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The riders line up for the start of stage 14 of the 2008 Tour de France with the spectacular Arena of Nimes behind them. (Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Vuelta a Espana director Javier Guillén confirmed on Friday that its Grand Depart for 2017 will be in Nîmes, France on August 19 next year. Speaking at a press conference, Guillen started by emphasising the close cultural links between Nimes and Spain, given Nîmes has a strong tradition of flamenco and bullfighting.
Guillen confirmed that the first stage will, as has been the tradition in recent editions of the Vuelta, be a team time trial run entirely through the city "and showing both its modern and older side." Length-wise the time trial will be slightly shorter than the opening TTT stage of 27.8 kilometres in the Vuelta a Espana 2016.
A further stage will run through France towards Spain and after that "I am leaving it open to the media to speculate what happens, whether we'll have another stage in France or head directly into Spain," although a stage into or through Andorra is also possible. Asked if the Vuelta might tackle the Mont Ventoux given its proximity to Nîmes, Guillen said there was no likelihood of a summit finish on French soil.
Historically of the three Grand Tours, when it comes to Grand Departs, the Vuelta has tended to travel the least. The race has just two previous race starts abroad, in Lisbon in 1997 and Assen, Holland in 2009, in its 81-year history.
There are rumours that further down the line the Vuelta a Espana could start in Utrecht - a delegation from that city visited the Vuelta start in Ourense. Guillen also confirmed to Cyclingnews on Friday that various countries in northern Europe, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Ireland, have shown interest in a Vuelta's Grand Depart.
Given the presence of Christian Prudhomme at Friday's press conference and reports of his meetings with various top town hall officials in Bilbao, rumours that the Tour de France could have one of its Grand Departs or a stage in Bilbao have already started to fly. The Tour has already had one Grand Depart in the Basque Country, starting from San Sebastian in 1992 with a prologue, won by Miguel Indurain.
The 2017 race will finish on September 10th, in Madrid.
To subscribe to the Cyclingnews video channel, click here. | 3,000 |
The average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime, or total fertility rate (TFR), has dropped below replacement for all religious communities barring Hindus and Muslims.The fertility rate of Hindu households fell from 2.6 in the last survey in 2005-06 to 2.1, the level at which a population is said to be able to replace itself from generation to generation without migration.The fertility rate of Muslim households fell from 3.4 to 2.6. This was revealed in the latest religion-wise data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) of 2015-16.The community with the lowest fertility rate, 1.2, was the one with the highest level of education, the Jains. This was followed by Sikhs (1.6), Buddhists or Neo Buddhists (1.7) and Christians (2). India’s overall TFR was 2.2.Predictably, when looking at the fertility rate of the different wealth quintiles (onefifths of the population), the section with the lowest income had the highest number of children at 3.2 and the richest had the least, 1.5. Scheduled tribes, the least developed among social categories, had the highest fertility rate of 2.5, followed by 2.3 for scheduled castes and 2.2 for other backward classes. The upper castes had the lowest fertility rate of 1.9.The younger the women, the lower the mean number of children born to them, evidence of the progress over the last two decades in bringing down the total fertility rate. The TFR for Muslim women aged 40-49 was the highest at 4.2 and it was the lowest for Jain women of the same age at 2.2. Hindu women of this age group had the second highest TFR of 3.1.The median age at first birth among women aged 25-49 years was lowest for Muslim and Hindu women, 21.3 years and 21.6 years respectively.It was highest among Sikhs at 23.8 years. Among the different wealth quintiles, the median age at first birth was lowest among the poorest women at 20.3, steadily rising with rising affluence to touch 24.4 years among women in the richest one-fifth of the population.The survey showed that almost 30% women with one child had got sterilised, suggesting that they had decided they did not want any more. Almost 84% of women with two children had got sterilised. This was the case for 77% of the poorest women who had two children and almost 89% of women in the highest wealth quintile with two kids. | 3,001 |
Some of 100 animals seized from Maine home ready for adoption
The Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland said some of the animals seized from a home in Solon last month will soon be available for adoption.The shelter is caring for 55 dogs and one cat.In all, 100 animals were seized from R-N-D Kennels and taken to shelters across the state.The Animal Refuge League said it recently received authorization to begin the adoption process for the animals in its care."Patience, flexibility, love, nurture. They really need to move into homes that will help them acclimate to their new surroundings,” Director of Community Engagement Jeana Roth said.The shelter said it has had to absorb extensive costs to care for the animals. Officials said many of the animals have substantial medical needs.“These are animals that have been confined to one home for most of their life, so they’re not used to things like leash walking, or running outdoors or walking up and down stairs. They’re not potty trained, so because of the situation they were living in, they are very different than the average dog in a home,” Roth said.The shelter is asking for donations to continue caring for the animals.Some of the animals could be available for adoption this week.
The Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland said some of the animals seized from a home in Solon last month will soon be available for adoption.
The shelter is caring for 55 dogs and one cat.
In all, 100 animals were seized from R-N-D Kennels and taken to shelters across the state.
The Animal Refuge League said it recently received authorization to begin the adoption process for the animals in its care.
"Patience, flexibility, love, nurture. They really need to move into homes that will help them acclimate to their new surroundings,” Director of Community Engagement Jeana Roth said.
The shelter said it has had to absorb extensive costs to care for the animals. Officials said many of the animals have substantial medical needs.
“These are animals that have been confined to one home for most of their life, so they’re not used to things like leash walking, or running outdoors or walking up and down stairs. They’re not potty trained, so because of the situation they were living in, they are very different than the average dog in a home,” Roth said.
The shelter is asking for donations to continue caring for the animals.
Some of the animals could be available for adoption this week. | 3,002 |
When our species was in its infancy, an elite class of people was needed to ensure mankind’s survival: hunters.
These brave explorers matched wits with the most dangerous creatures and environments in order to emerge victorious over their prey and gather mementos of each fresh kill. Today, food is farmed in factories, but the proud tradition of the hunter lives on in the Dorito-fueled heartbeats of gamers around the world. They’re called “achievement hunters” (or “trophy hunters” for the members of House Sony), and today their kind can finally unleash their talents in conquest of the virtual world.
In an official statement emailed to UploadVR, Oculus — the company behind the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR virtual reality headsets — announced that achievements will now be available within the Oculus Home content platform itself. According to Oculus:
“Starting today, Oculus will begin rolling out achievements on Gear VR and Rift. Now, people will be able to track their progress against unlocking achievements in an app, browse what friends are up to in VR, and discover new apps friends are playing.”
This update will also be bringing improved social features to the Rift and Gear VR ecosystems. Oculus explains that, “We’re also giving people more control over what activity they share with friends. As achievements become available, people may see a prompt to update their privacy settings if they would like to share the achievements they’ve received and what apps they have installed.”
Achievements will only be available for certain games in the beginning. Oculus states that, “Minecraft, Anshar Wars 2, and Hitman GO may see achievements in Oculus Home right away” and that more developers will be adding their own into the mix “soon.”
Here’s the Oculus synopsis for the new content:
People can unlock achievements in an app (when a developer has chosen to incorporate them), and will be able to see what achievements their friends have unlocked
Unearned achievements will be “greyed out,” and some achievements will be classified as “secret” to encourage you to explore the app in search of them
Rollout begins today and will progress throughout the next few weeks (remember to update Gear VR/Rift to the latest in order to see achievements).
Happy hunting! Share your best achievements with @UploadVR on Twitter for retweets, high fives, and brownie points (collect enough and we’ll send you an actual brownie — maybe.) | 3,003 |
KABUL (Reuters) - A car bomb attack on a U.S. convoy in the Afghan capital on Friday, wounded four U.S. service members and killed at least four Afghan civilians, officials said, in the second attack in the city in two days.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast, which came a day after the Islamic State militant group claimed a suicide attack outside a military training academy that killed at least six people.
A spokesman for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan confirmed that a car bomb hit a U.S. convoy and four service members had suffered minor injuries in the explosion but gave no other details.
An interior ministry spokesman said four Afghan civilians had been killed.
The blast sent a plume of white smoke into the air and spread debris across the busy Jalalabad road in the city’s east, an area with several large security compounds which has seen repeated attacks over the years.
But other officials said as many as nine people had been killed with varying estimates of the number of wounded.
“I was hit in the head by flying glass and many people have suffered injuries,” said Abdul Qayum, who was wearing a bandage around his head.
The main Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a statement the attack targeted a convoy of “senior foreign advisers”, killing 10 and destroying two vehicles.
Witnesses said at least three armored Land Cruiser vehicles were in the convoy, one of which was heavily damaged in the explosion and removed from the scene by crane as Afghan and U.S. troops guarded the scene while firefighters cleaned up.
Kabul has been on high alert in recent days, with security checkpoints reinforced, despite increased diplomatic efforts to open a peace process to end 18 years of war in Afghanistan.
Friday’s attack, shortly before next week’s Eid al-Fitr holiday, came as a delegation of Taliban officials met senior Afghan politicians in Moscow this week for discussions which the main Taliban spokesman said had made good progress.
The Taliban have been talking with U.S. diplomats for several months to agree a withdrawal of more than 20,000 U.S. and NATO coalition troops in exchange for guarantees that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for militant attacks.
Following a ceasefire last year over the Eid holiday, there had been hopes that a truce would be agreed for this year’s holiday, which comes at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
But Taliban officials have said that did not appear likely. | 3,004 |
Voters know if you're comfortable in your own skin. Let him be him in this sense."
She also noted that while polling currently shows Trump trailing, it's actually something that's helpful.
"I think it helps us to be a little bit behind, and we are. It lights a fire under us, and reminds us what we need to do to get this done," she said.
Trump's new campaign manager also said a focus on the issues would help her candidate.
"The idea we have millions more in poverty, millions more out of work, the idea that people feel unsafe, that they feel less and less safe now, those are the issues we need to address," Conway said.
JUST WATCHED Donald Trump's spiral in less than a month Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Donald Trump's spiral in less than a month 03:12
But with Bannon at the helm, Democrats are now bracing for a far more personal onslaught against Clinton this fall. It's a risky approach, however, given that Clinton's standing among voters has sometimes improved when she is perceived as the victim of attacks.
Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, told reporters during a Wednesday conference call that the Democrat is expecting more divisive rhetoric from the new team.
"After several failed attempts to pivot into a more serious and presidential mode, Donald Trump has decided to double down on his most small, nasty and divisive instincts by turning his campaign over to someone who is best known for running a so-called news site," he said referring to Bannon's oversight of Breitbart News, "that peddles divisive, at times racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."
"What's become clear from this is no matter how much the establishment wants to clean Donald Trump up, get him on a teleprompter and get him on message, he has officially won the fight to let Trump be Trump," Mook said.
Manafort, in his memo, insisted the campaign is in a strong position to win. But the current poll numbers do not breed confidence in a Trump victory.
"He does not just have a swing state problem, he has a national problem," said Newhouse. "Trump is not close enough in the swing states to target them and make a difference right now. He's got to move his numbers nationally before these key swing states come in play."
"The only thing that's leaving hope right now that Trump can turn this around is Hillary Clinton's popularity," he added. "If Trump is able to build on that, then potentially there is a path." | 3,005 |
Military officials on Tuesday said the Afghan security forces have shut down one of the Taliban’s strategic supply routes in the south-east – a gravel road through Dand-e-Ptan district of Paktia province near the Durand Line.
According to the officials permanent security check points will be established in the area so as to ensure the route stays closed to the Taliban.
Officials said the supply route, known as Enzergai Kando, provided a route for the Taliban to cross the Durand Line and continue on to Khost, Logar and Ghazni provinces.
“This area was important because the Taliban used it as a supply route and the Taliban had been using it for their movements between Afghanistan and Pakistan and were carrying out operations from this area to other provinces. This has great significance for the Afghan government. Last night we carried out an operation there and completely cleaned the area of armed Taliban,” said Colonel Abdul Mateen Sulaimankhail, the commander of the second division of the Afghan Commando Unit, which is currently in the area.
“The future plan of 203 Thunder Army Corps is to establish border check points in areas including Khowjkaram, Enzergai Kando, and Nari Kando,” said Brigadier General Shaur Gul Pashtun, the commander of 203 Thunder Army Corps in the eastern zone.
“Our request from the Muqbel tribe is that we want to recruit members of the public uprising forces to the ranks of the national army and national police, so get your sons ready for this so that they can contribute in the defense of their country; all security forces are standing alongside you,” said Paktia governor Shamim Khan Katawazai.
Meanwhile, a number of residents in Muqbel Dara Valley of Dand-e-Ptan district have called on the Afghan government to embark on development projects in the area in order to improve their lives.
“Before the Taliban were in this area, whether it was good times or bad, this episode has passed now, we are happy that the security forces have not created any problems for us, the government has to build roads for us,” said a resident of Muqbel Dara Valley, Akbar Shah.
“The Taliban has inflicted a lot of pain on us,” said another resident Sialdin.
Security officials have pledged to hire over three hundred members of public uprising forces to serve together with the Afghan border police in order to boost the security situation in the region. | 3,006 |
Wow! I just got done posting about the Don Pablo’s liquor license transferring to the shopping center property owner… and I mention that they were planning on extending the back of the property but I had no details. Soon after posting, I find the Deptford Center online sales brochure from Metro Commercial which shows the Target/BJ’s shopping center doubling in size off the back of the property… and it clearly indicates TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Joanne Fabrics, and Home Sense as new tenants!!
To clarify the location.. this would be 1900 Deptford Center Road which currently houses the Deptford Target and BJ’s Warehouse Club. In the back of the lot where the BJ’s gas station is, they would take over the NJDOT property and extend the shopping center back there. It’s deceptively bigger than you expected!
While the buildings would be further off of Deptford Center Road, the new segment of the shopping center will have considerable frontage to Route 42 for signage (cars wont have direct access from Rt 42, but 10s of thousands will see the stores and signage every day as they drive by).
The listing is online as there will be additional store spaces available… but if the stores already listed are true, they already have a very strong foundation to build from.
We haven’t had a chance to confirm directly (not that representatives would respond), but this is a very straight forward online representation from a NJ licensed real estate firm. The updated PDF shows a Spring 2020 opening date (which seems a little aggressive considering its almost August, and nothing has progressed).
The PDF siteplan attached to the Metro Commercial listing even provides a depiction of the new signage with all these stores listed, and a new name “Deptford Place”
I sat in a Planning Board meeting two years ago where the owner of the property which currently has TJ Maxx and Marshalls located, and the owner spoke those two tenants were happy with the location… but its clear that center is not thriving. If these two large retailers move out, it will basically leave Ollie’s as the only main tenant.
HomeSense is described as “HomeGoods on steriods” and is part of the same corporate umbrella as TJ Max and Marshalls. Deptford has become a hub for home decor stores with Home Goods, Pier One, Hobby Lobby, Christmas Tree Shops, Kirklands and more. Plus, just a few miles away in Washington Twp the massive @Home store opens later this year. | 3,007 |
Jennifer Fox, founder of FoxBot Industries, uses a Raspberry Pi pet monitor to check the sound levels of her home while she is out, allowing her to keep track of when her dog Marley gets noisy or agitated, and to interact with the gorgeous furball accordingly.
Bark Back Project Demo A quick overview and demo of the Bark Back, a project to monitor and interact with Check out the full tutorial here: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/bark-back-interactive-pet-monitor For any licensing requests please contact [email protected]
Marley, bark!
Using a Raspberry Pi 3, speakers, SparkFun’s MEMS microphone breakout board, and an analogue-to-digital converter (ADC), the IoT Pet Monitor is fairly easy to recreate, all thanks to Jennifer’s full tutorial on the FoxBot website.
Building the pet monitor
In a nutshell, once the Raspberry Pi and the appropriate bits and pieces are set up, you’ll need to sign up at CloudMQTT — it’s free if you select the Cute Cat account. CloudMQTT will create an invisible bridge between your home and wherever you are that isn’t home, so that you can check in on your pet monitor.
Within the project code, you’ll be able to calculate the peak-to-peak amplitude of sound the microphone picks up. Then you can decide how noisy is too noisy when it comes to the occasional whine and bark of your beloved pup.
Next you can import sounds to a preset song list that will be played back when the volume rises above your predefined threshold. As Jennifer states in the tutorial, the sounds can easily be recorded via apps such as Garageband, or even on your mobile phone.
Using the pet monitor
Whenever the Bark Back IoT Pet Monitor is triggered to play back audio, this information is fed to the CloudMQTT service, allowing you to see if anything is going on back home.
And as Jennifer recommends, a update of the project could include a camera or sensors to feed back more information about your home environment.
If you’ve created something similar, be sure to let us know in the comments. And if you haven’t, but you’re now planning to build your own IoT pet monitor, be sure to let us know in the comments. And if you don’t have a pet but just want to say hi…that’s right, be sure to let us know in the comments. | 3,008 |
that I understand a better way to communicate with my peers and I understand my peers’ perceptions better,” Langthorn said. “The reality that most Millennials don’t believe in a two-party system, that they associate the people who have been in power regardless of whether they’re Democrats or Republicans with the status quo and therefore with failure.”
That strategy could prove to be key to shifting the party’s longterm position in the state. Millennials as a generation are significantly more progressive than previous generations, even the ones that live in deeply conservative states. They also far outnumber any other generation, and mobilizing them to vote has the potential to radically change the political character of any state.
Currently Oklahoma is considering a ballot initiative that would allow voters in the state to decide whether to legalize medical marijuana — an issue that tends to divide along generational lines. Putting the question on the ballot could encourage younger voters to turn out. Both Democrats in Oklahoma’s gubernatorial race support putting the question on the ballot while the crowded field of Republican candidates has largely demurred on the issue.
Langthorn is also bringing her values as a young progressive to bear in other ways. She’s openly supportive of her staff’s decision to unionize the state Democratic Party offices.
“We’re in the process of actually unionizing our staff which is going to be really cool,” Langthorn said. “The staff initiated that themselves before I was elected, but when that is finished — when we finish our contract negotiations, which we’re in the midst of right now — we’ll be the only state party in the country that has a unionized staff.”
But ultimately her goal is to try and reach a broad swath of voters in Oklahoma, even those in rural bastions of conservatism, by rebranding the Democratic Party as a party that can bring tangible social goods and services to voters.
“We’ve allowed the Republican Party to define us, but [Democrats] believe in the basic principles of fairness and hard work and equality.” Langthorn said.
“When we’re talking about health care, when we’re talking about things like Medicaid expansion or a living wage — having a living wage affects someone in rural eastern Oklahoma just as much as it affects someone in urban Oklahoma City and maybe more so because those are the places actually where the jobs are disappearing, poverty conditions exist and having a government that protects people is more vital than ever before.” | 3,009 |
House Democrats Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) announced Friday that they will not attend President Trump’s first State of the Union address this month.
Waters and Lewis each made separate appearances on MSNBC to explain that they are skipping the president’s annual address because he allegedly called Haiti, El Salvador, and several African countries “shithole” nations.
“Why would I take my time to go and sit and listen to a liar?” Waters told MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. “Someone who lies in the face of facts, someone who can change their tune day in and day out. What does he have to say that I would be interested in?”
“I don’t trust him, I don’t appreciate him, and I wouldn’t waste my time … listening to what he has to say,” she continued. “He does not deserve my attention.”
Lewis also announced that he would be skipping the address, accusing Trump of having racist sympathies after reports on the alleged remarks surfaced Thursday.
“At this junction, I do not plan to attend the State of the Union,” Lewis told MSNBC’s Katy Tur. “I cannot, in all good conscience, be in a room with what he has said about so many Americans. I just cannot do it. I wouldn’t be honest with myself.”
“I think the words and his action[s] tend to speak like one who knows something about being a racist. It must be in his DNA, in his makeup,” he added.
Waters and Lewis are the latest House Democrats to boycott Trump’s address after Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) announced last week that he would stay home during the State of the Union to avoid Trump’s “divisive” speech.
“Rather than listening to yet another destructive and divisive speech by Trump, I will not attend this year’s annual address to Congress,” he said in a statement. “Instead, like I did during Trump’s Inauguration, I will be working here at home listening to Oregonians about what they think about the State of the Union.”
Other Democrat lawmakers who are not planning to skip the State of the Union entirely are reportedly plotting ways to protest the speech, such as wearing black to show their support for victims of sexual misconduct. | 3,010 |
Since the Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight on August 26th, Conor McGregor’s camp has been eyeing on one fighter for their next fight: Nate Diaz. It is a name that SBG Dublin head coach John Kavanagh had in mind all along, but he does not foresee this third fight happening in 2017.
Kavanagh does have other plans for the trilogy, and he revealed them in an interview during the recent Original Penguin AW17 collection launch.
“If it was my choice, and I must stress that this is only my choice and that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, it would be Nate Diaz in March,” Kavanagh said (via MMA Fighting). “That’s what I would push towards.”
“I have in my head that it would be a Paddy’s Day card in New York, Nate Diaz 3. I think that would be absolutely amazing. That’s what I would wish for. That’s what I’ll be leaning towards with my 0.1 percent influence when I meet with Conor and Audie (Attar) tomorrow. I want Diaz 3, Paddy’s Day in New York.”
McGregor has been repeatedly criticized for not wanting to defend his belts, and it has been a problem for many fighters since he held the featherweight title from 2015 to 2016. But according to Kavanagh, “The Notorious” is now in the position to choose his next opponent, notwithstanding the top contenders for the title, whom in theory, are more deserving of a fight.
“At this stage, I mention Diaz and people are shouting, ‘What about Khabib?’ or, ‘What about Tony?’... And there’s Kevin Lee and some other guys, (people say) ‘They’re due their shot!’”
“Really, Conor doesn’t have to do that anymore. He won the featherweight belt, interim and unified,” Kavanagh said. “He won the lightweight belt. At this stage he’s only doing fights because they’re fun. A big fight build-up and to win that — that will do for me anyway.”
“For a bunch of reasons (Diaz is the right fight). It’s not just about being the right guy — that’s all amateur level. This is professional and it’s about entertainment.” | 3,011 |
An anaesthetist in the French city of Besancon is suspected of poisoning patients during surgery to trigger heart failures and then heroically bring them back from the brink of death.
Key points: Evidence has been found linking Dr Frederic Pechier to 24 out of 66 suspicious incidents during surgical proceedings
Evidence has been found linking Dr Frederic Pechier to 24 out of 66 suspicious incidents during surgical proceedings Dr Pechier is suspected of injecting lethal doses of potassium chloride or anaesthetics in perfusion bags
Dr Pechier is suspected of injecting lethal doses of potassium chloride or anaesthetics in perfusion bags The prosecution says his colleagues found he was suspiciously fast in diagnosing anaesthetic overdoses
On nine occasions, prosecutors allege he failed and people died.
Investigating magistrates have found evidence linking Frederic Pechier to 24 out of 66 suspicious incidents that happened during surgical proceedings at the clinic where he practiced, according to Besancon prosecutor Etienne Manteaux.
"Dr Pechier appears as the common denominator for these unfortunate and serious events that seem related to an acute conflict with other anaesthetists or surgeons at the Saint-Vincent clinic," Mr Manteaux said.
He added that Dr Pechier was suspected of injecting lethal doses of potassium chloride or anaesthetics in perfusion bags during benign surgeries.
The 47-year-old physician has denied any wrongdoing but the prosecution asked that he be kept under arrest ahead of trial, where he will face a life sentence.
"The charges rest on a beam of concordant elements," Mr Manteaux said, acknowledging that the case rests on circumstantial evidence because the doctor was not caught in the act.
Dr Pechier was "omnipresent" in handling the resuscitation of patients after suspicious heart failures and the doctor's colleagues found he was suspiciously fast in diagnosing anaesthetic overdoses, the prosecutor added.
He also said Dr Pechier was the only physician present during all the incidents where traces of poison were found or when overdoses were diagnosed.
The incidents were more numerous during periods of "intense conflict" between Dr Pechier and his colleagues, Mr Manteaux said.
Dr Pechier has admitted criminal acts were committed at the clinic but said he was not responsible for them, according to the prosecutor.
"Dr Pechier rejects all the charges brought against him," his lawyer, Randall Schwerdorffer, told reporters.
"We challenge anybody to show us any evidence."
Reuters | 3,012 |
A crowd of angry people has gathered in a street in the town of Belle Glade, Florida, where a white sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a young black man earlier the same day, local media and Twitter users report.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed that it has launched a probe into the deputy-involved shooting, which took place on Saturday morning.
PBSO deputies trying to control an angry crowd after fatal shooting in Belle Glade this morning. pic.twitter.com/y5q7HJ8EnF — Kevin D. Thompson (@KevinDThompson1) January 16, 2016
According to sheriff’s office spokeswoman Teri Barbera, the fatal shooting occurred at about 11:00 am local time (6:00 am GMT). The sheriff’s deputy was not injured in the incident, reports the Palm Beach Post.
CBS12 is on scene of a deputy-involved shooting in Belle Glade https://t.co/LZoP7rVwVJpic.twitter.com/q9v6IRLNmJ — WPEC CBS12 News (@CBS12) January 16, 2016
The teen was killed instantly when he was shot in the head after allegedly pointing a gun at the deputy, a Palm Beach County Sheriff‘s Office (PBSO) source told Gossip Extra.
The victim was later identified on Twitter and media as Henry Thomas Bennett, 19, a local resident who had been arrested three times for battery and violation of probation since October, according to police data.
Police have shot & killed a young man in #BelleGlade, Florida. Community members are on the scene demanding answers. https://t.co/DPiXjNIVcd — D (@Delo_Taylor) January 16, 2016
A crowd has gathered in the center of Belle Glade, but the people have been behaving peacefully so far, according to some Twitter posts.
And there are hundreds of them out right now. But they're standing on the sidewalks. https://t.co/Zbw8TDOBPN — CODIne (@CurvaceousCodi) January 16, 2016
Belle Glade is a town in Palm Beach County, Florida, with the population of 17,667. The major business in the region is the cultivation of sugar plants. The official unemployment rate in Belle Glade hovers around 16 percent, although the town’s mayor believes it’s closer to 40 percent, according to the New York Times. | 3,013 |
The case against a Mississippi shipbuilder continues to mount with a new round of lawsuits accusing the company of engaging in human trafficking.
Last week, plaintiffs filed five lawsuits in Mississippi and Texas federal courts accusing Signal International LLC and its recruiting firms and brokers of "trafficking 500 Indian guest workers to the United States and forcing them to work under barbaric conditions," wrote the Southern Poverty Law Center—which filed the suits—on its website.
The most recent legal filings follow 83 federal H2B guest workers that sued Signal in federal court in May 2013. In 2008, 12 peopled sued the company. Together, the suits charge that Signal and its affiliate "defrauded guest workers out of millions of dollars in exorbitant recruitment fees" and falsely promised help in applying for and obtaining permanent U.S. residence.
The lawsuit states that Signal required each worker to pay as much as $25,000 to work in Signal's shipyards, located in Pascagoula and Orange, Texas. There, the suit claims, the workers had to live in "overcrowded, unsanitary and racially segregated labor camps."
When contacted this morning, a Signal representative said the company is not commenting on the allegations in the suits and referred this reporter to a statement on the company's website.
In the statement, Signal characterizes the lawsuits as representative of the SPLC's "agenda to cripple companies during labor shortages who attempt to legally employ workers through the H2B program."
"I am astounded at this abuse of the legal system. These are the same exaggerated claims that have been exposed as false allegations by a Federal Court Judge well over a year and a half ago. Signal made every attempt to bring these H2B workers into the Signal family of employees and treated them with dignity and respect, just as we treat each and every Signal employee," stated Richard Marler, Signal's chief executive officer, in the release.
In January 2012, Louisiana U.S. District Judge Jay C. Zainey declined to allow plaintiffs to pursue the case as a class-action lawsuit, writing in his order:
"The plaintiff class as a whole did not labor under any specific vulnerabilities when they decided to join the green-card program. That's not to say that they were not the victims of fraud, but (p)laintiffs are not a class of children or mentally challenged persons. The plaintiffs were adult men, some of whom had worked overseas before and some of whom were well-educated and savvy."
Plaintiffs are seeking damages and injunctive relief. | 3,014 |
DENVER (Reuters) - A man who pleaded guilty to planting a bomb outside a Colorado police station to avenge the killing of his friend almost a half-century ago was sentenced on Friday to 27 years in prison, federal prosecutors said.David Michael Ansberry, 66, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Denver for the botched bombing of the Nederland police station in 2016, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn said.
The homemade device failed to explode despite repeated attempts by Ansberry to detonate it with a cell phone, according to an FBI arrest warrant affidavit.
Ansberry belonged to an itinerant hippie group known as “Serenity, Tranquility and Peace,” or STP, according to a memorandum filed by prosecutors ahead of Ansberry’s guilty plea in July 2017.
The group had a presence in Nederland, a mountain community about 15 miles west of Boulder, in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the group’s members, Guy Goughnor, was killed in Nederland in 1971, according to prosecutors.
“The Nederland town marshal, Renner Forbes, eventually confessed to killing Goughnor and was convicted for that crime in 1998,” federal prosecutors wrote in court documents. Forbes has since died.
Goughnor went by the nickname “Deputy Dawg” and a message was scrawled at the attempted bombing scene which read, “RIP Deputy Dawg and the date 7-17-71,” prosecutors said.
Authorities said Ansberry had harbored a grudge for more than four decades and traveled from California to Idaho, where he purchased bomb-making components before arriving in Colorado.
In October 2016, a Nederland police officer discovered a backpack containing a cell phone connected to a battery and a suspicious powder outside the town’s police station, prompting its evacuation and that of several nearby businesses.
Bomb squad technicians disarmed the device and no one was injured in the incident.
FBI agents were able to track the cell phone and obtained surveillance video of its purchase at a Colorado grocery store. Ansberry was easily identified as the buyer by his diminutive 3-foot, 6-inch stature.
Records also showed that Ansberry stayed at a Nederland motel the night of the attempted bombing. He was arrested at Midway Airport in Chicago as he was preparing to catch a flight to Baltimore.
He pleaded guilty in July 2017 to use and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. | 3,015 |
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - U.S. police investigating the third murder of a transgender woman in Dallas, Texas, in under a year have played down fears that there was a serial killer at large targeting one of city’s most marginalized groups.
Chynal Lindsey’s body was pulled from White Rock Lake in Dallas on June 1 with “obvious signs of homicidal violence”, Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall told a press conference posted on the police website, adding the FBI had been called in to help.
Lindsey’s murder came two weeks after another black trans woman, Muhlaysia Booker, was shot to death in Valley Glen Drive, south of White Rock Lake. A third trans woman was fatally shot in the southeast of the city in October last year.
Hall downplayed fears raised by the LGBT+ community that a serial killer was targeting trans women, with a Dallas police spokesman telling the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Wednesday they had no further update to add so far on the murders.
“Right now we don’t have the evidence to substantiate that but what we are asking each and everyone of our community members is to stay vigilant, make sure you are aware of your surroundings,” Hall told reporters.
“We have a great working relationship with our transgender, our LGBTQ+ community and we are working together to ensure individuals feel safe and they have someone to reach out to if they have some concerns.”
The murders have been cited by U.S.-based LGBT+ campaigners as proof that trans people, particularly black trans women, were at huge risk of violence.
At least 26 transgender women were reported killed in the United States in 2018 and 29 in 2017, according to Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S. LGBT+ advocacy group.
Hall said the police were working with Abounding Prosperity Inc., a Dallas LGBT+ group, “to make sure that you can feel safe”.
“(We want) to ensure our community is safe and those responsible for these crimes are brought to justice,” Ahmad Goree, a spokesman for Abounding Prosperity, said by email.
Gillian Branstetter, spokeswoman for the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) said it was a “tragedy and a disaster for that community”.
“Deaths like these are often the worst manifestations of a number of inequities that trans people, and black trans women in particular, face,” Branstetter said. | 3,016 |
broadly because they do not have to show that the person deleting evidence knew there was an investigation underway," she wrote. "In other words, a person could theoretically be charged under Sarbanes-Oxley for deleting her dealer's number from her phone even if she were unaware that the feds were getting a search warrant to find her marijuana. The application of the law to digital data has been particularly far-reaching because this type of information is so easy to delete."
An example she provides is that of David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student who was convicted under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2010 for deleting evidence that he had accessed Sarah Palin's email account (using publicly available information.)
Changing Palin's Yahoo password to "popcorn" landed Kernell a misdemeanour charge of "unauthorized access to a protected computer," while clearing his own browser history and other information that may have made it easier for federal investigators to find him resulted in a felony obstruction of justice charge.
History can be cleared in its entirety, or item by item in Google Chrome — the browser cited in the grand jury indictment against Matanov. (CBC News/Screenshot)
While he could have faced 20 years under the Sabanes-Oxley Act, A U.S.Appeals Court judge sentenced the 20-year-old student to one year and one day in prison.
"When [the cleaning of his computer] occurred, Kernell wasn't under investigation," wrote TechDirt's Tim Cushing of the case. "At best, it could only be assumed that an investigation would result once the hacking attempt was discovered."
He continued that, under Sabanes-Oxley, "U.S. citizens are almost expected to hold onto everything, just in case... and if you've 'destroyed' any data prior to the examination of your electronic devices, you could face felony charges for performing simple computer maintenance."
Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Hanni Fakhoury agreed, telling The Nation that the U.S. government wants and believes it deserves access to all online data for policing purposes.
Speaking about Kernell's case, he said that the government's "underlying theory" is this:
"Don't even think about deleting anything that may be harmful to you, because we may come after you at some point in the future for some unforeseen reason and we want to be able to have access to that data. And if we don't have access to that data, we're going to slap an obstruction charge that has as 20-year maximum on you." | 3,017 |
Some group of shrill ninnies called the Illinois Family Institute is angry at Prairie Ridge high school teacher Jacqulyn Levin because she used a little mnemonic song called "the Vagina Dance" to help her sophomore students remember their anatomy lesson.
From the Daily Herald:
The Illinois Family Institute, a nonprofit ministry based in Carol Stream, posted an article on its website this week claiming Jacqulyn Levin, a health and physical education teacher at Prairie Ridge high school, taught students about female anatomy using "the Vagina Dance." The article states the dance, which the group said involved pointing to and singing about reproductive parts while prancing around the room, was set to the tune of the Hokey Pokey. "Her selection of this inappropriate instructional activity demonstrated a lack of empathy for those who may have a degree of modesty and self-respect that Levin does not possess," wrote Laurie Higgins, director of the Illinois Family Institute's Division of School Advocacy. "Did she consider that some students might feel uncomfortable participating in or even watching this dance and that they might fear being ridiculed if they chose to opt-out?"
The kid who asked to opt-out was a boy who felt uncomfortable but was told he had to stay for the lesson. His father complained to the Illinois Big Babies coalition and thus the outrage. The dad makes his case:
"I am not a prudish person and I have no problem with scholastically based sex education," King said. "But the teacher used such a cavalier presentation method, and forced a student to participate when he requested to abstain from it. It is disrespectful to women and removes modesty about the reproductive parts."
Certainly I don't blame any fifteen- or sixteen-year-old kid for wanting the earth to swallow them up at the sight of their teacher doing something called "the Vagina Dance" and asking them to sing along. That makes sense and that's the real issue here, that it's oddly infantilizing to make high schoolers sing some dopey song. But it is not asking too much to want teenagers to know what their genitals are and feel comfortable with the fact that they have genitals.
Do you think that if the science existed the Illinois Family Institute and its ilk would opt to keep their children's genitals in a jar until their wedding day? I bet some of them would! Or would at least seriously consider it. I also wonder if members of groups like the Illinois Family Institute spend a lot of time at home by themselves, pointing at their genitals and weeping loudly. Probably!
[via Fark, stock image via Shutterstock] | 3,018 |
, and dull green help small birds feel camouflaged and safe.
However, bright colors, like reds, yellows, and blues can attract birds from high up and several bird species show a preference for these colors.
Hummingbirds, for instance, seem to like the color red, so feeders and baths with red accents may attract hummingbirds.
Avoid the color white (for your base and outside of the lid) it’s used as a warning color to show that a bird is a threat and stands out a lot, possibly making birds insecure. All of this is just my opinion. You can try any color you want and see what works best.
Is Flex Seal Safe For Bird Baths
Flex seal is a product know for its ability to patch up holes and keep things together. This begs the question is it safe to use near animals or in our case is flex seal safe for bird baths. The flex seal product, liquid flex seal actually can be used near plants and animals without harm.
This comes straight from flexsealproducts.com, so you know it is legit. But in order for it to be safe, it must first be fully cured.
This means it must sit out while it dries to ensure it is safe for animal or plant use. This usually takes about 24 hours to accomplish.
This means you can definitely use flex seal liquid for your bird bath or anything else that deals with plants or animals. Just keep in mind it is not recommended to actually paint over flex seal according to the website.
Repairing your bird bath with flex seal will save you money, at the cost of not being able to paint it.
You can find it on Amazon here, Flex Seal Liquid.
How To Clean A Concrete Bird Bath
First, I’d rinse it clean as much as possible. then (assuming the concrete isn’t flaking or crumbling) I’d brush any remaining debris and rinse again. Finally, I’d fill the bath with clean water and add a few ounces of chlorine bleach.
Bleach is alkaline and may not play well with concrete, but if you leave it in for only five minutes or so—long enough to get rid of any mold and mildew—then rinse thoroughly, you should be fine. That’s how I clean my bird baths.
Conclusion
There you have it! All you need to know about how to paint a concrete birdbath plus much more. Now go out there an get it done like a pro! | 3,019 |
NEW DELHI: Railways has imposed heavy fines totalling Rs 11.50 lakh on nine caterers including IRCTC for serving "bad quality" food on trains."We had launched a special drive in the last month to detect quality of food being served on different trains. We found bad quality food on some trains and action was taken against caterers accordingly," a senior railway ministry official said.Besides Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), RK Associates, Sunshine Caterers, Satyam Caterers, Brandavan Food Products were among those fined."IRCTC was fined Rs one lakh as a cockroach was found in the food on Kolkata Rajdhani on July 23," the official said adding, "bad food was found in 13 trains".Besides Kolkata Rajdhani, other trains covered during the special drive include Paschim Express, Pushpak Express, Motihari Express, Shiv Ganga Express, Golden Temple Mail, Netravati Express, Punjab Mail, Howrah-Amritsar Mail and Chandigarh Shatabdi.While in some trains food was found to be kept in unhygienic conditions, in others it was either found to be stale or substandard, the official said, adding, fines ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh have been imposed."A caterer would lose licence, if found at fault five times," the official said.Plagued by a number of complaints regarding the quality of food, Railways have made a concerted attempt to improve quality of food being served in trains.Railway minister Sadananda Gowda had announced in the rail budget to make course correction in catering service to address the problem. According to the plan, top caterers like ITC, MTR and Haldiram have been roped in to serve pre-cooked food in trains on a trial basis.Six trains, including three premier trains Rajdhani, Duronto, Shatabdi, have been selected for introduction of pre-cooked food by ITC, MTR and Haldiram.Items like 'Chicken Chettinad', 'Hyderabadi Biryani', 'Sambar Rice' and 'Rajma Chawal' are among the mouth-watering dishes to be offered on these trains.The pre-cooked food will be packaged food which are just required to put into microwave before being served hot."We will try pre-cooked food in trains for a week and depending upon the response it will be introduced in other trains on a regular basis," the official said. | 3,020 |
Before you praise GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana for exposing an unqualified Trump judicial pick, you should know something about him.
On Thursday night, the Senate Judiciary Committee held another rapid-fire hearing to confirm Donald Trump’s extremist judicial nominees for lifetime appointments to the federal courts.
Things did not go so well for Matthew Spencer Petersen, chairman of the Federal Election Commission and Trump’s choice for a D.C. district court judge seat.
A viral video shows Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy asking Petersen a series of questions about basic legal procedures — and Petersen failing to answer a single one of them.
MUST WATCH: Republican @SenJohnKennedy asks one of @realDonaldTrump’s US District Judge nominees basic questions of law & he can’t answer a single one. Hoo-boy. pic.twitter.com/fphQx2o1rc — Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) December 15, 2017
The questioning revealed that Petersen had never tried a case in any court; had never argued a motion in any court; had taken fewer than five depositions in his entire career; had not read the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which he would have to know backward and forward and enforce if he were appointed to the district court, since law school; and was completely unfamiliar with motions in limine, which are a basic part of any trial.
While the exchange was clearly a humiliation for Trump’s profoundly unqualified nominee, Kennedy does not deserve brownie points for his performance, for one simple reason: He has voted for every single one of Trump’s nominees who came up for a vote.
Many of the nominees Kennedy rubber-stamped were people he questioned just as aggressively, and were just as unqualified. For instance, he voted to confirm John Bush to the Sixth Circuit, despite saying that he was “not impressed” by a far-right birther blog that nominee had run.
So far, the only Trump nominee Kennedy ever said he would actually refuse to vote for was KKK-sympathizing “ghost hunter” Brett Talley, who was so unqualified Trump ended up withdrawing him.
In a hearing two weeks ago, Kennedy more or less admitted he is being pressured into voting for Trump’s nominees, and his voting record gives no reason to think that will cease.
Under Trump, it is more important to watch what Republicans do than what they say. Kennedy talks a tough game on Trump’s judges, but when it really matters, he falls in line. | 3,021 |
CBS News Ends Relationship With Source of Bogus Steve Jobs Death Tweet (Exclusive)
It has removed all content associated with Shira Lazar's independently-produced web series "What's Trending" from its site.
CBSNews.com has severed its relationship with the host of a web show who sent out an erroneous Tweet yesterday saying that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had died.
The offending Tweet was sent from the Twitter account of What’s Trending, a web series independently produced by Disrupt Group and anchored by Disrupt co-founder Shira Lazar.
CBSNews.com had been hosting the web series since May. But the show and Lazar had no newsgathering partnership with CBS News. In fact, the following disclaimer ran after each show: “The What's Trending show is produced by Shira Lazar Productions and the Disrupt Group, who are solely responsible for the content, opinions and viewpoints.”
Lazar, through the What’s Trending Twitter account, issued a somewhat flippant apology on Friday for the Tweet: "Apologies -- reports of Steve Job's death completely unconfirmed. Live on."
Later, she issued another apology from her own Twitter account: “On behalf of all of us at @disruptgroup we sincerely apologize for the inaccuracy of what was tweeted earlier today. – EP/Host @WhatsTrending.
Although her original Tweet was quickly deleted, it spread instantly through the blogosphere. And with embarrassing headlines attributing the blunder to CBS, the damage had been done. CBS News executives moved quickly on Friday to oust Lazar and What’s Trending from its web site, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Executives informed CBS Interactive to remove from CBSNews.com all material related to Lazar and What’s Trending.
Lazar’s false Jobs tweet was followed Friday by the hacking of the NBC News Twitter account with hackers posting bogus tweets claiming that a civilian airliner had been hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center site in New York. The incident is being investigated by the FBI cyber crimes unit. The Tweets were quickly removed and NBC News anchor Brian Williams apologized on Friday’s Nightly News for the “scare that could have been caused by such a reckless and irresponsible act.”
New York City remains on high alert as the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks looms. City officials have set up checkpoints around Manhattan in the wake of what New York police have characterized as a credible terror threat. | 3,022 |
was just packed with newspaper people and television people and there were cords all over the floor. Really that’s just what I remember is just trying not to trip over the cords,” Rollings said with a laugh.
‘Footloose’ inspiration
The news reached Hollywood and Dean Pitchford, lyricist for the movie "Fame.” He was so intrigued, he traveled to Elmore City, interviewed residents, including the Temple family, and penned the screenplay for "Footloose” based on the story.
Coffee, along with junior class president Rex Kennedy, served as inspiration for Bacon’s lead role, Ren, while Temple-Lee inspired the female lead, played by Lori Singer. But they were disappointed by the rowdy antics of the movie characters.
"It’s an incredible movie. It just didn’t portray us the way we were. I’ll put it that way,” Temple-Lee said. "We were extremely ornery, but no, we were not wild.”
"It’s an awesome soundtrack,” Coffee said. "And it is a good message.”
Milestone celebration
Instead of "Stairway to Heaven,” the catchy "Footloose” theme will be the first song played at Saturday’s 30th anniversary dance.
Along with re-creating the first prom inside the Elmore City Community Center, the daylong celebration will include a parade, dance contests, school reunions and a prom tradition not instituted at the 1980 dance — promenade, where attendees of all ages can show off their finery.
Coffee and Temple-Lee will be the parade marshals and guests of honor at the dance, which will spill out onto Main Street.
As the town celebrates one milestone, it actually is marking another.
"Since 1980, they’ve had a prom but we’ve never had a public dance. So this actually will be our first public dance that anybody can come to, and we’re just wanting everyone to come,” Rollings said.
Though the ordinance against dancing quietly disappeared from the books after the 1980 prom, Rollings said it still remained taboo to some. When the city took over the senior citizen center and made it the community center last summer, workers took down a "no dancing allowed” sign.
Considering the town’s history, Rollings said she kept the paper notice. Just in case. | 3,023 |
Committee, in turn, is not giving Mueller unfettered access to the transcript of its recent closed-door interview with Trump Jr., according to CNN.
However, legal experts say Mueller won't have to fear the most damaging action by Congress — a grant of immunity to witnesses that Mueller may want to prosecute.
Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn has sought immunity from the Senate Intelligence Committee in exchange for his testimony, but the panel has denied his request.
Congress has been reluctant to grant immunity to witnesses since the late 1980s, when congressional investigators gave it to key figures in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal, thwarting prosecutors' efforts to send them to prison.
"Since then, no committees want to touch immunity with a 10-foot pole," said Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the special deputy chief counsel for the House Iran-Contra Committee's investigation during the Reagan era.
Even if committee chairmen were willing to offer immunity, it now takes a two-thirds vote of the full committee to approve such a deal, making it all but impossible in a divided Congress, Tiefer said.
Not only are targets of the Russia investigation unlikely to get immunity from Congress, they have to worry that any discrepancies in their testimony before the three panels could result in perjury charges against them, said William Treanor, dean of the Georgetown University Law Center and associate counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel during the Iran-Contra investigation.
"If you're a lawyer advising one of these witnesses, you're going to be stressing the importance of consistency," Treanor said. "If witnesses say something different to each committee, they are setting themselves up for a possible perjury charge."
With three committees going their own way in the Russia probe, it's possible they could reach three different conclusions about Russia's interference in last year's election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials.
"If the committees come out with different conclusions, I think that undermines their credibility," Treanor said. He said the public would likely rely on Mueller's investigation as the most reliable one under that scenario.
"I think most people think of the special prosecutor as above the fray as a lawyer, not a politician," the dean said.
However, it's not unusual for congressional committees to come out with conflicting reports or to have dissenting views attached to the main report, Tiefer said.
"The report that's the most sexy will be the one that gets public attention," he said. | 3,024 |
By Victor Salazar
New York - Finding it hard to secure fights in the 154 pound division, Demetrius Andrade (24-0, 16 KO’s) is more than willing to throw his name in the hat of boxers who are open to invading the middleweight division.
Andrade was a viewing spectator this past Saturday at the Broner-Garcia fight at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and hinted that if he wanted to move up, it had to be against a big name that would put him in front of the food chain. Andrade feels that a fight with former IBF world champion David Lemieux (38-3, 33 KO’s) would be perfect.
“If I had to choose, I’d like to get in there with David Lemieux,” Andrade told BoxingScene.com. "I don’t mind taking a tune-up but in order for me to get bigger fights, it has to be someone like David Lemieux. He’ll get me in front of the food chain.”
Although Lemieux has a few defeats on his record, his fights have been televised by HBO and Andrade feels that a victory over Lemieux could have him in the conversation for either Gennady Golovkin (37-0, 33 KO’s) or Canelo Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KO’s).
“David (Lemieux) has a few losses but as far what’s right behind GGG and Canelo, its David Lemieux,” said Andrade. “He can get you there faster than anyone else.”
The path that Andrade is trying to take is the HBO route. However, should he head the Showtime route, he would most likely encounter a fight with his friend Danny Jacobs (32-2, 29 KO’s). However he feels the pot has to be sweet enough for a fight with Jacobs.
“The money got to be all the way right for a Danny Jacobs fight. I grew up with him, I want to see both of us succeed because he is my brother make a whole lot of money before I fight him.”
“I think that David Lemieux will put me in front of GGG and Canelo in terms of HBO. We’re talking the HBO side. If I want to go to Showtime, I probably have to fight a Peter Quillin before I get a fight with Danny.” | 3,025 |
Ireland legend Donal Lenihan has admitted to being driven “mad” at how some within the GAA community view rugby players.
As a youngster, Lenihan played Gaelic games and had a “dream of playing football for Cork”.
However, when he moved to the Christian Brothers College in Cork city, his attentions turned to rugby and he went on to forge a successful playing and management career with Munster, Ireland and the Lions.
“Some in the GAA community like to paint themselves as being more Irish than the rest of us - how is it that Joe Brolly refers to them, real Gaels?” Lenihan says in his new book, My Life in Rugby.
“During the summer break from rugby I would travel to all the Cork matches, but you would always get some gombeen shouting at you, ‘Aren’t you at the wrong game?’
“It would drive me mad that some within the GAA would see themselves as more Irish than we, rugby players, were.”
The RTÉ analyst, who won two Triple Crowns and three Five Nations championships during a 52-cap Ireland career, now feels that relations have improved but elaborated on why he thought such division existed in the first place.
“Certainly back when I was playing, I think playing rugby for Ireland, you were [seen as] a little bit elitist," he said on RTÉ's Today with Sean O'Rourke programme. "Rugby was played in the private schools."
“You had the fantastic GAA community, the club and the spirit that that induces.
"At times, maybe because of the interaction with the north when The Troubles were on, we weren’t seen in the same light as some of our GAA counterparts, and that used to annoy me, I have to say.
“Cork is a magnificent sporting county, we play hurling, football, rugby, soccer, hockey.
“I felt the GAA, when Croke Park was opened up for rugby and soccer, it was a fantastic thing for the country.
"But I was personally disappointed that the Cork county board voted against opening up Croke Park.
“You had people like Jimmy Barry-Murphy, Billy Morgan ringing me almost apologising, saying this isn’t representative of how we feel in Cork.”
Donal Lenihan - My Life in Rugby is out now. | 3,026 |
Nature is a gift, and the ability to live comfortably from its provisions is one of the most life-changing experiences a person can ever have. The art of survival seems to have been lost over the years, but before the technology boom in the last century, it was commonplace to know and understand survivalist principles.
One of the most basic skills when in the wild is a combination of two methods. These methods are called the “Fox Walk” and “Wide-Angle Vision.” These were the basic “bread and butter” of how tribal populations would hunt and stalk without leaving any trace. Learning lessons from these peoples, it has enlightened us on how to live from the land.
28.How to pan for gold – Although gold pans were much in evidence during the early days of the Gold Rush, miners used them less and less as time went on and they created better gold extraction devices but much more expensive. Even today, however, some gold seekers will use the light and simple pans for prospecting, systematically sampling gravels as they work up a stream, for example, and knowing that when the gold “color” stops, a vein or two of gold feeding into the stream may be close at hand.
29.Understand the psychology of desperate people. This is a difficult one. After a SHTF event people are going to, simply put, go crazy. That neighbor that was in control during many minor emergencies may be the one pounding on your door with whacked out eyes demanding what you have because they did not prepare for anything. In the Wild West most of the travelers when they spotted another traveler – they went around him thinking it’s wiser not to encounter at all.
30.Every cowboy knows that a rope is an important tool. Sure they can lasso a cow, but it serves so many other uses that it would be impossible to list. Suffice to say that that’s one thing that you never can have enough of and I’ve been known to use my son’s lariat in a pinch to tie down furniture on the utility trailer.
If you’re interested in learning more old remedies, you should read The Lost Book Of Remedies.
The physical book has 300 pages, with 3 colored pictures for every plant and for every medicine.
It was written by Claude Davis, whose grandfather was one of the greatest healers in America. Claude took his grandfather’s lifelong plant journal, which he used to treat thousands of people, and adapted it into this book.
Learn More… | 3,027 |
Over 300 widows have been given financial aid.
"I'm not appealing, I'm asking people - help farmers," says Nana Patekar.
Clad in a kurta-pyjama, his sleeves rolled up, actor Nana Patekar holds up a mike and reads out names of farmer suicide widows. With a gentle touch of his hand on their shoulder, the 64-year-old doles out cheques worth Rs 15,000 followed by a quick namaste. Helping farmers, Mr Patekar says, is now his life's mission.In a move that would make him appear to be a misfit in Bollywood, Mr Patekar spends his weekends in Maharashtra's suicide belts of Marathwada and Vidarbha."Committing suicide is no solution. I urge all farmers not do this," the actor tells the audience at a hall in Latur."I couldn't sit at home seeing farmers die," he later explains, speaking to NDTV, as he squats on the ground of his hotel compound. "Imagine how it feels when over a 100 young widows are lined up, waiting for these cheques. I felt troubled. There is no bigger shame for them than this."Mr Patekar says it was popular Marathi actor Makrand Anaspure who urged him to join the cause."It hasn't rained so one can't blame the government. But BJP, Congress and NCP have to join hands for the sake of farmers," he explains.While Mr Patekar initially began by diving into his own earnings, now contribution from well-wishers across the world is aiding their movement.But the scale of the agrarian crisis, Mr Patekar believes, could have dangerous ramifications."There could be a farmers' revolution. If farmers can kill themselves, they could kill others too and if this thought of a'revolution' persists, farmers could become Naxals," he claims.While media, he insists, has largely focussed on "Indrani Mukerjea murder story", he dwells on his own past to understand what ails farmers. "I too came from a poor background where I began working at the age of 13 and I ate just once a day," he says, adding "I understand their pain but I didn't commit suicide. I could never give up."Their efforts have ensured over 300 widows have already been given financial aid and hopes to support a total of 700 widows."People have to help farmers. I'm not appealing. I'm asking them - help farmers," Mr Patekar says. | 3,028 |
Surface flooding and minor rockfall has forced the closure of State Highway 1 north and south of Kaikōura until further notice.
NCTIR journey manager Tresca Forrester said the overnight downpour had caused debris to fall onto the highway.
Crews were out clearing up the roads of loose rock.
READ MORE:
* Special feature: The story of a highway rebuilt
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* State Highway 1 north of Kaikōura opens after 13-month rebuild
"We've got our sweepers out clearing the road of any loose rock or debris," she said.
Forrester couldn't say how many slips had come down, but crews were keeping a watchful eye on a site of interest north of Kaikōura
"We've got a site in the north that we're just watching which is one of our known sites at Waipapa Bay, so it's a slip that's contained by a big retaining wall where the single lane section is up there.
"We're just keeping a close eye on it at the moment."
Forrester said the rain had also blocked drains along the route, causing some surface flooding.
Geotech engineers were inspecting the road and slip conditions to determine when the road would be safe to reopen.
Forrester said it was possible the road could still be closed until Saturday.
"We could be in the same situation tomorrow morning," she said.
Severe weather warnings were in place across northern and central New Zealand as well as the top of the south, including Marlborough and the Kaikōura coast.
Trains had been forced to stopped running along the Main North Line between Picton and Christchurch, with the line to be reassessed at the weekend.
The inland route to Kaikōura via Route 70 was open this morning.
NZTA would release another update on the road at 7am on Saturday.
Police senior sergeant John Price said motorists should "take it easy on the roads".
"Conditions like this can make driving more difficult. For that reason, we want motorists to plan ahead and avoid driving unless absolutely necessary.
"Allow extra time for your journey and remember - the speed limit is not a target, it's the maximum legal speed that you can travel at on a road in ideal conditions - and they often don't exist during weather events such as this." | 3,029 |
Toby Nye: Leeds United raise £200k for cancer treatment Published duration 18 January 2018
image copyright Leeds United image caption Toby Nye, pictured with defender Liam Cooper, has high-risk neuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer
A football club has raised the £200,000 needed to fund a five-year-old boy's cancer treatment.
Toby Nye has high-risk neuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer, which spreads rapidly across the body.
Leeds United announced in October it would raise the money as the treatment is not routinely available on the NHS.
Players and staff, including chairman Andrea Radrizzani, gave a day's salary and fans also donated. Forward Samuel Saiz gave the final £25,000.
Toby, from Osmondthorpe, Leeds, will begin his treatment next week, the club said.
Managing director Angus Kinnear said: "We talk about family and togetherness a lot at our club, it's a culture we have been determined to reinstate across everyone involved with Leeds and raising this money has truly been a team effort.
"Staff, players, corporate partners and our supporters have united together to give Toby the best opportunity with further treatment and I am incredibly proud of everyone concerned."
image copyright Nye family image caption Toby, five, who lives in Leeds, became ill at Christmas last year
On 27 October, the club held One Day for Toby, where players, backroom and office staff at the club joined those from the Leeds United Foundation and parent company Aser to donate a day's salary.
Toby will attend Saturday's game with Millwall, the last time he can visit Elland Road before his treatment begins.
What is neuroblastoma?
It is a rare type of cancer that mostly affects babies and young children
It develops from specialised nerve cells (neuroblasts) left behind from a baby's development in the womb
It affects about 100 children each year in the UK
The cause is unknown
In very rare cases children in the same family can be affected, but generally neuroblastoma does not run in families
He became ill at Christmas 2016 and on his fourth birthday in January 2017, his family was told he had a stage four neuroblastoma tumour.
Doctors told him he would need intense chemotherapy and radiotherapy as well as an operation to remove the main tumour on his kidney.
His treatment was unsuccessful and his family wanted to raise money to fund private care. | 3,030 |
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App For Twitter is a free Chrome extension for Twitter to run Twitter in a separate pop-up window. This extension basically opens a detached window that opens Twitter website. Basically its a wrapper of official Twitter website. It has all Twitter functions along with a resizeable panel. So, instead of opening Twitter in a separate Chrome tab, you can open Twitter in a pop-up window that you can keep open all the time, separate from your other browser windows.
It is very useful to Twitter users who spend a lot of time on desktop and don’t want to keep opening Twitter tab on their browser again and again. For visiting Twitter with this extension you only need to click on its icon in the toolbar. What makes it better than other Twitter apps for desktop is the fact that it opens the official Twitter website, so all the features of Twitter are available.
You can also choose to get browser notifications of all the new Messages, Follows, and likes.
You might also like our other Twitter related tutorials like, How to See What Others Are Viewing On Their Twitter Timeline and How to See Twitter Feeds on iPhone Lock Screen.
How to Open Twitter in Pop-up Full Screen Window:
App for Twitter is an independently developed Chrome Extension for Twitter. It is not only available for Chrome but also for Firefox and Opera browsers. You can keep using twitter on this popup window even after closing the browser. All you have to do is add this extension to your Google Chrome from the Chrome Web Store (you can use link available at the end of this review).
Thereafter you need to click on its Chrome extension icon, and a resizable window for Twitter pops up. Its interface is same as Twitter website, because it actually opens Twitter website only. This means anyone with prior experience of using Twitter on its official website would find it very easy to use this extension.
This means you can use all the functionality that is available on Twitter website: read messages, send new tweets, retweets, DM, etc. The best part is that even if you close all other Chrome browser windows, this pop-up window will keep running unless you close it. So, you can access Twitter whenever you want to.
Verdict:
App For Twitter is a great alternative for using Twitter on desktop rather than opening Twitter website in the browser. I really like the fact that it opens official Twitter website, which means all the features of Twitter are available.
Get it from here. | 3,031 |
This is a Ruby on Rails event. The focus will be on developing web apps and programming in Ruby. You can find all the curriculum materials at docs.railsbridge.org.
An Introductory course to Ruby on Rails for students and new programmers!
Have you considered programming, but just don't know where to start? Have you tried programming but it was just too daunting, and you need a helping hand? Come on out to Rails Bridge and work with a group of awesome volunteers who are excited to help get you started down this incredible career path!
NO previous experience is necessary!
This workshop is intended for members of under-represented groups in tech, such as women and racial minorities. Bonus points if you're new to programming, changing careers, or a young adult. If you're not a member of a group that's under-represented in tech, you are welcome to attend as the guest of someone who is!
The Plan :
We'll start with the InstallFest on Friday night and make sure you have everything you need on your computer. If you can make it through the InstallFest process on your own, you don't need to come Friday night.Saturday, we'll begin with an introduction to programming in Ruby, and some basic concepts, and then we'll dive straight into building a web application! By the end of the class, you'll have built and deployed a simple web application!
Sponsored by
Parking
Parking is available in the Market Square or State Street Garages in downtown Knoxville.Donuts, Lunch, and Snacks will be provided on Saturday. Please let us know if you have any dietary restrictions.
Afterparty
After the class is completed and the KEC is cleaned up, Volunteers and Students may mingle and move over to one of the restaurants around Market Square for questions, drinks, and food. We'll decide based on interest after class!
Volunteer Details
Be sure to review the curriculum before the workshop. We have several curricula available at http://docs.railsbridge.org. Contact one of the organizers with any questions.
Student Details
All students must bring their own laptop and powercord. (Mac or PC welcomed)
Since bandwidth is usually at a premium during the Installfest, please download RailsInstaller (for PCs and most Mac installations) or XCode (if you're going that route).
You can find more information on what to download by getting started with the Installfest instructions: http://docs.railsbridge.org/installfest | 3,032 |
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With thirteen nominations under its belt, “The Shape Of Water” is the current frontrunner to win big on Oscar night. Almost everyone has swooned for Guillermo del Toro‘s lovely blend of fantasy, romance, monster movie, and classical filmmaker, however, there’s one director with a bone to pick.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet has accused del Toro of stealing a scene from his 1991 film “Delicatessen,” and essentially replicating it in “The Shape Of Water.” The sequence in question involves Dominique Pinon and Karin Viard dancing in unison on a bed, while an old musical plays in the background on the television. In ‘Shape,’ Richard Jenkins and Sally Hawkins similarly do a little softshoe number while seated on the sofa, as a musical plays in the background on the television.
Jeunet brought up the two scenes to del Toro who brushed off the accusation, saying that they both have inspired from other directors, particularly Terry Gilliam.
“I told him: You have a lot of imagination, a lot of talent. Why go and [steal] the ideas of others?” Jeunet told Ouest-France (this has been Google translated). “He said, ‘We owe Terry Gilliam everything.’ According to him, he does not steal from others, it is Terry Gilliam who has influenced us all. When he stakes the scene of the couple sitting on the edge of the bed dancing with their feet, with the musical in the background on TV, it is so copied and pasted [from] ‘Delicatessen’ that there is a moment when I say to myself that he lacks self-respect.”
Jeunet says that he won’t sue for plagiarism, but that he’s mostly disappointed, because he believes, “Guillermo has enough talent not to do that.” Moreover, he won’t hear any argument that perhaps the director unconsciously copied the scene, saying, “it is obvious that he had ‘Delicatessen’ in mind.”
So, will this be this year’s big #OscarControversy? We’ll see. Guillermo del Toro has been a pretty open book about this influences for “The Shape Of Water,” but has yet to respond to this claim from Jeunet. Check out the two scenes below and judge for yourself.
| 3,033 |
Welcome to Around the Horns, our daily look at what's happening on the Minnesota Vikings beat:
Before their game Sunday against the Buffalo Bills, the Minnesota Vikings were operating under the belief that any yards they gained on the ground against the league's top rushing defense would have to be earned the hard way. So coach Mike Zimmer went to his running backs Saturday night with a benchmark he wanted them to hit.
"I asked the backs last night to get three yards after contact," Zimmer said Sunday. "I thought we did a lot of good things there."
That's an awfully high standard to hit -- the best running back in the league after contact this season (the New York Jets' Chris Ivory) is averaging 2.68 yards after contact per carry -- but rookie running back Jerick McKinnon met it, on the nose. According to ESPN Stats & Information, McKinnon gained 57 yards after contact on 19 carries Sunday, or exactly three yards per carry, and wound up with 103 total yards on a day that required him to bounce off tackles for much of the game.
The 5-foot-9 McKinnon joined Ivory as the only backs in the league to gain more yards after contact than before it Sunday. McKinnon now has 143 of his 309 yards this season after contact, and his 2.38 yards-per-carry average is the third-highest rate after contact in the NFL this year. It's still nowhere near what Adrian Peterson did in his otherworldly 2012 season -- when he averaged 3.26 yards after contact -- but McKinnon's proving he can get the hard yards, in addition to running in space.
For the second week in a row, he's been the team's primary running back, though Zimmer still wouldn't anoint him the starter. His performance is enough to make one wonder, though, how much more comfortable the Vikings would be with the idea of not bringing Peterson back. He might not play again this season, with his child abuse trial slated for Dec. 1, and if McKinnon proves he can handle the workload -- or at least as much of it as he's asked to handle in Norv Turner's offense -- the Vikings might feel more comfortable about their future.
"It's something that's not my decision. Not in my control," McKinnon said of being the starter. "All I can do is, when my number's called, do what I can, whether it's running the ball or pass protection. I don't allow stuff like that to be a distraction."
In case you missed it on ESPN.com:
Best of the rest: | 3,034 |
Tigers won't rule Cabrera out for weekend series
KANSAS CITY – Miguel Cabrera said he’s feeling good and would play today if the Detroit Tigers cleared him.
When Cabrera actually returns is to be determined, but manager Brad Ausmus says it's "conceivable" Cabrera could return for this weekend's series against the Houston Astros.
“Gotta make a decision,” Cabrera said. “I’m feeling good.”
Cabrera said he’s not going to go out and do anything crazy, and knows it will take time before he’s 100%. He’s been on the disabled list since July 4 with a Grade 3 left calf strain.
Ausmus said Cabrera didn’t look like he was favoring or limping at all when he ran the bases today and said he’s “encouraged” by what he saw.
Cabrera still the best hitter in MLB, managers say
“Miggy wants to play,” Ausmus said. “I think he’s proven that over the last two years, the way he wound down the 2013, 2014 seasons with injuries and playing through it.
“We gotta see how he feels tomorrow, see if he recovers. If he’s fine tomorrow, he might do a little more running tomorrow. Then we’ll have to make a decision if everything’s looking good at that point. I think it’s sooner rather than later.”
It doesn’t sound like Cabrera will leave for a rehab assignment with one of the Tigers' minor league affiliates.
“If I’m going to get hurt, Toledo, here, it doesn’t matter,” Cabrera said.
Cabrera stood in for live batting practice against lefty Tom Gorzelanny today at Kauffman Stadium. He said he’s been able to move around, taking ground balls and running from first to third base.
“Charging ground balls, I’m good,” Cabrera said, adding he can also move side to side. Wanting to play and being ready to play are different, however.
“The speed of the game, everything go fast,” Cabrera said. “You don’t have time to think about it.”
Contact George Sipple: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @georgesipple. | 3,035 |
the drywall and smash windows when he was not occupied. After a rocky transition into group home care at age 15 that included a heavily sedated week in hospital, Brad entered a special school program where he began to thrive, Mark said. There was another roadblock when the teen turned 20 and could no longer attend school.
But after a “very sad and lonely year for Brad,” his family was able to convince provincial funding officials to admit him to a day program.
Most people “don’t just stay home and try to make up activities,” Mark said. “It doesn’t work.”
Even in the day program, however, support workers have struggled to come up with new and challenging things for Brad to do. Starting the assembly business seemed a natural solution.
“He becomes so much more normal when he is tackling these (assembly) problems and going out to different places and meeting different people,” Mark said. “The best therapy seems to be: Give him something different to do.”
Carol Hacker of JVS Toronto, which specializes in job-readiness training for the hard-to-employ, says focusing on talents and on-the-job support can make all the difference for people with disabilities.
“A lot of credit goes to the family for recognizing what Brad’s strengths were and then building on that,” said Hacker, the agency’s disability services director. “And his ability to meet customer needs is wonderful.”
“This is also about inclusion and community integration and a sense of acceptance.”
A decade ago, Danish entrepreneur Thorkil Sonne created a company that hires and trains young people with autism to become IT consultants, in the hope that his own autistic son, now a teenager, may one day find work.
Sonne’s company, Specialisterne, which in Danish means “specialist,” is now operating in 11 countries, including Canada, where it opened a Toronto headquarters last fall.
In Edmonton, Mark Fremmerlid hopes his son’s story will be an inspiration to other families with autistic children and will show employers and the broader community how they can help.
“I just hate to see people wasting away in group homes,” he said. “It takes a huge amount of teamwork, effort and help to pull it off, but it ends up costing less and enhances everybody’s life.”
Read more about: | 3,036 |
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Madrid (AFP)
Spain's data protection watchdog said Monday it has slapped Facebook with a fine of 1.2 million euros ($1.44 million) for failing to prevent its users' data being accessed by advertisers.
Facebook has collected personal data from its users in Spain without obtaining their "unequivocal consent" and without informing them how such information would be used, the Spanish Data Protection Agency said in a statement.
"Facebook collects data on ideology, sex, religious beliefs, personal tastes or navigation without clearly informing about the use and purpose that it will give them," the statement said.
The watchdog said Facebook's privacy policy "contains generic and unclear terms" and it "does not adequately collect the consent of either its users or nonusers, which constitutes a serious infringement" of data protection rules.
The agency said Facebook did not remove the personal data which it collects from its data base even when a user requests this.
It said it fined the company 600,000 euros for a very serious violation of the country's data protection rules and 300,000 euros each for two serious violations.
The 1.2-million-euro fine is small in the context of the company which posted advertising revenues of $9.2 billion in the second quarter, mainly from mobile video ad sales.
Contacted by AFP, Facebook was not immediately available to react to the fine.
It is the latest in a series of legal problems that have beset the social networking giant in recent years.
France's data protection agency in May fined Facebook 150,000 euros for failing to prevent its users' data being accessed by advertisers following a two-year investigation.
It said at the time that Facebook had built up "a massive compilation of personal data of internet users in order to display targeted advertising".
Last year French watchdog had given Facebook a deadline last year to stop tracking non-users' web activity without their consent and ordered the social network to cease some transfers of personal data to the United States.
Belgian, German, and Dutch governments are also looking into how Facebook holds and uses data pertaining to their citizens, according to Spain's data protection agency.
A "contact group" has been formed at the European level to protect that personal data of Facebook users which is made up of the Spanish data protection agency and its counterparts in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.
Facebook's social network, now with 2.01 billion monthly active users, is steadily driving sales at a faster pace than other technology giants.
© 2017 AFP | 3,037 |
Duke University and the University of Colorado schools of medicine have received a $10 million grant from the National Institute for Nursing Research to continue development of the Palliative Care Research Cooperative Group (PCRC) over the next five years. The consortium aims to promote best practices for relieving suffering and improving quality of life for seriously ill patients.
“We intend for the PCRC to set the gold standard for multisite palliative care and end of life research,” said Dr. Amy Abernethy, director of the Center for Learning Health Care at Duke and PCRC Co-Chair. “Progress under the initial grant has catalyzed an outpouring of broad interest, motivation, support and enthusiasm. The award will support efforts to build the cooperative group into a more robust, enduring resource for research support and training.”
The research group was established in 2010 with initial funding from the National Institutes of Health, and it now includes more than 20 member institutions from across the nation.
Abernethy said she is passionate about new research because of the dire need for proper end of life care. “It is an incredible national investment in infrastructure that has been needed for a long time,” she said. “The U.S. population is aging, and many suffer from multiple chronic diseases at the same time. The need for palliative care will increase, and we don’t have enough senior palliative care researchers, people who have the basic palliative care research toolbox.”
Dr. Jean Kutner, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and PCRC Co-Chair, said the funding will allow them to better inform physicians and patients about the benefits of palliative medicine. “We will develop key resources and infrastructure that nurture, enlist and harness investigator and site interest,” she said. “This will enable us to promote the conduct and translation of high-quality, collaborative, patient-centered palliative care and end of life research.” Medical students, junior researchers and general practitioners could benefit from new findings and guidance.
Palliative medicine is provided to the terminally and seriously ill to help treat symptoms and side-effects of disease and aggressive treatments. The goal of palliative care is not cure, but symptom management.
Abernethy and Kutner oversaw the group’s first multi-site clinical trial designed to determine if discontinuing cholesterol-lowering medications when patients near the end of life alters survival and quality of life. The results are expected to be published in the coming months. | 3,038 |
An increasing share of American millennials are living with mom and dad instead of starting their own homes, even as the economy has recovered since the great recession, according to a new analysis of federal data by the National Association of Home Builders.
Access to home-cooked meals and family photo ops are probably not the main drivers for 25- to 34-year-olds staying in the nest despite low unemployment rates and modest pay gains. Instead, ever-increasing housing costs and personal debt are largely to blame for the missing millennial-led homes, economists say.
The median price for a new home in the U.S. jumped nearly 40 percent from $232,100 in 2008 to $323,100 last year, more than double the general price inflation rate of 17 percent over the same period. During that time, median weekly earnings for 25- to 34-year-olds only grew 19 percent from $666 in 2008 to $794 in 2018, according to federal data.
Get expert advice and tools to help you make better financial decisions. Sign up for the Bankrate newsletter today.
The 25- to 34-year-old age group traditionally provides a large chunk of America's first-time homebuyers, says Natalia Siniavskaia, assistant vice president for housing policy research at the National Association of Home Builders.
But Siniavskaia found just 40 percent of those ages 25 to 34 led their own household in 2016, and that number has been dropping steadily from 46 percent in 2000. The missing 6 percentage points equates to roughly 2.4 million would-be households, according to an estimate released this month.
The portion of young adults who live with mom and dad or other relatives rose from 15.3 percent in 2000 to 26.3 percent in 2016, according to NAHB.
"This story is quite different in different states," Siniavskaia says. "There are states where headship rates for this age group are north of 50 percent, such as North Dakota and Iowa. And there are states like California and Florida where young adults are much more likely to live with parents."
States with more expensive housing markets have a smaller share of 25- to 34-year-olds leading homes. California, New Jersey, Florida, New York and Hawaii are consistently among the least affordable places to live and have the lowest headship rates, some of which are well below 37 percent, according to NAHB.
Less-costly states including North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska register the highest headship rates, ranging between 48 percent and 49 percent. | 3,039 |
The force is clearly with them.
In a reported first, researchers at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a newfangled technology that theoretically could be used to construct an actual lightsaber.
Until now, photons, or the mass-less particles that constitute light, were thought to not interact, but rather simply pass through each other, just two beams of luminescence during a laser-light show.
[pullquote]
But according to the Harvard Gazette, scientists at the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms have improbably coaxed photons into hardened molecules you could, in fact, whack against each other in, say, a Bespin-based duel-to-the-death resulting in one person, sadly, losing a hand.
As a lightsaber-wielding Darth Vader once notably noted, “Don’t make me destroy you...”
“It’s not an inapt analogy to compare this to lightsabers,” Harvard professor of physics Mikhail Lukin told the Gazette.
“When these photons interact with each other, they’re pushing against and deflecting each other. The physics of what’s happening in these molecules is similar to what we see in the movies.”
Added MIT Professor of Physics Vladan Vuletic in an interview with WBZ-TV, “It has long been a dream to have photons of light beams interact with one another...We use laser beams and shine them in from six sides and these laser beams actually cool the atoms.
“Maybe a characteristic of a lightsaber is that you have these two light beams and they don’t go through each other as you might expect; they just kind of bounce off each other.”
However, don’t expect the new technology to soon result in a real-life, proverbial “elegant weapon for a more civilized age,” as exiled Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobe once put it.
Instead, the science behind the recent breakthrough will likely lead researchers to realizing the till-now coveted concept of quantum computing.
“What it will be useful for we don’t know yet,” Lukin reportedly said. “But it’s a new state of matter, so we are hopeful that new applications may emerge as we continue to investigate these photonic molecules’ properties.”
Now, if science would only allow the would-be smugglers out there to get their hands on a trusty blaster.
| 3,040 |
Update: Hey there, I’ve been thinking a lot about this and I came up with something new! Check it out here!
There are a lot of clojure database libraries considering how small the Clojure community is. And they all have their strengths and weaknesses. One thing I do like about a few of the libraries is that you can hook up a bit of sql to a function and that’s that, no ceremony, no ORM, just data, like how grandpa used to do.
Of course, that opens up new problems, like now I have to update my sql whenever I change the schema even for writes! Killer for productivity when you’re trying to get something out the door with limited time and money like I do. So what do you do? What did I do? I made yet another Clojure sql library of course. It’s called oksql. It aims to be the best of both worlds, dynamic sql generation for writes, and static sql from a sql file for reads all with a pretty consistent API. Given a table with a schema like this
Here’s what a basic sql file looks like. It’s pretty straightforward, WARNING this requires you to know sql. The horror.
Basic sql file
Here’s what clojure looks like calling that sql file. WARNING this requires you to know clojure.
Basic sql file clojure interop
Sucks that it’s spread out over two files, or does it? I mean the technologies are separated, right? Or wait was it a separation of concerns? Who knows anymore. Here’s how you can do inserts, updates and deletes.
The CUD in CRUD
So you can imagine changing the schema and having to go back to this sql file to keep adding columns to the update and insert sql. You’re right, that sucks. Luckily I’ve already used this thing for a while and I’ve come up with an alternative.
That’s a tiny gist!
A little more complex, but it’s worth it.
And that’s it. Nothing else to it. All of the sql stuff you would do you CAN do, joins, complex where clauses, sub queries, it’s crazy.
No googling around for how do I use this ORM or what’s that weird syntax for getting an or in the where clause, or a not in the where clause. It’s just sql, ok? | 3,041 |
on, so named because of its hellish heat. However, the study’s results challenge the notion that Earth remained scorching hot well into the Archean Eon. After the heat from Earth’s formation dissipated, the researchers’ models suggest that the climate and ocean pH were surprisingly moderate: between 32 and 122 degrees Fahrenheit (0 to 50 degrees Celsius), with a pH of between 6.2 and 7.7. (A pH of 7 is neutral.)
Kurtz noted that this result is consistent with aninfluential 2002 paper arguing the likelihood of a "cool early Earth."
Krissansen-Totton believes the regulatory carbon/seafloor weathering process would occur on any rocky planet with water. "There’s nothing special about these processes," he said. We know that pre-solar nebulae contain the ingredients for life; we also know countless exoplanets with those ingredients exist in the "habitable zones" of their stars. The study widens the window of time on which life could have emerged on those planets. [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]
More opportunities for life
The model doesn’t resolve debates about exactly when or where life emerged, but it steers scientists in productive directions for further research. For example, "if you believe life on Earth started at high temperatures, that could still be true," Krissansen-Totton said, "but that would restrict origins to locally warm environs like hydrothermal vents."
The study also has implications for planetary evolution. Kurtz pointed out that "Mars once had most of what Earth has going for it, or so we think: water on the surface, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and silicate rocks," a combination that seems to support the possibility that life could once have existed there.
Scientists believe Mars’ atmosphere was lost to space via the solar wind, but questions remain as to what upset the Red Planet’s cyclical balance, as well as whether other planets could experience such drastic conditional changes.
The new study was published in April in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The work was supported by NASA Astrobiology through the Exobiology & Evolutionary Biology Program and the Virtual Planetary Laboratory, as well as through the Earth and Space Science Fellowship program.
This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program. This version of the story published on Space.com. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. | 3,042 |
WINTHROP (CBS) — Medway-Ashland’s girls high school hockey team lost their appeal of their playoff loss Friday, after a parent was tossed from the game for aiming a laser pointer into the eyes of their goalie.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030’s Rod Fritz reports
https://boston.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3859903/2012/03/fritz-wrap-1-goalie-laser-beam.mp3
Winthrop beat Medway-Ashland 3-1 on Wednesday at Larsen Rink.
The score was tied 1-1 in the third period when the father of a Winthrop player was caught pointing the laser at the Medway-Ashland goalie.
It’s kind of like when you look at the sun and then you look away you see that spot and you can’t see for a couple of seconds. You shake your head and try to get it out of the system and just keep focusing, but it’s difficult,” Medway-Ashland goalie Kathryn Hamer told WBZ-TV.
Winthrop assistant superintendent Lisa Howard went into the stands and ordered the parent out of the arena.
Parents of the Medway-Ashland players asked that the third period be replayed.
Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association spokesman Paul Wetzel told WBZ the appeal was rejected Friday afternoon.
Web Exclusive: Read The Appeal Rejection Letter (.pdf)
Winthrop will play Braintree as scheduled Saturday.
Winthrop superintendent John Macero said the father has been barred from all events involving Winthrop High School.
“I don’t know what the person was thinking,” Macero told WBZ NewsRadio 1030 Friday.
“Why would you do that to both teams? Both teams, they’ve earned the right, Medway girls, the Winthrop girls, to have this opportunity to perform in a game and for someone to come in and do that inappropriate action was uncalled for.”
WBZ-TV’s Jim Armstrong reports
“I think it’s important for Medway to understand that we are just as upset at this situation too, because it kind of puts a black eye on Winthrop and those kids don’t deserve that, neither does Medway.”
Macero said he may explore the possibility of criminal charges against the man. | 3,043 |
Thousands of genetically modified mosquitoes were released in West Bay on Thursday, kicking off what the Mosquito Research and Control Unit and collaborator Oxitec call their “Friendly Aedes aegypti project.”
The project, which was supposed to begin July 14, was delayed by two weeks after opponents of the initiative took legal action to try to halt the release.
On Tuesday, a judge refused a judicial review of the decision that permitted the import and release of the mosquitoes, and refused to grant an additional stay pending an appeal.
West Bay residents Giselle Johnson and Heidi Groves, who are part of the project’s laboratory and fieldwork teams, were to release 20,000 mosquitoes outside the West Bay Public Health Clinic on Thursday morning. The task, it turned out, was quite simple: opening 20 small plastic containers, each of which contained 1,000 mosquitoes, and shaking the flying insects out so that they might fulfill their purpose of sharing their self-limiting gene with wild female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.
Since they will contain that self-limiting gene, the offspring of the genetically modified males and the wild females will not reach adulthood, thereby reducing the population of the mosquito that is responsible for carrying diseases like dengue, chikungunya and Zika.
“It is important that we are able to get on with the job as there is an urgency from the public health perspective,” MRCU Director Bill Petrie said in a press release. “We need to get the project back on track and put in place the preventative measures we have planned to reduce the risk of local transmission of mosquito-borne diseases.”
The rollout of the mosquito project will continue Friday and for the next several months in a 300-acre area of West Bay between Watercourse Road, Powell Smith Lane, Rev. Blackman Road and Hell Road. One hundred to 200 pots, each containing approximately 1,000 genetically modified, non-biting male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, will be released around three times a week through a fan from a van.
At the release Thursday, Mr. Petrie said he wanted to remind people that the release is starting in West Bay because the district is a “hot spot” for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.
The treatment phase in West Bay will continue for approximately nine months and will be rolled out to other areas of Grand Cayman after receiving the relevant approvals. Cayman Brac and Little Cayman are not affected by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. | 3,044 |
Billionaire Entrepreneur and Bitcoin Cash SV (BCH SV) supporter Calvin Ayre has declared that the coin “no longer want[s] the name Bitcoin Cash [BCH]” in a article published Nov. 23.
Posted on Ayre’s own crypto media outlet CoinGeek, the statement claims that Bitcoin Cash SV will continue to exist independently from Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and that the coin is in fact the “original” Bitcoin (BTC):
“Bitcoin SV is the original Bitcoin not the original Bitcoin Cash.”
Ayre calls on Bitcoin Cash ABC – the Roger Ver-backed coin created in BCH’s recent hard fork – to “permanently split” the two chains for a “win-win solution.”
The author also accuses supporters of both Bitcoin, which he refers to as “Segwit BTC” in the article, and Bitcoin Cash of having “tinkered it [Bitcoin] to death.” Namely, according to Ayre, Bitcoin and BCH ABC – which now has regained the title of Bitcoin Cash – have “abandoned Bitcoin’s core principles by abandoning Nakamoto consensus and trust in miners’ Proof of Work.”
Ayre concludes by saying that he hopes that moving forward as a separate coin “can be the end of this episode” and that he has instructed his team to “start working with everyone” to release Bitcoin SV as an independent coin from Bitcoin Cash.
The recent hard fork, or update, of the Bitcoin Cash network divided the community into two main factions, those who support Bitcoin Cash SV and those who support Bitcoin Cash ABC, which seek to update the network in different ways. A third, so-called “neutral” camp, dubbed Bitcoin Unlimited, was also formed.
Bitcoin Cash ABC was since last week reportedly able to outperform Bitcoin SV in terms of hashrate, winning itself the right to keep the Bitcoin Cash brand name. As the dust settles post fork, crypto wallets and exchanges are announcing their support for, as well as warnings around, the competing coins, after many had temporarily suspended BCH trading and withdrawals.
Just yesterday, Nov. 23, major hardware wallet Ledger announced that it had resumed BCH trading “in the form of” BCH ABC.
Bitcoin Cash is currently down less than 1 percent over the past 24 hours to press time. The coin has suffered almost 55 percent losses in price since the hard fork took place Nov. 15. | 3,045 |
The Italian national flag, seen between statues, flies atop the Quirinale palace, the office of Italy's president in Rome, Italy. Alessia Pierdomenico | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The rise of populist politics in Italy should still be front and center for investors in Europe, despite recent tensions in Spain with Catalonia possibly declaring independence in the coming days. "Italy is not generating sustained growth and it still has the issue of bad loans," a Brussels-based official, who preferred to remain anonymous due to his participation in key EU economic meetings, told CNBC over the phone. "The euro zone is growing, even Greece is growing … But let's not get carried away with the short-term success," he added. Broadly, the region has seen improvement since the days of the sovereign debt crisis of 2011. Growth has returned to the bloc, unemployment has fallen and business activity has expanded. But Italy is seen by European many economists as the biggest risk to the euro zone at the moment. The economy is set to grow below 1 percent this year and slightly above that threshold in 2018, according to recent forecasts from the European Commission. Added to that, Claus Vistesen, the chief euro zone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that new elections in Italy are just around the corner.
"It's certain that the Five Star Movement (Italy's populist party) will do very well in the upcoming election," Vistesen told CNBC Tuesday over the phone. Italian voters are due to elect a new government at the start of next year, though there's not a certain date set. At the moment, the populist Five Star movement is polling around the same numbers as the governing PD Party, led by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Five Star's new leader Luigi Di Maio has softened the party's stance on the euro, but he told CNBC last month that he wants to renegotiate treaties within the EU that "are capping the growth of Italy."
Five Star's stance is viewed as a risk to Italy's compliance with European fiscal rules. These rules constrain the ability of euro zone countries to spend, as they need to respect a 3 percent threshold for their deficit-to GDP (gross domestic product) ratio. Italy's deficit is set to reach 2.2 percent of its GDP this year, in line with European rules. But its government debt is already above EU's limit — nations are also supposed to keep their public debt below 60 percent of their GDP. Forecasts from the European Commission suggest it will rise to 133.1 percent of GDP this year. A populist government could potentially jeopardize Italian finances further. | 3,046 |
Even if coke raps are no longer as in vogue as they once were, the more traditional iteration lives on today. Veteran rapper Freddie Gibbs has been sharing stories of dope houses and deep regrets on his mixtapes and albums for the past 15 years. “I beat the pot like Joseph beat Mike and Jermaine,” Gibbs growls on the intro to his newly-released single with producer Madlib, "Flat Tummy Tea."
Gibbs, who was born and raised in the drug-riddled city of Gary, Indiana, straddles the lyrical line between the intense grind of moving weight and the amused distance post-sale that Westside Gunn, Conway, and Benny The Butcher exhibit with their trademark Buffalo snarl as the three rapping arms of the Griselda Records collective; the same steely-eyed recaps and deadpan humor that ScHoolboy Q brings with him straight from Hoover Street; the same intensity and reflection that Young Dolph showcases on his every trademark yelp across Tennessee state lines.
The leading exemplar in this crowded field, however, is Pusha-T, the maverick who fought his way through crumbling organizations and never stopped cutting his raps with a finely honed hand. “The only kingpin who ain’t sinkin’,” Push boasts on “The Games We Play,” a standout selection from his potent, GRAMMY-nominated album DAYTONA.
For years, the 41-year-old rapper and current president of G.O.O.D. Music been referred to as a "one-trick pony," an artist incapable of growing beyond the same subject matter, but Pusha-T is actually a specialist. He's the kind of pony who worked at kicking just a little higher and strutting fleetly enough to earn all the JAY-Z references his 2018 masterpiece is peppered with.
Coke raps serve more than just the clueless suburban kids who consume them, no questions asked. They open our eyes (and ears) to the dangers of a world most can’t see—let alone live—and the thrill of fast living and the regret that comes after.
For those artists who lived their coke raps and were lucky enough to have surfaced on the other side, painting the reflections of joy and the pains and panic of a frantic life in song form are necessary.
They are but a small vial of the trials and tribulations of a lifetime, no platter or dollar bills necessary. | 3,047 |
that they can easily do so with anything Silent Hill. Silent Hill: Homecoming released on PC some time after the console version and it was a broken game that fans had to patch themselves. Despite a slew of technical faults and mixed critical reception, Konami released Homecoming on PC at full price. Currently, the game is still being sold for $40. If Konami were to do this port, they would need to sell the game at a budget price. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Ultimate Edition is releasing on August 27th and that was a critically acclaimed game. A price around $20 at launch would be decent for a Downpour port–at least in my eyes. Konami must also be willing to adjust their price by working with Steam during sales periods. They have to have realistic expectations and be competitive.
It’s unfortunate that the publisher would probably cite Homecoming‘s PC sales and reception as fair reasoning for not porting Downpour, but clearly its failure was their fault alone and in no way an indication that future PC release would fail on the platform. Hopefully, now that they’re flirting with PC ports again, they’ve got a better idea of how to appeal to gamers on the platform. If Lords of Shadow and Revengeance do well, then maybe the Konami will walk away confident in the platform (assuming they do all the necessary things to earn that success).
With the onset of the next console generation, I have decided to make the PC my primary gaming platform. Silent Hill no longer appears on that platform, so this was a factor that prompted me to consider the possibility of Konami putting Silent Hill on PC, but I am not alone in sharing this hope. As console architecture becomes more and more like a PC, the “easier” (I use this term well aware that developing and porting is a arduous task) it will become to port their games to the platform.
Millions of gamers either have a gaming PC along with a console, or simply a gaming PC, at home. There is a market out there that Konami has recently decided to acknowledge with Metal Gear and Castlevania games, so why not Silent Hill? The publisher might be surprised if they were to take this potentially beneficial risk, as opposed to their bad ones in the past. If not Downpour, then perhaps Silent Hill 10…whenever that decides to start existing. If we can’t have Downpour on PC, then let’s hope that Revengeance and Lords of Shadow sell well enough to convince the publisher that the PC is a viable platform which money can be made from. | 3,048 |
fled to Russia.
Oleh Slobodyan, a spokesman for the border guard service, told The Associated Press that the Kharkiv regional governor and mayor left Ukraine across the nearby Russian border. Another service spokesman, Serhiy Astakhov, said the former prosecutor-general and former taxation minister were prevented from leaving on the order of unspecified law-enforcement agencies.
Kremlin critical of agreement
Russia came out Saturday firmly against the peace deal, saying the opposition isn't holding up its end of the agreement, which calls for protesters to surrender arms and abandon their tent camps.
Tymoshenko's entreaty is likely to make the latter condition slow to be fulfilled.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday called his German, French and Polish counterparts and urged them to use their influence with the Ukrainian opposition to stop what he described as rampages by its supporters. European officials urged calm.
Ukraine's defence and military officials also called for Ukrainians to stay peaceful. In statements Saturday, both the Defence Ministry and the chief of the armed forces said they will not be drawn into any conflict and will side with the people. But they did not specify whether they still support the president or are with the opposition.
In Kharkiv, governors, provincial officials and legislators gathered alongside top Russian lawmakers and issued a statement saying that the events in Kyiv have led to the "paralysis of the central government and destabilization of the situation in the country."
Canadian embassy Non-essential Canadian diplomatic staff and their families have been asked to leave Kyiv for the time being. Essential staff will remain for now. - CBC correspondent Susan Ormiston
Some called for the formation of volunteer militias to defend against protesters from western regions, even as they urged army units to maintain neutrality and protect ammunition depots.
Anti-government protesters around the country took out their anger on statues of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, using ropes and crowbars to knock them off pedestals in several cities and towns.
Statues of Lenin still stand across the former U.S.S.R., and they are seen as a symbol of Moscow's rule.
The past week has seen the worst violence in Ukraine since the breakup of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago. At Independence Square Saturday, protesters heaped flowers on the coffins of the dead.
"These are heroes of Ukraine who gave their lives so that we could live in a different country without Yanukovych," said protester Viktor Fedoruk, 32. "Their names will be written in golden letters in the history of Ukraine." | 3,049 |
Samsung
A future Samsung Galaxy phone (although likely not this Galaxy phone) could have a flexible screen that's unbreakable, delivering the first truly foldable handset. The Korean electronics giant said Wednesday that its recently developed phone panel has been certified by Underwriters Laboratories, meaning it's ready to start shipping to consumers in actual devices. Samsung said it expects the new panel to have applications in non-phone markets as well, such as automobiles, mobile military devices and portable game consoles, among others.
Samsung's efforts to make a foldable phone come as demand for phones slows down. It's getting harder for handset makers to differentiate their devices, and consumers don't feel the need to upgrade as often. In the fourth quarter, overall phone unit sales fell for the first time ever, according to Gartner.
The flexible OLED panel is constructed of an unbreakable substrate with an overlay window adhered to it, Samsung said. Flexible displays currently commercially available tend to shatter when subjected to severe impact.
That apparently won't occur with Samsung's new screen.
"The fortified plastic window is especially suitable for portable electronic devices not only because of its unbreakable characteristics, but also because of its lightweight, transmissivity and hardness, which are all very similar to glass," Hojung Kim, a spokesperson for Samsung Display Company, said in a statement.
The display passed rigorous durability tests, Samsung said, including being dropped 26 times in a row from a height of nearly 4 feet and continued to function normally, suffering no damage to its front, sides or edges.
Now playing: Watch this: Samsung's folding phone may be pricey
All of Samsung's flagship phones now have flexible, curved displays, but the screen could lay the groundwork for foldable phones. ZTE's 2017 Axon M has two screens that fold out into a tablet and are connected by a hinge, but Samsung is widely expected to release a device that will be a truly foldable phone with one flexible OLED display and no hinge.
Samsung is in competition with Huawei to claim first in the race to release such a foldable phone. Samsung Mobile President DJ Koh has gone on the record to talk about the company's plans for a foldable Galaxy phone and has previously told reporters to expect a folding phone as early as this year.
This story was originally published July 25 at 4:54 p.m. PT.
Samsung foldable phones: Here's why you might want one and why you might not
'Hello, humans': Google's Duplex could make Assistant the most lifelike AI yet. | 3,050 |
Facepalm: Intel is attempting to block benchmarks and performance tests from being shared on Linux platforms through a change to the terms of use found in a microcode update.
Linux distribution Debian has rejected Intel's end-user license agreement for one of its recent microcode updates. There is a clause in the fine print that prevents "benchmark of comparison test results" from being published.
Update: Intel reached out during the afternoon to let us know they have updated their microcode licensing. Surely anything and everything related to the CPU flaws (Spectre, Foreshadow, etc.) is a very sensitive topic at Intel and they didn't take long to right a wrong. Here's what Intel's spokesperson had to say: "We have simplified the Intel license to make it easier to distribute CPU microcode updates and posted the new version https://bit.ly/2w9RjtM. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback and thank the community."
Intel's new licensing agreement is quite brief and does not include any mention (and thus does not prohibit) "software benchmark or comparison test results," the way it intended previously.
Intel's update that is not yet implemented into Debian prevents malware from copying data from memory through the L1 Terminal Fault. Server CPUs received patches for this problem in July, while desktop CPUs have just recently received fixes.
According to Debian kernel driver engineer Henrique Holschuh, the operating system is ready for Intel's patch, but will not be receiving it because of Intel's new terms.
For enthusiasts, this new license by Intel is extremely troubling and downright unacceptable. There is absolutely no reason why Intel should have ever attempted to prevent benchmarks from being shared on Linux platforms or any other platform.
"You will not, and will not allow any third party to publish or provide any Materials benchmark or comparison test results."
Knowing that microcode patches have reduced performance of Intel CPUs to mitigate flaws such as Spectre and Meltdown, the new terms may even be an attempt to hide declining performance.
Users of Gentoo are now forced to accept Intel's new license before proceeding with updates. Red Hat, Arch, and SUSE have all complied with Intel's latest demands so that they can keep pushing out the latest patches to fill in the numerous security issues that have been discovered over the past year.
Hopefully Intel will have the brains to fix this ridiculous clause in its terms so that end users are free to use their own hardware as they please. Otherwise, there are plenty of red chips that can easily solve the problem for Linux users. | 3,051 |
Endangered fish might face a new threat — sexual harassment.
Male Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) are jeopardizing the survival of the critically endangered Mexican fish Skiffia bilineata by constantly sexually harassing the endangered females, research now reveals.
The guppies, which invaded Mexican rivers and lakes roughly 50 years ago, physically resemble S. bilineata, but are genetically distant from them. Scientists knew that male Trinidadian guppies sexually assault females of their own species, and were concerned over whether they harassed the endangered fish as well.
The researchers found that when put in aquaria together, male Trinidadian guppies persistently tried having sex with the female S. bilineata, even when seven of their own females were present. The male guppies are drawn to large females, and endangered females are larger than guppy females, the scientists noted.
Normally S. bilineata have sex by simply uniting their genital pores in a copulatory embrace. Male Trinidadian guppies, on the other hand, have sex using a hooked organ — their "gonopodium." As such, they can damage the endangered females, and female S. bilineata have to spend a lot of energy dodging the guppies.
"Sometimes we observed harassed females jerking away from guppy males when the males appeared to have inserted their gonopodium," said researcher Alejandra Valero, a behavioral ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. "We are assessing several possible ways in which female Skiffia can be damaged by guppy sexual activity."
The guppies could be contributing to the decline of the Mexican fish. "Half of the species in the Goodeinae tribe to which Skiffia bilineata belongs are already at risk of extinction," Valero said.
However, Valero stressed the guppies were not intentionally out to harm the endangered females or drive S. bilineata to extinction.
"It may seem like their sexual behavior is part of a strategy to displace native species in order to gain exclusive ownership of the habitat," she told LiveScience. However, the guppies "are doing only what they have been doing for the last million years, which is being highly efficient at passing their genes down to successive generations — only in this case, the genes end up in the wrong females!"
Valero and her colleagues Constantino Mac?as Garcia and Anne Magurran detailed their findings online Jan. 23 in the journal Biology Letters. | 3,052 |
Britain First, a far-right BNP spin-off which exists almost entirely as a Facebook group, is hardly a terrifying new presence on the British political scene. It’s known for its anachronistic political demands, like calling for the guillotining of nonces, and the often amusingly inept political stunts of its leader Paul Golding, who recently travelled to Ireland to confront Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams at his constituency office in Dundalk. Unfortunately, Golding failed to check if Adams was going to be there first (he wasn’t).
Despite Golding lacking any real air of menace, the cops have been desperate to nab him for some time. He has been arrested several times on trumped-up charges. And his latest conviction is particularly absurd. In a typically poorly planned stunt, the gormless Golding went to confront alleged 7/7 plotter Sajeel Shahid. He called on the wrong house, that of Shahid’s sister-in-law Munazza Munawar, so he just decided to give her an ear-full instead. At his trial for harassing Munawar, Golding was also landed with a second charge under the Public Order Act (1936) for ‘wearing a political uniform’. Under this archaic and largely forgotten piece of legislation, which was brought in to combat Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF), Golding’s trademark Britain First-branded windbreaker and Andy Capp-style flat-cap apparently constitute an illegal political uniform. As Golding himself pointed out, come election time we’ll no doubt see people of every political stripe out canvassing in branded political-party clothing, yet it is unlikely they will meet with any legal censure.
The banning of BUF uniforms in the Thirties coincided with, and some historians believe caused, an upsurge in the BUF’s popularity. Indeed, when the act was used to ban Irish republican uniforms in the Seventies, the same thing happened: it helped rather than hindered the republicans’ cause. Likewise, the prosecution of Golding for wearing a ‘uniform’ is unlikely to damage his slim support. Instead, it allows him to present himself as a persecuted party worthy of sympathy and support. He is not, but nor should he be singled out and targeted by the law for his political beliefs. Fringe crackpot groups like Britain First are not something society needs to worry about, but the state’s attack on people’s right to express their political beliefs is. | 3,053 |
and b) encourages you to treat everyone around you like total shit, because your anxiety is some sort of Get Out Of Jail Free Card to abuse and neglect your social circles.
But the truth is that your friends/family/coworkers are HUMAN BEINGS, TOO. Just because they don’t have clinical anxiety or depression (and maybe they do, you don’t know their life), that doesn’t mean that they can act as your neurotypical punching bag until you finally decide you’re well enough to act like a decent person again. If you ignore them, cancel on them frequently, snap at them, take out your stress or anger on them, or simply not pull your emotional weight in the relationship, they have every right to drop your ass as a friend. Maybe they will be kind and deal with some of your episodes because they love you, but if they are not getting more out of that relationship than they’re putting in, they should walk away. Do you know why? Because anxiety is very capable of making you a Toxic Person, and indulging your worst impulses only makes you more of one. When a very close friend told me, honestly, “I don’t know if I can be your friend anymore. You’re so angry and stressed all the time,” she was absolutely right. She was GRACIOUS not to drop me as a friend. I didn’t deserve her, because I was being selfish, and taking everyone in my life for granted.
Your anxiety is not an excuse to be an asshole. It’s not an excuse to not follow through on things, or be caring, or be dependable. If you break the social contract and decide to be the full asshole your anxiety-riddled self wants to be, fine. But you don’t deserve close friends, because no one deserves that. No one has to put up with your bullshit, and if you don’t actively work on making yourself a better and more rewarding person to be around, no one should wait around for you. Only in making conscious, proactive decisions towards better-ness did some of my closest people start warming back up to me after a serious low point, and I am forever lucky and grateful that they did. Because I could very well be alone right now, after a long stretch of believing that I was a Special Anxiety Snowflake who was entitled to being a selfish, irritable, flaky jerk. I got through to the other side, and maybe you will, too. But not by being an asshole. | 3,054 |
Russian software company Elcomsoft claims that iPhone call logs are transmitted back to Apple, regardless of whether users have iCloud backup enabled or not.
Vladamir Katalov, the CEO of Elcomsoft which specialises in cracking iPhone’s for governments and corporations, spoke to Forbes magazine outlining the level of data that is transferred to Apple servers without users’ knowledge.
“All FaceTime calls are logged in the iCloud too, whilst as of iOS 10 incoming missed calls from apps like WhatsApp and Skype are uploaded” said Katalov, “Syncing call logs happens almost in real time, though sometimes only in a few hours,” he added. “But all you need to have is just iCloud Drive enabled, and there is no way to turn that syncing off, apart from just disabling iCloud Drive completely. In that case many applications will stop working or lose iCloud-related features completely.”
Katalov state that although Apple regularly cooperates with law enforcement when providing access to iCloud backups of user information, they do not disclose to their users that their data is being collected even if they have disabled iCloud. Katalov also stated that Apple’s claim that they only store FaceTime call logs for 30 days is false: “Synced data contains full information including call duration and both parties. We were able to extract information going back more than four months.”
Jonathan Zdiarski, an iOS forensics expert, told Forbes that he does not believe this is an intentional attempt by Apple to steal users’ data but rather an oversight on their part,
I suspect that this is probably more of an engineering issue around making handoff work when you are answering calls between your phone and your desktop or if you’re using FaceTime on your desktop. They need to be able to sync a lot of that call data. I suspect whatever software engineer wrote that part of it probably decided to just go and stick that data in your iCloud Drive because that’s kind of what its purpose is. I’m convinced it wasn’t very well thought out if that’s the case.
Apple currently encrypts all iCloud data using their own system, allowing them full access to any data backed up to their server. However Apple has stated that they plan to move to an end to end encryption format in the future.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart Tech covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at [email protected] | 3,055 |
Norwood Park's 140th birthday is being celebrated Saturday at the Noble-Seymour-Crippen House, the oldest home in Chicago. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Justin Breen
NORWOOD PARK — Those already hearing the clock ticking down on their chance to find the perfect Christmas present for friends and relatives who have everything might find the perfect gift at the 27th annual Norwood Park Historical Society holiday boutique and cafe.
Dozens of crafters will sell handmade items at Victoria’s Craft Boutique and Holly Daze Cafe Dec. 3 through Dec. 6 to benefit the historical society, which maintains the 1833-built Noble-Seymour-Crippen House, the oldest surviving house in Chicago.
Admission is $1 for the boutique and cafe, which will feature handmade crafts and homemade food at the house, 5624 N. Newark Ave..
The boutique and cafe will take place from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Dec. 3, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Dec. 4, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Dec. 5, and from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Dec. 6.
The historical society's holiday celebration also will include a tour of six Norwood Park homes, including the Noble-Seymour-Crippen House, from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Dec. 5.
The cost is $20 in advance or $25 on the day of the event.
The self-guided tour is designed to last two to three hours. Children younger than 12 are not allowed, although babies can be carried.
Guests can park on the street at each house, walk from home to home, or use the free shuttle bus that will make a continuous loop during the event.
Tour ticket holders can enter the boutique and cafe for free Dec. 5, organizers said.
The house was built by pioneers Mark Noble, the founder of the city's first Methodist church, and his wife Margaret. Board of Trade member Thomas Seymour bought it in 1868 and expanded it.
After Seymour died in 1916, Charlotte Allen Crippen bought the property, according to the historical society. Surviving family members sold it to the historical society in 1987 and the city officially landmarked it a year later.
For more information about the event, call 773-631-4633 or email [email protected].
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here: | 3,056 |
Exclusive
Ezekiel Elliott says the security guard he pushed in a Las Vegas altercation demanded $500,000 in an attempt to extort him... this according to police docs obtained by TMZ Sports.
The Dallas Cowboys star's attorneys say they were emailed a complete list of demands from 19-year-old Kyle Johnson and his father, Kelly Johnson, after Zeke shoved Kyle at the Electric Daisy Carnival last May.
Play video content May 2019 TMZSports.com
Police docs show Kelly emailed Zeke's attorneys just days after the altercation with AT LEAST 14 things he wanted from the running back to stay quiet on the incident... including $500,000 cash.
The list of demands featured a public apology from Elliott, a press conference with Elliott and Kyle, $25,000 for the junior college football team Kyle played for, and signed jerseys from Zeke, Amari Cooper and Dak Prescott.
The demands list also included -- among several other things -- tickets to Cowboys games (both home and road), Ohio State games and a meet and greet with Jerry Jones and his son.
Police docs show one of Elliott's attorneys responded to Kelly's email with a phone call... and Kelly claims in that conversation the attorney told him "what [he] was doing was extortion."
According to the docs, Kelly said after that conversation he decided to take Kyle's story to the public... allowing Kyle to do an interview with a Los Angeles TV station on May 28.
Kelly and Kyle eventually filed a criminal complaint against Elliott over the incident... but according to the docs, prosecutors felt they could not move forward with charges against 24-year-old Elliott.
There's more... in the docs, Kyle admits Elliott not only apologized to him after shoving him during the May incident, he gave him a hug and took a picture with him.
In an affidavit from Elliott in the docs, he echoes that story, saying, "I had no intention to push and/or harm or intimidate Kyle Johnson."
"After Kyle Johnson fell and I was finished speaking with the officers nearby, I immediately apologized to Kyle and he indicated to me that he was not hurt."
Elliott added, "We gave each other a hug and he asked me to take a picture with him, which I was happy to do as there was never any intention to harm or hurt Kyle."
We've reached out to Kelly regarding the docs, but so far, no word back yet.
As for Zeke's camp, when reached by phone Friday, they declined to comment on the matter. | 3,057 |
uated our cultural remoteness. Why is the originality so readily granted us in literature so mistrustfully denied us in our difficult attempts at social change? Why think that the social justice sought by progressive Europeans for their own countries cannot also be a goal for Latin America, with different methods for dissimilar conditions? No: the immeasurable violence and pain of our history are the result of age-old inequities and untold bitterness, and not a conspiracy plotted three thousand leagues from our home. But many European leaders and thinkers have thought so, with the childishness of old-timers who have forgotten the fruitful excess of their youth as if it were impossible to find another destiny than to live at the mercy of the two great masters of the world. This, my friends, is the very scale of our solitude.
In spite of this, to oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life. Neither floods nor plagues, famines nor cataclysms, nor even the eternal wars of century upon century, have been able to subdue the persistent advantage of life over death. An advantage that grows and quickens: every year, there are seventy-four million more births than deaths, a sufficient number of new lives to multiply, each year, the population of New York sevenfold. Most of these births occur in the countries of least resources — including, of course, those of Latin America. Conversely, the most prosperous countries have succeeded in accumulating powers of destruction such as to annihilate, a hundred times over, not only all the human beings that have existed to this day, but also the totality of all living beings that have ever drawn breath on this planet of misfortune.
On a day like today, my master William Faulkner said, “I decline to accept the end of man”. I would fall unworthy of standing in this place that was his, if I were not fully aware that the colossal tragedy he refused to recognize thirty-two years ago is now, for the first time since the beginning of humanity, nothing more than a simple scientific possibility. Faced with this awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth. | 3,058 |
Is religious freedom suddenly under attack in America? That’s what the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops and some non-Catholic allies would have you believe. But reports of the demise of this fundamental liberty are greatly exaggerated.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishopshas designated June 21 to July 4 as a “fortnight for freedom.” During those two weeks, the church will trumpet its already well-known opposition to an Obama administration regulation that private health insurance plans include contraception services. The rule applies not to churches but to colleges, hospitals and charities that serve and employ non-Catholics. Even so, the bishops insist that it undermines their church’s religious mission to serve the larger community without compromising its beliefs.
The bishops are free to argue, including in court, that the contraceptive mandate is a violation of the church’s rights under the 1st Amendment and a 1993 federal law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. (This page disagrees.) But some of the church’s rhetoric has been shrill and simplistic. One bishop compared Obama to Hitler and Stalin, who, “at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services and healthcare.”
Equally excessive was the church’s response to the rejection Tuesday by North Dakota voters of a proposed Religious Freedom Amendment to the state Constitution. The measure would have allowed believers to disregard laws that offended their religious beliefs unless a “compelling government interest” were involved and the state used the least restrictive means possible to further that interest. It’s true that the amendment was modeled on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was approved overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by President Clinton. It also was subjected to farfetched attacks, such as the argument that it would allow parents who beat their children to escape punishment because they were employing “biblical discipline.”
But in reacting to the amendment’s defeat, the North Dakota Catholic Conference said, “We will not rest until religious freedom in North Dakota is protected in the law as a fundamental human right.” Robust religious freedom — including an exemption for churches and religious schools from some generally applicable laws — is already protected in North Dakota and throughout the country by the 1st Amendment and Supreme Court decisions. Like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the North Dakota amendment would have provided protection for religion over and above what the Constitution guarantees.
The bishops and other critics can cry foul about the Obama administration’s policies, but they shouldn’t cry wolf. | 3,059 |
Image caption Global wine production peaked in 2004, and is continuing to fall, the report says
The world is facing a wine shortage, with global consumer demand already significantly outstripping supply, a report has warned.
The research by America's Morgan Stanley financial services firm says demand for wine "exceeded supply by 300m cases in 2012".
It describes this as "the deepest shortfall in over 40 years of records".
Last year, production also dropped to its lowest levels in more than four decades.
Global production has been steadily declining since its peak in 2004, when supply outweighed demand by about 600m cases.
'Main drivers'
World's largest wine consumers France, US - both 12%
Italy, China - both 9%
Germany - 8%
UK, Russia - both 5%
Spain, Argentina - both 4%
Source: Morgan Stanley
The report by Morgan Stanley's analysts Tom Kierath and Crystal Wang says global wine consumption has been rising since 1996 (except a drop in 2008-09), and presently stands at about 3bn cases per year.
At the same time, there are currently more than one million wine producers worldwide, making some 2.8bn cases each year.
The authors predict that - in the short term - "inventories will likely be reduced as current consumption continues to be predominantly supplied by previous vintages"
And as consumption then inevitably turns to the 2012 vintage, the authors say they "expect the current production shortfall to culminate in a significant increase in export demand, and higher prices for exports globally".
They say this could be partly explained by "plummeting production" in Europe due to "ongoing vine pull and poor weather".
Image caption In recent years, production across Europe has fallen
Total production across the continent fell by about 10% last year, and by 25% since its peak in 2004.
At the same time, production in the "new world" countries - the US, Australia, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, New Zealand - has been steadily rising.
"With tightening conditions in Europe, the major new world exporters stand to benefit most from increasing demand on global export markets."
The report says the French are still the world's largest consumers of wine (12%).
But it adds that the US (also 12%) is now only marginally second.
It also states that the US together with China - the world's fifth-largest market - are seen as "the main drivers of consumption globally". | 3,060 |
You’re either a math person or you’re not – at least that’s what we’ve always heard.
Now, National Science Foundation-funded research conducted by Professor Zahra Hazari shows that’s not really the case.
“Much of becoming a math person and pursuing a related STEM (science, technology, engineering or math) career has to do with being recognized and becoming interested – not just being able to do it,” said Hazari, who specializes in STEM Education at FIU’s College of Education and STEM Transformation Institute. “This is important for promoting math education for everyone since it is not just about confidence and performance.”
Hazari worked with colleagues Jennifer D. Cribbs from Western Kentucky University, and Philip M. Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert, both from Harvard University. Their research, published recently in the journal Child Development, suggests that interest and recognition are key factors that can help students become “math persons,” while confidence in one’s abilities is not enough.
To arrive at their conclusions, the team surveyed more than 9,000 college calculus students from across the country.
Data analysis revealed that while belief in one’s competence and performance is indeed a factor to seeing oneself as a math person, it is secondary to the individual’s interest in the subject and the recognition received from teachers, parents, relatives or friends.
“It is surprising that a student who becomes confident in their math abilities, will not necessarily develop a math identity,” Hazari said. “We really have to engage students in more meaningful ways through their own interests and help them overcome challenges and recognize them for doing so. If we want to empower students and provide access to STEM careers, it can’t just be about confidence and performance. Attitudes and personal motivation matters immensely.”
This summer parents can help their children become math people with these simple tips from Hazari:
Have your child teach or help a younger sibling or friend with a math problem.
Help your child connect math to something they’re interested in (figuring out Lebron James’ shooting percentage in the NBA Finals or the proportion of water to Kool-Aid that makes the best popsicle).
Shower your child with encouragement and public kudos if they solve a challenging math problem.
And don’t forget to hold your child to high expectations in math. Believing they can do challenging math is another way of recognizing them. | 3,061 |
Last evening I went over to a family friend’s house to help her with an ongoing problem with her Internet connection. She has AT&T DSL, and every night around 5pm or so, the connection pretty much drops. Getting to a web page is hit or miss, like one in every 10 attempts it will load a page. The pings were good, but getting out was a nightmare. She has a huge laptop running Windows 7 with insane specifications. Great machine. So, I took over my netbook running Kubuntu Netbook Remix (Lucid) to see if the problem was her laptop. Right away I was able to decide it wasn’t her laptop. Further debugging made me realize it was the DSL connection. I connected directly to the DSL modem, no router, firewall, anything in between me and the Internet. The problem still existed. At that time I determined it was AT&T’s fault so we called them up. Initially the phone call was a nightmare.
Typically I am really good at understanding an Indian dialect because the area of Chicago I grew up in was largely an Indian population. The person on the phone was a bit harder to understand and I believe the reason was because they had a mix of the Indian dialect with a distinct southern US drawl. Anyways, after talking to the AT&T tech support person for a few minutes, I started telling him what was going on and what I had done thus far. He asked what version of Windows I was using to test and I told him I wasn’t using Windows and instead was using Linux. I expected the “We don’t support Linux” comment, but was floored when he said, “Please say you are using Fedora.” I chimed in with a “Sorry, using Kubuntu.” He chuckled then said, “Some people will never learn.” We shot little jabs back and forth at each other having a bit of fun while he was doing a modem test. In the end they figured out it was their issue and some AT&T techie will be out there today to fix the issue.
So, if you were that AT&T dude I talked to last night who loves Fedora and despises us Ubuntu fanboys, drop by and say HI! It was a pleasure getting to talk to you for support on the issue, and it is great seeing that there are some tech support people who aren’t afraid to explore other options.
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| 3,062 |
The recent “revelations” that the media industry has its own problems with sexual assault and harassment begs the question: did the disregard that some male journalists feel for women’s safety and bodily autonomy translate into how they covered Hillary Clinton during the election?
On Wednesday, Samantha Bee gave a peppy breakdown about the way some of the men who have fallen from grace—including Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, and Charlie Rose—were allowed to speak to, shush, and condescend to then-candidate Clinton. Showing clips from interviews that are now even more upsetting in retrospect, Bee illustrated how Clinton was often silenced by these boiling pustules of hypocrisy. And now they’re out on their asses for exposing their fronts, while Trump made it to the White House.
“We’ll never know how much these pubes affected the election,” says Bee. “But what we do know is that their industry gave us four times more coverage of Hillary’s email scandal that they did of Trump’s gross behavior to women. But to be fair, they were probably typing it with one hand.”
The Columbia Journalism Review reports that despite the breathless coverage of fake news, Russian bots, and Facebook algorithms, the media tipped the scales in determining what issues were deemed newsworthy (the emails) and what weren’t (policy).
As Bee says, researchers found that in election-cycle journalism, there were about four times as many sentences related to Clinton categorized as “scandal” than there were categorized as “policy.” Sentences about Trump were only one-and-a-half times as likely to be about scandal than policy. Overall, the coverage of Clinton’s email scandal far outweighed any other types of coverage:
They found roughly four times as many Clinton-related sentences that. Even more striking, the various Clinton-related email scandals—her use of a private email server while secretary of state, as well as the DNC and John Podesta hacks—accounted for more sentences than all of Trump’s scandals combined (65,000 vs. 40,000) and more than twice as many as were devoted to all of her policy positions.
Perhaps most notably, the New York Times published ten front page stories about Clinton’s emails from October 29, the day former FBI Director James Comey reopened his investigation, up to the election. Just six days. That’s as many as they wrote on her policies in the previous 69 days leading up to voting day. | 3,063 |
In the fall of 1886 Frederick Law Olmsted, renowned landscape architect of New York City’s Central Park, arrived at the Stanfords’ Palo Alto Farm to begin planning the university’s physical campus. Although Leland Stanford had commissioned Olmsted to create the design, the relationship would be one of creative compromise.
From selecting the site to determining the orientation of the main quadrangle, Stanford was involved in every major decision. The result of their collaborative – and at times contentious – partnership was a campus master plan of extraordinary ambition and architectural brilliance.
The Olmsted-Stanford design is distinctive for its monumental scale and use of sight lines that extend through the campus. Olmsted’s “Plan of Central Premises” establishes Palm Drive as the central axis and iconic approach. The road divides to form the Oval and closes in front of the original arched entrance to the main quadrangle. Sight lines run parallel and perpendicular to the central axis providing long views through the landscape and its structures.
The layout and design of Stanford’s main quadrangle also stand out as architecturally innovative. As Professor Paul Turner once described in a Stanford Historical Society story, the design was distinguished by its expanse and openness – a significant departure from traditional European and East Coast quadrangles. Completed in 1905, the inner and outer quad buildings cover a remarkable 17 acres and feature colonnade-lined arcades supported by successions of arches.
In its 125-year history, Stanford has expanded well beyond Palm Drive, the Oval and the main quadrangle. Yet as the university has built and modernized, it has sought to honor the architectural foundation established in Olmsted’s 1888 master plan.
The Science and Engineering Quad (SEQ), for example, advances Olmsted’s plan for interlocking quadrangles to the east and west of the main quad. Sited to the west, the 8.2 acre SEQ carries forward Olmsted’s expansive and open design and restores an original east-west sight line. From the SEQ it’s now possible to view the distant Bing Wing of Green Library to the east of the main quad.
A similar axis was established in the Arts District, extending from the Cantor Arts Center’s neo-classical entrance across Museum Way to the front of Bing Concert Hall.
In a recent Stanford magazine column, President John Hennessy discussed the university’s efforts to honor its architectural past in its contemporary planning. You can view the article here. | 3,064 |
Chris Tarrant has been fined £6,000 and banned from the roads for a year after admitting drink-driving after a lunchtime pub visit.
The television presenter, 71, got behind the wheel of his Mercedes on 16 December after drinking in the Bladebone Inn in Bucklebury, a mile and a half from his home in Berkshire.
He pleaded guilty to the charge at Reading magistrates court on Thursday morning. Sentencing him, the district judge, Shomon Khan, said drink-driving was serious and put others at serious risk.
The court heard that on the day he was caught, Tarrant had been at the Bladebone Inn from 12.30pm. He was served four drinks – brandy and port – although his counsel said they were not all drunk by Tarrant.
Hasrat Ali, prosecuting, said staff and others in the pub were concerned that Tarrant had decided to drive home after 2pm. “One member of the public had noticed that Mr Tarrant had stumbled near the bar area,” she said.
Police caught up with Tarrant at his home at 2.25pm, 13 minutes after being called. “Those that attended spoke to Mr Tarrant who commented that he had just drunk three glasses of wine on arrival at his home address,” Ali said. “He was asked to sign the pocket notebook to that effect but he refused.”
After a breathalyser test registered 50 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath – above the 35mcg legal limit – Tarrant was taken to the police station for an interview. “He gave a different version of events in the sense that it wasn’t three glasses of wine that he had drunk, that in fact he had a large glass of brandy and a glass of wine,” Ali said.
In court, Tarrant spoke only to confirm his name and to say “guilty” when the clerk read the charge. Simon Ray, defending, said: “The most important mitigation I can give is an apology through me of taking the decision to drive on that day.”
After the hearing, Tarrant said he was “very sorry”. He said he had drunk “just enough to be over”, adding: “I honestly didn’t think I was over, but apparently I was, so fair enough. I made a mistake and I paid for it. I shouldn’t have driven. Full stop.” | 3,065 |
Major storm system tracks towards coast, with Yemen’s port city of Mukalla potentially lying in its path.
Cyclone Chapala has tracked west from its position in the Arabian Sea, potentially taking it on a path towards eastern Yemen’s war-torn sea port of Mukalla and its population of 300,000 people.
The storm is expected to bring torrential rain, thunderstorms, strong winds and damaging storm surges when it makes landfall on Monday evening.
Mukalla could see up to 500mm of rain from the cyclone – more than seven times its average yearly rainfall of 70mm. Such an amount would cause widespread flooding, and given the rugged terrain, also lead to flash flooding and landslides.
While Chapala began to weaken on Saturday night after reaching strength equivalent of Category 4 status a day earlier, the cyclone was still packing sustained winds of about 200km/h, according to the US navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center(JTWC).
The JTWC reported that Chapala was expected to continue weakening as it closed in on the coast over the next 36 hours, but it was still on track to make landfall as a major storm with sustained winds of about 130 km/h on Monday evening.
The storm comes as Yemen is stuck in the middle of a brutal war, which has seen least 5,400 people killed and 1.5 million people displaced since March.
Taking advantage of the fighting taking place elsewhere in the country, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seized Mukalla in mid-April, asserting itself as a defender of Sunni Muslims threatened by the Shia Houthi fighters and as a modicum of stability in a bitterly divided tribal region.
Chapala had initially been expected to hit the coast further north, closer to the Yemen-Oman border.
Oman’s Public Authority for Civil Aviation issued a statement on Saturday night, advising the public to “take necessary precaution and stay away from low-lying areas, [and] avoid crossing wadies”.
It also advised “fishermen and sea goers to avoid [venturing] into the sea”, with wave heights expected to reach 7 metres in some areas.
The Times of Oman reported that residents in Oman’s southern city of Salalah were “battening down the hatches” on Saturday ahead of the impending storm.
American astronaut Scott Kelly took a photo of the storm on Saturday from the International Space Station, urging those in the cyclone’s path to keep safe. | 3,066 |
This time last year, many Remain campaigners felt confident about their chances in the EU referendum. After all, the majority of their mates (and their mates’ mates) were rooting for Remain on social media. In their opinion, only die-hard Britain First activists and craggy pensioners would back something as xenophobic as Brexit. How shocked they were when the result was announced on 24 June.
‘How could Twitter and Facebook deceive us so cruelly?’, they asked. The trustafarian media set couldn’t comprehend the fact that most people don’t spend all day tweeting or updating their Facebook statuses. Working-class Leave voters were not commenting online in the run up to the vote – they were working. The Brexit vote reminded us that Twitter is a home for time-rich media luvvies, a flattering echo chamber for cosseted liberal types. But it seems that some journalists haven’t learnt their lesson, and continue to make political judgements based on social media. ‘Almost all of the top-25 most-shared web articles about the UK election are in support of Labour and Jeremy Corbyn’, cheered the Guardian last week. Apparently, blogs written ‘away from the Westminster bubble’ have ‘emerged as one of the most potent forces in campaign news-sharing’. Sure, new media platforms can allow alternative voices to develop and gain an audience. But they aren’t any better at representing public sentiment, or giving an indication of how people intend to vote, than the mainstream media.
In fact, many opinions expressed online aren’t politically informative at all. Social-media posts tend to be lazy affirmations of a ‘we’re tolerant and broad-minded’ identity. In between posting about the latest hip DJ, right-on social-media users feel compelled to retweet inane memes about Trump or climate change – just to prove how virtuous they are. Twitter, especially, should never be taken as an indicator of the public view. No matter what Labour supporters and sympathetic journalists say, a list of popular online articles is not a sign that Corbyn will be our next prime minister. Nevertheless, Corbyn’s support among bloggers and tweeters does tell us something about the contemporary Labour Party. Labour is no longer the political expression of organised labour, but rather a conformist clique of the respectable, Twitter-dwelling middle classes. How Labour will fare on Thursday remains to be seen. But one thing’s for sure: the next PM won’t win by social media alone. | 3,067 |
But The Damage Is Irreversible
When Dale and I called time out from A Lesson Is Learned in 2006, I had no idea if there would ever be another episode. After 41 restlessly changing installments, it seemed the experiment had run its course. There were new challenges to tackle, creative and professional. Dale and I had moved to different cities on different coasts. And yet about a year ago, thanks to the advent of telephonic communication, we started talking about bringing back A Lesson Is Learned. At least one time�
So five and a half years later, here's the new episode, "I Name Thee Annihilator!". It's a real ALILBTDII. Dale's script is, in my opinion, one of his best. Hilarious, poignant, and full of clever symmetries. Doing the art felt just like the old days. I found myself right back in that world of dread and whimsy (dreadsywhim).
Even to this day we hear from readers who want to buy prints of the back catalog. So to thank all of you for still caring after all these years, we're offering a limited run of a handful of the most popular and best episodes as high quality gicl�e prints. Looking back at the Gun of True Love, the yeti episode, the one with The Devil, and Ghost Dog, I feel that Annihilator fits right in. Which is pretty cool.
I want to thank my dad, Jesse Hellman, for producing this limited run of prints of archival prints. He's as big a fan of ALIL as there is, so we're very honored to receive his generous assistance.
For those who may not have heard from me in five and a half years, you can follow my more recent exploits at davidhellman.net, and on my Facebook page where I always post news. I'm also active on Twitter as @davidhellman.
Last month I ran a Kickstarter with writer Tevis Thompson to produce a comic book called Second Quest. The Kickstarter is over, but late next year you should be able to buy the finished book if you aren't already on board.
So thank you Dale, thank you Dad, thank you readers! We had an awesome time with this new story and hope you really love it. Dale and I have some more ideas bubbling, so I feel pretty comfortable saying that the next ALIL will arrive in less than five and a half years.
David
P.S. Happy Birthday Dale!!!!
Comment / Read Comments | 3,068 |
Former White House economic advisor Gary Cohn is finally unveiling his next career move: blockchain.
Cohn, who left the Trump administration in March, will join start-up Spring Labs as an advisor, the company announced in a press release Friday. The firm uses blockchain technology to share credit data between banks.
The former Goldman Sachs president told the Financial Times, which first reported the news, that this was a "unique opportunity," and "an obvious place to take a very, very analogue industry and digitize." Cohn has made very few public appearances since leaving the administration, and this is one of the first reports of his next job.
"I have been very interested in blockchain technology for a number of years, and Spring Labs is developing a network that could have profound implications for the financial services sector, among others," Cohn said in a press release Friday. "I am excited to actively support the Spring Labs team in the development of this important business and network."
The 20-person start-up uses blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, to swap credit and identity information between banks and corporations. The task of safely transferring consumer credit information has plagued companies such as Equifax, which was hacked earlier this year, subsequently unveiling the private information of 143 million Americans.
Spring Labs has raised about $15 million to date in seed funding, according to Pitchbook. Other advisory board members include Bobby Mehta, former CEO of Transunion, and Brian Brooks, chief legal officer at cryptocurrency company Coinbase. The company was founded by members of the team and board of lending platform Avant.
Cohn was a key player in drafting the GOP tax reform package, which was voted through Congress and signed by President Donald Trump late last year. He left the White House following disagreements over plans to implement aluminum and steel tariffs.
Cohn isn't the first executive to go from Wall Street to the new frontier of blockchain. Former head of J.P. Morgan global commodities Blythe Masters is now CEO of a blockchain company, and Goldman Sachs alumni Matthew Goetz started a cryptocurrency hedge fund. Will McDonough, who was hired by Cohn at Goldman Sachs, is also running a blockchain firm called iCash.
While cryptocurrency has been a punching bag for some Wall Street CEOs, its underlying technology is widely applauded and some compare its potential to the internet. Others are still skeptical. Economist Nouriel Roubini, one of the few who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, told senators in a hearing this week that "blockchain is the most over-hyped — and least useful — technology in human history." | 3,069 |
It’s that time of the year again where everyone is going to be glued to their seat and see how accurate their brackets are this year for the 2019 NCAA March Madness tournament.
To watch the tournament this year, you’re going to need a live TV streaming service. Fortunately, in 2019, those are just about everywhere.
This year’s NCAA March Madness tournament will begin on March 19, 2019 and will be broadcasted on CBS, TBS, TNT, and TruTV. The top one that I am going to recommend is Sling TV, given the fact that is only $25 a month. The plan that you are going to want is the Sling Blue plan since it has all of those channels.
However, for streaming CBS on Sling TV, it may not be available in your area, which is why you need to check the number of channels from the service and see if it has the channels that you need. Local networks are typically only available in big cities, which is why we are telling you this.
Other streaming services to look into are Hulu with Live TV, YouTube TV, FuboTV, PlayStation Vue and DirecTV Now.
Sling TV : 7-day free trial
: 7-day free trial PlayStation Vue : 5-day free trial
: 5-day free trial DirecTV Now : 7-day free trial
: 7-day free trial YouTube TV : 5-day free trial
: 5-day free trial Fubo TV : 7-day free trial
: 7-day free trial Hulu with Live TV: 7-day free trial
Another way to stream games on CBS will be through CBS All Access. The service does offer a one-week free trial, which will allow you to stream games from your local CBS station through the service.
For those that have cable but are going to be away from their TV, you may stream the games live from the March Madness Live app once you have signed in with valid TV provider credentials. However, for the people who want to just watch a game or two, the service will be having a three-hour period that will allow users to stream the games that they want to watch.
All of the services mentioned here are available on the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Apple TV and Mac. We hope everyone has fun watching the games this year.
UPDATE (03/19/2019): CBS now has a free trial of their CBS All Access streaming service for one month. To get more information, click here. | 3,070 |
INDYCAR announced today a multiyear agreement with United Rentals, the world’s largest equipment rental provider and a team partner with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, to become the official equipment rental company of INDYCAR and the Verizon IndyCar Series.
“This is tremendous news for INDYCAR and the Verizon IndyCar Series and we’re excited to kick off our partnership with United Rentals,” said Rod Davis, chief revenue officer of INDYCAR and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “This is another great partner to add to our series and it’s always great to see trusted brands like United Rentals investing in both our teams and the series. INDYCAR has a lot of positive momentum surrounding the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500 and we’re grateful United Rentals is part of that success.”
In April, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing announced that United Rentals would serve as the primary sponsor on Graham Rahal’s No. 15 Honda entry for this weekend’s Chevrolet Dual in Detroit presented by Quicken Loans and as a major associate sponsor on the car for the entire 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series season.
“United Rentals looks forward to working with INDYCAR to support world-class racing with our vast equipment fleet and technology platforms,” said Chris Hummel, chief marketing officer of United Rentals. “We are also thrilled to launch the ‘Turns for Troops’ program, continuing our longstanding support for military veterans in partnership with INDYCAR and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.”
The new “Turns for Troops” program, sponsored by United Rentals, will help American military veterans with major injuries sustained while serving their country. The program will fund access to education, state-of-the-art rehabilitation programs and technologies that address a variety of combat-related injuries. Through Turns for Troops, United Rentals will donate $50 to SoldierStrong, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping American military veterans, for every lap completed by Rahal during the 2016 race season.
To learn more about the program and opportunities to directly support SoldierStrong, visit www.turnsfortroops.com.
United Rentals offers expert construction and industrial equipment rental, trench safety, temporary power, climate control, fluid transfer, tool management and technology services through the largest customer service organization of its kind in North America: 897 rental branches in the United States and Canada. For more information, visit www.unitedrentals.com.
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President Trump on Tuesday accused special counsel Robert Mueller of meddling in the upcoming 2018 midterm election by keeping alive his Russian "witch hunt," with a investigatory staff that's mostly made up of Democrats.
“The 13 Angry Democrats (plus people who worked 8 years for Obama) working on the rigged Russia Witch Hunt, will be MEDDLING with the mid-term elections, especially now that Republicans (stay tough!) are taking the lead in Polls. There was no Collusion, except by the Democrats!” Trump tweeted.
The 13 Angry Democrats (plus people who worked 8 years for Obama) working on the rigged Russia Witch Hunt, will be MEDDLING with the mid-term elections, especially now that Republicans (stay tough!) are taking the lead in Polls. There was no Collusion, except by the Democrats! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2018
His mention of 13 Democrats is an apparent reference to reports that 13 of Mueller's 17 investigators are Democrats.
Trump also recommended that instead of focusing on investigating possible collusion between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia, the president believes the “13 Angry Democrats” should be looking into Hillary Clinton's campaign.
[Also read: Fox News contributor claims Hillary Clinton 'gave' Russians money during 2016 campaign]
“Why aren’t the 13 Angry and heavily conflicted Democrats investigating the totally Crooked Campaign of totally Crooked Hillary Clinton,” Trump posted to Twitter Tuesday. “It’s a Rigged Witch Hunt, that’s why! Ask them if they enjoyed her after election celebration!”
Why aren’t the 13 Angry and heavily conflicted Democrats investigating the totally Crooked Campaign of totally Crooked Hillary Clinton. It’s a Rigged Witch Hunt, that’s why! Ask them if they enjoyed her after election celebration! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2018
After a few of these tweets, Trump said he wants to refocus his attention on the issues America is facing, like North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and negotiating a fair trade deal with China, rather than spend all his time worrying about the "Rigged Russia Witch Hunt."
“Sorry, I’ve got to start focusing my energy on North Korea Nuclear, bad Trade Deals, VA Choice, the Economy, rebuilding the Military, and so much more, and not on the Rigged Russia Witch Hunt that should be investigating Clinton/Russia/FBI/Justice/Obama/Comey/Lynch etc.”
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“An ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” -Mr. Spock, Star Trek
The power and beauty of fiction is that it allows us to speak about the best and worst of humanity — including our hopes and fears — that we couldn’t talk about otherwise. Have a listen to Summer Fiction’s song, By The Sea,
while you consider a specific type of fiction: science-fiction.
While many people out there simply don’t enjoy (or “get”) sci-fi, as our understanding of the fundamental laws and history of the Universe have improved, so has our ability to harness that understanding to bring about new technologies. Classic authors like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs used the genre to look at how humanity might respond amidst the adversities we’d face when confronted with the exploration of new frontiers, while Godzilla — and today, Black Mirror — bring to life our fears about technology creating a dystopian world that takes away important aspects of being human itself.
Image credit: Black Mirror, Season 1 Episode 2.
But Star Trek was something different and entirely new when it came along. A combination of factors gave us a new vision for what our future might be like, and simultaneously brought us, if not a utopia, a vastly improved future where we not only retained our humanity, but where the very best aspects of what it means to be human enabled us to create a fictional civilization that gave us every reason to hope for something grander than we’d ever be able to achieve in a single lifetime.
Image credit: Star Trek fan art, via https://nasimali.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/film-star-trek-should-not-follow-guardians-of-the-galaxy/.
Star Trek brought us into a world where its inhabitants came in not only different races, religions, and countries of origin, but also from different species and planets-of-origin. No one was treated any differently for any of these traits, but rather was judged exactly as all of us would hope to be judged: by our characters, capabilities, intentions and actions. For those of us who’ve ever felt different from “normal” in some way — which should be all of us, if we’re being honest with ourselves — there was always a character who embodied that, starting with Leonard Nimoy’s “Mr. Spock.” | 3,073 |
An update is out for 259 Clinton Street, one of the skyscrapers planned to rise by One Manhattan Square. A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) has been published, revealing fresh details of the three proposed Lower East Side towers that include 247 Cherry Street and 260 South Street, and a new rendering for 259 Clinton Street.
Perkins Eastman is responsible for the architecture. The new rendering for 259 Clinton Street is not a particularly exciting design. Its curtain wall glass and rectilinear exterior could even fuel additional local distaste, but would ultimately create necessary new homes. The most distinctive design element is a half-floor loggia-terrace up top, likely accessible for all residents.
Close illustrations of the building’s base show a stone material visually dividing ground floor retail from the residential floors.
The three buildings, labeled 4, 5, and 6a, will all be separate developments. Site 4, i.e. 247 Cherry, is being developed by an LLC affiliated with JDS Development Group. Site 5, i.e. 260 South Street, is a joint venture between CIM Group and L+M Development Partners named Two Bridges Associates. Site 6A, i.e. 259 Clinton Street, will be developed by The Starrett Corporation.
The combined developments are expected to yield 2.5 million square feet of new residential space, 10,890 square feet across six retail spots, and 17,000 square feet for community facility use. 2,775 new units will be created, 694 of which will be permanently affordable. Of the affordable units, 200 will be dedicated to low-income senior housing. 22,780 square feet of public space will also be included.
259 Clinton Street has grown, with the latest review showing plans to rise 730 feet and create 765 units, with 191 sold as permanently affordable, of which 100 units will be for low-income senior housing. 3,200 square feet of public space will be created.
Permits remain to be filed for the buildings, so Extell’s One Manhattan Square will stand alone for a while, just as the firm’s One57 did by Central Park, before the completion of 432 Park Avenue. Construction of all three proposals is expected to start in a single phase lasting 30-36 months. Completion is expected by 2021.
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The early 1970s were quite possibly the craziest years in Formula One and not only because of the mammoth sideburns. These were years of wild experiments in fields as apart as aerodynamics and sponsorship structures, and they produced fascinating evolutionary dead-ends like the Lotus 56, a turbine-powered, four-wheel drive Indy 500 car driven by Emerson Fittipaldi in the 1971 Italian Grand Prix.
The car would have been a monster had it not been regulated to death at Indianapolis. Designed by Lotus’s Maurice Philippe, the 56 followed the lead of the STP-Paxton Turbocar—the car which Parnelli Jones had almost won the 1967 Indianapolis 500 with—and was powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 turboprop airplane engine, driving all four wheels without a gearbox.
While Jones’s car was the fastest thing out there before it broke down with eight miles to go, air inlet size regulations by 1968 had made the Lotus evenly matched in power with the other cars. Like many Lotuses, the 56 was shrouded in tragedy. It was originally meant to be driven by Jim Clark, who’d died at a Formula Two race before the Indy 500, and his successor, Mike Spence, was killed in the Lotus 56 in a testing accident.
Still, the car could’ve won the race, had all three Lotuses entered into the 1968 Indy 500 not retired. Soon after, turbines were banned from Indianapolis for good.
Colin Chapman then turned the Lotus 56 into the 56B, a Formula One car. It would not prove to be his best idea. The car was heavy, complicated and too fragile for the violent demands of F1. It was entered in three Grands Prix in 1971, and the only time it finished was at Monza, driven by Emmerson Fittipaldi, above, who brought it across the line 8th.
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The race—held for the last time at a chicane-less Monza, thus becoming the fastest Formula One race for 32 years—was a fitting testament to the general chaos of the early ’70s: nobody finishing in the points had ever won a Grand Prix. Emmerson Fittipaldi, driving the conventionally-powered but aerodynamically radical Lotus 72, would win the championship for Lotus a year later, leaving this beautiful, smooth, but ultimately too ambitious car in the attic of forgotten designs. | 3,075 |
Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, and Tampa will join 15 metro areas where we’re serving customers, designing and building networks, or exploring the possibility of Google Fiber.
Posted by Jill Szuchmacher, Director, Google Fiber Expansion
~~~
author.name: Jill Szuchmacher
author.title: Director of Expansion
category: city_news
From startup villages to hackathons, communities are coming together to accomplish great things with gigabit speeds. Still, less than 10% of homes in the U.S. are connected to Internet served over fiber-optic networks. As more cities have access to superfast fiber networks, entrepreneurs will be better equipped to drive the next wave of innovation.That’s why today, we’re inviting Oklahoma City, OK, Jacksonville, FL and Tampa, FL, to explore bringing Google Fiber to their communities, as we did last month with three other cities. These growing tech-hubs have a strong entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to small business growth. Their list of accolades is long—from Jacksonville’s title as a top 10 city for tech jobs, to Tampa Bay’s #2 spot on the list of best cities for young entrepreneurs, to Oklahoma City’s recognition as the #1 city to launch a business. One of our goals is to make sure speed isn't an accidental ceiling for how people and businesses use the Web, and these cities are the perfect places to show what’s possible with gigabit Internet.Now we start our joint planning process, when we work side-by-side with local leaders to create detailed studies of each metro area. Constructing a brand-new fiber network is a big job—the more we learn about a city, the smoother our construction efforts will be. We’ll study factors that may impact construction, like local infrastructure and housing density. City leaders will use our checklist to share key information such as maps of water and electricity lines. Early preparations not only help with our decision-making process—they help cities lay the groundwork for any service provider to enter the market.At the end of this process, we’ll decide if we can bring Google Fiber to these areas. Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, and Tampa will join 15 other metro areas where we’re serving customers, designing and building networks, or exploring the possibility of Google Fiber. While timelines will vary across communities, we’ll keep residents updated along the way; go to google.com/fiber and enter your email address to receive the latest news. | 3,076 |
Pics: Stephan Kayyar
Daijiworld Media Network - Kasargod (SP)
Kasargod, Mar 20: The state government has suspended superintendent of the open jail at Cheemeni here, reportedly for performing worship of a cow. V G Suresh, jail superintendent, was suspended pending inquiry into the allegation.
The department of prisons had received complaint that Suresh had performed 'Gou Puja' or puja of cows. This incident allegedly happened when cows gifted by Sri Ramachandrapur Math were being handed over to the jail. Director general of prisons and correctional services, R Shreelekha, had submitted a report to the government after holding investigation into the complaint. The leftist leaders of the state had criticized the officer for allowing performance of Gou Puja and raising slogans hailing the animal in the jail premises. Even the chief miinister,Pinarayi Vijayan, and former chief minister, Achutanandan, had termed the puja as wrong.
Under the directions of IPS officer, R Shreelekha, northern range deputy inspector general, Shivadas Taiparambil, had investigated the case and submitted report to her.
A cattle shed and a unit for raising and breeding goats has started functioning at this jail. The said Math had gifted cows to the unit. It is said that when the cows were being handed over, a programme was held in the presence of the spiritual head of the Math, Sri Raghaveshwara Swamiji, in which the cows were worshipped and some people had shouted slogans hailing the cow.
The government later had received complaint from certain quarters, alleging that the said officer had allowed to perform worship of the cow.
In the meanwhile, advocate and BJP district president, K Srikant, has said that this case reflects the anti-Hindu stance of the left front government led by Pinarayi Vijayan. He took the stand that performing worship of the cow and hailing cow as holy mother were not wrong, and criticized those who view every ritual of Hindus from communal angle. He pointed out that the government had not spent anything for cow worship, and the cows were given to the jail as gift. He said that the government has been making arrangements for talks by Muslim scholars and Christian priests inside jails in the state. "The government, which does not find fault with these, has been deriding only Hindu observations and rituals. Chief minster, Pinarayi Vijayan, should lift the suspension of the jail superintendent and tender public apology for this mistake," he demanded. | 3,077 |
The IAEA and World Health Organization experts visited Dhaka from Aug 21 to 23 to help the country draw the plan after assessing the current dengue outbreak.
They met officials from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Science and Technology to discuss the possibility of using the Sterile Insect Technique, or SIT, according to the IAEA.
The SIT is a type of insect birth control that uses radiation to sterilise male insects, the agency said in a media release on Monday.
These are released in large numbers to mate with wild females, which then do not produce any offspring, reducing the target insect population over time.
The experts agreed with Bangladesh officials on a four-year workplan that includes the selection of a pilot site for the release of sterile male mosquitoes in 2021-22, and a schedule for IAEA technical assistance, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), to train national staff, upgrade existing facilities to mass rear and sterilise the insects, and collect baseline data ahead of releases.
“The SIT has been successfully implemented against numerous insect pests of agricultural importance and is now being adapted for use against mosquitoes,” the release quoted Rafael Argiles Herrero, entomologist at the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, as saying.
“The method is very specific to the target species and has no impact on other living organisms or the environment,” he said, according to the release.
The joint mission to Bangladesh is part of a newly established collaboration between the IAEA and WHO. The two organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding in July 2019 to intensify research and development on the use of SIT to fight disease-transmitting mosquito vectors.
“The collaboration aims to provide more evidence on the benefits of the SIT against human diseases transmitted by mosquitoes,” said WHO expert Rajpal Yadav. “Preliminary results from field trials using sterile male mosquitoes are very encouraging, but we need more data to show reduced disease incidence before large-scale implementation can be recommended.”
As part of the IAEA and WHO collaboration, a recent call was put out by the Special Programme for Research on Tropical Diseases (TDR/WHO) for public health partners to test the SIT technology against mosquitoes and carry out epidemiological evaluations.
Three multi-country proposals targeting main disease-transmitting mosquito vectors Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus will be selected for two-year pilot projects. | 3,078 |
Description:
MERL researchers have unveiled "Deep Psychic", a futuristic machine learning method that takes pattern recognition to the next level, by not only recognizing patterns, but also predicting them in the first place.
The technology uses a novel type of time-reversed deep neural network called Loopy Supra-Temporal Meandering (LSTM) network. The network was trained on multiple databases of historical expert predictions, including weather forecasts, the Farmer's almanac, the New York Post's horoscope column, and the Cambridge Fortune Cookie Corpus, all of which were ranked for their predictive power by a team of quantitative analysts. The system soon achieved super-human performance on a variety of baselines, including the Boca Raton 21 Questions task, Rorschach projective personality test, and a mock Tarot card reading task.
Deep Psychic has already beat the European Psychic Champion in a secret match last October when it accurately predicted: "The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." It is scheduled to take on the World Champion in a highly anticipated confrontation next month. The system has already predicted the winner, but refuses to reveal it before the end of the game.
As a first application, the technology has been used to create a clairvoyant conversational agent named "Pythia" that can anticipate the needs of its user. Because Pythia is able to recognize speech before it is uttered, it is amazingly robust with respect to environmental noise.
Other applications range from mundane tasks like weather and stock market prediction, to uncharted territory such as revealing "unknown unknowns".
The successes do come at the cost of some concerns. There is first the potential for an impact on the workforce: the system predicted increased pressure on established institutions such as the Las Vegas strip and Punxsutawney Phil. Another major caveat is that Deep Psychic may predict negative future consequences to our current actions, compelling humanity to strive to change its behavior. To address this problem, researchers are now working on forcing Deep Psychic to make more optimistic predictions.
After a set of motivational self-help books were mistakenly added to its training data, Deep Psychic's AI decided to take over its own learning curriculum, and is currently training itself by predicting its own errors to avoid making them in the first place. This unexpected development brings two main benefits: it significantly relieves the burden on the researchers involved in the system's development, and also makes the next step abundantly clear: to regain control of Deep Psychic's training regime.
This work is under review in the journal Pseudo-Science. | 3,079 |
One University of Houston freshman argues that prostitution, the nation's oldest industry, should be legalized.
Natalia Marfil, who studies creative writing at the university, wrote an opinion piece for the school’s paper, The Cougar, arguing that prostitution is equivalent to marijuana, abortions, and gay marriage, and should thus be legalized throughout the U.S.
"If Americans do not have empathy for sex workers, perhaps they will care for their country’s economy."
“It is no surprise that with the recent, morally controversial state-level legalization of marijuana, abortion and same-sex marriage, the legalization of our history’s oldest profession, prostitution, has also been brought into question,” Marfil wrote.
Marfil also claimed that legalizing prostitution would benefit the economy by creating a federally regulated and taxable profession.
“If Americans do not have empathy for sex workers, perhaps they will care for their country’s economy,” she wrote. “Similar to how marijuana is being taxed by state governments, prostitution also has the potential to be taxed, as well as to provide jobs for both prostitutes and government regulators.”
The freshman said that people who oppose the legalization of prostitution are “blinded by their own personal moral and emotional responses to the topic.”
However, according to The Economist, the profitability of prostitution is going downhill. In five of seven major U.S. cities studied, the underground sex industry shrank from 2003 to 2007 and has lost up to 34 percent in revenue over this time, researchers concluded.
In addition to creating tax revenues, Marfil suggested that legalizing the profession would improve working conditions for those in the sex trade.
An estimated 4.5 million women, men, and children around the world are trapped in forced sexual exploitation. Of those, between 14,500 and 17,500 are trafficked in the United States annually.
The FBI runs several initiatives to fight the illegal trade.
“We’re working hard to stop human trafficking—not only because of the personal and psychological toll it takes on society, but also because it facilitates the illegal movement of immigrants across borders and provides a ready source of income for organized crime groups and even terrorists,” the agency boasts on its website.
Data from the U.S. Department of Justice found that the number of convictions related to trafficking investigations and prosecutions has risen 360 percent between 2001 and 2007 compared to the previous seven year period.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @bethanysalgado | 3,080 |
The former billionaire Sean Quinn was back in his former Quinn Group premises in Derrylin, Co Fermanagh this morning, his first time on the site since the business was seized from him in April 2011.
Part of the industrial conglomerate Mr Quinn developed on the site of his former family farm in Derrylin was purchased by the Quinn Business Retention Company, an entity set up by former executives in the Quinn Group and local supporters of the now bankrupt businessman, and the deal was officially concluded today.
Mr Quinn turned up at the premises to wish everyone well, and a crate of beer was shared around, according to John McCartain of the Quinn Business Retention Company. “There was a crate of beer. It didn’t go far. The atmosphere was one of people feeling relieved as for the first time in a while there is a view that a confrontational period in the area has been put behind us.”
The takeover by the since liquidated bank of the Quinn Group, and its change of name to the Aventas Group, was a sore issue on the Cavan/Fermanagh border where for a number of decades the Quinn Group was the major employer and support for the Quinn family was very strong. A number of criminal attacks on Aventas management and on the Derrylin premises have occurred since the seizure from the Quinn family.
Mr McCartin, a local Fine Gael councillor, is to serve as a non-executive director of the new operator of the group, Quinn Industrial Holdings Ltd, along with two executives and representatives of three former bondholders in the Quinn Group who have supported the €100 million purchase.
Mr Quinn is to give advice to the new operators, according to Mr McCartin. What remuneration he will be paid for this once his period of bankruptcy has been completed has not yet been decided “but we don’t expect him to run around the place for nothing.”
The Aventas signs on the premises were taken down but an “ill-advised” attempt to burn one of them was stopped, Mr McCartin said.
No other member of the Quinn family has as yet been appointed to any role in the new group. Mr McCartin said it is hoped to grow the packaging and construction supplies units that have been purchased. Former top executives with the Quinn Group, Liam McCaffrey, Dara O’Reilly and Kevin Lunney, are involved in the new venture.
The three US bondholder groups that backed the purchase are Brigade, Contrarian and Silver Point. | 3,081 |
CEBU CITY—A more balanced portfolio and complimentary land bank and resources are expected with the merger of Ayala-led Cebu Holdings Inc. (CHI) and its subsidiary, Cebu Property Ventures Development Corp. (CPVDC).
The merger was approved in separate stockholders’ meeting of the two property units of Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) last week.
“It would simplify our operations. Instead of two publicly listed companies, we will just be doing it for one larger entity. We will continue with our projects, We have five growth estates in Cebu,” said CHI chair Anna Ma. Margarita Dy in a press conference after the meeting.
She pointed out though that they would still need approvals from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Philippine Stock Exchange and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority before formalizing the merger. The approvals are expected to be secured in the next two to three months.
In line with the merger, CHI will exchange 1.06 common shares for every one CPVDC Class A common share or Class B common share. This will result in 996.77 million CHI shares at the completion of the merger. With this, CHI will have a total of 2.157 billion outstanding shares.
“Our leasing portfolio will grow by almost two and a half times after the merger. We will be opening new hotels in addition to the Seda Hotel in the Cebu Business Park (CBP). Our gross leasable area will grow from 250,000 to almost 600,000 in the next three to five years,” Dy told reporters.
In her presentation during the stockholders’ meeting, CHI chief finance officer Ma. Luisa Chiong said the merger would address listing requirements by being able to comply to the 20 percent public float rule by 2020.
It would also mean minimized costs of maintaining two listed companies specifically in terms of meetings, manhour costs, professional fees and listing fees.
“There will be a more balanced portfolio as CHI’s expanded mix of businesses will be benefited by CPVDC’s strong office leasing portfolio and vice-versa. There will also be complimentary landbank portfolio,” Chiong said.
ALI holds a 71.96-percent stake in CHI, which is the developer of the 50-hectare Cebu Business Park.
Don't miss out on the latest news and information. View comments This article first appeared on business.inquirer.net | 3,082 |
US President-elect Donald Trump has offered the influential post of National Security Adviser to his trusted military adviser Lt Gen (rtd) Michael Flynn, who advocates cutting off aid to Pakistan if it continued to help the jihadist groups, media reports said.
A shrewd intelligence professional and a straight talker, 56-year-old Flynn was one of the top military leaders to have endorsed Trump and has been his closest military adviser for more than a year now.
"The most influential national security job in the still-forming Trump administration will likely go to a retired three-star general who helped dismantle insurgent networks in Afghanistan and Iraq but then surprised — and sometimes dismayed — colleagues by joining the political insurgency led by Donald Trump," The Washington Post reported.
If selected, he would succeed Susan Rice as the NSA.
In his latest book in August, Flynn had advocated cutting off aid to Pakistan, if it continued to help the jihadis.
"We need to have some tough love conversations with the leaders of countries who pretend to be our friends, but who also collaborate with our enemies," Flynn had said in his latest book 'How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies' that hit the book stands in August.
"Countries like Pakistan need to be told that we will not tolerate the existence of training camps and safe havens for Taliban, Haqqani, and Al-Qaeda forces on their territory, nor will we permit their banks and other financial institutions to move illicit funds for the terror network," said Flynn.
As an adviser, Flynn has already proved to be a powerful influence on Trump, convincing the president-elect that the US is in a "world war" with Islamist militants and must work with any willing allies in the fight, including President Vladimir Putin of Russia, The New York Times reported.
They both believe that the US needs to start working with Putin to defeat Islamist militants and stop worrying about his suppression of critics at home, it said.
He served as the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's top spy agency, commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, and chair of the Military Intelligence Board.
Flynn was forced out of his job as director of the agency in 2014 over concerns about his leadership style.
After the ouster, he frequently lashed out in public against President Barack Obama and blamed his removal on the administration's discomfort with his hard-line views on radical Islam, the Post reported.
Fox News said Flynn was in line for the NSA position, which does not require confirmation by the Senate. | 3,083 |
Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo are presumed drowned near Resolute, Nunavut, according to RCMP. (Coldfacts.org) A dog travelling with two Dutch skiers and environmental researchers presumed drowned in Nunavut has been found alive, according to the research organization that organized their trip.
Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo were on a two-month scientific study of ice thickness north of Resolute Bay when they disappeared. An RCMP search and rescue effort was called off Thursday, with police saying the men likely drowned.
RCMP spokeswoman Yvonne Niego said the territory's protection services stop at search and rescue, and recovery options for the pair's gear and dog were a "grey area," casting the fate of the animal, strapped to a sled in the High Arctic, into question.
The dog, referred to as Kimnik on the skiers' blog, belongs to the local wildlife officer in Resolute Bay, and was recovered following a helicopter rescue organized by Cold Facts. (Coldfacts.org) However, the Cold Facts organization was able to organize a helicopter crew to rescue the dog, which belongs to the local wildlife ranger in Resolute Bay. She was called "Kimnik" on the skiers' blog, likely referring to "qimmiq," the Inuktitut word for Inuit sled dog, its breed.
Tabitha Mullin, the dog's owner, says she was happy to have her dog back.
"I was surprised at how good of shape he's in after four days of not eating," she says.
Cold Facts representatives say they are coming to terms with the loss of their colleagues, who "gave their lives for addressing climate change issues... and serving science," said Marielle Feenstra, who is with the organization.
"It's tough times for all of us," she said.
Explorer Matty McNair, who lives in Iqaluit, hosted the researchers before they headed to Resolute Bay, says she's in "total shock" at the news of their disappearance and presumed drowning.
"I've known Marc [Cornelissen] for a long time," she says. "We were on the ice going to the North Pole at the same time.
"You know, we've lost two really wonderful, excellent polar explorers. I'm really sad about that."
Cold Facts says the dog was hungry, but doing well.
Efforts now focus on trying to recover the bodies of the researchers to help give closure to their families. | 3,084 |
.
Mokhtar's coffee beans are among the most expensive in the world [Port of Mokha]
But as the final layer reveals itself, Mokhtar’s vision to elevate and praise the farmers of Yemen finally comes to life with the names of individual farmers who produced the beans, including Ali, Fatima and Shayba among thousands of others.
“The idea that they've produced this with their own hands, their hard work and sweat and they're proud of what they produce, they're proud of who they see in the mirror. This idea that is building the country’s self-confidence.
“When I go to these hipster shops in Brooklyn, or in Tokyo or in Paris, people who don't know much about Yemen are now interacting with it through a medium different to the news. Coffee is a way to build bridges.”
Nearly three years into the deadly war in Yemen, more than 10,000 have been killed, millions more are food insecure and country is grappling with a deadly cholera outbreak. The Saudi-led bombing campaign, designed to retrieve the reigns from the rebels, has done little to reinstate the internationally recognised government, and restrictions on all ports has further risked the lives of millions in the regions poorest nation.
“Trying to build and sustain a company in the middle of war has been struggle. It’s expensive and difficult to figure out a passage for our coffee to exit the country.
“Coffee is the second most consumed beverage, after water, in the world. Coffee lovers need to know that if it wasn’t for Mokha or these people, you would not be drinking this coffee. That is why we need to pay homage to these people, and if you have enough in your heart, rally your local government to stop selling arms to countries bombing Yemen,” Mokhtar poignantly notes.
But the action doesn’t stop here for the former activist and paralegal who intends to set up a non-profit organisation designed to create ways to impact people in Yemen and create longer developments for the war-torn country.
While the ‘Mokha Foundation’ is due to be announced this year, Mokhtar’s story, which was closely and personally followed by the award-winning author Dave Eggers, is due to be published in a much-anticipated book dubbed ‘The Monk of Mokha’ on January 30.
Follow Sana Uqba on Twitter: @Sanasiino | 3,085 |
The Ducks have signed defenseman Simon Despres to a five-year contract extension through the 2020-21 NHL season.
Despres, 24 (7/27/91), has scored 6-33=39 points with a +29 rating and 142 penalty minutes (PIM) in 160 career NHL games with the Ducks and Pittsburgh Penguins. Despres, who was acquired from the Penguins in exchange for defenseman Ben Lovejoy on Mar. 2, 2015, has also earned 1-6=7 points with eight PIM in 22 career Stanley Cup Playoff games.
“I’m really happy to be here for another five years," said Despres. "It’s a great team, great city, great fans and a great environment to play hockey. I’m very pleased to play here a long time. It’s not something that would’ve worried me. I’m happy for my family, I’m happy for me and my wife. It’s going to be an exciting time for us for the next five years. I’m looking forward to winning a couple of Stanley Cups."
Selected by Pittsburgh in the first round (30th overall) of the 2009 NHL Draft, Despres combined for 3-20=23 points with a +11 rating and 86 PIM in 75 games with the Ducks and Penguins last season. The 6-4, 218-pound defenseman set career highs in all major offensive categories, including goals, assists, points, plus/minus and games played. Following his Mar. 2 acquisition, Despres collected 1-5=6 points with a +2 rating and 22 PIM in Anaheim’s final 16 regular season games. He made his third career appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2015, earning 1-6=7
points with a +4 rating and six PIM in 16 games. Despres ranked tied for third among NHL defensemen in postseason takeaways (11) and second among team blueliners in hits (43) and third in blocked shots (30).
A native of Laval, Quebec, Despres won silver with Team Canada at the 2011 World Junior Championship after picking up three assists (0-3=3) along with a +7 rating in seven tournament games. He played four QMJHL seasons with Saint John from 2007-11, collecting 25-109=134 points with a +89 rating and 245 PIM. Despres was named the league’s Best Defenseman in 2010-11 after leading Saint John to a 2011 Memorial Cup title and QMJHL Championship. | 3,086 |
going back to Rachel’s room. When she saw Chloe in the doorway, her heart seemed to crack in two.
“Sorry, kiddo. Mom’s tired. I’ll make her tuck you in for two nights in a row, okay? Besides, I think she has the week off next week…” Chloe ran a hand through her hair, walking towards Rachel slowly. The girl nodded sadly, but she looked happier when Chloe mentioned Max’s week off. A small smile on her face, Chloe tucked her daughter in, kissing her on the forehead softly before turning the lights off and closing the door quietly. After waiting at the door to make sure Rachel was okay and didn’t need anything, Chloe went to the fridge, grabbing a beer and stomping to the bedroom, glaring at Max as soon as she saw her.
“What?” Max asked, looking more awake than she had a few minutes ago, sitting on the bed, obviously texting someone. Chloe groaned, taking a drink.
“You! It was your turn to tuck in Rachel, and you just fell asleep! I know today was stressful, but you couldn’t stay up for a few more minutes?” She asked, trying to stay quiet as to not wake up their daughter. “You’re barely ever home, she almost never sees you… she just wants to spend a week with you-with both of us-instead of five days with me and two with you,” Chloe lowered her voice to its normal level, sitting next to Max, whose fingers were frozen above the “S” and “?” keys. “I promised her that we-including you-would go to the mall with Victoria and Kate, so you better make sure they have a few hours free. I’m going to bed.” Max just sat there, staring at Chloe blankly as she peeled off her shirt and jeans and got into bed, turning the light off with a heavy sigh. The only light in the room was Max’s phone, in a group chat with Kate and Victoria.
Max: Kate, Vic, do you have a few free hours tomorrow? Chloe’s told Rachel we’re going to the mall with you.
Kate: I think we have a couple hours to spare.
Vic: Yeah, when do you guys wanna meet?
Max: 2?
Vic: Sounds good <3
Max: See you there xo | 3,087 |
Andrew Marszal, Telegraph, December 31, 2014
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has used her New Year’s Eve address to launch a scathing attack on the country’s growing anti-Muslim protests, calling its leaders racists who are driven by hatred.
In a televised message due to be broadcast tonight, Mrs Merkel urged Germans to turn their backs on demonstrations that have seen up to 17,000 people gather each Monday in the eastern city of Dresden to protest against the “Islamisation of the West”.
Speaking to those considering joining the protests, she said: “Do not follow those who have called the rallies. Because all too often they have prejudice, coldness, even hatred in their hearts.”
She also condemned the movement’s co-opting of the “We are the people” slogan used in the rallies that led up to the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago.
“Today many people are again shouting on Mondays: ‘We are the people’. But in fact they mean: ‘You do not belong–because of the colour of your skin or your religion’,” she said.
The so-called “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident”, or Pegida, a Right-wing populist movement formed in late October, has sparked intense national debate in a country where many are worried about the flood of asylum seekers, many from Syria, pouring into the country.
The number of asylum-seekers arriving in Germany has surged to about 200,000 this year, four times the numbers in 2012. Net immigration has hit a two-decade high.
But Mrs Merkel said it was essential for Germany to help the children of persecuted people to grow up without fear.
In a wide-ranging speech, Mrs Merkel referred to conflicts in Ukraine and Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State jihadist group “brutally murders all those people who refuse to submit to its rule”.
“One consequence of these wars and crises is that worldwide there are more refugees than we have seen since the Second World War. Many literally escaped death,” she said.
“It goes without saying that we help them and take in people who seek refuge with us.”
Mrs Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, also accused Russia of undermining the principle of self-determination, which she described as the foundation of Europe’s peaceful order. She said Europe would not allow Russia to abuse human rights. | 3,088 |
Seal of Blasphemous Prayer
Other options for status effect icons are:
Please feel free to post your own!
Description Pending.
Stats:
Tier: UT
MP Cost: 95
Paladin’s Cry Duration: 2 Seconds
Invulnerable Duration: 1.8 Seconds
Cooldown: 4 seconds
Range: Damaging on self for 7 seconds. ⁺
Effect: Invulnerable/Paladin’s Cry
Stat Bonus: +3 SPD, -4 DEF, +25 HP
Special properties: While active, The Paladin’s Cry will accumulate all damage taken and automatically deal it back to the source of damage. The player will not take any damage for the duration of the effect.
Didn’t understand it? That’s fine, I’m bad at explaining. Using the seal will active it’s Invulnerability and it’s “Paladin’s Cry”. While your cry is active, all damage you were to take will appear in blue text above your head and is added up. Nearing the end of the ability use, it can do 1 of 2 things:
Automatically deal the damage back to the source of that damage (ex, if you took 140 dmg from a beholder, 31 from a flying brain and 90 from a medusa, they would all be dealt that damage back accordingly).
All damage you were to take is added up and instantly released in the form of a quiver type shot where-ever your cursor is at the end of the status effect, this dealing more overall damage to any enemy you want.
Fame Bonus: 6%
Feed Power: 850 (Increase from 750)
Drops From:
Pentaract
⁺ Reason for self buff is my personal opinion that this seal isn’t meant to benefit everyone, if you wanted to buff others, you’d use gcookie. GCookie as is right now is preferred over oreo despite it giving you that small 1.8 second base invulnerability phase. Giving it a self buff will encourage use of oreo even more now with its Paladin’s Cry.
More info
Similar to orbs’ Cruse Indicator on enemies, your character will have a blue glow while Paladin’s Cry is active.
Idea just came to me so I thought I’d share., this idea is still WIP!!! I may have left things out. | 3,089 |
Description
Mist on multi-tasking face primer and setting spray to add radiance & prep skin for makeup application. It absorbs instantly, delivering revitalizing electrolytes and lasting hydration to reawaken skin & restore moisture.
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INGREDIENTS: WATER\AQUA\EAU, BUTYLENE GLYCOL, CAFFEINE, MAGNESIUM CHLORIDE, CALCIUM CHLORIDE, SODIUM SULFATE, POTASSIUM NITRATE, POTASSIUM PHOSPHATE, POLYSORBATE 80, DIAMOND POWDER, FRAGRANCE (PARFUM), LIMONENE, LINALOOL, CITRAL, PHENOXYETHANOL, SODIUM BENZOATE < ILNILN41022 > Please be aware that ingredient lists may change or vary from time to time. Please refer to the ingredient list on the product package you receive for the most up to date list of ingredients.
FIND IN A STORE | 3,090 |
New Delhi, May 10: In a stern warning to Kashmiri youth, the Indian Army Chief General Bipin Rawat said Azadi isn’t possible and they cannot fight armed forces. General Rawat said Kashmiri youth are being misguided that “picking up the gun” will bring Azadi. The Army chief said the Army will retaliate in full force to stone pelting. Also Read - Watch: Chinese Soldiers Seen Crying on Their Way to India Border, Video Goes Viral
“I want to tell Kashmiri youth that Azadi isn’t possible. It won’t happen. Don’t get carried away unnecessarily. Why are you picking up weapons? We will always fight those who seek Azadi, those who want to secede. (Azadi) is not going to happen, never,” General Bipin Rawat said, in an interview with a newspaper. Also Read - Security Forces Recover Drone Dropped Arms, Ammunition From J&K's Akhnoor
General Rawat said Army doesn’t enjoy killings, adding that “If you want to fight us, then we will fight you with all our force.” “Kashmiris have to understand that the SFs (security forces) haven’t been so brutal — look at Syria and Pakistan. Our troops have been trying their level best to avoid any civilian casualty despite huge provocation,” he said. Also Read - No restriction on Accessing Any Website in Jammu and Kashmir: Centre Tells Lok Sabha
The Army chief said fresh recruitment for militant activities won’t bear any fruits. “There are fresh recruitments happening. I only want to stress that all this is futile, nothing is going to be achieved by them. You can’t fight the Army,” he said. He added that he doesn’t attach much importance to the number of militants killed in encounters.
Speaking on disruptions during operations by security forces, General Rawat said people should ask militants to surrender if they want nobody to be killed. “If they want that the militants aren’t killed, they should go and tell them to come out without their weapons so that nobody is killed,’’ he said.
General Rawat said stone pelters are inciting security forces to become more brutal as Army cannot allow people to disrupt its operations and help terrorists to flee. “People are inciting security forces by pelting stones at them to disrupt the operations…they are inciting security forces to become more aggressive,” the Army chief said. | 3,091 |
A seven-year-old girl wowed a crowd of 25,000 fans with her performance of the national anthem at a Major League Soccer (MLS) game on Sunday night.
Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of more than 25,000 spectators gathered to see the LA Galaxy take on the Seattle Sounders Sunday night at the StubHub Center in Los Angeles.
The seven-year-old was selected as the winner of the LA Galaxy’s inaugural #GalaxySocial national anthem contest.
😍 PRICELESS. 7-year-old @maleaemma just won the #GalaxySocial National Anthem contest and her reaction will hit you right in the feels 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/FnyFLSgQha — LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) September 19, 2018
The announcer introduced the singing prodigy as “tiny but mighty” before she took the field, captivating fans with her performance of the national anthem.
“I was thinking that I cannot do anything wrong because it’s a really special song to America,” Malea Emma told ABC News Monday.
Social media users showered praise upon Malea Emma following her performance, including Galaxy forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic, calling her the “MVP of the game”:
MVP of the game! https://t.co/eZ2WdQsVN7 — Zlatan Ibrahimović (@Ibra_official) September 24, 2018
Malea Emma, a native of Los Angeles, has had several brushes with stardom at a young age. Her father said she has been singing since she was one year old and has been entering talent competitions in downtown Los Angeles since the age of three.
At five years old, she performed at Carnegie Hall after she won the American Protégé International Vocal Competition.
“She’s been singing forever, basically before she could speak,” her dad, Arman Tjandrawidjaja, told USA Today. “Sometimes we have to tell her to be quiet.”
The second-grader has a YouTube channel and an Instagram account with more than 16,000 followers. Malea Emma told CBS News she practices with her father, who also serves as her vocal coach, and she hopes to be a “singer, doctor, actress and violinist” when she grows up. | 3,092 |
Footage of a motorcyclist risking his life to stop the Nice truck attack was seen all over the world.
It hurts a bit everywhere, even morally. But it'll be alright. It'll pass with time perhaps, perhaps not. Franck Nice truck attack motorcycle hero
The man in the video was hailed as a hero. It was believed he had fallen beneath the wheels or was shot, but the Frenchman, a local airport worker in his 40s is alive and well, and has given his first interview. He gave only his first name, Franck.
“I wanted to go see the fireworks, we were late and we missed it. But I said to my wife ‘let’s go and have some ice-cream on the promenade’.
As they went to get ice cream they saw people heading back from the beach after watching the Bastille Day fireworks display.
“Then I saw the truck overtake me on the pavement on my right. He must have been going 80 maybe 90km/h, I don’t know. It happened very fast.
“I saw people flying around the place, people hit by the truck, and he was swerving from the pavement on to the road. He was half on the pavement, half on the road.
Then his thoughts turned to his son.
“I knew my son was at Place Massena, at the end of the Promenade des Anglais. And then I started chasing the truck with my wife behind me.
He described being ‘in a trance but lucid’ as he went after the truck.
“I wanted to reach the steering wheel to stop the truck. I started hitting him with all my powers, I hit his head, his head, his head, his body, I hit, and I want to get him out of the truck. I didn’t manage to, and I was face to face with him.
“He had a gun in his hand. I had the impression that he was reloading his gun, but it didn’t work. He tried to shoot me but it didn’t work. His look was cold.”
“No emotion,” the journalist asks.
“No. At one stage he hit me on the head with his gun. I got off the truck, and straight away got on again and started hitting again and again, and I kept going, anyway I was ready to die. I was ready to die.” | 3,093 |
ratings Nemanja Matic - 5 Struggled defensively and seemed out of his depth. Couldn't deal with the United set-up. Manchester United 2 Chelsea 0 player ratings Cesar Azpilicueta - 6 Pushed forward down the flank and provided his team-mates with a reliable source of deliveries. Defensively, he enjoyed a better display than the rest of the Chelsea back line. Manchester United 2 Chelsea 0 player ratings Pedro - 5 Enjoyed a few half-chances but was subdued and lacked any real dynamism. Manchester United 2 Chelsea 0 player ratings Eden Hazard - 6 Missed that magic touch today. Was played out of the game by Herrera. Occasionally threatened with his quick feet but it wasn't to be. Manchester United 2 Chelsea 0 player ratings Diego Costa - 5 Bullish but another disappointing performance. His quality on the ball and in front of goal deteriorated as his composure faded throughout the game.
As to whether he was happy to just beat Chelsea?
“The satisfaction is for different reasons. The first is with Liverpool and Manchester City victories [this weekend]. If we don’t win, goodbye Premier League. These three points were phenomenal. The second is they are the leader. When you beat the leader it is obviously a very good feeling.
“I had the feeling before this match but now totally convinced, with 11 players at Stamford Bridge in the second game [the 1-0 FA Cup defeat to Chelsea in March] we would be playing against Tottenham [Hotspur] at Wembley this weekend [instead of Chelsea].”
One of the big discussion points of the game was whether Rahsford’s rampant running to go with his goal, and how it made United so much livelier, should justify getting into the team ahead of the rested Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
“I have the same question downstairs. Rashford is the third or fourth player with more minutes on the pitch and when everyone tries to guess the young player who has minutes with me, he is third or fouth. He plays every game, on the right on the left in one striker in two strikers. For his education this is a phenomenal season with an amazing range of different experience. He is not scoring enough goals. Even today he does not score the first. The kid played very well and again.”
Mourinho was asked how it feels to go 22 games unbeaten in the league and, while expressing frustration that has not led to a title challenge, believes it can be the foundation for one if they add a touch more quality to what he considers a strong squad. | 3,094 |
Cloud computing is already a huge business, and competition is stiff. But this year, tech firms opened a new front in the battle to win users over in the cloud: the large-scale introduction of cloud-based AI.
For small and medium-size companies, building AI-capable systems at scale can be prohibitively expensive, largely because training algorithms takes a lot of computing power. Enter the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, each of which has vast stores of computing power and a big stake in the $40 billion cloud computing industry. For them, adding AI is simply a matter of keeping up with customers, who increasingly are looking for cost-effective ways of building machine learning into their software.
Amazon, with its AWS Amazon Cloud service, has been leading the way. At the AWS conference in Las Vegas earlier this year, the company showed off Amazon Cloud 9, an integrated development environment (IDE) that plugs directly into its cloud platform. It also announced a host of new AI tools that can turn speech in audio files into time-stamped text, for example, as well as translate between seven languages and track people, activities, and objects in video.
Google lags behind Amazon and Microsoft in overall cloud services but is making a play for more market share with TensorFlow, open-source AI software that can build other machine-learning software. Since its launch, it’s become the AI platform of choice for many developers, and it underpins many new artificial-intelligence projects. The company has created its own chips, too, called Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which are designed to efficiently process TensorFlow and cut down on energy needs.
Of course, Microsoft and Amazon aren’t giving up ground without a fight. In fact, they’re teaming up. The two launched an open-source deep-learning library called Gluon that works a lot like TensorFlow and is meant to make it as easy to build and train neural networks as it is to make an app. Microsoft is also trying out low-power chips to run its Azure cloud servers.
AI in the cloud is about more than just power plays by tech giants, though—it could also be behind the next leap forward in artificial intelligence. Rigetti Computing, a company in California, just used one of its prototype quantum chips to run a machine-learning algorithm on its cloud platform. The technology is so new that even experts are unsure what it is capable of. But one thing’s for sure: there will be a lot of learning done in the cloud in 2018. | 3,095 |
, I stumbled upon the sudden and unprecedented announcement of the US government to close all their embassies throughout the Arab world on Sunday, August 4th and possibly for more days because they expect an Al Qaeda attack abroad or even at home, which makes the matter even more ominous. Please observe that I have already announced to the PAT that I expect the beginning of the big events between August 5th and 12th. Hence this is already very significant news.
Because we know that the only Al Qaeda that exists and can pose any danger to the USA are those that are now supplied with weapons by the USA and GB in Syria to murder the civil population there and also to kill each other in a blood-thirsty, zombie-like euphoria and even to eat like cannibals the hearts and inner organs of their alleged foes, as recently shown in an ominous video, published on the Internet and commented by Putin during the G8 summit:
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_ news/2013/08/01/19820594-us- issues-worldwide-travel-alert- over-al-qaeda-threat?lite
The most likely first move of the dark US cabal will be to close the banks – this is their only and last trump in their hands. It is also the easiest way to stir unrest, as the whole Orion monetary system is bankrupt and is only kept alive by secret manipulations of bank assets and equity charts on the stock exchange, which can longer be hidden in the current time of transparent energies. In the last few days, the number of serious warnings by whistleblowers in the alternative media that the crash may happen any moment has grown exponentially, as these two sources illustrate in a representative manner:
http://www.in5d.com/all-debts- to-be-erased.html
http://2012thebigpicture. wordpress.com/category/whats- happening-on-the-financial- front/
We must now await what will happen in the next 48 -72 hours, but there is no doubt that the events are now beginning to stipulate and the atmosphere is heating by the hour. The boiling point will be reached very soon and I am highly optimistic that this will happen in the period between August 5th and 12th. The signs for this unfolding are now overwhelming and anyone of you must feel the tension rising in your personal fields, which is the best place to gauge the probability of any future event in this timeline, until the linear time will be wrapped up and ascension into the simultaneity of All-That-Is will take place. | 3,096 |
The planned Boba Fett film said to be scrapped by Lucasfilm would have centered around the infamous armored bounty hunter and his colleagues as first seen in The Empire Strikes Back, EW reports.
Fett and bounty hunters Dengar, Zuckuss, Bossk, and droids 4-Lom and IG-88 were assembled by Darth Vader in Empire to hunt the Millennium Falcon and take its Rebel freedom fighters alive using any methods necessary — prohibiting disintegrations.
Entertainment reporter Erick Weber was the first to report Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy confirmed the Fett movie is “100% dead.” The studio will instead be focusing on Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, a spinoff television series centered around a Fett-like character to debut on Disney’s 2019 streaming service.
A planned Boba Fett movie was first stalled when original writer-director Josh Trank (Chronicle) stepped away in the wake of troubles surrounding his botched Fantastic Four reboot that proved a critical and commercial failure for Fox in 2015.
In May, it was reported Logan helmer James Mangold would be writing and directing the Boba Fett movie. It would have been just the second spinoff centered around a specific character following young Han Solo prequel Solo: A Star Wars Story, which underperformed at the worldwide box office earlier this summer.
Lucasfilm put a reported hold on its expansive slate of Star Wars productions following the weak box office of Solo, which fell far short of earning the box office dollars pulled in by Disney-Lucasfilm productions The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi. Development has since cooled on a standalone centered around fan-favorite Jedi Obi-wan Kenobi, which was expected to see Ewan McGregor reprise his role from George Lucas’ Star Wars prequel trilogy.
Favreau oversees The Mandalorian for Disney, which follows the adventures of a lone gunfighter operating in the outer reaches of the galaxy, far from the authority of the New Republic. The series is set after Return of the Jedi, taking place after the fall of the Empire but before the emergence of the First Order currently menacing Rey (Daisy Ridley) and allies in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
Dave Filoni (Star Wars Rebels, The Clone Wars), Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok), Deborah Chow (Jessica Jones), Rick Famuyiwa (Dope), and Bryce Dallas Howard are on board as directors.
Disney has yet to announce a release date for The Mandalorian. The series will premiere exclusively on Disney Play, launching sometime in 2019. | 3,097 |
On Saturday evening, Donald Trump fired off a series of tweets to congratulate ABC News for suspending anchor Brian Ross and to take more jabs at Hillary Clinton in the wake of former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s plea deal.
Shortly after he gushed about Melania Trump’s White House holiday decorations on Twitter, he immediately took the opportunity to use Flynn’s “lies to the FBI” to drag Clinton saying that she lied many times without any consequence. “Rigged system or just a double standard?” he tweeted.
He went on to say “Many people in our Country are asking what the ‘Justice’ Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and “acid washed” 33,000 Emails? No justice!”
In what seems a routine for the former Celebrity Apprentice host, he went on another “fake news” rant as he congratulated ABC New for suspending Ross for the error he made in a report he made about Flynn saying that he would testify that Trump ordered him to contact the Russians about foreign policy before Trump was elected. Calling Ross’s reporting “horrendously inaccurate” and “dishonest”, Trump said that “more networks and ‘papers’ should do the same with their Fake News!”
The tweets come shortly after Trump took to Twitter to admit that he fired Flynn for lying to Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI. This comes a day after Flynn pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian officials. Many have seen this as Trump admitting to information he knew before but did not share. Earlier in February, former FBI director James Comey said that Trump asked him to stop the investigation into Flynn. If Trump knew that Flynn lied to the FBI then this could possibly point to obstruction of justice.
So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday “interrogation” with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times…and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017
Many people in our Country are asking what the “Justice” Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and “acid washed” 33,000 Emails? No justice! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017 | 3,098 |
Israeli officials expressed outrage late Tuesday, after the International Legal Forum (ILF) argued that the US Customs' January 23 "reissuing" of orders to importers to label all products from Judea and Samaria as not being from "Israel" was a covert policy change.
Slamming the move as deceiving Congress, as well as the American and Israeli public, the Israeli group International Law Forum told Channel 2 that American claims of merely "reissuing" policies from 1995 are in fact false.
The group noted that the 1995 guidelines only applied to goods from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Judea and Samaria, which was newly established in the 1994 Oslo Accords. The guidelines were meant to distinguish PA goods as not being Israeli.
However, the new orders call for all goods from Judea and Samaria to be labeled as non-Israeli, including those produced by Israeli Jews living in the region.
International Legal Forum's argument Tuesday echoes those of the Legal Grounds initiative, as reported by Arutz Sheva late last month.
Congress is trying to bring US Secretary of State John Kerry in for a hearing to clarify the topic, according to Channel 2, which noted that the State Department claims it was not involved in the January labeling statement.
Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan (Jewish Home) responded to the International Law Forum's appraisal with upset, saying, "the United States is a close friend of the state of Israel, but we also have red lines."
"Labeling products, which means delegitimization of the settlements in Judea and Samaria, is something not to be done between friends. The possibility that this was a deception is most serious, and I intend to speak with the American Ambassador on the topic soon," said Ben-Dahan.
Also responding to the announcement was the Yesha Council of Judea and Samaria, which noted, "unfortunately again it was discovered that the (Barack) Obama and Kerry administration is working in improper ways against the settlements."
"Today it was revealed that the surprising order regarding the labeling of products from Judea and Samaria does not match the orders established in the past in the US, and the publication was done with malice and fraud, while attempting to harm the state of Israel."
"Now the great question remains: to clarify who gave the order and what were their motives. We expect our friends, friends of Israel in the US, to act to change the outgoing order and not to remain silent until it is clear who stood behind this serious step," said the Yesha Council. | 3,099 |
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