Department, or anyone else in the Bush administration before it begins eavesdropping on a specific phone line inside the United States. Instead, it has set up its own internal checklist to determine whether there is "probable cause" to begin surveillance. The Bush administration argues that the NSA checklist substitutes for the determination of probable cause in a court of law, but neither federal prosecutors nor other Justice Department attorneys even review the case of a suspect before the NSA begins to listen to his or her phone lines. Occasionally, top Justice Department officials audit the NSA program, but the NSA unilaterally decides on whom to spy. Bush's executive order gives the NSA broad latitude to decide what might constitute a suspicious phone number or e-mail address.
The existence of the Program has been kept so secret that senior Bush administration officials have gone to great lengths to hide the origins of the intelligence it gathers. When the NSA finds potentially useful intelligence in the U.S.-based telecommunications switches, it is "laundered" before it is widely distributed to case officers at the CIA or special agents of the FBI, officials said. Reports are said not to identify that the intelligence came from intercepts of U.S.-based telecommunications.
Bush administration officials offer conflicting information about whether intelligence gathered from the warrantless wiretaps is being used in criminal cases inside the United States. One senior administration official insisted that it never has been used in a criminal trial, but other top officials argued that the eavesdropping program has proved valuable in domestic terrorism investigations. Actually, both statements may be true. It appears that the NSA wiretaps are being used to identify suspects in the United States. But because the intelligence based on the warrantless wiretaps would almost certainly not be admissible in an American court, it is possible that the Bush administration is not attempting to take those cases to trial. Several high-profile terrorism-related cases since 9/11 have ended in plea bargains and out-of-court settlements; few have actually gone to trial. One reason for that legal strategy may be that the administration is fearful of getting caught conducting illegal surveillance operations.
The government has a number of ways to cover up the NSA's role in the domestic surveillance of people inside the United States. In some instances, the government seeks FISA court approval for wiretaps on individuals who have already been secretly subjected to warrantless eavesdropping by the NSA.
The Bush administration justifies that procedure by saying that the government obtains search warrants if it wants to eavesdrop on the purely domestic telephone calls -- between two phones inside the United States -- of the individuals under surveillance through the NSA program. Since the NSA is supposed to focus on international "transit traffic" and telephone calls and e-mail messages between someone in the United States and someone overseas, government officials say that they seek FISA warrants when they decide to go further to monitor all of the communications of an individual suspect.
But that process of obtaining a search warrant is clearly tainted.
The Bush administration is obtaining FISA court approval for wiretaps at least in part on the basis of information gathered from the earlier warrantless eavesdropping. The government is apparently following that practice with increasing frequency; by the estimate of two lawyers, some 10 percent to 20 percent of the search warrants issued by the secret FISA court now grow out of information generated by the NSA's domestic surveillance program.
Bush administration officials say that the NSA is using the Program to conduct surveillance on the telephone and e-mail communications of about seven thousand people overseas. They also acknowledge that the NSA is targeting the communications of about five hundred people inside the United States. Each one of those individuals is likely to make several phone calls and send several e-mails each day, which could mean that the NSA is eavesdropping on thousands of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other communications inside the United States on a daily basis. Over time, the NSA has certainly eavesdropped on millions of telephone calls and e-mail messages on American soil.
The expansion of NSA's role from spying on foreigners to conducting domestic surveillance has implications that are sure to provoke objections from civil liberties advocates. Even some senior officials within the administration have raised questions about the Program's legality. Government officials who were aware of the surveillance program "just assumed that something illegal was going on," said one Justice Department official. "People just looked the other way because they didn't want to know what was going on."
Some senior Bush administration officials learned the outlines of the NSA operation but were never officially briefed and were stunned that the White House and Justice Department would approve the domestic spying. "This is really a sea change," said a former senior law enforcement official who questioned both its legal and public-policy aspects. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches."
After President Bush signed the secret order authorizing the NSA eavesdropping operation, the Bush administration quietly notified the chief judge on the secret FISA court that approves national security wiretaps. That judge was then-U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a genial, rotund Texan and a Republican. The administration didn't ask for his approval, and he didn't stand in the way when the government decided not to seek search warrants for the NSA program.
The NSA operation was scaled back, at least briefly, in the spring of2004 when the federal judge who succeeded Lamberth as chief of the FISA court raised questions about how the NSA program was being used to generate intelligence. The concerns raised by District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly clearly rattled the Bush administration. One official said he believed that the Program was effectively halted for about three weeks. Other top administration officials suggested that they abandoned some of the most aggressive techniques used in the NSA surveillance operation after the judge complained.
Some congressional leaders have been notified about the Program, but only in extraordinarily secret fashion and only in ways that guarantee they feel constrained from raising objections to it. Even when one lawmaker did secretly raise concerns, he was ignored by the White House. In 2002, soon after the NSA operation began, top congressional leaders from both political parties were brought to Vice President Dick Cheney's White House office and were briefed about it by Cheney, Hayden, and then-CIA director George Tenet. The congressional leaders, including Democratic Senator Bob Graham of Florida and Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, at the time the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, respectively, were not permitted to bring staff members to the meeting and were told not to discuss the matter with anyone else. It was difficult for the congressional leaders to ask any questions about the Program, because they were unable to ask their staff to do any research or oversight of the NSA operation. The congressional leaders apparently knew only what Cheney and other top administration officials told them about the Program.
Later, after new lawmakers took over the intelligence committees, only one congressional leader, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat of West Virginia, raised any concerns with the White House. After he was first briefed on the matter in early 2003, Senator Rockefeller wrote a letter to Cheney saying that he was troubled by the NSA operation and its potential for the abuse of the civil liberties of American citizens.
Rockefeller told the White House in advance that he was planning to write the letter raising objections. In response, he was told by administration officials that he had to write the letter himself. Rockefeller followed the directions and handed over the letter, but there is no evidence that he ever received a response from Cheney.
The few other Democrats who have been briefed on the operation have fallen into line with the White House, perhaps intimidated by the broad public support for tough counterterrorism measures following 9/11. But at least one other senior Democrat who was briefed later regretted accepting the administration's decision to launch the operation and realized that the White House had trapped the congressional leaders. By giving the lawmakers secret briefings with no staff present and then demanding that they never discuss the matter with anyone, the congressional leaders were paralyzed. As time wore on, it became increasingly difficult for Democrats to protest the operation, since the White House could argue that they had been receiving briefings for years and had barely complained.
One government lawyer said he went to a congressional official in 2004 to reveal what he knew about the NSA eavesdropping operation because he believed that it was unconstitutional. But nothing happened as a result of his congressional contacts. He did not know that congressional leaders had already been notified.
Apart from the very small number of senior senators and congressmen who have been briefed by the White House on the NSA program, most members of Congress believe that FISA ended, once and for all, the right of the government to conduct secret wiretaps inside the United States without search warrants or court approval. Some experts in national security law say that past presidents have periodically -- and very quietly -- asserted that despite FISA, they reserved the right to order warrantless wiretaps in the United States under extreme circumstances for national security purposes. But that never became an issue with Congress in the past, because until now, no president has ever actually exercised that authority since FISA became law.
The legal opinions supporting the NSA operation followed secret deliberations over expanding the NSA's role. For example, just days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, John Yoo, a Justice Department lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote an internal memorandum that argued that the government might use "electronic surveillance techniques and equipment that are more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies in order to intercept telephonic communications and observe the movement of persons but without obtaining warrants for such uses." Yoo noted that while such actions could raise constitutional issues, in the face of devastating terrorist attacks, he wrote, "the government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties."
But that was not an argument that the Bush administration wanted to test openly in Congress. Seeking congressional approval was viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition from civil liberties groups. In order to support the White House decision not to seek new legislation to support the NSA operation, administration lawyers secretly argued that new laws were unnecessary because the post-9/11 congressional resolution on the war on terror provided ample authorization.
In the end, the administration's justifications for the NSA domestic surveillance operation fail to explain adequately why it would not be possible to conduct surveillance of terrorist suspects with courtapproved search warrants under the FISA rules. Several government officials said they have not had any trouble obtaining search warrants for wiretaps from the FISA court since the September 11 attacks. The number of warrants approved by the court doubled between 2001 and 2003, when more than 1,700 foreign intelligence warrants were executed, according to the Justice Department. The government has also not had any difficulty in keeping those courtapproved wiretaps secret. In the most sensitive cases, the wiretap requests can be handled under such tight security that knowledge of them is restricted to the highest levels of the executive branch on a need-to-know basis.
During the public debate over the Patriot Act, Bush administration officials noted reassuringly that the legislation would not expand the powers of the NSA, as if to underscore their argument that privacy concerns over the Patriot Act were being exaggerated by critics of the legislation. Even Yoo made the point, in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that the Patriot Act's critics had a cartoonish view of the law. "Civil libertarians would have us believe that the Patriot Act allows CIA and NSA agents to roam freely through the country detaining anyone they please," Yoo wrote. "Nothing could be further from the truth."
One of the most worrisome aspects of the NSA's move into domestic surveillance is that it appears to be part of a broader series of policies and procedures put in place by the Bush administration that threaten to erode civil liberties in the United States. Across the administration, many questionable actions taken in the heat of the moment after the September 11attacks have quietly become more permanent, lowering the bar on what is acceptable when it comes to the government's ability to intrude into the personal lives of average Americans. For example, in 2002 the U.S. military expanded its role inside the country with the creation of the new Northern Command, the first military command in recent history that is designed to protect the U.S. homeland. The creation of Northern Command has already raised the specter of military intelligence agents operating on U.S. soil, permanently developing new links with local law enforcement agencies, particularly those near large military bases. Few objections have been raised.
Since the Program was instituted, Hayden has been rewarded by President Bush. In 2005, Hayden was named deputy director of national intelligence, making him the top lieutenant to John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, the top intelligence post created by the post-9/11 intelligence reforms. During his Senate confirmation hearings for his new position, Hayden was never asked publicly about the NSA's covert domestic intelligence program.
In private, he has been defensive about his role in domestic spying. Hayden has said that the operations being conducted by NSA are "legal, appropriate, and effective" as part of the war on terrorism. He has little else to say, other than that the matter is "intensely operational." The Program was still active in late 2005, several officials said. | {
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