Split (1)

train · 33.2M rows

text stringlengths 1 100k
“ They’re all willing to come back for a second season. Campbell stated emphatically, “ I’m not going anywhere. This is the sh ow I’m going to devote basically every ounce of my aging energy into. This is something that you don’t take lightly. This was a long road to get here, starting back in ’79.” Tapert seconded, “I t would be a joyless process that the mantle would be passed to anyone else. I just don’t see that as a possible outcome in this. Raimi confirmed, “ I feel the same way. I think we’re really doing this to work together again as a team.”
The series is basically happening because Evil Dead fans are the most devoted, persistent people in the world. Raimi recalled, “Ivan, my brother, and myself, when I would be on promotion for any other movie, the reporters I’d be speaking with would feign interest in that picture I was working on and then they’d say, ‘But when’s the next Evil Dead coming out?'” Campbell had the same experience, “ I go to conventions a lot and I’m driven insane by the fans at conventions. I’ve been doing conventions since 1988 and I hear it at every convention I go to, same as Sam. We were tortured for years, and guess what? Now they’re going to get it.”
See that, folks. Never give up on your dreams. Ash Vs. Evil Dead is set to premiere on Starz this Fall.
The driver of a bus that struck and killed a cyclist just outside the Olympic Park in Stratford while ferrying journalists between venues has been bailed until August, police have said.
The 28-year-old man was knocked down by the doubledecker in Ruckholt Road, at the junction with the A12, at about 7.40pm on Wednesday. An air ambulance doctor pronounced him dead at the scene.
A Metropolitan police spokesman said a man in his mid-60s had been arrested just outside the Olympic Park at 9.28pm on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.
The victim is expected to be formally identified later on Thursday. A date for a postmortem examination is yet to be fixed.
After the fatal incident, Bradley Wiggins, who by winning a gold medal on Wednesday became Britain's most decorated Olympian, warned of the perils of cycling in the capital. "It's dangerous and London is a busy city and [there is] a lot of traffic. I think we have to help ourselves sometimes," he said.
"I haven't lived in London for 10 to 15 years now and it's got a lot busier since I was riding a bike as a kid round here, and I got knocked off several times.
"But I think things are improving to a degree. There are organisations out there who are attempting to make the roads safer for both parties. But at the end of the day we've all got to co-exist on the roads.
"Cyclists are not ever going to go away as much as drivers moan, and as much as cyclists maybe moan about certain drivers they are never going to go away, so there's got to be a bit of give and take."
Wiggins said he would like to see the introduction of a law making it compulsory to wear cycling helmets.
He later clarified his comments on twitter. "Just to confirm I haven't called for helmets to be made the law as reports suggest."
"I suggested it may be the way to go to give cyclists more protection legally if involved in an accident.
"I wasn't on me soap box CALLING, was asked what I thought."
Responding to his comments, Chris Peck, the policy coordinator for the UK's national cycling organisation the CTC said that making helmets compulsory would be counter-productive. He told Radio 5 live. "Making cycle helmets compulsory would be likely to have an overall damaging effect on public health, since the health benefits of cycling massively outweigh the risks and we know that where enforced, helmet laws tend to lead to an immediate reduction in cycling."
The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said he was "hugely saddened" by the death. A spokesman for the mayor said: "Any road death is a tragedy and the mayor's thoughts are with the cyclist's family. As this is now under police investigation it would be inappropriate to say anything else."
Johnson cycled into Whitehall for this morning's ministerial Olympics meeting at the Cabinet Office wearing a bike helmet. But he appeared to be opposed to mandatory wearing of protective headwear by cyclists, as advocated by Wiggins. "I think they should do if they want to," Johnson said.
A London 2012 spokesman said: "We can confirm that a cyclist tragically died as a result of a collision with a bus carrying media from the Olympic Park this evening.
"The police are investigating the accident and our thoughts are with the cyclist's family."
The Metropolitan police's road death investigation unit is looking into the collision.
In May 1997, 8-year-old Kirsten Hatfield disappeared from her bedroom one night, sparking a national search by local police and the FBI. But the case quickly went cold and she was never found.
On Monday, Oklahoma police made a decisive break in the long-dormant case, arresting a man who lives two doors down and was initially identified as a suspect in the case, but is now linked by DNA evidence to the girl’s disappearance.
Police arrested Joseph Palma, a neighbor who had previously told investigators he was at home that night, charging him with first-degree murder and kidnapping after a DNA test linked him to items found in the girl’s bedroom on the night of her disappearance.
Police said that they feared she had been killed just after she was abducted, but family members welcomed Mr. Palma’s arrest as providing some relief in a case that had gone cold more than 18 years ago.
“Oh my goodness,” the victim's mother, Shannon Hazen, told The Oklahoman after first learning of the arrest from the paper on Monday. “Yes! Yes! Yes!,” she said, then began sobbing.
Palma was identified as a suspect in the case after examining blood found on the windowsill of the girl’s bedroom and on her clothing, which was found in the house’s backyard. In June, he agreed to give a DNA sample after investigators began re-examining the case, but maintained that he had been at home during the night of May 13, 1997.
The blood on the windowsill was identified as his after DNA testing, with police saying the match was one in 293 sextillion, The Oklahoman reported.
“It is likely that Palma has been motivated to stay in the same home to conceal evidence of the crime and/or the location of Kirsten's body,” wrote Midwest City Police Detective Darrell Miller in a request for an arrest warrant.
Palma’s story also differed slightly from the account he gave in 1997 to two different investigators, Reuters reports, noting that there is no indication that police searched his home during the original investigation.
Investigators began searching Palma’s home on Monday and will continue searching on Tuesday, local police said. A longtime groundskeeper, Palma reportedly works for the Lake Thunderbird State Park, The Oklahoman reported, saying that it was unclear if he had an attorney.
Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy
“This is a huge case.... It's one of those cases you want to solve before you retire," Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes, who has been police chief for 16 years, told The Oklahoman.
This report contains material from Reuters.
After each mass shooting, gun control activists, bereaved parents and lawmakers reissue a call for more restrictive gun control laws. However, eight years after the shooting at Virginia Tech University that killed 32 and two years after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary that left 27 dead, Congress has not enacted substantial legislative changes.
The latest mass shooting in Oregon on Thursday again raises the issue of gun control and why efforts to pass gun law reforms have failed.
A simple reason is, perhaps, money. In 2015, the gun rights lobby outspent the gun control lobby about 6 to 1.
Data shows that the gun rights lobby, which includes groups like the National Rife Association and Gun Owners of America, consistently spends significantly more money in lobbying and campaign contributions than gun control groups like Everytown for Gun Safety.
The Center for Responsive Politics said that in the 2008 election cycle, gun rights organizations spent 34 times more on lobbying in 2008 than gun control groups. In raw numbers, that's $3.9 million versus $115,000.
While that money doesn't directly go to politicians, the money does go to lobbyists with access and who lawmakers often depend on for expert opinions and information.
Thursday's shooting at the Oregon community college is the 45th mass shooting this year, if defined as an event at which four or more people were killed. If defined as an event at which four or more people were shot, it's the 294th.
A drawing shows a woman having her arm prepared for minor surgery. (Print by Abraham Bosse via National Library of Medicine)
What’s the best way to treat prostate cancer? What are the benefits and risks of different rehabilitation options for survivors of stroke? Unfortunately, the answer to these and similar questions often is: Nobody knows. The United States spends $3 trillion annually on health care — much of it funded by taxpayers through programs such as Medicare — yet only a limited amount of information exists about what treatments work best for which patients. Although estimates vary, some experts think that less than half of all medical care is based on clear scientific evidence.
The good news is that the federal government is now making a significant investment in health services and patient-centered outcomes research to identify waste and improve the safety, effectiveness and quality of care. The bad news is that House Republicans are trying to abolish one of the main agencies carrying out this research, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and cut the funding of another, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The puzzle is why.
One possible reason is that Republicans oppose taxpayer funding of all scientific research as a matter of principle. Yet the same House Appropriations Committee draft bill that targets health services research also provides a $1.1 billion increase in the budget of the National Institutes of Health.
A second possible reason is that Republicans are uninterested in evidence-based policymaking. But both Democrats and Republicans argue that better information is needed to make government more effective. For example, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) recently introduced the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act of 2015 to evaluate the effectiveness of federal programs.
What makes the situation even more perplexing is that evidence-based medicine has a solid Republican pedigree. Perhaps the most important advocate of an increased federal role in paying for research on the clinical effectiveness of treatments has been Gail R. Wilensky, a Republican economist who served as George H.W. Bush’s Medicare director.
In 2008, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) published an op-ed with Billy Beane, the “Moneyball“ general manager of the Oakland A’s, and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in which they lamented that “a doctor today can get more data on the starting third baseman on his fantasy baseball team than on the effectiveness of life-and-death medical procedures. Studies have shown that most health care is not based on clinical studies of what works best and what does not — be it a test, treatment, drug or technology.”
Republicans have turned against government funding of evidence-based medicine research for five reasons.
Federal investment in this research (although it predated the 2008 election) became closely tied to the Obama administration’s health-care reform agenda, because big funding increases were tucked into the 2009 stimulus legislation and the Affordable Care Act — two measures the GOP strongly opposed. An increased federal role in comparative effectiveness research, together with payments to physicians for voluntary counseling to Medicare patients about end-of-life options and the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (another agency the GOP wishes to kill) contributed to the “death panels” myth, which Republicans have used to frame health-care reform as “rationing.” As University of Maryland political scientist Frances E. Lee argues, partisan conflict over technocratic issues such as medical research is often “opportunistic and focused on electoral advantage.” As she writes, “The politics of good government, ironically, is hardball.” Although evidence-based medicine might seem likely to have bipartisan support, it has become a partisan issue among voters. In 2010, Alan Gerber, David Doherty, Conor Dowling and I conducted a national survey to gauge public support for government funding of research on the effectiveness of treatments. Among those who reported not voting in 2008, there was not a large difference in support across Democrats and Republicans, but there were significant partisan differences among voters. Republican voters were much less supportive than Democrats. During the debates over the stimulus bill and health-care reform, the two parties took opposing stands on the federal government’s role in this effort, which led to the significant partisan split among politically engaged citizens. Research on the effectiveness of different treatments is a threat to the incomes of some health industry stakeholders. In 1994, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (the precursor to AHRQ) issued a report concluding that there was little evidence to support back surgery over nonsurgical alternatives for many cases of lower-back pain. Back surgeons went ballistic, and successfully lobbied Republicans in Congress (who associated the agency with the Clinton health-care reform plan) to slash the agency’s budget and curb its authority. Although some health IT companies see the value of AHRQ and PCORI, there are powerful interest groups that wouldn’t mind if the agencies were weakened. The public is not engaged. Although patients, caregivers, and family members would benefit from better information about the effectiveness of treatments, the benefits of a stronger base of medical evidence are too diffuse to mobilize ordinary citizens. AHRQ and PCORI are public-interest agencies that lack a natural constituency. Republicans have attacked government funding of evidence-based medicine research because there is little political penalty to doing so. The penalty would be higher if Republicans feared getting on the wrong side of doctors. In our survey research, we found that when it comes to the role of evidence in patient decisions as well as in the allocation of health-care money, the public believes that “doctors know best.” The public views doctors as trusted agents of their interests; when respondents are told that doctors support government funding of evidence-based medicine research, the argument of opponents that study findings will be used as a pretext for rationing loses its sting.
Clearly most doctors do believe in the need for research on evidence-based medicine (although medical societies frequently protest when studies question the efficacy of treatments used by their members). “Cutting funding to AHRQ would be a huge mistake in our mission to improve the quality & efficiency of healthcare,” tweeted one surgeon. But the physician community has not organized around the issue.
There is a good chance the proposed cuts to evidence-based medicine research won’t be enacted in this appropriations cycle. Nonetheless, the episode is a reminder that information is a powerful resource in government — one that can be destroyed when people aren’t looking.
Eric M. Patashnik is professor of public policy and politics and director of the Center for Health Policy at the University of Virginia. He is also nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Four reasons the updated Uber Dubai app makes us sad By Mike Priest
Double charges, secret surges… Uber, your app is bad.
Late last year, ride-hailing company Uber updated its app in an effort to make it even easier for customers to book one of its cars.
The update added a number of new features, including the ability to schedule rides in advance, as well as providing up-front fare estimates.
However, just like the sickly sweet smell of a newly opened car air freshener, not everything was as rosy as it seemed.
While the app also received a much needed facelift, some of the core functionality that users enjoyed was either buried behind a mess of design-driven decisions, or had been removed entirely.
So, after months of botched bookings and frustration, we can stand it no more!
Here are our top four gripes with the Uber app:
1) You can’t book an open-ended trip
One of the perks of the original Uber app was the ability jump in any of its cars and venture off into the Dubai streets to wherever took your fancy. A super handy feature in a city where roads and landmarks are constantly changing, giving Google Maps a tough time at playing catch up.
The app now requires that you enter a definite end-point to your journey, making it incredibly difficult in those instances when you’re trying to get to your mate’s place and all you have for directions are a vague take the third left after the second Mosque once you hit Al Wasl Rd.
Similarly, if you want to hail an Uber to help you collect something and then return home in the same car it is tricky to do as you can’t specify a round-trip as a destination.
2) The surge pricing indicator is tucked away
Surge prices are the scourge of the avid Uber user, always at their peak during daily prayer times, commuting rush hours or Friday brunches. Either they run the risk of doubling your fare during peak hours, or making you late as you impatiently wait for them to drop below 1.1x so you can avoid paying even a single fil over the going rate.
Uber must clearly have caught on that its users aren’t fans of elevated surge pricing as it now hides away any notice of it in the tiniest font possible, only notifying you when asking you to confirm your booking. We miss the big, bold pop up that told us we were about to be ‘surged’ before we booked.
A little unscrupulous if you ask us, especially for those looking to book in a hurry, or at the end of a night out.
3) Location errors can end up costing big
One Uber user recounted to us a story in which they were looking to travel from their apartment building in Dubai Marina to the Al Qasr hotel in Jumeirah but had, unbeknownst to them, mistakenly set their destination as a restaurant in JBR with the same name (that was 500 metres from their house).
Uber told them the fare would be Dhs30-40 when they booked (seems fair for Marina to Madinat) so they hopped in the cab and then had a confusing conversation about location, during which the driver said he knew it would be Al Qasr the hotel and not the restaurant, so the user asked the driver to take them there.
In the end a 10 minute ride cost them Dhs80 (and they didn’t realise it would cost that much when they booked).
While this is not entirely Uber’s fault (the app relies on Google Maps for its location information), we’ve heard multiple similar accounts to warrant it being noted as an issue. A series of checks certainly wouldn’t go amiss to ensure customers don’t wind up with a fare for the wrong location or, worse yet, end up somewhere else entirely.
4) Being charged double for a ride is no fun
One of the biggest changes that Uber implemented with its app overhaul is how they handle payment.
It used to be that you would book your ride and only be charged the fare (calculated based on the minimum fee and an amount per minute/kilometer) once you reached your destination. Just like a regular cab – nice and simple.
Instead, the new system calculates the fare in advance (using the same maths as before) and gives you an estimated rate for how much the journey should cost.
This is clearly stated in the app along with the caveat that “Uber places a temporary authorization hold on your card, which is converted to a charge for the final fare. You may receive 1 or more SMS messages from your bank notifying you of both the hold and the charge.”
Frustratingly, if your journey deviates from the specified amount charged at the beginning of the trip (due to a detour to pick up a friend or, you know, traffic) you are then charged a second, final amount for what the fare actually is. Sure, the original amount is released back to your credit card, but some banks take upwards of 10 working days to process a card chargeback, meaning if you’re a regular Uber user who gets stuck in traffic often – hello, practically everyone in Dubai – then you could be potentially ponying up around double each time you ride.
We reached out to Uber regarding our grievances with their app and they came back with the most diplomatic of responses:
“At Uber, we are passionate about using technology to help move people around cities, and to recapture the clean and simple aesthetic of the original Uber experience, we rebuilt a faster, smarter rider app completely from the ground up. The new Uber experience is reimagined around a simple question—“Where to?”. And by starting with your destination, we can tailor the journey to you.”
We will say this, Uber does continue to offer a responsive and competent level of customer support whereby, should you raise any of the above issues with your ride (and believe us, we did!), they go above and beyond in helping to resolve things.
It’s just upsetting that the core app is in such a state that we experienced everything we’ve mentioned here on multiple occasions, without so much of a hint as to whether these issues are going to be addressed in the future.
Let’s hope Uber gets its act together. In the meantime, it’s enough to make you want to try that other ride-hailing company’s app from across the street…
– Have you experienced any issues with the Uber app that drive you nuts? Tell us about them on Facebook.
Photos: Uber app
By Riot Jynx
Check out the winners of the League-o'-Lantern Halloween contest!
Community-voted Winners:
xcapriccino miisyou Sumino Kairosmith SneakyStyL Heirophant prinnybat Bamfxo Mitko Aseity
Honorable Mentions:
Kolab FuzzyLlamas IRamessesl DedRed7 IMB0reD
Randomly-selected Winners:
AngelicDragon Butters372 Suyuri A Wave o Babies Eosdrake StruckbyThunda A Heath Bar ohn5mindu Ashira Jaganshi Alyaska toxicpot Tero681 Bleufromage Slitheile13 RohesiaCrow Heisman1 Rosencruez Aqua Jet Gengaarr Dark Deception
Halloween is fast approaching, so double up on your Doran’s Blades and celebrate with our pumpkin carving challenge!
We're looking for your most creative, spooky, or adorable League-o’-Lanterns. Send them our way for a shot at a ghastly amount of RP!
How do I enter the contest?
Carve a pumpkin with a League of Legends-related image or theme
Don’t forget to include your summoner name in the design (it should be visible in the picture, so photograph it from as many angles as necessary)

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.