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武汉两年轻人跳江自杀 记者意外拍下坠落过程(高清组图)
2013-02-28 10:19:32 | 来源：湖北日报 | 编辑：李瑛 |
原标题：武汉两轻生者跳江自杀 记者意外拍下坠落过程【组图】
2月27日中午，武汉长江大桥上，两名年轻人先后翻越护栏坠入江中。至27日晚9时记者发稿时，两人仍下落不明。中午12时，记者在长江大桥武昌桥头堡处拍雾霾天气照片，突然有人呼喊“江面上有个人”。记者朝大桥下方看去，发现在距武昌江滩约百余米处，有一人在水中挣扎，时隐时现。就在这时，又有人爬上大桥护栏，一跃而下，记者根本来不及阻拦。文/湖北日报 图/李溪
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Telegram’s ICO Has Raised $1.7 Billion – But Not Everyone Is Impressed
ICOs that can raise over $1 billion are the unicorns of the crowdfunding space. To date, only EOS and Telegram have achieved that feat. Any project of that magnitude is bound to cause controversy, and while the headlines have focused on the $1.7 billion Telegram has raised, some investors have steered well clear of the mammoth crowdsale.
Also read: Trezor to Implement Bitcoin Cash Addresses
A Billion Reasons Not to Buy In
Money talks, and thus it’s no surprise that most of the talk surrounding Telegram’s proposed blockchain concerns the obscene amount it’s raising. Not content with securing $850 million in its initial private sale, the Russian messaging app has doubled up, taking its total proceeds to $1.7 billion. It’s hard to envisage what couldn’t be built for that sort of money: a literal moonshot would not be out of the question.
On Thursday, Telegram filed a Form D with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, confirming its second round of “purchase agreements for cryptocurrency”, and Pavel Durov’s company might not be done. It’s been reported that Telegram might keep on fundraising until it’s hit $2.25 billion. Aside from the pleasing problem of dreaming up ways to spend this money, Telegram has its investors to placate, who are worried that all this capital may be diluting the token value. Some investors have expressed disquiet, while others have stayed away altogether.
Chris Burniske Bows Out
Chris Burniske, one of the best known figures in the cryptocurrency space, and head of venture capital (VC) firm Placeholder, has steered clear. He believes that Telegram has “raised an unnecessarily large amount of money, which may ultimately hurt more than it helps”. Placeholder gets first dibs on major crypto projects, and if Burniske had wanted to buy into Telegram’s ICO, he’d have had no trouble securing an allocation.
“Considering the Telegram ICO? Proceed with Caution” wrote Justine and Olivia Moore in a scathing critique published last week. As VC investors at CRV, the pair are accustomed to evaluating projects such as Telegram, and their decision to warn investors off is telling. After outlining the project’s pros (of which there are many), they explore the cons, which are just as numerous. The Moores touch upon the huge amount being raised, claiming that it could ultimately top $2.6 billion. Remarkably, this money may not even be enough to support Telegram for long, as the leaked whitepaper has $620 million budgeted for the next four years. The Moores write:
If Telegram isn’t able to start generating revenue and spend continues to increase, the company could eventually risk bankruptcy or be forced to raise additional capital at unfavorable terms.
They conclude: “We aren’t convinced that Telegram will deliver significant upside beyond the ICO valuation.” There are reasons to admire Telegram, not least its CEO’s refusal to hand over encrypted user data to the Russian authorities – though the courts may eventually force his hand. Pavel Durov is certainly pro crypto and pro privacy, but that has little bearing on how Telegram’s own cryptocurrency project will play out. Despite being on course to exceed $2 billion when the dust settles, Telegram’s problems may have only just begun.
Do you think VC investors are right to avoid the Telegram ICO? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, and Twitter.
Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section. | {
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En enero pasado, cuando volvía de su gira por Asia, que la llevó a realizar visitas oficiales en Emiratos Árabes Unidos, Indonesia y Vietnam, la Presidenta se permitió un breve "lujo": hizo escala durante dos días en las islas Seychelles.
El viaje presidencial consta en el decreto 23/2013 publicado en el Boletín Oficial (BO) el 13 de marzo pasado y tuvo repercusión ayer, cuando en medio de la sesión parlamentaria que debatía el proyecto de blanqueo de capitales, el diputado nacional Gerardo Milman (GEN) denunció que los archipiélagos situados en el océano Índico son un conocido paraíso fiscal.
Las islas también habían sido identificadas por el financista Federico Elaskar en la primera edición del año de Periodismo Para Todos, que conduce Jorge Lanata, dondé relató operaciones dirigidas por el empresario kirchnerista Lázaro Báez para lavar dinero. En ese reportaje, Elaskar nombró a las islas Seychelles y también lo hizo el fiscal José María Campagnolli en un dictamen el jueves pasado.
El fiscal expuso una estructura de lavado que incluye a 148 compañías creadas en Nevada, Estados Unidos, constituidas a razón de una por semana, comandadas por una firma desde el paraíso fiscal de las islas Seychelles.
Las paradisíacas islas Seychelles, donde la Presidenta hizo escala durante dos días en enero pasado Archivo
"¿Qué hacía allí? Le pregunto a ella y a los diputados del oficialismo, ¿Qué misión comercial o geopolítica tenía en un paraíso fiscal?", cuestionó ayer el diputado Milman, según consignó el diario Clarín. "Elaskar dijo que Fariña le había pedido el armado de empresas para hacer que el dinero salga del país y que se armaron 40 o 45 sociedades off shore en distintos paraísos fiscales que están poco regulados como Belice, Panamá y Seychelles", acusó Milman. Y agregó: "Fue de vacaciones con la plata de todos o algo raro está pasando".
Según se desprende del decreto en el BO, la Presidenta estuvo en Victoria -capital de las islas- del 21 al 23 de enero, tras la gira oficial por La Habana, Abu Dhabi, Yakarta, Ho Chi Minh y Hanoi. La acompañaron su secretario Pablo Barreiro, el médico Luis Buonomo y dos funcionarias de la Secretaría General, Analía Olivera y Mónica Llamedo.
El paraíso de las islas
Con aguas cristalinas y playas blancas, las Seychelles son un grupo de 115 islas al noreste de Madagascar muy codiciadas para el turismo mundial.
Las paradisíacas islas Seychelles, donde la Presidenta hizo escala durante dos días en enero pasado Archivo
La ciudad de Victoria posee el único aeropuerto y puerto internacional del país, que recibe vuelos desde todas partes del mundo. La principal fuente de divisas del país es el turismo, aunque está identificado como un paraíso fiscal.
Las islas fueron el destino elegido por los duques de Cambridge, más conocidos como William y Kate, para pasar su luna de miel. Los jóvenes, que se casaron en abril de 2011 en la Abadía de Westminster, descansaron durante diez días en una villa de más de 4000 euros la noche. Es que el archipiélago, en el océano Indico, al nordeste de Madagascar, alberga algunos de los hoteles más lujosos del mundo.
La isla Norte, donde se quedaron William y Kate, es un paradigma del ecoturismo, famosa por sus senderos para el avistamiento de tortugas marinas gigantes y aves exóticas.
Las islas Seychelles, en el mapa
El decreto publicado en el Boletín Oficial | {
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Get ready for a new season of The West Wing. Right now we have two scripts ready and either would be a cracker. Want a pretty vice-president stopping traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue when she visits the boss? Or a black president with an equally stunning wife?
Addicts of the television series may ache to get more of Allison Janney and Richard Schiff scrambling to keep their commander-in-chief out of the political soup, but they were just actors, of course. But life in the real West Wing can be every bit as unhinged, emotional and exhausting. Just ask George Bush and Karl Rove. Or Dick Cheney and Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
While speculation about how John McCain or Barack Obama would fill their cabinets is rife, less attention has been paid to the people they might keep close. Along with the vice-president, these people will guide the new president politically – keeping him popular – and on policy. The choices Mr Obama makes might be particularly crucial. He would come to the Big Job with scant experience even of Washington, let alone of the executive branch. Who is going to show him the secret tunnel that leads to the Treasury building or where cook hides the biscuits?
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Probably, only the candidates know the names that will be on the West Wing doors if and when they are elected. But one thing seems likely. Many of their most trusted cohorts from the campaign trail will be along for the ride.
For sure, an Obama West Wing and a McCain West Wing would look quite different, and not just because the first would have Mr Obama's two daughters, aged seven and 10, running about. And while Mr Obama is likely to demand a tidy, no-leaks operation, some might expect the circle around Mr McCain to be more fractious and accident-prone. And maybe more press-friendly too.
Bound for the White House? The teams behind the presidential candidates
Barack Obama's team
David Axelrod
He would not come to Washington a ready-made celebrity. Axelrod, like his boss, is drama-averse and though willing to engage with the press when required, doesn't seek attention for himself. Lugubrious in his facial language, Axelrod got to know Obama when he was a community organiser in Chicago's South Side in the 1990s. Ax, as he is known, was later to take charge of political advertising in Obama's 2004 run for the US Senate in Illinois. Once a reporter with the Chicago Tribune, he has worked for assorted Illinois politicians such as Mayor Richard Daley and the late former Senator Paul Simon.
David Plouffe
Baby-faced and quietly spoken, the campaign manager has been steely in keeping Obama on message over the past two years. "He is the most focused, talented operative I've ever worked with," remarked the Democratic lobbyist and Clinton supporter Steve Elmendorf. Plouffe – pronounced Pluff – has worked for Senator Tom Harkin and was deputy chief of staff for the former House Minority Leader, Dick Gephardt. With Axelrod, he would have to keep Obama's approval ratings flying and prepare for the next big electoral test – the mid-term congressional elections in 2010.
Valerie Jarrett
Jarrett is less well known to the general public but is almost family to both Barack and Michelle Obama. Jarrett, 51, a lawyer who also has worked with Mayor Daley as planning and development commissioner, is the one person who can say anything to the Obamas without fear of causing offence. "She's totally loyal to both of them, can be totally honest with both of them," one Obama operative said. She is, however, already a very busy person, in charge, for instance, of trying to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago.
Robert Gibbs
Gibbs could be brought into the White House to fill the all-important job of press spokesman, a crucial role in any administration. He began working for Obama in 2004 as communications director, a job he held on to when Obama arrived on Capitol Hill. Just 36, Gibbs already has plenty of experience in the harsh world of Washington politics. He helped on the press beat in the early days of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. Obama sometimes like to refer to him as his "one-person Southern focus group".
John Mccain's team
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Steve Schmidt
As other loyal aides were jettisoned, Steve Schmidt emerged early in the summer as the man in charge of day-to-day operations of the McCain campaign and has been as disciplined as his predecessors were scatter-shot. With a shaved head, he also solidified his reputation for political ruthlessness, a trait he learnt from an old mentor, Karl Rove. Schmidt, who was among those encouraging McCain to pick Palin as his running mate, would be relied upon to crack the whip in a McCain White House to keep the policy message straight and on point.
Randy Scheunemann
McCain abhors lobbyists and Washington insiders, but he has relied on one of them for much of his foreign policy help. And Scheunemann would presumably expect to be taken into the McCain inner circle to perform the same duties if his man wins. A fully paid-up member of the neo-con brigade on foreign affairs, Scheunemann's Washington lobbying firm has overseas customers that include the government of Georgia. He was a founder and main mover of the now defunct Project for the New American Century, a group of like-minded neo-cons in Washington DC that was at the forefront of arguing the case for invading Iraq.
Nicolle Wallace
An obvious candidate for the spokesman's job in a McCain White House, she has done it before – briefly for George Bush when Dan Bartlett resigned last year. Wallace was working on air as a political analyst with CBS News until May this year, when she was recruited to handle the press for McCain. Reporters have sometimes been baffled by what have seemed to be her mixed messages. While recently defending the McCain ticket's emphasis on the former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, she told Fox News that "nobody cares about Mr Ayers".
Mark Salter
If not chief of staff then surely most trusted adviser, Salter and McCain go back a long way. He has co-written McCain's memoirs – starting with Faith of My Fathers. He is more responsible than anyone for shaping his political image. The two men are so close Salter is married to a former McCain secretary. He writes McCain's speeches too. Asked what his precise role would be, he replied: "I guess I'm 'of counsel'." Those who anger or disappoint the senator are liable to be lashed in emails from Salter, known as "Saltergrams". | {
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Justin Tallis, AFP | A British Army soldier patrols with an armed police officer near the Houses of Parliament in central London on May 24
Britain’s interior minister has warned American officials after US intelligence apparently leaked details of the Manchester attack to the media before the British government was ready to release them to the public.
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Britain’s interior minister, Home Secretary Amber Rudd, called the leaks “irritating” and said she told Washington that such leaks "shouldn't happen again".
Three key details of the Manchester Arena attack appeared in US media before British authorities had released them publicly, including an initial death toll, the fact that the attack had been a suicide-bombing and the name of the suspect, Salman Abedi.
The press reports cited unnamed US "officials".
“Leading theory is Manchester was a suicide bomber, US senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation tells @ABC,” a journalist for the network tweeted.
CBS and NBC made Abedi’s name public on Tuesday morning US time.
BREAKING: Suspected Manchester bomber identified as 22-year-old Salmon Ramadan Abedi, according to official, @PeteWilliamsNBC reports — NBC News (@NBCNews) 23 mai 2017
Although British journalists also had Abedi’s name at the time, the UK government and the Greater Manchester police refused to confirm it until hours after his name was reported in the US press. The British government had said earlier in the day that it might withhold the suspect’s name because the investigation was continuing.
Rudd emphasised that it is important to control the flow of information regarding any ongoing investigation to ensure "operational integrity”.
"The British police have been very clear that they want to control the flow of information in order to protect operational integrity – the element of surprise,” she told BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme.
"So it is irritating when it gets released from other sources and I have been very clear with our friends that that should not happen again."
You can listen to the full interview with the home secretary here ???? https://t.co/WSdkD4zP3c — BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) May 24, 2017
But Rudd downplayed the effect the leaks will likely have on the current investigation into the Manchester attack. Asked whether the American indiscretion had compromised the inquiry, she said: "I wouldn’t go that far. But I can say they are perfectly clear about the situation and that it shouldn’t happen again."
Intelligence is routinely shared between Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States under the UKUSA Agreement, which launched the so-called Five Eyes programme.
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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Researchers have discovered a gene that drives color differences within a species of bumble bees. This discovery helps to explain the highly diverse color patterns among bumble bee species as well as how mimicry — individuals in an area adopting similar color patterns — evolves. A study describing the gene, which occurs in a highly conserved region of the genome that provides blueprints for segmentation, was led by researchers at Penn State and appears online the week of April 29 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“There is exceptional diversity in coloration of bumble bees,” said Heather Hines, assistant professor of biology and of entomology at Penn State and principal investigator of the study. “Of the roughly 250 species of bumble bees, there are over 400 different color patterns that basically mix and match the same few colors over the different segments of a bee’s body.”
The most common bumble bee color patterns feature red around a bee’s tail, thought to advertise its dangerous sting. In spite of the great diversity available, color patterns tend to converge toward similarity within a particular geographic region because they serve as an important and effective warning signal. This is an example of Müllerian mimicry, where similar, often vibrant, color patterns are used among multiple species to warn predators of a dangerous feature like toxicity or sharp spines.
“Müllerian mimicry has served as an example of evolution since the days of Darwin,” said Hines. “Studying these mimicry systems — similar color patterns in many different species — allows us to see how natural traits evolve. It can also tell us about how traits are encoded in the genome: is there only one way to make a trait, or do different species arrive at similar traits through different genetic pathways?”
The research team investigated the genetic basis of color in the species Bombus melanopygus, which exhibits two regional color patterns. Bumble bees that live in the Pacific coastal region are black in the mid-abdomen, whereas those in the Rocky Mountain region are red. Previous studies suggested that a single gene was driving this color change, although the identity of this gene was unknown.
The researchers performed a genome-wide association study, where researchers look for variation in DNA sequence associated with variation in a trait. They identified a regulatory region that changes expression in a gene called "Abdominal-B," which drives the shift in color.
“Abdominal-B is located in a highly conserved region of the genome that contains important patterning genes referred to as 'Hox genes,' which act as blueprints for the segments of a developing bee larva,” said Hines. “Usually any change to these Hox genes triggers many other important changes in the development of the animal’s segments, but we weren’t seeing those other changes. It turns out that the altered expression of Abdominal-B happens so late in development that it can have very specific effects on color without other consequences.”
The change in the regulatory region resulted in Abdominal-B being expressed in an unusual location late in pupal development; the same time in development that pigment is starting to show up in the bee. Abdominal-B is usually expressed closer to the tail of the bee, but in red-striped bees it is expressed in segments further up, causing a mid-abdominal color shift.
“It’s possible that the expression of this gene and other Hox genes might move around late in development, allowing the mixing and matching within segments to create the modular color patterning that we see across bumble bees,” said Hines.
According to the researchers, this particular genetic change in the regulatory region was not responsible for color shifts in ten closely related species of bumble bees with similar red and black color variation. It is likely that these other species undergo genetic changes that target other regulatory regions of the same gene or different genes entirely. The researchers are continuing to investigate the genetics of color shifts across species.
“This tells us that the basis for color patterning in Bombus melanopygus arose independently from patterning in other species,” said Hines. “Bumble bees do not share this similarity in color pattern because they all inherited it from a common ancestor, so there must be many diverse routes to mimicry.”
This study also included Penn State researchers Li Tian, Sarthok Rasique Rahman, Briana Ezray, Patrick Lhomme and Luca Franzini, and James Strange at Utah State University. This work was funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER grant to Hines. | {
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(W) Jeff Lemire (A/CA) Ramon K. Perez
• Arrows over Bed-Stuy! Intrigue at the circus! The past and present merge as Hawkeyes Barton and Bishop race against time to save a group of innocent kids, with devastating powers. | {
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All too often, we have heard an undiscerning, one rule fits all mantra against religion and politics. That rule says that religion and politics don’t mix except for the extremists. It matters not whether the extremist is a Christian, Jew, or Muslim; one cannot afford to vote with one’s faith.
There is good reason to join in the chant. For we see the effects of many who do vote according to their religion. And the first effect we see is intolerance. Those who are of a different faith than that of those in power all too often suffer oppression. This is as true in the West as it is in the East. It is true whether the religion of those in power is Islam, Judaism, or Christianity. When religion dominates politics, people suffer.
In America, a legitimate fear is expressed by those who are afraid that Conservative Christians will run the country on “Biblical” values. These values cannot be reduced to a particular abortion position. This is because there are some Conservative Christians who want to dictate how the poor will or will not be helped, what rights those who have different religious beliefs can have, what gender can marital partners be, and what foreign policies we should pursue. Some legitimate concerns cause others to claim that such Conservative Christians makeup the “Christian Taliban” referring to the harsh and brutal Taliban rule that existed in countries like Afghanistan.
But those who want religion and politics to separate might be wearing blinders here. For one only needs to point out that the political reforms that Martin Luther King advocated were based on his religious views. And who could object to laws based on King’s belief in equality and the dignity of human life?
So many for many non-conservatives, it is important to note that the religious values that they wish not to control the law of the land are conservative religious values. So where does that put a religious conservative like me?
I will only quickly comment on a few Scriptures and how they, IMO, obligate us to advance certain kinds of policies. The first Scriptures we should consider are Isaiah chapters 58 and 59. Chapter 58 tells us how it isn’t the shortage of religious ritual behavior that concerns God, it is that this behavior has been used as a veneer to cover-up living selfishly rather than living selflessly. Isaiah 58 tells us that people practice fasting, but it is not to the glory of God. In contrast to merely fasting or following other practices, God wants His people to take care of those in need. To do so is to experience personal salvation. To continue to live selfishly is to promote the dystopia rid of all justice described in chapter 59. “Truth has fallen in the streets” because everybody seeks to use deception in administering the law.
How should Isaiah chapters 58 and 59 determine whom I vote for? It is rather simple. It determines the key question I will ask before voting. This question is not am I better off than I was four years ago. Rather, the question for the Christian, like myself, must become are the least of these better off than they were four years ago.
One way to answer the latter question is to quip, if misery loves company, then the answer must be yes. This is because we have more people who are living in or near the poverty level since Obama has become president. And we should only note that, in 2008, candidate Obama never expressed a concern for the poor. His claim to fame was to be a defender of those in the Middle Class though he was more dependent on the upper class for campaign contributions.
Isaiah chapters 58 and 59 are all too clear. That until we go out to help those who are in need, regardless of our religious claims about ourselves, we are in darkness. And at this point, we need to consider what Martin Luther King said when talking about the Vietnam War. He stated that it was not enough that we toss a little money to those in need. We must challenge the system that causes all of the hardship.
If what King said is valid, how can I vote for any Republican or Democratic candidate who wants to maintain the current socio-economic system that makes so many people suffer? For most of the Republicans are in favor of making the current system even more cold-hearted than it is today. Meanwhile, Democrats only want to take the edge off of the current system rather than changing it. Thus I will vote for either the Socialist candidate, Stewart Alexander, or the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. No other candidates want to make the necessary changes to the current system that put the right priority on those in need Alexander and Stein.
Likewise, I will use my Christian Fundamentalist beliefs to dictate what foreign policies my country should have too. What beliefs am I talking about here? I am thinking specifically of the 2nd chapter of Romans where we are warned not to judge others because we are practicing similar, if not the same, sins.
Many times has Noam Chomsky described the above problem with regard to U.S. policies. Specifically, Chomsky states that we must follow the principle of universality by refraining from doing to others what we consider them doing to us is wrong. That is, we must all abide by the same set of rule. Such a view faces off the belief in American Exceptionalism. And here again, I find that my Fundamentalist beliefs preclude me from voting for either Romney or Obama because both believe in such exceptionalism. In fact, a belief in American Exceptionalism has deceived President Obama into believing that he can create a kill list that he can use to execute anyone else without sinning.
Certainly Obama is not the only candidate who believes in American Exceptionalism, Romney might even prescribe to a stronger belief than Obama. That means that Romney could very well conduct even more egregious sins than Obama has.
There are other religious beliefs to consider than the two I just mentioned. But they seem sufficient. For if I carry these religious beliefs with me into the voting booth, I will be required to vote for someone other than anyone who belongs to the two major parties.
_________
Chris Day blogs at
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Korea truly is the land of the cute – I mean, yes, Japan is also the holder of such a title, but Korea is mad for anything that just makes you go ‘awwww’, or in my case, squeal with delight. There are times when it gets too much (I’m looking at you, matching couple outfits), but generally I’m enjoying living in a land where wearing Doraemon socks doesn’t make you look like a 7 year old.
Bearing this in mind, imagine how excited I was to find out that Holika Holika (and I know I only just posted a review about one of their products, sorry) were releasing a new range of products. Not just any old range – a Gudetama range! This cute little egg character hails from Japan and is from the makers of Hello Kitty (Sanrio), so you know it’s bound to be adorable. ‘Gude’ comes from Japanese onomatopoeia, meaning someone with no energy, and ‘tama’ is from the word ‘tamago’, which means ‘egg’. Gudetama is, of course, a lazy egg. Strange concept, but whatever, it works – this little guy is darn cute.
This can’t-be-bothered-with-anything egg is a hit in Korea, too, and Holika Holika have embraced this, introducing their new range of products with his sweet little face (or bum, as he often has that on show) all over them.
The range was released on Friday the 13th (argh!), so on Saturday I made a trip to downtown Busan to explore the two stores in Seomyeon – hoping beyond hope they hadn’t sold out of anything. I’m sure if I had been in Seoul, the displays would have been more impressive, but they were nice enough for sure. Bright yellow shelving guided me towards the products, and I was pleasantly surprised with how good they looked – I hadn’t known what to expect other than little Gudetama’s face slapped all over some products, all in the name of gimmick.
The full range is as follows:
Smooth Egg Peeling Gel
Lazy & Easy Cream Blush
Lazy & Easy Face 2 Change BB Cushion Compact
Puff Cushions
Character Mask Sheet
Cleansing Sheet and Mask
Quick Nail Kit
Lazy & Easy All in One Master
Lazy & Easy Oil to Foam Cleanser
In late May, dry shampoo and lip tints are to follow and complete the collection.
The products are well designed and the theme is clearly ‘easy to use’. It seems to target those who don’t want to spend hours on their make-up or skincare routine – the oil to foam cleanser is something I currently use instead of an oil cleanser then followed by a foam, making life much easier, and the All in One Master is an essence and serum at the same time. Combining two steps from a routine together certainly does appeal if you’re either short for time or lazy, just like Mr. Gude himself.
I haven’t tried all the products yet, but I’ll leave a mini review for the ones I have done. The nail stickers don’t need any page space – they’re cute as hell, let’s leave it at that. We all know we’d wear them every day if we could. The first things I tried were the character sheet mask and the peeling gel. I’ll start with the face mask.
Gudetama Character Sheet Mask
The packaging on this one is obviously very sweet. It costs 2,000w per pack, so that’s roughly €1.50/$1.70/£1.18 (at the time of writing). It states that it:
restores the balance of tired skin with soothing essence containing vitamins.
First cleanse, then tone, and put on this sheet mask as your next skincare routine step. Ingredients include calendula extract, aloe leaf extract, tea tree leaf water, and even egg yolk extract (well, it is Gudetama). These ingredients condition and calm skin, so in theory it looks like a pretty nice mask to look forward to at the end of a hard Monday’s work.
As I pressed the mask onto my face it was pretty evident that it wasn’t going to fit well. The space for my mouth wasn’t quite right in relation to my eyes, meaning the part between my lips and nose hung awkwardly over my top lip. I pushed it into position, but the fit wasn’t quite right and there seems to be a lot of sheet towards the outer part of the mask compared to in the middle. It does soothe somewhat, and it isn’t irritating or too rough, so the feel is nice. There is a hefty amount of liquid in it, and as I took it off my face after the 15 minutes it advises, it took a while to pat into the skin. So it is certainly loaded with product.
While fragrance is listed as being the last on the ingredients list, it certainly is strong. As I took it out the packaging, I got a whiff of the scent, and whilst it isn’t bad, it is a little too much. Luckily the smell doesn’t linger, and it was only my initial reaction to it that was slightly off-putting. After 15 minutes, my skin does feel smooth and calm – I have some spots under my eyes at the moment and I could feel the effect of the mask on them as a slight tingle.
Verdict: If they changed the shape of the mask, I probably would consider using it again as a calming mask to soothe tired skin. I’ve used better masks recently (Nature Republic Snail Mask springs to mind), but it did seem to have a cooling and relaxing effect.
7/10 overall. 1 hour later my skin is still feeling good.
The next product I tested was the peeling gel. It was my first time using a peeling gel, and I’ve got to say, I really like it. The packaging is great (although I’m worried about the shape of it when the gel starts to run low – the design means it looks like it’ll be difficult to get it out), and you don’t have to use much so it will go a long way. Squeeze a small amount onto your fingertips, and rub into your face, constantly rubbing for 2-3 minutes.
After just a minute, some skin started coming off my face, so it does seem to be effective. I say some, as peeling gel naturally balls up, as it were, when you rub – some of it is the product itself binding together, and some of it is your skin. Peeling gel gets rid of icky dead skin, and it is recommended no more than twice a week. Once is advisable. Never overdo this! Whilst the ingredients are not strong chemicals by any means (I know most equate skin peeling with something strong), as with exfoliation, you shouldn’t overdo it. This is basically another way of exfoliating. After rubbing it into your skin and seeing the skin come off, wash the face thoroughly with warm water, and continue with your routine.
The day I used this, my skin felt really good and much cleaner, if that is a good way to describe it. It felt just that bit softer, and I did notice change to the skin on my forehead, which seemed a little less oily and just looked more even all over. If you have sensitive skin I’d recommend this product, as it wasn’t harsh and is much nicer than an exfoliation (which I hate on my skin). Use it if scrubs or things with bits in are too much for your poor skin!
Verdict: I really liked this product. I like the packaging, the fact that it doesn’t have any kind of scent to it, and what it did to my skin. The only way it could be improved is if the product didn’t come out too quickly from the container (I have to be careful not to squeeze too much out, it comes out easily), and time will tell how awkward it is to get out when it runs low. At 7.900w (€5.91/£4.66/$6.70) it isn’t pricey either.
9/10 overall.
And to conclude, here are my pictures of the full haul, and of the Holika Holika store displays. Happy Gude-ing! | {
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C'est un scénario récurrent de politique-fiction, tout à fait possible du strict point de vue constitutionnel, mais qui contreviendrait totalement aux usages républicains. Rien, dans la loi fondamentale, n'oblige le Premier ministre à démissionner de son poste après l'élection d'un nouveau président de la République. Car le gouvernement (et par extension son chef) n'est responsable que devant l'Assemblée nationale, qui seule peut le destituer en votant une motion de censure. Sur le papier, le résident de Matignon peut donc tout à fait refuser de s'en aller après une alternance présidentielle. Jusqu'ici, ce cas de figure ne s'est toutefois jamais produit. Mais il semblerait que Bernard Cazeneuve soupèse l'idée dans le cadre de l'hypothèse de l'élection à la présidence de Marine Le Pen le 7 mai prochain.
C'est en tout cas ce qu'affirme Challenges jeudi 30 mars, dans une brève signée du journaliste Nicolas Domenach, qui cite le Premier ministre en ces termes :
" Bernard Cazeneuve 'n'a aucunement l'intention de déserter le front de Matignon au cas où Marine Le Pen emporterait la présidentielle'. "
Toujours selon Challenges, le chef du gouvernement ajoute, comme pour souligner que tout est possible :
" Je n'ai laissé aucune lettre de démission en blanc à la présidence. "
Autrement dit : ni l'actuel ni le (la) futur(e) chef de l'État ne peut le forcer à quitter son poste. Un tel refus de sa part entraînerait évidemment un sérieux blocage et une impossibilité de gouverner pour le (la) nouvel(le) Président(e), pourtant élu(e) au suffrage universel. Suite à la publication de cet article, l'entourage de Bernard Cazeneuve a cependant démenti auprès du Lab l'existence de tels propos, assurant :
" Le Premier ministre n'a jamais, jamais évoqué ce scénario. "
Poussons tout de même la logique jusqu'au bout. Face à cette résistance de Bernard Cazeneuve, Marine Le Pen aurait alors deux options. La première serait d'attendre qu'une nouvelle majorité soit élue aux élections législatives du mois de juin (environ un mois et demi après la présidentielle, donc) et que les députés frontistes déposent une motion de censure contre le gouvernement qui, si elle était adoptée, provoquerait la démission de ce dernier. La seconde serait d'invoquer l'article 16 de la Constitution, qui accorde les pleins pouvoir au président de la République.
En tout état de cause, cette non-démission de Bernard Cazeneuve occasionnerait un désordre politique et institutionnel sans précédent sous la Vème République. Un scénario déjà envisagé fin 2015 par le député socialiste Malek Boutih, qui imaginait alors Manuel Valls (qui n'avait pas encore démissionné) rester en poste malgré l'élection de Marine Le Pen.
[Edit 7/04]
Malgré ces démentis du cabinet du Premier ministre, Le Figaro assure également, vendredi 7 avril, que "Bernard Cazeneuve réfléchit à cette hypothèse d'un maintien en poste [à Matignon] jusqu'aux législatives, en cas de victoire de Marine Le Pen" à la présidentielle.
Malgré le démenti du cab de Cazeneuve, Le Fig assure qu'il envisage de rester à Matignon en cas d'élection de Le Pen https://t.co/TBhJh0j6kipic.twitter.com/9S3xjADccj — Etienne Baldit (@EtienneBaldit) 7 avril 2017 | {
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"My cousins go to my granny’s house after school every day and the day he wore his McDonald's shirt, I happened to be hanging out there while my granny used my car. I was watching TV in her bedroom and my cousin walked in. As he was getting on the bed to grab the iPad I noticed something funny about his shirt. I told him to stop and let me look at it. His response was, 'What? It’s a McDonald's shirt.' I asked if he was sure about that and had him look at it again. Then I asked him why his mom let him wear that shirt, and at that moment I pulled out my phone to record him while he explained everything to me. Afterwards I sent the video to my aunt and asked her why he was wearing such a provocative t-shirt. Her response was 'OMG! I had no idea he was wearing that! Send that to me!' Once my granny got back, I asked her if she noticed anything funny about the 'McDonald's sign' on his shirt. As soon as she realized what it really was, she made him change it immediately." | {
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A California liquor company has turned to new technology to produce vodka made from the Bay Area’s notorious fog.
The brand Hangar 1 is now selling bottled $134 vodka made from the San Francisco fog, according to MarketWatch, that features “fog-catching” technology which transforms the fog into fresh water.
“To make our 2018 limited release of FOG POINT, we installed our very own fog catchers around the San Francisco Bay Area to turn fog into fresh water, before blending with vodka distilled from Napa’s Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc + Viognier wine,” Hangar 1 explains.
“This revolutionary experiment yields an extraordinarily crisp and pure sipping vodka with elegant hints of pear, citrus, and honeysuckle,” the description of the vodka reads.
Between the fog technology and the limited edition of only 5,000 bottles being sold, the price tag on the vodka has jumped to four times what the average bottle of vodka costs a U.S. consumer. | {
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In this virtual bank, your savings are stored in crypto format on a blockchain , and instead of interest on your savings, you get a virtual share in the revenue of the bank.This is an unconventional concept developed by Mumbai-based entrepreneurs Varun Deshpande, Ratnesh Ray and Siddharth Verma, whose product Nuo Bank went live this week.The product uses cryptocurrency and blockchain to replicate a bank that will have a decentralized, global and transparent cryptobanking platform.The startup has got seed funding from PayU India CEO Amrish Rau and managing director Jitendra Gupta, who have together invested $250,000 in the company.Nuo Bank will essentially offer about 20% of its 1 billion tokens, called Nuo Coins , to customers, the value of which will be connected to smart contracts. These contracts will entail that up to 25% of the revenue that the bank makes should be reserved for these tokens.The bank will generate revenue from the transaction fees, or merchant discount rate ( MDR) on its payments products as well as a share of the premium from its peerto-peer lending business.“Instead of offering a fixed interest rate, we are making customers a part of the bank’s growth. These tokens can be sold on exchanges or used within the Nuo Bank ecosystem for transactions,” said Deshpande, who, along with Ray and Verma, had earlier founded BeeWise, a financial identity platform.The app’s peer-to-peer lending facility will allow users to pledge Etherium-based tokens and borrow money from a lender, who will be another customer of the bank. Nuo Bank marks the first crypto investment by Rau and Gupta, who, since the acquisition of their fintech company Citrus Pay in 2016, are heading PayU India.“We invested with the rationale that if crypto(currency) can challenge fiat currency, then there would be a crypto bank required and credit would also become borderless.This is an experiment in a space, and if it takes off, we want to be a part of it,” said Rau. “The team also wants to make the product available globally, which is exciting,” he said. Nuo Bank is giving 100 tokens each to the first 10,000 users. Deshpande said they have already registered 5,000 customers in the first 36 hours.Even as cryptocurrency seems to have become synonymous with uncertainty, entrepreneurs across the globe are using the technology to innovate, especially around financial services.Last month, Bank of America said cryptocurrencies pose a threat to its business.In a regulatory filing, the bank said “clients may choose to conduct business with other market participants who engage in business or offer products in areas we deem speculative or risky, such as cryptocurrencies,” adding that this could “negatively affect our earnings.” | {
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В российском павильоне на Венецианской биеннале появилась группа людей в военном камуфляже с надписями On Vacation ["в отпуске"].
Как сообщает из Венеции корреспондент Би-би-си Александр Кан, активисты, предположительно украинские художники, никак не мешают работе выставки, а просто картинно фотографируются со всеми желающими, утверждая при этом, что они здесь в отпуске.
Украинские интернет-ресурсы сообщают, что группа желающих сохранять анонимность художников действительно представляет Украину, а их целью является привлечь внимание посетителей выставки к проблемам своей страны и напомнить об аннексии Крыма Россией. Также сообщается, что акция будет проходить до 9 мая.
Венецианская беннале пока работает лишь для специалистов, журналистов и художников. Для публики 56-я международная художественная выставка откроется 9 мая и будет работать до 22 ноября.
Россия отвергает обвинения Украины и западных стран, которые заявляют об участии российских вооеннослужащих в украинском конфликте. При этом в прошлом году Александр Захарченко, называющий себя премьер-министром ДНР, заявил, что на стороне сепаратистов воюют кадровые российские военные, которые взяли для этого отпуск. | {
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Jersey Shore cast sign 'VD clause' so MTV cannot be sued for STDs contracted on show
It has been revealed that the cast of Jersey Shore were ordered to sign a 'VD clause' in their contract.
MTV, who make the show, added the clause so the cast cannot sue the company if they contract a sexually-transmitted (or venereal) disease.
Under the head of 'Health of Other Participants', the clause states that the cast, who include Snooki and JWoww, take full responsibility for any nasty side effects of the frequent sexual encounters featured in the episodes.
Legally binding: Cast members of Jersey Shore, including Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi [right] and Deena Nicole Cortese [left] signed the 'VD clause'
It states: 'I acknowledge and accept, that the other participants have not been screened for any diseases, sicknesses or other health conditions (and specifically have not been tested for any sexually transmitted diseases) and I assume all risks of interacting with the other participants, including any consensual contact.'
The seedy contract was leaked to Seth Kaufman, who has written a book, The King of Pain, about the cynical business of reality television, reports the New York Daily News .
Mr Kaufman, a former editorial director of TVGuide.com, says that he received the contract 'from someone close to the show'.
Sexual encounters: One-night stands are frequent on the show and cast members are encouraged to indulge in heavy drinking and hard partying
Jersey Shore is one of MTV's most popular reality television shows.
Currently in its sixth season, the fly-on-the-wall documentary follows a group of people who live in the same summer rental in Seaside, New Jersey.
Nicole (Snooki) Polizzi is the best known cast member, followed by Jennifer (JWoww) Farley, Mike (The Situation) Sorrentino, Paul (Pauly D) DelVecchio, Vinny Guadagnino, Deena Cortese, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro and Sammi Giancola.
On the show, one-night stands are a frequent occurrence and in the fifth season, Polizzi announced she was pregnant with part-time cast member Jionni LaValle's child.
Best friend JWoww isn't exactly shy when it comes to having sex either.
In the opening credits, she says: 'After I have sex with a guy I will rip their heads off.'
From the word go, the popular program, which averaged 7.9million viewers per episode in its fifth season, received a fair amount of controversy.
As well as the racy content, producers also came under fire for using the derogatory word 'guidos' in promotional material to describe the Italian-America sentimentality of the main characters - despite Snookie being Chilean and the fact that JWoww is Irish and Spanish. | {
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Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin inspecting tornado damage with National Guard leaders.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin inspecting tornado damage with National Guard leaders.
Supreme Court decisions or not, Defense Department orders or not, bigots are gonna be bigots. That's the reminder we get from various states' refusals to follow a direct order from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to give National Guard members in same-sex marriages the spousal benefits to which they are entitled. Bigots can take different routes, though. In Texas, they're simply refusing to do it, sending same-sex couples to federal facilities that might be hundreds of miles away. Oklahoma, by contrast, has stopped processing spousal benefits for everyone , apparently figuring it doesn't count as discrimination if you treat everyone equally badly in order to be allowed to treat some people badly.
In an announcement earlier in the month, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said:
FALLIN: Oklahoma law is clear. The state of Oklahoma does not recognize same-sex marriages, nor does it confer marriage benefits to same-sex couples. The decision reached today allows the National Guard to obey Oklahoma law without violating federal rules or policies. It protects the integrity of our state constitution and sends a message to the federal government that they cannot simply ignore our laws or the will of the people.
Actually, the federal government can and often does supersede state laws. That's not generally controversial except among secessionists. For instance, several states have laws on the books saying they don't have a minimum wage, or have one below the federal level of $7.25. Yet despite state law, the minimum wage in those states is $7.25 an hour. Or take interracial marriage. At the time the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia, Oklahoma had a state law against interracial marriage; that law was effectively struck down by the Court's decision. Fallin's implication that it would somehow be unprecedented for Oklahoma to have to do something it doesn't want to do because of the federal government is twisted and moronic, and as Think Progress points out, the vast majority of funding for the Oklahoma Military Department comes from the federal government to begin with.
Meanwhile, of course, the lives of all married Oklahoma National Guards are made more difficult in service of a spiteful bigotry. | {
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Following the release of Overcooked! 2 last week, you'd be forgiven for expecting developer Ghost Town Games and publisher Team17 to enjoy a well-earned break. That's not the case — for now at least — as they've announced that a New Game Plus mode is in the works for the chaotic co-op cooker. After chefs have played through the game once, they will be able to try out New Game+, replaying the game's 45 kitchens in an attempt to earn four stars in each level and reach an even higher of culinary stardom.New Game+ will be coming soon to, and Ghost Town Games has announced that more updates and content are cooking in the oven that they'll talk about more when they're ready to serve.We've got the full list of Overcooked! 2 achievements - check the list for guides to unlocking them. | {
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Irish medical staff were more focused on the welfare of a foetus than the risk to the life of a dentist who died after being refused an abortion, a draft report into the tragedy has found.
Savita Halappanavar died in October while miscarrying at the University Hospital Galway. Her death provoked international protests against Ireland's ban on abortion.
Her husband, Praveen Halappanavar, claimed his wife was denied a termination after being told by medical staff that "this is a Catholic country". The 31-year-old was 17 weeks pregnant, although her foetus was found to be unviable.
The family's solicitor, Gerard O'Donnell, said the draft report, commissioned by the Health Service Executive, found not enough emphasis had been put on Halappanavar's health.
The report was delivered to Praveen Halappanavar and his lawyer at the weekend.
Next week, the inquest into his wife's death will resume in Galway after briefly opening earlier this year. It will be the first time that medical staff who looked after her will give evidence under oath and in a public forum.
While the inquest will determine the cause of death, which is already known, it will not be able to apportion blame. | {
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The clocks read zero when the lights went out.
It was a Saturday night last December, and Oleksii Yasinsky was sitting on the couch with his wife and teenage son in the living room of their Kiev apartment. The 40-year-old Ukrainian cybersecurity researcher and his family were an hour into Oliver Stone’s film Snowden when their building abruptly lost power.
“The hackers don’t want us to finish the movie,” Yasinsky’s wife joked. She was referring to an event that had occurred a year earlier, a cyberattack that had cut electricity to nearly a quarter-million Ukrainians two days before Christmas in 2015. Yasinsky, a chief forensic analyst at a Kiev digital security firm, didn’t laugh. He looked over at a portable clock on his desk: The time was 00:00. Precisely midnight.
Yasinsky’s television was plugged into a surge protector with a battery backup, so only the flicker of images onscreen lit the room now. The power strip started beeping plaintively. Yasinsky got up and switched it off to save its charge, leaving the room suddenly silent.
He went to the kitchen, pulled out a handful of candles and lit them. Then he stepped to the kitchen window. The thin, sandy-blond engineer looked out on a view of the city as he’d never seen it before: The entire skyline around his apartment building was dark. Only the gray glow of distant lights reflected off the clouded sky, outlining blackened hulks of modern condos and Soviet high-rises.
Noting the precise time and the date, almost exactly a year since the December 2015 grid attack, Yasinsky felt sure that this was no normal blackout. He thought of the cold outside—close to zero degrees Fahrenheit—the slowly sinking temperatures in thousands of homes, and the countdown until dead water pumps led to frozen pipes.
That’s when another paranoid thought began to work its way through his mind: For the past 14 months, Yasinsky had found himself at the center of an enveloping crisis. A growing roster of Ukrainian companies and government agencies had come to him to analyze a plague of cyberattacks that were hitting them in rapid, remorseless succession. A single group of hackers seemed to be behind all of it. Now he couldn’t suppress the sense that those same phantoms, whose fingerprints he had traced for more than a year, had reached back, out through the internet’s ether, into his home.
The Cyber-Cassandras said this would happen. For decades they warned that hackers would soon make the leap beyond purely digital mayhem and start to cause real, physical damage to the world. In 2009, when the NSA’s Stuxnet malware silently accelerated a few hundred Iranian nuclear centrifuges until they destroyed themselves, it seemed to offer a preview of this new era. “This has a whiff of August 1945,” Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, said in a speech. “Somebody just used a new weapon, and this weapon will not be put back in the box.”
media The Macedonian Teens Who Mastered Fake News These guys didn’t care if Trump won or lost the White House. They only wanted pocket money. But the consequences of what they did shook the world. Security Inside the Hunt for Russia's Most Notorious Hacker A mysterious cybercriminal deployed an invincible botnet to steal a fortune from US banks. Then the FBI discovered what else he was after. Hacks Security High-Profile Extortion Hacks Aren't Paying Off Hacking big companies and small tends to work---until the hack goes public.
Now, in Ukraine, the quintessential cyberwar scenario has come to life. Twice. On separate occasions, invisible saboteurs have turned off the electricity to hundreds of thousands of people. Each blackout lasted a matter of hours, only as long as it took for scrambling engineers to manually switch the power on again. But as proofs of concept, the attacks set a new precedent: In Russia’s shadow, the decades-old nightmare of hackers stopping the gears of modern society has become a reality.
And the blackouts weren’t just isolated attacks. They were part of a digital blitzkrieg that has pummeled Ukraine for the past three years—a sustained cyberassault unlike any the world has ever seen. A hacker army has systematically undermined practically every sector of Ukraine: media, finance, transportation, military, politics, energy. Wave after wave of intrusions have deleted data, destroyed computers, and in some cases paralyzed organizations’ most basic functions. “You can’t really find a space in Ukraine where there hasn’t been an attack,” says Kenneth Geers, a NATO ambassador who focuses on cybersecurity.
In a public statement in December, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, reported that there had been 6,500 cyberattacks on 36 Ukrainian targets in just the previous two months. International cybersecurity analysts have stopped just short of conclusively attributing these attacks to the Kremlin, but Poroshenko didn’t hesitate: Ukraine’s investigations, he said, point to the “direct or indirect involvement of secret services of Russia, which have unleashed a cyberwar against our country.” (The Russian foreign ministry didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.)
To grasp the significance of these assaults—and, for that matter, to digest much of what’s going on in today’s larger geopolitical disorder—it helps to understand Russia’s uniquely abusive relationship with its largest neighbor to the west. Moscow has long regarded Ukraine as both a rightful part of Russia’s empire and an important territorial asset—a strategic buffer between Russia and the powers of NATO, a lucrative pipeline route to Europe, and home to one of Russia’s few accessible warm-water ports. For all those reasons, Moscow has worked for generations to keep Ukraine in the position of a submissive smaller sibling.
But over the past decade and a half, Moscow’s leash on Ukraine has frayed, as popular support in the country has pulled toward NATO and the European Union. In 2004, Ukrainian crowds in orange scarves flooded the streets to protest Moscow’s rigging of the country’s elections; that year, Russian agents allegedly went so far as to poison the surging pro-Western presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. A decade later, the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution finally overthrew the country’s Kremlin-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych (a leader whose longtime political adviser, Paul Manafort, would go on to run the US presidential campaign of Donald Trump). Russian troops promptly annexed the Crimean Peninsula in the south and invaded the Russian-speaking eastern region known as Donbass. Ukraine has since then been locked in an undeclared war with Russia, one that has displaced nearly 2 million internal refugees and killed close to 10,000 Ukrainians.
“Russia will never accept a sovereign, independent Ukraine. Twenty-five years since the Soviet collapse, Russia is still sick with this imperialistic syndrome.”
From the beginning, one of this war’s major fronts has been digital. Ahead of Ukraine’s post-revolution 2014 elections, a pro-Russian group calling itself CyberBerkut—an entity with links to the Kremlin hackers who later breached Democratic targets in America’s 2016 presidential election—rigged the website of the country’s Central Election Commission to announce ultra-right presidential candidate Dmytro Yarosh as the winner. Administrators detected the tampering less than an hour before the election results were set to be declared. And that attack was just a prelude to Russia’s most ambitious experiment in digital war, the barrage of cyberattacks that began to accelerate in the fall of 2015 and hasn’t ceased since.
Yushchenko, who ended up serving as Ukraine’s president from 2005 to 2010, believes that Russia’s tactics, online and off, have one single aim: “to destabilize the situation in Ukraine, to make its government look incompetent and vulnerable.” He lumps the blackouts and other cyberattacks together with the Russian disinformation flooding Ukraine’s media, the terroristic campaigns in the east of the country, and his own poisoning years ago—all underhanded moves aimed at painting Ukraine as a broken nation. “Russia will never accept Ukraine being a sovereign and independent country,” says Yushchenko, whose face still bears traces of the scars caused by dioxin toxicity. “Twenty-five years since the Soviet collapse, Russia is still sick with this imperialistic syndrome.”
But many global cybersecurity analysts have a much larger theory about the endgame of Ukraine’s hacking epidemic: They believe Russia is using the country as a cyberwar testing ground—a laboratory for perfecting new forms of global online combat. And the digital explosives that Russia has repeatedly set off in Ukraine are ones it has planted at least once before in the civil infrastructure of the United States.
One Sunday morning in October 2015, more than a year before Yasinsky would look out of his kitchen window at a blacked-out skyline, he sat near that same window sipping tea and eating a bowl of cornflakes. His phone rang with a call from work. He was then serving as the director of information security at StarLightMedia, Ukraine’s largest TV broadcasting conglomerate. During the night, two of StarLight’s servers had inexplicably gone offline. The IT administrator on the phone assured him that the servers had already been restored from backups.
But Yasinsky felt uneasy. The two machines had gone dark at almost the same minute. “One server going down, it happens,” Yasinsky says. “But two servers at the same time? That’s suspicious.”
Resigned to a lost weekend, he left his apartment and took the 40-minute metro ride to StarLightMedia’s office. When he got there, Yasinsky and the company’s IT admins examined the image they’d kept of one of the corrupted servers. Its master boot record, the deep-seated, reptile-brain portion of a computer’s hard drive that tells the machine where to find its own operating system, had been precisely overwritten with zeros. This was especially troubling, given that the two victim servers were domain controllers, computers with powerful privileges that could be used to reach into hundreds of other machines on the corporate network.
Yasinsky printed the code and laid the papers across his kitchen table and floor. He'd been in information security for 20 years, but he’d never analyzed such a refined digital weapon.
Yasinsky quickly discovered the attack was indeed far worse than it had seemed: The two corrupted servers had planted malware on the laptops of 13 StarLight employees. The infection had triggered the same boot-record overwrite technique to brick the machines just as staffers were working to prepare a morning TV news bulletin ahead of the country’s local elections.
Nonetheless, Yasinsky could see he’d been lucky. Looking at StarLight’s network logs, it appeared the domain controllers had committed suicide prematurely. They’d actually been set to infect and destroy 200 more PCs at the company. Soon Yasinsky heard from a competing media firm called TRK that it had been less fortunate: That company lost more than a hundred computers to an identical attack.
Yasinsky managed to pull a copy of the destructive program from StarLight’s network. Back at home, he pored over its code. He was struck by the layers of cunning obfuscation—the malware had evaded all antivirus scans and even impersonated an antivirus scanner itself, Microsoft’s Windows Defender. After his family had gone to sleep, Yasinsky printed the code and laid the papers across his kitchen table and floor, crossing out lines of camouflaging characters and highlighting commands to see its true form. Yasinsky had been working in information security for 20 years; he’d managed massive networks and fought off crews of sophisticated hackers before. But he’d never analyzed such a refined digital weapon.
“With every step forward, it became clearer that our Titanic had found its iceberg. The deeper we looked, the bigger it was.”
Beneath all the cloaking and misdirection, Yasinsky figured out, was a piece of malware known as KillDisk, a data-destroying parasite that had been circulating among hackers for about a decade. To understand how it got into their system, Yasinsky and two colleagues at StarLight obsessively dug into the company’s network logs, combing them again and again on nights and weekends. By tracing signs of the hackers’ fingerprints—some compromised corporate YouTube accounts, an administrator’s network login that had remained active even when he was out sick—they came to the stomach-turning realization that the intruders had been inside their system for more than six months. Eventually, Yasinsky identified the piece of malware that had served as the hackers’ initial foothold: an all-purpose Trojan known as BlackEnergy.
Soon Yasinsky began to hear from colleagues at other companies and in the government that they too had been hacked, and in almost exactly the same way. One attack had hit Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine’s biggest railway company. Other targets asked Yasinsky to keep their breaches secret. Again and again, the hackers used BlackEnergy for access and reconnaissance, then KillDisk for destruction. Their motives remained an enigma, but their marks were everywhere.
“With every step forward, it became clearer that our Titanic had found its iceberg,” says Yasinsky. “The deeper we looked, the bigger it was.”
Even then, Yasinsky didn’t know the real dimensions of the threat. He had no idea, for instance, that by December 2015, BlackEnergy and KillDisk were also lodged inside the computer systems of at least three major Ukrainian power companies, lying in wait.
CURT MERLO
At first, Robert Lee blamed the squirrels.
It was Christmas Eve 2015—and also, it so happened, the day before Lee was set to be married in his hometown of Cullman, Alabama. A barrel-chested and bearded redhead, Lee had recently left a high-level job at a three-letter US intelligence agency, where he’d focused on the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure. Now he was settling down to launch his own security startup and marry the Dutch girlfriend he’d met while stationed abroad.
As Lee busied himself with wedding preparations, he saw news headlines claiming that hackers had just taken down a power grid in western Ukraine. A significant swath of the country had apparently gone dark for six hours. Lee blew off the story—he had other things on his mind, and he’d heard spurious claims of hacked grids plenty of times before. The cause was usually a rodent or a bird—the notion that squirrels represented a greater threat to the power grid than hackers had become a running joke in the industry.
The next day, however, just before the wedding itself, Lee got a text about the purported cyberattack from Mike Assante, a security researcher at the SANS Institute, an elite cybersecurity training center. That got Lee’s attention: When it comes to digital threats to power grids, Assante is one of the most respected experts in the world. And he was telling Lee that the Ukraine blackout hack looked like the real thing.
The hackers had spread through the power companies’ networks and eventually compromised a VPN used for remote access.
Just after Lee had said his vows and kissed his bride, a contact in Ukraine messaged him as well: The blackout hack was real, the man said, and he needed Lee’s help. For Lee, who’d spent his career preparing for infrastructure cyberattacks, the moment he’d anticipated for years had finally arrived. So he ditched his own reception and began to text with Assante in a quiet spot, still in his wedding suit.
Lee eventually retreated to his mother’s desktop computer in his parents’ house nearby. Working in tandem with Assante, who was at a friend’s Christmas party in rural Idaho, they pulled up maps of Ukraine and a chart of its power grid. The three power companies’ substations that had been hit were in different regions of the country, hundreds of miles from one another and unconnected. “This was not a squirrel,” Lee concluded with a dark thrill.
By that night, Lee was busy dissecting the KillDisk malware his Ukrainian contact had sent him from the hacked power companies, much as Yasinsky had done after the StarLightMedia hack months before. (“I have a very patient wife,” Lee says.) Within days, he’d received a sample of the BlackEnergy code and forensic data from the attacks. Lee saw how the intrusion had started with a phishing email impersonating a message from the Ukrainian parliament. A malicious Word attachment had silently run a script on the victims’ machines, planting the BlackEnergy infection. From that foothold, it appeared, the hackers had spread through the power companies’ networks and eventually compromised a VPN the companies had used for remote access to their network—including the highly specialized industrial control software that gives operators remote command over equipment like circuit breakers.
The same group that snuffed out the lights for nearly a quarter-million Ukrainians had infected American electric utilities with the very same malware.
Looking at the attackers’ methods, Lee began to form a notion of who he was up against. He was struck by similarities between the blackout hackers’ tactics and those of a group that had recently gained some notoriety in the cybersecurity world—a group known as Sandworm. In 2014 the security firm FireEye had issued warnings about a team of hackers that was planting BlackEnergy malware on targets that included Polish energy firms and Ukrainian government agencies; the group seemed to be developing methods to target the specialized computer architectures that are used for remotely managing physical industrial equipment. The group’s name came from references to Dune found buried in its code, terms like Harkonnen and Arrakis, an arid planet in the novel where massive sandworms roam the deserts.
No one knew much about the group’s intentions. But all signs indicated that the hackers were Russian: FireEye had traced one of Sandworm’s distinctive intrusion techniques to a presentation at a Russian hacker conference. And when FireEye’s engineers managed to access one of Sandworm’s unsecured command-and-control servers, they found instructions for how to use BlackEnergy written in Russian, along with other Russian-language files.
Most disturbing of all for American analysts, Sandworm’s targets extended across the Atlantic. Earlier in 2014, the US government reported that hackers had planted BlackEnergy on the networks of American power and water utilities. Working from the government’s findings, FireEye had been able to pin those intrusions, too, on Sandworm.
For Lee, the pieces came together: It looked like the same group that had just snuffed out the lights for nearly a quarter-million Ukrainians had not long ago infected the computers of American electric utilities with the very same malware.
It had been just a few days since the Christmas blackout, and Assante thought it was too early to start blaming the attack on any particular hacker group—not to mention a government. But in Lee’s mind, alarms went off. The Ukraine attack represented something more than a faraway foreign case study. “An adversary that had already targeted American energy utilities had crossed the line and taken down a power grid,” Lee says. “It was an imminent threat to the United States.”
On a cold, bright day a few weeks later, a team of Americans arrived in Kiev. They assembled at the Hyatt, a block from the golden-domed Saint Sophia Cathedral. Among them were staff from the FBI, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the body responsible for the stability of the US grid, all part of a delegation that had been assigned to get to the bottom of the Ukrainian blackout.
The Feds had also flown Assante in from Wyoming. Lee, a hotter head than his friend, had fought with the US agencies over their penchant for secrecy, insisting that the details of the attack needed to be publicized immediately. He hadn’t been invited.
On that first day, the suits gathered in a sterile hotel conference room with the staff of Kyivoblenergo, the city’s regional power distribution company and one of the three victims of the power grid attacks. Over the next several hours, the Ukrainian company’s stoic execs and engineers laid out the blow-by-blow account of a comprehensive, almost torturous raid on their network.
“The message was, ‘I’m going to make you feel this everywhere.’ These attackers must have seemed like they were gods.”
As Lee and Assante had noticed, the malware that infected the energy companies hadn’t contained any commands capable of actually controlling the circuit breakers. Yet on the afternoon of December 23, Kyivoblenergo employees had watched helplessly as circuit after circuit was opened in dozens of substations across a Massachusetts-sized region, seemingly commanded by computers on their network that they couldn’t see. In fact, Kyivoblenergo’s engineers determined that the attackers had set up their own perfectly configured copy of the control software on a PC in a faraway facility and then had used that rogue clone to send the commands that cut the power.
Once the circuit breakers were open and the power for tens of thousands of Ukrainians had gone dead, the hackers launched another phase of the attack. They’d overwritten the firmware of the substations’ serial-to-ethernet converters—tiny boxes in the stations’ server closets that translated internet protocols to communicate with older equipment. By rewriting the obscure code of those chunks of hardware—a trick that likely took weeks to devise—the hackers had permanently bricked the devices, shutting out the legitimate operators from further digital control of the breakers. Sitting at the conference room table, Assante marveled at the thoroughness of the operation.
The hackers also left one of their usual calling cards, running KillDisk to destroy a handful of the company’s PCs. But the most vicious element of the attack struck the control stations’ battery backups. When the electricity was cut to the region, the stations themselves also lost power, throwing them into darkness in the midst of their crisis. With utmost precision, the hackers had engineered a blackout within a blackout.
“The message was, ‘I’m going to make you feel this everywhere.’ Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom,” Assante says, imagining the attack from the perspective of a bewildered grid operator. “These attackers must have seemed like they were gods.”
That night, the team boarded a flight to the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, arriving at its tiny Soviet-era airport in a snowstorm. The next morning they visited the headquarters of Prykarpattyaoblenergo, the power company that had taken the brunt of the pre-Christmas attack.
The power company executives politely welcomed the Americans into their modern building, under the looming smokestacks of the abandoned coal power plant in the same complex. Then they invited them into their boardroom, seating them at a long wooden table beneath an oil painting of the aftermath of a medieval battle.
Before their eyes, phantom hands clicked through dozens of breakers—each serving power to a different swath of the region—and one by one by one, turned them cold.
The attack they described was almost identical to the one that hit Kyivoblenergo: BlackEnergy, corrupted firmware, disrupted backup power systems, KillDisk. But in this operation, the attackers had taken another step, bombarding the company’s call centers with fake phone calls—possibly to delay any warnings of the power outage from customers or simply to add another layer of chaos and humiliation.
There was another difference too. When the Americans asked whether, as in Kiev, cloned control software had sent the commands that shut off the power, the Prykarpattyaoblenergo engineers said no, that their circuit breakers had been opened by another method. That’s when the company’s technical director, a tall, serious man with black hair and ice-blue eyes, cut in. Rather than try to explain the hackers’ methods to the Americans through a translator, he offered to show them, clicking Play on a video he’d recorded himself on his battered iPhone 5s.
The 56-second clip showed a cursor moving around the screen of one of the computers in the company’s control room. The pointer glides to the icon for one of the breakers and clicks a command to open it. The video pans from the computer’s Samsung monitor to its mouse, which hasn’t budged. Then it shows the cursor moving again, seemingly of its own accord, hovering over a breaker and attempting again to cut its flow of power as the engineers in the room ask one another who’s controlling it.
The hackers hadn’t sent their blackout commands from automated malware, or even a cloned machine as they’d done at Kyivoblenergo. Instead, the intruders had exploited the company’s IT helpdesk tool to take direct control of the mouse movements of the stations’ operators. They’d locked the operators out of their own user interface. And before their eyes, phantom hands had clicked through dozens of breakers—each serving power to a different swath of the region—and one by one by one, turned them cold.
In August 2016, eight months after the first Christmas blackout, Yasinsky left his job at StarLightMedia. It wasn’t enough, he decided, to defend a single company from an onslaught that was hitting every stratum of Ukrainian society. To keep up with the hackers, he needed a more holistic view of their work, and Ukraine needed a more coherent response to the brazen, prolific organization that Sandworm had become. “The light side remains divided,” he says of the balkanized reaction to the hackers among their victims. “The dark side is united.”
So Yasinsky took a position as the head of research and forensics for a Kiev firm called Information Systems Security Partners. The company was hardly a big name. But Yasinsky turned it into a de facto first responder for victims of Ukraine’s digital siege.
Not long after Yasinsky switched jobs, almost as if on cue, the country came under another, even broader wave of attacks. He ticks off the list of casualties: Ukraine’s pension fund, the country’s treasury, its seaport authority, its ministries of infrastructure, defense, and finance. The hackers again hit Ukraine’s railway company, this time knocking out its online booking system for days, right in the midst of the holiday travel season. As in 2015, most of the attacks culminated with a KillDisk-style detonation on the target’s hard drive. In the case of the finance ministry, the logic bomb deleted terabytes of data, just as the ministry was preparing its budget for the next year. All told, the hackers’ new winter onslaught matched and exceeded the previous year’s—right up to its grand finale.
On December 16, 2016, as Yasinsky and his family sat watching Snowden, a young engineer named Oleg Zaychenko was four hours into his 12-hour night shift at Ukrenergo’s transmission station just north of Kiev. He sat in an old Soviet-era control room, its walls covered in beige and red floor-to-ceiling analog control panels. The station’s tabby cat, Aza, was out hunting; all that kept Zaychenko company was a television in the corner playing pop music videos.
The 20th and final circuit switched off and the lights in the control room went out, along with the computer and TV.
He was filling out a paper-and-pencil log, documenting another uneventful Saturday evening, when the station’s alarm suddenly sounded, a deafening continuous ringing. To his right Zaychenko saw that two of the lights indicating the state of the transmission system’s circuits had switched from red to green—in the universal language of electrical engineers, a sign that it was off.
The technician picked up the black desk phone to his left and called an operator at Ukrenergo’s headquarters to alert him to the routine mishap. As he did, another light turned green. Then another. Zaychenko’s adrenaline began to kick in. As he hurriedly explained the situation to the remote operator, the lights kept flipping: red to green, red to green. Eight, then 10, then 12.
As the crisis escalated, the operator ordered Zaychenko to run outside and check the equipment for physical damage. At that moment, the 20th and final circuit switched off and the lights in the control room went out, along with the computer and TV. Zaychenko was already throwing a coat over his blue and yellow uniform and sprinting for the door.
The transmission station is normally a vast, buzzing jungle of electrical equipment stretching over 20 acres, the size of more than a dozen football fields. But as Zaychenko came out of the building into the freezing night air, the atmosphere was eerier than ever before: The three tank-sized transformers arrayed alongside the building, responsible for about a fifth of the capital’s electrical capacity, had gone entirely silent. Until then Zaychenko had been mechanically ticking through an emergency mental checklist. As he ran past the paralyzed machines, the thought entered his mind for the first time: The hackers had struck again.
This time the attack had moved up the circulatory system of Ukraine’s grid. Instead of taking down the distribution stations that branch off into capillaries of power lines, the saboteurs had hit an artery. That single Kiev transmission station carried 200 megawatts, more total electric load than all the 50-plus distribution stations knocked out in the 2015 attack combined. Luckily, the system was down for just an hour—hardly long enough for pipes to start freezing or locals to start panicking—before Ukrenergo’s engineers began manually closing circuits and bringing everything back online.
But the brevity of the outage was virtually the only thing that was less menacing about the 2016 blackout. Cybersecurity firms that have since analyzed the attack say that it was far more evolved than the one in 2015: It was executed by a highly sophisticated, adaptable piece of malware now known as "CrashOverride," a program expressly coded to be an automated, grid-killing weapon.
Lee’s critical infrastructure security startup, Dragos, is one of two firms that have pored through the malware's code; Dragos obtained it from a Slovakian security outfit called ESET. The two teams found that, during the attack, CrashOverride was able to “speak” the language of the grid’s obscure control system protocols, and thus send commands directly to grid equipment. In contrast to the laborious phantom-mouse and cloned-PC techniques the hackers used in 2015, this new software could be programmed to scan a victim’s network to map out targets, then launch at a preset time, opening circuits on cue without even having an internet connection back to the hackers. In other words, it's the first malware found in the wild since Stuxnet that's designed to independently sabotage physical infrastructure.
“In 2015 they were like a group of brutal street fighters. In 2016, they were ninjas.”
And CrashOverride isn’t just a one-off tool, tailored only to Ukrenergo’s grid. It’s a reusable and highly adaptable weapon of electric utility disruption, researchers say. Within the malware’s modular structure, Ukrenergo’s control system protocols could easily be swapped out and replaced with ones used in other parts of Europe or the US instead.
Marina Krotofil, an industrial control systems security researcher for Honeywell who also analyzed the Ukrenergo attack, describes the hackers’ methods as simpler and far more efficient than the ones used in the previous year’s attack. “In 2015 they were like a group of brutal street fighters,” Krotofil says. “In 2016, they were ninjas.” But the hackers themselves may be one and the same; Dragos’ researchers have identified the architects of CrashOverride as part of Sandworm, based on evidence that Dragos is not yet ready to reveal.
For Lee, these are all troubling signs of Sandworm’s progress. I meet him in the bare-bones offices of his Baltimore-based critical infrastructure security firm, Dragos. Outside his office window looms a series of pylons holding up transmission lines. Lee tells me that they carry power 18 miles south, to the heart of Washington, DC.
For the first time in history, Lee points out, a group of hackers has shown that it’s willing and able to attack critical infrastructure. They’ve refined their techniques over multiple, evolving assaults. And they’ve already planted BlackEnergy malware on the US grid once before. “The people who understand the US power grid know that it can happen here,” Lee says.
To Sandworm’s hackers, Lee says, the US could present an even more convenient set of targets should they ever decide to strike the grid here. US power firms are more attuned to cybersecurity, but they are also more automated and modern than those in Ukraine—which means they could present more of a digital “attack surface.” And American engineers have less experience with manual recovery from frequent blackouts.
“Tell me what doesn’t change dramatically when key cities across half of the US don’t have power for a month.”
No one knows how, or where, Sandworm’s next attacks will materialize. A future breach might target not a distribution or transmission station but an actual power plant. Or it could be designed not simply to turn off equipment but to destroy it. In 2007 a team of researchers at Idaho National Lab, one that included Mike Assante, demonstrated that it’s possible to hack electrical infrastructure to death: The so-called Aurora experiment used nothing but digital commands to permanently wreck a 2.25-megawatt diesel generator. In a video of the experiment, a machine the size of a living room coughs and belches black and white smoke in its death throes. Such a generator is not all that different from the equipment that sends hundreds of megawatts to US consumers; with the right exploit, it’s possible that someone could permanently disable power-generation equipment or the massive, difficult-to-replace transformers that serve as the backbone of our transmission system. “Washington, DC? A nation-state could take it out for two months without much issue,” Lee says.
In fact, in its analysis of CrashOverride, ESET found that the malware may already include one of the ingredients for that kind of destructive attack. ESET’s researchers noted that CrashOverride contains code designed to target a particular Siemens device found in power stations—a piece of equipment that functions as a kill-switch to prevent dangerous surges on electric lines and transformers. If CrashOverride is able to cripple that protective measure, it might already be able to cause permanent damage to grid hardware.
An isolated incident of physical destruction may not even be the worst that hackers can do. The American cybersecurity community often talks about “advanced persistent threats”—sophisticated intruders who don’t simply infiltrate a system for the sake of one attack but stay there, silently keeping their hold on a target. In his nightmares, Lee says, American infrastructure is hacked with this kind of persistence: transportation networks, pipelines, or power grids taken down again and again by deep-rooted adversaries. “If they did that in multiple places, you could have up to a month of outages across an entire region,” he says. “Tell me what doesn’t change dramatically when key cities across half of the US don’t have power for a month.”
It’s one thing, though, to contemplate what an actor like Russia could do to the American grid; it’s another to contemplate why it would. A grid attack on American utilities would almost certainly result in immediate, serious retaliation by the US. Some cybersecurity analysts argue that Russia’s goal is simply to hem in America’s own cyberwar strategy: By turning the lights out in Kiev—and by showing that it’s capable of penetrating the American grid—Moscow sends a message warning the US not to try a Stuxnet-style attack on Russia or its allies, like Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. In that view, it’s all a game of deterrence.
“It would be hard to say we’re not vulnerable. Anything connected to something else is vulnerable.”
But Lee, who was involved in war-game scenarios during his time in intelligence, believes Russia might actually strike American utilities as a retaliatory measure if it ever saw itself as backed into a corner—say, if the US threatened to interfere with Moscow’s military interests in Ukraine or Syria. “When you deny a state’s ability to project power, it has to lash out,” Lee says.
People like Lee have, of course, been war-gaming these nightmares for well over a decade. And for all the sophistication of the Ukraine grid hacks, even they didn’t really constitute a catastrophe; the lights did, after all, come back on. American power companies have already learned from Ukraine’s victimization, says Marcus Sachs, chief security officer of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. After the 2015 attack, Sachs says, NERC went on a road show, meeting with power firms to hammer into them that they need to shore up their basic cybersecurity practices and turn off remote access to their critical systems more often. “It would be hard to say we’re not vulnerable. Anything connected to something else is vulnerable,” Sachs says. “To make the leap and suggest that the grid is milliseconds away from collapse is irresponsible.”
But for those who have been paying attention to Sandworm for almost three years, raising an alarm about the potential for an attack on the US grid is no longer crying wolf. For John Hultquist, head of the team of researchers at FireEye that first spotted and named the Sandworm group, the wolves have arrived. “We’ve seen this actor show a capability to turn out the lights and an interest in US systems,” Hultquist says. Three weeks after the 2016 Kiev attack, he wrote a prediction on Twitter and pinned it to his profile for posterity: “I swear, when Sandworm Team finally nails Western critical infrastructure, and folks react like this was a huge surprise, I’m gonna lose it.”
CURT MERLO
The headquarters of Yasinsky’s firm, Information Systems Security Partners, occupies a low-lying building in an industrial neighborhood of Kiev, surrounded by muddy sports fields and crumbling gray high-rises—a few of Ukraine’s many lingering souvenirs from the Soviet Union. Inside, Yasinsky sits in a darkened room behind a round table that’s covered in 6-foot-long network maps showing nodes and connections of Borgesian complexity. Each map represents the timeline of an intrusion by Sandworm. By now, the hacker group has been the consuming focus of his work for nearly two years, going back to that first attack on StarLightMedia.
Yasinsky says he has tried to maintain a dispassionate perspective on the intruders who are ransacking his country. But when the blackout extended to his own home four months ago, it was “like being robbed,” he tells me. “It was a kind of violation, a moment when you realize your own private space is just an illusion.”
Yasinsky says there’s no way to know exactly how many Ukrainian institutions have been hit in the escalating campaign of cyberattacks; any count is liable to be an underestimate. For every publicly known target, there’s at least one secret victim that hasn’t admitted to being breached—and still other targets that haven’t yet discovered the intruders in their systems.
“They’re testing out red lines, what they can get away with. You push and see if you’re pushed back. If not, you try the next step.”
When we meet in ISSP’s offices, in fact, the next wave of the digital invasion is already under way. Behind Yasinsky, two younger, bearded staffers are locked into their keyboards and screens, pulling apart malware that the company obtained just the day before from a new round of phishing emails. The attacks, Yasinsky has noticed, have settled into a seasonal cycle: During the first months of the year, the hackers lay their groundwork, silently penetrating targets and spreading their foothold. At the end of the year, they unleash their payload. Yasinsky knows by now that even as he’s analyzing last year’s power grid attack, the seeds are already being sown for 2017’s December surprises.
Bracing for the next round, Yasinsky says, is like “studying for an approaching final exam.” But in the grand scheme, he thinks that what Ukraine has faced for the past three years may have been just a series of practice tests.
He sums up the attackers’ intentions until now in a single Russian word: poligon. A training ground. Even in their most damaging attacks, Yasinsky observes, the hackers could have gone further. They could have destroyed not just the Ministry of Finance’s stored data but its backups too. They probably could have knocked out Ukrenergo’s transmission station for longer or caused permanent, physical harm to the grid, he says—a restraint that American analysts like Assante and Lee have also noted. “They’re still playing with us,” Yasinsky says. Each time, the hackers retreated before accomplishing the maximum possible damage, as if reserving their true capabilities for some future operation.
Many global cybersecurity analysts have come to the same conclusion. Where better to train an army of Kremlin hackers in digital combat than in the no-holds-barred atmosphere of a hot war inside the Kremlin’s sphere of influence? “The gloves are off. This is a place where you can do your worst without retaliation or prosecution,” says Geers, the NATO ambassador. “Ukraine is not France or Germany. A lot of Americans can’t find it on a map, so you can practice there.” (At a meeting of diplomats in April, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson went so far as to ask, “Why should US taxpayers be interested in Ukraine?”)
In that shadow of neglect, Russia isn’t only pushing the limits of its technical abilities, says Thomas Rid, a professor in the War Studies department at King’s College London. It’s also feeling out the edges of what the international community will tolerate. The Kremlin meddled in the Ukrainian election and faced no real repercussions; then it tried similar tactics in Germany, France, and the United States. Russian hackers turned off the power in Ukraine with impunity—and, well, the syllogism isn’t hard to complete. “They’re testing out red lines, what they can get away with,” Rid says. “You push and see if you’re pushed back. If not, you try the next step.”
What will that next step look like? In the dim back room at ISSP’s lab in Kiev, Yasinsky admits he doesn’t know. Perhaps another blackout. Or maybe a targeted attack on a water facility. “Use your imagination,” he suggests drily.
Behind him the fading afternoon light glows through the blinds, rendering his face a dark silhouette. “Cyberspace is not a target in itself,” Yasinsky says. “It’s a medium.” And that medium connects, in every direction, to the machinery of civilization itself.
Andy Greenberg (@a_greenberg) wrote about Edward Snowden’s work to protect reporters from hackers in issue 25.03.
This article appears in the July issue. Subscribe now. | {
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Ever wonder what President George "Dubya" Bush will be doing once he leaves the White House? Well, we wondered too and voted for him to run a hot dog stand, in the city that never sleeps - New York! Help the President cook and serve up sizzling hot dogs, burgers and fries to all kinds of customers. Start in the Bronx and move up to Wall St. while meeting daily cash goals. Chomp down on hours of fun game play in 5 different locations... AND we've super sized the game with a surprise location just for laughs! Uncle George wants YOU!!! So, don't forget to submit your high-scores and compete with other fast food fanatics around the world!
Category
Celebrity | {
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A university student from the southwestern city of Karlsruhe has chosen his own unique way of recalling the division of his country by developing a computer game that requires gamers to shoot East Germans attempting to cross the border into West Germany.
The game is titled "1378 km," in reference to the length of the old border fortifications between East and West Germany (856 miles). The game is a first-person "shoot-'em-up" similar in gameplay to video game "Half-Life."
Border guards from the former Communist East operated under a shoot-to-kill policy at the inner-German border. This strategy cost the lives of hundreds of people trying to escape to the West.
Gamers must shoot three East German escapees
To the tune of the East German national anthem, gamers get a bird's eye view of the former border fortifications, complete with a mined death strip, watchtowers and grim-looking border guards ready to shoot at anything that moves.
A 'history lesson'
The new video game triggered a mixed response, with the director of the Berlin Wall Foundation, Axel Klausmeier, calling the game "tasteless" and a slap in the face of victims' families. He said there was nothing to be learned from a shoot-'em-up computer game.
But the game's 25-year-old creator, Jens Stober, a student at the media design faculty of Karlsruhe University, insists there is a need for the game.
"It's my impression that, particularly among young people, that part of history is no longer really debated and has been forgotten," he said.
"Being young, too, I myself didn't know much about the border fortifications either. Many of my peers have no idea that the inner-German border was 1378 kilometers long. They've only heard about the Berlin Wall, but that was only a small part of the border. So I wanted to bring the big picture back to young people's minds."
Hundreds died trying to cross the inner-German border
Stober added that "after three killings at the latest you'll automatically drop out of your action as a border guard, and you'll find yourself in a year 2000 courtroom facing multiple charges.
"By then it should have dawned on every gamer that this is not your regular first-person shooter, but it's something very different."
Reflection on the past
Adam Rafinski, a teacher at Karlsruhe University who has lent his support to Stober's game concept, maintains that "1378 km" is a serious game that you don't just play as a pastime, and that users can take a history lesson from the themes presented.
"I can well imagine that people who'll be playing this game will ask themselves a lot of questions," Rafinski said. "They'll want to know more about the fortifications, the automatic firing devices and all the rest, and why they were there. And they'll realize how difficult it must have been to make it across the border."
Author: Hardy Graupner (dfm)
Editor: Nancy Isenson | {
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The ELEAGUE Major is four days away, kicking off on January 22 with the Swiss group stage. Here is the first part of our series of previews, featuring teams ranked from #16 to #20: GODSENT, Liquid, FlipSid3, HellRaisers and fnatic.
The ELEAGUE Major will take place at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, from January 22-29, with a $1 million prize pool up for grabs once again, as has been the case since MLG Columbus 2016.
This Major will be the first to use the Swiss format in the group stage, which we saw in play at several Main Qualifiers as well as ESL One New York. Teams with the same win-loss record will be randomly matched in each round before they reach three wins (at which point they advance to playoffs) or three losses (and exit the tournament in groups).
The first round match-ups are the following:
As always, the upcoming Major will be one of the most stacked tournaments of the year, featuring 16 of the top 20 teams according to our ranking.
Our series of previews begins with the bottom five, whom we call The Underdogs: GODSENT, Liquid, FlipSid3, HellRaisers and fnatic, ranked from #16 to #20.
* Ratings used are from the past three months on LAN
First of all, who would've thought after the last Major that all players from the old fnatic would be considered underdogs at the next one? That's how things stand at the moment, as both of the Swedish teams have so far failed to live up to their previous standards. GODSENT have been the better of the two up to this point, although mostly because the new fnatic squad have been absent at most events.
After a disappointing couple of months, pronax and co. qualified for the Main Qualifier (as Freddy "KRIMZ" Johansson left for fnatic and GODSENT lost the spot at the Major). However, even against lower-tier competition, the Swedes faced issues and barely escaped some of the matches with their lives, playing overtime battles with numerous teams on their way to the victory in Bucharest.
GODSENT then attended DreamHack ZOWIE Open Winter, where they finished first in their group with wins over FlipSid3 and Kinguin, but were stopped in the semi-finals by a solid looking Gambit.
GODSENT skipping WESG due to little practice doesn't bode well
When it mattered most, flusha's team showed up, cruising through the Main Qualifier with three wins in a row, against Dignitas, G2, and HellRaisers. It seems Lekr0 fits in quite well, showing solid individual form at the aforementioned two events.
Their newest member Lekr0 took an extended vacation until the end of the first week of January, which gave them zero time to prepare for WESG. A loss to PRIDE in the DH Masters Las Vegas closed qualifier made GODSENT realize they wouldn't stand a chance at the Major without practice and controversially skip the $1,500,000 event only two days before the event started.
As the Major approaches, GODSENT's chances at advancing to playoffs are in doubt, not only by the community but quite obviously by the team itself. While most teams played for a solid portion of a month, the Swedish roster will have had one week of practice, which is simply not enough for a Major.
Another team who haven't quite been able to live up to some of their past results are Liquid. After a disappointing group stage exit at ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals, the American-Danish team brought in zews for much-needed guidance, as they were back in their in-game leadership shenanigans since Luis "peacemaker" Tadeu's departure.
At their first event with the new Brazilian coach, Liquid didn't show too much improvement. Northern Arena Montreal saw the North American squad exit in 5th-6th place, losing to both European teams (Heroic and G2) in the group stage.
zews had two months to work with in Liquid
Their IEM Oakland showing was significantly better, even though they still finished just below the playoffs teams. Liquid couldn't stand a chance against Astralis, but they destroyed Natus Vincere and TYLOO and lost narrowly to Immortals and G2.
That being said, zews barely had a chance to make significant changes due to very limited time and already seemed to have some sort of effect in Oakland. If that curve keeps going upwards, we might see a very different Liquid at the Major, especially as they have now had more than two months to figure out their flaws.
Bringing electronic into the team in September, FlipSid3 had to wait for their international debut until November, when they were set to attend iBUYPOWER Masters, the qualifier for IEM Oakland.
Last-minute visa issues prevented their new member from attending the event in Costa Mesa, however, and the team went out in last place with a stand-in, Owen "smooya" Butterfield.
Finally, FlipSid3 could show what they had in store at DreamHack ZOWIE Open Winter later that month. After losing to GODSENT in the initial round, B1ad3's team eliminated Dignitas in a tight series but couldn't overcome Kinguin and exited another tournament in groups.
FlipSid3's victory in Leipzig is a good sign, but the Major is a whole other level
After the Christmas and New Year's break, FlipSid3 were quickly back in business at DreamHack ASTRO Open Leipzig. The group stage saw them defeating the new German team BIG as well as Vega Squadron following double-digit scorelines. In the playoffs, F3 took down LDLC and BIG in a comfortable manner, clinching their very first international trophy.
That achievement will surely bring some confidence into the CIS camp, although it needs to be said that the competition there was no match to the one FlipSid3 will face at the Major. It is hard to see B1ad3 and company keeping their Legends status over so many big names, but they were able to surprise us before at ESL One Cologne 2016 by eliminating NiP and shouldn't be counted out.
HellRaisers started their journey to the Major at the European Minor, where they finished second in their group with series wins over Heroic and ENCE. Defeating Space Soldiers and GODSENT in narrow fashion in playoffs, they earned their place at the Main Qualifier for the third time in a row.
HellRaisers are coming into the Major as one of the bigger surprises of the Main Qualifier. ANGE1's team were up 2-0 after defeating mousesports easily and NiP in overtime, but they had to fight in three more rounds due to losses to GODSENT and OpTic.
In the end, they survived a narrow Overpass battle with Cloud9 to become the last team at the Major, their first one with this core of players.
Facing the right teams, HellRaisers could make a solid run at the Major
Over the last several months, ANGE1 has clearly become HellRaisers' best player despite also being the in-game leader and entry-fragger, although lately he had more help with DeadFox's addition. The Hungarian turned a few heads at EPICENTER, his first event with the team, and continued to do so at the Minor and the Main Qualifier, where he carried HR in the overtime win against NiP.
Overall, HellRaisers' chances at making it through aren't great, but they showed they could play with some of the best teams in the world at the qualifier. They will need a little bit of help from the randomizer, but if they face the right teams (such as any of the other Underdogs, mousesports, Gambit...) and their stars play well, they could squeeze in the three wins.
As mentioned above, fnatic have largely been inactive even before the addition of disco doplan back in November. With their previous lineup (with Lekr0 and John "wenton" Eriksson instead of KRIMZ and disco doplan), they only attended two events, ESL One New York and EPICENTER: Moscow, and exited in 5th-6th place at both.
After swapping the two players, dennis went inactive due to personal reasons. fnatic attended ELEAGUE Season 2 with coach Jumpy standing in and, understandably, the Swedes didn't make playoffs with losses to Dignitas and OpTic.
Due to dennis' inactivity, the Major will essentially be fnatic's debut
We have yet to see the current lineup in play offline, which essentially makes the Major their debut, which doesn't help fnatic's case at all.
They also have little to no true leadership, swapping the IGL role around a few times, agreeing to play more loosely. That can work, but only if the individual players deliver. fnatic have a fairly agreeable match-up in G2 to start it off, but the competition will be harder the further they go; with an untested team, keeping the Legends spot will be tough.
You can follow HLTV.org's Milan "Striker" Švejda on Twitter | {
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One of the basic rules of the Senate allows for unlimited discussion and debate. As long as someone wants to talk, discussion on a bill must continue. No vote can be held on a bill until all discussion/debate is closed.
If even one person wants to keep talking, debate on a bill continues.
The only way to make that person stop talking is when 60 Senators vote to end debate. This is called a cloture vote (cloture is from a word meaning to close off or bring to an end).
Cloture used to require a two thirds majority. This was back in the days when filibusters were rare. The cloture requirement was reduced from two-thirds to three-fifths in 1975--a more manageable 60 votes.
Please read this next part carefully, because it is the answer to the question "what happened to a simple majority."
Since Obama took office, Republicons have been filibustering everything. But they do not do it by actually standing on the floor talking. They do it by announcing in advance that none of them will vote for cloture.
Even when a bill is supported by a majority of Senators and has enough votes to pass if an up or down vote were held on the bill itself, if you cannot get the 60 votes for cloture, to end discussion of the bill, you never get to vote on the bill itself!
During the brief time that we had 60 people in the Democratic caucus, we did not always have 60 votes for cloture, because of out and out turncoats like Joe LIEberman, and conservaDems like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln. And now there are only 58 Dems because of Scott Brown and Mark Kirk. This is why midterm elections and special elections are important, dammit!
So we are forced to waste a lot of time trying to court one or two "moderate" votes on the R side (especially the "Maine Twins" Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins). But because Republicons have better adherence to authoritarian discipline than we do (and also withhold NRC campaign funds from people who vote the wrong way), their 40 vote bloc stands firm.
So long as the Rs vote in lockstep to support their filibusters, we need 60 votes to accomplish anything, because we need 60 votes just to be able to bring a bill to the floor for a vote.
This has also led to some breathtaking Republicon hypocrisy, where Senators can claim to be in favor of the bill itself, but then vote against cloture claiming they "just want more discussion". Republicons get to look like they support key legislation in the minds of their ill-informed and under-educated Fakes News watching constituents, while still obeying R Party discipline with transparent prevarications like "I support the bill, I just have problems with procedure."
I've got a problem with procedure too, when 40 Senators who represent less than 40% of the population can impose their will on the majority party representing the majority of the population!!!
The need for these cloture votes is one of the basic differences between the House and the Senate. Both bodies started out with unlimited debate, but now all bills in the House have limited debate, which means bills in the House always come up for a vote eventually.
So if I see one more person praise Speaker Pelosi for getting things through the House I will tear out what is left of my hair. Pelosi has done a good job, but people need to realize how much she is helped by House rules where she only needs a simple majority for everything. Even if several Blue Dogs desert her she still has more than enough votes.
If all Harry Reid needed was a simple majority on actual bills, we would have had almost everything we wanted in the last two years! If Reid had rules in the Senate that allowed ALL bills to come up for a straight up or down vote, a LOT more positive legislation would have been passed in the last two years! Yet people blame Reid and Obama for rules that neither one of them put in place!
When the 112th Congress is sworn in on January 4th, 2011, on the very first day the Senate is in session, there will be an opportunity to change Senate rules with a SIMPLE MAJORITY VOTE.
I join Rachel Maddow in saying that this is the single most important thing we can do to change Washington next year.
That one change would make the final two years of Obama's first term totally different from the first two years, and make it possible for much more progressive legislation to get through Congress.
It would also lessen a lot of the vitriolic blaming of Harry Reid and President Obama around here over legislative rules they were not responsible for. | {
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NEW YORK - Anti-abortion leaders are deeply worried that the Obama administration and other Democrats may try to capitalize on the slaying of Dr. George Tiller to defuse the abortion issue in upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Many anti-abortion groups condemned the killing of Tiller, a prominent abortion provider in Kansas. But they expressed concern that abortion-rights activists would use the occasion to brand the entire anti-abortion movement as extremist.
They also worried that there would be an effort to stifle anti-abortion viewpoints during questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Her exact views on abortion aren't known, but conservatives fear she supports abortion rights.
Said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, an anti-abortion activist: "No one should use this tragedy for political gain." | {
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8 Problems You’re Sure to Have When You’re Always the Tallest in the Room
In my seventeen years of always being among the tallest in the room, having reached a full 5 feet 11 inches (11 and a half, but I ignore that half) at the age of fifteen, I’ve gotten pretty good at living in this world despite the minor issues that arise when you’re an amazon. Some of which include…
1. The Average Sized Person vs. Hugs
Hugging is a fantastic thing; I think we can all agree. There’s nothing quite like pulling a good friend in for a long embrace. When you’re tall, though, hugs can get complicated. Any normal human’s head is going to end nestled right in your boobs, suddenly making a comforting action very uncomfortable.
2. Finding Potential Suitors
It is a cultural norm for men to be taller than their mates. Aesthetically, it just looks better. Being a tree makes it mighty hard to find a man taller than you. Height is often also seen as intimidating, which means that even the sweetest soul looks a tad tough in a big body. Plus, girls short and tall alike want men with some height, which means more competition for a smaller range of men.
3. The Lack of Nickname
As a tall woman, you will never be called “shrimp”. You will never be “tiny” or “peanut” or “minnie” or “sweetie” or anything else cute and endearing. There are no polite nicknames for tall people (if you find one, please let me know), so you will never ever have an adorable little moniker for friends and family to use.
4. No, I do not play volleyball
Because you are tall, everyone assumes you are an athlete. Toss (Hit? Bump? Spike?) a volleyball to me, and I swear it will just hit me in the face. Hand-eye coordination does not necessarily come with height.
5. You must be twenty
It’s Halloween and you’re twelve, trick-or-treating with your friends alone for the first time. You walk up to an elderly lady’s door. She looks you up and down, and then croaks, “Aren’t you a little old for this stuff? I need to save my candy for the real kids, sorry.” Seriously, that is one of my most traumatic memories. Everyone assumed I was twenty when I was twelve. Being tall can really mess up a childhood.
6. Walking at pace
I’m out with my friends, just strolling along, and then all of a sudden my friends are gone. I turn around and they’re a block behind me. Why am I only friends with tiny people?
7. You wonder why I hate going to clubs?
Everyone is shorter than me. All my friends are down at my boob-level, dancing, making faces at each other, having fun together. But I’m up here, trying not to get in anyone’s way, awkwardly shifting from side to side. Please stop bumping into my boobs. Please.
8. Wind
OKAY PEOPLE HIDING BEHIND ME DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM THE WIND/SUN/EX-BOYFRIEND’S GAZE. I am bigger, for sure, but I really don’t provide that much protection against anything. Sorry.
Being tall definitely has its upsides, though. I’ve never had a problem commanding attention; I’ve never had pants that were too long. People easily compare my height to that of models and my legs are looong. I’ve never had to wear painful high-heels. I’m only seventeen and yet I’m still offered the wine list at restaurants. I’ve never had to strain my neck at concerts.
I guess being tall really isn’t all that bad.
You can read more from Emily Joseph here. | {
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En 2011, aux États-Unis, le nombre de wagons transportant des produits pétroliers a augmenté de 44 % par rapport à l’année précédente. De 2008 à 2012, il est passé de 9500 à 97 000 wagons. Au Canada, entre 2009 et 2012, on est passé de 500 wagons de brut à 130 000. Pourquoi ce retour aussi fulgurant que soudain du transport pétrolier par train, alors que tous les yeux sont tournés vers la construction de pipelines ?
La réponse se trouve dans le pétrole de schiste, principalement celui du bassin Bakken au Dakota du Nord. L’exploitation de ce pétrole léger a fait du Dakota du Nord le deuxième producteur du pays, devant l’Alaska. Ce pétrole est loin du réseau de pipelines, conçu pour relier les secteurs de production du Texas, de l’Oklahoma et autres, et les centres de consommation à l’ouest et au nord-est des États-Unis. Il y a très peu de pipelines au Dakota, mais comme c’est traditionnellement un important producteur de boeuf relié aux marchés de l’Est par train, le Dakota a beaucoup de voies ferrées. Au début du XXe siècle, cet état disposait de trois fois plus de voies ferrées par habitant que le reste du pays. Encore aujourd’hui, il en compte 3700 km, et on remet en service d’anciennes lignes ferroviaires.
Évaluation à long terme difficile
Plus de la moitié de la production du Dakota est transportée par rail. À la fin de 2012, 800 000 barils/jours de pétrole de Bakken prenaient le train, dix fois plus qu’en août 2011. Une entreprise, BNSF Railway, a vu en cinq ans la part des produits pétroliers augmenter de 7000 %. Deux acteurs majeurs, l’Union Pacific et le Canadien National, sont dans la course. Le transport de produits pétroliers occupe une place relativement petite dans tout le transport ferroviaire, probablement au tour de 5 %. Mais c’est celui qui grossit le plus rapidement et il est très rentable.
L’histoire de la production pétrolière américaine et celle du chemin de fer vont de pair. Le chemin de fer a permis à John D. Rockefeller de développer Standard Oil. Son monopole sera ébranlé à partir de 1879 avec le succès du premier pipeline en Pennsylvanie. Le transport par pipeline est moins dispendieux que le transport par train. Est-ce dire que le Dakota de Nord est voué à terme à se convertir aux pipelines ? Rien n’est moins sûr. Pour l’instant, les prix élevés du brut de schiste permettent de se payer le train. Mais il y a autre chose.
Les bassins de pétrole de schiste ne se comportent pas comme les réserves de pétrole traditionnel. Ils sont plus difficiles à évaluer à long terme. Ont-ils une rentabilité passagère ? Seront-ils là dans 30 ans ? Les conséquences écologiques auront-elles raison de ce type d’exploitation ? Cette relative précarité retient d’éventuels investisseurs d’aller de l’avant dans la construction de pipelines, des projets coûteux dont la rentabilité dépend de la pérennité des oléoducs.
Le chemin de fer est plus flexible que le pipeline. Les grandes raffineries côtières sont plus rapidement atteignables. Les producteurs du Dakota peuvent plus rapidement changer de clients, au gré des prix pour maximiser les revenus. Et, il faut le dire, pour plusieurs compagnies de chemin de fer, le pétrole est une bouée de sauvetage et elles n’ont pas l’intention de regarder passer le train. All aboard !
Sables bitumineux
Et les sables bitumineux ? Ont-ils un avenir plutôt pipeline ou plutôt wagon ? Comme la capacité des pipelines dépasse de beaucoup la capacité du transport par rails et que le Canada veut en arriver à extraire 5 millions de barils/jour, le pipeline est avantagé. Mais le transport par wagon ne nécessite pas de diluer le bitume avec du condensat importé, contrairement au transport par pipeline. Cet avantage pourrait réduire le coût du transport par rails et pourrait devenir une possibilité en cas de baisse des prix du brut.
On pourrait donc se diriger vers un débat de relations publiques opposant les entreprises de chemin de fer aux propriétaires d’oléoducs, chacun ventant les mérites de son système tout en décriant l’autre. Les tenants des oléoducs peuvent avancer que leur réseau est enfoui, loin des habitations et des dangers de collision. Les autres pourront affirmer que comme le pétrole se retrouve dans des milliers de wagons au lieu d’être dans un seul pipeline, les rares déversements par wagons sont moins dommageables que les déversements de pipelines. Quoi qu’il en soit, c’est probablement un faux dilemme. Tant que le pétrole de schiste restera loin des pipelines, il continuera à être déplacé par train. Nous n’assistons pas à un choix entre deux façons de transporter le pétrole, mais à une juxtaposition de deux systèmes. Nous ne sommes pas devant un choix entre l’un ou l’autre, nous sommes devant la réalité de devoir vivre avec l’un et l’autre. Et les deux sont dangereux.
Pierre Ross - Recherchiste à Nature Québec | {
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Thank you for saying soLuna is my 'go to character' when I need inspiration or I'm bored so I am sure you will see here again soon ^-^ | {
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The swap by Triple Eight Race Engineering from the traditional V8 Supercars brake bias adjuster knob to a lever has rivals pondering its potential advantages and whether they will follow suit.
T8 has been running the lever in the Red Bull Holden Commodore VFs of Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes since the start of the season, but the change only became widely apparent to rival teams via in-car vision during the Tyrepower Tasmania SuperSprint at Symmons Plains in March.
The brake bias adjuster is one of the tools a driver has to control the handling of his car during a race. For instance, the bias would be wound further to the front as the fuel load lightened to prevent lock-ups.
The knob traditionally used in V8 Supercars is a 'set and forget' item which might be adjusted every few laps.
However, the belief among rival teams is that the T8 lever would permit constant adjustment during a lap, potentially allowing the brake balance to be changed between consecutive corners.
The lever sits to driver's left, whereas the knob is normally placed down to driver's right. The new set-up was designed by former T8 senior engineer Jeromy 'JJ' Moore, who left the team over the summer to join the Porsche World Endurance Championship program.
Red Bull Racing Australia team manager Mark Dutton admitted the lever did allow quicker changes.
"It is quicker, it is easier to access, and it is in a more natural position. They are the main reasons for it," Dutton told v8supercars.com.au.
"This (lever) is just easier. You could do that (adjust brake bias between corners) with the old one. There are no extra capabilities that you couldn't do with the knob that you can with the lever.
"But if you can do it more easily and repeatedly then you might open up the scope to change it more often around the track."
The move to a brake bias lever might sound like small beer, but in a Championship where much of the technology is controlled, any performance gain is vital.
Dutton emphasised the ergonomic advantage the lever provided the driver, something which potentially also translated into improved performance.
"You don't want the driver to not be able to do what he wants to do because it's not in the right spot or not quite easy enough to do, whether the steering is in the right position, the brakes are in the right position, the right angle of the seat.
"There are a multitude of things that people don't give enough credit to and that's just another one of them ... so ergonomics is a huge deal and it might sound boring but that is a performance thing."
Walkinshaw Racing's technical director Mat Nilsson said the lever had been spotted and confirmed there would be an investigation to establish whether the feature developed by WR's Holden factory rival was worth pursuing.
"We have discussed or flagged that Triple Eight have a system," he said. "So at some point we will probably look at it. But you have to pick your priorities and go from there.
"If it is a quick and easy change they can do then you do get an advantage out of it because they can change it more quickly and more regularly than what we can with a traditional bias adjuster. So they are probably in a situation where they can change the setting multiple times a lap."
Prodrive Racing Australia team principal Tim Edwards said the factory Ford squad was also pondering the lever and what - if any - response it might make.
"We have noticed it, it just depends what you are trying to achieve. For a particular corner on the track they might need a certain bias and on another part of the track they might need something different. So it's just a quick way of tuning the balance on the same lap.
"It's like anything, you see another team doing it and you have to evaluate whether you think there is an advantage in it and whether you want to do it or not.
"But I'd like to think there are things that are not so obvious we are doing that they are not doing."
Follow the next event, the SKYCITY Triple Crown from July 19-21 live on FOX SPORTS 506 across the three days and stay tuned to TEN and ONE for highlights. | {
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Del. Mark D. Sickles (D-Fairfax), seated right, gets a standing ovation after an emotional speech on a bill relating to religious objections to same-sex marriage at the Capitol in Richmond on Feb. 16. (Steve Helber/AP)
The Virginia House passed a bill Tuesday that would prohibit the government from punishing people and businesses who discriminate against same-sex couples, transgender individuals and those who have sex outside marriage.
Supporters say the Government Nondiscrimination Act is needed to protect what they call religious freedom in the face of shifting cultural attitudes toward gay rights and the legalization of gay marriage. Opponents say it’s a “license to discriminate,” with broad-reaching consequences.
The bill passed the Republican-controlled chamber 56 to 41, with seven Republican members voting “no,” two not voting and one absent. Although the vote is a win for the socially conservative wing of the party, the fact that some Republicans voted against it reflects a divide within the Republican Party in Virginia and the nation.
Before the vote, Del. Mark D. Sickles (D-Fairfax), who is openly gay, gave an emotional floor speech urging his colleagues to consider the sweep of history before they cast a vote that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
“You’ll have to excuse me for taking this bill a little personally,” he said.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has said he would veto the measure if it passes the Senate and reaches his desk. But, Sickles said, “Your kids will be looking back at what you do today and how you vote on this bill.”
He went on to read from the program of Equality Virginia’s annual dinner, noting prominent businesses and political donors that support gay rights, including utility giant Dominion, whose ad trumpeted the “power of diversity,” and Lutheran Family Services.
He received a standing ovation from House Democrats.
The bill’s sponsor, Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah), defended the bill, which he said would provide reasonable accommodation for deeply held religious beliefs.
“We find ourselves constantly under attack by the shifting cultural winds . . . that blow against us,” Gilbert said.
Gay rights activists are not satisfied with equality, he said, “and they will not be satisfied until people of faith are driven out of this discourse. They want us driven out.”
At Gilbert’s urging, some of his colleagues clapped and stood for him, as well.
[Religious freedom or license to discriminate?]
Under the bill, an individual, corporation, partnership, association, trust, society or any other legal or commercial entity can cite religious belief in defense of its opposition to gay couples, transgender people or unmarried couples without fear of losing tax benefits, grants, contracts, loans, scholarships, certification, accreditation or jobs. There are exceptions for hospitals making decisions about visitation or emergency medical treatment. | {
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Francesc Campoy
9 January 2015
Last November more than two hundred gophers from all across the United States got together for the first full-day Go conference in New York City.
The diverse speaker lineup included university students, industry experts, and Go team members.
And good news, everybody! All the talks were recorded and are available:
Two more talks come from the Go meetup in New York City, which met the day before GothamGo:
Benchmarking Go by Brian Bulkowski - the founder of Aerospike talks about profiling tools for Go and Linux, and micro benchmarks for goroutines, channels, buffers, and and other Go features.
Go Static Analysis Tools by Alan Donovan - a member of the Go team at Google NY gives a guided tour of several static analysis tools designed to help Go programmers understand, navigate , and refactor their code.
Make sure to have a look at all of those in preparation for the FOSDEM Go devroom FOSDEM in Brussels (Belgium) and gophercon.in in Bengaluru (India). | {
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Article content
For 25 wonderful years, the City Hall wading pool has been the glory of downtown Edmonton. Every summer, people flock there to wade and splash. It is our most beautiful, our most delightful, and our most popular downtown amenity. It makes City Hall feel accessible, joyously democratic, a place for the people.
So I was horrified to read Elise Stolte’s scoop Tuesday in the Journal telling us we’re spending $13 million to retrofit the pool as a much shallower fountain. Currently, the water is 40 cm deep, up to my knees when I wade in. The new pool would be 15 cm deep, barely up to my ankles.
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.
tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Paula Simons: Draining joy from City Hall pool is shallow thinking Back to video
City councillors weren’t given any advance warning, beyond a vague memo dated Sept. 22, 2017.
“The city hall fountain will also undergo construction in 2018 to addressing (sic) legislated safety and accessibility improvements,” it read.
That was it. No mention that the pool, as a functional pool, was to disappear. Indeed, the rather misleading artist’s rendering that councillors received showed kids frolicking in water far deeper than 15 cm. | {
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LeBron James has taken out a full-page ad in his hometown paper in which he thanks the people of Akron, Ohio, for supporting him -- and doesn't mention the city where he played basketball the last seven years.
The ad, appearing in the Akron Beacon Journal, includes photos of James taking part in community events in Akron, including an annual downtown bike-a-thon he sponsors. That event is scheduled for Saturday, and James plans to appear.
James left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat as a free agent last month, joining Olympic teammates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
The move set off a storm of negative reaction from Cavaliers fans and team owner Dan Gilbert, who sent off a scathing letter vowing to win a title before James does.
Two days ago, former Cavaliers center Zydrunas Ilgauskas -- who signed with the Heat July 17 -- took out a full-page ad in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, thanking fans for their support. Ilgauskas, like James, had played his entire career in Cleveland before signing with Miami.
In James' ad, he thanks Akron residents for their love and support. He calls the city his home and the "central focus" of his life and says he will always come back.
"It was here where I first learned how to play basketball, and where I met the people who would become my lifelong friends and mentors. Their guidance, encouragement and support will always be with me," reads James' ad in the Beacon Journal.
"Akron is my home, and the central focus of my life. It's where I started, and it's where I will always come back to. You can be sure that I will continue to do everything I can for this city, which is so important to my family and me. Thank you for your love and support. You mean everything to me."
About 35 miles to the north in Cleveland, the feelings are not so warm and fuzzy.
In Cleveland sporting goods stores, anti-James T-shirts have become popular, including one that says "We Are All Quitnesses." That's a bitter nod to a gigantic downtown mural -- since taken down -- that featured James with his arms outstretched after tossing powder into the air under the heading: "We Are All Witnesses."
And last week, a baseball fan wearing a Heat jersey with James' name on it was escorted out of a Cleveland Indians game after he was pelted with beer and peanuts by angry spectators.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. | {
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A South African judge has blocked the country’s planned withdrawal from the international criminal court (ICC), saying the move is unconstitutional without prior parliamentary approval.
Sitting in the high court in Pretoria, deputy judge president Phineas Mojapelo said on Wednesday that any move to pull out of the ICC must be “on the basis of the expressed authority of the constitution”. He ordered Jacob Zuma, the South African president, to retract the country’s “invalid” notification to the court of withdrawal.
Michael Masutha, the justice minister, said the government would decide how to proceed, including a possible appeal, after reading the full judgment but indicated it still intended to press ahead with the withdrawal. He described the judgment as a policy decision.
Pretoria said last year it planned to leave the ICC after receiving criticism for ignoring the court’s order to arrest the visiting Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is accused of genocide and war crimes, in June 2015.
Under the Rome statute, the founding treaty of the ICC, countries have a legal obligation to arrest anyone sought by the tribunal. Ministers had argued that the ICC’s obligations were inconsistent with domestic laws giving sitting leaders diplomatic immunity.
The clash over Bashir was the latest in a series of disputes rooted in deep suspicion of the institution among many leaders in Africa.
Opened in July 2002, the court has repeatedly faced criticism by some on the continent who regard it as racist or imperialist. Nine out of the 10 cases being investigated by the ICC involve alleged crimes in Africa.
Last month, African leaders adopted a strategy calling for a collective withdrawal from the court. The non-binding decision came behind closed doors near the end of an African Union summit.
Late last year, Burundi and the Gambia also announced plans to leave the court, leading to concerns that other states would follow.
In a boost for the ICC, however, Adama Barrow, the new democratically elected president of the Gambia, recently reversed that decision – made by Yahya Jammeh, the west African state’s former authoritarian leader.
Defenders of the ICC, the first legal body with permanent international jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, say the majority of its investigations have followed an explicit request or grant of jurisdiction from the government in the country where the crimes were committed, as in the case of Uganda.
Wednesday’s decision in Pretoria high court was largely expected as Mojapelo had already told government lawyers during a previous hearing that he was concerned that officials had exceeded their constitutional powers.
The application to stop the withdrawal was brought by one of South Africa’s two main opposition parties – the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA).
“We have seen how our country’s approach to foreign policy under [president] Jacob Zuma has been at loggerheads with the human rights-based foreign policy spearheaded by the late president Nelson Mandela. By irrationally withdrawing from the ICC, South Africa is out of touch with other progressive and democratic nations on the continent,” James Selfe, MP and chairman of the DA’s federal executive, told reporters earlier this week.
The government will decide whether to appeal, officials said. | {
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【球界ここだけの話（１７９）】広島の癒し系ポッチャリ左腕は無類の猫好き…ペット可の部屋も借りていた
【球界ここだけの話（１７９）】
「ワタシハー、オデブー、チャンデスカ！？」。１５日のＤｅＮＡ戦（マツダ）の試合前練習が終わったときのこと。広島のマイク・ザガースキー投手（３２）から突然、満面の笑みで歩み寄られた。
１メートル８３、１０９キロの体を目の前に、記者は少し戸惑いながらも「ノ、ノー…」と答えると、満面の笑みを浮かべながら「イエーイ！！」と近くにいた野村とハイタッチをかわした。
テンションの高さはいつものことだが、それでもここ最近は、それに拍車がかかっている。まさにここだけの話だが、６月２２日にも米国で飼っていた黒と白のツートンカラーの愛猫「ルピータ」（８歳、雌）がローレン夫人の母親と一緒に来日するといい、ザガースキーにとっても楽しみで仕方のないよう。
癒し系ポッチャリ左腕で全国的に愛される存在だが、チーム内では知る人ぞ知る猫好き。母国の実家では４匹も飼っており、その内の１匹が今回初めて来日する。自身の加入が決まってからも「猫が飼いたい」とチームが用意するマンションではなく、わざわざ球場から離れているペット可のマンションを借りた。
また２月の宮崎・日南キャンプが始まる前にはスタッフから「日南は人の数よりも、猫の数のほうが多いぞ」と聞かされると「本当か！？ 本当なのか！？」と目の色を変えたという。キャンプが始まれば、ホテルから球場に行くまでの道すがら、猫を見つけると口笛を吹いて必死に手なずけようとしていた。
その１５日のＤｅＮＡ戦は七回から登板し３人をわずか９球でピシャリ。畝投手コーチからも「左打者もしっかりと抑えてくれるし、今後もドンドン使っていく」と高い評価を受けた。愛猫が来日する日に向けて、左腕の調子も上がってきているようだ。（玉木充） | {
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Brighton & Hove Albion defender Gaetan Bong has signed a new one-year deal at the club, running until June 2020.
The 31-year-old, who has made 47 Premier League appearances since helping the club reach the top flight in 2017, put pen to paper on a contract extension earlier today.
Bong has contributed towards four of the seven clean sheets Chris Hughton’s team have secured in the Premier League so far this campaign, as he closes in on 100 appearances for the club.
Hughton said, “Gaetan has been part of the squad for the majority of my time here, and he’s proven to be an important player for us in both the Championship and Premier League.
“He gives everything on the field and sets a great example. His professionalism in training every day is commendable, and he thoroughly deserves his new deal.”
The Cameroonian was one of many players brought into the club during the summer transfer window in 2015, as Hughton made additions to the playing squad after steering the club to Championship safety.
Bong made 40 league appearances for the Seagulls during his first two seasons, which culminated in winning promotion to the Premier League against Wigan Athletic at the Amex Stadium.
Markus Suttner and Bernardo have provided Bong with competition for the left-back spot since reaching the top flight, but the full-back was a consistent figure towards the end of the 2017/18 campaign and has played 24 times the season.
Bong also came out of international retirement last year, and has since featured for Cameroon in African Cup of Nations qualifying matches against Comoros and Morocco, before captaining his nation in a friendly against Brazil. | {
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Mahashta Murasi claims that he was born in January 1835, which make him the oldest man alive till date. Murasi, if born on the same day he claims, will be the oldest man alive on earth and the oldest man to have ever lived according to Guiness Book of World Records.
According to the officials, Murasi was born and brought up in Bangalore, and is recorded to have lived in Varanasi since 1903.
He worked as a cobbler in the city until 1957, when he retired at the already venerable age of 122.
The man’s birth certificate and identity cards all seem to confirm his version, but unfortunately no medical examination can confirm his saying for now. | {
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This article is the third installment of my examination of reports going to Toronto Executive Committee and to the Metrolinx Board on June 28, 2016. For a complete list, see Part I of this series.
This article deals with two separate reports from the City of Toronto and from Metrolinx about Fare Integration. These two reports have quite different outlooks. For Metrolinx, there is an acknowledgement that any new fare policy will be difficult, but a determination to stay the course with their work plan and fare models. For Toronto, the focus is on the inequity of short versus medium and long-distance GO fares (a problem not just for Toronto as a node), and on the changes needed for GO to become more than a 905-to-Union Station commuter railway.
Additional material comes from the Metrolinx Fare Integration Advocacy Groups & Academics’ Workshop held on June 24, 2016. Presentations from this workshop are not yet online.
The Metrolinx Report
The fundamental question about any attempt to restructure fares is “what is our goal”. Moreover, are the goals clear and the effects measurable, or are they simply a mushy political statement of “making things better” without any sense of what, exactly, that means? The following slides are taken from the Metrolinx Update [pp 10-11]
When the work on Fare Integration began at Metrolinx, the framework for the study was revenue neutrality – that somehow all of the existing fare revenue could simply be reallocated by shifting charges around (and possibly acquiring net new revenue from riders attracted by the new tariff). This simply was not possible if the idea was to reduce or eliminate “double fares” without a substantial effect on other riders. In parallel, there are the concepts of “fairness” and “social equity”. One addresses the perception that some riders travel at much less than the “fair” price they should pay, while the other speaks to the premise that some riders should travel at a lower fare to relieve their low income status. Finally, there is the issue of the “value” of transit service, and the components that might justify different fares for what would otherwise be the same trip between “A” and “B”.
The philosophical conflicts between these and other goals have never been addressed, but instead the shopping list above is available to justify (or refute) any proposal without being consistently applied, or applied on a comparative basis.
Behind the entire discussion has always been the inequity of the “double fare”, and this is summarized by a Metrolinx slide.
“Choosing cheaper and slower trips on the TTC” also brings political pressure for the extension of TTC rapid transit service into the 905. The debate has been as much about bringing the reach of “TTC fares” closer to the commuter market as it has been the stimulus of development in the 905. This skews priorities for capital spending toward subway construction in place of service improvements on the commuter rail network. Indeed, one could argue that SmartTrack is an example, flawed though it might be, of the perception that GO is too expensive to play a meaningful role beyond its current function.
A subtle distinction in the “boundary effect” with existing fares is the presence of absence of the Presto fare card. Unified payment technology is a separate issue, but a major annoyance for riders, from the question of unified fares. The former problem will vanish by the end of 2016 as the TTC completes its Presto migration and the remaining issue will be the perceived fairness of cross-border fares.
The workshop produced some interesting stats (for which the reports are not yet online), notably a breakdown of “cross-border” trips. On a daily basis, there are 802.5 thousand trips crossing a fare/service boundary:
127.3k trips from outside Toronto to Planning District 1 (PD1), the downtown core
237.4k trips from outside Toronto to other locations in the 416
154.5k trips from Toronto to outside of the 416
283.3k trips between locations outside of Toronto
Collectively, Metrolinx claims that there are about 4 million daily trips implying that the cross-border moves represent about 20% of the total.
These numbers should make readers pause for a moment because the TTC carries less than 2 million a day, and the rest of the GTHA comes nowhere near this level (GO Transit is 1/10 the volume). The first question is whether these are “linked” or “unlinked” trips, although if they are unlinked, then the border crossing disappears because it exists at the boundary between links (e.g. GO train to TTC subway). Alternately, is this a projection for a future date when ridership has doubled compared to today?
The breakdown above illustrates an important point: a minority of the cross-border trips are going to downtown, roughly 1/8 of the total, and half of them are bound for locations outside of Toronto itself either from within the City, or from one transit system to another. Moreover, GO Transit trips are overwhelmingly bound to or from Union Station (94%), and so there is a much larger volume of travel crossing fare boundaries than GO Transit itself represents.
Even more astounding, the modelling predicts that removing the fare barrier (the exact details are not published) would increase trips by only 22,000, or roughly half a percent of the total. The expected shift of auto to transit trips is in the range of 0.4% to 0.7%, a value so small as to be within the margin of error of any estimate. If the intention is to encourage more travel with fewer boundary-induced penalties, this is a hopeless outcome. There is absolutely no point in throwing the entire region’s fare structure up in the air for such a small benefit to riding or to reduced auto travel.
My gut feeling is that the numbers are wrong, but the material presented at the workshop only included summary figures without the underlying data.
The second bullet in the Vision is the experience of regional transit as one network despite multiple providers. This will never be possible if there are wildly different levels of service quality (frequency, hours, transfer co-ordination). Even within Toronto there is a huge difference between the standard applied to rapid transit service (frequent service regardless of demand) and that used for surface routes (frequency based on actual demand), and the disparity is even greater when the 905 systems are included. An integrated fare, whatever that means, will not change this.
A major source of increased travel demand by any mode is the suburb-to-suburb commute. This market has a very complex origin-destination pattern, and it does not lend itself to the simple solution of building one rapid transit line that will magically solve all problems. “Rapid transit” will continue to be distant from most suburban travellers, and the degree to which transit’s presence must expand simply to be a credible option for this market is enormous. Low levels of transit use today do not bring strong voter support for big increases in transit spending.
A related problem is whether suburban networks should focus on local travel which is today overwhelmingly by car as there is no alternative, or on providing “last mile” services for the regional commuter system. These have very different travel patterns, and the choice to serve one may come at the expense of the other. This is not just a 905 issue, and we see within Toronto a surface network where a significant function in the outer 416 is to deliver riders to the subway, not necessarily to other non-subway destinations. The two goals continue a tug-of-war for attention and funding within Toronto transit planning.
Metrolinx has proposed three concepts for a new fare structure pretty much since the beginning of the debate.
Many different price models have been run by Metrolinx to see their effect, but none has been published. Although numbers showing effects appear in public reports, the underlying assumptions and the comparative effect of changing the fare model are unknown. An informed debate is impossible without this.
The City report contains a superior presentation of the fare schemes by placing them on one page where they are easily compared. The substantial changes in short-distance GO fares are obvious, but also the effect on local fares in the various schemes. Of particular importance is the fact that a large proportion of “local” trips within Toronto include some degree of subway travel, and so the number of riders who could face a higher fare (possibly, but not necessarily offset by a lower fare for short surface-only trips) is substantial.
A notable change in the definition of “rapid transit” compared to earlier versions is that “LRTs” are now included as higher-priced services. Originally this included only the Toronto subway because, according to Metrolinx, the model data are based on 2011 travel patterns and there was no LRT or BRT travel in that network. For an agency supposedly planning for 2031 and beyond, that is an astounding admission. Moreover, there is no reason why BRT lines should not receive the same treatment.
It is ironic that in the process of trying to “integrate” fares, Metrolinx proposes to balkanize the local transit systems. This brings the obvious point of separate pricing based on a class of service, and just what defines the transition between classes. There is now a premium fare on some TTC express buses to downtown, but the York University Express runs on a transit only road at regular TTC fares. BRT roads in the 905 provide faster service for some routes, although they are rarely “end to end” operating on reserved lanes. Should a higher fare be paid for these services? Should the Spadina streetcar be a premium fare “LRT” even though it is one of the slowest routes in the system, a function of high demand, closely-spaced stops and many traffic signals? Should the Hurontario LRT be a premium fare service while routes on the Mississauga busway or Viva in York Region operate at standard fares?
What is really going on here is that Metrolinx is defending the higher fare for GO Transit by attempting to merge the “premium” subway service (and now LRT) into that fare class, even though GO provides demonstrably different service because of its very widely spaced stations. (We will ignore the “express subway” in Scarborough for the purpose of this discussion.) Riders on the Yonge subway at peak periods might disagree that theirs is a “premium” service as the alternative, the Yonge streetcar, is only a distant memory for most of them.
Modification of the existing system is self-evidently the easiest to implement because it requires comparatively small changes to the structure (same basic ideas with possible adjustment of individual components such as co-fares or the GO tariff). This structure may have the least increase in TTC/905 transfers, but this is not quantified as to scale relative to the other concepts. Are we talking about a major uplift in cross-border travel, or relative differences among the small values?
Both concepts 2 and 3 speak of a reduction in longer distance subway trips, but do not address where these trips have gone. Did they migrate to buses, to GO, to autos? The question of change in travel mode induced by the fare structure shows up in various ways. Zone fares make life much more complex for local trips (which cover a huge territory when one considers the size of Toronto). A modified GO fare (part of concept 1) leads to the greatest growth on GO, but can GO actually absorb the demand?
There is a disconnect between past claims that “GO is full” and the idea that the commuter rail network can take on a significant new role for shorter trips. In the workshop, there was even a passing reference to forcing demand balancing through fare policy. This would be a contrary to the stated goals except for the idea of distributing demand “efficiently through the network”, a concept that opens a Pandora’s box of whether capital or operating “efficiencies” should trump passenger convenience and the attractiveness of service.
The claimed benefit-cost ratio of 3.3 to 5.0 is simply not credible without knowing the basis of calculation. What costs are incurred? Are new operating subsidies implied? Where is the cost of additional service to improve the 905 bus networks and address both local travel demand and the “last mile problem” for GO? Metrolinx is in love with benefit-cost ratios, but their calculations are often dubious, and the use of a very long timescale (60 years) has the earmarks of an attempt to include as much future revenue as possible.
Achieving increased ridership through fare changes is incredibly expensive. The 1% new ridership shown above would cost $130-180m depending on the assumed fare structure. How this can possibly have a positive benefit-cost ratio is a mystery.
The last bullet is understated and roundabout, yet vital – greater ridership increases would come from development of the transit network. In other words, the fare system alone is insufficient to bring growth. Any tactic that rebalances fares involves more subsidy and revenue reallocation to existing riders than it does to attracting new ones. Service is key.
The shift of riders from GO to local transit to trips to the downtown core must not be ignored, and on two counts. First, there is no capacity to absorb such an increase, and the cost of providing new capacity (capital and operating) must be weighed against the benefit to the affected riders. Second, it is clear that the demand model “believes” that riders are price-sensitive, and this has implications for the effect of fare increases some options would impose on local trips.
The justifications for fare-by-distance reveal a strange view of how the network would behave. First, it would give “greater customer choice” between rail services including LRT. That presumes, of course, that such a choice actually exists. For example, the Crosstown LRT is planned not as a net new service, but as a replacement for a large number of bus routes just as the Bloor and Yonge subways replaced very intensively used streetcar routes in their time. Riders will be forced to pay more for the new service because they have no option.
Moreover, the absence of BRT belies a Metrolinx focus on inside-416 “rapid transit” as a cash cow and their long-standing view that the Crosstown should be viewed and operated as a “regional” service. A discussion of outside-416 “rapid transit” fares is long overdue, including a definition of just what that term means.
The idea that FBD would be used to offset “revenue decreases from fare reductions elsewhere” shows what is really going on here. The only way to make the scheme revenue neutral and avoid the need for higher subsidy is to charge some riders more so that others can pay less. That is not what “fare integration” is supposed to be about.
After all of the machinations about possible fare structures, Metrolinx comes to the conclusion that they can achieve “significant benefits” by modifying the existing system. As with so much else in this study, what is missing here is a quantification of relative benefits and costs, not to mention the numbers of riders affected and the scale of the effects on their travel budgets.
Throughout this entire discussion, Metrolinx has failed to consider the role of time-based fares, that is to say, the treatment of a “transfer” as a time-limited pass rather than the more restrictive use it has today for single trips and limited cross-system travel. Indeed, when this has been raised in the past, “time-based fares” were misrepresented as charging by trip minutes, and “transfer rules” were considered as local decisions beyond the study’s scope. The move to a “two hour transfer”, a form already used in much of the GTHA, eliminates much complexity in automated fare collection, and enables “trip chaining” where multiple short hops are not discouraged through the requirement for a full fare at every stopover. This addresses a major social equity issue for riders whose travel patterns are much more local, with multiple stops, than the typical commuter pattern.
Also missing here is a substantive discussion about costs and “fairness” of the fare system. Many debates have turned on the perception that “somebody else” isn’t paying enough, and that transit nirvana could be attained simply by charging “them” more. Conversely, some fare options sit for years as proposals because nobody wants to pony up the added subsidy they might require, and the perception that yet another group of “not I” is getting a break on fares at the general expense. This is a ludicrous situation when we see daily press conferences where Ministers and Mayors never tire of reminding us of the billions in spending on new capital projects.
The TTC estimates that a two-hour transfer would cost a bit over $20 million in foregone revenue. I refuse to use the term “lost revenue” because for that price, we are gaining something in return – a transit system that does not penalize short-hop trip patterns. It is an investment, not a cost, and should be evaluated just as any other proposal on that basis.
Future work will concentrate on the “modify” option “for deeper evaluation, considering short-, medium-and longer-term opportunities” [p 19].
We have travelled a very long distance to reach the point of acknowledging that turning the fare system upside down might not be the ideal approach.
The City of Toronto Report
The City’s report on Fare Integration takes quite a different tack from that by Metrolinx. The City is looking both at how fares could be used to increase the role of GO within the 416, but also at the ways in which the Metrolinx schemes actually work contrary to provincial policy. The situation is complicated by the need to maintain the fiction that “SmartTrack” will actually exist as a separate service rather than simply applying a new fare structure to all GO operations within Toronto, including to the corridors that were not part of the Mayor’s election platform.
The focus is overwhelmingly on GO+TTC fares, as opposed to TTC+905 fares for local services.
The discussion is summarized thus:
The fare policy issues with respect to the current state of GO Transit fares in Toronto can be summarized into the following problem statements: 1. GO Transit fares are structured to benefit long-distance commuters, which encourages urban sprawl and is thus at odds with City goals and objectives and provincial growth management policies.
2. GO Transit fares are relatively high for short trips (on a per-kilometre basis), which discourages transit riders in Toronto who tend to make shorter trips on average due to closer proximity to Union Station; the major destination point for trips on GO Transit.
3. GO Transit fares are not affordable to low-income residents (a large number of whom live in neighborhoods where GO Transit is the only rapid transit option) due to the high cost of short trips within city limits.
4. The absence of a co-fare between TTC and GO Transit services reduces the opportunity for transit riders in Toronto to use the GO Transit network as an integrated component of an efficient transit journey. [p 21]
The City seeks to have GO make two changes: reduce the fixed component of their fares so that distance is the greater determinant for short trips, and provide a TTC-GO co-fare to reduce or eliminate the barrier to travel on GO (and by extension SmartTrack) within the City. The report is guardedly optimistic that Metrolinx is headed in a compatible direction.
Some elements of the fare structure concepts being considered by Metrolinx in the GTHA Fare Integration review appear to conceptually address some of these considerations. Staff support the general direction that appears to show a reduction in the base fare for regional transit in each concept, and consistently applying the co-fare as shown in the modified ‘status quo’ concept. The actual fare levels for the base and distance components and co-fares have not yet been addressed. The implementation of SmartTrack/GO-RER requires the resolution of fare structures, price levels and transfer policies between GO Transit and TTC services, particularly within SmartTrack corridors. Fares on SmartTrack must be logically consistent with fares for other transit services within the city, as well as fares within the corridor beyond SmartTrack stations … . [p 3]
A separate report will come to Council from the City Manager on SmartTrack fares at a later date.
Unlike Metrolinx, the City actually analyzes GO fares to expose their built-in inequity.
The inflection in the curve occurs roughly at the transition from the 905 into Toronto where GO has traditionally charged more, at least in part because they claimed that Toronto riders would flood their services if fares were cheaper.
Reflecting the original purpose of the system, the fare structure has been designed to attract long-distance commuter trips and discourage short-distance trips. In order to encourage GTHA residents outside of Toronto to choose GO Transit, transit fares have been maintained at relatively low rates for longer-distance trips. [p 11]
This problem does not only affect travel to Union, but to other potential nodes on the network. For Kipling Station, the cost of accessing the subway by GO is very high just for the GO component of the journey, never mind the additional TTC fare. It is little surprise that a subway extension is among the options often heard from those living to the west of Kipling.
At Oakville, the same situation applies. It is much cheaper (by distance) to travel from Union or from Hamilton than it is from stations nearby. Metrolinx may talk a good line about nodal development other than downtown, but their fare structure does not support this.
These examples demonstrate how GO Transit’s fare structure is inconsistent with the long-term objectives for the nodal transit-oriented development that GO-RER is intended to catalyze along GO Rail lines. The high base fare and low distance-based component makes short trips on GO Transit expensive, discouraging its use for that purpose. [p 15]
Although GO is nominally distance based, the fare zones have a gerrymandered quality showing what has been necessary to superimpose higher “in town” fares on what should be a distance-based zone system.
The City generously observes that Metrolinx is trying to fix things.
Metrolinx has also taken some incremental but concrete steps toward correcting the problem. During the consideration of recent GO Transit fare increases taking effect February 2016, the Metrolinx board approved a tiered approach to fare increases where fares for short trips were frozen at 2015 levels. This effectively froze fares from Union Station to 75% of GO stations within Toronto. [p 13]
The tiered approach to GO increases is actually one that perpetuates and accentuates the lower level of long-distance fares which have the smallest percentage increases because there are not enough tiers in the Metrolinx fare model to embrace them equitably. A very basic calculation should be possible with the fare determined as:
Fare = Base + (Distance * Rate)
Both the Base and Rate values would go up by the same percentage each year unless there were a long term plan to rebalance these gradually instead of all at once. The Metrolinx tiered approach does not, and never has followed that pattern.
Lest Metrolinx present everything as sweet agreement among all parties, the City is more circumspect.
City and TTC staff support certain elements of the general direction presented in the Metrolinx fare structure concepts. Each concept shows a reduction in the base fare for regional transit, which is consistent with the direction this report suggests that Metrolinx consider. Actual fare levels for the base and distance components are not addressed in these concepts and need to be the subject of further analysis and discussion. [p 10]
The City raises problems with the Union-centric nature of the Metrolinx presentation, as well as with the high level of integration at the service and operational level between modes on the TTC. To save on scrolling, here is the chart of Metrolinx proposals again.
In Figure 4, Metrolinx has characterized the current ‘status quo’ fare structure. This diagram reflects the fare structure from the perspective of Union Station. A more generic characterization of the fare structure is diagrammed in Figure 8, reflecting fares for transit trips that could start and end anywhere in the region, and accurately shows GO Transit’s distance-based fares applying to short and medium length trips. Figure 5 shows the co-fare being made consistent across the region, with the price level again not defined. Concepts that introduce additional service-based elements into the structure (such as Figure 7) raise concerns, such as divergence between local surface and rapid transit, due the evolution of the TTC into a highly integrated system. [p 10]
If the base GO fare were lowered, and the distance component increased, this would make short trips cheaper, but long trips more expensive, a result that might not be attractive in the outlying portions of GO’s network (Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Barrie). This brings up the basic question of whether GO exists primarily to recover its costs, or to encourage a shift from auto to transit riding. Are higher per kilometer subsidies to very long trips justified by the reduction of auto travel? In any event, those long-haul subsidies should not come at the expense of short-haul riders.
The City notes that the GO fare structure is out of step with many existing policies and goals.
The current fare structure of GO Transit is inconsistent with a number of key local and provincial policies, especially in the areas of growth management, city-building, social equity, transit ridership and related policies … . There are several reasons for this: The fare structure is not integrated with local systems (especially in Toronto where no co-fares is available), and fare levels are inconsistent with those charged by local agencies.
The high base fare discourages shorter trips and compact development, and the low distance-based component encourages longer trips and urban sprawl.
The lack of financial incentives to use GO Transit does not encourage alternative modes of transportation as a policy imperative, contributing to greater greenhouse gas emissions by private vehicles. [pp 10-11]
Equity issues are discussed far more extensively by the City than by Metrolinx. There remains a basic question of “what do we mean by ‘equity'”, but at least the City is engaged with this. Today, discounts go to various groups regardless of their ability to pay such as seniors and students. Indeed, there is no mechanism in the current fare system to differentiate on any basis other than a widely recognized and documented one (seniors’ cards, student cards, apparent age of children, etc).
For transit fares this is a particular problem because subsidies are provided individually when the fare is paid, not (like shelter costs) on a group basis to a family and its dependents. This can be addressed through smart cards like Presto registered as part of a benefits group, but this is not as simple as a supply of subway tokens provided below cost for sharing as needed.
The City has 31 Neighbourhood Improvement Areas of which only 5 are served by the subway system, but more by the GO network.
This alignment is not surprising because rail corridors tend to serve old industrial districts where housing would be cheaper, and the social environment less supportive than in less industrialized residential areas. The NIAs represent 12% of the City’s population. However, the high cost of short-distance GO fares makes this network essentially vanish from the travel options available to low-income riders.
Co-fares figure into this too because even if GO’s own fares were lower, there would still be the disincentive of paying a full TTC fare just to reach a GO station.
In a masterpiece of understatement, the City observes:
There does not appear to be a clearly stated policy rationale for the TTC (and trips originating in Toronto) to not have the same co-fare treatment as is offered to 905 municipal systems. [p 17]
The rationale, of course, is that GO (and by extension Queen’s Park) prefer to subsidize the 905 and leave Toronto to its own devices. This might work in an era where the province had little role in Toronto’s transit beyond handing over money now and then for new ribbon-cutting opportunities. However, with the increased presence both through the takeover of LRT network construction and with the recognition that GO could do more for local travel, this isolation doesn’t work.
As with any fare structure, the underlying policy choices can lead to distortions such as the relative cost of including GO travel in one’s journey. In the example below, one who journeyed from somewhere in southern Etobicoke to Union via TTC plus GO (to avoid the interminable ride on the streetcar network over that distance) would pay more than someone coming from Port Credit Station, which is only one beyond Long Branch. This is an example of a provincial policy that hurts Toronto riders, but it gets far less attention than the griping we might hear from the lack of 905-416 co-fares at Kipling Station.
It is no surprise that the number of Toronto residents making the TTC-to-GO transfer daily is under 10,000 while in the 905, there are far more local transit-to-GO transfers, 38,000. Even the attempt to provide an “integrated” fare at Danforth and Exhibition Stations has produced very little uptake because riders face the cost of a Metropass plus a $60 premium to ride on GO for their hop to Union Station.
A fascinating view of co-fares revealed by the City report (but not, as far as I know, in any public Metrolinx report) is that co-fares are not a significant reason why riders choose GO.
Metrolinx has recently undertaken a review of the co-fare program. The original purpose of the co-fare was to replace GO Transit’s discontinued community shuttles, which connected people living in 905 residential communities without good local transit to nearby GO stations during the system’s earlier years of operation. A secondary benefit is relieving the need to construct and maintain expensive and land-consumptive parking spaces at GO stations. The review found that co-fares did not contribute significantly to ridership on the GO system, as existing co-fare users would either continue paying full local transit fares or drive to GO stations. Metrolinx will consider the future of the co-fare program in conjunction with a new station access policy. The conditions for success for a co-fare are significantly different in the City of Toronto. The high frequency of service and good network coverage provided by local TTC routes means Toronto does not have the same “first and last mile problem” 905 transit providers have that discourages GO Transit riders from accessing GO stations by local transit. Further, there is a lack of abundant, free parking at GO stations in Toronto. [p 20]
The City goes on to observe that the $13 million Metrolinx now spends on co-fares for the 905 might provide greater value-for-money in Toronto where the ability to feed the GO network through the TTC is higher than in the 905. I cannot help seeing a ghostly “wink” in that statement because it aims straight at the type of financial analysis underlying so much that Metrolinx does. If transit cannot get “value-for-money”, then we don’t do it, no matter what.
The basic point, as I stated earlier about long-trip subsidies, is that GO exists also as an instrument of policy to get people out of their cars, and to avoid expansion of the expressway network. This has a cost both in GO operations and in the need to subsidize local transit services, one which Ontario has consistently avoided. The skewed fare system is a direct result. | {
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Florida Atlantic University has dropped its plan to name a stadium after GEO Group, a for-profit prison corporation, after weeks of protests by students and civil rights groups. GEO had pledged $6 million to the school in exchange for the naming rights to the stadium.
Student groups, faculty members, and alumni had opposed the gift because of a long list of allegations of human rights abuses at GEO Group facilities. The Boca Raton-based company faced a Justice Department investigation into abuses at a Mississippi youth detention facility that found, “widespread and significant deficiencies at the facility,” according to a DOJ press release. Allegations of substandard medical care and other abuses by two immigrant rights activists that a GEO-run Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Broward County led 26 members of Congress to sign a letter requesting an investigation into the facility.
The negative publicity GEO received due to their failed bid to brand the FAU Owls’ home field will likely not affect the company’s business. GEO Group runs 96 facilities worldwide, and has seen its revenue triple over the past ten years, taking in $1.6 billion in 2011 alone. According to a 2012 report by ProPublica, the total number of prisoners in private facilities increased 37% between 2002 and 2009. | {
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and also I know the anatomy sucks something awful, but I'm just not in the mood to fix it
So who has Skyward Sword? I DON'T because I'm a poor kid with no money but maybe I'll get it for Christmas. So no spoilers please
It's been a long time since I've actually liked something I've drawn! It seems like I've been in such an artistic rut lately. Hopefully this is an end to that.OH HEY Look at that, I got SS for Christmas and now I'm gonna waste entire days playing it. XDI think this is the last serious artwork I'll do for the rest of the year (except Christmas presents, actually this was a present for my history teacher, lol). School has just been so crazy and stressful lately, I haven't had time to work on personal stuff. Speaking of which, I should really start on my homework. | {
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TOD Corner: Soccer Fields Coming Soon Near Wellston Transit Center By Liza Farr
Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) refers to the investment that takes place at and around transit infrastructure. TOD is often a catalyst for economic growth – improving access to jobs, housing and amenities, and helping promote active lifestyles and a reduced dependence on automobiles.
The Wellston Transit Center has attracted a number of new developments, and there are no signs of activity stopping any time soon.
A few months ago, expansion work began at STL Venture Works, a small-business incubator and innovation center located just a few steps from the MetroLink station. The expansion is adding to the existing St. Louis County and Municipal Police Academy, the Metropolitan Education and Training Center (MET Center), and the Early Explorers Child Development Academy.
Wellston is now looking forward to even more investment in development and amenities with the recent announcement of the Sparta Court Soccer Fields project. The St. Louis County Port Authority was awarded a $450,000 grant from the Outdoor Legacy Partnership Program of the U.S. Department of the Interior. The grant will fund the development of two youth soccer fields (for players 4-8 years old), new parking areas, landscaping, and maintenance on the lots adjacent to the Early Explorers Child Development Academy, just a few hundred feet from the Wellston MetroLink Station. Leaders at St. Louis County noted that the grant application was an important step in the ongoing revitalization of Wellston by addressing a community need for recreational opportunities.
“As a result of the hard work by the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership and St. Louis County, these developments near MetroLink are even more accessible to the community at large and will promote the long-term success of Wellston and the greater North County region.” – Steve Stenger, St. Louis County Executive
The area around the Wellston MetroLink Station is quickly becoming an important civic center for the community with a concentration of crucial job training, public service and community facilities. The Bi-State Development Research Institute built on this existing momentum in Wellston by recently installing a fresh food kiosk at the Wellston Transit Center that when it opens in the very near future, will bring fresh and healthy food options to Metro riders and the surrounding community. Through the Research Institute, the transit center is also slated to become one of the Metro transit center locations in North St. Louis County that a mobile health screening unit will visit once a week. The Links 2 Health vehicle will be operated by the St. Louis County Department of Public Health.
St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger recognizes this momentum of services and facilities around the MetroLink station as an important piece of the Wellston’s future.
“These are projects we’ve been working on since I took office in 2015. This year has been pivotal, as we’re finally starting to see our goals come to fruition,” said Stenger. “As a result of the hard work by the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership and St. Louis County, these developments near MetroLink are even more accessible to the community at large and will promote the long-term success of Wellston and the greater North County region.”
Building a concentration of community services around public transportation is smart transit development. Those that use the services around the light rail station are often transit-dependent and can benefit greatly from the convenience and accessibility of all of the resources located near MetroLink.
Blueprints:
Project: Sparta Court Fields | {
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The conflict between science and religion may have its origins in the structure of our brains, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Babson College have found.
Clashes between the use of faith vs. scientific evidence to explain the world around us dates back centuries and is perhaps most visible today in the arguments between evolution and creationism.
To believe in a supernatural god or universal spirit, people appear to suppress the brain network used for analytical thinking and engage the empathetic network, the scientists say. When thinking analytically about the physical world, people appear to do the opposite.
"When there's a question of faith, from the analytic point of view, it may seem absurd," said Tony Jack, who led the research. "But, from what we understand about the brain, the leap of faith to belief in the supernatural amounts to pushing aside the critical/analytical way of thinking to help us achieve greater social and emotional insight."
Jack is an associate professor of philosophy at Case Western Reserve and research director of the university's Inamori International Center of Ethics and Excellence, which helped sponsor the research.
"A stream of research in cognitive psychology has shown and claims that people who have faith (i.e., are religious or spiritual) are not as smart as others. They actually might claim they are less intelligent.," said Richard Boyatzis, distinguished university professor and professor of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve, and a member of Jack's team.
"Our studies confirmed that statistical relationship, but at the same time showed that people with faith are more prosocial and empathic," he said.
In a series of eight experiments, the researchers found the more empathetic the person, the more likely he or she is religious.
That finding offers a new explanation for past research showing women tend to hold more religious or spiritual worldviews than men. The gap may be because women have a stronger tendency toward empathetic concern than men.
Atheists, the researchers found, are most closely aligned with psychopaths—not killers, but the vast majority of psychopaths classified as such due to their lack of empathy for others.
The new study is published in the online journal PLOS ONE. The other authors are Jared Friedman, a research assistant and recent graduate in Philosophy and Cognitive Science who will begin his PhD in organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve in the fall, and Scott Taylor, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Babson College.
Brain structure
The research is based on the hypothesis that the human brain has two opposing domains in constant tension. In earlier research, Jack 's Brain, Mind & Consciousness lab used functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the brain has an analytical network of neurons that enables us to think critically and a social network that enables us to empathize. When presented with a physics problem or ethical dilemma, a healthy brain fires up the appropriate network while suppressing the other.
"Because of the tension between networks, pushing aside a naturalistic world view enables you to delve deeper into the social/emotional side," Jack explained. "And that may be the key to why beliefs in the supernatural exist throughout the history of cultures. It appeals to an essentially nonmaterial way of understanding the world and our place in it."
Friedman said, "Having empathy doesn't mean you necessarily have anti-scientific beliefs. Instead, our results suggest that if we only emphasize analytic reasoning and scientific beliefs, as the New Atheist movement suggests, then we are compromising our ability to cultivate a different type of thinking, namely social/moral insight."
"These findings," Friedman continued, "are consistent with the philosophical view, espoused by (Immanuel) Kant, according to which there are two distinct types of truth: empirical and moral."
Experiments and results
The researchers examined the relationship between belief in God or a universal spirit with measures of analytic thinking and moral concern in eight different experiments, each involving 159 to 527 adults. Consistently through all eight, the more religious the person, the more moral concern they showed. But no cause and effect was established.
They found that both spiritual belief and empathic concern were positively associated with frequency of prayer, meditations and other spiritual or religious practices, but neither were predicted by church dinners or other social contact associated with religious affiliation.
While others theorize that mentalizing—interpreting human behavior in terms of intentional mental states such as needs, desires or purposes—has a positive association with belief, the researchers found none.
Like other studies, these experiments showed that analytic thinking discourages acceptance of spiritual or religious beliefs. But the statistical analysis of data pooled from all eight experiments indicates empathy is more important to religious belief than analytic thinking is for disbelief.
So why can the conflict between science and religion become so strong?
"Because the networks suppress each other, they may create two extremes," Boyatzis said. "Recognizing that this is how the brain operates, maybe we can create more reason and balance in the national conversations involving science and religion."
Using both networks
The researchers say humans are built to engage and explore using both networks.
"Far from always conflicting with science, under the right circumstances religious belief may positively promote scientific creativity and insight," Jack said. "Many of history's most famous scientists were spiritual or religious. Those noted individuals were intellectually sophisticated enough to see that there is no need for religion and science to come into conflict."
They refer to Baruch Aba Shalev's book 100 years of Nobel Prizes, which found that, from 1901 to 2000, 654 Nobel laureates, or nearly 90 percent, belonged to one of 28 religions. The remaining 10.5 percent were atheists, agnostics or freethinkers.
"You can be religious and be a very good scientist," Jack said.
The researchers agree with the New Atheists that suspension of analytical thinking—at the wrong time—can be dangerous, and point to the historical use of religious differences to persecute or fight wars.
"Although it is simply a distortion of history to pin all conflict on religion," Jack said. "Non-religious political movements, such as fascism and communism, and quasi-scientific movements, such as eugenics, have also done great harm."
The researchers suggest, however, that taking a carefully considered leap of religious faith appears be an effective route to promoting emotional insight. Theirs and other studies find that, overall, religious belief is associated with greater compassion, greater social inclusiveness and greater motivation to engage in pro-social actions.
Jack said the conflict can be avoided by remembering simple rules: "Religion has no place telling us about the physical structure of the world; that's the business of science. Science should inform our ethical reasoning, but it cannot determine what is ethical or tell us how we should construct meaning and purpose in our lives."
To dig deeper into belief, the researchers are planning studies to learn if individuals who increase their empathy then increase their religious or spiritual belief, or vice versa.
Explore further Belief in God strengthened by imagining how life would be different | {
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Valeuutisista tunnettu MV-lehti on kehittänyt uuden rahoituslähteen: se louhii virtuaalivaluuttaa sivustolla vierailevien koneilla ilman, että nämä tietävät louhinnasta.
Sivuston avaaminen kuluttaa kävijän tietokoneen suoritintehoa ja lisää sähkönkulutusta jonkin verran.
– Hyvin vähän kuitenkin, ei sitä sähkölaskussa huomaa, Viestintäviraston kyberturvallisuuskeskuksen tietoturva-asiantuntija Jarmo Lahtiranta sanoo.
Sen sijaan mobiilikäytössä virtuaalivaluutan louhinta kuluttaa akkua normaalia enemmän.
Ilmiö on levinnyt nopeasti maailmalla
Virtuaalivaluutan salalouhinta on uusi ilmiö, mutta Viestintäviraston mukaan siinä ei todennäköisesti ole mitään laitonta. Käyttäjä kun ei tiedä myöskään Facebook-liitännäisten toiminnasta tai siitä, miten vaikkapa mainokset toimivat, kun niitä klikkaa.
Maailmalta löytyy useita tapauksia, joissa sivustot ovat louhineet virtuaalivaluuttoja käyttäjien selaimilla. Esimerkiksi CBS Showtime (siirryt toiseen palveluun), piraattisivusto Pirate Bay ja vakuutusyhtiö Tuneprotect (siirryt toiseen palveluun) ovat jääneet kiinni salalouhimisesta.
Hämmennystä on herättänyt se, että ne eivät ole kertoneet louhinnastaan.
Kävijä voi tarkistaa sivuston lähdekoodista, onko sivulle asennettu CoinHive-lisäosa. CoinHive louhii esimerkiksi Monero-kryptovaluuttaa.
Kryptovaluutasta vaihtoehto mainoksille?
Lahtirannan mukaan muuallakin verkkomediassa on pohdittu kryptovaluuttojen louhintaa yhtenä vaihtoehtona mainoksille.
Kun mainoksia estävät ad blockerit yleistyvät eivätkä ihmiset klikkaa mainoksia, verkkomedian pitää kehittää vaihtoehtoisia rahoitustapoja. Toisaalta samoilla mainostenesto-ohjelmilla voidaan jo estää myös louhintaohjelmia.
– Virtuaalivaluuttojen louhiminen rahoituskeinona ei ole toistaiseksi lähtenyt leviämään ehkä siksi, että ilmiö on niin uusi, Lahtiranta sanoo.
Britannian yleisradioyhtiö BBC arvioi jutussaan viime vuoden lopulla (siirryt toiseen palveluun), että jos sivustolla käy miljoona kävijää kuukaudessa eli runsaat 30 000 päivässä, sivuston ylläpitäjä tienaa virtuaalilompakkoonsa noin sata euroa.
MV-lehden louhimisesta keskusteltiin perjantaina Reddit-sivustolla. (siirryt toiseen palveluun) Keskustelusta kertoi ensimmäiseksi Tivi (siirryt toiseen palveluun). | {
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For any makeover to pull off in the right manner, the most important thing will be hair. Now with advancement in everything, having less hair is not a problem because hair extensions are readily available to everyone for use. However, people are now more critical about the quality of products they use. Well, to further improve your sales even more and to attract customers towards your brand, this is where you need hair extension packaging from Cosmetics Boxes Packaging. Our packaging boxes will not only keep your hair extension protected but with such high quality designs, it will help you get your brand recognized in the market.
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To fulfill all your packaging needs, reach out to Cosmetic Boxes Packaging at our contact number +1 573-466-4273 or at our email address [email protected]. | {
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Tyson Foods fell the most in roughly 17 months on Monday after China's retaliatory tariffs on American goods targeted U.S. agriculture and food producers.
Shares of the processed food company closed down 6.2 percent on the quarter's first trading day amid a broader market sell-off, falling the most in a single day since November 2016. The sell-off in Tyson shares on Monday adds to the company's nearly 15 percent decline since the year began.
"The impact will be broad-based and will signal the top in Tyson margins," Pivotal analyst Timothy Ramey predicted. "We expect the Chinese tariff to cause meat supplies in the U.S. to back up meaningfully as the market has to be cleared, 'sell it or smell it' — the loss of a meaningful export market means that product has to be sold elsewhere."
The Springdale, Arkansas company produces and packages chicken, beef, pork and prepared foods, making it a prime target of any agricultural tariffs.
Beijing's new tariffs on meat, fruit and other American products is in response to new U.S. taxes on Chinese goods, heightening fears of a potential trade war between the two economic powerhouses. China's latest move, announced by its finance ministry in a statement dated April 1, comes after President Donald Trump approved taxes on foreign steel and aluminum.
The tariffs will take aim at 128 kinds of U.S. products, identical to the proposed list released by the government on March 23. At that time, the Chinese government said the impact would have an import value of $3 billion.
"China is the second-largest export market for the U.S. pork producers accounting for over 20 percent of our exports, second only to Mexico and more important than Mexico in premium products," Ramey added. "Growing exports to China of both chicken and pork products have been the single largest driver of the long-term bull market in Tyson's margins. That likely changed today." | {
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An informal adviser to Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Tuesday that the campaign was being extra careful about selecting a female vice presidential candidate because of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
“I think, unfortunately, Palin poisoned the well on that,” the unnamed informal Romney adviser said. “I would guess if I were inside the Romney mind that they’re worried that any woman chosen will be subjected to a higher level of scrutiny.”
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The Romney campaign is concerned picking a female vice presidential candidate would draw comparisons with the failed McCain/Palin campaign in 2008, according to the informal adviser. Palin’s critics have accused her of sinking the chances of McCain’s presidency by alienating independent voters.
At least one woman, New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R), is being considered to run alongside Romney.
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have also been floated as possible vice presidential candidates. | {
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The backlash to Indiana’s newly passed "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" – a complex name for a simple law that lets business owners discriminate against LGBT people – has been fierce and swift. Both the famous and the slightly less famous took to Twitter to criticize the law. Wilco and comedians Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman cancelled plans to perform in the state. Businesses pulled sponsorships for the Indy Big Data tech conference. The National Forensic Association, The Mid-American Conference, and the AFSCME workers’ union have cancelled events. And mayors and governors from states and cities around the country – including Connecticut, Denver, New York City and state, Portland, San Francisco, Vermont and Washington, D.C. – have announced bans on government-funded travel to Indiana. Even the Christian Church aka Disciples of Christ just announced plans to relocate its 2017 General Assembly gathering.
And there were other signs of opposition. The Internet, making brilliant use of Yelp, did some serious trolling of an Indiana pizzeria that planned to use the law to justify discrimination against LGBT patrons. And the famously Libertarian Penn Jillette, speaking about the legislation on CNN, was moved to explain to one of its defenders that no one is "forcing people to engage in gay sex."
And yet conservatives, in a familiar chorus, have pulled out the stops defending the legislation. We know this song and dance well: It involves feigned outrage and cries of religious persecution. Start your wahmbulance engines now and take a drive through the 5 most ridiculous right-wing reactions to the pushback against Indiana’s anti-LGBT law.
1. Bill O’Reilly Equates Protesters of the Law with “Jihadists.” Calling in to offer wisdom to his “Fox & Friends” cohorts, O’Reilly suggested they “link everything together,” implying some sort of global anti-Christian conspiracy. Mentioning attacks on Christians in Kenya, O’Reilly stated, “You’ve got two things in play. You’ve got the Muslim extremists – jihadists. They want to kill Christians…And then in the United States and Western Europe, you have a civil war between the secular progressive movement and the traditional religious people. In both cases, Christians are targets.”
O’Reilly then complained that the “totalitarian left is pretty much out of control in America” and said the mainstream media “sympathizes with the fascists.” He also noted that “the fanatics in the secular progressive community” counts among its members “a lot of entertainment figures.”
2. Tucker Carlson Calls Opponents of the Law “Jihadis.” You remember Tucker Carlson. Last week, he was mansplaining manners to a female spokesperson for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and then being a smug jerk about his brother’s reference to the woman as a “self-righteous bitch” and “labiaface.” So when Tucker Carlson speaks about tolerance and acceptance, there’s nothing to do but listen and marvel at the astonishing lack of self-awareness on display.
Case in point: Just the other night, when Carlson was a panelist in a discussion about the Indiana law on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier." Said Carlson of those protesting against it, “These are absolutists. These are jihadis. These are people who want to make you obey. They don’t brook any opposition to their worldview at all. They will crush you.”
Carlson then went on to paraphrase one of his Daily Caller editors (another guy with whom, we have to assume, he also makes gross misogynist jokes): “Today’s social liberals…set the societal norms. Anyone who deviates from them is punished. That’s not tolerance. That’s authoritarianism.”
3. John Stossel Proves He, Too, Can Regurgitate a Memo; Complains About the Left’s “Totalitarianism.” John Stossel joined O’Reilly to discuss the law, because Fox News isn’t covering anything else right now, apparently. Stossel, famously Libertarian, agrees with gay marriage. But he doesn’t think you should have to serve gay people who come into your shop, and the people suggesting you do – because otherwise you are discriminating – are no better than dictators in Stossel’s book.
“I think this movement has moved from tolerance to totalitarianism. The totalitarianism of the left,” Stossel said.
“You are absolutely right on that,” said O’Reilly, because of course he did.
Then they spent the rest of the segment agreeing with each other.
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4. Tom Cotton Basically Suggests Gays Should Be Happy They Aren’t Being Hung. Tom Cotton is off-the-charts awful in nearly every observable way. He led the traitorous group of 47 Republican lawmakers who penned a letter to Iran in an effort to undermine multinational nuclear negotiations. He vetoed equal pay for women. He thinks we should be throwing more people into Guantanamo. And he’s pretty sure the problem with the gays is that they don’t realize how lucky we are that we aren’t killing them for being gay.
In an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Cotton essentially said as much. When asked about the “discrimination potential” of the law against LGBT people, Cotton said: “I…think it’s important that we have a sense of perspective about our priorities. In Iran they hang you for the crime of being gay.” See? Instead of protesting and complaining about laws that further marginalize gay people, gay people should be celebrating just being allowed to live. Because Tom Cotton is an idiot.
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5. Mark Levin Says Those Who Oppose Indiana’s Law (Of Course) “Hate America.” When we last visited with him, Mark Levin was comparing Obama to Hitler. In his continuing quest to embody every caricature of conservatism possible, Levin went on a spiel about how liberals are anti-American, because that is the sort of the thing uncreative right-wingers do.
On his radio show, discussing the Indiana and other laws for “religious freedom” – his words – Levin said, “Ladies and gentleman, the people who oppose these laws hate liberty. They hate the Constitution. I’ll go even further. They hate America.”
Audio below. Be sure to put on boots before you listen. | {
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Reflections on Africa By Karen Allen
Southern Africa correspondent, BBC News Published duration 1 January 2017
As she moves on from her posting, the BBC's Southern Africa correspondent Karen Allen looks back on nearly 12 years of reporting from the continent.
Africa is not a country. It is a continent that feels like it has come of age. Despite the very real problems of poverty, corruption and the sense you sometimes get in some quarters, that no-one is held to account, business types hail Africa as the "final frontier". After nearly 12 years reporting this region, for me it feels like a place where one grows up.
I have met priests and politicians, warlords and entrepreneurs, gangsters and teachers. Ordinary mums and dads. Each of them has helped to shape my impressions and many have become firm friends.
One of the first lessons I learnt in Kenya was survival. There is no safety net here when times get tough.
In the early days on a visit to the slum known as Kibera, an elderly lady called me over as she stirred her supper in a thick, black, cast-iron pot. "Hey sister, where are you from?" she asked. "London," I replied. "Yes, but where in London?" I was rather puzzled as she pressed me further. "I know London," she nodded, sagely. "In fact, I know Paris and Berlin, too."
It emerged that this friendly stranger had once been a glamorous stewardess for an international airline. She had drunk the best champagne and visited the fanciest European hotels but when times got hard in the 1980s and the airline folded, she lost her job.
image copyright ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images image caption South Sudan became Africa's 54th state on 9 July 2011
She was now selling samosas in the slum to survive. From that day onwards I learnt never to make any assumptions about Africa: a jet-setter one day, a slum dweller the next. It is the drumbeat of so many who take the knocks, but reclaim their dignity and survive.
Yet, in absolute terms, people are getting poorer in Africa because the population continues to grow. During my time on this continent I witnessed a colleague of mine - away from the BBC - lose two of his three young children. That is never OK.
When I arrived in Africa more than a decade ago, Boko Haram in Nigeria did not exist, Somalia's al-Shabab insurgency group had yet to be formed - not to mention so-called Islamic State - and Sudan was one vast, sprawling country emerging from more than two decades of civil war.
I arrived to a continent of 53 states. I now leave behind 54. South Sudan's independence in 2011 marked the newest addition to the globe. The birth pains are still being felt.
When I arrived, George W Bush was beginning his second term as US president, oil and gas had yet to be discovered in many parts of Africa and mobile phones were just beginning to open up a world of possibilities from e-commerce to telemedicine.
image copyright SIMON MAINA/AFP/Getty Images image caption Mobile phones have transformed the lives of millions of Africans
Now, two US presidents later (give or take a week or two), China has become the second-biggest investor in Africa, with India hard on its heels. The brain-drain is beginning to slow down as African talent is being retained, especially in the technology sector.
And there is more money flowing back into Africa from remittances, than the entire aid budget for the continent.
With this growing economic confidence, powered by a rising middle class, has come a new political assertiveness. And, with growing insecurity, the West knows it needs Africa more than ever before.
You see it in the UN Security Council. South Africa has held its ground on issues such as Libya during the fall of Gaddafi. The African Union is pushing for permanent seats and a greater say in world affairs as the continent now contributes more troops to peacekeeping operations than anywhere else on earth.
You see this assertiveness in matters of international justice. Countries like South Africa and Burundi have turned their backs on the International Criminal Court.
And you see this push back on matters of wider society and the tussle between the old way of doing things and what some see as imported Western ideas.
image copyright ISAAC KASAMANI/AFP/Getty Images image caption Gay rights remain a controversial subject in many parts of the continent
A rapidly growing young urban class, more connected with the world through mobile phones, is making new demands, touching on everything from gender equality to gay rights.
A young female couple I met in Kenya back in 2006 had been forced out of their business as florists because word had got out that they happened to be gay.
In Uganda, activists like David Kato would be murdered a few years later, for the simple fact that he was gay. Yet slowly, very slowly, there has been a perceptible shift. Constitutions are being shaken up.
But there is still a tangible sense of mistrust between many African nations. Principles of sovereignty and non-interference, just like in many other parts of the world, are jealously guarded.
And the settling of old scores between neighbouring continues to be played out in places such as Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and its newer neighbour South Sudan.
In many places, the slow roll-out of infrastructure is blamed for underscoring this continued sense of separation and investors say corruption continues to frighten off potential investors.
image caption Karen Allen reporting from an internally displaced persons' camp in Chad
Yet 2016 saw the creation of the first continent-wide trading bloc. At the moment only 10% of the continent's trade is conducted between African nations. But the potential is huge - 620 million consumers.
The political landscape is also being redrawn. Regrettably, I have been banned from working inside Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe's leadership persists. And, as I write, the presidents of the Democratic Republic of Congo and The Gambia are resisting pressure to stand down.
But transfers of power are happening more peacefully. We have seen it, for instance, in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal, and maybe also in Angola, where President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos has ruled supreme for the past 37 years but has indicated that he will not stand again for re-election.
I never really understood that institutions mattered until I moved to South Africa but, oh, how they do. The country's history may set it apart from other African states but South Africa's constitutional court, its free press and parliament have all challenged the legitimacy of President Jacob Zuma. | {
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The Overwatch League Regular Season has come to an end and we are waiting for the playoffs to begin soon. This league was a unique concept in esports. The location-based franchise system is extremely popular in regular sports but is a novel concept in esports.
Regardless of your opinion on the first season of Overwatch league, there were highs and lows to Season 1. A total of 240 Matches played ( not including the Stage Title matches and the Season Playoffs), the Overwatch League exceeded expectations. But it also left a few fans disappointed and unsatisfied.
Top Notch Production: OWL sets the standard
Esports tournaments are getting better in their production and Overwatch league raised the bar higher. Blizzard enlisted some of the most well-known talents in the industry right from the get-go. Community figures such as Montecristo, Semmler, UberX duo added charisma and depth to the talent desk.
The Stage at the Blizzard Esports Arena was a unique stage with a LED screen sprawling across the stage. The expansive screen envelops the audience and it enthralled the online viewership everytime it was shown on stream. The attention to detail on the big screen and the experience of being surrounded by the Overwatch map is something that has not been seen in esports yet.
The team entries on to the stage were unique and exciting. Florida Mayhem stole the top spot when it comes to unique entrances in the Overwatch league. The team, despite not being anywhere near the top of the table were definitely the best when it comes to team entrances especially in the first half of OWL Season 1.
The regular extra content such as the WatchPoint Streams and videos definitely kept viewers glued to the OWL news. The Overwatch league website was regularly updated with the VODS and the match schedules. The talent lineup was not afraid to go out of the ordinary, which added the necessary flavor to the Season 1.
Better than expectations viewership numbers
Prior to the start of the Overwatch league, there was a lot of skepticism about the potential of success for the League. With the game hardly getting more than 30000 to 40000 viewers on it’s best LAN events, the possibility of a greater number for OWL seemed unlikely for many. But the Overwatch league beat all expectations, even that of the team owners.
To say it has been a massive success is an understatement. The franchise owners who paid out $20 million for the teams definitely came into Season 1 with lower expectations. The first week of Overwatch league had over 10 million viewers, a mind-boggling number for sure.
When we were finalizing our purchase of an @overwatchleague franchise, there was a very wide spread amount of skepticism and many people who immediately wrote off the idea as a flash in the pan. Boy, were they wrong. The first regular season was a massive success. — Mike Rufail (@hastr0) June 18, 2018
EnVyUs & Dallas Fuel owner, Hastro adequately sums up his experience so far in OWL Season 1. The initial jump on the first day of the Overwatch league was mainly due to the hype and the marketing surrounding the opening day. But as we ran through the various stages, the viewership numbers were on a decline. The lowest viewership numbers in Stage 4 were still way above the expectations for team owners. The most difficult task for the OWL team will be to maintain the viewership numbers in the Playoffs and in Season 2.
Too Much Overwatch
If you have been playing Overwatch since early 2017, this title will make you chuckle. The big announcement of Overwatch league came during Blizzcon 2016. However, this announcement turned out to be a repellent for tournament organizers in the subsequent year. Without any knowledge of Blizzard’s plans for Overwatch, tournaments organizers were opposed to investing in Overwatch.
2017 saw very few tournaments up until the Overwatch League. But once the Overwatch League started, we saw ourselves bombarded by Overwatch. With OWL match days taking up 4 days in a week, all of a sudden, viewers just had so many matches to watch.
By the third and fourth stage of Season 1, player and viewer burnout was a serious issue. The intensity of the games and the huge pressure on the players to practice and keep up with the ever-changing meta definitely had an effect. The players were given just 10 days of break between stages and most of that time was used up in trying to understand the meta for the next stage.
As we await news for Season 2, Blizzard would probably want to change the schedule to make it easier on the viewers and the players. I never thought I would say this, but right now there is too much Overwatch in the regular season.
The live version and the tournament version are not the same
Each stage of the Overwatch League was played on a single game patch. This is expected since the teams should have an even footing through the regular season. However, the live version of the game was not always the same as the Tournament version.
The tournament version would often be one or two patches behind the live version. Considering how big the changes in an Overwatch patch are, this fundamentally presents a totally different version of the game. The characters would often have different abilities ( such as the Hanzo Scatter arrow or the way Sombra Health-pack works).
As a casual fan, a viewer wants to watch the professionals playstyle and try to emulate them. But when you see the pros playing on a totally different patch than the live one, the disconnect does grow. The Overwatch league production team is different from the game developers, but they need to synchronize the Stage schedule and the patch release schedule with each other.
Other games such as Dota 2 and CS GO also have great timing for their patch update. The tournaments are almost always played on a live patch, give or take a week’s delay. Playing the live version of the game is important to connect with your fanbase and ensure interest in the game. This is something that the Overwatch league totally ignored and one that definitely earned them a lot of flak.
Potential for more
Although the production for Overwatch League is one of the best in esports, there is a lot of potential for more content to be added. We can have halftime shows and innovative entries and performances. Los Angeles was the only location for all the LAN matches of Season 1. However, the future for Overwatch League is based on teams traveling to other cities. We hope that individual locations bring out more flavor in the production.
One thing that I would definitely want to see more in Overwatch League streams is cosplays. However, despite the potential for growth, the overall experience for Season 1 was satisfactory.
The Problem with Overwatch Match format
Blizzard decides and announces the maps for each match in advance. However, they seemed quite random and did not provide any consistency. This resulted in a big gap when it comes to the teams’ map pools for the week. Some teams would get overlapping maps for their two matches, while some others would get two completely different map pools. Since a team is provided almost 3 days to prepare for the next week’s matches, it is not sufficient time for the teams to practice. It is also very unfair to the team that has to practice potentially eight different maps as opposed to a lower potential of 4 maps only. This is a huge factor since the teams require time to study their opponents and their individual performances on specific maps.
The subsequent seasons of Overwatch league need to fix their format. They need to ensure a level playing ground with similar map pools for every team. But apart from deciding the maps beforehand, what about ensuring a map veto. This is something that Blizzard seems very averse to doing, however having map veto could actually prove to be useful.
It is a matter of preference, but other esports titles successfully employ map/hero vetoes in their games. Of course, hero vetoes is not a possibility in Overwatch simply because the game will become too one-sided in its current state. But map vetoes are not out of the ordinary. Previous Overwatch LAN tournaments employed Map vetoes successfully.
What do you think about the first season of Overwatch league? Was it all that you expected? Or would you like to see some changes? | {
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In a brand new interview with Eonmusic, ex-JUDAS PRIEST guitarist K.K. Downing was asked about the possibility of taking part in the band's upcoming 50th-anniversary tour, alongside other former members Al Atkins and and Tim "Ripper" Owens. He responded: "Yeah, lots of things could happen, but I think the main thing is, lots of people are saying to me, 'Will you be included? Are the band talking to you about the 50th anniversary?', because, obviously, it's a pivotal point, that anniversary. I mean, I was there 50 years ago; Al Atkins was the singer 50 years ago; Ian [Hill, bass] was there; and so, 'Are you going to be included?' Well, the answer is, I don't know. It's the other guys that need to be asked, as it's obviously their decision. Many people are asking me what might happen, when only those guys can say, but people do want to know."
Downing, who joined ex-MANOWAR axeman Ross "The Boss" Friedman on stage last weekend at this year's Bloodstock Open Air festival at Catton Park, Derbyshire, United Kingdom to perform four PRIEST songs, acknowledged that he would be up for discussing a return to his former band.
"I was okay, really, throughout the years that I hadn't been in the band," he said. "I was just hoping that I would automatically, naturally [rejoin], because, there wasn't any rifts or anything really. We were hard-working and longtime mates, you know? I mean, I went through infant school and stuff like that with Ian, I've never had an argument with Ian, ever, or the other guys, really. I always thought that I would get the respect, and get what I was entitled to, because we've all worked in a band for years. For me, it was 40 years or more, and you work towards a pension and everything, but things started to go not right, and I wasn't particularly happy about that. I was fine to be left alone, and to leave them alone, but I wasn't getting the respect that I deserved, and so I'm thinking, well, maybe, if I'm not going to rejoin the band, maybe it's time for me to play with some other guys. I wanted to research that, so I'm here now."
Downing went on to say that he has continued doing interviews since the release of his autobiography because it keeps him connected to the fans and the music industry.
"I try to answer questions with good guys like yourself, who I have good relationships with, and I want to keep the relationships," he explained. "I don't want to say, 'No, I'm not answering those questions,' and I don't want to lie to those questions; I want to try to answer honestly… But the thing is, the guys in the band [JUDAS PRIEST] will probably make a statement for the fans at some point as to give their assessment of the situation so that it kind of puts everything to rest. Whatever they decide, the thing is, I'm doing interviews because I want to — I want to connect with the fans and the media because I'm in the industry, and that's what I do. I write a book, I played a show today, so I'm doing things that people out there are interested to find out about."
Downing left PRIEST in 2011 amid claims of band conflict, shoddy management and declining quality of performance. He was replaced by Richie Faulkner, nearly three decades his junior.
Last summer, Downing revealed that he sent two resignation letters to his bandmates when he decided to quit JUDAS PRIEST. The first was described as "a graceful exit note, implying a smooth retirement from music," while the second was "angrier, laying out all of his frustrations with specific parties."
Downing later said that he believed the second letter was "a key reason" he wasn't invited to rejoin PRIEST after Glenn Tipton's decision to retire from touring.
Downing's autobiography, "Heavy Duty: Days And Nights In Judas Priest", was released in September via Da Capo Press. | {
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Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter knows that bands aren’t supposed to still be good 20 years into their career. In a rare interview with GQ, the helmeted man-droid drops a deep American cinema reference (what’s French for “franchise”?) in order to explain his group’s potential plight as they began to scrape together their first new album in eight years, Random Access Memories
“In Scream 2, they have this discussion about how sequels always suck,” he tells Zach Baron. “The thing we can ask ourselves at some point is like: We’re making music for 20 years. How many bands and acts do you have that are still making good music after 20 years? It always sucks — almost always, you know? … So our new album is supposed to really suck.”
Tell that to the citizens of Planet Earth, where people have been freaking royally about the Parisian electro-house duo’s return since before they even heard (and covered and remixed ad infinitum) the new LP’s Pharrell-featuring first single, “Get Lucky.” Speaking of Daft Punk’s “Collaborators,” you’ll find the latest in their ongoing video series above: French house-smith DJ Falcon.
Heretofore, we’ve witnessed elucidating conversations with Giorgio Moroder, Panda Bear, Skateboard P, Nile Rodgers, Todd Edwards, and Chilly Gonzales (plus Andrew the Pizza Guy); heard some fascinating reworkings of the album’s only real leak yet (discounting an early version of “Contact”); and pointed out the pair’s 19 savviest samples to date, from Barry White to Black Sabbath.
“But what to they think about Skrillex?” you ask. Visit GQ to read the rest. | {
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GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Torrance Gibson isn't going anywhere.
"I'm back for sure next year," Gibson said after Ohio State's 44-28 Fiesta Bowl win over Notre Dame on Friday. "Why would I leave Columbus? It's an easy question to answer. Urban Meyer, I trust him with my future. I'm going to give him 110 percent on the field and I hope he believes in me."
One reason for Meyer to believe in Gibson? Sneaky quarterback work.
Gibson, a top 100 recruit in the Class of 2015 and a 6-foot-4 speedster with a strong arm and developing hands, switched to receiver in his first year at college. He spent all his time in the meeting room with receivers coach Zach Smith and never got on the field. A year of redshirting means he has four years of eligibility remaining.
But Gibson admitted he's still a quarterback at heart.
"Oh yeah, always," Gibson said.
That's why he spent time on his own at Ohio State's headquarters throwing the football.
"I did quarterback stuff when nobody was in the Woody," Gibson said.
A first-year player was sought out in a victorious bowl locker room, and these questions were asked, because an elite high school player who sits his first season always creates questions. He suffered an ankle injury early in the season, then didn't dress for a time in the middle of the season because Meyer said he didn't earn it.
That could be a formula for departing. It has been for others before. For Gibson, it sounds only like a formula for intrigue.
What is this guy going to be? And when?
"It's undetermined right now," Gibson said, speaking to reporters for the first time since the preseason. "You have to leave everything up to the head coach, but I'm still a quarterback part-time."
He has given his trust to Meyer. But what does he want to play?
"What I want? I just want to play, basically, help this team win a national championship again," Gibson said. "And basically, that's all I want, is to play."
A player that eager to contribute was denied the chance to even dress or warm up for a few games in the middle of the season. Meyer took that away.
"Yeah, I didn't deserve to dress," Gibson said. "I had academic issues. I took it all for a joke. Coming out of high school, I thought I was a hot shot, I thought I was this, I thought I was that.
"He humbled me. He told me that it's not about you, it's about the team, you've got to want to play on this team. And he's right. I want to play on this team and I want to be a part of this team. And I guess he humbled me this season."
Gibson didn't want to talk about what kind of player he thinks he could be. But he said he made a lot of strides at receiver under the tutelage of Michael Thomas and Jalin Marshall.
"Being a receiver came naturally to me," said Gibson, who had played it a few times at camps. "So I was used to it."
He wasn't used to this kind of football season. He said his ankle injury was painful and took longer to come back from than he expected. And no young player likes to sit.
Now it's on to next year, when Gibson should have a role.
"I think Wildcat quarterback or something like that," Gibson said, dropping a tantalizing idea as a change-of-pace threat in the backfield. "You never know, so keep your eyes open."
Gibson will be in Columbus for you to watch. | {
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David Beckham Shirtless At Sunset On Brazilian Beach
, fresh from a trip to Africa, was shirtless on a Brazilian beach in Cabo Sao Roque on Tuesday. His visit was part of a weekend unveiling of a new soccer project that will bear his name. The David Beckham World of Sports will feature eight soccer fields and facilities for top athletes. There will also be a scholarship program that will benefit Brazilian children.
The planned luxury resort near Natal will be the site of Beckham's third soccer academy. He has previously launched sites in London and Los Angeles. As a partner in the resort project, he will oversee the progress of the sporting complex.
Victoria Beckham also posed for the t-shirt likeness as part of a Marc Jacobs ad campaign that will benefit Melanoma research. | {
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Let's take a behind-the-scenes look at the kind of work that goes on in backstage maintenance shops at Walt Disney World. Friend of the blog, Nomeus, share these wonderful photos from 2005 from one of his family members.
There are many buildings, trailers, and underground areas at Walt Disney World dedicated to the creation and maintenance of props, figures, signs, ride vehicles, and other pieces for the parks. If you ever have a chance to tour any of them with permission, I highly suggest you do. Some of my most fond memories are from working in some of these places and visiting others. You never know what you'll run into. Half-dressed animatronics, Captain Hook with missing limbs, an old "Rover" dog from Carousel of Progress who's been renamed "Steve". A big thanks to Nomeus and one of his family members for providing these amazing glimpses into various creative processes.
Fox News recently interviewed Nomeus, Leonard Kinsey, and Adam The Woo about their explorations around Walt Disney World through areas that are normally off-limits to the public. Kinsey states, "To me it’s like you live in a house for 30 years and you’ve never gone in the basement. That’s just weird."
We do not suggest anyone go anywhere at Disney without the proper permission. There are tours and other ways to see some of these things. In the mean time, watch this:
Nomeus is a prominent Urban Explorer, mostly around Florida. You may remember some of his fantastic photos we posted of the abandonded Bin Laden mansion just minutes north of Magic Kingdom. Photos from his other explorations are found on his website, Nomeus Photography - Abandoned Florida and Beyond.
Related posts:
ABANDONED DISNEY: River Country [Part 1]
ABANDONED DISNEY: Country Bear- Max
ABANDONED DISNEY: Haunted Mansion Hitchhiking Ghosts
Bin Laden Mansion Minutes From Walt Disney World
Pirate Animatronic Behind-the-Scenes
Little Box of Treasures | {
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LOS ANGELES — Gwyneth Paltrow’s inaugural health-and-wellness summit on Saturday kicked off just as you’d expect: well-groomed women wearing yoga pants and expensive handbags hooking themselves up to IVs and oxygen tubes in a parking lot, experiences otherwise associated with the glamour of getting triaged at a disaster site.
This is Paltrow’s peculiar gift — or grift — and it was on full display at “In Goop Health,” her day-long event meant to bring her website’s “most requested and shared wellness content to life.” By last week, all 500 tickets, ranging from $500 to $1,500, had sold out; another event is planned for New York City in January.
Attendees were told via email to arrive at 9 a.m. The summit wouldn’t actually begin for another hour, which allowed enough time to shop inside a cavernous industrial space for Goop-branded products such as water bottles ($35), hoodies ($100) and a “G.”-branded flight pack consisting of four thin nesting canvas bags containing some magnesium packets, a sleep mask, earbuds and moisturizer ($198).
It was the physical manifestation of the day to come: For those willing to spend so much on so little, Paltrow will happily take your money.
She introduced her first speaker, Dr. Habib Sadeghi on Cosmic Flow, by explaining her own interest in wellness — or, in her parlance, “healing modalities.”
It began in 1998, she said, after her beloved father was diagnosed with cancer, and given her brand’s origin story, it seems naïve at best, craven at worst, for Paltrow to commodify junk science and dangerous information.
Even the affable late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who had Paltrow on his show Tuesday night, couldn’t play along, asking about a recent Goop post claiming the scientific benefits of going barefoot.
“What is Earthing?” he asked.
“I don’t really know that much about Earthing,” Paltrow admitted. “There’s this type of electromagnetic thing that we’re missing and it’s good to take your shoes off and walk in the grass . . . I don’t know what the f—k we talk about.”
What about the jade eggs ($66) she tells readers to insert in their vaginas?
“Is that something you believe in?” Kimmel asked.
“I don’t know!” Paltrow said. “I never read that before.”
Those eggs, of course, were available for sale at her summit.
In the day’s first lecture, Sadeghi spoke for nearly 90 minutes about “integrative photosynthesis,” “spiritual Wi-Fi,” “laterality to the body,” “neuro-vegetative signs” and “the ontological experience called your life.”
He spoke of June 4, 1997, the day Paltrow first reached out, as the most important of his entire life, moreso than his marriage or the birth of his two children. He’s saved every email she ever sent him, and spent half an hour walking the audience through a detailed explanation of Paltrow’s first bloodwork, her then-recurrent urinary tract infections and an ovarian cyst that, he said, threatened to blow out her back. (One of the enduring mysteries of Paltrow’s success as a health and wellness guru is her endless stream of medical ailments.)
Sadeghi went off on some interesting tangents. “What makes water wet?” he asked, more than once. “I nearly got a master’s in electric chemistry asking that question.”
He stated that we still don’t know how birds fly, despite the Wright brothers inventing the airplane by observing birds in flight. “I am probably one of the most authentic human beings you will ever meet,” he said, a pronouncement usually reserved for anyone working a con.
About 50 women, most exasperated, streamed out during his lecture, and it’s not hard to see why: By middle age, most everyone has had an experience with catastrophic illness, and there’s no reconciling Sadeghi’s nonsense with that.
Finally, after plugging his forthcoming book, Sadeghi wrapped it up. “This is not a convention,” he said. “It’s a pilgrimage. We are here to hold the light, the consciousness, for a different way of being.”
Next up was a panel on gut health.
Here we were instructed that kale, superfood of the millennium, can be extremely dangerous; that vaginal birth is the new breastfeeding (a delivery system for essential nutrients that will determine your child’s fate); that taking one Advil or Aleve “is like swallowing a hand grenade”; that cancer does not exist among wild animals (it does, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, and at similar rates to humans); and that we Americans are not meant to eat nightshades such as tomatoes and potatoes because “everyone immigrated from Europe, Africa, or Asia” where there are no nightshades — despite the Irish fleeing the Great Potato Famine, tomatoes composing the bulk of the Mediterranean diet for centuries, or France and Belgium’s ongoing quarrel over which nation, 300 years ago, invented French fries.
Also, we should use frog venom to treat burns, bad luck and cancer.
Next up was “The 10-Minute Facelift with Dr. Julius Few,” a room-clearing demonstration in which Few sliced holes in a volunteer’s face. After explaining that his patient was under a local anesthetic, he pushed a threaded needle through his volunteer’s left cheekbone to her lower jaw, then reversed course while tugging tight.
Those who remained groaned and gasped. The doctor was unfazed.
“I do think Gwyneth and I are alike, in that we think the best things in life are simplest,” he said, dabbing up the wounds. “This procedure starts at $3,500 and lasts two to three years.” Few’s quick addendum: Blindness is a potential side effect.
The event was now nearly four hours in, yet there was no break in sight. Instead, we were subjected to another panel discussion: Paltrow interviewing two of her favorite shrinks. Dr. Phil Stutz and Barry Michels explained that we are all mere pawns of something called The Field, which Stutz described as “the invisible force that makes things happen that you can’t do on your own.”
The enemy of The Field, they claim, is Part X: “a devil living inside you, a demon. He wants to f—k you up any way he can.” But by closing our eyes, visualizing what we want and calling on The Universe™ to deliver it, we can have whatever we want. It’s a cynical mash-up of Freud’s personality theory, the Jungian shadow self, comparative mythology and “The Secret,” capped off by Stutz and Michels telling an audience member upset with her boyfriend to wish their problems away.
Finally, the crowd broke for lunch, with those who paid $1,000 availing themselves of private workouts. The highest tier lunched with Paltrow and select panelists. The proles were relegated to wandering around the warehouse and converted parking lot for two hours, getting solicited by dream interpreters or standing in endless lines for free blowouts or manicures — services promptly halted once the panels resumed, no matter that some had spent well over an hour in line.
“Sorry,” one of the Goop staffers told a disgruntled guest. “We can offer you a $20 gift certificate?” The attendee walked away.
The 3 o’clock panel was “The Mother Lode,” described as “an exploration of the mother wound and ways to re-parent ourselves.” Dr. Oscar Serrallach, the lone male on the panel, elicited groans when he compared his work on the mother wound to “a reporter in a war zone, [seeing] all this carnage around me.” Dr. Robin Berman claimed that “the word ‘mother’ is transgender.” Dr. Sherry Sami, wife of Paltrow’s first speaker, hit the crowd’s marrow, listing the great stressors of upper-class motherhood: “Pre-school interviews, what camps they should go to — what kind of nanny is going to bring the right consciousness into their life?”
Children are here, Sami continued, to teach their mothers how to be “a great digestive enzyme,” to help their children “metabolize their experiences” while leading the mother towards her “divinity.” Seems a lot for a toddler, but the crowd loved it.
Next was a sex panel featuring therapist and author Esther Perel, sexpert Nicole Daedone, and Jenni Konner, showrunner of HBO’s “Girls.”
“I don’t know how I got on this panel,” Konner said, and she struggled through a painfully earnest discussion of “the nourishing approach to orgasm” and “the value of [the] body.” Instead, Konner spoke to the industry-heavy audience about female-centric production crews and the way women work in male-dominated writers rooms.
Konner’s cohort Lena Dunham, billed as a star attraction, did not appear, and Paltrow offered no explanation or apology — a rude omission for anyone who’d paid so much in hopes of seeing her.
After a short break, Paltrow’s trainer and business partner Tracy Anderson — a controversial figure whose financial practices and approach to fitness led, in part, to a falling out with Madonna — took the stage for a brief, awkward Q&A. She spoke against cross-training (regarded by most physiotherapists as extremely beneficial), boasted that she worked with Microsoft to open her viewers’ “neural pathways” so they’d connect with her online presence, then rushed offstage.
As we rounded 5 o’clock, the final panel took the stage: Paltrow and her celebrity friends Cameron Diaz, Nicole Richie and Miranda Kerr. In the middle sat Tory Burch, the lone true businesswoman, and at times she looked ready to gouge her eyes out.
Yet this was the only panel that transfixed the entire crowd, and it was clearly what they came for: the chance to see and hear Paltrow and her peers gush over each other’s fabulousness, marvel at how each of them does it all (with no nods to nannies, personal assistants, household staff, managers and agents) and reinforce the notion that every woman out there, if only they wish hard enough and buy enough GP-approved product, can be a member of her clique too, an inhabitant of her world — and there’s no denying that Gwyneth Paltrow is on her own planet.
It’s one where those without more pressing concerns can leisurely embark “on a journey,” face “obstacles” that help them “remake paradigms” to create more authentic selves that, in turn, so generously make the world a better, more healing place.
Yet it’s one with Paltrow’s trademark snobbery and class consciousness: Although all attendees were promised post-summit drinks — “Let’s face it,” Paltrow’s editorial director Elise Loehnen told Vanity Fair in April, “everyone’s going to need a cocktail at the end of the day” — those who paid just $500 were hurried out of the venue as a voice came over the loudspeaker, asking everyone else to join Gwyneth and her friends for a cocktail in the garden.
In Paltrow’s world, you get what you pay for. | {
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The distinctive roar of fighter jets tore across Brisbane's skyline this afternoon.
Labelled "the Ferrari of the skies", five F/A-18F Super Hornets made their debut in Australian skies over South-East Queensland.
F/A-18F Super Hornets, considered "the Ferrari of the skies", will make their debut in Australian skies over South-East Queensland today.
As the newest addition to the Australian Defence Force military capability, the Super Hornets were escorted by a formation of the outgoing F-111s and a Hawk aircraft.
The show-and-tell flight over the region finished at the jets' new home at RAAF Amberley base. | {
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The politician is an avid lover of sports and has expressed his passionate support towards the Blues.
Indian Super League outfit, Bengaluru FC dropped a bombshell on their local fans after announcing in a club statement that due to an ongoing controversy surrounding the Kanteerva Stadium, they had to enlist the Balewadi Stadium in Pune as a contingency plan in accordance with the fast approaching AIFF club licensing deadline.
This effectively means that the current ISL champions could be playing their ‘home’ matches out of Pune, which has not sat well with their local fanbase in Bengaluru and now some very prominent figures have spoken out on the matter.
One of those figures is Tejasvi Surya, Member of Parliament for Bengaluru South Lok Sabha Constituency, who has tweeted his outrage regarding the whole fiasco. In the tweet, he has expressed his support for Bengaluru FC and their skipper, Sunil Chhetri, showing his discontentment over the prospect of the champions playing their home games elsewhere.
Our city’s football club play ‘home’ matches elsewhere? This shouldn’t be happening As a @bengalurufc & @chetrisunil11 fan myself, I was looking forward to watching our #HeroISL champs at Kanteerava I shall request Hon CM @BSYBJP, who holds the sports portfolio, to intervene https://t.co/hYWJn794aH — Tejasvi Surya (@Tejasvi_Surya) 18 September 2019
As a result, the MP has vowed to intervene and request the Honorable Chief Minister of Karnataka, B.S. Yediyurappa, to look into this matter as he also holds the sports portfolio.
This comes as a good sign for the local fans of the Blues, who would be hoping to not suffer the same fate as that of the fans of Delhi Dynamos FC and FC Pune City, as both these cities have lost their ISL franchises.
While the football enthusiasts in Pune would welcome Bengaluru’s shifting of base, which has happened due to the former affiliation of BFC’s CEO, Mandar Tamhane, who was the treasurer of the Pune District Football Association; the club itself is hopeful of finding a resolution through the Karnataka High Court, that will allow them to continue playing at the Kanteerava Stadium, where they have tasted a lot of success.
Tamhane spoke on the matter previously and had said, “We want to stay here and we are hopeful. We are waiting for official confirmation on the issue, as we cannot do much till we hear anything.” | {
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It was meant to be a show case for healthy living, with the first lady, Michelle Obama, personally putting hand to pitch fork in a crowd of school children to dig up the first White House vegetable garden in more than 50 years.
Instead, an embarrassed White House admitted today that the plot - whose lettuce, herbs and other produce have been consumed by the first family, visiting dignitaries, local school children and a women's homeless shelter - had tested positive for elevated levels of lead.
A spokeswoman for the White House said the soil in the garden had lead concentrations of 93 parts per million of lead. Health experts say it is safe to raise leafy vegetables in soil with concentrations of 10-50 parts per million, and urban gardens typically have raised lead levels. However, it is advised for young children to be tested for exposure to lead if they play in areas where lead concentrations exceed 100 parts per million. The Environmental Protection Agency puts the threshold for dangerous lead levels at 300 parts per million.
But even though lead levels in the first garden are far below that danger zone, the disclosure is awkward for a White House which has made prominent use of the vegetable garden to define Michelle Obama's role as First Lady,and to encourage sensible eating habits in children.
Children are especially vulnerable to exposure to lead, which can cause neurological and kidney damage, and stunt their growth.
The vegetable garden was an important symbolic break with the George Bush presidency, and it became a cause for environmentalists and the organic food movement in America who had urged the Obamas to use the White House to set an example of healthy eating.
Michelle Obama invited dozens of 10- and 11-year olds from a state elementary school in a transitional neighbourhood of Washington to the White House last March to help her dig up a 1,100 square foot plot of land near her daughters' swing set. Photographers were let in to take pictures of her kneeling in the dirt and wielding garden tools.
The first lady gave interviews joking about how all the members of the first famly would be required to weed on occasion.
As the weeks went on, and the White House garden grew, it became central to Michelle Obama's efforts to rebrand herself, and banish any residual damage from the rightwing attacks of the election campaign when she was cast as the stereotypical angry black woman. The White House featured blog posts on the garden's progress.
The school children were invited back to tend the plot and just two weeks ago to bring in the first harvest: 73 lbs of lettuce, 12 lbs of snap peas and one cucumber. Obama and the children then trooped into the White House kitchen to wash lettuce and shell and cook the peas for lunch, which they ate outside on red and white checked tablecloths.
Sam Kass, who followed the Obamas from Chicago as their personal chef, gave a short speech praising the gardeners for getting their yeild without resort to fertiliser or herbicides, and for using green compost.
The White House said the garden would go on. "The garden recently underwent extensive soil testing that proved it is completely safe," Katie McCormick Lelyveld, the first lady's spokeswoman, said. A lead level of 92 parts per million is significantly better than the government standard for a garden like this. The White House kitchen garden team is committed to producing fresh, safe and healthy food as a learning opportunities (sic) about health eating, and they'll continue to do so," Lelyveld said.
The White House would not say whether the Obamas or the children who had helped tend the garden would be tested for lead exposure. | {
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TROUT RIVER, Newfoundland, April 29 (UPI) -- The rotting stench of a bloated blue whale has residents of Trout River, Canada, worried. The dead whale washed ashore more than a week ago and has since doubled in size -- its belly like an overinflated balloon.
Locals are concerned with the growing stench, and also apprehensive about the possibility that it's methane-filled stomach might soon explode -- spewing stinky whale guts all over the beach and boardwalk.
The whale is one of nine that were reported dead off the coast of Newfoundland, apparently crushed by a large ice flow that changed directions and trapped the pod of giant mammals.
According to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, several have been found beached along the West Coast of the Canadian island: one in Trout River, one in Rocky Harbour, and another in the Bakers Brook area.
Normally, a beached whale carcass on a lonely stretch of shore can simply be left to rot -- carried off and consumed, piece by piece, by carnivores and predators. But right off the boardwalk of a town like Trout River, a humongous dead whale is more of a problem.
“It’s only going to be a matter of time before it warms up and the smell becomes unbearable,” Trout River Town Clerk Emily Butler said.
Understandably, businesses along the boardwalk are worried about the damper the growing smell could put on storefront traffic during tourist season.
RELATED Britain hosts talks over looted Ukrainian assets
Newfoundlanders fear rotting whale carcasses could soon explode http://t.co/tmcYTBBXSX pic.twitter.com/ldA1jLeY2V — CTV News (@CTVNews) April 29, 2014
But a small fishing village like Trout River doesn't exactly have the resources to haul off a giant blue whale. Not only that, the town also needs a special permit to carve up and dispose of an endangered species like a blue whale.
RELATED Head of Massachusetts child welfare agency resigns amidst questions about three deaths
For researchers like Dr. Jack Lawson, with Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the occurrence is sad but compelling.
“We rarely get a chance to look at a whole blue whale,” he Lawson said. “So, this is an opportunity for us to collect samples from animals that normally aren’t easy to find and approach.”
“For scientists, even a dead animal is a source of excitement.” | {
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Svět se zmítá v těžko pochopitelných problémech. V Česku máme obrovské štěstí. Naši zemi neřídí blázniví idealisté, ale rozumní muži s rozumnou politikou. Rozumná politika se nenechá ničím rozházet. Je stejná včera, dnes i zítra. Rozumná politika totiž neuznává plynutí času. Rozumný svět je pořád stejný a neměnný. A pokud takový není, je to jeho problém. Ani světem se rozumná politika rozházet nenechá.
Když jsou spodní vody zamořeny pesticidy a z přírody nenávratně mizí hmyz, pak rozumná politika velí ničeho si nevšímat a dál podporovat nekonečné lány řepky zalévané tunami pesticidů.
Když se klima blíží ke kolapsu, pak rozumná politika velí přemýšlet, jak by se na tom dalo vydělat. Podpora uhelných elektráren a ignorování obnovitelných zdrojů zní jako rozumná politika rozumných mužů v nejlepších letech.
Když do montoven každou chvíli napochodují roboti a nikdo neví, zda a jaká bude práce, pak rozumná politika velí nahnat víc dětí na učňáky. Rozumná politika se stará o to, co firmy chtějí letos, a ne v jakém světě budou žít děti za deset let.
Když jsme závislí na výrobě aut a svět přezbrojuje na elektrická, pak rozumná politika velí si toho nevšímat a elektrická auta nepodporovat.
Když je země stižena epidemií alkoholismu, pak rozumná politika velí snížit DPH na točené pivo a navrhnout legalizaci alkoholu za volantem.
Když lidé nemají kde bydlet a ceny nájmů je vyhánějí z měst, pak rozumná politika velí označovat jakoukoli snahu o řešení za komunismus. V rozumném světě totiž výši zdanění určil bůh coby dodatek k desateru: nezabiješ bližního svého ani jeho prázdnou chýši danit nebudeš. A když šel za Ježíšem zástup hladových, řekli mu: jeden chlapec tu má dvě ryby a pět chlebů, ale copak tím jde nakrmit všechny? Tu Ježíš pravil: nejde, to by byl komunismus.
Fotrovský realismus vs. dětský idealismus
Racionalita a pragmatismus má být realistickou odpovědí od reality odtrženému idealismu. Je proto třeba upozornit, že tato rozumná politika už jaksi neodpovídá vůbec na nic. Existuje jen sama pro sebe v říši čistých idejí.
Existuje ve světě, ve kterém čas neplyne a nic se nemění. Jedině v takovém světě je možné opakovat do omrzení stále totéž a současně se ničím skutečným nezabývat, protože v abstraktním světě rozumných řešení na životech skutečných lidí nesejde.
Česká politika je tak rozumná a pragmatická, že by ji měl někdo celou i s jejími protagonisty přesunout do skanzenu a prohlásit jí komplet za světové dědictví UNESCO. Expozice bude mít rozhodně úspěch.
A tak se děti ve školách připravují na svět, který už zanikl, a na budoucnost, kterou nemají, zatímco jejich rodiče smutně sledují rostoucí ceny bytů i nájmů, s čímž umírněná rozumná politika nemíní nic dělat. Během čekání, až problém vyřeší trh, zestárnou a umřou. Důležité však je, že politika zůstane stejná a mýtického trhu se nikdo nedotkne.
Někdo by si možná mohl myslet, že realitní trh je tu proto, aby si na něm lidé našli bydlení. To je ale typická chyba idealistů. Pragmatik ví, že realitní trh je tu proto, aby plnil sny spekulantů s byty. Jejich právo vlastnit v centrech měst prázdné domy je svaté a nedotknutelné.
Přece jen nejsme na komunistickém západě, kde je speciální danění prázdných nemovitostí normální – třeba v Dánsku u většiny nemovitostí platí, že pokud je majitel sám neobývá, pak je ze zákona povinen je pronajmout. Nicméně jak řekl Ježíš, je to samozřejmě komunismus.
S rozumnou politikou na věčné časy
Nesmíme se nechat dojímat realitou nedostupného bydlení. I ve světě idejí je třeba hájit posvátné zákony trhu stejně, jako před pár desetiletími obhajovali jiní dogmatici nedotknutelné zákony historické nutnosti. Ani jedna mutace fotrovského realismu přitom nepočítala s právem lidí upravit si běh dějin či trhu k obrazu svému.
V abstraktní politice plné rozumných řešení skutečné životy celých generací nehrají žádnou roli. Týká se to všeho. Pokud dnes prospívá řepce zalévání pesticidy, pak se bude zalévat pesticidy, dokud nechcípne poslední motýl a neotráví se poslední studna. Právo likvidovat životní prostředí dnešních a budoucích generací je nedotknutelné. Takové už jsou zákony rozumné politiky. Byznys je byznys. Hlavně žádný extremismus.
Kvůli klimatické změně budou příští generace obývat nehostinný svět. Proti tomu brojí děti, což není rozumné. Navíc každý rozumný politik ví, že Greta Thunberg jedla ve vlaku salát z plastové misky. Takhle rozumná politika rozhodně nevypadá. Rozumná politika nosí dobře střižená saka, jako mají lobbisté Shellu nebo ExxonMobil, kteří minulý rok utratili dvě stě milionů dolarů ve snaze zablokovat jakékoli snahy o řešení klimatické krize. U nás si představte třeba uhlazenou tvář majitele hnědouhelných dolů a elektráren Daniela Křetínského. Vážně chcete byznys takového rozumného člověka omezovat kvůli nějakým drzým dětem?
Kůrovcová kalamita, která decimuje české lesy, je dalším exemplárním příkladem rozumné umírněné politiky, která se dělá každý rok stejně bez ohledu na okolnosti. Vědci a ekologové desítky let upozorňují na rizika smrkové monokultury, která se pěstuje v polohách, kde nemá co dělat. Naposledy se snažili veřejnost na tristní stav českých lesů upozornit ve zprávě z roku 2006. Marně. Ušmudlaní vědátoři a ekologové nemůžou stát v cestě umírněné politice a rozumnému byznysu. Výsledek uvidíte už brzy také ve vašem lese.
Nobelovku za umírněnost
Kdyby se na nás řítil meteorit, čeští politici by navrhli daňové úlevy pro výrobce pokrývek hlavy. Pokud bude sucho, čeká totéž producenty hydratačních krémů. Česká politika je tak rozumná a pragmatická, že by ji měl někdo celou i s jejími protagonisty přesunout do skanzenu a prohlásit jí komplet za světové dědictví UNESCO. Expozice bude mít rozhodně úspěch, protože světem pochoduje „centristický taťka“ a oceňuje politiky, kteří jsou permanentně mimo čas a prostor.
Jak nedávno upozornila Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, jsme už natolik cyničtí, že se jakékoli snaze o řešení posmíváme coby mladistvému idealismu, zatímco cynismus považujeme za znak rozumu. Pokud nás rozumná politika umírněných řešení přivedla k extrémním důsledkům, pak je na čase ji začít nazývat pravým jménem, tedy nikoli jako politiku rozumnou a umírněnou, ale dogmatickou a extremistickou. Děste se toho, až vás někdo pochválí za to, jaký jste rozumný a umírněný člověk.
Autor je publicista a sociolog. | {
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Data Source
In a 2013 study of physician professional satisfaction, we surveyed 656 practicing physicians in 30 practices within each of six states: Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.14 We consulted with each state’s medical society and created a list of practices for potential inclusion in the study. Practices were selected to achieve diversity in practice size (10 small with < 10 physicians, 11 medium with 10–49 physicians, 9 large with > 49 physicians), specialty (15 multispecialty, 10 primary care, 5 single subspecialty), and ownership model (19 physician owned or physician partnership, 11 hospital or other corporate ownerships). The practice sample was not nationally representative. Most practices agreed to participate and all but one participating practice completed the study. That practice was replaced before data collection with another practice from the same state. We surveyed all physicians within each practice, receiving 452 responses, of which 439 included a response for physician gender (69% response rate overall; 67% response rate for gender).
The physician survey (see Online Appendix 1 for survey instrument) collected self-reported income from the past year as well as gender, specialty, hours worked per week, weeks worked per year, composition of work hours, percent of patient care time spent providing procedures, compensation type, age, years in practice, race, and ethnicity. This study is a secondary analysis of the survey data; the survey was originally intended to measure physician professional satisfaction and related determinants. Analysis of these survey data was approved by the RAND Human Subjects Protection Committee.
Measures
Our outcome was annual income in dollars. Demographic covariates included the following: gender (male/female), specialty group (primary care: family practice, general practice, internal medicine, and pediatrics; obstetrics/gynecology; medical specialties: cardiology, dermatology, gastroenterology, neurology, oncology, and pulmonology; surgical specialties: general surgery, otolaryngology, ophthalmology, orthopedic surgery, and urology; other: emergency medicine, psychiatry and other), race (white [European, Middle Eastern, other], black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Asian, or other), ethnicity (Hispanic or Latino, or Not Hispanic or Latino), age (grouped as 18–40 years old, 41–50 years old, 51–60 years old, 61–70 years old, or 71 years old or more), and years in practice (5 years or less, 6–10 years, 11–20 years, 21–30 years, or 31 years or more). Work covariates included the following: hours worked per year (in hours), work hour composition (percentage of time spent on patient care, teaching, research, administration, and other), percent of patient care hours spent performing procedures with and without general anesthesia (categorized as 0%, 1–24%, or ≥ 25%), and compensation type (fixed salary, salary adjusted for performance, shift, hourly or other time-based method, or share of practice billing or workload). Practice covariates included the following: practice size (≤ 9 physicians, 10–49 physicians, or ≥ 50 physicians), practice specialty (primary care, single subspecialty, or multispecialty), and practice ownership model (physician-owned or partnership, or hospital or corporate owner). We also included state and practice random effects.
Statistical Analyses
We estimated several multilevel mixed-effects generalized linear models of annual income as a function of different covariates. Model 1 estimated income as a function of physician gender alone; Model 2 additionally adjusted for state and practice random effects and practice covariates; Model 3 additionally adjusted for hours worked per year; Model 4 additionally adjusted for specialty. Model 5 additionally adjusted for work hour composition, and Model 6 additionally adjusted for the percent of patient care hours spent performing procedures with and without general anesthesia, and compensation type. Model 7 additionally adjusted for age, years in practice, race, and ethnicity. We report the difference between male and female incomes in every model to show how the difference was “explained” by additional covariates and how much of the residual difference remained unexplained.
We excluded respondents whose reported work hours exceeded the 95th percentile (3550 h/year) because such extreme values might have been misreported or might be considered “overtime” hours that deserve higher effective hourly wages. In all models, we winsorized income at the 95th percentile ($600,000) to limit the influence of extreme outliers. Winsorization of these outliers can help compare “like to like,” as respondents earning very high incomes may have fundamentally different work or business arrangements compared to all other respondents.15 Non-response can bias estimates of parameters and relationships even among surveys with high response rates.16, 17 Therefore, we constructed non-response weights using data on gender, age, AMA membership, state, individual specialty, practice size, practice specialty, and practice ownership model and used the weights in all models to account for differences between survey responders and non-responders. Multiple imputation by chained equations is the preferred method for addressing missing data in observational studies.18, 19 Here, we used multiple imputation for the following covariates: gender; age; years in practice; race; ethnicity; hours worked per year; percent of hours worked in teaching, research, administration, and other; percent of patient care hours spent performing procedures with and without general anesthesia; and compensation type. State effects were assigned to the state level of the model. Practice random effects and a vector of practice characteristics (practice specialty, size, and ownership model) were assigned to the practice level of the model. All other covariates were assigned to the individual level. Standard errors were clustered within states and practices. | {
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Boogie Nights recap, Trevor Bauer’s McLaren, OK BOOMER, strongman crushes own dick, Papa John, Bill Cosby, Josh Brolin’s butthole, Kid Rock vs. Oprah and Johnny Depp’s Michael Jackson’s glove musical.
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Meggan Powers takes it all off and shows off her incredible hot body!
The girl that Pinked you is here! She loves it when you look at her nude sets!
The perfect teen foot fetishist! If you love feet, you'll love Piper Fawn! | {
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Blockmesh, found online at Blockmesh.io, is a messaging app that promises to pay you in exchange for helping to build and maintain a mesh communication network. Here’s our review.
What Is Blockmesh?
Blockmesh aims to connect the world through free data sending, which means individuals will be able to engage in secure communications at a fraction of the cost. In fact, Blockmesh aims to create free worldwide communications channels using a network of “nodes” worldwide.
The platform is catered towards developing parts of the world (the Blockmesh whitepaper specifically mentions Africa). There are 2.6 billion mobile phone users around the world, including billions of users in developing countries. Instead of targeting just those users, Blockmesh wants to target the 4 billion people worldwide who don’t have a phone. Many of these users cannot afford a phone, which means they struggle to communicate with the modern world.
Users interact with the platform through a mobile app. As long as your phone can install the mobile app, you can use Blockmesh to facilitate secure communications.
Users are rewarded with Blockmesh tokens for supporting and maintaining the network. You “support” the Blockmesh mesh network by installing the Blockmesh app on your phone. When you install the app, your phone can be used for secure communication across the network.
What Problems Does Blockmesh Seek To Solve?
Overall, Blockmesh seeks to solve the problem that many people worldwide live outside of mobile network coverage. Some of the specific identified problems include:
Phones aren’t affordable, and 13% of people worldwide live below the international poverty line
Only 29% of countries have affordable broadband for 100% of the population
31% of people live outside of 3G coverage
80% of online content is only available in 1 of 10 languages, which only about 3 people speak as their first language
95% of survey participants in 12 developed and developing countries have used online government services
Blockmesh aims to solve this problem by making mobile communications more affordable than ever before.
How Does Blockmesh Work?
Blockmesh works as a mesh communication network where users install a mobile application onto their smartphones, and then each device connected to the app acts as a communication relay.
A mesh network, by the way, is a group of devices that communicate and pass information from one device to another in sequence until the intended recipient is reached.
For example, a text message is sent from A to B, with A and B being two different locations around the world. The message is sent by A, then relayed via users, from user C to user D, until it reaches B.
The platform revolves around the use of Blockmesh tokens, which are ERC20 tokens built on the Ethereum blockchain. There’s a total of 2 billion Blockmesh tokens.
Possible revenue streams identified by the Blockmesh whitepaper include MeshAD, the MeshDev-Platform, MeshEX, MeshAID Disaster Redundancy Networks, and the Mesh token’s transaction costs.
How does Blockmesh plan to cater to the billions of users worldwide who have a mobile device – but struggle to participate in a modern economy or financial system? The secret to Blockmesh’s plan is to make their system free to use, with no data required from network providers. You can earn Mesh coins by supporting the network. Coins are transferable, and coins are liquid (through the Bancor protocol). You can also earn an estimated reward of 30% for holding Blockmesh within the first year.
Users will be able to load their ERC20 tokens onto a debit card for easy spending.
Targeted users for Blockmesh include any smartphone holders, any communities with high data costs or low coverage, disaster areas, and rural customers.
Another unique feature of Blockmesh is that the company doesn’t need to build its own infrastructure. In fact, it requires no infrastructure whatsoever because it uses existing phones. It doesn’t need to use cell phone towers or satellites.
The end result of Blockmesh is cost-free communications – something that could be revolutionary for developing areas of the world.
Who’s Behind Blockmesh?
Blockmesh is led by Bjorn Dingemans (Founder), Tyron Caithness (Head of Financial), and Eureka Zandberg (Legal Cousel).
The company has partnered with Bancor and P-ACS, among other members of the blockchain community.
By Q4 2018, Blockmesh hopes to launch its mobile app for iPhone and Android, with a Mesh hotspot reward rolling out before the end of the year. By Q1 2019, they hope to be listed in app marketplaces.
Blockmesh originally formed as a mesh network solution provider in October 2015. They’ve been an existing, profitable business prior to launching their cryptocurrency project.
Blockmesh ICO
The Blockmesh ICO is scheduled to take place on February 28, 2018.
There are 220 million tokens available through the ICO at a rate of $0.05 per token, out of a total supply of 2 billion Blockmesh tokens.
50% of the total supply of tokens is reserved for mining. The remaining tokens are reserved for future development and mainstream adoption (25%), Blockmesh founders (4.9%), pre-ICO (1%), reward air drops (5%), service providers (4.1%), and an ICO (10%).
Reward airdrops will be given 3 times a year for 1 year. This is to encouraging “hodling” behavior (yes, Blockmesh uses the term “hodling” in its whitepaper). Users with the Blockmesh app on their mobile device will be rewarded for data sent via the app. Users with Wi-Fi routers or boosters can also earn tokens by providing internet to the mesh.
Overall, Blockmesh tokens will be given as a reward for launching and supporting the Blockmesh network. They’ll also be used for peer to peer payments and in-app purchases.
Blockmesh Conclusion
Blockmesh aims to enable cost-free communication by creating a network of mobile devices worldwide. Today, billions of people worldwide own phones. However, someone in one country might struggle to communicate with someone in another country due to high communication costs – including long distance rates. Blockmesh solves this problem by creating a “mesh” network of nodes, where communications are routed through mobile phones worldwide as part of a global network. The end result is cost-free communications.
Blockmesh will be in development throughout 2018. To learn more about the platform, visit online today at Blockmesh.io. | {
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Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became well known for urging stressed-out students competing for elite colleges to calm down and stop trying to be perfect. Yesterday she admitted that she had fabricated her own educational credentials, and resigned after nearly three decades at M.I.T. Officials of the institute said she did not have even an undergraduate degree.
“I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to M.I.T. 28 years ago and did not have the courage to correct my résumé when I applied for my current job or at any time since,” Ms. Jones said in a statement posted on the institute’s Web site. “I am deeply sorry for this and for disappointing so many in the M.I.T. community and beyond who supported me, believed in me, and who have given me extraordinary opportunities.”
Ms. Jones said that she would not make any other public comment “at this personally difficult time” and that she hoped her privacy would be respected.
Ms. Jones, 55, originally from Albany, had on various occasions represented herself as having degrees from three upstate New York institutions: Albany Medical College, Union College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In fact, she had no degrees from any of those places, or anywhere else, M.I.T. officials said. | {
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Statement
UNICEF alarmed about reported extreme violence against children in Syria
NEW YORK, 31 May 2011 – “As the death toll in Syria increases, UNICEF today calls for immediate efforts by all parties to spare civilians, particularly children and women, the most vulnerable populations.
“Since mid-March, reports of children injured, detained, displaced and at times killed have been increasing. While UNICEF cannot verify the reported cases and events, we are particularly disturbed by the recent video images of children who were arbitrarily detained and suffered torture or ill-treatment during their detention, leading in some cases to their death. We call on the government to thoroughly investigate these reports and ensure that perpetrators of such horrific acts are identified and brought to justice.
“UNICEF reiterates the state’s primary responsibility for the well-being of those affected by the unrest and therefore the duty to ensure the continuation of basic social services at all times and their urgent resumption in case of interruption, especially for life-saving and emergency services.
“The use of live ammunition against demonstrators has reportedly left at least 30 children dead. UNICEF has not been able to independently verify the number of the victims and the circumstances of their death.
“UNICEF strongly condemns all acts of violence against children everywhere.
“As party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Syria has an obligation to ensure children’s right to life, to freedom of expression, to freedom of peaceful assembly, and to protection from violence, exploitation and abuse. These rights must be upheld at all times.”
For more information, please contact:
Charbel Raji UNICEF Amman;
Tel + 962 6 550 2422
[email protected]
Patrick McCormick, UNICEF New York,
Tel + 1 212 326 7426,
[email protected] | {
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Sweden submarine search called off Published duration 24 October 2014
image copyright AP image caption Swedish ships and planes have been searching waters off Stockholm for the past week
The Swedish military has called off its week-long search for a suspected submarine in the sea south of Stockholm, officials say.
Naval vessels and planes have been searching the Stockholm archipelago for the last week, amid suspicions a Russian submarine was in trouble there.
Russia's defence ministry denied any of its ships were involved.
The vessel, whatever it was, is now believed to have left Sweden's territorial waters.
The Swedish operation was reported to have been the country's biggest military mobilisation since the Cold War.
In a statement, the military said (in Swedish) : "This means the bulk of ships and amphibious forces have returned to port." It added that some smaller units would remain in the area.
Rear Admiral Anders Grenstad told reporters: "We assess that the [vessel] that violated our waters has now left."
"It's the assessment of the defence forces that probably foreign underwater activity has taken place in Stockholm's inner archipelago," he said, calling any such activity within Swedish territory "unacceptable".
The military believed at least one vessel was involved, he said, adding that it was probably not a large submarine, but "a small vessel".
Hundreds of people were said to be involved in the search, that the military said was based on "several credible operations".
Swedish officials had not said which country they thought was behind the "underwater activities", but there were widespread suspicions that the Russian navy was involved.
image copyright EPA image caption The operation was said to be Sweden's largest mobilisation since the Cold War
Russian officials have repeatedly denied any involvement, with a defence ministry statement saying: "There have been no extraordinary, let alone emergency situations, involving Russian military vessels."
Whatever the answers, what is clear is that Sweden's underwater defences are not up to scratch, the BBC's Malcolm Brabant reports.
A new submarine hunting helicopter is not due to come into service for a number of years, our correspondent adds.
Soviet submarine sightings caused Cold War security alerts in Sweden in the 1980s.
Russia's military intervention in Ukraine this year has fuelled suspicion about its intentions towards other neighbouring states, notably in the Baltic.
On Tuesday, Nato said its jets intercepted a Russian spy plane that had briefly entered Estonian airspace.
Russia said the plane had been on a training flight and had not violated Estonian airspace.
Sweden is not part of Nato but has tightened its ties with the alliance.
It signed a pact with Nato on 5 September, allowing it to engage in joint training exercises, and receive assistance from Nato troops in emergencies.
image caption The search focused on Ingaro Bay - about 30,000 islands make up the Stockholm archipelago | {
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Jurgen Klopp has given his Liverpool players a history lesson in a bid to inspire a miraculous fightback in their Champions League semi-final with Barcelona.
The Reds boss has enjoyed some truly momentous European nights under the lights at Anfield.
From the thrilling late show against Borussia Dortmund in 2016 to last season's demolition jobs on Manchester City and Roma.
But Klopp says a contest from before his arrival at Anfield gives him the belief that overhauling a 3-0 deficit on Tuesday night is possible.
See what Jurgen Klopp had to say about the clash with Barcelona HERE
It was the same challenge that his Dortmund side faced against Real Madrid in the quarter-finals back in April 2014.
Having lost 3-0 in the Bernabeu, a much changed line up threatened to pull off a stunning comeback on home turf as Marco Reus struck twice before Henrikh Mkhitaryan hit the post.
Dortmund fell agonisingly short but Klopp said after that contest: “You could make a video of this game and show it to the teams that lose a first leg 3-0.”
Show Player
It's an experience that the manager has recalled with his Liverpool squad as they fine-tune preparations for their mission against Barcelona.
(Image: Photo by Alexandre Simoes/Borussia Dortmund/Getty Images)
“I don’t think too much about (the fightback against) Dortmund,” Klopp said.
“My own personal little story is about Real Madrid, years ago with Dortmund. We lost 3-0 there but then at home we changed seven or eight positions. We changed the team on purpose, more or less.
“Oliver Kirch was a really good player who had only played a couple of games, but that was the eye-opener for the whole world. Everyone was thinking: ‘Who’s that guy?’ He played an unbelievable game that night against Madrid.
“We won 2-0 and we should have won 5-0 without a shadow of a doubt. We were clearly the better side.
“But it was Madrid then and it’s Barcelona now. It’s a big difference. I don’t want to talk too much, but I have told the players that story.
“It doesn’t mean that it will happen again but it is enough for me to believe. That is what we do, not more.”
(Image: Photo by Boris Streubel/Getty Images)
The scoreline in the Nou Camp last week was undoubtedly harsh on the Reds, who created a stack of chances but were wasteful in the final third.
The loss of Naby Keita, Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino to injuries has weakened Klopp's hand further.
No wonder the manager was far from bullish when he faced the media on Monday. But he knows that belief will grow – both in the stands and on the field – if Liverpool start brightly and impose themselves on the contest.
Klopp said: “I've had these games a couple of times. In my experience, it's not that before the game you think: 'Yeah, I believe we will do it.'
“I'm completely fine with the chance. I don't think we have more, but I don't think we have less. Less than them, but we have at least a chance. They are halfway through. That's the truth.
“I don't sit at home and tell my missus: 'Wait for me at home, we will have a party after the game because we'll win it.' We have to work for it.
“We believe in the chance, we believe in the opportunity, not in the result. There are a lot of other components that are important as well.
“We have to make changes again obviously and we will see how we deal with that. But in general, the shape is good and confidence is there, so we should try it.
“A lot of things are possible. We have to do the right things on the pitch and then you need a bit of luck, which we didn’t have in Barcelona.
“We need a little bit more at home and we need a fantastic atmosphere. We have two of the best strikers in the world not involved so of course we need the crowd involved.
“Some things will be new, 100%, with not really any time to train. That’s how it is but I am still looking forward to it. It’s all good. It’s the Champions League and you want to be a part of it.
“We were so happy when we came through the quarter-final and now we are in the semi and we have to use the second leg.”
Can the depleted Reds really make Barca suffer?
Klopp said: "I don’t want to say that because you make a headline of it and then Mr Valverde sits in the meeting room, translates it into Spanish and shows it to his players!"
Whether or not Liverpool prove able to repair the damage done in the Nou Camp, Klopp is convinced that they will be an ever stronger force in Europe next season.
Despite the result in Catalonia cutting deep, the manner of the performance showcased how far they have come.
"What I liked and the reason for the good football we played was how brave we were. That's how you play in these places," Klopp said.
"Barcelona has a lot of quality, unbelievable quality. On the other side, they work with the respect the other team shows.
"I think we showed exactly the right amount of respect. It was not too much. It was really exactly right. That's what I liked so much.
"We didn't try to be cheeky. We were completely serious in all situations. We worked hard for each moment and then we played really good football.
"I know how it sounds: you lose 3-0 and say afterwards I really liked the game. But I cannot always speak to the people with no idea about football.
"People who have an idea about football saw it and thought 'that was massive'. That's what I really like.
Show more
"I was impressed. That makes it so important for now and for the future. It gives us a basis we can work with.
"We all make these experiences together. We did it there like this, why can't we do it today? That's how I thought about it." | {
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(AP) — The man tasked with trying to find a way out of an impasse over the construction of a giant telescope in Hawaii says he met with Native Hawaiian leaders. But the only issue they reached a consensus on was to meet again.
Hawaii County Mayor Kim said Monday he met Native Hawaiian community leaders, including many from Oahu.
He says the group didn’t include protesters currently blocking a road to Mauna Kea’s summit, where an international consortium has a state permit to build a telescope. Kim says he met with protest leaders earlier when he visited the spot where they are blocking the road.
Hawaii Gov. David Ige last week asked Kim to take the lead on finding common ground with protesters. The protest is on its 15th day. | {
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We have pretty high standards when it comes to holiday lights. After all, places like Rockefeller Center and Champs-Elysées have seriously raised the bar with their out-of-this-world Christmas decorations. But just when we thought we'd seen it all, Japan illuminates one of the coolest displays we've ever seen: tens of thousands of lights glittering on a rice field.
The incredible display in Japan's Ishikawa Prefecture comes courtesy of Aze no Kirameki ("Twinkling of the Ridges"), an annual event in which the Shiroyone Senmaida rice paddies are transformed into a holiday fantasy-land. According to Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, hundreds of local volunteers gathered back in early October to set up some 21,000 solar-powered lights, which will remain up until mid-March.
This year's mass lighting is just as stunning as years past, with the LEDs running along each of the field's 1,004 individual rice paddies. The lights automatically turn on when the sun sets, and change from yellow to pink every half hour. Visitors can walk along the field's paths to view the rows of bulbs up close and enjoy this year's addition: a cricket sound effect placed in devices along the walkways, chirping every time the colors switch. Or, you can see the entire spectacle from a viewing platform up high.
The first Aze no Kirameki festival took place seven years ago, organized by the town of Shiroyone to attract visitors during the cold winter months. Shiroyone Senmaida, about seven hours north of Tokyo, had already gained some popularity as a summertime destination and was named a "special place of scenic beauty" by Japan's government back in 2011. The nine-acre area is indeed gorgeous during warmer seasons, with its verdant, terraced fields set along the Sea of Japan. But thanks to the addition of these twinkling lights, the site remains impressive (arguably becoming even more impressive) when the temperatures drop.
To see this display in person, get yourself to Tokyo (there's a flight deal for that!) and then take a plane or train to the Noto Peninsula. A little bit too much effort for you? We won't judge you for staying home and drooling at the event's photos on Instagram. | {
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Spider-Man: Far from Home (4,634 theaters) - $41.7 M
Toy Story 4 (4,210 theaters) - $22.0 M
Crawl (3,170 theaters) - $12.5 M
Stuber (3,050 theaters) - $7.5 M
Yesterday (2,755 theaters) - $6.2 M
Aladdin (2,557 theaters) - $5.3 M
Annabelle Comes Home (3,209 theaters) - $4.7 M
Midsommar (2,707 theaters) - $3.0 M
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2,308 theaters) - $2.8 M
Avengers: Endgame (1,443 theaters) - $1.9 M
Paramount's Crawl delivered an estimatedon Friday and is currently looking at a $10-11 million debut. The film received a "B" CinemaScore from opening day crowds.Disney's release of Fox's R-rated comedy Stuber brought in an estimatedon Friday and is expected to finish around $8 million for the three-day. It too received a "B" CinemaScore from opening day audiences.You can check out all of the Friday estimatesand we'll be back tomorrow morning with a complete look at the weekend.Paramount's Crawl brought in an estimatedfrom preview showings last night beginning at 7PM. The performance is ahead of the $735k in previews 47 Meters Down brought in ahead of an $11.2 million opening in June 2017.Disney's release of Fox's Stuber brought infrom previews beginning at 7PM in nearly all of the film's opening weekend 3,050 locations. The performance is a bit ahead of the $500k in previews for CHiPs ahead of a $7.7 million opening back in March 2017 and trails the $950k in previews for The Happytime Murders ahead of a $9.5 million opening last August.We'll take a closer look at things tomorrow morning once Friday estimates come in. For now you can check out our weekend preview below.This past Sunday morning it appeared the weekend box office had finally outperformed the same weekend from a year prior after three-straight down performances. However, once actuals came in, the weekend again dipped below the same weekend in 2018 for the fourth weekend in a row and, unfortunately, this week will make it five.Looking to repeat atop the weekend box office, Sony and Marvel's Spider-Man: Far from Home is in something of a never-before-seen position after debuting on a Tuesday last week with the July 4 holiday landing on a Thursday. Looking at films like Transformers and The Amazing Spider-Man , those films dipped -47.5% and -44.2% respectively after their six day openings, but both were July 3 releases rather than July 2, and neither opened as large as, which leads to the assumptionwill have a bit of a steeper second weekend drop. As a result, we're anticipating a dip anywhere from 54-57% and a three-day around, which would push the film's domestic cume near $270 million after 13 days in release.Second place will also be a holdover title in Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 4 , which is looking to end up near $350 million domestically by the end of the weekend or just a million or so short. With no new competition in the family marketplace this weekend, we're expecting a drop around -35% for a three-day over. Come Sunday evening the film will rank as the fifth highest grossing Pixar release ever.Landing in third is where we expect to find the first of the weekend's new releases in Paramount's R-rated alligator thriller Crawl . The studio is anticipating a weekend performance around $10 million for the $13.5 million production, which lines up mostly with what we're seeing, though we do see some potential upside. A look at IMDb page view data shows it pacing very similarly to 47 Meters Down , which debuted with over $11 million back in June 2017 from just 2,270 locations.is debuting in over 3,100 locations, leading us to expect a performance that can, at the least, reachNext we come to Disney's release of Fox's R-rated buddy comedy Stuber , which is opening in over 3,000 locations. While the studio isn't providing expectations for this weekend, industry expectations have the film debuting anywhere from $7-15 million with many settling around $11 million. Based on the information we're looking at, even the lower end of that range could end up too high. A look at IMDb page views for films such as American Ultra The Nice Guys and even The Happytime Murders showtrailing well behind all five over the two weeks leading up to release. In fact, the best comp at this point seems to be 2017's CHiPs , whichis also trailing in terms of IMDb page views. That film opened with $7.7 million from 2,464 locations, which is right around where we're going with our expectations forand don't expect reviews — 43% on RottenTomatoes and 38 on Metacritic — to help out either.Rounding out the top five is Universal's Yesterday , which is adding 141 locations as it enters its third weekend in release. At this time we're expecting a dip around -40% or so for athree-day and a domestic cume nearing $48 million.In limited release, Bleecker Street will debut The Art of Self-Defense into seven theaters this weekend before it will expand into over 500 locations next weekend. Additionally, Entertainment Studios will debut the documentary Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable in 205 theaters and A24 will release The Farewell in one theaterThis weekend's forecast is directly below. This post will be updated on Friday morning with Thursday night preview results followed by Friday estimates on Saturday morning, and a complete weekend recap on Sunday morning. | {
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Boxes of expired film have been sitting in a box in my closet for years. I have been waiting for an opportunity to put the film to a test, and with a credential for this year’s Daytona 500 and no assignment, it seemed like the perfect time to break out the expired film and take a risk. I had no idea once I processed film if I would even get anything usable, but my hope was to get images that echoed the timelessness of Daytona and it’s fanbase. Photographers have it easy these days with digital, but the ability to hold the images and have a tangible experience with photography was one of the best feelings I’ve had in a while. Here’s a collection of some of my favorite frames.
Photographs by Chip Litherland/ The Players’ Tribune | {
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“Contract is not Settled; …We Continue To Bargain In Good Faith and Members Continue to Prepare For A Work Stoppage”
The Chicago Teachers Union is currently in contract negotiations with the Chicago Public Schools and has been since November 2011. While much has been made of the interim agreement in which the Union was able to successfully stop the threat of a 7 hour and 40 minute work day as well as force the District to hire displaced (tenured) teachers in over 500 new positions, the parties have not reached a new contract agreement.
Educators have been without a contract since June 30.
Despite the interim agreement, there are many open issues still on the negotiating table in which there has been little movement. Public school educators also remain concerned about the District’s refusal to provide adequate wrap-around services for students severely impacted by poverty and violence in addition to threats of ballooning class sizes. Teachers are concerned about the new evaluation process of which 40 percent of the review is based on how students perform on standardized tests. Job security, health benefits and teacher pay have not been resolved.
While we continue to bargain in good faith, CTU members continue to prepare for a work stoppage in September when most of them are required to return to the classroom. State law requires a “cooling off period” of 30 days after the issuing of a fact-finder’s report. At the end of this period, or thereafter, the CTU may strike provided it has first given the District a 10-day notice of the intent to strike.
It should be noted that movement at the bargaining table came only after nearly 10,000 people marched in downtown Chicago in support of a fair contract and more resources for neighborhood schools. This dramatic action was followed by a historic vote, where 90 percent of CTU members voted 98 percent to authorize a strike.
We recognize strikes are not popular. However, they are the strongest tool public workers have in ensuring their rights are not trampled upon and working conditions are fair and equitable. The CTU is fighting for strong, well-resourced neighborhood schools where students, regardless of their zip code, will have equal access to a high quality education.
Chicago is a world-class city and it deserves world-class neighborhood schools. Teachers, paraprofessionals and school clinicians are prepared to do what it takes to protect their jobs, their students and their schools. ### | {
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Yesterday, Mitt Romney unveiled a new attack that-even by the standards of his campaign-was incredible in its dishonesty. First, a little background. A few weeks ago, after urging from both Republican and Democratic govenors, the administration allowed states more flexibility when it came to fulfilling welfare work requirements. The memo, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, stipulates that states can receive a waiver as long as their programs achieve the same work goals as the original program. The hope is that, with flexibility to try new approaches, more recipients can be placed into jobs.
This, it should be said, was a reform pushed by Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts.
Rather than praise the change, or ignore it, the Romney campaign went on the attack, accusing Obama of "ending the work requirement" and turning welfare into a cash grant. Here's the ad:
Today, the Obama campaign released its rebuttal, which hits Romney for flagrantly distorting the truth:
This was a quick response, even amidst a campaign in which multiple ads and videos are released every week. But it's easy to see why Team Obama would want to nip this in the bud. There's a line in Romney's ad that hearkens back to Ronald Reagan's rhetoric about "young bucks" and "welfare queens":
"Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work or wouldn't have to train for a job, they would just send you your welfare check."
Racism isn't inherent in opposition to welfare. But attacks on welfare have often played on stereotypes about "lazy minorities" and government "dependence." The data shows that there is a strong, if subtle, connection between racial attitudes and support for government programs. If you answer affirmatively to statements like, "African Americans should not need any special privileges when slavery and racism are things of the past," you are more likely to have a general opposition to downward redistribution.
Romney's ad plays on that prejudice; it's telling viewers that the African American president has taken their resources and given them to the undeserving poor, who don't want to work. This is an obvious appeal to racial resentment, and only a little more subtle than Newt Gingrich's frequent attacks on Obama's as a "food stamp president."
Greg Sargent reports that the ad will run at high frequency in all of Romney's media markets. This shouldn't come as a surprise. To win the election, the Republican candidate needs to win a historically high percentage of white voters-60 percent, greater than any presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide. Given the degree to which Romney will do or say anything to win the presidency (see his radical reinvention over the last eight years), it's not crazy to think that he would try to capitalize on the zero-sum thinking-and cultural resentment-that emerges especially during times of economic distress. | {
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Feb 2 (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said on Tuesday it was exploring strategic alternatives in addition to the continued pursuit of the reverse spin-off of its Internet business.
The company also said it would cut about 15 percent of its workforce and close offices in five locations.
Shares of Yahoo, which also reported fourth-quarter results, fell 1.4 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
The company said it would simplify its product portfolio and that it had begun to explore divesting non-strategic assets.
Yahoo on Tuesday also reported a 15 percent fall in adjusted quarterly revenue as it struggles to keep its share of online search and display advertising in the face of tough competition from Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google.
Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, who joined Yahoo in 2012 from Google, has been trying to revive the Internet pioneer's core media and online advertising business by spending heavily to draw more users to its websites.
Mayer proposed in December that Yahoo spin off its main business, which includes its search engine, digital advertising units and its email service, after Yahoo abandoned efforts to sell its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. But the company had provided few details.
Traffic acquisition costs (TAC), the amount Yahoo spends to attract users to its websites, rose to $271 million in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, from $74 million a year earlier.
Yahoo's revenue - after deducting fees paid to partner websites - fell to $1.00 billion from $1.18 billion.
The company reported a loss of $4.43 billion, or $4.70 per share, in the quarter, compared with a net income of $166.3 million, or 17 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, Yahoo earned 13 cents per share, in line with analysts' average expectations.
Up to Tuesday's close of $29.06, Yahoo's shares had fallen 35 percent in the past 12 months.
(Reporting by Abhirup Roy and Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru and Deborah M. Todd in San Francisco; Editing by Savio D'Souza) | {
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Khamenei's power is declining not because he is challenged by anyone inside the establishment but by knocks on his door. Even if he wanted to do a Kim Jong-un, he can't. He has no organized political party and, heading for his 80th birthday, is unable to attract young Shiites who are thinking of their future.
The "Supreme Guide" is getting less and less "supreme". Signs that he is being cut down to size by events, including nationwide protests, have multiplied. He still makes speeches, summons civilian and military officials, and issues orders. But, increasingly, people hear him but don't listen.
The Khomeinist regime is programmed in its DNA to be anti-American, anti-West, anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, anti-Turk, anti-Russian, and more importantly perhaps, anti-Iranian.
The other day in Tehran, the arrival of a US registered passenger plane at the International Airport triggered an avalanche of rumors that, for a brief moment, buried the anxieties that grip Iranians with regard to the looming confrontation with the Trump administration in Washington. The wildest, and most popular, rumor was that the "American plane" had brought a special emissary from Washington to invite the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei to a summit with President Donald Trump with a view to "doing a North Korea".
The rumor wasn't all that fanciful.
The history of relations between the US and the mullahs is full of cloak-and-dagger episodes.
President Jimmy Carter wrote flattering letters to Khomeini, the man who created the Islamic Republic. In response Khomeini sent Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan to reassure Carter and persuade him to resume the supply of arms to Iran. President Ronald Reagan sent his former National Security Adviser Robert MacFarlane to Tehran to discuss a deal with the ayatollah. And Khamenei visited the occupied US Embassy in Tehran to discuss the purchase of American arms with US diplomats held hostage.
Under Reagan, with help from Israel, the US smuggled arms to Iran to stop Saddam Hussein's army.
Over the years, successive Islamic presidents, including Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami maintained sub-rosa dialogues with the "Great Satan". Right from the start President Hassan Rouhani was identified as head of "The New York Boys", a coterie of US-educated functionaries working for a "grand bargain" with Washington.
President Barack Obama turned out to be the most pro-mullah leader the US had seen. He went out of his way to even deliver cash to Tehran but ended up vilified and humiliated.
While such under-the-counter deals helped reduce tension, the fundamental problem -- that the Khomeinist regime is
incapable of normal relations with anyone, let alone the American "Great Satan" -- remained. The Khomeinist regime is programmed in its ideological DNA to be anti-American, anti-West, anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, anti-Turk, anti-Russian, and more importantly perhaps, anti-Iranian. Today, the Islamic Republic does not have many friends.
All it has is lackeys and mercenaries, like the "Hezbollah" in Lebanon and the Assad clique in Syria, and small groups on the margin of the Iraqi Shiite community.
The problem is that old shenanigans no longer work and, thus, Khamenei cannot do a Kim Jong-un even if he wanted to.
The reason is that the "Supreme Guide" is getting less and less "supreme". Signs that he is being cut down to size by events, including nationwide protests, have multiplied. He still makes speeches, summons civilian and military officials, and issues orders. But, increasingly, people hear him but don't listen.
A few months back he threatened that if the US tears up the "nuclear deal", he would "shred it."
However, when Trump threw the "deal" into the ashcan, the "Supreme Guide" swallowed his pride and urged Rouhani to find some way of saving something from the ghostly "deal."
When the Trump administration demanded that Tehran freeze its missiles project, Khamenei refused. He summoned his generals to "produce more and more missiles, and more powerful ones".
Last month, however, Muhammad-Ali Aziz-Jafari, the general who commands the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), publicly declared that Iran had frozen its missile project at a maximum range of 2,000 kilometers. Even then he had to stress that 2,000 kilometers was the length of Iran's own territory, from the border with Turkey to the Gulf of Oman.
Not a peep from the "Supreme Guide".
Khamenei's order to reopen the Arak plutonium plant, and install new centrifuges and enrich uranium to a higher degree has also been buried under a ton of lip-service. The government doesn't have enough money to pay its employees let alone spending on white elephants to please the Ayatollah.
In the past months, Khamenei has issued two fatwas forbidding women from riding bicycles in public places, notably city streets. However, the Islamic Police (NAJA) has officially declared that it has no intention of enforcing that ban against the many Iranian women who ride bicycles to work and school. In fact, women have continued to ride in the streets in deliberate protest of Khamenei's decree. In one isolated incident, in Yazd, vigilantes attacked a group of women cyclists but had to retreat when they themselves were set upon by an angry crowd.
Khamenei's order to "Islamize" human sciences and burn books written by the Infidel on philosophy, politics, sociology, economics and other disciplines has also been criticized and ignored. Iranian students still have to read not only Aristotle and Adam Smith but also August Comte and Karl Popper.
The pan-Islamic conference that Khamenei had convened to create "Islamic social sciences" ended in chaos as it was boycotted by almost all reputable academics.
Khamenei has spent time and energy telling Iranians how to write poetry, make movies, and even have successful marriages.
Khamenei has even somewhat retreated on his promise to wipe Israel off the map in 25 years' time. Now he says he wants a referendum for a one-state solution.
A comical episode revealed the decline in Khamenei's prestige. Having sacked his Chief of Staff Gen. Hassan Firuzabadi, Khamenei wanted to regain control of a luxury villa the general had occupied for 23 years, and issued two fatwas ordering instant evacuation. The general ignored the fatwas and stayed put until Khamenei had to send his own armed bodyguard to seize control of the villa.
Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Image source: kremlin.ru)
A longer list could be established of cases in which Khamenei's orders have been ignored because there is no realistic way to carry them out.
Khamenei's power is declining not because he is challenged by anyone inside the establishment but by knocks on his door. Even if he wanted to do a Kim Jong-un, he can't. He has no organized political party and, heading for his 80th birthday, is unable to attract young Shiites who are thinking of their future.
I don't know whether that is good or bad news. The Islamic republic was a wayward ship from day one but at least had a captain. Today, it is not clear who is in charge, which means the Islamic Republic is in a worse state than Kim Jong-un's People's democratic republic of Korea. | {
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First Lady reveals appalling example of ‘stereotyping’ in Target store
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
December 18, 2014
How many times have you been walking through a store when someone has mistakenly thought that you are an employee and asked you for help?
How many times have you made the mistake of confusing another shopper with an employee of the store?
Only the other week I was sorting through some Levi jeans and a woman enquired as to whether a certain size she wanted was in stock. I laughed it off, informing her that I was not a member of staff. She looked a little embarrassed but chuckled and went on her way. No big deal.
According to Michelle Obama, if this happens to a black person it’s RACIST.
In an interview with People Magazine entitled The Obamas: How We Deal with Our Own Racist Experiences, the First Lady describes how “the impact of stereotypes” effects her own family when the protective bubble of Secret Service security is relaxed, with particular reference to when she visited a Target store incognito as part of a lame photo-op to try and prove she was just like everyone else.
“I tell this story – I mean, even as the first lady – during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf,” said the First Lady. “Because she didn’t see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn’t anything new.”
Yes that’s right, Michelle Obama thinks that a woman in Target erroneously thought she was an employee and asked her for help because she was racist and automatically assumed Obama worked there because she was black, and that the request for help had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Obama is a tall woman who is probably good at taking things off shelves.
Indeed, when the First Lady originally told the story during an appearance on the David Letterman Show, it was obvious that the reason the woman in Target asked Obama for help was not because of her skin color but because of her height.
“No one knew that was me. Because a woman actually walked up to me, right? I was in the detergent aisle, and she said — I kid you not — she said, ‘Excuse me, I just have to ask you something.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, cover’s blown.’ She said, ‘Can you reach on that shelf and hand me the detergent?’ I kid you not. And the only thing she said — I reached up, because she was short, and I reached up, pulled it down. She said, ‘Well, you didn’t have to make it look so easy.’ That was my interaction. I felt so good.”
“Clearly, she’s had time since then to think about what really happened: RACISM,” writes Jim Treacher. “Let this be a lesson to you, white racists of America (if that isn’t redundant). When you see Michelle and her assistant at Target, get your damn laundry detergent yourself.”
Characterizing the incident as racist takes on added irony given the fact that the very reason for the visit was part of a PR stunt to portray Obama as an ‘ordinary’ person – you know, one that could very well be a Target employee.
Here’s a newsflash for Michelle Obama and the race baiters who will seize upon even the most nondescript and harmless incident to cry racism – we’ve all been mistaken for “the help” no matter the color of our skin.
Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71
FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.
This article was posted: Thursday, December 18, 2014 at 7:33 am
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Infowars.com Videos: | {
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Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz tells Senate panel export of petroleum products not classified as crude oil up considerably during the last decade. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- The export of petroleum products not classified as crude oil has increased by a factor of four in the last decade, the U.S. energy secretary said.
A Senate committee on energy heard testimony about the merits of the nation's strategic petroleum reserve. Jason Bordoff, director of energy policy at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, explained the SPR is an important strategic asset despite the rise in domestic crude oil production and the subsequent decline in imports.
"There is an urgent need to modernize the SPR's existing infrastructure to ensure that it can remain effective in the event of an emergency by delivering additional and incremental barrels to the market," he said in his prepared remarks.
In July, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Republican chair of the committee, expressed frustrated with lack of funding necessary to modernize the SPR.
The SPR was created in the wake of the Arab oil embargo on the United States in the 1970s to provide an emergency stockpile to buffer against any future supply shocks. With U.S. crude oil production rivaling Saudi Arabia, industry supporters argue the subsequent ban on domestic crude oil exports established after the embargo is outdated.
U.S. Energy Secretary Moniz told the Senate committee U.S. producers were not throttled by the ban on access to foreign economies.
"U.S. exports of non-crude petroleum products from the United States averaged a record 3.8 million barrels per day in 2014, a nearly four-fold increase over the last decade," he testified.
The U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security, a division of the Commerce Department, has authorized exports of so-called condensate from the U.S. market. The White House said earlier this year the BIS decision did not represent a shift in U.S. export regulations.
Legislation enacted in response to the 1970s oil embargo bans the export of unprocessed crude oil, but products like gasoline and other fuel products aren't restricted.
Condensate refined or processed in a certain way is not characterized as crude oil and is therefore not subject to the export ban. | {
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Former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel announced his resignation from politics on Monday. This means giving up his seat in the Austrian parliament, which he intends to do by the end of the week.
Schüssel was chancellor of Austria from 2000 to 2007 and headed two controversial cabinets during his 32 years in the Austrian parliament. He served as head of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) from 1995 until the end of his chancellorship and has been perhaps the most influential Austrian politician of the past two decades. His sudden resignation is a blow to his party and to his own legacy.
In recent weeks, there has been media speculation that Schüssel or associates from the ÖVP were involved in cases of corruption where companies, including Telekom Austria, allegedly made payments to politicians. Though there is no evidence linking Schüssel directly with any of the scandals.
The former chancellor maintains his innocence and said Monday that he only resigned to make it easier for the Austrian judicial system to come to an objective conclusion in the case.
"No one, including me, can exclude that my trust was betrayed or abused by someone," said Schüssel. "No one would regret it more than me [if that were the case]. That's why we need total clarity on this issue.
"I would like to contribute to the conduct of an investigation which is objective, free from political influence and free from pre-judgment in the media."
Suspect payments
In the Telekom case, investigators are looking into dubious payments of millions of euros to a lobbyist and a strong suspicion that money was channeled back to politicians or people close to them.
Grasser is among those under investigation
Most of those under investigation were once members of or linked to the ÖVP’s then-coalition partners, the right-wing Freedom Party. Former Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser, for instance, is under investigation after revelations that millions of euros were paid to lobbyists and public relations agencies during the privatization of state-owned property.
Mr Schüssel told journalists he did not acknowledge any wrongdoing and that it was wrong to link his party to the allegations of kickbacks and corruption which appear almost daily in the media.
"On one hand this decision has not been easy because I put great emphasis on the team and on companionship. I was the longest serving party leader, 12 years as president,” he said. "And I know how important that is for the whole country. On the other side, I go with a light heart because I always did my job using the best knowledge and with a clear conscience."
Widespread surprise
Franz Fiedler, a former public auditor and now the chair the corruption watchdog Transparency International, said the revelations were shocking.
"The scale of it surprised me. Not that corruption exists in the public arena and in business - that doesn't surprise. But the density of it - that surprised me. And that it was associated with a single firm, or the environment of a single firm. I could not have imagined that," Fiedler said.
Author: Matt Zuvela, Kerry Skyring (AFP, dpa)
Editor: Martin Kuebler | {
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We're excited to announce the launch of four new powerful extensions that take your simple Standard Notes experience to a new level.
We decided early on that simplicity is the only way to achieve quality, stability, and longevity in software. Too often we see apps we depend on implode from their own complexity or become completely unusable from endless bloat. We knew that if we wanted to avoid this death trap, we had to design our system differently.
Extensions have been the perfect solution for us. We get to keep our core suite of applications as simple, fast, and reliable as possible. For the million and one other features users will want and invariably need, we created Standard Notes to be extensible.
Up until now, extensions have been limited to only certain parts of the app, like menu actions and custom editors. Today we're announcing a new class of extensions called components.
Components allow you to completely swap out sections of the app with custom modules. With components, you can build a custom tagging system, custom note list views, utility bars that allow pushing a note to WordPress and GitHub, and more.
Today we're announcing four new components:
1. Folders
2. Autocomplete Tags
3. Action bar
4. Github push
These extensions are now available in your Extended dashboard. If you're new to Standard Notes, get started by downloading the app here, then visit the Extensions directory to learn more.
Components use a special offline messaging system to deliver an extensible application even in the web browser. In fact, we make sure that our web application is always as powerful as our desktop applications. This is essential to our goal of longevity, because while desktop platforms may come and go, or be updated to oblivion, we're counting on the web to always be present no matter which platform you use. Powerful web access means as long as web browsers exist, Standard Notes exists.
Developers should check out our getting started guide to learn more about developing a component for Standard Notes.
We're beyond excited to get this in your hands and begin exploring the possibility of what a fully extensible notes app looks like.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch. | {
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GOSHEN, N.Y. -- A woman who admitted to causing her fiancé's death by removing a plug from his kayak before a Hudson River outing is heading to prison, reports CBS New York.
Angelika Graswald, 37, was sentenced to the maximum one-and-a third to 4 years in state prison Wednesday in Orange County Court.
Graswald pleaded guilty in July to criminally negligent homicide.
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The plea came weeks before she was set to stand trial on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the death of 46-year-old Vincent Viafore, of Poughkeepsie, who drowned while the couple was kayaking in April 2015.
Prosecutors accused Graswald of removing a drain plug from Viafore's kayak and pushing a floating paddle away from him after his kayak capsized. "48 Hours" investigated the case in the episode, "Death on the Hudson."
Graswald's attorneys said the death was an accident, caused by high waves, cold water and alcohol. They said the plug in the kayak police say led to his drowning was removed long before the incident. They also argued that paddling with the plug removed from the drainage hole -- a small opening on the top of the kayak -- wouldn't have caused Viafore's kayak to fill with a large amount of water.
Graswald, a Latvian national, admitted she caused the death of her fiancé by removing the plug from his kayak, knowing that he wasn't wearing a life vest or wetsuit and that the Hudson River waters were dangerous and cold.
Prosecutors said she did it for his $250,000 life insurance policy. | {
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England and Chelsea forward Eniola Aluko will be writing a regular column for the BBC Sport website throughout the season.
Ahead of Chelsea's first Women's Super League game on Sunday, she explains how qualifying as a lawyer will allow her to concentrate on football during a vital World Cup season.
For the first time in eight years my double life as a striker and trainee solicitor will be on hold.
You may know that I play for Chelsea and England, but I am also a recently qualified sports and entertainment lawyer.
The certificate came through the post earlier this month and it was a very proud moment for me; it's taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to this point. Sometimes after a tough training session, the last thing you want to do is go into the office.
The timing has been excellent, though.
Like many other clubs in the Women's Super League, we are full-time professionals at Chelsea. So now I'm qualified, my plan is to put law on the backburner and give football my full attention. It coincides nicely with what is the biggest year of my football career.
The competition for places in the England squad has never been stronger ahead of the World Cup in June and hopefully training every day will also boost our chances of winning silverware at Chelsea this season.
Being pipped to the title by Liverpool on the final day of last season was painful, but we are stronger for going through that experience. And with August's FA Cup final also due to be played at Wembley for the first time, there is plenty to be excited about.
Chelsea were pipped to the 2014 WSL title on goal difference by Liverpool after losing at Manchester City
All about Eniola Aluko Born: 21 February 1987, Nigeria Forward for Chelsea Ladies and England (89 caps, 32 goals) Ex-clubs: Birmingham, Charlton, St Louis Athletica, Atlanta Beat, Sky Blue Qualified as a sports and entertainment lawyer in 2014 Brother Sone plays for Hull City in the Premier League
Dealing with Beckham and Boyle
Usually it takes five or six years to qualify as a solicitor but after spending some time studying and playing in the United States, my journey has taken a little longer.
The last two years of my legal training have been a bit of a slog, fitting it around football, and in that sense I've been fortunate to work for two very understanding law firms.
Aluko says she was inspired by fictional lawyer Atticus Finch in the book To Kill a Mockingbird
Both have given me a wide and varied taste of the sports and entertainment world, from working on commercial deals for David Beckham through to divorce cases and the hacking trial.
Much of this world involves contract law; basically negotiating on behalf of artists or sports stars, and their employers, to get your client the best deal possible.
At one firm, I helped the likes of One Direction and artists from the X-factor negotiate with their record labels, and I even helped represent comedian Frankie Boyle in his defamation case against the News of the World.
During my time at a sports law firm, we did a lot of work with Olympic athletes such as cyclist Victoria Pendleton and snowboarder Jenny Jones, while working on Eden Hazard's image rights is something that will stand me in good stead for working in that field.
My plan is to work in sports law when I finish playing and, even now, I occasionally get team-mates asking about their deals with clubs and what my opinion is.
Women's football is still quite young so players aren't always that savvy when it comes to their contracts. You do get occasions where they have signed something that they didn't want to, but if I can offer advice it's always nice to help progress their careers.
After I retire from football, representing female players is something that might appeal to me.
Why law?
I've always had a natural leaning towards representing people's interests. I remember in school I used to get very irate about things if I thought they were unfair and I always used to stick up for other people.
It was just an innate thing; I'm quite principled when it comes to how people are treated.
When I was younger I was obsessed with the book To Kill a Mockingbird external-link and the central character Atticus Finch; I loved law films and I was very interested in politics. My dad was a politician back in Nigeria. I just took that interest on to university and when I qualified with a first-class degree, I knew that I could practise it for real.
Lawyers are becoming more common in football. A lot of agents will hire them to deal with the technical details of a contract so, quite often, lawyers will double up as agents too. Having the legal and commercial law background is definitely an advantage when it comes to negotiation.
For me, that is the best part: getting the best deal for your client. People assume a sports lawyer will just dot the Is and cross the Ts, but there's a lot more involved. All parties are usually happy when a contract is signed but in a year's time when the relationship with a club breaks down or the athlete wants to change clubs or agents, you need to have the foresight to specify how it will be dealt with.
I've negotiated my own contract in the past; I was involved when England players were looking for better central contracts a few years ago.
That was a good example of when having a knowledge of the playing side and the legal side can be beneficial, and I hope that will be the case in the future. As a lawyer, I will be able to understand my clients' needs because, as a professional footballer, I have been there.
Lineker's praise for my goal
I've been flattered by the reaction to my goal for England during the 1-1 draw against the Netherlands in our successful Cyprus Cup campaign earlier this month.
Aluko scores wonder goal for England
It was already on the internet but it wasn't until I appeared on Match of the Day 2 Extra and they showed it in the programme that people really picked up on it. One of them was Gary Lineker, who said some very nice things about it on Twitter. It's nice when high-profile people acknowledge your work.
In fact, we had a bit of banter after he told me he only scored tap-ins, but I managed to find him scoring a worldy.
Was it my best goal ever? I scored a similar one in the 2009 European Championship quarter-finals against Finland where I dribbled from the half-way line, so maybe that edges it because of the occasion.
Scoring goals like that inspires me to do the same thing again, and hopefully I can for Chelsea and England this season.
Eniola Aluko was talking to BBC Sport's Alistair Magowan. | {
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Source:
April 19, 2015 20:31 IST
The influential Khaps or caste councils from three states have vowed to work to end female foeticide and demanded a provision for 10-year jail to the guilty, arguing that if such strict law can be framed for cow slaughter why not for protecting girl child.
Breaking from tradition, two women were among those who presided over the largely male-dominated Mahapanchayat (grand assembly) of about 100 khaps from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi yesterday, which decided to promote the Narendra Modi government's flagship 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' scheme.
The call was given from Haryana, which has the most skewed gender ratio in the country due to dwindling population of girls. Notably, the Union government's ambitious 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' campaign to improve the child sex ratio was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Panipat in January this year.
"Like the cow protection Act, the Haryana government should also frame a law giving 10 years punishment for those caught in acts of female foeticide, besides hefty fines too should be imposed.
"If strict law can be there for cows, which we support, then why can't there be a tough law for those who kill the girls inside wombs and don't even allow them to see the outside world," Om Prakash, general secretary of the Jat Mahasabha, Mann, said on Sunday.
For "protection and upkeep" of cows, Haryana assembly had last month passed a Bill which clamps a complete ban on cow slaughter in the state and provides for a rigorous imprisonment ranging from three years to 10 years for killing the animal.
The Khaps are high influential caste groupings but have gained notoriety in the past with their controversial diktats against same gotra (sub-caste) marriages, uses of mobile phones and other issues.
A resolution has been passed under which committees would be formed to take the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao drive to the district, block and village level for creating awareness about the importance of the girl child, Prakash said.
They also resolved to ‘socially boycott’ the persons found indulging in female foeticide.
He said that Khaps will strive to promote education of girls, make people aware about the ills of dowry practice and help safe girls for a healthy society.
"A person who informs about female foeticide, he/she will be honoured by the Khaps," he further said. On the occasion, a pledge was taken by everyone present against female foeticide.
Mann said the meeting was presided by women also unlike in the past when mostly men were seen.
"Those who presided over the Mahapanchayat included Ram Karan Solanki, Jaimal Singh, Jagvanti Malik and Sudesh Chaudhary," he said.
"We wanted to give a message that if women are not given equal space to speak and allowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with men, then the whole purpose will be defeated," he said.
He said that when a delegation of Jats had recently met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on the issue of Jat reservation, many Khaps were also part of the delegation.
"The prime minister had then requested the Khaps to support our BBBP campaign, because we (Khaps) work at the grassroot level and can play a crucial role in the success of the Centre's initiative," he said.
Mann said it was the happiest moment for him when he became father of a girl after having seven sons. "I was very happy when a girl was born to me. I educated her and made her a doctor. She has made me proud and now I am even more proud as I have got an able son-in-law who is a judicial magistrate," he said.
Launching 'beti bachao, beti padhao (save daughter, educate daughter)' scheme in Panipat district of Haryana in January, Modi had said discrimination against girls shows a mindset which is harmful for the future of the nation. | {
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Below is a list of all achievements. There are 2,009 achievements of which 43 are hidden until achieved. All achievements combined give a maximum RuneScore of 21,081.8.[n 1]
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Name Members Description Category Subcategory
Safety Dance Yes Avoid being damaged by twenty of the Queen Black Dragon's fire waves without defeat. Combat Solo PvM 50
Sage Advice No Talk to the Lumbridge Sage. Exploration Lumbridge 5
Sandy's Secret Getaway Yes Grapple over Yanille's southern wall. Exploration Ardougne 10
Say It, Don't Spray It Yes Hear one of Al the Camel's poems using a fully featured cramulet. Exploration Desert 15
Scabigail Yes Complete the Scabaras research. Completionist
Miscellaneous Master Quest Cape
Trimmed Completionist Cape
Miniquests 10
Scourge of Scurvy Yes Grow a healthy fruit tree in the patch near Brimhaven. Exploration Karamja 10
Scribbling in the Depths No Obtain the hidden rewards after the 'Song from the Depths' quest. Completionist Master Quest Cape
Trimmed Completionist Cape 10
Scribblings of a Dragonkin Yes Find 'Vicendithas' Scribblings' located in the Edimmu Resource Dungeon. Completionist Master Quest Cape 25
Scrolling with Power Yes Unlock the Dungeoneering scroll traits. Completionist Trimmed Completionist Cape 20
Scrying Game Yes Use Zemouregal's scrying pool to spy on the citizens of New Varrock. Exploration New Varrock 10
Seagullible Yes Earn tier 10 reputation with the ports faction. Completionist
Exploration Trimmed Completionist Cape
Menaphos 40
Second Shrubbery No Try to find out which is the mightiest tree in the forest. Miscellaneous No 10
Security through Obscurity Yes Use the deposit chest near the Bedabin Camp. Exploration Desert 15
See Yew at Five Yes Cut five sets of yew logs. Exploration Seers' Village 15
Seeing Lava Yes Use your fire cape on TzTok-Jad before defeating them. Minigames No 25
Seems Legit Yes Obtain five artefacts from Pyramid Plunder and sell them to Simon in one go. Exploration Desert 5
Seers' Village Yes Activate the lodestone in Seers' Village. Exploration Lodestone 5
Seers' Village Set Tasks - Easy Yes Given by any seer in Seers' Village for completing all Easy Tasks in Seers' Village. Exploration No 5
Seers' Village Set Tasks - Elite Yes Given by Sir Kay in Camelot for completing all Elite Tasks in Seers' Village. Exploration No 25
Seers' Village Set Tasks - Hard Yes Given by Sir Kay in Camelot for completing all Hard Tasks in Seers' Village. Exploration No 15
Seers' Village Set Tasks - Medium Yes Given by Stankers at the coal mine west of Seers' Village for completing all Medium Tasks in Seers' Village. Exploration No 10
Sentient Letters Yes Collect all the letters from the Senntisten digsite. Completionist Master Quest Cape 10
Seren Memories Yes Deposit Seren memoriam crystals, then search the Sanctum alcove. Completionist Completionist Cape
Master Quest Cape 20
Set It On Fiyr Yes Burn a fiyr shade with pyre wood. Exploration Morytania 25
Setting Up No Make a full suit of tier 1 armour (helm, body, legs, boots, gloves). Exploration Daemonheim 5
Seven Colours In Their Hat Yes Show the Wise Old Man your chromatic party hat. Miscellaneous No 50
Shade-Shattering Ka-Bloom Yes Cast Bloom using a Flail of Ivandis, upgraded with at least 200 burnt vyre corpses. Exploration Morytania 15
Shadow Boxing Yes Kill a shadow warrior in the Legends' Guild basement. Exploration Ardougne 15
Shadow Hanging Over Me No Claim all treasure from the chests during (or from Gudrik after) the 'A Shadow over Ashdale' quest. Completionist Master Quest Cape 5
Shadow Wave Yes Wave goodbye to a black hand. Combat Elite Dungeons 5
Shadows Below Yes Survive the shadow beneath the barrows. Completionist Trimmed Completionist Cape 50
Sharks are Good for the Elf Yes Bank a shark fished from the elven lands using the Elf Camp deposit chest. Exploration Tirannwn 10
Shattering Worlds I Yes Complete world 10 in Shattered Worlds. Combat General 5
Shattering Worlds II Yes Complete world 25 in Shattered Worlds. Combat General 5
Shattering Worlds III Yes Complete world 50 in Shattered Worlds. Combat General 5
Shattering Worlds IV Yes Complete world 100 in Shattered Worlds. Combat General 5
Shattering Worlds V Yes Complete world 150 in Shattered Worlds. Combat General 5
Shattering Worlds VI Yes Complete world 200 in Shattered Worlds. Combat General 5
Sheep Shearer No Complete the 'Sheep Shearer' miniquest. Completionist
Miscellaneous Master Quest Cape
Trimmed Completionist Cape
Miniquests 5
Sheepsworn Yes Successfully breed a sheep with the Ravensworn trait. Skills Farming 0
Sherpa's Delight No Catch a trout in the river to the east of Barbarian Village. Exploration Varrock 5
Shipping Out From the Shipyard Yes Charter a ship from the shipyard in the far east of Karamja. Exploration Karamja 10
Show That You Cairn Yes Explore Cairn Island to the west of Karamja. Exploration Karamja 5
Shrimpin' Ain't Easy No Catch some shrimp in the fishing spot to the east of Lumbridge Swamp. Exploration Lumbridge 5
Shrimpy Yes Unlock the Shrimpy pet. Combat Boss Pets 0
Sick and Twisted Yes Kill a warped terrorbird or tortoise in the Warped Poison Waste Dungeon. Exploration Tirannwn 5
Silky Smooth Yes Sell silk to the silk trader in Ardougne for 60gp each by haggling. Exploration Ardougne 5
Simply Divine No Create a divine location. Skills Divination 5
Sinclair Swirling Yes Use the churn in the Sinclair Mansion garden. Exploration Seers' Village 5
Sing-Along-a-Seren Verse 1 Yes During the Amlodd Voice of Seren : create a Titan's Constitution summoning scroll. Exploration Tirannwn 15
Sing-Along-a-Seren Verse 2 Yes During the Cadarn Voice of Seren : use a crystal bow to damage a Cadarn elf. Exploration Tirannwn 15
Sing-Along-a-Seren Verse 3 Yes During the Crwys Voice of Seren : cut a magic log in the Crwys district. Exploration Tirannwn 15
Sing-Along-a-Seren Verse 4 Yes During the Hefin Voice of Seren : complete one lap of the Hefin Agility Course successfully. Exploration Tirannwn 15
Sing-Along-a-Seren Verse 5 Yes During the Iorwerth Voice of Seren : use a crystal dagger to damage an Iorwerth elf. Exploration Tirannwn 15
Sing-Along-a-Seren Verse 6 Yes During the Meilyr Voice of Seren : craft a perfect juju farming potion using moss you harvested yourself. Exploration Tirannwn 15
Sing-Along-a-Seren Verse 7 Yes During the Trahaearn Voice of Seren : mine an adamantite or runite rock. Exploration Tirannwn 15
Sing for the Lady Yes Help Lady Ithell with crystal singing research. Completionist Completionist Cape
Master Quest Cape 10
Sinking Fast Yes Complete a sinkhole. Exploration Daemonheim 5
Sir Mitt No Climb to the top of the White Knights' Castle. Exploration Falador 5
Skeletal Wishes Yes Complete Rag and Bone Man and Fur 'n Seek wishlists, and have the Odd Old Man rebuild the Skeletal Horror. Completionist
Miscellaneous Master Quest Cape
Miniquests 15
Skeletrail Horror Yes Claim an elite clue scroll by defeating the skeletal horror. Minigames Treasure Trails 5
Skinful Yes Use Humidify to fill a waterskin while standing in the desert. Exploration Desert 15
Slash Fund Yes Get water from a cactus in the desert. Exploration Desert 5
Slay-ryu I Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent in a group. (X/5) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu II Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent in a group. (X/10) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu III Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent in a group. (X/25) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu IV Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent in a group. (X/50) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu Solo Kills I Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent while not in a group. (X/5) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu Solo Kills II Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent while not in a group. (X/10) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu Solo Kills III Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent while not in a group. (X/25) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu Solo Kills IV Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent while not in a group. (X/50) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu Solo Kills V Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent while not in a group. (X/75) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu Solo Kills VI Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent while not in a group. (X/100) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu V Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent in a group. (X/75) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay-ryu VI Yes Defeat Seiryu the Azure Serpent in a group. (X/100) Combat Boss Kills 5
Slay Bells Ring I Yes Slay a combination of 500 corrupted or devourer creatures. (X/500) Exploration Menaphos 25
Slay Bells Ring II Yes Slay a combination of 1,000 corrupted or devourer creatures. (X/1,000) Exploration Menaphos 25
Slay Bells Ring III Yes Slay a combination of 2,500 corrupted or devourer creatures. (X/2,500) Exploration Menaphos 25
Slay Bells Ring IV Yes Slay a combination of 5,000 corrupted or devourer creatures. (X/5,000) Exploration Menaphos 25
Slay Bells Ring V Yes Slay a combination of 10,000 corrupted or devourer creatures. (X/10,000) Exploration Menaphos 25
Slayer - Crabbe Yes Unlock the Slayer pet. Skills Skilling Pets 0
Slayer 10 Yes Reach level 10 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 110 Yes Reach level 110 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 120 Yes Reach level 120 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 20 Yes Reach level 20 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 30 Yes Reach level 30 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 40 Yes Reach level 40 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 5 No Reach level 5 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 50 Yes Reach level 50 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 60 Yes Reach level 60 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 70 Yes Reach level 70 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 80 Yes Reach level 80 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 90 Yes Reach level 90 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer 99 Yes Reach level 99 in the Slayer skill. Skills No 5
Slayer Master Yes Earn the title 'Slayer Master' from Morvran's platinum Rush of Blood challenge. Completionist Completionist Cape 45
Slide To The Left Yes Solve a puzzle box. Minigames Treasure Trails 5
Slime and Snails and God Wars Tales Yes Complete Tales of the God Wars. Completionist
Miscellaneous Master Quest Cape
Trimmed Completionist Cape
Miniquests 20
Slippery When Wet No Craft a water rune at the Water Altar. Exploration Lumbridge 5
Smithing - Smithy No Unlock the Smithing pet. Skills Skilling Pets 0
Smithing 10 No Reach level 10 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 20 No Reach level 20 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 30 No Reach level 30 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 40 No Reach level 40 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 5 No Reach level 5 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 50 No Reach level 50 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 60 No Reach level 60 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 70 No Reach level 70 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 80 No Reach level 80 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 90 No Reach level 90 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 92 (Halfway There) No Reach level 92 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smithing 99 No Reach level 99 in the Smithing skill. Skills No 5
Smooth Bakriminel Yes Craft some bakriminel bolts from scratch in the Wilderness. Exploration Wilderness 25
Smoulders and Skully Yes Kill Smoulders while wearing the demonic skull. Combat Elite Dungeons 10
Sniffing Out the Mole No Enter the mole's lair under Falador Park. Exploration Falador 5
Sniper Training Yes Kill one guard on each tower of the Ranging Guild using a regular shieldbow. Exploration Seers' Village 10
So-lacking in drops Yes Obtained a collection of unique drops from Solak. Miscellaneous Feats 0
So Su Me Yes Solve an easy runedoku casket (Choose "examine lock" option rather than force or pick lock). Exploration Desert 10
So You Think You Can Guard? Yes Obtained by defeating Telos at 2000% enrage. Miscellaneous Feats 0
Soft Kitty, Purple Kitty No Complete the Purple Cat miniquest. Completionist
Miscellaneous Master Quest Cape
Miniquests 10
Solly Yes Unlock the Solly pet. Combat Boss Pets 0
Some Old Dusty Journals Yes Find and read the Ancient, Dusty and Weathered Tarddian journals. Completionist Master Quest Cape 20
Something Barrowed I Yes Defeat the six Barrows Brothers and loot their chest. (X/5) Combat Boss Kills 5
Something Barrowed II Yes Defeat the six Barrows Brothers and loot their chest. (X/10) Combat Boss Kills 5
Something Barrowed III Yes Defeat the six Barrows Brothers and loot their chest. (X/25) Combat Boss Kills 5
Something Barrowed IV Yes Defeat the six Barrows Brothers and loot their chest. (X/50) Combat Boss Kills 5
Something Barrowed V Yes Defeat the six Barrows Brothers and loot their chest. (X/75) Combat Boss Kills 5
Something Barrowed VI Yes Defeat the six Barrows Brothers and loot their chest. (X/100) Combat Boss Kills 5
Source of Denial Yes Pick fruit from a sq'irk tree in the Sorceress' Garden without stopping. Minigames No 10
South AND West Side Story Yes Infiltrate both the Black Arm Gang AND the Phoenix Gang in New Varrock. Exploration New Varrock 15
Special Slayer Delivery Yes Unlock the ability to craft all Slayer items. Completionist Trimmed Completionist Cape 30
Spiderlogical Warfare Yes Defeat Spyndra with one of Araxxi's legs, eyes, fang or web in your inventory. Combat Elite Dungeons 10
Spidersworn Yes Successfully breed a spider with the Ravensworn trait. Skills Farming 0
Spinal Trap Yes Set a spinebeam trap that you made yourself. Exploration Daemonheim 10
Splitting Headache Yes Defeat a skeleton at Senntisten altar (or pray at Senntisten altar) with Soul Split enabled. Exploration Varrock 25
Squeal for Coins Yes Claim the coins from Yelps' cash bag after fighting him. Completionist Master Quest Cape 15
Squishing Level I Yes Squish a corrupted scarab. Exploration Menaphos 5
Squishing Level II Yes Squish 10 corrupted scarabs. (X/10) Exploration Menaphos 10
Squishing Level III Yes Squish 50 corrupted scarabs. (X/50) Exploration Menaphos 15
Squishing Level IV Yes Squish 100 corrupted scarabs. (X/100) Exploration Menaphos 20
Squishing Level V Yes Squish 200 corrupted scarabs. (X/200) Exploration Menaphos 25
Stacked Yes Start a floor with 225 of any type of ammo bound to you. Exploration Daemonheim 15
Staff on Stryke Yes Kill a Desert strykewyrm wearing a full slayer helmet and wielding an ancient staff. Exploration Desert 25
Stairway to Haven Yes Climb the stairs within Brimhaven Dungeon. Exploration Karamja 10
Stalker Notes Yes Find all Stalker notes. Completionist Master Quest Cape 30
Stand Still, Eluned! Yes Have Eluned or Ilfeen recharge a teleport crystal for you in Isafdar. Exploration Tirannwn 5
Stand Your Ground Yes Defeat each of the six Legiones without moving. Combat Solo PvM 50
Stand and Deliver No Kill a highwayman on the road south of Falador. Exploration Falador 5
Star Seeker Yes Use the noticeboard near the Observatory to gather information about shooting stars. Exploration Ardougne 5
Stay Safe No Fully complete the Stronghold of Player Safety. Completionist
Miscellaneous Completionist Cape
Master Quest Cape
Miniquests 5
Stay Secure No Fully complete the Stronghold of Security. Completionist
Miscellaneous Completionist Cape
Master Quest Cape
Miniquests 5
Stealing Sedridor's Stones Yes Fully loot Archmage Sedridor's chest. Completionist Master Quest Cape 20
Steel, Stud or Silk Salute Yes Perform the Salute emote in New Varrock while wearing level 20 armour. Exploration New Varrock 25
Steel Justice No Smith a steel longsword on the anvil in the jailhouse sewers. Exploration Lumbridge 10
Stick a Bork In Him, He's Done Yes Defeat Bork. Exploration Varrock 25
Stick the Knife In No Venture through the cobwebbed corridor in Varrock sewers. Exploration Varrock 5
Stir, Galahad Yes Have Sir Galahad make you a cup of tea. Exploration Seers' Village 5
Stoic Sweetcorn Guardian Yes Plant a scarecrow to protect your sweetcorn as it grows in the patch north of Port Sarim. Exploration Falador 10
Stone's Throw Away Yes Complete the Dahmaroc statue in your player-owned house. Completionist Trimmed Completionist Cape 50
Stranger and Stranger Yes Create a stranger plant pouch at the Well of Voyage. Exploration Tirannwn 10
Strength - Kangali No Unlock the Strength pet. Skills Skilling Pets 0
Strength 10 No Reach level 10 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 20 No Reach level 20 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 30 No Reach level 30 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 40 No Reach level 40 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 5 No Reach level 5 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 50 No Reach level 50 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 60 No Reach level 60 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 70 No Reach level 70 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 80 No Reach level 80 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 90 No Reach level 90 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 92 (Halfway There) No Reach level 92 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength 99 No Reach level 99 in the Strength skill. Skills No 5
Strength of a Raging Fire Yes Defeat Masuta the Ascended with at least 7 thrashing waters still remaining. Combat Elite Dungeons 50
Strike a Pose No Have Thessalia show you what outfits you can wear. Exploration Varrock 5
Struck A-Ghast Yes Kill a ghast in Morytania. Exploration Morytania 5
Stuffed With Anima Yes Defeat Telos (on 100%+ enrage) after letting him reach a full anima bar in all 5 phases. Combat Solo PvM 55
Summary Spirits Yes Claim the XP from all Wilderness spirit realm portals. Completionist Master Quest Cape 20
Summoning - Shamini Yes Unlock the Summoning pet. Skills Skilling Pets 0
Summoning 10 Yes Reach level 10 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 20 Yes Reach level 20 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 30 Yes Reach level 30 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 40 Yes Reach level 40 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 5 No Reach level 5 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 50 Yes Reach level 50 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 60 Yes Reach level 60 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 70 Yes Reach level 70 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 80 Yes Reach level 80 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 90 Yes Reach level 90 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 92 (Halfway There) Yes Reach level 92 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Summoning 99 Yes Reach level 99 in the Summoning skill. Skills No 5
Sun Shade Yes Plant the dominion marker in the desert, with all its achievements complete, including killing Sunfreet. Exploration Desert 25
Sunshine Through The Rain Yes Defeat Hard Mode Commander Zilyana whilst under the effects of her cloud attack and the Sunshine ability. Combat Solo PvM 40
Superior Successor Yes Obtained a collection of unique drops from the Magister. Miscellaneous Feats 0
Superiority Complex I Yes Defeat Verak Lith in a group. (X/5) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex II Yes Defeat Verak Lith in a group. (X/10) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex III Yes Defeat Verak Lith in a group. (X/25) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex IV Yes Defeat Verak Lith in a group. (X/50) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex Solo Kills I Yes Defeat Verak Lith while not in a group. (X/5) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex Solo Kills II Yes Defeat Verak Lith while not in a group. (X/10) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex Solo Kills III Yes Defeat Verak Lith while not in a group. (X/25) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex Solo Kills IV Yes Defeat Verak Lith while not in a group. (X/50) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex Solo Kills V Yes Defeat Verak Lith while not in a group. (X/75) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex Solo Kills VI Yes Defeat Verak Lith while not in a group. (X/100) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex V Yes Defeat Verak Lith in a group. (X/75) Combat Boss Kills 5
Superiority Complex VI Yes Defeat Verak Lith in a group. (X/100) Combat Boss Kills 5
Supply and Demand No Complete five supply runs after the 'Death Plateau' quest. Completionist Master Quest Cape 10
Supreme Hatchling Yes Unlock the Supreme Hatchling pet. Combat Boss Pets 0 | {
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“Shut off the damn tv, the voices make me stressed”
Alright said, Anya,
“I feel like you, my own family, is playing trickery against me”
Maa, Why would I, I’m your daughter
“You are just like the others, you only want bad things for me”
Apparently, October has a National mental health awareness day! It went almost unnoticed so I thought why not put out some experiences, that makes it okay to talk about it, even though it’s a month late.
The society still has a stigma, they make a big deal out of everything. You name the disorder, the blame and shame will come too.
Telly has raised considerable awareness about Depression and about reaching out to your loved ones and friends. But then how does anyone reach out when the person on the other end does not get anything about the illness.
It’s like having a fever when you’re running a temperature only you know what you feel, you feel cold, you are tired and need rest while the others can only sympathize with you for not keeping well because they’ve had the case of fever at some point in their life.
Apply the same case in depression, the symptoms may be felt and passed off like a regular ‘sleep over it and the next day you’ll feel good’ incident. Even the person here cannot detect it unless it’s very severe. So then do we really, actually know ourselves? And in severe cases, even though people know, they’d only support you by cheering you up with “many others have it worse than you” (because they clearly haven’t gone through a similar stage, they can’t sympathize) Leaving the person going through this all alone.
So I scanned the web and found an incredible article from The Guardian that takes into account what a severely depressed person feels like.
The article in The Guardian states
“So how is this misleadingly named curse different from recognizable grief?
For a start, it can produce symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s – forgetfulness, confusion, and disorientation. Making even the smallest decisions can be agonizing. It can affect not just the mind but also the body – You cannot conjure your actual personality, which you can remember only vaguely, in a theoretical sense. You live in, or close to, a state of perpetual fear, although you are not sure what it is you are afraid of. The writer William Styron called it a “brainstorm”, which is much more accurate than “unhappiness”.
Thus your personality – the normal, accustomed “you” – has changed. But crucially, although near-apocalyptic from the inside, this transformation is barely perceptible to the observer – except for, perhaps, a certain withdrawnness, or increased anger and irritability. Viewed from the outside – the wall of skin and the windows of eyes – everything remains familiar. Inside, there is a dark storm.
Other negative emotions – self-pity, guilt, apathy, pessimism, narcissism – make it a deeply unattractive illness to be around, one that requires unusual levels of understanding and tolerance from family and friends. For all its horrors, it is not naturally evocative of sympathy. Apart from being mistaken for someone who might be a miserable, loveless killjoy, one also has to face the fact that one might be a bit, well, crazy – one of the people who can’t be trusted to be reliable parents, partners, or even employees. So to the list of predictable torments, shame can be added.”
Seeking therapy becomes difficult and getting back to normal life seems like a distinct dream. You can recover, of course, that’s what they tell you but this recovery is dependent on the individuals progress that they make each and every day. Some take months and some years with the treatment to get back to who they were before the illness got to them.
Please leave a comment below if you’d like to share your opinion! | {
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Tuomas Uutela ja Ilkka Mannikainen pitävät lentämisestä niin paljon, että he matkustavat Helsingistä edestakaisin vaikka vain käydäkseen vessassa jonkin maan lentokentällä. He harrastavat lentopisteiden keräämistä ja bisnesluokassa ja loungeissa istumista. Tässä jutussa he kertovat, mikä huvikseen lentämisessä viehättää ja miten siihen voi olla varaa ja näinä ilmastonmuutoksen aikoina myös pokkaa.
Sonia El Kamel HS, teksti
Aku Isotalo HS, kuvat ja video
Tuomas Uutela ja Ilkka Mannikainen kävelevät tottuneesti Helsinki-Vantaan priority-turvatarkastuksen läpi.
He asettavat ainoat matkatavaransa metalliritilöitä pitkin kulkeviin harmaisiin muoviastioihin. Uutela riisuu selästään mustan reppunsa. Mannikainen kaivaa taskuistaan puhelimensa ja lompakkonsa.
Tavaraa on vähän. Tällä matkalla ei viivytä kauaa. | {
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SAN LORENZO DE EL ESCORIAL.- Owen Jones, activista, periodista y escritor inglés, ha vaticinado que "la gran coalición supondrá la destrucción del PSOE". Su afirmación se basa en lo ocurrido ya con Alemania. "En Alemanía la derecha gobierna con el centro izquierda, y eso ha supuesto la decadencia del partido socialdemócrata alemán", ha dicho en los Cursos de Verano de la Complutense.
"Hay que ser muy cautelosos con la derecha, lo que la izquierda debería hacer es quedarse en el lado de la oposición si no podría ser su suicidio", ha sentenciado respecto al caso español.
En referencia al Brexit, Owen, nacido en Manchester, ha dicho que Reino Unido se enfrenta a su peor crisis desde 1945 porque ahora la crisis no solo es económica. La dimisión de Cameron, la crisis de su partido y del partido laborista ha supuesto que "los xenófobos que ganaron el referéndum creen que tienen legitimidad completa" y apunta que la consulta "no fue un referéndum sobre la UE" y sí "un referéndum sobre la inmigración".
"El discurso que situaba a los inmigrantes como terroristas, criminales, diciendo que si Turquía se unía a la Unión Europea sería el fin hizo que la campaña fuera entre quienes estaban a favor o no de los inmigrantes. Lo peor es que ahora esos racistas creen que tienen un mandato", ha dicho en El Escorial.
En su ponencia Nuevas estrategias progresistas en Europa, Owen Jones ha querido dejar claro que "la falta de personas de izquierdas" fue la causante del Brexit. La decadencia de la socialdemocracia -cómo él mismo ha dicho- ha aupado al partido ultraderechista en Austria, a Amanecer Dorado en Grecia o a Le Pen en Francia, quienes, según Jones, "propondrán a sus países seguir el mismo camino que Reino Unido".
"El referéndum en mi país ha abierto una brecha y a menos que la izquierda haga algo, los beneficiarios serán los populistas de derechas" ha lamentado el periodista. Sin embargo, ha dicho sentirse esperanzado con el auge de partidos de centro izquierda.
El partido verde en Austria, el ala izquierdista de Estados Unidos con Bernie Sanders, en Grecia con Syriza -ha dicho- son la alternativa al capitalismo. "En Europa tenemos mucho que aprender de partidos como Podemos, que son capaces de construir una nueva Unión Europea", ha concluído el también colaborador de la formación. | {
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Seven—count ‘em—seven Republican 2016 hopefuls will be traveling through Iowa over an eleven-day stretch between August 2 and August 12, kissing babies, praising pigs, bashing teachers and, most of all, tearing into President Obama—when the person they’ll be running against in 2016, of course, will be Hillary Clinton, not Obama. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry will all be there. Not one of them has a snowball’s chance in Nevada of getting the nomination, which will go to one of the more “mainstream” Republicans: Chris Christie, Jeb Bush (Jeb Bush?!), Paul Ryan, or maybe one of the dark-horse GOP governors, such as Scott Walker (Wisconsin) or Mike Pence (Indiana). But Iowa, where Christian conservative caucus-goers hold the high cards, will send one or two of the GOP’s kooky far right into New Hampshire, and so they’re each hoping they’ll be the one. Perry, the goofy governor of Texas, is trying to go from Mr. Oops! to Mr. Iowa, with nine events scheduled in the state by this Tuesday, according to The Des Moines Register, leading the pack by far with a total of twenty-three appearances in Iowa. Ad Policy
The Register, in another piece, quotes an Iowa political analyst, Steffen Schmidt, thusly:
It probably would have been better if five or nine were coming because some smart-aleck political analyst will no doubt comment about Hillary Clinton as Snow White and the seven dwarfs.
There is widespread discontent bordering on despair among Republicans looking ahead to 2016, which is what probably accounts for the continuing speculation about whether Mitt Romney will suddenly emerge as the GOP’s favorite son once again, along with concern that so far the Republicans have been unable to put forward even a single female candidate to challenge what, after all, will be a female Democrat in 2016. Meanwhile, despite growing hopes and dreams among progressives that someone will emerge to challenge Clinton from the left—such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Zephyr Teachout, someone!—the former first lady and secretary of state is building an unassailable redoubt. (The latest CNN/ORC poll, released July 29, has Clinton leading Warren 67-10.) And while the Republicans are bashing Obama nonstop, ridiculously suing him in court, threatening impeachment and denouncing the White House’s alleged tyranny, Clinton is conducting her own assault on Obama, from the right, especially in regard to what she considers her strong suit, foreign policy.
In today’s edition, The Washington Post has a lengthy piece about Hillary Clinton’s eclipsing Obama in popularity, citing among things a Quinnipiac University poll in Ohio—the swing state on which Republican fortunes almost wholly depend in 2016—in which voters polled rated Obama an abysmal 36-59 percent job approval rating while giving Clinton a much more robust 52-43 approval, and backing Clinton by substantial margins against any and all GOP challengers. The Post also notes, with some glee, that Wall Street loves Clinton:
Some of the groups who have felt alienated by the Obama presidency are being won round by Clinton. Take Wall Street, always one of the president’s most complicated relationships. Although Wall Street financiers raised over $12 million during Obama’s last campaign, few financiers appear to have much love for the president. It was his administration that pushed the Dodd-Frank banking reforms into law, and Obama said recently that “further reforms” are required. As one banker put it to CNN Money: “There’s been so much finger pointing. He’s made it seem bad to be successful and to be millionaires and billionaires.”
More interestingly, the Post notes that Clinton didn’t miss an opportunity to slam Obama’s handling of foreign policy during an appearance on CNN on Sunday:
On foreign policy, look for Clinton to contrast her more hawkish tendencies with the Obama administration’s approach. During an interview on CNN on Sunday, Clinton appeared to criticize the Obama administration’s interactions with other nations. “How do we try to enlist the rest of the world in this struggle between cooperation and order and conflict and disorder, which is really at the root of so much that’s going on today? And I don’t think we’ve done a very good job of that,” she said. She also noted the popularity of George W. Bush in Africa because of his efforts to battle AIDS there. He made me “proud to be an American again,” Clinton said.
In other words—no surprise, Christie Watch guesses, to readers of The Nation—Clinton is courting Wall Street, bashing Obama’s diplomatic efforts and saying that George W. Bush made her “proud to be an American.” Sounds like there’s a country song in their somewhere.
Unfortunately for the GOP, which insists on attacking Clinton from the right, none of their nonsense (such as Benghazi) is having much effect, and that leaves her lots of running room to run as a candidate more hawkish and more pro –Wall Street than Obama. The Republicans are each finding it difficult to separate themselves from the pack while simultaneously figuring out a way to build the case against Hillary Clinton, as The Hill’s Campaign Blog notes in “The GOP’s 2016 Hillary paradox.”
So, as Joan Walsh points out in Salon: | {
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BOSTON (AP) — They say no man is an island, but Michael Richard Smith has been creating his own floating homes in Boston Harbor.
The Coast Guard and Boston police are keeping an eye on the unconventional camper who has been tying his canoe to small offshore docks in the city's inner harbor and pitching his tent to sleep at night.
The 49-year-old Maine native said Tuesday he's been paddling the waters of metro Boston since October with all his possessions aboard a 14-foot, 40-year-old aluminum canoe he patches with duct tape when necessary.
Smith detests the term "homeless" and describes himself as just another "fellow citizen."
He said he feels most secure when he sleeps out in the harbor, and lists his biggest worries as the wakes of fast ferries and drunken boaters.
"It's about as safe as I could be," said Smith, who's also camped on at least one inner harbor island. "Anybody who would want to hurt me or take my things, they have to have a boat. And boat people stick together."
The Coast Guard spotted Smith a few days ago, and said while the mariner has been moving around, he hasn't moored anyplace where he's a threat to security or his own safety.
"What it really seems like is he's trying to figure out whether it's feasible to live out there," Coast Guard Lt. Joe Klinker said Tuesday.
The Coast Guard official said the agency would take action if Smith entered a security zone, but that he has stuck to recreational areas.
"It's not a major concern for the Coast Guard right now," Klinker said. "... A lot of people who don't have a place, live by the water. But on the water is unique."
On Monday night, Smith tied up and slept on a floating dock about 100 yards offshore from the New England Aquarium.
Boston Police Department's Harbor Unit has offered him city services, but he declined, police spokeswoman Cheryl Fiandaca said Tuesday. She said Smith did accept a new life vest with reflectors and a whistle from police.
Police told Smith not to operate his canoe at night, because it doesn't have lights. And while police said they'll continue to check on his safety, like the Coast Guard, they said Smith doesn't appear to be breaking any laws.
Story continues
Smith said he spent about a year camping further north in Massachusetts before his sister helped him transport his canoe to Boston's Seaport District. Once there, he put the vessel he named "Alice Williams" in the water behind the InterContinental Hotel, the same neighborhood where Red Sox baseball team owner John Henry has been known to dock his 164-foot yacht "Iroquois."
The name of Smith's canoe is a tribute to the family of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island whom the mariner admires for his support of First Amendment freedoms. He used the name of Williams' mother, because he said women need more recognition.
Smith said he's spent years trying to advocate for better public schools, and has passed on a newsletter he's written on the topic to politicians, including Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. The canoe owner said he thinks about public policy as he's paddling through the harbor and that living on the water has taught him balance, patience and fortitude.
Smith is a wiry, mustachioed man with long brown hair who tucks a silk pink rose into the brim of his explorer hat. He dresses in layers to stay warm, but also doesn't seem to mind that colder weather will be coming as winter arrives.
Smith plans to sleep out in Boston Harbor all winter and prefers to concentrate on the beauty of his surroundings rather than the bareness of his accommodations.
Before sunup Tuesday, Smith saw a shooting star skitter across the New England sky and said later he made a wish meant for all people, no matter where they bunk at night.
"I wished self-esteem for all of us," he said. | {
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Volkswagen ID.3 Has Encountered 'Massive Software Problems'
Rumors: Volkswagen produces ID.3 with incomplete software and stores the cars until the update is ready.
German media reports of worrying “massive software problems” that Volkswagen is having with the Volkswagen ID.3, which has been produced on a limited scale in the ramp-up phase since November 4.
The nature of the issue is not described, but in general, it seems that the software is not complete, which means that all of the early ID.3 which were, are and will be produced (for at least a few more months) will need a software update.
Unofficial sources say that the first batch of cars is stored at specially-rented parking lots. It's expected that the German manufacturer will have to upgrade the software for some 10,000 ID.3 in Spring 2020.
Another batch of 20,000 ID.3 (total of 30,000) could also be affected and probably will require a software upgrade but through an over-the-air update.
Combining the rumors, we would guess that the over-the-air update is part of the not yet ready software/firmware features.
Customer deliveries of the first ID.3 cars are expected in mid-2020.
The unofficially reported problem with the software sounds interesting, especially if we recall VW CEO Herbert Diess' words about the software as an important competitive advantage.
“In the long run, I think we might have a bit of an advantage because of scale. On the hardware side, there is probably not so big a difference because they [Tesla] are are also have a dedicated electric platform and they’re quite big already for an EV manufacturer.” “But when it comes to the next big thing, which is software, Tesla is strong in software – but software really is a volume game. If you do software, you have to use ten million devices, not one million.”
Source: Manager Magazin, ecomento.de via Teslarati | {
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by
One wonders if Trump and his administration are aware of what is happening in the world or if they care the Earth is under deadly stress by no less an enemy than humans.
Are they so certain their crackpot theories are valid, that global warming is a hoax, that it’s fine to keep cutting down forests, that burning the Amazon is good for ranchers, that pollution is good for business, that poisoning children by neurotoxins in their food is an unavoidable part of food production?
Or am I wasting my time even raising these questions?
Trump probably believes with most economists that you make money by breaking eggs: cutting down trees, producing food by poisoning the land and the food people eat, constructing golf courses and skyscrapers, gambling in the stock market, outsourcing most industries, digging for gold, silver, and petroleum and lavishing the Pentagon’s war machine.
This is probably true. Economists and executives of the country’s largest companies consider pollution an externality of no consequence. They have been opposing environmental regulations for decades. Trump is doing their bidding.
So, why should we be upset by the latest proposal of Trump to log the Tongass National Forest?
Civilization
Societies join civilization under the rule of law and the virtues of justice, keeping religion out of politics, guaranteeing the freedom of thought, the employment of science for the discovery of truth, and protecting human and environmental health. In other words, you no longer live alone out in the woods, shooting everything that moves for a meal. Even MacDonald’s happy meals shouldn’t take away the rights of wild animals to also have an opportunity for a meal.
Under these virtuous political and ecological conditions, not many countries qualify to talk, much less to brag, about civilization.
It’s not merely Jair Bolsonaro who is burning the Amazon for more beef exports. American and European and African and Asian politicians and businessmen are burning and excavating their countries for money and power. Or, if that is not possible, they fund others in other countries to convert the natural world into cash.
Few if any world politicians and businessmen take climate change seriously and abandon fossil fuels or protect the natural world as if their lives depended on it.
Global chaos
The malaise is global. The twentieth century removed most of the rural people from villages to urban slums. The twenty-first century added technical prowess and confiscated peasant land to industrialized agriculture. Technologies boosted the processing and sale of food. Automation is engulfing industrial production. Computers abolish time in communications.
This high tech illusion does little to ameliorate world hunger and poverty or pollution. Rather, it is warning the urban majorities to keep serving their masters.
Those masters are the president and his assistants, agribusiness CEOs, other corporate executives, bankers, TV and media owners, state governors, Congressional politicians and the military.
Trump is the top boss. His policies against the natural world and the health of Americans are probably incomprehensible to him. He understands, however, his rollbacks of environmental laws please his election funders and the corporate elite.
You notice that when he signs his executive orders. He turns the signed text of the order to TV as if the text was celebrating a victory over an enemy. I wonder if he even reads the text. He is simply doing the work of corporate America.
Alaskan politicians behind the plundering of the Tongass National Forest
Alaskan politicians, the governor, Mike Dunleavy, and the two senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, all Republican, convinced Trump to dismantle federal protections of the Tongass National Forest.
The Trump administration ordered the Forest Service to approve this process of destruction. In March 16, 2019, the Forest Service designed a 15-year logging project in the Prince of Wales Island that included the opening of 164 miles of new roads in 67 square miles of land and the clearcutting of up to 23,000 acres of old-growth trees – trees several centuries old.
Environmental organizations like Earthjustice, Sierra Club, Alaska Wilderness League, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Alaska Rainforest Defenders, National Audubon Society, Natural Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Forest Service and the US Department of Agriculture for violating the National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental laws. They pointed out that such massive timber sale from the projected clearcutting of old growth trees was “wasteful, destructive, and a giveaway” to a timber industry contributing less than 1 percent to the economy of Alaska.
In addition, clearcutting 23,000 acres of ancient trees would harm the Alexander Archipelago wolf, flying squirrels, and birds like Goshawk.
Why this violent attack on a forest these environmental organizations call the crown jewel of America? The Alaskan politicians, like Bolsonaro of Brazil, have a distorted and selfish vision: satisfy the landowners in Brazil and the timber barons in Alaska.
Do these politicians, including Trump, ever think about the real bad effects, ecological and social, of their actions? They must have heard of the inferno in the Brazilian Amazon and its potentially horrific consequences on the planet. They cannot really assume or believe that adding quite a bit more carbon to the atmosphere from logging Tongass would be a good thing for America or the world? Or could they?
War on science
The only reasonable explanation of the murky world of Trump and the Republican politicians (of Alaska and the rest of the country) is that they reject science.
Certainly, the Evangelicals do. These Christian Republicans support Trump. They make no secret they expect Jesus to rise up, thus signaling the end of life on Earth. This delusion gets scary as high officials of the Trump administration are its fervent believers.
Without understanding science or willfully ignoring it, Trump and his supporters feel free pretending they are still living in the gilded age of the nineteenth century – with slaves and plantations. That means they convince themselves to go on earning a living or make it possible for others — as their ancestors did with logging, gold digging, and petroleum and coal exploration and use.
Of course, no matter how often they say climate change is a hoax, they cannot escape its violent storms, higher temperature, and local and global crises attributed to anthropogenic policies and economics associated with business decisions like the burning of forests.
Republicans may even understand the consequences of logging the country’s largest Tongass National Forest. Opening roads in the Tongass wilderness would be unleashing destruction. It would be no better than the roads Brazil constructed decades ago in the Brazilian Amazon. Countless people and companies will pour into the Tongass forest. The result will be devastation on a grand Amazon scale. Trees and wild animals, medicinal plants, and insects will be annihilated. Salmon and ecological tourism will be gone.
Environmental health
If this is the vision of Trump and the Republicans, and it is, we are all victims of ignorance labeled economics and capitalism. These ways of thinking and running America and the world all but ignore environmental health, as if human health can exist in the absence of environmental health.
For example, as early as the early 1970s, the US Environmental Protection Agency had evidence Iowa farmers and those non-farmers that lived close to farmers were dying from cancer at twice the rate urban people died from cancer. The reason for such high rates of cancer death were the excessive amounts of a large variety of neurotoxic and carcinogenic pesticides Iowa farmers routinely sprayed on their crops.
In other worlds, Iowa farmers were paying the ultimate price of polluting and poisoning the natural world. A sick natural world has been causing a sick human world.
The sooner we realize this fact, that we are the natural world, the better chances we have to throw out of office Trump and his Republican followers.
Tongass, the Amazon rain forest, and other forests all over the world, teach a few straightforward truths: they are the living part of the natural world that regulates climate. Rain, oxygen, carbon dioxide, wood, wildlife, medicinal plants and valuable insects are all locked together in those trees.
Disturb those trees and ecosystems of the Amazon and Tongass at your peril. | {
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Television actor Bill Cosby has been jailed for up to a decade for sexually assaulting a woman in 2004.
Judge Steven O'Neill sentenced the 81-year-old comedian to three to 10 years behind bars and fined him $25,000 (£19,000) in a Pennsylvania courtroom.
He told Cosby, who is the first celebrity of the #MeToo era to be sent to prison, that he was not entitled to bail while he appeals against his conviction.
After sentencing, Cosby was led away from court in handcuffs and taken to jail.
Prosecutors had been seeking a term of five to 10 years in prison. Cosby's defence lawyers asked for house arrest.
The former Cosby Show star, who was known to millions as "America's Dad", was convicted in April of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his Philadelphia home 14 years ago.
:: Bill Cosby's Hollywood star to stay despite conviction
Image: Cosby's accuser Andrea Constand (in grey jacket) pictured after sentencing
More than 60 women have made similar allegations.
The comedian did not make a statement in court.
He sat back in his chair, with his head on the headrest as the sentence was read.
"It is time for justice. Mr Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The time has come," Judge O'Neill said.
He quoted from Ms Constand's own statement to the court, in which she said Cosby took her "beautiful, young spirit and crushed it".
The punishment came at the end of a two-day hearing at which the judge declared Cosby a "sexually violent predator" and will have to have monthly counselling for the rest of his life.
It also means that neighbours and schools will be notified of his whereabouts.
Image: The comedian was called a 'sexually violent predator' by a judge
When the ruling was announced, a woman was reported to have shot her fist in the air and whispered, "Yes!"
Cosby's lawyers had asked for house arrest, saying Cosby, who is legally blind and walks with a cane, is too old and vulnerable to do time in prison.
But prosecutors pressed for five to 10 years behind bars, claiming he could still pose a threat to women.
Montgomery Count District Attorney Kevin Steele rejected the idea that Cosby's age and failing health entitled him to mercy.
He said: "He was good at hiding this for a long time. Good at suppressing this for a long time. So it's taken a long time to get there.
Image: Cosby has been sentenced to three to 10 years. Pic: Montgomery County Correctional Facility
The sentencing came as another #MeToo drama unfolded on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh stands accused of sexual misconduct more than 30 years ago.
Ms Constand, now 45, said she has suffered with anxiety and self-doubt for years in a statement submitted to the court.
She said she now lives alone with her two dogs and has trouble trusting people.
"When the sexual assault happened, I was a young woman brimming with confidence and looking forward to a future bright with possibilities," she wrote in her five-page statement.
"Now, almost 15 years later, I'm a middle-aged woman who's been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward."
Ms Constand went to police a year after waking up confused at Cosby's gated estate, only to have the district attorney pass on the case.
Prosecutors called on some of Cosby's other accusers as they pushed for a lengthy sentence, with a number of them, including model Janice Dickinson, present at the sentencing hearing.
Five other accusers testified at the trial as part of an effort by prosecutors to portray him as a predator. | {
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New Delhi: A 30-year-old man was bludgeoned to death allegedly by his mother and her live-in partner after he objected to their illicit relationship in east Delhi's New Ashok Nagar, police said on Sunday.
The incident took place on Saturday night.
Investigations revealed that Ravinder Pathak, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Basti, had recently moved in with his mother.
He stayed with his mother and her friend Ajeet in a rented flat in New Ashok Nagar area, a senior police officer said.
Pathak worked as a driver in Noida. When he reached home after duty on Saturday night, he saw his mother and Ajeet in an objectionable position that led to an altercation among them, the officer said.
The argument turned violent and the woman and her live-in partner hit Pathak on the head with a brick, resulting in his death, he added.
Later, Ajeet called up ambulance service. When the ambulance driver reached the spot, he saw Pathak lying in a pool of blood following which he informed police, the officer said.
However, the woman managed to take Pathak's body to her daughter's house in Azadpur for cremation. Her daughter suspected foul play and forced her to return with the body to New Ashok Vihar.
When the woman returned, she was nabbed by police, he said, adding her live-in partner has also been arrested. | {
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Peercoin has also been referred to as the Peer to Peer coin (PPC). During its launch, it caught the attention of cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Although as many others it was forked from Bitcoin, it tried not to inherit all of Bitcoins shortcomings which included solely relying on a Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm.
The Proof of Work algorithm has been viewed as a major hindrance to scalability. Additionally, the algorithm also requires massive computing powers when confirming transactions on the platform.
The coin’s developers, Sunny King, who is believed to be a pseudonym, and Scott Nadal, introduced a second consensus algorithm, Proof of Stake, to not only address the computing power intensity of PoW but also to increase Peercoin’s efficiency.
So how do the two algorithms seamlessly fit into the platform?
According to its website:
Peercoin is the first hybrid blockchain: utilizing proof-of-stake to provide security for the network and proof-of-work for distribution of new coins.
The Proof of Work algorithm handles the mining process but as the mining difficulty rises, the platform accepts the Proof of Stake algorithm to take over the addition of new blocks in a process known as minting. Additionally, the second algorithm is responsible for securing the platform against a 51 percent attack.
This type of attack occurs when a single entity has more than 50 percent controlling power on the platform. When this happens, the entity is able to reverse transactions allowing them to spend the same coin more than once.
With Peercoin using the same hash function as used by Bitcoin and by having the same PoW algorithm, the rewards miners get for adding new blocks keeps decreasing over time.
The PoS algorithm rewards those holding 1 percent of PoS coin blocks. But, to qualify for this rewards your coins must be held for thirty days. The PoS algorithm, unlike the PoW algorithm, does not rely on the computing power since what determines if you are eligible for minting is the amount of Peercoins you hold in your wallet.
To avoid the monopoly that a staking system may introduce, the Peercoin blockchain only considers coins depending on age. As we had pointed out earlier on, coins eligible for minting must have been in your wallet for 30 days. What about the maximum age of these coins?
The PoS aspect of the Peercoin platform caps the maximum age of coins eligible for minting at ninety days. As the number of times you participate in the minting process rises, you earn supplementary Peercoins.
Major differences with Bitcoin
Apart from employing two consensus algorithms on the same platform, Peercoin has other differentiating features,
For example, Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins which will ever grace the face of the earth. This means that after the 21 million Bitcoins have been mined, all Bitcoins will already be in circulation. Peercoin, on the other hand, does not have a hard cap on the number of coins to be ever mined. Instead, the number of Peercoins in circulation will be inflated each year at a rate of 1 percent.
Also, the block confirmation time for Peercoin is lower than on the Bitcoin platform. Also, the transaction fees on the Peercoin blockchain are lower than those on the Bitcoin platform.
Trading Peercoin
When it comes to buying and selling of Peercoin, your favorite cryptocurrency exchange may not have yet listed the coin. But major exchanges that support trading of Peercoin include Poloniex, YoBit, Cryptopia, CoinEgg, WEX, and HitBTC. On this exchanges, Peercoin is listed against other cryptos meaning that it cannot be bought directly using fiat. At the time of writing, Peercoin was exchanging hands at $0.602 and had a market cap of $15,143,564 according to coinmarketcap. The coin occupies position 168 on coinmarketcap.
Conclusion
From our discussion above, it is clear that Peercoin is among the best when it comes to security. Also, it was the first blockchain project to use the Proof of Stake algorithm.
Unfortunately, the coin is not as popular as other altcoins out there. Also, its price appreciation curve is not as steep as with Bitcoin and other altcoins since its birth.
However, being among the first cryptos after Bitcoin, it has manifested resilience it may be a good choice to include in your portfolio. | {
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Google today announced that it will invest in a new subsea cable that will connect Singapore to Perth and Sydney in Australia (with a branch to Jakarta, Indonesia). The so-called Indigo cable will be almost 5,600 miles long and will be built by a consortium that also includes AARNet, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra.
The cable will feature two fiber pairs with a total capacity of about 18 terabits per second — with the option to expand in the future.
As Google notes, that’s enough to power 8 million simultaneous Google Hangout video calls (or are those Hangout Meet calls now?). Google, however, is obviously sharing the capacity here, so it won’t quite be able to handle all of those calls at any given time. It’s also worth noting that 18 terabits isn’t extremely fast by today’s standard. The subsea cable between Hong Kong and Los Angeles Google and Facebook invested in last year tops out at 120 terabits per second.
Google isn’t sharing how much it is investing in this project. We do know, though, that the APX-West cable between Singapore and Perth, which ultimately evolved into the new Indigo consortium announced today, was supposed to cost in excess of $75 million to build. The extension of the original APX project between Perth and Sydney was also supposed to include other landing sites in southern Australia. As far as we can see, those have been scrapped now.
Google has made a total of seven subsea cable investments so far. Five of these have been in Asia.
For Google’s customers, especially in Australia, having more bandwidth available between cities like Sydney, Perth and the rest of Asia (and the Middle East and Europe from there), will result in faster connections and (maybe more importantly) lower latency. The cable itself, though, should also improve connectivity between Perth and Sydney, which is currently a rather underserved market as far as direct subsea connections go. Overall, though, Australia’s connectivity to the rest of the world is scheduled to improve quite a bit over the course of the next few years, with various new submarine cable projects slated for completion in 2018. | {
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An MV-22 Osprey launches from the flight deck of amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island, while underway in the Pacific Ocean, Aug. 16, 2014.
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Japan’s Defense Ministry announced Friday it has selected the Bell Boeing MV-22 Osprey when they start procuring a helicopter-to-plane hybrid in fiscal 2015.
In July, Japan unveiled its five-year midterm National Defense Program Guidelines for fiscal 2014 and beyond, which included adding as many as 17 tilt-rotor aircraft by fiscal 2018. The guidelines said other aircraft were under consideration, but almost all of the alternative tilt-rotor platforms are still under development.
Used widely in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marine Corps has flown Ospreys throughout Japan since September 2012, when they arrived — amid concerns over the aircraft’s safety record — to replace the CH-46E Sea Knight assault support helicopter.
There have been no incidents during that time, but the helicopter continues to be assailed by protesters on the southern island of Okinawa who oppose war, U.S. bases, Japan’s central government and perceived environmental threats.
Due to its increased capacity, speed and versatility, the Osprey has been called essential to the defense of Japan and in disaster relief operations.
The ministry also chose to add the Northrop Grumman E-2D early-warning and control aircraft and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. | {
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Zoran Milanović upravo je izašao na pozornicu u izbornom stožeru u Tvornici i obratio se javnosti nakon što je postao relativni pobjednik prvog kruga predsjedničkih izbora. Zahvalio je svima koji su glasali za njega, ali i onima koji nisu glasali za njega. “Idemo u drugi krug, ali ne idemo u rat. Ratovi su gotovi. Idemo u civiliziranu građansku utakmicu i neka pobijedi bolji. Siguran sam da sam taj ja”, rekao je.
Kaže kako će u ova dva tjedna koji su pred nama, pokušati nagovoriti ljude da mu daju svoj glas. “Za dva tjedna bit će to još bolje”, rekao je Milanović. “Moj zadatak je da se jednako obratim onima koji će me podržati, ali i onima koji su pod navodnicima drugi. Jer nitko u Hrvatskoj ne može biti drugi”, rekao je Milanović.
‘Svakome ću pristupiti kao prema čovjeku’
Rekao je kako neće zagovarati prazno zajedništvo. “Svjestan sam da nisam svima po volji, ali spreman sam prema svakome pristupiti kao prema čovjeku”. “Imate pravo na sreću i na miran život”. “Ovo je bila teška godina iza mene, osobno, privatno. Šest mjeseci sam hodao Hrvatskom i opet sam shvatio nešto novo i vidio novu šansu”, rekao je.
Kaže kako smatra da je zreo i spreman raditi taj posao. “Ali to je više od posla, to je način života. Nitko se u Hrvatskoj u kojoj ću biti predsjednik neće osjećati kao građanin drugog reda”, rekao je Milanović. “Pozivam sve hrvatske ljude da razmisle, da gledaju iduća dva tjedna, i da mi daju taj mali komadić vjere”, rekao je Milanović i zahvalio SDP-u na podršci.
“Bit ću pravobranitelji i bijesni zagovaratelj Ustava. To je moja država, ali država nisam ja”, rekao je. “Razvijmo naše hrvatske barjake i idemo u sportsku utakmicu. Ponavljam, ne idemo u rat, ratovi su završili”, zaključio je svoj govor Milanović i pozvao ljude da mu daju podršku u drugom krugu predsjedničkih izbora. | {
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Mohammed Israr, who received stab injuries, in Baghpat on Friday. (Express Photo/Prem Nath Pandey) Mohammed Israr, who received stab injuries, in Baghpat on Friday. (Express Photo/Prem Nath Pandey)
The men who assaulted and stabbed a Muslim cleric and two others on a Delhi-Shamli passenger train on Wednesday night allegedly mocked them over their skull caps and scarves, and told them: “Topi pehenta hai? Topi pehenna hum sikhaenge (You wear caps? We will teach you to wear caps).”
“They stabbed us with ice picks… I don’t even know what the trigger was… But during the fight, we realised that our skull caps and scarves had irked them,” Mohammad Israr, the cleric’s 20-year-old nephew, told The Indian Express in Chauhalda village on Friday. According to the medical report, Israr suffered the worst injuries — he received stab injuries on his back, scalp and hands. Also Read: Muslim cleric, his two relatives beaten up in train in UP: FIR
Israr said he, his uncle, cleric Mohammad Gulzar (30), and two other youths, Abu Bakr (17) and Mohammed Momin (18), had gone to Delhi for the first time, to see the Jama Masjid and Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah. All of them, he said, were “very excited”. On their return journey, on board a Shamli-bound passenger train from Old Delhi Railway Station, they were allegedly assaulted by seven men.
“The men were sitting in the compartment next to ours… We were about to deboard the train at Aheda when one of them blocked our path. They shut the windows… and suddenly started assaulting us. We kept asking what the problem was. We couldn’t understand what had provoked them. While they were assaulting us, one of them said, ‘Topi pehenta hai? Topi pehenna hum sikhaenge (You wear caps? We will teach you to wear caps).’ That’s when we realised it was about our religion,” said Gulzar. “We often heard of such arguments over our faith, but never thought we’d be at the centre of one,” he said.
Gulzar said the train halted at Aheda for half-a-minute, during which the assault continued. Just as the train started to move, the attackers reportedly pulled the emergency chain, deboarded and ran off towards Sunehra village.
According to Gulzar, none of the other passengers came forward to help. “They kept watching…I will never travel on a train to Delhi again,” he said. Gulzar and the others got off at the next station, Baghpat, and called their relatives. They went to the police station and filed a complaint, after which they were taken for a medical check-up, he said.
Dr Yatish Kumar, Medical Superintendent of the Community Health Centre at Baghpat, said three persons were brought to the Emergency ward soon after midnight on Wednesday. “Israr had 13 injuries on his body and five puncture or penetrative wounds. It seems that a sharp object like ice pick was used for inflicting the injuries. Gulzar had four puncture wounds, while Abu Bakr had two puncture wounds,” he said.
No arrests had been made till Friday evening. Circle Officer, Baghpat, Dilip Singh, said “there may have been a trigger” for the assault. He did not, however, specify what this “trigger” could be. “We have questioned several people and police have been deployed at various stations for leads on the accused,” said Singh.
📣 The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay updated with the latest headlines
For all the latest India News, download Indian Express App. | {
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Article content
ZAGREB, Croatia – A Canadian man’s message in a bottle has washed ashore in Croatia 28 years after he penned the letter meant to fulfil a promise to a woman.
“Mary, you really are a great person. I hope we can keep in correspondence. I said I would write,” the short message reads. “Your friend always. Jonathon. Nova Scotia 1985.”
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.
tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or 'I said I would write': Nova Scotian's letter in a bottle washes up in Croatia 28 years later Back to video
Kite surfer Matea Rezik discovered the note after it washed up in a bottle on the banks of the Neretva river.
Rezik told Croatian newspaper Dubrovacki Vjesnik she was helping clear a beach of debris when she spotted the plastic-coated note shoved into a bottle.
Rezik has since posted a photograph of the note on Facebook and said she’d love to get in touch with either Jonathon or Mary.
“Message in a Bottle! From Canada to the Neretva River estuary for 28 years!!” she wrote alongside the photo of the message.
The discovery is sparking much speculation about the relationship between the man and the woman and what might have become of them. | {
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Sony PSX: The PSX is a sort of prelude to the PS3. Never released outside of Japan it was a combination of the PS1, PS2 and a digital video recorder. It also was the first Sony product to make use of the Cross-Media Bar, or XMB, the navigation toolbar for accessing photos, videos, games and other settings, which is now found on the majority of Sony's televisions and consoles. The PSX was an extremely capable device, able to play games, tune in to television stations, and even record your favourite show. It also looked extremely cool in ceramic white. If you can get your hands on one it still stacks up against the PS3's media centre capabilities | {
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