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Who were the Social Democratic Party? | Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The creation of the SDP A lot of commentators have been comparing the resignations of seven MPs from the Labour Party on Monday to the formation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In January 1981, four members of the Labour Party - Bill Rodgers, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and David Owen - made the decision to resign. Featuring former ministers and standing MPs, the group earned themselves the nickname of "the gang of four". The resignation of their memberships followed the party's Wembley conference earlier that month, with the cohort issuing what became known as the "Limehouse Declaration" from Mr Owen's house in the east London area of the same name. The four were unhappy with the direction Labour was moving in - namely, to the left - and, in their statement, claimed "a handful of trade union leaders [could] now dictate the choice of a future prime minister". Image caption "The gang of four" - Bill Rodgers, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, David Owen The founders wanted "a new start in British politics" and proposed a Council for Social Democracy to "rally all those who are committed to the values, principles and policies of social democracy". The leader of Labour at the time - Michael Foot - said he wanted them to stay and help to shape the party. But two months later, that council became the Social Democratic Party and eventually 28 Labour MPs would join the ranks, as well as one Conservative. In June of the same year, the SDP joined in an electoral alliance with the Liberal Party to take its "new politics" to the polls. The alliance elections Ms Williams was the first member to stand as an SDP candidate and win, taking the sear of Crosby in October 1981. And come the election in 1983, the alliance was shown to have growing support - securing almost 25% of the vote. But thanks to the "first past the post" voting system in British elections, this amounted to only 23 MPs. After the election, however, Mr Foot, resigning as leader, blamed the alliance for siphoning off Labour votes and giving Margaret Thatcher and the Tories another term in government. The alliance went on to fight another election, in 1987, but again failed to make much of an impact on the numbers in the Commons - with almost 23% of the vote amounting to just 22 MPs. It was decided in 1988 that the SDP and the Liberal Party should merge - and the Liberal Democrats were born in October 1989. Mr Owen was unhappy with the decision and formed a new version of the SDP in 1990. But it dissolved quickly and subsequent incarnations have not managed to make an impact on Westminster elections. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-47280218 |
Will Tyler Henry Make a Believer Out of The Bachelor's Chris Harrison on Hollywood Medium? | In this clip from Thursday's season premiere of Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry, the longtime Bachelor host meets with Tyler Henry, despite having "never done anything like this." Hilariously, Tyler struggles to recognize Chriswhich makes the latter believe the medium has his "work cut out for him." Even though it appears the famed TV personality has some doubts about Henry's abilities, he's eager to meet with the famed clairvoyant for the sake of "good TV." Why would I agree to do this?'" Harrison quips to the camera. "Frankly, I'm a producer. I love TV, Tyler's good TV and there's that curiosity there of like, 'How does he do it?'" Nonetheless, it doesn't take long for Tyler to connect with someone on Chris' behalf. While holding a personal item belonging to the deceased, Tyler is able to surmise that he's talking to a male "contemporary" whose life was cut short. | https://www.eonline.com/uk/news/1015673/will-tyler-henry-make-a-believer-out-of-the-bachelor-s-chris-harrison-on-hollywood-medium?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories |
What next for Labour's breakaway MPs? | In a boiling hot, cramped room in a swish venue on the south bank of the Thames this morning, a small group of MPs made a big statement. Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Chuka Umunna, Mike Gapes, Anne Coffey, Angela Smith and Gavin Shuker all know they face an extremely bumpy future. But they hope together they'll start as a few, and end up being a group for the many. Their reasons for quitting are both historic and immediate. The splinter has been a long time coming because for a couple of years these MPs have been part of the large chunk of the Labour parliamentary party which had grave concerns about Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Angela Smith, for example, now admits that during the 2017 election she was telling voters in her constituency that her leader could not, and would not be prime minister, despite campaigning for the party he was at the top of. The seven who have decided to quit are not the only MPs I know of who did that. There have been fears, many publicly articulated but expressed with more fury in private, about the leadership's attitude to security policy, to Nato, as well as Jeremy Corbyn's response to the Skripal attack and his attitude to the Trident nuclear deterrent. One of those who has left described it today as "Marxism in disguise", illustrating the deep-seated, long-held and profound differences of world view. Add to that the hurt and concern inside the party over anti-Semitism that has built up over the last year, what the departing group have described as institutional racism towards Jewish people. Whatever else, let that sink in for a moment. That in 2019, a group of MPs believe that our main opposition party is institutionally biased against a minority group. But consider too the Labour leadership's hesitancy in campaigning full throttle for another referendum on staying in the EU, and the group, all of whom believe there should be another referendum, felt they had no choice but to quit. To do so goes against the grain of our tribal politics. Some of their colleagues are openly furious, accusing them of being "cowards". Others are responding more in sorrow than in anger. This is not an easy moment for anyone in the Labour party, and you could not have sat in that stuffy room this morning and felt it was an easy moment for any of those leaving either. Many other Labour MPs and members will see this as nothing less than a betrayal. And in our first-past-the-post system it is very hard to see in the short term, what kind of impact this group will have. So far they are not a political party, although they say they may evolve into one. So far they have no leader, and no policy programme as such. They are clearly open to welcoming disgruntled members of the Conservative party too. Their view is that our whole political system is broken and neither the Tories nor Labour fit for purpose. And it is possible within days that they might be joined by a sprinkling of Tory MPs. This splintering might, just might - in time - turn into a much bigger redrawing of the landscape. For now though that is way off. And this is first and foremost about the Labour Party - the seeds of the splinter sown more than three years ago, bearing bitter fruit just when Parliament's biggest decisions over Brexit are about to be made. MPs still in the party will have a variety of reactions, from fury to sadness. But few of them now could pretend there isn't a problem, even prompting an astonishing admission from the party's deputy leader, Tom Watson, who - remember - is also elected by the members who so overwhelmingly supported Jeremy Corbyn. "I love this party. But sometimes I no longer recognise it," he said. A warning that despite the government's many and multiple problems, it is Labour that's losing members and losing MPs. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47282328 |
Should I Pay Off My Student Loans Early? | If you have some extra money, paying more than you have to on your student loans might not be the best idea. College grad receiving a huge from parents. More Image source: Getty Images. Many financial planners, myself included, group debts into two broad categories -- good debts and bad debts. Good debts include those that have relatively low interest rates and will help enhance your life. For example, a mortgage allows you to buy a home, which will hopefully increase in value over time. An auto loan (assuming the interest rate is reasonable) helps you buy a car, which can in turn get you to work so you can earn money. On the other hand, the bad debts category include debts that have relatively high interest rates, and/or dont do much to enhance your life. Credit card debt is the textbook example of a bad debt, especially if it was incurred while buying things you really didnt need. Id classify student loan debt as a form of good debt, but its really in a category all by itself. Even though student loans may have slightly higher interest rates as a whole than mortgages and dont necessarily get you a tangible asset, Id put student loans ahead of mortgages in many cases. Heres why: Student loan interest, up to $2,500 per year, is tax deductible, even if you dont itemize. There are several ways federal student loan debt can eventually be forgiven. Even if you dont qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, there are forgiveness programs for other professions (especially teachers) as well as for borrowers who have made a certain number of on-time payments. Federal student loan debt qualifies for income-based repayment plans. There are no other debts I know of where your payment can be reduced due to your income without an adverse impact on your credit score. Student loan debt may qualify for a deferment or forbearance if youre experiencing a financial hardship. To put it mildly, if you call your auto lender and tell them youve lost your job, youre not likely to get the same type of treatment. Finally, if you obtain a degree, a student loan can increase your lifetime earnings power by far more than its cost. With that in mind, like most personal finance concepts, theres no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to paying student loans early. There are some situations where early repayment makes sense, but others where youd be better off investing the money or using it to pay down other types of debt. When paying your student loan debt early is a smart idea Despite the benefits, accelerating your student loan repayment certainly makes sense in some circumstances. While this isnt an exhaustive list, here are three situations where it can make sense to direct your discretionary income toward your student loan debt. Your student loan debt is at a variable interest rate -- This is rather common among private student loans. Adjustable-rate debt can be quite scary to carry, especially over long time periods. If your student loan interest rates could potentially climb much higher, early repayment could be a smart idea. -- This is rather common among private student loans. Adjustable-rate debt can be quite scary to carry, especially over long time periods. If your student loan interest rates could potentially climb much higher, early repayment could be a smart idea. You wont ever qualify for any type of forgiveness -- This is also true of private student loans in most cases. If your income is too high to qualify for income-based repayment and you dont work in public service, you also arent likely to be eligible for any type of loan forgiveness. -- This is also true of private student loans in most cases. If your income is too high to qualify for income-based repayment and you dont work in public service, you also arent likely to be eligible for any type of loan forgiveness. You dont want any debts whatsoever -- I can talk about loan forgiveness programs, tax deductions, and more until I run out of breath. At the end of the day, some people just dont feel comfortable carrying debt of any nature. When you should pay down other debts or invest instead You work in public service and arent on the standard repayment plan -- The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program allows the balance of federal Direct Loans to be forgiven after 10 years of qualifying full-time public service employment. However, to receive PSLF, you must be on one of the income-driven repayment plans. Technically, the standard 10-year repayment plan qualifies, but there would be no balance left to forgive. If you feel that youll ultimately qualify for PSLF, it doesnt make sense to pay your student loans down any faster than you have to. -- The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program allows the balance of federal Direct Loans to be forgiven after 10 years of qualifying full-time public service employment. However, to receive PSLF, you must be on one of the income-driven repayment plans. Technically, the standard 10-year repayment plan qualifies, but there would be no balance left to forgive. If you feel that youll ultimately qualify for PSLF, it doesnt make sense to pay your student loans down any faster than you have to. You qualify for income-based repayment -- All of the income-driven repayment plans forgive any remaining balance if the loans arent paid in full after 20-25 years, depending on the specific repayment option. If income-driven repayment is keeping your monthly payments low, it could make sense to use your extra money for other debts, or to invest. -- All of the income-driven repayment plans forgive any remaining balance if the loans arent paid in full after 20-25 years, depending on the specific repayment option. If income-driven repayment is keeping your monthly payments low, it could make sense to use your extra money for other debts, or to invest. Your student loans have low, fixed interest rates -- If your student loans are low-interest and dont have variable rates, investing could be the better option with your discretionary cash. -- If your student loans are low-interest and dont have variable rates, investing could be the better option with your discretionary cash. You have high-interest credit card debt -- It rarely makes sense to invest or to pay down any of your good debts if you have high-interest credit card debt hanging over your head. The bottom line on student loan early repayment One important thing to point out is that several of these options could apply to you -- even things from both the pay early and invest instead categories. For example, its entirely possible to have a private student loan that will never qualify for loan forgiveness, but at a low, fixed interest rate. Every situation is different, so my point here is that its important to weigh the applicable reasons both for and against early student loan repayment to make a smart financial decision for you. The Motley Fool owns and recommends MasterCard and Visa, and recommends American Express. Were firm believers in the Golden Rule. If we wouldnt recommend an offer to a close family member, we wouldnt recommend it on The Ascent either. Our number one goal is helping people find the best offers to improve their finances. That is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team. | https://news.yahoo.com/pay-off-student-loans-early-180000088.html |
Are Matson, Inc.s Returns On Capital Worth Investigating? | Help shape the future of investing tools and receive a $20 prize! Today well look at Matson, Inc. (NYSE:MATX) and reflect on its potential as an investment. In particular, well consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), as that can give us insight into how profitably the company is able to employ capital in its business. First, well go over how we calculate ROCE. Then well compare its ROCE to similar companies. Then well determine how its current liabilities are affecting its ROCE. ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. In general, businesses with a higher ROCE are usually better quality. Overall, it is a valuable metric that has its flaws. Renowned investment researcher Michael Mauboussin has suggested that a high ROCE can indicate that one dollar invested in the company generates value of more than one dollar. Analysts use this formula to calculate return on capital employed: Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) (Total Assets Current Liabilities) Or for Matson: 0.059 = US$121m (US$2.4b US$326m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2018.) Therefore, Matson has an ROCE of 5.9%. ROCE can be useful when making comparisons, such as between similar companies. Using our data, Matsons ROCE appears to be around the 5.4% average of the Shipping industry. Separate from how Matson stacks up against its industry, its ROCE in absolute terms is mediocre; relative to the returns on government bonds. Readers may find more attractive investment prospects elsewhere. As we can see, Matson currently has an ROCE of 5.9%, less than the 13% it reported 3 years ago. Therefore we wonder if the company is facing new headwinds. NYSE:MATX Last Perf February 18th 19 More When considering ROCE, bear in mind that it reflects the past and does not necessarily predict the future. ROCE can be deceptive for cyclical businesses, as returns can look incredible in boom times, and terribly low in downturns. ROCE is only a point-in-time measure. Future performance is what matters, and you can see analyst predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company. How Matsons Current Liabilities Impact Its ROCE Current liabilities are short term bills and invoices that need to be paid in 12 months or less. Due to the way the ROCE equation works, having large bills due in the near term can make it look as though a company has less capital employed, and thus a higher ROCE than usual. To counteract this, we check if a company has high current liabilities, relative to its total assets. Matson has total assets of US$2.4b and current liabilities of US$326m. As a result, its current liabilities are equal to approximately 13% of its total assets. It is good to see a restrained amount of current liabilities, as this limits the effect on ROCE. Our Take On Matsons ROCE If Matson continues to earn an uninspiring ROCE, there may be better places to invest. Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking at a few good candidates. So take a peek at this free list of companies with modest (or no) debt, trading on a P/E below 20. | https://news.yahoo.com/matson-inc-returns-capital-worth-170055600.html |
Did the tit Rex mini Mardi Gras parade get bigger in 2019? | The tit Rex parade floats that rolled through the Marigny on Sunday (Feb. 17) didnt get any bigger; they were still about the size of toy poodles on leashes. But the crowd seemed to be considerably larger than in recent years, which was a relief because the devotion of tit Rexs following was tested in 2019. You see, the city moved tit Rex to an earlier spot on the calendar this year and separated it from another popular parade, Chewbacchus, that used to roll on the same night. So it was questionable if the audience for the tiny parade would be as large as usual. Sundays beautiful weather certainly played a part in the tremendous turnout, but it seems safe to say that the move didnt diminish tit Rexs fanbase at all. 'tit Rex rolls through the Marigny neighborhood in New Orleans 2019 And no wonder. Tiny tit Rex is the best Carnival procession that youll ever struggle to see. Unlike full-sized parades that fill a curbside onlookers entire field of view, the exquisitely detailed tit Rex floats are led through a forest of onlookers legs, small children and crouching camerafolk, in such tight quarters that a quick glance at the rattling contraptions is about all you can hope for at least at the crowded start of the roll on St. Roch Avenue. Watching tit Rex is like watching a rock show from way in the back row, even if youre up close. But this is a problem that should never be solved. Tit Rex (pronounce it like the toothy dinosaur) is all about deliberate downsizing. The smallness of tit Rex, which was modeled after elementary school shoebox parades, was always meant as a subversion of the steroidal superkrewes such as Endymion and Bacchus. The tiny, hand-made tit Rex throws (which are too precious to actually throw) are intended as antidotes to the hail storm of plastic imports that accompanies more conventional parades. 'tit Rex parade throws 2019 (Photo by Doug MacCash, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune) Photo by Doug MacCash, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Tit Rex may be tiny, but it has a big chip on its shoulder. The do-it-yourself tit Rex float builders make some of the most scathing satirical statements in all of Carnival, but they can rely on miniaturization for a certain degree of obfuscation. Its easy enough to get the gist of the social-political commentary on topics such as President Trumps proposed border wall, the crackdown on Bourbon Street prostitution, dysfunctional infrastructure, gentrification, etc. But the details are as difficult to bring into focus as the lyrics in a Bob Dylan song. Mardi Gras 2019: See the complete parade schedule My personal favorite 'tit Rex 2019 float was an adorable pastel jetliner stuffed with rows of marshmallow Peeps. It had something to do with the discomfort of contemporary air travel or so I surmised. Curiously, I didnt see any NFL lampooning in this years parade. Or maybe I missed something. 'tit Rex rolls through the Marigny neighborhood of in New Orleans, La. Sunday, Feb. 17, 2019. The theme for the 11th parade was 'A Modicum of Decency' . or try to! (Photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune) (Photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.c Doug MacCash has the best job in the world, covering art, music and culture in New Orleans. Contact him via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at Doug MacCash and on Facebook at Douglas James MacCash. As always, please add your point of view to the comment stream. | https://www.nola.com/mardigras/2019/02/did-the-tit-rex-mini-mardi-gras-parade-get-bigger-in-2019.html |
Are Panthers, Patriots good fits for Colin Kaepernick? Is another NFL team? | CLOSE Colin Kaepernick, Eric Reid and the NFL agreed to settle on Friday, but the case wont truly be resolved until Kaepernick is back on the field. The former 49ers quarterback's attorney, Mark Geragos, told CNN's Ana Cabrera recently that he believed Carolina and New England were among three teams he believed might be in the market to sign his client "within the next two weeks." (Geragos made only a vague reference to a third potential suitor.) "(T)he natural would be if Cam Newton is out, then the natural place to be is to play with Eric (Reid) in Carolina. And youve got an owner there," Geragos explained, a reference to David Tepper, the Panthers' progressive new boss who greenlit the signing and subsequent extension of Reid, the safety who played with Kaepernick in San Francisco and also settled his own collusion grievance against the NFL. (Photo11: Kevin C. Cox, Getty Images) "I will tell you besides the Panthers, it would not surprise me if (Patriots owner) Bob Kraft makes a move." Geragos added of Kaepernick, 31: "He absolutely wants to play. He wants to compete at the highest level. I mean this is a competitive young man. ... This is someone whos in his prime. You get smarter at that position, and hes wise beyond his years." Definitively, yes. Kap's game pretty closely mirrors that of Newton, the Panthers' starter for eight years plus arm strength, extends plays, great athleticism on the move, capably limits turnovers ... but also not especially accurate, particularly on touch throws. Kaepernick (6-4, 230) isn't as sturdily built as the 6-5, 245-pound Newton it's probably safe to assume he's lighter than his listed playing weight while Newton appears even heavier. But Kap also doesn't invite the kind of punishment as the 2015 league MVP, who just underwent shoulder surgery, when he tucks the ball and runs or tries to barrel over the line on sneaks. Like Seattle's Russell Wilson, Kaepernick excels at gaining maximum yardage with his legs while knowing when to get down or out of bounds. Bottom line: The skill sets are similar enough that Carolina probably wouldn't experience much drop-off (or have to drastically redesign the offense or alter play calling) if Kaepernick were to replace Newton. And to suggest Taylor Heinicke or Kyle Allen are better options is simply silly. Meh. Maybe. Let's not discount that he could bring a new dimension to this attack perhaps even running point on certain packages the way Taysom Hill does in New Orleans. And if anyone knows how to leverage a given player's talents and Kaepernick presumably still has plenty of it it's Bill Belichick. But in that same vein, it never seems like a particularly good idea when the Saints effectively take the ball out of Drew Brees' hands. And though no one would suggest that Tom Brady's current backup, veteran Brian Hoyer, has Kaepernick's upside, he's also infinitely more familiar with the playbook and wouldn't require New England to reconfigure its attack on the fly if Brady went down. Accuracy and efficiently cycling through his progressions are Brady's bread and butter, yet have never been Kaepernick's strengths. Maybe he could get there under the tutelage of Belichick and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, but this could also be a square peg, round hole situation. Does Kaepernick fit in ... There are other patently obvious teams that could immediately benefit from Kap's services. Baltimore Ravens: Joe Flacco's moving to Denver, and Robert Griffin III is unsigned. The franchise has flirted with Kaepernick in the past, and he'd seem to plug in nicely to what's being built around Lamar Jackson. Houston Texans: Deceased owner Bob McNair probably would not have signed off, but they could obviously do much better than Brandon Weeden, Joe Webb et. al. reference the lost 2017 season if Deshaun Watson goes down again. Jacksonville Jaguars: No explanation required. Miami Dolphins: They're rebooting, and Ryan Tannehill's future with the franchise seems tenuous at best. New Orleans Saints: Teddy Bridgewater is headed for free agency, and Kaepernick is almost surely a better option behind Brees (and how much time does he have left?) on a regular basis than Hill. Oakland Raiders: A little competition for Derek Carr wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, and it would be interesting to see what Jon Gruden's offense would look like with a player like Kaepernick at the controls. Philadelphia Eagles: Perhaps the ideal locker room fit, and a roster that's about to need a new Plan B behind oft-injured Carson Wentz. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Jameis Winston is the only experienced quarterback they have under contract for 2019, and he's not signed for 2020. Be nice to have a capable reserve if new coach Bruce Arians ultimately concludes Winston is not the answer he's banking on. Tennessee Titans: Marcus Mariota always seems to be banged up. And we saw what happened in Week 17 with their playoff aspirations riding on Blaine Gabbert. Washington Redskins: The need is obvious given Alex Smith's uncertain outlook. Of course, that was also painfully apparent in the final two months of 2018 ... when Washington threw away its playoff hopes by employing much less capable backups. *** Follow Nate Davis on Twitter @ByNateDavis | https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2019/02/18/colin-kaepernick-patriots-panthers-nfl-team-fits/2904678002/ |
Will The Japanification of Europe Help The U.S. Dollar? | With the daily chaos in Washington and policy and political uncertainty in major money centers around the world, it is no wonder that divining the direction of currencies, has become a full-time profession for many. This years annual TradeTech FX conference assembled numerous foreign exchange professionals to debate the direction of the U.S. dollar against G-10 and emerging market currencies. At last week's conference, dollar bears cited numerous reasons why they believe that the dollar is too expensive against the Euro, yen, and sterling, and why it is likely to decline against those currencies later in the year. China is using all possible monetary, fiscal, and bank credit stimulus tools to stem its growth rate slowdown; hence, there is room for the Chinese renminbi (CNY) to appreciate against the dollar. The trade war The Euro The U.S. current account and trade deficits have to be to be reconciled either with higher interest rates, tax increases, and/or budgetary cuts. Euro, yen, and sterling are undervalued, so there is room for them to appreciate against the U.S. dollar. Many emerging market currencies could do well against the U.S. dollar, since the Fed is unlikely to raise rates more than once this year. According to Steven Englander, Head of Research and Strategy at Rafiki Capital Management Despite overwhelming positive dollar news, there has not been dollar buying you would have expected. As soon as market gets positive tone, investors buy emerging market currencies that got beat up last year. The U.S. economy is stable economy, one of the most exciting we have encountered in the last 50 years. It is growing, at 2%, but that is not exciting investors. Ulf Lindahl, Chief Investment Officer of A.G. Bisset Associates did a great job explaining to audience members that fifteen-year currency cycles exist and they repeat. Euros average gain in upward phase was +114%. The average duration of the upward phase is about eight years. I expect the dollar to go down. Against the dollar, other currencies are at their cheapest in 30 years. This is being driven by the global economy. He also emphasized how undervalued a number of G-10 currencies are against the U.S. dollar. Sterling is 27% undervalued, and the yen and the euro are undervalued 37% and 22% respectively. This cycle will be reversed. Helping Asian currencies appreciate against the U.S. dollar will be Chinas economic performance. It is difficult for economists and market participants to get a good reading of what is happening in China, because it is very opaque, and data are not reliable. According to Win Thin, Global Head of Strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, it is important to note what Chinese policymakers are doing with huge monetary and fiscal stimulus. This means there are big concerns from the government. They are worried about people getting very upset if the economy slows down. Thin emphasized that this is the most worried about China he has been in his career. The trade war has been going on longer than anyone thought. It is not a disaster, but we should be cautious. According to him, China not to implode. It will muddle through. Dollar bulls, however, strongly argued that the dollar is really the only name of the game and cited the following reasons in support of their position. The dollar is a reserve currency and held by numerous central banks and other financial institutions. All commodities are priced in dollars. The dollar benefits in very good U.S economic times or when there are problems elsewhere, there is a flight to safety. The U.S. dollar is like the Swiss franc, a safe haven currency. S. is now an energy exporter, which puts it in a very strong position economically. Europe is an energy importer. While U.S. growth is likely to slow down, we are not in a recession and few economists are predicting one soon. Data from continental Europe, is showing that the Eurozone is barely escaping recession. Banks in Europe have not recovered fully from the financial crisis in the same way that U.S. banks have, so that will hurt the Euro against the U.S. dollar. Alessio De Longis, Vice President of OppenheimerFunds The Japanification of Europe is here. The Euro is no longer behaving like it used to. The European Central Bank (ECB) has used up its monetary policy arsenal. As did a number of other dollar bulls, De Longis pointed out that ECB has no more room to ease. Europe is on the verge of a recession, and the financial sector in Europe is broken. For Marc Chandler, Managing Partner and Chief Market Strategist at Bannock Burn Foreign Exchange, Exchange rates are good way to look at market sentiment. Almost every emerging market [EM] currency has given up post FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] gains. The low interest rate story is not enough for the EM rally. I do have questions about growth in the US, Europe, China, and Japan. In light of a global slowdown, low interest rates in the US and Europe will not be enough to push emerging market currencies up against the dollar. Chandler also explained that he is bullish on the dollar, because the US was the first to get into the financial crisis and is the first out. That divergence is not over. Bad weather in the U.S. has hurt the first quarter. However, the government shut down is over. He also believes that trade problems with China as well as Brexit will get kicked down the road. With all this information, it is important to consider what should be done with currency portfolios. Chandler has advised clients to hedge Euro receivables based on forward pricing and volatility. Lee Ferridge, Head of FX Strategy at State Street Global Markets was negative on Australia. It is a high beta currency. Housing prices have been rising and the US-China trade situation not solved yet. This will hurt the Aussie against the dollar and the yen. Andrew Busch, former Chief Market Intelligence Officer at the Commodities Futures Trade Commission, said that he did not like emerging markets, the Brazilian real and Russian ruble just smell. However, he did say that there could be some good opportunities due to volatility. Robert Savage, CEO of CCTrack Solution was unequivocal that the dollar is the name of the game. There is a high risk of central bank intervention to cap the rise of the dollar. He also said no matter the result of U.S.-China trade talks, Trump will declare victory and move on; he has done this on other issues. There is no real competing currency against the dollar. Said Ben Emons, Head of Portfolio Management at Intellectus Partners. Central banks have tried to move away, but results have been miniscule. Like De Longis, Emons believes that Europe is moving to Japanification; the yields showing this. Europe cannot get out of the Japanification trajectory. While an informal poll at the TradeTech FX conference, showed that the majority of participants were bearish on the dollar, the bulls persuaded me to lean their way. I have been attending and presenting at this conference for five years, and I have to confess that I am already looking forward to TradeTech FX 2020 to exchange views with such varied conference participants from all over the world. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/mayrarodriguezvalladares/2019/02/18/will-the-japanification-of-europe-help-the-u-s-dollar/ |
Who Is King Of Sauvignon Blanc, France Or New Zealand? | One of the most satisfying wines to taste blind is Sauvignon Blanc. Its aromatic character is easy to recognise. It is also a wine that is loved by many all over the world, often in a refreshing, aromatic, easy-drinking style. Some certainly think so. There are very ambitious wines made in France, for example Sancerre and white Bordeaux, and also in New Zealand, a country that has almost built all its international reputation on this grape. We talked to one of the experts in the field to find out if this grape can make great wines and who, then, is the leader of the pack. Wine Paris, the brand-new Paris wine exhibition, took place during three days in February. Among the many master classes on offer were one with Rebecca Gibb, Master of Wine and Sauvignon Blanc specialist. She has lived for six years in New Zealand, the New World country specialized in this grape variety. Despite the fact that Sauvignon Blanc is an immensely popular grape, it is often overlooked by the wine consumer looking for high-quality wines. Sauvignon Blanc is by many not considered as noble as for instance Riesling or Chardonnay. But, says Rebecca Gibbs, there is greatness in Sauvignon blanc. Well, it is definitely the country with the oldest history of Sauvignon Blanc, it can be found in documents dating to the 16th century. It took the grape much, much longer to reach New Zealand but this far away country is rapidly catching up. There are today 86,400 acres (35,000 hectares) in France and 56,800 acres (23,000 hectares) in New Zealand. Chile, surprisingly perhaps, is the number three Sauvignon blanc country in the world with 34,600 acres (14,000 hectares). Its distinctive aromatic character and the asparagus, passion fruit, green apples, and citrus flavours that greet you in the glass are often very attractive. It is a fruity yet green wine, says Rebecca. It is a wine easy to like and often easy to recognise. It is a wine you mostly drink young because what you are looking for is exactly this fruity, aromatic character, the vitality of a young wine. Since the mid-1980s New Zealand has been known for its exuberant style of Sauvignon Blanc from the sunny region of Marlborough. Sometimes almost overwhelming. The region has huge temperature differences between day and night. The temperature during the growing season can drop from 86 degrees F during the day to 37 during the night, says Rebecca. This preserves aromatics and acidity. Also, although nobody knows exactly why, in New Zealand the quantity of thiols in the Sauvignon Blanc wines is higher. Nobody talks about Sauvignon Blanc today without mentioning the thiols. Thiols are chemical compounds that develop during the fermentation. They are responsible, in part, for the strong aromatic smell of passionfruit and grapefruit and at times, boxwood. Consumers like this style so producers do what they can to enhance it. One way is maybe to harvest by machine. Research in Auckland, says Rebecca, shows that machine harvest, as opposed to hand harvest, give 5 to 10 times higher presence of thiols. The reason for this is not yet quite clear. Huge quantities of easy drinking, unpretentious and very aromatic Sauvignon Blanc wine are being made in New Zealand each year. This style will probably not pave the way to greatness. However, a number of ambitious producers in the country are showing that there is more to Sauvignon Blanc than meets the eye (or the nose, maybe). Work is being done to boost quality and character, says Rebecca, such as improved clonal selection, closer plantings, use of barrels, use of wild yeast, ageing on lees with lees stirring, skin contact, lowering of yields. Today the yields in some places in Marlborough are very, very high. Of course, some New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc wines are already there and can easily be compared with the greatest of the French Sauvignon Blanc wines, from Bordeaux, Sancerre and Pouilly-Fum. In Bordeaux, especially in Pessac-Lognan in the Graves region, the producers use barrel fermentation and ageing on the lees. This gives a creamy and full-bodied mouthfeel. It is less obvious varietal Sauvignon Blanc. But the wines have huge ageing potential. In Sancerre and Pouilly Fum, ageing in small barrels is rare. The wines still have a good body. The nose is less aromatic, more citrus and green apples with a lot of freshness on the palate. Overall, they are more discreet than their New Zealand counterparts. At the master class, we tasted six wines blind. Four were from France, one was from Marlborough, New Zealand, and one was from Stellenbosch, South Africa. Before being told which one was which we voted and the winner was Clos Henri from New Zealand (yes, a French-owned winery but still a New Zealand wine). Myself, I voted for the South African wine (Waterkloof Circumstance Sauvignon Blanc 2016). And the competition was fierce. Among the French wines were the superb Cte des Monts Damns 2017 from Henri Bourgeois in Sancerre and the extraordinary Chteau Doisy-Dane Sec 2016 from Bordeaux. So perhaps one of the initial questions is answered, Sauvignon Blanc can make great wine. As for the other question, who makes the best, the jury seems still to be out. You will have to decide for yourself. Britt Karlsson | https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlsson/2019/02/18/who-is-king-of-sauvignon-blanc-france-or-new-zealand/ |
Why Can't We Expand Access To Transportation For Older Adults? | For decades, weve known about the consequences of poor transportation. It is a major reason why people miss medical appointments, struggle to shop for food and medicine, and become more socially isolated. It can contribute to malnutrition and falls, result in more emergency department visits and hospital admissions, and even push older adults to leave their homes and move to residential care. All for want of a simple ride. Yet, government, local non-profits, and businesses still are taking only small steps to fill this critical need. Often programs struggle to get beyond lip-service, or provide only half measures that look good on paper but do little to help older adults remain independent and as healthy as possible at home. Like so much else in the world of senior services, transportation for older adults suffers from a lack of both coordination and resources. Technology can help. Payment systems can be modernized. Jana Lynott of the AARP Public Policy Institute describes a model where consumers use universal scheduling software to better coordinate door-to-door transportation services such as senior shuttles, paratransit busses, taxicabs, and even ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Lyft. She describes the concept, called Universal mobility as a service (UMaaS), as Expedia for paratransita simple way for consumers to choose the most appropriate and cost-effective ride. But this, and other solutions, must navigate a swamp of regulations and payment systems that are less-then-friendly. Traditional Medicare: Medicare generally pays only for ambulance trips to hospitals or skilled nursing facilities. Last week, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a new demonstration program that takes a modest step towards a more sensible model. Medicare would pay for ambulance rides to lower-cost and more accessible urgent care clinics or doctors offices. Thats fine, but seniors rarely need an ambulance to take them to the doctor. Ride-sharing or similar services would be far less costly and more convenient. Even better: Medicare could cover transportation to social services such as adult day programs, senior centers, and the like. Medicare Advantage: Unlike fee-for-service Medicare, MA managed care plans may provide non-emergency transportation to healthcare providers. And they can use less-costly alternatives than ambulances. Under new rules, the plans will be able to expand these services in the coming years and, for example, provide rides to adult day programs or other non-medical services. Even better: If they could provide rides to the grocery store. Medicaid: Non-emergency medical transportation is a required Medicaid benefit. However, because funding is short, many states limit this service. According to one study, 3.6 million beneficiaries miss or delay medical care because they cannot get to the doctor. Public transportation: Those living in cities and some suburbs may be able to rely on the bus or other mass transit. And buses increasingly are accessible for those who use wheelchairs or otherwise need assistance. But public transportation suffers from the last mile problem. Some public transit agencies provide paratransit or other options for older adults. But they often are expensive and inefficient. Limited service often means long waits. A growing number of cities and counties are winning designations as age-friendly by improving transit options, at least on paper. But many still fall far short in reality. Private market options: Ride sharing is a growing option for older adults, just as it is for everyone else. Uber and, especially, Lyft, are aggressively raising their profile in both the senior and medical markets. Lyft, for instance, is partnering with health systems to provide rides to medical appointments and even has begun adapting services to older customers who do not have smartphones. However, ride-sharing has its challenges: For example, most drivers are untrained in assisting customers who may have functional or cognitive limitations. Community organizations. Volunteer rides are a core service of many community organizations. Neighborhood-based senior villages link volunteers with those who need assistance. Rides. Faith communities and circles of friends do much the same informally, sometimes with the help of online calendar software such as lotsa helping hands. And community-based organizations are non-profits that often provide rides or information about third-party transportation (full disclosure: I am on the board of such a non-profit). This really isnt that hard, and the payoff in improved quality of life and potential cost savings could be significant. Government, business, the health system, and non-profits need to get on board this train. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardgleckman/2019/02/18/why-cant-we-expand-access-to-transportation-for-older-adults/ |
How Well Is The Gig Economy Working For Gig Workers? | The gig economy gets lauded for letting millions of Americans set their own hours and choose their work assignments as freelancers and independent contractors. But the gig economy which includes people from Uber drivers to dog walkers to consultants gets low marks for letting them earn a decent living and receive benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans. The pay and benefits problems, however, are slowly starting to shrink, according to experts at a gig economy workshop held by The Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. last week. Improvements for Pay and Benefits for Gig Workers I do see some pathways. There are some people showing it can be done, Maureen Conway, The Aspen Institutes vice president for policy programs and executive director of its economic opportunities program, told me in an interview after the event. Also on Forbes: Conway, who hosted the panel (The Rise of Gig Work: Creating Flexibility and Stability for a New Era), was quick to add a word of caution, however. We do many events like this one featuring companies we think are leading, in terms of their practices. Unfortunately, many companies are not following. The gig economy, Conway added, is in some ways emblematic of the issues of instability in work in America today. But The Aspen Institutes panelists described a few glimmers for gig workers: States and Governments Libby Reder, senior fellow with The Aspen Institutes Future of Work Initiative, said a few state and local governments, like ones in Washington state and New York, are trying to improve gig worker pay and benefits. Washington state, Reder said, is attempting to come up with a whole new model through legislation that would let gig platforms contribute to benefits funds for gig workers and set governance requirements for administrators. Last week, a national teleconference organized by the labor advocacy group Working Washington instituted a campaign for a $15-an-hour minimum wage for gig workers. While a patchwork of state regulations might be less preferable than federal rules, Reder said, states are laboratories of our democracy. If we dont try a few things out there, we wont be able to think about a comprehensive solution. Benefits for House Cleaners Also, she noted, the National Domestic Workers Alliance last year launched a novel benefit program called Alia to help house cleaners. It won The Workers Lab 2018 Innovation Fund award. Employers of the house cleaners can pay into a benefits fund (usually $5 per cleaning) for the cleaners to draw paid time off and, in some cases, insurance coverage, said Reder. Cleaners in California and New York can access accident insurance, critical illness insurance, life insurance or disability insurance, but not general health insurance. House cleaners can receive Alia contributions from multiple employers or clients and take the Alia Benefits Credits with them when they leave a job or client, making them portable. Alia plans to add insurance options in other states in coming months and to adjust the product for nannies and caregivers. A Points Program to Accrue Benefits Joshua Karam, co-founder and CEO of Hyr gig platform for the restaurant and hospitality industry, noted that his workers earn good money just shy of $20 an hour, on average. Also, he noted, Hyrs U Points program lets its gig workers choose where to allocate their points accruing them for paid time off, health or dental insurance or retirement savings. So far, Hyr is available in New York City, Miami and Los Angeles; Boston, Chicago, Toronto and other Canadian markets will be added soon. Helping Gig Workers Manage Taxes And Jake Biscoglio, vice president of strategic growth initiatives/new market development at Prudential Financial, talked about the tool Covered 1099 his firm launched two weeks ago to make it easier for gig workers to save for, and pay, their taxes. We found a main pain point for gig workers was saving for taxes the awareness that it needs to be done, the discipline to do it and the time off between gigs, said Biscoglio. Covered 1099 automates the process as you get income, so money goes into the account to pay for the taxes. Covered 1099 replicates the traditional employees W-2 experience for independent workers whose earnings show up on 1099 forms. Its Tax Estimator lets gig workers set aside money the tool believes will be due for taxes and then use that cash to pay quarterly estimated taxes. (Covered 1099 is not permitted for New York state residents.) The taxation piece is important, because gig workers are responsible to file their taxes and many are used to the withholding that comes with W-2 jobs, said Karam. They dont know what they dont know. The Struggle for Policymakers Reder noted that policymakers are struggling to close the gap between laws and regulations regarding pay and benefits for traditional workers and new ones needed for the business models we see today of gig-economy platforms and their independent contractors. And Conway told me she didnt see anything coming out of Washington in the year ahead to help gig workers pay or benefits because were fairly gridlocked. Gig Work: Still Challenging Despite the new and promising ideas described at The Aspen Institute panel, gig work remains challenging for many. A 2017 study from the Freelancers Union and the gig platform Upwork found that 63% of freelancers dipped into their savings once a month. Panelist Lyndsey Cameron, a researcher who has interviewed ride-sharing gig workers and been one for about three years, said: Its tough to earn daily bread. But [being a driver] gave me a lot of flexibility. In a recent Fast Company article on the gig economy, gig drivers lamented that they have been earning less money from their work lately as companies hiring them have tried to cut costs. One Instacart driver said he averaged nearly $20 an hour before November, but in January, was averaging well under $15 an hour. And, the article noted, about 1,600 Instacart drivers have signed a petition complaining about their 30 to 40% pay declines. For many drivers at companies like Uber and Lyft, Cameron said, the money they earn is supplemental income, but its not to go to Hawaii. Cameron said her research found that whether gig workers feel empowered or exploited depends on their backgrounds. If youre a first-generation immigrant expecting to work your way up and had done low-paid, low-skill work before, youre more likely to feel empowered, she said. The people who feel more exploited are ones who had been laid off from manufacturing or pink-collar jobs and wanted to stop their downward social mobility. But, Cameron said, the gig economy is a really good thing for workers who are fifty-plus. In fact, she noted, she was drawn to her gig research because her mother lost a job in her 50s and then did gig work for about six years. Where the Gig Economy Is Headed: People 45+ Angela Heath, an audience member who recently led the online Gig Worker Summit and is CEO and Gig Income Guru for consultant TKC Incorporated, told me she believes people 45+ are where the gig economy is headed. And, she noted, the gig economy encompasses far, far more than Uber drivers. Theres a continuum of gig platforms, including some for the nations top talent, such as consultants, said Heath, author of Do the Hustle Without the Hassle. We found at our summit that many of these gig workers didnt know how to build their businesses. Heath plans to offer another online gig summit GigCon for all types of gig workers later this year. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2019/02/18/how-well-is-the-gig-economy-working-for-gig-workers/ |
Can early education push help pass sports betting? | BATON ROUGE They may not seem like a natural fit, but sports betting and early childhood education soon may become inseparably linked at the Louisiana Capitol. Early childhood education advocates see gambling on sports events as an untapped source of financing for the millions of dollars they say are needed to give Louisiana a high-quality, seamless system of education and care for children from birth until they enter kindergarten. Some backers of legalizing sports betting in Louisiana see early childhood education a noncontroversial issue that politicians regularly say they support as a way to bolster possible passage of the gambling legislation. So discussions are ongoing to try to dedicate money generated by any proposal to authorize sports wagering to early learning programs, becoming the latest strange bedfellows in Louisiana politics. For years now, we have been in the trenches looking for funds, begging for funds, hands and knees. We dont have enough funds for our earliest learners. This is just another opportunity, said Paula Polito, chair of Louisianas Early Childhood Care and Education Advisory Council and owner of a Jefferson Parish early learning center. Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards supports legalizing sports betting and said tying it to early childhood education programs is a conversation that I am willing to have. Lawmakers last year spurned a sports betting proposal by Sen. Danny Martiny, a Kenner Republican. But Martiny and other senators who support the gambling expansion hope a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing sports betting, combined with sports wagering now happening in Mississippi, could change minds. State panel seeks $86 million to address early child care waitlist They say gamblers are finding ways to wager, traveling to Mississippi casinos and using offshore gambling sites, and Louisiana is losing money that could be made by taxing the activity. "If we don't legalize sports betting in Louisiana, it's not going to go away," Martiny said. At least eight states allow sports betting. Others are considering it. Martiny said he'll file legislation in the regular session starting in April, to authorize sports wagering at Louisiana's land-based casino in New Orleans, 15 riverboat casinos, and four racetracks. He said he's trying to match what Mississippi allows, to keep Louisiana casinos competitive. Sports betting still faces high hurdles to passage in the Legislature, with opposition from conservative groups and pastors who object to increasing gambling options. But if passed, estimates of what Louisiana could receive from taxes on legalized sports betting range from $40 million to $70 million a year. That's why the early childhood education community's interested. An Early Childhood Care and Education Commission created by lawmakers said research shows young children with access to quality education options are less likely to need special education services in school, drop out before graduation or end up in the criminal justice system. Polito, a commission member, said 90 percent of child brain development occurs in the first four years of life. Louisiana years ago created a pre-K program for at-risk children, and the commission said 90 percent of needy 4-year-olds now have access to a quality early education program. The commission wants a state financing commitment to similarly help children from birth to three years old with early learning assistance. The commission estimates the price tag would be $86 million annually for the next decade. Martiny said early childhood development should be a priority and he'd support dedicating sports betting revenue to the effort. But he isn't committing to introduce his proposal that way and he's not sure if the dedication would help or hurt the measure's chances, particularly since some lawmakers believe Louisiana has too much money locked up. He also expects supporters of other causes to try to secure the sports betting money. "It's an election year. Everybody's got their own issue," Martiny said. "We have people who are against dedications. The governor seems to be in favor of the dedication. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are some people who won't vote for anything that the governor's for." Even if sports betting legalization wins passage, no money would come immediately. Local parishes would have to decide in the October election to authorize the activity at casinos and racetracks, Martiny said, and the Gaming Control Board would have to write regulations before wagering begins and taxes are collected. Sports Betting in Louisiana: 5 things that need to be worked out | https://www.nola.com/education/2019/02/can-early-education-push-help-pass-sports-betting.html |
Is Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia a first-ballot Hall of Famer? | New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia announced 2019 would be his final MLB season, putting to bed an impressive career. The big lefty is a six-time All-Star, a Cy Young Award winner and World Series winner. Many feel he has first-ballot Hall of Fame credentials. Others feel his greatness is not up to par to be a first-ballot inductee. CC Sabathia embodied greatness for most of his career. The California native burst on the scene at 20 years old with a 17-5 record in his rookie year and never looked back. He now has 246 total wins and .617 winning percentage at the time of publishing. Sabathia also got the job done in the playoffs, where he was ALCS MVP in 2009 with the World Series-winning Yankees. There is no way he doesn't get inducted on his first ballot. 2 x wins leader Cy Young winner Multiple All Star 250 wins Only third left handed pitcher to reach 3000 strikeouts. What more would he need to do for you to be first ballot Matthew Grace Photo (@matthewgphoto) February 16, 2019 CC Sabathias career is definitely worthy of a Hall of Fame induction, but not on the first ballot. If you dont think so, look no further than the resume of Mike Mussina. The former Oriole and Yankee great has a better ERA, better win percentage, more wins and a higher Wins Above Replacement. Mussina has yet to be inducted into the Hall. Sabathia will make it someday. However, itll take a few tries to get there. Not even close to a first ballot HOF pitcher! Kenny Powers (@sawxfan23) February 16, 2019 The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, wed love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.oregonlive.com/tylt/2019/02/is-yankees-pitcher-cc-sabathia-a-first-ballot-hall-of-famer.html |
What's New At The 2019 South Beach Wine And Food Festival? | February in Miami is synonymous with The Food Network & Cooking Channel South Beach Wine and Food Festival (SOBEWFF). For five days, from February 20 to 24, the 18th annual edition, called Eat. Drink. Educate., will feature over 100 events spanning Miami-Dade, Broward and, for the first time, Palm Beach (Martha Stewart will be hosting a dinner here on the 21st). Over 70,000 attendees expected. As in prior years, proceeds will benefit Florida International Universitys Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management. In addition to the festivals key signature events, including large-scale tastings on the beach to the more intimate chef-hosted dinners, this year will see the launch of several new marquee events. Here are some of those to look out for in Miami: Jos Andrs A Taste of Puerto Rico (February 21, Thursday; 7 PM to 10 PM; SLS South Beach; $175- Sold Out) Global social justice advocate, ThinkFoodGroup owner Jos Andrs is dedicated to fostering an understanding of the storied culture of Puerto Rico. This year, the James Beard Award-winning chef and 2017 SOBEWFF Tribute Dinner Honoree, will be hosting a Puerto Rican-inspired soiree with over a dozen chefs hailing from the island, to serve up dishes like mofongo, bacalaito, tostones, lechon, paired with wines from Gonzalez Byass. Adam Richmans Mixing It Up On The Miami River: Best Bars, Bites, Beats (February 21, Thursday; 10 PM to 12 AM; The Wharf Miami; $95) Adam Richman, host of Man Finds Food, will take guests through free-flowing cocktails and late-night bites from food trucks Mojo Donuts and Fried Chicken, La Santa Taqueria, Spris Artisan Pizza, over live music, right by the historic Miami River. Martha Stewarts Wine & Cheese Happy Hour (February 22, Friday; 5 PM to 7 PM; No. 3 Social Roof Bar & Lounge; $95- Sold Out) Martha Stewart herself will guide attendees through the world of cheese, paired with wines from Mouton Cadet, over scenic views of the Miami skyline at Wynwoods newest rooftop bar, No. 3 Social Roof Bar. Cindy Hutson and Delius Shirleys Taste Jamaica (February 22, Friday; 8 PM to 10:30 PM; National Hotel; $150) In partnership with the Jamaica Tourist Board and the Jamaican Gastronomy Network, South Floridas pioneers of Caribbean cuisine Cindy Hutson and Delius Shirley of Ortanique on the Mile and Zest in Miami, have rounded up some of their country's best chefs to introduce new Jamaican cuisine. DJ Irie will be spinning that evening. Marc Murphys Mangia! A Taste of Italy After Dark (February 22, Friday; 11 PM to 1 AM; Casa Tua Cucina; $95) Marc Murphy, judge on Chopped, will be leading attendees through dishes like homemade ravioli, truffled pizza, caprese salad, salmon tartare, skirt steak and tiramisufrom from Casa Tuas casual outpost in Brickell City Centre. Geoffrey Zakarians Ros Pool Party (February 23, Saturday; 3 PM to 5 PM; Eden Roc Miami Beach; $95) #RoseAllDay will come in various shades of pink from Chateau DEsclans at a rose poolside party hosted by chef, restaurateur and TV host Geoffrey Zakarian. Emeril Lagasses Sunset Stone Crab (February 23, Saturday; 6 PM to 9 PM; Montys Sunset; $175- Sold Out) Chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, TV personality and 2009 SOBEWFF Tribute Dinner honoree Emeril Lagasse will be hosting a sunset seafood feast, complete with stone crabs, and free-flowing wines and spirit, overlooking the sparkling waters of Biscayne Bay. I am incredibly excited to share with people some of the unexpected and delicious flavors of South Beach in a fun, informal, party-like setting, says Adam Richman in this exclusive with Forbes Life, who will also be hosting Rock n Roll: An Asian Night Market on February 22, as part of the CRAVE Greater Fort Lauderdale Series. And getting to do that while raising money for the next generation of culinary talent is something I consider a really great honor. For more information on SOBEWFF, visit sobewff.org | https://www.forbes.com/sites/cheryltiu/2019/02/18/whats-new-at-the-2019-south-beach-wine-and-food-festival/ |
Could a defeated IS rebound? | Image copyright Manbar.me In short: yes, but not in the same form. The jihadist terror group's self-proclaimed "caliphate", which once ruled over nearly eight million people across Syria and Iraq, has been all but eliminated. The temptation for triumphalism in Western capitals is overwhelming. It has taken four-and-a-half years of relentless military pressure by a 79-nation coalition to get to this point. It has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives, many of them civilian. But people who have access to secret intelligence on the Islamic State (IS) group's activities and intentions are calling for caution. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Alex Younger, the chief of Britain's secret intelligence service (MI6) - an organisation that was frankly caught completely off-balance by IS's lightning advances in 2014 - said this: "The military defeat of the 'caliphate' does not represent the end of the terrorist threat. We see it therefore morphing, spreading out... within Syria but also externally... this is the traditional shape of a terrorist organisation." Speaking at the same event, German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen assessed that IS was currently going deeper underground and building networks with other terrorist groups. Gen Joseph Votel, who runs US Central Command, has warned that, although the IS network is dispersed, pressure needs to be maintained on it or its components will have "the capability of coming back together if we don't". Image copyright Reuters Image caption IS was driven out of Raqqa, the de facto capital of its "caliphate", in October 2017 Estimates of the number of IS fighters who have dispersed across the Syria-Iraq arena range from 20,000 to 30,000, many of whom will be unwilling to return to their home countries for fear of prosecution. There are also small concentrations of fanatical IS-linked militants in Libya, Egypt, West Africa, Afghanistan and the southern Philippines. Already in Iraq there is evidence of IS militants mounting increasingly bold attacks in the northern provinces. So far, so grim. But let's have a look at what originally propelled IS to its early victories and lightning conquests in 2013/14 and assess whether it could do so again. Out of the wilderness IS grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent group formed from an alliance of convenience between disgruntled and out-of-work Iraqi military and intelligence officers with idealistic jihadists flooding in from around the Arab world and elsewhere. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Last September the BBC spoke to two British extremists who have lived and fought in Syria for years Al-Qaeda in Iraq's calling card was what it said was a religious duty by all Muslims to come and resist the US occupation of Iraq. But then its brutality and intolerance (eg chopping off the fingers of anyone caught smoking cigarettes) so alienated the Iraqi tribes that they sided with the government and drove al-Qaeda out into the wilderness. Iraq's Shia-led government then squandered this gain by embarking on a systematic programme of discrimination against the country's Sunni Muslims. By the summer of 2014 they felt so disenfranchised that IS (a Sunni extremist movement) was able to practically walk into Iraq's second city of Mosul unopposed. Couple this with a weak, demoralised Iraqi military, whose senior officers deserted their own troops ahead of the IS advance, and you had all the ingredients of an IS takeover of a third of Iraq. Next door in Syria, with the civil war still raging, there was enough chaos and confusion for IS -as the most ruthless and ideological of all insurgent groups - to carve out large areas of control. Yes, and no. It is highly unlikely that a physical "caliphate" of any size would be allowed to be reconstituted. Yet many of the factors that fuelled IS's early success are still there. Iraq is awash with sectarian Shia militias, some funded, trained and armed by Iran. There are disturbing reports of Sunni villagers being dragged from their homes and - in some cases - falsely accused of supporting IS. In some places, Shia revenge squads stalk the streets at night with impunity. Iraq desperately needs a national reconciliation process and inclusive government if it is to avoid a regenerated IS 2.0. Yet there is little sign of this happening in practice. In Syria, the factor that sparked that country's catastrophic civil war now sits victorious in his palace in Damascus. President Bashar al-Assad, saved from defeat by his Russian and Iranian allies, appears more secure than ever. Most Syrians are now too exhausted to oppose him. But the atrocities committed by his regime, on an industrial scale, will continue to propel some towards armed resistance, and IS will be looking for ways back into the Syrian battle space. Further afield and globally, wherever there is a perception of bad governance, of disenfranchisement, of religious persecution against Muslims or where large bodies of alienated young men feel their lives lack purpose, there will always be opportunities for recruiters to the "cult" of IS. Its caliphate is over, its dangerously infectious ideology is not. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-47286277 |
How many IS foreign fighters are left in Iraq and Syria? | Image copyright Reuters Image caption A jihadist fighter filming a military parade in Raqqa in 2014 US President Donald Trump has called on European countries to repatriate hundreds of foreign Islamic State (IS) militants being detained by Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria, warning that they could "be forced to release them" once US troops withdraw from the country. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance has offered few details about the detainees. But they represent only a fraction of the tens of thousands of Sunni jihadists believed to have travelled to Syria and neighbouring Iraq to join IS. Jihadists began travelling to Iraq in 2003 when a US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime triggered a Sunni insurgency. Hundreds are thought to have joined al-Qaeda in Iraq, a precursor to IS. Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Islamic State group urged Muslims to migrate to their new "caliphate" in 2014 Many more went to Syria after a civil war erupted there in 2011. Their presence complicated the conflict and helped make it overtly sectarian in nature, pitching the country's Sunni majority against President Bashar al-Assad's Shia Alawite sect. There was a huge surge in arrivals after IS seized control of swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and urged Muslims to migrate to their new "caliphate". The United Nations has said that more than 40,000 foreign fighters from 110 countries may have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join terrorist groups. A July 2018 study by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King's College London based on official, academic and other data concluded that 41,490 people - 32,809 men, 4,761 women, and 4,640 children - from 80 countries were affiliated with IS specifically. Researchers found 18,852 came from the Middle East and North Africa, 7,252 from Eastern Europe, 5,965 from Central Asia, 5,904 from Western Europe, 1,010 from Eastern Asia, 1,063 from South-East Asia, 753 from the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, 447 from Southern Asia, and 244 from Sub-Saharan Africa. Approximately 850 people from the UK were among them, including 145 women and 50 children. The US-led Global Coalition to Defeat IS, which has provided air support and military advisers to local forces in Iraq and Syria since 2014, has said it believes the vast majority of IS militants are dead or in custody. But it has declined to speculate on the number of foreign fighters who may have been killed. The head of MI5 said in October 2017 that more than 130 Britons who had travelled to Iraq and Syria to fight with IS had died. Senior SDF official Abdul Karim Omar said on 18 February that the US-backed alliance had about 800 foreign fighters from almost 50 countries in its prisons. At least 700 women and 1,500 children were being held at camps for displaced people, he added. Few of the SDF's detainees have been identified. But two men from London, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, are among them. They are alleged to have been part of an IS execution cell dubbed "the Beatles" that beheaded at least 27 Western hostages. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Interview with so-called 'IS Beatles' duo Mr Omar reiterated that the SDF wanted the foreign fighters to be repatriated. He warned that they were a "time bomb", saying an attack on northern Syria by Turkey - which has vowed to crush a Kurdish militia that dominates the SDF - could spark chaos and allow the jihadist to escape. However, their home countries have raised concerns about bringing hardened IS members back and the challenges of gathering evidence to support prosecutions. There are believed to be another 1,000 foreign fighters of various, sometimes undetermined, nationalities under arrest in Iraq, according to the UN. Image copyright AFP Image caption Djamila Boutoutaou from France was sentenced to life in prison in Iraq for being an IS member It is not clear whether that figure includes women and children. But a group of more than 1,300 of them are known to have been detained near Tal Afar in 2017. Human Rights Watch said at least 72 of those women had been put on trial by June 2018, accused of illegal entry and being a member of, or assisting, IS. Most of them, it added, had been found guilty and sentenced to death or to life in prison. They were from a number of countries, including Turkey, Russia, France and Germany. Children aged nine and above have also been prosecuted. After five years of fierce and bloody battles, Syrian and Iraqi forces, backed by world powers, have driven IS out of almost all of the territory it once controlled. However, UN Secretary General Antnio Guterres told the Security Council at the start of February 2018 that IS was reported to still control between 14,000 and 18,000 militants in Iraq and Syria, including up to 3,000 foreigners. Mr Guterres published his findings as the SDF launched an offensive to capture the last pocket of territory controlled by IS in Syria. Foreigners who have fled the fighting around the village of Baghuz and been detained by the SDF include the British teenager Shamima Begum, who was 15 when she ran away from her home to join IS. ICSR researchers found that at least 7,366 foreigners affiliated with IS had travelled back to their own countries, including 256 women and up to 1,180 children. By June 2018, 3,906 had returned to countries in the Middle East and North Africa, 1,765 to Western Europe, 784 to Eastern Europe, 338 to Central Asia, 308 to South-Eastern Asia, 156 to Southern Asia, 97 to the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, and 12 to Sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 425 who returned to the UK, only two women and four children were confirmed, according to the ICSR. The UN has expressed concern about returnees becoming active again on release from prison or for other reasons. It has also said radicalised women and traumatised minors may pose a threat. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-47286935 |
Should I feel guilty about trapping mice? | The question I have lived in my house for almost 50 years. Each fall, when the cold weather appears, mice come in from the garden looking for a warm place for the winter, leaving evidence of their arrival. Each fall, I set traps for the visitors and usually kill five or six. But this now bothers me. A mouse arriving in my kitchen and prowling for food is only being a mouse; it has no malevolent intent. It now occurs to me in the past few months that merely being a mouse does not warrant a death penalty. The answer Well, I know not everyone would agree but personally I do feel like youre overthinking this and any mice who manage to penetrate the perimeter of your domicile should be dispatched to Mouse Heaven (or Mouse The Other Place) without a second thought. My opinion may be influenced partly by having lived and worked on a farm for a couple of years, where uninvited creatures, a.k.a. pests, were treated with a minimum of sentimentality. Story continues below advertisement (Public Service Announcement: sensitive and/or squeamish readers might want to skip the next two paragraphs.) I have memories, for example, of the farmer shooting Canada geese, considered pests for some reason, out of the sky. Or of the rats that lived under the corn silo, hardly moving, becoming atrophied and obese, munching on kernels of corn that fell down to them. Every so often, as a matter of routine, the farmer would throw a wet smoking rag under the silo, and these fat rats, barely able to walk, would come trundling out, where the farmer was waiting with a shotgun; his son with a shovel; and me, the hired hand, with a pitchfork, ready to rain doom down upon them. Frontier justice. If what ensued were portrayed in an old-timey cartoon, the sound effects might be: Blam blam! Kloon! Splort! Okay lets draw a curtain over that admittedly unsavoury scenario. Please allow me to attempt to redeem myself and portray myself as a more sympathetic character when I say: I do hate seeing any of Gods creatures suffer. So Im saddened and disgusted by and opposed to the glue trap. I do hope you arent using those to catch your mice. The mouse becomes stuck and thrashes around in the glue, alive. Some people then toss the mouse in the garbage, to die of natural causes, i.e. thirst and starvation. Its more humane to drown the stuck mouse in the sink or toilet. But still not humane enough. The mouse has likely suffered and been frightened and confused for many hours. I feel like the conventional snap trap is humane enough, usually killing the mouse instantly. (Snap-trap hack: Dont use cheese for bait, use peanut butter or dog food or a bit of Tootsie Roll.) Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement But if youre still squeamish and conscience-struck, there are also such things as live traps where a door shuts behind the mouse and you then take it somewhere (far from where you live) and release it to nibble another day, to scurry around, squeak and ideally mate, and have numerous further mousey adventures. Then theres the question of prevention, maybe the most humane option. Keep your house clean and crumb-free (mice only need about a tenth of an ounce of food a day to live, so youll have to be meticulous), with food sealed up and pet food put away for the night. Sprinkle cotton balls soaked in peppermint oil around: that apparently repels them. If you do all these things maybe theyll say to themselves: Squeak squeak this house sucks, its not worth the bother, lets go next door to that holey, crumb-filled house where they leave their dog food out all night. But whatever you do, ultimately, I think your instinct is correct to draw a line in the sand vis-a-vis uninvited creatures such as mice in your house. They can carry disease for one thing: for example, some mice have ticks which can give you Lyme disease, which you most emphatically dont want. Your welfare and well-being should be your primary concern, above and beyond what is certainly a laudable compassion for the creatures scurrying around the house youve dwelt in and maintained for half a century, eating your food, gnawing holes in the walls, and leaving droppings. Send your dilemmas to [email protected]. Please keep your submissions to 150 words and include a daytime contact number so we can follow up with any queries. | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/article-should-i-feel-guilty-about-trapping-mice/ |
Are Whole Foods prices on the way up again? | In less than two weeks, Amazons ownership of Whole Foods Market will officially be one and a half years old. Since the sale closed on Aug. 28, 2017, the American-Statesman has tracked prices at the Austin-based grocer to see how Amazons promised cost reduction has proceeded. The newspaper has price-checked a basket at Whole Foods headquarter store on North Lamar Boulevard every six months. Prices of the 23-item basket have decreased over time. But ahead of another check set to happen this month, recent media reports indicate that Whole Foods prices are on the rise as Whole Foods sales growth has slowed. The grocery chain is increasing prices on some items because of rising packaging, ingredient and transportation costs, the Wall Street Journal reported recently. Additionally, contracts Whole Foods had signed with suppliers to sell hundreds of products at lower prices expired and wont be renewed, sending prices up. Soaps, detergents and oils are some of the most affected items, the Journal reported, with the average item's cost increase being 66 cents. Since Amazon purchased Whole Foods, its tried to erase the Whole Paycheck image the grocer has long carried. Many of the companys price reductions have come via its Amazon Prime rewards system or through deals the e-commerce company has offered online. In an emailed response Monday, Whole Foods spokeswoman Stephanie Ferragut said the company continues to work on its price structure. Our teams are working hard to lower costs and invest the savings in both lower prices for customers and new programs such as delivery of Whole Foods Market groceries via Prime Now, Ferragut said. The American-Statesmans latest price check in August showed that overall prices had dropped 4.69 percent since the first check right before the sale closed in 2017. But prices had risen 4.23 percent since a check in February 2018. Prices on popular items such as organic raspberries, ground beef and large brown eggs had remained lower since Amazons takeover. But Fuji apples, Whole Foods 365-brand organic spring mix and a gallon of 365-brand milk had increased in price. Overall sales at Whole Foods, which had climbed since Amazon came into the picture, have also not been as strong lately. In its fourth quarter earnings report on Jan. 31, Amazon said sales at its brick-and-mortar stores were down 3 percent year-over-year. Chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said then in a call with investors thaht those sales mostly reflected Whole Foods stores. A shorter day count in that fourth quarter when compared to the previous fourth quarter affected numbers, Olsavsky said. In addition, purchases made online by Whole Foods customers for in-store pickup, which were counted as online sales, also skewed the outcome. Without those factors, Olsavsky said, physical store sales would have increased by 6 percent. Amazon has continued investing in Whole Foods. After only opening five new stores in 2017, Whole Foods opened about 25 new stores last year, a recent analysis by the American-Statesman found. Total store count has almost surpassed 500, with more stores planned to open in Illinois, Georgia and other locations. | https://www.statesman.com/news/20190218/are-whole-foods-prices-on-way-up-again |
Will 49ers put franchise tag on kicker Robbie Gould? | More than two years after Robbie Gould was released by Chicago, it sure sounds like the 49ers placekicker wants to be reunited. When the Bears ended their 11-season relationship with Gould in September 2016, the franchises career scoring leader penned a letter to the greatest fans in the NFL that ended with this: Once a Bear, always a Bear. Twenty-nine months later, Gould appeared on 670 The Score in Chicago on Sunday and his 22-minute interview ended with him saying this: Once a Bear, always a Bear. Goulds wife, who is from suburban Chicago, and his three young sons have stayed in Chicago during Goulds two seasons in Santa Clara. He is building a home outside the city he has called home since 2005 and he wants his kids to grow up as Chicago sports fans. As it happens, the local football team hasnt adequately replaced Gould. In fact, the Bears 2018 season ended when Cody Parkey capped an erratic debut season in Chicago by missing a 43-yard field-goal try with five seconds left in a 16-15 wild-card playoff loss to Philadelphia. The thing for me is its going to be the best place to win (and) the best place for my family, Gould said, and obviously that opportunity will come up and well make those decisions. But heres the thing: It might not be Goulds decision to make. NFL teams can begin applying the franchise tag to one player on their roster Tuesday and Gould is the 49ers only logical candidate to receive the designation (the franchise-tag period ends March 5). The one-year franchise tag will be about $5 million for kickers. If its applied, Gould could be the NFLs highest-paid kicker in 2019, but the second-most-accurate kicker in NFL history has earned a significant raise after signing a two-year, $4 million deal in 2017. With the 49ers, Gould has made 72 of 75 field-goal attempts, which is the most accurate two-season stretch in NFL history among kickers with at least 50 attempts. Last year, Gould led the NFL in field-goal percentage (97.1). Parkey ranked 30th (76.7) and missed as many regular-season kicks (seven) in 30 attempts as Gould has missed in his past 105 tries dating to 2015. However, Parkey has $3.5 million in guaranteed money in 2019 and he would count $5 million in dead cap space if released. The Bears are projected to have about $20 million in cap space. Codys obviously the kicker for the Chicago Bears, Gould said on The Score. They have a lot of things they would have to do in order for it to work. Were all ears if we get to (free agency) and well take it in stride. Wed definitely consider all opportunities when we get to that free-agent part, for sure. Gould said Sunday that hes seeking at least a three-year contract. Given his family considerations and desire to give myself a chance to win a Super Bowl he likely wouldnt welcome the one-year franchise tag from the 49ers, who went 4-12 in 2018. The 49ers, who are projected to have more than $60 million in cap space, can sign Gould to a contract extension. Last month, however, general manager John Lynch said such a deal wasnt imminent. Were hopeful to work things out with Robbie, Lynch said. And hes kicked unbelievably for us. Hes been incredibly clutch for us. And wed like to reward him for that. The franchise tag can strain relationship between teams and players, who often are seeking more long-term security. Still, it would be shocking if the 49ers didnt apply the tag to Gould because they dont fit his criteria. Its possible the 49ers could part with Gould and explore free-agent options that could include New Englands Stephen Gostkowski, Minnesotas Dan Bailey and longtime Falcon Matt Bryant, all of whom rank in the top 10 in career field-goal percentage. Bryant, who recently was released by Atlanta, played for 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan with the Falcons, but will be 44 in May. Bailey, 31, is coming off a disappointing debut with the Vikings after the Cowboys released him before the 2018 season. For his part, Gould often sounded Sunday as if he was destined to reach free agency. It could be wishful thinking, or perhaps Gould knows something about the 49ers franchise-tag intentions. This can be said with certainty: When it comes to his future, well soon see if one of the most trustworthy kickers in NFL history is accurate again. Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @Eric_Branch | https://www.sfchronicle.com/49ers/article/Will-49ers-put-franchise-tag-on-kicker-Robbie-13626054.php |
Where does Trudeau go without Butts? | For the first time in a long time, Gerald Buttss Twitter feed went silent. Save for a single tweet to thank those who had reached out after his resignation as Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus powerful principal secretary, Mr. Butts did not have anything else to post on Monday. Gone were the habitual attacks on critics of the Liberal government, including rival provincial premiers. There was none of the usual virtue signalling or heaping of praise on his own government and boss. Story continues below advertisement With Mr. Buttss sudden departure, the Prime Minister loses his most ferocious defender and closest confidant. Indeed, no Prime Minister in recent memory has been as seemingly dependent on a single aide as Mr. Trudeau has been on his old McGill University pal. Their relationship has been so symbiotic that the prospect of Mr. Trudeau without Mr. Butts is difficult to contemplate. Even so, Mr. Butts had to go. He violated every rule governing the comportment of political advisers, who should stay quiet in public and never upstage their boss. But as the brewing scandal over allegations of interference by the Prime Ministers Office in a fraud case involving SNC-Lavalin came to dominate the news, Mr. Butts attracted the very worst kind of attention. The allegations that senior PMO staff sought to put pressure on former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to defer prosecution of SNC-Lavalin have not only sparked an investigation by the Ethics Commissioner, they have thrown the entire government off course in an election year. Instead of protecting Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Butts has put him in grave danger. The prospect of more damaging details emerging about the PMOs handling of the SNC-Lavalin file, which ran directly through Mr. Butts, made his position untenable. As did the PMOs dreadful attempts at damage control, as it repeatedly changed its messaging in days after The Globe and Mail broke the story. Mr. Trudeau had little choice but to cut his friend loose. And many members of the Liberal caucus will cheer his departure. Mr. Butts was seen by many as too controlling. His continual presence at Mr. Trudeaus side, even at caucus meetings, became a source of tension. Instead of enjoying free access to their own Leader, some Liberals felt ignored or condescended to by the PMO. The next Liberal shuffle needs to be the unelected @gmbutts, Conservative MP Erin OToole tweeted on Thursday, using Mr. Buttss Twitter handle. Longtime Liberals tell me this needs to happen because of the divisive environment he creates. Time for Trudeau to show his Svengali the door. Still, even his critics concede that Mr. Buttss skill, intelligence and toughness will be difficult for Mr. Trudeau to replace. While chief of staff Katie Telford enjoys the Prime Ministers trust, her relationship with Mr. Trudeau is not comparable with the bond he shares with Mr. Butts. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement Thus, although his departure had become necessary, it also carries big risks for Mr. Trudeau and his government. Unless Mr. Butts continues to offer advice from the sidelines, the Liberal government now heads into the critical months before an election without its chief strategist. For Mr. Trudeau, this is an inflection point. Mr. Butts had come to overshadow his boss, leading to unflattering suggestions on social media that the Prime Minister reported to his principal secretary, rather than the other way around. Now, Mr. Trudeau has to ensure that Mr. Buttss departure does not throw the PMO into disarray or, worse, lead to infighting among his senior staff. Every recent prime minister, save for perhaps the lone wolf that was Stephen Harper, has relied on an airtight relationship with a single senior adviser. Mr. Trudeaus father, Pierre Trudeau, came to count on Jim Coutts to a degree few expected from such an independent thinker as Canadas 15th prime minister. Brian Mulroney, the consummate extrovert, depended on his introverted principal secretary Bernard Roy. Jean Chrtien had Eddie Goldenberg and Paul Martin had David Herle. Still, none of those duos matched the Trudeau-Butts partnership. It would be hard to understate the extent to which Mr. Butts made Justin Trudeau. Had the two twentysomethings not struck up an enduring friendship at McGill, it is not clear that Mr. Trudeau would be where he is now. For better and for worse. Because as much as Mr. Trudeau is indebted to Mr. Butts for helping him become Prime Minister, his former principal secretary has left the Liberal government under a cloud from which it may not emerge intact. That has to be bittersweet for both of them. | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-where-does-trudeau-go-without-butts/ |
Why did Justin Trudeau cut off his right hand? | On Monday afternoon, another senior figure abruptly exited the Trudeau government. But, as with the departure last week of former justice minister and attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould, principal secretary Gerald Buttss resignation is a move that is generating far more heat than light. His leave-taking, like that of Ms. Wilson-Raybould, is related to the allegation, first reported in The Globe and Mail, that senior officials in the Prime Ministers Office last year put pressure on the then attorney-general to cut a deal with engineering giant SNC-Lavalin to avoid a criminal prosecution. The scandal is now eating the Trudeau government or, to put it more precisely, the government is being consumed, day after day, by its inability to rebut the allegation of scandal. Until Monday, it was hard to overstate the power of Mr. Butts. Canadian government is nominally cabinet government, but the Prime Ministers Office is the unelected quasi-ministry that stands above the elected members. As principal secretary, Mr. Butts was at the peak of that PMO pyramid, and hence at the top of government. A close friend of the PM since their days together at McGill University, he was a driving force behind Mr. Trudeaus improbable rise from the political fringes to MP, to party leader, to PM. Story continues below advertisement Mr. Butts was not only seen as the most powerful person in government and the chief string-puller behind the curtain; he was also believed to be indispensable to the PM, both as a policy wonk and a political strategist. He wasnt just Mr. Trudeaus right-hand man, he was understood as his right arm, or even the right half of his body. And now, just months before the election, hes gone, or at least no longer running the show at the PMO. Gone, but the issue that provoked his departure remains. As with the resignation of Ms. Wilson-Raybould, the proximate cause of Mr. Buttss departure is obvious, while the deeper reason is shrouded in dense fog. The immediate reason for his resignation is that the government is faced with a political crisis that threatens the PMs popularity, and even his hold over his party. Mr. Butts, the chief political adviser, has been unable to make that political headache go away. For more than a week, the government has failed to successfully address the SNC-Lavalin allegation, or to respond to it in a way that puts it to rest. If anything, it has made things worse, sending the Prime Minister into the crosshairs of journalists questions, day after day, with an incomplete and evolving story. It was bad enough when Mr. Trudeaus first response was to insist that he had never directed" the attorney-general to defer the prosecution. It was a legalistic phrasing that both suggested something amiss without addressing the allegation, which was not that Ms. Wilson-Raybould had been directly ordered, but that she had been put under pressure. It was worse when, a few days later, the PM pointed to Ms. Wilson-Rayboulds continued presence in cabinet as proof nothing was amiss and then hours later, she resigned. In the days since, the government has been parsimonious with information about what happened, or did not happen, on the SNC-Lavalin file. Mr. Buttss resignation, momentous as it is, doesnt change the fact that Canadians still dont know what the Trudeau government did, or did not do, with regard to the SNC-Lavalin prosecution, and whether its actions involved anything legally or ethically problematic. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement The government has been consistent in denying that it did anything wrong, and that is also part of Mr. Buttss resignation letter. The problem is that its impossible for Canadians to make up their minds on whether the government did wrong, when so little is known about what the government did. As such, Mr. Buttss resignation may raise questions about the future shape of the Trudeau government, and even, in an election year, its future as the government. It has also, for the first time, revealed hints of Liberal members jockeying for pole position in a post-Trudeau party. But it doesnt deliver what psychologists and political advisers alike always aim for: closure. The key player in this drama, Ms. Wilson-Raybould, has yet to speak and to give her side of the story. Until she does, it remains impossible to say whether Mr. Buttss departure is a sideshow, or something that goes to the very heart of the narrative. | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-why-did-justin-trudeau-cut-off-his-right-hand/ |
How many winnable games are left for Suns this season? | Jan 24, 2019; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker (1) looks on against the Portland Trail Blazers during the second half at Talking Stick Resort Arena. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports (Photo11: Joe Camporeale, Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports) The numbers tell the story of the current state of the 2018-19 Phoenix Suns: 11-48 NBAs worst record. As Kelly Oubre Jr. said, the Suns are at the bottom. 15 Current losing skid; games Devin Booker has missed due to injury. 11 Wins Phoenix needs to match last seasons win total. 23 Games remaining on schedule. Phoenix can redefine their season within that last number starting Thursday at Cleveland in the first of a three-game road trip. The Suns play Saturday at Atlanta and conclude the trip Monday at Miami. Phoenix Suns head coach Igor Kokoskov talks with Phoenix Suns center Deandre Ayton (22) during the first quarter against the Charlotte Hornets in Phoenix January 6, 2019. (Photo11: Michael Chow/The Republic) All three have losing records, but the Hawks and Heat have already beaten the Suns. Theyll play the Cavaliers for the first time this season at Quicken Loans Arena. Igor Kokosov said the Suns needed an escape after losing their 15th straight game last week at Los Angeles against the Clippers. Were all going to get to escape from each other, Kokoskov said. I think we all need that escape emotionally from losing games, but we are who we are as a group. We belong here and if we want to change something, we have to do it as a group. Starting from each individual, understanding that we need to change. Having TJ Warren back would be a welcomed change as the teams second-leading scorer has missed the last 10 games with right ankle soreness, but it wont matter if the Suns continue to play poorly. Phoenix Suns forward T.J. Warren (12) looks to pass between Charlotte Hornets forward Marvin Williams (2) and center Bismack Biyombo (8) during the first quarter in Phoenix January 6, 2019. Thursday at Cleveland (12-46) Saturday at Atlanta (19-39) Monday at Miami (26-30) 3-1 New Orleans (26-33) 3-2 L.A. Lakers (28-29) 3-4 Milwaukee (43-14) 3-6 New York (11-47) 3-9 at Portland (34-23) 3-10 at Golden State (41-16) 3-13 Utah (32-25) 3-15 at Houston (33-24) 3-16 at New Orleans 3-18 Chicago (14-44) 3-21 Detroit (26-30) 3-23 at Sacramento (30-27) 2-25 at Utah 3-27 Washington (24-34) 3-30 Memphis (23-36) 4-1 Cleveland 4-3 Utah 4-5 New Orleans 4-7 at Houston 4-9 at Dallas (26-31) The Suns should win at least six more games to avoid matching the worst record in franchise history at 16-66 they set in their inaugural 1968-69 season. That's not a slam-dunk guarantee, though. Phoenix Suns forward Josh Jackson goes in for a dunk against the Atlanta Hawks during the first half of an NBA basketball game Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019, in Phoenix. (Photo11: Ross D. Franklin, AP) There are 11 teams left in their schedule with losing records, but theyve only beaten three of them New York, Memphis and Dallas. Phoenix has also beaten Milwaukee, which has the NBAs best record, and Sacramento. The Suns get the Bucks at home, but have to go to Sacramento where they lost earlier this month. If they somehow beat the Bucks again, itd be worth looking up if a team with the NBAs worst record has ever beaten a team with the NBAs best record twice in the same season. The Suns have 13 games against teams that would make the playoffs if the season ended now or are within three games of the eighth spot Milwaukee, Golden State, Portland, Houston, Utah, Sacramento, L.A. Lakers, Detroit, Miami and Washington. They play the Jazz three more times with two being at home and are at Houston twice. Those teams have postseason motivation. The Suns need to find some of their own and play far better than they have to not only end this current skid, but redefine what has been a horrid 2018-19 season. Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at [email protected] or contact him at 480-787-1240. Follow him on Twitter at @DuaneRankin. Support local journalism. Start your online subscription. | https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nba/suns/2019/02/18/phoenix-suns-verge-having-nbas-worst-record-again/2911819002/ |
Is a witness in the Botham Jean case less credible after raising $30K on GoFundMe? | A woman who recorded video in the moments after an off-duty police officer fatally shot Botham Jean has raised more than $30,000 in contributions after she said publicizing her evidence led to her being threatened and fired. But legal experts say her fundraising could undercut her credibility as a witness in the murder trial of the now-fired officer, Amber Guyger, and the federal civil trial against Guyger and the city of Dallas. Ronnie Babbs, 29, recorded her video in a stairwell down the hall from Jeans apartment as paramedics rushed him down the hallway on a gurney. The video shows Guyger, still in uniform, frantically pacing the same hallway while she was on the phone. | https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/02/18/witness-used-role-botham-jean-case-raise-30k-gofundme-will-hurt-credibility-bunny-babbs-ronnie-amber-guyger |
Do We Write Differently on a Screen? | I wrote my first story in a university library, in Boston. It was 1978, and I was bored to death with structuralism and post-structuralism. I wrote with a cheap ballpoint pen in the exercise book that I used for lecture notes. I noticed at once that the time passed differently when writing a story. It wasnt quicker or slower, simply absent. You moved into a dream space. You didnt know whether it was early or late. When I finished, I typed up the story on a small manual typewriter. I have to thank America for teaching me how to type fast, with all fingers and never looking at the keys. In England, you gave your weekly essay assignments to professors handwritten. In the States, they had to be typed. Walking back through the campus, late on spring evenings, you could hear a clatter of typewriters from open windows. I bought a book called Teach Yourself Typewriting. When a story was typed, you let it rest, then reread it and made handwritten corrections. Then reread it again. Then again. Then typed it up again, hopefully without mistakes. A lot of paper was thrown away. A lot of Wite-Out was used. You were a craftsman, producing pieces of paper with neat black signs. After making photocopies, you sent the story, by post, to a magazine, and it came back, months later, with a rejection and perhaps some suggestions how to improve it. You rewrote and retyped and re-sent. It was many years before I had a story published. Meantime, I moved back to the U.K., then, with my Italian wife, to Verona, where I began to translate. Here, typing skills were invaluable. You rode your moped into town in the morning, picked up a piece of workperhaps a description of a marble-quarrying machinerode home and had to translate it onto camera-ready paper for evening delivery and immediate printing. There was no time for rough drafts. You read each sentence, thought it through, produced an English version in your head, and typed it out perfect the first time. It was a fantastic discipline. And hugely stressful. In the early eighties, we bought an electric typewriter that could memorize about half a page before printing it out. To read the page, you had to scroll it from right to left, on a single line of display, between keyboard and print roller. It cost the equivalent of a thousand euros in todays money and wasnt satisfactory. A year or two later, we spent double that for a machine that could memorize a fantastic four pages on an audiocassette and offered a yellowish monochrome screen where you could read as many as fifteen lines at once. That was the machine on which I translated Roberto Calassos The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. On more than one occasion, the audiocassette jammed and four pages of work were lost. But, before that, I published my first short novel, Tongues of Flame. I continued to write fiction by hand and then type it up. But, at least, once it was typed, you could edit on a screen. What a difference that was! What an invitation to obsession! Hitherto, there was a limit to how many corrections you could make by hand. There was only so much space on the paper. It was discouragingtyping something out time after time, to make more and more corrections. You learned to be satisfied with what you had. Now you could go on changing things forever. I learned how important it was to keep a copy of what I had written first, so as to remember what I had meant in the beginning. Sometimes it turned out to be better than the endlessly edited version. Despite the introduction of this technology into the writing process, feedback on what you wrote was still slow. Long-distance and international phone calls were expensive, and editors and agents tended to communicate by letter. Post from London took at least a week to arrive in Italy. When it came to reviews, English newspapers were hard to find and expensive if you did find them. You had to wait, sometimes months, for press cuttings from London. Every day, I listened for the postman, passing on his scooter, and rushed downstairs to check the mail when he passed. Nothing. Just when the price of fax machines fell to something affordable, we bought a flat in a new development on the edge of town. The phone company made us wait eighteen months for a line. But this slowness was positive. You concentrated on the next piece of writing or the next translation. You learned not to worry too much what people were saying about you. We had personal computers at this point, but I still wrote fiction by hand. The mental space feels different when you work with paper. It is quieter. A momentum builds up, a spell between page and hand and eye. I like to use a nice pen and see the page slowly fill. But, for newspaper articles and translations, I now worked straight onto the computer. Which was more frenetic, nervy. The writing was definitely different. But more playful, too. You could move things around. You could experiment so easily. I am glad the computer wasnt available when I started writing. I might have been overwhelmed by the possibilities. But once you know what youre doing, the facility of the computer is wonderful. Then e-mail arrived and changed everything. First, you would only hook the computer up through your landline phone a couple of times a day, as if there were a special moment to send and receive mail. Then came the permanent connection. Finally, the wireless, and, of course, the Internet. In the space of perhaps ten years, you passed from waiting literally months for a decision on something that youd written, or simply for a reaction from a friend or an agent, to expecting a reaction immediately. Whereas in the past you checked your in-box once a day, now you checked every five minutes. And now you could write an article for The Guardian or the New York Times as easily as you could write it for LArena di Verona. Write it and expect a response in hours. In minutes. You write the first chapter of a book and send it at once to four or five friends. Hoping theyd read it at once. Its impossible to exaggerate how exciting this was, at first, and how harmful to the spirit. You, everybody, are suddenly incredibly needy of immediate feedback. A few more years and you were publishing regularly online for The New York Review of Books. And, hours after publication, you could know how many people were reading the piece. The mind becomes locked into an obsessive, manic back-and-forth. When immediate confirmation is not forthcoming, there is a sense of failure. Suddenly, the writer, very close to his public, is tempted to work hard and fast to please immediately, superficially, in order to have immediate gratification for himself in return. Curiously, the apparent freedom of e-mail and the Internet makes us more and more conformist as we talk to each other unceasingly. While you sit at your computer now, the world seethes behind the letters as they appear on the screen. You can toggle to a football match, a parliamentary debate, a tsunami. A beep tells you that an e-mail has arrived. WhatsApp flashes on the screen. Interruption is constant but also desired. Or at least youre conflicted about it. You realize that the people reading what you have written will also be interrupted. They are also sitting at screens, with smartphones in their pockets. They wont be able to deal with long sentences, extended metaphors. They wont be drawn into the enchantment of the text. Time to leave your computer and phone in one room, perhaps, and go and work silently on paper in another. To turn off the Wi-Fi for eight hours. Just as you once learned not to drink everything in the hotel minibar, not to eat too much at free buffets, now you have to cut down on communication. You have learned how compulsive you are, how fragile your identity, how important it is to cultivate a little distance. And your only hope is that others have learned the same lesson. Otherwise, your profession, as least as you thought of it, is finished. | https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/do-we-write-differently-on-a-screen |
Did Capital Punishment Create Morality? | On June 30, 1860, there was a debate in Oxford between Thomas Huxley, Charles Darwins chief explainer, and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, himself a considerable intellectual. Concluding his skeptical remarks, Wilberforce turned to Huxley and asked mockingly whether it was through his grandfather or grandmother that he claimed descent from an ape. Taking the podium, Huxley thundered that if he had to choose for a grandfather either an ape or a clever and influential man who used his gifts to turn new scientific ideas to ridicule, he would certainly choose the ape. There were no more snide jokes about Darwinism in Victorian England. Still, one feels for the bishop. It was hard, in 1860, to get ones mind around evolution by natural selection, and it still is. Its difficult talking about causation without purpose, but that is what Darwinism requires. And telling a story about the origins of morality that begins hundreds of thousands of years before any creature had a sense of right and wrong, or even a sense of self, is a tall order. The story that Richard Wrangham tells in his new book, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution, isnt quite definitiveit is still a work in progressbut its very impressive. Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard, has spent his career studying the great apes, especially chimpanzees, bonobos, and us. He is perhaps best known for the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, published in 2009. In that highly original work, he argued that the discovery, made around 1.9 million years ago, that applying fire to food makes it more palatable transformed human destiny. It did this biochemically, because food contains much more energy when cookedenergy that fuelled a large increase in the size of our brainand sociologically, by giving rise to the sexual division of labor and, specifically, marriage. Wranghams first book (co-authored with Dale Peterson), Demonic Males: Apes and the Origin of Human Violence, from 1996, is more continuous with The Goodness Paradox than is Catching Fire. Demonic Males was written in the wake of two momentous discoveries: the violence of chimpanzees and the pacifism of bonobos. The premise of the book is that violence is adaptive, i.e., that it promotes survival. That may not seem controversial now, but it was through much of the twentieth century. Culture was thought to be the source of our antisocial emotions, and any suggestion that they also had biological roots was considered politically retrograde, or at any rate too depressing to contemplateas though those acting under the influence of inherited tendencies were absolved of all moral responsibility. Surveying the extensive record of primate violence in Demonic Males, Wrangham and Peterson made an intriguing discovery. Infanticide is not uncommon; and adultsusually maleskilling other adults of the same species does happen. But in only two species do bands of males prowl the borders of their range and kill isolated members of other communities: chimpanzees and human hunter-gatherers. This is pure aggression, not territorial defense. The reason appears to be increased access to food resources and, when all the males of a neighboring community are killed or driven off, annexation of females. The record of chimpanzee violence is full and clear. Most remaining hunter-gatherer groups have been brought under the jurisdiction of a modern state and to some degree assimilated, so the record of human aggressiveness is more ambiguous. Still, as Wrangham and Peterson write, although peaceful foragers have been repeatedly hoped for, they have very rarely been found. What has been found, instead, are bonobos. The last of the great apes to be discovered, bonobos are so physically similar to chimpanzees that their skeletons laid in museums for fifty years before it was noticed that they were a separate species. But socially and behaviorally, chimps and bonobos are worlds apart, even though they only live on opposite banks of the Congo River. Unlike chimpanzees, bonobos do not patrol, do not raid, and do not kill their neighbors. The sometimes deadly competition among males for sexual primacy and the rape and beating of females, which are commonplace among chimps, are unknown among bonobos. (Indeed, bonobo society is female-dominated.) Neighboring bonobo communities can mix amicably, which almost never happens among chimpanzees. Sex is much more relaxed and, apparently, enjoyable. It turns out that there is a relation between the abundance of food in an environment and the size and stability of foraging parties, and a further relation between the character of foraging parties and violence along the border between ranges. Scarcity has its usual malign effects. Bonobos, chimps, and gorillas eat much the same foods: fruit, herbs, buds, leaves. But gorillas are more sensitive to dry spells, during which they move into the mountains, where there is greenery. In normal periods, they compete for food with chimps. There are no mountains south of the Congo River, so no gorillas live there, and bonobos have the food supply all to themselves. Bonobos have evolved in a forest that is kindlier in its food supply, and that allows them to be kindly, too, Wrangham and Peterson write. Humans seem to have a capacity for violent aggression as strong as that of chimpanzees and a capacity for gentleness and docility as strong as that of bonobos. Compared with other primates, we practice exceptionally low levels of violence in our day-to-day-lives, yet we achieve exceptionally high rates of death from violence in our wars, Wrangham writes. That discrepancy is the goodness paradox. Wrangham has been pondering this paradox in the twenty years since the publication of Demonic Males, and he has the first draft of an explanation. It is, literally, far-fetched, relying on observations from Siberia, the South Pacific, the Amazon, Tierra del Fuego, and other remote corners of the earth, as well as on the work of archaeologists, paleontologists, psychologists, biochemists, neurophysiologists, geneticists, and others. The clichs about science being a vast coperative endeavor may actually be true. Scientists classify aggression into reactive and proactive types. Reactive aggression is a response to a provocation or threat. Its angry, impulsive, and associated with high levels of testosterone. Proactive aggression is calculating, premeditated, and strategic. Think of those TV Westerns where the hero deliberately provokes a slow-witted, hot-headed antagonist who goes for his gun while our hero pulls his hat down over his eyes and clobbers him over the head with a six-shooter. Our hero is proactively aggressive; the villain is reactively aggressive. Usually, reactive aggression is individual, while proactive aggression is institutional, taking such forms as war or capital punishment. The types of aggression constitute one building block of Wranghams theory of moral origins. An equally important element of that theory is domestication, which turns out to be a crucial category for interpreting the human evolutionary past. For a long time, no theory of human domestication was thought to be necessary, even by Darwin, on the apparently self-evident ground that domestication requires someone to direct the process, like the breeder. Obviously, no one had done that to humans. But while breeding, or artificial selection, requires an external agent, natural selection does not. If selection pressures work against aggressiveness, animals will self-domesticate. That humans have self-domesticated has grown increasingly obvious over the past half century. Even apart from increased docilitythe primary index of domesticationhumans show many signs of what has come to be recognized as the domestication syndrome: smaller bodies and brains, thinner bones, shorter faces, and reduced physical differences between males and females. Besides these anatomical markers, there are also behavioral and physiological ones, which involve fear response, playfulness, learning rates, sexual behavior, and hormone production, among others. What these markers all have in common is paedomorphism (literally, child shape). In dogs, foxes, guinea pigs, and many other species, domesticated animals resemble the juvenile stage of the wild animals that they descended from. Humans evolved from our Homo ancestor several hundred thousand years ago, and there arent sufficient fossils to demonstrate paedomorphism directly. But there are plenty of Neanderthal fossils, and comparisons strongly suggest that present-day humans are, in many respects, juvenilizedthat is, domesticatedversions of our remote ancestors. In this case, however, the answer is unusual: none. A decades-long, painstaking experiment by two Russian geneticists working in Siberia showed that reduced brain size, thinner bones, and all of the other markers of domestication syndrome are merely incidental byproducts of a primary adaptation: reduced reactive aggression. In organisms selecting against such aggression, the migration of neural-crest cellsa special kind of cell that carries developmental instructions throughout the embryo and fetusis delayed, resulting in smaller bodies, smaller brains, hormonal changes, and the rest. Studies have been fairly clear on this. What has been unclear is why human communities selected against reactive aggression. For Wrangham, the answer is that group life requires a minimum of stability. No trait is more disruptive than reactive aggression, which fuels such behaviors as quests for dominance and demands for submission; arrogance, bullying, and random violence; and the monopolizing of food and females. That is a behavioral profile of the alpha male, the arch-reactive aggressor. Communities must either endure such pests or eliminate them. Once humans could communicate (the origin of language cant be further narrowed down than three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand years ago, but empathy or shared intentionality appears to be independent of language and might be sufficient for communication), the die was cast. The origin of domestication, Wrangham proposes, was the group execution of alpha males. Civilization is founded on capital punishmentor, to give it its anthropological name, coalitionary proactive aggression. The executioners were adult males, usually married. (One of alpha males most salient offenses was commandeering other mens wives.) Over time, as alpha individuals were regularly killed and the gene for reactive aggression became less frequent in a population, the coalition of executioners became more stable. Their power was, in effect, absoluteanticipating Max Webers famous definition of the state: the agency with a recognized monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force. Staying on the right side of these executioners came to seem a matter of life and death (by murder orwhat often amounted to the same thingostracism). Community members would have welcomed rules that told them which behaviors were dangerous. They would also have cultivated a reputation for beneficence, since antisocial behavior was the original sin. These developments may have given rise to two of the most distinctive features of human morality: our orientation to abstract standards of right and wrong, and our much greater degree of prosocialityaltruism, coperation, fairness, etc.than is found in other primates. MORE FROM Under Review David Treuers Rebellious New History of Native American Life The Plight of the Political Convert The Two Faces of Suicide The Modern Monkhood of Thomas Merton Ling Mas Severance Captures the Bleak, Fatalistic Mood of 2018 Megan Boyles Liveblog and the Limits of Autofiction By making us reflect on the rightness of our actions, capital punishment gave birth to virtue. But in replacing the limited power of the alpha male with the unlimited power of executioners and eventually of the state, Wrangham writes, coalitionary proactive aggression is responsible for execution, war, massacre, slavery, hazing, ritual sacrifice, torture, lynchings, gang wars, political purges, and similar abuses of power. That is the books constitutive paradox. Planned, cordinated violence gave us a social order that made virtue adaptive. But that social order also made exploitation and oppression possible, either by the state or by favored or powerful subgroups. We are, Wrangham concludes, the best and worst of species. | https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/did-capital-punishment-create-morality |
Could Canada end up as a tax haven for Americans? | Taxes on rich Americans are probably going up if Democrats win both the presidency and Congress anytime soon. Whether its to provide revenue for more government spending on health care or the environment, or simply to reduce inequality, it seems likely that the well-off will pay more. The idea receives wide support: Exactly which type of taxes would go up, and on which group of rich people, and by how much, remains to be seen. Prominent proposals include Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warrens plan for a 2 per cent tax on wealth of more than $50 million (U.S.) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs idea for a 70 per cent tax rate on income of more than $10 million a year. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass. ), who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, speaks at a rally at Columbia College in Columbia, S.C., Jan. 23, 2019. Both Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have proposed taxing the richest Americans at a higher rate. ( TRAVIS DOVE / NYT ) If and when taxes are raised, an interesting question is how those affected will respond. They can probably be expected to spend more on political campaigns to limit taxes. They will almost certainly engage in more intensive avoidance efforts. But if that doesnt work, the affluent could resort to the ultimate dodge they could leave the country. This is one of the things that forced France to drop its supertax of 75 per cent on incomes of more than 1 million euros ($1.13 million). That tax, which lasted from 2012 through 2014, caused rich people such as executive Bernard Arnault and actor Gerard Depardieu to move to neighbouring Belgium, and made it hard for France to attract senior managers. The U.S. is hardly France. Other than a few eccentric personalities such as Facebook Inc. co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who renounced his American citizenship in 2015 and moved to Singapore to escape taxes, very few millionaires tend to abandon the richest, most powerful country in the world. The U.S. is home to some of the most important centres of the technology industry, the finance industry and others. And unlike in Europe, there isnt an abundance of alternative nearby countries to move to, meaning that wealthy American expatriates might have to move far from family and friends. Article Continued Below But if the U.S. raised top tax rates a lot, the situation might change. And there is one other appealing country nearby, which (mostly) speaks the same language as the U.S. Although some Americans think of Canada as a quasi-socialist economy thanks to its single-payer health-care system, its not actually a high-tax country. The top federal income tax rate in Canada is 33 per cent lower than the equivalent rate in the U.S. The provincial tax rate in Ontario, home to the business hub of Toronto, is 13.16 per cent, similar to the 13.3 per cent paid by Californians. Its true that during the past century or so, the top tax rates charged by major developed economies have tended to move roughly in concert: But that doesnt mean Canada would necessarily follow the U.S.s lead on top taxation. And even if it did raise taxes on the rich when the U.S. did, it wouldnt necessarily raise them by as much. There is precedent for small countries deliberately and successfully using preferential tax rates to attract prosperous foreigners. In a 2013 paper, economists Henrik Jacobsen Kleven, Camille Landais, Emmanuel Saez and Esben Schultz analyzed the effects of a 1991 Danish law that allowed high-earning immigrants to get three years of preferential tax rates. They found a surprisingly large effect lots of wealthy people moved to Denmark. A number of other European countries, such as Portugal and the U.K., have employed similar schemes. Canada is, in some ways, in a similar position to nations like Denmark. Its small compared to the U.S., which has about nine times its population. Because of this, Canada has had trouble retaining its top talent, as its best and brightest tend to move to the U.S. where the big industry clusters are. An increasingly restrictive U.S. immigration system might help reduce the brain drain, but another coup would be if Canada could lure rich Americans to spend their dollars north of the border. The already-rich, however, would be a less important prize than the Americans hoping to make it big in the future. If aspiring entrepreneurs and top managers moved to Canada to escape sky-high U.S. taxes, they would start and run businesses there. That could allow Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and other Canadian cities to steal a march on Silicon Valley and New York City and become the new tech clusters of the continent. To the Americans who support much higher taxes, this might be a perfectly acceptable tradeoff. Rich people fleeing to Canada would reduce U.S. inequality, and curb the political influence of the donor class two goals that figure prominently in the political lefts agenda. Cities such as San Francisco and New York would lose some of their dynamism, but at least that might ease the excessive costs of housing there. In the calculus of fans of higher taxes on the rich, the benefits could easily outweigh the costs. But if lost tax revenue and the weakening of key industrial clusters angered too many Americans, then the U.S., like France, could be forced to moderate its ambitions to chip away at the fortunes of the rich. | https://www.thestar.com/business/2019/02/13/imagine-canada-as-a-tax-haven-for-americans.html |
How Many Babies Will Be Conceived On Valentine's Day? | Approximately one half of Americans are expected to celebrate Valentines Day in some manner on Thursday, whether it be with the traditional pagan sacrifice of rosebushes, the traditional pecuniary sacrifice to the greeting card aisle, or any number of alternatives. (Some few will opt instead for the Finnish friendship holiday Ystvnpiv, a traditional sacrifice to pronunciation.) Whatever one calls Feb. 14, we can comfortably forecast an uptick in amorous enterprises at the end of the evening. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, I can report that 10,408 children will be conceived this Valentines Day. Heres how I arrived at that number. Birth rates in the United States have generally declined in the past decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, totaling 3,855,500 in 2017, the most-recent data point available. Thats more than 10,000 children a day, on average. The key phrase being on average, since we know that birthdays are not evenly distributed across the calendar thanks to data that Carl Bialik, now the data science editor at Yelp, received from the Social Security Administration for a 2016 article on FiveThirtyEight. Based on these figures, which Bialik generously open-sourced, the data journalist Matt Stiles put together a widely popular chart on the most common birthdays, which spike in mid-September. For all its claims on love, Valentines Day produces far fewer babies than Christmastime. (I feel it in my fingers) The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now This would be a simple exercise if all pregnancies lasted exactly 38.5 weeks, the average gestation time according to 10 years of data from the CDCs natality figures. (That figure varies depending on the sourcesee the methodology note below.) Unfortunately, for both expectant parents and data journalists, due dates are not so precise. Over 90% of pregnancies have gestational periods between 37 and 42 weeks, which is considered a full term, and another 7% are late pre-term deliveries made after 34 weeks, which carry increased risk of complications but only a very small increase in dire outcomes. This equates to typical gestation periods between 238 to 300 days, highly concentrated around the middle of that range. Which is to say, children born between Oct. 10 and Dec. 11 might have been conceived on Valentines Day, with Peak Valentine Conception falling in mid-November. From here, its a fairly simple calculation: For each week in this span, I multiplied the percentage of births attributable to a Feb. 14 conception, based on the CDCs gestation data, by the number of children born that week, according to the Social Security Administration. While it would have been preferable to have day-by-day gestation data, this isnt generally possible since most mothers cannot pinpoint a pregnancy to a specific day after their last menstrual cycle. The result, 10,408 births, is not significantly different than the daily average for the entire year. This may mean Valentines Day is not the fertility factory one might suppose, though theres another factor to consider: Given how amorous the December holiday season isbirths are north of 11,000 a day for much of September, based on current annual fertility ratesa significant number of couples might already be pregnant by the time February rolls around. Methodology: The CDC measures the length of gestation according to an obstetric estimate, while older, more dated sources often use the expectant mothers last normal menstrual cycle as a guidepost. Contact us at [email protected]. | http://time.com/5528415/valentines-day-pregnancy-conception-babies-births/ |
Did Trump jump-start a Beto O'Rourke campaign for president? | Ostensibly, President Donald Trump came to the El Paso County Coliseum on Monday night to rally support for building a wall, or fence, like that what separates El Paso from Ciudad Jurez along a longer stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. But it was readily apparent throughout Trumps stemwinder that he also came in hopes of burying former U.S. Rep. Beto ORourkes potential presidential campaign before it has a chance to get off the ground. If so, that strategy appears to have backfired. O'Rourke, who has been out of the national political spotlight since his close-call loss to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, suddenly was sharing a split screen in national coverage with the president. O'Rourke, speaking at an outdoor counterrally a few hundred yards away, was retesting his hopeful message that resonated with Texas voters three months ago, while Trump was belittling O'Rourke. I think that this was the debut on the national stage for Beto ORourke, and I would be very surprised if he is not running for president, Jim Messina, who managed President Obamas 2012 re-election campaign, said Tuesday on MSNBC. My view is that Im not sure that Beto ORourke needed any kind of jump-start, but it seems to have given him one, said Matt Angle, a Washington, D.C.-based Democratic strategist who heads the Lone Star Project. Ive gotten calls all morning from people who again want to know how you get in touch with Beto ORourke." Trump's attacks on O'Rourke were based on the notion that Trump drew a far larger crowd than O'Rourke. The El Paso County Coliseum holds 6,500 people, and despite Trump's claim that thousands more people were allowed in, the fire marshal told the El Paso Times that was not true. Crowd estimates outside the Trump rally ranged from 10,000 to 12,000. An O'Rourke aide gave the attendance at the counterrally at 7,000, citing law enforcement estimates. Bloomberg News said the counterrally crowd ranged from 10,000 to 15,000, citing El Paso police. An El Paso Police Department public information officer did not return a telephone message Tuesday. FACT CHECK: TRUMP'S CROWD SIZE ESTIMATE IS OFF (AGAIN) Even before he took the stage at the coliseum, Trump was asked by Laura Ingraham of Fox News about ORourke. Theres an opposing rally kind of going on at the same time as this rally tonight, Beto ORourke, a young up and comer they say in the Democrat Party. He and others say the wall is really about hate and racism, Ingraham said to Trump. To that you say what? Well, to that I say that No. 1, very few people showed up to his rally and this place is packed with thousands and thousands outside, and I guess he challenged us to an event so maybe this means hes going to have to drop out of the race, because this was not a good situation for him, Trump said. I dont know why he did it. The chyron under Trump read, Trump: Lack of people at Beto rally may mean he should drop out of the race. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Trumps most vociferous advocate and surrogate in Texas, drove the point home in an interview with Ingraham outside the coliseum right after the rally. Of Trump, Patrick said, Tonight, this was a bold move for him to come to Beto ORourke, to Robert Francis ORourke's hometown, outdraw him. Tonight, Laura, I think Beto ORourke's presidential campaign came to an end, Patrick said. He may run, but its over. When you can't carry your own town, when (Trump) comes out and draws out a crowd like this, it is over for Beto. And all the Democrats are going to seize on this tomorrow morning and say, `Look, what he did he was an embarrassment to our party, in his own city, and Trump knocked him out of the race tonight. Reviving fortunes But, by daylight, it appeared that if anything Trump had elevated ORourke and revived the fortunes of a potential presidential candidate who some had thought had let his moment pass as he played the role of what Wimberley writer Richard Parker, in a New York Times column about Monday nights events in El Paso, described as presidential Hamlet. ORourke has said he will decide by the end of the month whether hell run for president. University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus disputed Patricks assertion that ORourke was done for after Monday nights pas de deux with Trump. To me this is quite the opposite, Rottinghaus said. This puts ORourke firmly in the kind of ideological and rhetorical lead for the Democratic Party and sets him up as a natural opponent for Trump and puts a lot of other people on unsure footing. Looking at tweets from other contenders, the one who looked the most out of sorts was Julin Castro, who would be a natural opponent for Trump on this issue had ORourke never decided to get in his minivan and challenge Ted Cruz, Rottinghaus said. O'Rourke, who just completed three terms in Congress, built a national fan and fundraising base during his Senate run and immediately vaulted in polls to the top tier of potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. It appeared that in the months since, some of that popular ardor might have faded as ORourke hesitated and a succession of popular candidates jumped into the fray. But, in a couple of hours Monday night, Trump managed to insert ORourke right in the middle of the presidential campaign in exactly the way any of the other Democratic candidates would have envied. A virtual debate For Democrats around the country sizing up prospective matchups with Trump, ORourke rose to the challenge Monday night in El Paso. He offered them a young candidate with the bona fides to answer Trump with some authority on the border issues that seem almost certain to be center stage in the 2020 campaign and on which ORourke laid out a 10-point agenda, by far his most comprehensive yet, Friday in a post on Medium. We are not safe because of walls but in spite of walls, ORourke said at the rally organized by some 50 community groups and institutions in El Paso. We have so much to give, so much to show the rest of the country. We know that walls do not save lives, he said. Walls end lives. Trump told Ingraham that walls are about safety for the Americans, safety for our people, safety for our country, and a wall is a very good thing, not a bad thing. Its a moral thing. But during the rally, Trump describing O'Rourke as a young man whos got very little going for himself except he has a great first name. So we have, lets say, 35,000 people tonight, and he has 200 people, 300 people, Trump said. Not too good, Trump said. That may be the end of his presidential bid. | https://www.statesman.com/news/20190212/did-trump-jump-start-beto-orourke-campaign-for-president |
Can the Charlotte airport get as big as the Atlanta airport? | Charlottes airport has rocking chairs, a NoDa Brewing Company taproom and soon, renovated concourses and seats with charging stations. Its dominant carrier, American Airlines, recently added domestic and international routes. And Charlotte Douglas International Airport picked up a couple of additional carriers too. Its entirely feasible, said airlines analyst Bob Mann, who is based in Port Washington, N.Y. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Charlotte Observer But Atlanta, the second busiest airport for takeoffs and landings in the U.S., first would have to plateau in growth, he said. Meanwhile, Charlotte would need to grow in size and number of passengers to keep pace with Atlanta, aviation experts say. And becoming like Atlanta, with its internal train system, even more international options and cheaper fares could come at a cost, experts warn. Charlotte could lose some of its charm and convenience. And that is what local airport officials hope to avoid. Even so, heres what can help the Charlotte airport grow: Economic growth Airline analysts say Charlotte would need more business to call the city home, especially industries whose employees drive high airfare, such as bankers and lawyers, for the airport to offer the same destination options as Atlanta. Just over a decade ago, Charlotte housed the headquarters of eight banks. But now, only Bank of America is headquartered here, although BB&T and SunTrust Banks recently announced plans to merge and form a new bank with headquarters in Charlotte. Banking seems to generate more income and thus more people willing to pay premium airfares, said Joe Brancatelli, a New York-based editor of business travel website JoeSentMe. Charlotte has 40 banks that do business in the area, according to FDIC data. By comparison, Atlanta has 89. More local passengers Having more local passengers originating from Charlotte would spur additional flight options and cause other carriers to join the market, said Brent Cagle, the Charlotte airport aviation director. Atlanta, which saw 895,502 takeoffs and landings last year, according to FAA statistics, is the largest hub for Delta Airlines. Chicago OHare International Airport took the top spot, with just over 900,000. On the same list, Charlottes 550,013 takeoffs and landings ranked sixth, the spot it has held for the past several years. Charlotte has more flights than an airport its size should have based on the number of local passengers because it is such a large connecting hub for American Airlines, airport aviation Ditector Brent Cagle said. David T. Foster III [email protected] Charlotte had nearly 46 million total passengers in 2017, according to the airport. That is less than half of Atlantas roughly 100 million. Charlotte has more flights than an airport its size should have based on the number of local passengers, Cagle said. Thats because it is such a large connecting hub for American Airlines, he said. In addition, prices out of Charlotte are traditionally more expensive than domestic fares at other airports. For the second quarter of last year, Charlotte prices averaged $427, according to the BTS. Charlotte ranked 28th. Meanwhile, Atlanta was third, with fares averaging $358. But Charlottes budget options are expanding. On Tuesday, low-cost, Florida-based Spirit Airlines announced it would launch flights to four U.S. airports, starting in June. And late last year, low-cost Mexican carrier Volaris began flying to Guadalara from Charlotte. More long-haul flights Airport analysts say offering more nonstop, long-haul destinations will help Charlottes airport grow. The international destinations that Charlotte passengers want to fly to, but currently require a layover, include the Vancouver and Ontario areas of Canada, Cagle said. Other top destinations are in the United States, including Albuquerque, N.M., Honolulu and Orange County, Calif., he said. Roughly 12 million Atlanta passengers, or about 12 percent, were traveling to and from international destinations in 2017. In Charlotte, roughly 3.3 million passengers, or about 7 percent were traveling internationally. Last summer, American Airlines announced plans to add a nonstop to Munich in March. At the time, the Charlotte Chamber said that more than 200 German companies in the city employ about 17,000 people. Some Charlotte growth plans call for a train to help transport passengers to a future terminal. Currently, Charlotte has 106 gates and five concourses over 50 acres, according to the airport. By comparison, Atlanta has 192 gates and seven concourses on about 150 acres, according to that airport. Charlotte is much more compact an airport than Atlanta, analyst Brancatelli said. In Atlanta, 11 trains operate during peak hours, according to the airport. A train in the existing Charlotte terminal is unlikely, said aviation director Cagle. But long-term plans call for a satellite terminal at the airport. That terminal could require a train or another automated people mover, Cagle said. That terminal could come to fruition in the next 15 to 20 years, or sooner if growth accelerates, he said. Trains are not always more efficient because passengers have to walk to the train, wait for it, then walk to their next gate, analyst Mann said. Youre often better just hoofing it. Front-porch feel While Charlottes airport is growing, its important to retain its Southern charm and front-porch feel, Cagle said. He said the Concourse A expansion shows that balance, with improvements like more charging stations and a clean design. The Atlanta airport is big and impersonal, said Brancatelli. Im battling Atlanta to get to where I want to go, he said. Charlotte is not just any airport, Brancatelli said. Its more relaxed and less chaotic than Atlantas, he said. And it has those famous rocking chairs. Charlotte feels like someplace, Brancatelli said. Thats what youll lose almost by definition as you get bigger. Observer reporter Danielle Chemtob contributed | https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article225279915.html |
What Do Early KonMari Adopters Homes Look Like Now? | I recently checked in with more than a dozen people who did their first KonMari-style cleanouts in 2015, 2016, or 2017. They were generally enthusiastic (even Martin Law) about the way Kondos book made them reconsider their relationship to material things, although many of them lamented the onslaught of new stuff that must always be kept at bay. Read: Marie Kondo and the privilege of clutter That process has come more easily to some than to others. My house has never gone back to the way it was before I started doing this three years ago, says KK Holland, a 37-year-old who lives in Santa Barbara, California. Yes, clutter occasionally mounts, but she works to keep it in check. I remove items that no longer spark joy on an ongoing basis, and I am a pretty fierce guard of what comes into my house, she told me. At the end of 2017, she and her husband had a baby girl. Im happy to report our KonMari survived an infant, Holland says. She insists that nothing makes her uniquely good at vanquishing clutter, but that Kondos approach has staying power because it prompts people to fundamentally revisit why they own what they own. Most people I talked to, though, carved out exceptions to or ignored certain recommendations in the process outlined in the book. A couple of them kept more books than they thought Kondo would want them to. And two womenone in Massachusetts, the other in Hanover, Germanyindependently told me they thought it was too onerous to remove everything from their handbags each day upon returning home, as Kondo prescribes. And for some people, the project of going through every last thing they own, one by one, was too much to handle. Mike Fu, a 33-year-old Brooklynite, estimates that he made it through about three-quarters of the KonMari method three or four years ago. I probably chickened out at the point where it was going through all the papers and non-clothing or -book objects, he told me. Fu says he was at one point enticed by minimalist lifestyle porn, such as an image of a sparsely decorated all-white living room with an iMac, but hes since come to terms with having a bit of clutter. And he and his partner are planning to give the KonMari method another try, at our own glacial pace. Jasmine Bager, whos 35 and lives in New York City, also tried a KonMari cleanout but decided it wasnt for her. After she piled up all her clothing for a Kondo-style review a few years ago, she found the prospect of carrying through with the project too exhausting and avoided the pile, shifting it back and forth between her chair and her bed. She later came up with her own decluttering system, which she says works for her: Every day, when she leaves her apartment, she forces herself to take three items with her to get rid of. There is some flexibility to Bagers rule (a bag of garbage counts toward the quota, and she doesnt follow it if shes in a real hurry), but she has been sticking with it for more than a year. In the course of what she calls her little game with the city, shes been leaving behind various objectsa magazine, a key chain, a book, shoesaround town, unlabeled, with an expectation that someone who needs them will claim them. Once, months after abandoning a headband shed made herself, she was pleased to see a stranger wearing it at a subway stop near her apartment. | https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/marie-kondo-konmari-method-work/582703/?utm_source=feed |
Has Bitcoin Entered A New Normal? | Bitcoin has been experiencing low volatility recently, which could fuel greater adoption by enabling the cryptocurrency's use as a medium of exchange. As for whether this will actually materialize, analysts have offered mixed views. Nigel Green, founder and CEO of independent financial consultancy deVere Group, forecasted that bitcoin's modest price fluctuations will probably prompt greater use of the digital currency. [Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.] While the digital currency's price fluctuations have been "relatively modest" as of late, "volatility will return again," he predicted. "However, there is a growing sense that crypto sector will have less extreme swings moving forward," emphasized Green. "This is likely to further drive mass adoption." There is already evidence that this more widespread use is taking place, claimed Mati Greenspan, an analyst who works for social trading platform eToro. "We are seeing a greater level of adoption in real-world use cases lately, which is very likely being supported by reduced price volatility," he stated. Skeptical Replies While the aforementioned analysts seemed optimistic that low price volatility would probably facilitate greater use of bitcoin, others seemed skeptical. "While I'd like to agree, I'm afraid we havent been in this narrow range long enough," warned Tim Enneking, managing director of Digital Capital Management. I suspect that scenario is more likely to repeat than a long-term bottom," he predicted. He was not alone in stressing that the cryptocurrency markets can change at a moment's notice, as Charles Hayter, cofounder and CEO of digital currency data platform CryptoCompare, also spoke to this subject. Periods of low volatility can quickly shift to times of high volatility, noted Hayter. Bitcoin's 'Sideways Market' Marius Rupsys, a digital currency investor, also weighed in on the cryptocurrency's current conditions. "Bitcoin is in sideways market, therefore volatility is rather low," he emphasized. "Once we enter bull run or continue bear market, volatility shall increase to levels that are more common for crypto assets," said Rupsys. He also threw cold water on the proposed link between price volatility and the digital currency's use as a medium of exchange. "Bitcoin is considered more as a store of value (still speculative) rather than medium of exchange, at this point of time," he asserted. "Therefore, reduced volatility does not have much of impact to adoption." Disclosure: I own some bitcoin, bitcoin cash and ether. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/cbovaird/2019/02/13/has-bitcoin-entered-a-new-normal/ |
Why Does the Democratic Party Refuse to Address Poverty? | Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nations journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and well send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nations journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and well send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Susie Shannon is a warrior for the poor and homeless. An activist from Southern California, Susie recognized something in the early 2000s that millions of progressives are starting to realize now: If she wanted to make a difference and actually improve peoples lives, she not only had to engage with the Democratic Party, she had to enter it. Ad Policy In doing so, Susie didnt alter her politics one iota; rather, she was instrumental in building the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party, for which she is now a presiding officer. Susie also shepherded a homeless-housing bill all the way through the California State Legislature to the governors desk and didnt relent until she had Jerry Browns signature. In 2016 she was a Bernie Sanders delegate; and the following year she became the only elected Bernie delegate from California to become a member of the DNC. Not wasting any time, Susie wrote a resolution prior to the Chicago DNC meeting in August 2018 to form an official Poverty Council of the DNC. She knew that underserved communities needed a seat at the table to build political power and raise awareness about issues related to poverty across the country. In doing so, Susie was following the proper protocol, as official councils are how the DNC addresses important issues or focus groups. This is where the story turns, and becomes an object lesson for progressives. Related Article The New Democratic House Needs an Anti-Poverty Agenda Greg Kaufmann Shortly after submitting the resolution, Susie was contacted by DNC staff members who rejected the proposal for a Poverty Council and altered the resolution to make it a toothless reaffirmation of the Democratic Partys commitment to poverty issues, with no establishment of a Poverty Council. As the author of the resolution and a member of the DNC, Susie had a right to reject a recommendation from the staff. She told them on the phone that the changes were unacceptable and she would not agree to a simple reaffirmation. Despite her rejecting their changes, the staff sent out their version in the first meeting notice sent to the DNC members. At that point, Susie drafted a formal demand letter to the staff to reinstate the original language to create a Poverty Council, along with a demand to resend the resolution to DNC members so as to meet notice requirements. The staff told her they had sent the wrong version by mistake and reinstated the original language. Susie was more than disappointed by the DNC staffs rebuff of the Poverty Council. After all, there are DNC Councils on interfaith communities, small business, youth, veterans, etc. When Susie arrived at the DNC meeting in Chicago, she was told by a co-chair of the Resolutions Committee that her resolution would likely be tabled. Undeterred, she spoke directly to DNC Chairman Tom Perez, who assured his support. With Perezs support Susies original proposal passed unanimously out of the DNC Resolutions Committee as well as on the floor of the DNC general session. Current Issue View our current issue Unfortunately, thats not the end of the story. Susie set about planning the inaugural meeting of the Poverty Council, reaching out to legislators, stakeholders, and those living in poverty to speak at the opening session of the committee at the upcoming February 1416 meeting of the DNC in Washington, DC. She contacted the staff of the DNC in October to inquire about the dates for the winter DNC meeting and the scheduling of the Poverty Council. For months, she was told to wait. The agenda was not ready yet. The secretary of the party told her he was conferring with his staff on when specific councils would meet. Still, Susie proceeded with the planning and received interest from Congresswoman Maxine Waters and others in speaking at the opening session. Two weeks ago, one day from the deadline for the publication of the DNC agenda, Susie was contacted by the DNC staff and told that they were not going to put the Poverty Council on the agenda (even though other councils would officially be meeting). This, in effect, would have blocked the council from functioning. However, Susie refuses to be daunted. She has reserved a conference room at the Washington Marriott Marquis hotel, the same hotel as the DNC meeting, on her own dime (which is not cheap! Susie is looking for donors to help defray costs). She is going to convene a meeting on poverty issues during one of the least busy hours that the DNC is meeting. Susie has invited legislators, stakeholders, and those impacted by poverty to speak and help shape a Democratic Party agenda for 2019. Thats where things stand right now. The council was designed to build a political base and create a national legislative agenda for the 40.6 million people living at or below the poverty line, Shannon says. The council is intended to make sure that every candidate, elected official and party leader should have an anti-poverty platform leading into the 2020 election. This is not a new question. By Bill Clintons presidency the shift away from supporting programs designed to address poverty became official party policy, echoing the Republicans mantra of self-help. Of course, poverty rates remained more or less constant. During Obamas presidency, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West launched their poverty tour because of the president and the partys refusal to even say the word, let alone do anything about poverty. Similarly the on-going Poor Peoples Campaign explicitly operates outside of a party that refuses to seriously address an endemic social problem that conservatively has many tens of millions of Americans in its grips. Related Article Our Political Economy Is Designed to Create Poverty and Inequality Dennis Kucinich What is new is that following the miraculous success of the 2016 Sanders campaign, and the election in 2018 of truly radical voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib to Congress, left progressives are engaging with and entering the Democratic Party like no time in recent memory. The emergence of a powerful social-democratic tendency inside the party means that the partys reluctance to seriously address poverty is going to be challenged. This is a difficult battle that progressives simply have to win. Given the current realities of the American political system, if the Democratic Party is unwilling to tackle endemic poverty, theres no available avenue to address this reality of American society and we truly are condemning millions upon millions of people to misery. Of course, just getting the party to address the problem is only the beginning. Changing policy is the next hurdle; and thats an even higher one. The prevailing ideology of the past four decades, call it neoliberalism or market fundamentalism, embraced by the mainstream of both parties, offers no solution to American poverty. Rather, it tacitly accepts it as part of the landscape. So an alternative poverty policy will, by definition, fly in the face of Democratic establishment orthodoxy. In other words, were going to meet resistance. Fortunately, we have tireless warriors like Susie Shannon to lead the way, who wont rest until poverty eradicating policies are put into practice that actually work. As long as there are families without food, children living in motels, and people forced to live on the streets and in shelters, Susie says, we will be pushing in the halls of Congress, in state legislatures, and in the Democratic Party. Susie Shannons Poverty Council is meeting Friday, February 15 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm in the Union Station Room of the Washington Marriott Marquis Hotel. The event is open to Democrats and members of the community. A lineup of speakers from federal, state, and local government have been confirmed. All of the presidential candidates have been invited to speak, and Kamala Harriss campaign has confirmed a spot on the agenda. Our Revolution President Nina Turner; Larry Cohen, the former head of the Communication Workers of America and the board chair of Our Revolution; Mayor Treney Tweedy from Lynchburg, Virginia; and staff from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, as well as other stakeholders will be part of the agenda. The DNC did not respond to requests for comment for this article. UPDATE: After this article was published, Brandon Gassaway, DNC National Press Secretary, submitted the following quote: Addressing the scourge of poverty and its impact on health, education, and future economic opportunity is a core Democratic value. We support all of our members who are working to find solutions to address this critical issue and we look forward to working together in implementing those ideas. | https://www.thenation.com/article/democratic-national-committee-poverty-susie-shannon/ |
What do public schools spend money on? | ANALYSIS/OPINION: Some know the value of education by having it. More money. Now. Depends. Those questions and answers might as well be inscribed on school budgets across the nation as teachers strike, localities seek state funding, states seek federal dollars and federal spenders allocate as if tomorrow is promised to no one. Tax now, spend tomorrow is their rule of thumb. That certainly has been the case since President Jimmy Carter and Congress separated education from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and made it a Cabinet-level agency. Prior to that, parents and other taxpayers knew local school salaries and understood budgets enough to know whether tax dollars should be spent on textbooks and chalk, or teacher raises and air conditioning. These days, raises top the list. The majority of school districts budgets is spent on salaries, pensions, health insurance, tuition reimbursement and other employee benefits. Toss athletic and specialty club stipends and housing tax credits into the bucket, too. Consider Virginia, where Gov. Ralph Northam wants to boost teachers pay by 5 percent. Thats on top of a 3 percent raise OKd in 2018. The raise would increase K-12 school spending to an estimated $7.3 billion. Not everybody, of course, appreciates the prospect of a 5 percent pay boost. Five percent feels insufficient, said Richmond middle-school teacher Sarah Pedersen, whos organizing Virginia Educators United. The coalition of teachers and education supports a 14 percent raise. In Denver, more than of the 4,725 teachers in district-run schools called in absent on Monday, the first time the city has faced a teachers strike in 25 years. Some students bucked picket lines to get to their classes, where administrators and substitute teachers held sway. Over the past year, there have been similar walkouts in Washington state, Arizona, Kentucky and Oklahoma, as teachers push for higher pay, smaller classes and more staff. Inside the Beltway, the D.C. Council could be setting children and their parents up for what could become an annual pay-as-you-go game of charades. The lawmakers plan is to bring in a lengthy list of appointed officials and bureaucrats between now until spring to discuss public schooling. They surely will get some numbers on graduate rates, literacy rates, textbook and technology costs. But when it comes and dollars and cents, the lawmakers should do some basic readin, writin and rithmetic homework beforehand to educate the public via transparency. (Names, ages and ethnicity not needed.) By getting down to such nitty gritty facts, parents can get a clearer picture of why teachers want to strike and why funding is always front and center as an educational issue. If elected leaders dont do their own homework and tell the truth, its easy to see why critics view advocates of school choice as the enemy. And why dont ask, dont tell and, whatever you do, dont tell the truth is their mantra. Deborah Simmons can be contacted at [email protected] Copyright 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. | https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/11/what-do-public-schools-spend-money/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS |
What's Going On With 'Red Dead Online'? | Red Dead Online is getting an update sometime this month. It's a big one, at least from a certain perspective: ever since launch the game has struggled to balance the pain griefers can cause with the general concept of lawlessness, and Rockstar is doing some work on the ideas of honor and dishonor with this one. You'll be able to see how honorable a player is by looking at the map, and player visibility on the map will also be reduced over long distances to reduce the viability of just running around killing everyone. Particularly lawless characters will get NPC bounty hunters coming after them, much like in the main game. Also, we're getting daily challenges with gold nugget and XP rewards. It's a list of changes that may well be welcome for the people that are currently playing Red Dead Online. I'm not entirely sure, because I only check in with this occasionally after I ran out of anything I particularly wanted to grind for. And there certainly isn't anything for a player like me in this update. I can't imagine I'm alone. This is the sort of update that seeks to improve the game as it is without adding more in on top. Consider the daily challenges, which people can complete for additional XP and Gold Nuggets. And not why in some sort of existential sense, which is always a good question to ask when we pitch our tents in a virtual world and become concerned with relative ROI on virtual salmon fishing. Red Dead Online released in a barebones state, short on content, rewards and activity in general, a striking difference from the bustling world of Red Dead Redemption 2. It felt like the most absurdly polished early access title that you've ever played, a sketch of a game that could become interesting in the future. Which I supposed, at the time, was not ideal but surely going to be rectified soon. And yet here we are, months later, and Rockstar has mostly only made lateral improvements without adding any actually meaningful goals, rewards or new content. There are no real high-end items worth grinding for, whether in the form of property, tricked-out wagons or even just weaponry that offers any sort of power or progression fantasy. The western setting already hampers Rockstar a little bit when it comes to high-end rewards, but the team hasn't even added in the more obvious loot that it has to work with. I designed my character to look like a young Al Swearengen so I could buy a saloon. So far the union suit is the only part I've got down. GTA Online launched in an arguably even more compromised state and went on to make billions, so one could make the argument that this isn't such a big deal. But GTA Online launched into a radically different gaming landscape than the one we're living in now. Games-as-service have become the dominant model for the entire industry, and Rockstar is now competing for attention with Fortnite releasing new content every week, an ascendant Apex Legends, regular content drops in most every other game on the market, etc. GTA Online has adapted successfully to this new model, which is what makes it even more curious that Red Dead Online seems to be borrowing more from 2012 than 2019. I wonder if this was always the plan: Red Dead Redemption 2 received several Rockstar-standard delays, after all, and we can't be sure that Red Dead Online launched in the state the team intended to launch it in. It's entirely possible that the developer decided that one more delay just wasn't in the cards and decided that the priority would go to finishing up single-player, giving Online short shrift. If that was the case, I can't help but imagine it might have been a better idea to just delay the mode until it had a legitimate content pipeline rather than letting it flounder like this. Red Dead Online is ostensibly still in beta, but there's not a lot of room for a distinction like that in modern gaming. The game is out, the game is available, the game costs money to play. Not only does it not feel like a beta, it won't look anything like a traditional launch when it finally "releases". I still want this game to work, but I'm growing more and more skeptical. As the shine wears off of Red Dead Redemption 2 and the industry moves on it's going to be harder and harder to gin up interest for the multiplayer component. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2019/02/13/whats-going-on-with-red-dead-online/ |
Could instant replay be coming to Arizona high school football? | Instant replay could be coming to Arizona high school football. (Photo: azcentral sports) Instant replay could be part of the Arizona high school football playoffs next season after the National Federation of High Schools' Board of Directors approved the option for state associations. David Hines, executive director of the Arizona Interscholastic Association, said the AIA Executive Board will need feedback from the schools "before we go down that road." Brian Gessner, who is in charge of officials for the AIA, said scoring plays and possibly turnovers would be reviewed with instant replay, but the AIA would only have that technology for state championship games. Maricopa coach Brandon Harris would like to see instant replay used for all games, not just the playoffs. "Getting calls right is important," he said. "Not just for playoffs but for in-season games as well. "Many times calls can impact a season that precludes a team from getting to the playoffs. Having them in the playoffs is a start, however." Glendale Cactus coach Joseph Ortiz is all for instant replay. "I think games in the playoffs are so important, so to be able to review them to insure that the right call is made, I feel is worth the wait it would take for the refs to review the call," he said. "Being a part of playoff games in the past where a review would of changed the game, I am totally in favor for it." Gilbert Highland coach Brock Farrel also is on board with instant replay. "I love the idea of instant replay," said Farrel, whose team reached the 6A semifinals last season. "Its important and referees are humans, too, that make mistakes. But if technology can aid them, then I am all for it." Snowflake coach and Athletic Director Kay Solomon is opposed to instant replay. "First of all, who will pay for the systems to ensure that there is instant replay at every game?" he said. "If the AIA becomes responsible for that, the costs they incur will simply be passed along to member schools who are already strapped for funds to maintain sports programs." Solomon also points to a lack of cameras beyond those in the pressbox and the time it would take for officials to review plays. "Officiating has always been a difficult job. As a coach, I respect and appreciate the work they do," Solomon said. "They will never get every call right, just like coaches will never call the right play or the correct defensive alignment and coverage every down. My preference would be that we continue to use replay for coaching and making adjustments, but let the officials call the game on the field using their best trained judgement." Play clock The NFHS board also approved the play clock increasing from 25 to 40 seconds after plays. The play clock will remain 25 seconds, according to a NFHS news release, in the following situations: - Prior to a try following a score. - To start a period or overtime series. - Following administration of an inadvertent whistle. - Following a charged timeout. - Following an officials timeout. - Following the stoppage of the play clock by the referee for any other reason. In all other cases, the 40-second play clock will be used when the ball is declared dead by a game official. "The 40 seconds after play ends versus 25 seconds from time chains, down markers are set will be more consistent and really should not affect us in any way," Farrel said. This has been the age of the RPO and no huddles and teams getting plays off in nano seconds. Get crucial breaking sports news alerts to your inbox. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Sports Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters "The play clock, I'm not sure about," Harris said. "I don't like the idea of the clock being bled out especially in end-of-quarter situations. You literally could use nearly a minute of time for each play with a clock that long. Some teams could essentially slow the game down to a crawl. If you had a 10-play drive, teams could bleed a whole quarter theoretically." Solomon doesn't oppose the 40-second play clock, but he's not sure it's needed. "I've had very few problems with the pacing of the game in the past by the officials," Solomon said. "I'm not opposed to the 40-second play clock, but I don't know that it's completely necessary in order to fix a broken part of the game." READ MORE To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert at [email protected] or 602-316-8827. Follow him at twitter.com/azc_obert. | https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/high-school/2019/02/11/instant-replay-high-school-football-arizona-aia-options-playoffs/2840238002/ |
Why is Grand Canyon University excluded from the Arizona Teachers Academy? | Opinion: Grand Canyon University has a well-regarded teacher training program. If the purpose is to produce and retain more teachers, it should be included. Grand Canyon University has a well-regarded teacher training program. If the purpose is to produce and retain more teachers, it should be included. (Photo: Michael Schennum, Michael Schennum / The Republic) Gov. Doug Ducey is heavily touting his Arizona Teachers Academy budget proposal. He has advocated that $21 million be appropriated to cover tuition and fees for students at the state universities ASU, U of A and NAU who pledge to teach at Arizona public schools for a period of time. Ducey says that it will help alleviate the teacher shortage. But the problem doesnt seem to be the number of people going into teaching. The big problem is keeping them once they enter the profession. Part of that is pay, and Ducey has addressed that component. But a large component is working conditions and expectations. Doing the job as designed in most schools requires a work week of 60 to 70 hours. Two months off during the summer doesnt compensate for that. Particularly for one-income families in which the breadwinner feels obligated to work some other job during that period. CLOSE "More transparency and more accountability," Ducey says are needed for taxpayers dollars spent in schools. Brian Snyder, Arizona Republic But if the state is going to provide scholarships specifically for future teachers, theres a significant omission in Duceys program: Grand Canyon University. GCU is a private, Christian college. But it has an extensive and highly regarded program for teacher education and training. If the purpose of Duceys mislabeled Academy is to increase the production of teachers and reduce their debt in hopes of keeping them in the field, there is no reason to exclude GCU. Its character shouldnt be a barrier to participation, particularly from a governor who professes to believe in school choice. Theres another element of the program that defies the principles of school choice. The scholarship is limited to students who pledge to teach at public schools. There are roughly 45,000 Arizona children who attend private schools. They need teachers too. And private schools face the same recruitment and retention challenges as public ones. Reach Robb at [email protected]. MORE ROBB COLUMNS: Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/robertrobb/2019/02/11/why-grand-canyon-university-excluded-duceys-teachers-academy/2840614002/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/robertrobb/2019/02/11/why-grand-canyon-university-excluded-duceys-teachers-academy/2840614002/ |
Will Mark Ingram return to reprise his role in the Boom and Zoom show? | New Orleans Saints running back Mark Ingram (22) celebrates with teammate Alvin Kamara (41) after Kamara's one-yard TD against the Pittsburgh at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, La. Sunday, Dec. 23, 2018. (Photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune) This is arguably the biggest in-house decision the Saints face this offseason though it might be oversimplifying it by thinking about it strictly as a decision on the Saints' side of things. While Ingram has already made it plain that he would prefer to be back in New Orleans with a new deal next season, the market may dictate how this situation unfolds for everyone involved. It is hard to put a finger on what the demand will be for the services of a two-time Pro Bowler who turns 30 in December. Considering the position he plays, Ingrams age will work against him, but on the flip side, he only has three seasons with 200-plus carries, meaning he does not have as much wear and tear as some other recent 30-year-old free agent running backs. The Saints could allow Ingram to test the open market with the hopes of getting him back at a team-friendly contract, but doing so would risk allowing another team to swoop in with a better offer. | https://www.nola.com/expo/sports/g66l-2019/02/fe6005fb3e8101/will-mark-ingram-return-to-reprise-his-role-in-the-boom-and-zoom-show-.html |
Will Kyler Murray go No. 1 overall to the Arizona Cardinals? | Former Oklahoma QB Kyler Murray has officially chosen football over baseball. The reigning Heisman Trophy winner, who was drafted ninth by the Oakland As in the 2018 Major League Baseball Draft, made his feelings known on social media Monday afternoon. He simply went with his heart and his first love. Now the question is whether Murray will be the No. 1 overall pick by the Arizona Cardinals in the 2019 NFL Draft. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to the Star-Telegram Murray was already considered as a possible first-round pick. ESPN draft experts Mel Kiper and Todd McShay have him going among the top 13, possibly as high as No. 5. He has a chance to be the first player drafted in the first round by the NFL and MLB. Murray picked Erik Burkhardt of Select Sports Group as his agent for football, according to sources. The decision has opened up the possibility of him going a lot higher, like first overall. Burkhardt also represents Kingsbury. And it doesnt take a brain surgeon to connect the dots. In October 2018, Kliff Kingsbury said he would take Kyler Murray as the first pick of the NFL draft if he could. There's a San Francisco Chronicle report that he's expected to declare and Kingsbury's @AZCardinals are first on the clock pic.twitter.com/ERF1lFz5qg ESPN (@espn) January 10, 2019 And there is no denying Kingsburys affinity for Murray dating back to his days as the Texas Tech coach last season when he openly stated he would take the former Allen star No. 1 overall if it was up to him. It wasnt his choice then but a lot has changed since, including Kingsbury being fired by Texas Tech, hired as the offensive coordinator at USC and then leaving that post to take the Cardinals head coaching job. He was hired by Arizona primarily because of his offensive expertise and knowledge of the college spread attack that is changing the face of the NFL, as well as his prowess in developing quarterbacks at Texas Tech. ESPN college football expert Kirk Herbstreit has already made the connection. Kirk Herbstreit on Kyler Murray in the NFL. "It wouldn't shock me between now and maybe even draft day to see Kliff Kingsbury possibly either move out of that spot, maybe get rid of Josh Rosen, and possibly try to pull the trigger to get a Kyler Murray. "#OUDNA | #BoomerSooner pic.twitter.com/ePr3pG32IC Sooner Gridiron (@soonergridiron) February 12, 2019 Murray is perfect for his scheme and system, similar to former Texas Tech protege Patrick Mahomes, now the quarterback of Kansas City Chiefs, who won NFL MVP award in 2018 with his revolutionary style of play. While Murray is undersized at 5-foot-10, his speed and quickness are off the charts. And he can throw it as well as any quarterback in the draft. According to an NFL scouting director, Murray has a chance to be very good in the right system. They will have to create a college system for him. He is Michael Vick in a Doug Flutie body. He has the skill and is tough. Its hard to predict for me. It might not be hard to predict for Kingsbury who has the right system for Murray. That the Cardinals drafted quarterback Josh Rosen in the first round last season may or may not be a problem. He was drafted by the previous staff and could be offered up as trade bait on draft day. Thats already being discussed in NFL circles. Kingsbury is going to draft him and trade Rosen, according to an unnamed agent via text. Classic. | https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/article226138880.html |
Is the SNC-Lavalin scandals biggest victim Trudeaus relationship with Indigenous people? | The appointment of Jody Wilson-Raybould, a We Wai Kai First Nation woman, to serve as the first Indigenous minister of justice was a powerful symbol for Indigenous people and a signal to all of Canada. Her resignation from cabinet is equally powerful. Jody Wilson-Raybould, left, is sworn in as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada during a ceremony at Rideau Hall, in Ottawa, on Nov. 4, 2015. When Wilson-Raybould was made a cabinet minister there was hope it would mark a turning point in Ottawas relationship with Indigenous peoples, but her demotion and subsequent resignation from cabinet have dashed those hopes, Tanya Talaga writes. ( Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS ) Trudeau was elected promising that the relationship this country has with Indigenous people was, to him, of the utmost importance. When Wilson-Raybould was appointed attorney general, it signalled that maybe he meant it, that maybe this time would be different. Maybe Wilson-Raybould would finally be the one to uphold basic human rights and fairness for Indigenous people. A First Nations woman was the top lawyer in a country that still has the paternalistic Indian Act on its books, that consistently fails to properly consult Indigenous communities on decisions that profoundly affect them, that claims it desperately wants to reconcile yet fights not to deliver equitable health, education and social services to Indigenous kids. Perhaps, it seemed for a moment, she could change history. Article Continued Below But it wasnt long before that old familiar feeling of doubt crept in. There was double speak on what nation-to-nation actually meant. There was little progress on bringing clean drinking water to First Nations. There was big talk but no action on revising the Indian Act. More inadequate consultations. And on and on. It must have been increasingly uncomfortable for Wilson-Raybould in cabinet, watching as the government ignored its promises on making First Nations, Mtis and Inuit proper partners in everything from drafting legislation to fulfilling funding commitments. And then, abruptly, she was no longer the countrys top lawyer, fired from her historic role and shuffled off to Veterans Affairs. Incensed, First Nations leaders stood staunchly by Wilson-Raybould. The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs accused the Trudeau government of racist and sexist overtones in a whisper campaign against her after she left Justice. Im familiar with her work ethic, her deep dedication and commitment, said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the union, who has known Wilson-Raybould for years. She is an amazing individual but to see her publicly humiliated and the subject of a deliberate smear campaign is infuriating, he said. We are completely disgusted with the Trudeau government and its handling of this issue I know Jody. She is full of integrity. Eventually, of course, a new story about her demotion emerged that she had been pressured to intervene in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin and was punished for her refusal. She said on Tuesday that she resigned from cabinet with a heavy heart. When she first sought elected federal office after practising law on Vancouvers Downtown Eastside and serving as the British Columbia regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations she truly felt she could make a difference. She wanted to pursue a positive and progressive vision of change on behalf of all Canadians, she wrote in her resignation letter, and a different way of doing politics. Maybe she could change things using the masters tools in the masters house. But that is harder than it looks. Even the purest of intentions and hope are rarely a match for 150 years of colonial history. Then, on Tuesday night, the prime minister seemed to throw Wilson-Raybould under the bus. He said if she had any problem with what was happening, it was her responsibility to come directly to him, and she did not. Trudeau said he was disappointed with her decision to leave cabinet. He also mentioned that Canadians are puzzled by her resignation and so was he. Not all of us are. She clearly had her reasons. Perhaps she had enough of the colonial power system. In any case, the result is the same: she is no longer in a position potentially to overhaul that system from within, and so yet another symbol has soured. Ontario Regional Chief RoseAnne Archibald tweeted, Ninanaskamon 4 your groundbreaking work as the 1st Indigenous woman to serve as the top lawyer in Canada. I know this will only be a temporary setback for you. Your kind of strength and leadership is unstoppable in the long run. Remember who you REALLY are @Puglaas. Wilson-Raybould signed her letter with her traditional name, Puglaas. It means a woman born to noble people. We should wait and listen to hear what this noble woman has to say. Correction February 13, 2019: This column was edited from a previous version that misspelled Jody Wilson-Raybould's traditional name. Tanya Talaga is a Toronto-based columnist covering Indigenous issues. Follow her on Twitter: @tanyatalaga Read more about: | https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2019/02/12/is-the-snc-lavalin-scandals-biggest-victim-trudeaus-relationship-with-indigenous-people.html |
Can Oregons defense stand tall while on road for 5 of last 7 games? | EUGENE Oregon enters the pivotal seven-game home stretch of the regular season with virtually no margin for error, but if its defense can stand tall during a span that includes five road games the Ducks have the talent to make a run at the postseason. Beating Cal and Stanford were all but guarantees last week for Oregon (15-9, 6-5 Pac-12), which improved to over .500 in conference play for the first time after holding the Cardinal to 27.3 percent from the field, lowest by a Pac-12 opponent against UO in over five years. Defense is always the top priority getting stops, guard Victor Bailey Jr. said. Coach has emphasized that from the beginning of the year. But I think for us really locking in and staying on the defensive end, thats going to take us over the top over offense any day. The adage is that defense travels and for Oregon thats been true in road wins but much less so in most of its losses away from Matthew Knight Arena this season. Oregon Ducks basketball resume review: Every game a must-win Oregon's opportunities to move up enough for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament may have evaporated due to the rest of the Pac-12 cannibalizing itself. The Ducks are second in the Pac-12 in scoring defense in league play and did well at containing Arizona and Utah in hostile environments. But at Arizona State and Colorado the Ducks had trouble on offense and it impacted their defense. A one week span showed the extremes Oregon is capable of: One of the worst shooting performances in Dana Altmans tenure at Colorado and one of UOs best defense efforts in his nine seasons while Routing Stanford. Not making excuses for them but thats sometimes youth; Things dont go your way and you give into it, Altman said. Colorados playing really good, but we had a bad half that first half. We were really bad. Hopefully our guys understand the difference preparing yourself ready for a game. How important every possession is in a game. All season Altman has stressed the need for more activity and movement on the defensive end and ball movement on the offensive end. When the Ducks do those things, they tend to create turnovers, create more open shots and ultimately win. It sounds so easy, but this season has been anything but. Altman joked that if his team could text each other on the court rather than talk theyd be more effective. This is just a quiet group," he said. "They dont talk much of the floor, they dont talk much on the floor. We got to do a better job forcing them to do that, get them out of their comfort zone. Eliminate some bad mistakes were still making. How Oregons season ends up turning out will be determined over the remaining seven games, starting Saturday at Oregon State, then at USC and UCLA, home against Arizona State and Arizona and at Washington State and Washington. The Ducks are a game back of the three-way tie for second place in the Pac-12 and a top four finish is widely considered necessary to have any chance of winning the Pac-12 Tournament. If Oregon were to go 6-1 or better it could be on the bubble for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. The best thing is were probably as healthy as weve been in a long time, especially a couple of days here, hopefully get Paul (White)s ankle a little bit better," Altman said. "Thats the positive; Kenny (Wooten)s gotten used to his mask and I think were a little healthier than weve ever been. Thats the positive. The negative is the schedule really shifts against us here. | https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/2019/02/can-oregons-defense-stand-tall-while-on-road-for-5-of-last-7-games.html |
How have county jails in CA changed with criminal justice reform? | The Sacramento Bee and ProPublica are investigating conditions in Californias county jails. We need your help understanding whats going on in facilities big and small. Inmate and staff safety concerns come at a cost to California taxpayers. Access to quality mental-health care and substance-abuse treatment is far from guaranteed. An average of 137 people die in jails across the state each year. We want to know more about the people behind these numbers, and want to hear from others about their experiences in Californias county jail system. Were looking for people who have spent time in county jails across California. Were also seeking the impressions of family members and others who know someone whos been incarcerated. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Sacramento Bee We want to learn more about crowding, inmate treatment and access to resources in jails. And we want to hear from people who can tell us what is or is not working in the jail system. You can read more about our project here. Your submission to us is confidential. We wont publish any information you share without your permission, and wont voluntarily share what you tell us here with the government or third parties. You can tell us your story at this form. If youd rather talk on Signal or WhatsApp, which are more secure, send a message to 347-244-2134. You can also email our reporting team at [email protected]. | https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article226008510.html |
What did CA Governor Gavin Newsom say in state of the state speech? | Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday delivered his first state of the state speech. Here are his prepared remarks as released by his office. Mr. Speaker, thank you for being a champion for all Californians and for welcoming Jen and me into your house today. Madam Pro Tem thank you for your commitment to collaboration, which has helped make our first month together so productive. I also have the honor of saying for the first time ever in this chamber: thank you Madam Lieutenant Governor for that very kind and short introduction. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Sacramento Bee To all the constitutional officers and legislators assembled here today thank you for your service to our state. And let me reassure everyone: our son Dutch is not here. We learned our lesson at the inauguration. It was just over four weeks ago that I stood in front of this Capitol and pledged to defend not just the California constitution but the California dream. Today, I want to talk about how we can do that together. By every traditional measure, the state of our state is strong. We have a record-breaking surplus. Weve added 3 million jobs since the depths of the recession. Wages are rising. We have more scientists, researchers, and engineers, more Nobel laureates, and the finest system of higher education anywhere in the world. But along with that prosperity and progress, there are problems that have been deferred for too long and that threaten to put the California dream out of reach for too many. We face hard decisions that are coming due. The choices we make will shape our future for decades. This is what I want to talk about today, as frankly and directly as I can: The tough calls we must make together on rail, water, and energy. How we protect migrants, care for seniors, and help the homeless, and how we will tackle the affordability crisis that is coming to define life in this state. I wont pretend to have all the answers. But the only way to find them is to face these issues honestly. Lets start with the fear mongering from the White House about the so-called emergency at our border. For me, this is an echo from fifteen years ago. I was a new mayor sitting in the gallery at the State of the Union when President Bush said LGBT Americans should not be able to get married. It was an attack on our friends and neighbors, and on Californias values. I was so proud to watch brave Californians answer those attacks with love and courage. Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin made history when they were married 15 years ago to this very day. Now, just like back then, we must stand up for those maligned, marginalized, and scapegoated. Because last week, we heard another president stand up at the State of the Union and offer a vision of an America fundamentally at odds with California values. He described a country where inequality doesnt seem to be a problem, where climate change doesnt exist, and where the greatest threat we face comes from families seeking asylum. Just last night, he went down to El Paso and said it again. Immigration Let us state the facts. We are currently experiencing the lowest number of border crossings since 1971. In California, like our nation, our undocumented population is at its lowest level in more than a decade. Some 550,000 fewer in our state alone. Immigrants, both those here legally and those without documentation, commit crime at a lower rate than native-born citizens. And those families, women and children, seeking asylum at our borders, are doing so lawfully. Those are the facts. The border emergency is a manufactured crisis and California will not be part of this political theater. Were not backing down. Just yesterday, I gave the National Guard a new mission one that will refocus on the real threats facing our state. A third of our forces currently on the border will be redeployed to help prepare for the upcoming fire season by joining Cal Fire in prevention and suppression. Work, ironically, the Federal government curtailed during the recent shutdown. Another third will boost the National Guards statewide counter-drug task force by redeploying up north to go after illegal cannabis farms, many of which are run by cartels, are devastating our pristine forests, and are increasingly becoming fire hazards themselves. The remaining third of our Guard will focus on stopping criminals smuggling drugs and guns through existing border checkpoints. A wall that stretches thousands of miles through the wilderness will do nothing to stop this threat. This is our answer to the White House: No more division, no more xenophobia and no more nativism. We suffered enough from that in the nineties with Props 187 and 227. High speed rail Next, lets level about high speed rail. I have nothing but respect for Governor Browns and Governor Schwarzeneggers ambitious vision. I share it. And theres no doubt that our states economy and quality of life depend on improving transportation. But lets be real. The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long. Theres been too little oversight and not enough transparency. Right now, there simply isnt a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were. However, we do have the capacity to complete a high-speed rail link between Merced and Bakersfield. I know that some critics will say this is a train to nowhere. But thats wrong and offensive. The people of the Central Valley endure the worst air pollution in America as well as some of the longest commutes. And they have suffered too many years of neglect from policymakers here in Sacramento. They deserve better. High Speed Rail is much more than a train project. Its about economic transformation and unlocking the enormous potential of the Valley. We can align our economic and workforce development strategies, anchored by High Speed Rail, and pair them with tools like opportunity zones, to form the backbone of a reinvigorated Central Valley economy. Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield, and communities in between are more dynamic than many realize. The Valley may be known around the world for agriculture, but there is another story ready to be told. A story of a region hungry for investment, a workforce eager for more training and good jobs, Californians who deserve a fair share of our states prosperity. Look, we will continue our regional projects north and south. Well finish Phase 1 environmental work. Well connect the revitalized Central Valley to other parts of the state, and continue to push for more federal funding and private dollars. But lets just get something done. For those who want to walk away from this whole endeavor, I offer you this: Abandoning high speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises and lawsuits to show for it. And by the way, I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump. Nor am I interested in repeating the same old mistakes. Today I am ordering new transparency measures. Were going to hold contractors and consultants accountable to explain how taxpayer dollars are spent including change orders, cost overruns, even travel expenses. Its going online, for everybody to see. Youre also going to see some governance changes, starting with my pick for the next chair of the High Speed Rail Authority, Lenny Mendonca, my Economic Development Director. Because, at the end of the day, transportation and economic development must go hand in hand. Delta tunnels We also need a fresh approach when it comes to meeting Californias massive water challenges. We have a big state with diverse water needs. Cities that need clean water to drink, farms that need irrigation to keep feeding the world, fragile ecosystems that must be protected. Our water supply is becoming less reliable because of climate change. And our population is growing because of a strong economy. That means a lot of demand on an unpredictable supply. There are no easy answers. But let me be direct about where I stand: I do not support the Water Fix as currently configured. Meaning, I do not support the twin tunnels. But we can build on the important work thats already been done. Thats why I do support a single tunnel. The status quo is not an option. We need to protect our water supply from earthquakes and rising sea levels, preserve delta fisheries, and meet the needs of cities and farms. We have to get past the old binaries, like farmers versus environmentalists, or North versus South. Our approach cant be either/or. It must be yes/and. Conveyance and efficiency. And recycling projects like were seeing in Southern Californias Met Water District, expanding floodplains in the Central Valley, groundwater recharge, like farmers are doing in Fresno County. We need a portfolio approach to building water infrastructure and meeting long-term demand. To help bring this balance, Im appointing a new chair of the California water board, Joaquin Esquivel. Our first task is to cross the finish line on real agreements to save the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta. California Governor Gavin Newsom visited Monterey Tract in Ceres, Calif., to talk with residents about getting safe and affordable drinking water Friday, Jan. 11, 2019. Andy Alfaro [email protected] We must get this done for the resilience of our mighty rivers, the stability of our agriculture sector, and the millions who depend on this water every day. Now, lets talk honestly about clean drinking water. Just this morning, more than a million Californians woke up without clean water to bathe in or drink. Some schools have shut down drinking fountains due to contamination. Some poorer communities, like those I visited recently in Stanislaus County, are paying more for undrinkable water than Beverly Hills pays for its pristine water. This is a moral disgrace and a medical emergency. There are literally hundreds of water systems across the state contaminated by lead, arsenic, or uranium. Solving this crisis demands sustained funding. It demands political will. PG&Es bankruptcy Next, lets talk about our energy future and PG&Es bankruptcy. We are all frustrated and angry that its come to this. PG&E didnt do enough to secure dangerous equipment or plan for the future. My administration will work to make sure PG&E upholds its obligations. I have convened a team of the nations best bankruptcy lawyers and financial experts from the energy sector. They will work with my strike team to develop a comprehensive strategy that we will present within 60 days. We will ensure continued access to safe affordable power. We will seek justice for fire victims, fairness for employees, and protection for ratepayers. We will continue to invest in safety, and we will never waver on achieving the nations most ambitious clean energy goals. The problems we face are far greater than PG&E. Climate change is putting pressure on all of our utilities public and private, north and south. Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric both recently had their credit ratings downgraded. This pressure comes at a time when the entire energy market is evolving. From roof-top solar and wind generation to smart grid technologies. From Community Choice Aggregators to direct access service. More and more of our electricity now is procured outside of investor-owned utilities. Regulations and insurance practices created decades ago didnt anticipate these changes. We must map out longer-term strategies, not just for the utilities future, but for Californias energy future, to ensure that the cost of climate change doesnt fall on those least able to afford it. Schools Now let me turn to education. The teachers strike in LA is over but the need to confront its underlying causes has only just begun. Understaffed schools, overcrowded classrooms, pension pressures, the achievement gap, and charter school growth these stressors are showing up all over the state, right here in Sacramento, in Fresno, and Oakland. Districts across the state are challenged to balance budgets even in this strong economy, and at a time when were spending more on schools than ever before. Seven years ago, we invested $47.3 billion in our schools. Next year, with your support, well invest more than $80 billion -- that includes $576 million for special education. But its not enough. Were still 41st in the nation in per pupil funding. Something needs to change. We need to have an honest conversation about how we fund our schools at a state and local level. But at the same time, lets remember that the measure of a school systems excellence is more than the sum of its budgets. We need clear and achievable standards of transparency, more information sharing, and accountability for all public schools traditional and charter. We need a new president for the State Board of Education, to lead the way and work alongside State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, and to lift up all of our students. And my pick for that position is nationally recognized education expert Linda Darling Hammond. Homelessness Theres another urgent moral issue we must confront: the homelessness epidemic. So many of Californias homeless whether theyre families, veterans, victims of rent spikes, or survivors fleeing domestic violence are invisible and left behind by our society. Too many on the streets are suffering from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or paranoia. Many are self-medicating with drug or alcohol as a consequence. Our homelessness crisis has increasingly become a public health crisis. Last year, there was a Hepatitis-A outbreak in San Diego. Recently, there was an outbreak of Syphilis in Sonoma. And now, typhus in Los Angeles. Typhus. Thats a Medieval disease. In California. In 2019. Mayors, county supervisors, and city councils around the state are working hard to reduce homelessness and its underlying causes. Weve got to have their backs. But they cant do it alone. To help lead this discussion, Im appointing a new Commission on Homelessness and Supportive Housing, led by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. With your support, lets put half a billion dollars into immediate funding for navigation centers emergency shelters with services on site, and another hundred million for Whole Person Care to replace a fragmented approach to services with one thats more integrated and comprehensive. And while cities and counties are on the front lines, this challenge will only be solved regionally. We need to work together as a state to focus on prevention, rapid rehousing, mental health, and more permanent supportive housing because while shelter solves sleep, only permanent supportive housing solves homelessness. The Golden State is getting grayer Now, lets talk about something too often overlooked: The Golden State is getting grayer. We need to get ready for the major demographic challenge headed our way. For the first time in our history, older Californians will outnumber young children. Over the next decade, our statewide senior population will increase by 4 million. In 25 years, it will double. And more than half will require some form of long-term care. Growing old knows no boundaries aging doesnt care what race you are, your economic status, or if youre single with no other family support. Ive had some personal and painful experience with this recently. I lost my father over the holidays, after years of declining physical health and dementia. He was determined to live out his days with dignity. He also happened to be a retired public official with a pension and a support circle of family and friends. Even with all those advantages, it was a daily challenge to meet his needs so he could live in place and maintain a good quality of life. Millions of Californians share a similar story, and the numbers will only grow. Its time for a new master plan on aging. It must address: person-centered care, the patchwork of public services, social isolation, bed-locked seniors in need of transportation, the nursing shortage, and demand for In-Home Supportive Services that far outpaces its capacity. And we cant talk about aging without focusing on Alzheimers. Too many of us have seen the crushing grip this disease has on our loved ones and especially on our wives and mothers two-thirds of new Alzheimers cases are women. Today, I am launching the Alzheimers Prevention and Preparedness Task Force, bringing the most renowned scientists and thinkers together to develop first-of-its-kind research in this area. It will be headed by a leading advocate for families dealing with Alzheimers, our former first lady, Maria Shriver. She is here today and we are grateful for her continued service. Housing affordability Tying together many of the hard challenges we face is the broader cost crisis. In a recent survey, 61% of young adults in California said they cant afford to live here. California should never be a place where only the well-off can lead a good life. It starts with housing, perhaps our most overwhelming challenge right now. We all know the problem. Theres too much demand and too little supply. And that is happening in large part because too many cities and counties arent even planning for how to build. Some are flat out refusing to do anything at all. Thats why I have committed $750 million for a major new incentive package for communities to do the right thing. $250 million in support to cities and counties to update their housing plans, revamp their zoning process, and get more housing entitled. $500 million more in grants when they achieve these milestones. If we want a California for All, we have to build housing for all. I want to support local governments that do whats right, like Anaheim and Santa Rosa. But there must be accountability for those that dont. Two weeks ago, the state of California sued the city of Huntington Beach for failing to meet its obligations on affordable housing. Let me tell you, as a former mayor, the last thing I wanted to do was start my term by suing a city. But they left us no choice. This isnt about picking on Huntington Beach, they happened to be first because of a statute of limitations. There are 47 other cities across California that are not complying with their planning requirements in one way or another. Some cities are trying, like Clovis. But others are not, like Wheatland, Huntington Park, and Montebello. I am inviting these cities leaders to sit down next week for a candid conversation. I dont intend to file suit against all 47, but Im not going to preside over neglect and denial. These cities need to summon the political courage to build their fair share of housing. I also want to acknowledge other factors beyond city planning that have limited our ability to provide housing. In recent years, weve expedited judicial review on CEQA for professional sports. Its time we do the same thing for housing. I want to applaud the efforts by home builders and labor leaders, who together are working to forge a compromise to accelerate production. But there is no way we can achieve our ambitious targets unless we train a skilled workforce big enough to meet this challenge and those workers deserve wages high enough to support their families. Lets encourage this progress, bring more people to the table, and get something big done. And while were at it, lets not forget the commitments many of us made after Prop 10 failed last year. The pressures on vulnerable renters didnt go away after the election. We need new rules to stabilize neighborhoods and prevent evictions, without putting small landlords out of business. I want the best ideas from everyone in this chamber. Here is my promise to you, get me a good package on rent stability this year and I will sign it. Health care Next, if were serious about taming the cost crisis we need affordable health care for all Californians. Our ability to invest in everything we care about is constrained by the pressure of rising health care costs. It impacts everything else we want to do. The White House is laser-focused on destroying the Affordable Care Act. The vandalism theyve already done to the individual mandate has had consequences. This years Covered California premiums increased almost twice as much as we expected. This is just what we feared, and its just what they wanted. Thats why, when it comes to the individual mandate, California must act where Washington failed. If we do, we will be able to deepen subsidies for those earning up to $48,000 and extend subsidies to families earning up to $150,000, something no other state in America has done. We all know California has among the lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates in America. Thats why our budget devotes more than $1 billion to increase rates and address the provider shortage. This investment will also allow us to increase access to preventative health measures like -immunizations, trauma screenings, and mental health services. And it provides $100 million for reproductive health and family planning. As we pursue the long-term goal of single payer financing, let us make a down-payment now by expanding Medi-Cal coverage to all Californians up to age 26, regardless of their immigration status. But access is only part of the solution. Cost is another. We must address rising costs throughout the system, like the consolidation of hospitals and other health providers, which limits patient choice and makes care more expensive. And we must continue to bring down the cost of prescription drugs. My first act as governor was to lay the foundation for a single-purchasing system the largest such system in the nation, which will save hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the people of California. I want to thank President Trump for calling attention to prescription drug prices in his State of the Union. Yes, you heard that right. I hope he follows through. After all, this should be a bipartisan issue. But with or without the Federal government, California will lead. Jobs and wages Finally, we must ask ourselves, how do we create a future with more good jobs and higher wages. Because when it comes to making life in California more affordable, cost is only one side of the equation, the other is income. Despite our rising wages, working families in California today barely earn more than they did a decade ago. Many working parents are making less than their parents did at the same age. Thats why, with your support, we will provide a cost of living refund by expanding the earned income tax credit to a million more Californians who need it the most. For families with kids under the age of six, theyll see their benefit go up by as much as three times. But, in an economy where the world of work is in a perpetual state of flu, where workers are too often displaced, devalued and disconnected from the social safety net, we must also think bigger. Its time to develop a new modern compact for Californias changing workforce. This is much bigger than Dynamex. California needs a comprehensive statewide strategy to uplift and upskill our workers, to ensure technological advancements in AI, blockchain, big data, are creating jobs, not destroying them, and to reform our institutions so that more workers have an ownership stake in their sweat equity. We will appoint a new Commission on Californias Workforce & Future of Work. We will bring together leaders from labor and business both the public and private sectors. Their assignment is to come up with new ideas to expand worker opportunity without extinguishing innovation or flexibility. California is proud to be home to technology companies determined to change the world. But companies that make billions of dollars collecting, curating and monetizing our personal data have a duty to protect it. Consumers have a right to know and control how their data is being used. I applaud this legislature for passing the first-in-the-nation digital privacy law last year. But Californias consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data. And so Ive asked my team to develop a proposal for a new Data Dividend for Californians, because we recognize that your data has value and it belongs to you. So much left to do Now, weve covered a lot of ground today, but there is so much more that deserves our focus. Climate change. Reforming our tax code and our criminal justice system. Major initiatives like paid family leave, universal pre-school, free community college, re-imagining the DMVtheres so much more. And Ill be talking a lot about those issues in the coming months. At my inauguration, I quoted the Sermon on the Mount about a house that did not fall in the face of floods and storms, because it was founded upon a rock. I promised that, together, We will build one house for one California. Weve started drawing the blueprint for that house, and together we will finish it. President Donald Trump, FEMA Director Brock Long, Gov. Jerry Brown, Gov.-elect Gavin Newson and Paradise mayor Jody Jones tour the Skyway Villa Mobile Home and RV Park during Trumps visit of the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif. on Saturday, November 17, 2018. Paul Kitagaki Jr. Sacramento Bee file This goes deeper than budget numbers or program details. This is about the bonds between us as human beings. As St. Paul said, we are many parts but one body. We are all diminished when one of us struggles to lead a good life. The problems we face are as hard as they come, and decades in the making. But I truly believe we have the tools to solve them. We have the technology and the know-how. Most importantly, we have the generosity of our people. Remember the story of the registered nurse in Paradise who was sitting in traffic, trying to escape the fire, as flames started to engulf his car. He thought, this is it. He recorded a goodbye video for his family. Then a miracle occurred: a bulldozer cleared burning cars out of his path. At that point, he could have driven away as fast as possible. Thats what a lot of people would have done. Instead, he turned his car around and drove straight to the hospital in the middle of town, where he worked in the ICU. He and his colleagues started treating injured people. Then the hospital caught fire. They moved patients to a helipad 100 yards away as fast as they could. Every single one of them was safely evacuated. When he was asked why he did this why he drove back through the fire when he could have saved himself he shrugged and said, This is what we do. His name is Allyn Pierce and hes here with us today. Allyn is right. Taking care of each other, showing courage when it matters most this is what we do in California. Yes, we have so much left to do. But I believe in the remarkable talent assembled here. I believe in our state. And I know that the best is yet to come. Thank you. | https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article226151065.html |
Should all couples sleep apart? | Ford has invented a mattress that nudges you if you start crowding your partner but beds are for more than just sleeping In the same week that a Kickstarter campaign was set up to fund the production of an interactive button encouraging partners to signal they are in the mood for sex, as opposed to just, you know, telling them, the carmaker Ford has suggested an even less romantic product stay-in-your-lane mattress technology for couples. Happy Valentines Day! Fords mattress design would include a mechanism to nudge partners to their own side of the bed if they began to dominate the space. According to studies (no doubt funded by bed manufacturers), one in four people report better sleep when they sleep alone, which does make some sense, given there is no risk of duvet larceny by your other half, or disruptive snoring. But the idea of couples actually sleeping in separate beds is rather saddening. It seems just a step away from the set-up of former couple Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton, who lived in adjoining houses. Perhaps its the practice of sleeping in separate rooms that Ford is trying to avoid, although it remains perplexing why a car manufacturer actually cares (the mattress is at the prototype stage). There is also, surely, a glaring issue with this mattress: there are other things couples do in bed, which involve being quite close together, and during which being nudged probably isnt ideal. Its sort of the point of sleeping together, in both senses of the term. Dont get me wrong: none of us enjoy being locked in a vice-like grip by the one-night stand we cannot wait to kick out at first light, but spooning with someone you actually like, nay, love; holding hands; snuggling (so sorry) all of these things are quite nice. So, I wont be investing in Fords mattress although I am sure it will come in any colour, so long as its black. This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information. | https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/feb/13/should-couples-sleep-apart-ford-mattress |
What should SNC-Lavalin be facing? | Too big to fail? 2018 contracts total $68M, Feb. 12 Past Liberal governments obviously said yes to the question, is SNC too big to fail? and they kept it alive. Today, the circumstances are different, and the reply should be NO. No company should be given the special treatment because of personal contacts and large financial donations. Honesty, openness and rule of law is what Canada stands for according to our prime minster, so let it work. Brian Mellor, Picton, Ont. SNC-Lavalin viewed as jewel of Quebec Inc. that needs to be protected: professor, Online, Feb. 8 It seems many people are missing the big picture with all the politicking surrounding the SNC-Lavalin issue. Do we really want to take down a major Canadian company because of its behaviour in Libya, a country where corruption has always been the rule, not the exception. I believe plea deals have a long history in Canada and there seems to have been no reason why SNC-Lavalin was not given the same opportunity, except for the stubbornness of the former justice minister whose mantra seems to have been: rule of law at all cost, regardless of the consequences. | https://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2019/02/11/what-should-snc-lavalin-be-facing.html |
Should Congress ban the use of government shutdowns? | Lawmakers have narrowly avoided another government shutdown, coming together on a compromise mere days before the deadline. While Democrats are happy with the deal--which provides the president with a small fraction of the border wall funding he had been pushing for--many are wondering why government shutdowns have become such an omnipresent threat. Several pieces of legislation have been proposed to make shutdowns obsolete. But many lawmakers want the threat to negotiate with. PERSPECTIVES According to The Week, most countries do not have budgets so intimately ruled by political debate and partisanship. In other countries, not passing a budget leads to swift and decisive consequences. For decades, members of Congress have proposed a solution to the threat of government shutdowns--automatic continuing resolutions. According to Slate: While the solution to the threat of shutdowns is relatively simple, no such legislation has ever been passed. According to The Atlantic, some worry an automatic continuing resolution would lead lawmakers to rest on their laurels and refuse to pass any permanent budget on principle. Tom Davis, a former Republican representative, proposed legislation that would instate automatic continuing resolutions during his time in office. But according to the Washington Post, nothing was ever passed because lawmakers have little to no incentive to do away with shutdowns. The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, we'd love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.oregonlive.com/tylt/2019/02/should_congress_ban_the_use_of.html |
Why was Matthew McConaughey in the Texas basketball huddle? | Dressed in a three-piece orange suit, Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey joined the Texas basketball huddle on Tuesday night during the Longhorns' game against Kansas State. McConaughey briefly posed as one of coach Shaka Smart's assistants by listening in during huddles in Texas' 71-64 loss to the first-place Wildcats. McConaughey, a 1993 Texas alum, was tabbed the university's "Minister of Culture" in December. The actor's role is to help "create a fan experience unlike any other," according to the university. It's part of a marketing effort as the program is slated to open a new $338 million basketball arena and entertainment facility in 2021. The new stadium will seat 10,000 and is partially funded by ArenaCo, a corporation in which McConaughey is an investor. Its time to raise the bar," McConaughey said in the December release announcing his role as Minister of Culture. "Its time for an authentic home-court advantage for our Longhorn basketball teams." He added on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last month that his goal is "to have that arena be the last place any visiting basketball team wants to play and the first place that any world-class large band act does want to play." STAR POWER: Five college basketball players poised to rise in March BRACKETOLOGY: Wild night with upsets of Kentucky, Michigan | https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/big12/2019/02/13/matthew-mcconaughey-showed-up-texas-basketball-huddles-vs-kstate/2859992002/ |
What does Jeremy Corbyn really think about Brexit? | Brexit has become a divisive issue for the Labour leader and his party. Heather Stewart charts Corbyns changing relationship with the EU. Plus: Lois Beckett looks at the March for our Lives movement, a year after the Parkland shootings In 1975, Jeremy Corbyn, then a local Labour councillor, voted no in the European Communities membership referendum. In the 2016 referendum, he came out in favour of remaining in the EU, but was criticised by some for what was seen as a lacklustre campaign. Now Brexit is threatening to split his party, and many of his MPs and party members feel frustrated by his lack of clarity over the partys position on Europe. The Guardians political editor, Heather Stewart, talks to Anushka Asthana about Corbyns changing relationship with the EU, while Steve Howell, a former Corbyn adviser and author of Game Changer: Eight Weeks That Transformed British Politics, discusses how Corbyn arrived at his remain and reform position. Plus Alena Ivanova, a Momentum activist, argues that Corbyns only option is to listen to party members who want a second referendum. And: In the year since the mass-shooting in Parkland, Florida, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, have been steadily working to build a political movement. Lois Beckett has been following them. | https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2019/feb/13/what-does-jeremy-corbyn-really-think-about-brexit-podcast |
Why does the Memphis Express have so many former LSU players? | Anybody wanting to see which former LSU players are in the upstart Alliance of American Football should follow one team. Because of the leagues player-allocation policy, the majority of former Tigers playing in the league are likely to be placed on the Memphis Express. The opening weekend of games saw at least 10 former LSU players on the eight AAF rosters, but eight of those players were on the Memphis-based team coached by Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Singletary. A three-phase allocation process before the season put those former Tigers there. The first phase puts players on teams nearest where they competed in college. With the Birmingham-based AAF team drawing players from Alabama and Auburn, the league opted to put former LSU players on the Memphis roster. The eight former LSU players on the Express are: Zach Mettenberger, quarterback (sixth-round draft choice, 2014, Tennessee Titans) Terrence Magee, running back (undrafted, 2015) Toby Weathersby, offensive line (undrafted, 2018) Greg Gilmore, defensive tackle (undrafted, 2018) Sam Montgomery, defensive line (third round, 2013, Houston Texans) Anthony Johnson, linebacker (undrafted, 2014) Brad Wing, punter (undrafted, 2013) Josh Jasper, punter (undrafted, 2011) Other schools in the Memphis allocation zone are Tennessee, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Memphis, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Middle Tennessee, Austin Peay, Chattanooga, East Tennessee State, Tennessee State, Tennessee-Martin, Carson-Newman, Lane and Tusculum. Although Tulane does not have a tie-in with any teams, the one former Green Wave player in the league is defensive tackle Julius Warmsley. He landed with the Express based on the second phase of the allocation process, which put the former Tennessee Titans practice squad player on the Alliance team closest to his most recent NFL team. The third phase allows teams to sign any player who did not receive an assignment through the first two phases. The Express also has two former New Orleans Saints players. Davis Tull, a fifth-round drafted linebacker in 2015, played in college at Chattanooga. He was with the Saints in 2015 and on the practice squad in 2016 before the team waived him in 2017. Colton Jumper, a linebacker, joined the Saints as an undrafted rookie out of Tennessee in 2018. The Saints cut him after the preseason. Here is everything you need to know about The Alliance Player Allocation process. Associated college and professional teams will be released by Alliance City Team. Get ready to #JoinTheAlliance pic.twitter.com/AtN2cMCrYi The Alliance (@TheAAF) July 12, 2018 Another former LSU player on an AAF roster to start the season was cornerback Ron Brooks with the San Diego Fleet. Sione Teuhema, a linebacker who began his college career at LSU and finished at Southeastern Louisiana, is with the Arizona Hotshots. Other former Saints players on AAF rosters are cornerback Sterling Moore, linebacker Obum Gwacham and receiver Josh Huff with the Arizona Hotshots, cornerback Damian Swann and receiver Seantavius Jones with the Atlanta Legends, offensive lineman Avery Young with the Birmingham Iron, offensive lineman Andrew Tiller with the Orlando Apollos and linebacker Travis Feeney with the San Diego Fleet. AAF kicks off without kickoffs, but with SkyJudge In the opening week, Memphis lost at Birmingham 26-0. Among the former LSU players, Magree rushed five times for 18 yards, Johnson registered a sack and Wing punted five times. Warmsley, the former Tulane player, shared a sack. Tull, the former Saints player, posted three tackles. Mettenberger did not play behind starter Christian Hackenberg and backup Brandon Silvers, who both played. Next, Memphis plays 7 p.m. Saturday at home against Arizona. | https://www.nola.com/sports/2019/02/why-does-the-memphis-express-have-so-many-former-lsu-players.html |
What did NBA have to say about officiating in Heat-Warriors? | A day after Erik Spoelstra implored the NBA not to fine him for criticizing the officiating, the league obliged. According to a source briefed on the situation, the NBA decided not to penalize the Heat coach for his comments in the wake of Miamis 120-118 loss at Golden State. But in its daily officiating report, the NBA conceded that the Heat was victimized by one bad call. The NBAs Last Two Minute report released Monday evening indicates there should have been a discontinued dribble called on Kevin Durant with 24.6 seconds today. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald Combining video evidence from multiple angles confirms that the ball does not make contact with Justise Winslows foot/shin and a discontinued dribble should have been called on Durant, the report reads. But the report also indicates the officials made the right call on the second play the Heat questioned, when Josh Richardson found himself on the ground while trying to run open on an inbounds play with 5.4 seconds to play. [Klay] Thompson does not appear to extend his leg unnaturally and there is no conclusive angle that shows foot contact while trailing Richardson, the report reads. From broadcast, it appears that Richardson may trip over [Bam] Adebayos foot as he comes off the screen. After Sundays game, Spoelstra began his postgame news conference with this message for the league: Look, NBA do not fine me. Im allowed to say this. It ends up being 26 to 8, he said of the Warriors 26 free throw attempts, compared with Miamis eight. I know nobody wants to hear that, and thats not why we lost. The officials, so lets be clear about it, so I do not get fined, thats not why we lost. But you hate to see 26 to 8 when our guys are going aggressively. Beyond that, those two calls late in the game particularly angered the Heat. With the score tied at 118, Durant lost his dribble but was the first to touch it first with one hand, then the other - after the ball rolled away. He then missed a three-pointer, but DeMarcus Cousins grabbed the rebound, was fouled by Winslow and hit two free throws with 5.4 seconds left to provide the winning margin. Its a double-dribble, Spoelstra said of that play. Everybody can see it. Those are tough calls to make, but everybody saw it. Its right there in front of everybody. That should be a violation. And you cant miss those calls. The NBA on Monday conceded Spoelstra was right about that. On the ensuing play following a timeout, Richardson tumbled to the court and slid into the bench while trying to position himself the inbounds pass. Richardson was a primary Heat option on that play. I dont know if he got knocked off course, Spoelstra said. But Ive said my piece. But it looked like he was coming off and had an opportunity to break free. Richardson, who scored a career-high 37 points, said: I was running to the corner for the inbounds. I got tripped. I slid out of bounds. I got held to the bench. Nobody called it or saw it, so it is what it is. The NBA disagreed with that assessment by Richardson. With Richardson falling out of the plan, Waiters missed a three-pointer that could have won the game. Before the Heats game against Denver on Monday night, Spoelstra indicated he agreed with the decision not to fine him. I didnt say anything inflammatory, he said. Im allowed to say my peace about that. I didnt cross the line. I didnt anticipate I would be fined. Spoelstra said assistant coach Chris Quinn read him the last two minute report from the Golden State game, which was released about two hours before Heat tipoff in Denver. I said enough last night, Spoelstra said Monday evening. Were very accountable. And I know the league is really pushing for that type of accountability as well. I walked out of that building with an L on our heads. At the end of the day, you deserve it and well take accountability for the things we could have done better. What I said is we just disagreed. It didnt look right and it didnt feel right. I understand the two-minute report. I understand the accountability. We just want them to watch the game film and understand some of the things we saw. Similarly, how we did it last night on the plane. I was angry. I went through things we could have done better regardless of how that went. Thats all. Were accountable. Players are accountable. That is the worst job in the legaue, to officiate. I have empathy for how difficult that can be. Accountability all across is what this league wants. Thats what this league is about. Transparency is good. We want not just the two-minute review. I went through the entire game twice. And that game deserves a review, not to rescind anything. We took an L and we walked out of there deserving of that, but just to look at some of the potential inconsistencies. | https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/barry-jackson/article226105310.html |
Should kids be forced to call adults by their honorific? | Dear Carolyn: I hate honorifics for myself and want to be called by my first name, period. Some kids in my life have parents who say they HAVE to call me Ms. Lastname or at least Ms. Firstname. They insist its important to them that their kids show respect. I keep telling them the best way their kids can show respect is by respecting what people want to be called! The parents get really upset when I tell the kids, Please just call me Firstname. We are at an impasse. - Name I admire everyones passion. I guess. If you were all my little Lego people and I were running your world, both sides would have backed down and said, Whatever, because whatever. Names are certainly significant and worthy of respect as elements of identity. Read more: But in this case, youre not trolling each other or taking disingenuous, political jabs at name choices. Both of you have made and stood by valid, well-meaning points that ably express who you are and what you believe in. You are living your truth on individuality, good for you; they are living their truth on responsibility, both parental and societal. Good for them. So I find myself wishing both parties would recognize the integrity and goodwill of the other and therefore the relative unimportance of a win or loss on the specific expression of said values - and just drop it. These kids can call you Firstname without their entire societal education caving in on itself. And your being called Ms. Firstname by one set of kids wont scald you like holy water on a vampire. Then the kids will turn 18, game over. Since Im talking to you, not these parents, youre the designated dropper: Defer to them in the name of friendship, and if thats not persuasive, then bigger-fish-to-fryship will do. Dear Carolyn: I got engaged nine months ago, and we settled on a very small wedding/elopement. My family is NOT happy. I keep reiterating that this is what I want to do and stating my reasons money, not having to pick and choose family, introvert who doesnt want to be the center of attention, more attention paid to the marriage and not the wedding - but I cant seem to get through to them that this is non-negotiable. I have said they can help in other ways, like help me pick out where to go, what Im wearing, etc., though with no money involved. Everything online comes down to, Offer that the insisting person can pay for the extras they want, but my family would happily pay to throw a huge shebang, which sounds like a nightmare. - K. If its non-negotiable, then stop negotiating. Thats what all your explaining sounds like, I promise you. Wanting them to understand no doubt seems like a reasonable goal but theyve rejected your explanations and refused to budge. So, budging them isnot a reasonable goal. Fortunately, you dont need them to understand. It would be great if they did, but not necessary. You can get fully married without it. So, do that stop explaining yourself and get married your way. To all complaints: Im sorry to hear that. To any threats: I hope youll reconsider. To your intended: I do. Email Carolyn at [email protected], follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com. Read or Share this story: https://www.freep.com/story/life/advice/2019/02/13/children-adult-relationship/2810997002/ | https://www.freep.com/story/life/advice/2019/02/13/children-adult-relationship/2810997002/ |
What's on in Whanganui this week? | [A_140213WCBRCMo01.JPG] La Fiesta Whanganui's fun festival celebrating women begins this week. The brainchild of Whanganui Women's Network manager Carla Donson, La Fiesta began 10 years ago as a celebration of International Women's Day and has grown from a week-long event into a bold and beautiful month-long, action-packed extravaganza. Events begin today and the official launch will be held at the new and improved Space Gallery on Saturday. See lafiestanz.com or pick up a programme. THURSDAY One Billion Rising What: Celebration of women and children When: 10am to 5pm Where: Majestic Square Details: Part of a worldwide solidarity event. Free family day with music, dance, drumming and speakers. See more at lafiestanz.com Art Group What: River City Artists - from beginners to established artists. When: 9.30am to 4pm Where: Christ Church Community Hall, 243 Wicksteed St. Details: Val 343 6316 or 027 4599448, Richard 343 5646. Meditation What: Drop-in classes from Gen Demo from Amitabha Buddhist Centre. When: 6pm to 7.30pm. Where: Whanganui Community Arts Centre, 19 Taupo Quay. Details: Suggested donation $12. Advertisement Thoughtful Thursday Screening What: La Fiesta screening When: 6.30pm Where: Confluence, 15 Watt St Details: Embrace - follows body image activist Taryn Brumfitt's crusade as she explores the global issue of body loathing. $10 at the door or book at confluence.kiwi Kowhai Park Runs What: Hosted by Wanganui Harrier Club When: From 5.30pm Where: Kowhai Park, Anzac Parade Details: Start of 6 week series. Pay at event. Valentines Evening at Lucky What: Celebrate Valentine's Day When: From 8pm Where:Lucky Bar + Kitchen, 53 Wilson St Details:Food, drinks, dancing and romancing. FRIDAY Intro to Social Enterprise Workshop What: Starting a social enterprise journey When: 9am to 12pm Where: Thrive Whanganui, 142 Guyton St Details: Join the Thrive team for an interactive workshop introducing social enterprise the concept and some case studies. Free. Sign up on Facebook Kilmarnock's social enterprise journey What: Starting a social enterprise journey When: 1.30pm to 33.30pm Where: Thrive Whanganui, 142 Guyton St Details: What: Hear insights from Kilmarnock Enterprises CEO Michelle Sharp. Picnic on Pedals What: Bike Month event When: Meet at 5pm Where: I-site Whanganui, Taupo Quay Details: Family friendly ride. Ride around the bridges to have a picnic in Kowhai Park. BYO food and drink. Free Saturday River Traders Market What: Goods, produce, food. When: 8.30am to 1pm Where: Downtown Whanganui riverbank Details: Goods, produce, food. Beach Furnace & Big Dig What: See 100 glass art treasures buried in the sand When: 2pm to 4pm Where: Castlecliff Beach Details: $10 ticket to dig in a square will be available to the public to purchase from 1pm on a first come, first served basis. Earth Tongue Drxnes & Transistor What: Brooding psychedelic force of music and theatre When: 9pm Where: Lucky Bar + Kitchen, 53 Wilson St Details: Tickets $10 from undertheradar.co.nz Sunday Castlecliff Market What: Goods, produce and food. When: 11am to 3pm Where: 5 Bryce St, Castlecliff. Hymnfest 1909 What: Celebration of a musical treasure When: 2.30pm Where St Stephens Church, Maunder St, Marton Details: The certification of St Stephens historic organ will be celebrated with music from the era when the organ was first installed. Entry by donation, afternoon tea provided. Monday Marlon Williams What: Turangawaewae tour with Emily Fairlight When:7.30pm Where: Royal Wanganui Opera House Details: Tickets A reserve $67, B reserve $55.50. Book at Ticketek. Grassroots Singers What: We welcome new (and current) singers. When: 6.30pm Where: Duncan Pavilion, Castlecliff beach Details: Mary Ann 06 3439981 Tuesday Slimming Support What: Slimmers Support Group - lose weight and keep it off. When: 5pm. Details: $10 joining fee with $2 weekly - inquiries Ngaire 347 1613. Tai Chi for Health What: A modified form of tai chi specifically for health. Suitable all ages and fitness. When: Beginners classes at 5.30pm. Where: 97 Putiki Drive. Cost: $3 per session Inquiries: Miriam 345 1395 or [email protected] Ukuleles What: River City Ukes - bring your ukulele to gain confidence and skills. When: 7pm-9pm. Where: Club Metro, 13 Ridgway St. Support Group What: Al-Anon meeting - confidential and anonymous programme for those affected by a friend's or family member's drinking. When: 7.30pm. Where: Quaker Rooms, 256 Wicksteed St. Details: No fees but koha appreciated | https://www.nzherald.co.nz/wanganui-chronicle/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503426&objectid=12203438 |
Is new game Apex Legends a threat to Fortnite? | Image copyright Electronic Arts Apex Legends - a new Battle Royale game - has had over 2 million concurrent players and over 25 million downloads in its first week. The game, released at the start of February, has a similar narrative to Fortnite. But Apex's new spin has taken the gaming world by storm, leading people to question whether it will be a threat. Apex Legends is available on PlayStation and Xbox - and Like Fortnite, it's free to download. What's come as a shock to some is how fast Apex is growing. Although Fortnite now has over 200 million players, Apex Legends seems to be growing much faster in its earlier stages. Fortnite was released in July, 2017. In its first two weeks, only 10 million gamers had played it. Newsbeat has been speaking to some American gaming experts who've played both. Image copyright Javy Gwaltney Image caption Javy Gwaltney, 29 (right) Javy Gwaltney is an associate editor for Game Informer in Minnesota. He believes Apex Legends is a great game but is not convinced it will be as successful as people think. "It just doesn't have the potential for that level of appeal in a way that doesn't really have to do with the mechanics of the game itself. "They have to learn, in a shockingly short amount of time, how to give players reasons to return over and over again outside of the core gameplay loop. "That means doing more than just dropping cosmetic skins and weapons into the game." Skins are a range of costumes that can be used to customize aspects of your character and playing experience. They can be bought with the in-game currency V-Bucks. Image copyright Javy Gwaltney Image caption Javy often writes reviews about newly released games for Game Informer The 29-year-old believes the reason why Apex Legends has done so well so far is due to the hype around the battle royale concept. Despite this, Javy doesn't think Apex will pose as much of a threat to Fortnite. "The problem isn't 'Apex Legends isn't as good as Fortnite' - but instead Fortnite was at the right time and place when nothing else was. "Epic (games) wisely built on that in a way that was massively beneficial to them. "You can't replicate that kind of success by making a great, even better game." "Sure, the game's got 25 million people who have played it but those numbers drop off all the time." However, Javy would still choose Apex Legends over Fortnite as for him the shooting lets it down. "The combat is fantastic. Movement, gunplay, sound, everything is just superb. "The shooting in Fortnite is bad. It's real bad." Cade Onder is editor-in-chief of GameZone. The 18-year-old from Iowa in the United States says Apex Legends is a completely different experience compared to Fortnite. "Apex has 60 players and you're forced into squads of three. "Fortnite has 100 players and you can play solos, duos, or squads of four. Apex is first person, Fortnite is third person" Similar to Javy, Cade thinks Apex's game play gives it the edge. "Communicating with players without headsets, automatically transferring attachments to new guns you pick up, and more. "It gets rid of a large amount of junk and fixes the issues that bog down other battle royale games. "Apex has much better shooting mechanics, much more enjoyable. "If Apex Legends can find a way to raise the bar and keep the engagement alive, it could at the very least go toe to toe with Fortnite." Josh, a YouTuber from Birmingham who goes by the name Frenzee says it's too early to decide whether Apex will be a long term threat to Fortnite. "But with the way it has launched, already hitting 25 million players with 1 million plus concurrent players, I think Fortnite are a little scared. "If the Apex developers have a solid roadmap and keep things fresh I do believe it could continue to take over the battle royale genre." Image copyright Jason Wyllie Image caption Jason Wyllie, 23 Jason Wyllie, 23, a Twitch streamer from Scotland says Apex can be enjoyed by casual and hardcore first-person-shooter lovers. "The game has a high skill ceiling cap - but low threshold for beginners - which means new players have a better first time experience (than Fortnite)." But Jason, who also goes by the name of Jaspers, believes Apex may not be a threat to Fortnite because of the strong following it's gained. "Fortnite is such a unique game that they will always have a core group that play the game and caters to the younger generation, as well as older generations." However when asked to choose between the two, Apex Legends still took the biscuit. "The big draw to apex over Fortnite is it comes down to team play, individual ability and gun skill. "Fortnite has a added skill of building that I'm not a fan of I prefer one on one gunfights where your aim is what wins the fight." Follow Newsbeat on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back here. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-47211771 |
Will El Chapo's conviction change anything in the drug trade? | The nearly half a century old war on drugs shows no sign of ending, and neither does the illegal trafficking Standing on the steps of the Brooklyn courthouse amid flurries of sleet and snow, US attorney Richard Donoghue hailed the conviction of Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn as a famous victory in Americas longest conflict. There are those who say the war on drugs is not worth fighting. Those people are wrong, he said. But that war now nearly half a century old shows no sign of ending, and neither does the trade in illegal narcotics. In the course of Guzmns eleven week trial, prosecutors presented the Sinaloa Federation as a vertically-integrated organization with a clear chain of command leading all the way up to one all-powerful boss: El Chapo. But Guzmn was arrested nearly three years ago, since which: Production of coca, the raw material of cocaine, has soared: 171,000 hectares were used to grow coca in Colombia in 2017 up 25,000 hectares (17%) on the year before. Provisional figures for 2018 suggest a further increase to record levels; most Colombian cocaine is shipped by Mexican cartels and their partners to the USA and Europe. The appetite for cocaine in the US and Europe remains insatiable cocaine prices in the UK are at their highest since 1990 and the drug is purer than it has been for a decade and while supplies of methamphetamine and synthetic drugs soar. Mexico set new records for murder, with 25,394 homicides in the first nine months of 2018, 18% up on the 21,460 recorded in the same period of 2017, the highest figure since records began in 1997, according to the interior ministry. In his final report to the nation, Mexican president Enrique Pea Nieto blamed the surge on the polices inability to combat small criminal gangs which arose after Guzmn and other major cartel leaders were captured. On 10 December 2006, president Felipe Caldern, launched Mexicos war on drugs by sending 6,500 troops into his home state of Michoacn, where rival cartels were engaged in tit-for-tat massacres. Caldern declared war eight days after taking power a move widely seen as an attempt to boost his own legitimacy after a bitterly contested election victory. Within two months, around 20,000 troops were involved in operations across the country. The US has donated at least $1.5bn through the Merida Initiative since 2008, while Mexico has spent at least $54bn on security and defence since 2007. Critics say that this influx of cash has helped create an opaque security industry open to corruption at every level. But the biggest costs have been human: since 2007, around 230,000 people have been murdered and more than 28,000 reported as disappeared. Human rights groups have also detailed a vast rise in human rights abuses by security forces. As the cartels have fractured and diversified, other violent crimes such as kidnapping and extortion have also surged. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by violence. Improved collaboration between the US and Mexico has resulted in numerous high-profile arrests and drug busts. Officials say 25 of the 37 drug traffickers on Calderns most-wanted list have been jailed, extradited to the US or killed, although not all of these actions have been independently corroborated. The biggest victory and most embarrassing blunder under Pea Nietos leadership was the recapture, escape and another recapture of Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn, leader of the Sinaloa cartel. While the crackdown and capture of kingpins has won praise from the media and US, it has done little to reduce the violence. Mexicos decade-long war on drugs would never have been possible without the huge injection of American cash and military cooperation under the Merida Initiative. The funds have continued to flow despite growing evidence of serious human rights violations. Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP But even before El Chapos trial, there was always widespread suspicion that successive Mexican governments had collaborated with the Sinaloa cartel against rivals less easy to control, to forge a Pax Mafiosa. On the ground, Sinaloa remains a force to be reckoned with, still shipping drugs north even as the fight for local markets in Mexico sends murder rates soaring. 'The only two powerful cartels left': rivals clash in Mexico's murder capital Read more Where the cartel is overstretched or torn apart by internecine war rival factions ramp up the violence and other cartels emerge to fill the vacuum. Once seen as a newcomer eager to make its mark, the Jalisco New Generation cartel is now a major player. The Zetas are no longer as strong as they once were, but they never lost the north-east and west coasts, nor the worlds busiest international trade crossing from Nuevo Laredo into Laredo, Texas. Meanwhile Mexican society has become brutalised: in the shadow of narco-trafficking violence come killings over other illicit economies, femicides and appalling levels of domestic violence. The products cocaine, meth, heroin - flow with the same official impunity with Guzmn arrested, extradited and convicted as at any other time. And Mexicos new president Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador seems as committed as his predecessors to the militarized anti-drugs strategy that has only contributed to the bloodshed. Guzmns conviction is a historic moment, but its legacy could be measured against that of less trumpeted moments in the narco-narrative. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emma Coronel Aispuro, center, wife of El Chapo leaving the US federal courthouse after a verdict was announced at the trial on Tuesday. Photograph: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images One was an appeal by then Colombian president Juan Manual Santos to the Organisation of American States at its summit in Cartagea in 2010, to tear up the war on drugs battle plan, and start again on the basis of co-responsibility between producing nations torn apart by violence over narco-traffic, and consuming countries where the noses, veins and pill-wrappers are, and where the money gets cleaned. The response from President Barack Obama was a rare admission that its really a two-way situation here but the war on drugs raged on, racking up more statistics of death and loss. Then there are those other figures: the dollars. The most revealing testimony of the trial came from Jess Zambada Garca, the accountant of the Sinaloa cartel. He explained how a successful shipment to New York would yield $390m in clear profit, to share between five investors, including his brother Ismael Zambada Garca El Mayo who co-founded the federation with Guzmn. Asked how many shipments he would make in a year to US entrepots, Zambada replied: hundreds. Theres no evidence to suggest that is not still the case only that there is a vacancy around the investment opportunity table. Guzmns trial marked the end of one of the worlds largest manhunts. An exhaustive report on the micro- and macro-economies of cocaine, published in 2012 by two academics at the Universitad de los Andes in Bogot concluded that 2.6% of the street value of cocaine from Colombia stays there, while 96.4% swills through distribution networks and banks in consuming countries. Colombian society has suffered to almost no economic advantage from the drugs trade, said one of the reports authors Alejandro Gavria, while huge profits are made by criminal distribution networks in consuming countries, and recycled by banks which operate with nothing like the restrictions that Colombias own banking system is subject to. At Guzmns trial, we heard about shipments, from Colombia via Mexico to the US, but this language that never reached the courtroom; the money always went back to Mexico: planes and Samsonite bags of cash flown and hauled here and there. But we know it doesnt stay in Mexico. Across the East River from the Brooklyn courthouse is the US headquarters of HSBC, through which hundreds of millions of dollars of profits were laundered for distribution through the legal economy. How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs Read more The Wachovia bank did the same with even greater amounts, admitted to the US district court of southern Florida. In both cases, the punishment was admonition. An indictment of Guzmn filed in El Paso in 2012 accuses him of running a vast money-laundering apparatus. An indictment in southern Florida filed in 2014 after the Wachovia settlement lists 92 wire transfers conducted by associates of Guzmn between 2003 and 2007, worth tens and hundreds of dollars each, through a branch of Bank of America in Oklahoma City. None of this language featured at trial. Guzmns defence lawyers also adopted the vision of a single integrated cartel, only they argued that it was ruled by El Mayo the man who co-founded the federation with El Chapo and then shopped him to the authorities. Guzmns trial marked the end of one of the worlds largest manhunts. El Mayo has kept a much lower profile than El Chapo, who was eventually arrested after granting an audience to Hollywood star Sean Penn, but in 2010, Zambada gave a rare interview to Mexicos Proceso magazine. One day I may decide to turn myself in, so they can shoot me, and therell be general euphoria, said the veteran drug lord. But we all know that at the end of the day, nothing will have changed. | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/13/el-chapo-conviction-drug-war-drug-trade |
Who would pay 615 for a pair of dirty Gucci trainers? | The brand is selling a range of sneakers with a distressed effect. But they certainly arent dirt cheap Name: Gucci. Age: 98. Appearance: Expensive, avant garde, filthy. Not quite. Filthy as in: This Gucci product has filth on it. In that case, I guess youd better take it to the dry cleaners. No! That would ruin it. Whenever we talk about fashion I get confused. Look, there is a simple explanation. Gucci has launched a range of filthy trainers. There is the Screener GG sneaker, inspired by vintage sportswear. There is the Rhyton, which pairs best with baggy denim jeans and T-shirts for a completely retro silhouette. There is the Virtus and the Rhyton Lips, also both filthy. I suppose it makes sense to sell damaged stock at a discount. It would, but these shoes are filthy on purpose. Someone at Gucci decided that dirty trainers look cool. They can be distractingly bright when theyre brand new, I suppose. So this range of shoes has what is known as a dirty look, which means they have been treated for an all-over distressed effect. Not unless you consider 615 cheap for a pair of shoes. I dont consider 615 cheap for 10 pairs of shoes! Well, there we are, then. OK, you were right. It is simple. It is also ridiculous. Its fashion. The whole point is to be edgy. If you want to be cool, you have to dare to walk the fine line between looking sensible and looking offensive or ridiculous. Ive stuffed some underpants up my nose. Too far on the other side of the line. Please dont. Gucci itself was blundering into that just last week. It released a black jumper with a huge polo neck that rolls up all the way over your nose, with big red lips printed on the opening around the mouth. Instant half-blackface, basically. Crumbs. After the uproar, Gucci removed the jumper from sale, and the creative director, Alessandro Michele, explained that he was trying to pay tribute to the 1990s club legend Leigh Bowery, who often used face coverings and giant red lips. I bet everybody got that reference right away. Yeah. Im not sure they did. But at least these shoes dont actually insult anybody. Do say: Gorgeous. Is there a risk they might get clean? | https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2019/feb/13/615-pounds-dirty-gucci-trainers |
Should kids learn multiple languages in school? | From elementary school to high school, kids learn things like math, reading and basic science. But for many kids, some subjects--like learning a second language--are not offered at all. Research shows that learning multiple languages early onimproves brain function and increases empathy, and many believe it should be required learning in all schools. Others say students already have enough on their plate. PERSPECTIVES There's no question that students benefit from learning a second language. According to Panda Tree, a site dedicated to helping young kids learn multiple languages, research shows that bilingual kids and adults have higher brain function than their monolingual peers, particularly when it comes to skills like multi-tasking and paying attention. Furthermore, when kids learn a second language, they are more likely to perform well on standardized tests: Studies of tens of thousands of high school students have found that students who have studied foreign languages perform better on the American College Test (ACT) for English and Mathematics. Additional studies have found that SAT-verbal scores improve with the length of time students have studied the foreign language. Given the importance school systems place on standardized tests, particularly the ACT and the SAT, it seems like a no-brainer that a second language would be included in every curriculum. It will help achieve a district's goals. Classes That SHOULD Be Mandatory in High School: - Accounting - Money Management - Taxes - How to Build and Keep Good Credit - Establishing a Job/Career - Nutrition - Self-Defense Also, Americans should be forced to be fluent in at least one other language. -- Omni (@InfernoOmni) April 27, 2018 Others don't see these "spillover" benefits as worth the time it would take to for all elementary students to study a second language. According to Forbes' Art Carden, studying another language in school is a waste of time, especially given how few students end up becoming fluent in the languages they study. Carden ties the question of studying multiple languages to the first lesson of economics: scarcity. By choosing to do one thing, you're choosing not to do another, and additional language study would have to come at the expense of something else--something else that people, facing the incentives and constraints they currently face, have deemed more important than a little more language learning. According to Carden, other classes like art history, or even economics itself, would have a more lasting impact on students, while still increasing their cultural understanding much in the same way studying a second language would. Doubtful. Keep in mind, the U.S. does not have an official language. So when it comes to learning a second language, some could argue it's every young person's civic duty. Although English is the most common language in America, the U.S. is also home to over 40 million native speakers of Spanish, Chinese, and French collectively. In a country of immigrants, it is essential that the American education system encourage diversity of language. Furthermore, learning a second language early on in life can increase your ability to empathize with others. Panda Tree's founder, Kristina Klausen, looked to Dr. Katherine Kinzler of Cornell University for insight: As Dr. Kinzler explains, "children in multilingual environments have social experiences that provide routine practice in considering the perspectives of others: they have to think about who speaks which language to whom, who understands which content, and the times and places in which different languages are spoken." Given the country's current divide and rhetoric when it comes to immigration and refugees, empathy through learning would surely only help. it amazes me how so many school curriculums teach foreign language solely in hs -- red cr7 (@lockeheartt) September 28, 2018 Even experts in the field agree that learning multiple languages in school is a waste of time. HuffPost's linguist and lexicographer Delfin Carbonell, Ph.D. is of the mind that many monolingual people and societies get on perfectly well with their single language. Furthermore, there are roughly 6,500 languages spoken across the globe, and Carbonell argues that the multitude of choices make it impossible to dictate curriculums that include foreign language options for students. Instead of arguing over Chinese for students' future business opportunities or Spanish to promote unity, Carbonell's advice is simple: when in doubt, abstain. The reformed linguist finishes his proclamation, saying: I have come to the conclusion that life is short and we should not waste a minute of it with the effort, time and money involved in language-learning. It takes years and years and the result is never satisfactory: native speakers will always mock our accent, mimic our ways and call us names...Body language gives us plenty of possibilities to convey our thoughts and can be "spoken" in all countries...I have turned into a convert scoff-language linguist. Learning a Second Language is a Waste of Time The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, we'd love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.nola.com/interact/2019/02/should_kids_learn_multiple_lan.html |
Have The Grammy Awards Found a New Tune? | Derek Ali, Ludwig Goransson, and Riley Mackin accept the Record Of The Year award for 'This Is America' onstage during GRAMMY Awards on Feb. 10, 2019 in Los Angeles. Janet Jackson was nominated for three Grammy Awards in 1987. I remember it being a really big deal at the time. Jackson was up for Album of the Year, Best R&B Song for What Have You Done for Me Lately, and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. Shed been killing it as a solo artist. No longer an offshoot of the Jackson family tree, she was now a fully independent and creative voice. Her album, Control, had become an anthem for black women. (Control producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were also nominated and came up short.) Jackson lost Album of the Year to Paul Simons Graceland, a lovely and enduring work, lauded at the time for its adventurous use of African rhythms. Fun fact: Simon violated an industry-wide and UN-sanctioned boycott of South Africa and its brutal apartheid regime to record it. I mention it because, well, Im still pretty salty about it. Disappointment and saltiness are two of the Grammy Awards enduring legacies, an annual spectacle which has often come tantalizingly close to acknowledging the influence of black and brown hip hop artists and women of color on global culture and then hands the nod to, well, Paul Simon. Or, more recently, Macklemore. The snubs in recent years have felt particularly egregious, explains Tamara Best. In 2014, Kendrick Lamars good kid, m.A.A.d city lost Best Rap Album to The Heist by the aforementioned Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. And then in 2017, Beyoncs extraordinary Lemonade lost to Adeles 25. (Both, I might add, are extraordinarily talented artists who publicly acknowledged the oversight themselves.) Of all the recent snubs, this one was a hard moment to witness, says Best. Lemonade single-handedly changed the way music was released and experienced. It was also Queen Beys crowning artistic achievement to datea love letter to and for black women about pain, healing and reconciliation. Enough is enough, as the song goes. Three A-List artists, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Childish Gambino declined to perform on the Grammy stage this year; Donald Glover (as Childish Gambino), Beyonc, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, and Ariana Grande all declined to attend. We continue to have a problem in the hip-hop world, Ken Ehrlich, the shows producer, told The Guardian. When they dont take home the big prize, the regard of the academy, and what the Grammys represent, continues to be less meaningful to the hip-hop community, which is sad. Its not sad its disrespected clout. According to Nielsen, eight of the top ten most popular recording artists of 2018 were hip hop artists. Drake, who won best rap song for Gods Plan, shocked everyone by showing up in person, something he hasnt done since 2013. He used his acceptance speech to reassure snubbed and aspiring musicians that awards dont matter which the producers promptly cut short for a commercial. (Also, I dont know why Jennifer Lopez led the Motown tribute. Lets just move on.) All that said, this years Grammy Awards added some needed sweet to the salt. For starters, it remedied the egregious exclusion of female artists last year. I guess this year we really stepped up, said Dua Lipa, who won for Best New Artist, alluding to an ill-received remark from the head of the Recording Academy about the underrepresentation of women last year. The vibe was peace, love, and inclusion from the very start, and host Alicia Keys did an extraordinary job setting the tone and performing throughout the show. Music is our shared global language, she said. And forever First Lady Michelle Obama made a surprise appearance and frankly, could have read a grocery list, and it would have been fine. Instead, she opted for inspiration. Music shows us that all of it matters, every story within every voice, every note within every song. And though there were disappointments, there were breakthroughs. Cardi B made history by becoming the first solo woman to win the Best Rap Album award for Invasion of Privacy, and of course, Childish Gambino won both Record and Song of the Year. His absence spoke volumes. But so did the utterly gracious Black Panther composer Ludwig Gransson, who was credited for Song of the Year along with Gambino, and accepted the award without him. Gransson was the only artist who mentioned 21 Savage last night. (The rapper is currently detained by immigration officials.) We want to thank all the rappers that are featured on the song. 21 Savage, who should be here tonight, he began. As a kid growing up in Sweden loving American music, I always dreamt of migrating here and work with brilliant artists like Donald Glover, he said pointedly. I really wish he was here with us right now, because it was really his vision. No matter where youre born or where youre from, you connect with This is America It calls out injustice, celebrates life and reunites us all at the same time. | http://fortune.com/2019/02/11/have-the-grammy-awards-found-a-new-tune/ |
Should 'austerity' be a dirty word? | Voter Anger Sweeps Europe, screams the Wall Street Journal the morning after elections in Europe. Oh my! The incredible selfishness driving the voters of Europe boggles the mind. In France, industrial production is down; consumer prices are up, in March the unemployment rate was close to 10%. In Greece, the statistics are similar, only with the unemployment rate around 20%. The economy in all of Europe, and most countries around the world, is in rough shape and the voters yet are demanding more handouts, angry that their governments say they cant afford them. Here in the United States, we see a similar attitude in the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Their attitude conveys a We deserve what the rich have forget about the fact most of the rich earned their money. As Governor John Kasich of Ohio put it, There is no money. Government overspending has helped to bring our economy into what is now called the Great Recession. The presidents vaunted stimulus packages didnt stimulate private sector jobs. Since Obama came into office, America has lost a net of 740,000 according to Elizabeth McDonald of the Fox Business network. Housing prices are down, food costs are up, health care costs are up. Large numbers of people who were formerly looking for work have become discouraged and simply stopped looking. There are fewer jobs. Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Streeters are busy planning their next rage rumble, demanding more taxes on the rich and more government support. Waving signs, shouting loud slogans, striking at the factories that have been paying you to put bread on your table wont put more real money in your pocket. If you want to lose weight, put down that fork. In the present US economy, we all need to step back from the trough. Now is a good time, before this governments spending forces another reduction in our national credit rating. [pullquote] It will take a disciplined approach on the part of our elected officials to carefully lift the economy from its current precariousness. Call it whatever you want, but without a strong dose of self-control now, our country can expect to be in the shoes of Greece sometime in the future. The question is whether the citizens of America have the backbone and willingness to be unselfish in their demands and self-interested enough to do what has to be done to secure a future for the nation. Austerity is not a dirty word. In fact, in a well thought out design, it is a road to the future. Republican Sue Kelly represented New York's 19th District in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2007. | https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/should-austerity-be-a-dirty-word |
Is the AAF already better than the NFL? | The Alliance of American Football league made its debut, and the first week was a big hit. Viewers were treated to a huge hit on a quarterback, transparent replay challenges and no kickoffs, all of which made for great reviews on social media. Many enjoyed the fresh approach to the sport. While the AAF might be the new kid on the block, others feel the NFL is still a better product with better athletes and competition. PERSPECTIVES Look out, NFL. There's a new football brand on the block and it's changing the way people are thinking of football. Unlike its more established counterpart, the Alliance of American Football is taking risks and it's paying off. San Diego Fleet quarterback Mike Bercovici took a massive, but legal hit that would've easily been a flag in the NFL, playing to the desire of fans who want to see old school football. There's also no field goals in overtime, only two-point conversions and onside kicks are replaced with the option to attempt 4th & 10 at own 35-yard line. One week in and the AAF is already more fun than the NFL! Wow! That's revolutionary! The NFL tries to hide behind a shroud of mystery at all times, while the AAF actually takes you into the replay booth to see and hear what the official thinks. It won't stop bad calls, but at least you know there is some clarity and accountability with each decision. Oh, it is... The American Alliance of Football is only getting attention because of one big hit and the Philly Special being run. Everything else about the league pales in comparison to the NFL. The two games that happened was a 34-point blowout and a 15-6 snoozefest. There's nothing exciting about football like that. It's like what happened the XFL. People flocked to it because it was football when there was no NFL, but as soon as the difference in quality became apparent, fans stopped tuning in. The NFL might have its problems, but thinking the AAF or any other football league is on the same level as the Shield is asinine. Did people already forget about the 100+ shootout between the Rams and Chiefs during the regular season?! Week in and week out, there's always an exciting matchup. The National Football League is still the best football anyone will ever see in the world. From wide receivers throwing TD passes to the Miami Miracle: 2018 NFL season's best plays How quickly they forget. Athletes playing the AAF are NFL rejects. While the Alliance of American Football is giving table scrap-levels of football, the National Football League serves up prime rib. The athletes that play in the NFL perform some of the most ridiculous athlete feats ever seen. The AAF might get lucky, but they can't pull off the kinds of highlights their rivals put out every week. The 20 most freakish athletes in the NFL The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, we'd love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.nola.com/interact/2019/02/is_the_aaf_already_better_than.html |
Can artificial intelligence prevent the next Parkland shooting? | Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School walk through the Florida state Capitol in Tallahassee. (Photo: COLIN ABBEY, EPA-EFE) Schools are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence-backed solutions to stop tragic acts of student violence such as the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a year ago. Bark Technologies, Gaggle.Net, and Securly Inc. are three companies that employ AI and machine learning to scan student emails, texts, documents, and in some cases, social media activity. They look for warning signs of cyber bullying, sexting, drug and alcohol use, depression, and to flag students who may pose a violent risk not only to themselves, but classmates. When potential problems are found, and depending on the severity, school administrators, parents and under the most extreme cases law enforcement officials, are alerted. In the fall of 2017, Bark ran a test pilot with 25 schools. We found some pretty alarming issues, including a bombing and school shooting threat, says Bark chief parent officer, Titania Jordan. A few months later Parkland happened and we knew what we had, and how it could help, but we didnt want to seem opportunistic or capitalize on a tragedy, Jordan said. The Bark product is free to schools in the U.S. for perpetuity. The company says it can afford to give the service away to schools, because of the money it makes from a version aimed at parents. There are limitations. None of the companies USA TODAY talked to for this story claim the ability to catch suspect behavior every time. Loosely defined, artificial intelligence describes machines that may demonstrate human behavior and learn from the data they digest. False positives sometimes arise. A school can't police a student's smartphone or other devices outside the ones it issued, unless the student signed into a social media, or other account, using the email or credentials the school provided. Students also are often more tech savvy than their parents and won't tell them about every account they have. Parkland one year later: 'They have made change': 1 year after carnage in Parkland, where key figures are now If an issue is detected, Bark sends a text and/or email alert to parents and schools, with recommended steps on how to address the issue. Barks parent product costs $9 per month, per family, or $99 per year, and includes monitoring across more than 25 social media platforms, from Twitter and Instagram to Snapchat and YouTube. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School make their way inside the Florida state Capitol in Tallahassee. (Photo: COLIN ABBEY, EPA-EFE) Bark is currently used in more than 1,100 school districts, covering 2.6 million children. If it detects something that is considered exceedingly severe such as a child abduction or school shooting threat, the issue is escalated to the FBI. According to Jordan, Bark sends out between 35,000 and 55,000 alerts each day, many just instances of profanity. But 16 plausible school shootings have been reported to the FBI since Bark launched its school product last February, she says. Preventing deaths by suicide Gaggle, which has been around 20 years, charges schools $6 per student, per year. Since July 1, the company claims to have stopped 447 deaths by suicide at the 1,400 school districts that use its service, and that last year it prevented 542 potential deaths by suicide. Gaggle also says it stopped 240 instances last year where a child brought a weapon to school to harm another student or intended to. Under such circumstances, Gaggle will immediately alert an emergency contact at the school and, if needed, law enforcement. "Studies have shown that kids will communicate before a violent act happens and they will communicate electronically. If you don't have the means to hear those cries out for help you're going to have children in jeopardy," said Bill McCullough, vice president of sales at Gaggle. Bark for Schools monitors student communications. (Photo: Bark) McCullough adds that the company doesnt rely on machine learning alone to make threat determinations. If a Gaggle scan of school-issued emails and documents uncovers a child in crisis, the content is analyzed by trained human safety experts who verify whether the threat is legitimate and then determine its severity. If the threat is deemed minor, maybe the use of profanity, a student may be warned directly. If a students life is considered to be in jeopardy, an emergency contact at the school is notified immediately. For its part, a third company, Securly, works with about 2,000 school districts. It charges $3 per student per year for a flagship product called Filter, with premium add-ons that can add about $2.50 per student to the cost. This past October, one of Securly's premium services known as 24it combines AI with trained human analystsflagged a student who had searched Google for both "how to make a bomb" and "how to kill yourself." The analyst contacted the school. Another recent example involved a student who searched for "painless ways to kill yourself" and watched YouTube videos on the topic. As AI systems have become more sophisticated, so has the machines' ability to apply contextual analysis to determine if theres real danger, or if school-age friends are harmlessly using what looks like threatening language to just rag on one another, maybe when playing a game. Our machine learning algorithm is smart enough to know the difference between a tween texting another tween KMS which stands for kill myself if theyre just embarrassed.and using it as a colloquialism. (Or) somebody with an actual propensity to have depression, anxiety or expressing the desire to take their own life or do harm," Jordan says. McCullough at Gaggle, says the companys algorithms are constantly being updated to detect the tone of despair in a message, to pick up symbols and misspellings, and to better analyze language. Weve had suicides that weve stopped where theres no word of kill or suicide in there, McCullough says. Gaggle may even warn the authorities of threats coming not from a school district it monitors but outside. "We had one instance where a third grade girl was getting solicited by an outside email address asking for nude pictures or that person was going to kill her parents," McCullough says. "She tried to send those pictures but because we run our service live, it never got out of our environment. The person was arrested. Balancing privacy, cost There is a delicate balance on privacy, says Rob McCartney, director of technology at the Sioux Central school district in Iowa, which uses Bark. Even though the school district we manage and maintain owns the students email addresses, the (student) has the right to a sufficient amount of privacy without us going in and looking and saying, `oh this is who your boyfriend is, or you came home late last night? Thats not what were there for. Vinay Mahadik, CEO of Securly, also navigates the fine line between privacy and security: We go to a lot of effort in trying to be a responsible company. Not a single time has a parent that weve served or a school district that we helped come back and told us that this is an awful thing that youre doing." McCartney appreciates that Bark is free, given the tight budget constraints many school districts face. But Rich OMalley, superintendent of Florence 1 schools in South Carolina, a district which pays for Gaggle, says that just saving one life or being able to touch one student who has an issue makes it priceless. As a superintendent, probably the number one issue I hear from parents is school security." Email: [email protected]; Follow @edbaig on Twitter Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/02/13/preventing-next-parkland-artificial-intelligence-may-help/2801369002/ | https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/02/13/preventing-next-parkland-artificial-intelligence-may-help/2801369002/ |
Is Renewables' Production Tax Credit Bullet Proof? | In the 1970s, I studied defense policy at M.I.T. but became disillusioned. One of the recent graduates, then working in the Senate, described how large amounts of quantitative research would be set aside by politicians who focused on spending that benefit their particular constituents. The archetypal current case would be Senator Bernie Sanders, who rails against the military-industrial complex, but supports weapons systems that bring jobs to Vermont, such as the F-35. https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-loves-this-dollar1-trillion-war-machine He notes himself that the industry spreads contracts around so as to have as many politicians supporting the jobs in their districts or states, a practice that probably originated with international defense contracts where companies agreed to undertake some production in the purchasing nation. Although I cant claim insight into the thinking of defense industry executives, it certainly appears as if this is a conscious strategy. A superficial look at renewable energy suggests that the solar and wind sectors have followed a similar pattern. The two tables below show that much of the increased generation (not capacity) has been in states that would be considered Red or Republican, based on their Senators. Although Republicans have 53% of the Senate, of the top wind states, they are nearly 80% and the top solar states just under 70%. (For my metric, I used the change in generation from 2014-2017; investment spending will differ based on capacity factor and relative costs. I suspect solar power in California costs more per watt of capacity than in, say, Arizona.) [Generation is utility sized systems, not residential. Potential for solar power from "Massachusetts Surprising Candidate for Solar Power," Topline Strategy Group.] This is hardly a precise measure, although I have tried to correct for ranking of the resource, that is, the potential solar and wind power, to show how attractive each state should be relative to others, as well as the increased generation relative to total generation (which makes Californias solar power increase look much smaller compared to Nevadas, which is on a lower base.) And I couldnt rank the potential wind power by state because it varies by height: flat states dont have much potential for generation by tall towers, while more mountainous states have most of their potential at higher levels. It is clear, though, that local conditions are often important drivers of investment, as Californias solar power has grown the fastest (relative to total generation) even though Arizona has much more potential. Presumably the difference lies in state tax credits and subsidies, including pricing, inasmuch as electricity prices are higher in California than Arizona. (Not clear to me whether theres more solar investment in California because electricity prices are higher and the investment is more attractive, or electricity prices in California are higher because the state government is shoe-horning expensive solar power into the system. Or how much of each.) But it seems quite obvious that extending Production Tax Credit past its 2020 expiration date will be easy with the current Congress, since Democrats are likely to vote almost unanimously in favor and in the Senate, there should be good Republican support. Unlike the defense industry, this political calculus seems more serendipitous than intentional, especially given the strong Republican presence in states like Texas and North Dakota that have superior wind potential. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2019/02/13/is-renewables-production-tax-credit-bullet-proof/ |
How many Kyler Murrays are out there in specialization era? | Kyler Murray has chosen football over baseball, at least for now. It is anyones guess when the world will see another athlete with the skills and opportunity to have such a choice. The Oakland Athletics selected Murray ninth overall in the Major League Baseball draft last June. He then went out and won the Heisman Trophy in his only year as Oklahomas starting quarterback, declared for the NFL draft last month and picked the NFL over MLB on Monday. Few athletes have positioned themselves to have such dynamic options. And in this age of youth sports specialization, it may become rarer still. Deion Sanders played pro football and baseball, and Prime Time has a special place in his heart for athletes who excel at a high level in both sports. He wishes more young men had the same opportunities as Murray, but laments that youth sports coaches often encourage kids to pick one main sport at an early age. Youve got some idiot in a youth league telling a kid, If you just focus on this one thing, youre going to be great, Sanders said. Then, youve got the same (kind of) idiot in high school Youre not going to play this other sport because Im not going to let you start until you dedicate yourself. Sports specialization has drawn a lot of attention in recent years, with baseball greats such as John Smoltz suggesting it can hurt young players simply because of the wear and tear. Still, many believe it has its place. After all, most athletes dont have the gifts of Murray, Sanders or Bo Jackson, the 1986 Heisman winner for Auburn who was an All-Star for the Kansas City Royals in 1989 and made the Pro Bowl for the Los Angeles Raiders in 1990. Tom Westerberg, Murrays football coach at Allen (Texas) High School who now coaches at Barbers Hill (Texas) High, said even the really good ones often are best served honing their skills in one sport. Athletes like him (Murray) come around once in a long time, with that athletic ability and been doing it for that long, Westerberg said. You can name the Bo Jacksons, the Deion Sanderses you can name those guys on one hand. So its not that all of a sudden you tell a kid to play multiple sports and youre going to get a ton of Kyler Murrays and Deion Sanderses. And having options comes with complications and questions. Back in 1992, Sanders played cornerback for the Atlanta Falcons during the day in Miami, then flew to Pittsburgh to join his Atlanta Braves teammates for a National League Championship Series game. Sanders looked back at that day during a recent ESPN documentary called Deions Double Play. Sanders true love was football, and it was his focus. He is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and had a productive baseball career, but he offered a glimpse of what might have been during the 1992 World Series, when he hit .533 with four runs, eight hits and two doubles in four games. I regret often that I didnt put a lot more into the game of baseball, Sanders said. I really do. I have those thoughts often. Oklahoma baseball coach Skip Johnson said being special in both sports requires brains, too. Murray said he has been clocked at 4.3 seconds in the 40-yard dash, yet Johnson said his unusually high intellect is what allowed him to progress in both sports. To have the thought process that Kyler has, to go through the things that he has, to learn (Oklahoma football coach) Lincoln Rileys system, to learn our system in baseball it just goes to show you what kind of aptitude that guy has as an athlete, Johnson said. Dr. Mininder Kocher, a professor at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Division of Sports Medicine at Boston Childrens Hospital, has contributed to research that shows youth sports specialization is on the rise. He said the fact that Murray played both football and baseball for so long might have helped him excel in both. On one hand, he clearly is sort of a unique athlete maybe genetically or maybe just intrinsic athleticism that he can be so good at two different sports, Kocher said. Some of that might just be a blip, that hes that good of an athlete. Part of it is that there are transferrable skills. Its good for the body to be doing different sports because youre not doing the same movement patterns over and over and over again. Murrays success makes Johnson more than willing to look for more multi-sport superstars. Last season, Murray hit .296, had a .556 slugging percentage and hit 10 home runs in 189 at bats for the Sooners. Theres more athletes out there that can do the same thing, Johnson said. Follow Cliff Brunt on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/CliffBruntAP More AP college football: https://apnews.com/tag/Collegefootball and https://twitter.com/APTop25 | https://nationalpost.com/pmn/sports-pmn/football-sports-pmn/how-many-kyler-murrays-are-out-there-in-specialization-era |
How long can Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke afford to wait to jump into 2020 race? | As the field of presidential hopefuls landing in Iowa continues to grow, the three Democratic contenders most preferred by Iowans still aren't in the race. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke led the field in a December Iowa Poll, but none has formally announced their intentions yet. "I think those are the big three that everyones waiting for," said Jeremy Dumkrieger, chairman of the Woodbury County Democrats. While those three remain on the sidelines, a slew of other candidates have kept busy hiring Iowa staffers and holding rallies in their quests to unseat Republican President Donald Trump. Presidential contenders Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Kirsten Gillibrand and Julin Castro all campaigned or will campaign in Iowa this month. Amy Klobuchar will visit Iowa just days after declaring her candidacy. Enthusiasm building around the Democrats already running risks leaving behind candidates who are still flirting with potential runs. But Dumkrieger said Sanders and Biden both have plenty of name recognition and support from previous Iowa caucus bids that likely affords them more time to make a decision. Many view O'Rourke, 46, who narrowly lost to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in November's election, as a "young rock star," he said. But time may be running out on him and any other lesser-known candidates who want to compete in a very crowded field. Polling shows Biden and Sanders enjoy near-universal name recognition in Iowa, but ORourke is less known. More: Former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso, appears with Oprah Winfrey for "Oprah's SuperSoul Conversations from Times Square" on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019, in New York. The lineup also featured actors Bradley Cooper and Michael B. Jordan and philanthropist Melinda Gates, underscoring the sense of celebrity that surrounds O'Rourke. More 'I think it's time for something new' On Friday, local leaders shared the stage with Booker at a campaign forum in Waterloo, Iowa. In the crowd, Waterloo Democrat Marna Creery liked what she heard from the New Jersey senator, but said she'd consider other young candidates like O'Rourke. I hope Joe Biden and Bernie dont get in, said Creery, a retired postal worker who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 caucuses. I think its time for something new. Im looking for fresh ideas. O'Rourke, a previous three-term congressman, gained celebrity status as he propelled a long-shot campaign into a close contest against Cruz. Cruz won the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2016 before losing the GOP nomination to Trump. While O'Rourke has not responded to invitations from local Democratic Party officials, he told Oprah Winfrey on Feb. 5 that he plans to decide whether to run by the end of the month. "I've got to tell you, and you can tell, I'm so excited at the prospect of being able to play that role," he said. Still, he has his work to do here: About a third of likely Democratic caucusgoers said they didnt know enough about him to form a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him, according to a December Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll. Just 4 percent of likely caucusgoers said Biden and Sanders were unknown to them. A national poll from Morning Consult released this week showed Biden led with 29 percent of respondents choosing him as their preferred candidate for the Democratic nomination. He was trailed by Sanders and California Sen. Kamala Harris. On Monday, the McClatchy news service reported that interviews with 31 Democratic operatives revealed deep pessimism about a potential Biden run. That story cited the former vice president's age (76), his policy baggage and the field of fresh faces igniting passion in the party. Those concerns were echoed by others in Waterloo. Democrat Darcy Stoen, 51, of Evansdale, said she liked Biden because of his record as vice president and as a Delaware senator. | https://news.yahoo.com/long-joe-biden-bernie-sanders-191646631.html |
Did Kacey Musgraves deserve her Album of the Year win at the 2019 Grammys? | The internet is divided on if Kacey Musgraves should have won Album of the Year at the 2019 Grammys. The country singer is far from new to the music scene, but according to her, she still has trouble getting her music played on country radio. So many music lovers may be unfamiliar with her. Musgraves has a strong fanbase, but considering she was up against artists like Janelle Monae, Drake and Cardi B for Album of the Year some were blindsided by her win. PERSPECTIVES Musgraves won a Grammy for her album "Golden Hour" and her fans felt it was well deserved. Musgraves is a Texas native and has come along way in music since she released her first single in 2012. kacey musgraves winning album of the year feels like the first time in forever that someone who deserved to win album of the year, won. -- steven j. horowitz (@speriod) February 11, 2019 Kacey Musgraves had the best, most accessible and critically adored album of any Album of the Year nominees, but radio wouldn't touch it. Just proves how out of touch and completely irrelevant radio is in 2019. -- new york nick (@NickEdwardEvans) February 11, 2019 Some viewers of the 2019 GRAMMYs had never heard of Musgraves and were blindsided by her win. #GRAMMYs -- Jarius Jackson (@JJtruble) February 11, 2019 Who tf is Kacey Musgraves and how did she win Album of the Year! [?] -- Okuurrt (@reddyy_freddy) February 11, 2019 The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, we'd love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.nola.com/interact/2019/02/did_kacey_musgraves_deserve_he.html |
What does Kris Abrams-Draines Top 10 list mean for his LSU commitment? | Despite releasing a Top 10 list of his favorite schools recently, Spanish Fort 2020 receiver Kris Abrams-Draine said he is still committed to LSU. The four-star prospect committed to the Bengal Tigers last March. Last week, he released on Twitter a Top 10 that along with LSU also included Arkansas, Nebraska, Mississippi State, Oregon, Tennessee, Kansas, Florida, Indiana and Ole Miss. I just wanted to let everyone know my recruitment is open, Abrams-Draine said following Spanish Forts loss to rival Daphne in the Class 6A, Area 2 championship basketball game. Im still committed, but its open. T O P T E N pic.twitter.com/iFY43sH86g Kris Abrams-Draine (@KD1ERA) January 30, 2019 The 6-foot, 160-pound Abrams-Draine, No. 10 among 2020 recruits in the state of Alabama on the latest 247 Sports composite rankings, said he plans to visit LSU again soon but also would like to take visits to Arkansas and Oregon among other schools. His former Spanish Fort teammate, cornerback D.J. James, signed with Oregon last week. D.J. has told me a lot about it, Abrams-Draine said. He said, when you go up there, its way nicer than you can imagine. In his past two seasons at Spanish Fort, Abrams-Draine has caught 99 passes for 1,487 yards and 22 TDs. As a junior, he finished with 941 all-purpose yards and 14 touchdowns while spending time at quarterback, wide receiver and kick returner. John Garcia Jr., a recruiting analyst for 247 Sports, said Abrams-Draine could be the most explosive offensive player in the state next season. A look at the state's top recruits for 2020 I would imagine he would have a big senior year, Spanish Fort head coach Ben Blackmon said. Hes been an incredibly versatile player for us. I dont think that will change next fall either. Blackmon said Abrams-Draines determination to improve in the offseason has been evident. If he works at it and I think he will he can be as good as anyone has ever been at the next level, Blackmon said. I think he has the capability to be THAT guy. I can see his determination. I can see him maturing. Hes coming in right now at 6:30 every morning to lift weights, and that is during basketball season. He wants to get stronger and wants to keep improving. LSU has another strong year in Mobile | https://www.nola.com/sports/2019/02/what-does-kris-abrams-draines-top-10-list-mean-for-his-lsu-commitment.html |
Does Drew Brees get his due recognition? | Drew Brees became the NFLs all-time leading passer in 2018, but his place in the pantheon of the leagues best quarterbacks remains up for debate. Breaking down the top quarterbacks in league history is purely subjective, but it still seems many people outside New Orleans dont give Brees his due. Tom Brady is widely considered the greatest quarterback of all time, and he surely gained more believers when he won his sixth Super Bowl earlier this month. According to Pro Football References Approximate Value statistic, Peyton Manning is the best quarterback and player in NFL history. Other players mentioned in such a debate might include Joe Montana, Brett Favre, John Elway or Aaron Rodgers. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, three former players and current analysts answered the question of whether Brees career is appropriately appreciated. Probably not, said Phil Simms, the longtime Giants quarterback who works for CBS. Numbers dont mean anything to anybody anymore. It used to be I couldve told you who the leading hitter in baseball was every year. I have no clue anymore. Its a shame, but thats what it comes down to. Having a great season and all that doesnt cross peoples minds anymore. Theyll go, Well, he didnt come through in the one game we needed him and they lost or whatever. So, I dont think hes been appreciated the way he should be. Probably never will be, but his satisfaction of what he did will always be in his brain and heart and his family and all of his teammates. Thats probably the most important thing. Saints could bolster tight end corps after unproductive 2018 Boomer Esiason, another longtime NFL quarterback and CBS analyst, immediately mentioned Super Bowl appearances as a determining factor in how a quarterback is judged. The only thing with Drew is he just doesnt have the nine Super Bowl appearances (like Brady), Esiason said. He has all the numbers. Hes shorter than most. Hes remarkably gifted, and I would say he plays with a chip on his shoulders. And I would say the players that he plays with absolutely love him and respect him, and its one of the reasons why Sean Payton is so good as a coach because hes got a guy on the field that he can trust. Brees and Payton have a lot in common with Brady and Bill Belichick in terms of tenure, but the Patriots quarterback and coach have combined to win six Super Bowls as opposed to the one for the Saints duo. Brees has more passing yards and touchdowns as well as a higher career completion percentage than Brady, but those regular-season stats dont matter to many people as much as postseason success. Still, as Brees continues to rewrite the record books, one of his former teammates thinks hes starting to receive proper due. I dont think he is (appropriately appreciate), but I think were starting to appreciate it, Hall of Fame running back and NFL Network analyst LaDainian Tomlinson said. This guy is an all-time leading passer, 500 touchdowns, Super Bowl win. You name it, he has it, so I think we are now starting to put him in his proper place as an all-time great without question. AAF kicks off without kickoffs, but with SkyJudge | https://www.nola.com/saints/2019/02/does-drew-brees-get-his-due-recognition.html |
Did Donald Trump just launch Beto's presidential campaign? | With a slew of other Democratic hopefuls recently announcing their candidacy, ORourke has remained elusive about a possible run. But his participation in Mondays pro-immigrant March for Truth, which ended in a rally with some 7,000 enthusiastic supporters near the Trump event, certainly looked like the actions of a potential candidate with a competing message to the presidents. Inside the County Coliseum, Trump supporters chanted USA! USA! and Build the Wall! while the president spoke of a dire threat from illegal immigration and an El Paso that thanks to a powerful border wall has become one of America's safest cities. Meanwhile, ORourke offered a more hopeful vision of his hometown. El Paso, he said, was safe not because of walls, but in spite of walls. Secure, because we treat one another with dignity and respect. That is the way we make our communities and our country safe. To chants of No Wall! and Viva Beto! ORourke spoke of the nonprofits, activists and volunteers who help immigrants find food, clothing and shelter upon arrival in the U.S., emphasizing that in El Paso, We stand for America and we stand against walls. We know there is no bargain in which we can sacrifice some of our humanity to gain a little more security. Clearly, Trump and ORourke offer competing views of the potential threat and inherent value of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. But this fact cannot be denied: El Paso was safe long before any physical barrier was erected along the border. As Mayor Dee Margo told CNN this week, going back to 2005 we were one of the safest cities in the nation while construction on the 10 miles of fencing in El Paso did not begin until 2008 and was completed in mid-2009. | https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2019/02/13/donald-trump-just-launch-betos-presidential-campaign |
Is another voting-rights lawsuit against Texas school district a sign of more to come? | Another Dallas-area school district has been sued in federal court over allegations that it is making it hard for residents of color to get elected, adversely affecting the education of minority and low-income children. The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday, alleges that all seven Lewisville board members come from affluent, predominantly white neighborhoods because trustees are elected at-large rather than from single-member districts. As a result, the board fails students of color and those struggling financially because those children are receive a "second-rate" education compared to their peers, particularly in elementary schools, the suit says. The lowest performing schools are those mostly serving poor, Hispanic children, while high performing schools are in the white, more affluent neighborhoods where trustees live. It's the second federal lawsuit in the past year that the Brewer Storefront has brought against a school district challenging how trustees are elected. The storefront is a pro-bono affiliate of the firm Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, which has sued several other districts and cities over voting rights violations, including the Grand Prairie, Irving and Carrollton-Farmers Branch districts. All now use remodeled voting systems. "We believe our community is not only ripe for change but we need change," said William Brewer, a partner at the storefront. "There are these very significant gaps in the educational opportunities that are being made available at Lewisville ISD to some but not others." | https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2019/02/12/another-voting-rights-lawsuit-texas-school-district-sign-come |
Is the Starbucks Cherry Mocha amazing or an abomination? | Love is in the air and so is the smell of coffee. Starbucks is here to add to the rose-tinted month with a new menu addition: the cherry mocha. The chain unveiled the sweet treat in 2018, and while some coffee-drinkers found the beverage to be delicious, others thought it tasted just like cherry medicine. Fans of chocolate-covered cherries can't wait to get their hands on the festive mocha-complete with pink sprinkles-while others won't touch it. PERSPECTIVES Starbucks is the authority on seasonal drinks. Its fall-themed pumpkin spice latte has become a cultural staple. The cherry mocha first hit stores in 2018, and it's making a comeback in 2019. But fans have to be quick; the cherry mocha will only be available until Valentine's Day, giving coffee-drinkers just a week to get their hand on the sweet treat. According to Refinery29: To create this beverage, candied cherry syrup and mocha sauce are melted into Starbucks Signature Espresso -- or Blonde Espresso, if you've requested the substitute. Then, steamed milk is added, and the drink gets a swirl of whipped cream. Finally, the cup is finished off with with a dusting of sugar and cocoa Valentine's sprinkles. The end result tastes like a cherry cordial in liquid form. Imagine sipping on a warm (or cold) cup of chocolate-covered cherries. Nothing says love like rich espresso, creamy chocolate and fresh cherries can. Starbucks' Valentine's Day Cherry Mocha is back CHERRY MOCHA IS BACK AT STARBUCKS YEEEEEEEE!!! -- Kaylee Price (@KayleeHopePrice) February 7, 2019 starbucks just emailed me about cherry mocha and im feeling so seen this morning -- madam cj. (@thechrissycode) February 7, 2019 But maybe there's a reason Starbucks is only unveiling the love-themed new drink for only a week. Last year's reviews were not entirely positive. It's rare to find cherry flavoring in anything outside of Shirley Temples and cough syrup. As a result, artificial cherry flavoring plagues many millennials, as it tastes universally of cherry cough medicine. Who among us has forgotten that moment of staring down the tiny plastic cup filled with red, sticky liquid. You accept your fate, pinch your nose, and learn to knock back the meds like a shot. No one on this earth wants to repeat that experience with fancy latte. Cherry mocha at Starbucks tastes like the red NyQuil. Hahaha gross[?] -- Sarah Mahan (@SarahhhLynne) February 8, 2019 I tried the cherry mocha latte today. Very gross. The cherry flavor tastes like cherry cough drops/medicine... [?] [?] [?] pic.twitter.com/KAqi5c0vnO -- Jan [?] KH3 TIME!!! (@raichub) February 14, 2018 Even some Starbucks employees agree: everyone at my store is ruthless if we dont like something we tell customers not to get it like the cherry mocha was GROSS !!! it was an act of charity truly telling people not to try it -- [?] (@bellifrae) March 22, 2018 The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, we'd love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.nola.com/interact/2019/02/is_the_starbucks_cherry_mocha.html |
How far did LSU rise in the polls after topping Mississippi State, Auburn? | The LSU Tigers rose two spots the latest Associated Press Top-25 poll, and rose one spot in the USA Today Coaches poll, both of which were released Monday morning. LSU (19-4, SEC 9-1) went to No. 19 in the AP Top 25 and to No. 21 in the coaches poll after securing double-digit comeback wins over both Mississippi State and Auburn. No. 19 LSU has a top-20 matchup on Tuesday with No. 5 Kentucky. The Tigers were No. 21 in the AP Top 25 and No. 22 in the coaches poll last week. LSU is one of three ranked SEC teams in the AP Top 25: No. 1 Tennessee, No. 5 Kentucky and the Tigers. Auburn was receiving votes. There are three ranked SEC teams in the coaches poll as well: No. 1 Tennessee, No. 5 Kentucky and LSU. Both Mississippi State and Auburn teams LSU topped last week received votes. Ole Miss also received votes. LSU started the season as the No. 23 team in the Associated Press preseason poll, rose to No. 22 after the first week and moved to No. 19 when it was 4-0. The Tigers tumbled out of the poll after losing back-to-back games in the Advocare Invitational over Thanksgiving weekend. LSU appeared back in the poll after starting SEC play at 4-0. The Tigers didnt make the coaches preseason poll, rose to No. 21 after starting the season at 4-0, and then fell out of the poll the next week after its Advocare Invitational showing. | https://www.nola.com/lsu/2019/02/how-far-did-lsu-rise-in-the-polls-after-topping-mississippi-state-auburn.html |
What Was It Like When The Universe Made Its Heaviest Elements? | When it comes to the elements of the Universe, every one of them has its own unique story. Hydrogen and helium were created in the earliest stages of the Big Bang; light elements like carbon and oxygen are created in Sun-like stars; heavier elements like silicon, sulfur and iron are created in more massive stars; elements beyond iron are made when those massive stars explode in supernovae. But the most massive elements of all at the very high end of the periodic table including platinum, gold, radon, and even uranium owe their origins to an even rarer, more energetic process. The heaviest elements of all come from merging neutron stars, a fact that was long suspected but only confirmed in 2017. Here's the cosmic story of how the Universe got there. Whenever you form stars, they arise from a large molecular cloud of gas that contracts down into a variety of clumps. The clumps grow more and more massive over time, as the atoms and molecules inside radiate heat away and allow them to collapse down. Eventually, they grow massive and dense enough that nuclear fusion can ignite inside of them. Eventually, these clumps will evolve into stars. In the earliest stages, with just hydrogen and helium, stars grew to enormous masses: tens, hundreds, or even thousands of times the mass of the Sun, typically. Later on, the presence of heavier elements enabled more efficient cooling, keeping the average mass much lower and limiting the maximum to only 200-300 times as great as our Sun. Still, even today, stars come in a wide variety of masses and sizes. They also come in a wide variety of distributions. While many of the star systems out there are similar to our own possessing only one star surrounded by planets multi-star systems are extremely common as well. The REsearch Consortium On Nearby Stars (RECONS) surveyed all the stars they could find within 25 parsecs (about 81 light-years), and discovered 2,959 stars total. Of those, 1533 were single star systems, but the remaining 1426 were bound into binary, trinary, or even more complex systems. As our observations have shown us, these clustering properties are independent of mass. Even the most massive stars can be commonly found grouped together in twos, threes, or even greater numbers. Over the history of the Universe, the most massive periods of star formation occur when galaxies interact, merge together, or fall into massive groups and clusters. These events will gravitationally perturb the hydrogen gas present within a galaxy, triggering an event known as a starburst. During a starburst, that gas gets rapidly converted into stars of all masses and in enormous varieties of groupings: singles, binaries, trinaries, all the way up to at least sextuple systems. The more numerous, less massive stars will burn through their fuel slowly, living extremely long times. About 80-90% of the stars ever created are still fusing hydrogen into helium, and will remain doing so until more time than the present age of the Universe has gone by. The next step up in mass, to Sun-like stars, makes a big difference for a large slew of elements present in our Solar System today. During most of their lives, Sun-like stars will fuse hydrogen into helium, while during the late stages, they swell into red giants while their cores fuse helium into carbon. As they evolve, however, and approach the end of their lives, these stars begin producing free neutrons, which start to get absorbed by the other nuclei present within the star. One by one, neutrons get absorbed by a variety of nuclei, allowing us to not only create elements like nitrogen, but many of the heavier elements that go beyond what are made in supernovae. Strontium, zircon, tin and barium are examples; smaller amounts of elements like tungsten, mercury and lead are also produced. But lead is the limit; the next element upwards is bismuth, which is unstable. As soon as lead absorbs a neutron, bismuth decays, and so we're back below lead again. Sun-like stars cannot get us over that hump. Neither can the most massive stars. Although they're quite small in number, these cosmic behemoths account for a significant fraction of the total mass that goes into star formation. These stars, despite having the most matter inside them, are the shortest-lived, since they burn through their fuel far more quickly than any of the other star types. They fuse hydrogen into helium, helium into carbon, and then work their way up the periodic table to iron. After iron, however, there's nowhere to go that's energetically favorable. These stars, in their final moments, see their cores implode, creating either neutron stars or black holes at their centers, while triggering a runaway fusion reaction in the outer layers. The result is a supernova explosion, coupled with a barrage of neutrons that rapidly get captured, creating many of the elements heavier than iron. Still, there are gaping holes in the periodic table, even with all of this. At the low end, lithium, beryllium and boron will only get created when high-energy particles zipping through the Universe cosmic rays slam into nuclei, blasting them apart through a process known as spallation. At the high end, elements from rubidium (element 44) and upwards, including most of the iodine, iridium, platinum, gold, and every element heavier than lead requires something else. These supernovae, many of which occur in binary systems, will very frequently leave neutron stars behind. When two or more stars go supernova in the same system, the existence of multiple neutron stars bound together leads to a tremendous possibility: a binary neutron star merger. For a long time, it was speculated that merging neutron stars would provide the origin of these elements, as two massive balls of neutrons smashing together could create an endless variety of heavy atomic nuclei. Sure, most of the mass from these objects would merge together into a final-stage object like a black hole, but a few percent should be ejected as part of the collision. In 2017, observations made with both telescopes and with gravitational wave observatories confirmed that not only are neutron star mergers responsible for the overwhelming majority of these heavy elements, but that short-period gamma ray bursts can be linked to these mergers as well. Now known as a kilonova, it's well-understood that neutron star-neutron star mergers are the origin of the majority of the heaviest elements found throughout the Universe. We frequently, when we talk about the history of the Universe, discuss it as though it were a series of events that happened at particular, well-defined instants in time. Although there are some moments in cosmic history that can be classed that way, the lives and deaths of stars are not so easily categorized. Star formation increases for the first 3 billion years after the Big Bang, then falls off and gradually declines. Heavy elements are present from when the Universe was less than 100 million years old, but the last populations of pristine gas were not destroyed until 2-3 billion years after the Big Bang. And the elements of the periodic table are continuously being created and destroyed by these processes that take place mostly inside stars and in interacting stellar remnants. Remarkably, we know today how many elements and of what different types are present, but it's a story that's constantly in flux. The heaviest elements of all, though, were created through one mechanism alone: neutron star mergers. Sure, supernovae can get you all the way up the periodic table, but only in insignificant amounts. Dying Sun-like stars can slowly drive the creation of heavier and heavier elements, but you cannot maintain anything beyond lead through that process. Cosmically, the only way we create significant amounts of the heaviest elements of all is through the inspiral and merger of the densest physical objects in the known Universe: neutron stars. Now that gravitational wave observatories have confirmed our cosmic picture of this creation, the tools and technology are at hand for investigating them further and in greater detail. The next step will show us, observationally, how the Universe's elemental abundances have evolved throughout space. At long last, a map of the chemical history of the Universe is within our reach. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/02/13/what-was-it-like-when-the-universe-made-its-heaviest-elements/ |
Should navigation apps warn when police are nearby? | Some navigations apps do more than tell you when to turn left or right; they tell you when you're approaching a police checkpoint. Nav apps like Waze argue this feature makes everyone drive safer-the more warnings, the more people tap the brakes. Users love the warnings because they help them avoid tickets. But some, NYPD included, believe this kind of features interferes with the implementation of the law, and is therefore criminal. PERSPECTIVES In February of 2019, the NYPD sent a cease and desist letter to Google. Although tech companies like Google, Apple and Facebook have been making headlines about leaking data as of late, this time, Google was in trouble to warning drivers of upcoming police checkpoints in its navigation apps (Waze and Google Maps). According to CBS New York, NYPD is under the impression that these warnings hinder the police force's ability to keep the city safe: "Individuals who post the locations of DWI checkpoints may be engaging in criminal conduct since such actions could be intentional attempts to prevent and/or impair the administration of the DWI laws and other relevant criminal and traffic laws," the letter continued. "The posting of such information for public consumption is irresponsible since it only serves to aid impaired and intoxicated drivers to evade checkpoints and encourage reckless driving. Revealing the location of checkpoints puts those drivers, their passengers, and the general public at risk." When nav apps give drivers a heads up about the police, they are able to alter drivers' behavior so they can avoid getting in trouble. This might seem great to drivers, but when it comes to enforcing the law, these apps make it more difficult. NYPD To Google: Stop Revealing Location Of DWI Checkpoints But according to Waze, notifying drivers of upcoming police helps keep the roads safe. CNN's Lauren del Valle reports: "We believe highlighting police presence promotes road safety because drivers tend to drive more carefully and obey traffic laws when they are aware of nearby police. We've also seen police encourage such reporting as it serves as both a warning to drivers, as well as a way to highlight police work that keeps roadways safe," a Waze spokesperson said in a statement to CNN on Thursday. If your driving down the highway and your phone alerts you the police are close, of course you are going to slow down. The more this happens, the better. Navigation apps are performing a civic duty by keeping the roads more tame. OK Waze, NYPD wants you to stop reporting locations of DUI checkpoints An alert on an app is no different from another driver flashing their lights, warning of a police stakeout ahead. By sending such a message, you are obstructing police activity. Plus, chronic speeders or even impaired drivers might choose Waze and Google Maps for the very sake of taking advantage of these features. In doing so, Google assists drivers in evading law enforcement. Sonila Kar agrees with the NYPD's cease and desist order: a valid demand! -- Sonila Kar (@sonilakar) February 8, 2019 Many people argue that since police checkpoints must be public information, sharing them via Waze, which crowd-sources information on traffic, hazards and police locations, is well within users' rights. According to a blog post from Guardian Interlock: Way back in 1990, a legal challenge came up in Michigan and the attempt was made to deem checkpoints unconstitutional. The United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that they were constitutional, but they mandated that checkpoints must be publicized ahead of time. If the police don't publicize a checkpoint it can be considered a detention without reasonable suspicion, and that violates your Fourth Amendment rights. (Just for the record, I am highly dubious that any court would uphold a prosecution against an individual for making public the location of police operations on public property and it is likely First Amendment protected activity) -- Byron Tau (@ByronTau) February 6, 2019 The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, we'd love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.nola.com/interact/2019/02/should_navigation_apps_warn_wh.html |
What is open and closed on Presidents Day? | CLOSE The third Monday of every February is a time to remember past presidents but also give some workers a three-day weekend. USA TODAY The third Monday of every February is a time to remember presidents (or at least one) and, for some, enjoy a day off work or school. Presidents Day, known also as Washington's Birthday, is a federal holiday, meaning many government institutions will close. The day was originally established in the 1880s to honor President George Washington but later became viewed as a time to recognize all presidents, past and present after it was moved to a Monday as part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act which took effect in 1971. At that time, the name was also changed to Presidents Day. Here are some key businesses that will and won't be closed on Feb. 18: Mail services The United States Postal Service will not deliver mail on Presidents Day. UPS will continue services. FedEx home delivery will be operational, but FedEx Express and FedEx SmartPost will have modified service. Banks Most banks, including Federal Reserve Banks, will be closed. Schools Most public schools will be closed to observe the federal holiday, and many private schools will do the same. Some schools might be in session to make up for weather-related cancellations. Stock markets The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and bond markets will be closed. Garbage Trash pickup will vary. Check with your local provider. DMV Department of Motor Vehicles offices across the U.S. will be closed. Courts Courts will not be in session. Retail stores Most department stores and retail shops will be open, many offering Presidents Day sales. Most restaurants will also remain open. Grocery stores Most grocery stores will be open. Follow Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/02/12/presidents-day-what-is-open-and-closed/2845408002/ | https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/02/12/presidents-day-what-is-open-and-closed/2845408002/ |
Will A Degree Help Me To Successfully Switch Careers? | If you've ever ridden a bicycle, chances are, you learned through trial and error. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that unless you're a professional cyclist, you've never taken a class or read a book about how to properly ride a bike. You just hopped on and figured it out, perhaps with a few scrapes along the way. After all, it's tough to translate the experience of biking without doing it. Taking classes does have some appeal: Formal programs offer structure. Humans dislike ambiguity, so the built-in organization of a degree or certification program feels less daunting than figuring out a path. Humans dislike ambiguity, so the built-in organization of a degree or certification program feels less daunting than figuring out a path. Studying a topic can help you understand the key acronyms, concepts, and theories. Every field seems to have its own "language" and vocabulary. Reading case studies and text books can help you become familiar with the vernacular. Every field seems to have its own "language" and vocabulary. Reading case studies and text books can help you become familiar with the vernacular. Being in a classroom can help you build your network. Any time like-minded individuals gather together, there's a chance to build valuable relationships. Any time like-minded individuals gather together, there's a chance to build valuable relationships. Having an instructor enables you to ask questions. Most formal programs are taught by experts who are well-versed in the area of study and who can help you to untangle complex equations or confusing approaches. Most formal programs are taught by experts who are well-versed in the area of study and who can help you to untangle complex equations or confusing approaches. Learning about a topic can help you target an area of focus. If you're uncertain where you'd like to specialize, getting a broad overview can expose you to niche areas that you wouldn't have considered otherwise. As someone who has always enjoyed learning, I'm an advocate for investing in degrees or certifications when it fits your purpose. But unfortunately, many people under-invest in the up front research, and dive in without fully understanding how their hard earned money and precious hours in the classroom will support their career goals. I had a client spend two years getting her Master's Degree in speech therapy, only to learn during her internship in her last semester that she didn't like the actual work. Formal education can certainly provide a boost in: 1) demonstrating commitment to a field, 2) building connections and 3) learning the concepts, but employers will be most interested in practical experience that demonstrates your ability to apply what you've learned in a way that gets results. The benefits of learning a new field through application include: Handling unforeseen complications. Real life is messy, and situations rarely unfold like they do in a textbook. Sometimes what's on paper, doesn't translate to reality. Real life is messy, and situations rarely unfold like they do in a textbook. Sometimes what's on paper, doesn't translate to reality. Learning the politics. When people are involved, politics emerge. In most fields, it's not enough to know the written rules - to be effective, you also need to learn the "unwritten" ones. When people are involved, politics emerge. In most fields, it's not enough to know the written rules - to be effective, you also need to learn the "unwritten" ones. Solidify meaning . Many times we have a vision of what we imagine a role will be like, only for it to be very different in practice, or not a good fit for our individual needs and values. . Many times we have a vision of what we imagine a role will be like, only for it to be very different in practice, or not a good fit for our individual needs and values. Understanding your brand. Even if professionals have the same role, each of us has unique strengths and personal limitations that shape how we approach our jobs. Knowing this will be important when differentiating yourself and communicating your specific value. Even if professionals have the same role, each of us has unique strengths and personal limitations that shape how we approach our jobs. Knowing this will be important when differentiating yourself and communicating your specific value. Recovering from set-backs. Mistakes are one of the best teachers, and failing an exam isn't the same as losing a customer or miscalculating a product launch. Experience enables you to be agile, foresee challenges, and build contingencies. Mistakes are one of the best teachers, and failing an exam isn't the same as losing a customer or miscalculating a product launch. Experience enables you to be agile, foresee challenges, and build contingencies. Achieving results. To build credibility with employers, you'll want to have a few "wins" under your belt. Don't discount similar or related experiences that showcase the same competencies in a different environment. You don't need to get a paycheck or have a title to gain valuable outcomes. To build credibility with employers, you'll want to have a few "wins" under your belt. Don't discount similar or related experiences that showcase the same competencies in a different environment. You don't need to get a paycheck or have a title to gain valuable outcomes. Recognizing outliers. In the classroom, we study "textbook cases" that are created to teach concepts, but in life, we need to identify and handle outliers or borderline cases, which sometimes are difficult to spot until we experience them. Unless you're planning to change to a field where formal training or licensing is required (e.g., lawyer, nurse), you may be better off saving your money (at least initially) and investing your time in learning new skills through trial and error first. Here's a few ideas of where to start: Look inside your current organization. Many companies recognize the value in retaining stellar employees, even if in a different department. If you're looking for a change, begin networking with people in the department you'd like to explore. Work with your manager to carve out time to do projects with the target department, and possibly a timeline to formally switch to the new function if things progress favorably. Many companies recognize the value in retaining stellar employees, even if in a different department. If you're looking for a change, begin networking with people in the department you'd like to explore. Work with your manager to carve out time to do projects with the target department, and possibly a timeline to formally switch to the new function if things progress favorably. Set up a self-created internship . Many non-profits or resource-limited organizations would love to have free (or low-cost) help. Put together a proposal stating how you can assist a company in reaching its goals or mission. This will build your applied skills (and references!). . Many non-profits or resource-limited organizations would love to have free (or low-cost) help. Put together a proposal stating how you can assist a company in reaching its goals or mission. This will build your applied skills (and references!). Hang a shingle. Today, you can start a website and market a side hustle for almost nothing. You don't need to wait to be selected by a company to start delivering services or gaining clients, and you may find that you enjoy having gigs, while still maintaining your day job. Today, you can start a website and market a side hustle for almost nothing. You don't need to wait to be selected by a company to start delivering services or gaining clients, and you may find that you enjoy having gigs, while still maintaining your day job. Find an applied program. If you learn best though formal instruction, seek out programs that emphasize application such as internships, practicum or capstone projects with real customers. The more real-world training a program offers, the better prepared you'll be to do the work verses talk about it. Bonus: Research the career services offered. In most educational institutions, this is not where your budget dollars are funneled, and you'll want to ensure your expectations about career placement are aligned with reality. Classes make you conversant in a topic, but application builds your competence and enables you to navigate unexpected situations, which inevitably happen in the real world. That's why hiring managers prefer applicants with experience. However, paid roles aren't the only way to gain experience and many of your skills may have transfer value, so get creative, do your research and go after what you want. Happy hunting! | https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawngraham/2019/02/12/will-a-degree-help-me-to-successfully-switch-careers/ |
Can the middle-class revival under Trump last? | CLOSE In his first State of the Union address before a divided Congress, President Donald Trump called on Washington to work together for the good of the country. But he outlined few new policy ideas and no clear path for collaboration. (Feb. 6) AP For years, Andrew Gehrt, of Greenville, S.C., bounced among several low- and mid-wage jobs in food services, retail and sales until he was laid off from a position as a sales rep for a water filter company. But after being unemployed for a year, the 29-year-old landed a job in September as business development manager for a technology company, at a salary of about $60,000. I felt stuck, he says. Now, I have a very hopeful outlook for the next five to eight years. In his State of the Union address last week, President Trump vowed the country can make its middle class bigger and more prosperous than ever before. Despite economists longstanding laments of a shrinking, hollowed-out middle class, Trumps pledge didnt seem so quixotic, at least judging by recent history. The vibrant economy, juiced further by the Trump-led tax cuts and federal spending increases, has lifted employment and wages for workers at all levels, including the middle class. The manufacturing, construction and oil industries traditional middle-class bastions have enjoyed revivals the past couple of years. And the replacement of many middle-wage workers with technology has slowed. Yet analysts say Americas middle class will soon resume its long-term decline, largely as a result of automation and the continued offshoring of factory jobs, unless policymakers take dramatic steps to alter that course. For the first time in decades, the middle class isn't shrinking. (Photo: Getty Images) The trend, left to its own devices, is going to get worse, says Richard Reeves, director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative at the Brookings Institution. A growing, prosperous, confident middle class is no longer going to happen automatically. More: Property taxes vary by state. Here's a look at what you'll pay Tax season tips: Tax refund advance loans are often too good to be true. Here's what you should know Minimum wage: From California to New York, states are raising minimum wages in 2019 for 17 million workers Economist Adam Kamins of Moodys Analytics agrees, adding. I think its a major concern for the U.S. economy. Mid-wage jobs, defined as paying $14.18 to $23.59 an hour, are expected to grow by 4.45 percent from 2018 to 2023, compared with about 6.26 percent growth for both low- and high-wage jobs, according to a CareerBuilder study. Fifty-eight percent of jobs lost during that period will be mid-wage, the report says. Middle class makes recent advances The recent trend has been positive. Median U.S. household income which includes paychecks as well as Social Security, public assistance and investment income rose 1.8 percent to an all-time high of $61,372 in 2017, according to the most recent Census Bureau figures. That followed gains of 5.2 percent in 2015 and 3.2 percent in 2016. Yet after adjusting for inflation, that income roughly equaled the level in 2007, before the start of the Great Recession. Its making up for lost ground but it doesnt really get people ahead, says Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. From 2010 to 2018, inflation-adjusted pay rose 1.5 percent for the middle quintile of workers based on earnings, compared with 6.5 percent for the bottom quintile and 2.9 percent for the top, according to figures from Brookings and the Labor Department. That data defines mid-wage slightly differently than CareerBuilder. Top earners, who overwhelmingly have four-year college degrees, are benefiting from a job market that places a growing premium on higher skills, Reeves says. And low-paid workers have advanced as a result of state minimum wage increases and social safety net programs such as welfare and food stamps, say Reeves and Jay Shambaugh, director of Brookings Hamilton Project. Middle-wage workers are, well, caught in the middle. Their struggles, Shambaugh says, have been compounded by well-known forces: the plunge in manufacturing employment as a result of both offshoring and automation; the sharp decline of unions that used to ensure higher wages for factory and other workers; stagnating teacher pay; and the meager growth of state and local government jobs amid budget cuts and depleted pension funds. Heres the good news: The fortunes of the middle class have brightened recently amid a strong economy and labor market. Employers added an average 223,000 jobs a month last year, up from 179,000 in 2017. And unemployment sank to a near 50-year low of 3.7 percent before ticking up recently, leaving businesses struggling to find qualified workers. Weve finally got to the point where firms are being forced to bid up for workers, so youre seeing a little bit more for the middle class, Shambaugh says. Average U.S. wages climbed 3.3 percent in 2018 after being stuck at 2.5 percent to 2.7 percent for several years. Trump deserves some credit. His tax cuts and spending increases boosted economic growth by seven tenths of a percentage point last year to 3 percent, says economist Greg Daco of Oxford Economics. And Trump slashed hundreds of regulations on businesses, further bolstering corporate confidence along with investment and hiring, says Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner. While the initiatives also prompted longer-term concerns such as swelling the budget deficit and dismantling consumer protections theyve sparked the labor market in the short term. Andrew Gehrt (Photo: Handout) Before he got his business development job, Gehrt says he noticed a surge in openings last year. He has resumed dining out and is finally able to sock some money away so he can eventually buy a house. Industries that employ middle-class workers in particular are benefiting. Manufacturers have added about 450,000 jobs since Trump took office, the largest two-year total in decades, amid an improving global economy and a rejuvenated oil industry. The number of factory jobs reshored, or shifted to the U.S. from overseas, by both American and foreign companies, hit a record 170,000 in 2017 and notched a still-strong 131,000 last year, according to the Reshoring Initiative, which tracks the data. Harry Moser, who heads the group, largely credits Trumps pro-business policies. The oil and natural gas drilling sector itself added 11,000 jobs in 2018 while boosting pay nearly 4 percent as a result of a surge in oil prices for most of the year. And construction has added 1.8 million jobs since the housing recovery began in late 2011, with average pay increasing 3.6 percent last year. Yet Kamins notes the near-term prospects for such middle-class jobs are mixed. Trumps trade war with China is expected to curtail factory employment gains this year. And oil prices have fallen sharply from their early October peak, though theyve rebounded from late December lows. And while the housing market is forecast to slow this year as a result of higher home prices and borrowing costs, mortgage rates have moderated since the Federal Reserve recently signaled it may not raise its benchmark interest rate in 2019. Outlook for middle class bleak unless The longer-term outlook for the middle class is dimmer. Manufacturers are likely to continue offshoring jobs in large numbers, with reshoring simply limiting the decline, Kamins says. And automation could wipe out up to 73 million jobs by 2030, according to a 2017 McKinsey report. High-level workers have analytical and managerial skills that machines cant replace. And low-wage workers cost less and are often not worth supplanting with technology, the study said. Others work in health care or other service industries that rely on human interaction. Middle-wage jobs, in turn, are most vulnerable, the report says. Besides factory employees, that means workers who originate mortgages, do paralegal or accounting work, drive trucks and handle maintenance and repair. While some can be easily shifted to other tasks, as many as 54 million Americans will need to be retrained, the study says. Reeves credits Trump for spending more on apprenticeships, but says government at all levels has fallen woefully short in rolling out programs to upskill workers, in many cases to work alongside robots or artificial intelligence. The federal tax cuts and spending increases are substantially widening the deficit over the next decade, making it even tougher to devote more money for retraining, Reeves says. Other Trump administration policies also may squeeze the middle class. Trumps conservative appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and Supreme Court are likely to further hobble unions, Shambaugh says. And while the tax cuts help middle-class Americans, the vast majority of benefits will go to the top 1 percent of income earners, according to the Tax Policy Center. New policies can change the dynamic, Shambaugh and Reeves say, such as expanding the earned income tax credit to more filers and reversing state funding cuts that have hurt public colleges. But such reforms need to happen soon, Reeves says. A robust, resilient and happy middle class is one of the things that makes America America, he says. If the middle class loses confidence...it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. CLOSE White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Tuesday President Trump's proposal for new middle income tax cuts is "doable," though the plan "may not surface for a while." (Oct. 23) AP Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/02/12/sotu-speech-2019-middle-class-revives-under-trump-but-can-gains-last/2816053002/ | https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/02/12/sotu-speech-2019-middle-class-revives-under-trump-but-can-gains-last/2816053002/ |
Are Hackers Winning The Denial Of Service Wars? | Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are a particularly pernicious form of cyberattack where the bad actor seeks to take down a web site or even an entire corporate network by flooding it with malicious traffic. DDoS attacks have been around for years and many cybersecurity vendors have risen to the challenge, bringing increasingly sophisticated DDoS mitigation technologies to market. The bad actors response is woefully predictable: increasingly advanced approaches to DDoS, leading to an escalating cat-and-mouse game, as enterprises and governments seek to stay ahead of the deluge of bad traffic hitting their networks. Bring in the Bots DDoS attackers use numerous Internet protocols, from the HTTP at the core of the web to simpler, lower-level protocols that do little more than request a brief acknowledgement from a server as part of an ongoing interaction. Request too many acknowledgements at one time, however, and the server can bog down. At the next level of sophistication, hackers send such malicious requests from a spoofed IP address, fooling the target server into sending a response to a different server, which is the true target. In this way, hackers dupe unwitting organizations into playing a role in the attack, while the victim only sees traffic from presumably trustworthy sites or services, thus amplifying the effect of an attack by a factor of one hundred or more. DDoS attacks, however, have reached an even higher level of sophistication, as hackers are now able to compromise millions of computers, smartphones, and even Internet of Things (IoT) devices like security cameras and baby monitors, recruiting these devices into botnets that can launch increasingly massive, unpredictable attacks on global targets. To make matters even worse, DDoS technology is simple and inexpensive to purchase on the Dark Web leading to a black market for increasingly innovative DDoS malware. There has been increased innovation in DDoS attack tools and techniques, according to the NETSCOUT Threat Intelligence Report. The availability of such improved tools has lowered the barrier of entry, making it easier for a broader spectrum of attackers to launch a DDoS attack. Size Matters The simplest mitigation is for an enterprise or government agency to have on-premises equipment with sufficient capacity to absorb DDoS traffic, filtering out the malicious messages while allowing legitimate requests through, a process the industry calls scrubbing. However, with the increasing sizes of the attacks, such a do-it-yourself approach rapidly becomes too expensive. The increase in the impact and complexity of attacks continues unabated, says Marc Wilczek, COO of Link11. When faced with DDoS bandwidths well over 100 Gbps and multi-vector attacks, traditional IT security mechanisms are easily overwhelmed, and unprotected companies risk serious business disruption, loss of revenue and even fines. To place 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) into context, the fastest enterprise local-area gigabit Ethernet networks generally run at one Gbps, and the fastest home Internet service will run around 100 megabits per second (Mbps) or a bit higher, which equals one tenth as much bandwidth as one Gbps. Volumetric DDoS attacks that is, attacks that consist of the sheer volume of traffic can well exceed 100 Gbps. According to James Willett, VP technology at DDoS mitigation vendor Neustar, his company has mitigated attacks in excess of 460 Gbps. The largest attacks on record have exceeded 1,700 Gbps. However, such volumetric attacks are easy to detect and thus mitigation vendors with high mitigation capacities like Neustars 10+ Terabit per second (10,000+ Gbps) globally-distributed platform are able to deal with them in a straightforward fashion. To respond to this mitigation capability, bad actors are mounting more complex attacks that typically involve enough volume to take down average Internet connections, but do so with intermittent bursts of diverse types of traffic over longer periods of time. One of our clients is a gaming company, Willett explains. This client experienced an attack that lasted six days across numerous network protocols. It was an intermittent attack that generated 91 alerts for new attacks. The attacker was probing different network segments, but also using different attack vectors looking for weakness. Some attacks take even longer. The longest DDoS attack in 2016 lasted 292 hours according to Kaspersky Labs research, or about 12 days, according to Russ Madley, cybersecurity specialist at SecureData Europe, formerly head of B2B at Kapersky Lab. Most online businesses can ill-afford to have their doors closed for even an hour, let alone for 292 hours, as criminals take advantage of their poor defences. Multifaceted DDoS Mitigation When a Neustar on-demand customer detects an incoming DDoS attack, it redirects its network traffic to the Neustar network, which scrubs it and returns the bona fide traffic back to the customers network. This mitigation technique requires a level of sophistication commensurate to the attackers. An attackers goal is to mimic legitimate traffic as closely as possible, so that its harder to figure out what to filter, Willett explains. Neustar tweaks and adjusts filtering in real-time, often looking inside the packets to identify patterns of good or bad traffic to help with filtering. Understanding what to filter is almost as important as what not to filter. We use tools like ThousandEyes to determine whether we are scrubbing too much, which impacts clean traffic, or under-scrubbing, which allows too much dirty traffic, Willett continues. We also use ThousandEyes and our own monitoring toolsets to monitor clean traffic tunnels at key points in the infrastructure after scrubbing to ensure availability. Neustars approach is similar to other DDoS mitigation vendors in the market, including Radware, NETSCOUT Arbor (which NETSCOUT acquired in 2015), Akamai Prolexic (acquired in 2014), and F5. Regardless of the vendor, however, proper configuration is essential. For DDoS mitigation to continue working properly it needs to be perfectly configured to the specific network it is protecting, according to The State of DDoS Protection Report by MazeBolt Technologies. The problem is that enterprise networks are constantly changing with servers and services added to networks to meet new demands. In order to ensure that DDoS mitigation is perfectly configured, enterprises need to match each network change with a respective fine-tuning of their DDoS mitigation posture. Industry analysts are also quick to sound a warning around the complexity of DDoS mitigation. For bad traffic to be diverted to a scrubbing centre in a seamless action to reduce any downtime, organisations need to have seamless integration between cloud and on-premise solutions, implemented in front of an infrastructures network to help mitigate an attack before it reaches core network assets and data, says Sherrel Roche, senior market analyst at IDC. Gartner also offers words of caution. To implement multiple denial-of-service defence measures at different layers would go beyond purchasing a single security product or signing up with a single service provider, warns Gartner senior research analyst Rajpreet Kaur. Unless youre in the business of creating and selling malware on the Dark Web, the path to profit for a DDoS attacker is murkier than, say, cryptojacking or ransomware. The DDoS landscape is driven by a range of actors, from malware authors to opportunistic entities offering services for hire. They are a busy group, constantly developing new technologies and enabling new services while utilizing known vulnerabilities, pre-existing botnets, and well-understood attack techniques, continues the NETSCOUT Threat Intelligence Report. At the core of such threats: nation-states. State-sponsored activity has developed to the point where campaigns and frameworks are discovered regularly for a broad tier of nations, the NETSCOUT report continues. Our findings include campaigns attributed to Iran, North Korea, Vietnam, and India, beyond the actors commonly associated with China and Russia. Kaspersky Lab also has an opinion. We expect the profitability of DDoS attacks to continue to grow, Madley adds. As a result, [we] will see them increasingly used to extort, disrupt and mask other more intrusive attacks on businesses. In addition, the situation is likely to get worse. When cybercriminals do not achieve their goals of earning money by launching simple DDoS attacks, they have two options, says Alexey Kiselev, business development manager on the Kaspersky DDoS Protection team. They can reconfigure the capacities required for DDoS attacks towards other sources of revenue, such as cryptomining, or malefactors who orchestrate DDoS attacks have to improve their technical skills. Kiselev concludes: Given this, we can anticipate that DDoS attacks will evolve in 2019 and it will become harder for companies to detect them and stay protected. DDoS attacks, therefore, may not be the quickest route to profitability for bad actors, but given the importance of this attack technique to nation-state cyberwar adversaries, we can expect continued innovation on the part of the hackers. Enterprises and government agencies cannot afford to relax their efforts to combat such attacks. Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, NETSCOUT and ThousandEyes are current Intellyx customers. None of the other organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: Christoph Scholz. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2019/02/12/are-hackers-winning-the-denial-of-service-wars/ |
What next after Theresa May's appeal for more time on Brexit? | After Theresa Mays latest Brexit statement to the Commons we know some extra details about the timetable for the process but not a whole lot more. The prime minister reiterated the fact that the government intends to press ahead with seeking changes to the Irish backstop the aspect of her Brexit deal that most enrages leavers in her own party. Theresa May asks MPs to hold their nerve on Brexit talks Read more She said she had still not yet decided which of three potential options she will pursue a unilateral exit mechanism; a time-limit; or the hi-tech solutions envisaged in the so-called Malthouse compromise. She also reiterated the governments opposition to Labours proposed condition of staying in a customs union to back a deal, but stressed commitment to maintaining workers and environmental rights. May confirmed that the next deadline of Thursday will as widely assumed not see a revised deal put to the Commons. Instead, the government will table a motion setting out its current plans, which MPs will be able to amend, to try to shape the process. The next date is 27 February. May confirmed in her statement that if by then she has still not put a revised deal to parliament, the government will table another amendable motion. The PM indicated she could well table a deal later than this, saying that the government would, if needed, seek to set aside the usual rules which dictate that international treaties need 21 parliamentary working days before they can be ratified. Not so much, it would seem. It had been billed as another chance for MPs to try to extend article 50 or seek to prevent a no-deal departure, after an initial motion at the end of last month saw the Commons turn down such ideas, and instead opt for a scheme by the leading Tory backbencher Graham Brady seeking changes to the backstop. However, it seems most MPs will now wait until the end of the month, mindful that amendments are unlikely to win enough support this time given Conservative MPs are minded to give May another couple of weeks to talk to the EU. Barring a hugely unexpected change of heart in Brussels she will not get the EU to agree to the legally-binding changes to the backstop demanded by many Tories. This will leave the prime minister having to instead either persuade her MPs and the Democratic Unionist Party to accept a lesser tweak to the backstop, which seems a tough ask, or put together a plan which would win over enough Labour MPs to see her over the line. The risk for May then would be that such a plan would involve enough concessions, particularly over a possible customs union, to split the Conservatives. There is definitely worry among many MPs that May could either inadvertently trigger a no-deal Brexit by vacillating too long in search of a non-existent breakthrough, or even that she might actively prefer this to a deal which would split her party. While the consensus sentiment for now is to allow the prime minister to reach the 27 February deadline unimpeded, a number of Conservative MPs say efforts by her to delay further would most likely trigger ministerial resignations and moves by the Commons to seize control of the process. On Tuesday, a new cross-party plan led by Labours Yvette Cooper and Conservative grandee Oliver Letwin was published, stating that without a resolution by the end of the month they will table an amendment to guarantee parliamentary time for a bill to give MPs a vote between no deal and an extension to article 50. | https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/12/what-next-after-theresa-mays-appeal-for-more-time-on-brexit |
Could debating naked really solve Britain's Brexit woes? | If we remove our clothes, we might better also see the way in which we are all equal human beings, says feminist economist Victoria Bateman Last March, the Cambridge academic Victoria Bateman walked into the annual conference of the Royal Economic Society in Brighton wearing nothing but shoes, gloves, a necklace and of course a smile. Smiling is a big thing in naked protest; that, and the idiosyncratic hair (a deep commitment to the overhead plait), bestows Bateman with an obscure seriousness of purpose. This is otherwise quite difficult to put across when you are not wearing any clothes. Her point, originally, was that economics has failed to put women at the centre of any analysis. In fact, it has largely ignored them, leaving the discipline fatally myopic. This is the subject of her forthcoming book, The Sex Factor, which makes the original but obvious point that classic explanations of prosperity fail: markets are not enough to explain growth; neither are innovation or democracy. People prosper through freedom outside as well as inside the marketplace the emancipation of women has a demonstrable, strikingly positive economic effect. Naked anti-Brexit campaigner challenges Rees-Mogg on live TV Read more Bateman has been mischaracterised as a kind of next-gen Catherine Hakim (a sociologist at the London School of Economics who argued that sex is a material female advantage because men want it and women dont). Thats wrong. Batemans point is not to monetise sex but to refocus the study of economics so that it includes the social spheres from which real economies draw so much energy. Anyway, that tension has been eclipsed, rather, by Batemans anti-Brexit nudity. She confronted John Humphrys on the Today programme last week, with Brexit Leaves Britain Naked written on her chest; and challenged Tory Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg to a naked debate. And today she appeared on ITVs Good Morning Britain, making the same request to Richard Madeley (although she has now decided that its fine for Rees-Mogg to keep his clothes on). This is a feminist issue, she tells me (by email), not just because Brexit will hit women disproportionately hard less money for public services but at a deeper level. Brexit seems to be moving us in a very different direction socially: away from the road that leads towards a free, open and tolerant society, towards something much more unwelcoming, illiberal and nationalistic, she writes. That is not the kind of society that will be supportive of womens freedom. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr Bateman (far right) on Good Morning Britain. Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock While she generally uses naked protest for specifically feminist issues from burqa bans to lack of access to birth control to legislation that endangers sex workers it has a foundation that could stretch to most progressive causes. If we remove our clothes, we might better also see the way in which we are all equal human beings. We shouldnt be putting up divisions between one another. In this reading, clothes themselves are a divisive construct, like nationalism, the language of hate, building walls. It makes one wonder whether everyone just taking their clothes off could break the Brexit deadlock. It could hardly get any weirder. | https://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2019/feb/12/could-debating-naked-really-solve-britains-brexit-woes |
Do The Weird Coping Rituals Of CEOs Like Steve Jobs Really Work? | The late Steve Jobs would bathe his feet in the toilet water of the Apple restrooms to destress, according to his authorized biography by Walter Isaacson. Nintendo director Shigeru Miyamoto keeps himself sharp by carrying a measuring tape and challenging himself to correctly guess the length of different objects. And Tesla tycoon Elon Musk plans his entire day in five-minute intervals. Such behavior is not dissimilar to athletes mentally preparing themselves before events. Tennis legend Rafael Nadal strategically places his water bottles with their labels facing the end of the court hes playing from, explaining: Its a way of placing myself in a match, ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head. I spoke to four entrepreneurs about their coping mechanisms and a psychologist to find out if such rituals really work in the pursuit of productivity, motivation or a less stressful work life. Celebrate wins early Jaclyn DiGregorio, founder of wellness brand Cusp It, starts every single day by handwriting all her goals for the year, pictures herself achieving them, and then behaves as though she has already met those goals. DiGregorio said: Say Im trying to close the deal of a keynote speech next month. I will go buy an outfit to wear because I already have decided that Im going to close this deal. I will get my hair and nails done and research travel arrangements. When I do close a deal, I feel like Im on top of the world. I spoke it into existence and now it exists. To succeed as a startup founder, you have to want it really bad. You have to do whatever it takes to hit those goals. Take to the skies Gaby Alves, co-founder of Tampon Tribe, flies a plane on days when work seems particularly stressful. She said: You have to make logical, strategic and accurate decisions under pressure. You simply can't blink while flying, training or learning commercial techniques because it is life-threatening if you make a mistake. You have to be super cool under pressure, trust 100% in your decisions, and implement them immediately. You also have the lives of others in your hands, so there is no room for error. For me, this is just like running a business, as mistakes can be costly, so it's perfect for learning to trust your instincts and being confident with what you know. Alves added: When you learn how to surpass fear and failure, you grow. I believe this is replicated when learning how to fly, and when you're working as an entrepreneur and in business; it is such a relief - relaxing, rewarding with an outcome of exhilaration and pure contentment. Feel grounded Heather Andersen, founder of New York Pilates, always works at floor level because it grounds her. She added: Im not a total hippy but sitting in a chair for long periods of time can be tied to chronic back pain, low energy, and higher blood pressure. Sitting on the floor or squatting has many health benefits like better digestion and healthier blood circulation, which is going to make you feel better and function more efficiently. And on top of the physical perks, the mental effects are huge. Play retro video games Having tried lunchtime jogs around Copenhagen, Mads Hallas Bjerg, CEO of Denmark-based art and antiques appraisal site Mearto, finds challenging his colleagues to regular video gaming tournaments specifically Command & Conquer: Red Alert works best for him. Bjerg said: Just 20 minutes of video gaming and the office is hyped with energy. It is super fun and works better for me than any meditation app when it comes to reducing my stress levels and increased my energy. You are totally zoomed in and no worries or negative thoughts can emerge in such an intense game. I asked Sharon Peake, chartered occupational psychologist, business coach and founder of Shape Talent to explain how these rituals might help us, mentally, to perform better. She said: The power in the ritual is less about the ritual itself and more about creating the environment that enables the person to perform. For some people performance comes from a calm, relaxed state, for others it might be a focused state, and for others it may be a highly excited state. It is seductive to attribute the success of well known, successful individuals to their strange rituals think Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerbergs strategy of wearing the same outfit each day, in order to reduce time. However, this is where our cognitive biases reveal themselves, as we erroneously attribute their success to these rituals, not taking into account the many other personality and behavioral aspects associated with their success. Peake added: Some rituals have been proven to be helpful, particularly when it comes to stress reduction. Exercise, relaxation and breathing techniques, mindfulness, meditation and reflecting on the positive learnings from a negative situation can all ease stress by reducing cortisol, your bodys main stress hormone. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/barnabylashbrooke/2019/02/12/do-the-weird-coping-rituals-of-ceos-like-steve-jobs-really-work/ |
Who made Rob Maclean's team of the week? | Rob Maclean's Scottish Cup team of the week features Queen of the South's figurehead, an Aberdeen super sub and a resurgent Celtic attacker. Formation 3-4-3: Daniel Bachmann (Kilmarnock); Connor Goldson (Rangers), Steven Anderson (Partick Thistle), Mark Reynolds (Dundee United); Michael Gardyne (Ross County), Ross McCrorie (Rangers), Daryl Horgan (Hibernian), Niall McGinn (Aberdeen); Stephen Dobbie (Queen of the South), Sam Cosgrove (Aberdeen), Scott Sinclair (Celtic). Goalkeeper - Daniel Bachmann I wondered - maybe you did as well - about Kilmarnock replacing that great shot-stopper Jamie MacDonald with Austrian goalkeeper Daniel Bachmann back in November. His commanding performances have dispelled any doubts and his penalty save on Saturday evening went a long way to earning Steve Clarke's men another Scottish Cup crack at Rangers after their goalless draw. Media playback is not supported on this device Kilmarnock 0-0 Rangers: James Tavernier's spot kick is saved Defenders - Connor Goldson, Steven Anderson & Mark Reynolds Connor Goldson brings a calmness to the Rangers defence and they're happy to have him back after injury. There was little to trouble goalkeeper Allan McGregor in the Rugby Park stalemate and the solid performance of Goldson was one big reason for Kilmarnock's lack of cutting edge. Veteran defender Steven Anderson might struggle to keep up his goal-per-game record for Partick Thistle but he could play an important part in preserving the Firhill side's Championship status. And, having scored on his debut in Inverness, the on-loan St Johnstone man netted the only goal against East Fife on Saturday to earn Thistle a home Scottish Cup quarter-final date with Hearts next month. Mark Reynolds looks like he could be a handy acquisition for Dundee United in their bid for promotion. And the 31-year-old Aberdeen loanee used all his knowhow to make sure 10-man United weathered a late St Mirren storm to reach the last eight. Midfielders - Michael Gardyne, Ross McCrorie, Daryl Horgan, Niall McGinn Michael Gardyne is a Ross County record-holder for both goals and appearances and his influence at the Dingwall club shows no signs of diminishing, even at the age of 33. He brilliantly created County's first equaliser in the Highland derby on Monday night and was, generally, the star of the show. It's the maturity of Ross McCrorie's midfield contribution for Rangers that makes you double-check the fact that he's still only 20. Learning from boss Steven Gerrard is obviously doing his progress no harm and young McCrorie was a top performer in Ayrshire. Daryl Horgan was the main man for Hibernian on Saturday as they made smooth progress to the quarter-finals. After a clever dummy, the talented little Irishman curled in the opening goal in a 3-1 win against Raith Rovers and had a hand in the other two home strikes. Niall McGinn was the game-changer for Aberdeen in the BBC live match on Sunday. They were going nowhere fast against Queen of the South until McGinn's introduction at half-time. He scored less than two minutes into the second period and created another two goals in the 4-1 win, lifting the standards of those around him. Forwards - Stephen Dobbie, Sam Cosgrove, Scott Sinclair Media playback is not supported on this device Watch: Dobbie scores stunning 38th goal of season There was no Scottish Cup upset for the Dumfries side, but they did provide one of the weekend's most memorable moments. Stephen Dobbie's equaliser, from more than 30 yards out, his 38th goal of the season, was a thing of beauty. The "King of Queens", as he was christened by commentator Liam McLeod, is a joy to watch. Sam Cosgrove is probably still wondering how he failed to secure his first hat-trick in senior football when he missed a sitter on Sunday. But the Aberdeen striker did score a brace for the sixth time this season. That's now 14 goals in his last 13 games as this incredible rise continues unabated. Scott Sinclair has come back with a bang for Celtic in the last couple of months after a dip in form had him on the periphery of the starting XI. The Englishman is again doing what he does so well, nipping in off the left flank and getting himself on the score-sheet. His treble against St Johnstone on Sunday means he's netted 11 goals in his last 11 games. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/47218088 |
What are the different measures of inflation, and are we being conned? | It seems so. There are three main estimates produced by the ONS: the consumer prices index (CPI); consumer prices index including owner-occupiers housing costs (CPIH): and the retail prices index (RPI). The rates for December 2018 Januarys figures are out tomorrow show CPI is 2.1%, CPIH is 2.0%, and RPI is 2.7%. The headline rate that tends to be used by the government and media is the CPI. Statisticians appear to prefer CPIH, while RPI is either hated or loved depending on whether it makes you a winner or a loser. Thats a constant refrain from pensioners, who argue that CPI is falsely low because it over reflects the falling price of electronics but not the rocketing cost of heating bills and council tax; and from younger adults, who argue that it doesnt capture sky-high increases in house prices. Give the statisticians some slack here. Broadly, the CPI should be seen as a shopping basket containing all the goods and services bought by households in the UK around 700 items, from the cost of a cinema seat to the price of a pint at the local pub, from a holiday in Spain to the cost of a bicycle. The ONS accepts that no one is average, and that the CPI inflation figure may not strictly apply to any one individual or family, but still gives us a useful yardstick of the impact of inflation on our own pocket or purse. We used RPI throughout the 1970s and 80s but now it is regarded as deeply flawed. In particular, the Carli formula used in RPI calculations appears to overestimate inflation in clothes prices. Various estimates suggest that the RPI has structurally overstated inflation by 0.5% to 0.8% a year. Its hard not to agree with the House of Lords economic affairs committee, which concluded that the government is engaged in inflation shopping using the lower CPI figure where it has to pay out such as for welfare benefits but switching to the higher RPI number when it wants to charge people, such as for student loans and rail fares. Even the ONS acknowledges that RPI has serious shortcomings, and no longer designates it as a proper national statistic. There is a thorny problem with the tens of billions of pounds worth of bonds issued by the government called index-linked gilts which are contractually obliged to pay interest based on the RPI figure. It wont be until 2068 that the last bond with an RPI contract will finally mature, and there is no chance the government will renege on those contracts. The House of Lords committee argues that with improvements (above all on capturing housing costs) the RPI can once again become a single general measure of inflation. But others argue that it is too flawed to be fixed and should be scrapped. | https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/12/what-different-measures-of-inflation-are-we-being-conned |
How Big Is Social Media And Does It Really Count As 'Big Data'? | UPDATE 1:30PM EST 2/12/2019: In response to my query yesterday for an official estimate of the total number of tweets sent since the service's founding, Twitter responded this afternoon that it was "not commenting," reminding us how few hard statistics the companies actually make available. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why it doesn't release these numbers. Social media has become synonymous with big data thanks to its widespread availability and stature as a driver of the global conversation. Its massive size, high update speed and range of content modalities are frequently cited as a textbook example of just what constitutes big data in todays data drenched world. We hold up social media platforms today as the epitome of big data. However, the lack of external visibility into those platforms means that nearly all of our assessments are based on the hand picked statistics those companies choose to report to the public and the myriad ways those figures, such as active users, are constantly evolved to reflect the rosiest image possible of the growth of social media as a whole. Much of our reverence for social platforms comes from the belief that their servers hold an unimaginably large archive of global human behavior. Facebook announced its first large research dataset last year, consisting of a petabyte of data with almost all public URLs Facebook users globally have clicked on, when, and by what types of people. Despite its petabyte stature, the actual number of rows was estimated to be relatively small. In all, the dataset was projected to contain just 30 billion rows when it was announced, growing at a rate of just 2 million unique URLs across 300 million posts per week, once completed. To many researchers, 30 billion rows sounds like an extraordinary amount of data that they couldnt possibly analyze in their lifetime. By modern standards, however, 30 billion records is a fairly tiny dataset and the petabyte as a benchmark of big data is long pass. In fact, my own open data GDELT Project has compiled a database of more than 85 billion outlinks from worldwide news outlet homepages since March 2018, making it 2.8 times larger than Facebooks dataset in just half the time. Compared to news media, social media isnt necessarily that much larger. It is merely that we have historically lacked the tools to treat news media as big data. In contrast, social media has aggressively marketed itself as big data from the start, with data formats and API mechanisms designed to maximize its accessibility to modern analytics. In its 13 short years Twitter has become the defacto face of the big data revolution when it comes to understanding global society. The company itself no longer publishes regular reports of how many tweets are sent per day or how many tweets have been sent since its founding and it did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how many total tweets have been sent in its history. However, extrapolating from previous studies we can reasonably estimate that if trends have held there have been slightly over one trillion tweets sent since the services founding 13 years ago. At first glance a trillion tweets sounds like an incredibly large number, especially given that each of those trillion tweets consists of a JSON record with a number of fields. However, tweets are extremely small, historically maxing out at just 140 characters of text. This means that while there are a lot of tweets, each of those tweets says very little. In reality, few tweets come anywhere near Twitter's historical 140-character limit. The average English tweet is around 34 characters while the average Japanese tweet is 15 characters, reflecting the varying information conveyed by a single character in each language. Moreover, while raw Twitter data can be quite large (a month of the Decahose was 2.8TB in 2012), just 4% of a Twitter record is the tweet text itself. The remaining 96% is a combination of all of the metadata Twitter provides about each tweet and JSONs highly inefficient storage format. Since most Twitter analyses focus on the text of each tweet, this means the actual volume of data that must be processed to conduct common social analytics is quite small. Assuming that all one trillion tweets were the maximum 140 characters long, that would yield just 140TB of text (the actual number would be slightly higher accounting for UTF8 encoding). In 2012 the average tweet length Twitter-wide was 74 bytes (bytes, unlike characters, account for the additional length of UTF8 encoding of non-ASCII text), which would mean those trillion tweets would consume just 74TB of text: a large, but hardly unmanageable collection. If we extrapolate from the 2012-2014 Twitter trends to estimate that somewhere in the neighborhood of 35% of all trillion tweets have been retweets (assuming no major changes in retweet behavior), then using that 74-byte average length would yield just 48TB of unique text. Of course, this is before the hyperlinks found in roughly a third of tweets are removed (again, assuming trends have held since 2014). It also ignores the prevalence of @username references in tweets that do not contribute to their analyzable text. For comparison, the 2010 Google Books NGrams collection representing 4% of all books ever published totaled 500 billion words (361 billion English words) and was estimated to be around 3TB in size. That would make it 25 times smaller than the totality of Twitter. The Internet Archives collection of English language public domain books totals around 450GB of text, making it around 86 times smaller than Twitter. The Google and Internet Archive digitized book collections include only a single copy of each book, making it unfair to compare them against Twitter with its myriad retweets. Filtering out retweets, we find that Twitter is just 16 times larger than the Google Books NGrams source collection, while the Internet Archives public domain books collection is around 54 times smaller. It is a remarkable commentary on the digital era that just 13 years of tweets is larger than the two centuries of digitized books available to researchers today. Partially this is due to the fact that such a small portion of our history has been digitized (less than 4% of known published books are represented in the Google Books NGrams dataset). In essence we are comparing the totality of 13 years of Twitter against just a 4% sample of two centuries of books. A bigger factor is the fundamentally altered economics of publishing in the digital age. Through the two centuries of printed books in the two collections above, the cost of publishing a book was so substantial that very few authors were rewarded for their efforts with published volumes and every word of a book mattered. In contrast, in the Twitter era ones publishing volume is limited only by the speed one can type (or have a bot type on ones behalf). This means that to truly compare Twitters size to other datasets we should compare it against a similar born digital collection. Over the period November 2014 to present, the GDELT Project monitored roughly 3TB of news article text (counting just the article text itself, not the hundreds of terabytes of surrounding HTML, CSS, JavaScript and imagery). Over that same time period, we can estimate based on previous trends that Twitter likely published in the neighborhood of 600 billion tweets, of which 330 billion were not retweets (assuming trends have held with retweet volume increasing over time). This would work out to around 84TB of text during that period if every single tweet were the maximum 140 characters or around 44TB using a 74-character average tweet length. Excluding retweets this would fall to just 24TB of text, assuming an average tweet length. News content can contain syndicated wire stories that are republished by multiple outlets, but the volume of such republication as a percent of the totality of daily journalistic output is unlikely to come close to the prominence of retweeting. Counting all trillion tweets sent 2006-present and assuming all of them were the maximum 140 characters, the Twitter archive would be just 47 times larger than global online news output 2014-present as monitored by GDELT. Using the more realistic average tweet length, Twitter would be just 25 times larger and removing retweets it would be just 16 times larger. Of course, those numbers compare a 13 year stretch of Twitter to just 4 years of news. Comparing the two over the same four-year period, we find that Twitter was around 15 times larger than news, but just 8 times larger if retweets are removed. Thus, if one had access to the complete Twitter firehose 2014-present, the total volume of text would likely be only around 8 times larger than the total volume of online news content over the same time period. Seen in this light, Twitter is large, but it isnt that much larger than global journalism, reminding us of just how much news is published each day across the world. Precious few researchers have access to the full firehose, so the largest academic research is typically conducted with the Twitter Decahose, which contains around 10% of daily tweets. The total Decahose output 2014-present is just 1.5 times larger than news. Removing retweets, the situation is reversed and news is actually 1.2 times larger than Twitters Decahose. Few universities have the financial resources to subscribe to the Twitter Decahose, so the overwhelming majority of academic Twitter research is conducted either with Twitters search API or its 1% streaming API that makes available roughly 1% of daily tweets. News is actually 6.7 times larger than the Twitter 1% stream over this period. If retweets are removed, news rises to 12.2 times larger than Twitter. Thus, in terms of the 1% data that most academics work with, Twitter over the last four years is actually several times smaller than worldwide online news output over the same time period. Those academics lucky enough to work with the Decahose still have less content than they would get from news. Yet, even if one had the entire firehose at ones disposal, the totality of that content would be just 8 times larger than news content. Filtering out all of the hyperlinks and username references would drop that number even further. In short, Twitter is certainly a large dataset, but in terms of the actual textual tweet contents that most analyses focus on, we see that a trillion tweets dont actually work out to that much text due to their tiny size. In many ways, Twitter is more akin to behavioral messaging data than a traditional content-based platform, especially with the way its retweet behavior corresponds to the like and engagement metrics of other platforms. Most importantly, we see that even at the full firehose level, Twitter isnt actually that much larger than the traditional contemporary datasets that precede it like news media. Twitter may be faster but it isnt that much larger. In terms of the Decahose and 1% products that most researchers work with, news media actually offers a larger volume of analyzable content with far better understood provenance, stability and historical context. Putting this all together, it has become the accepted wisdom of the big data era that the social media giants reign supreme over the data landscape, their archives forming the very definition of what it means to work with big data. Yet, as weve seen here, a trillion tweets quickly become just a few tens of terabytes of actual text, reminding us that high velocity small message streams like Twitter may consist of very large record counts, but very little actual data that is relevant to our analyses. Just as importantly, we see that traditional data sources like news media are actually just as large as the social archives we work with, reminding us of the immense untapped data sources beyond the glittering novelty of social media. Twitter certainly meets all of the definitions of big data but if we look closely, we find that good old traditional journalism is not far behind. The difference is that social media has aggressively marketed itself as big data while journalism has failed to rebrand itself for the digital era. In the end, rather than mythologize social media as the ultimate embodiment of big data, perhaps the biggest lesson here is that we should think creatively about how to harness the untapped wealth of data that surrounds us and bring it into the big data era. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/11/how-big-is-social-media-and-does-it-really-count-as-big-data/ |
Will Trump's New Artificial Intelligence Initiative Make The U.S. The World Leader In AI? | The tech world got a surprise on Monday when a senior administration official for the Trump administration announced during a telephone briefing that the President would be signing an executive order that would create an American AI Initiative designed to dedicate resources and funnel investments into research on artificial intelligence (AI). The order, titled Accelerating Americas Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, will direct agencies to prioritize AI investments in research and development, increase access to federal data and models for that research and prepare workers to adapt to the era of AI. While an obvious concern is funding for these innovations, no announcements have been made about the specific financial resources that will become available to the new program. Aside from how it will be paid for, we also currently lack information on how the government intends to structure or re-structure resources, who, exactly, they intend to call on for this effort (other than federal agencies), or how soon we should expect to see things take shape. Of course, Congress will ultimately decide how much money the program gets. The order has five pillars, according to the unnamed official: 1) Research and development (which will ask agencies to increase funding for and specifically report on AI research) 2) Infrastructure (which will encourage information sharing, though potentially run up against issues of privacy) 3) Governance (which will have to be drafted by government agencies and, we can only hope, other civic and academic groups, but at least aims to ensure the safe and ethical use of AI) 4) Workforce (which will support job training and continuing education in computer science) 5) International engagement (which will require collaborating on projects with other countries, without giving them the technological edge the U.S. seeks) Other than this general framework, we have very little else in terms of what will happen, though the government plans to release more information over the next 6 months. While for many AI conjures images of Skynet or other sci-fi fears of sentient machines threatening to eliminate or enslave humanity, the term is actually used quite differently in tech circles. AI is simply the all-encompassing term for machines which can intelligently solve problems or complete tasks based on a set of stipulated rules (or algorithms). While these algorithms are written by humans, giving them their own set of issues and biases, the machines dont need human intervention to go about their work. AI is used in recommending your next television show or new music; its also been used more problematically in predictive policing and criminal sentencing, for example. But still, its not the Terminator. Two subsets of AI that are even more sophisticated are fields known as machine learning and deep learning. Machine learning aims to enable machines to make accurate predictions based on data provided by programmers. Right now, deep learning is the pinnacle of what weve achieved in the field of AI. It is inspired by the way the human brain learns and processes information and patterns, and the goal is to enable machines to label and categorize people and items in order to categorize and make decisions about them. But the more we let machines make these decisions with minimal human intervention, the more humans are kept in the dark about the decision-making processes that machines employ. These are what takes AI to the next level and what an ambitious new federal program would likely concentrate on. Still, machines that use deep learning are very different from self-aware machines. The U.S. is still behind the curve in terms of federal AI strategy. In fact, it will be the 19th country to announce a formal strategy for the future of AI. Canada was the first, back in March of 2017. Seventeen countries followed suit after that, including France, Mexico, the UAE, and China. There was a special sense of urgency on behalf of the U.S. government once it became clear that China was set to overtake the U.S. in AI innovation. The American AI Initiative announcement comes almost exactly a year after The New York Times published a story on Chinas plan to become a world leader in AI by the year 2030, which technologists took as a direct challenge to Americas lead in arguably the most important tech research to come along in decades. Chinas 28-page (in translation) document laid out an aggressive plan to spark innovation and pump billions into new breakthroughs, though it was similar in many ways to a report the Obama administration had released about the future of AI back in 2016. Of course, there is research going on all around the country in both industry and academia on AI, machine learning, and deep learning. Kate Crawford, co-director of AI Now, told Science that ...while the executive order correctly highlights AI as a major priority for U.S. policymaking, she remains concerned about its apparent lack of input from academic researchers and civic leaders as well as the administrations troubling track record when it comes to privacy and civil liberties. But the truth is, its still unclear what kind of input went into the Trump administrations plan. Still, many are applauding the effort. Virginia Dignum, Professor of Social and Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Ume Universitys Department of Computer Science, told me she thought the U.S. government has been too quiet about AI and its societal impact, since the attempts of the Obama administration and the research is too important to ignore knowing that it will affect all people and all industries and world leaders need to take their role and responsibility seriously. She continued: It is also good to see that the U.S.'s view seems to approach Europe's in terms of analysing the need and scope of regulation, the availability of open (government) data, and the call for wide participation. I hope that this means Europe and the U.S. can collaborate in their efforts to ensure responsible development and use of AI. Of course, collaboration could be tricky when so many governments think of technological innovation as a race to the top, with a winner-take-all sense of success. Dignum also cautioned against this warlike narrative about an 'AI race, noting that while massive investments are crucial, there is not ONE finish line and also there are many routes to progress in AI. Instead of seeing world leaders create a narrative of more and bigger data and more and bigger computational power as the only way to realise the potential of AI, she hopes to see investments in environmentally sustainable, and smarter, approaches to AI. Another important consideration the most important, some might argue is how we can be sure that ethical standards and policy guidelines keep pace with this planned growth. Two of the administrations proposed pillars deal with ethical issues such as privacy and potential job loss, but the announcement is otherwise vague about how the program plans to ensure that responsible development and use of AI remain central throughout the process. This news also comes on the heels of concerns from companies such as Google about the government using privately developed AI technology, especially in warfare. Google had to end its collaboration with the Department of Defense last year on Project Maven after thousands of its own employees signed a petition to end the use of their work by the military. However, tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft have pledged to continue to work with the government, and, specifically, the Department of Defense as they see fit. While the role of universities has yet to be determined in the new plan, those on the forefront of AI research are eager to see whats ahead and what their roles may be. When contacted for comment, Fei-Fei Li, the Co-Director of Stanford University's Human-Centered AI Institute (who also spent a sabbatical year as Google Clouds Chief Scientist of AI/ML and Vice President) said: At Stanford, we support the responsible development and implementation of AI - especially when it ensures AI's impact on communities around the world is safe, fair and empowering. Building a future that benefits everyone will require cooperation on a truly historic scale, and that includes significant government investment. We look forward to hearing more details about the Trump Administration's plans. Its clear that no matter what shape the Trump administrations plans take, they will have to answer to AI researchers and advocates around the world who are, more loudly than ever, calling for advances that not only reach the masses but ensure their fair and equitable treatment. While the order calls on agencies to protect civil liberties, privacy, and American values in applying the new technology, AI simply cant be limited by geographic boundaries, and global cooperation will be crucial. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicabaron/2019/02/11/will-trumps-new-artificial-intelligence-initiative-make-the-u-s-the-world-leader-in-ai/ |
How Many Administrations Does It Take to Screw In a Light Bulb Rule? | The U.S. Energy Department (DOE) through a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking this month has stirred up a debate in Washington about whether consumers should have a choice in buying light bulbs. The debate is likely to spill into energy hearings on Capitol Hill this month. Environmental groups want the government to decide, citing climate change threats require a mandate and a heavy hand. Lighting manufacturers want the market to decide. At stake is a nearly $44 billion lighting market and 6 billion sockets to fill in households across America. At issue are several 2007 amendments to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 and subsequent interpretations of the statute, which DOE says were illegal, including a final rule which was approved Jan. 19, 2017, one day before President Donald Trump took office. If the rule is left unchecked, Americans would be left with two options for residential lighting by 2020LEDs and compact florescent lights (CFLs). The CFLs comprise about 6% of market share, and their share dwindles year over year. Environmentalists had supported the use of CFLs some years ago, but many groups distanced themselves from the technology after the Environmental Protection Agency reported the bulbs contain mercury, toxic to human health. Industry Is Pro-Choice The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), which represents light bulb manufacturers, said LED bulbs in 2014 and 2015 increased by 237%, making up 15 percent of the entire U.S. bulb market at the end of 2015. LEDs have been on an upward trajectory since. NEMA told DOE the marketplace is doing an excellent job of transitioning to more efficient lighting solutions and does not need government intervention. NEMA said 2018 third quarter data shows LED bulbs account for about 65% of the consumer lamp market, followed by halogen incandescents, which account for about 28% of the market. By the end of 2015, traditional incandescent lamps were virtually gone from store shelves and manufacturers were no longer shipping those lamps, NEMA said in its December 2018 blog. CFL sales, which account for 6.7% of the market have fallen dramatically NEMA said. NEMA has told DOE that the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act is clear. DOE was only expected to determine whether general service incandescent lamps and other incandescent lamps could be made more efficient and subject to higher standards. After DOE issued its rule January 19, 2017, NEMA fired back. Carl Silcox, NEMAs general counsel, said in his blog, NEMA believes the Department of Energy [under President Obama] flipped Congress intent on its head and mistakenly concluded that its job was to eliminate the energy-efficient halogen incandescent light bulb rather than determine whether a higher efficiency standard for those bulbs could be economically justified and technologically feasible. NEMA is aware of media reports that some hold the view that a 45 lumen-per-watt standard for all of these types of lamps is going into effect in January 2020, Silcox wrote in his blog. But that remains to be determined, and it is premature to say either yes or no until DOE follows the rules laid out by Congress in the 2007 law and addresses all the issues that Congress directed DOE to address. Natural Selection Lighting giant GE stopping manufacturing CFLs three years ago to focus on LEDs. In 2016, GEs LED lighting sales grew 250% and made up 15% of the 1.7 billion light bulbs GE sold that year. GE still manufactures efficient halogen incandescent bulbs and some traditional incandescent bulbs. In his blog last month, the president and CEO of GE Lighting, Bill Lacey, said sales of LED bulbs in the consumer market are greater than sales of all other lighting technologies combined, yet nearly 60% of U.S. residential sockets still contain a less efficient bulb. The Energy Information Administration, DOEs statistical arm, said most homes in the U.S. use more than one type of light bulb, and its primarily a mix of some type of incandescent bulbeither a traditional incandescent, or a more efficient halogen incandescent. GE does not support a government mandate. Lighting companies Sylvania and Philips still manufacture incandescents as well as CFLs, but like GE, their LED business booming. In fact, over the past several years, NEMA has recommended a look at LED efficiency instead. DOE sets the minimum efficiency standard for lighting, and the highest efficiency standard is set by the federal Energy Star program, jointly managed by DOE and EPA. Frank Sharp, senior technical leader at the Electric Power Research Institute, said the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which was implemented in 2012, 2013, 2014, required 4 lamps100-watt, 75-watt, 60-watt, and 40-watt general service incandescentsto be replaced with something 28% or greater in efficiency. The efficient bulbs are increased efficiency halogens, LEDs and CFLs. With DOEs new notice of proposed rulemaking, Sharp said the current discussion is tailored around whether the 2020 implementation will impact only those four lamp categories or will be broadened to include more lamps and lighting categories. Thats the root of this discussion, Sharp said. But the discussion has broadened in a matter of days. DOE said its trying to follow the law and provide consumers with a wide range of affordable energy options to meet their needs. Leave Them No Choice Environmental groups, one after the other, have deployed nearly identical statements criticizing the administration and painted a grim scenario should DOE reverse course. The National Resource Defense Council said the new rule would cost consumers $12 billion on their utility bills and cause up to 25 more coal-burning power plants worth of electricity to be generated every year. NRDC said thats enough to power all the households in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) echoed those costs. ACEEE said it used government and industry data published by DOE, NEMA and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to arrive at its conclusions. The analysis is clear and takes into account the natural market growth of LEDs, it said. [This] is ideologically driven, said Andrew deLaski, Executive Director for ACEEEs Appliance Standards Awareness Project. The Trump administration wants to advance an agenda that all regulation is bad. But the ideology seems to exist on both sides of the argument. DOE said consumer demand is driving innovation in advanced lighting technologies, and the department is committed to a regulatory process that promotes consumer choice, technological innovation, and certainty to stakeholders. Diversity of supply and freedom of choice are at the center of the Energy Departments proposal. ACEEE Executive Director Steve Nadel said its both illegal and a burden to U.S. industry for DOE to reverse course. If this rule is finalized by DOE, it is likely to be challenged in court. Since the U.S. standards that require LED, CFL or equivalent scheduled to take effect Jan. 2, 2020, there will be substantial uncertainty for manufacturers and retailers, Nadel said. He cites a similar case in California where the states governor fought then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt for attempting to roll back vehicle emissions standards across the country. Cutting Carbon At All Costs DeLaski said the LED market will grow organically even with a diverse supply on the market, but accelerating LED growth, changing consumer behavior, is critical to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In a statement, DeLaski said if DOE reverses the rule, US electricity use would increase by 80 billion kWh per year. He said pollution increases would include 19,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, 23,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 34 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year by 2025, the annual CO 2 emissions equal to that of more than seven million cars. DOEs Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and DOEs Energy Information Administration said the residential sector consumes nearly 22% of all U.S. electricity produced, and lighting accounts for 6% of total residential sector electricity consumption. Make Them Make Good Choices The [existing] standards push LED choice to be the default choice in the marketplace [in 2020], DeLaski said. By keeping the existing rule, Youre accelerating the transition [to LEDs] through a policy choice, he said. Low income folks shopping at the Dollar Store, they dont have good choices, DeLaski said. They often just buy the lower-priced incandescent or halogen, he said. Some consumers are slow to make changes, some consumers just buy what they always buy, he said. DOEs new assistant secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Dan Simmons, is set to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Energy Subcommittee soon. Simmons was confirmed by the Senate in January, though he was nominated by President Trump in June 2018. Still, House lawmakers want a progress report. The notice of proposed rulemaking is expected to come up. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/dipkabhambhani/2019/02/11/how-many-administrations-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-light-bulb-rule/ |
Who Is Guiding The Next Generation Of Entrepreneurs? | As industries advance, so too does the knowledge base and practical instruction that is passed down to the next group of young professionals. In the medical, computer, or engineering fields for example, you can actually see this evolution as technology improves and impacts our lives. My oldest son is graduating high school this year, and like many parents in America, our family has been hyper-focused on preparing him for college. But as we get closer to that day, and his prospects (and my investment) become real, I wonder if I should be questioning the system more. My son has been dabbling in business on his own since grade school, and I can see the entrepreneurial fire growing within him. I know there has been a palatable upswing in celebrating and romanticizing the entrepreneur in our culture. Youd be hard pressed to find a sports star or celebrity not running a business or building a brand in the off-season. Just a scroll through your Facebook feed will probably yield numerous side hustle opportunities. It certainly feels like everyone is getting in on the entrepreneurial bandwagon. But in reality, the statistics tell a very different story. Several studies show that entrepreneurship is at a historic low. Yes, people are starting businesses at the lowest rate in 40 years! Traditionally, being an entrepreneur has been a hard, thankless, humbling, lonely (I could go on) and very risky career path. It requires a disciplined long-term outlook and a tremendous commitment to sacrifice. We have to face the fact that the next generation has a different set of values when it comes to their personal freedom, work life balance, and risk/reward tolerance. They are looking for quality of life earlier and a clearer path to the upside of owning their own business. Instead of lamenting about the downfalls of this new age attitude, I decided to lean in and engage. When I speak to high schools about business and entrepreneurship, I can feel the hunger in these classes for practical knowledge and direct instruction. So I set out to see if anyone is speaking to this generation about being an entrepreneur on their terms. I met a remarkable young lady named Amie Tollefsrud. She is a self-made entrepreneur that quite quickly after college realized her communication degree wasnt leading her anywhere she wanted to be. So she set out to make it on her own, becoming a nutritionist and helping clients online. She quickly learned that every practical element she needed to succeed she was discovering on her own through trial and error. As her business grew, her success allowed her to travel the world and work remotely. Amie, like many in her generation, has no interest in anything that chains her to a desk. Eventually, she started teaching courses to other nutritionists on how to launch their business online. She was getting so many inquiries she started helping other young entrepreneurs from all business categories. Now, she teaches others how to create their own online courses and market their business brands. And while you get no degree or certificate for taking Amies or other courses like hers, the real world instruction directly from the source is very appealing. I also interviewed and spent time with Andrew 'King Bach' Bachelor, an incredibly popular social media influencer and entrepreneur. He recalls that one of his college professors told the class, The job you will have 10 years from now doesnt exist today. Barely five years later, its obvious he was right. Imagine the changes to the landscape in the next five years. When King Bach talks about the structure of his business or his systematic use of social media, it sounds more like science or economics professor than an Instagram influencer making funny videos. Unfortunately, King Bach isnt a professor at any college or university. His wealth of knowledge and experience is exactly the kind of expertise needed to help advance the study of entrepreneurialism. Overall I think thats what our community needs to embrace. Like the other more traditional professions, we need to aggressively explore our emerging technology and continually advance our areas of education and training. Think of it as the entrepreneurs modern pursuit of higher education. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/brantpinvidic/2019/02/11/who-is-guiding-the-next-generation-of-entrepreneurs/ |
Will President Buhari Continue To Rule Nigeria Despite Failing To Address Havoc In The Middle Belt? | On February 16, 2019, general elections will be held in Nigeria. The list of candidates is long. Among them, the leading candidate is President Muhammadu Buhari who is hoping to be reelected. The question is whether his record in recent years proves he has what it takes to secure the win. Buhari has received widespread praise for his strong stance on corruption and for his proactive approach to the mass atrocities perpetrated by Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria. Nonetheless, the conduct of the Nigerian Security Forces in addressing the issue of Boko Haram is currently considered by the International Criminal Court as possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. Also, the handling of the cases of Leah Sharibu and Alice Loksha Ngaddah show that the claimed success is tainted. Yet there remains a significant issue that has been neglected. For Buhari, it may cost him the elections. That issue surrounds the mass atrocities perpetrated by the Fulani herdsmen in the Middle Belt - atrocities that in 2018 have outnumbered the fatalities caused by Boko Haram. The Fulani herdsmen also referred to as the Fulani militia, are a semi-nomadic, pastoralist ethnic group who live predominantly within Nigerias Middle Belt. The attacks carried out by Fulani herdsmen are focused on the area of the Middle Belt, in Kaduna, Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue, and Taraba particularly. However, some reports suggest that the Fulani herdsmen are expanding the territories of their terror and have already reached southern states, including Oyo and Enugu, as well as northern states like Zamfara and Gombe. Fulani herdsmen are reportedly highly militarized and widely use AK-47. The atrocities perpetrated by the Fulani herdsmen have been the cause of thousands of fatalities in 2018. As a result, in July 2018, the Nigerian House of Representatives recognised the atrocities in Plateau state as genocide. Despite this designation, no decisive steps have followed to address the alarming situation in the Middle Belt. The question the Nigerian electorate has to ask is why Buhari has failed to respond to it. The situation in the Middle Belt is often referred to as a clash over grazing land. However, the attacks are more targeted. They occur against indigenous tribes and local, mainly Christian, farmers. These farmers are being attacked and slaughtered in their own homes. Further, the clashes intensified around the 2011 elections, and again around the 2015 election suggesting political motives. Because of the systematic nature of the attacks, and the specific targeting Christians, it has been suggested that Fulani herdsmen are not only looking for dominance over territory and properties, it looks as though they ultimately want to eliminate the presence of Christians from the area. However, there are also reports that Fulani herdsmen attack anyone who does not follow their ideology. Violence perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria is nothing new and the situation has been deteriorating since approximately 2012. However, recent months have seen a definite intensification of their campaign. Looking at the figures between January and June 2018, there were 47.5% more attacks by Fulani than those of Boko Haram. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project reported that since the beginning of 2018, 66 separate events involving the militia have been recorded, a 260% increase from the same month in 2017. One of the more recent attacks (on June 23, 2018) left more than 200 dead. In response, the Nigerian military reportedly deployed 300 soldiers and seven helicopter gunships to Benue, Plateau and Taraba States. This action came months if not years too late. And indeed, the situation only continued to deteriorate over the subsequent months. As a result, new data suggests that between January and September 2018 alone, Fulani herdsmen were responsible for nearly 1,700 deaths, a figure that is six times greater than the number of people killed by Boko Haram that year. This is how the Fulani herdsmen secured the title the most lethal faction operating in Nigeria in 2018. Boko Haram has been a significant threat to peace and security in Nigeria and had to be addressed by Buhari. However, the flagrant neglect of the issue of violence in the Middle Belt cannot be justified. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2019/02/11/will-buhari-rule-despite-failing-to-address-havoc-in-the-middle-belt/ |
What Does It Take To Get Aging Parents To Stop Driving? | Adult children struggle with it. Spouses do too. When an elder's driving starts to look dangerous, everyone but the elder himself worries. Families are uneasy confronting their aging loved one about giving up the car keys, as there is resistance from Mom or Dad. "I'm fine!" the parent shouts. "Don't tell me what to do!" The uncomfortable feeling of trying to keep a parent safe while not showing disrespect causes inner turmoil with the family members. One mistake we see at AgingParents.com, where we consult with families of elders, is the attitude of avoidance. "Let's wait until there is an accident," they tell themselves. They want their loved to give up driving but their own fear or discomfort stops them from taking action. As reported in the Washington Post, Prince Philip, driving at age 97, rolled his car, injured two other people and was fortunate to walk away from the accident. No one's older parents are entitled to such a miracle. Two days later he was spotted driving again, without a seatbelt, the article reports. For him, one terrifying accident wasn't enough to stop on his own. Something else had to prompt the license surrender weeks later. The way we recommend approaching the problem is first, to acknowledge that the aging parent is not the only one whose dignity, feelings and independence are at stake. Any accident victim who is injured by a dangerous older driver can lose dignity and independence in a serious accident caused by that older person. As a former personal injury lawyer, I have met numerous people on the receiving end of an aging person's bad driving. None of the particular cases I handled where the older driver was at fault were fatalities but there were permanent injuries and losses of function involved for those clients. We saw the effect of what happened when the elder and their families waited until there was an accident. An aging parent's independence must be outweighed by the risk to the safety of the driving public. After facing the reality that those driving days must end, family members need to discuss the issue with their loved one in a kind and respectful way. There should be a plan. We lay out such a 5 step plan in my book, The Family Guide to Aging Parents. We suggest starting with a one-on-one conversation initiated by the elder's favorite, most trusted or closest person. Failing that, other family members need to participate, creating consensus. If needed, bringing in a trusted person as a communication ally outside the family follows that effort. Legal means to stop a scary driver are a last resort, but these options exist as well. Our culture values independence and driving symbolizes that. It is very hard for anyone to be told by someone else he or she has to quit driving. However, studies of the problem show us that most elders, when asked, will voluntarily give up this privilege. The remaining ones, who are perhaps unable to process the logic or reasoning to give up the keys because of cognitive impairment, are the most difficult for families. The combination of an elder's early dementia, stubbornness, fear and anger is a formidable problem. But it must be addressed, not ignored. In Prince Philip's case, the Washington Post article suggests that it was the Queen who must have finally told him to surrender his license. The article reports that he was very sorry about causing the injuries. His remorse would not have been any consolation if he has also hurt the baby who was in the Kia he struck in his accident. If your own aging parent is still driving and should not be, think about everyone else whose safety is endangered when families fail to act. News reports all across our country report incidents of older drivers creating havoc and harm behind the wheel. State laws do not impose mandatory age limits on driving and are unlikely to do so. It is up to the people around our aging parents to intervene when the older person needs to give up the keys. My own mother in law drove until age 93, though she had ceased driving at night long before that. To her credit, she had decided to give up her car when she moved to a seniors' community. No pressure on her was needed about the car, but it was to prompt her to make the change of residence. At 93, we got her a smart phone, taught her to use Uber and she still got around when she wanted to go. When an aging parent does give up the keys, be sure you help with alternative transportation plans. Independence has a new meaning with Lyft and Uber at one's disposal. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolynrosenblatt/2019/02/11/what-does-it-take-to-get-aging-parents-to-stop-driving/ |
Why Go Induction? | With only an electric stove option at my current residence, I decided to purchase an induction stove, rather than use the outdated electric one that existed there previously. After years of cooking on a gas stove, I was wary of how this induction stove would cook; I thought I would miss the flame, and the cooking process I was so accustomed to. But after cooking on an induction stove for just a few weeks, it will forever be my cooking appliance of choice. Many people are still not familiar with this relatively new technology. Although Ive been writing about induction stoves for years I had never experienced cooking on one myself, until now. First introduced at the Worlds Fair in Chicago in 1933, induction cooking now has about 8% of the market share for cooktops and ranges. According to Consumer Reports, No other cooking technology that weve tested is faster than the fastest induction elementswere talking 2 to 4 minutes speedier than the competition to bring 6 quarts of water to a near-boil. Induction Simplified An electromagnetic field below the glass top surface transfers current directly to magnetic cookware, causing it to heat up. Induction stoves and cooktops look like regular electric ranges, but when they heat up, they do not display the glow that these other ranges do. When an induction-compatible pan is placed on the cooktop, currents are transferred to the pan and instant heat is generated. The cooktop doesn't heat up, the cookware does. And as soon as the pot is removed the heating stops; the induction stove-top will not heat up unless there is a magnetic pot on it. Advantages of Induction A major difference between induction and other types of cooktops is the speed with which induction cooks. For a first time user, they may very well burn the first food they begin to cook. There is a power mode that will heat up a small amount of food in seconds and will boil water in a few minutes. There are various levels of heat, that can be used to heat food quickly or much slower at the lowest levels. In addition to the speed of cooking induction ranges also save energy by automatically shutting off when a pot is removed from the range. This is also a safety feature, because there is no chance of leaving the stove on when cooking is finished. Induction stoves are very easy to clean. Unlike gas stoves with grills and crevices, the top of an induction cooktop is flat with minimal detail to clean. Grease and spills can easily be wiped off and cleaned with a special cream, specially designed for glass top appliances. It is easy to keep an induction stove looking like new. Disadvantages of Induction A minor disadvantage is the requirement to use magnetic pots for induction stoves. However, many kitchens are already equipped with pots that are magnetic; these pots can also be used with any other types of stoves. In the past, induction ranges have been more expensive than other cooktops. Recently, however, there are more modestly priced units, making them more affordable and comparable to the price of may other stove tops. New Technology One of the newest technologies to be coming out in appliances, including stoves, is connectivity, whereby the appliance can be programed and controlled. According to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM), connectivity "will allow consumers to save additional time, conserve energy, integrate the use of renewable energy and pave the way for faster and more accurate repairs." AHAM predicts "Connected devices will be in nearly every home by 2020, when the total number of those devices is expected to reach 26 billion." The GE Appliance Caf cooktop shown above can be automatically adjusted to the pan temperature as the home chef proceeds through a video-guided recipe. Another new technology which will be introduced by Wolf in 2019 is the Cook Anywhere induction cooktop. A pan can be placed anywhere on the cooktop surface and the technology will automatically detect the pans footprint, heating only the area making contact. The cooktop will be able to heat up to six pots and pans simultaneously in any position, allowing additional cooking flexibility so the user is not constrained to specific cooking zones. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/sherikoones/2019/02/11/why-go-induction/ |
What Is Some Good Career Advice For Aspiring Robotics Entrepreneurs? | originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Erik Schluntz, Cofounder & CTO at Cobalt Robotics, on Quora: My favorite thing about both robotics and entrepreneurship is that they force you to get your hands dirty and be generalists. In most other fields you get pushed towards specialization until all youre doing is some tiny part of a much bigger problem and you cant do anything else. My advice is to fight this as much as you can, and stay a generalist! In robotics, all problems are inherently cross-stack. You could solve a problem mechanically, by changing your robot. In electronics, by how you control it. In software, by avoiding the problem or approaching it differently. In most situations, one of these solutions is going to be 100 times easier than the others, but often, someone who is an expert in just one domain wont realize that. Theyll plow ahead into a weeks-long R&D project when it instead could have been solved in a few hours. Theres a saying: to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. One of our mottos at Cobalt is, Dont be a hammer! Entrepreneurship is exactly the sameyou need to be good at engineering, sales, marketing, customer discovery, logistics, and leadership, all while also knowing how to prioritize your time. Youll be doing all of these things yourself for a while, so its really important that you can get your hands dirty and get stuff donenot just talk about it. That might mean making 50 cold sales calls a day, or it might mean hand soldering your first set of 30 circuit boards. To a 17-year-old, I would say focus on getting into a great college where youll learn some awesome engineering skills, and more importantly, surround yourself with amazing people that you can work with for the rest of your career! Work on real group projects so you can learn about what it takes to manage a team and get something to work outside of a class. And have a lot of fun while youre there! This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions: | https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/02/11/what-is-some-good-career-advice-for-aspiring-robotics-entrepreneurs/ |
Can TripAdvisor's Hotel Segment Return To Growth In Q4? | TripAdvisor is scheduled to announce its fiscal fourth quarter results on Wednesday, February 13. The company has delivered a solid performance so far this year, driven by a turnaround in its Hotel business and solid demand for its Non-Hotel business, particularly the Restaurants and Experiences segment. In fact, the companys Non-Hotel segment has continued to deliver operational and marketing efficiencies, which has resulted in a strong improvement in its profitability. In the first nine months of 2018, the companys total revenues grew 3% year-over-year (y-o-y) to $1.3 billion. In addition, the companys adjusted EBITDA grew 25% during this period, largely due to increased investments, notably to enhance technological capabilities in order to improve customer engagement. TripAdvisor experienced a more than 50% surge in its stock price over the course of 2018. We have a price estimate for TripAdvisor of $64, which is around 10% ahead of the current market price. We have created an interactive dashboard on What To Expect From TripAdvisors Q4, which details our key forecasts and estimates for the company. You can modify the interactive charts in this dashboard to gauge the impact that changes in key drivers for TripAdvisor can have on the companys earnings and valuation, and see all of our Information Technology data here. Segment Expectations TripAdvisors Hotel segment accounts for almost 80% of the companys revenues. The companys revenues declined moderately in its core hotel-booking segment, even as profitability spiked in the division in the first nine months of fiscal 2018. However, management expects that the hotel business will return to growth in Q4 following several consecutive quarters of declines, largely on the back of its lower cost base and more restrained spending. On the other hand, TripAdvisors Non-Hotel segment is broken down into Experiences, Restaurants, and Rentals. In the first nine months of fiscal 2018, the segments revenue jumped 25% to $350 million. The segment has been profitable but is still largely in growth mode as management focuses on adding to its portfolio of bookable products in hopes of capturing a dominant position in this high-growth market. We expect the Hotel segment to generate about $1.2 billion in revenue in 2018 from Click-Based and Transaction revenues, Display-Based Advertising and Subscription revenue, and Other Hotel revenues. The company has witnessed increased visitors (or hotel shoppers) on its primary website over recent years, where direct suppliers and Online Travel Agencies place their advertisements. Additionally, the company also generates commissions from its travel partners for its instant booking feature. Increased visitors on the TripAdvisor website have driven more clicks and partnerships with advertisers (hotels and OTAs). However, declining revenue per hotel shopper amid increased competition has put pressure on revenues. We expect this metric to decline going forward, putting further pressure on the companys revenue growth. Although we expect TripAdvisors Hotel revenues to decline for full-year fiscal 2018, the segments revenues should rebound over the long run as the company is focusing on three major areas brand advertising, product experience, and marketing mix. In addition, the company continues to capitalize on the significant supply and demand advantages in Non-Hotel offerings and remains focused on driving market share gains in the segment. Also, TripAdvisor plans to globally expand its platform by using Viators tech base to support multiple languages and points of sale. Going forward, the company plans to continue investing in long-term core growth initiatives that should drive solid growth in its revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Explore example interactive dashboards and create your own. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/02/11/can-tripadvisors-hotel-segment-return-to-growth-in-q4/ |
Can AI Cure What Ails Health Insurance? | I n 1970, Americans spent $74.5 billion on healthcare$448 billion in todays dollars. But by 2017, that price tag had ballooned to $3.5 trillion flowing to and from insurers, Medicare and Medicaid via patient premiums and claims payouts to healthcare providers and drug companies. All told, keeping the U.S. healthcare system spinning took six billion insurance-related transactions (an increase of 1.2 billion transactions from 2016), according to the nonprofit Council of Affordable Quality Healthcare. Thats roughly 11,450 transactions per minute. For insurance companies, its a cumbersome, complex, and expensive system. Experts say yes. Insurers could save up to $7 billion over 18 months using AI-driven technologies by streamlining administrative processes, according to a recent Accenture study. By automating routine business tasks alone, the study projects that health insurers could save $15 million per 100 full-time employees. But AIs promise extends beyond reducing wasteful spendingit could also help insurers improve consumers overall health. More and more, youre seeing investment in AI to intervene on behalf of customers to change behavior in ways that actually result in better healthcare outcomes, says Christer Johnson, health care data and analytics advisory leader at Ernst & Young. Health insurance companies are aware of this potential and acting on it. Roughly three-quarters of health insurance executives (72%) say investing in AI will be one of their top three strategic priorities for the coming year, an Accenture survey reveals. 72% of health insurance executives say investing in AI will be one of their top three strategic priorities for the coming year. And while health insurance leaders eyes are on the prize of long-term savings and improved patient health, AIs impact is already rippling across the industry. Here are four areas where the technology is transforming the industry today. Engaging Customers With AI Bots When consumers reach out to ZhongAn Tech, Chinas largest insurance company, to apply for coverage, check their benefits, or file a medical claim, 97% of the time they interact with an AI chatbot. Only the thorniest inquiries (3%) are directed to a human representative. In the future, expect AI-based customer engagement to be the rule, not the exception. By 2030, chatbots will be the primary touchpoint for most insurance customers, with 70% to 90% fewer human personnel engaging with customers than in 2018, according to a McKinsey report. Today, 68% of insurers are already using chatbots in various segments of their business, an Accenture survey finds. And the consulting firm reports that health insurance companies could save more than $2 billion annually by using AI to manage customer interactions. Increasingly, health insurance customers are becoming acclimated to human-machine interactions, according to Torben Nielsen, VP of innovation and strategic investments for Premera Blue Cross. 68% of insurers are already using chatbots in various segments of their business. Weve done a ton of research into our member experience, and weve found that more and more people are very comfortable engaging with technology solutions versus talking to a person, Nielsen reveals. With 2.2 million members, Premera is the Pacific Northwests largest health insurer. In 2017, it launched Premera Scout, a 24/7 chatbot to help customers quickly access information on claims, benefits, and other Premera services. What members want is a personalized experience, Nielsen explains. AI allows us to take complex data and really extract value out of it in a much more personalized manner for the individual. Cigna and Humana are among the other major health insurers engaging customers with bots. Cignas Answers chatbot uses natural language processing to understand and respond to more than 150 common questions with personalized benefits information. Thanks to Answers and Cignas digital One Guide service platform, the company reports that customer satisfaction rose by 20% in 2017. While bots are primarily handling basic customer interactions at present, Nielsen envisions them eventually dispensing customized, data-driven health guidance. In the future, bots will access your personal health information and identify gaps in care that you werent aware of, he predicts. They will really become a guide in your healthcare journey. Faster, Smarter Claims Management Out of every 10 healthcare claims submitted, insurers flag as many as eight as unusualthat is, as potentially incorrect or fraudulentbased on the companys guidelines, according to a McKinsey study. That means up to 80% of all claims must be reviewed by adjusters, a process that requires a great deal of time, money, and human effort. But AI is transforming claims processing across the insurance industry, as algorithms detect anomalies in seconds, rather than days, weeks, or months. Over the years, claims acceptance or denials have been primarily based on set rules that are hard-coded in processing systems, explains Johnson. Now they are starting to embed more machine-learning models that can take into account multiple factors, instead of just a hard, fast rule. Among the largest investment in AI tech in the insurance industry has been in fraud detection, with more than 75% of insurers reporting the use of machine-learning algorithms to flag fraud cases in 2016, according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. Faster fraud detection means faster processing. A pilot program spearheaded by Prudential in Singapore credits AI with reducing the time to process hospital claims by 75%; a claim that once took nine days to process can now be settled in a mere 2.3 seconds. Still, EYs Johnson finds that AI automation in claims processing has progressed more slowly than many had hoped, hindered by challenges such as preparing, cleansing, and aggregating unstructured data from diverse silos such as hospital facilities, doctors offices, and pharmacies. If you had asked me five years ago where wed be today, its been slower than I would have expected, says Johnson. But, he adds, Its happening. Predicting ER Visits With AI Many major insurers are exploring how to leverage AI solutions to prevent negative health outcomes before they happenand investing in tech startups to tap their innovative analytics. Case in point: In 2017, Premera Blue Cross took an early stake in Cardinal Analytx, a healthcare AI startup incubated at Stanford University that uses predictive modeling to recommend healthcare interventions in advance of medical crises. Cardinal is able to, with a high degree of certainty, predict when a member is about to have a severe health event, Nielsen says. Thats much better for the individual because theyre avoiding something big and nasty. And it allows us to reduce costs that we would otherwise have incurred. Similarly, Cigna has invested in Prognos, which applies AI to lab diagnostics. Analyzing a database of 14 billion medical records, the insurer reports that it can predict when a customer is most likely to visit an emergency room, need hip or knee replacement within six months, and pinpoint a diagnosis of depression three months before an antidepressant is ever prescribed. Early intervention especially benefits patients suffering chronic illnesses. Today, roughly 75% of total healthcare costs are related to chronic conditions such as non-terminal cancer and diabetes," Johnson says, citing CDC research. Johnson explains that predictive analytics, based on indicators like when a patient searches online for information about symptoms or visits a specialist, can indicate an impending negative health event. By reaching out early, insurers can engage them in preemptive care. With AI, you can identify patterns that suggest this is the right moment in time for a person with a chronic condition to get an intervention call, he says. Weve actually seen that if you call at the right time, you can increase engagement by over 800%. Live Healthier, Pay Less In 2014, Progressive Insurance launched a mobile app for its Snapshot program, offering to reduce premiums for safe drivers based on AI analysis of millions of data points on speeding, braking hard, or texting while driving. Major insurers like Allstate, State Farm, and Nationwide, among others, have since offered similar incentives based on telematic data, saving consumers billions in premium costs. And car insurers have saved billions in accident payouts for themselves in the process. Studies show that vehicle telematics can reduce speeding events by 60% and lower catastrophic accident rates among young drivers by 35%. Given the widespread popularity of wearable sensors such as Fitbit and health data tracking via smartphones, behavior-based premiums seem like an inevitability in health insurance. Weve already seen some examples of insurance companies starting to experiment with it, says Nielsen. If you walk a certain number of steps on a daily basis, there may be an incentive for you, such as money being allocated to your health savings account. In 2018, John Hancock announced that it would stop selling traditional life insurance and sell only interactive policies that track health data through smartphones and wearables. The insurers CEO Brooks Tingle explained the shift to The New York Times, saying, The longer people live, the more money we make. But, Nielsen emphasizes, its still early days for behavior-based policies in the health insurance sector. The industry is still trying to determine whether that is something that should be further scaled up, he notes. Consumers, for their part, seem very willing to trade personal data for cheaper insurance; nearly half of 1,194 U.S. consumers surveyed by Troubadour Research said they would share their biometric data with health insurers in exchange for premium discounts. The Road Ahead: Personalization Through AI While major health insurers are eyeing behavior-based products warily, several insurance-technology startups already offer them. BioBeats and FitSense are using AI tech to crunch data generated by fitness wearables to offer personalized employee health plans. Other AI-driven health insurance startups innovating more personalized products include Collective Health, Bind, and Oscar, which is pioneering a white-glove concierge for all plan. Nielsen, for one, believes the new, tech-fueled entrants into the sector will ultimately benefit all healthcare insurersand their customers. I see startups coming into the health insurance marketplace as a positive, and I think we all do in the industry, he explains. They bring new thinking, and it allows us to really take a close look at what our core competencies are and to make sure that were developing products for what future healthcare may look like. Ultimately, this shift toward personalization is fundamentally transforming health insurers traditional business model. For generations, insurance companies have based their coverage on risk pools determined by statistical sampling. Now AI is allowing them to mine huge data sets in real time to predict health outcomes for a single consumer instead of a group. And insurers are optimizing those insights to help consumers live healthier lives. Natural language processing, bot technology, machine learningthese processes are not just playing a key role in creating efficiencies for companies, says Nielsen. Theyre creating a better health experience for members. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/insights-intelai/2019/02/11/can-ai-cure-what-ails-health-insurance/ |
Can Cars Of The Future Fight Back Against Burglary By Moving? | Recently I had a break-in with my Tesla. The thief broke that small back window (known as the "quarter window") in order to pull the back seat forward and see into the trunk. While there were things in the trunk, he or she abandoned the task and fortunately didn't take anything. The thief is of course the real villain, though Tesla could certainly handle this sort of problem better. Tesla's issues here are not the subject of this article, however. The subject is the much more interesting topic of how robocars (or even the Tesla) might (literally) fight car break-ins in radical new ways. Yes, fight -- I want to examine what would happen if robocars were to start driving to escape or deter burglars, even sometimes hurting a burglar if they foolishly don't back off. Many people react to this by saying, "You just can't leave valuables in your car." That may or may not be true. If it is true, the secured lockbox could be the simplest answer. But even those who won't store valuables still want to leave non-valuables. Many like to have an umbrella, low cost sports gear or an overnight change of clothes and various other items of little value to a thief. People with kids tend to load up their vehicles with stuff for the children. Thieves will still break-in on seeing the shape of these items to find out if they are valuable. Some people, though, also leave more valuable things like laptops, cameras, high end sporting goods and like the ability to safely do so. Well, it's not very useful to steal the car itself. These cars will need interaction with HQ to work, so if stolen it could only be for the parts. And they probably won't be able to drive it away. Teslas and many other cars can already be remote disabled. Makers of these cars should be able to serialize all their expensive parts -- certainly any electronic parts -- and seriously dampen the black market for stolen parts. This leaves the main reason for a break-in the theft of personal property. Fortunately, it turns out that people don't really try to steal or break into these small robots. We've driven hundreds of thousands of miles with minimal incident. Even vandalism is very rare. To compound that, the robot connects to a remote operations center if anything unusual is going on. The remote operator can sound a loud alarm, and can warn the thief that they are being recorded with the 360 degree view cameras, and they are indeed being recorded. The police don't do much about theft these days, but victims are keen to stop it. If we saw the same person trying to steal a Starship robot more than once, we would be able to put together a well documented multiple-crime case to the police that they actually would care about. Yes, thieves can do fancy things like wear masks or make Faraday cages to block all signals -- but real world thieves are not nearly that organized most of the time. The robot can also drive away, if it has a way out. Alarm blaring. First, start with a better alarm Everybody hates car alarms. They have frequent false alarms, to much annoyance, so much that they are generally ignored by the public and there are now legal limits on how much they can sound. They are now viewed as near-useless unless the owner hears them. (Tesla's ability to send the alarm to your phone helps a bit here.) Modern technology should allow the creation of much better, reliable car alarms. We can start with better, cheaper sensors for things like glass breakage, and motion detection inside the vehicle. If somebody is moving inside your vehicle suddenly after it's been locked and static for a while, that's usually a very clear sign -- unless it's your dog. The interesting news is that Tesla has promised it will shortly provide a software update with a much better alarm. Elon Musk has stated that they will offer a "Sentry Mode" which, among other things, will play Bach's famous "Toccata and Fugue" during a robbery. Tesla Sentry Mode will play Bachs Toccata and Fugue during a robbery (and keep Summer safe)https://t.co/wnS5qLeB2E Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2019 Few other details are present, but I will speculate on what a better alarm system might involve. Some cars (including the Tesla) now feature an inward facing camera. This camera is not used, but is speculated to be useful for monitoring driver gaze while using Autopilot, so people don't take their eyes off the road for long. There is some chance that regulators may insist on this sort of function, and other high end cars with similar functions have been doing this. The Tesla, like many other cars, has an array of cameras looking in all directions. Today, we have much better machine learning technology which could be put to task trying to spot a burglary. The problem with existing car alarms is the false alarms. AI tools could do a lot to get that number way down. By watching what's going on, and listening to sounds, and getting input from sensors of vibration and motion, a much better job is possible. Remote control center Cars with connectivity can also send the alarm to the owner's phone, or to a remote operations center. The remote operator can be given the chance to look out through the cameras and hear the sounds. They can get the ability to speak directly to those in or near the car and hear them. "You in the green hoodie, step away from the Tesla! We're recording you on video and contacting police." The last part about the police is probably a lie, but might help convince the burglars to move on. And they could play an alarm in confidence; with human confirmation there should be few false alarms. They could play some Bach. The remote operations center can also make final decisions on nastier alarms. For example, you could place a super-loud alarm inside the car. An alarm which starts off annoying and rises to ear-splitting, so loud that you just can't bear to stay inside the car. By being inside, it would not bother those outside at that level, but you still don't want to set it off by accident or with the owner or other friendlies in the car -- but triggering by a human could make sense. The ability to use a human in the loop means the AI systems don't have to be perfect. The better they are, the fewer false alarms they send to the control center and that makes it cheaper to run. To have a human in the loop requires connectivity, which means enclosed and underground garages need to have WiFi to get your business. But once you have that human, you possibly have a more dramatic option. Ideally, garages would install Wifi or micro-cells to make sure parked cars remain connected. This would be a selling feature of a parking spot. An option open to the robocar (and perhaps even to the Tesla before too long) would be to move -- if not plugged in. If somebody is trying to break in, drive away! I'm not talking about actively hitting them, which would almost surely be legally risky, but simply moving to get away in a fashion that is not completely risk-free to them. My thief had his or her arm buried in my car through the arm-sized hole in the window. If the car started to move at that point it might unintentionally bruise that arm. The law doesn't let you leave traps for thieves. Punishment is the job of the law, not the victim. Courts have ruled if you leave a bear trap in your back yard, the burglar can still sue you even though he was trespassing. You can't inflict harm for the sake of harm. But I suspect the law might be more favourable to what happens when your robot is trying to escape an assailant, just as we are to people. Force is allowed to defend property, but not deadly force. (This varies a lot state by state. In some states you can use deadly force to defend property. In others it is not permitted, or is a very last resort.) The robot could give warnings. In fact, it would surely sound alarms. It could even wiggle slightly as it gets ready to move, to make it clear that motion is about to start and the arm should be retracted. In fact, that could be enough -- a car that is just wiggling back and forth a few inches or so is not a car you want to be breaking into. (It could even do this when plugged in.) It, or the operator directing it, could even make verbal warnings, perhaps, for amusement, in the voice of the ED-209 robot from Robocop -- "You have 15 seconds to retreat from the car!" But it would not then shoot them. Probably. Of course, if the thief were to stand in the way of the car, it must not run them over. A clever thief, or team of thieves, could box the car in and block it from escaping. But most of these thieves are not clever or in teams, and it's hard to both simultaneously stand in front of a car and rob it, while an alarm is blaring and the owner or security might be coming. The car would need to be sure it doesn't run over anybody (you can't be sure if the person in the way of the car is the burglar, after all.) A proper robocar could then drive to a new safe location. A simpler car like a Tesla could just rock back and forth until given a command by its owner on the mobile app. While you might not safely move the car with the burglar's arm inside, movement before the arm goes in might be allowable and make it hard to burgle. While it might be attractive to think a car could move in the interests of escape, generally the law doesn't allow touching somebody with a motor vehicle (considered deadly force) unless live humans are in fear for themselves, not for their car. So while Asimov's laws are fictional, they do apply in this case. It's untested if having the car move very slowly, so slowly as to nudge but not hurt, could be enough to make it not be deadly force. If the burglar lay on the ground in front of the car, the car would legally need to stop. And it might need sensors to make sure nobody is under the bumper, which not all cars have. In some states, civil liability for harm could still apply even if criminal law didn't. An amusing prospect is that a car might take a thief who is fully inside and drive them to the police station. They could jump out, but the harm from that might be on them. The voice could advise them to buckle up for safety, and remind them that they're on video and will suffer more if they trash the car on the way. I'm going to leave that to the lawyers -- since this could also be viewed as kidnapping. Modern sensors, like motion detectors and cameras fed into neural networks should be capable of accurately detecting break-ins with few false alarms. A vehicle that can then escape in such circumstances would be a very hard car to rob. A group of professional attackers could figure out how, but many car burglars are crimes of opportunity by people who are not the smartest. Even they would learn, though, that certain cars are not worth getting into. Even the pros would face a challenge. They would know there is video of all they do. If carrying cell phones, their IDs would be recorded. The cars themselves would be useless to steal except for parts, most of which would have serial numbers. Valuable personal property can be worth stealing, but less so for pros, who need a big score to merit the risk, because police -- and the car companies themselves -- will go after organized rings in a way they don't go after random thieves. Indeed, it could be in the interests of a car maker or fleet operator to double down to send out the clear message, "if you think you want to burglarize cars, these are not the ones." Companies could assist police in tracking villains so that customers know this is a good car to use. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2019/02/11/can-cars-of-the-future-fight-back-against-burglary-by-moving/ |
Can Wisdom Protect Against Loneliness As We Age? | By Holly Lawrence, Next Avenue Contributor A fascinating new study of loneliness found that adults are at risk across the entire lifespan, but especially during their late-20s, mid-50s and late-80s. Equally interesting: the researchers say that wisdom can help protect against loneliness. That finding could be particularly useful for boomers in their mid-50s and their parents in their late-80s. You have more control over loneliness than you might think," said Dr. Dilip Jeste, the professor of psychiatry and neurosciences and director of the Center for Healthy Aging at the University of California, San Diego who conducted the study. Loneliness is a personality trait. All traits are modifiable. Thats where wisdom comes in. The researchers studied 340 residents of San Diego, ages 27 to 101. Roughly three-fourths (76%) of the participants reported moderate to high levels of loneliness, and loneliness increased for those in their late-20s, mid-50s and late-80s. Loneliness was associated with depression, anxiety, stress, and cognitive complaints and those with higher levels of loneliness had lower resilience, optimism and mental well-being. Also on Forbes: Loneliness means feeling stressed out because your expectations for quality social relationships are not met, said Jeste. It then leads to anxiety, and even fear about future social engagement. Instead of expecting a positive experience from a new relationship, the person goes in anticipating an unsuccessful or disheartening or stressful encounter. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and perpetuates a vicious circle. Jeste and his colleagues created the San Diego Wisdom Scale which identifies wisdom as having a variety of components including compassion, empathy, self-reflection, decisiveness, the ability to give good advice to others, the ability to control your emotions and the acceptance of uncertainty and diversity of perspectives. Our study shows that wisdom and loneliness did not seem to coexist. In other words, wiser people don't feel lonely and vice versa, Jeste said. Of course, not everyone in their mid-50s or late-80s will get lonely, Jeste noted. But he and his colleague Dr. Ellen Lee, a geriatric neuropsychiatrist and one of the studys authors, offered thoughts on why loneliness may peak at those ages: The mid-50s is a period of midlife crisis, Jeste explained. Also, during that time of life, women experience menopause and men experience changes associated with andropause (symptoms including fatigue and a decrease in libido). Physical illnesses start to surface, too. You start seeing death in your family, friends and you become aware of the shorter lifespan, said Jeste. You start to realize that the time horizon is truncated now. Lee said that research assumes people in their late-80s group are at greater risk of loneliness for a variety of reasons: they may become widowed, lose friends, have a smaller social network or become more isolated socially due to physical disabilities, for example. Advice for Increasing Wisdom to Prevent Loneliness Jeste offered advice on how to break a pattern loneliness by increasing wisdom. Start with self-reflection, what Jeste calls the most important part of wisdom. This means honestly looking inside yourself and thinking about your strengths and your limitations, he advised, providing an example. I may have five friends, and I feel lonely because I feel that I need twenty friends. However, you may have five friends, and youre more than happy with having five friends. So, you dont feel lonely. Jeste explained that the person who feels lonely with only five friends do one of two things. I can find opportunities to increase my friendships from five to twenty; an older person could move into senior housing where there are organized social activities or find friends through Facebook. Is it because Im not decisive? Self-reflection, Jeste added, helps in adjusting expectations to the reality. You can also increase wisdom by developing self-compassion, Jeste said. Thats about accepting yourself for who you are. If you go to a party and not everyone wants to talk with you, let it go. By developing compassion for yourself, you become less bothered about not connecting with those people, said Jeste. To become more positive about your life, Jeste said, keep a gratitude diary and write in it daily what makes you feel grateful, happy or proud. Doing this regularly would help you start the next day looking for positive happenings, said Jeste. Alternatively, he suggested, share your days positive experiences with others at the dinner table. Summing up his studys findings, Jeste said: Every one of us is capable of being wiser and less lonely. We have more control over our brain, mind, and body than we think. We teach our kids to form good physical habits like brushing teeth every morning and night. Likewise, we can form good mental and behavioral habits of wisdom at any age. Loneliness will then be a thing of the past. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2019/02/11/can-wisdom-protect-against-loneliness-as-we-age/ |
Can Israeli Wine Succeed Beyond The Kosher Aisle? | During a recent visit to the US, Lenny Recanati, whose family are the majority owners of Israels Recanati Winery, spoke candidly about the need for wines from Israel to move out of the kosher aisle and take their place alongside other great wines in wine shops and on wine lists. He was accompanied by Recanatis head winemaker, Gil Schatsberg, who also weighed in on the future of Israeli wine. Over dinner at a bustling Flatiron Greek restaurant, Kyma, where Recanati Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve will be added to the list in the near future, we tasted the newly-released 2017 vintage of several Recanati wines and discussed the winerys recipe for success. Recanati Winerys total production is 100,000 cases (1,200,000 bottles) per year. Of that, 13,000 cases (156,000 bottles) are shipped to the United States, with 70 percent sold to non-kosher accounts. The majority of Recanati wine, about 75 percent, is sold domestically within Israel. For wine to be considered kosher, only Sabbath-observant Jews can handle the grapes and finished wine from the moment the grapes enter the winery through bottling. Selling the wine in a separate aisle or section of wine stores can be a barrier to the wines gaining widespread recognition among US wine consumers. Lenny Recanati:We are one of the few Israeli wineries with a national presence as were available in 44 states. New York is our largest market; however, we have a very strong presence in Florida, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. LR:Yes. We are on the cusp of Israel breaking through. Our strategy has been to represent ourselves as world-class wine. Our wine quality is getting recognized by the press, the trade, and consumers which is resulting in more and more non-kosher business. LR:The biggest obstacle we are facing is fighting the image and the perception of Israel as a producer of only kosher and simple wines, and the misperception of kosher wine as degraded wine or as "Manischewitz wine." LR:First of all, we strongly believe that the main reason for our success is the quality of our wines and the consistency of the quality; without this nothing could happen. Consistent high scores for our wines from acclaimed critics around the world are the proof that the quality is there. Having said this, a large part of our success in the US market is due to a long-term cooperation with our US importer, Palm Bay International; without the hard work and fruitful cooperation of the Palm Bay team with our winery team, this gradual and steady growth in the US market would never have happened. LR:These are high quality wines that reflect our unique growing conditions. Recanati wines are an excellent example of great wines from Mediterranean varieties and indigenous varieties that reflect the Israeli terroir. These are wines that are earning consistently high scores from critics and have a place on the global stage. In a follow-up email, Hal Cashman, Brand Development Director for Palm Bay International, Recanatis importer, confirmed that the non-kosher area is where Recanatis U.S. growth is coming from; in 2018, this sector grew 15 percent. Asked how he and his team have been able to get onto wine lists in non-kosher restaurants, Cashman attributed the change to the quality of the wine itself: Our winemaking team is amazing. Gil has been at the frontier of Israeli winemaking for years, championing Mediterranean varieties. As the trade and consumers continue to taste our wines and get to know us, they are recognizing that there is something special here. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/theworldwineguys/2019/02/11/israels-recanati-winery-finds-success-outside-the-kosher-aisle/ |
Who is excluded from conferences and summits and why? | The exclusion of countries, peoples or individuals from high-profile summits and conferences often says much about the events themselves. As the Mideast conference in Poland convenes with U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shaping the narrative in Warsaw as part of the Trump administrations global push to isolate Iran and promote Israeli interests, its no surprise that Tehran is not invited. Iran has denounced the conference as an American anti-Iran circus. The Palestinians have boycotted the conference and urged others to do the same. Notable absences are those of senior officials from France, Germany and Russia as well as various non-Gulf Arab nations. Heres a look at some major summits and conferences over the years which have seen key players excluded or refusing to attend. THE PALESTINIANS: CAMP DAVID TO MADRID While President Jimmy Carter, Egypts Anwar Sadat and Israels Menachem Begin cemented the Camp David peace accord in 1978 with a three-way handshake at the White House before the worlds cameras, the Palestinians were markedly absent. They hadnt been included and references to the West Bank and Gaza did nothing to mollify anger among the stateless seeking a state. In 1991 in Madrid, the Palestinians were represented but only as part of the Jordanian delegation in a contentious and acerbic Mideast conference that saw Syria and Israel openly trading insults. Two years later, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shook hands with his Israeli counterpart Yitzhak Rabin with President Clinton beaming alongside them. The Palestinians were now much more so on diplomacys world stage, but a quarter of a century later they are no closer to their elusive goal of independence. SOUTH KOREAS MOON: DMZ BUT NOT SINGAPORE OR VIETNAM North Koreas dynastic leaders, as much by design and desire as exclusion, were always on the outside of international gatherings looking in from afar. That changed in a series of seismic events for the Korean Peninsula in 2018, following a year where threats of nuclear Armageddon were at the fore. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is preparing for his second summit with President Donald Trump in two weeks in Vietnam. This follows the mind-boggling spectacle of their first encounter in Singapore last year. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has been a key driving figure with determined plans and aspirations for engagement with Pyongyang. Moon himself held historic summits with Kim at the Demilitarized Zone on the border between the two nations. Now Moon finds himself excluded again as Trump and Kim take centre stage. There is speculation about a possible four-way meeting, also including Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping, to declare a formal end to the Korean War, which stopped with an armistice and left the peninsula still technically at war. DAYTON AND THE BOSNIAN SERBS A city in Ohio became the byword for ending Europes worst conflict since World War II. The Dayton Accords ended the Bosnian War which had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced more than 2 million people as former Yugoslavia broke apart in a frenzy of communal violence. The grim-faced presidents of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were all in attendance in Dayton in 1995 and for the official signing in Paris the following month. But absent were the group blamed by many for some of the worst bloodshed and persecution in the war, the Bosnian Serbs. Serbia President Slobodan Milosevic, himself an international outcast, represented his fellow Serbs interests in Dayton. The Bosnian Serb wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic, by then already an indicted war criminal was a fugitive evading justice. He was finally captured in 2008. Tamer Fakahany can be followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/TamerFakahany | https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/who-is-excluded-from-conferences-and-summits-and-why |
Why is Twitter's Jack Dorsey wanted in India? | Image copyright AFP Image caption Indian MPs want Jack Dorsey to appear before them on 25 February Jack Dorsey is no stranger to controversies. On his last trip to India in November, the chief executive of Twitter posed for what he thought was an innocuous picture and ended up enraging Hindu nationalists. The picture had a placard reading "Smash Brahminical patriarchy", alluding to oppression by upper-caste Hindus. The backlash on his own social media network was fierce: Mr Dorsey was promptly accused of "hate-mongering". (The following month, in an unrelated controversy, he was criticised for promoting Myanmar as a tourist destination in a series of tweets despite widespread allegations of human rights abuses in the country.) Now Mr Dorsey has been summoned by MPs in India, one of the fastest growing markets for his network, which claims 126 million daily users worldwide. By one estimate, more than a sixth of its users come from here. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of the most followed leaders on the network. "It's quite an exciting time for us in India," says Maya Hari, the network's vice president and managing director, Asia-Pacific. A 31-member panel of MPs wants Mr Dorsey to appear before it on 25 February to get his views on "safeguarding citizens' rights on social/online news media platforms". The panel is led by Anurag Thakur, a MP belonging to Mr Modi's governing BJP. Twitter appears to have been singled out for this unusual meeting. It all began with the MPs shooting off a letter to Twitter India earlier this month. They said they wanted to meet the head of the network or a senior functionary on 11 February. Twitter's local office informed the panel that Mr Dorsey could not appear at such short notice and offered its top local policy executive instead. Mr Thakur was clearly displeased with the response: Skip Twitter post by @ianuragthakur The Parliamentary Commitee on Information Technology takes very serious note of this. We will take appropriate action on 11th February. Citizens are welcome to send their concerns/issues via email to the Parliamentary Commitee. [email protected] https://t.co/oKBzdoJkhV Anurag Thakur (@ianuragthakur) February 9, 2019 Report When some top local executives reached the meeting venue on Monday, the MPs refused to see them. Clearly, they wanted to talk to Mr Dorsey. The timing of the "summons" to Mr Dorsey is interesting. With crucial summer elections looming, right-wingers on Twitter have been complaining that the network is banning accounts supportive of the BJP. Pro-government TV networks reported that the MPs had actually summoned Twitter officials over "allegations of bias", something which was not stated in the government's official communication with the network. BJP spokesman Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga weighed in, promoting a hashtag called #ProtestAgainstTwitter: Others have joined in, accusing Twitter of bias and an "authoritarian" stance: And last week, members of a group who call themselves Youth for Social Democracy gathered outside the local office of Twitter near Delhi to protest, saying that Twitter had "acquired an anti-right wing" attitude. "They block our accounts and impressions of the tweets," one protester said. Skip Twitter post by @ANI Delhi: Members of 'Youth for Social Media Democracy' protest outside the office of Twitter India. Protesters say "Twitter has acquired an anti-right wing attitude. They block our accounts & impressions of the tweets. We won't tolerate this, they will have to change their policy." pic.twitter.com/rsgTO99uWx ANI (@ANI) February 3, 2019 Report Twitter has responded, saying that the network did not act against users based on their ideology. "To be clear, we do not review, prioritise or enforce our policies on the basis of political ideology. Every tweet and every account is treated impartially. We apply our policies fairly and judiciously for all," says Colin Crowell, who leads public policy, governance and corporate philanthropy efforts at the network. He said Twitter had made more than 70 "product, policy and operational changes" since the beginning of 2018, to help people "feel safe expressing themselves on our service". "Abuse and hateful conduct comes from accounts across the ideological spectrum and we will continue to take action when our rules are broken." However, the network admitted that "mistakes can happen", which means accounts could get taken down wrongly for a short time. "However, these mistakes or 'false positive' decisions are not political statements of intent; they are the basic human error rate of running the fastest, most open conversational tool in history." Image copyright AFP Image caption India is one of Twitter's fastest growing markets "We have a specialised, global team that enforces the Twitter Rules with impartiality. Twitter India employees do not make enforcement decisions. This is by design to ensure fairness and objectivity." Most Twitter users believe the bigger problems in India - as they are elsewhere in the world - are hate speech, intimidation, death threats and vicious trolling of women. "It does not behove a great institution like the parliament of India to get into a standoff with Twitter on so trivial a matter. Let's not forget that Jack Dorsey has no stakes in upholding the dignity of India's parliament. Our parliamentarians, on the other hand, are sworn to it," says Nitin Pai, the director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent Bangalore-based centre for research and education in public policy. Analysts like Prasanto Roy believe the summons to Mr Dorsey appears to be part of Mr Modi's government's increasingly "viciously combative position against multinationals and foreign digital companies". Over the past year, Mr Modi's government has sought data localisation of all payment gateways and digital payment companies based outside India. It has pressured WhatsApp - India is the biggest market for the messaging app - to allow traceability of messages that trigger public unrest. And in December, it changed e-commerce rules to prevent online retailers from selling products through vendors in which they hold an equity stake without holding consultations with key stakeholders like Amazon and Flipkart. "Most of this is driven by extreme nationalism and pressure from local business lobbies," says Mr Roy. "India's much-touted big bang digital collaboration in the form of Mr Modi's ambitious Digital India programme with the world has completely soured." More on India from Soutik: Follow Soutik at @soutikBBC | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-47208172 |
Could patients become their own doctors? | Image copyright Getty Images An NHS where patients stay at home and rarely attend GP surgeries or hospital out-patient appointments is likely in a decade's time, according to US health expert Dr Eric Topol, who was asked by ministers to look at how technology would change the role of health staff in England. Many patients, according to his report, will be managing their own long-term conditions, for example high blood pressure and lung disease, with wearable devices and sensors, which will be much more effective than occasional appointments with a doctor. The buzz phrase is the "democratisation of healthcare". People who might have had to occupy a hospital bed for a few days for observation will be sent home instead. Elderly patients, including those with dementia, will be monitored at home, with cameras and devices to detect falls built into the floor. Fewer doctors A new army of healthcare professionals is set to emerge to help technology-empowered patients. This will include nursing associates, working alongside registered nurses and trained to interpret blood pressure and temperature checks. Likewise, more physician associates will support doctors with the diagnosis and management of patients. Fewer doctors than anticipated will be needed, under this vision of the future, and they will be able to focus on the sickest patients and avoid the risk of burnout caused by an excessive workload. Better diagnosis NHS England has already announced a plan to cut the number of out-patients' appointments and encourage remote monitoring and consultations. The Topol report gives the example of fracture clinics and notes that at Brighton and Sussex University Hospital Trust trained therapists deal with patients over the phone and most are not seen in person, meaning consultants can review them within 72 hours of referral. No serious complications for patients have been reported. Image copyright Getty Images Dr Topol says the NHS, as an efficient, proven system delivering healthcare for the whole population, is well placed to take advantage of new medical technology and the UK is already leading the world in genomics (the study of an individual's genes), which allows better diagnosis and more personalised care. Personalised service Welcoming the report, the Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock, said technology saved lives and opportunities had to be seized - but when it came to sophisticated technology, the NHS was lagging behind Tesco. "They know who you are through loyalty cards, where you shop, through store IDs, what you buy, the items scanned at the checkout," he said. "They shape their offers with a personalised service in order to deliver for you, the customer. "The NHS doesn't have anything like that yet." It still did not have the data to determine which hospitals patients had been to and what medicines they were taking, Mr Hancock added. Financial incentive Sceptics will say this needs money and the NHS in England already has multiple calls on the funding allocated by the government. Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said: "The deployment of technology will of course require significant resource and investment and we would repeat that this needs to be properly funded by government and not left to already stretched individual NHS trusts to dig even deeper to fund." On the other hand, the NHS has a powerful financial incentive to adopt the Topol vision. More patient care in the home in theory means less need for expensive overnight stays in hospital. Telemedicine means consultants can get through longer lists of patients, using video or phone consultations. The challenge is to ensure the drive for efficiency does not over-ride the need for human interaction between doctor and patient when required. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47205496 |
How Much Will Refranchising Boost Coca-Cola's Margins in 2018? | The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) is set to announce its fourth quarter results on February 14, 2019, followed by a conference call with analysts. The market expects the company to report net revenue of $7.03 billion in Q4 2018, 6.4% lower than in Q4 2017. Adjusted earnings for the quarter are expected to be $0.43 per share compared to $0.39 per share in the year-ago period. For the full year, revenue is expected to decrease by 10% to $31.9 billion and adjusted EPS to increase by 9.4% to $2.09. Increased earnings are likely to be the result of large-scale refranchising of the companys bottling business, coupled with lower tax expense for the year. We have summarized our key expectations about the earnings in our interactive dashboard Lower Revenue and Higher Margins: Coca-Colas Mixed Bag in 2018. In addition, all Trefis Consumer Staples data is here. Key Factors Affecting Earnings Impressive growth of zero sugar: As the world over people are increasingly moving away from soda consumption due to increased health concerns and awareness, Coca-Cola has benefited from this trend with the revamping of its Coke Zero into Coca-Cola Zero Sugar in Q3 2017. The company witnessed impressive growth in sales of Zero Sugar, which increased by 11% in Q3 2018 compared to the year-ago period. We expect consumption to remain robust in the fourth quarter as well, thus driving revenue for the product. Potential of ready-to-drink tea: Research has shown that the ready-to-drink tea category has shown steady growth in 2018, growing at about 3.4% year-on-year driven by consumers preference for healthier and easily available options. This corresponds to a steady rise in Coca-Colas tea portfolio, driven by Fuze Tea, Ayataka, and Gold Peak. The US and Asia Pacific are the two main regions where the ready-to-drink tea market is surging. In the Asia-Pacific segment of the company, tea and coffee witnessed 4% growth in volumes during the first nine months of 2018. Ready-to-drink tea and coffee market size is expected to reach $116.13 billion by 2024. Such immense growth potential would drive sales of Coca-Colas ready-to-drink tea in 2018 and beyond. FY 2018 growth is expected to be around 3.5% to 4% for the full year as Q4 sales are generally lower due to seasonality. Refranchising of bottling operations: Coca-Cola is refranchising many of its bottling operations in a bid to move away from the capital intensive and low margin business of bottling, and focus more on the concentrate business as the consumption of carbonated drinks continues to slow down, especially in developed markets. Coca-Colas net sales growth has been hurt in the last few quarters due to these structural changes. The bottling business comes with four to five times more revenue per drink sold and the accompanying cost. Thus, any impact on the sales of the bottler is going to have a magnified impact on overall sales for Coca-Cola and much less effect on the companys profits. In the last two years, the company has completed the refranchising of its bottling operations in China, Japan, Canada, and Latin America. Thus, in spite of higher revenues in almost all the geographical segments of the company, total revenue for 2018 is most likely to see a drop of close to 10% due to the near halving of bottling revenues compared to the previous year. Productivity and Reinvestment plan: This plan, which was introduced in 2012 and expanded a couple of times since then to extend up to 2019, focuses on restructuring the Companys global supply chain; implementing zero-based work, an evolution of zero-based budget principles, across the organization; streamlining and simplifying the Companys operating model; and further driving increased discipline and efficiency in direct marketing investments. The new productivity plan means that Coca-Cola now has extended its previous productivity plan to save $3 billion in annual savings by 2019 to achieve incremental savings of about $800 million, bringing its current program to $3.8 billion in productivity savings. If the $500 million of productivity that will transfer to Coca-Colas bottling partners due to the accelerated pace of refranchising is added, the program extends to $4.3 billion in productivity savings by 2019. This program has boosted margins to 22.4% in the first three quarters of 2018 compared to 14.3% in the corresponding period of 2017. We expect margins to remain elevated around the same level in Q4. Coca-Cola is also expected to report a close to 10% year-on-year reduction in its tax expense in 2018, benefiting from a lower effective tax rate due to the implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Lower tax expense, operating efficiency in the form of lower costs due to the refranchising initiatives, and the productivity program would help the company increase its profitability. Net income margin for 2018 is expected to witness a sharp increase to 22% from 3.5% in 2017, thus translating into a higher adjusted earnings per share of $2.10 compared to $1.91 in the previous year. We have a price estimate of $53 per share for the company, which is higher than its current market price. We believe that the companys focus on its high-margin core products and diverse offerings to cater to the health-conscious young generation, along with steps to boost its bottom line, will provide support to its stock price going forward. Explore example interactive dashboards and create your own. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/02/13/how-much-will-refranchising-boost-coca-colas-margins-in-2018/ |
Will the Apostle Islands ice caves open this winter? | Video (02:19) : In 2014, the south shore of Lake Superior froze, allowing access by foot to the ice caves of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Photographer Brian Peterson was there in February as more than 8,000 people visited. There are high hopes the mainline ice caves at the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore will open this winter after three years of no access. Park officials say the next few weeks are crucial to determine if visitors will be able to witness the dazzling ice formations this season or whether theyll have to wait another year. The caves are a hit-or-miss phenomenon. For the ice caves to open, there needs to be a sufficiently thick layer of ice on Lake Superior for people to make the miles-long trek to the formations. You need the right conditions so that people can get out there, said Julie Van Stappen, chief of planning and resource management for the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. The best conditions for ice formation is when its really cold and really calm. After a warm December, the regions recent cold freeze helped form more ice along the south shore of Lake Superior in northwest Wisconsin. But strong winds last week broke up ice and stymied progress. A photo posted on the Apostle Islands Facebook page Saturday shows ice on the lake is patchy, with round sheets of pancake ice floating on the surface. The sea caves are carved along Lake Superiors coast on the northern tip of Bayfield Peninsula. During winter, waves splashing against the sandstone cliffs along with water seeping down from rock layers freeze on the rock formations, creating a magnificent array of icicles, crystals and sheets of ice. The caves unique ice structures form every winter, regardless if theres access to the caves or not. But jagged shark ice sticking up along the coast has prevented even trained park rangers from going out on Lake Superior this winter to see what they look like. When accessible, the caves have become wildly popular. In 2014, more than a hundred thousand people flocked to the area to witness the caves firsthand. A much shorter season in 2015, just nine days, still drew thousands of visitors. It was really more a local phenomena until 2014. And then all of a sudden the whole world discovered it, which was really cool, Van Stappen said. But warm weather has prevented public access for the last three winters. Although theres ice forming on Lake Superior this year, Van Stappen said, the sheet of ice needs to be locked in place between several islands and the mainland to ensure safety. It went from no ice to pack ice, which formed really quickly, she said. Its jumbled up ice and its not high-quality at this point. Park ranger are monitoring conditions over the next few weeks to gauge if ice becomes safe enough to walk on. The park posts regular updates on its Facebook page and the parks website. Its hard to say, Van Stappen said. Its all dependent on weather conditions. Austen Macalus is a University of Minnesota student on assignment for the Star Tribune. | http://www.startribune.com/will-the-apostle-islands-ice-caves-open-this-winter/505721642/ |
What will be the future of Jack London Square as a food hub? | Oaklands Jack London Square is in the throes of a restaurant and retail boom, but progress for the 434,000-square-foot waterfront property hasnt been without growing pains. One of Jack London Squares more high-profile tenants since 2017, Tartines Coffee Manufactory, quietly vacated its 5,000-square-foot roasting facility last April. The production hub was open along the waterfront for less than a year before moving to 671 Fourth St., roughly a mile away. Chris Jordan, Tartines chief operating officer, said the new Fourth Street space, which is in the same industrial area as Temescal Brewings new production facility, is a more ideal fit for our roasting growth in Northern California. It remains a commercial roaster thats not open to the public. After national developer CIM Group purchased the Jack London Square property in 2016 as part of a $131 million deal, Coffee Manufactory was billed as an anchor tenant for a new wave of restaurant and retail businesses in the area. According to officials with the property in 2017, it represented the beginning of a long-term vision for the area. A CIM representative declined to comment on Tartines exit from the property, citing a policy wherein the company does not speak publicly about tenant agreements. CIM also would not confirm what business, if any, is taking over Tartines former space. While Tartines exit may have come as a quiet surprise, other new restaurant tenants have found Jack London Square a better fit. Sustainable meat specialist Belcampo, Burmese restaurant Grocery Cafe, Thai restaurant Farmhouse Kitchen and Reem Assils Dyafa opened in recent years. All remain notable draws. The same can be said for Brooklyn West and Irish bar Slinte, both of which opened in 2017, as well as Plank, the spacious restaurant, bowling alley and beer garden that opened in the former Barnes & Noble space in 2014. The neighborhood is also being mentioned as part of the Oakland Athletics proposed stadium plans at Howard Terminal. The ambitious project includes the construction of a gondola that would travel near the Marriott City Center at Washington and 10th streets, as well as Water and Washington streets near Jack London Square. The Bay Area Council Economic Institute last month released a study saying the gondola would bring an additional 50,000 visitors to Oakland and have economic benefits of around $403 million in taxable sales, some of it coming from increased Jack London Square tourism. The latest project to come to life at Jack London Square might be one of its most popular Ayesha Currys Homemade, a temporary retail store selling her lifestyle products. Curry said her plan is to become a permanent fixture at Jack London Square. Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @JustMrPhillips | https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Jack-London-Square-quietly-loses-anchor-tenant-13611070.php |
Should there be more sport in schools? | Getty Images The person responsible for sport in the government, Mim Davies, says exercise needs to be as important as reading and writing in schools. In her first speech as the Sport Minister, she's said it's really important for kids to build a "sporting habit for life". She also thinks there's not enough women's sport on the television. At the moment, she believes it's viewed as a bit of a "novelty". The government says that kids should get at least 60 minutes of exercise each day. Currently, only 17% of under-16s get that amount. The opposition party, Labour, have responded by saying that the government has cut 35,000 hours of PE from the school curriculum this year. Let us know in the comments below... | https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/47212875 |
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