text
stringlengths 627
100k
|
|---|
Say you’re a lawyer, and state bar rules ban you from having sex “with a current client.” What if you’re having a three-way sexual encounter with your current client and the client’s girlfriend? Is that having sex “with” the client, because you and the client are having sex together (much like you might be going skiing “with” a friend)? Or is it not, because you and the client are not actually physically stimulating the other?
Not a hypothetical! These are the facts of a real case, In re Disciplinary Proceedings Against Inglimo, decided in 2007 by the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
The relevant language of SCR [Wisconsin Supreme Court Rule] 20:1.8(k) is as follows: (k)(1) … (i) “Sexual relations” means sexual intercourse or any other intentional touching of the intimate parts of a person or causing the person to touch the intimate parts of the lawyer…. (2) A lawyer shall not have sexual relations with a current client unless a consensual sexual relationship existed between them when the lawyer-client relationship commenced. The referee found that Attorney Inglimo engaged in sexual relations with L.K.’s girlfriend while she was doing the same with L.K. The OLR [Office of Legal Regulation] essentially argues that the word “with” in SCR 20:1.8(k)(2) connotes a temporal and spatial connection. According to the OLR, as long as the lawyer and the client are both participating in a sexual act at the same time in the same place, they are having sexual relations “with” each other…. On this issue, we concur with the referee’s conclusion [that Inglimo did not violate the rule]. The definition of sexual relations in SCR 20:1.8(k)(1) connotes conduct directly between the lawyer and the client. When the definition refers to touching, the rule speaks of the lawyer intentionally touching the intimate parts of “a person,” but the subsequent alternative definitional phrase uses the more definitive “the person” when referring to a situation in which the lawyer causes the touching to be done to him/her…. Further, SCR 20:1.8(k)(2) prohibits a lawyer from having “sexual relations” “with a current client.” Thus, the definitional language of SCR 20:1.8(k)(1) and the prohibition of SCR 20:1.8(k)(2) together clearly indicate that the prohibited “sexual relations,” whether intercourse or touching, must be intentionally done between the lawyer and one particular person, namely the client…. [B]ecause it does not appear that the definitional elements of “sexual relations” have been satisfied, the simple term “with” in the prohibitional phrase in SCR 20:1.8(k)(2) cannot transform this situation into a violation of the rule.
I bring this up nine years later partly because it’s the sort of bizarre legal story I like (really, who would have thought the Wisconsin Supreme Court would have to decide that?) but also because the “depends upon the meaning of ‘with’ ” question just came up in another sex case, this one a solicitation case from last Friday in Utah, State v. Hawker (Utah Ct. App.):
A detective came across an internet advertisement for escort services that showed a “scantily dressed” woman “in seductive pos[es].” The detective called the number on the ad and spoke to Defendant, asking her to meet him at a motel. He also requested that Defendant wear a short skirt with no underwear and “perform with [a] sex toy” while he “watch[ed].” Defendant agreed to engage in the requested conduct for $250 for thirty minutes or $300 for one hour…. When Defendant arrived in the motel parking lot, the caller introduced himself, informed the Defendant that he was a detective, and arrested Defendant for agreeing to “masturbat[e] with a sex toy for money.” … Defendant was charged with … sexual solicitation….
Now sexual solicitation is defined, in part, as meaning “offer[ing] or agree[ing] to commit any sexual activity” — including “masturbation” — “with another person for a fee.” So was agreeing to masturbate in front of someone for a fee “sexual activity” with the person? No, says the lead opinion (you can read the full decision to also see the concurrence and the dissent):
The term “with” has two possible meanings in this context. It can connote “one that shares in an action,” or it can mean “accompaniment or companionship.” Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary 2626 (1993). If the former definition applies, Defendant did not violate [the relevant provision], because there was never an agreement that the detective would manipulate the toys or otherwise actively participate in the act of masturbation. But if the latter applies, the result is different because Defendant agreed to masturbate while in the detective’s company. To determine which variant of “with” this statute employs, it is appropriate to consider the other forms of sexual activity mentioned in the statute. “The several provisions of the statute should be construed together in the light of the general purpose and object of the act and so as to give effect to the main intent and purpose of the legislature as therein expressed.” … [The definition of sexual behavior] contains a list of behaviors that, under [the solicitation statute], may not lawfully be engaged in “with another person for a fee.” These behaviors, “so used together and directed toward the same objective [,] … should be deemed to take character and meaning from each other.” … [T]he sexual solicitation statute must be read to prohibit receiving or agreeing to receive payment for acts that are of the same sort, or “of equal magnitude.” The list set forth in [the definition of sexual activity] includes … [genital, oral, and anal sex –] necessarily a two-person activity. [None] of these categories of conduct involves one person acting and another person watching. In other words, for these types of sexual activity to be prohibited under subsection (1)(a), “with” must mean that the other person is joining in the activity and not merely there as company or a very small audience. Construing like terms together, “with” must mean the same when applied to masturbation. It is therefore not enough, under subsection (1)(a), that someone agrees to masturbate on her own for a fee while another person is present. Because this is precisely what Defendant agreed to do, her agreement did not violate [the relevant provision of the solicitation statute].
There’s more — the statute, and the decision, are both complicated — but this should get you a sense of the “with” debate. Things lawyers argue about … |
Jalandhar: The Prime Minister of Dominican Republic (North America) Roosevelt Skerrit chaired the sixth convocation of Lovely Professional University on Tuesday. In 2004, Skerrit became the youngest prime minister of any country in the world at the age of 31.Skerrit honoured gold medallists and toppers of various academic programmes of the LPU 2015 batch. In all, 7,810 regular, distance education and part-time students received degrees and diplomas.LPU also conferred its 'honoris causa' doctor of letters degree on the visiting PM, who was accompanied by a high-profile delegation, including cabinet secretary Steve Ferrol of the Dominican Republic.PM Skerrit asked graduates to believe in themselves and their country. "Step out with force to face the world on a positive note. You too can become PM, CEO or leading global entrepreneur. You too can encourage and motivate the generation next to you," he said.He also expressed his desire to collaborate with LPU in India for students and cultural exchange programmes. "Geometrical boundaries should not be challenging for us. The honour which I have received here, I dedicate the same to youth of both the countries India and Dominica for their diligence and hard work and urge them to create and navigate a new globalized world," said Skerrit. |
Jerusalem, February 22, 2011 -- The portion of the brain responsible for visual reading doesn't require vision at all, according to a new study by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and France.
Brain imaging studies of blind people as they read words in Braille show activity in precisely the same part of the brain that lights up when sighted readers read. The findings challenge the textbook notion that the brain is divided up into regions that are specialized for processing information coming in via one sense or another, the researchers say.
"The brain is not a sensory machine, although it often looks like one; it is a task machine," said Dr. Amir Amedi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, head of the team of researchers whose work on the topic is reported in the latest issue of Current Biology.
"A particular area fulfills a unique function, in this case reading, regardless of sensory input modality," he said. Amedi is affiliated with the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada and the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences at the Hebrew University.
Unlike other tasks that the brain performs, reading is a recent invention, about 5,400 years old. Braille has been in use for less than 200 years. "That's not enough time for evolution to have shaped a brain-module dedicated to reading," Amedi explained.
Nevertheless, brain scans have shown that a very specific part of the brain, known as the Visual Word Form Area or VWFA for short (first discovered in sighted people by Dr. Laurent Cohen of Paris, a co-author of the current article), has been co-opted for this purpose. But no one knew what might happen in the brains of blind people who learn to read despite the fact that they've had no visual experience at all.
In the new study, Amedi's team, which included his doctoral student Lior Reich, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the neural activity in eight people who had been blind since birth while they read Braille words or nonsense Braille. If the brain were organized around processing sensory information, one might expect that Braille reading would depend on regions dedicated to processing tactile information, Amedi explained. If instead the brain is task-oriented, you'd expect to find the peak of activity across the entire brain in the VWFA, right where it occurs in sighted readers, and that is exactly what the researchers saw.
Further comparison of brain activity in the blind and sighted readers showed that the patterns in the VWFA were indistinguishable between the two.
"The main functional properties of the VWFA as identified in sighted are present as well in the blind, and are thus independent of the sensory-modality of reading, and even more surprisingly do not require any visual experience," the researchers wrote. "To the best of our judgment, this provides the strongest support so far for the metamodal theory of brain function," which suggests that brain regions are defined by the computations they perform. "Hence, the VWFA should also be referred to as the tangible word-form area, or more generally as the (metamodal) word-form area."
The researchers suggest that the VWFA is a multisensory integration area that binds simple features into more elaborate shape descriptions, making it ideal for the relatively new task of reading.
"Its specific anatomical location and strong connectivity to language areas enable it to bridge a high-level perceptual word representation and language-related components of reading," they said. "It is therefore the most suitable region to be taken over during reading acquisition, even when reading is acquired via touch without prior visual experience."
Amedi said he and his research associates plan to examine brain activity as people learn to read Braille for the first time in order to find out how rapidly this takeover happens. "What we want to find out is: how does the brain change to process information in words and is it instantaneous?"
### |
on March 28, 2017
Take a minute and think about all the young people you know. Your older children, their friends, your church’s youth group, that newlywed couple, your college friends—how many of them have a biblical worldview? Well, according to new research , only 4% of the millennial generation in America—the twentysomethings—have a biblical worldview.
Only 16% of their grandparents and just 7% of their parents can be said to have a biblical worldview.
It should come as no surprise that Millennials are less likely than any other generation to have a biblical worldview and are very secularized in their thinking. After all, only 16% of their grandparents and just 7% of their parents can be said to have a biblical worldview. As I’ve said many times before when reporting on sad statistics like this, instead of the church going out and influencing the culture, the culture has greatly influenced the church. In fact, many in the church don’t think much differently from those outside the church! And, of course, keep in mind that 90% of kids from church homes in the United States are sent to the secular education system where our tax dollars are used to impose the religion of atheism on their thinking a number of hours per day.
This new report on Millennials’ beliefs included these saddening US statistics, among others:
One out of every three older adults (33%) is a born-again Christian, stating that they will experience eternity in Heaven with God after their death on earth only because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Far fewer Millennials (20%) share that expectation
Less than two out of every ten adults 30 or older (18%) claims to be in the atheist-agnostic-none faith preference category. Nearly three out of every ten Millennials embrace that category (28%)
A minority of adults 30 or older (43%) supports same-sex “marriage.” However, nearly two-thirds of those under 30 (65%) support it.
Commenting on this study, George Barna the executive director of the American Culture and Faith Institute which authored the study, wrote,
Remember, a person’s worldview is typically developed between the ages of about 18 months and 13 years. . . . There is usually very little movement in a worldview after that point. You could say with confidence that the worldview a person possesses at age 13 is probably the worldview they will die with. Unless pre-existing patterns radically change, we are not likely to ever see the Millennial generation reach even ten percent who have a biblical worldview. . . . Parents are one of the most important influences on the worldview of their children, and Millennials are entering their prime childbearing years. But because 24 of every 25 Millennials lack a biblical worldview today, the probability of them transmitting such to their children is extremely low. You cannot give what you don’t have. In other words, if today’s children are going to eventually embrace a biblical worldview, people with such a perspective must exert substantial influence on the nation’s children to supply what their parents are unable to give them.
Parents, I cannot urge you strongly enough to be intentional about imparting a biblical worldview to your children, as the Bible instructs. The influence you have on your children cannot be replaced by anyone else—they are looking to you and your example. Are you using the time you have with them to teach them to love God’s Word and to start their thinking in all areas from Scripture? If not, consider these Scripture passages:
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. ( Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. ( Proverbs 22:6
And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. ( And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. ( Ephesians 6:4
But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” ( All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” ( 2 Timothy 3:14–17
Education begins in the home—right from when a child is born.
Pastors and other Christian leaders—you need to be equipping parents and young people with the tools they need to think biblically. You can’t avoid important topics like gay “marriage,” transgender issues, abortion, creation vs. evolution, or the exclusivity of Christ. You need to preach and teach on these issues to help those under your influence to think biblically and turn to God’s Word—not our culture—for answers!
Our Answers Bible Curriculum (ABC). It’s a four-year Sunday school (or homeschool or family study) curriculum that features a chronological walk through the Bible, synchronized across ages so parents and their children are learning the same thing each week. It’s full of apologetics and biblical worldview content, and there’s nothing else quite like it out there. Our online store is full of resources to help equip believers to think biblically. I especially encourage you to check out). It’s a four-year Sunday school (or homeschool or family study) curriculum that features a chronological walk through the Bible, synchronized across ages so parents and their children are learning the same thing each week. It’s full of apologetics and biblical worldview content, and there’s nothing else quite like it out there.
I encourage you to check it out at I encourage you to check it out at AnswersinGenesis.org/sunday-school
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for
Ken Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying Ken
This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team. |
This article is about an American street performer from Seattle. For other uses, see Artis (disambiguation)
Artis the Spoonman (born October 3, 1948) is an American street performer and musician from Seattle, Washington, who uses spoons as a musical instrument.
He frequents the Pike Place Market accompanying singer/songwriter and guitarist Jim Page with his collection of spoons of different shapes and sizes and materials spread out on a blanket.[1] In addition to spoons, he plays the flute and recorder.[2] To the larger public, he is probably best known for his collaborations with Soundgarden and Frank Zappa.
Career, performances [ edit ]
1970s and 1980s [ edit ]
Artis had been active since 1972 as a street artist[3] when he had his first collaboration with a major artist, appearing on stage with Frank Zappa in Eugene, Oregon, and at New York's Palladium, in 1981.[4][5]
1990s and later—collaboration with Soundgarden [ edit ]
In 1992 Artis made a guest appearance, (as local talent), at Bumbershoot, Seattle, which that year featured a lineup of acts including Soundgarden, who were to become instrumental in bringing Artis to the attention of a wider audience.
In 1993 he published a compilation of his poems and short stories called Artis-Aspirations to Manifestations from the Womb to the Void.[6] In 1994, an NPR's Morning Edition focused on him and his artistic rejection of material values.[7] His song "Wake Up Call" opened the 1995 compilation Northwest Post-Grunge.[8]
In the same year, he recorded "Spoonman" with Soundgarden, a song written by Chris Cornell, and named for and featuring Artis. He played the spoons in the song and appeared in the music video.[9] On their 1994 tour, he opened up for the band in New York City, and Shepherd's Bush in London.[10] The single charted at number three on the US Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and at number nine on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart.[11] The song also became a top twenty hit on the UK Singles Chart.[12] In 1995, the song won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.[13]
Chris Cornell commented:
It's more about the paradox of who [Artis] is and what people perceive him as. He's a street musician, but when he's playing on the street, he is given a value and judged completely wrong by someone else. They think he's a street person, or he's doing this because he can't hold down a regular job. They put him a few pegs down on the social ladder because of how they perceive someone who dresses differently. The lyrics express the sentiment that I much more easily identify with someone like Artis than I would watch him play.[14]
Artis and Jim Page in 2009
On November 10, 1995, he released an album titled Entertain the Entertainers. The album was rated four and a half stars out of five by Allmusic.com who called his release "an exceptional album showing off a very good range for an artist that would otherwise be known more for the gimmick of his chosen instruments, regardless of his abilities on them."[15]
Artis has performed at many festivals, mostly in Canada and the United States. Other bands he has played with include Aerosmith and Phish, and he has been a featured performer at Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival (2003 and 2004)[16] and the Oregon Country Fair. He was a featured performer at the 2013 Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle.
Artis has made television appearances on the BBC and Late Night with David Letterman, among others. He plays an old man in the 1995 film Toast with the Gods.[17]
Personal life [ edit ]
Artis has stated he was a sailor in the United States Navy in the late 1960s, and worked for the United States Postal Service in the early 1970s.[1]
Artis suffered a heart attack in 2002,[18] and a benefit was organized for him in Seattle.[19] He was reported as receiving state General Assistance Unemployable benefits from 2002 to 2010,[20] and federal SSI benefits with alcoholism-related mental disability as of 2011.[21]
Since 2009 he has lived in Port Townsend, Washington.[22]
Discography [ edit ]
...Entertain the Entertainers (Sapphire Records, 1995)
"World Beat Ragtime" by Shoehorn (Kutsubera Music, 1994) "A Livin' Spoonful" by Artis (2003) "The Blue Monk" by Shoehorn (Kutsubera Music, 2008)
He also recorded a session for Frank Zappa.
See also [ edit ] |
Dr. Drang:
Paging is clearly an artifact of the technology of paper books.
I don’t think that is clear at all.
Take the iPad. iPads have screens that have a specific size. In terms of points, every iPad ever made has the exact same screen size. Designers design content for that specific screen size. If they can avoid it, why should they design chunks of content that are longer or wider than that specific screen size?
Look at iOS’s home screen. There are pages of apps. You jump between pages, you don’t scroll. Is the home screen’s pagination an artifact of paper book technology, or is it simply a better idea than having a home screen that can be scrolled? I’d argue that it’s a better idea.
This example also shows that a simple interaction model isn’t pagination’s only advantage. How do you find apps on your home screen? For many of the apps you use often, you probably find them by their position. Pagination allows you to organize things spatially.
This (typically) doesn’t apply to automatic pagination, where page breaks are chosen in a way that can’t be predicted by the author, but it does apply in many other situations. If you use iBooks author, you design individual pages that perfectly fit the iPad’s screen. This means that you can ensure that paragraphs that belong together are on the same page. You can make sure that illustrations and pictures are next to the text they belong to. And your users can identify things by their position: «look at the image at the bottom left of page 35!»
Pagination isn’t just an artifact of paper books. It actually has real advantages over scrolling.
Dr. Drang continues:
I read shitloads of stuff on scrolling web pages—as I’m sure Michael does—and I don’t get exhausted doing it.
Similar sentiments were expressed in a lot of the feedback I’ve received. I’m sure scrolling doesn’t feel like a particularly problematic or burdensome interaction to most readers of this website. But we are not good approximations of the average user. I’ve seen too many iPhone users, holding the phone in their left hand, painstakingly scrolling with their right index finger. For most people, scrolling on a touch device isn’t as easy and automatic as it is for us (and on a PC, it’s even worse).
This may change. Today, many children are growing up with iPads. Maybe in 20 years, everybody will have such well-developed fine motor skills that they can easily and precisely interact with any touchscreen, without consciously thinking about it at all. On the other hand, mice have been around since the 60s, but if you’ve been to a few usability tests with a wide variety of participants, you’ve seen people struggle with lining up the mouse cursor to a link on a web page, or to a window’s close button.
It’s certainly easier to become proficient with a touchscreen than with a mouse, but as of right now, a lot of people still are not. |
Episode 36 Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues, Part 6 – Agri-Food Systems, I: 31 March 2013
[audio: http://niche-canada.org/files/sound/naturespast/natures-past36.mp3][01:20:20]
The history of Canadian food and agriculture is an enormous topic with both a global and deeply personal scope. All humans require food to live and agricultural products become food for our consumption, demonstrating the profound interrelatedness of food and agriculture. Beyond sheer survival, food serves social and cultural purposes for all people, from planting and harvesting, through preparation, and ultimately with consumption. Communities and families coalesce around these activities and have done so for all of human existence. Food is a source of pleasure and for many people is intricately linked with spirituality. Examining the environmental history of food and agriculture in Canada reveals the ways in which our complex relationships with nature and each other inform this most intimate aspect of our daily lives.
A primary element of agriculture is a relationship with the earth. In order to cultivate crops to harvest and consume, humans must manipulate the natural environment. Since the arrival of Europeans to North America, agriculture has largely involved a perceived human domination of the environment including physical manipulation (tilling, seeding, deforestation, filling wetlands), technological innovation (genetically modified crops, mechanized equipment, fertilizer, pesticide), and transportation of agricultural products (railways, highways, airports, canals and seaways). Euro-Canadian concepts of liberalism have also influenced the relationship between people and the planet, promoting private property ownership as one of its foundational elements of property, liberty, and equality. The ideal of the yeoman farmer, an entrepreneurial agricultural producer, is fundamental to the Canadian founding myth. In order to create Euro-Canadian farms on the landscape, however, indigenous peoples were displaced, intertwining human relationships with the land and also with other humans.
Food and agriculture require and inform our relationships with each other. In the process of colonialism, European-style agriculture was adopted by and foisted upon indigenous peoples through political mechanisms. Politics, food, and agriculture continue to be closely tied as demonstrated through food-based political movements, agricultural and food regulation and legislation, international trade policies, and even in Canada’s World War I conscription crisis. Migrations between provinces and immigration policy have been driven by agriculture, and current Canadian politics are focused in many ways on increasing the export of Canadian agricultural and food products. Regional and national dishes and crops inform Canadian identities. The power shift from producer to corporation in Canadian food systems is thought to be a factor in social inequity experienced by people across the globe.
Canadian agriculture and food are crucial components to discussions about health. The quantity of food available dictates both famine and obesity, as does the quality of food. As more is known about the health effects for humans of genetically modified foods, hormone-added foods, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and food-borne infections such as Escherichia coli and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, we are changing how we interact with our food and its suppliers. Agricultural environmental practices also raise concerns about the health of the groundwater we drink and use for irrigation, as well as the air we breathe. Reviewing the history of agriculture and food in Canada helps us understand why we have the systems we do and how they came to be, as well as assess their efficacy for our contemporary needs and desires as humans always in need of nourishment.
To begin this look at agriculture and food in Canadian history, we look at the case study of chicken breeding in North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On this episode of the podcast, we spoke Margaret Derry about her new book Art and Science in Breeding: Creating Better Chickens.
Please be sure to take a moment to review this podcast on our iTunes page and to fill out a short listener survey here.
Visit the main page at http://niche-canada.org/naturespast
Suggested Readings:
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. “An Overview of the Canadian Agriculture and Agri-Food System, 2012”
Andrews, Geoff. The Slow Food Story: Politics and Pleasure. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008.
Bradbury, Bettina. “Pigs, Cows, and Boarders: Non-Wage Forms of Survival Among Montreal Families, 1861-91,” Labour/Le Travail, 14 (Fall 1984), 9-46.
Carter, Sarah. Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993.
Derry, Margaret. Art and Science in Breeding: Creating Better Chickens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
Iacovetta, Franca, Valerie J. Korinek, and Marlene Epp. Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
Mosby, Ian. “‘That Won Ton Soup Headache’: The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, MSG and the Making of American Food, 1968-1980.” Social History of Medicine 22, No. 1 (April 2009): 133-151.
Murton, James. Creating a Modern Countryside: Liberalism and Land Resettlement in British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.
Russell, Peter A. How Agriculture Made Canada: Farming in the Nineteenth Century. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012.
Turner, Chris. “The Farms are not All Right” The Walrus, October 2011.
Wall, Ellen, Barry Smit, and Johanna Wandel. Farming in a Changing Climate: Agricultural Adaptation in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.
Winson, Anthony. The Intimate Commodity: Food and the Development of the Agro-Industrial Complex in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
Works Cited
Music Credits |
power overwhelming
Those two words won me many single player games as a kid playing Starcraft. By typing them in my units would become invincible, slaughtering my enemies with a single shot or slash. I actually was unable to beat the campaign of Starcraft and it’s sequel without this code until I went back to the game a decade later. These words are now a popular meme among both Blizzard games as well as the real time strategy community as a whole. Today I want to touch on a lighter subject, and one less indepth, that of cheat codes in real time strategy games.
I grew up playing real time strategy games, mostly Blizzard, Ensemble and Westwood games and while I loved the genre I was obviously not very good as a kid. I loved playing the campaigns most of all though, but struggled to beat many of them. One day my friend showed me he had bought the strategy guide (another topic worth reminiscing about) for the game we both had recently bought, Starcraft. In it there were tons of great strategies but we quickly discovered a section with cheat codes, and our single player experience was never the same. I would cheat my way through levels I found boring to get to the ones I wanted to play or just to get to the story aspects. It completely changed my enjoyment of the game because if I got frustrated, as children do, I wouldn’t have to get mad, I could just cheat through a hard part and turn it off when I felt safe. I could relax and have fun again.
I played a number of other games around that period as well, namely Warcraft 2: Orcs and Humans as well as Age of Empires 1 and 2. I quickly discovered my favorite site during the early days of the internet, Cheat Code Central. From there I learned other iconic codes that I would continue to use many times. In Starcraft I used black sheep wall to reveal the map and show me the money to start rolling in minerals. While in Warcarft 2 I memorized unite the clans to speed through levels with instant wins. Blizzard had some amazing and iconic ones but Age of Empires was even more unique. They had your run of the mill “win now” and “more resources” cheats. One of my favorites was gaia/natural wonders (For AoE and AoE2 respectively) which allowed you to control the neutral animals on the map, pretty useless but was fun as a kid. Nothing topped the fact in both games you could get a car that launched rockets by using bigdaddy and how do you turn this on. These type of meta or 4th wall breaking cheats were some of my favorite because they allowed me to break the fantasy of the game I was in but not lose the fun. Even the first Red Alert game got in on the action with a bit trickier method but some fun options like turning resources into civilians.
Now cheat codes haven’t gone away, Blizzard has held faithfully to putting them in each game as did Ensemble in Age of Empires 3 but sadly many games are moving away from it. Grey Goo was one game I was hoping would including them since it’s such a throw back to the classic real time strategy and has a solid campaign but no luck. Many real time strategy games also are having shortened or no campaign at all now. Company of Heroes and World in Conflict did include codes but they were mostly for camera control but both did have at least one fun code. While I don’t have the greatest love for the Supreme Commander series I do appreciate some of their creative cheats. From altering the gravity to altering the game speed, they had some interesting options.
Parts of this might be tied to Steam being such a powerful distribution platform and the mutual exclusiveness of cheats and achievements. Another is with games becoming more multiplayer-centric cheat codes obviously don’t fit into a competitive online game. Lastly I think cheat codes in general are being phased out of games of all genres and platforms. With mods being so powerful on computers it’s of little incentive for developers to do this when their users will just mod the game for them. Console hack devices like GameShark don’t exist anymore and codes for consoles are gone the same way outside of the occasional Konami code in some games.
While it may be a bit nostalgic and childish, I know that I miss cheat codes and I teach my kids the wonders of real time strategy games I hope I won’t have to raise them on games that may be too hard for them at the time but that they will have a way to not quit like I wanted to before I found cheat codes.
So how about you, did you ever play with cheats or were you a purest? If you did what were some of your favorites? |
Dramatic cellphone video captured a group of good Samaritans forming a human chain to rescue a driver from a burning SUV in Florida.
Witnesses told CBS affiliate WKMG that a red Jeep Cherokee rear-ended another car and drove into an embankment on Sunday in Palm Bay.
Witness Tom Sais and a group of others got to the vehicle as it was burning.
“Start climbing on through and there he was up in the air, hanging still strapped into his seat belt, hanging sideways,” Sais told the station.
Shortly after police arrived on scene with fire extinguishers, the driver was pulled out of the car. The group then formed a human chain to get the driver to the top of the embankment.
“Grabbed onto his belt, kind of pushing him, kind of hanging onto him, dragging this guy with whatever we had and made it up to the top,” Sais said.
Sais told WKMG that Palm Bay police had to Taser the driver, who was resisting help. The man was hospitalized with minor injuries.
Shannon Perez captured the video on her cellphone.
“I think it’s good that the police get, you know, some coverage of how they are heroic and they save lives, and I think that’s amazing,” Perez told WKMG. |
UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent will make his return from a knee injury on November 17, when he meets interim champion Carlos Condit in the main event of UFC 154 in Montreal.
At least as of now.
Asked about St-Pierre's status during Thursday's UFC 149 press conference in Calgary, UFC president Dana White said that the champ's return is on track.
"Yup, as far as I know, right here, right now, he's gonna fight, yes," said White. "Unless any complications happen, he's good to go."
At four years and three months, St-Pierre is the second-longest-reigning champion in UFC history, behind current middleweight champion Anderson Silva. He's won nine consecutive fights, but has been out of competition since April 30, 2011, when he defeated Jake Shields at Toronto's Rogers Centre in the main event of UFC 129.
Knee woes first kept St-Pierre out of a UFC 137 bout with Condit; then a UFC 143 matchup against Nick Diaz. St-Pierre underewent surgery on his right ACL and Condit instead defeated Diaz for the interim welterweight title.
On June 27, St-Pierre tweeted "I'm back in Montreal and full-time training! Already tried a few kicks - right knee is super strong," indicating that he's back on track for the Condit bout. |
In the olden days of pornography, the lives of the performers were mostly limited to what we saw acted out on film.
Of course, rabid fans knew who Linda Lovelace was hooking up with offscreen and whether Jenna Jameson actually dated women in real life; but on the whole, porn stars existed as larger-than-life projections of what their audiences wanted them to be.
They played to the fantasies of millions, then disappeared back into their private lives. Under the guise of their erotic fake names and strategically-tailored public personas, they could expose every inch of themselves, yet still remain completely unknowable as human beings.
That is, until social media came along and changed everything.
While Facebook continues to lock out porn stars (their "no nudity" policy extends to Instagram as well), Twitter has welomed them with open arms. Not only can these performers tweet nude photos and other NSFW material to their personal accounts, but they can also use Vine —Twitter's six-second video sharing app, the moving picture version of Instagram—to create mini-movies of themselves for the world to see.
However, not all of these Vines are as titillating or overtly sexual as one might think. In fact, many of them are downright mundane: driving in traffic, cooking dinner, spinning around in parking lots (fun fact: Lexi Belle and I have the same Ikea office chair ) and other activities that aren't unlike anything you, your sister or your best friend might capture on a given day.
This disarming display of normalcy is what makes these videos so remarkable. Porn stars are pulling back the curtain on their private lives and showing viewers that despite their "unique" career paths, they're really just like us.
For example, porn actress and activist Stoya wrote a wonderful piece for Vice a couple of weeks ago that defends this cultural shift, saying that social media outlets like Twitter, Tumblr and Vine have been enormously helpful in allowing viewers to see porn stars as more than just sexual objects:
"Porn stars can definitely be quirky and are probably more sexually liberated than the average adult, but we aren't so far removed from humanity that we're above concerns like bills and laundry," Stoya writes, "To pretend that we are underestimates the intelligence of people who are interested in the lives of porn stars or what goes on behind the scenes of the adult film industry."
Dylan Ryan is another porn actress who defends the right of women to be sexually liberated in whichever ways feel right for them, even going as far as to say that the choice of an adult film career can be both "feminist" and "empowering."
"I am the agent of my own experience," Ryan told the Huffington Post , "One of the things that people often think about porn is that the women who are performing in it are distant from their bodies or they're there because they're getting paid or because they've been sexually abused or because they have a very unhealthy sense of self. And while those stereotypes are based in a lot of realities that exist...that's not the experience of every performer, and that's not been my experience."
Perhaps one can be a feminist and a porn star, a kinky exibitionist and a down-home girl who likes to Vine videos of her cat jumping onto a beanbag chair. All of us are full of contradictions, some of them surprising and often endearing: that's what makes us human.
Does seeing photos and videos of Stoya goofing off with her friends or Lexi shopping for Nutella at the grocery store strip away their fantasy, or make them even more interesting—and by extension, even more sexy and appealing—to porn fans and naysayers alike?
Leave me your take on the humanization of porn stars (and whether this has been a positive or negative side effect of our 2013 "insta-share" culture) in the comments section below.
Leah Pickett writes about popular culture for WBEZ. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. |
This is police state stuff. Two men were shot and killed, in public, in February. Police know who did it, but they will not tell us. They say no charges should be laid in the case, but they will not tell us why, or give us the information they uncovered in their investigation. Police have security-camera video of the incident, but they will not show it to us.
Chief Mark Saunders has released little information about why police decided not to charge an off-duty security guard who fatally shot two people at a McDonald's in February, but held out faint hope that a coroner's inquest, somewhere down the road, might be called that would reveal more of the story. ( Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star )
Two people are dead, and the Toronto Police Service’s response, after four months of investigation, boils down to: Nothing to see here. Trust us. Move along. But see, that’s not how this whole democracy thing works. That’s not how this whole justice system of ours works. That response from the police doesn’t work. Here’s what we know: the double shooting happened at a McDonald’s near Danforth and Coxwell, according to a police statement. “The two men became involved in a physical confrontation with an armed uniformed private security officer who was working at a nearby location. During the altercation, the private security officer discharged his firearm, fatally wounding both men. The private security officer was subsequently taken to hospital where he was treated for a firearm-related injury.”
Article Continued Below
And that’s about all we know. Police have interviewed witnesses and seen video evidence, and have concluded, after consulting with the Crown, that there is “no reasonable prospect of conviction,” and therefore no charges will be laid against the guard. They share that conclusion with us, but will not share any of the logic or evidence that leads them to that conclusion. “We haven’t charged anyone, so we wouldn’t discuss specifics,” police spokesman Mark Pugash told the Star, citing what he said was a department policy. As this case illustrates, it’s a policy in desperate need of revision. A longstanding principle of our justice system, often cited by the Supreme Court in its decisions, is that “justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.” There’s no way to see if justice is being done if the police keep all the evidence and information secret. Police Chief Mark Saunders says people who want information can just wait to see if the Ontario Coroner decides to hold an inquest. “If that does happen, then that will be the forum where you have the opportunity to hear all of the evidence and have an understanding of why things have concluded the way that they have,” he said, pointing to a possible and theoretical day years down the road.
That response doesn’t really work, either. Police shouldn’t pass the buck to the coroner to disclose basic information. We shouldn’t have to wait years to know whether we can trust what they are saying. Two people are dead, shot publicly in front of bystanders. No one is going to be held responsible for that. How can we, the people of Toronto, see the justice in that if no one will tell us what happened? Was it a clear-cut case of self-defence? I could imagine a hundred scenarios in which that’s possible, but we don’t know.
Article Continued Below
Pugash would not confirm or deny even that hypothesis in talking to my colleague Rachel Mendleson yesterday. Why was this security guard armed in a restaurant? We don’t know. What kind of work was he doing nearby? We don’t know. Was his life in danger? Was he being robbed? Was he defending other people? We don’t know. And the people who do know refuse to tell us. If we can’t see justice being done, and evaluate it for ourselves, we cannot be certain injustice isn’t being covered up. If we cannot see the results of the police investigation, we cannot trust its conclusions. Without an explanation for what happened, people are left to wildly speculate. There are those who think police are likely to be too sympathetic to another uniformed authority figure authorized to carry a gun in a case like this. Who is to say they are misguided, if we have no information? In 2010, when an independent prosecutor announced that no charges would be pursued against former Attorney-General Michael Bryant for the automotive death of bicycle courier Darcy Alan Sheppard, he outlined a detailed theory of the events of the night and the reasoning behind dropping the case. That decision remains controversial and often lamented, but at least the reasoning is there for all to see and analyze, in both the prosecutor’s statement and a written report. Even at that, many still feel a courtroom, where the stories and evidence from that investigation could be tested in front of a judge, would be the only place justice could have been done and unresolved questions been answered. That Bryant case looks like an absolute model of disclosure and transparency in comparison to this. It’s possible to imagine reasons why it might be reasonable to protect the identity of the armed guard in this situation. Although it is possible to imagine more reasons why his name should be public, even if he’s not guilty of anything. After all, without knowing his identity, how can we know if the police in charge of the investigation had any relationship to him that would compromise their objectivity? But even if protecting his privacy is reasonable, we deserve to know what happened in that McDonald’s. What the witnesses saw. What the cameras captured. We deserve to know, in part because this incident itself is a matter of significant public interest, in which the public needs to be able to judge the appropriateness of the response by the police and attorneys who represent us. But also because a policy in which not just the details but the most basic determinations of fact of police investigations are kept secret, and that secrecy is considered routine, is a dangerous policy, ripe for abuse. Investigators who share only their conclusions, while saying “trust us” when asked how they arrived at those conclusions, do not belong in a democracy. That’s police state stuff. And apparently, it’s standard operating procedure in Toronto. Edward Keenan writes on city issues [email protected] . Follow: @thekeenanwire |
Jonathan Cahn released a video today warning viewers to prepare for God’s judgment for the nation’s growing “apostasy” to fall upon America in September in the form of economic collapse, natural disaster, or a terrorist attack.
Or maybe not … as Cahn was careful to hedge his bets by also asserting that possibly nothing at all will happen because God “is sovereign and He doesn’t have to work according to our schedule or understanding.” But even if nothing happens, Cahn said, America still deserves God’s judgment because of things like the legalization of gay marriage.
“I believe a great shaking is coming to America and the world,” he said. “We have watched the apostasy of America continue, it has continued and it accelerating. The harbingers have not stopped, they have continued to manifest, which are indications of a nation progressing to judgment.”
“How does judgment come?” Cahn continued. “It can come in the form of collapse economically, financially, the nation’s blessing, sustenance being removed. It can also come in the form of natural disaster, earthquakes, famines, other things, many ways in the natural realm. It can also come in the form of man-made disaster, as in terrorism, war, as in 9/11.”
And America is ripe for such judgment because of the recent Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide, he said.
“This summer, America crossed the line,” he warned. “This was a tectonic event, a seismic change with ramifications not just about marriage but about the future of the culture, of society, of religious freedom, of persecution and, I believe, judgment.” |
Paintings stolen from Amsterdam museum have been recovered from house in stronghold of crime syndicate near Naples
Two Vincent van Gogh paintings that were stolen from a museum in Amsterdam more than a decade ago have been recovered by Italian law enforcement authorities in Naples after an investigation targeting a powerful organised crime syndicate involved in the cocaine trade.
The paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen, painted in 1882, and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, painted in 1884, were discovered after allegedly being hidden away in a house affiliated with an international drug trafficker based in Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples.
Officials hailed the discovery as a major victory in the fight against organised crime. It also provided an insight into the inner workings of the Italian underworld, where precious works of art are seen as valuable currency.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, 1884. Photograph: Getty Images
The authenticity of the paintings has already been confirmed by an expert from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, from where they were stolen in 2002.
Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh museum, said he wasn’t sure when the paintings could be returned to the Netherlands, as they are likely to be needed as evidence in the ensuing trial.
“After so many years I didn’t dare to think they would ever return,” Rüger said. “We’ve waited 14 years for this moment and of course we’d like to take them straight home. We’ll need to exercise a bit of patience, but I am convinced we can count on the support of the Italian authorities.”
The frames have been removed and the seascape has a small patch of damage in the bottom left-hand corner, the museum said, but otherwise the paintings appeared to be in good condition.
The paintings were discovered thanks to a tipoff from Mario Cerrone, a suspected drug trafficker arrested in January who collaborated with the Camorra, a notorious Neapolitan crime syndicate made up of numerous clans.
The discovery was part of a broader investigation into the Camorra’s Amato-Pagano clan, which prosecutors said was one of the most dangerous and active gangs of drug traffickers operating in the region. Investigators came across the paintings in a building that they were searching after a judge last week ordered the seizure of the gang’s assets. They also seized a small plane.
“When we finally found them, we did not believe our eyes,” a local official told La Repubblica.
The FBI considered the 2002 heist one of the “top 10” art crimes, according to its website. The thieves entered the Van Gogh museum from the roof of the building, which allowed them to get past security and cameras undetected, even though their entry did trigger alarms. They had used a ladder to climb up to a window and then smashed
Two men, Octave Durham, an art thief who earned the nickname The Monkey for his ability to evade police, and his accomplice Henk Bieslijn, were eventually convicted of the theft in 2004 after police discovered their DNA at the scene of the crime. They were handed four year sentences, but authorities were never able to track down the stolen works.
View of the Sea at Scheveningen is one of Van Gogh’s early paintings and depicts the beach resort close to The Hague. It was the only work in the museum’s collection from Van Gogh’s two years in The Hague and one of just two Dutch seascapes the artist made.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Detail from Vincent van Gogh’s View of the Sea at Scheveningen. Photograph: Getty Images
Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen is a smaller work that Van Gogh painted for his mother in 1884, and depicts a church in Brabant where his father Theodorus was attached as a preacher. After his father’s death in 1885 Van Gogh revised the painting, adding figures of women wearing black shawls used in mourning.
Dario Franceschini, the Italian culture minister, said the discovery was extraordinary and “confirmed the strength of the Italian system in the fight against the illicit trafficking of works of art”.
John Dickie, a historian and expert in organised crime in Italy, said the reason the country was known for its expertise in following the illicit trade of art was the extent to which that trade existed in the first place.
“Italy also has the best mafia police in the world, because it has the most powerful mafia networks,” he added.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Axel Rüger (left), director of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, and Naples prosecutor Giovanni Colangelo shake hands in front of the recovered Van Gogh painting Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen. Photograph: Ciro Fusco/EPA
The town of Castellammare di Stabia, about 19 miles south-east of Naples, where the paintings were found, has long been known as a Camorra stronghold. It was the home of Assunta Maresca, known as Pupetta, who was a former beauty queen, convicted murderer, and Camorra boss described as a trailblazer and suffragette in the syndicate.
Unlike the highly organised Sicilian mafia, the Camorra is an “archipelago of gangs”, Dickie said, with some branches being more sophisticated than others.
“It is easy to say the Camorra did it and then jump to the conclusion that the Camorra is moving into the art market,” Dickie said.
He said the discovery and the alleged involvement of the Camorra reflected the opportunistic nature of the Neapolitan syndicate. Its members spend a lot of time in prison and are part of a vast underworld network in which illegal goods are sold and traded.
“I don’t think we need to conclude that it’s the Camorra boss who is putting this art on his mantelpiece. A lot of times these people don’t have a lot of class [and] they wouldn’t necessarily be impressed by having this,” Dickie said.
Federico Varese, an expert in criminology from Oxford University, said it was unsurprising that the discovery exposed a link between Amsterdam and the Camorra, given the Dutch city’s reputation as a major drug hub. Cross-border investigations dating back to the 1980s had found the presence of the Camorra in Amsterdam.
“What I know for sure is that a lot of camorristi are in Amsterdam, not because they want to be rooted there or deal in racketeering of shops or that kind of thing, but because they are there to buy drugs. Amsterdam is a hub for the buying and selling of illegal goods,” Varese said.
The Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, informed his Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte, about the police operation before the funeral in Jerusalem of the former Israeli leader Shimon Peres. Renzi also tweeted a message of thanks to Italian law enforcement, saying he was proud of their work. |
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took the stage Saturday at CPAC, praising the assemblage for its support during the fraught Wisconsin recall fight, which Walker won, allowing him to stay in power. His speech was themed around the idea that the states are the laboratories of policy -- "Real reform does not happen in Washington, it happens in the statehouses throughout this country," he said -- and that he, in particular, was leading the way to end "government dependency."
If future GOP presidential runs depend on silver-tongues articulation of dorm-room "makers vs. takers" arguments, then Walker's future is pretty bright.
WALKER: This president and his allies measure success in government by how many people are dependent on the government ... We measure success in government by just the opposite, by how many people are no longer dependent upon the government. Not because we kicked them out to the street. Not because we threw them out to the curb.
To that end, Walker insisted on the "need" for "real entitlement reform," to move Americans "from government dependence to true independence," and told the crowd that his decision to opt against Medicare Medicaid expansion that would bring medical coverage to uninsured Wisconsinites was rooted in his desire to prevent more of this "dependence."
"In America," Walker said, in case his point wasn't clear enough, "people don't grow up dreaming of being dependent on the government. In America, people don't come to this country as immigrants because someday they want to become dependent on the government. In America, they live the American dream."
"Real reform," Walker insisted, "happens in the states." In Wisconsin's case, "reform" largely came in the form of controversially impoverishing working class Wisconsinites in public sector jobs, a cause for which Walker successfully stoked widespread enthusiasm across the Badger State. At CPAC, Walker cast this struggle as "standing with the taxpayers" against "special interests" and "corporate interests."
That's not, strictly speaking, true. Walker and the GOP-controlled state legislature have showered corporate interests with boodle, and Walker's been richly rewarded by corporate backers for his efforts. As Brian Beutler reported, much of Walker's budget shortfall was due to a self-engineered set of corporate giveaways.
Politico reported on Friday that Walker was "open to a presidential bid and pointedly declined to pledge to serve a full four-year term if he’s reelected next year."
[NOTE: This article has been corrected after "Medicare" was inadvertently used instead of the correct word "Medicaid." We regret the error.] |
A detective constable with responsibility for sexual offenders will be sentenced today after being found guilty of abusing his position to set up affairs with vulnerable women.
Married father-of-two Mark Fisher, 49, - nicknamed Fish The Flirt - preyed on a string of women who were either victims of crime or had drink or drug problems.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
An investigation by Cumbria Constabulary's professional standards department found he used police systems inappropriately to gain information about three women.
He also threatened the fairness of a future trial when he attempted to gain favour with another woman when he showed her a photograph of a person who had allegedly attacked her.
Fisher, of Cockermouth, also gave cash and alcohol to one woman who was living in a hostel. He also offered to pay her drug debts in return for sex.
Although the inquiry overseen by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) found the relationships were consensual, it concluded that Fisher, who worked in the force's public protection unit, had still abused his position as a police officer between 2008 and 2010.
A jury at Carlisle Crown Court yesterday found him guilty of five counts of misconduct in a public office following a three-week trial. He was cleared of three similar counts.
IPCC commissioner Ms Naseem Malik said after the verdict: "Fisher totally abused his position of trust to target vulnerable women for his own sexual gratification.
"I must praise the bravery of the five women who have stood up in court to give evidence against him. I must also praise Cumbria Constabulary for conducting a rigorous investigation.
"Fisher used police records and the contacts he made totally inappropriately.
"He was a police officer who should have been helping these women by doing the job he was paid to do.
"Instead, he seemed to regard his job as something that gave him opportunities to forge relationships to meet his sexual needs.
"Today's verdict has finally put an end to Fisher's activities."
Cumbria's Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said: "We are sorry for the distress caused to Fisher's victims while he was a serving police officer.
"We acknowledge their bravery and thank them for bringing his misconduct to our attention so that we could take action.
"We are disappointed by Fisher's behaviour - he abused his position of trust and failed in his role to protect vulnerable members of the community.
"Police officers are not above the law and we expect our officers to conduct themselves lawfully and appropriately, inside work and out.
"By the very nature of their roles, police officers and staff have access to sensitive information, and we take our responsibility to protect that information seriously.
"This case highlights the consequences of abusing that trust and shows how robustly the Constabulary deals with breaches of data protection.
"Fisher's behaviour was not representative of Cumbria Constabulary and he can now contemplate his actions while he awaits sentence."
Fisher was remanded in custody and will be sentenced today.
SOURCE:PA
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe now |
63nd Annual Meeting of the Louisiana Folklore Society
March 22-23, 2019
The Louisiana Folklore Society invites you to attend its annual meeting to be held March 22-23, 2019 in Houma, Louisiana, in partnership with Nicholls State University.
The conference will begin with a tour of local cultural points of interest on Friday afternoon, March 22nd (more information to be announced soon). Paper sessions and presentations will take place the morning of Saturday, March 23. The afternoon of the 23th will be a Summit on a Cultural Action Plan for the Bayou Region, featuring representatives from local community stakeholders and environmental and cultural professionals.
Local Accommodations
A block of rooms has been reserved at the Courtyard by Marriott, which is across the street from the Duhe Center at 142 Library Drive, Houma. Call 985-223-8996 to make a reservation or to book a room online, click here. A block of rooms has been reserved at a special price until March 8th, 2019.
Tour, afternoon, March 22 – Duhe Center
More information soon.
Presentations, 8 – noon, March 23 – Duhe Center
We welcome presentations on any aspect of Louisiana folklore, folklife, and traditional arts, as well as on folklore theory and practice. More information at:
Bayou Culture Conversation, March 23, afternoon, Duhe Center
An afternoon of discussion about our heritage, our culture, and how we cannot just survive but thrive.
For more information on the Louisiana Folklore Society, join or renew your membership, please visit www.louisianafolklore.org. |
The 2016 elections have seen a surge in contributions from “ghost corporations,” so-called because they are not functioning businesses or non-profits, and hence seem to exist solely to shield their owners’ identities.
Ghost corporations are a particularly dangerous and alarming new twist in campaign financing in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. They make a mockery of one of the central claims of that decision: that “prompt disclosure” and “transparency” would allow U.S. democracy to survive the unlimited flood of money into elections from individuals, corporations and unions.
So exposing the real donors hiding behind ghost corporations is essential. And The Intercept has now determined the identity of the donor behind this cycle’s second-most generous ghost corporation, Children of Israel LLC. He is Saul Fox, a California private equity CEO.
Children of Israel LLC contributed $150,000 in 2015 to Pursuing America’s Greatness, a Super PAC supporting Mike Huckabee’s presidential run; $400,000 in 2016 to Stand for Truth, a Super PAC supporting Ted Cruz; and $334,000 to the Republican National Committee.
Fox’s motive in masking his identity is unknown. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Fox’s funding of Children of Israel LLC can be pieced together via a close examination of corporate and FEC filings, specifically a twice-amended Republican National Committee year-end filing for 2015.
According to the Republican National Committee’s initial Jan. 31, 2016, filing with the FEC, Saul Fox personally gave the RNC the annual legal maximum of $334,000 on Dec. 10, 2015. (Congress recently crafted new rules that allow individuals to give $33,400 to national parties’ general accounts, and then $100,200 each to accounts for their headquarters, conventions and legal funds. There are therefore technically four separate donations.)
In that original filing, Fox’s address is listed as being on a street in Cupertino in Silicon Valley. This address is the same as the home address of Shaofen Gao — a realtor in Silicon Valley who, in filings with the state of California, is listed as the registered agent for Children of Israel LLC.
The RNC then amended that filing twice, most recently in May. The May filing has new information: it says for the first time that when the RNC received $334,000 on Dec. 10, 2015, the money came from Children of Israel. And the amended filing lists Fox, immediately after the Children of Israel entries — with the same transaction ID as the Children of Israel donations, with an “M” added at the end.
The “M” stands for “memo,” and signifies that the entry is not a separate donation but exists to provide additional information about the Children of Israel contribution. In this case, the entry’s additional information is that the contribution from Children of Israel is attributable in full to Saul Fox.
If limited liability companies like Children of Israel make political donations, and the LLC is treated as a partnership for tax purposes, federal regulations require the LLC to inform the recipients who the actual humans behind the company are. Then the recipients of the donations must disclose this in their filings with the Federal Election Commission. By May of this year, Fox and the RNC were doing that.
But Children of Israel either failed to do so with its contributions to Pursuing American’s Greatness and Stand for Truth, or the two Super PACs simply chose to ignore it. According to Brendan Fisher, associate counsel of the political money watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, Fox and/or Children of Israel therefore violated prohibitions on “straw donor” contributions made in someone else’s name. (The CLC filed a complaint with the FEC against Children of Israel in March before Fox’s identity became known.)
Pursuing America’s Greatness did not respond to questions. Stand for Truth’s treasurer stated that the Super PAC is “confident that its filings are accurate and comply with FEC regulations,” but would not say anything further because of “the complaint pending before the FEC.”
The RNC’s amended, legally compliant filing came after the Campaign Legal Center filed its Children of Israel complaint. After a similar Campaign Legal Center complaint in 2011 about several corporate donations to Restore Our Future, the main Super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, a former Bain Capital official revealed that he had funded one of them. The RNC did not respond to requests for comment.
This is not the first time Fox has been connected to donations whose true sources were obscured. During the 2012 campaign, a company called Mercury Trust gave $1 million to American Crossroads, a Super PAC co-founded by Karl Rove, and made a donation of $425,000 to Restore Our Future. Mercury Trust was later discovered to be affiliated with Fox Paine.
Fox is also a prolific, longtime GOP donor under his own name. He most recently gave $100,000 to Team Ryan, a joint fundraising committee set up by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and $25,000 to Donald Trump’s joint fundraising committee.
In addition to his Children of Israel contributions to their Super PACs, Fox personally gave $2,700 to Huckabee’s presidential campaign and $5,400 to Cruz’s.
Fox also gave $5,400 to Marco Rubio’s campaign, as well as — surprisingly — $5,400 to campaign-finance reformer Lawrence Lessig’s abortive presidential run.
The FEC took over four years to vote on whether to open an investigation into the similar Restore Our Future donations during the 2012 election cycle, and then deadlocked without taking any action. So imminent action at this point seems unlikely.
The donor or donors behind Freedom Frontier, the most generous ghost corporation, remain unknown. Freedom Frontier is a Dallas 501(c)(4) nonprofit — a type of organization that can engage in political activity as long as that is not its primary focus. Freedom Frontier does not appear to have ever done anything except give $2,575,000 to various conservative Super PACs this election cycle. |
More than a year after arriving on Canadian soil, thousands of Syrian refugees are still struggling to make ends meet and provide for their families.
Alberta welcomed nearly over 5,100 refugees between Nov. 26, 2015 and March 2017, with 2,100 settling in Edmonton.
A report prepared by city staff and presented to the community and public services committee Monday shows the biggest challenges are in health, housing and employment.
"It's just the demand is so high," Ricki Justice, with the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, told the committee.
Justice said refugees dealing with complex trauma from the Syrian war are having a tough time accessing psychological services.
"Six-week wait times to see a counsellor," she said.
The executive director of the Islamic Family and Social Services Association, Mohamed Huque, says several social agencies in Edmonton work together to help refugee families. (CBC) Catholic Social Services, a group responsible for settling the government-assisted refugees in Alberta, has held a series of forums since the first refugees arrived last year. In May 2017, it compiled the information delivered in the report.
"It's not out of a lack of want," Mohamed Huque, executive director of the Islamic Family and Social Services Association, told CBC News.
"Sometimes it's a lack of resources."
He said long wait times and a lack of childcare prevent some refugees from attending language classes, which could boost their skill levels and better their chances of finding work.
"I hope the public appetite doesn't wane," Huque said. "The long-term effects are the ones that we tend to lose focus [on]."
Housing struggles
The province came out with an affordable housing strategy earlier in the summer and Huque hopes some of it will address the need for larger units for bigger families.
"I don't think it was expected the sizes of some of these families," he said. "Six, seven, eight people are just not going to fit into a two- or three-bedroom unit."
He said moving to a bigger place is beyond many refugees' means. They end up relying on food banks and other charities.
Coun. Scott McKeen wants to see more detailed information on refugee families and their backgrounds. (Lydia Neufeld/CBC) Coun. Scott McKeen told the committee he wants to see better documentation on refugees' backgrounds and what families need.
"We probably, as a community, don't have a really good handle on how big that is," McKeen said. "Where the gaps are going to be for what kind of family."
McKeen said he wants to know how many are struggling with housing "so then we can, with our government partners, come up with a strategy that is effective."
Huque explained a lot of that information is contained in sponsorship documents, which accompanied the families when they arrived and include background on the kinds of employment they had in Syria.
But the location of those documents depends on who sponsored the families.
"It's in different places, but it's available."
Refugees are still arriving, but not in the same numbers. The city report is meant to outline the gaps in services.
The city helps coordinate and share information among agencies to help newcomers participate economically, socially and culturally in the long term. |
Study Design
The present study is a 3-month randomized double-blind study using brain imaging and modafinil 400 mg/day vs placebo (Figure 1). Enrolled cocaine-dependent patients were hospitalized from day 0 to day 17. They were examined twice, before and after 2 weeks of treatment (on days 3 and 17). The participants went through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)/PET imaging, neuropsychological tests, and clinical and biological assessments (craving and depression rating, blood tests, and urinary toxicology screening tests). From day 4 to day 90, modafinil 100 mg tablets or placebo tablets were orally administered in the morning as follows: four tablets for 26 days, then three tablets for 30 days, and finally two tablets for 31 days. A cocaine abstinence follow-up was carried out from day 17 to day 90 using urinary benzoylecgonine (BE) dosage. Urine samples were collected on days 29, 45, 59, 75, and 90 to assess abstinence after hospitalization. Thereafter the treatment was discontinued. Compliance with medication was measured by pill count using the treatment blisters. Each group was blind to modafinil or placebo until the end of the study. The study was registered as the Cocaine Addiction Imaging Medications and Neurotransmitters (CAIMAN) study, with ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT00701532.
Figure 1 Study design and patients’ clinical course. During hospitalization, neuroimaging session, neuropsychological tests (N-back; Iowa Gambling task), clinical assessments (craving and depression ratings), and urinary toxicology screening tests were performed twice. After hospitalization, patients came back every 2 weeks for medical consultation, and urine samples were collected to define abstinence or relapse. The decrease of modafinil dosage occurred on day 30 (400–300 mg) and day 60 (300–200 mg). The horizontal bars represent the clinical course of each participant throughout the study. Full size image Download PowerPoint slide
Participants
The study was approved by the local ethics committee (Comité de Protection des Personnes Ile-de-France 7). Oral and written consent were obtained after complete description of the study. Participants were randomized by the Department of Clinical Research of Paris Sud University.
Twenty-nine cocaine-dependent male patients aged 26–52 years were recruited in the Cocaine Reference Center of Paul Brousse University Hospital, Villejuif (France) over a period of 2 months. All patients met DSM-IV criteria for cocaine dependence, had a positive urine toxicology screen for cocaine in the weeks prior to hospitalization, were seeking treatment, and were willing to give informed consent prior to participation. Exclusion criteria were: a known hypersensitivity to modafinil or modafinil contraindications, any substance-related Axis I disorder (except tobacco dependence), any treatment that interferes with the DAT or modafinil, and MRI contraindications.
Clinical Assessments
Depression was assessed using the Montgomery–Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) (Montgomery and Asberg, 1979) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) (Beck et al, 1961). Craving was evaluated using a seven-point visual analog scale, the brief version of the Cocaine Craving Questionnaire (10-item CCQ brief) measuring the current craving (Karila et al, 2011b). Cognitive deficits were measured using two neuropsychological tests: Bechara’s Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) (Bechara et al, 1994) assessing decision-making, and a visuospatial N-Back task assessing working memory (Carlson et al, 1998). These tests were carried out in session by a senior neuropsychologist.
Pharmacological Treatments
Modafinil (100 mg tablets) is chemically and pharmacologically distinct from other central nervous system stimulants and is approved for the treatment of sleep disorders. The pharmacokinetics of modafinil is linear, independent of the administered dose. Peak plasma concentrations are reached 2–3 h after its use. The elimination half-life of modafinil is 10–12 h. The pharmacodynamic activity does not seem to affect the autonomic nervous system and the cardiovascular system. The usual dosage for this treatment is 200–400 mg per day as a single dose in the morning. It has numerous side effects and some contraindications (FDA, 2007). The placebo tablets were identical to the modafinil ones. In case of withdrawal symptoms, hydroxyzine 25 mg were administered three times per day.
Image Acquisition and Processing
PET images were acquired on a Siemens ECAT HRRT 3D-PET scanner (CPS innovations Services, Knoxville, TN, USA). Previous studies using [11C]-PE2I and HRRT in healthy subjects reported good suitability and test/retest reproducibility, and better accuracy in quantifying DAT binding, as compared with conventional PET scanners (Hirvonen et al, 2008). [11C]-PE2I was prepared using a TRACERlab FX-C Pro synthesizer (Gems, Velisy, France). The acquisition started with the bolus injection of 300 MBq of [11C]-PE2I and lasted 60 min (20 sequential frames from 1 to 5 min were acquired). Images were reconstructed using the statistical algorithm ordinary Poisson-ordered subset expectation maximization. The voxel size was 1.2 × 1.2 × 1.2 mm3. The injected radioactivity for [11C]-PE2I was 306.3±56.0 MBq in scan 1 (day 3) and 319.46±38.35 MBq in scan 2 (day 17). The specific radioactivity in the two scans was 29.3±12.8 and 28.6±14.0 MBq/μmol, respectively. There was no difference between the groups on days 3 and 17 in injected radioactivity (F(1,26)=0.01, P=0.91 and F(1,21)= 1.33, P=0.26, respectively) or in specific radioactivity (F(1,26)= 0.69, P=0.41 and F(1,21)=1.16, P=0.29, respectively).
MRI was acquired on a 1.5-T Signa scanner (General Electric Healthcare, Milwauke, WI, USA). A T1-weighted sequence was performed using the following MRI parameters: 3D Fourier-transform spoiled-gradient-recalled acquisition with TR=12.5 ms, TE=2.2 ms, 124 contiguous slices of 1.3 mm thickness, a field of view of 24 cm, and a 256 × 256 view matrix, with a voxel size of 0.9 × 0.9 × 1.3 mm3, 16 bits/pixel.
Motion corrections during PET acquisition were carried out using a home-made tool within the BrainVISA/Anatomist software (http://brainvisa.info) consisting in frame by frame co-registration of the PET dynamic series using a mutual information method. Thereafter, in order to process parametric binding potential images, brain regions were determined by T1-MRI automatic parcellation and applied on dynamic co-registered PET images using the PMOD PNEURO tool, version 3.4 (PMOD, Zurich, Switzerland). Time–activity curves obtained from bilateral dorsal caudate and putamen nuclei as high specific binding and crus1 sub-region of the cerebellum as a reference tissue were exported to PMOD’s pixel-wise tool. Parametric maps of the regional [11C]-PE2I non-displaceable binding potential (BP ND ) were generated using Gunn’s basis function method (Gunn et al, 1997), which is closely related to the simplified reference tissue model (Lammertsma and Hume, 1996). Previous studies have confirmed the suitability of specific [11C]-PE2I binding quantification using a compartmental approach with the cerebellum as reference region (Seki et al, 2010). Spatial normalization was applied on the BP ND maps using SPM8 (Statistical Parametric Mapping, Welcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, London, UK) with a ligand-specific [11C]-PE2I template generated according to an MRI-aided procedure (Meyer et al, 1999). The normalized BP ND maps were smoothed using a 10-mm FWHM Gaussian filter. The voxel size was 2 × 2 × 2 mm3.
Statistical Analysis
Among the 29 patients enrolled, two left the study on the first day of hospitalization and were excluded from the analysis. Twenty-seven patients were compared on enrolment on demographic and clinical characteristics using Student’s t-test. In order to assess their course during hospitalization, we performed repeated-measures analyses of variance on clinical and neuropsychological data between day 3 and day 17. These analyses included time (day 3, day 17) as within-subject factor and group (modafinil, placebo) as between-subject factor.
During follow-up, samples containing BE at concentrations 300 ng/ml were considered positive for cocaine. Therapeutic failures were defined by dropouts or at least one cocaine-positive urine sample, and abstinence was defined by negative urine samples. A chi-square test (Fisher’s Exact test) was used to compare the treatment groups in terms of therapeutic failure and abstinence throughout the study for 27 participants. We used post-hoc t-tests on day 3 clinical data to ensure that the therapeutic failures and the abstinent patients were not clinically different at the beginning of the study. JMP 10 (JMP, SAS Institute, Cary, NC, 1989–2007) was used to perform these analyses.
PET images voxel-wise analyses were performed with SPM8. A one-sample t-test of BP ND maps acquired on day 3 was performed to visualize the localization of DAT availability in the brain before treatment and was used to define a mask of analysis. Analyses were conducted within a brain mask defined as all voxels with a minimum value of PET signal, which was 50% superior to the maximum value of the crus1 area (cerebellar reference region). This mask included bilateral striatum, insula, pallidum, claustrum, amygdala, thalamus, midbrain, inferior frontal cortex (gyrus rectus, olfactory cortex and orbitofrontal cortex) and temporal cortex (hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus).
We compared BP ND maps using a repeated-measures analysis of variance (flexible factorial design in SPM8) with subjects and time as within-subject factors and group as between-subject factor. This analysis was conducted to examine the global group effect, the time effect and the group by time interaction for the patients who were present to the two imaging sessions (N=22). Post-hoc two-sample t-tests were used to specify the differences between treatment groups on day 3 and day 17 separately, with age as confounding covariate. Likewise, post-hoc paired t-tests were used to assess time effect between day 3 and day 17 within the two groups separately.
Correlation analyses were performed between BP ND images and clinical or neuropsychological variables (craving and depression rates, working memory and decision-making scores, and urinary BE amounts) using multiple regression analyses, with age as confounding covariate. Analyses were conducted across all patients on day 3 (n=27) and the two groups on day 17 (n=9 and n=13 for the modafinil and placebo groups, respectively). |
International taxation is the study or determination of tax on a person or business, subject to the tax laws of different countries or the international aspects of an individual country's tax laws as the case may be. Governments usually limit the scope of their income taxation in some manner territorially or provide for offsets to taxation relating to extraterritorial income. The manner of limitation generally takes the form of a territorial, residence-based, or exclusionary system. Some governments have attempted to mitigate the differing limitations of each of these three broad systems by enacting a hybrid system with characteristics of two or more.
Many governments tax individuals and/or enterprises on income. Such systems of taxation vary widely, and there are no broad general rules. These variations create the potential for double taxation (where the same income is taxed by different countries) and no taxation (where income is not taxed by any country). Income tax systems may impose tax on local income only or on worldwide income. Generally, where worldwide income is taxed, reductions of tax or foreign credits are provided for taxes paid to other jurisdictions. Limits are almost universally imposed on such credits. Multinational corporations usually employ international tax specialists, a specialty among both lawyers and accountants, to decrease their worldwide tax liabilities.
With any system of taxation, it is possible to shift or recharacterize income in a manner that reduces taxation. Jurisdictions often impose rules relating to shifting income among commonly controlled parties, often referred to as transfer pricing rules. Residency-based systems are subject to taxpayer attempts to defer recognition of income through use of related parties. A few jurisdictions impose rules limiting such deferral ("anti-deferral" regimes). Deferral is also specifically authorized by some governments for particular social purposes or other grounds. Agreements among governments (treaties) often attempt to determine who should be entitled to tax what. Most tax treaties provide for at least a skeleton mechanism for resolution of disputes between the parties.
Introduction [ edit ]
Systems of taxation vary among governments, making generalization difficult. Specifics are intended as examples, and relate to particular governments and not broadly recognized multinational rules. Taxes may be levied on varying measures of income, including but not limited to net income under local accounting concepts (in many countries this is referred to as 'profit'), gross receipts, gross margins (sales less costs of sale), or specific categories of receipts less specific categories of reductions. Unless otherwise specified, the term "income" should be read broadly.
Jurisdictions often impose different income-based levies on enterprises than on individuals. Entities are often taxed in a unified manner on all types of income while individuals are taxed in differing manners depending on the nature or source of the income. Many jurisdictions impose tax at both an entity level and at the owner level on one or more types of enterprises.[1] These jurisdictions often rely on the company law of that jurisdiction or other jurisdictions in determining whether an entity's owners are to be taxed directly on the entity income. However, there are notable exceptions, including U.S. rules characterizing entities independently of legal form.[2]
In order to simplify administration or for other agendas, some governments have imposed "deemed" income regimes. These regimes tax some class of taxpayers according to tax system applicable to other taxpayers but based on a deemed level of income, as if received by the taxpayer. Disputes can arise regarding what levy is proper. Procedures for dispute resolution vary widely and enforcement issues are far more complicated in the international arena. The ultimate dispute resolution for a taxpayer is to leave the jurisdiction, taking all property that could be seized. For governments, the ultimate resolution may be confiscation of property, incarceration or dissolution of the entity.
Other major conceptual differences can exist between tax systems. These include, but are not limited to, assessment vs. self-assessment means of determining and collecting tax; methods of imposing sanctions for violation; sanctions unique to international aspects of the system; mechanisms for enforcement and collection of tax; and reporting mechanisms.
Taxation systems [ edit ]
No income tax on individuals Territorial Residence-based Citizenship-based Systems of taxation on personal income
Countries that tax income generally use one of two systems: territorial or residence-based. In the territorial system, only local income – income from a source inside the country – is taxed. In the residence-based system, residents of the country are taxed on their worldwide (local and foreign) income, while nonresidents are taxed only on their local income. In addition, a very small number of countries, notably the United States, also tax their nonresident citizens on worldwide income.
Countries with a residence-based system of taxation usually allow deductions or credits for the tax that residents already pay to other countries on their foreign income. Many countries also sign tax treaties with each other to eliminate or reduce double taxation. In the case of corporate income tax, some countries allow an exclusion or deferment of specific items of foreign income from the base of taxation.
Individuals [ edit ]
The following table summarizes the taxation of local and foreign income of individuals, depending on their residence or citizenship in the country. It includes 244 entries: 194 sovereign countries, their 40 inhabited dependent territories (most of which have separate tax systems), and 10 countries with limited recognition. In the table, income includes any type of income received by individuals, such as work or investment income, and yes means that the country taxes at least one of these types.
Residency [ edit ]
Taxing regimes are generally classified as either residency based or territorial based. Most jurisdictions tax income on a residency basis. They need to define "resident" and characterize the income of nonresidents. Such definitions vary by country and type of taxpayer, but usually involve the location of the person's main home and number of days the person is physically present in the country. Examples include:
The United States taxes its citizens as residents, and provides lengthy, detailed rules for individual residency of foreigners, covering: periods establishing residency (including a formulary calculation involving three years); start and end date of residency; exceptions for transitory visits, medical conditions, etc. [106]
The United Kingdom, prior to 2013, established three categories: non-resident, resident, and resident but not ordinarily resident. [107] From 2013, the categories of resident are limited to non-resident and resident. Residency is established by application of the tests in the Statutory Residency Test. [108]
From 2013, the categories of resident are limited to non-resident and resident. Residency is established by application of the tests in the Statutory Residency Test. Switzerland residency may be established by having a permit to be employed in Switzerland for an individual who is so employed.[109]
Territorial systems usually tax local income regardless of the residence of the taxpayer. The key problem argued for this type of system is the ability to avoid taxation on portable income by moving it outside of the country. This has led governments to enact hybrid systems to recover lost revenue.
Citizenship [ edit ]
Almost all countries tax foreign income based on residency, if at all. Only three countries in the world systematically and comprehensively tax the worldwide income of nonresident citizens:[110][111]
Like Eritrea, enforcement tactics used by the U.S. government to facilitate tax compliance include the denial of U.S. passports to nonresident U.S. citizens deemed to be delinquent taxpayers and the potential seizure of any U.S. accounts and/or U.S.-based assets. The IRS can also exert substantial compliance pressure on nonresident citizens as a result of the FATCA legislation passed in 2010, which compels foreign banks to disclose U.S. account holders or face crippling fines on U.S.-related financial transactions. Unlike Eritrea, the U.S. has faced little international backlash related to its global enforcement tactics. For example, unlike their response to Eritrea's collection efforts, Canada and all EU member states have ratified intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) facilitating FATCA compliance and supporting the U.S. global tax regime in place for U.S. citizens (including dual nationals). The implementation of these IGAs has led to a substantial increase in U.S. citizenship renunciations since 2012, with wait times for renunciation appointments at the U.S. consulate in Toronto exceeding one year as of early 2016.[126]
A few other countries tax based on citizenship in limited situations:
Finland continues taxing its citizens who move from Finland to another country as residents of Finland, for the first three years after moving there, unless they demonstrate that they no longer have any ties to Finland. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Finland for tax purposes. [127]
Finland continues taxing its citizens who move from Finland to another country as residents of Finland, for the first three years after moving there, unless they demonstrate that they no longer have any ties to Finland. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Finland for tax purposes. France taxes its citizens who move to Monaco as residents of France, according to a treaty signed between the two countries in 1963. [10] However, those who already lived in Monaco since 1957, as well as those who were born in Monaco and have always lived there, are not subject to taxation as residents of France. [128] [129] Other than this case, France does not tax the foreign income of its nonresident citizens.
France taxes its citizens who move to Monaco as residents of France, according to a treaty signed between the two countries in 1963. However, those who already lived in Monaco since 1957, as well as those who were born in Monaco and have always lived there, are not subject to taxation as residents of France. Other than this case, France does not tax the foreign income of its nonresident citizens. Italy continues taxing its citizens who move from Italy to a tax haven [Note 7] as residents of Italy, unless they demonstrate that they no longer have any ties to Italy. [130] Other than this case, Italy does not tax the foreign income of its nonresident citizens.
Italy continues taxing its citizens who move from Italy to a tax haven as residents of Italy, unless they demonstrate that they no longer have any ties to Italy. Other than this case, Italy does not tax the foreign income of its nonresident citizens. Mexico continues taxing its citizens who move from Mexico to a tax haven [Note 8] as residents of Mexico, for the first three years after moving there. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Mexico for tax purposes. [132]
Mexico continues taxing its citizens who move from Mexico to a tax haven as residents of Mexico, for the first three years after moving there. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Mexico for tax purposes. Myanmar law taxes the foreign income of nonresident citizens except their salaries. However, since 2012 this tax is no longer enforced by embassies and consulates of Myanmar. [74] [75] [76]
Myanmar law taxes the foreign income of nonresident citizens except their salaries. However, since 2012 this tax is no longer enforced by embassies and consulates of Myanmar. Portugal taxes its citizens who move to a tax haven [Note 9] as residents of Portugal, for the first five years after moving there. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Portugal for tax purposes. Other than this case, Portugal does not tax the foreign income of its nonresident citizens. [134]
Portugal taxes its citizens who move to a tax haven as residents of Portugal, for the first five years after moving there. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Portugal for tax purposes. Other than this case, Portugal does not tax the foreign income of its nonresident citizens. Spain continues taxing its citizens who move from Spain to a tax haven [Note 10] as residents of Spain, for the first five years after moving there. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Spain for tax purposes. [135] Other than this case, Spain does not tax the foreign income of its nonresident citizens.
Spain continues taxing its citizens who move from Spain to a tax haven as residents of Spain, for the first five years after moving there. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Spain for tax purposes. Other than this case, Spain does not tax the foreign income of its nonresident citizens. Sweden continues taxing its citizens (as well as foreigners who lived there for at least ten years) who move from Sweden to another country as residents of Sweden, for the first five years after moving there, unless they demonstrate that they no longer have essential connections to Sweden. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Sweden for tax purposes. [136]
Sweden continues taxing its citizens (as well as foreigners who lived there for at least ten years) who move from Sweden to another country as residents of Sweden, for the first five years after moving there, unless they demonstrate that they no longer have essential connections to Sweden. After this period, they are no longer considered residents of Sweden for tax purposes. Turkey taxes its citizens who are residing abroad to work for the Turkish government or Turkish companies as residents of Turkey, but exempts their income that is already taxed by the country of origin.[98] Other than this case, Turkey does not tax the foreign income of its nonresident citizens.
A few other countries used to tax the foreign income of nonresident citizens, but have abolished this practice:
Romania used to tax the worldwide income of its citizens regardless of where they resided, but abandoned this practice some time between 1933 and 1954. [137] [138]
Romania used to tax the worldwide income of its citizens regardless of where they resided, but abandoned this practice some time between 1933 and 1954. Mexico used to tax its citizens in the same manner as residents, on worldwide income. A new income tax law, passed in 1980 and effective 1981, determined only residence as the basis for taxation of worldwide income. [139] However, since 2006 Mexico taxes based on citizenship in limited situations (see above). [140]
Mexico used to tax its citizens in the same manner as residents, on worldwide income. A new income tax law, passed in 1980 and effective 1981, determined only residence as the basis for taxation of worldwide income. However, since 2006 Mexico taxes based on citizenship in limited situations (see above). Bulgaria used to tax its citizens on worldwide income regardless of where they resided. [141] A new income tax law, passed in 1997 and effective 1998, determined residence as the basis for taxation of worldwide income. [142]
Bulgaria used to tax its citizens on worldwide income regardless of where they resided. A new income tax law, passed in 1997 and effective 1998, determined residence as the basis for taxation of worldwide income. The Philippines used to tax the foreign income of nonresident citizens at reduced rates of 1 to 3% (income tax rates for residents were 1 to 35% at the time). [143] It abolished this practice in a new revenue code in 1997, effective 1998. [144]
The Philippines used to tax the foreign income of nonresident citizens at reduced rates of 1 to 3% (income tax rates for residents were 1 to 35% at the time). It abolished this practice in a new revenue code in 1997, effective 1998. Vietnam used to tax its citizens in the same manner as residents, on worldwide income. The country passed a personal income tax law in 2007, effective 2009, removing citizenship as a criterion to determine residence. [145]
Vietnam used to tax its citizens in the same manner as residents, on worldwide income. The country passed a personal income tax law in 2007, effective 2009, removing citizenship as a criterion to determine residence. Myanmar used to tax all foreign income of its nonresident citizens at a flat rate of 10% (income tax rates for residents range from 5 to 25%). As part of a series of reforms, the country exempted their foreign salaries from tax in 2011, effective 2012.[146] Although Myanmar law still taxes their foreign income other than salaries, this tax is no longer enforced by embassies and consulates of Myanmar.[74][75][76]
Other [ edit ]
There are some arrangements for international taxation that are not based on residency or citizenship:
United Kingdom imposes global income tax on anyone who owes UK student loans. These are not true loans, but borrowings to be repaid through an additional 9% income tax, levied above a certain income threshold, until the balance of the loan expires in 30 years. The interest rate is expressed as a punitive addition to the UK Retail Price Index inflation rate (e.g. RPI + 3%), so the value of the loan cannot be inflated away. The loan cannot be repudiated by declaring bankruptcy. The income tax is imposed irrespective of citizenship or residency, which means the UK HMRC must track the location and income of all loan holders, wherever they are in the world, for several decades.
Corporations [ edit ]
Countries do not necessarily use the same system of taxation for individuals and corporations. For example, France uses a residence-based system for individuals but a territorial system for corporations,[147] while Singapore does the opposite,[148] and Brunei and Monaco taxes corporate but not personal income.[149][150]
Exclusion [ edit ]
Many systems provide for specific exclusions from taxable (chargeable) income. For example, several countries, notably Cyprus, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Spain, have enacted holding company regimes that exclude from income dividends from certain foreign subsidiaries of corporations. These systems generally impose tax on other sorts of income, such as interest or royalties, from the same subsidiaries. They also typically have requirements for portion and time of ownership in order to qualify for exclusion. The Netherlands offers a "participation exemption" for dividends from subsidiaries of Netherlands companies. Dividends from all Dutch subsidiaries automatically qualify. For other dividends to qualify, the Dutch shareholder or affiliates must own at least 5% and the subsidiary must be subject to a certain level of income tax locally.[151]
Some countries, such as the United States and Singapore,[152] allow deferment of tax on foreign income of resident corporations until it is remitted to the country.
Individuals versus enterprises [ edit ]
Many tax systems tax individuals in one manner and entities that are not considered fiscally transparent in another. The differences may be as simple as differences in tax rates,[153] and are often motivated by concerns unique to either individuals or corporations. For example, many systems allow taxable income of an individual to be reduced by a fixed amount allowance for other persons supported by the individual (dependents). Such a concept is not relevant for enterprises.
Many systems allow for fiscal transparency of certain forms of enterprise. For example, most countries tax partners of a partnership, rather than the partnership itself, on income of the partnership.[154] A common feature of income taxation is imposition of a levy on certain enterprises in certain forms followed by an additional levy on owners of the enterprise upon distribution of such income. For example, the U.S. imposes two levels of tax on foreign individuals or foreign corporations who own a U.S. corporation. First, the U.S. corporation is subject to the regular income tax on its profits, then subject to an additional 30% tax on the dividends paid to foreign shareholders (the branch profits tax). The foreign corporation will be subject to U.S. income tax on its effectively connected income, and will also be subject to the branch profits tax on any of its profits not reinvested in the U.S.[citation needed] Thus, many countries tax corporations under company tax rules and tax individual shareholders upon corporate distributions. Various countries have tried (and some still maintain) attempts at partial or full "integration" of the enterprise and owner taxation. Where a two level system is present but allows for fiscal transparency of some entities, definitional issues become very important.
Source of income [ edit ]
Determining the source of income is of critical importance in a territorial system, as source often determines whether or not the income is taxed. For example, Hong Kong does not tax residents on dividend income received from a non-Hong Kong corporation.[155] Source of income is also important in residency systems that grant credits for taxes of other jurisdictions. Such credit is often limited either by jurisdiction or to the local tax on overall income from other jurisdictions.
Source of income is where the income is considered to arise under the relevant tax system. The manner of determining the source of income is generally dependent on the nature of income. Income from the performance of services (e.g., wages) is generally treated as arising where the services are performed.[156] Financing income (e.g., interest, dividends) is generally treated as arising where the user of the financing resides.[157][citation needed] Income related to use of tangible property (e.g., rents) is generally treated as arising where the property is situated.[158][citation needed] Income related to use of intangible property (e.g., royalties) is generally treated as arising where the property is used. Gains on sale of realty are generally treated as arising where the property is situated.
Gains from sale of tangible personal property are sourced differently in different jurisdictions. The U.S. treats such gains in three distinct manners: a) gain from sale of purchased inventory is sourced based on where title to the goods passes;[159] b) gain from sale of inventory produced by the person (or certain related persons) is sourced 50% based on title passage and 50% based on location of production and certain assets;[160] c) other gains are sourced based on the residence of the seller.[161]
In specific cases, the tax system may diverge for different categories of individuals. U.S. citizen and resident alien decedents are subject to estate tax on all of their assets, wherever situated. The nonresident aliens are subject to estate tax only on that part of the gross estate which at the time of death is situated in the U.S. Another significant distinction between U.S. citizens/RAs and NRAs is in the exemptions allowed in computing the tax liability.[162]
Where differing characterizations of an item of income can result in differing tax results, it is necessary to determine the characterization. Some systems have rules for resolving characterization issues, but in many cases resolution requires judicial intervention.[163] Note that some systems which allow a credit for foreign taxes source income by reference to foreign law.[164]
Definitions of income [ edit ]
Some jurisdictions tax net income as determined under financial accounting concepts of that jurisdiction, with few, if any, modifications.[citation needed] Other jurisdictions determine taxable income without regard to income reported in financial statements.[165] Some jurisdictions compute taxable income by reference to financial statement income with specific categories of adjustments, which can be significant.[166]
A jurisdiction relying on financial statement income tends to place reliance on the judgment of local accountants for determinations of income under locally accepted accounting principles. Often such jurisdictions have a requirement that financial statements be audited by registered accountants who must opine thereon.[167] Some jurisdictions extend the audit requirements to include opining on such tax issues as transfer pricing.[citation needed] Jurisdictions not relying on financial statement income must attempt to define principles of income and expense recognition, asset cost recovery, matching, and other concepts within the tax law. These definitional issues can become very complex. Some jurisdictions following this approach also require business taxpayers to provide a reconciliation of financial statement and taxable incomes.[168]
Deductions [ edit ]
Systems that allow a tax deduction of expenses in computing taxable income must provide for rules for allocating such expenses between classes of income. Such classes may be taxable versus non-taxable, or may relate to computations of credits for taxes of other systems (foreign taxes). A system which does not provide such rules is subject to manipulation by potential taxpayers. The manner of allocation of expenses varies. U.S. rules provide for allocation of an expense to a class of income if the expense directly relates to such class, and apportionment of an expense related to multiple classes. Specific rules are provided for certain categories of more fungible expenses, such as interest.[169] By their nature, rules for allocation and apportionment of expenses may become complex. They may incorporate cost accounting or branch accounting principles,[169] or may define new principles.
Thin capitalization [ edit ]
Most jurisdictions provide that taxable income may be reduced by amounts expended as interest on loans. By contrast, most do not provide tax relief for distributions to owners.[170] Thus, an enterprise is motivated to finance its subsidiary enterprises through loans rather than capital. Many jurisdictions have adopted "thin capitalization" rules to limit such charges. Various approaches include limiting deductibility of interest expense to a portion of cash flow,[171] disallowing interest expense on debt in excess of a certain ratio,[citation needed] and other mechanisms.
Enterprise restructure [ edit ]
The organization or reorganization of portions of a multinational enterprise often gives rise to events that, absent rules to the contrary, may be taxable in a particular system. Most systems contain rules preventing recognition of income or loss from certain types of such events. In the simplest form, contribution of business assets to a subsidiary enterprise may, in certain circumstances, be treated as a nontaxable event.[172] Rules on structuring and restructuring tend to be highly complex.
Credits for taxes of other jurisdictions [ edit ]
Systems that tax income from outside the system's jurisdiction tend to provide for a unilateral credit or offset for taxes paid to other jurisdictions. Such other jurisdiction taxes are generally referred to within the system as "foreign" taxes. Tax treaties often require this credit. A credit for foreign taxes is subject to manipulation by planners if there are no limits, or weak limits, on such credit. Generally, the credit is at least limited to the tax within the system that the taxpayer would pay on income from outside the jurisdiction.[173] The credit may be limited by category of income,[174] by other jurisdiction or country, based on an effective tax rate, or otherwise. Where the foreign tax credit is limited, such limitation may involve computation of taxable income from other jurisdictions. Such computations tend to rely heavily on the source of income and allocation of expense rules of the system.[175]
Withholding tax [ edit ]
Many jurisdictions require persons paying amounts to nonresidents to collect tax due from a nonresident with respect to certain income by withholding such tax from such payments and remitting the tax to the government.[176] Such levies are generally referred to as withholding taxes. These requirements are induced because of potential difficulties in collection of the tax from nonresidents. Withholding taxes are often imposed at rates differing from the prevailing income tax rates.[177] Further, the rate of withholding may vary by type of income or type of recipient.[178][179] Generally, withholding taxes are reduced or eliminated under income tax treaties (see below). Generally, withholding taxes are imposed on the gross amount of income, unreduced by expenses.[180] Such taxation provides for great simplicity of administration but can also reduce the taxpayer's awareness of the amount of tax being collected.[181]
Treaties [ edit ]
OECD members Accession candidate countries Enhanced engagement countries
[182] Havens in countries with tax information sharing allowing for compliance enforcement have been in decline. The "Big 7" shown are Hong Kong, Ireland, Lebanon, Liberia, Panama, Singapore, and Switzerland. Ratio of German assets in tax havens to German GDP, 1996–2008.Havens in countries with tax information sharing allowing for compliance enforcement have been in decline. The "Big 7" shown are Hong Kong, Ireland, Lebanon, Liberia, Panama, Singapore, and Switzerland.
Tax treaties exist between many countries on a bilateral basis to prevent double taxation (taxes levied twice on the same income, profit, capital gain, inheritance or other item). In some countries they are also known as double taxation agreements, double tax treaties, or tax information exchange agreements (TIEA).
Most developed countries have a large number of tax treaties, while developing countries are less well represented in the worldwide tax treaty network.[183] The United Kingdom has treaties with more than 110 countries and territories. The United States has treaties with 56 countries (as of February 2007). Tax treaties tend not to exist, or to be of limited application, when either party regards the other as a tax haven. There are a number of model tax treaties published by various national and international bodies, such as the United Nations and the OECD.[184]
Treaties tend to provide reduced rates of taxation on dividends, interest, and royalties. They tend to impose limits on each treaty country in taxing business profits, permitting taxation only in the presence of a permanent establishment in the country.[185] Treaties tend to impose limits on taxation of salaries and other income for performance of services. They also tend to have "tie breaker" clauses for resolving conflicts between residency rules. Nearly all treaties have at least skeletal mechanisms for resolving disputes, generally negotiated between the "competent authority" section of each country's taxing authority.
Anti-deferral measures [ edit ]
Residency systems may provide that residents are not subject to tax on income outside the jurisdiction until that income is remitted to the jurisdiction.[186] Taxpayers in such systems have significant incentives to shift income outside its borders. Depending on the rules of the system, the shifting may occur by changing the location of activities generating income or by shifting income to separate enterprises owned by the taxpayer. Most residency systems have avoided rules which permit deferring income from outside its borders without shifting it to a subsidiary enterprise due to the potential for manipulation of such rules. Where owners of an enterprise are taxed separately from the enterprise, portable income may be shifted from a taxpayer to a subsidiary enterprise to accomplish deferral or elimination of tax. Such systems tend to have rules to limit such deferral through controlled foreign corporations. Several different approaches have been used by countries for their anti-deferral rules.[187]
In the United States, rules provides that U.S. shareholders of a Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC) must include their shares of income or investment of E&P by the CFC in U.S. property.[188] U.S. shareholders are U.S. persons owning 10% or more (after the application of complex attribution of ownership rules) of a foreign corporation. Such persons may include individuals, corporations, partnerships, trusts, estates, and other juridical persons. A CFC is a foreign corporation more than 50% owned by U.S. shareholders. This income includes several categories of portable income, including most investment income, certain resale income, and certain services income. Certain exceptions apply, including the exclusion from Subpart F income of CFC income subject to an effective foreign tax rate of 90% or more of the top U.S. tax rate.[188]
The United Kingdom provides that a UK company is taxed currently on the income of its controlled subsidiary companies managed and controlled outside the UK which are subject to "low" foreign taxes.[189] Low tax is determined as actual tax of less than three-fourths of the corresponding UK tax that would be due on the income determined under UK principles. Complexities arise in computing the corresponding UK tax. Further, there are certain exceptions which may permit deferral, including a "white list" of permitted countries and a 90% earnings distribution policy of the controlled company. Further, anti-deferral does not apply where there is no tax avoidance motive.[190]
Rules in Germany provide that a German individual or company shareholder of a foreign corporation may be subject to current German tax on certain passive income received by the foreign corporation. This provision applies if the foreign corporation is taxed at less than 25% of the passive income, as defined.[citation needed] Japan and some other countries have followed a "black list" approach, where income of subsidiaries in countries identified as tax havens is subject to current tax to the shareholder. Sweden has adopted a "white list" of countries in which subsidiaries may be organized so that the shareholder is not subject to current tax.
Transfer pricing [ edit ]
The setting of the amount of related party charges is commonly referred to as transfer pricing. Many jurisdictions have become sensitive to the potential for shifting profits with transfer pricing, and have adopted rules regulating setting or testing of prices or allowance of deductions or inclusion of income for related party transactions. Many jurisdictions have adopted broadly similar transfer pricing rules. The OECD has adopted (subject to specific country reservations) fairly comprehensive guidelines.[191] These guidelines have been adopted with little modification by many countries.[192] Notably, the U.S. and Canada have adopted rules which depart in some material respects from OECD guidelines, generally by providing more detailed rules.
Arm's length principle: It is a key concept of most transfer pricing rules, that prices charged between related enterprises should be those which would be charged between unrelated parties dealing at arm's length. Most sets of rules prescribe methods for testing whether prices charged should be considered to meet this standard. Such rules generally involve comparison of related party transactions to similar transactions of unrelated parties (comparable prices or transactions). Various surrogates for such transactions may be allowed. Most guidelines allow the following methods for testing prices: Comparable uncontrolled transaction prices, resale prices based on comparable markups, cost plus a markup, and an enterprise profitability method.
Tax avoidance [ edit ]
Tax avoidance schemes may take advantage of low or no-income tax countries known as tax havens. Corporations may choose to move their headquarters to a country with more favorable tax environments. In countries where movement has been restricted by legislation, it might be necessary to reincorporate into a low-tax company through reversing a merger with a foreign corporation ("inversion" similar to a reverse merger). In addition, transfer pricing may allow for "earnings stripping" as profits are attributed to subsidiaries in low-tax countries.[193]
For individuals tax avoidance has become a major issue for governments worldwide since the 2008 recession. These tax directives began when the United States introduced the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in 2010, and were greatly expanded by the work of The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD introduced a new international system for the automatic exchange of tax information – known as the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) – to which around 100 countries have committed. For some taxpayers, the CRS is already “live”; for others it is imminent. The goal of this worldwide exchange of tax information is tax transparency, and has aroused concerns about privacy and data breaches due to the sheer volume of information that is going to be exchanged.[194][195]
Expanded Worldwide Planning (EWP) is an element of international taxation created in the wake of tax directives from government tax authorities after the worldwide recession beginning in 2008. At the heart of EWP is a properly constructed Private placement life insurance (PPLI) policy that allows taxpayers to use the regulatory framework of life insurance to structure their assets. These assets can be located anywhere in the world and at the same time can be brought into compliance with tax authorities worldwide. EWP also brings asset protection and privacy benefits that are set forward in the six principals of EWP.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ [10] After this period, they become residents of Saint Barthelemy for tax purposes.[11] New residents of Saint Barthelemy are considered residents of France for tax purposes, for the first five years after moving there.After this period, they become residents of Saint Barthelemy for tax purposes. ^ Saudi Arabia taxes the local business income of its residents who are not citizens of Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) and of nonresidents. It also imposes zakat on the worldwide business income and assets of its residents who are citizens of Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Saudi Arabia does not impose tax or zakat on income or assets that are not related to business activities. ^ Puerto Rico does not tax foreign income of nonresident citizens. However, Puerto Rican citizens are also United States citizens, and the United States taxes their worldwide income regardless of where they live. ^ [10] After this period, they become residents of Saint Martin for tax purposes.[84] Residents of France who move to Saint Martin are not considered residents of Saint Martin for tax purposes, and continue to be taxed as residents of France, for the first five years after moving there.After this period, they become residents of Saint Martin for tax purposes. ^ The United States Virgin Islands do not tax foreign income of nonresident citizens. However, citizens of the United States Virgin Islands are also United States citizens, and the United States taxes their worldwide income regardless of where they live. ^ [41] Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands use the same income tax code as the United States, but each territory administers it separately. In the case of nonresident citizens, individuals who acquired United States citizenship by a connection to Guam or the Northern Mariana Islands are taxed by the respective territory, instead of by the United States. ^ [130] As of 2018, the following countries and territories are considered tax havens by Italy: Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Caribbean Netherlands (Bonaire, Saba, Sint Eustatius), Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Djibouti, Dominica, Ecuador, French Polynesia, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey (including Alderney and Sark), Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jersey, Lebanon, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nauru, Niue, Oman, Panama, Philippines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles, Singapore, Sint Maarten, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tonga, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Vanuatu. ^ [131] However, the provision does not apply if the country has a treaty to share tax information with Mexico. This provision applies to income whose tax in the new country of residence is lower than 75% of the tax that the person would have paid as a resident of Mexico.However, the provision does not apply if the country has a treaty to share tax information with Mexico. ^ [133] As of 2018, the following countries and territories are considered tax havens by Portugal: American Samoa, Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Caribbean Netherlands (Bonaire, Saba, Sint Eustatius), Cayman Islands, Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Djibouti, Dominica, Falkland Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Gambia, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guam, Guernsey (including Alderney and Sark), Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jamaica, Jersey, Jordan, Kiribati, Kuwait, Labuan, Lebanon, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nauru, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Oman, Palau, Panama, Pitcairn Islands, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Qeshm, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Seychelles, Sint Maarten, Solomon Islands, Svalbard, Swaziland, Tokelau, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, United Arab Emirates, United States Virgin Islands, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Yemen, and other Pacific islands (Micronesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna). ^ [135] As of 2018, the following countries and territories are considered tax havens by Spain: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Dominica, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Jordan, Lebanon, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Macau, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nauru, Northern Mariana Islands, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, United States Virgin Islands, Vanuatu.
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ] |
Ubisoft couldn’t have found a better way to conclude their 3oth anniversary giveaway than this: The company has decided to offer Assassin’s Creed 3 absolutely free for the entire month. This makes the title its final gift to loyal gamers after their year-long series of giveaways launched this summer in honor of its 30th birthday.
Assassin’s Creed, being the biggest franchise of Ubisoft, makes the giveaway pretty generous. Although it is certainly not the first decent gimmick by the company, over the past few months, Splinter Cell, Beyond Good and Evil, and Far Cry have also been offered as freebies. With Assassin’s Creed 3, they have saved the best for last.
Revealed at E3 2006, Assassin’s Creed puts the audience in the middle of an ancient war between two age-old factions: the Assassins, who fight to protect freedom and the Templars, who aspire to impose a New World Order,” Ubisoft said. “From Italian Renaissance to the Russian Revolution, the player meets real historical heroes, takes part in events and shapes its own destiny. From one episode to the other, the creative teams have constantly added new layers of interaction and new gameplay making each world deeper and more fascinating.
Assassin’s Creed 3 will be available as a free download for Ubisoft Club members starting December 7. As expected, players will need a registered Uplay account to get their hands on their very own copy. The previous giveaway title, Far Cry: Blood Dragon, is still available to those who haven’t signed up yet.
PC gamers can experience the truth behind the most grisly war in history: the American Revolution. What makes this 2012 title so special is that it’s a sequel not just to Assassin’s Creed 2, but to Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. The most prominent change from the previous Assassin’s Creed games is the introduction of star Desmond Miles.
Assassin’s Creed The Ezio Collection is a compilation of the Ezio trilogy by Ubisoft released this fall. The game is out now on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and contains some impressive improvements compared to Assassin’s Creed 2.
RELATED STORIES YOU NEED TO CHECK OUT: |
Alright, so I know everybody is waiting for this, and yes, we did have a conference with Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and it was incredible! There were in total 160 missionaries from the mission, all the way from Huesca to us all the way in Gandía and the Baleares. It was amazing. One thing that we all learned is that Apostles are still normal people. They don´t even know why they were called to be Apostles even to this day jaja. But Elder Cook talked to us about the importance of Preach My Gospel and he left us all with a small prophecy. He said that we are in Spain at this time, due to the economic crisis, because the people of Spain are ready for the Gospel. He said they are more humble, more open, and that this time is crucial for the Lord´s vineyard to flourish in Spain. He also left us with a blessing that EVERYBODY that we love and cherish will be taken care of. It was an amazing experience, and he wanted to shake each one of our hands. Incredible.
But in other sad news, Elaine did not get baptized because her mom is not letting her. Please pray for her still that she may be baptized! She shared her testimony the other day and she knows that the church is true! We need your prayers everybody. We need your love.
And not much happened this week, we talked to people, found a couple of people that are progressing, and Maricela, one of the recent converts in our area, her whole family has agreed to listen to our message and some of them have expressed interests in being baptized! The problem is their work schedule so we don´t have a lot of time to teach them, but please pray for her family that they may have time to meet with us.
Today for our pday we went to Catarroja, a town about 40 minutes away in train near Valencia. We played a turkey bowl with the whole Valencia Zone from Castellón and everywhere in between. It was fun, although Catarroja is not as pretty as Gandía. We have travelled so much this week… we are really tired, jajaja! |
A popular meditation technique that’s intended to create feelings of kindness can also reduce prejudice, according to new University of Sussex research.
The study, published online in the journal Motivation and Emotion, found that just seven minutes of Loving-kindness meditation (LKM), a Buddhist practise that promotes unconditional kindness towards oneself and others, is effective at reducing racial bias.
Lead researcher Alexander Stell, a Doctoral student in Psychology, said: “This indicates that some meditation techniques are about much more than feeling good, and might be an important tool for enhancing inter-group harmony.”
LKM is known to engender happiness and kindness to oneself and others through repeating phrases such as ‘may you be happy and healthy’ while visualising a particular person.
Some previous studies have shown that inducing happiness in people, for example by exposing them to upbeat music, can actually make them more likely to have prejudiced thoughts compared to those hearing sad music.
Mr Stell said: “We wanted to see whether doing LKM towards a member of another ethnic group would reduce the automatic preference people tend to show for their own ethnic group.”
For the study, a sample of 71 white, non-meditating adults were each given a photo of a gender-matched black person and either received taped LKM instructions, or instructions to look at the photos and notice certain features of the face. Both conditions lasted just seven minutes.
Using the Implicit Association Test, the researchers then scored the reaction times of the participants who were asked to match up positive and negative words (for example “happiness” or “wrong”) with faces that belonged to either their own or another ethnic group.
On average people are quicker to match positive stimuli with their own group and quicker to match negative stimuli to the other group. This produces a bias ‘score’ that is considered a more robust measure of prejudice than traditional questionnaire data, which are known to be strongly influenced by social desirability.
The researchers found that just seven minutes of LKM directed to a member of a specific racial group (in this case, a black person) was sufficient to reduce racial bias towards that group. However, there was no marked reduction in racial bias towards other groups.
Additionally the researchers measured levels of positive emotions that were either ‘other-regarding’ (e.g. love, gratitude, awe, elevation) and those that were more self-directed (e.g. contentment, joy, pride) and found that people doing LKM showed large increases specifically in other-regarding emotions. These other-regarding emotions were found to be what drives the reduction of bias. |
(WSVN) - America is split over the presidential race. If you support one candidate, friends supporting the other can be furious. A South Florida man says he was banned from his condo gym because he wore his Donald Trump ‘Make American Great Again’ cap.
Is that legal? Help Me Howard with Patrick Fraser elected to check into it.
Nikos Henry is a young single guy … so it’s no surprise why he moved to South Beach.
“The women… the weather … the culture,” Henry said.
As you can see from Nikos’s cap, he also likes Donald Trump.
“I believe in what he says. I think we need to change the country,” he said.
Sometimes when Nikos goes out, he wears Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ cap and sometimes that grates on the nerves of people he sees.
“I gotten heckled … some guy threw a soda in my car with the window open and said ‘Screw Trump,’ and I am like, ‘What the heck,” Henry said.
Nikos can laugh about being heckled. “And hen I wore it to the gym, and that’s when it all went downhill,” he told 7News.
The South Florida man lives at The Flamingo on Miami Beach where his lease includes a membership in the gym that’s on the property.
“I got approached a couple of times by staff that told me I should probably not wear the hat and I ignored them and kept wearing it,” Henry said.
Henry said the newly appointed general manager came up to him and said ‘you need to take the hat off.’
“And I basically told him he needed to go screw himself. And he banned me from the gym,” Henry said.
Nikos then got an email from the general manager saying, “We were terminating your membership due to the verbal harassment directed at one of our employees.” Nikos says that’s not why he was banned.
“He says verbal harrassment, but I know it’s because of the hat. I know it,” Henry said.
Nikos says he ignored the ban and went back to the gym wearing a different cap.
The manager at The Flamingo fitness gym sent an email with a surveillance picture taken of Nikos at the gym, telling him if he came back, he would be arrested and charged with trespassing.
So Nikos went to to speak to the manager.
“I went and apologized. I said I won’t wear the hat again and he said, ‘No, we sent you an email, read it. You are banned,” Henry said.
Banned Nikos believes he was banned because he supports Donald Trump.
“I think it’s political discrimination … definitely. This is insane. It’s hilariously insane,” Henry said.
Nikos thinks it’s insane, but Howard, is it legal to bar him from a gym for wearing a cap supporting a political candidate?
“No they cannot ban him for the Trump cap because they have no rules prohibiting the wearing of political attire, but they can ban you for what they call verbal harrassment. And how does Niko prove he’s banned because of the cap and not harrassment? It’s almost impossible. He can’t do it, and so they can ban him,” said Howard Finkelstein, 7News legal expert.
7News contacted the general manager at the fitness center who says Nikos didn’t even wear the cap into the facility.
He wrote, “Mr. Henry’s membership was not suspended due to this attire or political views. His membership was cancelled for his inappropriate and verbally abusive behavior. Hostility and harassment is simply not tolerated in order to protect our staff and fellow members.”
“I feel like it’s my right as an American to be able to wear what I want,” Henry said.
Despite the claim it was Nikos’s abusive words that got him banned, he is still convinced it was his Donald Trump cap.
“People cannot stand for the freaking Star Bangled Banner now? You can’t wear a hat? It’s just insane,” Henry said.
Now Nikos could sue the gym, but he probably wouldn’t win. He admits he cussed at them when they told him to take the Trump hat off… giving them the right to bar him for verbal harassment.
Got a problem you can’t work out? Feel like you’re a candidate for some help? Elect to go with us and let us campaign to get things taken care of.
CONTACT HELP ME HOWARD:
Email: [email protected]
Reporter: Patrick Fraser at [email protected]
Miami-Dade: 305-953-WSVN
Broward: 954-761-WSVN
On Twitter: @helpmehoward7
Copyright 2018 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
A king crab. (Allison Randolph)
At first glance, it’s hard to imagine anything capable of surviving in the frigid waters off the shore of Antarctica. But, in fact, the Antarctic coastline is home to a unique ecosystem that’s been in place for millions of years, dominated by soft-bodied filter feeding organisms, such as sea stars and marine worms.
But new research, led by Richard Aronson, a professor of biological sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, finds that rising water temperatures off the coast of Antarctica, brought about by global climate change, could be pitting the delicate marine ecosystem against an unexpected threat: an invasion of shell-crushing crabs.
A study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that conditions are ripe for an invasion of king crabs on the continental shelf off the western Antarctic peninsula. The crabs, which are known for their habit of breaking open the outer skeletons of animals like starfish, urchins and mollusks, feed on the kinds of soft-bodied organisms living on the shelf and have the potential to wreak havoc on the local ecology.
King crabs are found on the bottom of the ocean in deep waters around the world and are also known to turn up in shallower waters in subpolar regions. A few species, such as red king crabs, are famous for growing to enormous sizes, although many other species are much more modest in size. But while they’re widespread across the globe, for millions of years they’ve been unable to venture too close to the Antarctic land mass because conditions there are too cold for them.
[What one starving polar bear picture does — and doesn’t — say about climate change]
In general, king crabs can’t cope with temperatures much colder than 1 degree Celsius (34 degrees Fahrenheit). Shallow waters over the Antarctic continental shelf tend to be very cold, because they’re so close to the icy continent. A little farther offshore, over the continental slope, the waters warm up a bit — and then, as the waters deepen, they start to get colder again.
In recent years, scientists have been observing king crabs in the waters over the Antarctic continental slope off the western Antarctic peninsula. Temperatures there are pretty frigid but still within livable range for the crabs. So while scientists aren’t sure how long the crabs have been there — they might have moved into the area just a few years ago, or they might have been there for decades, Aronson said — it’s not wholly surprising that they’ve shown up in the area.
However, scientists weren’t quite sure how big a population existed there. So in 2010, Aronson and his colleagues conducted a photographic survey off the Marguerite Bay on the western Antarctic peninsula to find out how many crabs were present.
It turns out there are more than just a few crabs crawling around down there. The researchers found a large population, thousands strong, mostly consisting of a species of king crab called Paralomis birsteini, which grows to an average of a few inches long — and the population appears to be stable and reproducing. This in and of itself wasn’t that surprising, bcause it was already common knowledge that the crabs existed at these depths. But the researchers were also interested in finding out whether there were any barriers to the crabs moving farther up onto the continental shelf.
To find out whether the crabs could survive on the shelf, they measured environmental conditions, including water temperature, salinity and pressure. Their conclusion was that conditions are tolerable for the crabs on the continental shelf, meaning there are no barriers to the crabs moving into the shallower waters.
During the survey, crabs were observed at depths of 2,759 feet to 7,434 feet — but Aronson said they could move up to about 1,312 feet deep, which is on the lower end of the Antarctic continental shelf. This is thanks to rapid warming in the waters off the western Antarctic peninsula, which have warmed by about 1.5 degrees Celsius in the past 50 years — a warming rate that’s about double the global average.
[Scientists declare an ‘urgent’ mission — study West Antarctica, and fast]
“I think it’s really an important study,” said Craig Smith, professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii, who was not involved with the study. In 2012, Smith published a paper describing another colony of king crabs in a different part of the western Antarctic peninsula. “It’s kind of substantiating some of the speculation and some of the other finds about king crabs and their potential to invade the continental shelf.”
If the crabs continue colonizing the area, there could be big consequences for the soft-bodied organisms living there. “These prey haven’t experienced this kind of predation in tens of millions of years,” Aronson said. So they haven’t developed adequate defenses, such as harder shells, to protect themselves from the hungry crabs. In other parts of the world, the kinds of organisms that king crabs feed on have developed much stronger skeletons that are better able to stand up to the crab’s crushing claws.
And, in fact, the crabs already seem to be making a difference in the lower depths where they’re living. During their survey, Aronson and his colleagues observed that where the crabs are most abundant, their prey animals are relatively scarce. But in shallower waters, where the crabs haven’t established themselves yet, the animals are much more abundant.
“You might think that maybe it’s the crabs that are having the impact,” Aronson said. “So this gives us at least some preliminary corroboration of the idea that these crabs, if they move up, will devastate these invertebrate populations in shallow water.”
The thing that scientists can’t explain yet is why the crabs haven’t moved into the shallower area, because it appears to be hospitable to them.
“There are a couple possibilities,” Smith said. “One is that there are barriers that we don’t quite understand.” In other words, some unidentified factor could still be preventing the crabs from moving upward. The other possibility is that conditions have only very recently become habitable for the crabs on the continental shelf, and they haven’t had time to move into the area yet.
If they do start moving forward, though, Aronson said he expects they could become a fixture on the shelf within the next five years or so. And as the region continues to warm, the authors say, the crabs could move into even shallower depths — perhaps above 656 feet — within the next few decades.
Smith says similar research in other parts of West Antarctica would be warranted, as it’s possible that the crabs are creeping up on other parts of the continent as well. West Antarctica is a particular concern, more so than the eastern side of the vast continent, because it has experienced so much warming in recent decades.
And he says experimental laboratory studies could also help scientists get a better grip on the kinds of conditions crabs can tolerate and how quickly they might be able to colonize shallower waters in Antarctica. “There’s an urgent need to bring these [crabs] into the lab and reproduce the conditions on the Antarctic shelf and see whether they can reproduce, what their physiological tolerances are,” Smith said.
Making accurate predictions about the crabs’ behavior over the next few years will be crucial to understanding how the Antarctic ecosystem might change in the future as a result of climate change.
“This is about the diversity of marine communities on the planet,” Aronson said. Even if there are no obvious economic effects associated with changing Antarctic ecology, there are still ethical issues to consider, he added. “This is about what you want this planet to look like — what this planet ought to look like — and how we are doing as stewards of the planet,” he said.
Also in Energy & Environment:
Yet another survey suggests the climate change ‘debate’ is settled among scientists
Scientists say New York City already faces much worse flood risks due to rising seas
With cap and trade plan, China adopts an emissions policy that couldn’t get through U.S. Congress
For more, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here, and follow us on Twitter here. |
LAS VEGAS--Researchers at the Black Hat security conference here showed today how they could disrupt and snoop on home automation networks in residences and offices using devices connected to Ethernet networks that communicate via public power lines.
Dave Kennedy and Rob Simon have created a device that can be plugged in to a power outlet outside a target building or a nearby building and programmed to interfere with the home Ethernet network inside. The X10 Black Out device can be programmed to jam the signals that turn lights on and off and open doors, as well as disable security systems, kill security cameras, turn air conditioning or heat off, and interfere with other functions of a home automation network based on the X10 protocol. X10 is one of the most popular protocols.
They also have developed the X10 Sniffer device, which can see what appliances and systems are attached to the Ethernet network and see whether the doors are open and lights are on. "We can track people with motion sensors and see what part of the house they might be in," Simon said during a presentation. The sniffer device basically "maps out the entire house," said Kennedy, whose hacker handle is "ReL1K."
Home automation systems are appearing in more and more buildings, computerizing tasks that typically require some manual interaction, like turning on lights, or enabling advanced services, like heating toilet seats. The weaknesses stem from the fact that there is no encryption in the X10 protocol, said Simon, whose handle is "Kickenchicken57."
The researchers are a few weeks away from releasing versions of the devices that would allow an attacker to remotely control the device via the cellular network, so that it could be plugged in to the outlet and communicated with from afar, instead of having to preprogram the commands. The attacker will be able to communicate with the device via text message and the device will be able to "send text notifications when someone comes into their house," for example, Simon said.
They are also working on a sniffer based on the Z-Wave home automation protocol that connects appliances over a mesh network. That device will be able to sniff and decode the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption keys when a new appliance is added to the network, they said. This would enable an attacker to spoof the Z-Wave basic controller for the system.
"We're trying to bring more exposure to this attack avenue," Kennedy said when asked why he was revealing the weaknesses and releasing the tools. "This needs to be incorporated into penetration testing. It is a very real threat vector."
He said he had not notified any vendors of the flaws yet. Vendors will eventually need to add encryption to block such attacks, Kennedy said. "There's virtually no security on these things right now," he said.
The researchers did find one device, a Z-Wave-based door handle, that had encryption, but it was turned off by default. |
1 Place each salmon fillet on a sheet of aluminium foil.
2 Drizzle a little olive oil and a squeeze of lemon over each piece of salmon. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and dill.
3 Wrap up the salmon fillets in the foil, carefully sealing each packet.
4 Put on the top rack of the dishwasher and run for a full cycle, with heated drying. Salmon will be done when the dishwasher runs the full cycle.
By: Connie King on Sat, Jun 8th 2002
More fish advice
It sure sounds like a novel way to cook salmon, but I was just wondering why? In what way is it better than other methods? Besides its orignality, of course..
This is the only way I know of poaching a large whole salmon or sea trout that is too long for any other method & it works extreemly well. Don't forget to take out the dirty crockery first & don't add detergent. Be sure rinse aide is empty and clean or it tastes diabolical, honest!.
Questions about fish:
Ask question |
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, right, kisses the hand of Pope John Paul II during a ceremony at the Vatican. Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis on March 13, cleared Pope John Paul II for sainthood, approving a miracle attributed to his intercession. (Photo11: AP) Story Highlights Healing of Costa Rican woman has been approved as a miracle
Pope Benedict XVI cleared way for faster beatification process during his papacy
Vatican rules waived to make Pope John XXIII a saint
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis cleared Pope John Paul II for sainthood Friday, a little more than eight years after his death and faster than any other person in the modern era.
The Vatican said the healing of a Costa Rican woman has been approved as a miracle, one of the steps necessary for sainthood. Pope Benedict XVI cleared the way for the lightning-fast process during his papacy when he dispensed with the five-year waiting period after someone's death before the beatification process can begin.
The development sets up a remarkable dual canonization along with John XXIII, who was pope from 1958 to 1963. John XXIII, a beloved populist with a strong connection to the faithful, is the pontiff most compared to Francis.
Francis pushed aside the rules requiring at least two confirmed miracles to make John XXIII a saint, something the pope is allowed to do if he believes the figure deserves to be made a saint based on his own merit, according to Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi. The two will be officially named saints "within a year," Lombardi added.
Until now, the fastest person to be named a saint in the modern era was Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, whom John Paul declared a saint in 2002 after the Spaniard died in 1975.
Vatican experts said sainthood declarations further establish Francis' stamp on the papacy.
"This is just the latest example of Francis doing things his way," said Alistair Sear, a church historian. "It's clear the new pope follows his instincts, and many of the decisions he has made, such as this one, resonate."
CLOSE Pope Francis confirms a second 'miracle' by John Paul II, clearing the way for the first Polish Pope to be declared a saint. AP
The miracle Francis approved Friday involved the curing of a Costa Rican woman suffering from a brain aneurysm who prayed to John Paul for help and was healed on May 1, 2011 — the day John Paul was beatified, according to Italian and Spanish media reports. John Paul's first miracle — curing a French nun of Parkinson's Disease — was confirmed three years ago as part of the process required for his beatification.
Benedict's dismissal of the five-year waiting period before the start of the beatification period could have been in response to chants of "Santo Subito!" or "Sainthood Immediately!" that erupted throughout St. Peter's Square during John Paul's funeral. In the early days of the church, popes sometimes declared saints based on popular acclimation, but Benedict declined to do that, electing instead to clear the way for John Paul to be canonized in a remarkably short time by modern standards.
But some Italian media have criticized the church for moving so quickly to declare John Paul a saint, saying that the full ramifications of John Paul's 27-year papacy, including many of the Vatican's current problems including sex scandals and corruption, had their roots in his 1978 to 2005 papacy.
"These problems that started during John Paul's papacy are a real concern. There is a kind of cult of popes, and each pope feels pressure to canonize his predecessors," said Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent for the London Catholic newspaper The Tablet. "There are a lot of dark clouds associated with his long pontificate, and with time they would complicate things. From Francis' perspective, this was probably an inevitable step, and so it was wise to get the distraction out of the way so he can focus on other things."
The news of John Paul's sainthood drew some enthusiastic responses in St. Peter's Square on Friday.
"John Paul II was the holiest man I ever saw in all my life," said Orlando Di Cosimo, a 61-year-old furniture restorer, who works near the Vatican.
Teresa Sitar, 35, a shopkeeper from John Paul's native Poland who has been living in Italy for 12 years, said she waited in line for 16 hours at John Paul's wake.
"He was a great man. I am so happy this has happened and so emotional I can't even think of what to say," she said.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/127etfT |
Post: #5 Re: Are e-cigs Evil ? - Channel 5 phone in show !
Can you comment on the fb page about the show then? (I am allergic to fb so don't use it) maybe everyone could slam the comments with loads of facts and references before the show goes out? If nothing of use is referred to in the programme then we can be safe in the knowledge that it was going to be hysterical bias from the start and there is nothing we could have done about it anyhow.
Maybe a point could be made about them not all looking like ciggies, cos you can bet your life the argument of it encouraging kiddies to smoke will come up...... Probably repeatedly with wails of 'but the children.... Won't somebody think of the children' It's time for Action!
http://nnalliance.org/
http://www.theindefatigablefrog.blogspot.co.uk/
@caeruleansea @caeruleansea |
ONE: Kingdom of Champions will take place next Friday at the Impact Arena in Bangkok and will feature two title fights with Thailand’s Dejdamrong Sor Amnuaysirichoke defending his strawweight title against Yoshitaka Naito in the main event.
On the undercard, one of ONE Championship's most promising up and coming stars will take to the cage for the fifth time in as many months when featherweight Christian Lee takes on Rocky Batolbatol. Lee is currently 17 years old and since his debut in December, he's already managed to pick up four wins all of which he has won inside the first round.
Having competed earlier on in the month at ONE: Ascent To Power on 6 May, Lee will step into the cage for his next fight just 21 days later at ONE: Kingdom Of Champions. He explained to the Independent why the event was one he simply didn't want to miss out on.
Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month
"This event is going to be huge and by far one of the biggest events of ONE Championship history," said Lee excitedly. "I think whether you are a fan of rock music or a fan of MMA fighting, you are going to come in there and see an amazing show. If I wasn't fighting, I'd just go in there and watch the fights and the music and take in the atmosphere. I think it's going to be amazing and I expect it to be one of the best fight cards yet."
When Lee spoke about rock music, he was referring to the fact that the show will feature appearances by two of Thailand’s biggest rock bands, Bodyslam and Big Ass. The inspiration behind the blend of rock music and MMA is said to be masterminded by the ONE Championship president in Thailand Kamol ‘Sukie’ Sukosol Clapp.
'Sukie' is a beloved local Thai celebrity and has a highly successful background within the music industry and he once described ONE Championship events as "having the atmosphere of a rock concert, building momentum from when the show starts, up to an epic finale manifested in an intense main event that electrifies ravenous martial arts fans."
ONE: Kingdom Of Champions has the making to be exactly that but for Christian Lee, he maintains his focus is on doing his job inside the cage as he continues to work his way up the ranks in ONE Championship's featherweight division.
"As soon as I found out I was fighting Rocky I immediately pulled up tapes of his last fights," said Lee. "I looked at his record and his past fights and I thought he was actually pretty similar to my last opponent. He swings for the fences and he goes out on his shield. He will come looking to knock me out so I'm going to be ready and I'm going to be on top of my game and look to finish him."
At just 17 years of age, Lee is living every bit the dream of any young man achieving success, fame and wealth but that doesn't stop him doing some of the most normal things a guy his age does and that includes graduating from high school.
"It's always kind of weird for me coming back home because I would be travelling the world fighting and I'd meet all these people and I'd be like 'oh I'm still actually in high school'," said Lee laughing. "Now that I've just graduated though I feel really good, nothing has really changed, I'm still doing what I've basically been doing for the past year so far.
"When I was in school I'd basically just ask for all the work ahead for the whole quarter and then when I'd go to fight, all my work would be done so that's how I've pulled it off."
With high school now in the bag, Lee will now be dedicating himself full time to MMA and that's a scary prospect for the rest of the ONE Championship featherweight division. His next stop will be ONE: Kingdom Of Champions and by the sounds of it, he's ready to rock in Bangkok.
ONE: Kingdom Of Champions Full Card - Impact Arena, Bangkok, Thailand
D. Sor Amnuaysirichoke vs. Yoshitaka Naito 115 lbs
Marat Gafurov vs. Kazunori Yokota 145 lbs
Christian Lee vs. Rocky Batolbatol 145lbs
T. Nastyukhin vs. Robert Lisita 145 lbs
Leandro Ataides vs. Marcin Prachnio 185 lbs
Anatpong Bunrad vs. Eugene Toquero 125 lbs
Y. Sityodtong vs. Chrech Kosal 135 lbs
Kyal Linn Aung vs. Shannon Wiratchai 145 lbs
Pongsiri Mitsatit vs. Ye Thway Ne 115 lbs
Kev Hemmorlor vs. K. Konsrichai 145 lbs
Keep up to date with all the latest news with expert comment and analysis from our award-winning writers |
Microsoft has already appealed the original ruling
A ban on Microsoft selling certain versions of its flagship products Word and Office has begun.
The software firm was made to change elements of the software by US courts after a patent dispute with Canadian firm i4i.
Microsoft said that it had complied with the court's ruling and would now offer "revised software" in the US.
The court ruling means that Microsoft must also pay i4i damages of $290m (£182m).
However, the firm said on 8 January that it had filed another appeal against the injunction.
The firm wants a panel of 11 judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to review the case in the hope of overturning the original judgment.
Microsoft has already challenged the ruling once. But in December last year, a panel of three judges rejected its arguments and upheld the original decision of a Texas court that ruled that Microsoft had infringed a patent belonging to i4i.
The disputed patent relates to how Microsoft file formats, such as .docx, use aspects of XML, a language that allows formatting of text and makes files readable across different programs.
XML is used in recent versions of Microsoft's word-processor Word.
Microsoft has now removed the disputed feature from all available versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office on sale in the US from today.
"This process will be imperceptible to the vast majority of customers," the firm said in a statement.
Despite the firm's compliance, Microsoft has said it will still challenge the case.
Kevin Kutz, director of public affairs at Microsoft, said the latest appeal had been filed because the firm believed the decision in December conflicted with "established precedents governing trial procedure and the determination of damages".
"We are concerned that the decision weakens judges' authority to apply appropriate safeguards in future patent trials," he added. |
That year, Mr. Corley was in a visiting room with his wife when Simon Prindle, a New York State corrections officer, ordered him to leave the room and stand against a wall with his legs spread because he wanted to make sure Mr. Corley did not have an erection, according to the complaint.
Officer Prindle, the complaint says, then “paused to fondle and squeeze Mr. Corley’s penis,” and threatened Mr. Corley when he objected. Mr. Corley had nightmares after the episode, and filed a grievance, but did not get anywhere with it, according to the complaint.
Four days later, the complaint says, Officer Prindle stopped Mr. Crawford as he left the prison’s dining hall after lunch. While searching him, Officer Prindle “grabbed” Mr. Crawford’s penis, asking “What’s that?” According to the complaint, Mr. Crawford said: “That’s my penis, man. What the hell are you doing?” Officer Prindle continued to press Mr. Crawford against the wall, “squeezed and roamed” with his hands around the inmate’s genitals, and threatened to send him to solitary confinement if he resisted. Mr. Crawford subsequently went to a therapist to report the episode and seek treatment.
Inmates at the prison filed more than 20 grievances against Officer Prindle, saying that he had sexually abused or harassed them by, among other things, directing prisoners to bend over and spread their buttocks for a proper anal-cavity search, said Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma and Adam D. Perlmutter, lawyers for Mr. Corley and Mr. Crawford.
In 2014, Norman A. Mordue, a federal judge in the Northern District of New York, dismissed the men’s case. He cited a 1997 Second Circuit opinion, Boddie v. Schnieder, as establishing the standard for the sexual abuse that must occur for prisoners to claim a violation of their Eighth Amendment rights. |
Secularists are not atheists Secularism is about separating church and state, not disbelief. Mixing it up with atheism serves only the right
Secularism leaves the mystery of deity to the chartered imagination of man, and does not attempt to close the door of the future, but holds that the desert of another existence belongs only to those who engage in the service of man in this life. —George Jacob Holyoake, “English Secularism”
American secularism has lost control of its identity and image. That’s because the equation secularism = atheism is rapidly gaining market share. It is increasingly employed in popular usage, political analysis, and even scholarly discourse. This formula is muscling out an infinitely more accurate understanding of secularism as a political philosophy about how the state should relate to organized religion. If this association prevails, if secularism simply becomes a synonym for atheism, then secularism in the United States will go out of business.
Advertisement:
Which is fine by the Revivalists and which may account for why they perpetuate this confusion. In these circles secularism has become another word for godlessness. As one journalist perceptively observes, “secular” is a “code in conservative Christian circles for ‘atheist’ or even ‘God-hating’ . . . conjur[ing], in a fresh way, all the demons Christian conservatives have been fighting for more than 30 years: liberalism, sexual permissiveness, and moral lassitude.”
Not only foes draw this link, but friends as well. The website of the Secular Coalition for America describes the group as “a 501(c)4 advocacy organization whose purpose is to amplify the diverse and growing voice of the nontheistic community in the United States.” This community, it points out, is comprised of “atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic Americans.” An affiliated organization, the Secular Student Alliance, refers to its mission as “to organize and empower nonreligious students around the country.”
Why must so-called secular organizations be focused exclusively on nonbelievers? After all, just a few decades back, in secularism’s mild separationist golden age, all sorts of religious believers could have been categorized as secularists. The term could refer to a Baptist, a Jew, a progressive Catholic, a Unitarian, and so on. Also, there were secular identities that didn’t make any reference to a person’s religious belief or lack thereof. A secularist might just as likely have been a public school teacher, a journalist, a civil rights activist, a professor, a Hollywood mogul, a civil libertarian, a pornographer, and so forth. From the 1940s to the 1980s all of the aforementioned groups mobilized on behalf of secular causes, the most prominent being separation of church and state.
Aside from being preposterously imprecise, the equation secularism = atheism gravely undermines the potential of secularism as a political movement. It leaves people of faith with little incentive to buy in and reduces secularism’s personnel to the size of the tiny American atheist movement.
This equation poses a serious public relations problem as well. The atheist movement is not just small, but it is also among the least popular groups in the United States. A survey in 2007 found that respondents viewed nonbelievers more unfavorably than any other cohort they were asked about. This included Muslims, whom the atheists somehow edged out by 18 percentage points. If atheists are perceived to “own” secularism, its approval ratings will plummet even further.
This is certainly not the fault of atheists, the vast majority of whom are tolerant, self-critical, and moderate in their outlook (that is, secularish). And were a true secular movement to be forged, it should make the eradication of anti-atheist prejudice integral to its platform. The fact remains, however, that the more secularism becomes narrowly equated with atheism, the less it will be able to forge coalitions and pursue its agenda effectively.
Advertisement:
Which brings us, then, to the aforementioned impending bankruptcy. The growing popularity of the secularism = atheism equation has to do with the advent of a group known as the New Atheists. Incensed by the political and cultural might of the Revivalists, this movement crashed into the public square in 2004. The result included enviable book sales, preposterous polemics, and the almost overnight development of a national media platform.
Yet instead of honing their powers of critique on anti-secular Revivalists, the New Atheists advanced a mixed-martial-arts assault on religion in general. They gleefully (and catastrophically) set about pitting nonbelievers against all believers. They thus included in their onslaught the one constituency in whose hands the future of secularism lies: religious moderates. The New Atheist creed maintains that moderates are just as dangerous and misguided as their extremist co-religionists.
Here is Sam Harris, offering his characteristically subtle take on the question: “Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflicts in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed.” Richard Dawkins, in “The God Delusion,” includes a self-explanatory section titled “How ‘Moderation’ in Faith Fosters Fanaticism.” “Even mild and moderate religion,” he avers, “helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes.” Surely a school of thought that can’t distinguish between a member of the Taliban beheading a journalist and a Methodist running a soup kitchen in Cincinnati is not poised to make the sound policy decisions that accrue to the good of secularism.
The precise relation of atheism to secularism needs to be teased out and explained to the general public. This is actually an old dilemma, one that was debated a century and a half ago. There, the possibility was raised that the passions of extreme atheism tend to muck up the agenda of secularism.
Advertisement:
Secularism Born Again?
Opinions differ as to when secularism was born. One approach focuses on Christian premodernity and identifies Paul and Augustine as having laid down the initial tracks of the secular vision. The second, which is preferable, points to the high-speed thought corridor that stretched from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. It was there, in early modernity, that the Luther-Locke-Jefferson line carried the secular vision into the sunlight of Reason.
Others, however, identify a completely different starting point: the winter of 1851, when the Englishman George Jacob Holyoake (1817–1906) recalls having coined the word secularism (his contribution being the suffixing of that -ism onto the word secular). He shared that recollection in a book written forty-five years later, so, unless his memory was flawless, perhaps we should not canonize the precise date. Suffice it to say that secularism experienced a third and auspicious birth sometime during the mid-nineteenth century.
Advertisement:
For some it is Holyoake, not Jefferson, nor Locke, nor Luther, who is the true father of secularism. And if secularism suffers from a definitional crisis today, let us note in passing that to him must be ascribed some responsibility for that as well. In his works, such as The Principles of Secularism of 1871, he somehow managed to define secularism in about a dozen different ways.
This complex figure lived a long and tumultuous life in what must have been a very interesting era to think outside the confines of Christianity. The viselike grip of ecclesiastical control was clearly loosening in Victorian England. This context provided a perfect, though not necessarily risk-free, environment for Holyoake and countless other “infidels” to mount a ferocious attack on the status quo.
In his youth, Holyoake was a relentless critic of Christianity. Like so many Victorian dissenters, he spent time in jail for blaspheming. In 1843 he bitterly, but eloquently, recounted the tale of his imprisonment in his essay “A Short and Easy Method with the Saints.” There, the twenty-five-year-old protests that “religion is ever found the mother of mental prostration, and the right arm of political oppression.”
Advertisement:
Holyoake was understandably enraged at having been thrown in a dungeon for an off-the-cuff poke at Christianity he had made while taking questions after a lecture. He complained that this religion forces the concession of “man’s noblest right, the right of expressing his opinions.” “Infidels have never received anything from Christians,” he broods, “but calumny, contempt, insult, imprisonment, and death.”
As he aged, however, Holyoake’s views would mellow and evolve in ways that make him difficult to categorize. In his early life he threw his lot in with atheism, but one scholar sees him drifting to agnosticism in his old age. Another writer refers to him as a “lukewarm” atheist and notes that Holyoake “was sympathetic to religion.” He saw secularism as a worldview or system of ethics that moved to- ward knowledge of God insofar as it assiduously strived to discover the truth. Holyoake, for his part, endorsed an “atheism of reflection,” which “listens reverentially for the voice of God, which weighs carefully the teachings of a thoughtful Theism; but refuses to recognize the officious, incoherent babblement of intolerant or presumptuous men.”
This calls attention to a very important truth about self-professed atheists in the nineteenth century and most likely today as well: rather than having a fixed lifelong identity as deniers of God’s existence, there is a recurrent fluctuation in their thought. Individual atheists change across the course of a lifetime.
Should this be surprising? People change. Theists change. Atheists change. The latter are not godless every minute of their lives. Nor are the former lacking in doubts. Extreme theists and extreme atheists insist on locking people into one fixed identity. But atheist identity is always in flux. How to be secular? In matters metaphysical, keep an open mind or, as we shall see later, “don’t get overwrought.”
Advertisement:
In any case, Holyoake refined and defended his thought about secularism across more than a half-century of published work. His initial comment from 1851, referenced earlier, maintained that “secular” connoted “principles of conduct, apart from spiritual considerations.” Gaining attention and growing in stature, the rising star would publish a book a few years later called Principles of Secularism. There he offered up a plethora of definitions. It is hard to pinpoint which understanding of his subject he preferred, but the following would seem to represent his view well: “Secularism is the study of promoting human welfare by material means; measuring human welfare by the utilitarian rule, and making the service of others a duty of life. Secularism relates to the present existence of man. . . [it is] a series of principles intended for the guidance of those who find Theology indefinite, or inadequate, or deem it unreliable.”
Holyoake’s sympathetic readers were variously confused, elated, or angered by this definition. Let’s begin with confusion: a passenger on the Luther-Locke-Jefferson line might be justifiably flummoxed. Where is the reference to order? The state? The church? In truth, political conceptions of secularism were always an afterthought for Holyoake. He did occasionally contemplate the role of government, as when he wrote, “The State should forbid no religion, impose no religion, teach no religion, pay no religion.”
Ethicists, however, might be elated by a definition that placed the accent of secularism on moral behavior instead of politics. Holyoake, as we have seen, spoke of principles that were to guide secularists, what he called “a code of duty pertaining to this life.” Foremost among them were the following mantra-like propositions: (1) “the improvement of this life by material means,” (2) “science is the avail- able Providence of man,” and (3) “it is good to do good.”
Holyoake’s definition(s) not only stressed ethics, but ethics geared to the present. “Secularity,” he commented, “draws the line of separation between the things of time and the things of eternity. That is Secular which pertains to this world.” The emphasis on ethical action in the here and now is constant through all of Holyoake’s thinking. Holyoake went so far as to opine, “Giving an account of ourselves in the whole extent of opinion . . . we should use the word ‘Secularist’ as best indicating that province of human duty which belongs to this life.”
Advertisement:
Thus far we have encountered two species of definitions of secularism: the political and the ethical. The political was born of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. It stresses the relation between religious institutions and government. Its bearers were our five visionary architects. The ethical definition was engendered by Holyoake and later on we will note its affinities with the thought of Saint Augustine. We would add, parenthetically, that Holyoake’s approach has lived a long and healthy life in dictionaries and encyclopedias in the entry titled “Secularism.” Curiously, many reference books tend to favor this ethical definition over the older political one that developed in Christian political philosophy.
Among those who were chagrined by Holyoake’s approach would be the small but growing band of Victorian infidels for whom he was a hero and leader. True, Holyoake would earn their respect by championing the cause of freedom of expression (a huge issue for an out- spoken population that had a knack for getting thrown in the clink). But why didn’t his definition reference infidelity or atheism or agnosticism or some such thing?
Holyoake intentionally omitted any reference to atheism in his definition of secularism. To understand why is to glimpse a credible alternative to the extreme forms of atheism that are coming to dominate secularism today.
Excerpted from "How to Be Secular" by Jacques Berlinerblau. Copyright © 2012 by Jacques Berlinerblau. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. |
UBS, Deutsche Bank, Santander and BNY Mellon announced their “utility settlement coin,” a new digital asset they hope will become the industry standard for blockchain settlements. They expect banks will initially use the coin for post-trade settlement and clearing by early 2018, after they secure blessing from regulators and central banks.
While this development signals significant market traction for an institutional use of digital assets, I have to say it’s deeply misguided. A bank-issued digital asset can only really efficiently settle between the banks who issued it. Then, two scenarios can play out.
Scenario one: all banks around the world put aside competitive and geopolitical differences, adopt the same digital asset, agree on its rules, and harmoniously govern its usage. Fat chance.
Scenario two (the more likely scenario): banks not in the issuing group issue their own digital assets with their own sets of rules and governance.
We’re kinda seeing this already, as the FT points out, with Citi’s Citicoin and Goldman Sachs’ SETLcoin. The result would be an even more fragmented currency landscape than what we have today. If banks of different digital asset groups want to settle trades with one another, they’ll have to make markets between their unique digital assets or trade between their digital assets and a common fiat currency. What a mess!
The second big problem with the “utility settlement coin” is it seems it’ll be backed by a basket of currencies. Once backed by cash, it’s no longer an asset; it’s a liability. Trading liabilities then ultimately requires moving cash across borders, re-creating today’s system but adding more friction!
We strongly believe banks need an independent digital asset to enable truly efficient settlement and we believe XRP is best positioned for that role. It goes back to the fundamentals of what makes digital assets unique and special - they’re universal currencies, meaning anyone can use them as units of value anywhere in the world. That universality gives digital assets global reach and the ability to settle much faster than traditional assets.
Compared head to head with other independent digital assets (like bitcoin or ether), XRP settles the most efficiently cross-border, in just seconds. In fact, we’ve run tests with global banks to prove XRP can lower liquidity costs for cross-border trades. More to come on that front. |
Brian Henson, director
My father, Jim, passed away in 1990. He had done three Muppet movies, and I didn’t want too much of a direct comparison between me and my dad. So I thought: “Let’s do something different.” Our agent, Bill Haber, said to me: “Christmas Carol is the greatest story of all time, you should do that.” While I was thinking about it, he called me back and said: “I’ve sold it to the ABC TV channel.”
We set to work on the script. The Muppets are famous for questioning the status quo, and anti-establishment irreverence, so we took that and pointed it at Charles Dickens. Robin the Frog was going to be the ghost of Christmas past, Miss Piggy was going to be this bacchanalian ghost of Christmas present, and Animal was going to be the ghost of Christmas yet to come. We were going to do a romping parody.
Then we stopped and reconsidered. Nobody had ever captured Dickens’s prose – the wonderful way he described the scenes. So we had to put Charles Dickens in the movie. Who’s the least likely character to be Charles Dickens? Gonzo! So we made him this omniscient storyteller, with Rizzo his pain-in-the-neck sidekick. Ninety-five percent of what Gonzo says in the movie is directly taken from the book.
When I met Michael Caine to talk about playing Scrooge, one of the first things he said was: “I’m going to play this movie like I’m working with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I will never wink, I will never do anything Muppety. I am going to play Scrooge as if it is an utterly dramatic role and there are no puppets around me.” I said: “Yes, bang on!” He was intimidating to start with, but he’s a delight.
Filming it was completely terrifying. I was 28 – I did not feel ready to do a movie. I begged other people to direct. Jeffrey Katzenberg could see that it was an emotionally fragile environment, and he kept his production department away from me. When Scrooge comes home and he’s an angry, lonely man, and the first ghosts show up, I knew I was going to scare people. There were kids crying in the cinemas [when the film was released in 1992]. But then when Jacob Marley and his brother Bob come out, they’re singing the catchiest tune in the movie. You need to go to those dark places for the ending to be as joyous as it can be.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Muppets with Michael Caine. Photograph: Disney/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
Steve Whitmire, performer, Kermit and Rizzo
I was taking over from Jim as Kermit, which was a little scary, as you might imagine. It was important not only to match Kermit’s character, but also his voice. Jim and I don’t sound exactly alike, and the night before we pre-recorded the songs, I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep, thinking: “I really want this to be good, this means so much to everybody.”
Then I had a bizarre dream. I was in this building that was all white, and Jim was there. He comes over to me, in a hurry to get somewhere quickly. I said to him: “I’m really nervous about taking over Kermit.” He looked at me. Jim would do this thing where he would take one finger and put it on his bottom lip as he was thinking – he thought like this for a second and said: “It’ll pass.” And he walked away. It felt much more like a visit than a dream. The feeling from that gave me confidence for the whole film.
Watch a clip from The Muppets' Christmas Carol Read more
Bob Cratchit was a natural role for Kermit, the caring person who looked after people. He was almost playing himself. I also performed Rizzo the Rat, a character I had originated and had been doing for a dozen years by that point, which was all goofing around – it was a great release. When the director said “Cut”, the characters stay alive for a while at the end of the scene, and they continue to talk: “How was that? Did we do a good job?” Plus some comments I can’t put out for public consumption. Various scenes came out of that improvisation.
Kermit is an extremely simple puppet – he’s just a piece of fabric draped over the performer’s hand. I’ve really worked to expand the amount of expression you can create with him. On our new show, we’ve had Kermit talk out of the side of his mouth, and Kermit’s smile is something that Jim really didn’t do.
On my best days, I have this sense that I’m channelling Jim in some way. We and Kermit all share a dualistic view on life, where the good stuff and the bad stuff equals itself out. Kermit looks for equanimity in things: he sees the best in people, and sees the worst in people, and nurtures them beyond that without criticising them. It’s the way Jim was, and it’s the way I’ve tried to operate in my own life as well.
Dave Goelz, performer, Gonzo and Waldorf
Jim kept a gruelling schedule, but every meeting with him, even if it was with his accountants, was full of laughter. The idea of him being stricken was the furthest thing from our minds. He died very suddenly, and we were just flattened by it. Brian called a meeting to see whether we wanted to continue without Jim. And every single one of us said: “It just feels like our life’s work, and we’d like to try and go ahead.” That was about 5pm on the day he died.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bob Cratchit (Kermit) with Tiny Tim (Robin the Frog) in The Muppet Christmas Carol. Photograph: Disney/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
By the time the work on Christmas Carol started, the really intense grieving was done. It was such a soulful piece, and a chance to carry on the heart of Jim’s work: the idea that people were basically good, and there was enough in the world for everyone. It was cathartic. Brian was incredibly good, right from the beginning. Michael Caine got halfway through the film before he found out it was Brian’s first time directing – he couldn’t believe it.
The Muppets are a big psychodrama where you feed your personality and fears through your characters. I usually search for a flaw of mine I can use for comedy, and then I try to find a way to make it lovable – for example, the clumsy Travelling Matt character in Fraggle Rock came out of wanting to preserve my dignity and not be shamed in front of people.
It was the same with Gonzo. When he appeared in the 1970s, he was really pathetic, he didn’t have much confidence. And that came from me. I had suddenly found myself in showbusiness and I thought: “How did I get here from the sofa? I have no idea how to do this.” So I asked Jim Henson if I could build a new Gonzo with an eye mechanism that could allow him to look excited – this was his second phase, with this zany, bombastic appreciation for life.
Then, in the early 80s, I started therapy and it really transformed me, and Gonzo, too. I had always seen myself as not having children, and then people would bring their kids to the set of Fraggle Rock, and I found myself tearing up. I ended up getting married and having two wonderful kids. I was unlocking my emotions. When the screenwriter of Christmas Carol, Jerry Juhl, cast Gonzo as the wise Charles Dickens, that ushered in Gonzo’s soulful phase.
Bah, humbug! The many faces of Scrooge Read more
Playing the heckler Waldorf though, one of Jim’s characters – I was reluctant. Of course, I wanted to be supportive, but really I wanted Jim to come back instead. For the following 15 or 16 years I did Waldorf, I just thought: “I’m a placeholder.” I didn’t ad lib, I just did the dialogue. And then one day it occurred to me I had done Waldorf longer than Jim had, and that Jim was not coming back. So I might as well try to own it.
I’ve never been able to watch Christmas Carol dry-eyed. The comedy deepens the emotion – it ambushes you. It remains my favourite film we’ve done by a good margin. It’s such a powerful piece of literature, and to be able to do it with our goofy characters and make it work, it’s a huge satisfying success.
• The Muppet Christmas Carol airs on Sky Movies Christmas over the holiday period |
IQ and the Wealth of Nations is a 2002 book by psychologist Richard Lynn and political scientist Tatu Vanhanen.[1] The authors argue that differences in national income (in the form of per capita gross domestic product) are correlated with differences in the average national intelligence quotient (IQ). They further argue that differences in average national IQs constitute one important factor, but not the only one, contributing to differences in national wealth and rates of economic growth.
The book has drawn widespread criticism from other academics. Critiques have included questioning of the methodology used, the incompleteness of the data, and the conclusions drawn from the analysis.[2][3] The 2006 book IQ and Global Inequality is a follow-up to IQ and the Wealth of Nations by the same authors.
Outline [ edit ]
The book includes the authors' calculation of average IQ scores for 60 countries, based on their analysis of published reports. It reports their observation that national IQ correlates with gross domestic product per capita at 0.82, and with the rate of economic growth from 1950–1990 at 0.64.
The authors believe that average IQ differences between nations are due to both genetic and environmental factors. They also believe that low GDP can cause low IQ, just as low IQ can cause low GDP. (See Positive feedback).
The authors write that it is the ethical responsibility of rich, high-IQ nations to assist poor, low-IQ nations financially, as it is the responsibility of rich citizens to assist the poor.
National IQ estimates [ edit ]
The result claims that Hong Kong has the highest national IQ estimate with 107, followed by South Korea with 106.[1]
Central to the book's thesis is a tabulation of what Lynn and Vanhanen believe to be the average IQs of the world's nations. Rather than do their own IQ studies, the authors average and adjust existing studies and use other methods to create estimates.
For 104 of the 185 nations, no studies were available. In those cases, the authors have used an estimated value by taking averages of the IQs of neighboring or comparable nations. For example, the authors arrived at a figure of 84 for El Salvador by averaging their calculations of 79 for Guatemala and 88 for Colombia. Including those estimated IQs, the correlation of IQ and GDP is 0.62.
To obtain a figure for South Africa, the authors averaged IQ studies done on different ethnic groups, resulting in a figure of 72. The figures for Colombia, Peru, and Singapore were arrived at in a similar manner.
In some cases, the IQ of a country is estimated by averaging the IQs of countries that are not actually neighbors of the country in question. For example, Kyrgyzstan's IQ is estimated by averaging the IQs of Iran and Turkey, neither of which is close to Kyrgyzstan—China, which is a geographic neighbor, is not counted as such by Lynn and Vanhanen. This is because ethnic background is assumed to be more important than proximity to other nations when determining national IQ.
To account for the Flynn effect (an increase in IQ scores over time), the authors adjusted the results of older studies upward by a number of points.
Scores that do not support the theory [ edit ]
In several cases the actual GDP did not correspond with that predicted by IQ. In these cases, the authors argued that differences in GDP were caused by differences in natural resources and whether the nation used a planned or market economy.
One example of this was Qatar, whose IQ was estimated by Lynn and Vanhanen to be about 78, yet had a disproportionately high per capita GDP of roughly USD $17,000. The authors explain Qatar's disproportionately high GDP by its high petroleum resources. Similarly, the authors think that large resources of diamonds explain the economic growth of the African nation Botswana, the fastest in the world for several decades.
The authors argued that the People's Republic of China's per capita GDP of at the time roughly USD $4,500 could be explained by its use of a communist economic system for much of its recent history. The authors also predicted that communist nations whom they believe have comparatively higher IQs, including China and North Korea, can be expected to rapidly gain GDP growth by moving from centrally planned economies to more capitalist based economic systems, while predicting continued poverty for sub-Saharan African nations no matter what economic systems are used.
Reception and impact [ edit ]
Map depicting average IQ values as presented in the follow-up scientific study, 'Intelligence and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations'.
Several negative reviews of the book have been published in the scholarly literature. Susan Barnett and Wendy Williams wrote that "we see an edifice built on layer upon layer of arbitrary assumptions and selective data manipulation. The data on which the entire book is based are of questionable validity and are used in ways that cannot be justified." They also wrote that cross country comparisons are "virtually meaningless."[4]
Richardson (2004) argued, citing the Flynn effect as the best evidence, that Lynn has the causal connection backwards and suggested that "the average IQ of a population is simply an index of the size of its middle class, both of which are results of industrial development". The review concludes that "This is not so much science, then, as a social crusade."[3] A review by Michael Palairet criticized the book's methodology, particularly the imprecise estimates of GDP and the fact that IQ data were only available for 81 of the 185 countries studied. However, the review concluded that the book was "a powerful challenge to economic historians and development economists who prefer not to use IQ as an analytical input", but that it's likely those scholars will deliberately ignore this work instead of improving it.[5]
By economists [ edit ]
In a book review for the Journal of Economic Literature, Thomas Nechyba wrote that "such sweeping conclusions based on relatively weak statistical evidence and dubious presumptions seem misguided at best and quite dangerous if taken seriously. It is therefore difficult to find much to recommend in this book."[6]
Writing in the Economic Journal, Astrid Oline Ervik said that the book may be "thought provoking", but there is nothing that economists can learn from it. She criticized the book's authors for not establishing cross country comparability and reliability of IQ scores, for relying on simple bivariate correlations, for not considering or controlling for other hypotheses, and for confusing correlation with causation. Ervik stated, "The arguments put forward in the book to justify such comparisons [between the average IQ in different countries and their GDP] seem at best vague and unconvincing. At worst, passages in the book appear to be biased and unscientific...The authors fail to present convincing evidence and appear to jump to conclusions."[7]
Edward Miller, an economics professor who has published many controversial papers on race and intelligence, gave the book positive reviews in two different white nationalist publications, the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies and The Occidental Quarterly.[8][9]
Criticism of data sets [ edit ]
Some criticisms have focused on the limited number of studies upon which the book is based. The IQ figures are based on 3 different studies, one study in 34 nations, and two studies in 30 nations. There were actual tests for IQ in 81 nations. For 104 nations there were no IQ studies at all and IQ was estimated based on IQ in surrounding nations.[2] The limited number of participants in some studies has also been criticized. A test of 108 9- to 15-year-olds in Barbados, of 50 13- to 16-year-olds in Colombia, of 104 5- to 17-year-olds in Ecuador, of 129 6- to 12-year-olds in Egypt, and of 48 10- to 14-year-olds in Equatorial Guinea, all were taken as measures of national IQ.[3]
Denny Borsboom argued that mainstream contemporary test analysis does not reflect substantial recent developments in the field and "bears an uncanny resemblance to the psychometric state of the art as it existed in the 1950s". For example, he argued that IQ and the Wealth of Nations, in order to show that the tests are unbiased, uses outdated methodology – if anything, indicative that test bias exists.[10] Girma Berhanu, in an essay review of the book, concentrated on the discussion of Ethiopian Jews. The review criticized the principal assertion of the authors that differences in intelligence, attributed to genetics, account for the gap between rich and poor countries. Berhanu criticized the book as being based in a "racist, sexist, and antihuman" research tradition and alleged that "the low standards of scholarship evident in the book render it largely irrelevant for modern science".[11]
In addition, some people have argued that Lynn deliberately ignored samples or studies that found higher IQs in sub-Saharan Africa, and only used data that provided especially low IQs. For example, in one study from Nigeria that involved seven samples, Lynn only used results from the two lowest scoring samples. Lynn did not provide an explanation about why the 5 highest scoring samples were ignored.[12]
Impact on psychology [ edit ]
In 2006, Lynn and Vanhanen followed IQ and the Wealth of Nations with their book IQ and Global Inequality, which contained additional data and analyses, but the same general conclusions as the earlier book. Discussing both books, Earl Hunt writes that although Lynn and Vanhanen's methodology and conclusions are questionable, they deserve credit for raising important questions about international IQ comparisons. Hunt writes that Lynn and Vanhanen are correct that national IQs correlate strongly with measures of social well-being, but they are unjustified in their rejection of the idea that national IQs could change as a result of improved education.[13]
See also [ edit ] |
Somebody recently told me that hardcore is dead. Through chipped teeth and bruised bones, I will promise you it is not.
I turned a corner into an alley on 18th street this past Friday afternoon to find a considerable crowd gathered together for the same purpose. The place: Alleykatz; the purpose: United Blood, Richmond’s fourth annual hardcore festival.
Gritty as hell and DIY to the core, United Blood gathers hardcore fans from all over the country, even as far as Europe and Asia, for two days of undeniably fun chaos, the realest kind of unity I’ve ever seen, and of course, skull-rattling, gut-pumping music.
Somebody recently told me that hardcore is dead. Through chipped teeth and bruised bones, I will promise you it is not.
I turned a corner into an alley on 18th street this past Friday afternoon to find a considerable crowd gathered together for the same purpose. The place: Alleykatz; the purpose: United Blood, Richmond’s fourth annual hardcore festival.
Gritty as hell and DIY to the core, United Blood gathers hardcore fans from all over the country, even as far as Europe and Asia, for two days of undeniably fun chaos, the realest kind of unity I’ve ever seen, and of course, skull-rattling, gut-pumping music.
Now I myself am not a dedicated hardcore fan, but I believe that good is good, and these truly were some of the best hardcore bands in the country. The first band I caught was Alpha and Omega from Los Angeles, CA. A rhythm section that reverberates straight up the spine, guitar tones straight out of hell, and a front man with a snarl like a kick in the teeth made this band the perfect introduction to an awe-inspiring weekend. Notables included hard-as-nails War Hungry and lightweight bad-asses Title Fight, both from Pennsylvania, as well as local heroes Swamp Thing, Naysayer and Wasted Time, and Boston’s resident nutcases The Rival Mob. The dual headliners were Connecticut’s Death Threat and New York’s hardcore veterans Madball.
I got a chance to talk with Collin Ackerman, co-founder of United Blood (along with David Foster, a native Richmonder now located in PA), and he had this to say:
Me: When did you start United Blood?
Collin: In 2007, it started small. The headliners were DTN, Bracewar, and Have Heart. It was just a small little thing. It’s probably doubled since we started. The past two years, we’ve had over 800 people.
Me: How did this thing come about?
Collin: There’s a fest in PA called Posinumbers, one of Foster’s friends, Bob Mac, was running it, and it stopped happening a couple years ago. We figured “There’s no reason we shouldn’t have this here, Richmond’s a great town and we have a great spot for it. Let’s try it and see what happens.” We just took a shot and it worked. Without Foster, though, there wouldn’t be this thing. Foster and I pretty much split everything up, doing our own paypal accounts for ticketing, booking all the bands, getting food and contracts for the bands, all of the promotions and everything
Me: So everything was pretty DIY, huh?
Collin: Yeah, no sponsors. We made a pact four years ago that we’d never have sponsors, we do everything ourselves and with the help of our friends, of course. It affects my life a lot, I meet kids from all over the world that I would never meet otherwise. All I care about is that people are having fun, I probably get made fun of for asking everybody that so much.
Me: What about the connotations that hardcore can be violent and hateful?
Collin: Honestly, it’s aggressive just like any other art form can be, but nobody has any bad intentions for the most part. Nobody’s out to get anybody, it’s just about getting what’s inside of you out. I don’t think it’s any different from Slaughterama or Best Friend’s Day, which I love and go to. In all four years, we’ve had maybe one fight, but fights happen at Beach Boys concerts too.
Me: Anything else to say?
Collin: Thanks to everybody that comes out and has fun, thanks to all the bands, thanks to you guys for covering it. I want everybody to have the opportunity to get exposure to things they don’t normally see. And check out Vinyl Conflict Records, that dude hooked us up a lot this year.
All weekend, what I was really overcome by, and Collin touched on it as well, was how positive and community driven of an event United Blood is. One would look at the rolling, growling mass of tattoos and black eyes with abject horror, until noticing that for every one person that fell, there were two or three raising them back up. Between songs and sets there was a smile on almost every face, a real “I’m just so fucking happy to be here” smile. Another little thing that struck me was that every band that I saw perform was sporting the t-shirt of another band at the festival, as well as giving shout outs to all the other bands, small but inspiring. People came from all over the country to see their friends, have a great time, and support something that they all care very much about. This, my friends, is what I call love.
Towards the end of the last set that I saw, I looked down at the pit and knew I had one thing left to do before my experience was complete. I handed off my camera to a friend and shouted something inaudible that probably sounded like “fuck you dad!” as I dove into the crowd. I lasted about twenty seconds before my entire world exploded momentarily. Intentional or not, I got rocked in the face so hard that I can only imagine it looked like a UFC highlight reel. After crumpling like a pile of rags, I jumped back to my feet and into the fray, trying to ignore my wobbly-knees and what I thought to be sand in my mouth (it was actually tiny tooth fragments). In retrospect, the guy that gave me my first black eye in years probably thought I was some asshole nube, which is fair enough on his part, but to me, getting knocked the fuck out was equal to a firm shake of the hand and a “welcome to the club.”
For those of you that still haven’t been to United Blood, I will say that like it or not, hardcore is a part of Richmond’s identity, and it’s well worth the price of admission to see what locals and out of towners alike have put so much time, effort, and care into creating. I am truly stoked to live in a town that produces the kind of diversity that exists in our art and music scene. To those that did make it this year, I’ll see y’all at United Blood 5.
P.S. I’d like to say thank you to all the bands (every single one, not just those mentioned above), photographers, staff, fans, and of course Alleykatz for putting on such a great show and making this such a memorable event, you really exemplify what true dedication and hard work is all about, while still having a fucking good time. Don’t forget to check our Flickr feed for more great pictures from the show, click here for a full list of the bands at this years United Blood Fest. |
The cycle started with Store Championships, as players faced off against their locals and friends. Later, players made the trip out to Regional Championships, making some great journeys, friends, and stories to tell down the road. National Championships quickly followed and the competition was even fiercer as people traveled from all over to attempt to claim the title. The cycle is nearing completion as the 2016 World Championship approaches. In November, pilots from across the galaxy will gather their squadrons and meet in Roseville, MN in order to determine who will claim the title of X-Wing™ World Champion.
A Competition to Remember
Our World Championships will be an unforgettable experience. We are extremely excited to see world-class competition as hundreds of passionate players make new friends and forge memories that will last a lifetime on the biggest stage. At its core, though, the World Championship is about finding the best player in the world for each of our competitive games. So, ask yourself a question. Can you outmaneuver the rest of the competition and be crowned the 2016 X-Wing World Champion?
Veteran Instincts
In addition to the fantastic items every attendee of the 2016 World Championships will receive, players who do well in the 2016 X-Wing World Championship will have a chance at these fantastic prizes:
Participation: Each player that participates in a 2016 World Championship event will receive a copy of the alt-art card The Inquisitor - a ruthless pilot who flies as if he is constantly on the heels of your foes. After the lunch break, each player in the X-Wing World Championship will receive two additional copies of this card! X-Wing World Championship will receive a challenge coin to commemorate their participation in the event! In addition, each player that plays in theWorld Championship will receive a challenge coin to commemorate their participation in the event!
Day 2 Participants: Each player receives a set of acrylic Weapons Disabled tokens. Locking a ship out of its ability to shoot is a powerful effect and these bright, reflective tokens are sure to remind both players when a ship is not able to bring its weapons to bear!
Top 16: Each player receives a set of metallic colored dice.
Top 8: Each player receives a set of acrylic maneuver templates. These clear frost templates are accented with a bright gold paint and will make a player truly stand out as one of the best in the world.
Top 4: Each player receives an uncut sheet of cards (not pictured) featuring the World Championship promo - The Inquisitor. Our prizes are usually either game components or collector’s items. This unique prize is both!
Winner: The X-Wing World Champion receives the 2016 X-Wing World Champion trophy and a one-of-a-kind playmat to showcase their achievements! Additionally, the Champion will receive The Greatest Prize in Gaming - the chance to design a card for X-Wing!
This and More
These fantastic prizes are not the only reward for attending the 2016 World Championships. Players will also be gaining cherished memories of intense matches, new friends, and the experience of competing at the highest level of play. Keep your eyes on our website for additional information about the event, including live streaming and more! |
In return for covering about one-third of the costs, the Chinese state-run company China General Nuclear Power Corporation will take about one-third ownership in the project. (A subsidiary of E.D.F. owns the rest.) The British government has also provisionally agreed to let China build a yet-untested Chinese-designed reactor in Bradwell-on-Sea, northeast of London, later.
These deals are a major coup for China, which yearns to become a player on the international nuclear market. But they are a risky move for Britain: They give a Chinese state-owned company access to Britain’s electricity grid, even though China is a longtime strategic competitor.
The British government has also guaranteed that investors in the Hinkley project will get $115 per megawatt-hour over 35 years. This is approximately twice the price of electricity today, and it is more than the prices of most major sources of renewable energy, which the International Renewable Energy Agency predicts will drop over the next few decades.
If the market price of electricity falls below that rate, a government company is contractually bound to cover the difference — with the extra cost passed on to consumers. Price forecasts have dropped since the deal was struck: This summer the government, revising estimates, said differential payments owed under the contract could reach nearly $37 billion.
If the Hinkley plan seems outrageous, that’s because it only makes sense if one considers its connection to Britain’s military projects — especially Trident, a roving fleet of armed nuclear submarines, which is outdated and needs upgrading. Hawks and conservatives, in particular, see the Trident program as vital to preserving Britain’s international clout.
A painstaking study of obscure British military policy documents, released last month by the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, demonstrates that the government and some of its partners in the defense industry, like Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, think a robust civilian nuclear industry is essential to revamping Britain’s nuclear submarine program.
For proponents of Trident, civilian nuclear projects are a way of “masking” the high costs of developing a new fleet of nuclear submarines, according to the report. Merging programs like research and development or skills training across civilian and military sectors helps cut back on military spending. It also helps maintain the talent pool for nuclear specialists. And given the long lead times and life spans of most nuclear projects, connections between civilian and military programs give companies more incentives to make the major investments required. |
Mix It Up at Lunch Day is one of those programs that just seems like a nice thing to do.
The idea is that on one day of the school year, kids are invited to have lunch with the kind of kids they don't usually hang out with: the jocks mix with the nerds, lunch tables are racially integrated, et cetera. Sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center as part of their Teaching Tolerance division, it arose out of a broad effort to tackle the problems of bullying in the schools and bigotry in society – and it appears to have been effective in breaking down stereotypes and reducing prejudice. Over 2,000 schools nationwide now participate in the program, which is set to take place this year on 30 October.
You can argue about how permanent its effects are, or whether other approaches might be better, but the idea of making new friends in the lunchroom seems utterly benign. Right?
Wrong, as it turns out – at least, according to the American Family Association, a radical rightwing evangelical policy group. Mix It Up at Lunch Day is, in fact, part of "a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools", according to the AFA literature. The program "is an entry-level 'diversity' program designed specifically by SPCL (sic) to establish the acceptance of homosexuality into public schools, including elementary and junior high schools," warns the AFA website. "See if your child's school is on the list."
The AFA has urged parents to keep their kids home on 30 October, and claims that at least 200 schools have responded to its charge by canceling the program.
There's a backstory here. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has fought for civil rights causes since its founding in 1971, conceived and promoted Mix It Up at Lunch as part of their Teaching Tolerance program. The SPLC also, as it happens, named the AFA, along with a dozen other "pro-family" groups, as a "hate group" in 2010, citing, among other factors, AFA's expressed views on same-sex relationships. The "homosexual agenda" is not the only factor in the SPLC's decision to include AFA on the list. AFA's director of issues analysis, Bryan Fischer, has appeared to suggest that what is biblically deemed "sexual immorality" merits punishment by death. He evidently hates Muslims, too, having recently opined that "allowing a mosque to be built in town is fundamentally no different than granting a building permit to a KKK cultural center".
So, now it's payback time. The AFA's jihad against Mix It Up at Lunch Day is its way of saying "I'm rubber, you're glue." It has come up with its own list of boycotts and hate groups, and sure enough the SPLC, on account of its "incendiary language", is on that list.
Funny word games aside, the SPLC is right. It is, by now, well known that the AFA and the kind of interests they represent spread conspiratorial falsehoods about the LGBT community, placing blame for a wide variety of social ills on a "gay agenda". They also seem to support a certain type of bullying and bigotry in public schools – the faith-based kind – and believe there should be more of it.
One example comes from an AFA cultural ally: Gateways to Better Education, formed in 1991 by Focus on the Family in tandem with a rightwing Christian legal advocacy group that calls itself the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Gateways publishes a "Guide for Commemorating Religious Freedom at School". But the freedom Gateways and the ADF have in mind applies only to those who share their religion.
"Religious Freedom Day is not 'celebrate-our-diversity-day,'" members are reminded. Gateways advocates a "Biblical approach to tolerance", which apparently consists of intolerant attitudes toward what the ADF and Gateways call "pro-homosexual education" and "the gay activist agenda". Parents' No 1 goal, they say, should be to "encourage your children to be bolder" in expressing their faith at school.
The far right's fixation on same-sex relationships is so ludicrous that it defines a sub-category of camp. But let's take a step back for a moment. The big question, the one that keeps coming back in every one of these skirmishes in the culture wars, is: why is the loudest religion in American politics today so much about hate?
Consider Mix it Up at Lunch Day from the perspective of the almost limitless other conceptions of the Christian religion that are out there. You could, for example, construe it as an exercise in "loving thy neighbor". You could quote the gospel of John that "God is love." You could view it as part of the religious mission of charity. I have no doubt that there are countless Christian and non-Christian people in the US who would view Mix It Up Day in just this way.
So why does the form of religion that seeks to claim the term "Christian" in the political realm have to focus so relentlessly on a "gay conspiracy" – not to mention sexually active singles and the purely evil Muslims?
I don't believe for a moment that this hysterical voice that screeches in America's political sphere is the authentic voice of religion in America. Most religious Americans want to mix it up at lunch! They want to make friends across party lines, and they want to help people who are less fortunate. A survey by the Public Religious Research Institute, released on 24 October, reveals that 60% of Catholics believe the Church should place a greater emphasis on social justice issues and their obligation to the poor, even if that means focusing less on culture war issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Earlier this year, in response to the Ryan budget, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops joined other Christian leaders in insisting that a "circle of protection" be drawn around "essential programs that serve poor and vulnerable people".
So why is it that the so-called "values voters" are urged to vote against the politician who supports choice, not the politician who wants to shred that "circle of protection" for the poor and vulnerable? Why is it that when politicians want to demonstrate just how religiously righteous they are, they talk about banning same-sex marriage and making contraceptives hard to get, instead of showing what they have done to protect the weak?
There is an obvious answer, and it is, in a sense, staring you in the face every time you watch a political debate or read about the latest antics of Focus on the Family and the AFA. The kind of religion that succeeds in politics tends to focus on the divisive element of religion. If you want to use religion to advance a partisan political agenda, the main objective you use it for is to divide people between us and them, between the in-group and the out-group, the believers and the infidels.
The result is a reduction of religion to a small handful of wedge issues. According to the religious leaders and policy organizations urging Americans to vote with their "Biblical values", to be Christian now means to support one or, at most, a small handful of policy positions. And it means voting for the Republican party.
This type of rhetoric is also championed by a segment of Jewish conservatives. Alarmed that Obama won 78% of the Jewish vote in 2008, they accused Democratic Jews of being "Jinos" – Jews In Name Only. "They eat bagels and lox; they watch 'Schindler's List,'" writes Town Hall columnist Ben Shapiro, "but they do not care about Israel" – at least, not in the way that Shapiro thinks we should.
When religion is thus reduced to a single policy decision and support for a political party, it becomes shrill and bigoted. This abuse of religion for political purposes has been tremendously damaging for American politics. But it is worth pointing out that it has been destructive of religion, too. According to another poll this month, this one by the Pew Research Center, record numbers of Americans are now reporting that they have no particular religious affiliation. Perhaps that is because, right now, the God of hate seems to be shouting louder than the God of love. |
Organizers of Ottawa’s Capital Pride festival say they are investigating “accounting irregularities” amid allegations by two suppliers and a DJ that their cheques have bounced and that they haven’t been paid for their services.
Guillaume Tasse said he has been given the runaround by festival organizers since he went to collect $42,000 he said he was owed after last month’s festival. Tasse isn’t alone. Sebastien Provost, the executive producer and president of production company House of SAS, said he’s out about $24,000 after he bought liquor for the festival only to later be told by his bank the cheque he received was no good.
Montreal DJ Stephan Grondin said he, too, is owed thousands of dollars after his bank told him the cheque he received from the festival didn’t clear.
Provost and Tasse said they have both filed complaints with Ottawa police.
Organizers for the Capital Pride festival weren’t talking Thursday, but in a short news release they said they were investigating “accounting irregularities that have come to light upon review of its post-festival finances” and said a police investigation “may be pending.”
Tasse said his attempts to collect on a bill for providing a stage, tents, toilets, tables, chairs and other infrastructure have not been successful. He initially approached Capital Pride festival’s treasurer, Giselle Gardipy, he said, but a meeting they set for Monday, Aug. 25, did not take place.
Tasse said he was told by board members that Gardipy was in hospital but that they had no other details.
The Citizen’s attempts to reach Gardipy, who was the first aboriginal person to win the title of Miss Gay Ottawa in 2005 and Queen of Capital Pride in 2006, were unsuccessful Thursday. Gardipy’s given name is Daryle.
Tasse said the chair of Capital Pride’s board of directors subsequently told him the board would have no further contact with him. Tasse said he and the other supplier have made continued attempts to contact the board to no avail. Tasse alleges that the $10,000 deposit cheque he was provided has bounced.
Production manager Provost said he deposited the nearly $24,000 cheque from the festival into his own account before buying the alcohol for the festival weekend. It wasn’t until the following Wednesday that he learned his account was overdrawn by about $15,000 because the cheque never cleared.
“I’m devastated and I’m broke,” said Provost, who said he volunteered his time to run the production and used his connections to book the performers.
Provost said he last spoke with Capital Pride’s treasurer on Aug. 26.
“We sent multiple emails, we tried calling them for multiple days after that, and there was no answer. No one returned our email,” said Tasse.
Montreal DJ Grondin said he, too, has had a hard time getting answers.
“Right now at the Capital Pride you can’t leave a message because the voice mail box is full,” he said.
Provost, who himself once chaired the Capital Pride board of directors, said he fears the situation may have undone all the good accomplished by this year’s festival. Organizers said 110,000 people came to Bank Street to see this year’s parade.
Tasse and Provost both said they offered to work with festival organizers if they were facing financial problems.
“We can talk. We can figure it out,” Tasse said he offered. “That was ignored completely.”
“I feel betrayed because we tried to help that event and support them. I gave them a $10,000 sponsorship,” said Tasse.
In their news release Thursday, Capital Pride organizers vowed to “continue to uphold its transparency with the LGBT community and its allies as details surrounding this situation emerge.”
Capital Pride chair Jodie McNamara declined an interview request, citing the advice of their lawyer. Assistant treasurer Stephanie Lavergne also declined to answer questions about the suppliers. Board secretary Rob Swartz wouldn’t comment.
Meanwhile, Mayor Jim Watson was not available Thursday evening to comment on the issue, but his spokesman, Brook Simpson, said the mayor was “disappointed to see that there have since been alleged issues related to payment and hopes that all parties involved can come to an amicable agreement quickly.”
[email protected]
twitter.com/andrew_seymour |
ATLANTA — Chicago tops the 2014 Bed Bug Cities List for the third year in a row. The list, released by Orkin, ranks the cities by the number of bed bug treatments Orkin performed from January to December 2014. Bed bugs were in the news throughout 2014 in the Windy City, with reports of the blood-sucking insects on public transit and inside several downtown office buildings, as well as in police headquarters, a fire station, school, library and movie theater.
"Bed bugs are a serious issue across the country, and they're very difficult to control," said Orkin Entomologist and Technical Services Director Ron Harrison, Ph.D. "Bed bugs are not limited to any level of cleanliness or income, which means they can be found in any home or hotel. They're great hitchhikers, and people often bring them inside on their clothes or in their luggage."
Seven cities made double-digit jumps on Orkin's Bed Bug Cities List compared to 2013, including Omaha, Neb. (+16), Lexington, Ky. (+16), Sacramento, Calif. (+14), Grand Rapids, Mich. (+13), Buffalo, N.Y. (+12), Charleston, W.Va. (+11) and Louisville, Ky. (+10). Several cities also dropped significantly in the past year, including Syracuse, N.Y., San Diego, Miami, Greenville, S.C. and Atlanta. Four cities made the Bed Bug Cities List for the first time including Myrtle Beach, S.C., St. Louis, Bowling Green, Ky. and Ft. Wayne, Ind.
Chicago Detroit (+2) Columbus, Ohio Los Angeles (-2) Cleveland – Akron – Canton, Ohio (+1) Dallas – Ft. Worth (+7) Cincinnati (-2) Denver (+1) Richmond – Petersburg, Va. (+2) Dayton, Ohio (-3) Indianapolis (-1) Houston (+4) Seattle – Tacoma (+5) Washington , District of Columbia – Hagerstown, Md. (-6) Milwaukee (+6) San Francisco – Oakland – San Jose (+3) Raleigh – Durham – Fayetteville, N.C. (-5) New York (-1) Charleston – Huntington, W.Va. (+11) Grand Rapids – Kalamazoo – Battle Creek, Mich. (+13) Omaha, Neb. (+16) Louisville, Ky. (+10) Nashville, Tenn. Lexington, Ky. (+16) Atlanta (-10) Buffalo, N.Y. (+12) Sacramento – Stockton – Modesto, Calif. (+14) Syracuse, N.Y. (-14) Boston – Manchester (-9) Charlotte, N.C. (-5) Baltimore (-4) Phoenix – Prescott (-4) Miami – Ft. Lauderdale (-11) Knoxville, Tenn. (-3) Cedar Rapids – Waterloo – Dubuque, Iowa (-6) Minneapolis – St. Paul (+8) Hartford – New Haven, Conn. (+3) Champaign – Springfield – Decatur , Ill. (-3) San Diego (-13) Lincoln – Hastings – Kearney, Neb. (-1) Kansas City, Mo. (+9) Honolulu (+3) Albany – Schenectady – Troy, N.Y. Colorado Springs – Pueblo, Colo. (-2) Myrtle Beach – Florence, S.C. St. Louis Greenville – Spartanburg, S.C. – Asheville, N.C. (-11) Bowling Green, Ky. Ft. Wayne, Ind. Toledo, Ohio (-4)
Bed bugs are in every region of the country, and Orkin has treated for bed bugs in all 50 states. Rollins, Orkin's parent company, saw an 18 percent increase in bed bug revenue in 2014. The problem is growing nationwide as well. According to an annual report on the pest control industry, Americans spent $446 million to get rid of bed bugs in 2013, the latest data available, compared to $70 million in 2004. |
What kind of paper and glue do I use?
What's the difference between this and the AR V3?
Can it actually cycle a cartridge like one of tacome1942's models?
Can I attach accessories from other models to the rails?
Build a paper model of the Hk416 carbine.This model is 1:1 scale, consists of several distinct parts that can be disassembled, and includes a collapsible stock and moveable bolt carrier.In addition to the rifle, some accessories like a foregrip, various ironsights, an ACOG optic, and an AN/PEQ-15 laser/IR module are included.The receivers and magwell are compatible with the PM AR V3. The download package contains instruction photos in addition to pattern pages in black, tan, and white.90-lb or 185-g paper, and regular white paper glue. Tacky glue also works, and dries faster, but may have more volume.The images (1700x2200), while larger than a page, turn out the same size on letter and A4 paper if automatically resized to printable area.Besides the Hk416 style details, the stock is attached via a much sturdier buffer tube, and the barrel is significantly strengthened as well.No. The moving parts do not replicate 100% functionality, they're just there for appearances.Sure. The rails are pretty close to 1:1, so it's even possible to put real accessories on them (although this isn't recommended because the weight would break them off). |
The Prince’s Trust today sent out an email containing a quote from Benedict Cumberbatch thanking everyone who was kind enough to donate to our fundraiser this year in honour of The Princes Trust.
Benedict said:
“I’m so proud of my fans and the importance they’ve seen in helping a cause I am so fervently enthralled to.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate over the years. I always knew that I wanted to work as an actor and have been extremely lucky to get where I am today. It hasn’t been without hard work and determination, but a key ingredient to anyone’s self-confidence and personal success, is the support and guidance that comes from having a role model.
I also know that many young people don’t have such opportunities. With no role model, life can be daunting and self-esteem can drop making it harder to ask for help. It’s a vicious cycle. That’s why I am a Prince’s Trust Ambassador – believing every young person deserves a chance in life is a vision we both share.” |
Human physiology is amazingly diverse. The body has many systems and changing activity levels in one system often do not correlate well with changing activity levels in another. We will employ just one of these many measures but readers should bear in mind that additional measures will be necessary before more complete assessments are possible. The particular physiological measure we employ is based on EDA. EDA manifests itself as small increases in the secretion of sweat at various points on the body; most research, including our own, measures EDA at the fingertip (see Dawson et al. 2007). EDA is especially appropriate for our purposes because other physiological systems, such as the cardio-vascular, lie under control of both the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system. EDA, on the other hand, lies entirely under SNS control (Dawson et al. 2007). As a result, EDA increases are widely accepted in the psychophysiological community as reliable indicators of arousal (Kreibig 2010) and as linking closely “with the psychological concepts of emotion, arousal, and attention” (Dawson et al. 2007). The highly questionable use of EDA as an indicator of whether or not a single, designated individual is telling the truth should not be confused with its acknowledged value as an indicator of the situations under which a group of people, on average, is physiologically aroused.
EDA has been widely used in the field of psychophysiology to get at, for example, overall cognitive engagement with one’s environment (Nikula 1991), task vigilance (Dawson et al. 1989), and conditioned anxiety among those individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (Blechert et al. 2007). In terms of political behavior more specifically, EDA has been used as a measure of disgust response that predicts support for sexual morality policy (Smith et al. 2011a), as a gauge of threat response to predict support for socially protective policies (Oxley et al. 2008), and as a measure of anxiety in the face of negative political campaigning (Mutz and Reeves 2005).
It should be noted that, in and of itself, EDA is incapable of indicating valence (and this is one of the reasons it is problematic as a lie detector). Both an image of a snake and an image of a loved one typically increase EDA. Though this situation can be a problem for some research designs, the goal here, as stated above, is to acquire a broad measure of physiological response and not one that is keyed to, or strives to measure, responses to a discrete category of stimulus content. Thus, to obtain our measure of broad EDA response, we recorded mean changes in EDA of each participant occasioned by the presentation of a lengthy series of very diverse still images. We know the stimuli were diverse because an independent panel of 126 individuals rated their own emotional responses to these images in terms of valence, with one being “happy/positive feelings” and nine being “unhappy/negative feelings,” and also on intensity, with one being “no reaction” and nine being a “strong reaction.” The valence ratings ranged from a mean of 1.83 (SD = 1.178) for an image of a sunset to 8.42 (SD = .924) for an image of an anorexic woman. Strength of emotional reaction ranged from a mean of 2.79 (SD = 2.01) for a clean toilet to 8.11 (SD = 1.208) for the anorexic woman. The raters also were asked to select specific emotions that were elicited by each image, which resulted in an assortment of reported, evoked emotions, including happiness, disgust, satisfaction, amusement, anger, fear, sadness and anxiety. The ratings show that the images selected for presentation run the gamut from decidedly positive (sunset, bowl of fruit, smiling child, cute animals) to decidedly negative (wounds, vomit, physical fights and dangerous animals). Each image appeared for 12 s on a computer screen directly in front of the participant and was preceded for approximately 10 s by a fixation point on a blank screen.
Because individuals vary dramatically in their pre-stimulus EDA levels, and because our focus is on the degree of response, we constructed a ratio of change in EDA for each individual by dividing the average skin conductance level (SCL) during presentation of each stimulus by the SCL obtained during the previous inter-stimulus interval (or ISI). Thus, at stimulus onset, increases in SCL relative to the previous ISI provide a ratio above 1, while decreases will produce a ratio below 1. We then calculated overall tendency to display physiological arousal by computing the mean change in this ratio across all non-political images for each participant. These procedures are standard in EDA analyses and the mean magnitude of the EDA response we recorded for our sample is typical (see Dawson et al. 2007). What is perhaps less typical is our practice of averaging this response across such a wide range of images in order to get a broad measure of EDA responsiveness. As argued above, however, we believe that doing so will provide both useful information on its own and also serve as a valuable baseline against which physiological responses to particular categories of stimuli can be compared.
Our basic measure of political participation was obtained from a survey that participants completed long before the physiological exercise. Participants were presented with 11 items bearing on political participation, with a particular bent toward issue-driven participation: “how often do you discuss issues with other people,” “are you registered to vote,” “do you usually vote in elections,” “do you feel strongly about political issues,” “have you voted for particular candidates because of their position on a political issue,” “have you campaigned for particular candidates,” “have you contributed money to particular candidates,” “have you contacted elected officials to encourage them to support a position on a political issue,” “have you tried to persuade other citizens to support a position on a political issue,” “have you joined an organization that promotes a position on a political issue,” and “have you attended meetings that promote a position on a political issue.” The item gauging frequency of political discussion was a five-point scale but all of the others were dichotomous “yes–no” items. Each of the individual items was standardized and factor analyzed using principal-components factoring, with the overall measure of political participation created by multiplying respondents’ scores on each item by its factor loading and summing the products of the individual participation items together.2 Weighting the individual participation items by their factor scores makes it possible to create a participation index that includes only the items’ shared correlation with the underlying construct of political participation while discarding the portion of covariance not explained by that construct.3
Participants in this project were obtained in the following manner. We contracted with a professional survey organization to randomly contact individuals within convenient distance from Lincoln, Nebraska, to see if they would be willing to travel to our lab for a 90 min session in exchange for $50. In this fashion, 200 subjects were recruited and completed an extensive, computer-based survey of their political beliefs, personality traits and demographic characteristics. This is the survey that included the items on political participation mentioned above. It was intended that these participants would serve as a pool from which we could recruit smaller groups for physiological testing as money and lab time became available. Several months after the larger group completed the survey, 37 individuals with relatively strong political ideologies (either liberal or conservative) were invited back. A year later 51 additional participants from the pool were invited back, with this group consisting of some who were politically disinterested and uninvolved and others who were more engaged in the political process. We make no claim that these 88 individuals constitute a random sample. Their willingness to travel to participate in lab exercises on two separate occasions, for example, is an obvious source of bias. Still, for our purposes recruiting a purely random sample is less crucial than securing a group of people with a wide range of political participation levels.
On the second trip, research participants were brought to our physiology lab one at a time and sensors measuring EDA were attached to the distal phalanges (fingertips) of the index and middle fingers on participants’ non-dominant hand. After an acclimation period, the series of images was presented. The participant was not required to perform any behavioral task—only to pay attention to the images on the screen. Data from two participants were not usable. One was discovered to have a health problem and the readings for the other were corrupted perhaps because of a misplaced or malfunctioning sensor. |
Image copyright EPA
Tributes are being paid to Princess Diana on the 20th anniversary of her death.
Dubbed the "people's princess" by then prime minister Tony Blair, she died after a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997 aged 36.
On Wednesday, her sons - Prince William and Prince Harry - visited the growing floral tributes being left at Kensington Palace.
Harry told members of charities Diana supported, "all of us lost somebody".
The princes are marking the anniversary in private, but other public services are taking place across the UK - including at East London's Mildmay Mission Hospital, which the princess regularly visited when it was a hospice caring for HIV patients.
Former members of staff will share their memories of her, alongside the hospital's patron, actress Linda Robson, and dancer Wayne Sleep, who performed with the princess.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption William and Harry greeted people and looked at the flowers left outside Kensington Palace
Members of the public have been visiting Kensington Palace, where Diana had lived for more than 15 years during her marriage to Prince Charles and after their divorce.
BBC News correspondent Mark Lobel spoke to Terry - who had met the princess through his charity work - as he laid roses for her outside the gates.
"It was a privilege [to meet her]," he said. "I was under Waterloo Bridge, giving out blankets and food to the homeless. I don't know what made her come, but she looked down at us all and we were all amazed, just like a little angel came out.
"She spoke to us all. She was very sweet. It was unbelievable. Everybody gave her a smile and she gave them a lovely smile too."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jennie Bond: 'It was a kind of mass hysteria'
Speaking to the BBC's Sophie Long, John - who had been at Kensington Palace since early morning - said Diana "brought happiness to everyone."
"It is important for us to be here," he added. "Princess Diana always ran to the crowd, embraced you and picked you up. No other royal has ever done that."
'A surreal atmosphere'
Image copyright EPA Image caption People left tributes near to the Alma Bridge tunnel where the crash happened 20 years ago
By Hugh Schofield, BBC News Paris correspondent
There are quite a few people at the unofficial Diana memorial at the Alma Bridge tunnel today. But most, you sense, are passers-by attracted by the TV cameras.
The days of pilgrimage to the scene of her death are long gone - which is as it should be.
For those of us who were in France at the time, the 20th anniversary has been a moment to cast back one's mind, and recapture the somewhat surreal atmosphere that surrounded the whole affair.
Partly it was a sense of wonder at the sheer unlikelihood of it all, partly it was excitement and partly it was just plain sadness.
An old friend, Tim Livesey, was embassy press officer at the time, and drove with the ambassador to the hospital late in the night.
He remembers the doctor coming out at four in the morning and uttering the words: "Elle est morte."
He told me: "I will never forget the way he said the word 'morte'. It was like a glass smashing on a marble floor. It was the end."
Deborah Gold, chief executive of the National Aids Trust, said the princess had raised understanding and changed minds with her charity work.
"[Diana] was responsible for one of the biggest shifts in public attitudes towards Aids by being really willing to talk to people, touch people and to shame public attitudes," she said.
"There was such a high level of misinformation about HIV and a real fear of people living with HIV that made lives for them extremely difficult.
"She just challenged that so powerfully at Middlesex Hospital where she shook the hand of the man living with HIV and showed how ridiculous those fears were."
Sir Elton John, a close friend of Diana's and fellow HIV and Aids campaigner, paid tribute to her on Instagram.
The singer, who performed an alternative version of his song Candle In The Wind at her funeral, posted a picture of the two of them and wrote: "20 years ago today, the world lost an angel. #RIP"
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Members of the public are laying tributes at Kensington Palace
Ken Wharfe, a personal protection officer to the princess and a bodyguard to her two sons, said her children always came before her royal duties.
"Work certainly broke a new mould in terms of royal duty," he told the Victoria Derbyshire programme. "But behind all that, wherever we were in the country or abroad, it was, 'I must get back and see my boys'. That was always crucial in her life.
"She generated the fun with her kids, but also with us on tour. She was almost the entertainment manager and she would always find something to make people laugh.
"William and Harry… are using their mother's template because they know it is one that works. It was her work ethos that endeared her to the public." |
Some 50 settlers and right-wing activists entered a key West Bank military base early Tuesday morning and threw rocks, burned tires, and vandalized military vehicles.
The settlers were acting in response to a rumor that the IDF would act to evict a West Bank settlement in accordance with an August Supreme Court ruling.
Settlers near the outpost of Givat Menachem, 2010. Haggai Ofen
What do you think of the attack on the IDF base? Visit Haaretz.com on Facebook and share your views.
In the attack on the Efraim Regional Brigade's base near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, right-wing activists threw stones at region's brigade commander and his deputy after forcefully opening the door to their jeep. The brigade commander was lightly wounded after a stone hit his head.
In addition to the attack on the IDF base, right-wing activists blocked a main West Bank road and threw stones at passing Palestinian vehicles and IDF soldiers in the area.
Around 100 right-wing activists and settlers came to the area of the base before 50 of them enetered the base, according to the IDF spokesman.
The youths were repelled by security forces. No arrests were made.
Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email * Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close
Earlier during the night, the IDF and police rushed to the otherwise quiet border with Jordan after a group of 17 right-wing activists, three of them minors, occupied structures near the border. The activists said the action was intended as a message to Jordanian authorities to keep out of Temple Mount affairs.
The IDF and police surrounded the activists, who were hilltop youth, and prepared to evacuate. Four other activists were arrested before joining the group on the border.
The activists seized abandoned churches near the Qasr al-Yahud holy site, which is the believed site of Jesus' baptism.
The activists, accompanied by television crews, cut their way through a fence that used to protect a minefield surrounding the area, before it was cleared by Israeli security forces. The activists danced near the structures, entered one of the churches and chanted songs. They were all arrested.
In another incident overnight Tuesday, a group of five Breslov entered Joseph's Tomb in the West Bank to pray without permission. Palestinian security forces opened fire, but no one was hurt.
A similar incident took place in September, when unknown perpetrators infiltrated a base in the Binyamin region and snuck their way to a mechanics workshop on site, where they slashed the tires and cut the cables of twelve army vehicles.
The settlers were galvanized into action by rumors that the eviction of several West Bank settlements was imminent. The Supreme Court ruled in September that the state must destroy Migron, the largest outpost in the West Bank. Forty-five families live in Migron, which has a total population of 280 people.
Read this article in Hebrew |
The LG G5 was officially unveiled at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona and has since become available to pre-order in the UK.
It seems LG making quite a large departure from the G3 and G4 handsets that came before, so is definitely one that should pique your interest if you're in the market for a new phone.
There's a new design, a shift in focus and a number of innovative features that LG hopes will help the G5 hit the big time. LG launched this phone saying it wasn't about the numbers. But it is about doing, it is about experiences, and it is about playing.
With that all in mind, here's everything you need to know about the new LG G5.
The LG G5 shifts the design away from LG's trusted plastics of past generations and now focuses on metal, launching its first metal unibody handset.
Much of the sculpting of previous handsets has also been ditched: there's no nature-inspired curve here. Instead there's a phone that measures 7.7mm thick depending on where you look. The volume controls move to the side, leaving a power button with embedded fingerprint scanner on the back.
READ: LG G5 review: Modular misfire?
But that's not to say this handset lacks character: there are soft curves to make it comfortable to hold, and a luscious curve at the top of the display that looks great.
The shape is likely to be the least talked about aspect of the LG G5 design though. Instead, the modular nature of the phone will be the hot topic. Depressing a small button on the side at the bottom releases the bottom section of the phone and lets you remove the battery. It's still all metal, but innovatively done.
It's that removable section that can be switched to add different modules, called Friends, to change the skills of the LG G5.
The LG G5 features a 5.3-inch display with 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, 554ppi. It's not the largest display around on a handset this size, but it's still offering a cracking resolution.
It's a IPS LCD panel, which LG says is important for the Always-on feature that the G5 offers. This will give you information on the display without you having to wake it up. If this was an AMOLED display, showing that information all the time would lead to burn out.
READ: LG G5 vs LG G4: What's the difference?
LG has redesigned this display however, so it offers a partial on/off state which it uses for the Always-on function. It's able to do so without using the G5's application processor, so it keeps power consumption to a minimum. LG says that the display will only use 0.8 per cent battery per hour in Always-on mode.
The LG G5 shakes up the camera dramatically, pairing a 16-megapixel sensor with a second 8-megapixel sensor. It retains the normal laser autofocusing, but looks to offer a range of new functions with this new pairing of cameras.
Firstly, the 16-megapixel camera will operate as a standard camera, taking your high resolution shots exactly as you'd expect. The second camera, however, has a 135-degree lens, so will take wide angle photos.
READ: LG Cam Pro: Get a grip on mobile photography
The idea is to let you easily fit more into a shot, without having to use a stitched panorama. It's ideal for things like city scenes or anywhere you want to get more into the picture.
It's not designed to compete with pro-spec wide angle shots, it's simply designed to be practical and fun. Switching from one camera to the other is easy within the new app.
There are also a range of additional functions offered that use both cameras. You can record video and stills at the same time, you can have a number of different framing effects and plenty more.
The LG G5 features the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 octa-core chipset with 4GB of RAM. There's 32GB on internal storage, along with a microSD card slot for expansion.
The LG G5 battery has a capacity of 2800mAh which isn't huge, but uniquely for a metal handset, you'll be able to switch that out yourself by removing the bottom of the phone and sticking in a new battery.
There's no wireless charging on offer, but you do get Quick Charge 3.0 and USB Type-C.
As we mentioned, there's a fingerprint scanner on the rear of the handset.
The big play with the G5 is in the domain of accessories. Using that removable bottom section, you'll be able to change the skill set of your phone by swapping modules.
There's the LG Cam Plus which is designed to enhance the camera experience. You simply remove the bottom of the phone and put the Cam Plus module in its place and you have a range of additional features. Firstly it expands the battery to 4000mAh for all-day shooting, but it also adds buttons and a better grip, for a more natural camera experience. It will cost £69.
The LG Hi-Fi Plus is a module developed in partnership with B&O Play, offering a 32-bit DAC and amp, designed to give you an audiophile experience from your handset. Again, you simply swap the bottom module of the phone for the Hi-Fi Pro module and you'll be ready for better quality audio. It will cost £149.
READ: LG 360 VR preview: A unique perspective on mobile VR
There are also external accessories. The LG 360 Cam is a 360 camera, using dual 13-megapixel cameras back to back. This wirelessly connects to the G5 so you can preview, save and share your 360-degree world. It captures both video and stills, perfect for making your own VR content and it is fully compatible with YouTube 360 video and Google Street View. The LG 360 Cam costs £199.
Talking of VR, there's also the LG 360 VR headset. This VR headset takes the form of glasses that you wear, connected to your phone via USB. It contains a display for each eye, offering 960 x 720 pixels each. For audio you can connect a set of headphones to the VR headset. It works with Google Cardboard and YouTube 360 video content, as well as LG offering its own hub within the headset. The LG 360 VR costs £199.
READ: LG 360 Cam: Capture your VR world
Finally, LG has announced the LG Rolling Bot. This cute ball carries a camera, speaker and mic and connects to your home Wi-Fi network. You can control it using your G5, driving around your house. It also contains a laser pointer, designed to entertain your cat or dog. There's no word on pricing for Rolling Bot.
The LG G5 launches on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, but heavily doctored as LG normally does.
The biggest change is the ditching of the apps tray, so now all your app shortcuts will appear on home pages. You still get to make folders and move things around, but there will no longer be a shortcut to tap to take you through to your selection of apps.
There will be added software support for the LG Friends, with a Manager app to take care of those connected devices.
The LG G5 was unveiled on 21 February 2016 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and it will be available from 1 April in the US and 8 April in UK.
Pre-orders have opened at many of the major networks and retailers, and several of them are offering unbelievable incentives to get you to sign up with them. Virgin Media is even giving away a 32-inch TV to customers to wait to buy the phone from its store on release date.
SIM-free, the handset will be available for £529 and in three colours, grey (Titan), gold and silver from multiple retailers. The following are if you want it on a contract - there are plenty of attractive deals on offer.
To celebrate the phone's connection with Bang & Olufsen, Carphone Warehouse is including a pair of B&O Play H3 in-ear headphones worth £149 with every pre-order while they last.
The high-street retailer is offering the phone across several networks, including EE, O2, Vodafone and its own iD provider. One of the most economical price plans is £37.49 a month for a 24-month plan and £29.99 upfront cost.
That'll get you 5G of 4G data a month and unlimited texts and minutes on EE.
Alternatively, you can get the monthly cost down to £26 a month if you pay £149.99 upfront. That gets you 3GB of monthly data and unlimited texts and minutes on Vodafone.
You can also get deals without upfront costs for the handset from £37.50 a month.
The grey, gold and silver versions of the LG G5 are all available.
FIND OUT MORE: Carphone Warehouse
Instead of Carphone Warehouse you can opt to go straight to the networks. EE, for example, is offering even more freebies. It ups the ante by giving away a similar set of B&O Play H3 in-ear headphones and adding a B&O Play S3 Bluetooth speaker - a combination set it claims is worth over £400.
It only ranges the grey (Titan) and gold handsets, but plans start at £29.99 a month for 24 months, with the handset costing £99.99 upfront.
That will get you 1GB of 4G data, 500 minutes of talktime and unlimited texts.
If you want to pay less upfront for the phone, the cheapest deal is £39.99 a month for 24 months with a £9.99 upfront cost. That gets you 4GB of data and unlimited texts and minutes.
Ordering the phone from EE will also get you Wi-Fi Calling and 4G calling, which means that voice calls will switch to data connections if the mobile signal is not strong enough. It will default to your Wi-Fi network at home, for example. You only get that when ordered directly from EE.
FIND OUT MORE: EE
If you're after a new telly and willing to wait until the 1 April release date, Virgin Media has a staggering deal for LG G5 purchases. It is giving away a free 32-inch LG HD TV when customers purchase the phone from that date.
The 32LH510 TV is worth £250 and will be available from launch day, so just hold off from pre-ordering if you want to snag one.
Freestyle price plans will start at £31 a month with no upfront fee for the LG G5 itself. That will include 250MB of 3G data.
Virgin Media's Freestyle plans also offer the ability to increase or decrease the monthly airtime tariff every month. And the Wi-Fi Buddy app will hook you up to thousands of secure Wi-Fi hotspots around the UK for free.
The phone will be available from Virgin Media's website and in-store from 1 April.
FIND OUT MORE: Virgin Media
Like Carphone Warehouse, Vodafone is giving away a free pair of B&O Play H3 in-ear heaphones with every pre-order on a Red or Red Value Bundle plan.
The first 2,000 customers who pre-order the phone will get the additional headphones, worth £149, and you need to get your order in by 31 March as the phone ships on 1 April, like with others.
Vodafone is offering the LG G5 in grey (Titan) and gold colours on 24-month price plans, starting at £29 a month with an upfront cost of £49 for 1GB of 4G data, 1,000 talk minutes and unlimited texts.
Alternatively, you can get the phone for a £9 upfront cost on a £34 a month tariff. That includes 2GB of data and unlimited minutes and texts.
Vodafone Red Value plans also include six-months of Netflix, Now TV, Spotify or Sky Sports and inclusive calls to the UK from Europe from £39 a month with a £9 upfront handset fee.
FIND OUT MORE: Vodafone
O2 are offering a similar deal to Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse, with a free pair of B&O Play H3 headphones with pre-orders, although this deal expires on 7 April, so you have to be fast.
You'll be able to get a 32GB handset with no upfront cost for £32 a month, scoring yourself 1GB of data.
FIND OUT MORE: O2
Like O2, Three is yet to reveal details about its LG G5 pre-orders or price plans.
We expect Three to post details on its webpage at three.co.uk soon. |
(Escondido, CA) – Stone Brewing still rocking…
…It was announced at the Craft Brewers Conference that 14 of the top 40 craft breweries were above 30% sales growth in early 2011 (per Victory Brewing). All indications are pointing to craft beer surpassing the startling growth numbers of 2010.
Stone is among those leading the charge. As a bonus, it looks like they won’t have to pull distribution anywhere (at least not out of necessity). Per a newsletter sent out this morning, “First quarter numbers are in and we are cruising at a lovely 42% increase. What, you ask? Will we have enough beer? All signs point to yes. We’re working around the clock to continue to meet the ever-escalating demand! So rest easy and sell lots of our beer.”
…As of today, Missouri is the 37th state to sell beer in Stone Brewing’s portfolio. Launch events take place around the Show Me State beginning Tuesday.
…A peek at distributor performance shows some interesting findings (bear in mind that Stone turns 15 years old this year):
Stone’s #1 wholesaler in terms of case equivalents sold (an industry-standard measure that accounts for both on-premise and off-premise sales) is Ben E. Keith in Texas. If I’m interpreting this blog post correctly, only two beers in Stone’s portfolio were available from 2001 to September 2008: Stone IPA and Arrogant Bastard Ale. Much of that growth has happened in just 2.5 years with the expansion into new territories in Texas and the rest of Stone’s product line funneling down to the Lonestar State.
After just one year in Chicago, Windy City Distribution is already the brewery’s 6th-ranked wholesaler in CEs sold.
Click Wholesale in Washington is the fastest-growing wholesaler for Stone (among those selling at least 14k CEs annually).
…Social Media Coordinator, Jacob McKean, noted that the delays with Imperial Russian Stout Classic and Belgo Anise Imperial Russian Stout have more to do with bureaucratic red tape (my words, not his) more than anything else. Labels have been approved at the federal level but the feds must also approve a statement of process for each beer. Also taking up time in this process are approvals at the state level, wholesaler pre-orders, printing and labeling. The newsletter made mention of the possibility of the two beers not making it out until early June but the current release date remains 5/31.
2011 Specialty Release Dates: |
Hello! I did a signing in L.A. at the Exxxotica convention last weekend and wanted to share some of the pictures with you. Unfortunately, I wasn’t wearing a superhero costume, so hopefully you cosplay fans can forgive me, LOL. Instead I was wearing a body hugging dress that, erm..., showed off my curves.
The first day I was signing at the Penthouse booth to represent my being Danni’s Hard Drive Girl of the Month for August. The second day I was signing at the Club Spotlight booth.I also took part in a seminar of stopping piracy in adult entertainment. That was pretty interesting. They had me on to talk about my not safe for work website and how I try to reduce the illegal downloading of the videos on it.There were a lot of my hot girlfriends signing there like Allie Haze, Andy San Dimas, Lexi Belle, Chyna, Belladonna, Teagan Presley, Charlie Lane, Phoenix Marie, Misti Dawn, Breanne Benson, Kirsten Price and Ann Marie Rios. Allie was dressed as Princes Leia from the Star Wars adult video parody she’s starring in. Which explains the picture of me and Darth Vader, LOL.Have a look and LMK what you think, here or on Twitter
Tanya
xx |
To hear Telltale tell the tale, The Walking Dead wasn’t built to be a wildly acclaimed game of the year award magnet. A good game? Yes. A great story? Clearly. But not a bowling ball catapult into zombified super stardom. With all eyes suddenly on the once-unassuming developer, “that Fables game” has an incredibly tough act to follow. But The Wolf Among Us is a) about a gruff, nicotine-addicted werewolf detective and b) not about gazing sullenly out the window while protesting, “No, it’s just the rain/my allergies/this waterfall we’re standing under.” It takes place in a mad fantasy reality where anything can happen – except, um, the undead apocalypse. It’s maybe a bit different. So, where does Walking Dead’s DNA end and Wolf Among Us begin? What about Fables-specific issues like mystery-solving, a pre-established main character, wolfed-out combat, and a somewhat controversial creator? I spoke with Telltale president Kevin Bruner about all of that and more.
RPS: The Wolf Among Us takes place in pseudo-modern times, but under a premise that’s far more surreal. Walking Dead was at least grounded in…
Bruner: Real people in a zombie apocalypse.
RPS: Whereas this is a lot more outlandish and crazy. How are you embracing and leveraging that? What are the biggest changes?
Bruner: In a lot of ways I think Fables is the hardest thing we’ve ever done to date. In Walking Dead, Lee and Clem were inventions. They could be things that were convenient for the game world. Their backgrounds, their personalities, the way they react to things. We could craft those characters in a way that was fun to role-play as and fun to interact with. With Fables, you play Bigby Wolf. He has to be Bigby Wolf. Snow has to be Snow. The world has a stricter set of rules than Kirkman’s zombie world. The role that you play, as a kind of detective and the sheriff of Fabletown, isn’t as life and death as “I am protecting Clementine from being eaten by zombies.” The bar is set a lot higher for us as far as how we make all that work.
[pullquote]I think Fables is the hardest thing we’ve done to date.[/pullquote]
But we really have embraced it. We’ve come up with new storytelling techniques. We call it the evolution of choice. A big thing in Walking Dead was going where the story took you, and we would throw these choices at you, but you couldn’t really determine what was going to happen next. Whereas in Fables, the choices you make in the moment are all there, like in Walking Dead, but there are places where it branches timeline-wise.
Two events are happening at the same time and you have to choose which event you’re going to interact with. When you get there, you make the same kind of in-the-moment choices, but there’s stuff happening somewhere else at the same time. Not only do you get to choose what to say and how to treat people, but you also get to choose when and where you’re saying it. If you go one way, people will be like, “Where were you? We were over here and we could have really used you.” You have to explain why you weren’t there. These are all new role-playing aspects that we’re using as tools to help us stay within the bounds where Bigby Wolf can be Bigby Wolf and the Fables universe can stay consistent.
RPS: Is that how you’re handling the issue of ownership of a pre-established character? Like you said, Lee was your own invention. Bigby’s an animal of an entirely different (and literal) sort.
Bruner: It’s interesting. He’s the sheriff, right? Your first instinct is that it should be a crime-solving game. We’ve done a bunch of forensics games at Telltale before. Where we landed was, he’s the sheriff of Fabletown, and there’s a crime, and it’s a story about a sheriff figuring out what’s going on with a crime, but the gameplay isn’t [necessarily crime].
That’s the backdrop. That’s what happens. But the gameplay is about relationships. It’s about how Bigby and Snow start to come closer together. There, in canon, Snow isn’t the deputy mayor yet. You can see how Crane treats her. You can start to form some opinions about… Bigby can express to Snow, “Well, don’t do that,” or “I’m gonna go and kick his ass.” Those kinds of things. We let you explore that level of detail, in the context of this narrative of this crime and this event that happens in Fabletown. That’s the backbone that you ride along. The gameplay is about something different.
It’s not like an L.A. Noire crime-solving game. But the story is about investigating and interviewing and things like that.
RPS: Aside from those moments where you can choose to go to one event or another, is this story by and large fairly linear? Or is there more exploration to it?
Bruner: There’s more non-linear areas in each episode than there are in Walking Dead, but certainly early on in the episodes, they all end in the same place that you can share with your friends.
RPS: You recently mentioned that Telltale sort of “begrudgingly” adds adventure game-y elements to its stories. You’re trying to,er, tell tales first and foremost. Compared to Walking Dead, is this even less puzzle-heavy?
Bruner: Yeah, I’d say it’s less puzzle-heavy, but that’s because the core narrative, being a mystery, has more intrigue built into it. I think some of the same questions that a puzzle, in a more traditional adventure games, might pose in your head, like “How am I going to do this?”, it’s more like, “What does this information that I have right now mean?” In some ways it’s like a whodunit kind of thing. I think you feel a lot of the same things you might feel if there were more puzzles, but it’s not a puzzle game, in the same way. I think it’s mentally challenging in the same way as a puzzle game, but that’s more because of the whodunit nature of the tropes.
RPS: How does the whodunit part function? Can you make a wrong call? Can you accuse someone who’s entirely innocent?
Bruner: A big part of the choices that you make is how you interpret the information that you know right now. That’s one thing that’s going to be a lot of fun. The game certainly isn’t set up in a way where it rewards or punishes you for making a call. If you say, “I think all the events that I saw mean this, or this other thing,” it just allows you to express that. The world comes back and says, “Well, if it means that, then this follows.”
But it’s very non-judgmental. The story allows all that space to exist. It feeds that kind of detective story whodunit intrigue. Okay, you saw this, what does it mean? What we want is for you to say, “I don’t know what it means.” Narratively you don’t have enough information to know exactly what it means. You could say, “I think it might mean this,” and then the story will start telling itself. If that’s what you think it means, we’ll give you a bit of information that reinforces that, or maybe a bit of information that will make you question that, and we’ll take it from there. I think that makes it really engaging. It feels cool.
RPS: Bigby is also, at heart, a gigantic wolf monster. He fights, right? How are you approaching combat in this one? I’m guessing you’ve evolved it quite a bit from Walking Dead.
Bruner: Yeah, the fight sequences are completely over the top. They’re fables, right? They’re hard to kill. One of the things we didn’t want to do was make it feel like it turned into a superhero game. When fights break out, we want you to get excited. You feel the fight coming and you have the controller in your hand, and then the fight gets so over the top that you’re like, “Whoa, hold on, that’s not exactly what I was going for there.”
Bigby, when he becomes the wolf, he’s out of control. We want to convey that to the player. The level of control and the things that you can do when Bigby is the wolf aren’t exactly the expected things. You’ll be like, “Yeah, I’m totally going to be a big badass right now and punch that guy in the face.” So you punch that guy in the face, but you punch his face off. There’s blood everywhere. It’s totally brutal. As a gamer, we want you to be like, “OK, that’s not exactly what I meant. I meant I wanted him to be a big badass hero. Then I obliterated this guy in a horrible way.” That’s kind of like Bigby being out of control and when he wolfs out, he doesn’t always do [what you’re expecting].
[pullquote]Bigby’s a wolf – not a superhero. He’s being his DNA, what’s inside him.[/pullquote]
He goes a little overboard most of the time. It’s a reflection of the Fables thing. They’re not Superman and Batman fighting. He’s not a kung fu master. He’s a wolf. It’s very animalistic. He’s not being a superhero – he’s being his DNA, what’s inside him.
RPS: With the combat, how direct is the control for the player? Is it just a few little QTE button inputs, or are you fully moving him around?
Bruner: It’s cinematic combat. It’s kind of QTE-ish. More like what we did in Walking Dead. It’s not like an Arkham Asylum kind of combat, where you can target people and things like that. The sequences are scripted in a way so that they’re timed and dramatic. You shouldn’t feel like you’re getting scored. There’s not a power meter or anything like that. It’s still very cinematic. We want to be telling stories all the time. Coming back and putting a power meter up, for us, is not narratively the right thing to do.
RPS: But I saw in another report that you can get beaten up, and people will actually react to your battered appearance.
Bruner: Yeah, you can succeed to varying levels when you’re in a fight. You can lose fights. Sometimes you can intentionally lose a fight, if you think that’s the right thing to do. Then, if your face is all beat up and bruised and you go back to Snow, she might be like, “What the hell happened to you? I thought you were a tough guy?” Or she might say, “What the hell happened to you? C’mere, let me warm up to you a little bit, get a little closer.” You can kind of use the fighting narratively as a tool if you want to. That’s more what getting beat up is about.
RPS: It’s interesting that you’re approaching combat from the narrative perspective first and foremost. Combat is one of gaming’s main means of interaction, but gratifying violence is always the end goal. What’s it like reinventing a very common game trope for an entirely different purpose?
Bruner: It’s pretty hard. How do we do it cinematically? How do we look at really great fights in the movies and more linear mechanisms? Why are they compelling? Why do you care what’s happening in a fight? We’ve been working on it all through Jurassic Park, all through the zombie attacks and the different activities you do in Walking Dead, and I think Fables is our next iteration of it.
But the fighting in Fables is definitely a result of different combat prototypes that we’ve done over the years. It’s hard, because in games, in skill-based gaming, you have arena fighting games, which is all about dexterity and memory and button combos. They’re really compelling to play. The line gets really close between video game fighting, for skill-based rewards, and a fight in a story-based game that is narratively important. That’s a really fine line to tread, a difficult line to tread.
RPS: For all its fantastically brutal emotional and narrative beats, Walking Dead didn’t look so great. It moved really robotically, and the art style kind of clashed with everything else. Wolf Among Us is quite a looker in still shots, though. Is fluidity and animation getting a similar treatment?
Bruner: We get pretty maniacal about making things look the way that they’re supposed to look when we get into various IP. We have what we call a “living ink” look for the game. When we released the first round of screenshots, there was a lot of, “Holy crap, is that concept art?” It’s the game. The game really looks like that when it’s moving. It’s not cel-shading in the more traditional cartoon cel-shading. It’s a very flat look that looks more like inked comic books.
We’ve invested a lot in some technology to make it look like a comic book, like a newsprint comic. Then we keep iterating on what our actors can do, trying to make our animations look better. But we’re always challenged by the amount of content that we do. Every game is like trying to do an animated feature film, a five- or six-hour animated movie on a very small budget in a very short amount of time. We have a lot of tricks up our sleeves to do that. We keep trying to get better at it. But on this one, I think the art direction is very bold, very cool. The overall look that comes out is very unique. I haven’t seen anything that quite goes to the extent of looking like a regular printed comic the way Fables does.
RPS: Are seasons of Wolf Among Us and Walking Dead going to run concurrently, or will it be one and the other alternating?
Bruner: We’re not announcing any release dates for anything other than Fables right now, but certainly we’re gearing up to have multiple games or shows running simultaneously. We’ll have an episode of one thing coming out at the same time as an episode of another thing, which we’ve never done before. We’re definitely getting prepared for that.
You talked about the technical problems. One of the things that we want to make sure of is that, before we get two games going simultaneously, we get one game going without people having saved game problems and technical issues like that. That’s our immediate goal, to get Fables out there, get it clean, feel confident that if we have two of these things going simultaneously, we have the bandwidth to support it properly. We feel pretty confident that we’re there, but the proof’s in the pudding. We’ll have to wait until Fables launches.
RPS: I’ve only recently gotten into Fables myself, but I keep hearing of controversy attached to its creator. He’s said some things about Israel apparently, and he even alluded to it in the comic once. But do you think that stuff’s really an issue – especially for your game and your story?
Bruner: I don’t think our story is overly conservative or has any kind of personal political slant to it or anything like that. Bill [Willingham] has been great to work with. I’ve heard similar things, but in our interactions with him, he doesn’t seem like he has an agenda or anything like that. He just seems like he wants to tell a great story with these characters.
RPS: It’s always an interesting thing to see, when people just will not remove a creator’s work from the creator themselves. In some cases it’s maybe warranted. Case in point: Orson Scott Card. But is that at all a concern for you guys?
Bruner: It hasn’t really come up so far. Fables is a comic book. Fables doesn’t have a TV show. The really hardcore Fables audience is still relatively small. We feel like one of the things that we’re trying to do is to get a lot more people introduced to Fables. So I think everyone’s aware that, for a lot of people, the Fables game is going to be their first contact with the franchise. We feel like we have a lot of heavy lifting to do, just about Fabletown and the Mundies and all that.
When we get to that level of, “Is there an agenda to it or not?” you have to get pretty deep into the IP. Most of our effort is focusing on people who are new to the franchise and explaining why these fairy tales live in New York and how long they’ve been there and what the relationship is with the mundane world. We have an enormous amount of expositional ground-level work to do.
RPS: Especially relative to The Walking Dead, because even if it’s its own universe, it’s still like, “This is the world. Now there are zombies in it. That’s pretty much it.”
[pullquote]We’re gearing up to have multiple games or shows running simultaneously.[/pullquote]
Bruner: If you say it’s a zombie story, you have a big head start, whereas the Fables universe is really sophisticated and really complicated. Getting people up to speed with enough of it that they understand how the game is working has been a real challenge. We’ve deliberately focused on just a few aspects of the world to start with, because if you try to go wide and explain everything – which we did contemplate at one point, having a big speech at the beginning of the game where we figured out a way to dump as much information as possible, like at the Remembrance Day festival or something like that – [it’s too obvious]. We’ll talk about the Mundies. We’ll talk about glamours. We’ll talk about how they got to Fabletown. And we’ll leave the rest of it for episode two [laughs].
RPS: Personally, I think that’s probably the better way to go. Usually, when there’s an exposition dump, most people can pick up on it. People are pretty story-savvy.
Bruner: Yeah. We want to be clever about it. The Remembrance Day is a great time to talk about the past. Can we squeeze that into two minutes and feel like people understood what they were doing, though? We explored that for a little while, and we said, “No, let’s just start small.” Start small, start intimate, try to get people engaged in what they’re doing, and let the story get bigger as it goes along.
RPS: For better or worse, I think all eyes are on you right now, because Walking Dead was such a success. Admittedly, the follow-up to Walking Dead is Walking Dead season two. But a lot of people will look at Wolf and say, “That’s the follow-up to Walking Dead,” because it’s the next thing sequentially. When you have that kind of comparison, how do you manage it? How do you manage the fact that a lot of people are going to be coming to your game because they liked The Walking Dead?
Bruner: You do two things. You continue to do the best work you can possibly do, and then you run in the corner and hide as much as possible [laughs]. It’s tough coming on the heels of such a successful and an important game to people, saying, “Hey, do you want to try this other thing?” We think a lot of people who played Walking Dead will really like Fables. It may not be for all of them, because it’s a different context. Maybe some people who never played Walking Dead, Fables will be their thing.
But we believe that Fables is the right kind of world for us to play with. It works really well for the kind of games that we want to make. We didn’t know Walking Dead was going to be what it was, so hopefully, as long as we stick to our guns and the same things we thought were important with Walking Dead… If we’re doing that with Fables, hopefully it will resonate the same way with people.
Check back tomorrow for part two, which digs deep into Telltale’s super-duper secret (and very interesting) experimental projects. Complex non-combat AI, being able to say whatever you want to characters, atypical games that bridge the gap between seasons – those sorts of things. Also, we talk about why King’s Quest ended up falling by the wayside. |
Advertisement
In one giant leap for robotkind, NASA will send the world’s first humanoid robot to space later this year.
The humanoid, called Robonaut 2 or R2, is set to launch on space shuttle Discovery on 1 November, 2010, and travel to the International Space Station, where it will become a permanent resident and work alongside humans as a robotic helper.
The Robonaut features dexterous arms and hands that can manipulate objects and tools just like humans do. Astronauts will mount the robot on a fixed pedestal inside one of the space station labs and use it to perform tasks like flipping switches, cleaning air filters, and holding tools.
The main goal is to find out how manipulation robots behave in space -- and also give crew members a second pair of hands. NASA hopes the experience will allow it to upgrade the robot in the future, so it would be able to support astronauts in more complex tasks, including repairs and scientific missions inside and outside the ISS.
"It’s the first time ever in the history of the planet that we’ve decided to launch a humanoid robot into space," says Nic Radford, the Robonaut deputy project manager. "It’s been an amazing experience."
The robot can perform tasks autonomously or under remote control, or a mix of both. Astronauts on the station will operate the robot using a laptop. The Robonaut can also be "joysticked" and directly controlled from Earth, though there's a delay of several seconds for commands to reach the space station.
Most of the time the robot will receive instructions designating a task and carry it through autonomously. But NASA has tested a sensor suit that a human operator can wear to transmit motions to the robot. Eventually the Robonaut could become a powerful telepresence system for space exploration.
And why a human-shaped robot? The advantage of a humanoid design, Radford says, is its ability to interact with the same exact technologies that the crew can.
“Space shuttles and stations were made with humans in mind,” he explains. “The technology we’ve invested in over the years requires five fingers and two arms to operate. So the humanoid system with fine points of dexterity is a logical design as opposed to redesigning the shuttle interface for a non-humanoid robot.”
The Robonaut, which looks a bit like Star Wars' Boba Fett, is about 150 kilograms [330 pounds]. Built primarily with aluminum with steel parts, it carries over 350 sensors and has a total of 42 degrees of freedom.
Each arm is about 80 centimeters long and can hold 9 kg [20 lb] in Earth's gravity. Each hand has 12 degrees of freedom: 4 degrees of freedom in the thumb, 3 degrees of freedom each in the index and middle fingers, and 1 each in the other fingers.
Behind its helmet visor are four visible light cameras: two provide stereo vision for the robot and remote operators, and two work as auxiliary cameras. A fifth infrared camera is housed in the mouth area for depth perception.
Because the head is full of cameras, the robot's computer system -- 38 PowerPC processors -- are housed inside the torso. Or as NASA puts it, "R2 thinks with its stomach -- literally."
This version of the robot has no legs or wheels. It's 101 cm [3 feet, 4 inches] tall from waist to head. “From the waist up he looks quite like me,” Radford jokes. “Big biceps and very muscular.”
Working with GM over the past three years, NASA originally designed Robonaut 2 as a prototype to be used on Earth so engineers could understand what would be needed to eventually send a robot to space. But when mission managers saw the robot early this year, they were so impressed they decided to send it to the space station. The Robonaut team was given six months to get the robot ready.
Here's an overview of the project:
In a second phase of the Robonaut project, at an undecided date, NASA will be making the unit mobile using a leg-type system, giving it the ability to move around inside the ISS. The third phase will feature a robot that will perform missions outside the space station.
The Robonaut is also a part of Project M, which wants to put a humanoid robot on the moon in 1,000 days -- beating Japan’s proposed goal of 2015. Even if the effort, which Radford describes as "a quick, hot burn project," is not successful, it will likely develop useful technologies.
It seems the future of space exploration will surely include advanced telepresence robots with expert operators controlling them safely from Earth. But Radford sees the robots being used in cooperation with humans, not replacing them completely. “They are just another tool in a human explorer’s toolbox,” says Radford.
“This is the dawning of a different era,” he concludes. “Ubiquitous robots that are in and around us, doing everything. We represent the beginning of that.”
As for Robonaut, it's currently cocooned inside a foam-cushioned aluminum frame called the Structural Launch Enclosure to Effectively Protect Robonaut, or SLEEPR for short, where it's awaiting to rocket to space. Bon voyage, Robonaut!
Watch Robonaut getting ready for the big trip:
Images and videos: NASA |
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Australian ABC, a government news organisation, reports that 100s of scientists who attended a 4 day conference in Australia’s capital Canberra last week are all sad about what we are doing to our planet. But there is something we can do to help.
Climate change: Scientists sad, frustrated as extreme weather becomes the new norm By Riley Stuart Call it fatigue, call it frustration, but some of the best brains in the country are fed up. Australia’s leading climate scientists joined their New Zealand counterparts in Canberra for a four-day conference last week, but dark clouds lingered over their discussions. The theme of the conference was “Australasian weather, climate and oceans: past, present and future”. And global warming was never far from the guests’ lips. “There is definitely what you would call ‘climate fatigue’ on the part of scientists,” said Dr Andrew Glikson, from the Australian National University’s School of Archaeology and Anthropology. “There were hundreds of scientists there, and my impression is while we continue to do the science as best we can, there is a fatigue when it comes to arguing in public. …
Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-15/climate-change-blamed-for-australia-extreme-weather-events/8268692
Will Stefan, one of the authors of The Anthropocene Equation, a claim that 0.7C / century is exceptional, attended the event. Apparently he was sad as well.
I understand how deeply these people care, which is why I have decided to do something to help.
Please sign my change.org petition, Help Climate Scientists avoid Personal CO2 Emissions.
When climate scientists have full time access to world class video conferencing technology, they will be able to avoid attending all those climate conferences in person. Climate scientists will be able to avoid the mind numbing guilt they must currently feel about their personal carbon footprints, as they soar above our heads flying on CO2 belching jet aircraft to attend all those climate conferences.
Please take the time to show you care. Sign the Petition, and if you have time, leave a personal message of support for our hard working jetset climate community.
Don’t forget to send the petition to your friends, so they can sign as well.
Advertisements
Share this: Print
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Reddit |
When you bring high level strikers under one roof together, you’re bound to get something spectacular in every event. That’s what GLORY kickboxing presents to the world currently: the biggest stage for kickboxers. Thankfully I have a friend there that green lit my breakdowns.
Joe “Bazooka” Valtellini’s High Kick
The first person I wanted to feature is Joe “Bazooka” Valtellini. He’s unique because of his rise and his story. While working as a full-time special education teacher, he also pursued his world championship dreams. As an amateur, he was undefeated under modified Muay Thai rules: 11-0.
Born in the rich Muay Thai community of Toronto, he studied under one of the best–Paul Minhas. Minhas had long been in the K-1 and MMA arena and being the head coach of Gary Goodridge. Minhas also studied under Ajahn Suchart of the famous Siam #1, a well known school that’s home to North American Muay Thai stars like Clifton Brown, Matt Embree, and Simon Marcus.
However, due to the combat sports laws in his province, Bazooka had difficulty finding amateur fights. With a short amateur career, he’d turned pro in 2010, fighting under the “Friday Night Fights” Muay Thai promotion in New York. There, he defeated highly ranked North American Nak Muays, all with t(ko). That moved him to fight under Lion Fight, North America’s biggest Muay Thai promotion. He faced against a very experienced Muay Thai fighter, and as Friday Night Fights is not full Muay Thai rules, it was a difficult jump. Bazooka lost for the first time via decision.
After one more full rules Muay Thai bout, he joined Glory, and took on fighters with 10 times his experience. With dynamite punches and kicks, he again finished all of them. He was given Murat Direkci on his first fight–a European champion with over 90 fights and a 90% finishing rate. This fight is a must-watch, see how composed Bazooka was with just 8 professional fights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyVVQjbVEtM
Fight Against the Greatest Karate Kickboxer
On his 4th fight, he met Raymond Daniels, whom many consider to be the greatest American Kickboxer (full-contact karate) of this era. Daniels was undefeated, and no one before Bazooka knew how to deal with him.
The answer was ring cutting, pressure, and low kicks. A bit ironic that Duke Roufus was commentating this, knowing exactly how to deal with Raymond Daniels. It’s been a long way since “The Legendary Fight That Changed History” between Changpuek Kiatsongkrit and his older brother Rick Roufus.
Tournament Finale: Nieky Holtzken
This advanced Bazooka to the finals for a world championship match with Nieky Holtzken, whom many consider to be the best kickboxer competing today. It was a war and competitive match, but Bazooka was down on points. In the last round, he’d bite down and go out on his shield. To the world, he showed tremendous heart, and the fight was just stopped seconds before the bell could ring. Duke Roufus could barely contain his excitement during this bout.
Marc De Bonte: Another Shot at the Title
As the champion, Holtzken would get injured, and Marc De Bonte would capture the title in his place. It was then that Valtellini got another shot at the title. This time, he took home the gold.
Fighting for Glory Documentary
If you want to see a beautiful combat sports documentary, be sure to check this one out. Look behind the scenes on the fastest rising kickboxer and how he captured the prestigious world title in essentially just 6 kickboxing fights.
Great martial artists are also great human beings–it’s unfortunate that Valtellini had to halt competition due to injuries. Unlike MMA where there are big media companies and organizations sharing their story, kickboxers who are equally great athletes do not get their legacy passed on. It is up to the fans to show support to them and make sure it does.
Podcast with Muay Thai Guy
Be sure to subscribe to my mailing list in order to get a sneak peak and release dates on my e-book. My Nak Muay Nation partner, Sean “Muay Thai Guy” Fagan was fortunate to do a private session with Bazooka and great fight knowledge was shared. I have since then written an in-depth discussion of the ideas surrounding it. With the e-book, many more legends and their fight ideology will be featured and discussed.
Comments
comments |
This week at the House of Lords the Road Danger Reduction Forum presented an award to West Midlands Police—in particular Pc Mark Hodson and Pc Stephen Hudson—for their Operation Close Pass initiative, which targets drivers who pass too close to people cycling when overtaking them. I was invited along to see them receive the well-deserved award and hear more about the details of the operation, as well as about how it has been adapted for use in Camden.
The award
This was the first time in its 23 year history that the RDRF has given a genuine award: the sole previous occasion was a wooden spoon in 2012, in recognition of the West Sussex Gazette’s use of the phrase “a collision involving a car and a tree”. (Personally, I’m not sure that constitutes even a blip on the contemporary scale of dreadful reporting.) And this is some measure of the esteem in which Operation Close Pass is held: it was described by Cycling UK as “the best cyclist safety initiative by any police force, ever” and I’ve yet to see anyone dispute that. Importantly in this context, it aligns well with the RDRF’s underlying principle of danger reduction at source and quite explicitly steps away from common misconceptions about the extent to which people on pedal cycles or on foot can prevent themselves from being hit by other people in motor vehicles.
Motivation
One crucial aspect of the conception of Operation Close Pass was careful consideration of evidence beforehand. WMP looked at the STATS19 data for the area and came to some interesting conclusions, which are summarised in a seminal blog post, “Junction Malfunction and a New Dawn” (if you’ve not read it, you absolutely should, now—it is something of a tectonic shift in aligning the police’s view with a number of points that most cycling and walking campaigners have been making for many years).
The basic point is that the evidence suggests that, in terms of public harm cause by cycling casualty collisions, little is due to environmental factors, little is due to the behaviour of people on bikes, and much is due to behaviour of people in cars. This is unsurprising when you consider the principle of road danger: the cause of it is not so much poor behaviour itself, but the combination of poor behaviour and a vehicle which allows that behaviour to pose great danger. It’s why we let children ride bikes but not drive cars.
The major casualty risk manifests itself at junctions by way of drivers’ failure to observe people on bikes. As Pc Hudson says in his blog:
75% of KSI [killed or seriously injured] RTCs [road traffic collisions] involving cyclists in the West Midlands from 2010 to 2014 occurred within 20 metres of a junction, involving a cyclist and another vehicle. Further analysis (I won’t bore you with the figures, tables etc.) showed that the majority of KSI RTCs in the West Midlands involving cyclists occur when a car has pulled out of a junction in front of a cyclist that is mid- junction because the car driver has failed to spot the cyclist.
So why the focus on close passing?
One reason is that it is something which can, unlike poor observation at junctions, be detected and proven relatively easily (using video evidence) and without waiting for a collision to have occurred. Another is that it cements in drivers’ minds the need to look for people on bikes, which may well improve observation at junctions. The fact that this is a covert operation is important: WMP understand that the feeling of possibly being caught is the most powerful aspect of traffic enforcement in terms of behaviour change, and key to that is the sensation that being caught could happen anywhere. But the third reason is perhaps the most interesting.
If you ask anyone who cycles what they are most concerned about, the majority will say “close passes by drivers” (in the blog it is cited as “the most common complaint we receive from cyclists”). If you ask anyone who has given up cycling why they gave it up, many will say the same, as will many when asked why they never even started cycling. Certainly WMP seem to have found that to be the case, and this has influenced the prioritisation of the operation: the aim is in no small part to foster an environment in which more people feel able to cycle.
But how does this fall within the remit of the police, who are there primarily to reduce crime rates and reduce public harm? Even though it’s a commendable objective for all sorts of reasons that are in the wider public interest, getting more people on bikes may not be an obvious police goal.
I asked Pc Hodson about this and his explanation was refreshingly straightforward.
In any situation where the general public feel unable to do certain things because of fear arising through the behaviour of others, the police would be involved. To use a somewhat stereotyped analogy: if elderly people felt unable to walk to the local shops on their own because of groups of youths behaving threateningly, the police would apply the law in order to reduce the threatening behaviour and create a safe environment where people felt safe doing what they wanted to do. Tackling one group’s imposition of fear on others, inhibiting their ability to conduct themselves freely, is a community policing matter. The fact that it happens to involve the highway is really of no significance: it merely means a different piece of legislation is referred to when dealing with the threatening behaviour.
So how does the operation work?
Operation Close Pass
The operation, which has been deployed nine times so far, involves an officer cycling in plain clothes on a bike equipped with both front and rear facing cameras. When they experience a close pass, two uniformed officers further up the road (one on foot, one on a motorcycle) are notified and will pull the driver over and explain why they’ve been stopped.
The explanation is not merely “a quick word”. It is a 15 minute demonstration of how and where people should cycle (ie well away from the kerb) and the dangers not just of close passes, but of passes at particularly problematic locations such as at pinch points, on pedestrian crossings and when approaching parked vehicles. In all, 130 drivers have so far been through this process and WMP report that only one of those reacted negatively to it (note that the police frequently cite The Attitude Test: fail this and you’re suddenly rather more likely to be prosecuted than educated).
The explanation involves a few props, central to which is a mat which shows a road layout with distances marked on it. WMP were keen to point out that these distances are illustrative only and that the discussion is really about more humanly recognisable metrics: the width of a car door and the length of an outstretched arm are both used to illustrate the discussion. It’s worth noting that the officers unanimously saw the idea of a distance-based passing law as actively disadvantageous, on the basis that it actually provides more opportunity to undermine a prosecution. Much mention was made of the standards expected in the driving test: drivers are, for instance, required to leave sufficient clearance for a fully open car door when passing stationary vehicles. Driving test faults are equated to failure to meet the standard that is “expected of a competent and careful driver”, as specified by the definition of careless driving. This is, essentially, the yardstick: would you pass your test with driving like that?
The operation has also brought numerous other offences to light, including several seatbelt violations and instances of mobile phone use, but also one of a driver who—even with his prescription glasses—could only read a number plate at 7.5 metres. Unsurprisingly, his licence was immediately revoked before he became the next Ronald Finney. But this shows that the operational model is not excessively specific: it is a good way to catch a variety of dangerous behaviours. This can, of course, include people jumping red lights on bikes, or riding at night without lights.
Resourcing
One of the key operational features of the initiative is that it is cost neutral. Which is not to say that it is zero cost, but that it is simply a new area on which to focus existing resources: there is no additional spend on either materials or manpower, and no reduction in visible policing. The mat used for education was paid for by Birmingham Cycle Revolution (which also provides the lights given out by WMP to unlit cyclists; it is part of Birmingham City Council which has a stated aim of seeing 10% of all journeys being made by pedal cycle by 2033).
However, it’s possible to adapt Close Pass to reduced levels of resourcing. The approach taken by Sgt Nick Clarke in Camden is an example of that: it uses no mat and it is deployed on a relatively opportunistic basis, at times when other demands on the officers on the street are low. It also serves as a demonstration that whilst an understanding of cycling is important, there is no specific need for traffic police: in Camden it is very much a community policing operation.
As Pc Hodson remarked, the lowest-resource option would be for a plain clothes officer to cycle around with a pair of cameras on their bike, process the footage and then send out NIPs to anyone shown to be driving below the expected standard.
Of course, there is an even lower-resource option. There are plenty of people already cycling around with cameras on their bikes: the public. And, on this subject, WMP made some illuminating comments. The most notable was that everything they’d received via public video submissions was indeed evidence of prosecutable driving. The public, they said, appeared to use the same criterion that they did when considering whether to take action: simply, “was this obviously bad driving?”
All of this becomes particularly interesting when one starts looking at some other forces.
Such as Hampshire.
Outdated policing
West Midlands’ approach to the dangers faced by those on pedal cycles could scarcely be more different to that of Hampshire. While WMP are spending a few hours every so often enforcing safe passing and explaining why people ride bikes in a certain way and so on, Hampshire Police are out collaring the people on bikes.
Recently they staged three such operations, stopping 480 cyclists. Of these, 34 were dealt with for failing to display lights, which rather implies that the remaining 446 were cycling perfectly legally. A reminder: Operation Close Pass only stops drivers who have committed an offence, it doesn’t stop 13 law-abiding road users for each offending one.
So… Three recent @HantsPolRoads operations, stopping 446 people cycling legally. But a real reluctance to address bad driving. pic.twitter.com/r0cdIMprAz — Bez (@beztweets) October 31, 2016
But notice the other part of that tweet above: Hampshire “will only pursue allegations of poor driving if the circumstances meet the legal definition of dangerous driving or if the driver is a prolific or repeat offender.”
Compounding this, Hampshire Police’s definition of dangerous driving is rather interesting. Take a look at the CPS guidelines and Hampshire’s own guidelines and spot the difference. In case it’s not obvious, let me help you out.
So, in Hampshire, several factors fall into place to prevent action being taken against close passing. You can’t get an offence dealt with if it’s not committed a repeat offender, and since offences aren’t dealt with it’s kind of hard to become a repeat offender. You can’t get an offence dealt with if it’s not dangerous driving, and since close passing has been curiously erased from the guidelines for dangerous driving it’s kind of hard to get close passing seen as an offence. It’s quite a neat closed loop.
The justification that Hampshire Police give is that “we only have limited resources at our disposal”.
Of course they’re limited resources. All resources are limited. West Midlands Police also have limited resources.
But the operations stopping cyclists evidently involve multiple officers and, given that on average 160 cyclists are “engaged with” (as Hampshire euphemistically phrase it) each time, they clearly aren’t brief deployments either. It’s quite obvious that per deployment the operation requires a similar level of resourcing to WMP’s Operation Close Pass as it has been run thus far, notwithstanding the fact that Close Pass can be run with significantly less resource.
The issue is not the finite nature of resources, it is that those resources have been deployed to do other things: namely handing out fluorescent beanie hats to cyclists.
This is a straight choice in how to deploy resources: you could have Operation Close Pass for the same resource as consumed by the hat giveaway.
Hampshire are not even reviewing video evidence, the letter makes clear. The least resource-intensive distillation of Operation Close Pass is not even on Hampshire’s to-do list. When WMP can not only confidently state that near enough every video they receive shows prosecutable driving, but consistently take action as a result, Hampshire’s stance is made to look shameful.
#OpClosepass has now reached 78 prosecutions using 3rd party footage, here's a couple of the latest #GiveSpaceBeSafe #vulnerableroadusers pic.twitter.com/NjsERi7wUY — CMPG – Road Policing (@Trafficwmp) October 21, 2016
78 prosecutions during Operation Close Pass, and it hasn’t even been running long. Why not try sending a Freedom of Information request to Hampshire, or indeed any other force, to see how many NIPs—let alone actual prosecutions—they’ve issued to drivers on the basis of third party video evidence, ever.
And that was four weeks ago. They’re still going.
Taking every opportunity to protect vulnerable road users from dangerous drivers, 3 of this week's many 3rd party footage based prosecutions pic.twitter.com/ipr5FLULDL — CMPG – Road Policing (@Trafficwmp) November 14, 2016
But let’s not forget West Midlands’ approach prior to deploying Operation Close Pass, which was to analyse data to see what the evidence pointed to in terms of causative factors.
Maybe we should see what the data says in Hampshire.
Checking the facts
Between 2005 and 2015 there were 1663 cycling KSI collisions in Hampshire, 40 of which were fatal.
Of these, “rider wearing dark clothing” was cited as a “very likely” (as opposed to merely “possible”) factor in just 34 cases, only one of which was fatal. Of these, 13 coincided with failure to display lights, from which it’s probably reasonable to infer that if a causative factor had indeed been lack of conspicuity then in several cases lights may well have sufficed, rendering clothing irrelevant. The second most commonly coincident factor, in 8 of the 34 cases, is a driver’s failure to look—in which case, again, is clothing relevant? (This is the great lie of the “be safe, be seen” culture which Hampshire, among others, promulgate dogmatically: no-one has control over being seen.)
So, even giving the benefit of doubt, there are probably a couple of dozen cases in which dark clothing may have been a factor. For all Hampshire’s efforts they are targeting roughly two serious injuries per year.
Two.
Yet, despite having consistently applied this level of resource to these operations for some years (as far as I can see they go back as far as 2009), they don’t seem to be doing very well at it. In the three years 2005-2007 there were three KSI collisions where dark clothing was cited as a likely factor. In the latest three years, 2013-2015, there were ten.
The best part of a decade has been spent handing out yellow vests instead of tackling poor driving in a progressive manner, and in that time injuries attributed to lack of yellow vests have tripled. Stop and think about that for a moment.
And no, that rise isn’t caused by there being more people cycling. In most parts of Hampshire, cycling levels have fallen (see table CW0103).
An entirely plausible hypothesis is that there is simply an increased tendency within Hampshire to record dark clothing as a factor, rather than it being a factor. It rather suggests a victim-blaming culture.
Let’s not forget that it was Hampshire Police’s collision investigator who said that high-visibilty clothing “may have acted as camouflage” when Lauren Paul drove into lollipop man Ray Elsmore on a pedestrian crossing, inflicting fatal injuries. Ever get the feeling you can’t win?
Looking at all KSI cases in Hampshire, by far the most prevalent contributory factor is drivers’ failure to look. So why spend so much time focusing on the appearance of the thing that those drivers are failing to look at, and shifting drivers’ expectations of others’ conspicuity higher, when this can only serve to reduce their propensity to look more carefully?
Meantime, back to that figure of 1663 cycling KSIs. They’re not evenly spread: they’re rising. Significantly. The dashed orange KSI trend line below shows roughly a 150% increase over the 11 year period. (For what it’s worth, I plotted this graph for several forces. Hampshire was comfortably one of the worst performers: of those I looked at, only Devon and Cornwall—the force which for some time disbanded its roads policing unit altogether—was worse.)
So, Hampshire’s approach is failing on both fronts: cycling is declining, while KSIs are increasing at a higher rate than almost anywhere in the country. And while the same data show where the problem lies, Hampshire Police continue to appear either oblivious to what the data say or to actively ignore it.
“Failure to look” is a problem indeed.
When asked what would be perceived as a mark of Operation Close Pass’s success, Pc Hodson remarked that although a reduction in casualties was what everyone would like to see, a perfectly valid successful result would be to see a significant increase in cycling levels without a significant increase in casualty figures.
I agree; in fact I think the latter is the more important goal at this point in time, and this returns to the earlier point about how important it is to establish the link between tackling behaviourally threatening uses of vehicles which restrict people’s freedoms, because it is this that cements the police’s role in helping to establish an environment in which people can choose socially benign forms of transport.
And West Midlands’ actions, together with Hampshire’s data, highlight how ineffective—nay, counterproductive—it is to focus on the more vulnerable and to believe that the colours that they wear have any significant effect on whether they are injured. This view is demonstrably misguided. It is outdated. And policing based on it is similarly outdated.
Replication
Fortunately, numerous forces have started knocking on WMP’s door looking to replicate Operation Close Pass. Even forces from abroad—Finland, Denmark and even Australia—have sought them out.
The crucial aspect of this, though, will be not only how this operational model can be adapted to other territories, and to urban and rural areas, but how effectively the education can be delivered. One thing that is entirely clear from Operation Close Pass, and which binds it together, is the ability of Pcs Hodson and Hudson to deliver the material to drivers. Of course we await measurable results, but from everything seen so far it is indisputable that they have not only a thorough understanding of all of the pertinent issues but an exemplary ability to explain those issues to people whose viewpoint has never extended to experiencing roads by bicycle, both of which are essential if any educational process is to be effective.
But, in order to see how well that can be replicated, other forces must first try to replicate it. And, thus far, not all have beaten a path to West Midlands’ door.
No matter where you are, there can be no harm in adding your voice in encouraging your local force to look into Operation Close Pass, because the alternative is clear: it’s bright yellow clothes, declining levels of cycling, and rising casualty figures.
Use of resources is a choice. And, as choices go, this should be an easy one. |
A group of community farmers, some of them Amish, are challenging rules requiring the tagging of livestock with RFID chips, saying the devices are a "mark of the beast."
Michigan and federal authorities say the radio frequency identification devices (RFID) will help monitor the travels of bovine and other livestock diseases.
"Use of a numbering system for their premises and/or electronic numbering system for their animals constitutes some form of a 'mark of the beast' and/or represents an infringement of their 'dominion over cattle and all living things' in violation of their fundamental religious beliefs," according to the farmers' lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
As radio frequency identification devices become a daily part of the electronic age, RFID technology is increasingly coming under fire for allegedly being the mark of Satan. The technology is fast becoming a part of passports and payment cards and is widely expected to replace bar-code labels on consumer goods.
The suit (.pdf) mentions various verses from the Book of Revelation. "He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." Revelation 13:16-17
The farmers' lawsuit, brought by the Virginia-based Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and some of its 1,400 members, seeks to block enforcement of the National Animal Identification System. Some of the group's members so staunchly oppose the program that "they may have to quit farming," according to the lawsuit.
And if they quit, U.S. citizens could be in jeopardy during a terror attack. According to the lawsuit:
"All plaintiffs preserve and protect Americans' agricultural heritage and traditional farming techniques, they maintain and protect heirloom varieties of plants and animals constituting a valuable genetic resource which may help to protect America's food supply in the event of a disease outbreak, and they also provide a national security benefit founded in a diverse system in the event of a terrorist attack or natural disaster that interrupts the distant transportation of centrally produced food across the country."
They may quit farming and imperil the United States because RFID tagging "forces them to, in part, violate tenets of their Old Order Amish beliefs, i.e., they are forced to use technology they would ordinarily not use," according to the suit.
The lawsuit also claims the program places a financial burden on small farmers and that the U.S Department of Agriculture has failed to show "any rational relationship to or causal link with animal disease control."
See Also: |
• Rooney picked up ankle injury during draw with Bolton • Striker went off during second half at the Reebok Stadium
Wayne Rooney has been ruled out of Manchester United's Champions League game against Valencia on Wednesday due to an ankle injury picked up during yesterday's draw against Bolton Wanderers.
Sir Alex Ferguson has told club officials the 24-year-old will not be fit enough to make the trip after being withdrawn during the second half of yesterday's game.
It is unclear how long Rooney will be out for, but he could possibly miss United's trip to Sunderland on Saturday, while England will hope the striker will be able to participate in their Euro 2012 qualifier against Montenegro on 12 October.
Some may feel it is a good time for Rooney to have a break. On ESPN yesterday, the pundit Kevin Keegan voiced his concern for the striker, who has scored only one goal for United this season, a penalty against West Ham United.
Meanwhile Nemanja Vidic has told his team-mates to cut out the defensive lapses that are wrecking their title bid. United have conceded nine goals in five Premier League games so far this season, and are three points behind the leaders, Chelsea.
"It is a big concern that we are conceding so many away goals," said Vidic. "We have to stop doing it. We cannot let it happen again.
"Over the last few years we haven't given that many goals away or even allowed them so many chances. Before we have always looked strong, so this is not what we are used to. We have to play much better in our away games." |
Edward Barnell hugs his granddaughter Tiffany, 8-year-old daughter of Loreal Tsingine, who was shot and killed, at Tsingine's funeral at Desert View Cemetery, in Winslow, Ariz. At least two officers who trained Shipley, who later shot and killed Tsingine, armed with scissors, had serious concerns that he was too quick to go for his service weapon, ignored directives from superiors and falsified reports, | Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic via AP
On April 24, a column I wrote, “Where is Justice for slain Navajo mother, Loreal Tsingine?“ went to print. The column concluded by posing the issue of how without exception “the racist police perpetrators of these hideous executions continue to have impunity from any consequences.” I also posed the question “How long are Native Americans and other people of color to be sitting ducks in a pond waiting to be the next victims of the vicious, racist, militarized police murderers?”
Both of the above points would be tragically raised again. Just a mere five days later, on Saturday, April 29, a Black youngster, 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, was shot to death by a white police officer in a Dallas, Texas suburb. Edwards was sitting in the passenger seat of a car that was leaving the scene of a house party.
At first, the policeman stated that the car was backing toward him in an “aggressive manner, “but subsequently video from body cam footage proved that the vehicle was actually being driven away from the police officers at the scene. Taken to a hospital nearby Edwards was pronounced dead resulting from a gunshot to the head.
Police officer Roy Oliver who killed Edwards, in response to the video cam footage, told the media that he “misspoke” (a euphemism for lying) in reference to the specifics of the incident. Oliver has since been fired. He, of course, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
This incident also raises the question of why did the officer fire at the vehicle in the first place, since it was leaving the scene of the house party. It was later brought out that the officer shot Edwards with a rifle. A rifle! Why would the police take out rifles to shut down a teenage house party? There was no plausible reason for the use of any deadly force, much less a rifle. This shows the combat/war mentality of the racist, militarized police.
We don’t know who will be the next victim, but what we do know is that there will be more victims.
In regard to the issue of the seemingly infinite impunity of the police from any consequences for these hideous slayings of people of color, we have only to look at the announcement by the Department of Justice on Tuesday, May 2, (just three days after the murder of the Edwards youngster) that federal charges will not be filed against the police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the killing of African American Alton Sterling. In this instance video footage clearly shows Sterling pinned to ground by two white police officers. Sterling is shot several times while still pinned to the ground. The feds said there was not sufficient evidence to indicate that Sterling was not reaching for a gun.
This is absurd. This is outrageous. This reinforces and strengthens the message of impunity of the police.
In North Charleston, South Carolina, April 4, 2015, phone footage shows another Black citizen,50 year-old Walter Scott, shot numerous times by white policeman, Michael Slager while running from the officer. The officer initially claimed that he was in fear of his life. This is preposterous- incredible that the officer has the temerity to even let those words issue from his mouth. The officer fired his service revolver eight times at the hapless Scott killing him. Slager has since pled guilty to Deprivation of Rights under Color of Law and awaits sentencing. Don’t be surprised if he gets just a slap on the wrist.
In Oklahoma the trial began on Monday, May 8, of white Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby for the killing of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed Black man. Crutcher reportedly had his hands in the air when he was shot. Shelby said she was in fear of her life- “the magic words”.
The police slaughter of Red and Black people rages unabated. In October, 2016 there was a deadly increase in fatal police shootings of American Indians around the country. Eight police slayings of Native people took place in that bloody month. Up to that point, there had been an average of two a month.
There is long-standing belief among many citizens of color that racist, white-supremacist elements, such as the Klan and home grown Nazis, have infiltrated the police departments. If that be the case then there needs to be a purging of the police departments in question along with more stringent background checks of new applicants.
What is also so frustrating is that although there is all this hand wringing and lamenting by a plethora of writers, journalists and reporters, there is a lack of direction by anyone of the progressive or leftist slant to propose anything to halt these racist, state sanctioned lynchings. I would venture some proposals including everything from civilian review boards, peoples’ tribunals to community patrols to monitor the activities of the police who in so many instances act like an occupying army rather than protectors of the communities they are supposed to serve. There has to be community control of the police. Keep in mind that the courts, so far, have been on the side of the police. The so-called justice system in this regard is broken.
As an aggrieved mother of a recent victim so poignantly said: “the police cannot police the police.” |
The F-4 Phantom II lives. But the life it leads today is an odd one.
It still flies in other countries; in northern Iraq, for example, the Turks use it in combat with the Kurds. But in the United States, it leads a twilight existence. It’s a warplane, but it no longer fights. Its mission is weapons testing, but no pilot flies it. Mostly, you’ll find these F-4s either sitting in the desert or lying at the bottom of the sea.
The F-4 entered service in 1960, flying for the U.S. Navy. After studying its potential for close air support, interdiction, and counter-air operations, the Air Force added the F-4 to its fleet in 1963. Eventually the Phantom ended up even in the U.S. Marine Corps’ inventory. In four decades of active service to the United States, the aircraft set 16 world performance records. It downed more adversaries (280 claimed victories) than any other U.S. fighter in the Vietnam War. Two decades later, it flew combat missions in Desert Storm.
In 1996 the aircraft was retired from the U.S. fleet. But the venerable McDonnell design has one last mission to perform for the military: to go down in flames.
Since 1991, 254 Phantoms have served as unpiloted flying targets for missile and gun tests conducted near Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. The use of F-4 drones (designated QF-4s) is expected to continue until 2014.
When an airframe is needed for target duty, one is pulled from storage at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in the Arizona desert. The airframe is given refurbished engines and instruments, then sent to Mojave Airport in California. There, BAE Systems turns the aircraft into remote-controlled drones, installing radio antennas and modifying the flight controls, throttles, landing gear, and flaps.
QF-4 production test pilot Bob Kay is responsible for testing the converted aircraft, then flying them from Mojave to Tyndall and Holloman. Kay has been captivated by the F-4 since the age of seven, when his father took him to an airshow. “I saw a Navy A-3 refueling two Phantoms as they flew over so low and with that noise,” he says. “That’s all I remember of that airshow, but I knew I wanted to fly that fighter.”
I ask if he has any second thoughts about being part of a system that destroys an airplane he loves, an aviation legend.
He thinks for a moment, then says, “What better way is there for a warrior to end its life than to go down in a blaze of glory?”
The Phantom has been called “double ugly,” “rhino,” “old smokey,” and monikers even less flattering. The design does have its share of ungainly bends and angles. The horizontal stabilizers droop 23.25 degrees. The outer wing sections tilt upward 12 degrees. When an engineer looks it over, the first thing that probably comes to mind is “stability and control problems.” A brutal example of that weakness occurred during a May 18, 1961 speed record attempt. While Navy test pilot Commander J.L. Felsman flew below 125 feet over a three-mile course, his F-4 experienced pitch damper failure. The resulting pilot-induced oscillation generated over 12 Gs. Both engines were ripped from the airframe and Felsman was killed. (A later attempt succeeded.)
Control sensitivity varies widely. It takes full aft stick to raise the nose for takeoff, yet at certain fuel loadings and at speeds just above Mach 0.9 at low altitude, moving the stick only one inch can produce 6 Gs on the airframe. At above Mach 2, on the other hand, the shock wave that is created moves the center of lift so far aft that pulling the stick all the way back produces only about 2 Gs.
With all its peculiarities and faults, legions have had love/hate relationships with the aircraft. “The F-4 is the last of the fighter pilot’s fighters,” says BAE’s Bob Kay. “You have to fly the F-4.” It has none of the bells and whistles of next-generation fighters. Instead of the multi-function flight displays found in modern fighters, the cockpit instruments are “steam gauges”—round dials with needles. It has an inertial navigation system, best described as cranky. There is no flight management system, no GPS, no Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS), and no “Bitching Betty” voice system to alert the pilot to hazards. You have to navigate, bomb, shoot missiles, fire the gun, look for problems, and evaluate every one of those actions instrument by instrument. For the pilot, this means a lot of time is spent head down, analyzing instrument data; in modern aircraft, on the other hand, much of the information is presented compactly, in head-up displays above the instrument panel.
My affair with the Phantom began upon graduation from pilot training in 1964, when I landed a tour in the Air Force F-4C. Though the Navy and Marine Corps assigned radar operators to the “pit,” as we referred to the second seat, the Air Force thought it would be more effective to use the configuration for two pilots. Wrong. No true fighter pilot chooses to serve as
copilot. The assignment was akin to a shotgun marriage. For two years I languished six feet behind my more experienced comrades, calling off altimeter readings as they bombed, strafed, and fired rockets in training exercises on the gunnery range. Backseaters had to beg, cajole, and whine for stick time, and when we got it, we found that every aspect of flying the F-4 from the rear cockpit was a nightmare. The meager instruments were placed haphazardly in a straight line across the panel. The useless clock and G-meter were located in the center. Why? Because they fit there! Instrument approaches gave you a migraine. And to spot the runway, you had to peer through a knothole on either side of the cockpit, which made landing from the pit an adventure, especially with a crosswind.
Front-seaters were not always thrilled with the F-4 either. In 1972, during his second tour in Vietnam, U.S. Air Force Major Dan Cherry, now a retired brigadier general, flew 185 combat missions in the Phantom; today he recalls: “The F-4 cockpit was uncomfortable, the instruments were poorly arranged, crew coordination was a hassle, it was ugly, and it used fuel like nobody’s business.”
Crews that flew the airplane for the Navy had their own share of problems. By 1966 the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign waged by the Navy and Air Force had really heated up. Large formations of fighter-bombers were striking targets in the Hanoi area daily. That year Commander Dick Adams’ squadron flew combat in F-4s off the carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. Each Phantom launched from the Rosie’s short catapult with four 500-pound and four 1,000-pound bombs, plus an empty centerline tank, which was refueled during climbout. Before a carrier landing, Phantoms had to achieve a certain landing weight; landing heavy would overstress the arresting cables. For this carrier, the F-4 was a heavy aircraft, and as such could try an approach with fuel for only one or two attempts. On the 1966 cruise, one of the squadron jets on a landing attempt was waved off, and when the pilot ran out of fuel before completing a second pattern, the engines flamed out and the aircraft went deep-six. The crew survived.
In March 1966, I was told that if I agreed to take a combat tour, I’d get the front seat. Are you kidding? I made my first front-seat flight at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. I still remember it: a gunnery mission. And oh, the visibility from the front
chair! My landing was the smoothest of “grease jobs.” At that moment, the shotgun marriage turned into a love affair.
After passing my checkout flight, I was stationed at Ubon Air Base in Thailand, a member of the 555th—“Triple Nickle”—Squadron in Colonel Robin Olds’ famed Eighth Wing.
At Ubon, the F-4 was all things to all people. One squadron flew only at night, popping flares and dropping bombs. The other two squadrons flew both day and night, dive-bombing bridges, strafing ground targets, rocketing truck parks, and tangling with the ever-elusive MiGs over Hanoi.
On October 11, 1966, I discovered how tough the Phantom was. An 85-mm round blew a four-foot section off my right engine, and the aircraft caught fire. Still, it held together through the 400 miles back to Ubon.
By the end of 1966, the Phantom had revealed a host of shortcomings. Number one was the dismal record of missile hits against the North Vietnamese MiG-17s and MiG-21s. The AIM-7 radar-guided missile had a probability of kill below 10 percent. Richard Keyt, who flew F-4s for the 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron during the Vietnam War, recalls: “Our missiles were designed to work in a non-maneuvering environment—a non-turning, 1-G shot at the bomber target flying straight and level at high altitude.” The reality: “F-4s fired in high-G turns at small MiGs that were turning hard and pulling Gs.” To remedy the problem, the Air Force expanded its Weapons System Evaluation Program (WSEP) at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. Combat crews were given practice in firing missiles at towed radar-reflective targets.
My backseater, First Lieutenant Jerry K. Sharp, and I took part in that exercise over the South China Sea in December 1966, scoring a hit. On January 2, 1967, we used the skills we had honed in that exercise when we merged with a flight of four MiG-21s that were turning hard to get at us. Sharp got a radar lock-on while under heavy Gs. Then I centered the steering dot, fired two AIM-7s, and watched as the second missile exploded and tore the tail section from the MiG in front of us.
For other F-4 shortcomings, the military contracted out quick fixes. Modifications included the installation of Radar Homing and Warning (RHAW) gear—a cockpit system that alerted pilots when their aircraft was being tracked by anti-aircraft-artillery radars or surface-to-air-missile sites. Also added were radar jamming pods, plus chaff and flare dispensers used in combination to confuse tracking radars and to dupe radar-guided or heat-seeking missiles.
The C variant had a number of design problems; one of the biggest was lack of a gun. The rules of engagement over Vietnam required that an adversary be identified visually before a missile could be fired at it. The MiGs were small, and to make the ID, shooters had to get close, often much less than the minimum distance that the AIM-7 radar-guided and AIM-9B heat-seeking missiles required to hit a target. At short range, “if you didn’t have a gun, you couldn’t shoot down anything,” says Richard Keyt. The quick fix was the SUU-16/A gun pod with the M61A1 20-mm cannon.
But without a lead-computing sight and with no tracer ammunition, F-4C pilots were denied the visual cues needed to correct aiming errors. Then, in 1967, the F-4D arrived. The D model introduced a lead-computing optical sight for use with the gun pod. In addition, the normal ammunition load now included tracers.
On November 6, 1967, the gunfighter Phantom proved its worth. Captain Darrell “D” Simmonds and First Lieutenant George H. McKinney Jr. were escorting a flight of F-105s that came under attack by two MiG-17s. “We picked up the MiG-17s visually that were shooting at the Thuds [F-105s],” says Simmonds. “I was able to get in there and maneuvered for a perfect ‘uphill dart’ shot. I hit him, came alongside, and looked at him, and he looked at me, then ejected just before the plane hit the trees.” McKinney spotted another MiG-17 and Simmonds swung into a hard turn, accelerating as he lined up for the shot. “We were close, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity,” the pilot remembers. “I fired and he blew up.” Later, Simmonds realized: “We had used just 497 rounds for the two kills—less than five seconds of firing.”
The D model, however, was not a cure-all. “The guns on the D hung externally, on the centerline, and that created drag,” says Keyt. As for the missiles, the underperforming AIM-9B was abandoned for the Hughes AIM-4D Falcon. Designed to bring down strategic bombers, it required cooling of the seeker head prior to launch and needed a direct hit to score a kill. As pilots found out during what became known as the “Falcon Fiasco,” it came up short in a dogfight. Major James R. Chamberlain, a backseater stationed with the “Gunfighters”—the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing at Da Nang—notes, “The biggest problem with the AIM-4D was the limited amount of cooling time available [two minutes or less], which meant that the missile could not be pre-cooled for a quicker lock-on. And, once available liquid nitrogen was consumed, the missile was a blind, dead bullet—derisively called the ‘Hughes Arrow.’ ” After firing four of the missiles in combat without success, Robin Olds insisted the missiles cost him his fifth kill. He ordered them removed from his fleet.
The Air Force soon trashed the AIM-4D. Newer Sidewinders were substituted. The military also recognized the benefits of an internal gun: The F-4E, introduced in 1967, had an M-61A cannon mounted beneath a solid-state AN/APQ-120 radar, both inside the aircraft nose. During the time Richard Keyt’s 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron was based at Korat air base in Thailand, five squadron aircrews were credited with MiG kills, and four used the internal gun.
In 1973, during my third tour in Southeast Asia, I was assigned to the early E model. It was a dream to fly, not only because of the improvements made in gun and missile technology but also because the Air Force had realized the folly of putting two pilots in a fighter. After 1967, virtually all the GIBs—guys in back—were either navigators or radar intercept operators.
The follow-on Es brought enhancements: A horizontal tailplane with a fixed inverted slat gave improved control at high angles of attack. Leading-edge slats on the wings enabled tighter turns at slow maneuvering speeds. A Northrop system called TISEO (target identification system, electro-optical) identified airborne targets.
By the time my final tour was up, in 1974, a fleet of Phantom variants had safely taken me through a gauntlet of fire and flying experiences that would constitute the greatest adventures of my life.
Three-plus decades later, I was once again in the company of Phantoms. This time the setting was the tarmac at Tyndall.
The commander of the 82nd Aerial Target and Recovery Squadron, which conducts the drone shootdowns, is Lieutenant Colonel J.D. “Bare” Lee. A former F-16 pilot, Lee also has 1,500 hours in the Phantom. He still recalls the first time he took to the air in one. “I was shocked at how much more difficult it was to fly than I thought it would be,” he told me. “When I got home, I told my wife, ‘I think I just traded in a Porsche for a ’72 Cadillac.’ ”
At any one time, a total of up to 80 F-4s are stationed at Tyndall and at Lee’s Holloman detachment in New Mexico. Twenty-one Phantoms sat on a ramp called the Swamp, awaiting movement to Death Row, the holding area for the soon-to-be targets.
At mid-afternoon the drone mission briefing took place. The meeting included the drone “fliers,” Lockheed Martin personnel headed by pilot/controller Matt
LaCourse. “Today’s mission is in support of WSEP, so there’ll be a lot of shooters out there,” said Lee. “WSEP” is the same Weapons System Evaluation Program I had participated in four decades earlier in Vietnam, when I’d practiced shooting at towed targets from F-4s. Now the F-4 was the target.
LaCourse explained that four F-22 Raptors would each fire the latest AIM-120 air-to-air missile. The shooters and chase plane would take off from the main runway, while the drone used a strip three miles east.
Most Phantoms wind up in the Gulf of Mexico within one to three missions. But not all: One, nicknamed “Christine,” after the Stephen King book and film about a crazed car with a mind of its own, had survived 10 missions. Another, “Son of Christine,” has come back from 12 sorties, the current record.
Some drone missions are not meant to be shootdowns: The Phantom is loaded with missile jammers, and missiles without warheads are fired against the craft to test how well the jamming works. Other Phantoms are spruced up with Vietnam War-era camouflage and flown to airshows.
One Phantom was saved by its former pilot. On April 16, 1972, Dan Cherry, flying an F-4D, had scored a victory over a North Vietnamese Mig-21. Thirty-two years later, during a trip with friends to the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, Cherry encountered the aircraft he had flown that day. It was on display in the little town of Enon, outside Dayton.
“In spite of her flat tires, weeds growing up all around, bird droppings everywhere, and faded gray paint, she was beautiful,” he recalls. “Walking around her and answering my friend’s questions made me realize how much I loved her and how much I owed her for taking such good care of me. Suddenly all those things that seemed like negatives before paled in comparison to the strong bond I felt at that moment.” Cherry took on the task of relocating the aircraft to the Aviation Heritage Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where it was restored and is now displayed. Then he decided to learn about the pilot of the MiG he had shot down. (Cherry’s story about meeting his former enemy in Vietnam will appear in a future issue of Air & Space/Smithsonian.)
At Tyndall, the heat and humidity hit my face like a wet washcloth. The van driver took us from Death Row to the end of the runway, where F-4E tail number 73-1165 was positioned about 20 feet to the right of the runway centerline.
I asked if I could approach the aircraft. My unit escort, Major Kevin Brackin, obtained permission. I got out of the van and walked across the concrete. When I reached the aircraft, I placed my hand on the radome. Because of the cloud cover, the nose was warm to the touch, not the usual egg-frying hot. The Phantom felt alive.
I felt a wave of dread. Within minutes this magnificent machine might be in pieces at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
A photo was taken, and I headed back to the van to listen to the radio chatter.
Lee says it cost the Air Force $2.6 million to get the aircraft from the boneyard in Tucson to the runway at Tyndall. Is it worth it? “The F-4E has the built-in ability to launch flares and chaff and can carry an assortment of jamming pods, all of which put our latest weapon systems through their most rigorous tests,” says Lee. Had we taken the time to test our missiles properly in the early 1960s, the Vietnam air war might have turned out like the one over Baghdad: a clean sweep.
We positioned ourselves behind the drone to await the launch order. Both engines were started. The canopy was closed, and the self-destruct bomb was armed for use in case the drone went out of control. Finally, the intake screens in front of the engine inlets were removed.
Then came an ominous ground transmission: The “shooter aircraft have problems,” and a storm cell had slung cloud
layers over a wide swath of sky. We sat and waited.
Finally, after a 15-minute delay, the mission was ordered back on.
The drone launch order was soon passed, and the operators got the Phantom rolling. LaCourse made a correction to get the aircraft precisely on centerline as both afterburners lit. Fifteen seconds later, I watched the pilotless aircraft take off.
The F-4 proceeded out over the gulf. The first aircraft fired its missile. The ground controller monitoring the telemetry radioed the air crews: “No hit.”
The Phantom flew on.
My emotions tangled: I wanted the aircraft to survive, but I also wanted it to fulfill its intended mission.
The four F-22 Raptors spread out. Each launched a missile. Over the radio we heard “Fox-four”—all shooters had fired.
Then: “Splash.” A direct hit.
Brackin and I walked back to the van and got in. Brackin was staring straight ahead. Then he turned to me. “So now you know,” he said, grinning. “It takes four Raptors to kill an F-4.” |
India isn’t able to nurture its startups to their full potential.
All the odds are in India’s favor: The world’s fastest-growing major economy has been ranked the third-best destination for technology investments. From Microsoft to Uber, Silicon Valley bigwigs are all setting up offices and development centers in the country. The Indian startup sector is teeming with “soonicorns”—soon to be unicorns (private billion-dollar startups). At the start of 2016, prime minister Narendra Modi launched the Startup India initiative to improve the ecosystem for budding companies through tax exemptions, reduced red tape, patent reforms, better funding channels as well as avenues for incubation and training.
According to“Entrepreneurial India,” a new IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) report, more than 76% in a survey of over 1,300 Indian executives—600 startup entrepreneurs, 100 venture capitalists, 100 government leaders, 500 leaders of established companies and 22 educational institution leaders—believe that India’s economic openness is a major business advantage. Six in ten recognized that India’s skilled workforce as an asset for businesses. Calls to slash the corporate tax rate from 30% to 25% is “expected to further boost startup activity,” IBM notes.
But despite all the efforts, the industry is built on a flawed foundation. More than 90% of startups in India fail within five years of founding, according to IBM.
The melee of newbies
Aping successful business models is doing the nascent startup industry little good in finding its own bearings.
More than 77% of venture capitalists interviewed by IBM cited the lack of pioneering innovation as a major reason for startups fizzling out. “Indian startups are prone to emulate already successful global ideas,” the report notes. The homegrown Olas and Flipkarts and Snapdeals are proof.
Finding and holding on to the right talent is another big hurdle. Technical institutes in the country churn out 1.5 million engineering graduates each year, but fewer than 5% of them are deemed employable. For years, India’s limited tech talent has also been subject to brain drain. Even though that trend is reversing, it will take years for the effects to show. Especially since startups have lost their grip on Silicon Valley veterans who returned to partake in the dynamic environment. Seven in ten of the venture capitalists in IBM’s survey believe that “talent acquisition is one of the biggest challenges faced by Indian startups, and limited availability of necessary skills impedes growth.”
Startups are also grappling with a funding crunch, according to 65% of the venture capitalists. In the quarter ending March 2017, the volume of initial angel and seed investments more than halved to 120 compared with 245 deals in the same period in 2016. And Series A funding, traditionally secured right after seed funding to expand user bases and develop the businesses, declined 65% in deal value from a year ago.
A lack of knowledgeable and experienced mentors and amateur founders added to the troubled mix.
Bringing back a conscience
Poor business ethics often put investors and founders on different pages, fracturing entire businesses.
Founders often get away with misrepresenting their financials, obscuring future plans and exuding their disregard for regulatory constraints, Economic Times reported. Eventually, the lines between business funds and personal wealth get blurred. (It’s no wonder that India’s richest men also head some of the biggest companies.)
“Thinking of that money as their own, as opposed to taking care of it because the capital is vested in a company or to build a certain technology, affects the organisation, and how people are treated,” Nipun Mehrotra, chief digital officer, IBM India and South Asia, told Economic Times.
Kartik Hosanagar, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, blames a combination of India’s “overall jugaad mentality” (a makeshift attitude) and “poor governance” for the flouting of laws and the inaccuracies in financial data. For instance, the lack of an active board can mean some of the issues like financial misreporting can go unnoticed.
“Largely, good investors stay out of the way and let founders do their thing. Excessive interference only hurts startup progress,” says Hosanagar. “But a complete absence of governance can be bad too. First-time entrepreneurs can benefit from some hand-holding.” |
During his campaign rally in Michigan on Friday, Donald Trump demanded that President Obama not pardon Hillary Clinton.
“So here’s my question for Hillary Clinton: can you promise that not one of the five people who were granted criminal immunity will ever be allowed to serve in a Clinton Administration?” Trump stated while speaking to thousands in Novi, Michigan. “And here is the demand I am making today to President Obama: will you pledge, here and now, not to issue a pardon to Hillary Clinton and her co-conspirators for their many crimes against our country and society itself?”
“No one is above the law. Not even Hillary Clinton,” he added, while referencing Clinton’s email scandal.
The Washington Post’s Bob Costa first reported that Trump would be making the demand. |
Charities Pull Fundraisers Planned for Trump's Mar-A-Lago
Enlarge this image toggle caption Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images
On Friday, three well-known charities — the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Susan G. Komen — announced they are canceling plans for fundraising events at President Trump's Palm Beach country club, Mar-a-Lago.
The three joined a growing list of nonprofits that have severed ties with the exclusive, Trump-owned resort. Others include the Cleveland Clinic and the American Cancer Society.
The cancellations come in the wake of Trump's controversial comments made earlier this week when he said that "both sides were to blame" for last weekend's deadly violence involving white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.
Trump has been under heavy criticism all week for his remarks, which prompted many corporate leaders to bail out of White House advisory boards. So many CEOs resigned that the president responded by disbanding three committees — one focused on shaping business strategy, another on boosting manufacturing and third on improving infrastructure.
After the CEOs started refusing to work with the president, pressure increased on charities to give up their annual trips to Mar-a-Lago for galas.
For example, Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove had served on one of the disbanded business councils. And a day after that dismantling happened, the hospital announced that "after careful consideration," Cleveland Clinic would not hold its 2018 event at Mar-a-Lago.
Earlier this year, despite a petition drive by doctors and medical students, the hospital had refused to cancel its fundraiser there. When medical students and other groups renewed the push recently, Cleveland Clinic remained firm, saying Mar-a-Lago met its needs.
Now, it does not.
The American Red Cross said in its statement that it must provide "assistance without discrimination to all people in need, regardless of nationality, race, religious beliefs, or political opinions."
The charity's connection with the president's club "has increasingly become a source of controversy and pain for many of our volunteers, employees and supporters," it said.
The Salvation Army issued a similar statement, saying its event at Mar-a-Lago helped raise money for disaster victims and the homeless. "Because the conversation has shifted away from the purpose of this event," the group says, "we will not host it at Mar-a-Lago."
Susan G. Komen, a charity that invests in breast cancer research, confirmed it is also withdrawing from Mar-a-Lago and is seeking a new venue for its fundraising event.
The rash of high-profile cancellations has created something of a scramble in Palm Beach as charities look for other suitable venues. The Palm Beach Post says other nearby hotels and the Palm Beach County Convention Center are hearing from interested groups.
For Trump, the cancellations will mean a significant loss of income, unless the staff at Mar-a-Lago finds new customers who want to book a 20,000-square-foot ballroom embellished with 24-karat gold leafing, modeled, as Trump told Florida Design magazine, after Versailles. |
Race like a champion in F1 2015 - get closer than ever before to the experience of racing in the world’s most glamorous, exciting and prestigious motorsport. F1 2015 puts you in the heart of the action with a stunning new game engine that recreates the blisteringly fast and highly responsive racing cars of FORMULA ONE™ and features all-new ‘broadcast presentation’ that immerses you in the unique race day atmosphere. F1 2015 is the official videogame of the 2015 FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP™ and also features fully playable 2014 FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP™ bonus content. Compete as your favourite FORMULA ONE star in the new Championship Season and push yourself to the limit in the challenging Pro Season mode. Hone your skills in the new Online Practice Session, and then challenge your friends and racing rivals from across the world in Online Multiplayer.
Key Features:
A STUNNING NEW GAME ENGINE – A brand new game engine, built from the ground up for the latest consoles and PCs allows players to experience FORMULA 1™ in unprecedented detail.
THE MOST RELEVANT FORMULA 1 GAME YET – An earlier release in the racing calendar and with free digital updates set to keep the game up to date with the sport during the season, F1 2015 brings fans the most relevant FORMULA 1 video game ever.
THE MOST INCLUSIVE F1 RACING EXPERIENCE EVER – Featuring a naturally authentic purely physics-based handling model with enhancements and additions in over 20 areas, F1 2015 is designed to be player inclusive for both seasoned players and those new to the series.
NEW GAME MODES – Immerse yourself in the new Championship Season, test yourself to the limits in Pro Season or use the new Online Practice Session to hone your skills before taking on rivals across the world in Online Multiplayer.
BONUS CONTENT – Look back at last year’s exciting season and enjoy a fully playable 2014 FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP™ as bonus game content.
© 2015 The Codemasters Software Company Limited (“Codemasters”). All rights reserved. “Codemasters”®, “Ego”® and the Codemasters logo are registered trade marks owned by Codemasters. “Codemasters Racing”™ is a trade mark of Codemasters.
An official product of the FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP. The F1 FORMULA 1 logo, F1 logo, F1 FIA FORMULA 1 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP logo, FORMULA 1, FORMULA ONE, F1, FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, GRAND PRIX and related marks are trademarks of Formula One Licensing BV, a Formula One group company. Licensed by Formula One World Championship Limited. All rights reserved. |
Portrait Innovations is announcing a new technology that allows customers to create full-body 3D replicas of themselves or their loved ones. As the only portrait studio in North Carolina with these capabilities, Portrait Innovations uses state-of-the-art photography and 3D printing technology to produce stunningly detailed, lifelike collectibles that people can cherish and display forever. The chance to take advantage of this new keepsake technology is exclusively available at the Portrait Innovations studio located in the Promenade Shopping Center in Charlotte’s Ballantyne area.
The process to create these 3D figurines is actually quite easy using the new technology. An individual or couple enters the 3D Studio and a Portrait Innovations professional photographer captures the perfect 360-degree portrait using 120 high-speed digital cameras simultaneously. This 360-degree image is replicated through a 3D printer. Customers have the choice of four keepsake options:
• Full Standing Figurines: The full size image is turned into a 6- to 8-inch lifelike figurine
• Wedding Cake Topper: Couples can create a full body 8.5-inch figurine to display on their wedding cake, and then keep as a memento following the big day (don’t worry, the groom doesn’t have to see the bride in her wedding dress)
• Character Figurines: At 3 inches tall, the 3D portrait of someone’s face can be added to the body of a caricature, selecting from 30 options ranging from sports, heroes, holiday themes and various jobs
• Mini Toy Head: Adding new excitement to a classic toy, a detailed replica of a loved one’s head is added onto a Lego® person
“Portrait Innovations is thrilled to continue being on the cutting edge of such huge advancements in portraits and keepsakes,” said John Grosso, CEO of Portrait Innovations. “We’re looking forward to consumer feedback in our Ballantyne studio, just a short drive from our corporate headquarters in Charlotte. We think our guests will love the opportunity to create such memorable gifts and hope to roll it out to more studios as we see the demand for such innovative, truly impressive technology.”
Portrait Innovations specializes in providing a customized portrait studio experience with creative possibilities for beautiful, professional print and digital portraits. Guests can also create unique, thoughtful gifts, such as photo books, calendars, jewelry, playing cards, puzzles, greeting cards and much more. The company has 187 locations nationwide and photographers at each studio have been trained in the newest posing and photography techniques to work with newborns, children, families, graduates, religious milestones and large groups. Additional information can be found at http://www.portraitinnovations.com.
Prices for the new 3D keepsake figurines range depending on the size, style and scope. To officially roll out the program in Charlotte, the company is offering 25 percent off all 3D portrait figurines before Sunday, July 31. The Ballantyne studio is located in the Promenade Shopping Center at 5349 Ballantyne Commons Parkway, and can be contacted at (704) 844-8633. |
The Bills and Seahawks played one of the best games of the season in Seattle's 31-25 victory Monday. But much of the talk after the game was about the confusing, regrettable end to the first half.
Or as Bills coach Rex Ryan called it: "Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous."
A missed unnecessary roughness penalty coupled by the referees failing to reset the play clock on a successful field-goal attempt played a role in the Bills' loss.
Dean Blandino, NFL senior vice president of officiating, said on NFL Total Access Endgame after the game that the referees made two mistakes in the bizarre sequence just before halftime.
"It should have been unnecessary roughness," Blandino said about Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman's hit on Bills kicker Dan Carpenter on a 53-yard field goal attempt. Sherman only was deemed offsides on the play.
"The referee didn't think that the contact was severe enough, he felt that players were coming together and he just didn't think it was a foul," Blandino said. "We looked at it, it is a foul."
On the ensuing field-goal attempt, the referees flagged the Bills for delay of game even though an official was over the ball with less than 10 seconds remaining on the game clock. Blandino said referees need to reset the game clock if they're handling the ball with fewer than 20 seconds left on it.
For posterity, let's try to break down the entire sequence of events before we all try to forget it ever happened:
1. The Bills attempted a 53-yard field goal with three seconds left in the half. Sherman jumped clearly offside on the play and took out Bills kicker Carpenter at the knees, blocking the kick in process.
2. Somehow, a personal foul for unnecessary roughness wasn't called. Blandino confirmed this was a mistake.
3. Carpenter briefly writhed on the field in pain, but popped up and appeared to be fine once the trainers came out to talk to him.
4. Because the Bills were out of timeouts, the Bills were charged a "fourth timeout" and Carpenter was forced to leave the game. So the Bills were heavily punished for having their kicker get taken out at the knees. If the unnecessary roughness penalty had been called correctly, Carpenter would not have been forced to leave.
5. This is the point that Ryan lost his mind the first time. For some reason, the Bills players got confused and started running off the field with three seconds left. This inspired my favorite quote of the year from referee Walt Anderson.
"The half is not over! The half is not over! There's three seconds left on the clock!" Anderson pleaded like a parent trying to round up his children for dinner.
6. Buffalo's coaching staff had the presence of mind to remove Carpenter from the game and spike the ball with one second left.
7. Carpenter then got on the field and nailed a 48-yard field goal, but the play didn't count. The Bills were called for a delay of game penalty. That penalty happened in large part because the officials didn't set the ball down until roughly five seconds were left on the play clock.
8. Carpenter then missed his 53-yard field-goal attempt. Of course.
The Seahawks celebrated like they won the Super Bowl, Rex's head looked like it was going to explode, and we all got just a little bit closer to death.
"We're absolutely going to address it," Blandino said. "... We want to see what happened and just walk through the steps of where the breakdown was. So regardless of the outcome of the game, we're going to address the situation with our crew."
After the game, Ryan relayed an exchange he had with Sherman following a third quarter interception.
"He's mean-mugging like he's always doing and whatever," Ryan said. "It was a ridiculous play, no question. Then he's over on the sideline basically taunting us, so I had some words. I think I said 'You're too good a player to act like an ass.' " |
Image caption Collisions at the LHC in Geneva have refined a mass for the Higgs-like particle
Scientists say they may be able to determine the eventual fate of the cosmos as they probe the properties of the Higgs boson.
A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.
It all depends on some precise numbers related to the Higgs that researchers are currently trying to pin down.
A "Higgs-like" particle was first seen at the Large Hadron Collider last year.
Associated with an energy field that pervades all space, the boson helps explain the existence of mass in the cosmos. In other words, it underpins the workings of all the matter we see around us.
Since detecting the particle in their accelerator experiments, researchers at the Geneva lab and at related institutions around the world have begun to theorise on the Higgs' implications for physics.
One idea that it throws up is the possibility of a cyclical universe, in which every so often all of space is renewed.
"It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson," explained Dr Joseph Lykken.
This bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it Dr Joseph Lykken, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
"If you use all the physics we know now, and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news.
"What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it," the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory theoretician told BBC News.
It was not something we need worry about, he said. The Sun and the Earth will be long gone by this time.
Dr Lykken was speaking here in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
He was participating in a session that had been organised to provide an update on the Higgs investigation.
Two-year hiatus
The boson was spotted in the wreckage resulting from proton particle collisions in the LHC's giant accelerator ring.
Data gathered by two independent detectors observing this subatomic debris determined the mass of the Higgs to be about 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).
What is an electronvolt? Image caption The LHC's experiments create showers of particles Charged particles tend to speed up in an electric field, defined as an electric potential - or voltage - spread over a distance
One electron volt (eV) is the energy gained by a single electron as it accelerates through a potential of one volt
It is a convenient unit of measure for particle accelerators, which speed particles up through much higher electric potentials
The first accelerators only created bunches of particles with an energy of about a million eV
The LHC can reach particle energies a million times higher: up to several teraelectronvolts (TeV)
This is still only the energy in the motion of a flying mosquito
But LHC beams include hundreds of trillions of these particles, each travelling at 99.99999999% of the speed of light
Together, an LHC beam carries the same energy as a TGV high-speed train travelling at 150 km/h
That was fascinating, said Prof Chris Hill of Ohio State University, because the number was right in the region where the instability problem became relevant.
"Before we knew, the Higgs could have been any mass over a very wide range. And what's amazing to me is that out of all those possible masses from 114 to several hundred GeV, it's landed at 126-ish where it's right on the critical line, and now we have to measure it more precisely to find the fate of the Universe," he said.
Prof Hill himself is part of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) Collaboration at the LHC. This is one of the Higgs-hunting detectors, the other being Atlas.
Scientists have still to review about a third of the collision data in their possession. But they will likely need much more information to close the uncertainties that remain in the measurement of the Higgs' mass and its other properties.
Indeed, until they do so, they are reluctant to definitively crown the boson, preferring often to say just that they have found a "Higgs-like" particle.
Frustratingly, the LHC has now been shut down to allow for a major programme of repairs and upgrades.
"To be absolutely definitive, I think it's going to take a few years after the LHC starts running again, which is in 2015," conceded Dr Howard Gordon, from the Brookhaven National Laboratory and an Atlas Collaboration member.
"The LHC will be down for two years to do certain repairs, fix the splices between the magnets, and to do maintenance and stuff. So, when we start running in 2015, we will be at a higher energy, which will mean we'll get more data on the Higgs and other particles to open up a larger window of opportunity for discovery. But to dot all the I's and cross all the T's, it will take a few more years."
If the calculation on vacuum instability stands up, it will revive an old idea that the Big Bang Universe we observe today is just the latest version in a permanent cycle of events.
"I think that idea is getting more and more traction," said Dr Lykken.
"It's much easier to explain a lot of things if what we see is a cycle. If I were to bet my own money on it, I'd bet the cyclic idea is right," he told BBC News.
The Standard Model and the Higgs boson • The Standard Model is the simplest set of ingredients - elementary particles - needed to make up the world we see in the heavens and in the laboratory • Quarks combine together to make, for example, the proton and neutron - which make up the nuclei of atoms today - though more exotic combinations were around in the Universe's early days • Leptons come in charged and uncharged versions; electrons - the most familiar charged lepton - together with quarks make up all the matter we can see; the uncharged leptons are neutrinos, which rarely interact with matter • The "force carriers" are particles whose movements are observed as familiar forces such as those behind electricity and light (electromagnetism) and radioactive decay (the weak nuclear force) • The Higgs boson came about because although the Standard Model holds together neatly, nothing requires the particles to have mass; for a fuller theory, the Higgs - or something else - must fill in that gap
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos |
The Montgomery County Council has scheduled a public hearing on Bill 23-17, which was introduced by Councilmembers Craig Rice and George Leventhal last month. Bill 23-17 would ban performing animals from the traveling circuses that seek to set up in the County. The bill does not apply within the cities of Rockville and Gaithersburg.
The hearing on Bill 23-17 will take place during the County Council’s regular meeting on July 18. The hearing on the ban on performing animals is estimated to take place about 1:30 pm after the recess.
“The closing of the Barnum and Bailey Circus, which was driven by the concern for the way performing animals were treated, is a major driver behind this bill,” said Councilmember Rice. “Ironically, animals in a large circus such as that one likely were treated better than the animals who are in much smaller circuses with less resources. There are dozens of those type of circuses that go around the country and set up in an empty parking lot.”
The change to the County’s Animal Control law would ban a person or business from profiting by the exhibition of wild animals in a traveling animal act. Wild animals include chimpanzees, baboons, monkeys, lions, tigers, cougars, leopards, ocelots, wolves, coyotes, bears, kangaroos, elephants, crocodiles, alligators, snakes, hippopotamuses, rhinos, giraffes and camels.
Exempted from the law would be shows that showcase domestic animals that might be found at an exhibition such as a county or neighborhood fair. Exempted animals include dogs and cats, domestic cattle, swine, sheep, goats, domestic horses, donkeys or mules.
Councilmember Leventhal said that the proposed bill addresses protecting wild animals while also preserving traditions that have a focus on domestic animals that are cared for by individuals and families.
“The proposed bill will serve to protect wild and exotic animals, which are often mistreated and exploited in captivity,” Councilmember Leventhal said. “Displays of wild and exotic animals cannot be healthy or safe for the animals. They are forced to travel, are caged and displayed at all hours. I am gratified that a majority of Councilmembers is cosponsoring the bill.”
The Montgomery County Republican party released a statement today calling the proposed ban a waste of taxpayers money. “Rather than focus on real concerns of Montgomery County residents who have children attending public schools alongside MS13 members, Councilmember and Chairman of the County’s Education Committee Craig Rice is wasting his time and your tax dollars to push for legislation to prevent circus animals from coming into the county.”
Tom Ferleman, who is a candidate for Craig Rice’s seat as the District 2 representative on the County Council in the 2018 election said, “"The County Council should not waste time and taxpayer funds on silly bills; there are real issues in the County like gang violence and declining school rankings. The County Council should be embarrassed that they are having a hearing on circus animals, they are the circus and this is what we get for a 9 percent property tax increase. Rice’s circus bill is an example of why county voters passed by a whopping 70 percent, the term limits provision in the 2016 general elections. The County Council needs to focus on real issues not silly measures like this." |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Texan Sam Lovett had no health insurance in August 2010 when an emergency hospital stay brought the news from his doctors that his liver was failing and he could die within less than a year without a transplant.
The small distribution center where he worked did not provide health insurance. Lovett, 43, who lives near Comfort, Texas, was not able to buy private coverage on his own because of his already bad health. Though he had the resources to cover routine medical bills, he now needed a $400,000 organ transplant and no doctor or clinic would take him without insurance.
“They were making arrangements to send me to a hospice. One doctor flatly told me that I had a better chance of leaving the hospital dead than alive,” said Lovett, who had a history of alcoholism and obesity.
But in the months that followed, Lovett was able to enroll in the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP). The program was created by the healthcare law that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, signed in March 2010 despite the united opposition of Republicans in Congress. The program paid for Lovett’s transplant surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix last December.
PCIP is a temporary government program set up to run until 2014, when the Obama healthcare law is due to take full effect and prevent insurance companies from the common practice of denying people coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions. About 60,000 Americans already are receiving medical coverage through the program, according to the Obama administration.
As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule in the next few weeks on whether to overturn the law considered to be Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, Lovett said the choice is very clear for him and others unable to get insurance without the statute’s provisions.
“Without this, you’re going to die,” Lovett said in an interview arranged by the Consumers Union organization, which supports the law. “From my perspective, that’s what the Supreme Court will sanction, or not - whether people will be allowed to die because they can’t get insurance.”
Unlike people in many other rich nations where health insurance is near universal, many Americans struggle without medical coverage even as the country pays more for healthcare than anywhere else in the world. The U.S. healthcare system is a patchwork of private insurance and restrictive government programs that has left tens of millions uninsured.
Many Americans receive health insurance only because their employers provide it as a job benefit. But some companies, particularly smaller employers, do not offer it. People with pre-existing medical conditions often are denied private coverage when they try to buy it on their own.
The Obama law represented the $2.6 trillion U.S. healthcare system’s biggest overhaul in nearly 50 years. Twenty-six of the 50 U.S. states - including Lovett’s home state of Texas - and a small business trade group challenged the law in court.
The Supreme Court heard three days of historic arguments in March on the fate of the law. A ruling is expected by the end of June.
PCIP is only one facet of a law intended to extend coverage to more than 30 million more Americans, create competitive health insurance exchanges in all 50 states and find new ways to deliver effective healthcare at lower costs.
Opponents of the law say it represents an encroachment by the federal government on the individual right to choose healthcare, meddles in the business of the states, and would saddle consumers with higher costs and less access to care.
Should the high court overturn the law, its provisions could become invalid immediately.
‘START OVER’
Although conservatives revile the law, Republicans and other critics agree something should be done to give insurance access to people with pre-existing conditions and other health issues. Several Republican bills in Congress would create new insurance pools for extending affordable coverage.
“We need to get rid of the entire thing and start over with a very deliberative process,” said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “There’s bipartisan recognition that these are valid concerns that need to be addressed. But we need to do it in a way that doesn’t put government in the middle of healthcare.”
Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican challenger in the November 6 U.S. election, has called for repealing the law.
If the whole law or key provisions are struck down, it may be tough to get any alternatives through a Congress in partisan gridlock even after the election. Republicans currently control the House of Representatives and Obama’s fellow Democrats the Senate.
Republican lawmakers are working on an alternative healthcare agenda should the law be struck down. They may seek to reinstate some of its more popular consumer protections such as a provision, already in effect, that lets young adults remain under their parents’ health insurance plans to age 26.
But the uninsured or uninsurable could wait months or years for an alternative plan to help them. Meanwhile, many people without insurance fear that a major illness could lead to astronomical healthcare bills and doom them to bankruptcy.
Statistics show that as many as one in four working-age American adults go without health insurance in a given year, often due to unemployment and other job changes.
Helen Berger of Boise, Idaho, said she has not seen a doctor since her husband, Russ, lost his information technology job 10 months ago.
They had the option of paying to continue to get his former employer’s insurance plan under a U.S. law known as COBRA. But the $1,350 monthly premium was way more than they could afford on his $336-a-week government unemployment check.
Her 2-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter are eligible for a government health assistance program for children. The family also qualifies for $400 a month in food stamps.
Joining the state-federal Medicaid program for the poor would mean giving up assets including their home, she said. So Helen, 55, and Russ Berger, 57, are going without coverage until he can find another job or a charitable health clinic.
“We’re going in the hole (financially) every month without having to pay any health insurance. And now we’re coming up on a year being on unemployment (benefits), not knowing if that will continue,” Helen Berger said in an interview arranged by the advocacy group Families USA, which supports the law.
Because information technology specialists like her husband often land jobs as outside contractors without health benefits, Berger said a return to employment likely would mean they would have to buy their own insurance. She said she hopes affordable medical coverage will become available once the state insurance exchanges are launched as scheduled under the Obama law in 2014.
“If anything happens between now and then, we’re kind of in a bad place,” she said.
Her state, Idaho, also is among those challenging the law.
‘I’LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT’
Gail Richardson of Stone Mountain, Georgia, said she is skeptical the law will help her, but hopes to qualify for its expanded Medicaid eligibility, which also would begin in 2014.
“I just found out about it and was really happy. I used to think it would benefit a lot of people but not me,” she said. “But I still say I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Richardson, a 59-year-old freelance writer, has autoimmune liver disease and psoriatic arthritis. With an annual income of about $11,000, she said she cannot afford to join the PCIP program that paid for Lovett’s liver transplant.
That’s because the law requires PCIP coverage to be priced in line with plans for healthy customers in each state. In Georgia, the standard PCIP plan for someone her age costs $470 a month in premiums and can lead to out-of-pocket expenses such as deductibles and co-pays of $5,950 to $7,000.
Richardson is not eligible for Medicaid in Georgia, which is available in the state to adults without children only if they are elderly, disabled, blind, pregnant or suffering from certain forms of cancer. She gets much of her medical needs at discounted prices, or for free from assistance programs offered by drug companies and a supermarket pharmacy chain.
“I pay about $54 for three months’ worth of one prescription and get the other two free. My doctor does blood work every six months and charges about $78 per visit, which I repay in monthly installments,” Richardson said in an interview arranged by Consumers Union. “You can see how that’s dwarfed by the expense of premiums I couldn’t possibly afford.”
The Obama law would expand Medicaid to cover people with annual incomes of up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,000.
Related Coverage Factbox: Health benefits Americans could lose in court ruling
“I’d have peace of mind, knowing that if something serious happened to me, I’d be able to get care,” she said.
Her state also was among those challenging the law, including the Medicaid expansion. |
Linux 3.19 was released, to be followed by either a version 3.20 or 4.0. Also, the 2015 Linux Kernel Report reveals a growing rate of kernel contributions.
Linux kernel 3.19 was released on Feb. 8 (see farther below). Meanwhile, the next release has a good chance of being renamed from Linux 3.20 to Linux 4.0. As reported by LinuxPlanet, Linus Torvalds posted an entry on Google+ saying he is opening up the question of naming to the community before he makes a decision.
“I’m once more close to running out of fingers and toes,” wrote the Linux creator. “So — continue with v3.20, because bigger numbers are sexy, or just move to v4.0 and reset the numbers to something smaller?”
So far, Linux 4.0 has been outscoring Linux 3.20 among community voters, says LinuxPlanet. Like the Linux 3.0 kernel released in 2011, the 4.0 (or 3.20) release will be more or less like any other incremental release. There is one major new feature, however: live kernel patching.
A joint development of enterprise distro vendors Red Hat and SUSE, live kernel patching is inspired by MIT’s Ksplice. Red Hat and SUSE announced their respective technologies around the same time, and found so many similarities they decided to merge their efforts.
The live patching (code redirection) feature includes an API for kernel modules containing the patches, as well as an API/ABI for userspace that lets developers work with them. The technology is said to use existing kernel infrastructure, such as ftrace, as much as possible. Initially it supports x86, but is being ported to other architectures.
Linux 3.19
The new Linux 3.19 kernel, meanwhile, improves support for Btrfs file system scrubbing, adds RAID hotswap features, and offers Intel memory buffering enhancements, as well as Device Tree Overlays to ease development of the expansion buses found on community-backed SBCs. Support for several new processors has also been added.
According to Kernelnewbies.org, major enhancements in the just released Linux 3.19 include:
Btrfs scrubbing support
Fast device replacement with RAID 5 and 6
Intel Memory Protection Extensions that help to stop buffer overflows
AMD HSA architecture support
Support for the debugging ARM Coresight subsystems
Altera Nios II CPU architecture
Networking infrastructure for routing and switching offloading
Device Tree Overlays to support expansion buses found on consumer SBCs like the BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi
Support for hole punching and pre-allocation in NFSv4.2
Android binder moved from staging area to stable
(click to enlarge)
2015 Linux Kernel Development report
The Linux 3.19 release was followed by the publication of the Linux Foundation’s quasi-annual Linux Kernel Development report, which reveals key stats and trends in kernel development. Since the previous Linux Kernel Development report from Sept. 2013, which followed the release of 3.10, major new Linux kernel features are said to include:
O_TMPFILE option for the creation of temporary files
NFS 4.2 support
Virtualization support on ARM64 with Xen and KVM
Zswap compressed swap cache
Support for using GPU rendering engines independently of a graphical display
Multiqueue block layer for improved high-end disk I/O performance
Nftables firewall to eventually replace iptables
Realtime earliest-deadline-first scheduler
Numerous networking improvements
Major reworking of the control group subsystem
File sealing support for secure interprocess communication (IPC)
Overlayfs union filesystem’
Hundreds of new drivers, thousands of fixes
According to the new report, more than 96,000 Linux kernel changesets have been merged from 4,169 individual developers representing approximately 518 corporations since Sept. 2013. All these numbers have risen since the earlier report. Some 1,458 developers and 239 companies contributed to the Linux 3.18 kernel released in December.
The Linux kernel project, which oversees the largest and most important component of the many modules that comprise a typical “Linux system,” continues to be the largest and most open source project in the world. “There may be no other examples of such a large, common resource being supported by such a large group of independent actors in such a collaborative way,” says the report.
Faster pace, larger kernel
The accelerating pace of patch contributions merged into the Linux kernel reflects improved testing infrastructure, says the report. For example, during the last 17 months, the “zero-day build and boot robot” self-test framework alone found nearly 500 bugs, all of which were fixed. The zero-day bot is expected to improve over the next year, along with other testing technologies.
Kernel Development History
(data source: Linux Foundation)
Release Date Dev days Files Lines Changes Chgs/hour 3.11 9/2/13 64 44,017 17,407,037 10,893 7.09 3.12 11/3/13 62 44,601 17,730,630 10,927 7.34 3.13 1/19/14 77 44,985 17,934,674 12,127 6.56 3.14 3/30/14 70 45,950 18,275,747 12,311 7.33 3.15 6/8/14 70 46,795 18,636,331 13,722 8.17 3.16 8/3/14 56 47,440 18,882,881 12,804 9.53 3.17 10/5/14 63 47,505 18,868,140 12,354 8.17 3.18 12/7/14 63 47,986 18,997,848 11,379 7.53 Overall: 525 96,517 7.7
Since the release of the 3.10 kernel, patches have been merged at an average rate of 7.71 per hour, says the LF. The speedup has helped accelerate kernel development cycles, which have dropped from about 70 days in 2013 to just under 66 days.
The Linux kernel was comprised of only about 10,000 lines of code when Linus Torvalds released the first version in 1991, but has now grown from 17 million lines in Sept. 2013 to 19 million today. It might have been more than that if not for a rare drop in total lines of code in the 3.17 release when the kernel community stripped out a variety of old and unmaintained drivers. The only other time the kernel has shrunk was with the release of kernel 2.6.36 in 2010.
When it comes to the rate of kernel releases and the growth in kernel size, more is not always better. The consensus opinion in the community is that the current six to 12 week cycle is ideal. If the cycle is too short, there’s not enough time for testing, says the LF.
Meanwhile, Torvalds has long warned about the kernel growing too bloated, which led to the removal of drivers. Then again, to keep up with all the developments from server virtualization to new embedded technologies the kernel will probably need to keep growing.
More developers, but fewer volunteers and sponsors
Since Sept. 2013, nearly 200 more developers have participated in each kernel development cycle, says the LF. Since the kernel development team moved to the Git repository system with Linux 2.6.11 in 2005, thereby enabling more accurate tracking, some 11,695 developers have contributed, working for a “minimum” of 1,230 companies, says the report.
The number of contributions in which the labor was primarily paid for by a company has grown slightly, representing “well over 80 percent,” says the report. Submissions from unpaid developers, meanwhile, continues its slow decline of many years, dropping from 14.6 percent in the 2012 report to 13.6 percent in 2013 and now 11.8 percent.
Kernel Developer Affiliation
(source: Linux Foundation)
Company Changes None 11,968 12.40% Intel 10,108 10.50% Red Hat 8,078 8.40% Linaro 5,415 5.60% Samsung 4,290 4.40% Unknown 3,842 4.00% IBM 3,081 3.20% SUSE 2,890 3.00% Consultants 2,451 2.50% Texas Instruments 2,269 2.40% Vision Engraving Systems 2,089 2.20% Google 2,048 2.10% Renesas Electronics 2,004 2.10% Freescale 1,690 1.80% Free Electrons 1,463 1.50% Company Changes Outreachy 1,418 1.50% Oracle 1,166 1.20% AMD 1,109 1.10% NVidia 1,078 1.10% Broadcom 1,001 1.00% Huawei Technologies 971 1.00% ARM 788 0.80% Pengutronix 763 0.80% Cisco 723 0.70% Qualcomm 679 0.70% Fujitsu 672 0.70% Linux Foundation 627 0.60% Imagination Technologies 579 0.60% QLogic 545 0.60% Ingics Technology 526 0.50%
The report suggests that this is not so much due to a lack of volunteer spirit as the fact that Linux kernel developers are in such high demand — good kernel developers don’t stay unemployed for long. “Anybody who demonstrates an ability to get code into the mainline tends not to have trouble finding job offers,” says the report.
Over the years, the number of sponsoring companies has shown overall growth, despite some downticks. The 2009 kernel report, for example, listed nearly 1,000 developers working for more than 200 different corporations, while by the time Linux 3.1 arrived 2013, there were 1,392 developers working for 243 companies.
In 2014 and 2015, however, the number of companies dropped slightly compared to 2013. On Linux 3.18, for example, 239 companies contributed, compared to 241 on Linux 3.17.
There continues to be a large disparity between the volume of contributions submitted by sponsoring companies. The top 10 sponsors today make up nearly 57 percent of total contributions, says the report. The leading contributor — the 12.4 percent who list themselves as “none” — refers primarily to unaligned, unpaid contributors.
Since Sept. 2013, Intel has taken over the second-place slot from Red Hat, with 10.5 percent and 8.4 percent of contributions, respectively. Texas Instruments has dropped from fourth place to 10th, perhaps reflecting the chipmaker’s retreat from the smartphone market. Meanwhile, Linaro and Samsung continue to rise on the chart, with 5.6 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively, followed by “Unknown,” IBM, SUSE, “Consultants,” and TI.
Google, which has been increasing its contributions over the years, dropped to 12th place behind Vision Engraving Systems. After Google comes chipmakers Renesas and Freescale.
Interestingly, two smaller open source organizations have jumped into the next two slots ahead of tech giants like Oracle, AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Huawei. These include our embedded Linux friends at France-based Free Electrons, and the FOSS Outreach for Women, which recently changed its name to Outreachy. The organization is primarily backed by the GNOME Foundation, with fellowship support coming from the LF, Intel, and Codethink.
Individual contributions also vary significantly. Typically about a third of contributors contribute only one patch per release, but since the 2.6.11 release in 2005, the top 30 developers have contributed about 17 percent of the total. Since the 2013 report, contributors who have represented 1 percent or more of contributions include H. Hartley Sweeten (2.2 percent), Sachin Kamat, Jingoo Han, and Laurent Pinchart.
Perhaps just as important as the developers are the kernel maintainers who approve code. These “non-author signoff” contributors have been led since the last report by Greg Kroah-Hartman with 14.4 percent, David Miller with 8.6 percent, and Mark Brown and Andrew Morton, each with 4.1 percent. The companies supporting such signoffs are increasingly linked to the mobile and embedded sectors, says the report.
Non-author Signoffs
(source: Linux Foundation)
Developer Signoffs Percent Greg Kroah-Hartman 13,028 14.40% David S. Miller 7,780 8.60% Mark Brown 3,735 4.10% Andrew Morton 3,726 4.10% Mauro Carvalho Chehab 2,706 3.00% Daniel Vetter 2,554 2.80% John W. Linville 2,288 2.50% Rafael J. Wysocki 1,614 1.80% Simon Horman 1,339 1.50% Ingo Molnar 1,243 1.40% Developer Signoffs Percent Linus Walleij 1,213 1.30% Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo 1,044 1.20% Jeff Kirsher 916 1.00% Benjamin Herrenschmidt 906 1.00% Shawn Guo 905 1.00% Jonathan Cameron 871 1.00% Felipe Balbi 861 1.00% Jason Cooper 783 0.90% Chris Mason 761 0.80% Johannes Berg 748 0.80%
Interestingly, the total number of patches approved by Torvalds — 329, or 0.4 percent of the total — “continues its long-term decline, [reflecting] the increasing amount of delegation to subsystem maintainers who do the bulk of the patch review and merging,” adds the LF’s report.
Further information
The 2015 Linux Kernel Development report may be found here (requires free LF registration). |
While little Nieyely Lopez's mother Nicole worked two jobs, her mother's boyfriend, Antonio Harris, 19, would often baby-sit the 2-year-old.
In recent weeks, Nieyely's mother noticed that the child was reluctant to give Harris hugs and kisses, according to court records.
And she didn't question the bruises on the girl's face when Harris said she'd fallen off the bed.
So when Harris came to her job on Sunday to tell her Nieyely had stopped breathing, Nicole Lopez lied to police about several things, including her relationship with Harris, her daughter's last kiss and even her boyfriend's real name, according to court records.
Despite the initial lack of help from her, Lake Station detectives Sgt. Brian Williams and Sgt. Glen Gulley sorted through the facts to obtain murder, neglect of a dependent and battery charges against Harris, of Gary.
Harris is in custody, being held without bail. Nicole Lopez has not been charged. Lake County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Barbara McConnell said Lopez did finally cooperate in the investigation and agreed to testify against Harris.
Nieyely died Sunday morning at the Methodist Hospitals Northlake campus after Harris and his aunt flagged down a Gary fire truck on Lake Street in Miller, seeking help for the child, whose body was cold and lifeless.
A coroner reported that Nieyely Lopez, 2, died of "multiple blunt force traumatic injuries." Her death was ruled a homicide.
An autopsy revealed Nieyely suffered "blunt force injuries including a lacerated liver, bleeding to the right chest, rib fracture of right side, severe bruising of diaphragm from ribs, severe internal bruising, multiple lacerations to liver from a crushing blow (stomp on ground or punch against wall)" and knots on her head from knuckles or fingers, the probable cause affidavit states. She probably died from a cut to a blood vessel in her liver, and the injuries were less than 24 hours old, the affidavit states.
Lopez first told police Harris was her cousin and that she knew him only as "Tone," but later admitted they had been dating and living together for a few months. She worked at an area nursing home and Illinois night club while he stayed at home with the child. Lopez said that the child seemed sluggish Saturday night but claimed she saw no bruises or marks on the child. She told detectives that Harris had said the ligature-type mark on the child's neck was not from a string or rope.
2-year-old-girl found cold and unresponsive May 17, 2015 in Lake Station, Indiana. Child sustained blunt force trauma according to police. (WGN TV) 2-year-old-girl found cold and unresponsive May 17, 2015 in Lake Station, Indiana. Child sustained blunt force trauma according to police. (WGN TV) SEE MORE VIDEOS
When speaking to police, Lopez said Harris "was quiet but he can 'snap' easily," according to court documents.
She also asked to take a voice stress test to prove she was telling the truth. Gary Detective Roberto Figueroa performed the test and asked her questions about whether she had physically punished the child. She said no and passed the test, according to court documents.
Harris denied injuring the child, the affidavit states. He said Lopez lied about knowing his name because he might have felony warrants, and claimed the child was hurt by falling furniture, such as stereo speakers or bunk beds. The Lake Station detectives, however, searched the home and found nothing out of place, the affidavit states.
Gary police took Lopez and Harris into custody, but the case was handled by Lake Station when it was determined that the deadly injuries occurred at Lopez's apartment in Lake Station.
[email protected] |
The foreign foundation that gave money to Amnesty to support its campaign on abortion has taken issue with the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) and called on it to correct a statement it made on the matter.
The Open Society Foundations, which is funded by the billionaire George Soros, has said at no time did it tell Sipo that €137,000 it gave Amnesty last year was given for “political purposes”.
It has also said Sipo’s stance may be influenced by internal foundation documents that were reportedly obtained by people working for the Russian government who hacked into Open Society’s computer system in a bid to discredit Open Society’s work.
Last week Sipo, which has told Amnesty to return the money, said it had recently contacted the donor and that it confirmed the money was for political purposes.
In a statement issued on Thursday from New York, Open Society said it has written to the watchdog asking for the statement to be corrected.
“The grant in question was to fund the continuation of Amnesty’s ‘My body My Rights’ campaign, which seeks to mobilise support for a repeal of the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which effectively bans all forms of abortion in Ireland in violation of women’s and girls’ human rights,” it said.
The statement referred to Sherry Perreault, Sipo’s head of ethics and lobbying, who has asserted that the grant was for “political purposes” and that documentary evidence received by Sipo had been verified by the donor which “essentially clarified the intent”.
The leaked document continued: “With one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, a win there (Ireland)could impact other strongly Catholic countries in Europe, such as Poland, and provide much needed proof that change is possible, even in highly conservative places.”
In its statement on Thursday, Open Society said it believed Sipo in its public comment had referred to internal documents that were “stolen from our servers and illegally published on the DC Leaks website in 2016, reportedly by hackers working for the Russian government seeking to publicly discredit our human rights work around the world.”
The foundation said it had told Sipo the hacked documents were not “dispositive of our intention as a donor. Rather they were part of an ongoing discussion on how best to strengthen women’s reproductive rights across Europe”.
It said: “In addition, it was Amnesty who first approached Open Society, in a general call for expressions of interest for a grant that was not specific to abortion.”
The foundation said the legal scope of the money given to Amnesty was determined by the language of the grant agreement, and not any other document.
“The Open Society Foundations trusts that Sipo will rely only on this document to determine whether the terms of this grant comply with Irish law.”
Under Irish law, third parties cannot receive funding for political purposes from foreign donors. Colm O’Gorman, chief executive of Amnesty, has said it at all times made clear to Sipo what it was using the €137,000 for, and that Amnesty was told last year the grant did not fall within the Sipo remit.
Assurances On Thursday, Sipo said it had no comment to make on Open Society’s statement.
In a statement last week, Sipo said that in 2016, having heard of the grants, it made inquiries and received assurances from the recipients that the donations were not for political purposes.
However, it said, it recently received new information that indicated the donations “were indeed for political purposes”.
Sipo has said it sought and received written confirmation from the donor that the funding was for explicitly political purposes.
“As it is the intent of the donor that determines whether a donation is a political donation, the funding very clearly fell within the Act’s prohibitions. The Commission has issued directives to the recipients to return the prohibited donations.” |
Malloy: "I'm overwhelmed at how happy I am" Copyright by WTNH - All rights reserved Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy announced Thursday that he will not seek a third term. (WTNH / Joe Sferazza) [ + - ] Video
HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) -- There has been speculation at the Capitol for weeks that Governor Dannel Malloy would not run again and now it's official. After 14 years as Mayor of Stamford, and eight years as Governor, Dannel Malloy will move on.
"Today I announce that I will not seek a third term as Governor," said the Governor at a packed news conference in the large Old Appropriations room at the State Capitol. The decision comes as Malloy is facing the most difficult budget battle of his entire career and he pledged today to not borrow or postpone any difficult spending cuts to close the $1.7 billion dollar deficit "The decision I have announced today will allow me to focus on these areas fully, not just for the remainder of this session but for the next twenty months in total."
There is already a large field of Republicans seeking the nomination. Several have already raised considerable sums for statewide campaigns. They include;
On the Democratic side, Middletown Mayor Dan Drew is the only announced candidate, but there are several strong candidate possibilities, including;
Ganim made a remarkable comeback in 2015, after spending seven years in federal prison for corruption. While Lt. Governor Wyman is also high on many speculation lists, she declined to comment Thursday, saying today was Governor Malloy's day.
With his wife Cathy, who had to help him with his homework in college because of learning disabilities, he started to tear up.
I'm overwhelmed with emotion. I'm not sad at all. I'm overwhelmed at how happy I am."
Many at the Capitol have noticed that Governor Malloy has seemed very happy for weeks. He said Thursday that he started making this decision, along with Cathy, back in August. |
Introducing his new running mate on Saturday, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney boasted, "We offer solutions that are bold, specific, and achievable." Number Two dutifully followed Number One, as Paul Ryan then promised voters, "We won't duck the tough issues...we will lead."
Just not, it turns out, when it comes to the central premise of the Romney-Ryan economic plan. Both men have pledged to lower tax rates and "broaden the base" by closing some of the myriad deductions and loopholes that cost the United States Treasury over $1 trillion a year in lost revenue. But because neither man has "the courage to tell you the truth" in "the light of day," which tax expenditures they will close--and which Americans be hit hardest--will be a mystery until after Election Day. The result is that the ersatz Republican deficit hawks will add trillions more to the national debt than the Democrats they want to replace while raising the tax bill on working families.
While Governor Romney has stopped short of fully adopting the Ryan House Republican budget he has called "marvelous" and repeatedly pledged to sign if it crossed his desk, their respective blueprints are nearly identical on the issues that matter most. Both Ryan and Romney would deliver a massive tax cut windfall for the rich, a multi-trillion giveaway offset only in part by gutting the social safety net each pretends to protect. Romney-Ryan ends Medicare as we know it with a "premium support" gambit that would dramatically shift health care costs to America's seniors. Their shared call for repealing the Affordable Care Act could leave up to 48 million more people without health insurance. Even as their draconian austerity budgets would increase unemployment beginning in 2013, both men would nevertheless ratchet up defense spending. And despite their mutual pledges to end many tax loopholes and deductions to fund their gilded-class giveaway, Romney and Ryan are too cowardly to say which ones. As a result, these supposed deficit hawks would actually add trillions more in red ink to the national debt.
As it turns out, there's a simple problem with Ryan's bragging that his plan will "prevent an explosion of debt from crippling our nation and robbing our children of their future." That is, his math doesn't work. As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein explained in March, Ryan has a roughly $6 trillion hole to fill:
The Tax Policy Center looked into the revenue loss associated with House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's plan to cut the tax code down to two rates of 10 percent and 25 percent. They estimate the changes would raise $31.1 trillion over 10 years, or 15.4 percent of GDP. That's $10 trillion less than the tax code would raise if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire, and $4.6 trillion less than it would raise if all of the Bush tax cuts were extended.
The Republican congressman says he'll "broaden the tax base to maintain revenue...consistent with historical norms of 18 to 19 percent." So let's say Ryan needs to find close-enough deductions and loopholes to hit 18.5 percent of GDP. That means he'd need to close about $6.2 trillion in tax deductions and loopholes over 10 years.
But so far, Rep. Ryan has refused to answer the $6 trillion question: which tax deductions and loopholes will he close? And as we'll see below, he's not the only refusenik on the GOP's 2012 ticket.
As the Washington Post showed (chart above), the trillion-plus dollars in annual tax expenditures is now larger than Uncle Sam's take from the income tax each year. And as the Post also highlighted last year, "ever-increasing tax breaks for U.S. families eclipse benefits for special interests."
It's important to understand that much of the estimated $1.3 trillion in annual tax expenditures in 2015 (a figure larger than the entire 2012 budget deficit and equivalent to about a third of the $3.8 trillion in federal spending next year) benefit working and middle income Americans. For example, the home mortgage tax deduction was worth $89 billion in 2011. Tax-deferred 401K accounts cost the Treasury $63 billion. The Earned Income Tax Credit had a similar $63 billion price tag last year.
So what deductions and loopholes are actually in the mystery meat that is Paul Ryan's budgetary dog food? As Paul Krugman explained in "Pink Slime Economics":
We're talking about a lot of loophole-closing. As Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out, to make his numbers work Mr. Ryan would, by 2022, have to close enough loopholes to yield an extra $700 billion in revenue every year. That's a lot of money, even in an economy as big as ours. So which specific loopholes has Mr. Ryan, who issued a 98-page manifesto on behalf of his budget, said he would close?
None. Not one. He has, however, categorically ruled out any move to close the major loophole that benefits the rich, namely the ultra-low tax rates on income from capital. (That's the loophole that lets Mitt Romney pay only 14 percent of his income in taxes, a lower tax rate than that faced by many middle-class families.)
As Matthew Yglesias pointed out, in Ryan's 13-page description of his tax reform vision, those politically tough choices are completely missing:
Thirteen pages dedicated to explaining his vision for revenue-neutral tax reform. And even so he manages to not name a single tax deduction that he's planning to eliminate. Home mortgage interest deduction? I dunno. Electric vehicle tax credit? I dunno. Deductibility of state and local income taxes? I dunno.
Ryan has admitted as much. Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on March 20th, Congressman Ryan declared he would "Get rid of the special interest loopholes, special deductions, lower everybody's tax rates, bring in at least as much revenue to the government but grow the economy and create jobs, and get spending under control so we can pay off this debt." But when host Joe Scarborough asked "Which one of those [loopholes] do you eliminate," Ryan decided discretion was the better part of valor (starting around the 1:15 mark):
"We want to do this in the light of day and in front of everybody. So the Ways and Means Committee, which is in charge of the tax system, sent us the plan here, which is a 10 and 25 percent bracket for individuals and small businesses, and then they want to have hearings and, in light of day, show how they would go about doing this."
Appearing on CBS Face the Nation just days later, Ryan again claimed that "We're proposing to keep revenues where they are, but to clear up all the special interest loopholes, which are uniquely enjoyed by higher income earners, in exchange for lower rates for everyone." But he once again pleaded the Fifth when asked which "special interest loopholes" he would do away with:
"That's what the Ways & Means Committee is supposed to do. That's not the job of the Budget Committee," Ryan said on Fox News Sunday. "What we're saying is, we want to do this in the light of day, not in some backroom deal. We want to have hearings in the Ways & Means Committee that Chairman Dave Camp has already started that work, to say what tax benefits should go."
For his part, Ryan has claimed - but not detailed how - he would leave "middle-income tax write-offs" in place. Instead, he told ABC's This Week earlier this year, "With respect to the wealthy, we're saying, 'Stop subsidizing the wealthy. Close the tax shelters and loopholes that are disproportionately used by the wealthy so that we can get more tax revenue by having a broader tax base with lower rates.'" As Fox News dutifully reported:
But Ryan argued that popular deductions might not have to be eliminated for everybody -- just the high-income earners who "disproportionately" use them. He indicated a willingness to end the home mortgage interest deduction and other breaks for top earners...
Ryan said it's "impossible" to know whether the wealthy would end up benefiting more or less from all these changes.
Actually, it's not impossible. Looking at Mitt Romney's similar proposals, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center did just that. And the results are hardly surprising.
Even after assuming the closure of tax loopholes and deductions which disproportionately favor the rich, TPC forecast that President Romney would cut taxes for the richest five percent of earners while increasing the tax bill for the other 95 percent of Americans. It's no wonder Ezra Klein concluded that "'broadening the base and lowering the rates' is anti-family tax reform," adding:
"The size of the tax cut he's proposing for the rich is larger than all of the tax expenditures that go to the rich put together. As such, it is mathematically impossible for him to keep his promise to make sure the top one percent keeps paying the same or more."
For months, Mitt Romney has been using the same dodge as Paul Ryan, promising only that the "1 percent keeps paying the current share they're paying or more." In March, economic adviser Glenn Hubbard confirmed Romney's cowardice, explaining "it is not his intention to take on any specific deduction or exclusion and eliminate it." As the New York Times reported:
"In order to limit any impact on the deficit, because I do not want to add to the deficit, and also to make sure we continue to have progressivity in our tax code, I'm going to limit the deductions and exemptions, particularly for high-income folks," Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, said. "And by the way, I want to make sure that you understand, for middle-income families, the deductibility of home mortgage interest and charitable contributions, those things will continue," he said. "For high-income folks, we are going to cut back on that, so we make sure that the top 1 percent keeps paying the current share they're paying or more. We want middle-income Americans to be the place we focus our help, because it's middle-income Americans that have been hurt by this Obama economy."
But just two weeks later, Mitt Romney chickened out again, refusing to reveal which deductions and tax breaks he would end:
"So I haven't laid out all of the details about how we're going to deal with each deduction, so I think it's kind of interesting for the groups to try and score it, because frankly it can't be scored, because those kinds of details will have to be worked out with Congress, and we have a wide array of options."
In response, the Post's Klein could only shake his head:
"Let's be clear on this: A tax plan that can't be scored because it doesn't include sufficient details is not a plan. It's a gesture towards a plan, or a statement of intended direction, or perhaps an unusually wonky daydream. But it's not a plan."
Well, it is a plan in one sense. That is, unless they reveal their loophole closing secret sauce, President Romney and Vice President Ryan will produce red ink as far as the eye can see.
As the Center for American Progress explained, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assessment of the Ryan budget "did not test Rep. Ryan's claims about how his policies would actually affect spending or revenue," but "merely showed what would happen to the debt if his claims were true." In a nutshell, they are not:
But the House budget's entire claim to deficit reduction is built on the foundation of those fantasy revenue levels. Without them, the debt goes up, not down. In fact, with all the House budget's tax cuts properly accounted for, revenue would average just 15.3 percent of GDP from 2013 through 2022, not 18.3 percent. The result: deficits would never drop below 4.4 percent of GDP, and would rise to more than 5 percent of GDP by 2022.
The national debt, measured as a share of GDP, would never decline, surpassing 80 percent by 2014, and 90 percent by 2022. By comparison, President Barack Obama's budget proposal, released in February, would stabilize the debt by 2015, and bring it down to 76 percent by 2022.
If this all sounds familiar, it should. Because in February, Mitt Romney also rolled out a new economic plan, one which similarly hemorrhages red ink.
As it turns out, Romney's scheme to "Cut, Cap and Balance" the federal budget does nothing of the sort. As the Washington Post explained in its discussion of an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, "until the campaign offers a more specific plan, Budget Watch analysts said Romney's entire framework would add about $2.6 trillion to the debt by 2021." (As ThinkProgress and the Washington Post's Lori Montgomery and Ezra Klein all explained, that's likely a conservative estimate.)
In words and in pictures (above), CAP put it this way:
The various fiscal promises Gov. Romney makes simply cannot work together. He cannot simultaneously cut taxes as he's proposed, increase defense spending, protect Social Security and Medicare for current and near-future retirees, and also balance the budget. It is mathematically impossible.
Mathematically impossible and, for the American people, catastrophic.
Such is price of cowardice. For his part, Mitt Romney during brief moments of candor has acknowledged his complete lack of political courage. As the former Massachusetts Governor inadvertently revealed in an interview with the Weekly Standard, his opacity is by design, a lesson learned from losing the 1994 Senate race:
"One of the things I found in a short campaign against Ted Kennedy was that when I said, for instance, that I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, that was used to suggest I don't care about education," Romney recalled. "So I think it's important for me to point out that I anticipate that there will be departments and agencies that will either be eliminated or combined with other agencies. So for instance, I anticipate that housing vouchers will be turned over to the states rather than be administered at the federal level, and so at this point I think of the programs to be eliminated or to be returned to the states, and we'll see what consolidation opportunities exist as a result of those program eliminations. So will there be some that get eliminated or combined? The answer is yes, but I'm not going to give you a list right now."
In a December profile by the Wall Street Journal, Governor Romney acknowledged that when it comes to facing the voters, his cowardice is a feature, not a bug:
Amid such generalities, it's hard not to conclude that the candidate is trying to avoid offering any details that might become a political target. And he all but admits as much. "I happen to also recognize," he says, "that if you go out with a tax proposal which conforms to your philosophy but it hasn't been thoroughly analyzed, vetted, put through models and calculated in detail, that you're gonna get hit by the demagogues in the general election."
But what Mitt Romney calls "demagogues," most Americans would call "voters." And they can handle the truth. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan simply too afraid to give to them. |
Grace VanderWaal rides the GoldieBlox float in the Macy's 90th Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City, NY on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2016. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran/The Record of North Jersey)
Grace VanderWaal is going black tie.
The tiny songstress who just performed at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will sing the national anthem at the Rockland County Executive Ball, Jan 29.
VanderWaal will be a highlight of the annual Day campaign fundraiser, which kicks off at 5 p.m. at the Pearl River Hilton. The theme is "Celebrating Success To Shape The Future." Tickets start at $250.
Rockland County Executive Ed Day presented VanderWaal with a "key to Rockland" during her homecoming parade on Oct.1. During that event Day said of the singer: "Suffern knew she had talent. Rockland knew she had talent. Now America knows she has talent. It's rare to have someone so special to bring us all together."
It's been a busy year for the now internationally-known singer, who captured hearts when she first appeared on "America's Got Talent' in June, ultimately winning the coveted grand prize of $1 million and landing a record deal with Simon Cowell's Syco label.
RELATED: Grace album available for pre-order
RELATED: Grace in studio recording first album
Her first album, "Perfectly Imperfect," will be released Dec. 2 and she is set to appear on the "America's Got Talent Holiday Spectacular," airing 8 p.m. Dec. 19 on NBC.
Grace VanderWaal rides the GoldieBlox float in the Macy's 90th Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City, NY on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2016. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran/The Record of North Jersey)
Twitter: @krhudsonvalley
Read or Share this story: http://lohud.us/2gleevk |
0 Couple unknowingly drives onto interstate with drunk man on trunk
A drunk man passed out and went for a ride on the trunk of a stranger's car down a busy Memphis interstate, and neither the drunk man nor the driver knew it.
He is lucky, to say the least. The man crawled up on the back of the car with a trunk that's only about 14 inches wide.
Thankfully, an Memphis Police Department officer spotted him, but not before he went on a ride that he doesn't remember. On the other hand, it’s a trip the driver will never forget.
"There's no way to describe it. It's unbelievable," Carl Webb told FOX13 Memphis.
Webb and his wife were leaving Barbecue Fest on Thursday night in downtown Memphis. They had backed their car into a parking space at Carolina and Riverside.
"We came down the aisle, walked right to the car, opened it up on both sides then we got in the car."
It was dark out and Webb’s sunshade was stuck up, so he didn't see what was on his trunk. After driving about 14 miles, he was pulled over by police.
“The officer came up and he said, ‘Mister, are you aware there's a body on your trunk?' and that did not register. He goes, ‘Mister, I'm not messing with you. There's a body on your trunk.’ So I got out. We walked around and sure enough, there he was, still hanging on, still unconscious, just lying there.”
Webb had driven 14 miles with the uninvited and unaware passenger sleeping on his 14-inch-wide trunk.
"I have no explanation other than that little lip right there saved his life," he said.
The officer had to wake the man up. Webb said the man was so drunk, he started to stumble into traffic and the officer grabbed him.
Webb said he's just thankful for the officer's good police work.
“Good job man, good job. It was just outstanding,” Webb said.
Webb also has a message for the man who ended up on his trunk.
"I hope he takes a good look at where he put himself and the hazard that he had open up to himself. It would've been death."
The man was put in the cruiser, but there's no word on his identity or if he was charged with anything.
MORE FROM BOSTON 25 NEWS
Massive landslide blocks scenic California highway
Here's your complete guide to Boston Calling 2017
Pete Frates struggling to keep up with health care costs
© 2019 Cox Media Group. |
The ability to be smart, even very smart, is no guarantee that you won’t sometimes be stupid — even very stupid.
Case in point: in an article in Newsweek, George Will echos the sentiment of Nobel-prizewinner Robert Laughlin, that “The Earth Doesn’t Care if You Drive a Hybrid.” The essay inside is titled “What the Earth Knows,” which is this: What humans do to earth doesn’t matter in the long run, and the long run is what matters to the earth.
This is one of the most destructive, immoral, and yes, stupid arguments ever — not just about global warming, but about any topic anywhere any time. Congratulations to Robert Laughlin for proving beyond doubt that Nobel prize winners are still capable of staggering, mind-boggling stupidity.
It’s true that the earth doesn’t care what we do to it. It’s also true that the earth doesn’t care if you torture, rape, and murder children. Or set up death camps to carry out genocide. Or turn an entire race of human beings into slaves. Truly, the earth doesn’t care if we all die, painfully, miserably — or if George Will and his cronies get filthy rich by selling the health and well-being of the next generation for a hundred dollars a barrel. Let the children die — just don’t take away George Will’s SUV.
Earth doesn’t care if we, or our children, suffer. Apparently, neither does George Will. Or Robert Laughlin.
I care.
Advertisements |
Today's dispute occurred after members passed a presidential decree to partially mobilize the country, drawing up military reserves and drafting men under 50 years old to protect Ukraine’s border. The decree extends an original call for military reserves issued a month and a half ago.
This isn't the first time Svoboda has been involved in a brawl in parliament — another one occurred in April when communist leader Petro Symonenko criticized party members for encouraging strong-arm tactics.
The fight allegedly broke out after Svoboda member Oleg Tiagnybok voted to remove Donetsk native and Party of Regions representative Yuri Levchenko from parliament; Levchenko asserted that Svoboda “kills its citizens.”
With a downed passenger jet , militant separatists , and a menacing neighbor to deal with, tensions are understandably running a little high among those running Ukraine. Today, a fight in parliament erupted between members of the nationalist Svoboda [Freedom] party and the Party of Regions, the pro-Russia party of former president Viktor Yanukovich.
Read more
With a downed passenger jet, militant separatists, and a menacing neighbor to deal with, tensions are understandably running a little high among those running Ukraine. Today, a fight in parliament erupted between members of the nationalist Svoboda [Freedom] party and the Party of Regions, the pro-Russia party of former president Viktor Yanukovich.
VICE News is on the ground reporting from Ukraine. Watch here.
The fight allegedly broke out after Svoboda member Oleg Tiagnybok voted to remove Donetsk native and Party of Regions representative Yuri Levchenko from parliament; Levchenko asserted that Svoboda “kills its citizens.”
This isn't the first time Svoboda has been involved in a brawl in parliament — another one occurred in April when communist leader Petro Symonenko criticized party members for encouraging strong-arm tactics.
Today's dispute occurred after members passed a presidential decree to partially mobilize the country, drawing up military reserves and drafting men under 50 years old to protect Ukraine’s border. The decree extends an original call for military reserves issued a month and a half ago.
Exclusive footage of the MH17 aftermath. Watch it here.
Before the vote, security official Andriy Paruby told the Ukrainian parliament that Russia was increasing its presence at the border, with about 41,000 soldiers, 150 tanks, and more than 900 other large weapons mobilized.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian director of informational security Vitaly Nayda alleged that it was a Russian officer, not a pro-Russia separatist, who launched the missile that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. "A Russian-trained, well-equipped, well-educated officer… pushed that button deliberately,” said Nayda, citing Ukrainian intelligence.
After spending several days stuck at the crash site, most of the bodies from the flight are now en route to the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the EU is still considering tougher economic sanctions on Russia.
MH17 crash site reportedly looted by rebels. Read more here.
Follow Jordan Larson on Twitter: @jalarsonist |
On 12 May 2008, Irena Sendlerowa (commonly known as Irena Sendler) passed away of pneumonia at the age of 98 in Warsaw. Her death prompted the circulation of an online message aimed at informing the many people who remained unfamiliar with her heroic deeds during the Holocaust:
There recently was a death of a 98 year old lady named Irena. During WWII, Iliana, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto. She had an ulterior motive… She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews. Iliana smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box she carried, and she carried in the back of her truck a Burlap sack, (for larger kids). She also had a dog in the back, that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in, and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids/infants noises. During her time and course of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, and arms, and beat her severely. Iliana kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out, and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it, and reunited the family. Most of course had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes, or adopted. Last year Iliana was up for the Nobel Peace Prize…. She LOST. Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming. Check it out: www.irenasendler.org
Irena has often been referred to as “the female Oskar Schindler” in her native Poland for her daring and ingenuity in saving the lives of more than 2,500 Jews (most of them children) in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Unlike Oskar Schindler, whose story was the subject of the Academy Award-winning 1993 film Schindler’s List, Irena Sendler was a relatively unknown figure to the world at large until 1999, when four Kansas high school students wrote and performed “Life in a Jar,” a play about Irena’s life-saving efforts in the Warsaw Ghetto:
A Los Angeles Times obituary for Irena described how the Polish social worker passed herself off as a nurse to sneak supplies and aid into (and children out of) the Warsaw Ghetto, and the punishment she endured when she was finally caught by the Nazis:
She studied at Warsaw University and was a social worker in Warsaw when the German occupation of Poland began in 1939. In 1940, after the Nazis herded Jews into the ghetto and built a wall separating it from the rest of the city, disease, especially typhoid, ran rampant. Social workers were not allowed inside the ghetto, but Sendler, imagining “the horror of life behind the walls,” obtained fake identification and passed herself off as a nurse, allowed to bring in food, clothes and medicine. By 1942, when the deadly intentions of the Nazis had become clear, Sendler joined a Polish underground organization, Zegota. She recruited 10 close friends — a group that would eventually grow to 25, all but one of them women — and began rescuing Jewish children. She and her friends smuggled the children out in boxes, suitcases, sacks and coffins, sedating babies to quiet their cries. Some were spirited away through a network of basements and secret passages. Operations were timed to the second. One of Sendler’s children told of waiting by a gate in darkness as a German soldier patrolled nearby. When the soldier passed, the boy counted to 30, then made a mad dash to the middle of the street, where a manhole cover opened and he was taken down into the sewers and eventually to safety. Most of the children who left with Sendler’s group were taken into Roman Catholic convents, orphanages and homes and given non-Jewish aliases. Sendler recorded their true names on thin rolls of paper in the hope that she could reunite them with their families later. She preserved the precious scraps in jars and buried them in a friend’s garden. In 1943, she was captured by the Nazis and tortured but refused to tell her captors who her co-conspirators were or where the bottles were buried. She also resisted in other ways. According to Felt, when Sendler worked in the prison laundry, she and her co-workers made holes in the German soldiers’ underwear. When the officers discovered what they had done, they lined up all the women and shot every other one. It was just one of many close calls for Sendler. During one particularly brutal torture session, her captors broke her feet and legs, and she passed out. When she awoke, a Gestapo officer told her he had accepted a bribe from her comrades in the resistance to help her escape. The officer added her name to a list of executed prisoners. Sendler went into hiding but continued her rescue efforts. Felt said that Sendler had begun her rescue operation before she joined the organized resistance and helped a number of adults escape, including the man she later married. “We think she saved about 500 people before she joined Zegota,” Felt said, which would mean that Sendler ultimately helped rescue about 3,000 Polish Jews. When the war ended, Sendler unearthed the jars and began trying to return the children to their families. For the vast majority, there was no family left. Many of the children were adopted by Polish families; others were sent to Israel.
Irena Sendler is often claimed to have been a candidate to receive the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, but that honor was not awarded to her. It’s not possible to state categorically that she was “nominated” for the award, since information about Nobel Prize “nominations, investigations, and opinions is kept secret for fifty years.” (Since 1974 the statutes of the Nobel Foundation have stated that “work produced by a person since deceased shall not be considered for an award,” so she presumably could not be subsequently honored.)
In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former U.S. Vice-President Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” (Al Gore was also involved with another significant award in 2007, when An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary about his campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide, claimed an Academy Award as “Best Documentary Feature.”)
The International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) expressed its disappointment that Irena Sendler had not yet been honored with a Nobel Prize: |
Looking for news you can trust?
Subscribe to our free newsletters.
Earlier this month, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive action requiring the Federal Housing Administration to decrease insurance premiums on FHA mortgages, a change that could have potentially saved low-income homeowners as much as $900 per year. In his first administrative order as president, President Donald Trump suspended this Obama order, which was slated to go into effect on January 27. In practice, this means that low-income homeowners will be stuck paying higher insurance premiums on their FHA-insured mortgages.
JUST IN: In one of first Trump admin. orders, Dept of Housing & Urban Dev. suspends reduction of FHA annual mortgage insurance premium rates — CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) January 20, 2017
FHA loans enable homebuyers—often those with lower incomes and who have fewer assets or bad credit—to bypass conventional lenders who would likely deny them loans by taking out a mortgage that’s insured by the federal government. The borrowers have to pay FHA mortgage insurance, to protect the mortgage lender from a loss should the borrower default on their home loan. In his announcement of the change, Obama said the drop in premiums would help stabilize the housing market and spur growth in housing markets still recovering from the financial crisis.
At his confirmation hearing last week, Ben Carson, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the FHA, said he was concerned about the Obama administration’s last-minute implementation of this insurance premium drop and would reexamine it. “I, too, was surprised to see something of this nature done on the way out the door,” Carson told members of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committee. “Certainly, if confirmed, I’m going to work with the FHA administrator and other financial experts to really examine that policy.”
Presidential executive orders require no congressional approval to pass or overturn. Trump has vowed to eliminate all of Obama’s executive actions during his first days in office. This may be his first step toward fulfilling that promise. |
Whether for work or for play, the Dell UltraSharpTM U2412M can deliver an unmatched viewing experience.
Clearly outstanding: Watch your graphics come to life on a vast 24" (61cm) LED-backlit screen featuring a crystal-clear 1920x1200 resolution on a 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio so you can’t lose screen area just because your customized applications support a different resolution.
resolution on a widescreen aspect ratio so you can’t lose screen area just because your customized applications support a different resolution. Contrasting view: Get ready for blur-free viewing with 2 million:1 (typical) high dynamic contrast ratio and 8ms with overdrive gray-to-gray (typical) response time that helps ensure crisp, sharp and ghost-free images.
Colorful character: Enjoy an amazing range of rich, dramatic and accurate colors, thanks to IPS technology designed to give you color consistency across a broad viewing angle and a wide color gamut at 82% (typical).
designed to give you color consistency across a broad viewing angle and a wide color gamut at 82% (typical). Superior Connectivity: This monitor includes a Display Port, DVI-D, VGA, and 2x USB connectors.
Your monitor, your style.
The ultimate in flexibility and customizability, the U2412M monitor can be adjusted to suit your workspace, tailored to suit your viewing preferences, and with its wide viewing angle, it can be viewed from almost any position.
Height adjustability: Raise or lower the U2412M to suit your workspace and your personal style with 115mm of height adjustability.
Versatile connectivity: Connect a keyboard, mouse and other peripherals via USB ports, DisplayPort and DVI ports that can deliver outstanding image quality when viewing HD content.
Maximum flexibility: Position your monitor just the way you like with comfort-enabling features like tilt, swivel and rotate. IPS (in-plane switching) technology helps ensure a great view from almost any angle.
Supreme adaptability: Make colors cooler or warmer to suit your preference with the color temperature slider, while ‘Text mode’ automatically adjusts screen brightness to 150 nits, ideal for reading text.
Shipping Note: Shipping to Alaska and Hawaii is not available for this item.
A physical address is required for delivery. No Military or PO Box shipments available
Warranty: 6 Months VSSI |
Tyree is best known for the Helmet Catch in 2008 on the Giants' final drive of Super Bowl XLII . The catch came at a crucial moment and was instrumental in continuing the drive that eventually resulted in the Giants scoring a last-minute touchdown, resulting in a 17–14 victory over the previously undefeated New England Patriots .
Over Tyree's career at Syracuse , he ranked 13th on the career receiving record list with 1,214 yards, including 229 yards against Virginia Tech in 2002. He also developed a reputation for being an excellent special teams player, amassing six blocked punts . [3]
New York Giants Edit
Tyree was selected in the sixth round (211th overall) of the 2003 NFL Draft by the New York Giants. While with the Giants, he was primarily a backup, never catching more than 19 passes in a single season. However, he was best known for his special teams play, earning a Pro Bowl selection in 2005 as a special teams player.
The Helmet Catch Edit
During the 2007 season, Tyree had four receptions for 35 yards with no touchdowns; however, his utilization in Super Bowl XLII was his most relevant contribution.[4]
Tyree made two key plays in Super Bowl XLII. First, he caught a five-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Eli Manning, Tyree's first of the season, that gave the Giants a 10-7 lead late in the game.[5] Later, on a third-and-five with 1:15 remaining and trailing 14-10, Manning eluded a sack and threw 32 yards downfield toward Tyree. In Manning's words, the ball "floated" high.[6]
Tyree leaped and caught the ball fully extended, bringing it down against his helmet with his right hand, while the New England Patriots' Rodney Harrison pulled violently downward on that arm, simultaneously wrenching Tyree arching backwards towards the turf. Tyree, who got a second hand on the ball during the descent, seemingly kept the ball only inches from the turf, thereafter struggling successfully for possession while Harrison tried to steal the ball away from him on the ground. The play became known as "The Helmet Catch".[5][7] "I told you. He's a gamer," Manning commented to his brother, Peyton, regarding Tyree, after the game.[8] ESPN SportsCenter named it the greatest play in Super Bowl history the following day. It was later voted for the 2008 ESPY Award for Play of the Year. The pass moved the Giants to the Patriots' 24-yard line with 59 seconds left. Four plays and 24 seconds later, Manning threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress for the winning touchdown. The final score of Super Bowl XLII was Giants 17, Patriots 14.[9] Tyree dedicated this catch, which remains the last catch he has made in an NFL game, to his mother, Thelma, who died of a heart attack that year.[citation needed]
In 2008, Tyree was placed on injured reserve for a knee injury suffered during training camp after being on the physically-unable-to-perform list most of the season. He was released during the final cuts on September 5, 2009.[10]
Baltimore Ravens Edit
Tyree was signed by the Baltimore Ravens on October 13, 2009 after working out with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He appeared in ten games with the Ravens, but had no receptions.
Retirement Edit
Tyree signed a one-day contract with the New York Giants to announce his retirement from the NFL as a Giant on July 29, 2010.[11] On February 5, 2012, he watched from the Giants sideline as his former team beat the Patriots again in Super Bowl XLVI.[12] On July 22, 2014, he was named Director of Player Development for the New York Giants.[13] |
This summer, the Museum of Science Fiction in Washington, DC will open the "Future of Travel" exhibition at Reagan National Airport beginning on July 7, 2015.
As planned, the four-month exhibition will feature a large-scale Orion III spaceplane from 2001: A Space Odyssey, retro-futuristic travel posters by artist Steve Thomas, and a companion mobile app that will provide visitors with exhibit information, an interstellar passport, and their own "boarding pass to the future."
The mobile app will have an “Expedia-style” Plan-Your-Visit section to generate a simulated boarding pass that can be emailed to the traveler. The traveler could select a destination: the Moon, Alpha Centauri, or Mars – Climb Olympus Mons! Hike the Mars Rover trails! Stay in floating hotels! Remember your sunscreen! Travel to the Moon – Best view of the Earth! Visit the first moon landing monument!
BP Taylor of ScottModels finishing the Orion III Spaceplane from 2001: A Space Odyssey
With aerospace companies like XCOR, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX turning science fiction into reality by developing and launching reusable space vehicles, it seems like the future is nearly here - any day now we'll all be able to hop a sub-orbital jet and reach the other side of the world in just a few hours.
Early progress on the Orion III Spaceplane
Orion III Spaceplane nearing completion, donning the Pan Am markings of the late 1960s
Tour the Nation's Capitol by Hovermobile and the 2001 Space Pen
You'll be able to download your own "interstellar passport" from our companion mobile app for special access to future Museum activities
You'll be able to download your own "boarding pass to the future" from our companion mobile app for special access to upcoming Museum events
In this exhibition, we reflect on the visions of artists from 50 years ago and invite visitors to imagine the potential of interplanetary travel - where we could go, and how we might get there.
Your choice of retro-futuristic travel posters signed by artist Steve Thomas
The Museum of Science Fiction is a 140-person all-volunteer organization. Everyone involved is donating their time and professional expertise to make the Museum a reality. The specific team that made this exhibition possible includes:
Regan Samul, Curator
Katherine Kidwell, Associate Curator
BP Taylor, Model Construction
Steve Thomas, Artist
Alexandre Carvalho, CIO, mobile software development
Steve Dreyer, Model Construction Subcommittee Chairman
John Detrich, Graphics
R. Paul Stimers, K&L Gates
Keith Jodoin, Sapling Pictures
Hal Davis FAIA, David Greenbaum FAIA, SMITHGroupJJR
Jerry Vanek AIA, Exhibition proposal design
Hannah Hoare, Product Management and Sourcing
James Hedrick, Project Management
Jonathan Spencer, General Counsel
Tom Stoker, Casework
Will O'Neill, Digital Communities
Nico Pandi, Public Relations
This exhibition is our first chance to share what we're doing as we work towards establishing a permanent institution, and of course, there are some expenses involved ...
That's where we need your help.
We need to raise $7,500 to help with shipping, storage, and display of the "Future of Travel" exhibition. It might seem like a modest goal, but it will allow us to properly care for these objects until their permanent home is ready. If you help us surpass that, we have a few stretch goals planned so that your generosity and support might allow us to take the "Future of Travel" on the road!
Aluminum luggage tag and playing cards for your next sub-orbital flight
Beyond the warm fuzzy feeling you'll get from supporting the Museum, we have some sweet backer rewards planned that are all inspired by the iconic design of 2001: A Space Odyssey, from original art playing cards to a special travel poster signed by the artist himself. These items will only be offered through THIS Kickstarter campaign, so don't miss out! Take your time, browse our list, and pick out something you like - but I can tell you, our limited-edition travel tumblers and Museum of Science Fiction 'wing-pins' are personal favorites of the Museum's curator.
Zero-g travel tumbler and rocket fuel canister suitable for coffee or liquid hydrogen (just kidding about the H2)
His and her t-shirts, ideal for use at home or on lunar safari
The Museum of Science fiction is a 501c(3) nonprofit organization.
The Museum will show how science fiction continually inspires individuals, influences cultures, and impacts societies. Also serving as an educational catalyst to expand interest in the science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) areas, the Museum uses tools such as mobile applications and wifi-enabled display objects to educate and entertain.
To learn more about what we’re doing and who is involved, the following links will provide more information:
Museum website | Preview Museum | Leadership | Board of Advisors | Join
Quarterly Project Updates and Newsletters | Wikipedia | Facebook | Twitter
Thanks for your support! |
. . . .
Dow Jones. | AP Photo/Richard Drew Barron's to lay off employees next week, editor reveals in accidental email By Peter Sterne By | 10/21/16 03:07 PM EDT
Barron's is planning to announce lay-offs next week, editor Ed Finn wrote in an email that he accidentally sent to the entire Wall Street Journal newsroom on Friday.
On Friday morning, Journal editor Gerard Baker emailed Journal employees to On Friday morning, Journal editor Gerard Baker emailed Journal employees to announce a round of newsroom buy-outs
Story Continued Below
. .
Finn — the president and editor of Barron's, which is owned by Journal parent company Dow Jones — apparently meant to forward Baker's email to Dow Jones Media Group publisher Almar Latour and two other company executives, in order to discuss what impact the Journal buy-outs might have on forthcoming layoffs (which had not yet been publicly announced) at Barron's.
"The email Gerry Baker just sent about wsj buyouts says that dj is offering 1.5x the standard buyout package," Finn wrote in the email. "Are we planning to go to the employees we are laying off at Barron's next week and offer them 1x the standard package. That could create some problems. Please advise."
But instead of clicking "forward," he accidentally clicked "reply-all," inadvertently sending the email to the Journal's newsroom.
"That was not intentional. it was a mistake. we had not been told what package was being offered to the several barron's folks who would be laid off next week," Finn told POLITICO in an email.
Additional reporting from Hadas Gold |
Police believe they have nabbed a key figure behind a series of online extortion attacks that have taken place around the world over the last 18 months.
Operation Pleiades, a joint operation by police forces from around the world, led to the arrest of a "main target" and the detention of another suspect, Europol said Tuesday.
The denial-of-service attacks on webservers and the like made by group going by the name DD4BC (Distributed DoS for Bitcoin), are followed by an email threatening that the attack will be stepped up unless a payment is made in bitcoin.
Attackers using the name DD4BC have targeted businesses large and small -- and also email addresses leaked from the Ashley Madison website.
The timing of the attacks suggested that whoever was behind them was in Europe, while the grammar and spelling of the ransom demands suggested a non-native-English speaker, according to a report by Neustar Engineering analyzing the attacks.
The U.K.'s Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit came to the same conclusion, identifying key members of the network in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Police there, working with others from Austria, Germany and the U.K., conducted joint raids on Dec. 15 and 16, arresting one suspect and detaining another as evidence was seized following a series of property searches.
Europol deployed a mobile office as part of the action, giving investigators access to its forensic tools and databases.
The operation was supported by authorities in Australia, France, Japan, Romania, and Switzerland. Interpol, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service also helped coordinate the operation, Europol said. |
AutoGuide.com
Common sense would tell you that wearing headphones (those not made to communicate hands-free with a phone) while driving would be illegal – or at least stupid.
But apparently it’s not that clear cut in the majority of the 50 states in America. According to AAA, wearing headphones is “mostly illegal” in just four states, while it’s “mostly legal” in 33 states. In the remaining 13, it’s apparently a Facebook relationship status of “it’s complicated.”
The complicated states have differing laws from state to state but for the most part it means that unless headphones are built into a helmet or is a Bluetooth headset, it’s illegal.
In case you thought that it was perfectly safe and legal to use headphones while driving, you might want to double check your state’s law. Or just be a nice, safe driver and avoid wearing them altogether.
[Source: Geekwire] |
The wave of unrest that erupted in the Arab world last year reached Syria in March, with widespread protests against President Bashar al-Assad. Assad's troops began a series of harsh crackdowns, in some cases shelling and occupying residential areas. The UN estimates more than 5,000 Syrians have been killed in the past 10 months. Thousands continue to protest, despite the threat of government snipers in the streets and alleged incidents of torture and execution by Syrian forces. The Arab League, Europe, and the United States have all imposed stringent trade sanctions against Syria, and the Arab League has sent in a team of observers to monitor the situation -- but nearly 150 Syrians have reportedly been killed since the observers arrived two weeks ago. The Arab League mission will issue a full report on January 19, possibly referring the issue to the United Nations. However, Russia and China oppose UN action, and the U.S. and Europe do not appear to be planning any Libya-style intervention. Gathered here are images of the unrest in Syria over the past several weeks. Many of these photos have been made available despite harsh government restrictions on reporting. |
You know that awkward moment when you suddenly realize you’ve greeted the Swiss president by flying another country’s flag?
That was the unfortunate backdrop for a meeting in Kiev between Switzerland’s federal president, Didier Burkhalter, and Ukraine’s prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, convened Monday to discuss rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia.
With all good intentions, Yatsenyuk’s office had arranged to have a Swiss flag in the office along with Ukraine’s for the moment when the two political leaders shook hands. A lovely gesture, had it actually been the Swiss flag. But it was Denmark’s flag instead.
Admittedly, the two do have some key features in common — a red background with a white cross. The Swiss cross, though, is small and centered in a field of red, while the cross on the flag of Denmark extends all the way to the edges. Burkhalter didn’t let the mix-up get in the way of the crisis discussion, though he did point out the Danish flag before shaking Yatsenyuk’s hand, according to 20 Minuten.
This was not the first time the Swiss banner has been mistaken for its Danish equivalent. During the Danish cartoon crisis in 2005 — when drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammed sparked a diplomatic crisis — protesters reportedly burned Swiss flags.
To avoid future confusion, here’s a picture of the Swiss flag:
And this, as a red-faced flag-procurement functionary in Kiev now knows all too well, is the Danish one:
Shutterstock
— Sara Sjolin
— Follow Sara on Twitter @sarasjolin.
More must-reads from MarketWatch:
Inflation stays hot topic in Europe and U.K. in the week ahead
Ukraine mobilizes as pro-Russian forces extend grip |
WHEN Andrés Manuel López Obrador winds up a stump speech in the main square of Jilotepec, a small town in the eastern state of Veracruz, the crowd surges forward. It takes him 15 minutes to pass through the commotion of backslapping, selfies and jabbing microphones to reach the car parked outside the tent where he spoke. The point of the rally is to promote Mr López Obrador’s party, Morena, in municipal elections to be held in Veracruz in June. But his main goal is much bigger: to win Mexico’s presidency on his third attempt, in 2018.
That is a prospect that thrills some Mexicans and terrifies others. A figure of national consequence for more than 20 years, AMLO, as he is often called, has fulminated against privilege, corruption and the political establishment. Sweep away all that, he tells poor Mexicans, and their lives will improve. Many others hear in that message the menace of a charismatic populist who would punish enterprise, weaken institutions and roll back reforms. The biggest worriers view him as a Mexican version of the late Hugo Chávez, an autocrat who wrecked Venezuela’s economy and undermined its democracy.
Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
But Mexico, like some richer countries, may now want more drastic politics. Voters are enraged by corruption, crime, which is rising again after a drop, and feeble economic growth. Not long after Mr López Obrador spoke in Jilotepec, the state prosecutor in Veracruz reported that 250 skulls, belonging to victims of drug gangs, had been found in pits near the state capital. Many Mexicans have stopped believing that either of the parties that have governed Mexico this century, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of President Enrique Peña Nieto or the opposition National Action Party (PAN), will do much about such horrors. And now they face a confrontation with an American president who wants to end free trade, deport millions of Mexicans, build a wall and force Mexico to pay for it.
AMLO proposes to answer graft with his own incorruptibility, and Donald Trump’s nationalism with a fiery nationalism of his own. In Jilotepec he rails against the former governor of Veracruz, now facing corruption charges and on the run from the police. He slams the PRI, the fugitive’s party, as “corrupt and cynical” and the PAN as “corrupt and hypocritical”. The message strikes home. “Mexico is rich, but those who govern us rob us,” says a supporter.
Mr López Obrador has taken his campaign to the United States, where he presents himself as the only politician who can stand up to Mr Trump. In New York on March 13th he denounced Mr Peña for allowing his American counterpart to rain “insolence and insults” upon millions of Mexicans living in the United States. A President López Obrador would mean “alpha males either side of the border”, says Juan Pardinas of IMCO, a think-tank. Voters may like that idea.
Mr López Obrador is the early front-runner for next year’s election (Mr Peña cannot run again). In a one-round election, he could win with as little as 30% of the vote (see chart). If that happens, Mexico will embark on a perilous political experiment.
He began his political career in the southern state of Tabasco as an operative of the PRI, which monopolised political power at the national level from 1929 to 2000. His renegade streak showed up early. As an official of the National Indigenous Institute he spent five years living with the Chontal, an Indian community. Hence his preoccupation with the poorest Mexicans, says Lorenzo Meyer, a historian. Mr López Obrador became the PRI’s state chief, but was squeezed out of the job by priistas suspicious of his grassroots organising.
His rise to national prominence came after he lost a race to be governor of Tabasco in 1994 as the candidate of what is now the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), a left-wing group that had broken away from the PRI. At a sit-in in the Zócalo, Mexico City’s main square, Mr López Obrador theatrically presented 14 boxes of documents proving, he said, that the PRI had stolen the election.
His talent for political showmanship helped make him mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005. He ran twice for the presidency, in 2006 and 2012, losing to Mr Peña in the second contest. In 2014 he split from the PRD over its support for Mr Peña’s economic reforms and founded Morena, the Movement of National Regeneration.
Mr López Obrador has been an unremitting opponent of measures to modernise the economy, from the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada, which took effect in 1994, to the opening up of the energy market to private investors under Mr Peña in 2014. If elected, Mr López Obrador promises to hold a referendum on energy reform. A chapter in his most recent book is called “privatisation is a synonym for robbery”. He has sided with a radical and disruptive teachers’ union in resisting an education reform promoted by Mr Peña, which would require teachers in the abysmal state schools to take evaluation tests.
As Mexico City’s mayor, Mr López Obrador caused less mayhem than his image suggested he might. He built roads and introduced a small universal pension. Debt rose by a modest 9% in real terms during his mayoralty. “He got on well with businesses and with developers,” says Agustín Barrios Gómez of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, who is a former PRD congressman. He left office with an approval rating of 84%. But he preferred popular policies to good ones. The pensions did not require future beneficiaries to contribute. The investment in roads would have been better spent on public transport. He did not work to professionalise the police or the judiciary. In short, “he was not an institution builder”, says Mr Pardinas.
That failure points to his most worrying trait: a contempt for norms, separation of powers and the rule of law. After he lost the election in 2006, his supporters threatened a revolution and blocked Reforma, one of the capital’s main roads, for six weeks. In 2001 he responded feebly to the lynching of a man suspected of stealing religious images near Mexico City, saying, “We do not interfere with the beliefs of the people.” Though personally honest, Mr López Obrador lacks the respect for institutions that would make him an effective corruption-fighter.
As the date for the 63-year-old’s third (and probably final) run for the presidency approaches, he is trying to be less divisive. He endorsed Mr Peña’s plan to visit Mr Trump in January. (The trip was cancelled after the American president posted an insulting tweet.) He has been friendlier to business. Disappointed by the performance of the economy under the reformist Mr Peña, some entrepreneurs are “more willing to give Mr López Obrador a chance”, says Gerardo Esquivel, an economist at the Colegio de México, a university.
For now, Mr López Obrador has the political field to himself. Morena is basically a one-man party, which means its quota of party-propaganda broadcasts can focus on promoting him. Other parties have to divide their resources among various politicians; none has yet selected its presidential candidate for 2018. This “has had an enormous effect” on AMLO’s chances of winning, says Mr Aguilar.
The PRI’s nominee for president, whoever it is, will be tainted by association with the current government. The likeliest PAN candidate, Margarita Zavala, is popular, but she is the wife of a former president, Felipe Calderón, who is widely blamed for an upsurge of violence provoked by his inept crackdown on crime. The PRD has little support. Inflamed relations with the United States and an economy weakened by the onslaught from the Trump administration would also play into Mr López Obrador’s hands.
His victory is no sure thing. His momentum would be slowed if Morena does badly in the governor’s election in the State of Mexico in June. Anybody-but-AMLO voters could unite behind one candidate; nearly half of voters have a negative view of him, a much higher share than for any other potential candidate. He has a talent for self-destruction. In 2006 his 16-point lead vanished after he refused to participate in the first televised debate and called the president, Vicente Fox, chachalaca, a bird noted for its loud cackle.
Much of Mexico’s elite prays that such buffoonery will again prove his undoing. But he has become smoother and more disciplined. The danger is that, even if he is shrewder about obtaining power, he may be no wiser about how to exercise it. |
Little Jessie, 2006. Little Jessie has been drinking coffee in his bottle since he was a baby. He is 12 now and he still drinks coffee. He says it helps him sleep. Brenda Ann Kenneally
Brenda Ann Kenneally takes photographs, but to call her a photographer isn’t quite accurate. She prefers the term “digital folk artist,” and when you hear how she interacts with her subjects—families living below the poverty line in Troy, New York—and tells their stories, it seems an apt description. Kenneally doesn’t simply create media, she curates it: She collects family photo albums, school and medical records, letters from prison, scrapbooks, and even screenshots from Facebook. Since she began her project, “Upstate Girls,” more than 10 years ago, she’s amassed thousands of photos, several terabytes of video, and scores of other documents. “If you’re doing documentary, you need to be the foremost authority on whatever you’re doing. I don’t know anything about almost everything; there are so many things to know now. But I know some stuff about these couple places, and you have to want to share that,” she said. “The pictures are just a way to remind me about what I’ve learned. No longer do I care about having pictures in a frame on the wall.”
Kenneally lived in Troy, a city 140 miles north of Manhattan, and surrounding cities on and off as a child and teen. She left for good at the age of 17 after a young pregnancy and abortion, problems with drugs and the legal system, and time living in group homes. After getting sober, she studied photojournalism and sociology at the University of Miami. After graduation, she moved to Brooklyn and began photographing her neighbors’ struggles with poverty and drugs. She was in Troy on an assignment for the New York Times Magazine in 2002 when she met her first subject, Kayla, who later invited her to photograph the birth of her son. Beginning in 2004, Kenneally started visiting Troy regularly and began documenting the lives of seven women who lived near Kayla. “To go back there was like revisiting my own culture in a very real way,” Kenneally said.
Lawerence, 2007. Lawerence’s house collapsed one night, destroying all the family’s possessions and forcing them to move into a shelter. Lawerence is at the shelter in this photo with all the food that they could stash in the room. Brenda Ann Kenneally
Robert, 2013. Kenneally met Kayla’s brother, Robert, in 2004 when he was living at the Children’s Home of Kingston. He now has two sons by two different mothers. He’s pictured here with his son, Logan. Brenda Ann Kenneally
Laurie’s Son Chris, 2007. Laurie’s youngest son used to love to light fires and got into some trouble at school. Eventually, he went to go live in the country with Laurie’s mom. Brenda Ann Kenneally
Kandice, 2013. Kandice, seen here dressed for Halloween, really wanted to fall in love. After a few romances, she became pregnant and gave birth in January 2014. Brenda Ann Kenneally
Troy thrived during the Civil War, when the success of its steel processing plants served as an example of the industrialization of the United States. Shirt, collar, and textile production also boomed there. But today, Troy is a city with serious social issues: According to a report released by the New York State Community Action Association in 2010, 21.4 percent of residents in Troy live in poverty, and about 70 percent of poor families are headed by a single mother. “I have dedicated my life to exploring the how and why of class inequity in America. I am concerned with the internalized social messages that will live on for generations after our economic and social policies catch up with the reality of living on the bottom rung of America’s upwardly mobile society,” Kenneally said in a statement about her work. “My project explores the way that money is but a symptom of self-worth and a means by which humans separate from each other. Poverty is an emotional (rather than simply) physical state with layers of marginalization that cements those who live under them into place.”
Since Kenneally started her project, many of her subjects have had children and new lovers, and she has begun documenting their lives as well. She hopes to provide some sense of closure to the project soon, but not before releasing a nonlinear Web documentary feature on her subjects and a “photographic novel” in several parts. On the other hand, Kenneally feels her project will continue indefinitely. “I never feel I could stop. I feel like I should be there right now,” she said.
These photos, as well as the scrapbooks documenting the lives of their subjects, are scheduled to be on permanent display at the forthcoming North Central Troy Historical Society: A People’s History, across the street from where the many of the girls live. For more information check out www.mediasanctuary.org.
Update, July 17, 2014: This post has been updated with more information about where to find the photographs. The photograph “Kayla and Tony” has been removed at the photographer’s request.
Destiny and Deanna Pretending to Smoke, 2008. When the girls’ mother came home from work at the Hess convenience store, the girls would often pamper her by bringing her soda, taking her shoes off, and running to the kitchen to light her a cigarette from the stove. Brenda Ann Kenneally
Heather and Her Daughter Jada, 2010. Heather and Kayla lived together for two years until Heather had a one-night stand with a boy that both she and Kayla knew. Heather was forced to give the baby up to her mother. Brenda Ann Kenneally
Patrice and George, 2007. Patrice is Lawerence’s youngest sister. After the family got out of the shelter they moved around and then eventually came back to the street where they lived near Kayla’s family. A family friend named George moved in to help out with the kids and contribute financially. George and Patrice became inseparable. Brenda Ann Kenneally |
To one watching the advance of Chinese science and technology, or to me anyway, several things stand out. First, the headlong pace. Second, the amount of it that appears aimed at making China independent of the West technologically and getting the United States off Beijing’s back. Third, the apparent calculated focus. It looks like intelligent design, as distinct from America’s competitive scrabbling for profit by special interests, the hope being that this might inadvertently benefit the country as a whole.
In short, the Chinese seem to Have Something In Mind.
As I have mentioned before, China came out of nowhere to become the world leader in supercomputers. Also in high-speed rail, of strategic importance in its plan to united Europe and Asia economically. Heavy investment in solar power offers to ameliorate its dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf, vulnerable to blockage by the US Navy. Then there is DF21D terminally guided ballistic missile, specifically intended as a carrier-killer in what China regards as its home waters. The list could go on at length.
In much of America, the Chinese are dismissed as being “unable to innovate,” inventiveness being thought of as unique to white men. Thinner ice has perhaps never been trod.
The Chinese are smart. They are certainly capable of high-grade engineering and scientific research. (Eg., Beijing Genomics Institute) The line between imaginative engineering and invention is blurry. Note that on the numbers China can potentially bring to bear five times as many engineers as America can and, while they are well short of this, twice as many would be–is?–the beginning of a new world.
While Beijing works to benefit China, rapidly increasing its techno-industrial clout, Washington spends insanely on weaponry. It is trying to apply a military solution to a commercial problem. America crumbles economically, politically, culturally, but has the very best bombers.
Example of non-inventiveness:
Step One, From a while back, “China Activates World’s Longest Ultra Secure Quantum Communication Network..” Beijing to Shanghai.
Quantum communications is based on the behavior of entangled photons. Said behavior is obviously impossible, but apparently nobody has told the photons, so they do it anyway. (Unless all the world’s physicists are smoking Drano. This possibility is worth considering. If interested, quantum entanglement. Also Quantum Key Distribution.) The point is that if anyone tries to intercept the transmission, it becomes obvious. A weakness is that you need repeaters every sixty miles, which reduces security.
Unless you do it in space:
Step Two: China launches world’s first quantum satellite. Having done the landline, they move to orbital experimentation.
Step Three, Bingo! “China Just Took the Lead in the Quantum Space Race”
This being a big deal, I clip from Asia Times:
On Thursday, a team of Chinese scientists released findings from a breakthrough study that makes China the indisputable leader in the field of quantum communication, an achievement that could be of immense strategic importance.
The study, led by Pan Jianwei and published in Science magazine, successfully demonstrated the ability to distribute entangled photons across unprecedented distances, from space to earth, opening the door for the practical application of cutting-edge, ultra-secure communication.
The unprecedented distance was 1200 kilometers. Beijing might be regarded as trying to establish world-wide communications secure against NSA and, eventually, a whole internet proof against Fort Meade. Whether one regards this as engineering development or innovation doesn’t seem to make much difference.
“Chinese Solar-Powered Plane Flies at 65,000 feet”
It apparently could stay aloft for months. The stories dealing with it suggest that the purpose might be long-term surveillance of countries, meaning spying. In any event, it is a neat technological trick, especially from people who can’t innovate.
Then we have, from Phys.org,
“China launched its most powerful rocket ever on Thursday, state media said, as the country presses on with a program which has seen it become a major space power.”
The point here is not that China is ahead of America in space–it isn’t–but that it is coming on fast. Engineering, engineering, engineering. Dismissive Americans point out that the US was on the Moon in 1969 and that China is piggybacking of American technology. True. And Irrelevant.
From the National Interest: “The World’s New Leader in Super Deadly Hypersonic Weapons: China?”
Chinese Quantum Radar
Quantum radar is another application of entangled photons. The link gives a semi-technical overview. The important point is that in principle it allows detection of stealth aircraft.
The Chinese assert that they can now detect stealth aircraft at 62 miles with enough accuracy to compute a fire-control solution. This means that radar stations with slightly overlapping fields of detection, say a hundred miles apart, could detect incoming aircraft with easily enough time to shoot them down.
If this report is true, it is potentially devastating for the US Air Force. So far as I am aware, Chinese claims of technical results have heretofore been accurate.
The Air Force has invested very, very heavily in stealth. In bombers, the hugely expensive B2 and the planned hugelier expensiver B21 are dead meat if detached. In fighters, the F22 and the F35 Bankruper—Lightning II, I meant to say—will lose their main selling point if detectable. The F35 in particular has made compromises in performance to make it stealthy and, if detectable, is just a so-so fighter.
Next: “Enter the Nimble Dragon: China sees nuclear future in small reactors”
“SMRs (small modular reactors) have capacity of less than 300 megawatts (MW) – enough to power around 200,000 homes – compared to at least 1 gigawatt (GW) for standard reactors….”
“China is aiming to lift domestic nuclear capacity to 200 GW by 2030, up from 35 GW at the end of March, but its ambitions are global.”
Small reactors (a bit larger than a bus) are important if you want to electrify a remote city without the overkill of a standard plant or the expense of long transmission lines. China is not the only country working on mini-nukes (or on anything else mentioned in this column), but it can now play with the big boys. Again, small reactors are an abrupt entrance into a major technical field. Note “global ambitions.” A Reuters piece describes “an ambitious plan to wrest control of the global nuclear market.” Planning and doing are not the same thing, but if I were a nuclear market, I would be uneasy.
For whatever reasons, the American media do not much cover technological advance in China. Ignorance? Arrogance? Is it just the American tendency to regard the rest of the world as unimportant? Maybe a little attention would be a good idea. A steady stream of advances comes out of the Middle Kingdom. In some fields, the Chinese lead the world. In others, they are behind but not be much, and gaining. Could be important. Especially if they learn to innovate. |
TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie announced today that David Samson, whose chairmanship of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has come under fire in recent months, has resigned.
Samson, a close ally of Christie and a former attorney general of New Jersey, is reportedly under investigation by the U.S. Attorney of New Jersey in the face of accusations that his law firm, Wolff & Samson, had enriched itself by lobbying for companies with business before the Port Authority.
He told the governor of his decision in a telephone call, Christie said.
In a statement released today, Samson said: "Over the past months, I have shared with the Governor my desire to conclude my service to the PANYNJ. The timing is now right, and I am confident that the Governor will put new leadership in place to address the many challenges ahead."
Christie said that "in line with that belief, David tendered his resignation to me this afternoon effective immediately."
The stunning announcement came at the beginning of a Statehouse news conference, the first since a a two-hour session on Jan. 9 when Christie accepted responsibility for politically charged closing of access lanes at the George Washington Bridge and announced the dismissal of two close aides.
Samson was not referred to at all in a 360-page report released Thursday that Christie had sought to look into in the wake of the bridge scandal. The report absolved Christie and any current staff members of having a role in the closing of the bridge or a subsequent coverup.
Christie also said he would "fully embrace the reforms" included in the report, which was prepared by Randy Mastro, a lawyer with the firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.
"I intend to work with Gov. (Andrew) Cuomo … to bring a new day to the Port Authority."
A spokesman for the Port Authority declined comment today.
NJ Gov. Chris Christie announces resignation of Port Authority chairman David Samson 10 Gallery: NJ Gov. Chris Christie announces resignation of Port Authority chairman David Samson
RELATED COVERAGE
• Christie defends internal review of bridge scandal, floats idea of splitting up Port Authority
• Editorial: Port Authority chairman David Samson should resign
• Timeline of Port Authority's George Washington Bridge controversy
• Complete coverage of bridge scandal |
Summary: Researchers from Rockefeller University have identified what they claim to be ‘remarkable’ differences between the way the male and female brains respond to stress.
Source: Rockefeller University.
“Remarkable” is not a word you encounter very often in the scientific literature, where the unadorned description of experiments and their outcomes is the rule. But the adjective makes a bold appearance in a new report from The Rockefeller University, and with good reason.
Published this week in Nature Communications, the paper describes “remarkable” differences in the way the brains of males and females respond to stress. The findings, based on experiments with mice, are doubly notable because they occur in a part of the brain not normally associated with sex differences. They also have implications for the treatment of stress-related illnesses, including mood disorders.
“There is a need to include sex differences in neuropsychiatric research and endocrinology because men and women do respond differently to drugs,” says first author Jordan Marrocco, a postdoctoral associate in the neuroendocrinology lab of Bruce S. McEwen, Rockefeller’s Alfred E. Mirsky Professor.
That is especially important, notes McEwen, as scientists increasingly seek to tailor new medicines to individual patients. “Broadly speaking,” he says, “the pharmaceutical industry has followed a one-size-fits-all philosophy and tested drugs predominantly in males. Some drugs have undergone little testing in women when they go into actual clinical use.”
This can create serious problems, he says, citing the sleep drug Ambien, which was discovered to have a much stronger effect on women than men after it reached the market.
A gender divide
To investigate possible sex differences in the brain, the scientists focused on a region of the hippocampus known as CA3, which plays a crucial role in the stress response and is also involved in memory, the regulation of mood, and information processing. Specifically, they subjected male and female mice to a stressful task (a six-minute forced swim) and then used a method called TRAP, developed in the Rockefeller lab of Nathaniel Heintz, to look at how genes in their CA3 neurons responded.
What they found was, as they write, remarkable.
Many more genes (6,472) were altered by acute stress in CA3 in females than in males (2,474), when compared to unstressed controls. This large difference suggests, according to the study, that there is a clear genetic component in the response to stress. The scientists propose that genes in the parts of the brain that react to environmental stressors, such as the forced swim, may do so in female mice at a much greater rate than in males.
An additional finding underscores just how huge the differences in stress responses are between genders. The scientists identified 1,842 genes affected by stress in both sexes, however the vast majority of these “overlapping” genes responded in opposite ways in females and males- genes that were activated by stress in males were suppressed by stress in females, and vice versa.
Stress-induced diseases
McEwen’s group also experimented with mice engineered to carry a variant of the BDNF gene that, in humans, is known to increase the risk of developing stress-induced neuropsychiatric disorders. The researchers subjected these mice to cognitive tests—a common way to determine the impact of stress—and found that females with the gene variant had impaired spatial memory, even without being stressed. Males with the mutation, also unstressed, did not show such deficits.
The findings suggest that ovarian hormones may interact with the mutated gene in a way that increases the females’ stress-related memory impairment. Marrocco is investigating that possibility in a follow-up study.
The research in BDNF-impaired mice also sheds new light on the intricate relationship between genes and the environment, which can have the same effects on an organism through completely different mechanisms. “What we show,” Marrocco says, “is that gene expression in the brain of an unstressed mouse carrying this genetic variant is similar to that in a normal mouse who experiences acute stress.”
He adds that more research is needed into the biological differences known to exist between male and female stress responses. By identifying the genetic basis of these differences, and beginning to determine their location in the brain, McEwen and his team have taken a critical step in this direction.
About this neuroscience research article
Source: Katherine Fenz – Rockefeller University
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to the researchers.
Original Research: Full open access research for “A sexually dimorphic pre-stressed translational signature in CA3 pyramidal neurons of BDNF Val66Met mice” by Jordan Marrocco, Gordon H. Petty, Mariel B. Ríos, Jason D. Gray, Joshua F. Kogan, Elizabeth M. Waters, Eric F. Schmidt, Francis S. Lee & Bruce S. McEwen in Nature Communications. Published online October 9 2017 doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01014-4
Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article
MLA
APA
Chicago Rockefeller University. “Stress Has Dramatically Different Effects on Male and Female Brains: Mouse Study.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 10 October 2017.
<http://neurosciencenews.com/stress-sex-differences-7703/>. Rockefeller University. (2017, October 10). Stress Has Dramatically Different Effects on Male and Female Brains: Mouse Study. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved October 10, 2017 from http://neurosciencenews.com/stress-sex-differences-7703/ Rockefeller University. “Stress Has Dramatically Different Effects on Male and Female Brains: Mouse Study.” http://neurosciencenews.com/stress-sex-differences-7703/ (accessed October 10, 2017).
Abstract
A sexually dimorphic pre-stressed translational signature in CA3 pyramidal neurons of BDNF Val66Met mice
Males and females use distinct brain circuits to cope with similar challenges. Using RNA sequencing of ribosome-bound mRNA from hippocampal CA3 neurons, we found remarkable sex differences and discovered that female mice displayed greater gene expression activation after acute stress than males. Stress-sensitive BDNF Val66Met mice of both sexes show a pre-stressed translational phenotype in which the same genes that are activated without applied stress are also induced in wild-type mice by an acute stressor. Behaviourally, only heterozygous BDNF Val66Met females exhibit spatial memory impairment, regardless of acute stress. Interestingly, this effect is not observed in ovariectomized heterozygous BDNF Val66Met females, suggesting that circulating ovarian hormones induce cognitive impairment in Met carriers. Cognitive deficits are not observed in males of either genotype. Thus, in a brain region not normally associated with sex differences, this work sheds light on ways that genes, environment and sex interact to affect the transcriptome’s response to a stressor.
“A sexually dimorphic pre-stressed translational signature in CA3 pyramidal neurons of BDNF Val66Met mice” by Jordan Marrocco, Gordon H. Petty, Mariel B. Ríos, Jason D. Gray, Joshua F. Kogan, Elizabeth M. Waters, Eric F. Schmidt, Francis S. Lee & Bruce S. McEwen in Nature Communications. Published online October 9 2017 doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01014-4
Feel free to share this Neuroscience News. |
“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States ,” the memorandum said.
The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales , then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.
The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.
Most former officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations about the case involved classified information. They agreed to talk about the internal discussions only after the memorandum was released earlier this year.
New information has recently emerged about the deliberations and divisions in the administration over some of the most controversial policies after the Sept. 11 attacks, like the decision to use brutal interrogation methods on Qaeda detainees.
Former officials in the administration said this debate was not as bitter as others during Mr. Bush’s first term. The discussions did not proceed far enough to put military units on alert.
Still, at least one high-level meeting was convened to debate the issue, at which several top Bush aides argued firmly against the proposal to use the military, advanced by Mr. Cheney, his legal adviser David S. Addington and some senior Defense Department officials.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Among those in opposition were Condoleezza Rice , then the national security adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council ; Robert S. Mueller III , the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ; and Michael Chertoff , then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.
“Frankly, it was a bit of a turf war,” said one former senior administration official. “For a number of people, crossing the line of having intelligence or military activities inside the United States was not worth the risk.”
Mr. Bush ended up ordering the F.B.I. to make the arrests in Lackawanna, near Buffalo, where the agency had been monitoring a group of Yemeni Americans with suspected Qaeda ties. The five men arrested there in September 2002, and a sixth arrested nearly simultaneously in Bahrain , pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
Scott L. Silliman, a Duke University law professor specializing in national security law, said an American president had not deployed the active-duty military on domestic soil in a law enforcement capacity, without specific statutory authority, since the Civil War.
Senior military officials were never consulted, former officials said. Richard B. Myers , a retired general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , said in a recent interview that he was unaware of the discussion.
Former officials said the 2002 debate arose partly from Justice Department concerns that there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna. Mr. Cheney, the officials said, had argued that the administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them enemy combatants and keep them in military custody.
Earlier that summer, the administration designated Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and sent him to a military brig in South Carolina . Mr. Padilla was arrested by civilian agencies on suspicion of plotting an attack using a radioactive bomb.
Those who advocated using the military to arrest the Lackawanna group had legal ammunition: the memorandum by Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty.
The lawyers, in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote that the Constitution, the courts and Congress had recognized a president’s authority “to take military actions, domestic as well as foreign, if he determines such actions to be necessary to respond to the terrorist attacks upon the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and before.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
The document added that the neither the Posse Comitatus Act nor the Fourth Amendment tied a president’s hands.
Despite this guidance, some Bush aides bristled at the prospect of troops descending on an American suburb to arrest terrorism suspects.
“What would it look like to have the American military go into an American town and knock on people’s door?” said a second former official in the debate.
Chief James L. Michel of the Lackawanna police agreed. “If we had tanks rolling down the streets of our city,” Chief Michel said, “we would have had pandemonium down here.”
The Lackawanna case was the first after the Sept. 11 attacks in which American intelligence and law enforcement operatives believed they had dismantled a Qaeda cell in the United States.
In the months before the arrests, Mr. Bush was regularly briefed on the case by Mr. Mueller of the F.B.I. and George J. Tenet , the director of central intelligence. The C.I.A. had been tracking the overseas contacts of the Lackawanna group. |
A New Zealand firm says it successfully trialled technology to separate hemp fiber and cellulose fresh in the field during its harvest this year. The machine, the Clarke D8 decorticator, was invented by its late namesake, Australian Adrian Clarke, who developed the D8 through two decades of research and trials at TCI Australia, based in Victoria.
Waikato-based Hemp Farm NZ Ltd, said tests this harvest season in its fields included stressing the machine to the breaking point. A team of engineers identified points of weakness which were then re-engineered to further improve performance, the company said.
Hemp Farm said the D8 is a cost-effective alternative to traditional hammer mills used in the decortication process — often multi-million dollar machines that separate the fiber by forcefully pounding the hemp stalks.
The Clarke D8 costs a fraction of the price of a hammer mill, and farmers can use their land immediately after harvest, the company noted.
Hemp Farm works with farmers, researchers and environmentalists developing programs for health, ecological housing and environmental restoration. |
When you think of Troy, NY, men’s fashion is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. Jonathan Brust wants to change that.
This Friday, September 26th, Jonathan’s store, The Enigma.co., officially opens its doors at 16 1st St Troy, NY. Inside the historic building are some not-so-historic products: designer men’s clothing, accessories, high-end skincare products, and more will all be stocked for the gentleman-in-need.
#gmap_canvas img{max-width:none!important;background:none!important}
Jonathan’s mission came to fruition one night while he was out with friends and realized the apparent lack of stores in the area that cater to the new generation of refined men. The Enigma.Co was established to make up for this void; to allow men in the capital district to embrace the “feel good” factor that they are not accustomed to, but women in the region have an overwhelming supply of.
At last, an outlet will be available for men in the area who seek to better themselves and feel great doing it. Jonathan also plans on hosting events catered for men’s needs such as whiskey nights (yes, whiskey is a need), as well as shaving and grooming tutorials. If you are in the Albany area and in need of a wardrobe change as the seasons turn, take a trip to Troy to visit The Enigma.co and craft your new, confident look. |
In a second income tax raid conducted on Axis Bank, one of the country's largest private sector bank, in less than a week's time, the I-T deparment said it has found Rs 100 crore deposited in 44 fake accounts at the bank's Chandi Chowk branch in New Delhi, News 18 report said.
The I-T department is believed to be questioning the manager of Chandni Chowk branch, says report.
Another report says that so far Rs 450 crore had been deposited in Axis bank post the government's note ban exercise.
Axis Bank in a statement said the lender is cooperating with investigators and will take action on wrongdoers. "The bank is committed to following the highest standards of corporate governance and has zero tolerance towards any deviation on the part of any of its employees from the set model code of conduct. Strict action will be taken against any employee found deviating from the guideline . We would also like to add that we are cooperating with the investigating agencies," the statement said.
Recently, Axis Bank said it had suspended its 19 officials allegedly involved in illegal activity post demonetisation. The bank suspended 19 officials including 6 of Kashmere Gate branch of Delhi itself, Axis Bank executive director Rajesh Dahiya had said.
Earlier this week, the Enforcement Directorate arrested two Axis Bank managers in New Delhi and seized 3 kg gold bars in connection with its money laundering probe in a racket of illegally converting old notes in connivance with banking authorities.
The agency's probe till now, after it registered a criminal complaint under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on 30 November, found that huge monies were transferred through RTGS transfers to some shell companies including a case where the Director of such a firm was a "petty labourer."
The agency identified the two managers as Shobit Sinha and Vineet Gupta, working at Axis bank's Kashmere Gate branch, and said they were arrested late yesterday under the provisions of PMLA.
The case was first detected by the Delhi Police after it intercepted three people with cash of about Rs 3.7 crore in old notes, in front of the said Axis Bank branch last month, and the ED took cognisance of the police FIR to slap money laundering charges against the accused.
The Income Tax department too had carried out its action in this case and had surveyed the bank branch and later searched the residential premises of the duo.
With PTI inputs
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button. |
I recently took delivery of a MicroZed I/O Carrier Card, which complements the MicroZed System on Module (SOM) approach by breaking out the numerous I/O ports on the MicroZed board’s two micro connector headers.
The compact size of the MicroZed
The concept behind the MicroZed is that that it allows you to create a system of modules where the same compact MicroZed board can plug into a variety of application-specific carrier cards. When you stop and think about it this approach has a number of benefits:
Reduces Non-Recurring Effort in the development of the product, allowing focus to remain on areas of added value (e.g. an application-specific carrier card, which is simpler and easier to design).
Use of the MicroZed SOM board as a core provides a rapid-development hardware platform that allows the development team to begin very early testing of designs based on the Zynq SoC.
There’s no need to design a custom SoC and perform the subsequent verification, which greatly reduces time to market.
Allows the hardware design effort to be targeted at the application-specific card carrier, which reduces risk.
The MicroZed SOM concept is very flexible because the core MicroZed board breaks out just not the I/O from the programmable logic (PL) side of the Zynq SoC but also from the processor system (PS) side. One really interesting aspect is that the Zynq SoC’s I/O bank voltages are also accessible from the micro-connector headers on the MicroZed board and can therefore be driven by an external card. This enables a carrier card to set the Zynq’s I/O voltages for banks 34, 35 and 13 if you are using the Zynq Z7020 version of the MicroZed. The I/O Carrier Card supplies the I/O voltages required for the application at hand.
The MicroZed is installed on the left side of the I/I Carrier Card
The MicroZed board is also designed so that the board’s 5V power can be supplied from either the USB port or via the carrier card. This is achieved by diode-OR’ing the power supply lines from the MicroZed’s USB port and from the micro header on the MicroZed board.
There are currently three off-the-shelf carrier cards which can be purchased off the shelf from Zedboard.org:
The MicroZed I/O Carrier Card, as shown above. We will be exploring the use of this board over the next few blogs.
A MicroZed Breakout Carrier Card, which provides a bread boarding area for developing prototypes and one-off solutions.
The MicroZed FMC carrier card, which adds a low-pin-count (LPC) FMC interface to the MicroZed.
The I/O Carrier Card I will be experimenting with over the next few blogs comes with 12 PMOD (Digilent Peripheral Module) interfaces, LEDS, switches, and a 100MHZ oscillator used for clocking the PL side of the Zynq. I would like to use the I/O Carrier Card to test out a few concepts I have been demonstrating over the last few blogs. Hopefully my orders will arrive before I sit down to write the next blog.
Please see the previous entries in this MicroZed series by Adam Taylor:
Zynq DMA Part Two – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 29
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Eight: Zynq DMA – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 28
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Seven: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 27
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Six: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 26
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Five: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 25
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Four: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 24
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Three: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 23
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Two: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 22
The Zynq PS/PL, Part One: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 21
Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part Four: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 20
Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part Three: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 19
Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part Two: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 18
Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part One: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 17
The Zynq SoC’s Private Watchdog: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 16
Implementing the Zynq SoC’s Private Timer: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 15
MicroZed Timers, Clocks and Watchdogs: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 14
More About MicroZed Interrupts: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 13
MicroZed Interrupts: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 12
Using the MicroZed Button for Input: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 11
Driving the Zynq SoC's GPIO: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 10
Meet the Zynq MIO: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 9
MicroZed XADC Software: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 8
Getting the XADC Running on the MicroZed: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 7
A Boot Loader for MicroZed. Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 6
Figuring out the MicroZed Boot Loader – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 5
Running your programs on the MicroZed – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 4
Zynq and MicroZed say “Hello World”-- Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 3
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles: Setting the SW Scene
Bringing up the Avnet MicroZed with Vivado |
Hire a senior Perl / Python programmer today; download my up-to-date resume (PDF)
A scorpion giving birth
Thanks for the digg! Anyway, to answer some question I noticed in the comments: the babies do not come out of the mouth of the mother, but from an opening near the pectines (featherlike structures underneath the scorpion). The first photo on Scans of Diplocentrus species shows the pectines to the left and the right of a rectangular piece with a "half-round dent". The dent is where the opening is located.
The mother might eat her babies, but this mostly happens when she is stressed too much. If you're interested in scorpions in general (or other arachnids like tarantulas, vinegaroons, etc), this site has a lot of related photos, nature walks, etc. The easiest way to find something of interest is to use google, for example: site:johnbokma.com scorpions.
Related
Today, after Esme and I had returned from some shopping at Wal-Mart, I discovered that one scorpion was giving birth: a Diplocentrus species, probably Diplocentrus melici, which we had captured the 23rd of April, 2006. Later that day we captured another female. The latter gave birth some time ago, but shortly after died. My best guess is that it somehow got ill, and aborted the scorpions, none of which survived because the mother died before they were old enough to survive without her.
In the above photo you can see the scorpion giving live birth. In front of her, a baby is struggling out of its embryonic sac (not sure if it's that). Her front legs (not the claws) form a kind of cradle to catch the babies when they leave her body. One tiny newly born scorpion is climbing up. Baby scorpions ride on the back of their mother for the first week or so.
I am going to do my very best to keep as many alive as possible, probably using the same techniques as I use with the Diplocentrus bereai juveniles I keep. And since my hobby has its limits, space wise, I have plans to return the juveniles to the same location we captured the mother from after a year or so.
Diplocentrus melici related
Also today |
A few weeks back, Popular Science posted an article about phony cell towers being outed all over the country by some of the new, supposedly “ultra-secure” cell phones that have come out in the last few years following former NSA Contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks about the government spying on everyone.
These towers look like any ordinary cell phone tower, but are not officially connected to any cell phone company. Once in the vicinity of one of these fake towers, a multitude of different attacks can hit a user’s phone, including everything from spyware uploads to eavesdropping.
Via PopSci:
“Interceptor use in the U.S. is much higher than people had anticipated,” Goldsmith says. “One of our customers took a road trip from Florida to North Carolina and he found 8 different interceptors on that trip. We even found one [in the vicinity of] South Point Casino in Las Vegas.” Who is running these interceptors and what are they doing with the calls? Goldsmith says we can’t be sure, but he has his suspicions. “What we find suspicious is that a lot of these interceptors are right on top of U.S. military bases. So we begin to wonder – are some of them U.S. government interceptors? Or are some of them Chinese interceptors?” says Goldsmith. “Whose interceptor is it? Who are they, that’s listening to calls around military bases? Is it just the U.S. military, or are they foreign governments doing it? The point is: we don’t really know whose they are.”
take our poll - story continues below
Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story?
Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? * Yes, they've gotten so much wrong recently that they're bound to be on their best behavior. No, they suffer from a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Jussie who?
Email *
Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Completing this poll grants you access to Freedom Outpost updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Now, the Washington Times is reporting that not just one, but several of these towers have been located in D.C. around the capitol, so you can just take a big fat guess on who the phony towers are targeting.
These are just the towers that have been found, some two dozen so far. While some are stationary, these rogue towers can also apparently be portable and as small as a brief case. Wired reported, “The reach of a rogue tower can be up to a mile away, forcing thousands of phones in a region to connect to it without anyone knowing.” Think of the ramifications.
Sadly, when WT also interviewed ESD America CEO Les Goldsmith on the matter, Goldsmith told the outlet that he doesn’t think it’s the American government doing it because, “the federal government already has the capability of tapping directly into the carriers.”
That’s right. Who could forget.
But then again, we shouldn’t make assumptions about where the use of this technology — potentially by multiple players in both the public and private spheres — begins and ends.
A case in Florida revealed the use of StingRay, one form of these cell phone interceptors, by law enforcement. As Aaron Dykes of Truthstream Media reported last June, police departments are using hush hush surveillance technology, apparently with training and even direct supervision by the FBI, that can sweep up phone data from an entire neighborhood at once:
According to the Associated Press, the Obama Administration has been actively advising police departments to refuse disclosure about certain cell phone surveillance technologies, including the widely used “StingRay” device, even in routine state records requests. Evidently, the StingRay technology allows law enforcement to “trick” cell devices into sharing identifying personal and location data with them that would ordinary be sent to communications companies and require request procedures. Instead, police are bypassing company assistance and collecting unique information on suspects, persons of interests, and – as the AP reports – they can even “sweep up basic cellphone data from entire neighborhoods,” all without any court orders or oversight.
From what is currently known about these phony phone towers, Les Goldsmith is pointing to a foreign entity as the operators doing this. While this information has been passed to the FCC, is anything going to be done about it?
Wired reported that the agency is actually assembling a task force to deal with this issue. In the meantime, I guess we can all just have fun with getting spied on and having our phone’s data stolen and spyware forced onto it everywhere we go.
Then again, considering what Goldsmith pointed out — essentially that we’re already being directly spied upon by our government all the time anyway directly through the carriers — will anyone in officialdom even pretend to care that phony, malicious spy devices are popping up all over the country?
But we live in such a matrix, it’s sad to the point of laughable that while these fake towers are actively spying on Capitol Hill and the deep inner workings of our government, if you or I as an individual go there to take a picture of some of those famous landmarks with our cameras, we might just get stopped and questioned about what business we have snapping a photo.
You know, as a matter of national security.
Source |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.